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The Hexslinger Omnibus

Page 115

by A Book of Tongues; A Rope of Thorns; Tree of Bones; Hexmas; Like a Bowl of Fire; In Scarlet Town (Today) (epub)


  “First Among Creepers?” Yiska shrugged. “She is old now, and grey. We have bred her many times, setting her children to guard our—somewhere we lodge, when we weary of travelling. An old city carved from rock, where all houses must be entered through their roofs, and the cliffs hold no ladders, so webs are welcome. There, in the canyons, is where we keep our best stock.”

  Charlie pictured some of those sheer Pueblo Injun ruin-walls he and Chess had ridden past hung with silk, and nodded. He scritched Claw-foot’s head a while and watched her preen herself in turn, happy as a cat with string.

  “How long’ve you known folks were usin’ Manifolds on each other?” he asked Yiska, at last.

  “Some months. I am the White Shell Girl’s right arm, especially amongst those without power, dealing with matters she deems unworthy of her attention. But the truth is, even she can see it has built to this steadily, if slowly.”

  “Hard to stay quiet forever, ’specially when you know nobody’s like to listen to you ’less you pack whatever punch you can.”

  “Yes. Yet you must understand—the Hataalii have never had a place such as this before, and never wanted one. Always, when matters cease to satisfy, they have simply moved on; here, they must make accommodation in order to stay, without fighting, without killing, because the City is everything. The City, like the Oath that powers it, is more important than any hex who lives here.”

  “But Hexicas don’t run on hexes alone now, does it, name aside? That’s where the ‘naturals’ come in.”

  Another nod. “So it only follows that the Hataalii resent our presence, as much as they require it. They are . . . a proud people.”

  Oh, no damn doubt.

  Here Charlie thought on Chess Pargeter, a moment—that fierce little banty rooster of a man, fine spurs burnished grey-shot red as his hair and stood up tall as his boot-heels would allow for with a hand cocked on either hip, where those famous guns of his used to hang. Chess, who’d rather wash his hands in your heart than even consider backing down, most particularly if he suspected himself more sinning than sinned against. And let out a single mirthless chuckle at the image, so bitter it made Yiska cock a straight black brow, in what he took for rueful recognition.

  “Uh huh,” he agreed. “But then again, ain’t we all?”

  “This is so.”

  So calm, damn her. Must be an Injun thing, Charlie thought, and wanted to kick himself.

  “Don’t it rankle you none?” he asked, instead. “That gal of yours, with all her power—hell, she could paste you to the wall anytime she wanted, like Lenamarie with Lobbel, or Chess with me. And what-all could you do to stop her, save ask politely she not?”

  Yiska shook her head. “Less than I once could, I suspect—I have been lax in my honours to the diyí, lately. And once upon a time, she might have used that weakness. But not now. She has grown beyond that, for all I do not think she ever wanted to.” She gave him a steady look. “As has the red boy, rider, who counts no hexes amongst his friends, remembering always how the Reverend Rook used his own powers against him, before he knew what he truly was. Do you really think he does not know how you feel? Ask him, and see.”

  “Pass.” A pause. “And Lenamarie—what ’bout her?”

  “She was young,” Yiska replied. “She acted foolishly, not seeing how if she thought to use Doctor Asbury’s methods on her child, Lobbel might use the same man’s bilagaana witchery-tools on her. Yet I believe had she not chased her own death, she too would have learned better, in time.”

  “Didn’t use to bother me,” Charlie said, “the difference ’tween me and him, or him and any human man. But now . . .” Here he trailed away, feeling something still tweak at him, stronger by far than memory or regret. Then turned back to Yiska all of a sudden, demanding—

  “Does beg the question how Doc Hex’s doodads got in here in the first place, though, don’t it? ’Cause nice as Songbird and the rest comport ’emselves when they think they have to, I somewhat misdoubt they’d want to hand their property that sort of weapon, if it could be avoided.”

  Yiska looked down, and sighed.

  “You are not wrong, rider,” she replied. “For in truth, it was Yu Ming-ch’in herself who used her ties with Asbury to gather a war-chest of hex-handler tools, storing them against another new Council policy—debated only, not yet enacted. A law which would affect both Hataalii and natural, alike.”

  Must’ve cost her to admit, seeing where her loyalties lay—but she did it nonetheless, seemingly without regret, which Charlie thought admirable.

