No time to think yea or nay; might be this’d been exactly what Fennig and Berta were “jawing” over, while Marizol handed Ixchel her hat. But the three simply vanished with a crack, air collapsing to fill the space they’d occupied.
Ixchel’s jade-chip parody of a face contorted; she turned on Fennig, hair wafting straight up, an inky nimbus. “Bring them back, dog!”
“Make me,” Fennig snapped. “But ya can’t, can ya? ’Cause that ain’t what it says, in the fine print: ‘Service to the Suicide Moon,’ — that’s what you get, all you get, and welcome to it. Long as it ain’t a direct rise against ya, or flat-out doin’ something you told us not to, you got naught to say ’bout anything we do, Lady R. — no matter how much it . . . inconveniences you. My g’hals and me — we kept to the terms. You can suck us dry. But you can’t make us do your will — or any other damn thing, neither.”
Rook rumbled, down in his chest. “That’s . . . very lawyerly of you, Henry. ‘Obedience to her High Priest,’ though, said priest being me — how ’bout that?”
The gangster shrugged. “Oh, that one holds,” he admitted. “You could’ve stopped ’em ’fore they went, I have no doubt — stopped me from givin’ the order, for that matter, if you’d known it was comin’. But . . .”
“. . . I didn’t. And now it’s too late.”
“Exactly.” With a nod, Three-Fingered Hank stood up tall as Rainbow Lady Ixchel turned her dreadful eyes his way once more, blank and pitiless as her emblem the moon, if infinitely darker: a glare beneath which harder men than he had shivered, Rook included.
Still, truth to tell, Fennig wasn’t even looking her way, keeping his own eyes trained instead square on the creature who’d once played triangle-point in his polyamorous affections — perhaps studying her for some recognition, however small, and getting none that Rook could perceive. Yet smiling slightly all the while, nonetheless.
“I put trust in you, Henry Fennig,” Ixchel told him, slowly, “on my own consort’s word; looked to you and your women as helpmeets, my strong right arm in battle just as one of them serves me yet. Tonight, however, you have gone against your queen, your goddess — risked not only the Machine, but the new world it brings on. Of all people but one, you should know best the penalty for such betrayal.”
“True enough. Think about it this way, though: killing me, right here and now, over an ‘offence’ don’t break none of your precious laws? That ain’t justice, so much as tyranny — same kind we fought a war over, back in old King George’s time. And that war, we won.”
A ripple went through the crowd, gone almost before Ixchel could perceive it, let alone trace its source.
You don’t even see what you’re about to do here, do you, darlin’? thought Rook. Teach ’em in one fell stroke what I’ve known all along — that you can’t be trusted, not to keep your word, and not otherwise.
“So get ready, Missus,” Fennig finished. “Now everyone knows — I may be the first, but I damn sure won’t be last.”
Good epitaph, son.
Fennig met his eyes, his reply echoing straight inside Rook’s skull. Honoured, Reverend; you’re a good man, even when you ain’t. Now, don’t forget those glazers of mine, will you? Believe it or not, it’s worth your while.
Ixchel didn’t even have to give the order. Between one heartbeat and the next, Clo was back in Fennig’s arms, like they’d never been separate. Except, of course, that this time her lips were peeled back to expose a shark’s double row of teeth, bottom and top. Though her right hand cupped the nape of his neck, deceptively loving, her thorn-clawed left had already plunged to split his breastbone like a sunk rail spike, fingers cupped cruel ’round his beating heart.
Fennig coughed blood, arterial-bright and steaming. Rasped: “Love you, honey. Always will. This . . . ain’t your fault.”
“Yes it is,” Clo replied, without a shred of remorse. And bit his face off first, a crunchy sweetmeat, before moving on to the rest.
After near everyone else had turned away but Ixchel, Rook (who’d forced himself to watch) and Clo (still intent on her pleasure, taking far longer with Fennig than she had with Arkwright, for reasons Rook didn’t want to contemplate), Ixchel put a hand on her “daughter’s” shoulder, pulling her gently free of what little was left.
“Enough,” she told her, wiping blood from Clo’s lower lip only to lick it off her finger, savouring the taste. “You are young yet, and though you do not tire, there is no reason not to pace yourself. Return to your chamber, to await my will.”
