by Gemma Files
A few steps over, Morrow glimpsed Hosteen keeping his own gaze steady-trained anywhere else, unable to bear to watch. And Christ, how he envied the man for not having to see Chess and the Lady tandem-step in a funeral march, heading for the stair, while Rook followed after, his hand still on Chess’s arm. Pushing.
“I’d move on now, Ed, if I was you,” he said, all but throwing back a damn man-of-the-world wink. “I mean . . . you had your fun, already. Didn’t you? But tonight’s for us, and we really don’t need no witnesses.”
Chess moved sleepwalker-slow past Morrow’s elbow, his stunned stare flicking just the once to lock with his, then fall as though cut free. And Morrow . . .
Morrow did nothing to stop him — stop it. Because there was nothing he could do.
At all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Come half of midnight, Morrow went looking for Hosteen and found him outside in the scrub, smoking and staring up at Chess’s window, like he was expecting Shakespeare’s Juliet to lean out at any second.
“You care for him, don’t you, Kees?” Morrow said.
Hosteen shrugged, like he’d never made any real attempt to deny it. “Used to think it was because he was nice t’me, back in the War — but I paid him for it, so . . . hell, I don’t know. Just do, that’s all. . . .”
“Pretty sure I know the reason, if you’re interested.” Then, as Hosteen looked at him: “It’s ’cause he’s a hex.”
“And he believed you,” Allan Pinkerton said, four weeks later — in that cramped Tampico hotel he’d engaged for Morrow’s debriefing, with Songbird and Doctor Asbury in attendance. The faint Scots burr still audible in Pinkerton’s voice sounded doubly incongruous in the white-plastered, Spanish-style dining room, bright with rich sunlight falling through slitted windows. “Just like that.”
Morrow sighed. “Hardly. But . . . yeah, he came ’round to the idea eventually, given time and talk enough. I made him a pretty good argument, obviously.”
“Obviously?” Asbury repeated, with that same air of constant vague puzzlement Morrow had long forgotten attended most of his pronouncements.
“Got y’all here, didn’t he?”
He knocked out another shot of the tequila Pinkerton had given him, to the skittery accompaniment of one of Miss Songbird’s dry little laughs. “So he did, Mister Morrow,” she agreed, smiling at Morrow’s bosses, her mouth safe-shrouded behind those filigree claws of hers. “Much to our . . . mutual satisfaction.”
Four weeks after Rook had led them into Hell, and Morrow had clawed his way back up somehow, into the Agency’s loving arms. And Chess —
Morrow decided not to think about Chess; not right now, at least. So he slammed the shot and continued with his report.
“Said it yourself, Kees. How is it Chess can shoot somebody standin’ thirty feet behind him, ’fore they even have a chance to squeeze one off? How is it two men as dog-on-cat different as Chess and the Rev ever tripped over each other in the first place, let alone got stuck at the dick?”
“Hexation?” Morrow nodded, quickly. Hosteen just snorted. “Naw,” he said. “You’re thinking crazy, Ed. Rook’s more’n man-witch enough for both of them, without tryin’ to bring Chess in on it.”
“What if I had proof?”
“Christ, what if? What’m I supposed t’ do about it, exactly?”
A fair question. With, much as Morrow might hate to admit it, only one real answer.
“Kees . . .” He stopped. Then continued, reluctantly: “. . . there’s somethin’ I need to tell you — ”
“Aw, shit.” The older man put a hand over his eyes. “This never goes nowhere good.”
“ — I’m a Pink.”
Hosteen stared. “Why . . . in the hell . . . would you tell me a thing like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Have to be pretty damn desperate, wouldn’t I?”
They glared at each other a spell, ’til Hosteen sighed deep, and Morrow let out his own held breath at almost the same exact time, in grateful sympathy.
“Look,” he began, “Rook’s got a mojo-bag held over my head, that’s the long and the short of it. Chess and me, last night — wouldn’t surprise me if he had a hand in it, though I’m damned if I know why. But as it is, I have to stay the course, for fear of bein’ blasted. So if anyone’s left could do anything for Chess, Kees, it’d be you . . . assuming you were willin’.”
“You offered him a pardon.”
