A Book Of Tongues

by Files, Gemma

  “Let Goddamn go, Goddamnit!”

  “Chess — ” Rook said, warningly. Then: “C’mon, darlin’ — you know you’re outmatched, so don’t be an idiot, for Christ’s sake. Least . . . not where folks can see you.”

  Provoked beyond endurance, Chess dropped both guns outright and lunged straight for Rook like a rat-killing dog, all ten fingers hooked into claws. Without planning it out at all, Rook flung Chess’s weapons down and caught him by the neck, lifting him neatly off the ground.

  “That how your Momma taught you to fight, boy?” he demanded, voice almost too low to recognize himself.

  Chess tore a laugh out through his rapidly bruising throat. “Yuh, wuh — works pretty well, don’t it? ’Sides which . . . my Ma could’ve wiped the floor with any one’a these fuh . . . fuckers, and she don’t even pack a gun.”

  Rook hauled him closer. “Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret, Chess.”

  “I’d like . . . tuh . . . see that. . . .”

  A darkness seemed to fall between them, ecliptic. Barely noticing how fast the Sisters had already cleared out, Rook let Chess fall momentarily free — doubled up and hacking — before pinning his arms from behind and hauling him upstairs parcel-style, virtually tucked under one tree-limb arm. With that same charge flashing back and forth between them, energizing and exhausting, all the while: each touch a dry powder-burn, a branding iron’s kiss.

  And here was where he truly knew it, for the first time — how with every touch, he was sucking something out of Chess. Gulping it down, the way a gut-shot man will drink ’til he bleeds out and dies, regardless of the gaping hole where his belly should be. The darkness rising in him spurred a similar darkness in Chess, rendering him ten times as dangerous as usual to everything around him (himself very much included). And though Chess fought it tooth and nail, exhausting himself, he also fought to cleave to Rook just as hard, if not harder.

  Rook had been the true trap. And now Chess was caught, fast as any fly in amber.

  Reaching the second floor, Rook kicked in the first door he saw, popping it clear off its hinges. Then threw Chess down on the bed, face down, and let the unnatural take its course.

  After, he felt bad — as bad as he’d felt so all-fire good, just a hot, gasping moment previous. The hurt and injustice of it crashed over him in a wave, sticking him chest-first to Chess’s spine, and he buried his face in the nape of the smaller man’s trembling neck, hugging him fit to bruise. Chess stiffened for a moment, mouthed at Rook’s wrist like he wanted to bite, then curled back into him, with a little sighing sob.

  “I ain’t just yours, you know.”

  “I do.”

  “You’re mine, you witch-rode ox.”

  “I am, Chess, yes. I — surely, surely am.”

  The things I’d do, to keep you safe, little man, Rook thought, tongue gone abruptly cold and sour in his own mouth. What I’d do . . . you can’t imagine.

  Thankfully.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You got to take the fight to him,” Chess said. “Don’t wait for this bastard Love to come lookin’ — they don’t know what they’re dealing with, which puts them to a disadvantage. And even if you don’t know what you’re dealin’ with either, half the time, you still got good tricks to pull out, long as you can control the field of battle.”

  “So you think I should count coup on Love in Bewelcome itself, right where God and everybody can see.” Rook looked at Chess, genuinely curious. “That what you would’ve done? Back in the War?”

  Chess snorted. “Hell, no — I’d’ve snuck in under his lines, waited ’til he was asleep, then cut his damn throat. But I’m guessin’ you probably want to make more of a splash than that — send a message. Am I right?”

  “Maybe.”

  So it was decided — and five days after that night in the Two Sisters, Rook and Chess sat looking down on Bewelcome on horseback, from the same sharply sloping outcrop over which sunrise reached that threadbare-pleasant little settlement, most mornings. Had any Bewelcomeites chanced to glance their way, however, they would have seen nothing but what was rapidly becoming one of Rook’s favourite illusions, a heat-haze which repelled the eye without inciting even the briefest comment, and bent the reflecting sky like water.

