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)

  Maca mahui noyollo ye oncan ixtlahuatl itic, noconele hua in itzimiquiliztli zan quinequin toyollo yaomiquiztla ohuaya.

  (Let not my soul dread that open field; I earnestly desire the beginning of the slaughter, may your soul long for that murderous strife.)

  In ma oc tonahuican antocnihuan ayiahuc, ma oc xonahuiacan antepilhuan in ixtlahuatl itec, y nemoaquihuic zan tictotlanehuia o a in chimalli xochitl in tlachinoll, ohuaya, ohuaya, ohuaya.

  (Let us rejoice, dear friends, and may you rejoice, O children, both within the open field and going forth to it — let us revel amid the shield-flowers of the battle.)

  “Ohuaya,” he repeated, bittersweet and thick, as through a mouthful of marigold-scented gore. “Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec, Quetzalcoatl: come one, come all, come now, come. Ohuaya. Ohuaya. Ohuaya.”

  The invocation released Morrow, then, allowing him to stumble backward, cut wrist suddenly afire. Showing startling presence of mind, it was Ludlow who stepped up to knot a kerchief tightly over the gash, murmuring out the side of his mouth as he did: “Most uncanny, sir! The Apostles’ gift of tongues, Hell-translated? If there is any way you might approximate some version of the original, er, Aztectlish for me, later — ”

  Here, thankfully, he broke off, eyes widening: the blood-filled trough’s dense scum-skin had begun to bubble and steam, letting off a noise considerably thicker than that of boiling water — viscous, almost glutinous. Carver backed slowly away, clearly primed to draw, order or no. Pinkerton himself stepped to one side and, with no ceremony at all, grabbed one of the hex-handlers by the shoulder; the man stiffened, flailed and fell over to lie helpless, sucked near-dry in an instant, while blue-green light leaked out between Pinkerton’s knuckles like marsh slime.

  “Thought we were goin’ to negotiate,” said Morrow, dry-mouthed.

  “Aye, and it’s purest folly not to do so from strength, where ye can,” said Pinkerton, not taking his eyes from the trench, while Morrow wished his mouth was wet enough to spit. Should’ve thrown that damn knife into the trench and walked away, he thought; let him go fish for it, he wants this so —

  Just then, the blood exploded upward, splattering hot gore in all directions. It splashed off Pinkerton’s shields like water from an oiled parasol, but Carver, Morrow, Ludlow and the hex-handlers, less protected, were all drenched instantly: blind, mildly scalded, repulsed beyond telling. Morrow choked and swiped his eyes clear, then felt an immediate urge to laugh hysterically at the look on Ludlow’s face, gaping down at his ruined notebook. But when his gaze moved further, to the thing that now stood on the blood’s surface like some awful Christ-parody, all idea of mirth died hard.

  As in Bewelcome, the Enemy was naked but for a twining “suit” of Red Weed, still full of those bone-bits it’d picked up travelling through the earth — war trophies, decay-jewels, insults to dead and living alike. The vine’s flowers hissed, extending their pistils like tiny tongues. His face still looked like Chess’s, but stiff and set, as though worn like a mask, Xipe Totec-style; red hair, blue skin and green eyes all glowed with lightning, falling wispy from him as a mange-struck hound’s shed fur. And behind him, on the earth, his shadow seemed to hump up far too large and black for his small form, moving with a sickening independence.

  Yet the wry, contemptuous smile he . . . it . . . wore twisted unexpectedly in Morrow’s gut, so like was it to one his lost friend might’ve come up with, under similar circumstances.

  “Allan Pinkerton,” the thing said, seeming to taste the name — only one, after all, to the many it bore, from Chess Pargeter to Night Wind, Smoking Mirror, We Are His Slaves, and so on. “We recall you. Speak.”

  Though Pinkerton had to moisten his lips, his voice came out laudably steady. “First off, I’d like tae thank ye for your actions in Bewelcome, which saved many innocent lives. Yuir generosity will no’ soon be forgot — ”

  The Enemy gave a snort, and horked out a glob of blood at Pinkerton’s feet, where the droplet sizzled and sprouted into a Weed-tendril, lashing upward to suck hungrily at Pinkerton’s shields. With a yelp, the Agency chief slammed his boot down, bursting it to spray, then turned his glare on the creature who’d spawned it, which sniffed disdainfully.

