Fair enough, Rook thought.
Besides which, her mind-voice told him, I have a new plan which needs must be rehearsed under conditions of battle — a gift for you, of sorts. A terrible weapon, one which will sweep our enemies away before us.
That so, sweetheart? Or do you mean just the ones whose names don’t start with “The”?
Behind Ixchel’s back, the dragonflies snapped and hissed, angered on her behalf. If any of that annoyance reached her, however, it didn’t show; sucking day and night on those Mexes of hers really was altering her, he guessed, making her colder, more dispassionate. Bringing all her most unnatural inclinations to the fore.
He cast his mind back to when Hex City’s foundations were first laid, and she’d at least pretended to care.
Remembered telling her, after they were two weeks and fifty hexes deep in kowtowing, barely able to stroll from here to there with stumbling over some prostrate supplicant: These people are here at your say-so, madam — left everything behind like they was fleein’ Egypt, on nothing but the Call and some bad dreams. Least you could do is walk amongst ’em and grant a few damn prayers beforehand, ’stead of always goin’ straight for the pound of flesh.
She’d nodded, as he recalled. And told him, face so straight it might as well have been the jade chip-scaled mask it sometimes seemed: But . . . this is what I have you for. Is it not?
Original plan was, you’d wake a few more of your relatives and get ’em up here, on our side, he thought at her, back in the here and now. What happened to that idea, exactly?
The barest hint of a shrug. Things change, husband. As ever.
Conversation disposed with, Ixchel turned back to Marizol, still frozen in a dumb-show of acquiescence. Telling her: “Now, child, you have spent enough time away from Court. I need you to take up your seat at my side once more, as is your ancestral charge and right, and . . .
feed me.”
Marizol bit her lip even harder, for all the world as though she were trying to make the skin tear. As though she wanted to bring the red flowing freely, if only so she wouldn’t have to make use of the thorn-rope again.
“Si, señora,” she managed, through her pain.
“Good girl,” Ixchel said, laying a half-fleshed hand to her forehead. And with a concussive flash, they were gone.
From Fennig’s side, Clo Killeen let out one long-held breath in a fit of coughing; Berta embraced her from the side, stroking her chest soothingly, while Eulie — typically the most gentle of the three — squinched her pretty face up, and actually spat.
“She’s gonna kill that girl,” she remarked, to Rook, sounding like she hoped he’d deny it. “Ain’t she?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Goddamn it all to hell, then. She’s — good, that one, even if she ain’t hexacious.”
Rook nodded. “A few more like her on either side, and maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
From her place in the corner, Missus Followell shook her head. “Pure foolishness, and y’all know it. ‘Nice’ that gal may well be, but she ain’t never gone be one of us — no way, no how. Whereas the Lady, awfulness and all . . . is.”
“She’s a monster,” Clo whispered, lips barely moving, so fast Berta didn’t have time to clap a hand over her mouth. But Followell merely turned her too-calm eyes back on the Irish girl, replying, “And we ain’t?”
CHAPTER FOUR
“From my vantage, those who do not consider themselves entirely committed must, of course, feel free to move on,” Sophronia Love said, voice even, though still loud enough to fill a close-packed room. “Each of you must seek grace in your way, as your understanding of the Lord’s word prompts you, since I believe we all share the sure and certain knowledge that each man’s path is his own business.”
The small group of supplicants before her — disadvantaged by a good three feet of extra height granted the woman most simply called “Widow,” along with Bewelcome’s other town elders, by virtue of the stage on which they sat — shuffled where they stood, leader shifting his hat from hand to hand. “Ain’t like we want to go, Missus Love, what with the town still under fire. But . . . our families . . .”
“Mister Trasker, if you truly feel your family better served by cowering upon your land and hoping to be overlooked, then by all means — go ahead and cower. I’ll note, however, that this same strategy entirely failed to save either the Harmons’ cattle, the de Groots’ breeding studs, or those men who died in guarding them.” Her eyes flicked sidelong, to skewer a man uncomfortably tapping one boot in the front row. “And you, Mister Russell — Hiram? Did a similar policy save your daughters, when Satan’s servants came to carry them away?”
