“‘Body’ . . .” he repeated. “So — if the Enemy’s still got mine, then what the hell is this I’m ridin’ ’round in?”
“A dream,” offered Songbird, who’d been watching from the sidelines. Yiska nodded, and agreed: “The White Shell Girl has the right of it — you are spirit only, with nothing of the flesh about you at all, not blood nor bone nor breath.”
“That don’t help. What’m I made of, exactly?”
“Your own thoughts. So long as you believe you are, you are.”
“So, in other words . . . if I really do fall asleep, I’m fucked.”
Songbird snorted. “Look around you, English Oona’s son; these are days of wei-ch’i, danger and opportunity both. How likely is it you will have time for that?”
Though Chess was damned if he knew, he opened his lips to answer nonetheless, only to have Yancey lay a finger ’cross them, stopping his mouth with worship-charged blood. The jolt hit him like a dose such as his Ma would’ve been proud to suck down, in her day — and when Ed tipped the rest of it up to his tongue, he drank greedily, feeling himself gain solidity with every fresh swallow. He shivered all down along his spine, curled his toes inside his boots and sent a dark red-green pulse back through ’em both as payment, sealing their wounds shut with new skin fine as corn silk.
Who says I don’t pay my debts? Chess thought, semi-drunkenly. Pay my way, at the least, when I’m asked to, or even if I ain’t. And that’s ’cause I don’t want to owe nobody nothin’, in this world or the next, if I can possibly help it.
Grandma was starting in to jaw again, though, beckoning all parts of their odd little consort closer, so’s they could formulate a plan of action. And though Chess didn’t think it was likely she’d want his opinions on the matter, he drew up tall, blinking himself as awake as could be, under the circumstances — ready and willing to offer ’em, nonetheless.
“I have spoken with the dead northman’s women,” Grandma began, indicating those two hexes new-fled from Ixchel’s City; “Glass-eyes Hank, the visioneer, as others called him. They tell me that neither expected to be able to do as they did in bringing you, soldier, and your fellow warrior — ” She flipped a paw here at Carver, who looked damned uncomfortable indeed to find himself ’sconced up amongst such a freakish pack of circus-turns. “ — from the battle’s path. Not without their other sister-wife, at any rate.”
“Clo,” the lighter of the women offered. “She was always the strongest of us, ’sides from Hank himself; that’s probably how the Lady was able to do . . . what she did, with her. Make her what she is now.”
“And that’d be?” Chess asked.
“Bad,” Morrow supplied. “Awful enough it’ll take the whole lot of us to make a dent in that bitch’s hide, and even then . . .” He shook his head. “Well, right now, I’m damn glad they were able to get you top-side again for better reasons than the usual — ’cause ghost or no, you’re just about the biggest gun we got.”
Not that he wanted confirmation of Morrow’s words, but flashes reached out from the big man nevertheless, whether Chess called ’em or no: a swooping, skull-faced creature with two fistfuls of razors, wigged in bells and wreathed in cold fire, tearing men seam from seam the way a hawk will mice; someone so horrifying that Ixchel was content to simply stand by as she did her will, picking her teeth. The idea that Chess, especially in his current state, could form any viable sort of opposition at all to such a creature would’ve seemed purely laughable, had it not been for the sadly hopeful look Ed was throwing his way — as though if Chess didn’t suck as much blood as it took out of he and Yancey and step on up, even if he left ’em emptied in his wake, then everybody might as well either put up their hands and go home, or just shoot each other outright for good measure.
And how fucked are you, exactly, if that’s so? Chess thought, stolen warmth deserting him somewhat, as his stomach thicked with cold. How fucked are we all, for that matter?
No point in asking, red boy, Grandma’s pitiless mind-voice told him — and Yancey too, he suspected, from the way her eyes fell and her breath quickened, like she’d been caught peeping. As I said, we stand at the crossroads — and these people, only, opt to fight with you, no matter the cost. Which is why they need as much hope as they can dream up for themselves.
“There is a reason these women’s powers have increased,” Grandma said, aloud, before he could object, “and I think we all know it. In the wake of this morning’s battle, the Crack has opened yet further, tearing Balance from balance, as threads cut crosswise destroy any fabric. It must be shut again before we have any hope of confronting the Mother of Hanged Men, let alone of defeating her — or the Enemy.”
