A Rope of Thorns

by Gemma Files

  “Just can’t trust them Union types,” Chess observed, audibly disinterested.

  “I s’pose so. Here’s your whiskey.”

  Morrow tipped his hat, but Chess waved his away: “Not for me; you know what I like.”

  “Uh huh, ’course,” Joe stammered. “Just . . . we ain’t got no absinthe on the premises; that stuff is awful expensive, and we ain’t had the trade to merit it.”

  “Sure you do, Joe. Go look.”

  And there it was, right to hand, when Joe bent down behind the bar to feel for it with shaking fingers: a smallish bottle, green as any blowfly’s back. He went to hand it over, then jumped a foot when it skittered ’cross the bar-top, leapt into the air, and slapped right into Chess’s waiting palm. The cork popped out with a dead man’s hand trigger-click, falling to roll, stickily, against the toe-cap of Chess’s right boot.

  Joe looked like Morrow felt, to see it. Even the Rev in his heyday had never spilled power ’round with such casual aplomb, wasting it on absolute nothings, for the mere pleasure of seeing how such a spectacle disturbed the non-hexacious.

  Chess gave the bottle a pull, then licked his lips, pink cat-tongue faintly green-tinged. “Well, I’m for bed,” he announced. “Best room’s still at the top of the stairs, ain’t it?”

  “. . . yes.” Joe gulped. “I could, uh . . . clear it out. . . .”

  “Oh, don’t bother yourself.” Raising his voice, ever so slightly: “Reckon whoever’s in there’s probably heard I’m here, by now—and if they don’t got the sense to be gone by the time I’m at their door, I somehow misdoubt they would’ve been smart enough to cover their bill; good riddance to bad rubbish, is what I say.”

  Up above, a great thump and scuttle, followed by the smash of a window wouldn’t open fast enough; Joe almost winced to hear it, now white to the very lips.

  “Sure that’s so,” he said, finally. “Mister Pargeter.”

  No call to scare the poor bastard like that, Morrow thought. It was an ill deed, unworthy of the Chess he thought he’d come to know, since Mictlan-Xibalba’s toils. And when Chess’s eyes swung his way, Morrow met his gaze full-on, refusing to call the words back. Adding in on top, as he did: And let’s see what you want to do about it, exactly, if makin’ yourself a fearful object’s so all-fired important to you right this very minute.

  “Nothing” was the answer, apparently. Instead, Chess simply swung away and mounted those steps, bottle drooping from one hand, the other perched on his opposite gun-butt—so characteristic a pose it brought a moment’s salt sting to Morrow’s nose, throat clamping down hard in memory of the man Chess had once been, rather than the creature he’d become.

  At his elbow, Yancey said, quietly: “He keeps splashing it out on every little thing takes his fancy, he’ll run through the rest of that power we bled into him back in the Hoard pretty quick—don’t you think, Mister Morrow?”

  “But he’d still be a hex, wouldn’t he?” Geyer asked. “So perhaps the point is moot.”

  “Still be Chess, either way,” Morrow agreed, slugging back his whiskey in one fiery swallow, and struggling not to cough his guts out. “Which is . . . no small thing, in itself.”

  Yancey ignored the glass Joe’d laid in front of her, watching Geyer take a far more moderate sip from his. Then, waiting ’til he’d drunk it down, she said:

  “I believe it’s past time for you to explain yourself, Mister ‘Grey.’”

  The man squared his shoulders, as though preparing himself to step face-on into a high, cold wind. He took a breath, and began.

  “You have to understand, Ed, Miz—Mister Colder—”

  “Kloves,” Yancey reminded him. Thinking: You were at the wedding, after all.

  “—by the War’s end, for those of us who’d watched him work, Allan Pinkerton was a mythic figure—a second Odysseus using guile in the best of causes, managing to winkle a good portion of the Union in Horse-wise through the Confederacy’s Trojan gates, even while the rest of the matter was decided on a battlefield basis. That’s why I signed up with the Agency afterwards . . . why most of us did, I believe.”

  Morrow nodded slightly in agreement, possibly not even realizing he did so.

  “When Mister Pinkerton went on the move, I stayed behind in Chicago, on Agency business,” Geyer continued. “Not hex-related, in the main. The methodical centralization and science of crime as applies to all cases, that was our credo, which served us well indeed, since few of the magically inclined who take to crime wreak much more damage than the normal run of criminal. What they do is impressive, yes, but never let it be forgot: they cannot conspire. That, in itself, cuts their efficaciousness down substantially.”

