1. Al gets himself a Companion
Al Swearengen helped himself to another couple of fingers of Farnum’s rotgut and opened up the base. He hadn’t had himself a Companion for quite some time but things had been good lately in Deadwood and he felt like celebrating. The Gem Saloon was pulling in good trade more people arriving every week to stake their claim and make their fortune. And even those who had failed did good enough trade selling on their claim to the next mark and more often than not drinking and whoring on the proceeds in the Gem.
Inara Serra. Inara… Her name rolled off his tongue, left a taste behind like honey. Her dark eyes stared up at him, her sweet cultured voice listed her attributes and skills. A pretty little thing. Could give a moment or two’s ease to a troubled soul that was for certain. Oh, he wanted this girl. He put in his bid. It was more than he’d ever spent on a woman in his life but he had the sense that she would be worth it. And it did no harm to be seen as a man who could afford the services of a Companion. His wave was answered almost immediately. Inara Serra would be calling on him tomorrow afternoon at fifteen local time if that was convenient. Which of course it was.
Pleasure taken care of, he moved swiftly to business. He had some cargo needed moving, nothing that the Alliance or certain local interests need know about certainly nothing he wanted to pay dues on. There were various ships coming into port in the next day or so, some already broadcasting their readiness, their worthiness. He wasn’t looking for anything fancy. A nondescript freighter with a don’t ask-don’t tell policy for high-profit possibilities…
One took his eye. Firefly class. Serenity. A sweet name with darker overtones. Good enough reason as any to choose her. He looked for her captain’s name to see who he was planning to deal with. Mal Reynolds… another sweet name. Mal Reynolds. The world had turned a time or two since they last met. Swearengen smiled. He wondered if the hole he had left in the man’s shoulder still pained him any.
Reynolds was a fair man, honest in his way. Swearengen could respect that. He recognised that there was a place for honesty. And the man had been something of a hero in certain circles. He was known to be honourable, trustworthy if that could be said for anyone these days. And he had no love for the Alliance and their ways which was fine and dandy in Al Swearengen’s books. Yeah, Reynolds and his ship would do nicely.
2. Mal considers a job
“Where’s the job?” Jayne slid his second best knife into the scabbard in his boot.
“Deadwood,” Mal said. “Nice place… in its way.”
“Isn’t that Al Swearengen’s little fiefdom?” Zoe asked.
“Yup.”
“Didn’t he shoot you one-time?” Jayne asked. His best knife went into the wrist scabbard, one flick of his wrist delivering it into his hand.
Mal frowned. “Honest mistake, it was a tense moment.”
“Way I heard, only mistake he made was missing your gorram head,” Jayne scoffed. He caressed Vera one last time making sure she was secure in her holster across his chest.
“Is there anyone out there that you’ve dealt with that hasn’t tried to shoot, stab or otherwise kill you?” Simon Tam asked. The doctor checked the contents of a slim case then slid it into an inside pocket. “What is the job, by the way… more crime, I suppose.”
“A little light smuggling,” Mal said. “Nothing we haven’t handled a hundred times before.”
“And for this little light smuggling, of all the ships in all the ports in all the world, Al Swearengen just happened to pick ours?” Zoe asked. She remembered the man from the War. A dealer in everything to everyone. If you had the currency or the trade goods. Tall, dark, handsome as the devil with a strange streak of sentimentality which meant that you could never guarantee exactly what he was going to do in any given situation. He could give the shirt off his back to help someone and the next day go out and cut their throat to get it back from them again. Not an easy man to deal with.
A lot of old timers had settled Deadwood. There were minerals in the hills that the Alliance wanted. Not enough to warrant them taking over the planet wholesale and stripmining it but sufficient to enable a lot of people to scrape out a living of sorts. People of a certain type tended to gravitate to Deadwood. Which meant that the Alliance usually had a place to start looking if they ever wanted to find them. And everyone would have a secret, a past they were trying to forget. A real home from home.
War stories would be common trade around the campfires and saloon tables, memories of times and places that were engraved in Zoe’s soul, her bones and all the more painful for it. Bittersweet was too kind a word for the way her memories made her feel sometimes.
An arm snaked around her waist, drew her close. Once such an invasion of her personal space would have led to the perpetrator finding him or herself terminally short of breath but now she leant back into the touch, craving it, craving him. “Hey, wife,” Wash breathed, his lips soft against the back of her neck. He pulled away long enough to look around her towards the Captain. “We’ve got all our permissions to dock and a couple of interested parties want to speak to you about carrying some cargo.”
“I’ll follow up on them after I’ve talked to Swearengen,” Mal said. “He has first call on our services.” He hefted his piece, cocked it, checking the clip and then secured it at his belt. “Jayne, you’re with me. Doc, you and your sister should be safe enough from the Alliance here but Deadwood’s got its own dangers. It’s a mite rough. I’ll leave it up to you if you want to keep River on board or not. Shepherd Book already declared his intention to staying on Serenity – Deadwood’s way too godless for his tastes so he can watch her if you’ve an errand or two to run.”
