And the Pinks, all thirty or so, howled rage that turned swiftly to terror as waves of salt—liquid-flexible yet still stone-hard, and heavy—came flowing up their boots and legs, encasing them ’til only their fear-maddened faces remained free. Then put forth yet another delicate membrane at Love’s command, and sealed over the men’s mouths, silencing them.
“There,” the Sheriff said. “That’s better.”
Between the paralyzed Pinks and Chess’s fellow travellers, three mighty columns reached high, then bent over, ends splintering to a dozen sharpened points—each of which bore down on a different target: Pinkerton, Songbird, even Asbury, now gone a truly sick-looking grey.
“You will not interfere with my appointed retribution,” Love stated. “Your men have no power over me, and your allies, Mister Pinkerton . . . like yourself . . . stink of hexation, as the Devil breathes sulphur. Whereas I have divinity at my back. So here’s the choice, plain and simple: let Pargeter and me settle this, and live—or interfere, and face God’s judgement.”
Songbird said, “A god, yes. But which one?”
Love’s face tightened in a snarl. Perhaps only by contrast, he looked strangely more human than Chess had seen him, since—well, before.
“Any that’ll answer,” he ground out, eyes roaming from figure to motionless figure. A faint skitter of powdered salt blew harsh over the granulated crystalline ground. “This is my place. I raised this town. My people, my wife, my boy stolen from me, hand over fist—” His ash-and-grit voice almost broke, but not quite. “If such reckless injury was wrought upon Union Pacific, would you do less? No. So I will have full measure. I will have what I am owed.”
In front of him, the air shimmered. For a moment, Chess almost feared he was crying, and felt aghast—but no. It was more as though Chess could see time itself peel back, by five years, by ten. The town it had been, unpolished, but reared with dedication; Love and his woman Sophy, hugely gravid, laughing over their work; the empty plain of grey-green scrub and grass, waiting for Love’s arrival. And then . . . something else again, incomprehensibly old, a wild moonscape of shale and sandstone that knew no human footfall at all roared softly with a phantom slosh and moan, melting wax-cylinder imprint captured from the memory of some aeons-gone sea.
Over and above one another the images wildly slid like shuffled cards, the heart of this gutted place anchoring everything to its dead centre. Past overlaid present in bare, dark-on-dark fragments, atavistic shadows reared up behind muslin hung to dry, lizards bigger than grizzly bears that jostled and snapped at each other, with nothing on what passed for their minds but kill-or-be-killed carnage.
It was this place, itself. This place had always been weak, a sore in the world’s hide that never wholly healed, only broke open again and again beneath time’s ceaseless friction. The crack through which both light and darkness seeped in.
As Love turned to face him, Chess wondered whether the Sheriff had chosen it for that same weakness—knowing he heard his God so much clearer here, yet never thinking to ask why.
Or maybe it’d just been Goddamned shitty bad luck.
The laughter which exploded out of him caught even Chess by surprise, stopping Love flat in his tracks. Even Songbird frowned.
“Silence!” But Love’s cry was too cracked for real power, his clenched fists impotent. “You will not make a jest of this! His Judgement—” As Chess drowned him out with another helpless squall, the man’s bloodless face looked fit to explode. “STOP that!” he screamed.
“Muh . . . make me, ya fuckin’ puppet.” Chess had to brace his hands on his knees, whooping deep gasps. “Still think you’re some kind’a holy vessel? God’s Left Hand? Only if his Right don’t know what you’re doin’!” Eyes swimming, he forced himself to straighten. “You want payback, then take it in your own name, and spare me the God-botheration. Hell—” He grinned, and Love visibly recoiled. “I always figured whoever took me down, it’d be someone had good reason to be pissed—and you do, for sure. So just end it. Now.”
For half a second he thought Love might actually refuse.
The sheer unlikeliness of that idea turned to laughter once more—an uncontrollable gout of it—and Love’s expression changed, accordingly. The need to be morally in the right was gone. Only the need to hurt remained.
Chess watched with an almost euphoric detachment as a fourth spear-headed limb of salt burst up out of the ground, circling to orient its razor-sharp tip upon him. Come on, you bastard, he mouthed, come on, come on—
NO.