  “And then?”

  Geyer hesitated, as though still bound by the loyalties he was working hard to shuck.

  “Professor Asbury, I reckon,” Morrow said. “That would be where things began to change. Am I right, Frank?”

  “You are.”

  This Professor, Geyer haltingly explained—not a bad man in his way, yet terribly single-minded—had been studying matters hexological at an Eastern university. He aimed to create a system of quantification which would allow him to distinguish the potentially hexacious before they came to full flower, and thus perhaps win them to the orderly side of things—create a matrix of nurture which would train them to accept mere human guidance, then set them as watchdogs upon their own kind. To use their natural hungers as a culling agent, in other words.

  “Like cats on rats,” Yancey mused. “Or . . . no, too dissimilar—dogs on coyotes.”

  Geyer shrugged. “If the dogs could pull fire from the air, or the coyotes bring inanimate objects to life and set them fighting amongst each other, then . . . I suppose so. It’s all somewhat beyond my ken, Miss—ter, me being but a humble ’tec. So while I won’t allow myself surprised to learn of Ed’s mission after the fact—how Asbury and Mister Pinkerton set him to infiltrate Reverend Rook’s gang, so’s he might take Rook’s temperature with that ‘Manifest’ of theirs—”

  “Manifold, they called it; Asbury’s Manifold.”

  “Thank you, Ed. It did surprise me, however—once reports began to filter up from Mexico, in the wake of that particular tangle—to receive a secret summons calling me into Mister Pinkerton’s presence. I took an express train to meet him outside of El Paso, then hopped tracks and transferred to his private railcar, the one he often conducts business from.”

  “I know it.”

  “Have you set foot there lately, though? Changed, Ed—terribly so.” A shadow hollowed out Geyer’s face. “Much like the man himself.”

  Oh, enough, Yancey decided, abruptly; no matter how dear it cost Geyer to break his silence’s sworn bonds, she’d no more patience for this waffling. I need to understand this now, without annotation. So she shut her eyes, bolted the whiskey, laid but a fingertip on Geyer’s wrist, and—opened herself, wide.

  (See it all, then, granddaughter. As he did.)

  Yes, Yancey breathed back to that never-too-far phantom instructor, as the saloon’s ruckus slowed to a drone—the very pocket of time she sat in popping forth like a cog, and slipping between ticks of the Pinkerton’s pocket-watch, an oiled key in a sprung lock.

  And then, with truly frightening ease, she was there, abruptly. As him.

  Male from head to toe, the centre of her gravity abruptly upward-shifted, and baking in the railcar’s too-close air; she felt sweat drip down the runnel of “her” spine, soaking a patch at the waistband of “her” trousers so vehemently, she could only hope “her” belt was wide enough to cover it. The place was kitted out with all sorts of unfamiliar fripperies, reeking of ether and alcohol over not-faint-enough blood-stink, same as any more immobile sickroom. Chinese lacquer screens set up everywhere narrowed perspective ’til the fine gas sconces themselves seemed scarlet-tinged, while velveteen-print paper muffled the rhythmic clatter vibrating up through the floor, and unseen vistas rolling by outside the curtained windows played l
ight off shade in ever-changing patterns.

  Three figures occupied what space was left open, besides Geyer himself. A mild-faced old man with wandering eyes—Asbury, presumably; a frail girl wrapped in stiff brocade propped on a throne-chair twice her size, her half-blind porcelain face a malign doll’s, veiled under the same deep red as her shot-silk draperies—Songbird, they call her, the voice put in, little caged queen, maimed and poison-full since birth.

  And there in the back, someone Geyer knew well enough his heart leapt to greet him, for all he no longer looked a bit like his old self: Mister Allan Pinkerton, first of all Agents, looming massive even in repose, the ill effects of too much good food and too little activity swelling his already large form to cartoonish proportions.

  A veritable twin for those infamous lithographs of Tweed, “she” thought, without recognizing whose face passed through Geyer’s mind, all bloat. My good God, boss—how could you ruin yourself this way?

  Even as the idea formed, however, it was derailed, horrifically. Pinkerton moved forward into what passed for the light, allowing “her” to see what now passed for his face.

  “I’m main glad ye could come, Frank,” this object said, its voice one thunderous beehive snore—Scots accent rendered parodic, r’s rolling like cannonballs. “Yuir rate of travel did ye no damage, I trust?”