Morrow shook his head. “No, sir. For Kees it’s all about loyalty to the old cohort, and he’s known Chess a damn sight longer than he’s known the Rev. I did tell him your plans, though, Doc — how you were fixin’ to build a hexacious reserve. Gave him the idea that Chess might be worth more to the Agency alive than dead, for once.”
“That’s all well and good,” Pinkerton said, and sat back to mop his shining brow. “But as to Pargeter — just what is he now, anyways?”
“’Sides from not to be trifled with, or only at your own peril?” All Morrow had to offer was another shake, for that — plus a further swig, while Asbury and Pinkerton swapped significant glances.
Songbird rapped her gilded knuckles impatiently on the table-top. “My choice would be your genuine opinion on the matter, Mister Morrow. If you please.”
Morrow threw a glance upwards, speculating on exactly how high you’d have to go before the roof above became the floor of Chess’s impromptu prison — that room where he lay asleep, ensorcelled deep in a trance of Songbird’s own making. Maintaining the same fierce slumber he’d endured ever since they’d both . . . resurfaced from their scramble through the depths, with Morrow clawing his way up mindlessly with one arm dug death-grip tight ’round the raw neck of what he could have sworn was Chess Pargeter’s gutted corpse.
How he’d ever found Chess down there, in the first place — laid a hand on his collar in the dark, once it’d all gone predictably to shit — that, even now, Morrow didn’t quite know himself. Only that during what he’d thought was three days ago and the month or so Pinkerton assured him had actually elapsed, enough “grievous physical insult” had occurred to make Chess exactly what Rook and his dragonfly-cloaked Lady had planned for: a sacrifice to dead forces, a new-expressed mage not yet aware of his own power, a son-of-a-bitching reborn “god-to-be.”
Songbird had to feel it, surely. Wasn’t the tasty pull of Chess’s power what had led her, Asbury and Pinkerton to Mexico City, where they’d dug Chess — and Morrow — up out of the earthquake’s rucked hide? But then again, perhaps it was just too big, too . . . alien, for her to fully realize. Which was why she still had to ask.
And that, if handled correctly — could be an advantage, for Chess. Morrow, too.
“Fuck if I know what he is,” Morrow lied, therefore, right to the former witch-queen of San Francisco’s pig-pale face, with far more sass than was probably warranted, or safe. And went to pour himself another, regardless of Pinkerton’s disapproval.
“Good enough, Mister Morrow,” Asbury said. “You are no expert in hexology, sad to say, as we are all of us aware. But if, barring such sidebars, you might continue with your recitative nevertheless.”
Morrow nodded. “Why not?” he asked, of no one in particular.
“Think they’d want Chess for that hex-army of theirs, if only we could get him took into custody?”
“Think Chess’d stand still for it, if we did?” Morrow shot back, without thinking. Hosteen’s face fell at the idea, a whole dropped wedding-cake of dolefulness.
“Maybe not . . .”
“But . . . maybe so, too,” Morrow suggested. “’Cause much as Chess may not mind dyin’, he still takes awful good care to keep himself alive.”
“Yeah. Maybe . . .”
They looked at each other, then, and knew it: a compact had been sealed.
“So here’s what you do,” Morrow told him — risking another glance upwards only to find the window gone dark, and shuddering to think what-all might be in progress behind it. “
Go west nor’west, fast as you can. We got an outpost, maybe a day’s ride to get to, but they’ll bring you back a deal quicker, ’cause they got Songbird to work it for them — hell, she can probably slingshot Pinkerton’s private train right into the middle of Joe’s, she takes a damn mind to.” Hosteen stared. “C’mon, Kees! Can’t make fry-cakes without you break — ”
“ — eggs, yeah, yeah, I get it. But . . . Ed, you at least got credit with those fuckers, you pull out your badge. They ain’t got no fit reason under Heaven’s sky to believe me, on anything.”
Maybe not, Morrow thought. But they’re gonna want to.
“They will,” he said. “Long as you show them this.”
He reached inside his vest, where the Manifold clicked and chittered, to grasp it firm, pull it out, giving it no time for nonsense. And dropped it in Hosteen’s outstretched hand.