  Located several miles past the very outermost edge of the Bisti Badlands, Sheriff Mesach Love’s stronghold was the sort of place Rook’s gang would normally ride through at top speed, not looking ’round while they did, then never think of again. Its folks were almost universally the sort who’d probably call themselves “poor but honest” — more poor than honest, by Rook’s reckoning — and hadn’t even put up much in the way of a Main Street, thus far. But maybe they were just waiting ’til Love got his church built.

  “This place really is the asshole of the world,” Chess observed, idly.

  “You truly do despise simple people, don’t you, Chess?” Rook asked. “Why is that, I wonder?”

  Chess shrugged. “Just don’t think too much on them, that’s all.”

  “And I’m sure they’d be happy to keep it that way, too, they knew you like I do.”

  But all that would change, and soon enough, if things went according to the plan they’d roughed out back a mile or so, squatted in the shadow of a startling green cliff, surrounded by a wild moonscape of sandstone and shale.

  “They’ll beat on you, I reckon, once they catch you,” Rook said, to which Chess gave that same shrug again, since they both knew he was only stating the obvious.

  “Reckon so. But given they already eat a steady diet of Love’s holy horse-crap down there, I’ll bet I’ve had worse.”

  “Holy horse-crap?”

  “Aw, Ash, you know — ‘for God so loved the world,’ et cetera.” Chess’s glare turned vicious. “Like any God worth his salt wouldn’t know what a bag of filth he’d shit out on top of every one of us, and make himself sick laughin’ over it.”

  “Sheriff Love believes in a good God, no doubt.” Chess didn’t answer. “Okay, then how’s this: I find I might still believe in the Lord myself, Chess, down deep. Hate to disappoint.”

  Did he, though? The Lord, yes. but a good God? A forgiving one?

  God is always good, Brother Rook, the old preacher in his home town had once told him, so long ago. And He always wants to forgive. It’s just that we so seldom allow Him that opportunity.

  Rook felt a vague knot form in his chest, right where his heart should be. Didn’t want to think too hard on that, though, so he looked over at Chess, instead, smiling at the thought of his pocket-sized Satan ever begging forgiveness — and the knot swelled up even higher, bruising his lungs, making his stomach clench. “As for God,” Chess said, “you choose t’believe in him, that’s all well ’n’ good, I s’pose. Does he believe in you, though? My personal bet would be — not like I do.”

  But to that, of course, there was nothing to say.

  They laid in their heels, and galloped down in opposite directions.

  It was Joseph in Genesis which gave Rook the words to lay a misdirective glamour over their camp, just as the sun finally sank beneath the horizon: “And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners that were in the prison. and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it,” he murmured, back to the town, while Hosteen and the others watched uneasily, and red light fell bloody on the pages. “Because the LORD was with him, and that which he did, the LORD made it to prosper.”

  The verses thrummed in his mouth, as yet another heat-shimmer distortion washed over the camp, and all of them vanished at once.

  Walking into town took an hour. By that time, the “streets” were lit with lantern overspill and pit-bound cook-fires here and there between the tents. There was a rising ruckus already to be heard, even from a distance — gunshots, hoof beats, shouts and blows: Chess, doing his job.

  Truly amazing, the amount of trouble one small man can cause, Rook thought. Especially if he really puts his mind to it
.

  Watch the dust, he’d told the rest, and keep your weapons handy. Remember, they won’t be able to see you, not ’til I’m done . . . so make your own way and look out for yourself, ’cause any man’s dumb enough to wander off, he’s gonna find himself stranded in the desert. And we’re not stoppin’ to pick up any damn strays, afterwards.

  And now, he could hear somebody yelling, from ’round the next “corner” — an alleyway down the side of that half-raised frame where the church was eventually set to plant itself.

  “Rook! We know you’re out there, blasphemer. . . . ”

  “Best come collect your catamite, ‘Reverend’! ’Course, he ain’t too good-lookin’, anymore; had to dirty him up a touch. Hope ya don’t mind.”

  Yelled a third voice: “Oh, he’s plenty good with a gun, I’ll give you that. Get hold of him in close quarters, though, and the bitch fights like a damn bar-room gal!”

