The Hexslinger Omnibus

by A Book of Tongues; A Rope of Thorns; Tree of Bones; Hexmas; Like a Bowl of Fire; In Scarlet Town (Today) (epub)

  Pinkerton’s brows drew together, beetling. “Ye know . . .” he began, calmly enough, “one thing I’m gettin’ main sick of, these days, is the sound of Chink and Injuns frails callin’ me fool.”

  His hands drifted together, all but met, conjuring an even stronger reaction: a minor conflagration, hot enough to make all the non-hexacious step back a tad, dancing between both palms like some captured djinn. But Yiska merely sneered.

  “Hear me,” she said, raising her voice slightly—not even deigning to address Pinkerton directly, but rather her band, who grunted and clicked their tongues in appreciation. “It is as Red Cloud of the Oglala spoke: We have now to deal with another race—small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbours away. We cannot dwell side by side. My brothers, shall we submit, or shall we say to them: ‘First kill me, before you take possession of my lands.’”

  Pinkerton shook his head. “A pretty speech, indeed. But it’ll no’—”

  “Be quiet,” Yiska snapped, with such natural authority that almost all engaged parties did just that, at least for a second; she cocked an ear, listened hard, then laughed out loud, as though she had heard something she liked. “Hah, yes! The Spinner has not forsaken us, after all; she pulls her threads, shaking the web from sky to sky. This is far more like it.”

  “More like what, yeh daft squaw?” Pinkerton demanded, purple to his very hairline.

  Yiska gifted him with a smile like a wolf’s, all teeth.

  “Change,” she said, happily, throwing back her head. And howled.

  While, at the same time:

  This is a forked path, dead-speaker, Grandma’s spirit whispered, so low only Yancey might hope to hear. The fabric turns in my hands. Help me, so I may help you.

  Since your advice’s always been so good on the whole, thus far—that right? Yancey wanted to say, but merely shook her head, instead, drawing an odd look from Sophy Love. Given the drama currently playing out between poor Ed, Pinkerton, and the Diné woman, however, it was only a matter of time before the woman turned away again, distracted—allowing Yancey to ask, mentally:

  How?

  Let me come into this world once more, and act, for both of us. Lend me your witch’s strength, freely.

  I . . . my Ma said that wouldn’t be a bright idea, for either of us.

  And she was right, under most circumstances. Still—have you a better plan to offer?

  To hell with all hexes, alive or not, Yancey thought, hopeless—then, as Yiska’s howl split the sky, tightened her finger on the left-hand gun’s trigger, sending a bullet into the ground. It kicked up a distraction’s worth of noise and dust, scattering just enough of the crowd to cut her a clear path. She twitched her other barrel away from Sophy Love’s blank face, getting barely a blink in return for this last misguided spasm of mercy; annoying, but not so much so as to keep her around. Because for all these fools might be fixed to lynch her, she told herself, she really had come here to kill one man only, in the end. And now that that job was done with—she found she didn’t aim to kill more, no matter how much they might pique her. Not ’less she absolutely had to.

  Sprinting faster than she’d ever thought she could, Yancey barged past the men who held Morrow pinned, kicking one of them square to the back of the knee as she went and breaking his hold; from the corner of her eye she saw Morrow duck under the other’s wild haymaker swing, moving neatly sidelong to let him lay his own already wavering buddy out. The ensuing chaos sent Sophy Love scurrying back toward her husband’s body, one arm flung out as though to ward off further damage, the other keeping her baby shielded as best she could. Those near enough to see closed ranks around her, while the others joined the general tangle: Pinkerton and the Bewelcomers, Yiska and her braves, a swirl of sand and flying hooves, fresh gunfire blooming wild in her single shot’s wake.

  She was almost to Chess’s body, boot-soles already tacky with his blood. A length behind her was Morrow, whose eyes met hers on the back-glance, apparently trusting she had some plan in mind. That one look was sufficient to make him spin on his heel and take up a defensive position, unarmed but game, to block any comers.

  A good man. She could only hope he’d come out all right from this, whatever “this” might prove to be.

  Hope we both do, come to that.