“I’m running low on some basic supplies – weave and universal plasma in particular. I’ve got enough of the more esoteric stuff that won’t get out this far too often to trade for it. There has to be some doctoring going on here even if the medic’s never been Core trained. But you’re right. I don’t think this is any place for River to wander. I’ll ask Book to watch her.”
“Okay… then you go out with Kaylee. I think she’s on a supply hunt as well. You can watch each other’s backs.” Mal knew that the Doc’s feelings for Kaylee meant he wouldn’t let any harm come to the young mechanic. River would never forgive him if he did. And he was getting handier in a fight these days. Between the two of them they could probably manage to hold off any trouble until he and Jayne or Zoe came to the rescue. Probably.
It was a chance they had to take. They needed supplies to do what they had to do. Ship needed to fly.
3. Joannie contemplates the path not taken
Joannie Stubbs knew a Companion when she saw one. Only a few bona-fide Companions worked the boondocks and she thought she knew all of them. This one was new though, pretty as well, her black hair sleek, her dark eyes bright though she kept her expression properly demure. Her dress was fine too, rich scarlet fabric that simultaneously clung to her curves in all the right places and flowed around her as if it was alive. She turned heads all right. She was slumming and it excited her. She wasn’t scared though. The Companion paused at the crossing, fastidiously raising her skirts so they would not trail in the mire, looking up towards the Bella Union with a kind of wistfulness before heading down towards the Gem. So the Companion had business with Al Swearengen. Trixie would have her nose put out of joint though if any of the rumours about her and either or both Sol Starr or the Widow Garrett were anything, the girl had naught to complain over. There were many that wondered what hold she had over Swearengen that he hadn’t killed her yet or put her out on her pretty ass.
The Companion slipped through the doors into the Gem. As Joannie drew back from the window she caught sight of Alma Garrett also watching the Gem’s doorway. Her expression was curiously wistful. Joannie remembered a conversation they had once shared about father’s who treat their daughter’s as commodities. She remembered her saying that her father had taken her out of school to marry her to first husband – had Alma Garrett once trained as a Companion? It explained much about her character and demeanour. She had their grace, their reserve – and their way with men if the smouldering looks of Seth Bullock were anything to go by. Joannie wondered if the still-young woman was remembering better days.
Joannie’s father had sold her services for the first time when she was just twelve years old. He couldn’t trade her as a virgin, daddy had used her as a bedwarmer for most of the previous winter since mamma had died of wet lung. Joannie hadn’t put up a fight so he would keep away from her younger sister Ruthie and he would stay home nights rather than spend his time and money on some whore. At least this way there was food on the table and money for the rent. When he sold her he took most of what she earned to drink himself into a stupor. Some of the men saw the truth of it and gave her a penny or two extra when her father wasn’t paying attention. By the time he died in some barfight she had enough scrimped to see Ruthie boarded with a good family and a job serving in a store and herself a ticket to the port. She was all of sixteen and whoring was the only trade she knew. The Companions wouldn’t touch used goods like she was no matter how pretty the face but six weeks after she got to the port she met Cy Tolliver and he had taken her under his wing seeing the keen mind behind the pretty face and trim body. She might not have Companion status but she did all right. It was only when she saw something like the dark haired woman walking so lightly that she seemed almost to float that she realised how far she had to aspire.
She needed some air.
4. Jayne meets a fellow traveller
Mal told him his time was his own until three o’clock when he had his appointment with Swearengen. So Jayne found himself a bar with the prospect of pussy, a supply of rotgut as long as he had the credits to pay for it and the comforting ambience of barely controlled mayhem. Just his kind of establishment. Someone lurched to stand in the space beside him, catching his arm. Rotgut splashed from the glass onto the blistered veneer of the bar. It sizzled gently. Jayne watched it eat through the surface for a moment before knocking back the remaining contents in the glass in one.
“Whiskey!” his new companion ordered gruffly.
“Jane! You know darn well Al said you weren’t welcome to drink in here no more,” someone shouted from behind them. Jayne turned to face his accuser, aware that his companion also turned round.
“Whut?” they both asked at the same time before turning to stare at each other. “He was talkin’ to me.” Their voices overlapped almost seamlessly. Someone sniggered before covering it with a coughing fit.
Jayne noticed for the first time that his companion was a woman. A fine looking one at that under the dirt and the smell of sweat, whiskey and horse. “He was talkin’ to me,” the woman repeated. “I’m Jane… Jane Cannary.”
“So m’I,” Jayne said. “Jayne Cobb.” He remembered his mother’s manners. “At your service, ma’am.”