  “I expect neither gratitude nor reverence from you, human man,” it replied. “In fact, I suspect nothing you can offer would hold any interest for me at all, unless you prove otherwise. So speak the truth to me now, or say nothing.”

  Pinkerton scowled. “Verra well. Ye could not have failed to witness the demonstration of our new capacities, which we believe may suffice to destroy any foe of a hexological nature, no matter how powerful — if, that is, we can somehow get within sufficient proximity.” He paused. “Am I correct to think that your interests lie merely in preserving the world as ’tis, rather than remaking — or ruling — it?”

  “It is true I leave such meaningless occupations to others, as a rule. As for this world, Fifth in its line . . . why would I want it ended? Its disorder gives me great amusement.”

  “So you don’t see there’s any great call for a Sixth, eh?”

  “What my sister wants is to fall back, not move forward — by her own admission, she wishes to restore the Fourth, height of our reign, which ended in floods and was remade from bones. But she fools herself. No system built on death can ever be maintained past its due time; her ambition is an impossibility. I have only to play my games, and wait for her defeat.”

  “You know what’s happening inside Hex City, then — New Aztectlan, as they call it.”

  “At this very moment?” The Chess-thing shrugged. “I have some idea, but no. Does that disappoint you, Allan Pinkerton?”

  “Somewhat. But I’ve found most deities disappoint, eventually.”

  The Enemy matched Pinkerton’s wry grin with one of its own, slightly wider, displaying a row of black glass shark-teeth. “I have found the same,” it replied. “And yet . . .” Here it nodded to a point further out into the desert, empty as a robbed socket. Blinked Chess’s eyes, mildly.

  Hell’s it doin’ now? Morrow barely had time to think, before something popped out of nowhere, high above. Two — no, make that three — somethings, falling fast.

  The Enemy threw a hand up, casting Weed like sparks. Tendrils whipped ’round the lowermost body’s arms and legs, breaking its fall, jolting out a high-pitched cry in piteous Spanish; the other two felt its tug and leaped away, legs threshing, like the air itself was water. One was a dark girl with Creole hair, her hazel eyes lash-fringed and liquid, while the other . . .

  “Hell,” Private Carver blurted out, “that’s that gal from Bewelcome, ain’t it? One who tried to smother me.”

  Morrow nodded. “One of Three-Fingered Hank’s wives, yeah; I recall her. But — ” Why’s she here, without him? Or that Irish colleen tried to blast Sophy Love, either?

  “Good questions, soldier,” the Enemy noted, as though he’d spoke them aloud. “Shall we ask the lady to explain herself?”

  Pinkerton cast Morrow a foul look, making him colour. “Well, I — ”

  The Weed cracked once more, snaring Berta Schemerhorne and her sister-wife (Eulalia Parr, the intelligencers’ dispatches gave her name as), pulling them back down. At Pinkerton’s finger-snap, the hex-handlers — the half-drained one recovered, or at least recovered enough — sprang forward, armed with hexation-deadening bridles spun from magnesium, to lasso and slap a set of temporary collars on ’em.

  Reflexively, Carver moved to help, gun out; seemed to Morrow in retrospect that he almost seemed to think better of it, halfway into that first step, but no one could say the boy — ’scuse me, free man of colour — wasn’t game. And no matter how the women fought, without their power, they were just Eve’s weak flesh: a double-helping of Adam’s rib served rare, supposedly made for submission to God and man together.

  Morrow had never particularly credited that teaching, really; it’d never described how his Ma and Pa got
on, and he certainly didn’t believe it now, after having palled ’round even briefly with the likes of Songbird and Yiska, let alone Yancey Colder Kloves. But he still sometimes caught these things resounding inside him, hearkening back to that part of him which’d once thought Chess’s sort of outright daffodil patently incapable of beating a “real man” in battle, or that victory for non-hex over hex might be ensured by praying hard enough.

  “Let go, damn you,” Miss Berta snarled, while Miss Eulie and the third arrival, a big-eyed Mex girl-child, clung each to each, only pried loose with great effort on Carver’s part. “We didn’t come to fight! We came to damn well surrender!”

  Pinkerton loomed above her as a half-dozen sentries rushed over, ringing the captives with rifle muzzles. “Oh, aye? And what would yuir man Fennig think of that, I wonder?”

  “Nothing,” Eulie said, softly. “Hank’s dead — Clodagh too. Lady Rainbow killed him.”

