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)

  Hank Fennig and his ladies, the full complement, which was surely bad enough, by any standards. But then there was that house-huge fifth figure — one Morrow hadn’t seen in almost half a year, but would recognize ’til the day he died, and maybe after. He went clad in black, a preacher’s frayed collar round his neck, and under that collar was a scar — the hanging rope’s kiss, his dreadful lady’s marriage token. Painful toll paid for his passage from faithless secesh preacher to hexslinger, outlaw, administrator supreme of all New Aztectlan.

  Yeah, that’s right. And now . . . now, we’re well and truly fucked.

  Morrow hauled Carver back upright, spitting mud, clapped him on the shoulder. “Get to Washford!” he bawled, over what he suspected were both their equally ringing ears. “Tell him the Rev is here, Private! Reverend Rook is here!”

  Carver’s eyes widened; he saluted, turned, and ran.

  Morrow swallowed, wishing with all his heart — disloyal as he knew the impulse was — that he could go with him.

  SEVEN DIALS: ONE

  This is where the Gods killed themselves, to make the sun and the moon come up.

  Chess remembered.

  His first time — down here below everything, where the blood-fed calabash bloomed and bone dust and black water mixed to breed a nightmare river of mud — he had stumbled through stinking water, naked in all senses of the word, goaded by pain inside and out.

  He remembered the Enemy peering down at him off that wall of skulls, white eyes crinkled in a pitch black face, amused by the dim, obsidian mirror image of Chess’s flayed agony, drawling —

  Ah . . . not sweet sister Ixchel’s ixiptla, after all. Who does that make you, then, little king? Little sweetmeat?

  And him, snapping back in turn through all-nerve lips, each word a fresh spray of red: Chess Pargeter, motherfucker; you really ought to’ve heard of me.

  That Hell was wet he’d known already, through hard experience. But not how dirty things could be when coal and other infernals were involved. The well-earned grime of a hard day’s ride was only dust and sweat sometimes cut with blood, half inconvenience, half seasoning. Here, all things bore a layer of ground-in scum, each touch leaving black smears; the walls ’emselves seemed dingy, porous, weeping grey.

  So Goddamn cold.

  Through the glass pane, so muck-crusted it looked like a rotting grave cloth stretched flat, he was still somehow able to see the looming column beyond. Crowned in sundials set shimmering in the constant soft downpour, its shadow reached out in every direction at once, like one of those blood-daubed stone images of Tezcatlipoca Chess had glimpsed before, in other visions.

  K’awil, “God K,” Night Wind, Possessor of the Sky and Earth, We Are His Slaves. He who in red, white, blue and black aspects fuels every part of the Machine. Red Xipe Totec with his nude eyes flaring, facing the east . . . blue Huitzilopochtli gathering lightning from the south, so bright he cannot be looked on directly . . . white Quetzalcoatl rising from the west like a feathered vision-serpent, drawing blood from his own penis to bring the last dead world’s bones back to life. . . .

  The steel hats heard how my brother refused human sacrifice, red boy, the Enemy’s voice told him, without warning. They thought to twin him with their White Christ, claiming him as proof that fate brought them to our shores. As though he did not already have a twin of his own! But then, they rarely kept quiet long enough to learn the truth of things, even when they claimed to be interested.

  Chess felt his empty hands flex and looked down, yearning for gun-butts to fill ’em, let alone a target to train ’em on. Couldn’t’ve known he’d drowned at least one of those other dead worlds himself, I guess, he thought back, and outta pique with you, no less. Or do I got it wrong? ’Cause, you know . . . when you tell me this shit, can’t say as how I’m always listenin’.

  No. But if such observations distract, then I will leave you here, red boy, to your own devices . . . all alone.

  And then there was only silence, once more.

  So now he sat ensconced in the snug of some particularly rancorous varmints’ drink-groggery — called the Clock-house, he’d been told — watching the human tide eddy past. All ’round him, stinking ghosts spat and fought and roistered, so many that Chess could see the bilge-water which passed for whiskey in the phantom glass he gripped tremble with their movements. They jabbered as they elbowed ’round each other, Limejuicer voices shapeless and hoarse as crow-caws, blank gazes never quite meeting.