“God damn,” she burst out laughing. “If that ain’t the goddam strangest frackin’ thing. Ain’t the name a might girlish for someone as strappin’ as you?” The man who had accosted them grabbed a hold of her arm and she violently pulled away, her small hand automatically cocking into a fist. “Let me the feck alone, you cocksucker! I got credits. Just escorted a train in from Yankton.” She pulled a handful of coin from her pocket and banged it onto the bar. “See.”
A good looking woman with credits to spend. As she turned he got a glimpse of the piece she carried under her coat and it too was fine, mighty fine. Well cared for too, he could tell. Her tits weren’t too bad either. The cocksucker let go of her arm, he was tall but weedy with curly hair and by the way he was looking Jayne up and down no great shakes in the brains department or he’d know better than to stare at him like that.
“You got no business with me other than to keep that rotgut coming,” Jayne said. “And what she don’t pay for I will, so your friend, ‘Al’ won’t lose anything either.”
“You agree to meet her debts, you’re welcome to her then. She’s trouble. Kill ya soon as look at ya, the mad bitch.”
“Ah, go fuck yerself,” the woman muttered, snatching the bottle from the bar and slouching down at a table.
Jayne looked down at his new boon companion and grinned ferally. Yep, his kind of woman.
She matched him drink for drink, story for story, curse for curse. Even taught him some new ones. He told her about Serenity and the sweet set up he had there, being the Captain’s right hand man. “Doesn’t make a gorram move without me by his side,” he grinned. “Without me to watch their backs and keep ‘em all one step ahead of the Alliance they’d all have been dead a thousand times. Not that I get any thanks.”
Jane nodded emphatically. “No thanks. I get that. I do the right thing and everyone acts surprised. And that good feeling, they just pulls it out from under your feet. Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live,” she said heavily. “Just when you think you’ve got it all fucking figured out everything ups and fucking changes.”
“Knows exactly what you mean,” Jayne said, picking up his glass and throwing back another shot. He found it tasted better if you didn’t let it linger too long on the tongue.
“There’s this woman, see. Joannie… Joannie Stubbs. Chief whore and bottlewasher to that cocksucker Tolliver. Leastways she was. Then she struck out on her own, ran her own women for a while but it didn’t work out. There was murder done and backs stabbed. I stuck up for her when others didn’t cos she was always pleasant to me. Took care of things for her. Stood guard when she feared for her life. And then she goes and kisses me. And not a sisterly kiss either. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?”
“I know a whore who’s sly,” Jayne said. “Leastwise she’s a Companion. But she takes women as well as men.” He sniggered.
“Well I ain’t sly… leastways…” Jane emptied the dregs into her glass and looked at the empty bottle in bemusement.
“You been with a man though, ain’t ya?” Jayne asked, signalling the man behind the bar to send over another bottle. “I mean… you don’t look like no virgin type and you certainly don’t speak like one.”
“I don’t know you well enough for you to be asking me that. My heart’s true where it lands,” Jane struggled to her feet. “You callin’ me a whore now you cocksucker? Or are you just asking to screw me.”
Jayne grinned. “Well, if the offer’s open.”
The empty bottle hit him squarely between the eyes. Jayne fell backwards, his head bouncing audibly off the floorboards and then he just lay deathly still for a second or two before he started to snore. The room fell silent for a moment as everyone watched Jane lurch to her feet. “Just another fucking cocksucker like all the rest of you,” she announced. They all went back to their drinking and conversing. No one had died it was just that crazy talking she-man again and what poor excitement there had been seemed to be over. Business as usual.
The barman started towards her and Jane backed off, hands raised. “I’m going, I’m going… All you serve is fucking horse piss anyways.” Her grand exit was interrupted by the arrival of a handsome stranger. He blocked the doorway, obviously looking around for someone.
“I’m looking for Jayne Cobb,” he announced. The barman pointed to the slumbering body on the floor and then at Jane.
“She can explain what happened,” he said.
5. Jewel gets a taste of what might have been
Jewel crouched under the stairs, clutching her sweeping brush and watching the world go by. Watching the girl. Watching her shine. This was not a place for her young and sweet as she was. But as she watched the girl changed. Such a power within her though. She seemed to grow taller, older, her kittenish youth transforming into sleek pussycat, prowling amongst the tables, deftly avoiding the drunken hands that reached for her tender body. There was a grace to her that made Jewel’s breath catch in her throat. It was hard to comprehend that something so fluid, so beautiful could exist in the same ‘verse as her gangrel self. She drew into the shadows as the girl swept by then gasped as the girl crouched down, tilting her head to regard Jewel, her dark eyes black, almost doll-like.
“I see you,” she sing-songed, smiling. “Come out and play.”
Jewel crawled awkwardly from her hiding place, her crabbed limbs cramping and wayward. The girl made no attempt to help her to her feet and for that Jewel was glad. She needed no pitying reminders of her infirmity. The boots and braces the doc had fashioned for her helped some with her walking but for the getting up and getting down were just something else to fight with.