  “That’s what I figured. So . . . tell me ’bout that,” he suggested. “Or better yet—why not tell everybody?”

  To hear Songbird explain it, the idea rose up out of a desire not to fall back on Ixchel Rainbow’s ways, doling out tit for tat amongst those to whom no system of justice could ever be easily applied—to move forward democratically, same as every other part of America’s Union, without recourse to what had hitherto passed for hex-society’s usual savagery.

  “Once we did as we pleased, for who could stop us? But if we are to live like civilized people, then there must be boundaries set—some idea of crime, of accountability. Of retribution. Hex no longer preys on hex; this is the gift the Oath gives us, for which we are all grateful. So who can administer justice, when justice is required? Who stands outside the circle of hunger, ready to act objectively?” At the head of the long table that ran down the room’s centre, Songbird spread her hands, waiting.

  “. . . ‘naturals’?” said Sophie, after a pause.

  “Exactly.”

  A general stir traversed the adobe-walled council room, as the rest—no more in on this scheme than he and Chess, apparently—struggled to reconcile with Songbird’s revelation. “So what was the plan?” Chess inquired. “Bracelet them as step out of line and assign ’em hex-handlers ready-set to siphon off their mojo at will, ’til the bid was up? ’Stead’a jail-time, you get . . . powerless-time?”

  “Would you rather we simply kill them and drain their power away, as she did?” said Songbird. “Make ourselves cannibals again?”

  “’Course not, for Christ's sake—nobody learns nothing that-a-way, and we both damn well know it!” Adding, as she risked a small smile at her own cleverness: “But did you really think the same kind’a hexes so dumb they’ll keep on picking fights with their own, Oath or no Oath, were gonna just stand quietly by and let you give right of rulership to them they believe they’re so much better than?”

  The albino girl’s hazel gaze flicked downwards, studying her own nail-sheaths, which glinted in the dusty sunlight slanting through the room’s slitted windows. “They would have had no choice,” she said, at last. “And though we could not move against them ourselves, so as not to violate the Oath, we would have done all we might in the hex-handlers’ support . . .”

  “. . . trusting arcanistry t’take care of the rest? Quite some strategy, general. That the way they play it, back in China?”

  Songbird sniffed. “Hardly. Where I was bred, such fools would not be suffered to grow to expression—they would be weeded out at birth or soon after, like the weak links they are.”

  “Since this is not Ch’in, however,” Yiska hastened to put in, “we must find . . . other methods.”

  “Uh huh.” Chess tapped the table’s oaken top. “And that’s what got your Miss Lenamarie killed, right there.”

  Now Gabriel Love’s odd eyes swung Chess’s way once more, like a lizard’s. “Speak further, Pistoleer.”

  “I have to? Hell, you heard Missus Kloves put her ghost to the question—how she said she found the Manifold in with Lobbel’s things and worked on ’im, got ’im to let slip how Songbird here wanted him for her hex-handling squad. Things was already bad between ’em, on account of Lenamarie tryin’ to force-bloom Jorinda only to find out she was ‘just’ a plain old gal; that was the straw broke the camel’s back. Next thing you know, Lenamarie’s done a
quick-face turnaround on the whole ‘naturals’ question, and you—” Here he took in the white-haired gal, with a contemptuous hand-flip. “—got yourself a brand new mess to deal with.”

  “So I have motive? Even you are not so foolish as to accuse me!” Songbird snapped.

  “Directly? No; I’d smell it, you had. By connivance, though?” He let what little colour she could conjure spike a moment, before grinning, meanly. “Hell, you couldn’t pick a pocket without an audience, so that’s ‘no’ again. She never saw it comin’, remember?”

  “Lobbel.” Carver’s voice was the bleak tone of a man out of options.

  “He loved her,” Charlie pointed out, yet again. Idjit that he was. Chasing that thought with another, at almost the same time: Just like Chess loved the Rev, once. Just like the Rev—

  “My Vatti is innocent,” a new voice said, from the door. “I am the one you seek.”

  At this, they all turned to find Jorinda von Grafin standing there, all dressed up for trial—or execution, possibly—rather than down for everyday, with her reddish locks pinned high in imitation of her dead mother’s ’do. Hell, she was even wearing shoes, a shiny patent leather pair set a bit too high in the heels on her for comfort: Lenamarie’s? Charlie found himself quickly upright from where he leant ’til now, arms uncrossed, without even realizing he’d made the decision to be so.