Yancey’s warning struck him like a slap; he spun, and her eyes met his, as angry as Love’s had ever been. I haven’t hurt him how he merits, yet, she complained, lips unmoving. So if you won’t fight of your own choosing . . . I’ll damn well make you fight!
And with that, the reckless bitch sunk her teeth into her own wrist.
“Jesus!” Morrow yelled out, as blood welled up and spattered down, soaking swiftly into the salt-crust, and Chess felt the power explode back into him, hitting every internal pleasure point at once. Head thrown back, he was unable to prevent the sheer brutal ecstasy of sacrifice from swirling into him; he felt green light flare from his pores, reflecting off every salt-crystal, as Love’s spear broke apart like icing sugar. And the feeling only got better when Morrow snatched out his knife, cut his own palm open and wrapped it ’round Yancey’s wound, a flesh tourniquet.
Up on the train, Pinkerton’s eyes caught that same green glare and drank it in, his unwieldy coat going up like tinder; heavy wool was scorched by green fire, crumpling away from Pinkerton’s body like parchment. Eyes wide, Songbird spat some incomprehensible Chink oath and lofted herself even further, safe out of reach, power-halo cocooned. And Chess just stared, understanding at last what he’d sensed all along—why that feverish power bleeding off Morrow’s ex-boss had felt so familiar.
Because . . . it was his.
That last moment of the Tampico confrontation came back, daguerreotype-sharp: cross-drawing his empty guns and firing all the same, loaded at a blink with nothing but spellcraft, and driven by the same instinctive rage Bewelcome had fallen to. Breaks outta me and busts through you like the ball I made of it—Chess could almost see it happening—then dashes itself to pieces, same as any other ordnance, leaving a shred of itself behind in the furrow . . . a seed.
Taking the top off the Scotsman’s ear had birthed an unnatural, gangrenous infection in its wake, eating into body and mind alike: Chess’s magic, worming its way into Pinkerton first as something fought, then embraced. Hexation treated with hexation, breeding a taste for the same. Thus making this—disease of his the issue, come to term in a storm of pure man-witchery.
From that one moment had come all the lunacy that followed: paranoid mistrust of his own underlings; support for Asbury’s projects, from mass-produced Manifolds to this train itself, driven by hexes chained up like Roman galley slaves; the mad determination to destroy any obstacle in his path. The obsession which had brought him here, setting him on a collision course with Ash Rook, the Rainbow Lady, Hex City.
All my fault, Chess thought, and Christ, he was so tired of that not-so-simple truth. Just like every other Goddamn thing.
Pinkerton’s coat was gone, the collar concealing his face burnt away. What lay beneath was awfully familiar, in both senses.
Chess remembered his Ma, droning away—Oh, the drip’s bad enough, Christ knows, or them itchin’ bloody warts, but the Germ? The French Complaint? Might as well save up for a bullet an’ shoot yerself, do yerself a friggin’ favour. ’Cause that’s one case where the cure really ain’t worse than the disease, by ’alf.
Lion-faced, lips and nose all blurred together with sores, an inward-seeking pit that ruffled with each breath; his spit welled up silver, like Pinkerton had taken the mercury dose already. Ore cinnabar rimmed his single nostril, furled bat-snout
lips, the exposed top teeth. And those piggy little rogue-elephant eyes, so full of rheum and ire . . .
Asbury made the single most ridiculous sound Chess’d ever heard a grown man let fly, a squeak muffled behind both fists—all but threw himself back against the railing, as if trying to push his way right through it. Seeing his reaction, Songbird whirled in mid-air, red skirts belling, and though she made no sound, her shock showed equal-fierce: her shield-aura blazed up, too bright to look at. Morrow took a stumbling step backward, jaw similarly slack; this time, it was Yancey’s turn to support him. To knit her hand with his, and let their blood fall where it might.
“Boss . . .” Morrow rasped.
