Page 3 of By Any Means

Laurie needed the going on from this man. At least enough information to be able to tell Sam he’d gone completely off the track, here. “Not at all. You’re a glassworks man?”

“Third generation, yes,” Mr. Wright said. “Wright Glass Manufacturing. East 9th and Avenue D.”

Laurie snapped his fingers, which startled the man. He was jumpy. “Yeah. Wright’s Improved Jam Jars. Heard of ’em. Weren’t very improved. Youse almost went under last year.” And good riddance, probably. What in hell did Sam think he could do with a near-failure of a glassworks baron? In Maine?

Mr. Wright wilted further. “Er. Yes.”

Damn it all. Laurie had even less business feeling remorseful for hurting a rich man’s feelings than he did finding one vaguely screwable, but he felt so anyway. Not that it mattered—he was sure this wasn’t a viable job—but sympathy made his job that much harder.

He was a nonfiction columnist. He sold serials, a little sensationalized. He didn’t write character pieces and he didn’t write bias. Only the truth. But he knew how it went, time and again. Given an inch of leeway, an audience could—and would—read a new business owner, a capitalist, to be incompetent over malicious. Eccentric. Mad. Two cubic yards of silica-feldspar mad. Harmless, even if he wasn’t.

But if the man were harmless, Sam wouldn’t have sent him there. Surely?

Laurie nodded to the sand. “Long wagon ride, though, for a small sample.”

Mr. Wright laughed a little, then cleared his throat. “Oh, no. It’s my own hobbying, on my own time. Say. Are you going into town? Berryfield?” He scooched to one side on the bench, with an awkward, boyish wriggle more suited to a schoolroom than a buckboard wagon. “There’s a hot brick; we might share it.”

“Oh, no, sir.” Men liked being echoed. “You were goin’ the other way.”

Mr. Wright raised eyebrows, strangely pleading. “It’s no problem. Only another mile or so down the wye. You must be heading back soon?” Lines appeared at all angles across his face; in the gray March light, Laurie still couldn’t quite place his age.

“Alright.” Having done the requisite polite protests, Laurie hauled himself up. “I’ll do to the Berryfield station, as you said.” The passenger one this time. “Thanks.”

He sat. Mr. Wright pushed the lap blanket his way, then spread it across Laurie, tucking the edge under the meat of his left thigh. Laurie bit down on a startled inhale.

“Thanks,” he said again, stiffly.

Mr. Wright nodded and gathered the reins, then stared straight ahead, as though realizing his breach of familiarity. His mouth opened—a finely cut, too-wide mouth, the smooth, flat lips were sloped, almost pretty in profile—but hesitated. When Laurie said nothing, did nothing, only watched to see what he would do, his flush bloomed red again. As the man’s mouth shut and his jaw tensed, the line in his left cheek deepened.

Not just smile lines, then. And maybe there was a different reason for that flush.

Laurie watched silky, matched horsetails swing over glossy rumps. Expensive horses for hauling sand.

Dead brother, he reminded himself, one last time. Target.

Mr. Wright snapped the reins, clicked his tongue softly, and on they went.

2

CHARY

The handsome, mysterious stranger walking the barrens had already found Chary wanting.

And that was fine. Most people did. He wasn’t August; he was neither handsome nor charming. Words never seemed to exit Chary’s mouth correctly. He said either what people expected of him or precisely what they didn’t—if they even cared what he said.

So he didn’t say anything.

Despite Chary’s best attempt at driving, and the excellent draft mares, the wagon rocked and bumped so that occasionally their shoulders knocked, Mr. Moore’s rough tweed shushing against Chary’s Inverness cape. Mr. Moore didn’t recoil from the touch. Most were too polite for that.

Chary had once asked August how he accomplished it, how his brother snagged people’s attention like eye hooks and made them trust him. (August liked a mechanical reference. Chary had forgotten eye hooks were closed up.) August had looked over, faintly incredulous, then thoughtful; at last, he’d shrugged.

“They just do.”

Chary had then had a realization: that August had not considered how to charm a person any more than Chary had, say, considered how he’d come to learn to read. It was something ever-present, pre-memory, effortless magic.

The realization was worse than any would-have-been instruction of Say this firstly or Hold the cane thusly or Deploy a low timbre of voice. At least August hadn’t admitted his ignorance; another thing he perhaps just knew to do. But worst of all was the pity that had come, pity that August had tried to hastily hide in his demur. “This face is more trouble than it’s worth, Chary; trust me.”

Recent events had driven Chary to give this last sentiment more thought. Thought and understanding, tumbled and polished until he was sick.