Author: Truant, Johnny B.; Platt, Sean
Date: 2012-12-20

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

UNICORN WESTERN

The Hitching

Delayed

The Posse

Decisions

The Kid

Bandits

The Stew Hole

Dharma Kold

High Noon

Trouble at the Otel

Epic Unicorn Fight

Get cool stuff!

About the Authors

Unicorn Western

by Sean Platt &

Johnny B. Truant

Copyright © 2013 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.

Cover copyright © 2013 by Erin Mehlos.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Any resemblance to reality is rendered especially ridiculous by the inclusion of unicorns.

Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about Unicorn Western, to help us spread the word.

Thank you for supporting our work.

For Austin, Ethan, Haley, and Sydney, who we wanted to write for before they got old enough to begin criticizing (or ridiculing) us.

And of course for Dave, who made the fatal mistake of saying we couldn’t write a western without knowing the color of smoke that came from a gunslinger’s pistols.

UNICORN

WESTERN

CHAPTER ONE:

THE HITCHING

Clint touched his guns.

There were two of them — old, silver, and laced with scratches. Each pistol held seven bullets, as did every gun carried by The Realm’s marshals. Back before Clint packed fourteen bullets, he was allowed to carry a pistol on just one of his hips, and to only fire shots from a six-bullet tumbler, like every other commoner outside The Realm. But those days, for Clint at least, were long gone.

Most of the Sands’ bandits and outlaws carried two guns or more, even though doing so was as illegal as sipping from a silver flask on Sunday. But getting your hands on a seven-shooter was impossible, unless you were a marshal. Even the darkest of dealers wouldn’t pass them in the shadows behind a saloon, thanks to the taboo.

In a few hours, Clint would surrender his guns for good, along with his right to marshal in any town, be it inside or outside of The Realm. He’d hand them over along with his badge and go back to being plain old Clint Gulliver, with no Marshal in front. He’d be left with a lone six-shooter, strapped to his right hip since he was a righty, and knew that a straight draw was always better than the crooked aim from a cross-draw done wrong.

Surrendering his guns bothered Clint something fierce, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He could lose his hat, stubble, and anything else that made him a man, but along with his pistols, the gunslinger would be losing his unicorn. That was an itchy trigger finger’s worth of intolerable.

And, he thought, it was the last thing he should be thinking about right now.

Clint sat in the farback of the saloon, staring into the mirror as he did about twice a year. He looked good, so far as Clint Gulliver could look good. He looked pleased, so far as his crooked, perpetually scowling face could look pleased. Yet he was torn, and that bothered him. The marshal was a straightforward, cut-and-dried kind of a guy. He was rarely conflicted. But now he was torn between two great loves, and the fact that he felt so divided felt like trouble.

What was more — and this part was as hard to believe as the breaking away of The Realm and the leaking of the magic — he was happy.

He wore his newfound happiness like another man’s hat, every second assuming he’d have to give it back. It was a mistake, him wearing what passed for a smile. It was only a matter of time before Providence realized the truth, and took back what it should never have given the grizzled gunslinger to begin with.

Clint had seen most of the sides of the Sands, along with most everything sitting up and down the middle of the Sprawl. He had mostly been solo — and neither happy nor unhappy — prior to Mai and long before Solace. It had been that way since he first rode into the Sands with his back to The Realm.

But of course, solo didn’t include Edward, the unicorn he wasn’t supposed to have.

The gunslinger sighed, then pushed the stew in his gut down into his boots. Today was a good day. So what if being happy wasn’t quite familiar? Once upon a time, turkey didn’t go in pie. Things changed. Edward would be happy in his retirement, maybe even write that defamatory book about The Realm that he’d been talking on forever.

Clint listened.

Out in the main room, the pianoman was banging out “She’s Got a Way” three or four times faster than the song was usually played, pouring music out from the upright in the front where the gathered townspeople sat, the music drifting all the way into the farback and into Clint’s ears. The pianoman was playing the traditional hitching set, of course, working through “She’s Got A Way,” to “Just The Way You Are” — Clint’s cue to leave, so that he could cross the saloon’s main floor and approach his happily ever after.

Then, after the swapping of the vows, the pianoman would finish the set by playing “Piano Man” as tradition insisted, before concluding the ceremony and transitioning from hitching mode to party mode by smashing a pumpkin into the keys.

Clint adjusted his tie a final time, sighed, stood from his bench in front of the mirror, then walked through the batwing doors of the farback and entered the saloon’s main front room.

The citizens of Solace turned to greet the gunslinger.

Most towns scattered throughout the Sprawl were relatively large. Solace was small. With the tables pushed back to allow for the hitching party to stage their ceremony, the saloon seemed downright giant.

Clint spied Mai across the room, past the waitingmen and the preacherman, standing beside her row of waitingwomen. She looked beautiful, dressed head to toe in pink. She smiled as he entered, her hand twittering at her side like a nervous bird, wanting to wave — out of character for a wedding, but plenty normal for Mai.

The gunslinger smiled — in character for a wedding, but out of character for Clint. Then his hands went to his sides, finding them slim and too fleshy.

I should have my guns, he thought.

The pianoman kept banging his upright, finishing “Just the Way You Are” with a mellow voice as smooth as any Joelsinger in The Realm. For a second, the pianoman’s voice brought Clint to missing The Realm. Then he remembered his leaving, and the longing turned into a bolt of loathing. He shoved it down into his boots with the rest of his stew, reminding himself that he was at a wedding — his wedding, against all odds — and that a hitching was a time for joy, not anger.

The room fell into a hush as the pianoman finished, and the preacherman started with his opening words, welcoming them all and reminding them that there was nothing greater than friends gathering together to witness two souls stitching their lives together like scraps in a quilt.

The preacherman went on about the lovely day and the fair weather that would be remembered and remarked upon forever, or at least until the coming Harvest. He thanked Providence and the movements of the Sands for allowing them this great weather, then thanked Providence, on everyone’s behalf, for leaving them what remained of the magic, so far from The Realm.

The preacherman finished his opening address in the traditional way, with three claps and a wink. The assembly answered his call by clapping thrice. Clint should’ve done the same, but couldn’t bring his palms together any more than he could make himself sing along to the Joelsongs like everyone else. Margaret Partridge, who always had her nose in everyone’s business, was watching Clint rather than the preacherman and gave him the reek-eye when he failed to clap. Clint ignored her.

The preacherman raised his hand. Clint walked forward at his signal and stood beside Mai. Her hand found his, squeezing it in a strange reversal of roles. Clint was usually the strong one, but today he was a fish flopping on the desert floor.

“Dearly beloved,” said the preacherman, “we are gathered here today to witness the joining of this man and this woman under Providence, in the town of Solace, if the movements of the Sands so will it.”

“So will it,” the crowd murmured in repeat.

“The Sands have spoken, and the union of Clint Gulliver and Mai Maneau pleases them. Does it please the assembled?”

The guests, seated to the left of Clint and Mai, answered in one voice: “So it pleases us.”

Mai looked over, smiling at her man. Clint couldn’t bring himself to smile at the crowd, so instead he smiled at Mai. The smile, like the happiness that was worn like another man’s hat, felt strange. She returned his smile, her pink headpiece framing her smooth, pale face and shining brown hair.

Mai didn’t look like a Sands woman at all. She was pretty enough to grace the cover of one of The Realm’s glossy books. Like the swarm of men in the saloon, women of the Sands looked beaten by gritty wind and hard life. Their skin was rough, almost like cowhide, with hair that was dull and mostly dead. Mai looked nothing like that, and Clint was clear enough to admit it was her radiance that drew him to her, like he was metal and she was a magnet.

Clint would never have shared that first slice of pie, or his tall bottle of apple brew, if Mai hadn’t stood out like she did. It wasn’t long before Providence let Clint know he was right. Mai wasn’t supposed to be out in the Sands. She was supposed to be in The Realm. Her half-magick blood meant that she had a home behind the walls. That’s where the gunslinger would take her again if The Realm could ever be found. He swore on his guns — be they a pair of sevens or a commoner’s six.

Margaret Partridge belched from her seat. Not uncommon, but the sound still stole Clint’s attention. Nosy Margaret’s eyes weren’t where they were supposed to be. She was staring out the saloon window, interested in something that wasn’t a hitching.

“Clint and Mai, it is my pleasure to preside over your union. You wish to be joined forever under Providence?”

“We do,” they said as one.

The preacherman turned to Clint. “Clint, I’ve known you for nearly a year. When you came to this town, it was so dirty, a decent woman couldn’t walk the street without worry of falling to the grip of roving gangs. Solace was no place to raise a child. Drunkenness and lawlessness ruled, until you changed that. You are a good man, Marshal, brave and upright. Has life prepared you for the challenge of hitching?”

The preacherman held Clint’s eyes while he waited for the answer. The gunslinger buried a desire to leave him killt, which was what he usually had to do when a man dared to stare without flinching.

“Are you prepared to tolerate Mai’s friends, even when they annoy you, and feign interest in theater and dance to please her?”

The crowd should have chuckled, but something outside was stealing their interest away from the ceremony. Clint turned, spying the entire back row, which was all bodies twisted in their seats.

Mai elbowed Clint, returning his eyes to the front.

“And Mai,” said the preacherman, “can you accept Clint’s failure to notice changes in your hairstyle, from subtle to grand? Will you constantly pretend that the emissions from his rear don’t sour your stomach and curl the hairs in your nose?”

Clint looked from the preacherman to Mai. The preacherman said, “These are the things you must consider when hitching.”

Still, the saloon was missing its laughter. Behind them, Earl Lancaster, Bella Swinton, and Nicholas Willings all stood, then went outside in a line. Clint was wishing for his guns as Mai elbowed him again.

The preacherman strained his neck, trying to see where the three had disappeared — and where the remaining assembly seemed to be looking — until remembering his place and returning his attention to the couple.

“By entering into this union, you pool your strengths and shore your weaknesses. Clint, you bring grit, bravery, and a stubborn disposition. Mai, you bring compassion, stability, and a general sense of loving. If I’m right in my suspicions —” He scratched his head. “— you might even bring an increasingly rare share of magic, which even the… the…”

Bill Maynard, George Telford, and Hattie McDonnough slipped through the saloon doors and out into the street.

“… the… the…”

Robert Beltham. Nellie Peterson and her two daughters. Queer MacElroy, the town oddity. Only Teddy, the orphan in half the town’s employ, still had his eyes aimed front and center.

Clint looked at Mai’s uncommonly beautiful face and felt a twitching sort of nervous, like everything was suddenly slipping away.

“The vows,” said Clint. “The vows are next.”

Mai turned, watching the chairs and tables empty to nothing.

“There’s something wrong,” Mai said.

Clint curled his lip. “Ignore it.”

“I want to go out and see.”

“Ignore it,” he repeated. Then, to the preacherman: “Come on. The vows.”

The preacherman looked conflicted. Mai was distracted and wouldn’t keep her eyes forward. It was pointless anyway, seeing as they were the only three people still in the saloon. Duty was the only thing keeping the preacherman from bolting outside himself.

“Do it,” Clint growled. “Just finish quickly.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Mai. “I’m not getting married in a rush so we can run outside. We’re here to be with these people.”

“I don’t want any interruption in my hitching,” said Clint.

“We’re already interrupted.” It should’ve sounded harsh, but it sounded tender instead. Mai set the back of her hand to the rough of Clint’s face.

“What do you think we…?” Clint started to say to the preacherman, but the preacherman had already gone. They couldn’t get married now if they wanted to, unless the gunslinger planned to get ordained and play both the roles of both betrothed and betrother.

“Dagnit,” said Clint.

Mai pulled him toward the doorway.

Outside, they found the assembly gathered around the Water Reader, his fingers dipped into one of three rain barrels that were submerged halfway into the sand alongside the main street. His eyes were rolled into the farback of his head as he chanted in readerspeak. The assembly stood in an eager semicircle, ears perked for the stray word to leave the Water Reader’s mouth in plainspeak, so that they could predict his prophecy before he fell from his trance.

The crowd’s faces were pinched in worry, or maybe terror. The assembly turned to Clint, as if begging him to do something — like shoot the Reader right now between his rolled-up eyes, before he could spit a prophecy to ruin them all.

“Mnmnmnm stone mnmnm falling town mnmnmn the winds sands mnmnmn…”

“You people are terrible wedding guests,” said Clint.

Mai hushed him.

“This is how you thank your marshal?”

“Mnmnmnm hassle return shifting sands mnmnmnm to the ends the edge mnmnmnm…”

Hattie McDonnough looked up, her eyes wide. “No,” she said. “No…”

“Shut it Hattie,” Robert Beltham snapped. “Let the man read the Sands.”

“Mnmnmnm coming coming with the dozens mnmnMNMNM DARK SHIFTING SANDS MNMNMN.”

Without the slightest pause, the Water Reader’s eyes snapped into place. He drew his fingers from the rain barrel and said, looking directly at Clint, “The Sands have told me that a bleak cloud is returning to Solace. They showed me dark riders. And at the front of the riders, I saw the face of Hassle Stone.”

Queer MacElroy laughed. He was the only one.

CHAPTER TWO:

DELAYED

The preacherman refused to continue the ceremony. He said he’d give the couple a rain check.

Mai said, “I didn’t know preachermen gave rain checks.”

The preacherman didn’t look at her, or put apology into his eyes. He simply said, “Looks like you learned something new.”

“We’re to be married today,” Mai insisted. “Tomorrow’s magic is different. The moon was fullest this morning, and that made for the second moon this month, making it blue. I cannot be married except on a blue moon. Otherwise is trouble, and who knows how long we’ll have to wait?”

Clint took Mai by the arm and pulled her away. The preacherman wasn’t listening, and wasn’t going to. He was tossing clothes, bibles, and religious trinkets into an open suitcase until it was so fat that the preacherman couldn’t buckle the straps. He sat on top, forcing it closed, chuckling as if Hassle Stone wasn’t galloping toward Solace when his Water of Holies vial shattered inside. The preacherman made a joke about how his wardrobe would be forever blessed no matter how fashion might change, then lifted the suitcase lid and started mumbling as he gathered pieces of broken glass.

Clint growled at the preacherman, then dragged Mai upstairs, to his boarding room in the back.

“We’ll need to ride to Sojourn now so we can find a preacherman to marry us there, and we’re smart to hurry since the moon’ll be different by morrow,” she said, standing in the doorway.

“I can’t leave town,” he said.

“But we’re to be married.”

Clint grabbed Mai gently by both upper arms and pulled her eyes to his. “I told you, Mai, I can’t go. We’ll still be married, but not until Hassle Stone is right-handled.”

“The blue moon. Our hitching must be on the blue moon. Your friend the preacherman is…”

“The preacherman’s no friend,” said Clint.

“He’s running from something, not even willing to take ten minutes to finish our hitching. Vows were all that remained. ‘Do you? Do you? I declare you married.’ Two minutes, not ten.” Then she went bright with an idea. “Maybe your guns could persuade him.”

Clint smiled from the side of his mouth. “I can’t use my guns to force a man to marry us,” he said.

“Then we must get to Sojourn. Today, Clint!”

“It’ll have to be the next blue moon, Mai. I can’t leave Solace. Not now with Hassle Stone leaving horizon behind him.”

“Who is this Hassle Stone, anyway?” she said. “And why is everyone so afraid of him?”

Clint looked at Mai, her beautiful dark hair framing her frazzled face. She’d come to Solace after he had, and never knew a town polluted by the madness that followed Stone like an angry cloud.

“He’s a bad man.”

“The Sprawl is full of bad men.”

“Yar’m, and a lot of them are amigo to Stone.”

“Let Todd handle it. He was going to handle things while we were away anyway.”

“Todd can’t handle Hassle Stone.”