“And why do I think you already got some sort of plan in mind?” Morrow asked. But Yancey already had her brows knit, grey eyes all the paler for intent concentration.
“Songbird’s wound-suturing,” she said, at last. “We’re gonna . . . what? Travel along the Crack itself, pouring in hexation like mortar, so we’ve already got the war half-fought by the time we arrive?”
Grandma inclined her “head,” rock dust puffing quietly. “It will take all our effort,” she confirmed. “My granddaughter will lead and guide, while the White Shell Girl and red boy unseam whatever infection keeps these lips from closing and lay down healing instead, as though spinning silk for a web — and though it is hardly in his nature to cure instead of kill, you will teach him, dead-speaker, even while shedding blood along with your soldier to keep him rooted here, until he can re-take what is his. Sophronia Love will do the same for her son, of course. And the others, Glass-eyes Hank’s wives and this man who risked himself to free them — they will do their best to protect us on our journey, fending off whatever horrors slip through from Beneath.” Turning, she addressed the rest once more, all at once: “Do I have your promises?”
Young Mister Carver exchanged a glance with the first witch-girl — Berta, something whispered behind Chess’s eyes, in that way he’d finally brought himself to trust; other one was Eulie, casting her own eyes on Carver behind his back, unnoticed, and getting nothing but a squeeze on the hand from that “sister” of hers as reward. Yet he seemed to have made his mind up, all the same.
“Ma’am,” he told Grandma, gruffly, touching hat and rifle-stock together, in an odd sort of improvised salute. “Don’t know how much it’ll help, me bein’ only humanish — but given the stakes, I’ll sure as hell do my best if I can’t do any better, an’ keep on ’til I can’t do no more.”
“You do us great honour, soldier,” Yiska said, seeming to mean it. “A brave man is welcome always, no matter where he comes from.”
Berta and Eulie turned Grandma’s way. “Us too,” Eulie said. “That’s right, ain’t it, sissy?”
“It is.”
And so it went ’round the circle, faster and easier than Chess could ever in his life have suspected it would: Songbird (with a shrug for Yiska), Missus Love on her boy’s behalf, Yancey and Ed, Yiska herself. By the time it came down to him, he felt almost guilty for hesitating — almost.
“What is it you’re gonna be doin’, meanwhile, while all this is goin’ on?” he demanded, of his fellow not-ghost.
To which Grandma didn’t quite shrug — her frame wouldn’t support the movement required, he suspected — but answered, just the same: “Oh, one thing only, but without it . . . no plan, no hope, no chance at all. Better simply to lie down and let them walk on us. Ixchel, her demon and the Enemy, too.”
So tell me, red boy, will you do your part or pout over some mistreatment while the rest die, along with all this world? Give me your vow as well, to stand with the others so long as they need you, and I will count myself well repaid for the sacrifice I am about to make.
Again, temper swept Chess up and down, pricking him all over: oddly pleasant, a tonic, raising his fever ’til he felt like he could ride bulls and throw cows. Making him snap back at her, if only inside his own head —
Think I won’t, you rattletrap? Well, maybe you ain’t been payin’ attention: I’m Chess Pargeter, him who laid Mesach Love’s town to waste and brought it back, likewise; killed bluebellies, robbed trains and burned homesteads groundward too, plenty times over, and that was long before I even got myself hexified. So don’t you dare think there’s any damn thing you name I can’t do, I only put my mind to it.
“Count me in,” he told her, loud enough so’s everyone in earshot could hear. And saw her slab-face crinkle with just the slightest hint of a smile, in return.
“Then I am answered. Yet now I must do something for which the Old Drying Woman, this rock’s protector, will be very angry with me. And rightly so.”
“Why?” Yiska asked, a hint of fear in her flat black eyes.
Grandma raised those four-fingered rakes she used for hands, conjuring a flash between ’em might’ve made a blind man think he could see once more. Replying, as everyone else cringed away: “Because . . . of this.”
Elsewhere, while Clo still harried the hex-train’s remains and Geyer, Asbury and Fitz Hugh Ludlow made their escape from the Emperor’s forces, Rook pulled Ixchel back up out of the earth by her blood-fused topknot, and stood back a deferent pace or two.
She spat mud, clearing her throat enough to snarl: What did you mean by this, little king? I gave no orders!