“You shine,” she said, by way of conversation. “You… you’ve not been here be… before. I would ‘member.”
“No, I’m very new,” River said. “Like my namesake you’ll never cross my path twice.”
Jewel crowed with laughter at that. “I get it. I get it. Your name. You’re River ain’tchya. River… can’t never cross the same River twice. Water washes away all…”
River giggled. Then, her expression grew dreamy, she reached out and touched her fingers gently to the side of Jewel’s head. And gradually the palsied movements in her arms, the facial tics faded away and Jewel knew a moment of great peace and stillness. She raised her hand, amazed at the smoothness of the movement and reached out to touch River’s face in turn, her actions sure, precise. “Thank you,” she said clearly. River’s expression became strained, beads of sweat broke out on her brow.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t give you forever. Too hard… Too old… The damage… too deep.”
“Born with it. I know. Thank you. Thank you for the moment.” Jewel twitched violently as if she were a puppet whose strings had all been pulled at once, as River snatched away her fingers, nursing her hand as if it had been burnt.
“I’m sorry… sorry… sorry!” River fled as fast as she could. Jewel jerked her head until she could see the girl disappear through the door into the street, tears glistening in her eyes.
6. Al enjoys the profits of his endeavours
Al never made his women swallow. He thought it a kindness. The Companion was no different. Her skin might be softer her smell more expensive but when it came down to it she was just another woman. If he closed his eyes it could have been Trixie or any nameless woman. One warm wet cavern was pretty much like any other. He was slightly disappointed and relieved at the same time. There was no especial mystery here. Just another woman. Just another whore.
The Companion – Inara, he remembered - decorously spat and rinsed out her mouth over by the washstand. He lay on the bed and watched her. She was graceful, moved as if to music only she could hear. My god, the money he could make if she was his… but maybe he would keep her for himself. He thought about that for a moment, weighing up the pros and cons of annoying the Guild that much. Hand in glove with the Alliance as they were it would bring a world of grief down on his head that he did not need right now or ever. And the little lady herself might just object. He’d heard tell that they were trained in more skills than just pillowtalk. Better just to savour the moment. She’d be bound to disappoint sooner or later, they always did. Better to stay with the image, the ideal. He committed the pale perfection of her skin, the dark smooth silk of her hair to his memory. Fantasy was cheaper anyhow and didn’t talk back as much.
And he had business to attend to. Mal Reynolds would be calling on him within the hour to discuss his commission.
He held out his hand to her, she took it, her handshake surprisingly firm for such a slip of a thing as he palmed her the credit chip. Discretion in all things.
“I hope we can do business again,” he heard himself say. To his surprise, he meant it.
7. Doc Cochran recalls the stuff of legend
Doc Cochran couldn’t believe his eyes. The stuff of legend had just walked by his tent. Sergeant Zoe Warren, on the arm of a redheaded man with a deplorable taste in shirts and the expression of the luckiest man in creation. The years had been good to her and she looked happy, content with life and her place in it. Didn’t mean to say she looked any less dangerous. The piece on her hip told its own story. As did the snug fit of her breeches across that delectable backside.
He smiled in bittersweet memory. Sergeant Warren was one of the great might-have-been’s of his life. She’d been a damn good field nurse as well as a soldier and he had worked beside her as she helped out in the battlefield hospital when it seemed she was the only one of her company still standing. She had a good eye, he remembered, plenty of sense about her and a steady hand. He remembered some of them he’d doctored – the Captain Mal Reynolds, a young hothead with a charmed life, the boy, Tracey, hanging on to their coat tails. Others that were just faces, his acquaintance with them had not been long enough to learn their names.
He’d admired her strength, her stoicism, her resilience. She did not flinch or look away even during the most brutal of battlefield surgeries. She watched over her men, sat with them whilst they recovered or died. Often her beautiful face and calming words were the last things those poor souls experienced in this life.
He had heard a few tales of her exploits after the war. She was still running with Reynolds, his partner in a small scale cargo running adventure on a ship called Serenity of all things. He wondered who they had dealings with on Deadwood. No doubt find out soon enough. Reynolds was hardly the quiet type He remembered the man’s battle strategy with a half-smile.
They’d been holed up in an old temple, waiting death or rescue. It could go either way. The Alliance were breaking through in ones and twos, picking off men faster than he could put them together. Warren had just taken out another incursion, silent and deadly as some great cat, saving the boy Tracey yet again. As for the Doc, he’d been over by the wall trying to make six inches of low grade weave enough to hold some poor sod’s innards together, blood spilling over his hands with every beat of the boy’s heart.
“Thanks, didn’t know you were there,” Tracey said.