“Why the Sands not?” Mai was nearly yelling, and practically in tears. Clint never understood how women could cry when angry. He would comfort their sadness, if that’s what it was. But Clint had earned plenty a palm to his face after failing to notice a woman was angry rather than sad. Now that he knew the difference, the gunslinger might be able to survive a marriage…if he could get a preacherman to put him in the middle of one.

“Because Hassle Stone doesn’t ride alone,” Clint said. “He has a way of drawing others to gallop behind him, and subduing those who might fight against him. You didn’t see what it was like when I first came to Solace. It was as if he were magic.” Clint rubbed his hand over his uncharacteristically soft and freshly shaven jaw.

“But you have magic.” Mai reached out for his hand. “I have magic.”

“I don’t have magic,” said Clint.

“You know magic.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mai. You heard the Water Reader. Hassle’s on his way, coming to laugh at the law. I am the law. You see what that means, don’t you?”

“If Hassle Stone is bad, then of course the Reader said he’s bringing lawlessness. You know how Readers are.”

“Yar’m,” said Clint. “I do know how Readers are. Several are in my family line, including Kullem the Brew. Everything goes double meaning to them. You don’t know Stone, Mai. He’s not back for Solace. He’s back for me. That is what ‘lawlessness’ means. It’s not chaos he’s seeing in the water. He’s reading a grudge against the local law man.”

Mai shook her head, sighed, threw her hands in the air, then flopped onto the turkey feather mattress, starched undergarments rustling. Clint sat in the chair across from the bed. She lifted her head and watched him.

“If we left,” he said, “if we traveled to Sojourn. If we made our home there and never came back? Hassle Stone would take this town over. Then he’d leave men to control it, like occupying armies in a game of Risk. He’d give chase, follow us until he found me. If I weren’t ready when he found us, he’d lay me in my grave.”

A single tear painted Mai’s right cheek. Clint guessed her anger had turned to mostly vapor, and the tear a mere drop of frustration. Women cried for everything; getting learned on the various species of weeping should be part of a hitching.

“What happened with him?” she asked.

“With Stone?”

“Yar.”

Clint drew a deep breath, stood, walked to the window, and looked out onto the main street in front of the saloon and boarding house, his large gunslinger’s hands hanging limp at his sides.

“Stone’s men used to control Solace. From the way-back, since the town was just one saloon and a pair of tall closets. Before Stone, the town had neither law nor lawlessness. Stone showed, and stepped into Solace like a key sliding into a lock. It’s like the bad men were already here, just waiting for the right bandit to lead them. At least, that’s what the Water Reader said, and what Todd told me later.”

Clint’s jaw set as his eyes went to steel.

“His roving gangs roamed the street, taking all they wanted from the stores, without a thankoo or pleasem. They chased women, and caught them often. Merchants were extorted, and left barely enough rupees to stay alive. The saloon was the only thing booming, and not with wedding business. Well, the saloon and the coffiner. Each night after the saloon went shuttered, Stone’s men would spill into the streets, falling in a heap until their bodies were finished twitching from the poison.”

“Sounds like the Sprawl,” said Mai. “I’ve seen plenty of the same.”

“This was worse,” Clint said from behind serious eyes. “Todd said once a barber tried to help one of Stone’s men up from the dirt after a long night. Got a bullet in his beak for the trouble. Smashed through his nose and sailed through the back of his head. The barber managed a final word before he fell in a pile of meat and skin.”

“What was the word?” Mai asked, as if it mattered.

“Lice.”

Mai was quiet, waiting for Clint to continue. Then he said, “The entire town was their private pantry, their stock of supplies earned only from the sweat of others. They invaded homes just because they could, making sure everyone knew that everything in Solace belonged to Stone, regardless of the ink on any deed. No one dared fight back, or he’d have them arrested and put on trial in the street.”

“Trial?”

“More like a game of trivia. Stone held trial on the rare occasions when someone dared cross him, or sometimes to celebrate another day ending in Y. Stone’d stop men in the street, usually outside the saloon, putting his pistol to their skulls and pulling the hammer back with a quiet click you could nearly hear through the town. A crowd would gather, of course, since that’s what crowds do even when they hate what they see. Stone would ask the man, down on his knees, how many posts were in front of the post office, or something else equally irrelevant. The man would either get the answer right and live, or get it wrong and die. Either way, the citizens of Solace learned it was futile to wiggle beneath Stone’s heel.”

Clint turned from the window.

Mai said, “Why didn’t the people rise up? Weren’t there more of them than there were of the bandits?”

“Who ever rises up?” said Clint.

“So you came to town and…”

“Edward and I came to town a while after our exile. When we found Solace, I near wanted to die. Good thing for the town, I wasn’t willing to suffer a man like Stone sucking air under the same sun as me. We meant to pass through, on our way to deeper Sands, looking for a bed and pie. But the first thing that set my nerves to raw was how the place was quiet as a turkey graveyard. Then, we were welcomed into town when Stone himself stepped into the street and fired three slugs into Edward’s chest.”

Clint nearly smiled at the memory. Edward had looked down at his wounds, his horn glowing as the three slugs rose through his skin and fell to the dirt. The unicorn’s blood-matted hair had swirled blue and red and green and yellow as Edward stared up into Stone’s eyes. Both Clint and Edward realized Stone held the same fool belief as most folks — that a unicorn was only a horse with a horn.

Edward could have killed Stone with his own slugs, but Clint’s unicorn thought it was funnier to watch Stone run, which he did the second he saw the slugs hit the dirt.

Edward had let him go, then said to Clint: What a jerk. Now I need an apple brew.

Mai didn’t gasp when Clint told her Stone had shot Edward. She laughed, knowing his unicorn.

“It didn’t take us long to drive the bandits out of the town,” Clint said. “Edward wouldn’t even help. He walked straight from the center of the street where Stone had shot him and into the saloon, then pushed all of the tables and chairs out of the way and told the barman he wanted a tall apple brew and a fat slice of turkey pie. The barman was so shocked that he served Edward his brew in a mug. Edward asked for a clutch of straws and drank it that way, then stayed there the rest of that day and all of the next one. I tried getting him to help me with Stone, but he wouldn’t leave his sour mood behind. His coat was filthy, with rainbow-colored blood caked on his chest. He never washed — just stood by the bar and drank mug after mug of apple brew and ate them plum out of turkey pie. I told him we had a town to clear. He said I should try my best to avoid a mortal wound, and that he’d heal me like always if I got shot otherwise. I told him we could get done faster if he’d help, and he asked me what I was talking on since he was already done.”

Clint told Mai the rest of the story — how he’d hunted Stone’s men and taken them down, one by one. He told her about the three times he’d been shot, once square in the gut, and how each time he’d crawled back to Edward, who would only heal him after another round of ridicule. He told her about the time Stone nicked him in a lung, and how he almost hadn’t made it back to Edward’s new home in the saloon — and how when he had, catching up to Edward while he occupied the entire bar area of the saloon, the unicorn had laughed louder than ever, suggesting the gunslinger wear a stove plate over his heart if he insisted on continuing to fight.

Now, Clint pointed outside and finished his story, telling Mai how his final showdown with Stone had happened right there in the street below, in front of the saloon boardinghouse. He’d turned into Stone’s bullet as the bandit had fired, deliberately taking the fourth shot in the shoulder and falling. Then he told her how, when Stone kicked his seven-shooter away, he’d fired from his other side.

After a faded red billow of gunslinger’s smoke from the marshal’s gun, Stone had fallen. Clint stood, yelling for Edward. The unicorn healed him from the saloon without bothering to emerge. Clint, standing over a moaning Stone, had fired once more, slamming Stone with a bullet in his opposite arm. He’d told Stone to go, to get out of town before he bled out, and that if he ever found the strength in his arms to hold a weapon again, Clint would find and end him by sundown.

Mai let him finish, then stood and dragged a suitcase out from under the bed.

“What are you doing?” Clint asked.

“Packing. Leaving.”

“That’s my suitcase,” he said.

“Of course. It’s you that’s going. I only have a few things at the Otel. We’ll go there next, and be gone before Stone shows his face back in Solace.”

Clint shook his head.

“If he’s at all magic — or simply not a fool — he’ll be ready for you this time. He’ll know your unicorn can’t help you if he kills you outright. If this man is really coming back, you’d be an idiot to be here when he does.”

“Mai. I can’t leave. He’ll end this town. All of it. He won’t just take what he wants this time. He’ll kill what he can’t take, and he’ll let the bodies rot.”

“You said his grudge was with you.”

“His grudge is with the world.”

“This isn’t your fight,” she said. “Not anymore. You were to surrender your guns and unicorn in the morrow, no longer riding the Sands as a marshal. We were to leave.”

“Yar’m,” he said. “But we didn’t.”

Mai huffed, cursing the Water Reader and saying that if he could have just waited a few hours longer to disturb the town, they’d be married and Clint would have already handed his marshal’s star and guns to Todd, trading them for a citizen’s six-shooter and a horse. When word of Stone’s return came, the couple would already be well on their way toward Sojourn, off to start a new and delightfully dull rest of their lives.

“I spent most of my life in the deep Sands,” she said, “and in the deep Sands, the one thing you learn is that running keeps you breathing. Flight isn’t cowardice so much as a second chance. I survived without parents in the middle of the Sprawl because I knew when to run, and therefore live to fight another day. How will you help anyone if you die?”

“How will I help anyone if I leave?”

“Rally others. Report to Sojourn authorities. You could even come back. But if you stay now, you don’t stand a chance. How is that the right choice, in any sense?”

“Running’s a coward’s move.”

“Your pride! By the Sands!”

“You know me, Mai. I can’t leave the town nekid in a coming rain.”

“They have Todd!”

“Todd’s an idiot,” said Clint. “And Edward will never listen to him. Edward will watch him get shot while trying not to laugh. You think I have pride? Unicorns make me look penitent, and Edward makes most unicorns look like groveling fools. I can hand someone my guns, but Edward can’t be handed to any man. He has the choice to stay for the next marshal or to run back. He’ll run back. He’s not with me as a matter of duty, you understand. He’s with me because what we have is friendship, held together by mutual loathing.”

Mai’s face curled in surrender. She was holding one of his shirts, and set it on the bed, neither back in place nor in the suitcase. She walked to the door, then turned back, once again blinking tears from her eyes. This time, Clint had no idea why they were there.

“We’re to be married,” she said.

“Someday soon, we will be,” he promised.

“Come with me to Sojourn. Please, Clint. Like you promised. We’ve already hired the carriage. It’ll be ready shortly. We can still go, just climb inside and not look back. You and me, Clint. Pretend the preacherman made it through the last two minutes of the vows. Pretend the Reader said nothing.”

“But he did.” Clint shook his head. “He said too much, and now that I’ve heard it, I can’t leave Solace.”

She sighed, and opened the door.

“I’m going to the Otel,” she said. “When the carriage is ready, I’ll be taking it to Sojourn. You have that long to do the right thing, Clint. That long to change your mind.”

“I’m all that stands between Stone and these people.”

She swiped a tear from her eye. “I can’t watch you die.” She shook her head. “I won’t.”

“Then don’t,” he said. “Watch me live.”

CHAPTER THREE:

THE POSSE

Clint pulled open the door to Edward’s house five minutes later.

In truth, Edward’s house was a barn, and Edward’s room a stall, but Clint had never heard of a unicorn who used either of those base words. Horses lived in stalls inside of barns, and horses were disgusting. Horses crapped in the same rooms where they slept, whereas unicorns did their toilet business in the yard. Horses drank discolored water from plastic buckets. Unicorns lapped clean water from a foot-operated pump over an immaculate metal trough. Horses ate hay. Unicorns also ate hay, but only when there was nothing better in the offing. They loved brew and all sorts of pie, from dinner to dessert.

“Edward,” said Clint, catching his breath. “We’ve got a problem. The Water Reader says…”

A thirty-pound bag of oats flew across the stable, striking Clint in the face and sending him to the barn’s packed clay floor.

Clint stood, brushed himself off, and peeked around the corner, where he nearly ran into Edward’s enormous white rump. Edward looked back at Clint over his shoulder, his spiraled horn pointing at Clint in accusation.

“It’s me,” said Clint.

“I know,” said the unicorn. His dry, gravelly voice was eerily similar to Clint’s. People often confused them, much to Edward’s delight whenever he quietly sauntered up behind women, making crass come-ons in the name of the marshal, always falling into hysterics as they turned to look at and/or slap him.

“I’m your partner. You hit your partner with a sack of oats?”

Edward lowered his lips into the trough and began sucking up water. A soft glow spread in a small cloud from his head, and sent the same sack of oats flying at Clint. It struck him again, this time launching him into Edward’s rear.

“Apparently,” Edward said.

“I demand that you stop!”

“Good one,” said Edward, his eyes still on the water. The only sounds in the stable were Clint’s heavy snarl and the vague sucking sound of equine drinking. Clint slapped Edward’s hindquarters lightly. “Edward. Back out so I can stop talking to your butt. Come on.”

“No.” Slurp.

“Edward.”

“Clint.”

“I need to talk to you. This is important.”

“Tell it to your new horse.”

So that was it.

“I keep telling you, you can come with us. I just can’t ride you once I’m no longer a marshal.”

“Didn’t stop you before we came here. Before you got a new official badge, from the townspeople of Solace,” said Edward’s butt. “Besides, you apparently don’t understand the meaning of an unridden unicorn who keeps the company of humans. If you’re not a companion, you’re a hanger-on.”

Clint said nothing, waiting for the unicorn to finish pouting.

“When I was growing up, there was a foal with a deformed horn. His name was William, but that didn’t matter since all the unicorns called him ‘Stumpy’. He’d hang around with groups that didn’t want him, but that didn’t have the heart to reject him.”

“I don’t have time to talk about this right now,” said Clint.

“Of course you don’t,” Edward said. The sack of oats hit Clint a third time, knocking the gunslinger forward hard enough to drive his face fully between Edward’s cheeks just as the unicorn loudly saluted from his rear.

Clint fanned his hand in front of his face and began squeezing around Edward’s bulk. He moved up toward his head, maneuvered in front, placed his hands on Edward’s face, and pushed.

“Really? Really,” Edward laughed. “I weigh seven times what you do and I’m magic. You’re going to try pushing me out by force? Would you like me to wear a halter to make it easier?” The unicorn twisted his voice into that of a damsel-in-distress. “Yar, master, tell me what to do!”

“I’m not going to leave you alone,” said Clint, still pushing.

“You’re underestimating my ability to ignore you,” said Edward.

“I’ll urinate in your water trough,” said Clint.

“I’ll rinse it out.”

“Really? You think you’ll ever be able to get it clean enough?”

Edward was mildly obsessive-compulsive. He fussed with coasters until they were centered exactly under mugs and glasses. Even though he was a magical creature, he constantly used his hooves to knock on wood whenever he realized he might be close to counting chickens before they hatched. No way he’d ever feel comfortable enough to use a trough or spigot knowing it was peed on.

Edward sighed. It was an odd noise, hearing a unicorn sigh.

“Fine. Out in the yard. You go first or I’ll crush you.”

“Just be careful and you won’t crush me,” said Clint, sucking in his gut so Edward could back out of the stable.

“I wasn’t talking about an accident that might happen,” said Edward. “I was making a threat.”

Clint, happy to have at least gotten Edward into a back and forth, squeezed out the way he’d come. Then he led the unicorn out into a small pasture, even though he knew it was actually a garden because pastures were for horses.

Once together in the hot midday sun, Edward faced Clint and waited for the gunslinger to speak. His always-pristine coat was so bright that he was hard to look at, and Clint had to squint until his eyes adjusted. The animosity still in the unicorn’s eyes made his pearlescent, spiraled horn look extremely sharp.

Clint figured Edward wanted him to speak first — a power move, since he hadn’t wanted discussion.

“Hassle Stone is returning to town,” said Clint.