  Close enough to make out features, now. There was a variety of scuffle and tug going on, somewhat obscure — ’til all at once, Rook figured it out. They were hauling Chess out through the crowd’s heart, running him down a vicious little gauntlet of slaps, punches and kicks as they did. One particular thick-set roughneck reached back into the thick of it to grab Chess by whatever ear came handiest and threw him bodily forward into the dust, where he landed doubled up, gasping out a curse.

  “Just shut the fuck up, faggot,” the man said, and kicked him in the side. “Might as well keep your mouth free for other things, while you still got most’ve your teeth.”

  Now, Rook thought, hands curling into claws.

  But a calm voice from further to one side was already warning — “That will be quite enough of that, gentlemen.”

  The crowd swung ’round as one, Rook following, as a figure almost as tall as Rook’s half-stooped to step out through a backlit tent flap. Straightening up, this resolved into what couldn’t fail to be Sheriff Mesach Love himself: a far younger man than his reputation suggested — one-and-thirty at most, forming an almost-exact mid-point between Rook and Chess — and a touch gangly, his classic preacher’s broad-brimmed hat jammed down over a mop of brown hair tied back in two uneven, little-girl pigtails.

  “We’ve been waitin’ on you quite the spell, Mister Rook,” Love said, lifting haughty zealot’s eyes to address what must look to everyone else as nothing more than empty air.

  “Fine choice of words,” Rook answered — and let himself blink back into being all at once, a blown-out candle flame blooming high in reverse. Chess’s tormentors all took an unconscious step back at the sight, while Chess looked up and grinned, revealing the extent of the damage.

  “Well, hell,” he remarked, to the general company. “Now you’re really gonna see some fun.”

  Rook stared. “What the Christ’d they do to you, Chess?”

  “Nothin’ I didn’t expect. Now help me up.”

  He did, automatically — yet still found himself horrified, and downright furious. Chess’s face was all bruises, nose mashed flat and eyes blacked like a ’coon’s, the left one puffed ’til just a thin green slit peered out. And the more Rook saw, the more his rage began to whip sand up around them in a tightening funnel, without him even thinking to quote the Bible beforehand.

  “Aw, shit-fire!” The same tree-trunk fucker as before yelled out, throwing his hands up to guard his eyes and roaring at how fast his knuckles got skinned bone-deep, for his trouble — only to freeze silent, when Love turned those prayer-burnt eyes his way.

  “You hush up on that profanity, Meester,” Love snapped. “There’s womenfolk present.”

  “Sorry, Sheriff.”

  Rook took this opportunity to rein himself in, and huffed out a laugh. “Got them well-trained, I see. Which means I guess I must have you to thank for — all this.” A nod here at Chess, now wavering slightly by his side, angrily wiping away blood.

  Love shook his head. “Mister Pargeter’s the one’s at fault here. You sent him in scoutin’, he killed five of my men.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.”

  He threw this last over to Chess, as a compliment. But Love simply nodded.

  “Yes — that being his calling, or so I hear. And you . . .” Love gave Rook an appraising look, as though he aspired to rifle his soul’s pages. “You once proceeded from the Wesleyan tradition, Reverend, like myself. Which means you know that though depravity is total and grace resistible, atonement is intended for all.”

  “For all that wants it, yes. Must admit, though, I hadn’t thought you were chasin’ me down to debate finer points of theology.”

  “You’re the one came to me, Mister Rook,” Love pointed out.

  Like you knew I would, obviously, Rook realized. For oh, this was a clever young man stood in front of him indeed, with all his War-time honours no doubt well-merited. Yet Lucifer-arrogant all the same; this stand-off alone proved that, with the two of them squared off in the middle of the street like veritable duellos, so Love’s cohort and congregationalists (the latter even now starting to peep their heads out shyly, prairie-dog style) could admire his fortitude in the face of impending wizardish mayhem.

  “True enough,” Rook allowed. “What’s your sermon’s subject, then, Sheriff Love? Assuming you think I merit one.”

  From the crowd’s back ranks: “He don’t!”

  “Don’t deserve nothin’ but a short rope and a long drop, for all he’s done!”