“That’s sort of the point. Stealth, you may have heard of it…” Warren deadpanned, taking the dead soldier’s rifle and checking his pockets for ammunition and anything else remotely useful.
“I don’t think they covered that in basic,” Tracey said. He was right of course. Basic by the time Tracey had been conscripted consisted of giving the recruit a weapon and pointing out which end should face the enemy.
“Well at least they covered ‘Dropping your weapon so you can eat beans and get yourself shot’.”
Tracey grinned. “Yeah, I got a badge in that.”
Listening in, the doc sighed and shook his head. They thought they were invulnerable, these kids, charmed. Hadn’t figured yet that they bled just the same as everyone else. Which was his current problem. The kid he was trying to help was bleeding out faster than he could pump supplies back into him.
Warren just gave him one of her stone-cold looks. It got through to him. “Won’t happen again,” the boy muttered.
“It does, I’m just gonna watch,” Warren threatened.
“Anything interesting out there, you don’t mind me asking?” Tracey asked.
We all listened to what the sarge had to say. Holed up as we were fresh intel was precious. “’Bout thirty troops behind those buildings. Mortars but no rollers yet. I expect they plan to pick at us a spell before they charge. They had two scouts sniffin, about ten yards out, but I took ‘em down.”
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Tracey said, obviously impressed.
“First rule of battle, little one,” Zoe said. “Never let ‘em know where you are.” Of course at that moment Mal Reynolds came charging in screaming like a banshee and firing back towards enemy lines. The biggest charmed one of the lot. He dived over a wall for some cover, bullets impacting mere inches from his head. They all hunkered down a bit lower.
“Of course, there’s other schools of thought…” Zoe deadpanned.
Mal Reynolds was laughing. “Oh! That was bracing. They don’t like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself.”
Their position came under heavy bombardment a few minutes later. Whatever else Reynolds had achieved he had truly pissed off the Alliance. With a bitter taste in his mouth, Doc remembered all his hard work gone to waste, the soldier he was working on died when they moved him. He remembered working on both Reynolds and Tracey later that night both hit with shrapnel. The boy Tracey had been lucky not to lose his leg. And Zoe Warren had been at his side the whole time, an oasis of calm in the tumult.
The red headed fellow said something to her and she turned to face him, a smile wreathing her lips. Doc realised it was the first time he had seen Zoe Warren’s smile and wished for one bitter sweet moment that it had been aimed at him. The red headed fellow was a very lucky man.
8. Alma takes her medicine
For as long as she had been a woman Alma had suffered from this. It wasn’t nerves exactly, or hysteria as one less than sympathetic doctor had put it. Sometimes life was just too harsh, too bright and brittle, too grating and grinding. And then one day she found her medicine. And the world became soft and pure and simple.
She had grown to need it every day, to crave it when she couldn’t have it. Marriage hadn’t solved anything. She merely swapped her father’s lies and machinations for her husband’s. The days were still too bright, the nights too long and too dark.
Her first day in Deadwood she thought she would die. The noise, the stench, the roughness, all the hot little eyes watching her. Her husband was playing a dangerous game with dangerous men. The brutality she was casual witness to horrified her. She took a double dose of her medicine that day and again the next day, content to let everything drift away.
Bram was concerned enough to call the doctor to her and that wily man knew the moment he laid eyes on her what her true affliction was. He begged her to taper off her use but promised to keep her supplied.
Then fate took her husband from her and brought Sofia into her life. And Sofia brought Trixie.
She had been half way through her training as a Companion when her father had taken her out of school and married her to Bram Garrett in settlement of a debt. The kind of wife she was, the kind of woman she had been brought up to be she was one step away from being a whore like Trixie though she was too refined to let even the thought cross her mind. The social divide between them made such distinctions possible. But somehow despite all of that they were kindred spirits. She had her medicine and Trixie her smokes to keep the world and its mendacity at bay.
And as the days wore on, they discovered they had each other. Alma was no stranger to such a sisterhood. At school there had been Inara and Nandi, and they had been as close as close could be which not everyone approved of. Practical training was not supposed to engage the emotions. Love was never supposed to be a factor.
Perhaps she would not have made a good Companion after all.
Yet she did not love her husband. Not from the day they first met – the day they married – to the day he died. Her feelings for Seth Bullock were still fragile. His dark strength excited her, his intensity terrified her. He had a strong sense of justice and something about what they were doing was eating away at it like a worm in the heart of an apple.
There were no such complications with Trixie. It was what it was.
Miss Isringhausen had taken Sophia on a visit to play with some of the other children under the watchful eyes of Mr Utter and Jane. Most of the other denizens of Mr Farnum’s boarding house were out about their own business.
