Must be nice to have something you can rely on, Rook thought. Though granted, he himself’d known the feeling once, of course, and intimately.
But long ago, now. So long.
You will have your husband again, little king, and soon enough, Ixchel had told him, yet again, just before he finally took himself elsewhere. And this time, hadn’t even bothered to answer out loud — why, when he knew damn well she heard whatsoever he was thinking? Just let the words bubble up through him, slow as frog song mud-drowned:
See, honey, you do keep on sayin’ that. But — having seen that thing you claim is him up close, I’m just not sure whether I believe you, anymore. Or if I ever really did, for that matter.
This last was a sobering idea, when so many had already died in its service. Which was why Rook didn’t really care to examine it overmuch, right at this very moment.
So here he was instead, back in the adobe hut where he’d once conjured Kees Hosteen and debated this War’s exigencies with his Council, Fennig and Clo included, what now seemed like years ago. Lying back mother-naked on the heaped-up length of his own clothes and studying what little was visible of the ceiling in the lamps’ flickering light, with two fingers shoved inside Sophy Love’s Bible (snatched up almost without design in all the excitement, as the Hall went to matchsticks and the pre-torrent storm bore them all away, regardless) for a bookmark he didn’t even need, given how the relevant passages were already playing ’emselves out in his head:
For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.
But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God.
. . . Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. . . .
Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city.
31, 13, 22, and none of it damn well helped. Bibliomancy’d failed him, for what had to be the first time. Rook let the book fall, putting both hands over his eyes to block the world out with a double curtain of red-black flesh, and saw . . .
Ixchel, as ever, in her oldest form: that childish one with the high tits and her jade-chip mask, her shut lids marked like eyes, fixed and awful. Descending on him in a cloud, a boiling swarm of black rainbow-winged locusts, and saying, as she did: Why do you hide from me, little king? Where do you think to go, to rid yourself of my presence? We are made one flesh, even by that Book you cling to, ’til death do us part . . . and, since that parting will never happen, long after.
For as you know, there is no real death, for such as you and I.
No death the way he’d been taught to preach on it, certainly: a thousand torments with no hope of anything else once you passed through ’em, not even forgetfulness. Just watery cold and slimy stone, an endless raw-bones ball game played for worthless stakes. Sometimes he wondered why those old Mexes of hers had bothered staying alive at all, riding their nasty, brutish and short existences straight to the Machine’s lip ’stead of hanging ’emselves outright, from the most convenient tree. But he guessed you did tend to dawdle, when you knew the road only went one way; if nothing else, the scenery must make for a welcome distraction.
And that’s where I sent Chess, he knew. Down deep, down under, through awful pain, only to wait there for nothing but more — wait and watch, he could only suspect, while Tezcatlipoca strutted ’round using Chess’s body for a chariot.
Yet he is there, still, in existence, no matter how far my brother may have buried him; we would feel it, were it not so. Which means he will return, eventually.
Rook shook his head. Grandma, though — she told me that should never happen. “For the dead to return unBalances the world.”
A ghost should know better. For he is not dead . . . and she is no god.
Go back to that thing of yours and leave me alone, he thought at her, sure he could hear its skeletal rattle as he “spoke.” Give me an hour to myself, at least.
Let you dream on the past, you mean, ’til your hand cramps? Very well: amuse yourself, then sleep, and be ready to do my bidding once more. For I own you, Asher Rook; your bed is made, just as you always tell yourself. You are mine now ’til Doomsday, in this world, and the next.
She laughed at him then, those old tinkling bone-bells. And eddied away into the ether once more, taking her insectile trappings with her.
It really was getting just like a marriage, ’tween her and him and Chess; the worst sort. Like he was hitched to two equally powerful people at once, one of whom barely tolerated him, while the other wanted to ride him down and eat his beating heart. And neither of ’em even bothered to laugh at his jokes, either.
Fact was, grief and guilt made for a heavy overcoat, ’specially when worn together — and Asher Elijah Rook had spent more time than he now cared to think on in their twinned embrace, muffled from the world with only his dreadful wife and Three-Fingered Hank for company. For far too long, he had felt as though things reached him only at a remove, as though each word spoke worked its way through three separate translations, familiar-unfamiliar.
By law, no mourning would be allowed for dead Mister Fennig, his previous good works in the city’s service being all firmly set aside. Ixchel forbade even the smallest attempt at memorial, on grounds of treason; the sting of Hank’s presence in her court, it seemed, would disappear even more completely than his denuded body had into the gaping maw of what used to be his triangle’s point, the woman he’d loved and quarrelled with most fiercely, of all his ladies.
Yet still Rook couldn’t sleep, here or there. Not with traces of Hank’s mess still on the floor, and Ixchel telling Clodagh: Search, daughter, cast yourself out upon the stars, into the empty places where my own eyes can no longer see — I must have a new body, and soon, if I am to meet my brother on the field. For he will challenge me, I know it . . . and I must meet him, when he does. No matter my state, I must come against him, with all my strength remaining — and in the end, I must win.