“This is what yuir comrade made of me, Edward.” Gluey decay permeated Pinkerton’s voice, yet it rang with good cheer, as though abandoning any attempt to still sound human was purest relief. He was bigger than he’d been, too, shirt all but buttonless, braces strained over swollen shoulders. “Dinna fret, though—it’s no’ nearly so unpleasant as it appears. I barely sleep; my perceptions are clearer, keener. And I’m strong now, Edward—so strong, it beggars belief!” Ham-hands closed on the ironwork railing before him, and tore it out of the caboose’s frame with a screeching snap. Contemptuously, he cast it down, then hopped out after it. With one fist, he smashed the base of the nearest salt-spear; it burst like cheap porcelain, gone to dust and powder in an instant.
Sort of behaviour’ll sure change your image of a man, no matter how “good” you reckon ’im, Chess mused, seeing how the salt-trapped Pinks’ eyes bulged, on finally glimpsing their leader in the altogether. Or maybe ’specially so, you were dumb enough to think that well of anybody, in the first damn place.
Love stepped forward. “Thought as much,” he spat. “You wish him kept alive because his Devil’s might sustains you; you crave it all, for yourself. By God, that shall not be!”
Pinkerton laughed, gooily. “I’ll concur with Mister Pargeter in one thing, Sheriff: God plays nae part in these proceedings. And so . . .”
Faster than Chess would have believed such a bloated, heavy thing could move, Pinkerton’s bunched fist swung at Love’s jaw—only to slap cold into Love’s upflung palm, and stop. Green lightning billowed, backlashing into Pinkerton, who roared in agony; surprise flattened his already truncated visage into something truly ludicrous. As Love clamped down with all five fingers, the salt that was his substance flowing halfway up Pinkerton’s arm, his opponent’s mass began to shrink, collapsing. In turn, Chess felt that awful pull in his own guts, as Love’s dead essence drank up the power of Ed’s and Yancey’s blood with greedy delight.
Instinct took control, prompting a near-fatal mistake: Chess flung out both his own hands, double gun-stance style, and spasmed as the power-drain’s ripping agony only redoubled. Love turned, slow as minerals forming—ground-salt rippling upwards along his body, coalescing into plates and spikes that sheathed him like whitish-grey slabs of armour, a lime-crusted stalagmite grown head-high in seconds—and smiled.
“Foolish,” he remarked, probably to both of ’em. “Yet not unexpected.”
This loss of contact seemed to snap their link; the lightning died, and Pinkerton dropped back onto his ass with a grunt. Chess buckled to all fours, gasping for breath. At once, every ounce of strength was gone from his limbs; it took all the effort he could manage to keep from simply falling flat on his face. He felt the ponderous, trudging steps as Love came closer, ’til two encrusted boots finally placed themselves before him. Even as he watched, their salt and the ground’s flowed into each other, eddying back and forth.
If there was any sympathy at all in Love’s dead voice, Chess was deaf to it. “Here is your sin, Pargeter—all around you. Bitter shall be your portion.”
Those too-long fingers passed over Chess’s face, stroking scratchily along his lips. A sting struck his tongue, and suddenly he was heaving so hard he couldn’t breathe. Black and stinking blood, sparkling with tiny crystals, splashed over the ground in a foul flood, hollowing him out. He spewed and spewed, vision darkening.
It felt like another tornado, suction-rush tearing strength out of Yancey in hot spurts, each surge of weakness matching one of Chess’s. No sense to it, especially since the ragged bite she’d taken out of her wrist was already closing over, not losing near enough blood to provoke such a sense of shock. But this could never be about mere flesh; it was something in the place, working against her, sucking at her like a sink-hole. A quicksand of salt.
She was on her knees before she knew it, fighting not to get up but to keep from keeling over, tongue ragged, tasting blood. So cold. Not in front of Love, she prayed. Don’t go letting him see you falter.
And then Ed Morrow’s strong arm encircled her, warming her, if only for a second. He bent close, contorted face all a-blur, though she couldn’t tell if the water was in her eyes, or his. “Yancey, honey,” he whispered, “you gotta cut free of this, please.”