They lay together in the heat of the afternoon, skin to skin, no secrets between them but curtains drawn against the too fierce sun and those hot little eyes that seemed to watch their every move. Trixie took a deep drag of her cigarette; eyes heavy lidded against the soporific smoke and then handed it to Alma, curled into the curve of her arm, who took a more tentative drag. Though she was getting more used to her ‘medicine’ in this form she would never be entirely convinced that smoking was a ladylike pursuit. And in truth, as long as she had Trixie, she did not need anything else.
She remembered something. “Mr Swearengen…” and paused as a finger was laid on her lips.
“Your rules, remember,” Trixie said softly. “No one else exists when we’re in here.”
“I’m sorry,” Alma whispered, stroking her fingers through Trixie’s golden hair. No one would ever mistake Sophia for her birth daughter, their colouring was too different but she could pass for Trixie’s, and Alma knew that Trixie had a real affection for the young foundling. What a family the three of them would make. The success of her gold claim had made her rich enough to do pretty much as she wanted, buy what – and whom – she wanted. Perhaps even placate the hot-eyed devils who wanted to claim or control her – Swearengen and Bullock, her father and her former father in law.
“No one else exists when we’re in here,” Trixie repeated softly, discarding the butt of her cigarette before turning and beginning to kiss her way down the lean lines of her lover’s body, one hand tangling in Alma’s hair, scattering the pins that held it up, deftly untangling the braids and coils so that it fell loose around her face and shoulders. She feasted on Alma’s small breasts, licking and suckling at the dark nipples, glorying in the soft sounds of Alma’s growing arousal. She loved to take her time to allow Alma to let down her guard, lower her natural reserve and fully participate to take her own steps on the journey Trixie enticed her on. It had taken a long time for Alma to regain the confidence to make her own explorations, not only of Trixie’s body but of her own. Though she had begun her training as a Companion, she had never before touched herself ‘like that’ and had rarely seen her own naked adult form before Trixie showed her just how beautiful and precious she was. Now she was shameless, the little reproving voice (that sounded so much like Bram’s mother) said in her head, writhing naked under the touch of a woman who was no more than a common whore. But the voice was quiet and getting weaker by the day. Alma’s primary thoughts now for Trixie were love for the other woman and gratitude that she had helped save herself from herself.
It was a rare thing to find love, rarer still for it to be reciprocated. Both women knew it could not last forever and that the memory of these precious stolen afternoons was to be stored for the darker days ahead. Whatever else fate brought upon them, no one could take this moment away.
Trixie compared her tanned hand to Alma’s breast, white and silky soft to the touch. She always thought that Alma was somehow made of finer stuff than ordinary folk. She rested the pad of her thumb on Alma’s nipple, feeling it pebble and change beneath her firm touch. Alma shifted so that she was somewhat straddling Trixie’s slim hard thigh. As Alma began to press herself against her, rubbing herself Trixie took a deep breath, breathing in the wonderful scent of Alma when she was in heat, thick and hot and spiced. Fuck, if she could bottle it and sell it she’d make a fortune but she’d settle for being the only one to smell it, to know. This was true addiction.
They kept it quiet in case that cocksucking bastard E B Farnum heard them. It was not that he might report what he heard to Swearengen it was that he would think about them, picture them together behind his hot little eyes. And neither woman could bear the thought of that. This was their place, their time.
But all things end some time.
“I gotta go,” Trixie sighed, lifting her head from Alma’s shoulder. “Sol wants me to mind the store this afternoon. He’s got to take an order of engine parts out to Copper Creek.”
“Will I see you later?” Alma asked.
“Sol might want me to stay over a while,” Trixie said, not meeting Alma’s gaze as she fixed her petticoats and shrugged into her dress. “But I’ll try to come over after supper time.”
She couldn’t make demands, she didn’t have the right, not with Seth Bullock’s intense gaze still burning her skin. She might be the richest woman in Deadwood, hell perhaps in the whole district but Alma Garrett would give it all away if it made Trixie happy. But after years of near servitude to Al Swearengen all Trixie wanted was her freedom. And so that was what Alma gave her. She could whine about it the situation or she could be gracious and Alma was trying very hard to be a better person.
“That would be lovely,” she said, kissing her lover goodbye.
9. River counts
It had been easy enough for her to give Shepherd Book the slip. She had been able to sense the mad energy of this place from inside the ship, like a nest of crazed bees. Some backwoods places she had visited seemed to run at half speed nothing changing from year to year but Deadwood, Deadwood seemed to be on fast forward, a zone of flux and mutability.
The Bella Union was a much better place than where she had found the crippled girl earlier. Just about everyone there was too befuddled with drink or lust or hate to be truly interesting. Here, there were pretty girls leaning against the railings on the stairs and on the upper landing and River smoothed her dress down over her small breasts and thin hips. She looked like a child before their voluptuousness. All the pretty made her ache inside. She remembered Nandi’s place. She had liked it there, watching the child being born was still one of the most incredible experiences of her life. It was a pity so many people had died though. She shied away from thinking about that. She was here to have fun and hopefully no one would have to die. She wasn’t taking any bets on that one though.