“I was very happy to receive my little device once more, by the by,” Asbury assured him. “The readings you’d taken, their impressive range of resonances . . . well, they were more than I’d hoped for. It was they which formed the spectrum allowing me to confirm your diagnosis of Mister Pargeter’s — condition — last night, once he was . . . secured.”
“Glad to be of service, Doc,” Morrow replied. And t’ finally get the damn thing off my chest . . . literally, he thought.
“Strange, however, that Reverend Rook would not have immediately gleaned your intentions in this matter,” Songbird remarked. “Or this goddess of yours, either . . . powerful as you make her seem, in your report.”
“Did seem to me how Rook was probably just a bit distracted, right at that very moment. And the Lady? Well — she probably didn’t much care what we did, either way. From what I’ve seen, we’re dirt under her feet.”
Pinkerton: “Mmm. Well, then, by all means . . . continue.”
“Mornin’ came. Rook got us all together. Told us what was gonna happen. Chess . . .” Morrow paused, the image still fresh in his mind. “He just stood there, with that woman, that thing — Lady Ixchel — holdin’ his hand. Didn’t say a damn word. Like he was — ”
“In a sort of trance?”
“Hypnosis,” Asbury said to himself, quietly. “Or perhaps as in the Codex Magliabecchi, when the deity-impersonator is ‘made drunken’ and ‘painted white’ in anticipation of transformation . . . though that may only be a metaphorical intoxicatory state, to be sure.”
“All right, Doctor,” Pinkerton said. “I’d suggest we can address that issue in fine detail some other time, assumin’ it even comes up.”
“They didn’t ask about Hosteen,” Morrow went on, “and I sure as Christ didn’t volunteer. Then, after the Rev’d said his piece, she just all of a sudden up and grabbed big Cow-Puncher Pete Van Damme by the head and bent him back over her knee. Pulled a knife out of her hair, cut his throat. And where his blood fell on the floor, it . . . opened up a hole. . . .”
“A hole,” Songbird repeated. “Which . . . you went through.”
“That’s right.”
“Into Hell.”
“Yup.”
Asbury gave himself a shake. “Gods and monsters,” he said, musingly. “You have glimpsed wonders we can only dream of, Mister Morrow.”
“Yeah, well — you’d seen even the half of what I saw down there, you’d be happy to keep it that way,” Morrow replied.
In the end, the voyage itself had seemed . . . impossibly easy. A plunge, taken. Like stepping off a cliff.
That yellow sky, leering down. The rain of knives, falling. No wonder Rook’d wanted the rest of his gang to come along, haplessly unsuited as they were to hexacious labours — they made for perfect cannon-fodder.
The Rev kept them moving steadily forward, with Chess on one arm and Morrow clinging tight to the other, a protective envelope of lightning a-snap in all directions. And the Lady Ixchel glided on effortless behind all three — behind, beside, around. Ixchel, bent near-double in the darkness to murmur in Chess’s ear — Ixchel, darker by far than anything around her, no matter how deep they went.
Wrapped in her buzzing dress of devil’s darning needles, with her copper limbs unstrung at the joints and set drifting in Mictlan-Xibalba’s current like kelp — her flesh shiny as burnt bones, hair a net of hooks, voice like broken bells chiming: . . . but there is nothing like death in war, a flowery death, so precious . . . I know you can see it far off, my husband’s husband, as you always have. Far off, and not so far. I know how you yearn for it!
The words thrumming through everything at once, everyone, reverberate eternally on a shimmering thread of prayer, both answered and not. The yearning witchery of each dead and living supplicant, each made and unmade name all crying out, together —
To die for a god
To die as a god
To die, in Pain, in Glory, wrapped in Hot Heart’s Blood, is
beautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautiful
Morrow heard Rook’s voice rise above the din, so heartbreakingly human amidst all this spectral awfulness.
“Where is this place you’re takin’ us, woman? I didn’t get swung by my neck and lose my damn soul just to get eaten by someone else’s demons in a hell I don’t even believe in — ”
Be silent, husband. I will not be spoken to thus, not in my own place. There is nothing here that poses any danger.
“Says you!”
Yes. The only ones of any consequence awake down here are you, I and he, little king. All others lie asleep, dead and dreaming. These are their nightmares, nothing more. And besides — we are here.
