“‘We’?”
“Me, your father, your mother. Both said to say they love you, by the way.”
Yancey blinked, swallowing. “They — couldn’t be here?”
“They are here. It’s just you can’t . . .” Uther hesitated. “There aren’t really words for it — has to do with you still being alive and all, only grasping one point in Time. And that was your Pa’s attempt at an explanation!” He snorted. “Mala just gave me my marching orders and sent me on my way, to do what I can to help.”
Yancey startled herself with a gulp of laughter. “Sounds like Ma,” she admitted. “But — if you see it all, then you must know what I did — before the wedding, and after.” Her throat hurt to say it. “I brought Chess there, and all that followed down on the Hoard, likewise. Did for Sheriff Love again, too, eventually; murdered him, right in front of his wife and child.”
“Many have, honey.” Uther sighed. “Can’t say it didn’t hurt to learn, either, or to watch. But I don’t begrudge you none.”
Yancey stepped back, breaking the contact. She didn’t deserve even its shallow comfort. “Uther . . . I got you killed.”
Uther shrugged. “Halfway, maybe — rest of it I did myself, and gladly. But that don’t mean I’m unhappy you’re still alive.” More gently: “Stay that way, will you? We don’t need you to think like you gotta hurry up and join us, seein’ we’re with you already. Always will be.”
“I’ll try,” Yancey barely whispered.
“All I ask.”
He took her into his arms again, and she let herself rest there for a while. Did it always hurt, to be forgiven? she wondered. But maybe that was why folks called God merciful and cruel. Some mercies hurt, and probably should, with an ache that was oddly pleasing.
“So you came to help,” she said, presently. “How?”
Uther drew back a little, so’s he could study her face. “You got a lot of clout in this place, honey; more than me, truth be told. But I got one thing you don’t — time. I can take as long as you need to find the man you’re looking for.”
“Problem is, Uther, if he sees you comin’, he’ll think you’re part of those huntin’ him — one of those he did for, in a long and bloody line of such. That’s why it’s got to be me — somebody he knows, and trusts.”
Uther stroked his chin. “Huh. Well, I think I might have another option, come to think.” With a deadpan humour that fair made Yancey’s heart turn over, for sheer familiarity: “Don’t go nowhere, will you?”
And just as suddenly, she was alone again.
Yancey sank to the grey grass and buried her face in her palms, unsure whether to laugh or sob.
When she finally became aware of Uther standing before her again, she looked up — and leaped to her feet, mouth open at the sight of the man beside him. A man she’d only seen once, and only as a ghost, for the most fleeting of seconds through a third man’s memories — but all the same, she knew him.
“Experiance Colder,” said Uther, “this is — ”
“Kloves,” said Yancey, putting out her hand. “Yancey Kloves, Missus. We’ve never met, sir, but I know you through a mutual acquaintance . . . Chess Pargeter.”
Kees Hosteen stiffened — then unlocked, a slow smile splitting his greying beard.
“Shouldn’t surprise me, I guess,” he replied. “Man does get around.”
“True enough.”
“So, what the hell’s the little bastard gotten himself into this time?” Then, holding up a hand: “Actually, don’t bother; take too long to explain anyway, I’m sure. Just tell me what I can do to help.”
Yancey matched his smile, and did.
SEVEN DIALS: FIVE
Here at the bottom, in the underneath. The end of all things, and the beginning.
This is where the root grows down, snaking its way through layer upon layer, ’til it reaches at last the skull-seed of all life. And this is where the tree grows back up, accordingly — widdershins, counterclockwise, winding the world’s watch the wrong way ’til its coils cry out, ’til time itself runs a path so crooked it crosses over itself. ’Til the blood-choked channel between the two breaks, at last, through that crust which separates life and death, sleep and waking, dream and reality.
After which, fuelled by burning bones and sweet decay alike, it stretches up impossibly high, reaching to scar the sky’s very face: crack things apart, score them so badly they can never be mended, never return to what they were before, no matter what sacrifice is made. To birth a new world, whole, complete. Entire.
