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)

  That was the irony of it — in a city of hexes, where the innate hunger of hex for hex made every flare of power perceptible to any who cared to look, the only way to hide was to disdain hexation. In New Aztectlan, anti-scrying cloaks were nothing but black blankets in a white room — there was no spell another hex couldn’t pierce, given patience or luck. As with so much else, therefore, the best way to avoid detection was to simply never prompt anyone to look, since the only truly unprovable lie was one you never spoke at all.

  But then, we never do have to speak, out loud, we don’t want to — not so’s you’d notice. Ain’t that right, Rev?

  Rook nodded, acknowledging the sly twang of Fennig’s mind-voice, before casting his eyes back over to where his unofficial right hand slouched comfortably, all three of his “wives” chatting away with Marizol, as Eulie and Berta balanced the extremely enceinte Clo precariously between ’em. Rook raised an eyebrow at the Irish girl’s bulging belly, then directed a half-reproving glance to Fennig, who shrugged.

  Can’t get her to do nothin’ she don’t want, Rev, anymore’n you can get her not to do whatever she’s set on. I’m sure you know the type.

  Clo, keen enough to catch the exchange — at least in abstract — went red to her ear-tips. “Something ye want to say, Reverend?” she demanded. But Rook, knowing better, refused to be drawn — he raised his palms, which counted for enough of a surrender that Clo let herself slump back, still scowling, into Berta and Eulie’s supporting grip. “’Tis only that walking’s more labour than once ’twas,” she said. “But I have as much right to a place at this table as any other, caught short or not, as I’ll thank ye to remember.”

  Rook fought the urge to smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Oh, but he could see why the other three loved this girl, difficult as she was, defiant and fiery to the very last. But here remembrance closed his throat once more, crushing it, a second hangman’s noose.

  At the same time, a grey-haired, mahogany-skinned woman whose muscular frame spoke of too much labour and not enough food, rendering what her Maker might once have intended as womanly curvaceousness with unforgiving strokes, was taking her seat on Fennig’s other side. “Brazier and coals still not ready to hand, Rev’rend?” she drawled, passing out a kerchief-wrapped basket of rolls stuffed with meat, peppers and cheese.

  The Rev shook his head. “There’s too many would remember such an odd request, by far. So if these gatherings’ purpose is to remain private . . .”

  Sal Followell shook her head. “Secrets like snakes,” she grumbled. “Hard t’hold onto, no matter the circumstances — and they slither.”

  “Got that right,” Fennig agreed, glancing ’round. “So where’s the Honourable himself, old Mister Chu?”

  “Ain’t comin’,” Missus Followell replied. “Him and the Shoshone been up all night on war party business, so they sends their regrets — talkin’ ’bout dragons under the earth and such, how best they can entice ’em out t’help us. Well, Chu thinks it’s dragons and the Shoshone thinks it’s spiders, but I ain’t minded much which of ’em’s rightest, so I left ’em to it.”

  Clo had already finished her portion, devouring it like a feral dog. Rook gave her his too, earning a brilliant smile from Clo and a glare from the old Negress, who snapped: “You ain’t too much hex to need to eat, Reverend.”

  Fennig took a ginger bite, with rather less enthusiasm. “Much obliged for the thought, Missus F.,” he said, “but, ah . . . exactly what’s this we’re eating, again? Wasn’t just conjured, was it?”

  “An’ what if it was, Yankee man?”

  “Pax, Missus F.; truce. No insult intended. It’s just that me and the g’hals, we tried that, travellin’ here. Didn’t yield much pleasantness.”

  Rook remembered a hex-crafted cob of corn, melting to slimy decay in his mouth, and wanted to spit. “True enough,” he said. “Well, ma’am? Have we come to that pass?”

  Followell sighed. “Stores is tight,” she admitted. “With Pinks camped all ’round the outside walls, we can’t take no small-folk on raids anymore, and there ain’t many strong enough to wind-walk over them, or side-slip beyond. If we weigh our stocks careful, and ain’t too fussed ’bout what we eat — not like some — we can go ’nother four, six weeks. Longer, we get some more strong hexes come to join us.”