  “Any time,” Yancey said, shutting her eyes; Indeed, Grandma replied. And she felt something pull at her, inside and out, with such force it made her want to scream, fall face-down, be violently ill ’til she passed out. Like the cosmos itself was treating her as its personal spool, winding everything she had and more out of her at once ’til she felt turned inside-out.

  And just like Ezekiel’s spinning wheel, their differing degrees of power rose to meet and mingle in the middle of the air.

  Morrow knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear anything over the ruckus Yiska and Yancey had kicked off; the Na’isha riders had responded to Yiska’s howl by breaking into yells of their own and sending their mounts into a wild, circling gallop around the flummoxed, infuriated Bewelcomers. For all Yiska’s threatening, he couldn’t help but notice that none of her followers seemed actually to be striking lethal blows—they kicked and slapped, whacking backsides, heads or shoulders with the butt-end of tomahawk or spear, but never drew more than a solid punch’s worth of blood.

  Meanwhile, the enraged Pinkerton began trying to lay Yiska out, to no very good effect, raw whiplash arcs of power slashing from his hands—but she, in turn, struck the hexation aside with swift slaps, shrugging it off as she danced her mount aside using only knees and thighs. Something like what Sheriff Love had done himself with Rook, Morrow supposed, right here in the fight that had first set everything in motion. For a moment he had a disorienting feeling of vast, slow-spinning circles coming back round to their starting points; a dreadful sense of futility and inexorability overwhelmed him.

  Then Yancey made one of the worst noises he’d ever heard, something that should by all rights have gone utterly missed in the chaos: a small blurt of breath, a whimpering grunt, that reminded Morrow of nothing so much as the surprised gasp of a man gut-stabbed—but far far worse, for being in Yancey’s clear voice. Even as he spun back round, rushing to catch her as she folded, he wondered crazily if he’d heard it with his ears at all. She was grave-pallid, face drawn tight as if in agony, though her eyes stared blindly and all sound but the faint gasps of her breath had stopped.

  Of themselves, his fingers moved, stroking a damp lock of hair back from her forehead . . .

  . . . and Yancey’s hand flashed up, seized his wrist with shocking strength. The world shifted as Yancey’s sight slammed into Morrow’s own brain, dizzying him. Without transition, there was another Injun woman standing before Yancey: a squat, white-haired old squaw with one hand extended toward the girl and the other pointing skywards, above the moiling crowd. From Yancey’s midsection, a glowing silver thread spun with flash-flood speed into the squaw’s hand, leapt to the other and then into the air, where it gathered in a swelling knot over the Bewelcomers’ heads. And beyond, off to one side, watching with looks respectively of remote, amused interest and drawn, battered grief—

  The Rev, by all that wasn’t holy. And his Rainbow bride, too.

  Morrow’s hand clenched tight on Yancey’s, memories backlashing down the link to her like a lightning-strike, and both of them instantly knew what must’ve happened to Chess during that lost moment of time, when it looked like Sheriff Love had him pinned. Some final confrontation with his ruiner and his transformer had driven Chess to make any choice at all, rather than allow more destruction—and from the grief on Rook�
��s face, perhaps it’d been the only choice that would truly hurt the other man. For whatever consolation that might be, now, to him . . . or them. Or anyone.

  That is as may be, soldier, said the squaw. But I have no time for lovers’ quarrels. I care only that Rook and his Anaye-wife be stopped, for good and all. Your dead-speaker girl has promised me her power to that end in return for Yiska’s aid. Interfere with me at your peril.

  “You’re killing her,” Morrow said.

  No, the girl is stronger than you know, and I have worked such medicine before. I know my arts. The squaw glanced up at the knot of light in the air, and nodded.

  She made the same snapping motion Morrow had seen Songbird do, as if breaking off a thread, and the silver strand of light parted in her hands. Yancey instantly drew in a massive, choking gasp, colour flooding back to her face; Morrow pulled her close, steadying her. Looking up, he saw the silver knot burst, lashing streaks of light out to a hundred different points.

  Wind whirled up, still refreshingly cool with the surge of new life, and spun into a circular wall of air and sound. With such instant speed and coordination that Morrow knew it had been prearranged, Yiska and her braves broke off, flooding away from the panicked Bewelcome crowd—and before Pinkerton, still a-rage with lightning, could give chase, the wall of wind had begun to fill second by second with flying shards of bone and tooth and stone.