As though everything at once were commanding, or perhaps pleading: O you who die to live and live to die, gods and monsters — victims, killers, magicians of every world, together — kill yourselves, now, while you still can. Make the sun and moon come up, make it all afresh, anew. Start over, while you still can.
And do it now. Before it is too late.
Though Sheriff Love — Chess still couldn’t think of the man without his former title, for all he doubted the dead got to hold onto such things — stretched up as lean and tall as ever in his familiar dusty black, the rest of the lawman’s aspect was a strange cross-breed of the last two times Chess had seen him: hair caught back up in those two shortish ear-locks, parted severely and braided at the bottom, while his faith-hollowed face still bristled with that shaggy year’s growth of beard Bewelcome’s un-salting had gifted him, groomed only minimally (with fingers, perhaps), and honest-to-Christ knotted to keep it up out of his way.
What he looked most like was one of those old-time preachers whose Word Rook had liked to cite, back under the Lieut’s command–Preparers of the Way sent out into the desert to await God’s view-halloo, fed on honey and locusts, harassed by titty-shaking devils. Like those left behind in War-Heaven, however, Love bore the marks inflicted by his last go-out with lamentable clarity. That powder-burnt hole in his temple, for example, cracks starring out all ’round, with what rougher-yet damage the bullet had made coming out on the opposite side no doubt well-hid beneath his mane.
“Hadn’t looked to see you here,” Chess told him, studying for its traces — and vaguely recalling, as he did, how that might well have been the exact same thing he’d said to him when they’d met up at Yancey Kloves’ wedding, all that time ago . . . or not so much, maybe. Hard to Goddamn tell, down here.
But the Sheriff didn’t seem to notice. “Where else would you have thought to find me, ‘Private’?” He answered. “Judgement, once met, is swift, and terrible; when released from the flesh, all men resolve to their proper places, and stay there long as the Lord deems fit. Though, that said . . .” He looked Chess up and down. “. . . you obviously haven’t exactly resigned yourself to whatever fate He threw your way. Have you?”
Chess raised a brow. “You expected any different?”
“Given your nature? Not really, no.”
“Huh. Very . . . Christian of you, I guess.”
Nearby, Oona — frostbit feet miraculously returned to their normal hue — straightened up, buttoning Chess’s jacket closer about her, and tapped one hand impatiently on her still too-much-revealed thigh. “So ’oo’s this, then?” she demanded, of Chess. “’Nother of your God-botherer fancy-men?”
Chess almost spat, at that. “Hardly,” he managed.
“Well, I’m not likely t’know, am I?”
“You sure ain’t. So why don’t you keep your mouth shut and let me get my bearings, after which we’ll move on?”
Oona made a huffing noise, and tossed her red hair like a colt. The Sheriff, on the other hand, regarded her at first with interest, then outright startlement.
“Pargeter,” he said, at last, “is . . . that a woman?”
“What gave it away?”
“I — hadn’t known you to keep female company, is all, aside from Missus Kloves. And I know she isn’t yet in our same situation.”
“Yeah, and how’d that be, I wonder? No, wait, I got it .
. . God told you.”
Too much fun entirely, almost, to twit this great fool, now he’d recovered his vaunted reason and charitableness along with his salt-free skin. And yet — Chess had to admit it didn’t bring quite the charge it once might’ve, under different circumstances. The stakes were just too high, too immediate, to be worth indulging himself over something so . . . petty.
“God doesn’t speak to me,” Love said, at last. “Not any more. Not — yet, anyhow.”
To which Chess had no earthly idea what to reply, in all frankness. So they simply stood there a minute, glancing elsewhere, ’til Oona finally put in, “I’m ’is mother, in case you was wonderin’.”
Again, Love gave half a moment’s face-slapped double take, before rallying himself. “Really,” was all he replied.
Yeah, really. Think I dropped out of the air full-made, preacher-man, or came up a-bloom from perdition’s own root?