“You know full well it didn’t, ma’am.”
“Well, then.”
From the back of the hall, Morrow and Doctor Joachim Asbury watched this spin out, in silence. For the sin of arriving late, they’d been forced to seat themselves next to a frantically scribbling Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose Palmer Method shorthand was as unintelligible to Morrow as his overtures of friendship were unwelcome. A yellow journalist of some repute in first New York, then ’Frisco, this fashionably dressed fool had been touring the area writing exposes on Hex City when Pinkerton began his assault, and stayed to play war correspondent — from a safe distance, naturally. He had a way of smiling that barely reached his eyes, and a vulture’s keen instinct for the unwary quote which made Morrow almost loath to open his mouth wide enough to spit, whenever he chanced to find himself in the man’s company.
“She’s quite the fearsome virago, our Missus Love,” Ludlow murmured, admiringly. “A true Madonna-in-armour, equally suited for battle and worship alike. And pleasingly buxom, too; that boy of hers is a fortunate young man, indeed.”
“Sheriff Love sure wouldn’t’ve approved of you saying so, at least within his earshot.”
“Oh, no doubt. How lucky for me, then, that my arrival in this town chanced to fall after that inestimable gentleman had already been dispatched to his reward!” Ludlow turned, hand still scratching away unchecked at his note-tablet. “But I’d almost forgotten: you were there that day, weren’t you, Mister Morrow? Quite close by, as I recall — though the mysterious Missus Kloves, naturally, was closer. Perhaps you might see your way clear to relating the story of that adventure to me, one of these days, in detail. . . .”
“Sir, if you’ll excuse me, I really am trying to listen.”
Sophy had already returned her attention to Trasker, who seemed increasingly spooked, while the dignitaries sharing podium space with her — Mayor Alonzo Langobard, his bulk more fat than muscle, white shirt already sweat-stained in the stuffy hall; Captain Washford, looking somewhat embarrassed to be so elevated; young Reverend Oren Catlin, not half the Nazarene Sheriff Love had been, who’d nevertheless taken up the town’s vacant ministry under the apparent conviction that an easy smile and clean-cut good looks were all a new pastor needed in order to thrive — stirred in a milder form of discomfort.
“We will miss you, of course,” Sophy told the man, “you, and all you take with you. But I will have no compelled soldiers in my husband’s army.”
Here Mayor Langobard cleared his throat and sat forward, perhaps hoping to regain control by sheer force of bodily mass alone. “Widow Love . . . much as I hate to be indelicate, your husband has nothing to do with this.”
“He was Sheriff here, sir. He founded this town, along with its militia — swore in each and every man-at-arms who defended this place against iniquity in its infant stages, long before Mister Pinkerton or Captain Washford made their appearance, on this very Bible.” She tapped the tome, drably bound in practical oilskin, which even now rested close by her right hand, where her gurgling son could play with its well-worn edges. “My husband is the reason Bewelcome exists.”
“For which we all thank him, and kindly. But in case you hadn’t yet noticed — he’s dead.”
Reaction to this
ran through the crowd like a ripple, and Morrow watched face after face turn Sophy’s way, studying her steel façade for any sign of a crack. None came: the woman was immaculate, grief-hardened like stoneware. Even with her youth, bereavement and stern beauty sentimentally leavened by the baby balanced on one knee, Mesach Love’s former bride might as well have been a corpse herself, her coarse black weeds and implacable regard erasing any hint of allure.
“Are we so quick to forget our Gideons, then, when we have so much need of them, if only as examples?” the Widow asked. “The Sword of the Lord may be wielded by anyone, Mayor, so long as the fight — and the warrior — be righteous. It says so here, in Judges.”
At this, Catlin raised hand and voice together, in all-too-polite objection. “Now, Sister Sophy, I’m not entirely sure that’s the correct interpretation to place on — ”
“Sure does,” someone behind Morrow confirmed; “sure does. She’s right about that.”
Sophy knew her audience. The ripple grew, became a general agreeing murmur.
“Sheriff taught her himself, and there wasn’t no one better’n him for Scripture.”
