The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

the crowd toward the big top, she put her thoughts of the past behind her, right where they belonged. She needed to focus on the task at hand—finding the dagger and then figuring out a way to untangle herself from the two Antistasi, so she could get to Harte.

If she had hoped that getting the dagger from Pickett would be easy, that hope died at the sight of the two men standing on either side of the entrance to the big top. Each wore a serious expression on his face and the silver star of the US marshals pinned to his chest. They could be looking for anyone.… But Esta pulled the brim of her hat down anyway. Picking up her pace, she joined the tail end of a group entering the big top and made sure to keep her eyes ahead of her as she passed.

Once inside the enormous tent, Esta didn’t bother to find a seat in the bleachers. There was an area to the left of the entrance, where men in cowboy hats and worn jeans leaned against the railing to watch the show. It was a standing room, and the men who filled it didn’t look like the type to sit still long. They watched the horses and riders with a kind of critical squint, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and commenting on the mounts each performer rode. A few who had positioned themselves closest to the arena’s entrance hooted and hollered whenever a female rider went past or shouted slurs at the brown-skinned men who wore cavalry uniforms. The performers either didn’t hear or pretended that they didn’t care. They kept their shoulders back and their eyes forward as they kicked their horses into action and entered the arena to the cheers of the crowd.

Two men held court in the center of the arena. They looked like inverted images of each other—one fair and blond and the other with ruddier skin and dark hair—with horses to match. They were dressed in fringed leather that could have belonged in a Vegas show, and they took turns using a large, cone-shaped megaphone to announce each new act that rode into the arena. Esta figured they must be the Curtis brothers.

It quickly became apparent that, even with the clear skill of the riders, the Curtis brothers’ version of the Wild West was about as authentic as Harte’s old act as an expert in the mystical arts. She wondered briefly how it must feel for the buffalo soldiers to parade around for the same people who would keep them from sharing a table at a restaurant in town, or how the Lakota must feel about displaying their traditions in the same arena as the painted clowns who distracted the bulls. Esta wondered why any of them did it—if there was some benefit from being part of the Curtis brothers’ entourage, or if the men and women were there in the ring because it was the lesser of the evils they could have chosen from. Maybe they thought they could change their fate.

Esta knew otherwise. In the end, history would march on toward a future where people would still be pushed down, kept away, and discarded. Maybe once she’d hoped that by destroying the Brink, she could change the future, but with everything that had happened, she wasn’t so sure anymore. Fear and hatred and ignorance seemed so… inevitable.

Yet the future had changed, she reminded herself. The problem was that it had changed for the worse. She needed to concentrate on the job in front of her—finding the artifacts and containing Seshat’s power—so there could be a future to worry about at all.

On posters at the train station, Pickett had been billed as a “bulldogger,” whatever that meant. Esta didn’t really care as long as the cowboy still had the dagger and didn’t put up too much of a fight handing it over. With any luck, they’d never have to actually meet. Nothing good could come from that—especially not for Pickett himself. But for a long while, there was no sign of the cowboy. The show felt endless. Rider after rider, act after act, and Esta wondered if Pickett would ever make an appearance.

Nearly an hour in, the fairer of the two Curtis brothers announced the next act—a sharpshooter. At his signal, a woman rode into the arena, her horse kicking up dirt and dust. Esta couldn’t help but be transfixed by the drama that filled the ring. In this time, before microphones and loudspeakers and in an arena filled with the chattering noise of a crowd, the woman relied on a sort of pantomime to create her act, flirting with the audience as she accomplished ever-more impressive feats by hitting impossible targets. Somehow Esta wasn’t surprised to feel the warmth of magic sifting through the air whenever the woman took aim. Mageus had hidden among the theater folk back in New York. Why wouldn’t they hide in plain sight here as well?

After the sharpshooter left the arena to thunderous applause, Esta’s patience was finally rewarded.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the fairer of the brothers called. “We have a real treat for you today. Direct from the plains of Texas comes the dusky demon himself, a man who can subdue even the strongest steer with nothing but his force of will—Bill the Bulldogger Pickett!”

Pickett tore into the arena, a blur of speed on horseback, before he came to a dead stop mere inches from the Curtis brother who had announced him.

Esta had expected a giant of a man, a showman decked out in fringe and beadwork like the rest of the performers, but Pickett was dressed simply in the clothes of a working ranch hand: dark pants and a lighter shirt, with a hat that looked well loved and faded from days under the sun. She couldn’t see much of his face beneath the brim, but his dark-brown skin had reddish undertones, and a heavy mustache shadowed his upper lip.

Pickett didn’t turn when the