  And all without a word thrown his way, staring right on through him, like he wasn’t even worth the hip-check needed to squeeze by.

  No Ed to keep him company down here, in his despond. No Rev. No widowed Yancey Kloves, even, that calm grey gaze of hers just a lid ill-set over a hate as hot as his own. Only Chess’s own limping thoughts, slow as freezing, while he sat and shivered amidst the throng, utterly unmarked on.

  Why can’t I feel Ash Rook, at least? Always could, before.

  Like an absence, a wound, that was all. A fallen God-botherer-shaped hole.

  ’Cause he thinks you’re dead, is why, something told him, shortly — not the Enemy, though equally unsympathetic. Maybe even grieves you, in his fashion. But clever as he is, he saw you die and somethin’ else rise up wearin’ you like a coat; knows it was all his fault, too, if he’s halfway honest with himself. That’s got to leave a mark.

  And everybody else?

  There damn well isn’t “anybody else” down here. Just you and the dead folks, and him, and — her.

  “Talkin’ to yourself again, I see,” “English” Oona Pargeter’s shade observed from where she sat, a few arms’ lengths past where his elbow rested — just beyond reach, yet far too close for comfort.

  “Yeah, well, might be I got friends you ain’t privy to, woman,” Chess shot back, “which’d be a sight more’n you could ever claim.” A grin, gap-toothed in her raddled face, was her only answer. “Ain’t you got some other place to be?”

  “From the look of fings, I’d guess not.”

  If he had one last straw left, this was it. Chess threw back his chair and shoved his way out onto the cobbled streets outside, where he couldn’t even muster sufficient dismay worth snarling again to find Oona already standing there in the rain, waiting for him.

  Fuckin’ perfect.

  You really ought to’ve heard of me, he remembered telling Tezcatlipoca, his first time in Hell. I mean, seein’ how you’re the Devil himself.

  And now that very phrase rang in his ears yet, mockingly, as proof of his own naive assumption that every bad thing in every bad place existing should surely be aware of him by name or reputation. Worst moment but one in Chess’s entire life and he’d been so certain he was still somebody’s nightmare, Goddamnit, a skeleton strung with lit nerves tearing ass through the underworld, undebatably bad and unrepentant with it, too. With a cocked gun fisted in either raw-meat-on-bone hand, ready to fire at will.

  But he’d been wrong about that in the end, like so much else.

  Ripping his own empty chest open in the name of self-sacrifice — or pissiness, more like — aside, he sure hadn’t ever expected to find himself here again, buried alive in one more dark place beneath the world’s skin. The Sunken Ball-Court, the Place of Dead Roads, and now — this crap-hole, named by his Ma as Seven Dials for the same teetery column they stood beneath, from which seven streets radiated, all alike in the awful unending dark. Just a din of muck and yammer cut with a cacophony of clanks a-boom in the middle distance, like faraway ordnance.

  Almost enough to make a man miss ’Frisco, Chess thought.

  “Gone, that is, in London true,” said Oona, staring up at those looming dials. “Long ’fore I drew a breath, let alone got big enough to — ”

  “ — screw your way clear?”

  “That’s right. Always did fink yerself a cut above, though, didn’t you? Too good for the likes of anyone else.”

  “Never claim
ed to be ‘good,’ woman, or anything like it.” Chess stuffed his hands inside his coat, trying futilely to warm them while wondering if the truly dead at least got to sleep; felt like he’d been up for days, maybe a week or even more. “Whatever I am, though, I know I’m a damn sight better than you.”

  “What, ’cause you was born wiv that piece ’twixt your legs?” And that note, that sneering scorn, going straight to his gut. Fifteen years fell away. “All you are, old son, is lucky. Only wish to Christ you ’ad been born a girl, so’s . . .”

  “So’s you’d know what best to charge, I expect,” Chess snarled.

  Only to watch her spit, and snarl back: “No. ’Cause then I could’ve made you suffer like I did, just like, and not no different. The exact bloody same.”

  “I suffered enough,” Chess said, turning his back. And strode on, boots clopping through the rain, with his spurs trailing a-scratch on the cobbles like a dead man’s fingernails.