“Or bravery. ’Member when he stood toe-to-toe ’gainst Reverend Rook, with nothin’ but the Lord for backup? Devil won that round, but only halfway; even Satan himself couldn’t keep them two parted, or let young Gabe there stay bewitched.”
“And so what if he went down later on, still fighting? All flesh turns grass, eventually — way of the world. Yet it was God himself told the first Zealot: Peace be unto thee, thou mighty man of valour; fear not; thou shalt not altogether die.”
“That’s enough!” Langobard thumped the tabletop, face reddening. “Missus Love, there’s courage, and then there’s plain foolhardiness. The Harmons and the de Groots were told not to take lots so far north, and suffered the consequences. But I’ll not strip every field of able bodies, ’specially this close to harvest, and in this weather! If these men have an honest need to tend their lands — ”
Sophy drew herself up, suddenly ablaze, shifting Gabe to her hip. “More delay!” she shouted, uncowed. “You have done it again and again, since your election. Indeed, I begin to wonder if we shall ever be ready to march on Hex City, upon your say-so!” Morrow watched as a group of some dozen townsfolk — all with faces he recognized from the aftermath of Bewelcome’s resurrection, that day Ludlow so yearned to pick his brain on, and all well-armed — assembled at the stage’s far end, gathering ’round Sophy like Templars to the Ark. “The people of this town dare not wait forever — ”
“The people of Bewelcome voted me Mayor, Missus Love, not you!” Langobard bellowed back. “I won’t be dictated to, not by a mere female grasping at power she has no right to — earthly, or otherwise!”
“I repeat: this is my husband’s town, with Gabriel his only heir. What small influence I have here I hold in trust, for them both.”
“And therein lies the rub. For this is still a democracy we inhabit, madam, one in which your son has yet to attain his age of majority, let alone be elected to any sort of public office.”
“Be Mayor, then, Mister Langobard.” Abruptly, Sophy was all ice once more; Langobard rocked back on his heels, nonplussed. “Fulfill the charges given you. You know as well as I do that Bewelcome is over-billeted with Mister Pinkerton’s operatives and Captain Washford’s soldiers — we cannot feed them forever, much less endure the riff-raff, provenderers and Hooker-girls trailing in their wake. As for the newcomers who’ve helped to settle our God-blessed land — His kindness be with them all, but a growing population is a distraction we can ill afford, one which renders us daily less united in our purpose.”
“You were less displeased with our success when the depot station went up. Without Mister Pinkerton’s influence, it might well have been years before we saw a rail line out here — ”
“And Captain Washford can well speak to the problems that caused,” Sophy went on, inexorably. “Or am I wrong, Captain, in thinking that the supply-line trains have been consistently preyed upon by Reverend Rook’s forces, since they finally began regular runs?”
Washford rose, his stance more uncomfortable than ever. “Raids’ve increased, yes, like we knew they would. Still, they serve to draw the hexes’ attention away from Camp Pink, where Doc Asbury assures me he’s developing new measures to counteract the enemy’s resources — ”
“Yes, yes, all right.” Langobard cut Washford off with a peevish wave, ignoring how the other man’s eyes flashed. “To recap, Missus: though your points are taken, you must now take mine. I am in charge here, not you, and I don’t aim to see us all go the same way as Mesach Love himself, solely ’cause you’ve lost patience for justice.”
An underhanded strike, but one which seemed to hit, and deeply. For a moment, Sophy looked down, studying the table, as though in search of an answer — and as the blue granite of her gaze softened, Morrow got a sudden sense of the pain which lay behind it: still jagged as the moment after Yancey Kloves’ bullet met her man’s skull, these long months later. A hurt which had burned away everything in her that once rang gentle, purifying through calcination to leave nothing behind but commitment, cold as any butcher’s blade.
And this image, in turn, sent his mind careening back toward the woman who’d spawned it. Lost Yancey, whom he’d known so briefly, at least in the flesh, yet thought on so damn often. For a man to yearn after a woman he barely knew was more comedy than tragedy, prime as any vaudeville. But it was a hard thing nonetheless, to find himself so lamentably haunted by somebody who, he could only assume — could only hope, devoutly, fervently — probably wasn’t even dead.
