Crow Jane - D. J. Butler Page 0,1

John asked, pouring black liquid out of a bottle with sea monsters inked on the label.

“I was young in another time and place,” she said. “I only learned English as an adult.” When she was a child, no human foot had yet trod upon the forested knob of land that would one day become England.

“I wouldn’t want you to feel I’se pryin’, but I’m guessin’ the South Pacific … am I right?” John asked.

Jane threw back the rum. She’d learned to like the drink while sailing Spanish treasure galleons, centuries ago now. It seemed like yesterday to her, but a yesterday from which she was separated by a yawning gulf of infinite tedium.

“I mean, from the tattoos. Ain’t a lot of people get tattoos like those, are there? Big swirlin’ patterns on the face and all? That’s distinctive.”

“They were put on me as a mark,” Jane said, the word mark bitter in her mouth. “They were meant to be distinctive.”

“Plus your complexion’s that nice caramel color,” John said. “I don’t mean nothin’ rude by it—chalk it up to my age if you’re offended, or the hits to the head I took in Nam—and I think you’re pretty. I’m jest sayin’ you look Polynesian. Or Latina, maybe, or some kind of mix. Am I right?”

I know I told you I was born to roam,

But now I’m burning to get back home.

I gotta go.

At the back of the stage with the bass player were the electric organ and the drums. The organ player was a boxy little mesomorph with brown hair, a thin black tie and a neat blue suit, tight at the wrists and ankles. He was nearly invisible under piles of electronic devices and cable and his sound was huge, but patchy.

The drummer, by contrast, sat at a very spare drum kit and played with two wooden sticks that looked like fighting clubs. She wore spiked leather from head to toe and had the androgynous facial features and animal tail that marked her as one of Mab’s folk. That, Jane thought, was almost interesting. What was one of the fey doing playing in a crummy rock and roll band in Dodge City, Kansas? The Legate hadn’t said anything about that, and it made her take a second look at the other members of the band. What were they hiding?

“Men have always found me pretty,” Jane agreed. “That’s the root of the problem.”

The song ended in a predictable clash of cymbals and some modest scattered applause. The guitar player shuffled over to the singer and took the microphone. Jane noticed their footgear—the singer’s looked like what a horseman might wear to ride, and the guitar player had combat boots.

“We’ll take a break now,” the guitarist announced, “but we’ll be back on the stage in a few minutes.”

“Another?” John asked cheerfully.

“I’ve had enough,” Jane said. She slapped a bill onto the bar and stepped away into the crowd, her spurs jingling slightly.

Her wards of dissembling made her hard to notice, and she let the sweaty, alcohol-breathed herd swallow her. Wellman’s wasn’t full, but it was full enough to give her space in which to be inconspicuous, despite the ankle-length black duster she wore and the black broad-brimmed hat, the knives strapped to her belt and boots and forearms and the swirling tattoos that covered her entire face as they covered her entire body. She had given up cursing those angels who had held her down and marked her millennia ago, but only because her curses were pointless. If she ever saw one of them, she’d kill him.

That was why she’d come to Kansas.

Not that her knives would work on an angel. Of course, the knives weren’t her only weapons. Deliberately, she brushed the pistol holstered on her hip, the Horn. And that was why the Legate had come looking for her.

That, and the fact that he had something to offer her that she couldn’t refuse.

The crow flapped slowly in circles in the high space above the bar. The drinkers, primarily college kids but including a few self-consciously hip-looking older people, went about their business and mostly ignored the band that stepped off the stage into their midst. The big handsome singer got offered a few beers and took one, nodding and smiling as three college girls asked for the blessing of his presence, but saying nothing. Was he shy? The others were left to their own devices. Three of them headed for the bar, the heavy bass player in the lead and