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Lata, the woman in black, stood before her, the chase at an end, the final showdown come. Ka had been with Lilith this time, had brought her to this strange and unexplained objective. Was she to die at the hands of this woman? She did not think so. She had a feeling Ka had plenty more in store for her.
"Hello," the woman said, her dark eyes full of silent smug laughter. Quell your laughter, lady gunslinger, Lilith thought. Quell it lest your laughter quell you.
Aloud she said nothing, but merely met the gaze of the other levelly. "Hile to ye."
Lata smiled elusively, then cast an appreciative glance at Lilith's guns. "Have you drawn lately?"
"Lately I've had no need."
The voice of the woman in black was silky, like a cat. One with claws. "We came so close the last time we met. Do you remember?"
Her own voice, flat, betraying no hint of emotion: "Yes, I believe I do."
"We should have finished it."
"For what purpose? There would have been one less gunslinger in a world which already has too few."
The woman in black nodded slowly. Then she looked straight into Lilith's eyes, as though she hoped to spy out the other's weaknesses there. "Didn't you wonder, afterwards, which one of us was better?"
"Not particularly."
"I did. I still do."
Lata looked at Lilith's guns again, seeming to admire the ancient weapons. Her own gun looked to be of much poorer quality, for all that it hung from a fine leather holster. There was a time when no true gunslinger would dare soil herself with such a badly-made machine. But the world had moved on. "What must I do to call you out, darling?"
Lilith smiled thinly. "I think you would have to prove yourself an enemy of the forces I serve."
Her opponent in this growing battle of wits laughed merrily. "And how do you know I am not?"
"No true gunslinger ever was."
That silenced the woman for a moment. Finally she tossed her head, sending her dark curls flying, and asked, "What if I were to draw right now?"
She stared at Lata with honest surprise. "Turn your gun on another gunslinger? Ye'd be damned, for one."
The other smiled slyly. "But you would have to pull your weapon... would you not?"
Lilith spoke slowly, all but sure her words would fall on deaf ears. She had a feeling no answer she gave would cease this woman's thirst for blood. "I've sworn not to use the guns for anything which would not serve the great Purpose... and I suppose that includes the murder of a fellow gunslinger."
Again a moment of silence, both of them still as statues, facing each other at a distance of perhaps five yards. The wind -- not too dry, they were not in the desert yet, though it was not far away -- moved restlessly about them, tugging at their clothes and the woman's wild mane of hair. "I see. I am very disappointed. I believe if we fought you would die beautifully, if I defeated you... and should you have beaten me... you would help me die with grace and style. Someday." She turned, as though to go. Lilith doubted that was her intention.
"It is better there remain more of us in the world," she called grimly, her hands wanting to stray to the guns, to draw, to kill this foolish woman who dared to call herself a gunslinger. "To rid it of those who do not deserve to remain drawing breath."
As the words left her lips, the other woman suddenly whirled about, drawing her cheap gun and snapping into firing stance in one fluid motion. She fired, but Lilith was already out of sight, safely crouched behind a nearby stand of rock.
"I will not fight you unless I have to, for to do so would damn me, by all I have been taught," she shouted, knowing it was useless. This woman was mad -- had to be, for what other purpose would she have to kill a fellow gunslinger?
A shot ricocheted off the rock, as though to drive the point home.
Lilith tried one more time, knowing already that it was useless, that she would have no choice but to draw. "Is your honor worth so little to you, then? Or were you not taught by one who respected the ancient ways?"
The woman in black started to reply, but her voice was cut off by the harsh bark of a rifle. "What the -- " Lata spun towards the sound, just as the unseen rifleman fired again.
Lilith heard, unmistakable in the half-second after the rifle report, the sound of a bullet striking flesh.
She peered cautiously over the rock, and watched as the woman dropped to her knees. Whoever had fired that rifle must have had the eye of a hawk. The bullet wound lay directly over the woman's heart. "Lilith!," she cried in a strangled voice, her smug self-assurance gone.
Lilith looked about, trying to discern the whereabouts of the unseen bearer of the rifle. "Were you followed here by some enemy?"
Lata seemed not to have heard her. "Help... me... I'm, I'm... dying."
She came out from behind the rock and knelt by the dying woman's side. Mad or not, she had been a gunslinger. For that alone, they were comrades, at least at this last moment. "I cannot help you," she replied flatly. "I've no healer's powers."
The woman in black turned frightened eyes to her counterpart. "Please... I'm frightened. Don't let me die, not alone!"
Gods, thought Lilith. She's not a gunslinger at all, is she? Just an apprentice -- that's why the guns she has are so shoddy. She'd no business engaging a true 'slinger, right mind or no. Aloud she only repeated one of the many lessons she had been taught. "No gunslinger is ever alone, if they've the faces of their fathers firmly in mind."
Lata brought her arms up weakly, trying vainly to staunch the flow of her blood. "Please..."
Lilith thought for a moment, then remembered the medallions she wore around her neck. She grasped one and removed it carefully, the gold chain winking in the sun as she did so. James, it read. Loved of family, loved of GOD. She pressed it into the dying gunslinger's hand.
"This was given me long ago. I've been told it has the power to watch over one's soul, even in the worlds beyond this one. This is all the help I can give you."
The woman in black looked up at her fellow. She was very close to death now, and her voice was a mere whisper. "It would... have been better, better if this was your bullet... in me. At least then..." She winced in pain. "I'd have known who..."
Lilith nodded grimly. "Ka permitting, I'll discover whose bullet that was."
Lata reached for her hand. After a moment, Lilith returned the gesture. The dying woman grasped Lilith's hand gratefully, squeezed it once, then closed her eyes. "Go... go now. 'There is... is no fear... in dying alone.'"
Lilith rose and resumed her journey, not looking back.