He had a fair idea that she probably still rode with the man-squaw Yiska and her renegades, yoked to the will of that undead harridan, “Grandma.” Stranded amongst savages, with Pinkerton’s former pet sorceress Songbird her only “civilized” companion — was that any place for her to heal, even with her own bitter vengeance already accomplished? Or was she changing yet further, so much they’d be unrecognizable to one another when next they met?
Those few nocturnal reveries he’d had of her since, however, sweetly fleeting as they were, seemed so damn real. Even now, shutting his eyes, it was like he was there: the taste of her skin, the feel of her in his arms, that scent he could never recall on wakening, yet knew he’d know for hers under any circumstances. They lay abed, tracing each other like a pattern while she let down her dark hair, a curtain shutting them away from the world; in between bouts, she quizzed him on subjects he liked to think might give her aid or comfort, wherever she found herself.
Where are you? he’d asked her, once.
Only to watch her shake her head, sadly, and reply: Can’t tell you that, Ed. Too dangerous, for both of us. We’re working at a disadvantage, after all.
I miss you, he told her, to which she shaped a smile, already fading: sweet, just the way he remembered, or thought he did. For there was much about her he found slipping away likewise, worn down by time and distance — and all the time meeting only in dreams probably didn’t help much, on that score.
Of course, there was another ghost held tenancy in Morrow’s brainpan, too: someone also still upright, at least bodily, who he tried his best to avoid musing about at all, and mostly failed.
For awake or sleeping, Morrow intermittently felt Chess Pargeter’s touch, heard his voice, his sly laugh, the punctuational double-cock of his guns. He saw red hair glint under every hat, read Chess’s rooster-proud strut in a thousand passing walks. Thinking, as he did: This must’ve been how it was for him, with the Rev. . . .
“You mistake me,” Sophy Love replied, at last. “No person in this room knows more keenly than I do that Law is the only certain cure for lawlessness — Mesach preached on that very subject many a time, and though he knew he might never live to see it truly flower, we held it worth the price. For Law is the future’s currency, Mayor, and once established, it must be defended. Tooth and nail.” The knuckles
of her hands, folded primly before her, were white. “But if our enemies are not defeated, all Law will fall before them. Therefore do not count me so much impatient as afraid, lest all of us should lose what slim chance at it we have.”
The room was shamed to silence. And Morrow, caught in admiration, could only marvel at those stupid enough to think “mere” women unfit to rule.
It was the mild, reedy voice of Professor of Experimental Arcanistry Joachim Asbury which broke the spell first, declaring: “Missus Love, your position — though eminently moral — remains strategically unsound, in almost every respect.”
Langobard peered into the hall’s recesses. “That sounds like Doc Asbury.”
“Indeed,” Sophy agreed. “Once again, I see Mister Pinkerton has chosen to delegate his leadership duties.” Her eyes moved to Morrow, now rising to join Asbury, as the older man made his limping way down. “And Agent Morrow, as well — good to see the Agency represented directly by someone, at least. You are always welcome.”
Morrow cleared his throat. “Widow Love, Mayor Langobard, Captain Washford.” Adding, hesitating a scant beat before reflex overrode distaste: “Reverend Catlin.”
“Agent Morrow!” The pastor projected a blitheness so unflagging Morrow was hard put to figure whether it sprung from profound idiocy, incalculable self-confidence, or some admixture of both. “God bless and keep you. I take it your latest errand was successful?”
“Thank you, Reverend — we can deal with the niceties later, if you please.” Langobard leaned forward, table creaking under his weight. “But for once, Agent Morrow, I find myself and the Widow in full agreement. Where is Mister Pinkerton? Are we not important enough to receive our information from him at first-hand?”
Asbury shifted. “No, no. Mister Pinkerton wanted to come, I do assure you. But . . . circumstances . . .” He shrugged, helpless, as the crowd fell back to muttering.
He’s fighting a return of his old complaint, the old man had told Morrow, at the depot. It does seem to continue flaring up; the symptoms worsen, as well. Though I remain confident I shall find a true solution soon, he’d added, far too quickly to reassure.
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