  Fennig cleared his throat. “Yeah . . . might not be much cause for cheer on that front, neither.” As Rook motioned him to continue: “Since you delegated Oath-takin’ duties to me and the g’hals, Rev, you probably ain’t had opportunity to notice, but we ain’t been gettin’ much new blood for some weeks now. Stragglers, mostly — and they’re weak, too. Some of them’s still gettin’ pressed by the Pinks, sure, but . . .” Fennig doffed his smoked-glass spectacles a moment, rubbing at the marks they’d left on his nose. “I’m beginnin’ to think how maybe the well’s just run dry.”

  Never so many of us in one spot before, his mind-voice echoed, unheard by any but Rook — or was that true? Probably the Missuses could listen in to that particular telegraph line too, they cared to bend their will to it. Yet still it struck an intimate chord, a note of desperation Rook couldn’t ever remember having heard in Fennig’s roguish waking speech. What if the Call’s finally brung all there was to bring? What if we’re all there’s left to feed —

  The Machine, Rook completed. To feed the Machine.

  They were all still predators, however much the Oath kept them from each other’s throats. Perhaps Fennig thought Rook had forgotten that . . . or perhaps, in his Utopian blur, he’d all but forgotten it himself.

  Still, the one thing left he couldn’t afford was for any of the rest to think him afraid.

  “I’ve been advising the Lady to stop the Call for some weeks now,” Rook lied. “Obviously, it’s done all it can; just swelling Pinkerton’s ranks more than our own at this point, anyhow. Once it’s no longer drawing power, meanwhile, the Machine’s . . . appetite should diminish, enough to give us time enough to find another source.”

  “Source of what, exactly?” Clo asked. “Feedstock?”

  “Sustenance,” Rook corrected. “All cities are gluttons on their own flesh. New York any different in that respect, Hank?”

  “New York’s got close on a million lives to spare, Reverend,” Fennig replied, “whereas if we’ve topped five thousand, it’s news to me. How many hexes die a day on the Moon Court’s altar? Six? Eight?”

  “Used to be, sure. Less by far, since the Mexes turned up.”

  Leaning forward, Fennig’s three-fingered hand jabbed the tabletop. “’Kay, then: let’s say, without the Call, the Lady don’t need more’n one or two. Anyone care to wager on her choosin’ to settle for what she ‘needs,’ ’stead’a whatever she damn well feels like takin’?”

  Rook’s voice hardened. “We’ve all gone that bet, Henry,” he rumbled. “All staked our lives on her bein’ wise enough not to waste what she can’t replace yet, not before we’ve won for good. You’re lettin’ your fear run away with your temper, and this ain’t the time.”

  Fennig held still a moment, but subsided, his breathing harsh. “Not like we don’t have options, either,” Rook added, “unkind as they might strike certain tenderer ears amongst us. Auntie Sal — in your informed status as Midwife General, how many of our hexaciously inclined female citizens are currently about to bear progeny, ’sides from the obvious?”

  Followell sniffed. “Marse Followell an’ all his kin dead now these good four year, Reverend, which means I don’t have to be nobody’s ‘auntie’ no more. But as to your question — three score, just about, with ten to fifteen ready to drop within the fortnight.”

  “So many?”

  “All witches work a charm to keep their childbed empty, but some gave it up after comprehendin’ they could survive havin’ a hexacious babe, here. Still, since most’ve ’em never expected to keep a babe anyways, they got about as much fine motherly feeling as alley cats — give you
whatever you want, probably, long as there’s money or privilege in it for them.”

  “Just you wait one damned moment, Reverend Rook.” Clo fought her way to her feet, bracing on Eulie’s and Berta’s shoulders. “Are you telling me you’ll order our womenfolk to rip their own childer from their breast, render ’em up to be boned like fishes on that Hell-shat slut’s altar, just to keep this City alive another month?” The rage began to spark off her hair, spontaneous flares of magic crackling from fingertip to scalp, actinic-bright. “Anyone tries the same wi’ me, an’ I’ll — ”

  “Not one of us will take any babe against its mother’s will,” Rook assured her. “But you recall your Oath, Clodagh Killeen.” He touched the name with power, enough to still her where she stood. “Disobey Lady Ixchel, break your word, it’s your life and your babe’s, with nothing I can do to stop her — not me, not Henry, not your sisters here. That what you want?”