I killed the only human being who ever loved me true for you, you horrid creature, Rook thought. That, or to save him from myself. Only one I’ll probably ever love, likewise, when all I ever wanted was the opposite, yet every move I made conspired to lay him low.
Some things can’t be undone, his father had told him, long time gone. Some mistakes are irreparable, Asher. And the only way to pay for ’em is to take responsibility, accept punishment.
He turned over, groaning, feeling Sophy Love’s Bible nudge sharp ’gainst his side. And flipped it open at random, letting his finger-pads fall where they may; saw the words push up like scars, flower open, each sending out a single puff of poisonous black-silver print-pollen — Isaiah 13 again, 11 to 22, with some small transposition.
And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.
And as for that city, Babylon the proud . . . Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.
And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Rook ordered the damn thing, frowning. Seeing, as he did, the lamentable spectacle of Chess-but-not-Chess, rising up dry out of the sodden earth, wreathed in lightnings: his lips like clay, breath like dirt, Weed at his loins poking out all a-flower, while the markings all up and down his limbs shimmered like a heat wave. As bad as anything Rook had subjected himself to previously, yet still wearing that shape, that Song of Solomon
mask which made him want to sing praises, rub his face in the dust, let the same bad parody of “Chess” bruise his naked heel against his head ’til all their quarrels finally fell away.
For Behold, thou art fair, my beloved; yea, pleasant: also our bed is green. Yet By night on my bed I sought him who my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
Since keeping his eyes shut changed nothing, he opened them, instead. And found, though his head rang, that the silence in this empty room was strangely restful. Here, he could pretend for a moment that the years had fallen away, or spun to a fate altogether different . . . a world without the War, or the gallows; without hexation, without Ixchel . . .
Without Chess.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead again, cursing: no, not that. Never that. Or, by everyone’s God but his, what had been the point of any of it?
But you never could really pretend despair was peace, not for very long.
And here, inevitably, memory finally welled up, just as Ixchel had mocked him it would. A scene from two scant years previous, when he and young Mister Pargeter were still poisonously entangled as heartworm through a dog’s ticker — baking in bed together, holed up near the Border in some whorehouse whose accoutrements seemed to make Chess comfortable and uncomfortable in equal measure, and Rook itchy to amuse him out of his mulishness.
The details popped up in a glittering cloud, criminally fresh as ever. He saw them sharing tequila by the mouthful, saw himself dip to lap a bit more from the hollow of Chess’s throat before turning him over and licking a careful trail down his sweat-shiny spine, then bury himself face-first at the musky source. Kissing him wetly open enough so’s he could hook in a pair of fingers and scissor them half-viciously inside, preparing the way, while Chess just hiked his hips and purred out loud into the verminous pillows.
Moaning, as he did: Oh Ash, Jesus fuck, enough with the niceties, already — have at it, make me Goddamn scream! Best be ready to do me through this damn mattress, you know what’s good for you, ’cause I ain’t fit to wait one minute more —
You’re what’s good for me, you awful object.
Yeah? Then hurry up and get goin’, you sumbitch, ’fore I just pop off entire and leave you to ride your hand alone, for once.
Why, Chess Pargeter! You been cheatin’ on me, with yourself? A rap to the back of his skull, sharp enough to make his fist spark pleasantly. Impatient little bastard.
Three fingers now, well below both knuckles; Rook dipped his thumb lower, ran it quick ’cross Chess’s swollen, gilt-furred balls, laughed out loud to see him pant and snarl. And felt that very noise jerk him up in turn, poking his own sensitive head out past the foreskin’s tip like it was a gun and Chess’s yearning hole the target, an inescapable challenge, near-impossible not to thrust himself inside. . . .
He set teeth on Chess’s nape, nipping hard — made him gasp and squeal, then hump back, hump up, strong as some untamed bronco bent on stage-managing his own breaking. While Rook, in turn, found it was all he could do to just grab hold of either hip and enjoy the ride: deep-set, tall in the saddle but wholly at Chess’s mercy, rather than the other way ’round. And well content to be so.
Hit it, Christ! Yes, there, riiiight fuckin’ there, oh Lord Lord Lord —
He was touching himself now, in time to it, shamelessly — dipping low and then dragging up high once more, sweat-greasing his palm to pump out a bead or two of dew, then use that in turn to dig himself yet deeper. Yet feeling something crack wide inside him, as he did — dead flesh maggoted away to expose abraded tissue, exquisite as probing any unhealed wound.
One thing only you ever asked of me, darlin’, he thought, and I went on ahead and did different ’cause I knew better, like I always thought I did. Left you behind, then was surprised when you really couldn’t be held responsible. And look at me now . . .