“Cow-Puncher Pete,” Pinkerton mused. “So that’s who was on that floor. Was a five grand reward on for him, I recall — spares us that expense, any road.” He gave Morrow a steady look. “They let us through, you know. First time we’ve ever been welcomed to Splitfoot’s vale without gunplay; Joe himself wouldn’t go inside his own tavern. And the body we found looked dried ten years in the sun.”
He drummed his fingers pensively upon the table. “I’ve seen hexation. But . . . Hell?” He took off his bowler hat and turned it over in his hands, as if wondering how it’d gotten there.
“There are ten thousand different Chinese hells, Mister Pinkerton,” Songbird put in. “And our explorers have drawn maps — detailed ones, or so my tutors claim. Fifty of them in the Emperor’s library alone.”
Pinkerton nodded. “ Hell I know, same as every other man,” he said at last. “‘Gods,’ well — no such except the Almighty, in my book.”
“There are more books than the Book,” Asbury pointed out, mildly, in return.
You’re right about that, Morrow thought.
But he had no dog in either fight — and Asbury was already off again in any event, theorizing out loud.
“As for the idea of ‘gods,’ Mister Pinkerton, consider them as magicians writ large, truly cosmic predators. The bloodshed perpetrated by Maya and Aztecs in veneration of their pantheons is, indeed, legendary. In fact, some credit the entire fall of the Mayan Empire to their religious excesses: killing whole generations of beautiful youths and maidens, destroying forests to build pyres, polluting rivers with entrail, ash and gore. . . .”
“And that’s what-all this woman of Rook’s aims to bring about again — that right, Morrow?”
“Far’s I know? Yes.”
Enthralled with his visions, Asbury just kept on going. “‘Gods,’ then, would be the sum of Expressed magicians plus worship, as a system of human sacrifice channels both the power inherent in such sacrifices — chosen without doubt from amongst the Unexpressed — and the power of human faith, of sheer zealotry and credulousness, into the ‘deities’ in question. A fascinating equation indeed.”
Pinkerton smacked the table, sharply. “Doctor Asbury,” he said. “Seems to me Mr. Morrow has not finished his account, some of which I gather may still be of interest to you — and all of which has earned him, at the least, courteous attention.”
To Morrow: “Now then. Where did this Lady Ixc
hel take you, precisely?”
Morrow took a deep breath. “She called it the Moon Room.”
The arch itself was perfect and smooth as any cathedral’s, the rock in which it was set raw, rough and dripping with lichen. Above the arch, at its apex, sat a gouged half-circle curve, an inlaid sickle of flint splotchily patterned with dark stains: a moon shape, fit only for shed blood, mirrored in the yellow-black sky above by an almost-full real moon — skull-bright, a burst lantern.
This is the Moon’s House, said Lady Ixchel. A door between worlds and ages, poised to open. Be honoured, my kings . . . and you too, o blood-guards, my husband’s retinue. For this is where the old age will come anew.
They entered.
Inside, the moon seemed to loom closer still, making a pitiless roof that blocked the rest of the sky entirely. Under it sat that same black disk from Songbird’s, re-grown to full size: ten feet in radius, from its ragged-punched central hole on out, its circumference a smaller, bleaker, reverse-coloured parody of the painfully white orb above.
Their boots clopped dull and dead upon the round black stone, as if swamp-thick air swallowed the noise, though to the lungs the cavern’s air felt breath-hitchingly thin and dry — the painful draw of a mountaintop. The men ranged themselves around the stone’s circumference without even being told to, an instinctive movement — the circle of the tribe in wordless wonder, agape at the blackness of the infinite night sky.
At the centre of the circle Lady Ixchel stood, hands uplifted and her hair stirring about her in a great black cloud, as if she floated in invisible water. To the right and left of her stood Rook and Chess, facing each other like bride and bridegroom. Between them, the hole in the centre of the stone yawned, so empty it went beyond black into something that seared with anti-light, antilife — as sight-sore to look at directly as the sun.
Against that emptiness, the power in all three figures blazed, actinic and flashing. Morrow had to shade his eyes and fight not to double up, retching, to try and cough out the acrid stench of magic.