Rook shrugged. “Sorry for that, ma’am; thought you might’ve not wanted to be crushed, considering the difficulty you were already expending to keep that body of yours intact. My mistake, and my apologies.” He glanced skyward. “But may I ask you to consider the sun a moment? Most specifically, its position?”
Ixchel glared at him, but couldn’t help a quick look, after which she met his eyes with no less anger, but more uncertainty. An hour has passed? More? How have I lost this time?
“I took you under the earth, Lady, to your sanctuary ’neath the Temple,” said Rook. “You were near gone as made no never-mind; don’t surprise me you didn’t feel my sacrifices and supplications. Thought you might react better coming up where we went down.”
He dared one more swift lick of power, murmuring an verse of Genesis he’d always liked — “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him . . . be clean.” — and swept the mud and dirt from her in one warm caress of shimmering air, re-gathering the warmth into both hands only to offer it up, going on one knee, like it was the proposal they’d skipped altogether.
Eternal instinct, along with the brutal hunger of the moment, betrayed her. Within seconds she had seized the dully glowing mass and gulped it back, throat bulging like a bullfrog’s.
Rook kept his head bent, carefully not thinking on the part of the verse he’d deliberately omitted: Therefore Put away the strange gods that are among you.
They had emerged before New Aztectlan’s closed gates, ceiba forest wreckage stretching away to left and right. Rook signalled the sentries above, then turned to look back out over the plain. “If the scouts read things a’right, Lady, that Mex battalion should arrive ’fore sundown,” he said. “They’re still intent on playing coy, so might be I can convince them to stall an attack; depends on whether this comandante Delgado carries as big a stick as he claims to.” He dusted his frock coat down by hand, not willing to draw more power, for risk of re-rousing Ixchel’s appetite. “With your permission, I should go meet ’em alone, seeing how I’ve strength enough to meet treachery and clout enough to deal honestly — ”
“No, husband,” Ixchel interrupted; she’d recovered enough of herself that her voice sounded something like human once again, though sick-grating. “The conquistador soldiers can wait. There is another treachery to face, far closer to hand . . .”
Everything in Rook’s guts froze up; he could feel the blood fall from his face. Oh, shit, was all he could think. Not now, not when the chance to act was so close! Besides which, he could have sworn she no longer had control enough to read him without him knowing it —
“. . . that of my brother,” she finished, at last.
Thank Christ.
Not looking back at Rook, she strode back into the City as its gates rumbled open. Which thankfully gave Rook a moment to master himself, before following.
He’d already sent word to the Council that all City-folk not directly involved in fighting take shelter, anyplace they could, and so far as he could see, that’d mostly held. But many — too many — were now emerging from their various hidey-holes to gawp down Main Avenue at the thing which’d forced itself up smack-dab centre in Temple Square, piercing that long, step-slatted black shadow like some foul bloom, spread sticky-wide and oozing with odd scent.
Not large, Rook saw, as he and Ixchel drew near, just a mound of Weed perhaps eight feet high and as many wide — verdant with new growth but slow-throbbing like some giant egg sac, fit to hatch any moment and pump out some fresh awfulness. Crimson flowers whirled, flared, folded all over, tiny mouths sucking hungrily with stamens and pistils alike fang-sharp at the hexation-rich air.
At the centre, the peak of its height, a tangle denser yet sketched a living, throne-like shape on which sat the Enemy, boneless-slouched as Chess himself might’ve, with one leg kicked over an arm of its living “chair” and its stolen head cocked on the opposite fist. It grinned down at them, slyly flirtatious.
“Took you long enough,” it said.
Honourable Chu, Sal Followell and the Shoshone all faced the mound, aglow with power, though Rook smelled none of the acrid thunderbolt stink of witchery anger-loosed; not yet come to blows, then — simply skirmish-ready, even in the midst of battle. Meeting Chu’s gaze, he nodded toward the busted-in wall, and saw that Celestial gentleman grimace in understanding. Lifting up airborne, he tapped his Injun partner on the shoulder as he did and waited for him to rise likewise, so they could hurtle back and fortify the breach before their newest enemies could take advantage.
Stepping into Chu’s vacated place, Rook glared up at the second body-thieving god it’d been his misfortune to meet up with in as many years. “This your plan all along, then?” He demanded. “Draw us into a fight with the Pinks, make us spend our strength, wait ’til our defences were down so you could finally just up and walk in, ready to destroy us all?”
