Epilogue

Ten years later…

Pellet wasn’t much, but it was home.

Tamale still had fond memories of the place. Tucked away on the southern coast of Calimeda, Pellet had persisted as a port town all these years, providing safe harbor to all manner of scoundrels and thieves. She and Teresla grew up rubbing shoulders with such folks, so it was no surprise that she’d come crawling back after the rest of her world came crashing down.

Some days, though, she still wondered if she’d made the right choice.

“Up and at ‘em, Smoky,” she drawled, giving the snoring man a slap on his sweaty bald pate. “It’s past sunup.”

Here at the Wet Whistle, there was no last call. She’d put that policy in place herself, and regretted it most days, but what else could she do? Between the fishers and the smugglers, she had a number of regulars who kept decidedly irregular schedules. If she wanted the business, she had to cater to their needs.

…And that meant waking up old soaks like Smoky a half-dozen times a week.

“Nnghrgh… Cap’n can wait,” he slurred, reaching up toward her without lifting his head. “I’m done chasin’ the ocean’s embrace… It’s yours I’m hankerin’ for these days, Tamale…!”

“My embrace? You want my embrace?”

Smoky looked up at her with rheumy eyes, his head bobbing enthusiastically.

“Hm. Okay, stand up.”

He obeyed, stumbling to his feet with more vigor than she’d have expected from a man in his sixties. He looked terrible, and he smelled worse, but true to her word, Tamale went in for a hug. As she held him, a contented whistling sound issued from his nostrils–kind of like a cat’s purr, but infinitely more off putting.

Then, when she was certain that he’d let his guard down, she began to squeeze.

“AUGH!!” The man recoiled, trying to pull away from her, but she held him fast. Whenever he came by the Whistle, Smoky complained of the aches and pains that wracked his body after a lifetime of seamanship. Now, in her vice-like grip, she could hear–and feel–his old bones creaking in their sockets. Her lips curled upward in delight as the fisherman groaned in pain, his hands batting at her weakly in a bid to make her stop.

Eventually, she did. But she scarcely allowed him a single second to catch his breath before kicking him full in the chest. He collapsed to the floor, gasping and thrashing like the catch of the day while Tamale looked down on him fiercely.

“FUCKING ASSHOLE!” she bellowed. “FILTHY OLD MAN! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY BAR! IF I SEE YOU AROUND HERE AGAIN I’LL KICK YOUR ASS!”

With that, Smoky crawled his way toward the door, clutching at his chest all the while. Tamale watched him go with her hands on her hips, refusing to look away until he’d dragged himself fully out of sight. Only once she was sure he’d gone did she pull a rag from her apron and start wiping down his table, humming to herself all the while.

“Disagreeable old chap, isn’t he?”

Tamale turned to the patron, smiling wryly. As usual, his face was buried in the latest issue of the Wesson Broadside, his breakfast lying on the countertop untouched. “Yeah. He’ll be in again next pay, though. This is just a little dance we do.”

“Is that so? I’ll have to remember to adjust the time at which I take my morning constitutional.” He looked up from his paper, then, glancing after the humbled seaman. “...Of course, he would be an ideal client for my partner and I. Perhaps I should catch up with him after your next assault?”

She snorted at that. “Don’t bother. He won’t have enough to pay your fees, and you won’t get anything out of me anyway.”

“Not necessarily true! I’ve seen properties awarded to the wronged party in past settlements. Wouldn’t it be something to see that man running your bar?”

“...Eat your breakfast, Conrad.”

O’Fleef was one of the more recent additions to the Whistle’s clientele. He and many others like him had come west out of necessity as the Truvelans advanced, abandoning their homes and businesses to the southern Czar’s armies. Conrad was one of the lucky ones; he and his partner, Solomon Parge, had landed on their feet, successfully reestablishing their old law firm on the outskirts of Pellet. By contrast, most of the other refugees she knew were more of a mess than Smoky, and that was saying something.

“Any word about the war effort in today’s Broadside?” she asked, moseying her way back behind the bar.