  “Killed them both, the bitch, and after all he did for her, as well. Though, with Clo . . .” Berta shook her head, angry tears leaking

  free. “. . . hell, you’ll see soon enough, I guess,” she concluded, at last.

  Pinkerton nodded to the child. “So who’s this?

  The girl gulped back her sobs. “Marizol es mi nombre, jefe,” she got out. “Mi madre e padre — mama, papa . . . they bring me to the City, to worship the Lady with them. I am not bruja, I swear it! I grow up in Huejuquilla, I am no one — I only wish to go home. Please . . .” As she slumped, Morrow knelt, circling her with one arm; she pressed herself into his side, shivering, with cold and fever mixed. “Please,” she whispered. “I wish to go home.”

  Morrow looked to Pinkerton, who snorted in exasperation. “Sweet Christ, Edward, we’ve neither time nor men to spare on repatriations — how close do you think any State-uniformed man would get to the border, with the Hapsburg on the march? Still . . .

  belike the Bewelcomites could be persuaded to handle one more refugee.” With a small but real smile: “She’s no’ much of an eater by the looks of her anyways.”

  Marizol blinked at Pinkerton, then flung herself over and grabbed him by the knees, sobs and rapid Spanish rendering her babble unintelligible. Pinkerton looked discomfited; Ludlow hid a smirk. Berta and Eulie exchanged looks of relief.

  “She is thanking you for saving her,” the Enemy explained, smirking.

  Morrow’s hackles abruptly went up.

  “Saving her?” He asked, warily. “From what?”

  Though he’d directed the question to the Enemy, it was Eulie who answered. “We’ll tell you gladly, sir: the Lady, Ixchel — ” She pronounced it eetch-ell, mangling the name unmercifully. “ — is in bad straits indeed. That body she uses is rotting ’round her, so she’s desperate for a new one, with poor Marizol her first choice.”

  Berta nodded. “It’s true,” she agreed. “Keep her from acquiring a new vessel, and your war’s more than half-won.”

  Pinkerton’s face went terrifyingly still. “Then you’ve just brought something the Lady wants most desperately right into me own camp,” he replied, flatly. “What makes you think she’ll not rend heaven and earth to get this little chit back?”

  “Oh, there is no point to that.” Again, the Enemy interjected, as if it found nothing more enjoyable than to be helpful. “My sister’s great honour has already been openly rejected — cast back into her teeth, before all her subjects! For one must love a god to become the god’s ixiptla, and this girl does not love my sister . . . nor, I think, will she ever.”

  “Easy enough to say,” Pinkerton mused. “But Doc Asbury’s spoke enough on the workings of this Oath, and claims it’s no’ love ye need — only consent, which ye can get in many ways. What assurances do I have that the Lady won’t reach for this girl again, even here? That she won’t rise up from the earth, say, seize you two and tell the girl if she doesnae cooperate, you’ll be killed?”

  Eulie gaped, while Berta sputtered. “I, I — don’t think it works like that, Mister Pinkerton — ”

  Morrow cleared his throat, loudly. “Sir, we get her far enough away, fast enough, and she’ll be safe. The Lady barely ever leaves the City — hasn’t travelled beyond since it first went up, aside from the attack on Bewelcome, and she sure went home fast enough after that. Might well be she can’t go any farther, or the Oath ties her to her seat of power, sure as it does all the others; she’s got to know that if she leaves her folk for too long now, they’ll lose all hope — and then she’s lost. I’m telling you, sir, she won’t risk it for one girl this late in the game, new vessel or no. She ain’t that foolish.”

  Pinkerton returned Morrow’s gaze, gave a slow, considering nod. “You make good sense, Edward.” As Morrow let out his breath, however, Pinkerton went on: “But I’m no’ sure I credit the Lady with your brand of logic. ’Sides which . . . I dinna see a point in taking the chance.”

  For the first time since the War, under fire, Morrow froze — so was therefore unable to do anything about it when, without changing expression, Pinkerton put his quick-drawn pistol’s barrel against Marizol’s forehead, and fired. The back of the girl’s head blew out in a burst of bone, atomizing gore. Her eyes still wide, she let go and toppled limply back into the trough, splashing heavily, vanishing from sight.