To this, however, the Smoking Mirror merely chuckled, raising one of Chess’s red-gilt brows.
“Oh, Asher Rook,” it told him, “if you have still so failed to grasp what I have in common with your beloved boy, the very thing which makes him such a perfect vessel, then perhaps you have never understood either of us, at all. For this is the truth: since, with both of us, intention always gives way to instinct, no action of ours ever can truly rise to the lofty level of something like a plan.” Here it yawned, black shark teeth flashing, and added: “Besides which, as your minions here can tell you . . . I hardly walked.”
“Thing come up through the ground, like a damn fever blister,” Missus Followell cut in, angrily, “with Himself there riding it like his own personal cabriolet. And yeah, we all of us know your name, skin-changer, seein’ there’s one more like you told tales on in every place we hails from: coyote, crow, rabbit, spider, fox, whatever. But ain’t a one of us gonna honour such as you by speakin’ it, not ’less you make us.”
Tezcatlipoca cut a parody of Chess’s grin over at Ixchel — no cigar, yet well close enough to make Rook clench all over. “Such loyalty!” It complained. “How did you manage to win it, with so indifferent an investment? One more thing to credit that oh-so-able priest-king of yours with, perhaps.”
A taunt, meant to draw ire, if not outright blood. Yet the Enemy’s sister-mother-wife-and-all remained stock still, battered face showing not a hint of reaction — perhaps it couldn’t move anymore, Rook thought, beyond the minimum needed for speech.
“Don’t credit him alone!” Missus Followell snapped, fearless, without even a glance in Ixchel’s direction. “This here’s our place now, much as it is hers; we’ll see you o
ut of it yet, or die tryin’, from the Rev on down. ’Cause that’s what happens when hex can stand with hex, finally — and after thirty-odd years abloom, if anyone knows how that’s worth bein’ killed for, I’m her, believe you me.”
“You almost speak as though she was of no consequence at all.”
And . . . now those fierce eyes did drop, finally, as though Sal herself realized she’d maybe gone too far. For which Rook found himself surprisingly grateful.
“Wouldn’t say that, no sir,” she told her feet, choosing the words with care. “Without the Lady, there wouldn’t be a City at all . . . we owe Her everything. That’s why we keep the Oath, after all.”
“Aaaah, yes. Your Oath.”
Such a strange note in the creature’s voice, neither mockery nor respect, but a strange amalgam of the two, with something else woven in beneath. A sort of yearning. Almost an envy.
Never had worshippers you didn’t have to lie to, huh, Trickster? Though at least you compelled ’em with sweet words and pretty pictures personally, I’m sure, ’stead’a getting someone else to do that for you, like some others I might mention.
Over this same thought, however — as though summoned by even the implication of her name, let alone its mention — was where he at last heard Ixchel’s voice intrude, hoarse yet clear, almost raw.
“‘My’ Oath is nothing new, brother . . . as you, like any of us, should know.” Now it was her tone caught Rook off-guard, for she sounded almost as she had in those very first days, when she’d been nothing more than a voice in his head — all impassioned, seductive persuasion. “More than anything else, it is only the old agreement returned in new vestments. Sacrifice as sacrament, true devotion, instead of necessity. Though blood flows still for blood, power for power, the result is shared, sustainable. None must die, though they are glad enough to do so.”
“As you are glad enough to let them, my love — of that, I am most certain.”
Ixchel bowed her head, black cloud of hair falling only to drift upward once more, borne on a rising magical tide. “Surely. But you received your due share of ixiptla, gladly as any of us; you, too, flourished off the blood of those we now know to have been hexes-to-be, and like us all, worked wonders in return — preserving cities, renewing the land, shepherding the world through its seasons. Life for life, with pain the coin paid for existence. This has never changed and never will, since even the conquistadors’ creed admits the same, with their White Christ dying to bring rebirth! And thus it is we, we two, who are the very . . . gears of this Machine of my husband’s imaginings, its — workings, its . . . motor. We are the Blood Engine, ourselves.” Struggling for proper words, she came as far forward as she could without setting foot onto the Weed, stretching one hand up. Her pithed voice broke, almost pleading, as if she wanted to weep.
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