“Things have been quiet since the Truves took Segue,” he replied. “I doubt the militia are faring any better now than they have been, though. We’ve yet to develop an effective defense against those darts of theirs.”

Tamale clucked her tongue. “With things being the way they are, I sometimes wish I’d held on to Caliente.”

“And what if you had?”

Tamale looked up, scanning the dozy morning crowd in search of the man who’d spoken. She decided it must have been the man who sat with his back turned to the bar–the man in red.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, what if you had?” he repeated. “Would you give this place up? Head back out on the range? Would you fight for what you believed in the way you used to?

“The way Teresla used to?”

Tamale’s fingers tightened around her rag. She stowed it and stomped back out into the taproom, nostrils flaring in indignation. “Don’t know who you are, ‘friend’, but we don’t talk about my sister here. Do you understand me?”

“Apologies,” he answered. From this angle, she could see the side of his face. Clean-shaven and lined beyond its years, it bore a number of scars, and a rough leather eyepatch hid his near eye from view. “I just wanted to see if the past rules you the way it does me.”

“‘The past’? Who the hell are you? Who gave you the right to come in here and start talking nonsense?”

He turned to face her then, his good eye boring into hers. Unlike what she’d expected, it was a mellow shade of blue, and seemed to be lit from the inside by some deep, unquenchable passion.

The eye of an idealist.

“I’m Luca Benelli,” he greeted, lifting his coat to pat the odd, scraggly-looking weapon on his hip, “and this is Sniffer. Say hello, Sniffer.”

The dog-gun issued a low growl. “Sorry about that,” Luca said, chuckling mildly. “He used to be friendlier. I guess we all did, at that.”

Tamale’s patience was wearing thin. “I don’t know you. What do you want?”

The man didn’t speak. Instead, he reached inside his coat and produced something shockingly familiar–something she hadn’t seen in a long time:

Caliente. Her old launcher, long since pawned to enable her purchase of the plot the Wet Whistle now stood on. She goggled at the weapon as he lowered it to the table, finding herself at an utter loss for words. Apparently he’d been counting on this, because he used the spare time to dredge something equally unusual up from beneath the table–a hunk of ice with something frozen inside. A tool, maybe? Some kind of metal claw?

“Sniffer and I are good at finding things,” he explained. “For example, this,” he said, pointing at her gun, “was being sold at a stall in an open air market on Trigger City’s lower east side. While this,” he continued, waving toward the frozen item, “was found by the train tracks a few miles outside Calimeda. But, for the longest time, there was something–or should I say, someone–that Sniffer and I couldn’t find. Someone very dear to me.”

He paused for a moment, as if attempting to suppress a sudden crack in his voice. “But recently, after many years, I found her too. And that’s where you come in.”

Luca took up Caliente again and laid it down before her. “I want you to shoot at this block of ice for me.”

Tamale almost laughed out loud. “Are you serious? Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, for one, I’ll give you your gun back free of charge,” he answered. “But, more importantly, I’ll give you an opportunity. A chance to wipe the slate clean, and to give everyone in this wide, worsening world a taste of the very thing you and your sister used to fight for:

“Freedom.”

“Freedom. You don’t know anything about me,” she sneered.

He smirked, then gestured broadly around at the Whistle’s interior. “I know you’re better than this.”

Tamale only hesitated a minute before taking up the launcher. She fired without warning, her pepper bouncing to the table to emit a noxious cloud of stinging fumes that wafted quickly throughout the bar. Everywhere, patrons were coughing and hacking, some of them scrambling for the exit just to get a lungful of fresh air…

…But sure enough, when the smoke cleared, the job was done. The ice had melted. And the man in red was beaming up at her with all the enthusiasm of a long-lost relative.

Back by the bar, Conrad recovered from the stinging in his eyes and sniffed at his breakfast: eggs, bacon, and a simple side salad, stained orange by the particles of pepper juice in the air. With an inquisitive squint, he shoveled a forkful of greens between his lips and chewed thoughtfully.

“Mmm,” he murmured under his breath.

“That's good salad.”

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