Crow Jane - D. J. Butler Page 0,18

if she could avoid it. The fairies in front of her didn’t have visible tails, and each wore a leather belt with a sword hanging from it.

“You are in my lands now,” the Queen said.

“More or less,” Jane grunted. She turned the pistol so the fairies could get a clearer view of it.

The King nodded solemnly. “As she said, you travel cloaked in legend.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” Jane said, “but I won’t have my hand forced.”

“You would murder Queen Mab on her own doorstep?” the Queen looked affronted, staring at Jane down her long nose. “Queen Mab and her consort Oberon, Peerless Among the Fey?”

Jane laughed and swore in Adamic. The curse word shook the mirror hanging behind the two fairies askew. “Maybe,” she said, “and maybe not.” Behind her, she definitely heard the sound of fighting getting louder. “You can’t kill me, and I have no people you can retaliate against. Why should I hesitate at the thought of killing Mab?”

“If the occupants of the Mirror Throne were crassly murdered by a Flatworlder,” the Queen sniffed, “there would be war between the worlds. Are you so detached from your father’s and mother’s descendants that you can accept that?”

Jane shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe,” she said again, “and maybe not. But I’d sure as hell kill a couple of Queen’s Rangers stupid enough to dress up in costume and try to fool me. And nobody would go to war over that.”

They didn’t blink. The King curdled his eyebrows like she’d said something distasteful. “Queen’s Rangers?” he sneered.

She pointed the gun at him. “Drop your pants,” she ordered.

He sneered and did nothing.

Pop! Pop! Whizzang!

The sudden presence of bullets in the air told Jane that the band had caught up to her and she was out of time. If her ka weren’t so drained, or her pistol, she’d turn and fight them. On the other hand, if her resources were less exhausted, she could have just blasted these annoying fairies into oblivion. Instead, she raised the pistol and fired a shot into the air.

Bang!

“Two left,” she said, pointing the muzzle at Oberon. “I don’t miss.”

“Stop!” he pleaded, his eyes suddenly serious.

“Oberon …” the Queen warned him.

With quick but trembling fingers, the King undid his belt buckle and dropped his green pants into a velvety puddle around his pointy-toed shoes. A donkey’s tail twitched nervously into sight.

“I thought so.” Bang! Bang! Jane emptied the Model 1910, firing the last two shots into the center of the fake Oberon’s chest. He flew back without a sound, hitting the wall and sinking to the floor.

“Give my regards to Mab,” Jane snorted. She stepped past the surviving fairy chanting in Adamic, burning nearly the last of her ka-fire in the act.

The gate opened and she flowed into it, her whole body passing through the window, tiny though it was.

“Stop her!” she heard at her back, but then the fracas and the Outer Bounds were gone. The crow, of course, followed her through.

The night outside Dodge City, Kansas, was cool and clear, with a thick cloud cover blocking out the stars overhead. Jane stepped out of the mirror, turned, and plucked it from the saddle strap to which it had been clipped. She dashed it on the roadside gravel. To be sure, she ground it into even smaller shards with her heel.

She had other mirrors with her, but it would take the wizard Adrian longer to find them.

“Easy, girl,” she said.

She stood several miles away from Wellman’s, at the bottom of the bank below the highway and at the edge of an endless field of sorghum. The bushy grass waved cheerfully at her in the darkness, and before she did anything else, Jane stopped and reloaded the Calamity Horn. She filled the clip with thirty-two caliber Auto rounds and then holstered the gun. The shells were unimpressive, weak as far as modern handgun ammunition went—the gun and its curse were everything.

At the right end of the sorghum field was a two-pump gas station, closed for the night, but automatic pumps and vending machines still meeting the needs of one customer in a red pick-up truck. At the left end was a boxy brick building, the sign at the front of which read FINE CUTS, INC.

Jane swung into the saddle easily, though the horse—the Mare—was enormous. The Mare, not domesticated and not friendly but accustomed to bearing Jane, curled back its lips to reveal sharp, feline teeth and pranced sideways a step. The Mare smelled of sweaty