  Geyer swallowed his shock, with a dry click.

  “No sir,” he said. “Haven’t been out of Chi-Town for some time now, as you know. It was . . . restful.”

  The gaping tear laying Pinkerton’s jawbone almost open showed a high, wet rim of teeth through his cheek’s fine-flayed meat, a fascinatingly awful image. Was it creeping from his lip’s furled, necrotic sneer, or toward it? And that knot of sickness pulsing at its apex, half bruise, half tumour—had that once been his ear?

  “Ye’ll wonder how I manage tae keep mysel’ shaved, I suppose,” Pinkerton said, noting Geyer’s attempt to not react with dry humour. “Well . . . no’ very well at all, as ye can see.”

  Yancey felt something hot on “her” own face—more sweat, if she were feeling kindly. Or simply an understandable response to the startling notion that Pinkerton’s unkempt tangle of mutton-chops, beard and moustache might hide further damage still.

  “What happened?” Geyer asked, at last.

  To which Songbird gave a vicious little smile, and replied, “Chess Pargeter happened. Did he not, Mister Pinkerton?”

  “Shut your foul mouth, ye Chink-eyed hooer,” Pinkerton ordered her, without rancour.

  Doctor Asbury shuddered, hastening to try and mediate. “Miss Songbird, Mister Pinkerton—please! A modicum of sympathy might be accounted an amiable gesture, between allies.”

  Songbird snorted. “He deserves none.”

  “Don’t I, madam? That wretched invert shot me in my face—”

  “As you all but dared him to. Call yourself a general? You are unfit, on every level.”

  As if conjured, a gun appeared in Pinkerton’s hand (probably dropped from a spring-loaded sleeve-rig; Geyer had seen such back in Chicago, amongst the gambling set). “It’s a prerogative of generals,” he rasped, “to execute traitors—or incompetents. Was your witchery simply too feeble to match Pargeter’s, or did ye let him loose on me a-purpose?” To Songbird’s disdainful raised eyebrow: “Oh, I’ve seen ye stop shots before. But bear in mind my . . . condition—and the rate of Dr. Asbury’s progress. Are ye so sure we’ve no surprises for ye?”

  Songbird sniffed. “Mechanical niou-se,” she replied, dismissively. “My arts are not to be encompassed by such trifles. You may test his tricks against mine, at your convenience.”

  Geyer cleared his throat. “Gents, lady—this all strikes me a mite counterproductive. Surely, Pargeter’s threat enough we should probably deal with him first before settling private scores, let alone moving on to Reverend Rook and his . . . whatever she is, after.”

  A moment passed, and Pinkerton re-holstered; Songbird looked away, petulant rather than angry, danger dissipated, leaving Asbury to cast Geyer a grateful look.

  “This ‘Weed’ the dispatches tell of,” Geyer asked him. “Some natural plant augmented, pure hexation only, some hybrid of the two? And how does it play out, exactly, in this game?”

  Flipping his black-covered notebook open, Asbury showed Geyer a sample stuck beneath waxed paper: dried reddish-brown oval leaves and long trumpet-shaped flowers affixed to a corded vine, the whole gone a green-beige colour, like mouldy parchment.

  “As it manifests within Mister Pargeter’s vicinity,” Asbury began, “the Weed appears a heavily mutant version of Datura inoxia, a species of the family Solanaceae—known locally as thorn-apple, moonflower, Indian-root, nacazcul, toloatzin, or tolguache, and so on.” He used a cunning little pair of tongs to pluck one leaf from the page, holding it up so the hair-like tendrils covering it, fine as down, shone in a greyish halo.

  “In its natural state,” Asbury continued, “it contains a number of powerful hallucinogens, explaining the near-universal reports of visions on encounter of its hexaciously altered form; many savage tribes used this plant to engender religious deliriums, in order to enter their so-called ‘spirit realm.’” Asbury replaced the leaf once more, disquietingly careful. “Expert herbalistic skill was required to ensure safe dosage, since its variable potency easily induces coma, or even death. But the Red Weed itself has not directly killed anyone, that we can verify—neither through exposure, nor even ingestion.”

  Songbird made a sound in her throat, possibly risible, or merely exasperated. “As always, gweilo, you study much to say little. We workers know that plant for what it is: a casting line fishing for deeper prey, death for any of our kind to remain within its reach too long.”