  Chest a-heave, Clo sat back down, heavily, into Eulie and Berta’s arms — a four-arm hug, half embrace, half restraint.

  “If all else fails,” said Rook, “the Machine can be fed with the blood of the non-hexacious, as it was by Her worshippers of yore; them Mexes ensconced in the Moon Court alone prove that, as Miz Marisol could tell you. Which ain’t as potent, but means that even if we don’t have as many such as we’d like, we can still do what they did: take prisoners.” He tried to smile. “And fortunately for us, we just so happen to have a literal army of potential donors encamped outside these very walls.”

  “The Pinkertons?”

  “Who else?”

  Fennig nodded, ruminating. “Cert, I see it now. Like back home, when they swelled the constabulary with any man-jack could stand a beatin’, no matter if he’d been gang-bound before — or stayed so, after.”

  “Exactly. The strength that army gives us, once taken, will give us the strength to take other armies . . . any, however many are sent, whosoever sends them, each victory making us all the more invincible. Go forth to meet them like the Israelites of old, with Ixchel’s banner before us like the Ark before Moses.”

  “Conquerors,” said Fennig, voice suddenly gone flat. “That the way of it, Rev?”

  “Moral qualms, Hank? You never struck me as a man scared to do what needs doing.”

  “When it does, and t’protect my own? Hell, no. But I — we — didn’t come here with it in mind to become no new Alexanders, neither. Just to rake our plot, raise our seed and live like we never could, back in the Five Points.” He reached out a hand, not even looking to see if Clo, Berta and Eulie would all put theirs atop his, which they did; as always, Rook envied his easy trust in their affections, so much it almost made him green.

  “That Goddamn Oath,” Clo growled. “Times like these, I wish I’d plucked me own tongue out before uttering its first word.”

  “You had, you or your babe’d most like be dead, by now,” Followell pointed out. “An’ don’t you glare at me none, miss — but seein’ you don’t know my tale, I’ll tell it. I come on late, didn’t flare up with my bleedin’, so I had three babes laid in to suck who died on me and never knew why, not ’til I woke up ravin’ with fever, too delirious t’see I was so strong now, I’d already brung myself back from the dead.

  “Even then, when I did know, could I stop? No ma’am. I went on an’ killed my own boy, ate ’im up like candy. Was after that I finally broke an’ run, for fear Marse Followell’d try to keep on breedin’ me — he was just the sort of fool gotta have all his dogs and niggers be top merchandise, and wa’nt ’bout to quit the idea just on my account. Not like he could stop me, though, once I got my mind made up. And that’s why there ain’t no Marse, no more — no Followell Plantation, neither.

  “So. Say the Machine stops, and the Oath falls to pieces — you pondered much on that? A thousand hexes, all turned on each other at once; you an’ your babe, your sisters — yes, your man, too! ’Cause love won’t help, as I’ve lived long enough to know, Miss Clo.” Her voice roughened. “Think on why ‘mages don’t meddle,’ an’ you’ll find the truth right quick. Without the Oath, we’re all of us naked to our own hunger, just meat served up for judgement. Myself, I’ll do whatever best be done, to keep that day from my door . . . and you — will — too.”

  Such eyes that old woman had! Rook found himself fair melting under their regard, worn away like soap, reduced to a seat-shifting boy. Knew the others must feel much the same, considering how their own gazes fell, guiltily, to the tabletop. Soon enough, however, the spell was broken by a voice he’d frankly never hoped to hear within these precincts — soft yet horribly present, as though it sprang full-blown from the brainpan of every hex there.

  “Well put, my dark daughter. Your wisdom is admirable — your loyalty, also.”

  And in stepped the one woman-shaped thing none of ’em would have ever conjured on their own, given the option: Rainbow Lady Ixchel, the Suicide Moon herself, who came melting through the wall like all the chinks between bricks were one door split in a thousand pieces, each opening only to her command. Then hung there by Rook’s side with the exposed bones of her feet barely scraping against the floor, while her dragonfly cloak swarmed in to meet her — wrapping her close ’til nothing remained of that half-flayed corpse-face but a shimmering veil disclosing just her eyes, her too high brow and an inexplicable glimpse of purplish-dark lips strained back over teeth rendered wolf-long by her gums’ retreat.