  Around and around these spun, thickening, ’til the squaw yanked hard on the thread-end of silver light she still held. The wind shifted in a flash, fossil shards funnelling upwards into the air, then downwards onto her, covering her the same way a snuffer does a candle flame. In bare moments they had piled head-high, then twice that, boiling like stew-pot clay. And then they collapsed inward, locked solid—revealing a giant grey manlike figure, rough-hewn, dragon-toothed and clawed, which towered over the crowd, swaying slightly.

  More screams, total panic: Bewelcomers poured backwards, leaving only Pinkerton behind, who glared at this thing as though he found it personally offensive. The giant paid no attention to any of them. It turned, steps sledgehammer-ponderous, and aimed what vaguely resembled its face toward the twin figures of Ixchel and Reverend Rook. Lifting one three-fingered taloned hand, to point, it roared—Diné words instantly made clear to Morrow too, through Yancey’s interposition.

  “YOU! YOU WILL . . . BE . . . STOPPED.”

  Shit-fire, Morrow realized, that’s her in there. Hex-ghost riding a lizard-bone Merrimack, looking to pick a fight with a Goddamn god.

  Never could say you lacked for entertainment ’round these parts, could you? he found himself musing, grimly.

  In reply to the old lady’s challenge, meanwhile, Morrow saw something he’d genuinely never expected: a look of true shock, and real fear, on the face of Reverend Asher Rook. But Moon-Lady Ixchel simply threw back her head and laughed, inaudible at this distance—her mirth only redoubling as Pinkerton, exactly as frustrated as Love’d been by the prospect of being ignored, charged headlong at the giant thing, hurling blast after blast of hex-bolts, only to be sent flying a half-dozen yards with one backhanded slap.

  Morrow felt Yancey stir, and relaxed his hold, without releasing her entirely. This what you expected? he asked silently, link still vibrant-clear between them.

  Her own laughter, far gentler than the Lady’s, washed back over him like water, cold and sparkling. Stopped “expecting” anything a long time ago, Edward, she answered—and this time it was she who tightened her grasp in return, on him. Still and all, though, might be we should try to clear out of here, too . . . together, if you like.

  He caught his breath at the last words, whose meaning could not possibly be mistaken. And drew breath, intending to agree, out loud. . . .

  But before he could, a hand fell on his boot—small, strong, blue-tinged, gripping like a vise. He whipped round, just in time to see the “corpse” at both their feet gift them with a feral grin, eyes gone night-black, his every tooth an obsidian dagger.

  Morrow’s breath flew back out, so fast his throat felt raw.

  “Chess?” he managed.

  The thing shook its head, managing not even a bad imitation of humanity.

  “No more,” it replied.

  When Chess started to move again, Rook’s heart all but leapt haphazard in his chest, bruising it from inside. Yet the illusion was only momentary—and that terminal realization landed deep indeed, a barbed harpoon.

  No no no, that ain’t him at all, Goddamnit—

  Beside him, he felt Ixchel shake her head in sympathy, serpent-skirt set hissing. Indeed it is not, was all she said, mouth twisting like it was full of sour corpse-juice, puckered too fierce even to spit.

  The figure’s chest looked well-healed, like it’d never been rent at all, and the rest of him seemed similarly intact—spanking, horridly new: blood-red hair and beard, bright blue skin, eyes burning green, but with an iller light than any Rook had ever before seen, even in Chess’s most killing fits of passion. One that came from somewhere absolutely other.

  Both Yancey and Morrow were staring at him as well, apparently equally revolted, though Rook knew damn well that of the two, only the girl could possibly guess what she was looking at. Or . . . no, maybe not; they were joined at the hip and elsewhere, meaning her sight must be leaching into poor honest Ed through his skin, everywhere they touched.

  Which meant he knew exactly what she was saying when she blurted out, “Oh sweet Jesus, it’s . . .”