The usual quick connective spark between those words buzzing ’round Chess’s skull and his own sharp tongue, however, seemed to have gone fallow, making it lie surprisingly quiet in his mouth.
Indeed, he had to rouse it somewhat to simply say, in return:
“Sheriff . . . I’ve been thinking on this a good long time. . . .”
“Do tell.”
“Rook did you wrong at Bewelcome, and I helped. That-all at Hoffstedt’s Hoard, though — that one’s on you.”
“I know it.”
“But half of it’s my fault, too. And I know it.”
“Well. You do surprise me, Mister Pargeter.”
“Nice to know it can be done.”
And here, there occurred something utterly unexpected, something so strange in even this hundred-Hells world that Chess could only blink dumbly at it. Love looked away, shook his head . . . and smiled. A worn look, its bitterness muted only by long weariness, yet honest in its mirth as in its rue — and that mirth self-mocking, too. Then the smile died, and Love’s eyes went bleak, looking off into the distance.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “I’ve been humbled here, in many ways. So any startlement brought my way by you is nowhere near the worst.”
Not much caring to think on Love’s purgatorial tribulations, Chess cleared his throat, looking ’round. “So — where exactly is ‘here,’ anyway, if I might wrangle you away from your penitences for a moment or two? And while we’re at it . . . don’t suppose you know a back way out?”
“Are you two pursued?”
Chess snorted. “Always, Sheriff.”
Love gave a nod, once more as grim as ever. “Others here have called this place the Anchorhold, after those Papist hermits who brick ’emselves into walls, to better serve God undistracted. Which fits, since from what I’ve gleaned, it’s for those who need to contemplate their sins — to think on what they’ve done, before going on. As for how one leaves, however — ” A shrug. “Might it be you’ve come bearing repentance in your heart for your crimes, Pargeter? All of them?”
“Fairly certain that’d take longer than we have to spare, even if I felt like tryin’.”
“At least you’re honest, in your fashion.”
Beside them, Oona hooted softly; Chess shot her a glare.
“I looked for a way out of the ’Hold at first, and never found one,” Love admitted. “Yet new souls do arrive — and some who were here when I arrived have gone, though none saw them go — ”
Chess cut him off with an impatient wave. “Yeah, yeah, suffer, be purified, get saved,” he spat. “No offence, Sheriff, but that’s for them’s been killed true and final. I still got a body up there, and I aim to get it back. And given who-all’s holding its reins right now, I was kinda hopin’ you’d have something a bit more helpful to offer me.”
“Who would it be you think I share your antipathy for, exactly?”
“Old friend to us both, I’ll wager he’d say; a certain big black motherfucker, got a mirror for a foot. Ring any fuckin’ bells, Sheriff?”
Love closed his eyes, breathing hard. “Do you have any idea, Pargeter,” he asked, after many moments, “how long I’ve prayed God to quench the hatred in my breast? And now you storm through, and blow all my heart’s ashes back to Hellfire in a second. For that alone, I’d have you gone — back home, to another suffering gallery, even Heaven itself, little as you merit it. But to tell me that creature, that — ”
“Enemy,” supplied Chess.
“ — that the Enemy still walks the world, using your flesh for his vessel? Where my Sophy and Gabriel dwell, and me powerless to help them . . . how can I forgive, or be forgiven, knowing that?”
“It’s a conundrum, for certain.”
Love shook his head. “You terrible little man,” he said, without rancour. “Is there any one place you’ve ever appeared, where trouble hasn’t followed?”
Now it was Chess’s turn to look down, own head shaking in response. Because, Goddamnit — he didn’t know.
The Anchorhold’s air had been so quiet thus far, but for their voices, that the sound which next intruded — a splintering crack, as of ram-smashed stone — made them all start, even Love. Oona yelped in fright, reeling away; Chess spun, just in time to see the wall at his back bulge out, white-edged fractures webbed all across the dark granite. Before he could react, the rest collapsed, pouring down ’cross the floor like sand from a cracked hourglass. Cold white light spilled in, glittering with windblown snow so white it burned blackly, reflected off of Love’s narrowed eyes.