  Though he might have walked for hours, the stones underfoot did not change, and every wall looked like its neighbour; even the ceaselessly moving crowds had nearly vanished. So when the dry voice came back into Chess’s mind, at last, he was lonesome enough that he didn’t even flinch.

  What do you plan to do now, red boy?

  Leave this damn place. Kick your damn ass.

  Laughter like a desert gust, sere and hot and swift.

  You appear to have your work cut out for you.

  Suck my dick, you spectral motherfuck.

  Chess took a corner at random, followed by another, and another — then abruptly found himself back in the sundial column’s square, meeting Oona’s eyes yet once more, and clenching both empty fists at her smirk.

  “Shouldn’t’ve given your irons away up top, you wanted t’stay armed,” she agreed, as if she could read his mind. “But then, you never could plan ahead for bollocks.”

  “Stay the hell outta my head, bitch. Got more’n enough company in here, without I add you to the mix.”

  A snort. “Ah, but ain’t nothin’ real but what you fink, down ’ere.” She jabbed a finger at his gun-poor belt. “Them guns of yours is gone ’cause out of mind, out of sight — and since you never gave nuffin’ away you still cared about, must be you don’t care no more, except for ’abit. But as for the rest . . . well, look at yourself.”

  Grudgingly, Chess checked himself in the same muddy window he’d given up trying to stare through, not all so long ago: red beard well-trimmed to the touch once more, clothes their usual tailored purple. Hell, even a number of his scars’d been pruned away, though the curlicue strand under his jawline Oona herself had given him was still there — and as his fingers traced it, the knots binding his rage began to give way.

  “Such a peacock, you are, same as you ever were. Such a gilded bloody prancer.” Oona clutched her shawl to herself, scowling. “And always the ’ardest done by, ain’t ya? Well, fink on this: bad as I was t’you, let alone myself, I never killed nobody.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” Chess pointed out.

  “Oh, I ain’t sayin’ that’s not true. But you, you’re the curse made flesh, little boy, ain’t ya? Everyfing you touch bleeds.”

  The knots burst. Chess screamed at her: “You think I don’t know it?”

  “I know you do. So what’s the remedy?”

  Woman, he yearned to snap, if I knew that . . .

  Before he could think of doing so, however, Oona’d already seized him by the coat, hands knit in his lapels. “All right, playtime’s over. You need to listen t’me now, you great whingin’ molly — ”

  “Fuck I do!”

  “ — shut the ’ell up!” She slapped him, hard enough to shock; from the tone of her hiss it’d hurt her as well, but Chess barely noticed. Her screaming face pressed huge ’gainst his, plus the sting of flesh on flesh — how could it still terrify him? Chess Pargeter, killer of hundreds, hex and god alike?

  “Ain’t but one way t’leave any place you comes into feet-first, boyo,” she continued, unheeding, “an’ you ain’t doin’ that wivout me. Look at these last few years on your own go-by, and just try an’ tell me different. Every choice you got ’anded you made a dog’s breakfast of. What makes you fink findin’ ’ell’s back door’ll go any better?”

  Chess moistened his lips. “Difference is,” he managed, at last, “this time, if nothing else — I can sure as hell shut you up.”

  “Sonny boy, I’d like to see you try.”

  No you don’t see, bitch, Chess thought. But you Goddamn will.

  “All right,” he said, out loud. And threw his hand up, palm out, same way he’d done at least a score of times since Rook had made him something more than human, flinging open the floodgates to rain down a tide of greenish-red Flayed Lord power ’pon her.

  Nothing happened.

  Chess’s gut froze, skin crawling agonizingly, as if bracing itself to be stripped away once more.

  “See?” Oona whispered. “No guns. No witch-tricks. Not even a bloody knife left over, wiv a blade the exact size o’ your Johnson.” Leaning close in, to put her wormy lips right beside his ear: “Just gotta do fings up close ’n’ personal now, and take your chances, like the rest us. But that’s a gamble you ain’t ’ad t’risk in some long time . . . and if you can’t kill no more, then you’re nuffin’.”

  “Might be I don’t need to kill you, just to stop your damn tongue.”

  “Ooh, la! Listen t’you, fancy boy. ’M I s’posed to be impressed? Very well, yer ’ighness — I’ll just drop you a curtsey, shall I? As befits your bloody station.”