“Yes, mother.”
Taking Clo by the chin, Ixchel kissed her too-red mouth and stepped away, passing Rook by in the opposite direction. “I will expect you soon, my husband,” she threw back, cloak humming in her wake, as if over-stimulated by tonight’s amusements. “Do not keep me waiting.”
He made her a leg, bowing low, which seemed acceptable. And hung back one minute longer, stroking the bulge Fennig’s spectacles made through his vest cloth, feeling that residual pulse of energy under his fingertips as though the man was absent rather than excised: a patient, intimate resonance, like this fragile rig of wires and lenses carried just enough intelligence of its own to have stubborn faith he might one day return to reclaim them.
Fennig had to have known, or at least suspected, what Rook saw now: the specs were talisman as much as tool — mere contact conferred a stark fraction of Fennig’s gift. Enough to look at the horrid ruin Ixchel had made of Clo Killeen . . . and realize it yet contained a last seed of the original.
Something that might even bloom again, one day.
CHAPTER NINE
Night’s house, with its many chambers, its many occupants. Like the one located high on a hill overlooking Bewelcome where Chess Pargeter and “Reverend” Rook had once paused their horses, contemplating pre-emptive action ’gainst zealous young Sheriff Mesach Love, where two considerably less distinctive-looking men now stood in shadow, examining at a cautious distance the lamentable extent of Bewelcome’s current devastation.
Both wore duster coats and sported neat-waxed walrus moustaches, one blond, the other dark. The dark one used a brass telescope to mark points of particular interest while the other rocked back and forth with hands dug deep in his pockets, all but toe-tapping to signal his impatience.
“I’ll point out it’s your intelligencer we wait on, Mister Geyer,” the dark one said, without turning, “so whatever strategical quandary you find yourself enmeshed in, it’s entirely of your own making. Actually, given how little faith you seem to have in this fellow, I’m driven to wonder why you thought to engage him, in the first place.”
“Lack of options,” ex-Pinkerton Agent Frank Geyer replied. “He was well-situated, well-disposed . . . and to be frank, George, he works cheap.”
“Perfectly good qualities, in any spy,” agreed the other man — ex-Agent George Thiel, of course, first official defector from their former mutual boss’s increasingly dubious organization. “Pinkerton himself would approve.”
“Not if he knew what we were doing with him, I don’t think.”
“And there’s where I’d agree with you,” a third voice called out, from the shadows, as its owner made his way up the hill’s backside. This soon proved to be Fitz Hugh Ludlow, dandified clothes still mud-stiff from the fray. Reaching the hill’s apex, he stooped and huffed for a moment before straightening, trotting out the same oily grin that’d so failed to ingratiate him to Ed Morrow. “But may I say how disheartening it is to hear yourself described with such unfortunate accuracy, ’specially by those who don’t know you’re on hand to listen in?”
“Where’ve you been, Ludlow?” Geyer demanded.
“Extricating myself from that matchstick-pile Sophy Love and company used to call a meeting house, for starters, after which I was forced to stop awhile and observe Reverend Rook and his cadre beating unholy hell out of her
husband’s unworthy successors.”
Thiel turned, quirking an interested brow. “To what outcome?”
“Oh, bad all ’round, pretty much universally. Missus Love stood proud ’gainst the hexacious tide, only to get herself disintegrated. Reverend Catlin preached on God’s supremacy while holding one of Doc Asbury’s little machines, letting it suck in witchcraft ’til he blew his own hand off. Then Queen Rope herself appeared and tried to flood the town out, only for Chess Pargeter’s ghost to rise up through the dirt, ass-naked but for a set of Red Weed underclothes, and put paid to her scheming. Can probably see the moat he made from here, you only squint hard enough.” Ludlow paused for breath. “In short, an exciting evening had by all, well worth an entire yellow novel chapter to itself. And you, gentlemen?”
Geyer shook his head, as though to clear it. “Hold a moment . . . Sophronia Love is dead?”
Ludlow shrugged. “Impossible to tell, truly. I certainly saw her lose coherence in the face of that Paddy witch’s onslaught. But this proves nothing; I’ve seen hexes transport folk from one point to another just as easily, with much the same result.”