A tall man was watching her from the entrance to a side room, tall and greyly handsome in a cruel way. He attracted her and repelled her at the same time. As if sensing her interest in him he came over to speak to her.
“Hello, little lady. This is your first time in the Bella Union, isn’t it? I’m sure I’d remember a pretty face like yours.”
“Just arrived,” she said.
“My name is Cy Tolliver, the owner of this fine establishment. There’s drinks and games of all sorts to be had here if you’ve the coin. Poker or Blackjack, Prick or Pussy. We aim to please at the Bella Union.”
Poker. Jayne had showed her how to play Poker. The rules and variations had been easy to assimilate. She had played with him and Captain and Zoe and had won enough off of the mercenary to buy a pretty dress and some candied apple for Kaylee the next time they were planetside. Jayne wouldn’t play with her any more. Said she used her gorram mind tricks on him.
“Poker,” she said firmly, producing her small purse. “I’ll play poker.”
Mr Tolliver smiled and guided her to a table where four men were just finishing up a round. “Got some fresh blood for you here, boys,” Tolliver said with false cheeriness. “I’m sorry Miss… I didn’t catch your name.”
“River,” River said. “You may call me River.”
“There you go… Miss River, can I introduce you to Mr Steuben, Mr Boldron, Mr Vicheaux and Mr Langley. All fine upstanding men with good credit here, I assure you. We play a clean game, don’t we?”
“Sure thing, Mr Tolliver,” Mr Vicheaux smiled. River could imagine the blood on his teeth. She knew that as well as the gun in his belt he kept a second piece in his boot and a shiv in a sheath strapped to his left forearm that would spring to his hand with a flick of his wrist. She smiled at the men. Steuben had killed another man in Yankton in a fight over a horse, Boldron was a claim jumper and a pirate. Small fry compared to the other two but dangerous in his way. And Langley, well Langley might have killed a man over a wager in Yankton and be one step ahead of the Yankton lawmen but inside he just missed his dear old mum. He’d had enough of adventuring for this lifetime. All he wanted was to win enough to buy a ticket on the next transport out.
She was in good company. “Let’s play, shall we?”
The first three hands went with the cards, Boldron won the first pot, River the second and Vicheaux the third. She was counting the cards, the patterns were simple to determine, it was second nature to her but she didn’t use it to her advantage. The fourth hand Vicheaux was the dealer and to River he signalled his intentions to rig the deal as loudly as if he had stood up and shouted them to the rafters. She had a good hand, good enough to tempt her to stay in the game but Steuben had the winning hand: that was the way Vicheaux had dealt it. She folded early, protected herself. Langley dealt fairly and River managed to bluff a win. Then it was her deal. She found the marked cards easy enough. They weren’t being subtle. And so she played them at their own game. She was pretty certain by then that Boldron and Langley were playing a fair game, or as fair as these things went. Vicheaux and Steuben were working together. The only question was - were they working for Tolliver or for themselves?
The second time she dealt Vicheaux realised that the tables had been turned. She could hear his suspicions curling in his mind, scenarios being examined and discarded. Steuben hadn’t caught on yet but something in Vicheaux’s manner alerted him that all was not well. Vicheaux reached for his gun but it was already in River’s hand, pointing between his beady little eyes. She shook her head.
“You don’t play nice,” she said. “The cards want to run one way and you make them run another. I felt the markings and knew. Played you your own game.” To her side Steuben was reaching for his own gun, Boldron and Langley just looked as if they wished they were back on the road.
She felt cold metal rest against the back of her head and heard Tolliver’s cultured voice. “Gentlemen – is there a problem?”
10. Should old acquaintance be forgot
Inara walked out of the Gem outwardly as perfect and unruffled as she had been when she entered. Al Swearengen was a complex man. Undeniably evil but with a spark of redemption in him. He reminded her a lot of Mal, an older darker version of her captain. Her captain… no, not that, never that.
“Inara?”
She looked up, met the gaze of a dark haired pale skinned woman standing in the doorway of a lodging house. It took a long moment to place her. It had been almost ten years after all. “Alma?”
“The same… though you probably think me sadly changed,” Alma smiled, coming forward to take Inara’s hands. “I hardly believed I would ever see you again.”
“The ‘verse can be a distracting small place sometimes,” Inara said. “And you look… wonderful.” In truth, the older woman looked tired and sorely distracted. She was also using laudanum, there was an overbrightness to her eyes that was a sure tell. It was a common failing amongst Companions, something to ease the idle hours between contracts.
“If you have time… would you have tea with me?” Alma asked, almost shyly. “I have lodgings here. The rooms are serviceable, but clean.”
“That would be lovely,” Inara smiled. “I don’t have to be back at my ship for several more hours.”