  Which she did, bobbing ridiculously, and adding a pantomime air-kiss for emphasis. At the sight of which, that knot behind his jaw jumped, sparking — sheer revulsion gave way, bursting into rage the way flashpaper touches off dynamite. Without thinking, he reared back and pasted her one, with all his strength behind it.

  Torque set her neck sidelong, so hard it cracked outright — was that her jaw he heard go, in one mutton-bone crunch? At the same time, something flew from between her lips in a bloody spume-haze: her own tongue tip, severed on contact, ground like chuck between two uneven rows of grey teeth.

  Oona hit the cobbles face-first, then propped herself back up on both elbows, shaking her bruised head. And grinned a wide, red grin, blood painting her chin.

  “Oh, I fink you can probably do better than that,” she spat out. “Can’t ya?”

  Chess got up. “Let’s see,” he replied, and kicked her, full in the stomach.

  This is your mother, fool, some voice in his skull’s back cavity warned him, like he couldn’t’ve figured that out himself. So what? he snapped back at it, kicking her yet again even as she doubled over, one spur raking ’cross her gasping cheek. What-all’s that s’posed to mean to me, exactly, given the little it ever seemed to mean to her?

  Oona’s ghost jackknifed on the filthy stones at his feet, eyes level with his toes. Her hair fell down like a veil. And Chess loomed over her, poised to give fresh hurt for a lifetime’s worth with righteous rage still filling him tip-to-toe with gall, a lifetime of spoiled seed suddenly come to crop.

  She gave you life, is what, the voice said, simply. Kept you alive, when she could barely keep herself.

  Chess shook his head, eyes suddenly blurred. ’Cause she needed a whipping boy, someone to take it all out on.

  You were all she had.

  Fancy that. Must’ve been why she sold me, right? Why she drove me away with both hands, screamed the shame of what I am at me in the street, stuck a knife in my Goddamn neck?

  You came out of her . . .

  Like a turd, yeah. Again, fuckin’ so?

  She’s half of you, Chess.

  Wasn’t for her, you’d be —

  Somebody else, entirely.

  Whose was that damn voice, after all? Not Rook, not Yancey. Not even Ed, reasonable as it sounded. No one he knew. And yet, and yet, it seemed so very . . . familiar.


  Oona had turned over on her back, coughing wetly. She tried to hump herself away, dress a rag sweeping the rain-slick cobbles; Chess set one boot’s sole on her flat chest and pushed down, pinning her. “You stay here,” he ordered.

  Maybe it’s your voice, fool. Ever thought that?

  “I . . . I got . . . nowhere else t’be,” Oona managed, and gradually Chess realized her hacking spasms had curdled back into some parody of laughter. “Go on, son. Drink your fill. Used to tell you that, when you was on the tit.” Her head lolled from side to side. “’Urt me bad as you want, long as you want. Don’t make no difference, not t’me.”

  To me, or you. Or nobody else neither, accordingly.

  What sort of shit-heap life would somebody’ve had to live, he wondered, if even death held no possibility of change?

  And with that thought, all Chess’s simple rage swelled to something far beyond fury: something vast, something brilliant. So pure it almost felt like mercy.

  He knelt, cupping Oona’s head in his hands, almost tenderly.

  “How ’bout this, then?” he asked. And twisted, hard.

  Afterward, he sat still there beside her body, letting the cold rain plaster clothes to skin, a second sodden hide. He knew she wasn’t really “dead,” obviously, considering where they were, but by God, it’d seemed the only way to shut her up . . . and since it seemed to’ve worked, he wasn’t about to question his own logic.

  Without knowing why, he found himself recalling the first hot wash Oona had ever bought for him, alone; whenever they could afford to previously, she’d always opted for cold and gone in with him to save coin. That day, she’d sent him to the brothel’s tub-room by himself, water steaming already like it was set to boil laundry; he’d stood chest-deep in the great copper upright, with soap and a tin mirror set handy, so smooth you could actually see yourself undistorted, to a point. And new clothes to put on, after. The shirt had been white, not purple, but he’d buttoned it clear to the collar and smiled at his reflection, proudly.