“She and her babe might be prisoners, then, inside Hex City’s precincts,” Thiel observed. “A useful idea, ’specially if we wanted to rouse Bewelcome’s survivors for a rescue.”
“True!” said Ludlow. “And what a narrative that would make for . . . saleable indeed, to all possible markets.”
Geyer studied each for some hint of a joke, eyes widening with genuine discomfort when he didn’t find any. “You two make my blood run cold,” he said, at last.
Ludlow puffed up, finally insulted. “Sir, I follow my calling, from which you and Mister Thiel here benefit extraordinarily for very little bodily risk, while I put myself in the very thick of harm’s way. Believe me, if I yearned to be called names, I’d’ve stayed in New York.”
“Desperate times, Frank,” Thiel replied, at the same time, without heat. “Desperate measures. We can’t afford to be — ”
“ — what, human?”
“Over-nice, I was going to say. For the plain fact is, we need every advantage we can gain from here on out, putting our endgame together. What we do here we do for the very literal salvation of all mankind.”
There was little to say in response, so no one tried, simply fell silent a spell, ’til Ludlow said, “Well, moving on to other things . . .
as you know, Mister Pinkerton did not attend the meeting, for which I’m sure he’ll be thankful, once Mister Morrow and Doctor Asbury debrief him on their return. He seldom leaves Camp Pink at all, these days, or so Mister Morrow has tried ably to keep from letting slip.”
“And why’s that, I wonder?” Thiel asked the wind. Beside him, Geyer snorted.
“Still semi-witched, I’d ’spect, from his dabblings in matters arcanistric. You only saw the start of it, George — that wound he took from Pargeter, how Asbury tried to treat it. He was worse when I met him on the Train, by far.”
“Rumours to that effect, yes,” Ludlow agreed. “They do say how the Professor’s engineeringological victories have only made his particular . . . hungers all the easier to satisfy, as the Pinkertons’ supply of collared hexes grows. But this latest miracle of his may well take the proverbial cake.”
“Meaning?”
“Asbury gave Morrow bullets, Morrow shot ’em at the Rev — and they took. From what I could gather squatting behind a brake, everyone seemed pretty much equal horror-struck; Asbury too, now I think. But then, he’s been looking unwell, in general.”
“Tell me more about that,” Thiel suggested.
Ludlow laughed and struck a pose, fair cracking his knuckles. “Oh, that’s been coming on for some time now; going by tonight’s brief appearance, the man looks almost on the verge of a collapse — dispirited, sirs, very dispirited, though not so much so that he’s gone teetotal.” He paused, ruminatorily. “Rather the opposite, really.”
Geyer regarded him with scorn. “Never use a two-bit word when a five-dollar one’s to hand, do you, Mister Ludlow?”
“Vocabulary’s a tool and a hobby of mine, ex-Agent; fills in the blanks and keeps thing sharp, used judiciously. But believe you me, it’s not as though I enjoy seeing one of the finest minds of our generation thus reduced, designing weapons for a second Civil War under the command of a near-madman, a hopeless hophead. It sets me all of a jargogle to think what Mister Asbury might whip up next.”
“We should find a way to talk to him, Frank,” Thiel said. “For months now I’ve tried to deconstruct that Manifold of yours, bend even a tenth of its powers to our side — but all to no avail. I’m but a humble ’tec with some Corps of Engineering experience left over
from the War. Professor Asbury’s brand of science is as far beyond mine as Nobel’s Blasting Powder is to a tinderbox. And if he’s finally reached the limits of his appetite for our old boss’s more off-putting . . .
shenanigans . . .”
Ludlow glanced from man to man. “I believe I begin to reckon what you have in mind, Mister Thiel — and as it just so happens, I can help. You see, though he chose not to attend the maybe-late Missus Love’s little shindig, I received a secret communiqué from Mister Pinkerton this very morning. He wants an interview, a general-at-the-front sort of deal, and believes I would be the perfect . . .
now, what was the phrase he used? . . . ‘chronicleer’ to record his upcoming Campaign against the Hex for journalistic posterity. I’ll need a bodyguard on my journey, of course, things being chancy as they are right now. Any volunteers?”