“Fabulous.”

“He’ll want to kill me. And you.”

Edward laughed.

“He’ll want to kill everyone in town, or make them his toys. You remember what it was like when we arrived.”

“My days as a do-gooder are over.”

“I’m still the marshal. I intend to do what I can. You’re still the marshal’s…” He had to be careful how he said this. “… deadly sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” said Edward.

“Ultimate weapon. Head honcho. Name your title.”

Edward said, “I don’t want to fight Hassle Stone. I want to go to the saloon and drink. You can come with me. We’ll ring out the end of our partnership in style.”

“What better way to end our partnership than by committing one final heroic act?” said Clint. “Save the town. That’s how two law… law-beings? should go out in style. Beings. Hmm. I’m sorry; I don’t know any terms that cover both men and unicorns.”

“Hassle Stone bores me,” said Edward. “He was a simple bandit, and barely a challenge. You’ll get on my back, I’ll extend my protection, they’ll shoot at us, we’ll be impervious, you’ll shoot back, and then he’ll die or run. Once upon a time, the end, any questions, etc.”

“No reason not to help me, then.”

Edward scraped his hooves in the dirt, looking far more horselike than Clint dared to point out.

“Fine,” said the unicorn.

“There’s more to it, though.”

“Of course.”

“Stone won’t come alone, and he’ll know what he’s facing this time. He’ll bring men. Lots of men. Dozens. He can’t come straight at us, so he’ll go after others and hold knives to their throats or pistols to their heads. You can’t protect all of them.”

“You say that as though I would care to,” Edward said. His horn started glowing a soft yellowish-pink, and a metal object flew toward him from the barn. It was a can of apple brew, fashioned from city metal. Edward used his magic horn to set the can in front of him, then held it deftly between his teeth, raised his head, and bit it open, drinking the apple brew as it spilled.

“You need to stop drinking if we’re going to do this,” said Clint.

“I weigh fourteen hundred pounds and am magic,” said Edward. “Get off my back, Mom.”

Clint ignored him. “We’ll need men to match Stone’s. Two dozen at least.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s ride out and get them.”

Edward said, “Peachy” as his horn glowed again. Clint found himself flying through the air and landing roughly on Edward’s back, facing the wrong way, seconds before Edward trotted off.

Clint turned and righted himself, adjusting to find the fit between his bones and Edward’s. It had taken him a long time to learn to ride bareback without reins, but the one thing even a gunslinger would never dare — and that a unicorn would never permit — would be to garb a unicorn in human paraphernalia.

As far as unicorns were concerned, saddles and reins and bits and bridles and spurs were implements of slavery, and there was an ongoing tension between unicorns and humans regarding humans’ use of those instruments on horses. Horses were unicorns’ dumb cousins — but remained cousins regardless of their mental ineptitude. With unicorns, the issue was straightforward: ride bareback, or don’t ride at all.

Within minutes, Edward had trotted them over to Earl Lancaster’s place. Earl had a small tack shop on the main street and lived in the four-room apartment above the store. Earl would help. He was big and strong and fast. Always a quick draw. He even had an illegal six-shooter — a second gun — that Clint knew of but strategically ignored. Today his feigned ignorance would pay off. He’d allow Earl to wear it openly if he’d battle with Stone.

Earl answered the door with his hair in tufts, apparently just waking to answer from a midday nap. He yawned, then saw Edward standing in the street behind Clint. He snapped awake, suddenly serious.

“What is this, Marshal?”

“‘Marshal?’ You were at my wedding, Earl. You’ve ridden with me.”

“Okay. What is this, Clint?”

“You heard the Reader.”

“I did. Good wedding, by the way. Did preacherman finish you up, or are you still a single man?”

“Hassle Stone is coming,” said Clint, ignoring the question. “He’ll be bringing men with him. Possibly many men. I need guns.”

“You need guns?” Earl looked suddenly distracted. “But you have your unicorn.”

“It won’t be enough.” The gunslinger shook his head. “Stone’s coming in worse than last time. I’ve heard what you haven’t, about things he’s done after being run out of Solace. He’ll burn fields if he can’t get what he wants. He’ll kill women if he can’t have them.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Marshal… Clint… but I believe Stone’s quarrel’s with you, not the good folks of Solace.”

“His quarrel is with the world, Earl Lancaster.”

“I don’t aim to invite trouble I can’t hope to pardon,” Earl said, scratching his head and looking past Clint, out into the street. “I just run a tack shop.”

“Then you’ll want to keep running it. I need your guns. You can use both of them if you’d like.”

Earl flinched, probably not knowing if it was blackmail coating the marshal’s tongue. He said, “I want to let him pass, Clint. He may come at you, but I’ve heard about his operations out on the Edge. Or rumors, anyway. He’s done with Solace. And if he’s not, I don’t know how we’d be able to stop him.”

“You don’t know what you can do?” Clint felt his face flushing red. “You can fight!”

“I don’t know, Clint.” Earl shook his head enough to make the marshal want to punch him. Then something flew over Clint’s shoulder. He ducked at the last second as a sack of oats smacked Earl in the chest, throwing him hard against the doorframe. Earl’s eyes were on Edward, filled with something between anger and fear.

“Like I said, Marshal, I don’t want any trouble. If you can stop Stone, you will. If you can’t, us fighting will only make him angry. He’ll take what he wants, then move on. Years under his heel taught us how to deal with a Hassle Stone.”

“How to deal? And the answer is to lie down?”

The sack of oats, which had landed between Earl and Clint, twitched. Clint raised a palm to Edward without looking.

“Earl. You’re a strong man and a good gun. I need strong men and good guns to handle whatever Stone’s planning on bringing to Solace. Simple as that. If I can get the men, I can drive him back. If I can’t, then even if Edward and I eventually root them out, it’ll only be after he kills scores of you all and burns your town to the ground. Stone won’t go peacefully, not this time. Before Edward and I came to town, the magic had nearly drained from this place, leaving it no better than the rest of the Sprawl. Stone had probably never seen a unicorn in person, or the flash from a marshal’s guns. Now he has. He’s been out in the Edge, maybe toying with darkness. This time he’ll know. And if he can’t fight magic, he’ll burn the world down around it.”

Earl shook his head, taking a long step back. “I just run a tack shop, Marshal.”

“Earl.”

Earl Lancaster closed his door. Behind him, Edward said, “I’ll bet I can get that sack of oats through his window.”

“Don’t.”

“So what’s next, genius?” said the unicorn.

Clint remounted and rode to Bill Maynard’s ranch on the outskirts of Solace. Bill raised turkeys and pumpkins. He had a few cattle, some chickens, and a small field of bedraggled crops, but as was true across the Sands, turkeys were still the stupidest and most prolific livestock there ever was, and pumpkins the only crop that continued to thrive in the Sands. There were aquifers deep under Solace, so water wasn’t a problem. The pumpkins gobbled it up and grew huge. The problem was the poison soil, or so said the soil and science men. It was all a bit over the gunslinger’s head.

Bill Maynard’s answer was the same as Earl Lancaster’s. Bill explained that the reason he raised turkeys so successfully was because he was just as stupid as they were. But Maynard insisted that he wasn’t much of a gun.

Clint reminded Bill how he’d once been on the side of law and order, loathe to live under another man’s boot, or do his bidding. Bill said Stone’s quarrel was with Clint, not with him, and that one sure way to get yourself caught under another man’s boot — the one way in which he could actually become stupider than the turkeys he raised — would be to cause trouble for himself with Hassle Stone where there currently was none.

Clint argued. Edward magicked things so they flew at him. But ultimately Bill shook his head and went inside, wishing the marshal good luck, pleasem and thankoo.

“Stephen MacElroy,” said Clint as he climbed onto Edward’s back. “He’s a sure thing. He’ll help us.”

“Queer MacElroy?”

“His queerness is why he’s a sure thing,” Clint argued. “Earl and Bill think it’s crazy to face Stone? Then I should be aiming for crazy.”

Yet, even Queer MacElroy, who sometimes wore his pants backward and kept a banana in his holster, refused. It seemed that even the village idiot figured going up against Stone was a bad bet.

“Let’s leave town,” Edward suggested. “I’ll even let you bring that woman of yours. We’ll go rogue again. You keep your star and your guns, and we’ll get her a nice dumb horse. These people don’t want to help save themselves? Fine. Then there’s no reason for us to save them.”

“I can’t abandon the people of Solace.”

“Why the Sands not?”

“Pretend you come across a population of horses. Plain old horses, too dumb to do magic or help themselves. And a man wants to come through and cut them up for his own amusement. The horses are too dim to save themselves. Do you run off? Or do you help them because it’s the right thing to do?”

“Are you saying that these townspeople are your poor dumb wards?”

“I’m saying I can’t turn away. I know Stone is coming, and even if he is coming for me, he’ll stop here first. He’ll strip this town to its bones and take what he wants. He’ll leave men behind like in Risk, and then he’ll come after us. Either way, Solace loses, and eventually burns.”

Before Edward could reply, the Water Reader came running up the street toward them, yelling and waving his hands frantically in the air. The Water Reader was an old coot; hair white and wild, and beard tangled enough to house a family of birds. His voice was high-pitched, like an old crone’s from a Grimm Tale.

“It isn’t just Stone who’s coming,” the Water Reader cried. “I couldn’t see it at first, but now that they’re closer, I have.”

“He has men,” said Clint, nodding.

“He has men behind him, yar,” the Reader said. “But he also has someone in front. Someone even the great Hassle Stone must obey.”

“Who?” Clint asked.

“I don’t know.” The Reader shook his head. “I can only see his silhouette… and his mount. Reason I ran here to the yonder was to tell you that whoever this dark man is, he’s riding a unicorn of a different color.”

CHAPTER FOUR:

DECISIONS

Clint took Edward, who was nursing an even blend of fear and disgust after hearing of the dark rider and his mount, and walked to the Otel, where Mai was upstairs drinking a mug of Fanta from the bar.

“Fanta?” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

“My fiancé has abandoned me and will be dying soon,” she said. “I decided there was no point in waiting for my wedding toast. I’m going to drink it all, and damn the ridiculous price.”

“Take it easy, Mai. You’ve no tolerance for improving drinks. You’ll be on the floor.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, dead man,” she said.

He took her arm and turned her around. She’d already had too much Fanta; he could see it in her eyes. Had she come straight here to start drowning sorrows that needn’t be drowned?

“Grab hold of yourself, Mai. You’re to hitch a gunslinger, yet you’re acting like a trollop. Where’s your grit? Where’s the magic that’s in your blood?”

“Enjoying itself,” she said, raising her mug.

“Are you going to talk to me, or are you too far gone?”

She slapped him with her free hand.

“Better than drunk, anyway,” he said.

Mai crossed to the Otel room’s dresser and set the mug on its polished top, then dragged a suitcase from under the bed, unbuckled the straps, and began to fill it just as she had back in Clint’s room above the boardinghouse.

“The coach will be ready in an hour. When’s your date with death?”

“Around the same time. But there’s a new wrinkle.”

“Is there a kitten in need of rescue?” She slurred the last half of her sentence. “Does a little old lady need help crossing the street?”

Clint came close to smacking her back, but stopped because a man should never hit a woman — only men who had it coming. But he wanted Mai back to her old self: the woman who could take what a man could. This pouty, selfish Mai was different, and not altogether good. Maybe it was the Fanta.

“You used to stand on law’s right side,” he said.

“I used to be on the side of right,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. You came to this town as an outlaw wearing the star of a lawman. You should’ve been stripped of your guns and mount back in The Realm, but you walked the Sands with both until you found a job in a small town in the Sprawl that gave you legal right. You of all people should know what I mean. Minding books isn’t the same as minding sense.”

“And you think leaving these people defenseless is minding sense?”

“You cannot help people who don’t care to help themselves. If they want to dirty their knees to Stone, let ‘em. Meanwhile my compassion and grit will be riding with me to Sojourn, searching for others who care as well for what’s right, instead of settling for what’s left.”

“There’s more at work here, Mai.”

She turned, her interest piqued by something in his voice. She held a blouse above the open suitcase, pausing as she watched him, then set it in the suitcase and waited for Clint to continue.

“Stone brings with him a dark rider. Riding a unicorn of a different color.”

She gasped, a hand suddenly over her mouth.

“Solace starves for magic, as does all of the Sands — all of the world since the Leaking first started. Stone and his party are close. I suspect —”

“— I suspect that a unicorn of a different color making you want to stay even more means you’ve already lost whatever sense you had. They aren’t sensing dark magic as a sating of their thirst for magic of any kind. They have Edward in town already, with his white magic, and have for years.”

“You don’t understand this, regardless of your blood, Mai. Don’t pretend like you do.”

“I understand that when something pure willingly submits itself so fully to a master, it spits in the unblinking eye of creation! I understand that unicorn magic so totally under a human’s control is dangerous indeed. And I understand that you and Edward would stand no chance against such power.”

“Mai…”

“There’s nothing you can do, Clint,” she said. “Come with me. Maybe he’ll be drawn away, and Solace will survive. Maybe not. But you cannot stand and fight, and I cannot stand to see you try.”

“What I cannot do is run. You know I can’t.”

She sighed. “Yar, I suppose I do know just how pig-hearted you are. I just didn’t want to believe it, since it makes you so stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Clint’s ire was starting to swell, but he forced himself to let it go. It was actually best if Mai left, but only after she understood that he had no choice but to stay. He would face whatever happened in Solace, live or die by his choice, and join her later if he was still breathing.

“Tell me,” she said. “Have you made your rounds? Have you gone to the men of this town? Did you try to round up your posse, even before you knew about the dark rider?”

“Yar’m, I did.”

“And was anyone willing to fight by your side?”

Clint was silent.

Mai flared with anger. “These people don’t deserve you! This town is poisoned, like all of the rest of the Sprawl. It’s the magic gone missing. Solace tolerates you, and is happy to let you protect them with Edward, but it’s just that, Clint: tolerance. They don’t change. They’re sour like the air and the soil. What you see as redeemable here is all you brought with you, because of Edward. It’s a facade. The town wears a false smile to hide its despicable, ruined, cowardly face.”

“So I should abandon them?”

“Would you abandon rats?”

Clint stared, saying nothing.

“One hour, Clint. My coach leaves in an hour.” Mai approached the marshal and set her hand on his arm. “Come with me. Please. You always said you wanted to return to The Realm, and I’ve not seen her walls since I was abandoned on the dusty side as a child. We may never find it — Providence says that no man or woman can — but Sojourn is at least a spoke closer on the spiral. This place is used. Discard it. Remember me, and you, and where we’re supposed to be going. Don’t throw it away.”

“Once we left Solace as hitched, I was to no longer be a gunslinger,” he said.

A half-smile crossed her full lips. “I think we both know that one way or another, with or without your marshal’s star, you were leaving town on a unicorn’s back, with fourteen shots across your hips.”

Mai put one hand on the gunslinger’s chest, then the other. Her hands were delicate and small, immaculate against the dust and grit clinging to Clint like a second skin. “Let’s go. Take your guns and your unicorn. Take your woman. Let’s leave. Now. It’s not abandonment when folks are content to sit and stare into a setting sun. Your absence will make no difference.”

His heaving chest rose and fell under her tiny hands. After a long moment, he finally said, “I can’t.”

Her small hands gave him a little shove. Without a word, she returned to her suitcase.

“Then go, gunslinger. Go to your death.”

“I’ll find you when this is over,” he said. “Wherever you are.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes as he stood near the Otel room door, listening to the ticking clock. He turned, and left the room to greet his doom.

CHAPTER FIVE:

THE KID

Clint returned to Edward’s stall that wasn’t a stall, in the barn that wasn’t a barn. He was stuffing gear into his ancient cowskin rucksack when the orphan kid, Teddy, approached him from behind and jabbed a finger in his back.