  Asbury inclined his head, stiffly. “Miss Songbird is correct, of course,” he admitted. “The hexacious do seem mortally vulnerable to the Weed, given sufficient proximity. Which is due, I believe, to its secondary aspect—the fact that it serves as a power collector, and transmitter channel, for Mister Pargeter’s own magical energies. Consider a spiderweb, spun naturally wherever the spider comes to rest, by which it traps the insects it feeds on. After enough time—and larder stock—such webs may achieve a density that changes their environs. For Mister Pargeter, I believe the Weed serves this same function: a manifestation of his magic, evoking and altering this plant into a medium of transmogrification.”

  “Transmogrification . . . change?” repeated Geyer.

  “In the land itself, Agent Geyer. Fed by spilled blood, as tradition commanded the old Aztec and Mayan deities be reverenced, the Weed changes whatever area it covers—the natural soil and flora—renders them green and fertile, and transfers power into Pargeter as it does so. I speculate this confirms that the god-aspect bestowed upon Pargeter by his sacrificial ordeal is a fertility or “year-king” deity; from descriptions of the ritual itself, most likely the god named Xipe Totec—”

  It was Pinkerton’s turn to clear his throat, now; a sound both forceful and sickeningly liquid, as though something in his larynx were decaying. “What Asbury’s sayin’ is, Pargeter brings the Weed along with him, then makes sure it digs in deep. He’s changin’ Arizona and parts adjacent to something else entirely—and soon, we’ll have no chance of stoppin’ him.”

  Ducking down, Asbury unrolled a map of the southwestern States. Across the southern part of Arizona, spilling over the nexus where it met New Mexico and Old Mexico beyond, clouds of red ink dots were scattered, while dates written nearby confirmed a rough schedule.

  “Self-evidently, the Weed follows Mister Pargeter’s route northwest-ward, after his Tampico escape,” he pointed out. “Yet in addition to Pargeter’s clear line of travel, Weed also manifests spontaneously—as far north as Utah, by some reports, as well as in Nevada and California. And despite Arizona bearing the heaviest concentration, one area remains curiously untouched.” With his thumb, he touched a circle in the state’s northern territory, surrounded by red on all sides; Gey
er knew it at once, even done to scale.

  “Hex City.”

  “New Aztectlan, they call it,” Asbury corrected. “Several miles from the township of Bewelcome, thaumaturgically destroyed by Reverend Rook in ’65—a devastation enhanced by Pargeter’s own incipient manifestation. Whether as an after-effect of that destruction or not, the Weed appears incapable of manifesting on Bewelcomite soil; samples brought there desiccate in minutes.”

  “Samples? You’ve more of it, then?” said Geyer. Asbury nodded. “Alive?”

  This brought an unusually long hesitation. “As it can be,” he said, eventually. “Datura nacazcul appears sustained by human blood alone, which limits our ability to raise it. But it has proven valuable nonetheless—since, as a hex-engendered species, it has a certain capacity to treat certain . . . conditions.”

  “Mine, he means,” Pinkerton explained, without equivocation. “We make tinctures of it; helps keep this God-cursed affliction at bay, to a degree. Ye can smoke it as well, though like wi’ the Indians, getting the right dosage’s devilish difficult.” His wounded face spasmed, eyes gone oddly dead. “Turn the De’il’s spawn against the De’il, and God will laugh outright.”

  Yancey felt Geyer’s dismay and fright bone-deep, though she knew his face would’ve no more moved than Morrow’s, under similar circumstances—and abruptly, she pitied them both. To never feel free to give way, vent one’s worst feelings to the wind . . . she couldn’t imagine it, living that way.

  Chess Pargeter and I have that in common, at least, she thought.

  “Thiel,” said Pinkerton, abruptly. “I told you in my missive, Frank, Thiel is . . . unreliable. Hence your summons.”

  “Sir, that simply cannot be true. I’ve known George Thiel for years; if there were any man less likely to betray—”

  But Asbury, one hand lifted as if to shade his face against the light, was shaking his head in tiny, frantic movements behind its shelter. Songbird only looked amused.

  Pinkerton put one fist down on the table and left it there, no further emphasis needed. “Yuir loyalty does you credit, Frank, but I’ve sources of information you don’t. Leave it at that, and be content.” Adding, to Geyer’s open mouth: “Now is the time for orders, not talk. Will you obey, or no’?”