Further away, a woman in a bar turned over five cards carefully, paying more attention to the man who was paying her than what the cards said.
The night was already dieing, the last of the customers had either stumbled out of the Skum Pitt or were resting their heads on the table. The singer she had come to town with had already done his last set and had left for the night. She should have left with him.
But Neal had insisted and she had felt obliged. After all, he had allowed her to tell her fortunes for only a minor charge. Others might have turned her away. It had happened before, it would again.
"So who killed her?"
His wife. He was so damn insistent.
So determined.
One should just let these things die sometimes, just let them go. One dies a little each day one lives in the past.
He was mourning. He missed his wife. But there was more to this.
"It was those Skulz wasn't it."
She flipped over a car. A troubled woman.
"Your wife had concerns, secrets. Something she was troubled by."
The girl said.
"Well, she didn't talk much about her past."
The girl flipped over another card.
"Betrayal and Love. This could mean that she loved someone greatly yet betrayed a trust because of it, or it could mean that she betrayed her heart. I think the former. A difficult choice of a troubled woman."
She flipped over another card. The King. A powerful man.
The girl closed her eyes and she saw the fat man. "A powerful man is your enemy. But I can't make him out."
Then she flipped over the fourth. THe Twins.
A lie. She knew exactly who the fat man was. Her eyes still closed she saw it all. She saw how his hands were around her throat. How she had been giving the fat man sexual favors and the fat man had allowed her husband to maintain his bar.
She saw how the wife had once been a whore, and in that life had known the man. But she also saw something else. The other King. That the woman had been between them in some way, and because of that, had been killed. A pawn in a political battle. A sacrifice.
But in her head she heard something else- "Follow the Suits of Blue down into the tunnels dark and deep. Two that make one like the cookie of old"
"What? What is it?" Demanded Neil.
"She is torn between two lovers. I think her killer was jealous of the love she had for you and so killed her."
"Who?"
She flipped over her last card. Death.
"Death. The card of death and renewal." She said, closing her eyes.
In her eyes she saw Neil confronting Gizmo. Challenging Gizmo. ANd she saw the knife plunging into a chest, repeatedly, blood everywhere. Cruel death. Neil's.
"The jealous lover no longer walks the earth. He is dead. Killed in the wasteland, his body lost."
A lie.
To save a life.
Even as she said it she knew the lie wouls cost her.
But she also knew the card meant violence. Great violence was coming in the future.
"You must walk through a storm of fire to find your treasure"
Neil watched her, his eyes wide, shocked. "He's dead."
"He's lost in the waste. Dead or soon to be." She said. "The images are never perfect, never clear. I can only see the fragments and put them together."
"Dead." Muttered Neil again, as he turned away to begin cleaning up her bar.
But the girl remained, reshuffling her cards back into the deck. Then, with Neil's back turned, she drew a card, keeping her eyes closed. It was enough.
"Go North. Now."
She opened her eyes and saw a cloud blowing down on a begger or traveler.
Quietly Roadrunner collected her goods, and an hour later, slipped over the walls of Junktown. Under the pale moon, she began her journey North, across the wastes, looking for the men who blue who were like the cooke of old.
(cant really post before he replies to my question)
