Next to Chu, another man crouched, taller and browner though equally broad, his cheekbones flat as copper axe blades. “See it yet?” he demanded, raking his long hair back behind one ear, while the beaded pectoral covering his chest rattled like an abacus. “Spinning its web, under the earth’s skin . . . there, and there. If you can’t, you must be going blind, old idiot.”
“There are no spiders here, fool. Only dragons, rulers of weather and water — Ying-lung, who brings rain and floods, whose name we have called every day this week. Will you never learn?”
“Day I need to ‘learn’ from you, yellow man, I’ll lay myself face down in this pool and try breathing water. Who was here first, uh? Your people, or mine?”
“More of mine left here than yours, you dung beetle, even with the quota. As for lying face down — that must’ve been the extent of your strategy, when the gweilo came. The sage Sun Tzu says, Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory . . . but he never met any Shoshone.”
“Oh, go eat a buffalo liver, you miserable creature.”
Chu replied, without turning: “Seeing there are fewer shaggy cows roaming these hills now even than Shoshone, that would be difficult. So, are you ready at last to assist me, or do you need yet more time to complain, like a woman?”
The Shoshone snorted, sounding somewhat like a buffalo himself. “Aiweape-ha,” he said, to the air. “Crazy person, wandering free. You’d think you had no family to look after you . . . oh, wait.”
Chu flipped water at him, without looking, which the Shoshone avoided effortlessly. The droplets fell on the pool’s dusty rim, smoking slightly, before resolving themselves like mercury, then sliding sideways to rejoin the rest.
“Think them dames’ll stop squabblin’ anytime soon?” Fennig inquired, watching the scene.
Rook sighed. “Probably not, without I tell ’em to.”
“Well, we are on a schedule, or so Herself says. Interesting, though, how she wants to tag along just now, when she never did before. . . .”
“Who of us knows her mind, really? And don’t say me, ’cause flattering though that might’ve once rung, these days you’d be wrong.”
Now it was Fennig’s turn to sigh, casting a glance behind him, to where his three women sat arm in arm, laughing, their legs hung a-dangle over the abyss. “Morts is all somewhat mysterious by nature, Rev,” he observed, as though Rook hadn’t already noticed, “no matter who, or how big the size’a their hex-bag. Believe you me, I should know.”
“‘Morts’?” Rook repeated, cocking a brow.
“Ladies, I mean. Females. Them as ain’t men — or she-hes, neither.”
Nodding, Rook looked down, recalling when he and Chess had stood atop that ridge outside Bewelcome, surveying it like Lucifer and Jesus with all the kingdoms of the earth laid out before ’em. It’d been a spectacularly deadish place back then, with points north and west a veritable painted desert of wild green shale and furze, points south and east a barren scree studded with long-dead sea creatures and shadowed by arroyos dried near to crumbling; what little Sheriff Love’s bunch had managed to wrest from the earth had come up small and mean, fed by rigid faith, paid for in the sort of blood that didn’t reap crops worth speaking of. Not much magic to be found, one way or the other.
Now the same area was soaked in it, and the landscape lay utterly transformed.
Two months ago, as Pinkerton’s forces began trickling onto the surrounding plains, Ixchel had stood atop Her temple and spoken to the earth, which answered by thrusting great walls of granite and sandstone up ’round the city in a perfect circle. Those dwellers caught outside, their houses not within the walls’ arc, had scrambled fiercely to get back in — and strangely enough, not all had succeeded, exploding when they touched the wall-wards. She’d called that cull a Flowery War, its lost citizens martyrs to their cause . . . but what she’d really been after was the blood they left behind: tribute, tithe, tool. A red ring which was then met and matched by just as many “volunteer” lottery sacrifices on the Temple’s top, Machine-grist sent flowing down to sink into the soil, causing a forest of ceiba trees to blossom as a second defensive ring, tight enough that there was barely a handsbreadth left between brick and bark.
The ceibas’close-set branches had leaves sharp as obsidian, sap smoking and venomous, and whenever anyone tried to slip between they were met with swift-strangling vines that snaked out to lasso unwary scouts, dragging them off in pieces. The City folk on the wall had cheered to watch Pinkerton’s men die, until one had overbalanced and fallen; his magic was enough to break his plunge safely upon the ground, but not enough to save him from the trees, either.
Maybe a mile beyond the forest, meanwhile, a wide swath of fires and lanterns eventually began to appear as the sky darkened, sketching the outlines of hundreds of tents and a few new-raised buildings, all raw plank and whitewashed adobe: Camp Pink, meeting place for Agency and Army alike, with old Doc Asbury running interference between — yes, and that traitor Ed Morrow too, if rumour spoke fact.
Ed hadn’t been anything but a toy tossed between competing currents, though, if Rook forced himself to be charitable; a good man torn between bad people, put in untenable situations mostly by the Rev’s own hand, and acting as he saw fit. Hell, Rook couldn’t even really resent him having shared Chess’s bed, not when he’d sent him there himself — for if he did, he’d soon be forced to scour the whole West for other men he’d be similarly constrained to waste his precious time killing.