She shook her head, waved a feeble hand at the knot of monsters triangulated upon each other, kitty-corner at all angles of Bewelcome’s disaster-emptied main square. “’M . . . part of it, like them . . . all together. Linked.” So clear to her now, the warp and woof strung between all three men: power, immediate and inevitable. A literally fatal web. “So maybe this’s . . . s’posed to happen.”
“Not you.” It came through grit teeth. “Goddamnit, not you, too!”
“Let it ride, Mister Morrow,” said Love, of all people, only his face still showing semi-human through a wealth of salten plate; he tossed his head at Chess, like he still had even one pigtail worth flapping. “She chose her end, by standing with this monster. It’s time for you to walk away.”
Morrow said nothing; his face didn’t even change. But Yancey felt his decision, a punch to the heart—tried to grab at his arm, but slipped her purchase. At the same time, Morrow’s knife slashed down, twice over: once to rip the sleeve, once to lay open the big vein in the forearm. More blood, steaming fresh, to water this unholy ground.
And what crop might yet grow, thus irrigated?
He raised his voice, then, too—and Yancey knew she must be close to crossing over some final threshold, because it seemed she could hear other words beneath his, not even in English. Yet clear enough, for all that . . . clearer by far than the tumult gathering ’round her, massive swirl and grind of some salt-sandstorm looming up between sky and ground, blocking the sun so it shrank pinhole-dim.
“Nomatca nehuatl, ni Quetzalcoatl,
(I myself, I, Quetzalcoatl,
niMatl / ca nehuatl niYaotl,
I, the Hand / indeed I, the Warrior,
niMoquequeloatzin—atle ipan nitlamati . . . .”
I, the Mocker—I respect nothing. . . .)
“Tla xihualhuian, tlamacazque!—
(Come forth, spirits!—
tonatiuh iquizayan, tonatiuh icalaquiyan . . . .”
from the sunset, from the sunrise. . . .)
“in ixquichca nemi
(anywhere you dwell
in yolli / in patlantinemi . . . .”
as animals / as birds. . . .)
“in ic nauhcan
(from the four directions
niquintzatzilia ic axcan yez . . . .”
I call you to my grip. . . .)
“tla xihuallauh, Ce-Tecpatl,
(come forth, knife,
tezzohuaz titlapallohuaz—”
to be stained with blood—)
“Tla xihuallah.
(Come forth.
Tlatecuin.”
Cross my path.)
Without wondering how, she knew the words were pouring into Ed from elsewhere, and that he did not care. She felt the land beneath the salt rouse to Ed’s sacrifice with ten times the strength it had for hers—unsurprising, really; she’d spilled blood for spite and fury, to drive Chess into battle, while Ed’s had been for love and grief, out of a determination to save lives.
(Balance, granddaughter.)
The ground quaked, juddering them both painfully. Dull reports echoed, crack of dry ground, stone fracturing, snapping. With crashes like dropped clay pots, the salt cells binding the Pinkerton agents broke; to a man, they bolted, shouting as they fled.
A wall of green thrust up, vine and Weed-tangle slamming through the valley’s topsoil. It blossomed in a perfect circle, tendrils twining frantically inward but unable to cross the salt-lip, straining to reach Chess ’til its overspill latched onto Pinkerton’s hex-train—probably the largest other source handy—and began drawing fiercely on its power. It swarmed monkey-quick over the carriages, kicking up sparks and bursts of lightning like a firework show gone all askew. The train shuddered and crunched down, its enchantment-driven wheels suddenly gone the way of all spells.
All dignity forfeit, Asbury screamed like a colicky baby. In turn, Songbird let loose with a furious kettle-shriek, terror only thinly overlaid with anger. The force-grown crackle of leaves nearly drowned the Weed-flowers’ chitter, a flock of maddened birds intent on devouring whatever might be unlucky enough to lie in its path.
Yancey felt Morrow pushing harder, pouring all of his determination to save her—and Chess—into the sacrifice. The potency at work painted everything in ghost-shapes; all she could do was knit her grip with Ed’s and haul all the harder, throwing a last whisper of thought Chess’s way: God damn you, you irritating little man, get up.
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