  Ludlow threw up his hands; Eulie collapsed in a dead faint; Berta shrieked like a gutted horse and flung herself against her restraints, twisting madly, while the hex-handlers forced her down onto her face. “Marizol!” she screamed into the cold earth, voice muffled. “Marizol!”

  Only sheer numbness (another War-time legacy) kept Morrow from doubling over and retching in similar fashion. And from the greyish undertone to Carver’s face, he saw, the Private felt much the same way.

  The Enemy, on the other hand, closed its eyes, breathed deep and smiled — and God damn it all if this too wasn’t a Chess-smile, recognizable from close-quarters inspection: blissful grin of satiation achieved, absinthe after long dryness, violence after long restraint or climax after celibacy.

  Sacrifice received once more, however inadvertent, or unasked. And accepted.

  Morrow remembered little of the rest, though he vaguely recalled Carver taking charge of Berta and Eulie, shepherding them off to the stockade. A moment stood out peculiarly, tintype-stamped on his brain — Berta staring at Carver in dazed recognition, as if only now realizing how close she’d come to killing him, bare hours earlier. Nearby, Ludlow sat on the ground, once more examining his blood-drenched notebook, like a child does a broken toy.

  The Enemy’s words, too, he had somehow managed to file away, as it thanked Pinkerton for the life rendered up to it, and gave its counterproposal: The day after the day after tomorrow, at sun’s highest apex, I will stand before the walls of New Aztectlan — challenge my sister to leave her City and do me battle, god against god. If she dares not accept, even more loyalty and will to fight will be lost amongst her retinue; if she does, then surely you shall see, and seize, an opportunity. Whatever the result, your victory will be that much closer.

  “‘God against god’ . . . that suggests ye might lose,” Pinkerton observed, so incautiously it made Morrow want to scream. “Mayhaps there’s other reward in it for yuirself, though, hmmm? Something worth the risk?”

  But the Enemy only laughed.

  Avoidance of boredom is reward enough for me, Allan Pinkerton, it said, then sunk back into the trough, taking its bounty along with it — disappearing so utterly that nothing whatsoever remained in its wake, not even little Marizol’s pathetic corpse.

  Lying fully clothed on his cot yet again, Morrow stared up at his tent’s canvas ceiling in silence, then closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slowly, letting fatigue bear him down. He thought on Geyer, most likely still hidden in Asbury’s tent; wondered how long it would take for Asbury to hear what had happened, and if that would finally be enough to drive him to flee with Geyer, after all. Then turned his mind to Yancey, knowing
he had to dream of her if he could, for she needed to know what was happening — just how bad things already were, and would likely become.

  And God, but he just needed to touch her, be with her — so much so he was almost afraid she would recoil, if she sensed that depth of need in him. The world grew fuzzy; his heartbeat slowed. His limbs were heavy. Soft darkness enshrouded him. Morrow went into it gladly, waiting for contact . . .

  . . . only to open his eyes again but one second later, and find the Enemy in his bed.

  “Christ,” he said, disconsolate, “not you again.”

  It was like some bad parody of more memories than he liked to tally up: Chess Pargeter’s face hanging over his, studying him while he slept; one deft little set of pistoleer’s fingers tracing his body up and down, admiring it for handholds. As though he was just considering where best to clamber on and amuse himself a while, seeing what-all he could get away with before Morrow returned enough to his senses to object to the indignity.

  “No one will miss your presence, soldier,” the Enemy replied, coolly. “I only thought we should talk further, before my arrangement with your general comes to pass.”

  “Yeah, that was quite the bill of goods you sold him on. I’m takin’ it things won’t happen exactly the way you gave him t’understand they might, come mornin’ after next.”

  “What he thinks is none of my concern, soldier. Though I take it you would prefer they go badly, rather than well, for a man who blinked not one eye before killing that child my sister covets, for the grand crime of being a potential inconvenience.”

  Morrow snorted. “Say it again, why don’t you. And try to pretend like any of it means a damn thing, this time.”

  “For a man so lacking in power, you accord me very little respect. Is this wise?”

  “Hard to tell, t’be frank. I mean, I do fear you, if that counts for anything — same way I would a wild dog, or one of them poisonous snakes.” It almost felt like he was roaring drunk, this apparent freedom to insult something so powerful to its — Chess’s — own visage. But here he willed himself sober, stringently, before he made choices he maybe wouldn’t have time to regret; sat up straight and looked the Enemy in what passed for its eyes, only to watch it smirk back up, charmlessly.