Clint spun so inhumanly fast, Teddy didn’t have time to retrieve his finger before Clint had a barrel from each gun digging into Teddy’s forehead, both cocked. Clint saw it was only Teddy who had gotten the drop on him, then holstered both irons, lowering the hammers.

“That was a bad idea,” said Clint.

“What color smoke comes out of them guns?” Teddy asked, nodding toward the gunslinger’s hip. “I heard it ain’t white.”

“Gunslinger rounds use a special powder, highly illegal unless you’re a marshal. It’s a semi-magic firepowder, which makes a dull red smoke.”

“You mean pink.”

Clint said nothing, shoving more supplies in his pack. He’d have to shoulder the entire load when he and Edward went to the Flat Top, of course, since Edward wasn’t a mule and didn’t wear saddlebags, despite being many times stronger than Clint.

Edward’s attitude reminded him of his own grandfather’s. Clint’s grandfather had lived in The Realm with the rest of them, back when what was now the Sands was still relatively magic. Grappy worked to bring home the money, so Grammy did everything else. Grappy reasoned he did enough, and shouldn’t have to wash dishes… or carry cargo.

“Is it true that unicorns bleed rainbows?” Teddy asked.

“They have redundant vessels bearing many different magical elixirs,” said Clint. “So yar, when wounded, before they magick themselves healed, their blood flows in multi-hues.”

Teddy was poking around Edward’s room, but meaning no harm. The boy was thirteen and curious, and in his mind, merely investigating cool cowboy stuff. But Clint knew that Edward, as he watched Teddy prod, saw it as an invasion of his privacy.

“What colors?” said Teddy.

“Red. Blue. Green. Purple. Yellow. Orange. More, I think.”

“That’s a rainbow,” said Teddy.

“I guess.”

Teddy poked at a stack of Joelalbums Edward had collected during his travels. “Being a gunslinger sounds really fruity,” he said.

Clint said, “I assure you, the bad guys don’t see it that way.”

“So what else do unicorns do?” said Teddy. “Do they poop gold?”

“Yar,” said Edward, breaking his silence. “Stick your hands under there and I’ll show you.”

“Holy Joe, you talk?” Teddy cried, rushing inside the stall toward Edward. Clint grabbed his arm and held him back, certain a stomping was imminent if Teddy violated Edward’s space further.

“Of course I talk, you idiot,” said Edward, turning back.

Teddy started singing an old campfire song about a talking horse named Mister Ed, glee on his face. Clint slapped his hand hard over the boy’s mouth to keep him quiet. Being compared to a horse was bad enough for Edward, but a horse named Ed made the song downright infuriating.

“How come I never heard you talk before?”

“Because you’re a dumb kid. Everyone else knows I talk.”

“But you never go around talkin’. Like, being a member of the town. Is that because Mister Ed will never speak unless he has somethin’ to say?”

Edward reared. If the stall door had been open, Teddy would have been facing two hooves in the face. Clint leaned down and whispered, “Do yourself a favor kid, and forget that song.”

Teddy, unperturbed, shrugged, then resumed poking through Edward’s things. After a moment, he said, “Bad guys are comin’, right?”

“Yar, you could say that.”

“You gonna kill ‘em?”

“Yar.”

“I’ll help. I carry my own knife and water. I got a spyglass, for spying. And I got my gun.” Teddy patted his side, where a heavy iron hung in a filthy leather holster. Clint somehow doubted that Teddy, who was small for his age, would be able to lift the thing and hold it steady — let alone summon the finger strength to pull the trigger. The only way he’d be able to use it, maybe, would be if he carried it around cocked and single-action, in which case it’d be a constant threat to blow his foot off.

“You’re too young, Theodore,” said Clint.

“Where ya goin?”

“The Flat Top.”

“Why?”

“I want to look out across the Sands.”

“You think you’ll just see ‘em coming?”

Clint inclined his head toward Edward. “I meant a different kind of seeing. Using magic.”

“Say,” said Teddy, “a unicorn’s like a portable source of magic, right? Could you summon that magic yourself, like in a wand?”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Oh,” said Teddy. “I’ll bet if you could, it’d have to be a pink wand that made little pixie sparkles when you waved it around.”

Clint said nothing, and certainly didn’t volunteer the truth of Edward’s horn, which glowed a yellowish pink when its magic was used. Or that, yes, it did sort of sparkle.

“So you going to the Flat Top right now? And that’s why you’re packing?”

“Yar.”

“Okay. I’ll come with you.”

“No,” said Clint. “We’re going alone.”

“You need help. I know it. I heard you went around to get people to stand with you against Stone. How many you get? How big is our posse?”

Clint grumbled.

“The whole town will come out, I’m sure. He’s just one man, and a man can’t stand against a whole town. So what can I carry?”

Clint grumbled again. Teddy grabbed two waterskins, slung them over his shoulders, then stood waiting for further orders. His innocent face wasn’t endearing to Clint. It was annoying, and maybe even stupid. He’d need a lot of men to stand up to Stone and this other rider, but until he started finding some big men with fast hands, he’d prefer to ride solo. Teddy wouldn’t be able to help, and it wasn’t true that anything (or anyone) was better than nothing. Two was worse than one if the other was Teddy. The boy would only slow the gunslinger down, and get in the way of his bullets.

“You seem to think you’re going.” Clint shook his head. “But you’re too young, Theodore. You’ll get yourself killt.”

Teddy’s composure broke. “Aw, come on Marshal! Let me help. Everyone treats me like a man when it comes to earning a living, but suddenly when I want to help with something important, people tell me I’m only a kid. If I can get along in a Sands town without an ammy or appy, doing jobs and taking care of myself, then I should be allowed to help defend my home.”

Clint felt bad for the kid. It was true, what he said, but there was more to it. Keeping Teddy away from the approaching quarrel had nothing to do with keeping the boy protected, or shielding him from any unpleasantness. The kid was a liability. He could help, sure, but he’d likely be helping the wrong side. Teddy was small and thin even for his young age, and had a tendency to trip over things even when they weren’t in his way. Seemed as likely he’d shoot Clint or get in the way of one of the gunslinger’s shots as it did that he would land a bulls-eye himself.

“I’ve even got my own horse,” Teddy continued. “So you can ride your horse and I’ll ride mine.”

A sack of oats flew at Teddy’s head. Teddy saw it and ducked, though he didn’t seem to find it strange. It was as if people threw things at him so often that he’d grown completely used to it.

“Your horse can’t keep up with us,” Clint said.

Teddy made a face the gunslinger didn’t quite get, but then the boy turned and sprinted for the door, yelling about how his horse was like greased lightning, and how he’d show him. Clint realized he’d made a mistake. Reject kids, and you have to reject them from feather to pie. You can’t mention just one flaw in their plan. If you do, they’ll assume that it’s the only one, and that all they have to do is aim for a fix. But Clint wasn’t used to kids, or adults. He was used to Edward, the Sands, and his own fast hands.

Clint figured he and Edward could slip away while Teddy was running off, presumably to gather his horse. He slung his rucksack over his shoulder along with the two remaining waterskins, then fought with Edward for two minutes before leaving the barn, trotting down Main past the Otel — seeing no sign of Mai — and out into the open Sands toward Flat Top.

Clint rode in silence, thinking of Mai.

When the gunslinger first arrived in Solace as an exiled marshal, astride a unicorn with two seven-shot guns hanging from his sides, everyone had stared, knowing what he was even if they didn’t know who he was. Clint had gone into the saloon, practically begging the barkeep to challenge him or his right to drink an apple brew before using the tall closet. Clint’s hand had hovered at his side, almost twitching. Fast as he was, Clint with his right hand above his holster was like a normal man holding his gun ready, cocked and well aimed.

If the barkeep was fool enough to make the wrong comment, or ask Clint a question he didn’t eye proper, the man would’ve found himself dead on the floor in seconds. But the barkeep served Clint his apple brew and turkey pie without a word. Same for the man at the boardinghouse. Only later did Clint see that the reason everyone was so complicit was because Solace was used to doing what a man with a gun told them to do.

Even after Clint had run Stone from Solace, his distrust of its citizens lingered — along with their distrust of him. He’d ridden alone, with only a unicorn as a companion, for too long.

By the time he’d met Mai, though, he was respected in Solace. He’d won himself an official tin star, which made him their marshal. But a tin star wasn’t a stand-in for friends. Clint lived with a constant expectation that the townspeople would cross him. He felt their stares, and knew they were whispering stories whenever his back was turned.

Mai changed everything. Maybe it was the purity of her magic and the way it counterbalanced Edward’s jaded, cynical conjuring. Perhaps it was her beauty, or how she saw something noble in the disgraced, exiled gunslinger, even when he refused to see the same in himself.

Now she was sitting at the Otel, waiting for a carriage out of town — and, quite likely, out of his life forever. How quickly everything changed. Sure, Clint could tell himself they’d meet again in Sojourn. But how likely was that? How likely was it that Stone and the mysterious dark rider would arrive and that Clint would handle them quickly without getting killt, or that he’d be able to make it to Sojourn before Mai began a new life, moved on, or found someone else?

A narrow window was closing in front of his eyes. Maybe Mai was right.

Was Solace really worth giving up his one chance at being truly happy? He’d come to town loathing those he felt duty-bound to save. He’d always let his gunslinger’s nature take precedence over his human side. Was that how he wanted to spend the rest of forever, always setting the needs of others before his own? Was he really willing to subjugate a future of contentment for a bunch of yallers who wouldn’t even raise a hand to save their skins?

Clint patted Edward’s neck.

Edward didn’t like that Clint was bonding with Mai, but he knew, deep down, that Clint would never give up Edward (or even his guns) like the law said he must. He’d leave as he came, as a marshal who wasn’t really a marshal. A gunslinger who was only supposed to sling a single gun at a time. No one would stop him when he left. They didn’t have the courage to try.

But jealousy over Mai would be a petty irritation to Edward compared to the news that a unicorn of a different color was approaching. To Edward, even more than to Clint, the idea of a unicorn polluting his magic enough to mar his color away from the purity of white bordered on obscenity. The thought that a unicorn would surrender his will to any master was incomprehensible. And not just incomprehensible, either. It was bizarre, troubling, and downright profane.

Edward didn’t like the idea of Mai, but he would see taking Mai to Sojourn as the lesser of two evils. All Clint had to do was make the suggestion. But he held it inside, riding in silence.

Ten minutes later, within sight of the Flat Top, Clint heard a set of clumsy hooves behind him. The gunslinger turned to see Teddy riding up on a pony that was somehow both less appealing and more awkward-looking than a mule. Its mane was frizzy, like a woman with full hair and no comb. Its teeth were visible even when its mouth was closed, and as it galloped (or maybe hobbled) closer, Clint noticed its lazy eye aimed in the wrong direction. It was panting and wheezing as if smoking a barrel of tobacco.

Of course. He’d told Teddy where he was going, so it was simple enough for the boy to follow them once he got back to the barn and found them missing.

Teddy grinned, waving at Clint when he saw him looking back. His face was half greeting and half I-told-you-so over the speed of Teddy’s stallion.

“How much further is it to…” Teddy started to say, but Edward turned and shushed them. The unicorn’s horn began glowing as he squeezed his eyes tight. He blinked, and after a moment said, “Okay, we can talk, but we must lower our voices. There’s a party of five men over that rise, toward the base of Old Man Hill, sitting ‘round a stew pool. They won’t hear us yet, but they’ll be able once we summit the hill.”

“How do you know that?” Teddy asked.

“I’m a unicorn,” Edward said dismissively. He’d been speaking to Clint about the party of men, and he resented Teddy being in earshot.

“My horse can’t do that,” said Teddy, almost sadly.

Clint flinched, but Edward ignored the insult. He was too busy taking in Teddy’s mount from head to hooves to tail.

To the horse, Edward said, “You are one ugly mother…”

Clint interrupted him. “Come on. Let’s summit the hill. You can insult each other at the top.”

CHAPTER SIX:

BANDITS

Clint dismounted at the top of the hill, dropping the group’s overall height to make them less visible. Teddy dismounted too, but his horse was so short that the boy’s head ended up only slightly lower than when he was riding.

Edward turned to Teddy, apparently fine speaking with the boy as long as the words he spoke were insults.

“What is this creature’s name? Jeb? Cletus? Eeyore?”

“Pinto,” Teddy said.

“Fantastic. Reminds me of my old pal, Stumpy. He kept running into doors whenever he tried to enter a room. Liked to drink kerosene. Not good, the time he peed on a fire.”

“Teddy,” said Clint. “Do you still have that spyglass?”

Teddy patted a pouch at his side.

“Give it to me.”

“Sure. Once we get up to the top.”

“No. Just give it to me.”

“We’re a team, Marshal. I’ll give it to you up top. You gotta let me come if you want my glass.”

Clint opened his mouth, ready to tell Teddy that he could break his neck six times before the kid could raise a wrist to stop him. Instead, he closed it with a sigh and and started silently up the hill, leaving Edward and Pinto behind where Teddy had him tied to a scraggly tree. Edward was looking at the small horse as if it were an oddity at one of the Sprawl’s traveling freak shows, his face a blooming rose of disgust.

Thirty feet further up, they found a spot where they could spy the hill’s far bottom, maybe a quarter  mile off. There were, as Edward had said, five men sitting around a stew pool, refilling waterskins.

Clint slapped Teddy’s jacket with the back of his hand. Then he did it three more times, until the boy reached into the pouch, removed the spyglass, and handed it to Clint.

The gunslinger extended the glass and peered through the tiny lens at its small end. The men looked a month’s worth of dirty, and were dressed head to toe in dark gear. They had five horses, all tied to hooks driven deep into several large rocks surrounding the away-facing edge of the stew pool. The horses were all carrying over-stuffed saddlebags and seemed too heavily burdened with gear.

“They’re not traveling light,” Clint said to Teddy. “Not a day trip. Wherever they’re going, they’re planning to stay.”

“Solace?” said Teddy.

“Yar. Likely. I can see their path, and it stretches behind them. They’ll climb this hill once they’ve finished resting. Unless they spin off into the Sands, which they won’t, they’ll hit Solace in her nose. These men are either coming to stay, or merely passing through. A stack of chips on the former.”

“Is Stone with them?”

Clint adjusted the glass and scanned the short row of men.

“Nar. But they could be an advance party. The Water Reader said he saw Stone riding with a… another man. None of these men are he.”

Clint didn’t tell Teddy the reason he knew that the dark rider wasn’t among the men: there was no dark unicorn amongst the horses. Few people knew about unicorns of a different color, and even fewer understood what they did or what they really were. A dark unicorn could get them killt like nothing else, and Clint didn’t want to worry the kid. He didn’t exactly care if Teddy was scared, but he figured if the kid were frightened, he’d be more of a liability than he already was.

“Maybe they’re just travelers,” Teddy suggested. “Good guys.”

“I don’t think so.” Clint shook his head. “How often do people cross the Sands, willing to get lost in the Sprawl? How often do new people arrive in Solace? Nar, I’d say the chance of random travelers arriving on the same day as Stone are about as likely as magic true on the dusty side of the wall.”

“Okay,” said Teddy. “Let’s kill them, then.”

“Have you ever killt anything?”

“Rats. And I once had to shoot a mad cat. Winged it right across its left ear.”

“A rabid cat?” said Clint. You heard about rabid dogs sometimes, but not usually cats.

“A mad one,” said Teddy, in a voice suggesting that Clint should probably pay closer attention.

“And now you want to ride into a group of five armed men and kill every one?”

“You could do it,” said Teddy.

“Yar, but you said we. Why do I have to get dragged into a we situation filled with stupidity when I’m not the one needing a bib to soak up my drool?”

“You just said…”

“I said they’re probably part of Stone’s party. Stone and this other rider aren’t with them. Can you think of how we might find Stone and the other? It doesn’t involve killing them all outright.”

