Bruised-Eye Dusk
Novelette 7,809 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
"Rugg the spellbreaker was only passing through the Devil’s Palm on his way down to the coast, where he hoped to find his mother. He’d have avoided Ganvill, except he was running low on boom powder and salt, and the little settlement was the last tame place before a lot of nowhere."
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on BCS, where the author gets the click.