  Shit’s she think she’s doin’? he thought, mouth gone suddenly dry.

  “Now honey,” he told her, carefully. “I’m . . . sure that ain’t so.”

  The girl laughed, the ring of it gone flat—low, older, infinitely tired. “But it is,” she said. “You think me incapable? So did she, my Mutti, of anything. Oh, she loved me well enough, ’til she knew I’d never flower. Then, all at once, it was poor little Hansi’s turn—the same horror turned his way, Hex-Doktor Asbury’s Receipt, with Vatti left to watch. How could I let that happen?”

  “Well, it might’ve not,” Chess pointed out. “Might be your little brother ain’t a hex, either.”

  “Just as likely so, though, was she to test him . . . maybe all the more likely, since I proved not. And that would be worse.”

  She looked down, trying so hard to keep her eyes from twitching Gabriel Love’s way it was as though she’d carved a damn track in his direction: template for too-early-expressed hexes everywhere, this baby-faced boy with his Councilman’s manners and cold troll’s eyes. And though the kid himself barely seemed to register her distaste, Charlie saw something flicker ’cross the other hexes’ faces at almost the exact same time, a sort of tandem flesh-ripple, aftermath trail of some multiplied phantom chops-smack to which only Chess seemed immune.

  “So you laid the trap for her, with your Pa’s Manifold.” It wasn’t a question, but she nodded, anyhow. “Got it from wherever she’d put it, after she pulled it off ’im . . . probably didn’t even have to sneak around when you did, either, ’cause she never dreamed you’d go against her and was intent on other things, at the time.”

  “Yes, Mister Pargeter. She had just put Hansi back down, thinking to go for the potion while he slept, lulled by her songs. I pried the floor-board up hours before, when she was at Council; took an instant only to slip Vatti’s device beneath before she came back, still mixing it. Then . . . it was over and done so very fast, thank God, after.”

  “She suffer?”

  Jorinda’s gaze flicked back down, lashes lowered. “Only a little,” she whispered, as though trying to convince herself.

  Which was when that same iron bell Charlie’d heard throughout the night began, without warning, to ring once again.

  “The hell’s that?” Chess demanded, before remembering he could just use magic to find out; snapped finger to thumb ’til they sparked, then peered through the blazing ring, and cursed. “Aw, and how’d I just know it—some of Lenamarie’s constituents already got a hold of Lobbel, while you weren’t lookin’. Now they’re fit to string him up, they can just find a wall goes high enough.”

  Jorinda gasped, while Songbird spluttered, snarling: “What? They cannot—”

  “Can and will, you don’t get us there fast enough, since I can’t do it alone.” To Gabriel Love: “Hear that, small fry? We need hexation, a deal of it. You in, or out?”

  The boy half-opened his mouth, as though poised to complain he’d already done his due diligence for today, only to catch a truly frightening look from his Ma and close it again. “Fine,” he said, sulkily. “Take my hand, Pistoleer—and you, Yu Ming-ch’in. We must bend.”

  Bend what? Charlie wanted to ask, but didn’t get the chance.

  For the very instant Chess, Songbird and young Mister Love slapped palms together, the council room began to fold itself inward with a motion barely perceptible yet nauseating wrong, pinching the distance between this point and that ’til it no longer existed and going ’round every corner at once to bring ’em straight there. The wrench of it made Charlie’s gorge jump up like it was bound and determined to find the nearest exit, fierce and bitter, a phantom mouthful of vinegar; stubborn, he set his jaw and willed the son-of-a-bitch back down, stomach heaving.

  Reality parted like a dance-hall curtain on Hex City’s main square, the open area before the ruined foundations of some vast stone structure now gone for quarrying; Charlie’d seen it earlier today, and knew the horrid black thing now rearing up before those stones was nothing that belonged there. Hexation’s product, without a doubt: something half cactus, half tree, twelve feet high and made of black glass that seemed to taint the dust around it. In its long sunset shadow, Friedrich Lobbel resolved, straining ’gainst the noose ’round his neck as the crowd pulled him toward it. When they saw Chess, Songbird and Gabriel Love take shape, the ringleaders sprang back, some curse-muttering or throwing signs, while others reached for items Charlie could only assume had been spelled to act as weapons: a necklace of blue glass beads shook from a sleeve, some tangled mass of knitting complete with needles, two broken shells stuck together with wax, a termite-incised stick. Hexation flared at their touches—green or purple, silver-blue or amber, cold white or rheumy-red as a pigeon’s eye, all according to their various powers and traditions.