Trapped between two gods, neither of ’em offering any sort of salvation worth the sacrifice. What he wouldn’t do for just a hint of that still, small voice he’d once glimpsed inside Mesach Love’s mind, or Sophy’s bountiful Saviour! But such never had seen fit to show itself to faithless Asher Rook, no matter how long he prayed, or how hard. Chess, I am . . . sorry, damnit, like I’ve never been. So sorry.
Which is how, with one last, half-despairing grasp, he eventually found himself touching a whole new set of fingers entirely — five cold little digits, each tipped with an obsidian-flake nail, seemingly sprouting up through the tangle of his own belly-fur. Which knit irreparably with his while their owner murmured to him, gently, from somewhere over Rook’s suddenly stiff shoulder: “Oh, how I know he would appreciate that apology, mi conquistador, were your red boy here to hear it! Though he would pretend otherwise, probably, and act accordingly.”
The Rev turned his head just one tiny bit more, straining his neck muscles to their limits, and found himself eye to poison-green eye with the same thing that’d taken his measure at Bewelcome. There, however, it’d been far enough away to deny; here it was closer, very much so, flesh firm as Chess’s own.
“You,” he named it. “Enemy of All, right? We Are Your Slaves?”
“So I have been called, yes. And in my sweet sister’s time I was K’awil, God K, who is also known as Bolon Dzacab, Serpent-legged and Powerful, He of the Nine Innumerable Maternal Generations.” The creature smiled at him, showing those shiny black teeth. “But really, does it matter? Do you wish to be enslaved to me, Asher Rook? Or . . . to him whose meat I come wrapped in?”
Rook swallowed, dryly; felt his blood beat still all through the tenderest parts of him, every pulse a scrape, an implicit skinning.
“One thing you’re not, though, is Chess — at all. Are you?”
“Not entirely. But thinking you might be able to swap me for him is as good a reason as any to want to see us all back underground, is it not? I offer you a chance here, priest-king — only be ready to rise and I will lift you up further, if you swear to give me what I want.”
“Which’d be?”
“Words with my sister, face to face. Time to put my argument.”
“She don’t respond too well to arguin’, from my experience.”
“Ah, but I have known her the longer, by far. Trust me in this. . . .”
“If nothing else?”
“I see we understand each other.”
Rook pulled himself upright, pushing the Enemy’s hand away, and tried to position his bedding so’s to hide his only slightly flagging proof of interest — a move the thing all but snickered at. Still, it shifted back, crossing its legs like an Injun; folded palm against palm, primly, and allowed him time to collect himself.
“No offence,” he said, “but I thought I was alone. How’d you get in here, anyhow?”
A shrug. “In your position, you are never alone, truly — here, most especially. As to the other, how can I be kept out? Like my sister, I came in through your dreams . . . an easy entrance, especially when you are hurt and disconsolate, reaching out for any shred of comfort your mind can conjure.”
“That’s all it took, huh?” Rook shook his head. “Best to keep my hands out of my pants from now on, then.”
“Desire is a spell in itself, ‘Reverend’ — all wants are. But you cannot stop yourself from wanting, any more than you may choose to swear off breathing.”
“Guess I can’t, at that.”
“It is indubitable. And so — let us skip ahead, ask and answer that most central of questions. What do I want? For you have been wondering, have you not?”
“Much as you were doing to distract me, yes.”
“What I want is what you want, what your red boy wants. To see my sister fail.”
“And how’s that to be achieved? Seen that creature she made, yet?”
“The tzitzimime are not to be trifled with, yes. Like anything spawned from blood, however, they are difficult to control. Even one of them may be more risk than reward.” It smiled,
sidelong. “Besides which — I think you know something she does not, regarding this new ‘daughter’ of hers. What your maim-handed friend saw through his little clear mirrors, the ones he slipped you in that final fray, before his woman’s shell ate him whole. Those you glanced through later on, just the once, when my sister was distracted by her victory.”
Rook swallowed again. “Glasses, that’s what we call those. ’Cause they’re made of glass, this stuff we conjure out of sand and lime — cook it at high heat then blow it out, cool it, grind it so’s you can see things clearer.”
“I neither know nor care what ‘glass’ is, priest-king. Tell me what you saw, through your dead ally’s eyes.”
“I . . . saw . . . Clo, I thought. Still in there, under everything — the way Chess is in you, I only squint hard enough. And I thought I saw her looking back, too, almost as though . . .”
“As though some part of her were still the woman you knew, regardless of how my sister had remade her. As though, if you only found a way — she might be restored, and turn against the woman who killed her, killed her son, made her kill her man. Deformed her into this dreadful thing and laughed over it, then made her laugh, as well.”
“You really hate Ixchel that much? Though she was your sister, or your wife.”
“My sister, my wife, my mother, my all: my self. So no, little meat-thing, I do not hate her. How could I? Only we are left awake now, alone and alike — only us, in this whole mis-made world. But I cannot allow what she would see done. It is . . . foolish. Messy.”
“Thought you liked chaos.”
“Chaos is one thing. This — is idiocy.”
“I ain’t about to disagree.”
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