“Follow ‘em? Spy on ‘em?” Teddy suggested.

“Good for you,” Clint growled. “Finding a way to use that worthless shoulder pumpkin.”

Teddy turned his head, looking from one shoulder to the other.

Clint tapped the boy on his back, waited for Teddy to turn, then gestured with his head toward where Edward and the pathetic Pinto were standing. The pony was nibbling grass, eyes split in two directions. Clint could tell from the poor creature’s defeated body that Edward was insulting it, and probably hadn’t stopped or even slowed since they’d started up the hill.

They returned to their mounts, and Clint told Edward what he’d seen. The unicorn nodded since he’d seen most of it with his magic already.

“Now I suppose you want to go down there,” said Edward.

“Yar. We need peer into their conversation.”

“We?” said Teddy.

“Stone and the other rider aren’t with them,” Clint told Edward, ignoring Teddy. “We need to find where they’ll meet, and what they’re doing.”

“We, like… all of us?” Teddy said again, swallowing. He looked like he was trying to solve one of The Realm’s problems without a solution.

“Fine,” Edward agreed. “The sooner you can kill whatever needs killing, the sooner I can return to my turkey pie, and the sleep that follows.”

“We… including a unicorn?”

Edward said, “I’m the most important one here, seed for brains.”

“But…”

“Are you wondering how a 1400-pound, bright white creature will sneak close enough to eavesdrop on a stew hole?”

Teddy nodded.

“You’ll see. Watch from where we were before.”

Teddy said, “Wait. No, I’m coming with you.”

“No you’re not,” said Edward.

“I’m the only man you were able to get,” said Teddy, standing tall and puffing his chest. “Like it or not, I’m number two in this two-man posse.”

“I tried to ride alone,” Clint reminded him, leaving out the part about Teddy being only a boy.

“And I found you anyway! Now that’s a dedicated posse!”

Clint looked at Edward, raising his eyebrows.

“I can fit him. Plus, if he comes with us, he might get shot.” Edward said the last part as if it were a bonus.

“Fine,” said Clint. He accompanied Edward to the hill’s edge, near enough so the men at the stew hole would soon be able to see them if they looked up. Teddy followed, holding Pinto by the reins.

“You’re kidding, right?” Edward sighed, as if Teddy’s stupidity was an extra thousand pounds on his back. “That thing stays here.”

“But he’s my mount. What if we have to ride?”

“Then you’ll be lucky to not have a handicap between your legs,” said Edward.

Teddy wrinkled his nose, then went back to the tree and lashed Pinto to it again. As Teddy started toward Edward and Clint, Pinto began a low, desperate whinnying.

“Shut it up,” Edward ordered.

“He hates being left,” Teddy explained. “Even at the barn, he’s never alone. Pinto has a goat, named Cheesy.”

“You can stay with him,” Edward suggested. “Like Cheesy.”

“I’m not staying.”

Clint and Edward kept walking. Teddy seemed torn, but scampered to catch up as Pinto kept whining behind him.

“It’s going to give us away!” Edward hissed.

Pinto made a bona-fide “hee-haw,” like a donkey, and started pawing the dirt.

“He,” said Teddy. “He is going to give us away.”

“He is about to get magicked into an embolism,” said Edward, his horn already glowing a dull pinkish yellow.

Teddy jumped between Edward and Pinto, as if he anticipated Edward would fire a projectile. “Don’t you dare!” he cried, watching as the pink-yellow glow slowly faded from the unicorn’s horn. Clint waved a hand at Teddy, who looked like he was on the verge of saying something new about gunslingers and unicorns being sort of fruity.

Teddy was too close to Pinto’s mouth. The horse started chewing on his master’s pants.

Clint approached Teddy and put a hand on his shoulder. “Look. We need stealth. I know you want to come with us, but your mount is too unpredictable.”

“He’ll be fine if he stays with us,” Teddy insisted.

Pinto ripped off one of his pockets and chewed loudly.

“Stay here with him,” Clint said. “That’s an order, as your marshal. If you’re my deputy, then it’s your duty to stay here with your mount while we surveil. Yar?”

Teddy looked back into the gunslinger’s eyes with a surprisingly mature intelligence. “Marshal, what happens if while you’re down there, they pick up and decide to ride on to Solace?”

Clint’s head picked up and his mouth fell open. He felt suddenly old. His oversight was rudimentary enough to hurt. The riders would crest the hill, only to find a kid and his broken pony. That might be fine — Teddy could argue he was only out riding and got lost — but even if it was okay, and even if the riders didn’t kill him outright, Teddy’s presence so near their meeting hole would be enough for them to stop and give a good look around. They wouldn’t have to squint to see two more sets of tracks, one equine and another human.

Clint looked back at Edward to see if he’d heard what the kid had said. Edward gave a small nod, indicating that if he wasn’t allowed to give Pinto a fatal embolism, he should be able to cover them as they sneaked down to the stew hole.

“Come on,” Clint said, gesturing. “We’ll show you how a marshal, his deputy, and two mounts can get the drop on five men.”

CHAPTER SEVEN:

THE STEW HOLE

Two minutes later, Clint, Teddy, Edward, and Pinto crested the hill from the side, aiming their ride toward the men in the stew hole. Edward’s horn was at the highest point in their two-rider formation, and glowing. What looked like a shower of sparks blossomed from the horn’s tip, cascading over their procession like an umbrella. The surrounding magic was clear, but made everything appear pinkish yellow, making the Sands shimmer as if seen through a haze of heat, and lightly twinkle as though sprinkled with pixie dust.

“This is the manliest stakeout I’ve ever been on,” Teddy said, staring at the fairy sparkles.

Edward snarled. “I can let you out of the umbrella if you’d like.”

“I mean, it’s cool, but it’s just so…”

“Keep your voice down,” Clint whispered. “They won’t be able to see us, but they can hear us, and we’re still making tracks. That’s why we walked to the side and obscured our prints up top.” Pinto, under Teddy, was perfectly mute now that it seemed the boy wouldn’t leave him.

“How are we going to hear them?”

“By listening.”

“With magic?”

“I’m occupied,” said Edward, nudging his nose around at the sparkly umbra. “Use your ears.”

As they rode closer, communication between the two-man posse drifted to gestures. Pinto was surprisingly quiet, making it easy for the party to get reasonably close.

The five men at the stew hole were dressed in dusty trail shirts, each with a bandana slung around his neck to help filter the endless dust and winds forever whipping through the Sands. They were all unshaven, with skin the color of cowhide. All wore two guns, which was illegal for men who weren’t marshals, and which more or less validated Clint’s suspicions that the men were part of Stone’s posse. He was glad to see the irons were all six-shooters, comforted that the taboo of trading or using magic guns was still respected in the Sprawl.

The men sat on a winding row of rocks set around the shallow pool, dipping long stew rods into the steaming water. The gathering had the feel of friends nursing Fantas in a friendly saloon. They weren’t just pausing for a spell at the stew hole. The bandits seemed to be murdering minutes. They were waiting — taking a load off until some time when they were scheduled to depart.

But what — or whose — schedule were they keeping?

One of the men stood, then pulled a wide package from one of the saddlebags on his horse. Inside the package were five smaller parcels, each roughly the size of a brick. He passed them to the other four. One of the men refused, so he took the fifth for himself and sat down to unwrap it.

“Everyone likes turkey pie,” said the first man. “What’s wrong with you, Roger?”

“Turkey and pumpkin mash?” The man called Roger made a face. “That was a town dish in my grappy’s day. Now you take it, toss it into a saddlebag for days with a chunk of ice, and take the chance it won’t infect you with a poison stomach once you get to gnawing. Nar, a real trail man eats jerky.”

Roger reached into his own horse’s saddlebags and pulled out a wrapped package, longer than it was wide, and peeled back the paper to reveal long, flat sicks of cured meat. Probably ostrich.

“Real man. Is that what you are?” said another of the men, fatter than the others, with a stovepipe hat, missing its top half.

“Yar. Says your mother.”

A man across the group wearing thick round glasses spoke up. “The Leaking might be the best thing for manliness,” he said. “People complain about it, but ponder the notion. The Realm’s soft folks got softer, while the hard in the Sands’ve been getting harder. Even townies’ve been getting tough, and those who didn’t get tough up and died. In my grappy’s day, only the most desperate men rode into the Sands, be they filling their saddles with pie or jerky. Now it’s how we all are. I say cheers and yar!”

The man with the glasses raised an imaginary mug, but nobody returned the salute. The circle’s body language, worn on the group like an old coat, told Clint that the man often spoke of things no one cared about, and was so ignored.

“What time is it?” said the man with the jerky.

“You’ve got the watch,” said a man who hadn’t spoken yet. His face was long, like that of a horse.

“I have a watch, but it’s bound in my saddle. That’s why I’m asking you all.”

“You have the watch,” said the man with the glasses.

“I have the only watch?” The man looked suddenly upset. “What if it breaks? The cogs could get sullied with sand. Happens all the time. We could end up telling time by the sun.”

“Then maybe we’ll be late,” said the man who had carried the turkey pie. He took a large bite, and spoke around the food in his mouth. “Stone isn’t a train, so he ain’t pulling into no station at any o’clock. He’ll be there when we meet him, and we’ll meet him when we find him.”

The others around the circle stopped chewing their pie and jerky, apparently as aghast as the first man to learn there was but one watch in the company, and that they were trusting their timeliness to such an unsteady source.

“You haven’t ridden with him before, Bradford. When Stone says 3pm at the High Rock, he means 3pm at the High Rock. Arrive five minutes after three and get a slug in the gut for your trouble. Never mind the loss to the party. I done seen him do it, too. Yar. You keep an eye on that watch, Roger. If it slips, we ride as fast as we can; we make the High Rock and we wait. I don’t care if we’re hours early, so long as we’re not a minute late. What time is it now?”

Roger unwrapped the watch from a swaddle of cheesecloth like he was inside Castle Spires handling The Realm’s most delicate plates. He stared at the watch’s face before replying, probably making sure the watch hadn’t stopped.

“Just after noon,” he finally said.

Several of the other men glanced up at the sun and nodded, deciding that seemed about right.

Bradford studied the heads bobbing around the stew hole, chuckling through his mouthful of turkey pie. A swallow’s worth of mush fell from his mouth as he said, “You’re all that a’feared of Stone? He’s just a man. In a party of six, he’s but one.”

Nobody said anything. They just traded empty glances from one to the other.

“You’ve not ridden with Stone,” Roger repeated, his eyes not on Bradford, but rather the group’s only watch as he swaddled it back in the cloth. Then, as an afterthought, he pulled another rag from his saddlebag and wrapped the bundle again.

“And you haven’t yet seen Kold,” said the last man.

Clint tensed from head to toe. The hairs on his neck started to dance.

“Or seen Kold and Stone together,” the man continued. “It’s like a haunting, I shiv you not.”

“That’s another thing,” said Bradford. “I was hired on a six-way split. Now there’s this other man handing out orders, and if I can add — which I can, up to ten — that’s seven shares.”

“Kold doesn’t want no share,” said the man who’d spoken earlier. “He has his own aims in Solace.”

“Exactly. His own aims. Aims which will conflict with ours, thankoo and pleasem. Say his aims are the General Store. Well, that means the store’s contents are less in the way of spoils for us.”

“That’s not what I meant. Kold wants something else. Nobody knows what, but it’s something specific and nothing in our interest. Says Stone, anyway.”

Bradford snickered. “Why so mysterious?”

The men around the stew hole must not have known, because they shook their heads. Bradford was the only one who seemed to find anything worth laughing about.

Beside Clint, under the umbrella of sparkly pink energy, Teddy was drawing his index finger across his throat, silently asking if they should go ahead and kill the bandits.

Clint shook his head.

Teddy repeated the gesture, pointing to Clint’s guns, then his own.

Clint shook his head again.

Pinto collapsed on his side and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep, or maybe death. Teddy rolled into the dirt rather gracefully when it happened, as if it were a common occurrence.

Teddy stood up. He was acting as if Clint hadn’t understood. He mimed himself holding an invisible gun, then racked off imaginary shots at each of the bandits. His invisible gun was extremely powerful. The recoil after each shot drove his hands high enough to give him an imaginary concussion. As he finished each shot, his cheeks puffed out. Even though he had to be quiet, he couldn’t resist making as much of the “boom” as he could.

Clint took Teddy by the arm, guiding it until the boy had slipped his imaginary gun back into the real holster on top of his real sidearm, then he pointed at his own head and tapped it.

Below them on the ground, Pinto farted.

“What was that?” said the bandit with the glasses.

Teddy made a face at Clint, both an apology and an insistence that it wasn’t his fault. Edward rolled his eyes, the umbrella still flowing out from his glowing horn.

“Phantom fart,” said Roger, his voice full of tumbleweeds and mystery, as though speaking of a legendary beast.

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about ghoulem. They’re just an old wives’ tale!”

“Your problem, Bradford,” said the man who’d mentioned Kold earlier, “is that you’re not worried about anything.”

“You bet,” Bradford said. “One day you women might learn to appreciate the levity that comes from such a free mind as mine.” He laughed.

“A good gunman needs to be at least a little a’feared all the time. Else what reason does he have to aim true?”

“Poetic. That’s beautiful, Owen. Like a handful of sunflowers. Can you sing me a song?”

“You’d better get a little a’feared. You talk that way when we meet with Kold, and you’ll find trouble.”

Bradford said, “He’s just a man.”

Teddy tugged on Clint’s sleeve, making the throat-slitting gesture more urgently.

“Look at this pie,” said one of the men whose name hadn’t been given, holding up the package Bradford had handed him earlier. “It’s moldy.”

“So eat the mold,” said Roger. “It’s good for you.”

“No it’s not,” the man disagreed.

Once discussion drifted to pie and mold rather than bosses, Clint looked down at Teddy, then pointed behind them, indicating that they should regroup. Edward kicked Pinto and the horse rose slowly back to his hooves. They walked, still under Edward’s umbrella, back to their earlier dismount point on the far side of Flat Rock.

CHAPTER EIGHT:

DHARMA KOLD

Safely out of sight, Edward let the umbrella collapse and vented the unicorn version of a sigh. His eyes grew heavy and twitching, as his color subtly shifted from a radiant, almost glowing brilliant white to a more common bright white, almost snowy.

Clint ran a hand down the unicorn’s back, starting between his ears, then repeated the gesture twice more, gently. As he finished, Edward looked at Teddy, then Pinto.

“I should kick your mount to death,” said Edward. “That fart was careless.”

Clint turned to Teddy. “It’s hard for him to cast an umbrella that large for so long,” he explained. “It takes a lot of concentration. Your horse laying down and then…being distracting makes it harder.”

“He’s a horse,” said Teddy, as if that explained everything.

“Then get on your horse,” said Clint.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to High Rock.”

Teddy looked back toward the crest of the hill, his eyes full of confusion.

“Get on your mount,” Clint repeated.

Teddy did. Clint climbed onto Edward’s back and they started off as they’d come. After they’d put some distance, a scatter of sparse trees, and a few hills between the posse and High Rock (and after Edward verified that the bandits were still back at the stew hole) Clint allowed the group to talk.

“You wanted to kill those five men out of hand? Fine. Let’s assume you could work that pistol. And let’s assume we could get all five before they got us — which we could, and by ‘we,’ I mean ‘me.’ And I also means ‘while trying to avoid getting shot by you.’ Let’s also assume it’s okay to break Sands Treaty and spill blood at a stew hole, which it most certainly isn’t and never will be. What do you think Stone and the rest of the big, bad men would have done when their soldiers didn’t show?”

Teddy shrugged.