  Catching a view of Marizol cowering in the corner, half-hid behind Berta’s skirts, she smiled; Marizol sketched a sort of answering grimace back at her, then scurried over, head hung low, when Ixchel snapped her claw-tipped fingers, and re-took her kneeling place at that dread queen’s side.

  “Señora . . . mi reina,” she brought out, tight and high, as though stomach-punched. “Yo te saludo.” While Ixchel just grinned all the wider, carding those too-sharp implements carefully through the girl’s hair.

  “I have missed you, pet; you did ill to flee me so soon, without any word where you might have gone.” Adding, to Rook, with a creepish airiness: “And you too, of course, little husband. How seldom we see each other, these days, you and I!”

  “Business of the War, ma’am,” Rook replied, deadpan. “But I do s’pose as how it’s necessary, much though I might feel the lack myself.”

  “The War, yes. Whose direction I have thus far left to you and yours — Mister Fennig, or whatever others you might accord similar trust — since, as my brother Lightning Serpent proves, this is a matter men excel at.”

  “And I’m grateful for the opportunity, that goes without saying. Was there something you wanted, wife?”

  A bit too off-hand for her liking, perhaps; Rook certainly heard almost everyone else present suck in a gasp, soft as they tried to keep it. But thankfully Marizol, already deft at trying to draw her attention away, chose this very moment to volunteer — “Apologies, señora . . . it was remiss of me, I know. Lo siento mucho, mi dama celestial.”

  Ixchel chucked her beneath the chin, drawing blood. “Ah, child! You are so young. I understand — you meant no disrespect. How could you possibly know how very much you mean to me, and why?”

  How indeed, Rook thought, seeing Marizol shake under the Lady’s touch, a discreet tear streaking from one eye. Goddamn yet one more time this bed I made, let alone the filthy butcher-shop diablerie I have to practise, daily, in order to stay here!

  This was just what came of being a hypocrite, though, he guessed — a faithless preacher, sworn to false idols. Chess never would’ve stood for it, in any of his forms, for though ass-kissing was an art he’d excelled at (literally, at least), the mere grinding repetition of paying Ixchel homage would’ve bored him so senseless it’d’ve set him off like a lit fuse long before now, ’specially seeing how he was naturally immune to her mixture of cock-raising glamour and accelerant decay.

  Always did make him dangerous to sit still too long — that was one thing she never understood, ’bout Chess
. That, along with so much else.

  And once things’d come to a head . . . well, that’d’ve been a fireworks show for sure, fit to rock the whole stinking world from horizon to horizon. Something Rook would’ve paid good money for, to watch, and to clap at.

  But you are not him, husband, Ixchel’s mental voice told him, as we both know. Conquistador dream of “one flesh” aside, you never were . . . nor will you ever be.

  You know what I’m thinking? Ridiculous as it was, he couldn’t stop himself from forming the question, though it held its own answer.

  Of course; I know everything you do, little king, always. And why.

  Sal Followell had both hands shading her eyes, like she found Ixchel’s visage too fierce to consider directly, and Rook could tell how much that pleased the goddess by the way she preened, her grim cloak hissing. But in the far corner, Hank Fennig had once more pushed his glasses down so’s he could survey her over their rims with narrowed eyes — taking measurements, perhaps, or tallying some list. Rook made his own mental note to ask him which it was, later on.

  “These ideas of yours amuse me,” Ixchel told the others, meanwhile. “I approve — you may do what you must in order to keep the Machine going, just as I will do what I must, in order to use its power to its fullest. Thus it is that will we triumph, in the end, together.”

  The clear implication being: I will suffer sedition in speech, if not in deed. For nothing you plot is secret to me, or any sort of threat; you live only at my sufferance . . . even you, my husband.

  “Should we expect you along for tonight’s raid, then?” Rook asked. To which she bent her head, regally, fixing him with eyes whose softening ligaments had already started to make them cant in different directions.

  “I would not miss such a chance,” she answered. “I have spent too much time in the Underworld lately, to far too little effect. I must show myself to the populace, that their terror may swell and spread.”