  “Naw, do his kept boy first, for them Anniston twins, an’ Meester’s cousin. An’ make Rook watch!”

  Love ignored these hecklers, keeping his gaze on Rook. “On the proposition a man’s best-known by the company he keeps, perhaps. And since yours is that of a she-he thing who flaunts his unnatural proclivities as a martial banner . . .”

  Chess spat once more, bloodying the toe of Love’s boot. “She-he? You give me back my guns, Bible-thumper, we’ll see who wears the damn skirts — ”

  Rook didn’t bother looking ’round. “Hush up now, Chess, the Sheriff’s preachin’. Been a long time since I confabbed with a fellow Scripture student, and I mean to enjoy it.”

  “You’re going down Satan’s path,” Love said. “That much is clear.”

  “Uh huh. By robbin’ trains and boosting Railway payloads, or by letting Private Pargeter ride my dick?”

  Far too blunt for comfort, given circumstances. Rook saw Love purple right to his ear-tips, then avoid looking over to where a statuesque blonde woman with a beauty mark set just off-centre on her high, smooth forehead was suddenly all caught up fussing over her swaddled baby, which already had a hint of Love’s nose, along with the very beginnings of his wayward hair.

  “I’ll thank you to stay civil, if we’re going to settle this dispute like gentlemen,” Love said, at last, savagely quiet.

  Rook just smiled. “So you put my behaviour down to influence,” he said, “rather than free will; frankly, I don’t know whether to be flattered, or insulted. Layin’ my liaison with Chess aside, though — you told the papers what you objected to most was me quotin’ God’s word for the Devil’s purposes. But we both know no Christian performing miracles through gospel does it by Satan’s power. Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us.’”

  “Mark nine, thirty-eight to forty — which makes you a Continuationalist, Mister Rook? Tongues and prophecy will only cease when Jesus returns?” Leaning closer, at Rook’s nod: “Yet ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are as ravening wolves . . . A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.’ And ‘Every tree that does not bear good fruit is to be cut down and thrown into the fire.’”

  “Matthew seven, fifteen to ninteen. A fine counter-argument, from the Cessationalist view — and son, that’s equal-fine load of pride you’re carryin’ there, even without the Good Book to back it up. Hell, it’s sorta lik
e lookin’ in a mirror, give or take the sodomy.”

  Again, cries rose up — and again, the wind Rook could barely recall summoning whipped up along with it, cutting Love, Rook and Chess out in a wedge from the rest of Bewelcome’s herd, then circling tightly ’round them, on endless patrol. Love’s woman ducked under Tree-trunk’s arm, wrapping her baby closer, while those few congregationalists who tried pulling their pastor free of his dimly rotating cocoon got their fingers well-sanded, for their troubles.

  “Where’re the rest of your men, Mister Rook?” Love asked him, the noise alone enough to render their conversation extra-intimate.

  “Not too far. One or two might already have beads on that wife of yours.”

  “Then this should probably be kept between you and me, wouldn’t you say?”

  “As ‘gentlemen’?” Rook gave out a true belly-laugh, at the idea. “Sheriff, you don’t have one touch of hexation in you, or I’d’ve smelled it by now. We tangle, I’ll crush you like an egg.”

  “You’re forgetting — these folk are in my charge, as minister for this town, which makes it up to me to defend them. ’Sides which . . . I have the Lord, on my side.”

  “Uh huh. Well, you’re young still — but in matters of answered prayers, I think you’ll find God most often has nothin’ much of import to say back, savin’ the occasional ‘I told you so.’”

  Love studied Rook, almost sympathetically.

  “He does to me,” was all he said.

  Rook sighed. To Chess: “Step back, darlin’.”

  Chess looked mutinous, but did it.

  “At least throw me your guns,” he complained. “Ain’t like you need ’em!”

  Rook did.

  He turned to face Mesach Love head on, both hands rising to assume an arcane, unlearned posture — entirely intuited, each individual finger snake-crooked to spit, or strike. Only to realize Love was already doing something similar, in reply — hands first tented to bless, then canted forelong so he could sight at Rook over his own linked thumbs, a two-fisted shooting stance with no bullets behind it but those faith alone might supply.