“Stone is bad. He’s emptied towns without blinking; he subdued Solace for years before we arrived and drove him out. But Stone is only a man. You change this story so it’s Stone and five men coming to town, and we could handle it easily. But there are things we don’t know, and things we do. For one, how could we be sure those five represented all of Stone’s posse?”

“I just assumed…” Teddy began.

“That’s the problem with people in general,” said Edward. “You assume everything. You assume that all creatures are beneath you, and yours for subduing. Do you know why the marshal rides me? Because I allow it. Because I choose to be here. He has not tamed me.”

“Really? Because I always heard that —”

“You assume, you figure, and then you pass your tales from one idiot to another,” said Edward, with more rancor than usual. We are not your pets. Not usually, anyway.”

Teddy’s face scrunched at that last part, but Clint continued before he could ask what the unicorn meant.

“Stone could have groups of men coming from all over,” he said. “They could all be meeting at High Rock. It’s a convenient place, accessible from every direction, and sitting just outside of Solace. The way trails across the Sands cut into one another, High Rock’s like the hub of a wheel. If Stone has a dozen groups of five and one don’t show, might they not decide someone was onto them, and adjust their plans?”

Teddy nodded. “I suppose?”

“It’s what I’d do. We predicted Stone would have dozens of men, after all. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening. Now, if I ventured a guess, I’d say it’s just that half-dozen minus one,  plus Stone and Kold. You heard them talk about splitting their spoils into six. They’re treating it like a bank job rather than something as tangled up as the taking of a town. There might be more men coming, hired guns not entitled to a share, but the odds are against it. I’d say it’s us versus seven.”

“So you can handle them,” said Teddy.

“It’s long odds.”

“Well, that’d be straight-up truth if you didn’t have a unicorn,” said Teddy. “But you do, so…” He started making shooting motions with both of his hands, nearly falling from his mount as he did.

“Problem is, we’re not looking at seven normal men,” said Clint. “You couldn’t know this, Theodore, but the man they were stewing on — Kold — has gotta be Dharma Kold, who I unfortunately know too much about. His presence is troubling like a drought. You’ve heard of The Realm?”

“Of course. Where everyone wants to go. The city that broke loose in the fracture, and now is nowhere.”

“The things you believe about The Realm are mostly true,” said Clint. “It’s the one place left where there’s still abundant magic, without the need for unicorns to produce it and carry it. They have riches they don’t appreciate, and it turns them a sort of sour they can’t help, or get blame for. I was a marshal in The Realm, a long time missing, as was Dharma Kold. We were banished, and found ourselves on the dusty side of the wall. Once we were driven out a half mile into the Sands and could no longer see the wall, The Realm disappeared, gone to us forever. Even if we’d retraced our steps, we wouldn’t have been able to find it. Looking drove us mad. The Realm works on you, kid, making you forget there’s life outside it. So Kold and I, who once counted each other as friends, were united in anger and hatred. We plotted to return to The Realm. But we went about it different than most.”

Clint squinted at the still-vacant trail spread out behind them. They were halfway to High Rock with plenty of time. He wanted to be early enough to stake out and hide, which meant getting there before Kold, Stone, or any of the others arrived.

“Kold and I walked together for many endless miles,” he told Teddy. “You lose track of time and reality near The Realm and along the fault lines. It’s part of The Realm’s magic. I’ve no honest clue if Kold and I rode together for a month, a year, or ten years. We simply kept on, dipping into stew holes whenever we happened upon them, snaring game for food, and occasionally finding a town where we could pay for a shave, maybe a room, and a couple times some company. Time passed like blurs inside a dream, like one of those scenes in the flicker talkies where the view smears to show confusion. For the longest time it was hazy but tolerable, and we got along, both holding onto our marshal’s guns and our companions —“

“He means their unicorns,” said Edward.

Teddy nodded. Pinto placed one hoof in front of the other, taking faster steps than Edward in order to keep up.

“We were both angry when we left The Realm, and that made us dangerous. Behind the wall, it was our job to be dangerous — the proper sort, anyway. When we were banished, they let us keep everything that made us marshals. If they’d tried to take our guns, our unicorns, or even our stars, we’d have killt them dead. They knew they’d never see us again anyway, so they simply let us go, knowing we’d be lost a half-mile past the wall and out of their hair forever. So after leaving, we made plans. Dreamed dreams. But Kold’s dreams and plans grew disturbing. His unicorn didn’t balance out his human aggression like Edward does for me — one very important part of a healthy human-unicorn pairing. Kold’s unicorn,  Cerberus, only fed his hunger for discord. You’ve heard the expression ‘a horse of a different color’?”

Teddy nodded.

“The expression means, ‘something entirely different,’ and is based on a literal change in the color of a unicorn, which makes that unicorn something very different indeed. Enough time on the trail, and I started accepting my whereabouts. Kold took to wrassling with his. Kold’s unicorn fed his anger, or maybe on his anger. Everything changed. At first, the changes were subtle. Unicorns are supposed to be bright white, like Edward. They’re fiercely independent. You don’t ever command a unicorn, and never dare insult them. Kold’s unicorn, though, became a dull white, then a dusty gray, and started to follow his say-so. That’s when I knew it was time to leave. It was Edward’s idea, nosing me awake in the middle of the night, casting a cone of protection around us as we trotted off into the depths of the Sprawl. That was the last I saw of Dharma Kold, though I’ve heard plenty stories since.”

“As have I,” said Edward. Clint noticed with surprise there was no scorn in his voice. He was speaking to the kid, on his crappy horse, as if he were an equal. “We have a kind of radar. There are unpaired, nomadic unicorns all over, and we’re all connected. I can ‘talk’ to any who are close, and those I reach can ‘talk’ to any within their range. In this way, we can cover great distances inside our minds and  magic. Sometimes we even reach out and ‘talk’ to horses, though it’s very different. We must be up close, and horses are dumb animals, so we can only pull rough color from their thoughts — things they’ve seen as they’ve seen it, without interpretation. Based on all I’ve seen, across stories told by both horse and unicorn, there is a recurring tale of a dark rider, tearing through the Sands on a unicorn of pure, obsidian black.”

“And that’s bad?”

“Most unicorns are strong. As the marshal said, we’re independent. We partner with humans of merit, but always willingly and never as servants.”

Clint shrugged the rucksack that he, the human, was carrying, darkening the ink around Edward’s point.

“But some of us are weak, just as some humans are. Weak unicorns wish to lose themselves to the bliss of surrender, just as some humans relish the loss of control — allowing another to take charge, hold the reins, and make all the decisions. It’s tempting to do, but also a damnation. A unicorn of a different color has surrendered control of its magic to its rider.”

Teddy’s mouth fell open. “He’s more powerful than you,” he whispered to Clint. “That’s why you’re being so careful.”

“That’s an understatement, since I’ve no power. I’m a man. Kold’s unicorn has made him more than a man. It’s made him magic.”

“How can you beat a magic man?”

“Carefully,” said Clint. “The thing to remember is that the amount of magic between Cerberus and Kold is unchanged from the days when Cerberus had it all. It is simply under human control now, and housed at least partly inside a human. It’s also influenced by a human’s more base emotions and needs. Cerberus is black, like the magic itself, but Edward still holds as much magic as their pairing does now and more than Cerberus does alone. And I’m a better man than Kold, when he is only a man. I could always outgun him.”

“So you can beat him?” Teddy looked hopeful.

“I seriously doubt it,” Clint said. “It’s complicated, but the short version is, purity almost always loses to pollution when the two are served in equal shares. Acceptance versus will. You can’t ram purity and acceptance into something like you can with hatred. Make sense?”

“Nar.”

“Okay, I’ll put it this way. If you wish to keep breathing, here’s what you should do: ride ahead, gather your things from Solace, and head to Sojourn immediately. If you find my woman, Mai, tell her that if I don’t meet her in Sojourn, I’ll meet her in NextWorld.”

Teddy shook his head. “I’m standing with you.”

Edward turned to the kid. “You’re such an idiot. What are you going to do? I know you’re a boy and believe in the fantastic, but the gunslinger just said he can’t stand against Kold — and he’s a marshal, trained in The Realm, partnered with a unicorn. Who are you?”

“I’m your ward!”

“No, you are not,” Clint said.

Teddy stared ahead, his face tight and determined. Edward could magick him across the sands, but the kid would only ride back. Could Clint really blame him? The boy was an orphan, making his own way in a dead-end town. Adventure, in whatever form he could find it, was all he had to live for.

The kid finally broke his pouting silence. “You can’t beat Kold?”

Clint said, “I very seriously doubt it.”

“Then why are we headed to High Rock?”

“To find them as they meet, and disrupt what we can before we die.”

“I have a better idea,” said Teddy. “Let’s ride back into Solace. Get the town to evacuate. Then run off ourselves.”

“Your plan is to run?” said Clint. “You’ve a lot to learn if you wish to carry that gun like a man.”

“Run and live versus stay and die. Even an orphan knows which is better.”

“Then do it yourself, like I already suggested.”

“All for one,” said the kid. It was probably his way of saying he’d be doing whatever the marshal did, and nothing less.

“The town won’t evacuate.” Clint shook his head. “People never flee peril, even when the alternative’s doom. Sure, they could make Sojourn, but only as paupers. They’d need to abandon their houses, possessions, and places of business. They’d march or ride into the Sands with only what they could carry on their backs. Most folks aren’t that strong. Most need the warm and fuzzy of the known.”

“They’d leave if you told them what you just told me,” Teddy said. “And you’d have… what? An hour before the soonest they could arrive, if we ride straight?”

Clint pulled a watch from his pocket, opened it, and checked it against the sun. “Yar,” he said. “An hour. But they’d never leave. Even if they did, it’d never be all of ‘em.”

“Is that why you’re staying — to protect those who refuse to leave?”

“Yar.”

“If a few stay, screw ‘em,” said Teddy.

“What percentage, young Theodore, is worth surrender? Where should a gunslinger draw the line at how many people die before a good man will intervene?”

“You said you can’t do anything to help them.”

“Nar.” Clint shook his head. “I said I can’t win. That’s different.”

Teddy turned to Edward and addressed the unicorn directly. “You seem selfish. Are you sure you’re on board with this?”

Edward offered a small, equine chuckle in exchange for Teddy’s moxie. “I’m proud, and I’m nearly immortal. I’ll do what I can to assist the marshal, but how and where he choses to die is his decision.”

Teddy sighed, shaking his head.

“Same goes for you,” Edward added. “The one choice forever in a man’s control is the way he faces his death — the one thing that is truly his. I would never presume to tell you how to die, either.”

A few beats passed in silence.

“Although if you were to ask for suggestions —” Edward couldn’t help it. “— I’d suggest getting out of town, seeing as you won’t make it through the first shot.”

CHAPTER NINE:

HIGH NOON

Another fifteen minutes of silent riding and they hit the outskirts of High Rock.

No one spoke. The only sounds in the Sands, outside of the wind’s angry whisper, were the steady ticking of hooves — one set large and slow, and another smaller and faster — slapping the packed dirt of the trail.

By the time they were within a mile of High Rock, Clint had devised a way to get Teddy out of the way. He said that if the boy insisted on being Clint’s ward and sacrificing himself on the marshal’s mission, that was his business. He repeated: You are choosing certain death and are a fool for doing so. Then, once Teddy’s defensive wall was higher than the walls of a tall closet, Clint sighed, pushed a barrel of breath from his lungs, and gave the kid his mission.

“Ride into town,” he said. “You may be shot by bandits on your way, since I suspect Stone may have summoned groups from the east who will have to ride through Solace before meeting up with the others at High Rock. Be vigilant.” He paused. “You sure you want to do this?”

Teddy nodded.

“Fine, fine. Your choice, even if it’s turkey stupid. If you manage to survive, head to the Otel and find Mai. If she’s not left town, which I suspect she hasn’t despite her earlier claims, help her pack and force her onto a carriage. Use your gun if you need to, then ride with her to Sojourn. You’ll be pursued, if you ever make it that far, and will surely be killt on your way. Try to get as many of the bad guys as you can before you die.” Clint turned to Teddy and put a hand on his arm. “I ask again: Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”

The kid’s face was set. “I’m sure.”

“You’re choosing certain death. For nothing.”

“My choice, Marshal.”

“Yar. So it is.”

The kid tipped him a salute, then slapped his pathetic horse on the rear and rode off toward town as fast as he could.

Barely out of earshot, Edward said, “Kids are stupid.”

“It’s better to speak of nobility over stupidity.”

“Better?” Edward said. “Maybe for you. But stupidity is so dominant in that one, I had to turn to keep from laughing. The kid will be sneaking through town with his gun drawn, hiding behind barrels on his way to the Otel. He’ll try forcing your woman into a carriage if she’s still around, but if I have a feeling for Mai at all, and I see no reason to think I don’t, she’ll likely wallop the boy and smack the gun from his palm the second she sees it. If they get on the carriage, he’ll make the entire trip with gun drawn and pulse racing, eyes bugging out from his face on the lookout for bandits.”

“But he’ll survive.”

Edward laughed. “Shall I try and convince you that your noblest mission would be to skip the Rock, run into Solace, and hop onto that carriage with the two of them?”

“Just look ahead to the Rock. See anything yet?”

“No. The Rock is clear. And I can’t feel any other unicorns, either. Strange in itself.”

Clint had a spark of hope, but it was squashed by Edward immediately.

“That doesn’t mean Kold isn’t riding Cerberus,” he said. “I was losing the ability to sense Cerberus even back when he was ashy grey. I think it’s because we’re on the wrong frequency. Or maybe because the magic is under the command of…” Edward stopped, as if unwilling to say more.

They crossed the final stretch to High Rock, hitting the end of the trail at two o’clock — a full hour before the bandits were due to rendezvous with Kold and Stone.

High Rock was aptly named. In the middle of the Sands trails — ten minutes on horseback outside of Solace —  sat a small, isolated hill. Town rumor swore High Rock was some sort of burial mound. At the top of the hill was a massive boulder, buried halfway in the sand. The rest of the rock stuck out of the sand like a finger pointing at the sky.

High Rock made no sense, and shouldn’t have existed. The Sands were mostly sand, but High Rock sat at the top of a tall hill that looked like little more than a giant dune, though clearly it wasn’t. The endless winds that often obscured the trails never beat down the hill. It was as if the entire hill was the rock itself, with a thin skin of filth and soil sticking to its ugly windward face.

High Rock was a curiosity, especially since stones were so small in the Sands. The Rock seemed to have been dropped there by Providence, just like the church said it was.

Kold and Stone probably chose High Rock as their meeting spot since it would be impossible to surveil without being seen. From the top of High Rock, a person could see miles of sand, broken only a by few objects that might provide some possible cover. Anyone meeting at the top would know they were being watched… unless, of course, the watcher rode with a unicorn.

Clint and Edward waited, concealed from the trail in a shallow depression behind a small cluster of cacti. A quarter hour passed, then another. Then another.

With only fifteen minutes before the scheduled meeting time, Edward cast another umbrella, and they vanished from outside view. The riders wouldn’t want to be late. Based on their frightened conversation at the stew hole, Clint figured the group would arrive soon to avoid their leaders’ anger.

Another five minutes were gone from the clock. It was nearly time, but still no riders crested the horizon. Clint rubbed his still-smooth chin, his brow furrowed.

“Something’s been bothering me,” he rasped, breaking their shared silence for the first time since hitting the top of High Rock.

The unicorn turned. His horn was glowing lightly. Sparks flew out from it and into a giant dome.

“Yar?”