  Thrown bits of broke stone bells, landing like mines in all directions: each syllable was a blade, a club, a lit chunk of pitch. And even that gross vehicle Grandma’d fashioned for herself out of the thunder-lizards’ detritus, that stomping bone reliquary, had to stumble and shudder under the whole name’s dread weight.

  . . . Tezcatlipoca, Ixchel sighed in his ear, so close—so cold—her undead tongue crisped the skin of his lobe.

  Yes, sister.

  Those lips Rook’d once hung on, kissed and bit ’til they were sore as bruised fruit. The mouth that’d cursed him a hundred times over, first in jest, then deadly earnest. That skin, that face, that body—all of it Chess, Chess, and nothing like. A ghost-god’s puppet. A walking devastation.

  It turned its dead black eyes on him, now, and laughed at how he flinched.

  You yearn to break her hold on you, conquistador—regret your choices so sharply, back to the very beginning, that you might wish yourself hanged and rotten away to dusty bones, if only this one I wear still ran wild through the world. Yet here I am now, your lover reborn, to make all your dreams of freedom real . . . if you only break your oath to her and bow down to me, in her stead.

  Ixchel watched for his reaction, curiously incurious. And if his head-shake made her happy, he—in turn—did not care enough to want to know.

  “I might, at that,” he allowed, “you really were him. But you ain’t.”

  And here Ixchel laughed yet once more, icy-rippling as ever. You see, she told her Enemy, I chose well after all, when I made this man my mate . . . a traitor so far forsworn already he would never break faith again, at any price. Not even with me.

  One more smile greeted this proud assertion, dreadful as the rest. And yet—might that really be something else Rook saw underlying it, almost too dim to glimpse, the way even the dirtiest water still throws a reflection back?

  Perhaps, the Black Trickster replied, thoughtfully—crossed-bones king of Smoke and Mirrors alike, spreader of indiscriminate chaos. Then was gone, along with his blue-skinned Chess-body, completely as a rock dropped through the same stagnant pond-skin.

  “Nice to finally know what you really think of me, honey,” Rook told his awful wife, without rancour.

  To which she simply shrugged and snapped her fingers, summoning the chittering dragonfly swarm ’round them once more, and threw back: Am I to be jealous,
knowing you have preferred your little warrior from the start? We are king and queen, husband. Our business is to conquer, to build, to rule.

  “Won’t be doin’ much of any of that, he does what he said and lays his wrath down on us, like at . . . what was that place?”

  Tollan, City of Jade. They insulted him, and paid dearly for it.

  “Like Sodom and Gomorrah. Or . . . here, when me and Chess were through with it.”

  And look what has happened since. She wrapped him up, digging her bony chin into one collarbone’s curve, so sharp it was like she aimed to pierce him through. All wounds may be reversed, no matter how deep, if blood enough is shed to pay for it.

  “So you say, but here’s what I see: the only other one of yours in all creation you’ve managed to shake awake, coming to knock our gates down with both guns blazin’. How’s that anything but bad?”

  Oh, husband. You must learn to trust me, eventually.

  And before he could reply, she enshrouded him completely, flapping her hands—like bleached-blind bats—to flutter them both away.

  In the wake of such outright insanity, Yancey and Morrow clung fast together, too shook to move. But then, all of a sudden, Grandma’s suit was yelling something at Yiska—and before they could wonder what, with a yelp of acknowledgement, the Navajo-turned-Apache had already swooped in to grab Yancey up out of Morrow’s arms and boost her ’cross her saddle, then take off for the hills at full gallop, crew at her heels. It all transpired so damnable swift, Morrow couldn’t’ve hoped to draw a bead after any of ’em, even if he’d still had a gun to do it with—so he was left spot-rooted, howling after Yancey, as she went out of sight.

  “Hold on, girl, hold on! I’ll come for you, I swear on a stack of Bibles—I will find you, Goddamn it all to Goddamn fuckin’ hell—!”

  In the opposite direction, meanwhile, Songbird—still dazed from her ordeal—came to just in time for that lumbering dustpile to scoop her up, kicking poor Doc Asbury aside like trash, and go barrelling after Yiska and company; she was borne away likewise, weakly flailing. Soon, there was nothing left behind but tracks, the Chinee witch’s screams echoing away into the night.