Doesn’t matter, anyhow, a thin voice whispered, nastily, at his inner ear. All that with you and Chess, the epic tryst? Gone, never to return. One thing alone he ever asked of you, and you, you son of a bitch, went on ahead and left him.
He won’t forgive you now, no matter what. Not if you tore your own damn heart out and gave it to him, still beating, to plug up the wound where his used to be.
“Nor should he,” the Rev said out loud, to no one but himself.
“What was that, Rev?” asked Fennig, from behind him.
“Nothing, Henry.”
Rook turned back, encouraged to see Chu and the Shoshone engaged over their work once more. The yarrow stalk bunch discarded, both mages wove their fingers in opposing cat’s cradle patterns across the pool, rolling energy back and forth like they were carding wool. Soon enough, its surface began to dance and dimple, slopping up ’til it sprouted a funnel the size of a wine-ready goblet, above which a storm-cloud bloomed — bruise-dark, small but intense, rotating at a slow tilt. And growing.
“You must wait for it to swell further, before letting it slip,” Chu ordered. “Not too soon! Let it reach the size of a small dog, or a large child.”
“Who d’you think you’re talking to, railroad man? I was making rain before you ever knew this place existed.”
“Making water, perhaps. But a storm, large enough to destroy whole towns — this is different.”
“You don’t stop flapping your tongue sometime, it’ll split in two and fall off. And wouldn’t that just be a shame.”
A bit further down, Fennig’s three Missuses watched the hex-whores from the Blister shaking sand, salt and rice in a great glass bottle, patiently raising dust devils into tornados, then knitting the results together to release them, sending twister after twister sidewinder-shuddering ’cross the plains toward Camp Pink. The principle was basically the same, for all Chu and the Shoshone seemed to think they had an all-male lock on something twice as fierce.
“Won’t be long now, looks like,” Rook told Fennig, who nodded, then pulled his glasses down his nose, scanning the courtyard behind them. Ixchel was emerging from her seclusion, shadow-wrapped ’cept for where the largest of her insects perched here and there on her like living jewels, their wings throwing off minor rainbows. All around, a veritable tide of self-flagellating Mexican
s eddied, lashing themselves with thorn-studded dried gut whips; in her wake, Marizol — already bled a shade or two lighter — padded glumly along like the world’s least happy bridesmaid, holding her mistress’s train up out of the dust.
“Explain it to me again,” Fennig said, to Rook, his sharp eyes never stirring from that dread form. “How she got herself out of Hell, exactly.”
“Cannibalism, of a type. Theophagy. She ate other gods, like hexes eat hexes.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And that’d be why she has a plug in her back, right there, ’tween the shoulder blades — a hole she can’t fill no-how and with nothin’, I’ll venture. ’Cause takin’ a bite out of them took a bite out of her.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Don’t you? Where do any of us get our power from, Reverend?”
Rook considered that question a while, crossbreeding mythology and metaphor with observed fact. From what-all he’d seen, there seemed to be a strain of magic all hexes could tap, perhaps the same universal flow drove Songbird’s ch’i or required Grandma’s Balance — inexhaustible, hard-won and hard-wearing. Yet this was cut with two other streams, one bolstered by hex-vampirization, one pure dream-stuff, bastard child of fantasy and will. A sort of poetry made flesh, living or dying on the hex’s own confidence in the innate truth of whatever they could conceive of.
“I’ve seen her gulp witch and wizard alike down like an after-dinner shot,” Rook said. “So’ve you — remember? Looks aside, she don’t seem to be hurting much, in that direction.”
Fennig clicked his tongue. “So why don’t she fix herself up, at least, or skip bodies into that girl of hers, ’fore bad gets worse? Ain’t natural for any female to let her appearance slip so, even if she does derive some extra mojo from seemin’ an object of fear.”
“Needs Marizol to love her, apparently, or the trick won’t take. That takes time.”
“Hmmm. And she can’t push that part along any faster, either? All it takes is a word and a drop of blood, her hair and yours tied up in a knot — a damn honey-cake baked with her name on top. Didn’t they cast no charms in old Mexico?”
Rook simply shrugged, thinking: But it’s not her hair, just like it’s not really her body. And anyhow, as we none of us should forget — she’s different.
“Wouldn’t bet on her forbearance being a sign of weakness, myself,” he warned.
“You told me to look — I’m tellin’ you what I see when I do, is all. She has limitations. And that’s more’n we knew, even if we don’t know what, or why. Or what best to do with it, now we do know.”
Rook felt those black doll-eyes shift his way, and hissed through his teeth, projecting: Shut it, Henry. Felt her alien intelligence stroke his brain almost affectionately at the same time, before moving on — too busy, or bored, to bother probing deeper.
“She knows everything,” he said, at last. “Told me as much. So I don’t see the point of plotting, let alone anything else.”
Fennig’s spectacles were already back in place, rendering gaze and expression equally opaque. “Wants you t’think she does, more like — got her consuming interests, just like the rest of us. And contrary to popular belief, she can’t be everywhere at once, neither. I’ve checked.”
