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No one followed her from the town, and when the sun set hours later she slept, unafraid of ambush. There would be no pursuit. The Corps would have arrived in F'nax, and the townspeople would do quite well to satisfy that horde of thousands without taking the effort to come after her. Her informant would be buried along with whoever did not survive Tieburl's arrival, and she would be forgotten.
The morrow dawned hotter than the yestereve. Lilith's view was blurred by sweat as she strode endlessly towards the West; as the sun reached its zenith, she was forced to take refuge in the shade of a stunted palmer. She allowed herself only a short pull from her waterskin, and sat watching the shadows of the dunes around her until she judged it was about three o'the clock. She had no clock on her. Hadn't seen one for years.
As early evening turned to late, and that to night, she walked. And as she walked, she tried not to cast her mind back to the past, as preferable to this as it had been. This was all she had to cling to now, her thankless searching, her great quest. Better bitter reality than belladonna illusion, he had been fond of saying, before he had left. Another one of his affectations. Better to step into the clearing with eyes open, to eschew the lure of surrender and walk the path as meant. To remember the face of your father, but to remember your own as well. And to stand true.
Days melted, one into the other, oceans of featureless sand surrounding her. She did not know how long she had been between F'nax and her goal. Perhaps one week later, perhaps two, perhaps twenty years, she stumbled over yet another dune that lay across the road, and at its summit beheld something she'd not laid eyes on for quite some time: smoke. A single ribbon of it, rising from somewhere over the next hill, perhaps from a cooking fire, perhaps from a chimney. Smoke. And where there was smoke, there would be a settlement. Perhaps the Settlement. The West.
The end now nearing, her quest close to its end, Lilith found her pace slowing. What was the use of going on? He was dead. He was alive, but not here. He was here, but would have nothing to do with her. He would laugh in her face, her purpose dashed in an instant, and the world would thus end; not with a bang, but with a cheated dying whimper.
She continued on. There was nothing else to do, after all, and what if he was not here? She could search him out were he fled to the ends of the earth. What if he did refuse to hear her? He would listen. He might be the wiser, but she was the one who had completed her training. She was the one who bore the guns.
That night her sleep was plagued, for the first time in years, with the dreams of 'mare. The guns dangled in front of her, the face of her father far from her mind. "Catch them, catch them and make them your own," a voice whispered in her ear, "Come, any puling maggot can do it!" And she reached for them, leaping to grasp them, but as always they vanished, and as she fell the voice boomed around her, "Failed gunslinger! Failed gunslinger! Failed gunslinger! Failed -"
But the guns were real; she awoke with them in her hands, and their heft and weight gave her strength, as they always did. Ka had given them to her, and Ka would see her through her quest. She packed up and set out, her scuffed boots leaving tracks in the sand for the moonlight to fill. She went on, her pace steady and deliberate, and the sun was nearly set when she finally walked into the Western Settlement.
It was dead. The knowledge struck her with grim finality, and she stood in the center of the town square, her bag and waterskins slung in an ungainly pile by her feet, gazing with weary eyes at the ruins around her.
Half the settlement had been destroyed in a fire untold years ago; the charred buildings still stood, their windows unblinking eyes. The very few still standing were in various states of decay - smashed windows, collapsed roofs, holes in the walls. He was not here. How could he be? No one could live here; the town was dead. But the smoke -
She turned about in a circle again, this time scrutinizing the buildings more carefully. As she did so, from the upper-story window of what must have once been a hostel came a flash of light, as if reflected off moving glass -
She was off in an instant, charging up the rotten front steps of the hostel with guns drawn. Inside, she pounded up the stairs, shouting, "You're covered! You're covered! You're covered!" The door at the head of the stairs exploded in a storm of woodchips as she kicked it in.
Inside, a boy of perhaps 12 stood facing the window, his hands in the air, an old pair of binocks in one of them. Guns leveled at him, Lilith moved closer. "I'm a gunslinger, and right now I've got both guns aimed at you. I want to know where the Western Settlement is. Now." She stopped an arm's length from him. "Turn around."
He did so, slowly, the binocks still clutched in one of his hands. Her guns were the first thing his eyes fastened on as he did so, and at the sight of them - six rounds each of death in grinning steel - he paled visibly. His first attempt to speak produced little more than a moan.
"Speak."
His eyes flicked up to hers, saw no mercy there, and fixed on the guns again. He swallowed and tried again. "The - the Settlement? There be no -"
"Where is the Settlement? Tell me now!"
"Well, there's no need to shout at the poor boy." The voice from behind her was wry, somewhat amused, and infinitely familiar. She spun around to face the speaker, her guns still held at the ready. He leaned relaxedly in the broken doorway. The small smile on his face did not falter for an instant, though it would be impossible to miss at this range should she choose to fire. His dark hair fell unattended across his forehead. They stood that way for perhaps half a minute, in tableaux, she in firing position, he regarding her with nonchalant good humor.
At length, Jerent spoke. "So, you finally showed up."