“Stone knows we’re in Solace, which means that Kold does too. But if I put myself in either pair of spurs, this don’t make sense. They’d both know our Water Reader would see ‘em coming, and that I’d ride out to meet them before they hit town, and that I’d do so only after sussing out their intentions. It’d be natural to choose High Rock as a spot to palaver since you could see anyone coming for miles, but if I were jingling their spurs rather than mine, I’d be thinking that the town marshal and his unicorn could still hide anywhere beneath a magic umbrella”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s too dumb, what they’re doing.” Clint shook his head. “It’s so dumb, it’s almost blind. They’re coming to Solace in plain view to anyone magic, or with access to a Reader, and riding as light as a feather. Seven men, and only one of them strong enough to make a difference. When we rode out, we predicted dozens. That many, even without a dark rider on a unicorn of a different color, could overwhelm us. Seven’s a cactus without any needles.”

“They’re counting on Kold.”

“I don’t buy it,” said Clint. “Kold is a marshal, which means we’re kin in thought. Any man who chambers fourteen shots and rides a unicorn wouldn’t do this. It’s too dumb.”

“Maybe the theft of his unicorn’s magic has made him stupid.”

But Clint heard doubt in the unicorn’s words. The one thing magic didn’t do was make its user stupid. Edward said it plenty of times: magic made a creature smarter, further-seeing, insightful, able to see seven steps ahead…

As the obvious clicked into place, Clint’s hand fell instinctively to his gun. He turned to Edward. The unicorn, reaching the same conclusion, was staring back.

“He wanted me out of town,” Clint said.

The gunslinger had done exactly what he was supposed to. He’d heard of an approaching threat, then rode out of town with barely a thought to greet it. If Kold and Stone had come from the other direction while Clint and Edward were waiting….

Edward’s umbrella disappeared and the unicorn tossed his head impatiently at Clint. The gunslinger swung his body onto Edward’s back as the unicorn’s powerful haunches churned beneath him. Edward gathered immediate speed as Clint twisted his hands through Edward’s mane and fell into his most familiar rhythm, moving with his mount, loose enough to hold his balance through the gallop.

“How long?” said Clint.

“Normally ten or fifteen minutes,” Edward yelled over the wind and the thundering of hooves. “But this is a special occasion.”

Edward’s horn started to spark as if it were grinding against steel, glowing beyond its normal pinkish-yellow hue and into a dull, throbbing red. Sparks erupted in a cone around his horn, as if the unicorn were pushing his way through something solid.

The thundering of hooves grew distant as the world went dim around them, like someone had lowered the oil in the lamp of the world. For the thinnest sliver of a second, the world was a featureless, silent black before returning to its rightful color. The cone of sparks disappeared, and thirty seconds of riding out from High Rock, Clint found himself at the farback of Solace’s high street as Edward panted and shook beneath him.

“Are you okay?” said the gunslinger.

“Yar,” Edward said, nodding. “But…” His right front leg faltered, almost causing him to lose his balance.

“Can you fight?”

“I’ll be able to soon. It was a shallow fold. I’ll recover fast.”

Clint hopped down from Edward’s back, not wanting to burden the unicorn while he was already so weak — or risk being crushed if Edward’s balance gave out and he fell.

Edward’s head was moving side to side, taking in the town. “I don’t see anything,” he said. “Maybe you were wrong.”

“I wasn’t.”

As if on cue, a shot rang out from behind the bank. Clint watched a tiny bloom of white smoke — a commoner’s plume — and felt the slice of lead burn into his side. Whoever it was fired a second time, but this time a beautiful yellow flower of energy formed inches from Clint’s middle. Then the bullet struck something invisible and fell to the dirt.

“I never realized it before,” said Clint, clutching his hand to his side as blood gushed between his fingers, “but Teddy was right. Your magic is fruity.”

“I see,” said Edward, already starting to sound like his old self. “Would you prefer I let you die in a manly way, rather than use my fruity unicorn powers to pull that slug from your body?”

Clint winced. Two more shots struck their protective shield, and another pair of flowers (both a dusty lavender) bloomed. Two more bullets dropped into the dirt of the high street.

“Go ahead and pull it out,” he said. “But if you could do it with the sounds of a mighty steam engine, I’d prefer it.”

Edward’s horn glowed brighter, and Clint’s side became more liquid than flesh. His wound, including the clothes over it, shimmered and dipped as if a rock had been dropped into a tub of water. Then the ripples rose back to the surface, bringing the bullet on top of them. There was a small high-pitched noise, like that of a squeak toy, as his flesh congealed back into place. A blood-covered bullet fell to the dirt.

“Thankoo,” Clint said.

“We should get off the street,” said Edward, looking around. “Though I’ll admit, this is fun.”

“Nar,” Clint said. “Stay here.”

Another four shots struck the shield. Four slugs fell to the dirt.

Clint could see the shooters. There were four of them. After he was struck by the first bullet, the idiots had come out of hiding. The gunslinger recognized all of them from the stew hole. As he’d predicted, they had ridden around him, avoiding the High Rock entirely. But the fact that these were the same men told Clint that there probably weren’t any more members joining the party, which was good. Five hoods, one leader, and one dark magician would be plenty to take over the town if the marshal stayed away. But here he was, back a half-hour early.

Sorry to put sand in your plan, boys.

Clint wasn’t schooled in much more than marshaling, but could track shots better than the best sharks counted aces and kings. Two of the men had fired only a pair of shots, one had fired three, and one had fired only a single. All had extras, of course, but they’d need time to refill their revolvers once they were empty.

Clint, clutching his side and feigning injury, pointed at the man with three shots left. The gunmen kept their distance, but the farthest was only twenty yards off. They figured they had him.

“You!” Clint yelled to the man with three shots. “Are you not a man? You haven’t even hit me!”

The man fired.

“Ow!” Clint screamed.

The man fired again, and the other three fired once. Now, if he was smart, the man on empty would retreat and reload. But he was as dumb as the bandit he was, and wouldn’t know his status until he dry-fired the next time he pulled the trigger. So the gunslinger lay in the dirt, grabbing himself and screaming in pain, while the outlaw began to count his sixth of the town’s take.

“Act more anguished,” Edward suggested.

Clint clutched his stomach tighter, while screaming louder.

Outside the shield, the empty man tried to fire. His weapon went click, and his face turned red. He started shuffling backward.

“The clock is ticking,” Edward said.

Clint hopped to his feet and lurched forward.

“Now,” he said.

Edward dropped the shield.

Clint’s hands were on his guns, already unholstered and aimed. He fired a shot from each of his seven-shooters, so perfectly in sync they thundered through Solace with a single report. A cloud of dull red smoke belched from each muzzle.

His outstretched arms swiveled, and he fired again. Another twin puffs of smoke billowed from the barrels.

Four men lay dead. Stone and the remaining man would now only have to spilt the town’s spoils in half.

Clint holstered his guns and sighed, shoulders slowly rising and falling.

“Three left,” he said.

They cut away from the high street, knowing the sound of the battle would draw the others, if it hadn’t already. Edward asked Clint if he wanted him to raise the shield, but Clint shook his head. Kold’s bullets would sail through it anyhow, and he’d be surprised if Stone were willing to violate taboo and try to fire one of Kolt’s seven shooters. If he did, and if he was lucky, he might be able to get off a good shot before the firearm blew his hand into teethpaste.

Besides, Clint needed his unicorn sharp. Shields weren’t hard, but they did require tremendous energy to make and focus to hold. It had been a while since Edward had eaten.

They slipped behind the bank. Clint unholstered his guns, refilling his four empty chambers.

“You figured out their master plan?” Edward asked. “Any idea what Kold is after? Money?”

“Nar, not money. The bandits at the stew pool said Kold didn’t want a share, and I reckon that isn’t wrong. The dark marshal’s after something else.”

“He went to all this trouble to get you out of the way. If he knew you’d return shortly after…”

“… then whatever he wants is something he can grab and easily flee with,” Clint finished. “Before I return. Otherwise there’s no point. He might as well have ridden into town and faced us.”

“Maybe he wanted an early jump.”

“Stone, maybe,” Clint said. “Stone’s eyes are likely on the town. He and his men will rob the bank and businesses, then turn this place into their own private sweatshop. But I’d wager Kold wants something specific, and doesn’t plan to confront me.”

“Why not?”

Clint raised his eyebrow at Edward.

No one knew better than Edward that magic battles were messy. They were always risky and never certain. It wouldn’t matter what power Kold commanded. If he wanted to take a specific thing from the town, it was smarter to use subterfuge than to engage in a magical duel.

“Okay, fine,” Edward said. “So what does he want? And where is Stone and the other man?”

“You tell me.”

“I’ve been trying, but I can’t see them. It’s Cerberus. He must be with them.”

Clint nodded. It made sense. Unicorns were supposed to be full of magic. When they allowed a human to siphon it off, they became like black holes. The effect made it impossible for other magic users to see them, or to see others nearby.

Edward’s head twitched. “I can see the fifth bandit now. He doesn’t seem to be with Stone and Kold.”

“Where is he?”

“In the saloon.”

Clint took his back from the barrel and peeked around its side. The saloon was across the high street, past the four fallen bandits.

“Why didn’t he come out with the others?”

“There are people inside the saloon with him. Townspeople. Best guess is he watched what you did to his buddies and is now holed up in there with hostages, planning to bargain his way out of town without getting shot.”

“Where?”

“North wall. Beside the piano.”

“That’s the wall over there, right?” Clint gestured to where he thought the unicorn meant.

“Correct.”

Clint held one of his guns toward the building with both hands, aiming to the left of the windows. His hands became rock steady, the barrel of the heavy revolver not jittering even a nanometer.

“Here?”

“Six feet left.”

“No way. That’s into the outer wall.”

“Which one of us has a magic horn?”

Clint inched his gun to the left, his arm moving as smoothly as a heavy iron door on a frictionless hinge. He was now sighting very near the building’s corner.

“There?”

“Okay, five-feet-nine. Back up three inches.”

“Told you,” said Clint, his arms swinging slightly back. Griff used eight-inch posts in the walls, not doubled two-bys. He looked over at Edward, gloating.

Edward rolled his eyes, a strange mannerism for an equine. Then he said, “Two inches up.”

“There?”

“Yar.”

“Good?”

“Wait. He turned. Go right another two inches.”

“There?”

“Yar.”

“Sure? Locked in?”

“Yar.”

Clint squeezed the trigger. The gun’s report was thunder, but Clint’s arms didn’t even shake. It was as if the bullet had been fired from a rifle on a tripod rather than a handgun with a kick that could kill. A cloud of dull red gunsmoke plumed through the air.

Clint holstered his gun and crossed the street to the saloon, poking his head through the double doors and shouting to the barman.

“Is he dead?”

The barman stared.

“Is he dead?” Clint repeated.

“Something came through the wall,” said the barman, his mouth hanging open. “His chest exploded.”

“So he’s dead.”

The barman nodded, but because nobody in the saloon was moving and they were all staring at the gunslinger, Clint decided he should check for himself. He found the fifth bandit in the corner, crumpled over the piano bench.

That made five.

On his way out of the saloon, Clint tipped his hat at the barman. The barman still stared.

Clint understood the barkeep’s confusion. Clint had never had occasion to shoot through a wall in Solace, so no one in town had ever seen that particular advantage of a marshal’s guns — how the magic powder kept a slug spinning true until it met an obstacle it couldn’t penetrate, no matter what it had to pass through along the way.

Edward was waiting outside. Clint reached the door before realizing the obvious. He returned to the bar, asked the barman for a slice of turkey pie and an apple brew, then took the food outside and delivered it to the unicorn. After Edward ate the food and drank the brew (Clint had gotten him a clutch of four straws), he looked much better.

“Thanks,” Edward said.

“See the others yet?”

“No. Still nothing. They may have fled, after what you did to their posse. I can’t see them at all.” Then he stopped, his ears twitching. His horn pulsed a dull yellow, idling like an engine. Clint was reminded of The Realm’s thinking machines, and how they pulsed when searching for information.

“What?”

“I see nothing.”

Clint shrugged. “Maybe Kold found what he wanted and skipped out. We’ll have to go building to building, or…”

“No,” Edward interrupted. “I meant, I see nothing. It’s like a hole where there should be something. A large and suspicious absence where people should be.”

A hole?

Clint realized what Edward was saying. Solace was a bustling town for as small as it was, and most of the buildings were occupied at any hour. Even buildings with businesses usually held people inside, since most had apartments stacked onto their second floor.

When Edward said he saw “a suspicious absence,” he was referring to the black hole created by Cerberus, the unicorn of a different color. He couldn’t see Cerberus or anyone near him. That void where there should be people was why Edward could see Cerberus.

“Where?” said Clint.

“The Otel.”

CHAPTER TEN:

TROUBLE AT THE OTEL

Dharma Kold and Hassle Stone are at the Otel.

The thought sent a chill up the gunslinger’s spine.

Mai was surely gone by now. She had to be. She said she’d be leaving hours ago, lathered in a fury over Clint’s stubbornness. She was giving up, since he’d given up on their hitching. Faced with an ultimatum, he’d chosen duty, like any marshal worth his bullets was prone to do.

Mai should be safely out of town, and on her way to a new life in Sojourn, and Teddy might even be with her.

Unless she was bluffing.

Clint could see her in his mind’s eye as he ran toward the Otel, on foot with Edward a few steps behind, lost in a memory from what felt like a long time ago: her smooth, clear skin, somehow saved from the ravages of the Sands’ harsh weather. Her brown hair — not tied in a pink headpiece for hitching, but piled up under a common rag instead. She’d wanted to paint. To paint. A woman who was half-magick, abandoned in the Sands as a child, seeking and never finding The Realm as he himself had done for years.

Mai’s hands were naked of scars; her legs were without a single splotch or bruise. Clint had never even seen his woman purple, and wasn’t sure she could. And yet here she was, this fragile-seeming-but-not-at-all-fragile creature with a rag on her head, on her hands and knees with a bucket of paint. She held a brush in her hand like a workwoman from the Sprawl’s outlying settlements.

Clint remembered how much the filthy job of changing the room’s color had excited her, and how little he’d wanted to help.

“Help me with this,” she’d said, handing him a brush.

“Marshals don’t paint,” he said, or probably growled.

“Marshals don’t paint.” She wore a stern, over-the-top expression while mocking him.  “Get over here, gunslinger. This one does.”

Still, he refused, since painting a room was a task for anyone other than a proper Realm lady with her unique radiance, or for the town’s marshal. Besides, the paint stunk enough to get his head to swimming. Mai kept pushing. Clint continued to refuse.

Eventually she grew angry, and told Clint that if he wouldn’t help her, she’d hire Paul Wellings for the job. He’d charge more than they could afford, just to paint it brown. They never resolved the quarrel, and Clint left knowing he’d return to a brown room and a bill he couldn’t pay. Instead, he found the room painted a subtle yellow by the hand of a lady working alone ’til sundown. Mai was strong-willed and liked to win her way. She wasn’t above making threats to get it. Yet, in the end she was sensible, and seldom was rash out of anger.

Go, gunslinger, she’d said. Go to your death.

But she’d never left. She wouldn’t leave, because it was the wrong decision.

Mai knew who Clint was and always had. She wanted Clint to abandon Solace and the populace that didn’t deserve his protection, but she knew he never would. So when he’d left, she’d waited for the coach, stewing and hoping he’d change his mind against all odds, praying he’d meet her and they’d leave together.

But when he hadn’t come back to her, she’d sent the coach away and unpacked, watching the streets and waiting for evil to arrive and for her man to face it. Perhaps her half-magick side even whispered that the men were coming too late for her to warn Clint — that they’d tricked the mighty marshal into leaving the town undefended.

Then, if Clint knew Mai, she’d probably grabbed a gun.

The marshal didn’t need Edward’s magic — had it managed to penetrate the nothingness surrounding the Otel — to know that all of what he’d imagined had happened. Of course she’d stayed. Clint wished he’d realized it sooner, before it might be too late.

When the Otel’s facade came into view, Clint ducked behind a rain barrel in front of the store, his right pistol drawn. Edward moved into position behind Clint, but since Edward was nearly a dozen feet long, the lowest point on his back was five feet from the ground, and he was bright white, there was little point in hiding.