“Given the last time Pinkerton saw you, he called you out as a traitor — ” Thiel began, to Geyer.
“Last time he saw you,” Geyer pointed out, in return, “he ended up sending me to kill you — and the way he is these days, I doubt he’d even notice I was there, I took enough pains with my appearance. You’re needed elsewhere anyways, to lead the Texican charge, if and when the Mexican attack occurs.”
“When, not if.”
“So if it’s all the same, I believe I’ll take my chances.”
“Very well.”
Ludlow clapped his hands. “Perfect. How I do love theatricals!”
Once again, both detectives considered him narrowly. “You do know you may see things you don’t want to in that stronghold, Mister Ludlow,” Thiel said, finally.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself concerning the quality of my sleep, sir; I was caught downtown during the Draft Riots in ’63. Which sanguinary event marks the very moment I discovered my gorge doesn’t rise too easily, sad to say, when a good enough story’s involved.”
“I read the dispatches, in our Chicago office,” Geyer replied. “But I’ve always wondered — was hexation involved?”
“Here and there, yes. New York’s vastly diverse populace extends even to the hex-born — and since the gangs aren’t exactly inclined to turn down any weapon falls to hand, they tend to use whoever turns hex under combat’s excesses as heavy artillery, clearing the way for more natural incursion: hordes of immigrants and Nativists alike, all wielding bricks, bats, fists, knives, axes . . . but no pistols. Still, with the city a powder-keg always awaiting spark, we’ve never needed hexation’s prompting when it comes to exercising our civic pastime, not within Gotham’s precincts — or anywhere else human nature holds sway.”
Above, the moon shone down like a dead man’s eye full of secret glee, absorbing it all. No secrets in Night’s house, after all. Not with everything that ill light touched transformed near-alchemically, the same way a spell renders metaphor real, into a spy for some hidden Enemy.
Miles away, Yancey came to shivering top to toe with her teeth too locked to chatter, tongue worried bloody. Though Yiska and her braves had laid her out already — piling all the rugs they had on top of her, high as they’d go — the chill of the Underneath still ran all through her, worse than before. Just how damn deep had she had to dive, in order to whisper upward directions in Eng
lish Oona’s slippery ear?
Not as deep as she might yet have to go, she suspected.
Even as she formed this thought, a pale palm appeared at either temple, briskly stroking heat into her. “You look ill, dead-speaker,” Songbird observed, with a nasty touch of satisfaction. “The Ten Thousand Hells do not agree with you.”
“D-don’t think they were . . . made t’appeal . . . t’most,” Yancey said, with effort. “’Sides, that . . . seemed like one Hell only, t’me. An’ . . .
more’n enough.”
“Yes, you long-noses lack imagination, as a rule; I have observed this.”
Yiska laid a gentle hand of her own on Songbird’s shoulder. “Ohé, bilagaana, it gladdens me to see you returned safe, after such a long journey. Might it be you caught sight of our Enemy, while you were down there?”
Yancey tried to shake her head, and regretted it. “N’huh, no. Don’t think so.”
“You would know, if you had,” Songbird said. “He is . . . distinctive.”
“I do know — met the sumbitch twice before, and not when he was all dressed up in Chess Pargeter’s meat, either. How many times’s it been for you?”
Songbird coloured, flush slight but noticeable. “Never you mind, innkeeper’s daughter. He would have to be clumsy indeed to let either of us see him, if he did not wish to be seen.”
“You speak the truth, for once,” came Grandma’s voice. “He is not to be underestimated, this Smoking Mirror.” She moved out into the fire’s light, earth shaking beneath her tread, then lowered herself down by slow degrees. “The tale of Tollan’s Fall . . . have you heard it?”
“You know very well we have not, old — ” But Songbird found herself pinned by Yiska’s gaze, and amended whatever she might’ve been about to call the older hex. “Spinner.”
“Be quiet, then, little ghost. Attend, for once. There is virtue in the past’s lesson, always, for — since all gods repeat themselves, and most Hataalii likewise — it may give us some idea what he plans to do next.”
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