She followed the other woman back into the lodging house and up the stairs. A ratfaced man scurried out of a side room as they passed. “Widow Garrett,” he blustered.
“Mr Farnum,” Alma nodded her head gracefully and passed on without further comment. Inara could feel his hot little eyes on them all the way up the stairs. Her skin crawled and she could not repress a shudder. How could Alma stand it day after day?
Another surprise awaited her inside the room as a little girl ran up to envelop Alma’s skirts in a hug. “I’ve finished my drawing,” she said. “Come and see.”
“We have a visitor Sofia,” Alma said gently. “This is an old friend of mine, Miss Inara Serra.”
The little girl sketched a slightly clumsy curtsey and looked up at Inara with guileless blue eyes under her blonde bangs. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Inara.”
Inara curtseyed low in return, her elegance leaving the little girl wide-eyed. “And I’m very pleased to meet you Miss Sofia. So, you are something of an artist. I would love to see your drawing.”
Momentarily forgetting her awe of the beautiful stranger, the little girl took her hand and almost towed her across the room to the table where she had set up her paper and paints.
“I painted this today,” she said. “This is a horse, and this is me. And this is my mama in heaven and this is my mama here on earth and these is my other mama’s Trixie and Jane.”
“These are, Sofia” Alma corrected.
“These are my other mama’s Trixie and Jane,” the little girl repeated obediently.
“Quite the family you have Sofia,” Inara smiled. “That must make you very happy.”
“I am now,” Sofia said. “And mama’s happy too.”
“I understand.” Inara smiled up at Alma. “Sometimes the families you make are much more bound to your senses and emotions than the family you were born to. That’s how it is for me now, I think.”
“I never believed I could be happy here,” Alma said candidly. “But somehow I am.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Inara smiled. “We all deserve a little happiness sometimes.” She paused. “The man on the stairs… he called you ‘Widow Garrett’…”
“My husband, Bram Garrett was killed last year over his gold claim,” Alma said steadily. Inara noted the lack of grief in her expression. “A few weeks later, Sofia came into my life and the success of my late husband’s claim ensured that I am a rich woman.” She touched the little girl’s hair, smiling down at her adopted daughter. “And Trixie and I found each other… I… think about the old days sometimes. About you and Nandi…”
Inara turned away. “I would have written to tell you… but I had no idea where you were… Nandi died last year. She left the Guild about five years ago to set up her own house. She ran into some trouble with the locals and called on me for help. We saved the rest of her girls but Nandi was shot.”
“Oh,” Alma sat down. “It is difficult to think of it. She was always so full of life.” She smiled. “Nandi was the first person I ever kissed. You were the second.”
“A lifetime ago, my dear,” Inara smiled sadly. The little girl was growing restless with the ‘tall talk’ and Inara sensed that Alma needed a little time with her thoughts. Inara pulled an unused sheet of paper towards her and took up a brush. “I can’t paint as well as you can, Sofia, but I can do something called calligraphy. It’s making a picture with letters. When your mamma and I were just a little older than you are now, we were at school together and we were taught a secret language called Nushu. It’s very old from the days of Earth that Was and is very secret. Only for women. No man has ever learnt to read it or so the legend says.” As the little girl watched she painted the broad precise brushstrokes with a sure hand.
Inara, Nandi and Alma… the three of them had been ‘sworn sisters’ in the Nushu tongue, the bonds of love and friendship between them so strong that they went beyond the physical and emotional. Their foremothers on Earth That Was had used the secret language to preserve friendships when their lives were measured by the so-called ‘three followings’ – the father before marriage, the husband after and the son when he became head of the household. Things might be very different now but the need for a secret language to convey that which could never be said openly would never go away.
“It looks like a flower,” Sofia marvelled. “Not a word. Miss Isringhausen has taught me my letters. They don’t look like that.”
“That is how we keep them secret,” Inara smiled. “You must always write Nushu with a clear mind and a steady heart. That is how we were taught it at school.”
Alma’s hand was resting on her shoulder. “I think I’ve forgotten everything I ever learnt,” she smiled. “You obviously kept up your studies.”
“I find it relaxes me, helps me centre myself again,” Inara said, her brush moving swiftly, sketching out the slender sloping characters. “Especially if a client has been… tiresome.”
“You had a client in Deadwood?” Alma asked. “That’s what brought you here… what am I saying – why would anyone come to Deadwood of their own accord? It is hardly a civilised metropolis.”
“I had a client, and the ship that I am based on got a contract to transport some goods. And we needed to restock. We’ve been in the black a long time.”
“I always supposed you settled in a fine House somewhere in the Core,” Alma said. “I never took you for an adventuring spirit.” She smiled. “You look wonderful, the life obviously suits you.”
“I can’t claim that it has come easily,” Inara said. “But yes, I can’t see myself living any other way now.”
Go to pt 2
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