“They know you’re here,” Edward said. “Kold can shoot through your cover. A unicorn’s magic nullifies shields and umbrellas.” Edward kicked Clint in the back with one of his forelegs. “So stand up and face them in plain sight. There’s no advantage in hiding like a coward.”

Clint stood. Then, as if he’d been waiting for a cue, Hassle Stone’s dusty shadow emerged from the blacksmith’s shop to the right of the Otel, his full figure right behind. Stone walked into the middle of the street, two dozen yards from Clint.

“Marshal,” he said.

Clint’s hands hung at his sides, both barrels holstered. Stone’s gun was already drawn, dead centered on Clint’s chest. Stone had already cocked the hammer, meaning a feather’s touch would fire the gun and leave Clint dying.

“Lay down your gun and I won’t hurt you,” said Clint, as if he were the one with the aimed gun.

“You’re too late,” Stone snarled. “Kold found what he came for while you were out playing patty-cake in the desert. Once you’re gone, I’m taking the rest for my own.”

“Taking?”

“Yar, taking. Or getting given. This town quails at the memory of me and my men.”

“Your five men took five shots and fewer seconds than that to dispatch,” said Clint, nodding toward the pile of bodies in the street behind him. Stone hadn’t noticed. Clint tried not to smile at the outlaw’s jittering gun when he did.

“Put down your weapon, Stone. I’ve had enough killing for today. My guns need rest.”

The marshal’s guns were in their holster. Stone’s six-shooter was still centered on Clint’s chest.

Clint started walking forward, toward Stone.

“Back up, marshal.”

Clint paused. His face registered offense, as if he’d been socially rebuked.

“You’re riding with the Devil,” he said. “If you weren’t, you’d realize how futile this is. You’re under the influence of dark magic. Five men, Stone? You face me with five men? Have you forgotten our last encounter, and your yeller embarrassment at the end? Did you really think you could shoot me before I shot you twice?”

The barrel of Stone’s gun began to shake visibly, almost violently, as if the iron were suddenly too heavy. “Your unicorn can’t help you,” he said. “Kold’s horn carrier is preventing it.”

“I don’t need a unicorn to draw on you,” said Clint.

“Don’t you?” Stone growled. “This time I’ve got magic on my side.”

“This showdown,” said Clint. “It’s not a showdown. It’s amusement. I know Kold better than you ever could. He’s watching — through magic if not with his eyes — waiting to see how this will end. But he doesn’t care which direction it takes. You were his distraction. And I’m sad to say it worked, that I got distracted.”

“Step back.”

“I know how this ends, Stone. As long as it’s me versus you, I win. Put down your gun. I’d rather the afternoon not end with you killt. Not when you have information I want.”

“You’ve some nerve, gunslinger,” said Stone.

Clint watched, waiting for a crack in Stone’s concentration.

Stone’s eyes flicked behind Clint, probably to his pile of fallen men. It was enough. Clint drew both guns and fired twin clouds of dull red gunsmoke. The bullet from the right gun split the cylinder of Stone’s pistol, causing it to spin from his hand and spilling two of its bullets into the dirt. Clint’s second slug caught Stone in the right shoulder. The impact spun him like a top, giving Clint enough time to lower his head and launch himself in a sprint toward Stone. He landed his shoulder in the small of the outlaw’s back and drove him into the blacksmith’s hitching post.

Clint had already reholstered his guns and drawn his handcuffs. In a single fluid motion, he seized Stone’s wrists and shackled them, criss-crossed, around the hitching post. The criss-cross position pulled him so close to the post that his chin pressed against it.

A clap came from above, from the upper window of the Otel. Then another, and another. Clint looked up and saw the face of his old friend, and newest foe.

Dharma Kold had changed in some way. Maybe many ways. “I’m slow-clapping in sarcastic appreciation of your victory over the bandit,” he said.

Clint took several steps backward for a better view of Kold. Edward walked up and stood beside him.

“He’s changed,” Clint whispered.

“He’s gone dark,” Edward said. “Wait until you see Cerberus, wherever he is. It will be far worse on the donor’s end.”

“I can hear you,” Kold called from the window.

“He’s also gotten much uglier,” Clint whispered.

Kold leaned against the window sill, making himself comfortable.

“This is the place where I’m supposed to tell you my plans and backstory, yar?” Kold sneered. He took a bite of something — a giant piece of turkey pie. Kold had liked turkey pie from the start; he’d even ordered it back in The Realm where choices were plenty. “And now, I’m supposed to come down, and we’ll fight. I’ll show you my new tricks — the ones my mount taught me. Your boy there counters. We fire rounds.” Kold faked a yawn.

Clint said, “I don’t have much choice.”

“Oh, of course you do. I’m sure this isn’t a surprise.”

Kold reached to the side of the window and pulled something into view, showing Clint a fistful of dark brown hair, which was attached to Mai.

“She’s lovely, Marshal,” Kold said.

“Go,” Clint barked. “Take what you came for and go. If I challenge you, it could kill us both. Let her go and you’ll have my pardon. I’ll let you leave town, and I won’t pursue you with whatever spoils you choose to take.”

Kold was stroking Mai’s hair. She stood still, giving no resistance.

Kold laughed. “Listen to you! It has been forever. Our relative positions have changed more than you apparently realize. I’m not here to bargain with you, Gulliver. I’m here to tell you what I’m going to do, and what you’ll have to watch.”

“Take what you came for and let her go,” Clint repeated, his voice losing both volume and strength. He watched Mai as she stood in the window with her vacant eyes, staring helplessly up at Kold.

Then a terrible truth dawned on the gunslinger: There’s nothing I can do.

“Well, see, that’s the problem.” Kold barked another horrid laugh. “Your lady here is what I came for.”

At that moment, a shadow spilled from the Otel’s lobby and poured into the street like black tar. Cerberus was more like a hole in the fabric of reality than a unicorn. His eyes were now a bright, iridescent yellow.

That yellow stare was the last thing Clint saw before the dark unicorn charged.

CHAPTER ELEVEN:

EPIC UNICORN FIGHT

The minute Edward saw Cerberus, his eyes started to flash, and what could only be described as a snarl swallowed his expression. It was beyond profane for a unicorn to surrender its magic to a human. It was an act of deep violation, like giving away a soul. What remained was more shadow than a living being, empty of all it once was.

Edward didn’t just see Cerberus as a foe. He saw him as an insult to everything that he himself stood for.

Edward reared, standing on his hind legs. Clint felt the unicorn’s rage, boiling beneath his skin as if it were his own. Edward wanted to destroy the dark unicorn for the perversion he represented. He wanted to punish Cerberus for the dark mark he’d put across their kind.

Edward was stronger, too, because he hadn’t surrendered any of his own magic.

A blast of bright white light erupted from Edward’s horn and struck Cerberus square in the chest. The impact launched him backward, into the Otel lobby.

Something flew from Cerberus as he hurtled backward. Clint stared open-mouthed as dark tentacles slithered around the white beam. Then the energies collided, crashing with an explosion that cut through the Otel’s lobby like a knife.

The blast battered the Otel’s walls and supports, turning it from a sound structure into a mashed stack of broken mud bricks. The top floor slid to one side and then collapsed, crumbling onto the lobby floor below.

Kold’s face registered a satisfying look of genuine surprise, but then as the walls collapsed, both he and Mai were surrounded by a giant filthy bubble. The Otel’s roof fell onto them, past them, into the lobby level. The walls blew out. When the dust disappeared into the late afternoon air, the entire structure was nothing more than a ramshackle pile of boards.

The dirty bubble rose from the debris, hovering above the street. It floated to the side opposite where Stone was still shackled, with the shadows of Kold and Mai barely visible inside. Then it settled onto the dirt, and the bubble popped.

Kold grabbed Mai by the arm, pulling her roughly around the corner.

Clint started to follow, but the Otel’s rubble blew upward in a fountain as a pillar of black fire emerged, with Cerberus at its base. The dark unicorn marched forward, its yellow eyes wild. Edward was already galloping toward him. The white unicorn drove his entire weight, sidelong, into Cerberus’s obsidian side, knocking the dark unicorn’s body into the rubble.

Another flash of bright light surrounded them, and a hole appeared around the two entangled unicorns.

An explosion of snowy white blew the Otel’s remains spinning toward Clint. The gunslinger fell to the dirt as a fragment of what he thought might have once been a sink whistled over his head. The flash was blinding. Once in the dirt, he looked at his hands to see if he could still see them. What he saw was something like a photo negative, or an X-ray.

It’s white magic, not just light, he thought. Your sight will return.

For now, though, everything was backward.

Black was white.

White was black.

The unicorns had emerged and were dueling before the marshal, wrestling in a melee of legs and hocks and hooves and horns. Small spells strobed around them, meant for close quarters. Clint chewed through his panic, realizing how completely and totally Kold’s black unicorn was dominating his white one. Then he realized that the black unicorn, in his backwards-sight, was Edward. And then it made sense. Cerberus would have some dark tricks, but most of his magic was no longer with him because it had been surrendered to…

Clint looked around at what appeared to be a pitch black street.

Where was Kold?

Clint couldn’t get his bearings, and wouldn’t be able to shoot straight even if he trusted himself to aim his guns against Kold’s magic. Still, he had to try. Kold couldn’t get far.

He stumbled toward where Kold had disappeared with the spellbound Mai, but he’d not seen Edward stampeding toward him. He looked to his side and saw that Cerberus stood nearby. With his vision slowly returning, his world was sepia and grayscale.

The unicorns had taken wounds, but both instantly healed. They were painted in multicolored blood. Clint, who saw the many colors in different shades of gray, had a moment to note that even dark unicorns bled in vibrant colors.

Edward charged again, but this time Cerberus didn’t counter in time. Cerberus was off balance and reeling when Edward lowered his horn and drove it into the dark unicorn’s side.

Clint flinched back as the huge dark form of Cerberus flew in front of him, across his field of quickly improving vision, and then blew out the barber shop’s side wall.

The wall dripped debris as Cerberus stood and shook himself free of dust. A giant blue flash lit his side where Edward’s horn had struck him, and then he was whole again.

Edward’s horn was now a wet map of colors. He had stopped where he’d struck Cerberus, his nostrils flaring as his chest expanded and fell. Cerberus stared back.

“Okay, enough,” came a voice.

Now that the barber shop was missing a wall, Clint could see Kold and Mai taking refuge in the small alley behind the Otel. The shock was gone from the dark marshal’s face, leaving behind a strange brew of amusement and boredom.

“You horses can stop beating your chests,” Kold said. Edward’s head jerked at the insult. “No matter who wins, I’m holding the ace.” He waved his hand dramatically in front of Mai, as if presenting a prize.

Kold slapped his leg twice. In the barber shop’s rubble, in front of Frank, the barber (who was cowering behind a chair in the corner) Cerberus shook his massive black head and walked over so Kold could mount him and magick the compliant Mai onto the unicorn’s back. Mai wrapped her arms tightly around Kold’s chest.

Thirty feet away, his hooves wearing a carpet of sawdust and cinders, Edward snorted at Cerberus’s servility.

Kold turned to Clint and gave a satirical salute, then slapped Cerberus’s neck. The dark unicorn reared and leapt forward, but never landed. Instead, his black coat became a smudge that wound in a gently curving trail, like smeared ink, toward the horizon. And then they were gone.

Edward shook himself off and trotted toward Clint, his horn glowing, as the gunslinger’s vision returned to normal.

“Sorry about that,” said Edward.

Clint had his eyes bolted to the horizon. The dark stain had vanished. “Can we follow?”

“No. I can fold for reasonable distances, and even then it’s hard. But what Cerberus just did wasn’t a fold. That, my friend, was a prance. Something most humans will never see.”

Clint felt like he’d been beaten into a pile of submission.

“You can’t do that?” he asked. But it wasn’t a desperate question. It was an apathetic question that he felt he should ask. Despite Clint’s anguish and love for Mai, he barely had enough energy left to care.

“I could, in the same way you could trade an arm for a slice of turkey pie.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Any of us can do it, but only dark unicorns ever do. Think of the worst things humans sometimes do, but that the sane among you never would. It’s like that.”

Clint nodded and sighed, his spirit wearing a thousand pounds of defeat.

He walked to the other side of what used to be the Otel, to where Stone was handcuffed to the blacksmith’s hitching post. Stone looked up into his eyes.

“Where did they go?” Clint said.

“To drink cactus juice with your grappy, gunslinger.” Stone spat on the marshal’s boot. The glob of saliva made a clean circle in the dust covering the weathered cowhide.

Clint raised his foot and kicked Stone hard in the ribs. The blow emptied the breath from the bandit’s lungs, leaving him gasping for air.

“Where did they go?” Clint repeated.

Stone coughed, and kept coughing until the gunslinger thought he might spit his lung in the dirt.

Edward walked over and stood beside Clint, looming over Stone. Clint’s boot made another visit before Edward said, “Let me try” and raised a hoof to hover over Stone’s chest.

“Fine,” coughed Stone. “I’ll tell you. It won’t matter, anyhow. Won’t help you none to find them.”

“Where?” Edward said, lowering the hoof so it brushed against Stone’s filthy shirt.

Stone coughed again. “He’s taking her to The Realm.”

Clint’s chin rose. He turned and looked into the distance, to where the black smear had vanished. Just because Stone headed for the hills didn’t mean that was where Clint should go to meet them. There was a reason no one could find The Realm, since the Leaking had started. Lines were no longer straight, and forward was too often backward.

“That’s not possible,” said Clint.

“It is what it is,” said Stone.

With the melee finished, the citizens of Solace surfaced from hiding and drifted out into the street. They looked to the Otel ruins, then over to the dead men lining the street. Clint saw George Telford, Nicholas Willings, and Hattie McDonnough. He saw Earl Lancaster, who just ran a tack shop. He saw Bill Maynard, who didn’t want to stir up trouble with Hassle Stone where there was none otherwise.

Edward’s nose poked at Clint’s shoulder, urging him into motion.

Clint set his hand across Edward’s back, then stopped before kicking up onto his mount. He turned his gaze to the town and its people, all of whom were staring at the gunslinger who had saved them. Again.

He took the keys for Stone’s handcuffs from his belt, used the same hand to unpin the marshal’s star on his chest, and dropped both into the dirt.

Without another glance or comment, Clint climbed onto Edward’s back.

The gunslinger touched his guns. They felt right at his sides.

Edward’s horn glowed. Space folded.

Then the gunslinger — and his unicorn — left Solace forever.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Johnny B. Truant is an author, blogger, and podcaster who, like the Ramones, was long denied induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite having a large cult following. He makes his online home at JohnnyBTruant.com and is the author of the Fat Vampire series and The Bialy Pimps, both of which were written for adults. You can find a complete list of Johnny’s books here.

You can connect with Johnny on Twitter at @JohnnyBTruant, and you should totally send him an email at johnny@johnnybtruant.com if the mood strikes you.

Sean Platt is co-founder of the Collective Inkwell, speaker, and author, with breakout indie hits such as Yesterday’s Gone, WhiteSpace, ForNevermore, Available Darkness, and Dark Crossings, plus two traditionally published titles with Amazon’s 47North,  Z 2134 and Monstrous – all co-authored with David W. Wright. All the Inkwell’s existing pilots can be found in one low-priced volume in “The Serial Box.”

You can find Sean at SeanMPlatt.Com, Follow him on Twitter at @SeanPlatt, or email him at seanmichaelplatt@gmail.com.

Johnny and Sean, along with David Wright (the guy whose curmudgeony stance on western research inspired the Unicorn Western series) host two podcasts: the horror/comedy show Better Off Undead and the Self Publishing Podcast. Both podcasts are available on iTunes and the other podcast directories, as well as on Stitcher Radio, and both are for mature audiences only.