Once again, Chilicothe was the first man to step through — lurching stiff-legged, punctured hamstring braced with the stock of his own useless rifle, strapped to fashion a crude splint. For all that the morbid lack of expression on his face did not change, Chess yet felt the lifeless gaze transfix him, a lamprey-like force locking on.
What is it you think you’re fixing to do to me, you dead-ass motherfucker? Don’t even recall your first name, if I ever knew it.
He drew in a slow illusion of breath, wondering in turn what tricks he had left to work which might throw the dead man back — ’til, without warning, a long, tall back transposed between. Chess jolted awake once more, catching Oona by the arm; Love looked back over his shoulder, head jerking sideways to indicate a potential path of escape, even as he brought fists up pugilist-style.
“Go,” the Sheriff ordered. “If this is truly not your time, Pargeter, then there may be an exit for you, and the lady — find it, while you can. These, on the other hand . . . being damned like myself, they hold no terrors for me. I doubt I can hold them for long, though, without aid.”
“But — ”
Love squinted down at him, fiercely. “No buts. Do you swear you’ll oppose him, up top, with whatever might you can lay hand to? The Enemy?”
“He’s mine as well as yours, and everybody’s, so . . .”
“Don’t equivocate, fornicator. Swear.”
Oona was tugging at his arm once more, while Chilicothe grinned both their ways over Love’s dusty shoulder. Around them, the retreating rows of devotees sat frozen as ever in their cabinets, seemingly unaware of what further hell might be about to rain down. Then again, Chess guessed, they were probably used to blocking such distractions out; so engrossed were they in chasing after their penance, they were determined to let nothing intrude. Love had been one of their number, but he’d broken his vows — put out a hand to help Chess, help Oona. Now he was back to square one, on their account.
“I swear,” Chess told him, voice gone dry, as understanding of what Love had given up on his and Oona’s behalf made something at his vision’s limits pulse and throb. Feeling it deep-set, whatever it might be and no matter how little he wanted to; unable to ignore it, as he once would have, without thinking twice.
Because I’ve changed too, I s’pose. Little as I ever wanted to.
“Then go; take your dam. I will block their way, so long as God allows me.”
Love spread his arms, and when he spoke again
, his growl held a thunder beyond anything Ash Rook had ever produced. “How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgement; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers!” More stone fell from the edges of the breach. Chilicothe leaned into the words as into a harsh wind; behind him, the rest of the Dead Posse screamed, imprecations dissolving into one frustrated wail, over which the blast of Love’s voice lifted like a cyclone. “Therefore saieth the LORD, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, ‘Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies’!”
Oona grabbed Chess’s shoulder and shrieked something at him which he couldn’t hear; didn’t take much thought to guess the meaning, though. He nodded, scrambling back as Love threw the weight of his voice against the Posse, holding them out.
“Are you not ashamed of these oaks ye have desired?” Love bellowed at them, over the tumult. “Are you not confounded by this, your chosen garden? Vengeance is God’s alone, lost souls!”
But despite initial balking, those set against him had rallied already, their din only growing louder, as they listened. So, turning tail — and God Almighty, was he ever getting sick of that particular manoeuvre — Chess broke into a lope, chasing after Oona while she scarpered up the passageway, away from the breach.
The ’Hold’s corridor turned, crossed over another (equally endless, from what Chess could glimpse), then another, and so on. Every wall stood studded with alcoves, figures hung blind and motionless, faces abstract as masks, like those paintings on arroyo cave walls he’d rode under; the smooth-polished stone itself gave back their pursuers’ racket, shaking each coffin-cabinet visibly, without ever once rousing those pinned inside.
As they chose turn after turn at random, none leading anywhere useful, Oona cursed. “Place is a maze, worse’n bloody Whitechapel! Christ, to get all this way and stopped here — ”
“Some damn navigator you are! What happened, you lose track of that thread you been clingin’ to all this time?”
The Hexslinger Omnibus Page 88