  Hexes always go with what they know best, Chess’d told him once, near the start. That’s what Ash Rook said—American ones most ’specially, since they got none of that training Songbird’s always rattlin’ on about, or that dead squaw Grandma’s “Balance.” Was why he kept that Bible of his, so’s he could quote from it and watch whatever he wanted come true . . . and why I kept my guns, even after I knew I didn’t need ’em.

  Point and shoot: that was Chess, all right. Another thing he and Charlie’d had in common, at least for a while.

  Yet for all their display, no one ventured further, distracted perhaps by the way that strained-open passage behind them all was already starting to narrow, to twist. Charlie felt the pull of it pluck at his backside like an ill wind and stepped sidelong, rooting himself deep in the dust of the square while—from the corner of his eye—he saw Yiska speed up, hoisting Jorinda Von Grafin bodily as she leapt the threshold to land graceful yet firm, so close by Songbird’s side her passage all but stirred the fringe of one stiff brocade sleeve. Sophy Love, a step or so back, looked almost primed to try for the same sort of jump, but paused a bit too long; within a half-second, the passage shrank and winked out, leaving them alone but for the mob.

  Don’t seem like Gabriel misses her much, Charlie just had time to think, before Jorinda caught sight of her Pa and cried out, a tiny animal wail. “Vatti! Please, please, he is not who you want—”

  Yiska clapped a hand ’cross her mouth, though, before she could think to confess again, and fast enough so’s none of the crowd might hear. Meanwhile, Songbird put in, blunt as ever: “What do you do here, fools? Release this man, before you fall into further error. We have laws, as you well know, having voted upon them—”

  “Sure, for us,” someone snapped back, just one more voice
in the chorus. “Not for such as him! Had more’n enough of naturals killin’ us in the Hex War, ma’am, thank you kindly.”

  “Ai-yaah! That was Pinkerton, a genuine threat, not one lovesick man.”

  “That’s right—same one you come with, Miss Yu, ’fore Doc Hex struck you down, an’ got ya riled enough to make you change sides.” The speaker pushed his way to the front, a tall heavy-set man in a dirt-stained canvas duster with a bushy brown beard and small, mean eyes. Hexation crackled on his fists like brass knuckles made of St. Elmo’s fire. “Ain’t that so?”

  Songbird flushed again, pale cheeks pinkening. “I have never denied it, Lucas Marsh. Now put him down.”

  Another voice, half unimpressed, half perversely excited: “Or what?”

  A fair question, as they all knew. Oathed hexes couldn’t strike at each other, no matter how they might want to; Charlie saw Songbird’s fingers flex and shimmer, just as Gabriel Love’s pudgy little hands formed fists likewise—imitating or anticipating her, seeing how close they were tied, how long they’d lingered in each other’s heads (all the boy’s life, really, and wasn’t that a sad state of affairs)—before slackening once more, knowing better than to act on the impulse.

  For: Be it one against one or many against many, we all suffer alike here, when hexation works against hexation, Charlie could almost hear the boy’s devil-practical young-old voice murmur, in his mind’s ear. This is the toll, the cost of citizenship, in Hex City—the price of peace, of togetherness, such as no group of hexes has ever before known. And thus, for all its inconvenience, we pay it gladly.

  “Thought not,” said Marsh, as someone else yanked hard on Lobbel’s rope, choking him, a leash-pulled dog. To which Jorinda gave out with another, louder yelp, fighting Yiska’s grip with no great effect, save that her thrashing served to embarrass Songbird and Gabriel Love both, while at the same time drawing a mean laughter-ripple from those who held her father’s lead—amongst all of them, only Charlie actually seemed to care about her pain, let alone Lobbel’s. That was what he thought, anyhow, ’til he heard Chess make a blessedly familiar little snarling noise, then turned his head to see him already raising both lit palms, with a leftover cross-draw flourish.

 

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