“Henry — ”
“I’m a big boy, Rev. I slip up, I’ll gladly pay the price; g’hals can look after ’emselves, if they have to.” A thin grin. “Not that I wouldn’t miss their sweet company, from across the river. Still, once we get this War put to bed, we can . . .”
. . . rebuild, branch out, found schools and hospitals, do all the things necessary to make this means to an end permanent. That’s what Fennig wanted, like most’ve the rest — this haphazard experiment was a paradise to them, or close as they thought themselves ever like to see. Whereas Rook, like Ixchel, saw the edges blurring as New Aztectlan became a portal from one future to another, and knew what was coming would wipe out everything in its path regardless . . .
that in the end, the Hex City crowd could either join it, get out of its way or be borne away, accordingly.
Can’t help them with that, though. I’m all hers, bought and paid for. Can’t help anybody, with anything.
Chu and the Shoshone, having gotten the storm where they wanted it, had spun it free and let it expand, eating what was left of the twilit sky. Now Fennig’s ladies stood with arms still linked, thrilling to the thunder’s rumble as the first intimations of lightning swirled around them; Clo was already starting to drift up a tad in sympathetic response, her swollen belly lit from within, the other two just managing to keep her anchored.
Ixchel, meanwhile, was somehow already halfway out atop the cloud itself, which parted to let her pass. Her train and cloak formed a second funnel, sucking up a dose of darkness that spawned yet another roiling energy ball between her own hands, charge concentrated enough to lift the bulk of her hair by sheer galvanization.
With a tiny kick, she swam upward still, turning toward the east, where a dry riverbed snaked through two miles of canyons. And even without her mind touching his — not so’s he could notice, anyhow — Rook nevertheless thought he began to see what she might have in mind.
Time to go. To lay her vengeance down on Bewelcome — could’ve been anywhere, Rook supposed, but he could see why that place in particular held a certain charge, seeing how it was the last place she and that “brother” of hers had thrown down — and watch what rose to greet it, then crush that thing in turn with all the force of a dead pantheon, a living yet absent God.
At his elbow, Fennig still watched Rook from behind those lenses, twisting his cane — like he hoped for some sort of elaboration, but understood if none was forthcoming.
So Rook made himself look up, and tell him, lightly enough: “Best not to rely on me too much, maybe, when all’s said and done; not with your women on the line, and your child likewise. As the Lady’s own property, I’m hardly trustworthy.”
This time, the dapper New York gangster didn’t even bother to nod. Just replied, equally nonchalant, “Oh, no more’n any of us, Rev, I s’pose. But more so than Herself, by far.”
Rook inclined his head, reaching to rake up an appropriate verse from deep inside: Job 27:21, The east wind carrieth him away and he departeth, perhaps. Or Psalms, 83:15 — So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Either would do.
Yet hearing in his head simultaneous, as mocking echo, a few more of those Celestial war-wisdom adages Honourable Chu liked to quote: All war is deception; to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill — to subdue the enemy without fighting, that is the acme of skill; if ignorant of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.
“Let’s to it, then,” the Rev said. And stepped off the ramparts with Fennig and the Missuses trailing behind like a kite’s tail, blown straight into the storm’s beating heart.
CHAPTER SIX
The town hall’s roof came off like kindling, as if the storm’d turned one big mouth, opened wide, and took itself a bite. Rook came drifting down inside what was left with the rain still pelting ’round him and Fennig a mere half-step behind, bringing the Word along as well, in silver-black clumps: Isaiah 13, 6 to 9:
Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt:
And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
The place was gutted, chairs and pews flung every which way, smashed to sodden flinders. A stage took up the back half, uneven now, as though it’d been stamped on — and that was where he found what was left of
the elders’ council: some fat man with a broken leg, sprawled with a Manifold clutched to his chest like he thought it could ward off heart attack (Mayor Langobard, probably), plus a roster of other notables, similarly stricken — including a dapper fool Rook could only assume, with a twinge of nasty amusement, must be the town’s new preacher: no Mesach Love, that was for sure. For though this man’s lips moved feverishly, Rook could barely sense enough faith in him to light a lucifer, let alone ward off evil.
In the corner crouched Doc Asbury, managing admirably to not quite cower; might be the last few months had finally inured him to the shock of seeing his theories turned fact. While nearby, half-hid behind a tangle of fallen furniture, a man with similar taste in fashion as Fennig crouched with tablet out and pencil busy, scribbling frantically, as though he aimed to preserve all he saw for posterity’s sake.
But even as Rook took note of them all, they paled to invisibility in the face of his true target, who crouched above Langobard with one hand laid soothingly on his sweaty brow, clutching her baby close with the other: Sophronia Love, the Sheriff’s woman, moral heart of Bewelcome’s resistance. The figurehead all the rest rallied behind.
For a year in the salt, she looked uncommon good, even dressed in black with her hair plastered dark by the downpour’s vigour. As did that fussing boy of hers, whose healthy lungs sent up counterpoint music, loud enough to be heard over the storm itself.
Strike her down, this town dies with her, lit and fig. Strike her down, and victory follows.
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