If she’d gone to sleep as drunk as had been her habit over the last few months, the creak of the bedsprings wouldn’t have awakened her—a bomb-blast wouldn’t have awakened her. But although they’d brought the bottle, it still stood on the night-table of the bedroom she maintained at the Rest (it was as big as any three of the whores’ cribs put together), the level of the whiskey unchanged. She felt sore all over her body, but her head was clear; sex was good for that much, anyway.

Jonas was at the window, looking out at the first gray traces of daylight and pulling his pants up. His bare back was covered with crisscrossed scars. She thought to ask him who had administered such a savage flogging and how he’d survived it, then decided she’d do better to keep quiet.

“Where are ye off to?” she asked.

“I believe I’m going to start by finding some paint—any shade will do—and a street-mutt still in possession of its tail. After that, sai, I don’t think you want to know.”

“Very well.” She lay down and pulled the covers up to her chin. She felt she could sleep for a week.

Jonas yanked on his boots and went to the door, buckling his gunbelt. He paused with his hand on the knob. She looked at him, grayish eyes already half-filled with sleep again.

“I’ve never had better,” Jonas said.

Coral smiled. “No, cully,” she said. “Nor I.”

Chapter IV

ROLAND AND CUTHBERT

1

Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain came out onto the porch of the Bar K bunkhouse almost two hours after Jonas had left Coral’s room at the Travellers’ Rest. By then the sun was well up over the horizon. They weren’t late risers by nature, but as Cuthbert put it, “We have a certain In-World image to maintain. Not laziness but lounginess.”

Roland stretched, arms spread toward the sky in a wide Y, then bent and grasped the toes of his boots. This caused his back to crackle.

“I hate that noise,” Alain said. He sounded morose and sleepy. In fact, he had been troubled by odd dreams and premonitions all night—things which, of the three of them, only he was prey to. Because of the touch, perhaps—with him it had always been strong.

“That’s why he does it,” Cuthbert said, then clapped Alain on the shoulder. “Cheer up, old boy. You’re too handsome to be downhearted.”

Roland straightened, and they walked across the dusty yard toward the stables. Halfway there, he came to a stop so sudden that Alain almost ran into his back. Roland was looking east. “Oh,” he said in a funny, bemused voice. He even smiled a little.

“Oh?” Cuthbert echoed. “Oh what, great leader? Oh joy, I shall see the perfumed lady anon, or oh rats, I must work with my smelly male companions all the livelong day?”