A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

“Making water, perhaps. But a storm, large enough to destroy whole towns — this is different.”

  “You don’t stop flapping your tongue sometime, it’ll split in two and fall off. And wouldn’t that just be a shame.”

  A bit further down, Fennig’s three Missuses watched the hex-whores from the Blister shaking sand, salt and rice in a great glass bottle, patiently raising dust devils into tornados, then knitting the results together to release them, sending twister after twister sidewinder-shuddering ’cross the plains toward Camp Pink. The principle was basically the same, for all Chu and the Shoshone seemed to think they had an all-male lock on something twice as fierce.

  “Won’t be long now, looks like,” Rook told Fennig, who nodded, then pulled his glasses down his nose, scanning the courtyard behind them. Ixchel was emerging from her seclusion, shadow-wrapped ’cept for where the largest of her insects perched here and there on her like living jewels, their wings throwing off minor rainbows. All around, a veritable tide of self-flagellating Mexicans eddied, lashing themselves with thorn-studded dried gut whips; in her wake, Marizol — already bled a shade or two lighter — padded glumly along like the world’s least happy bridesmaid, holding her mistress’s train up out of the dust.

  “Explain it me again,” Fennig said, to Rook, his sharp eyes never stirring from that dread form. “How she got herself out of Hell, exactly.”

  “Cannibalism, of a type. Theophagy. She ate other gods, like hexes eat hexes.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. And that’d be why she has a plug in her back, right there, ’tween the shoulder blades — a hole she can’t fill no-how and with nothin’, I’ll venture. ’Cause takin’ a bite out of them took a bite out of her.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Don’t you? Where do any of us get our power from, Reverend?”

  Rook considered that question a while, crossbreeding mythology and metaphor with observed fact. From what-all he’d seen, there seemed to be a strain of magic all hexes could tap, perhaps the same universal flow drove Songbird’s ch’i or required Grandma’s Balance — inexhaustible, hard-won and hard-wearing. Yet this was cut with two other streams, one bolstered by hex-vampirization, one pure dream-stuff, bastard child of fantasy and will. A sort of poetry made flesh, living or dying on the hex’s own confidence in the innate truth of whatever they could conceive of.

  “I’ve seen her gulp witch and wizard alike down like an after-dinner shot,” Rook said. “So’ve you — remember? Looks aside, she don’t seem to be hurting much, in that direction.”

  Fennig clicked his tongue. “So why don’t she fix herself up, at least, or skip bodies into that girl of hers, ’fore bad gets worse? Ain’t natural for any female to let her appearance slip so, even if she does derive some extra mojo from seemin’ an object of fear.”

  “Needs Marizol to love her, apparently, or the trick won’t take. That takes time.”

  “Hmmm. And she can’t push that part along any faster, either? All it takes is a word and a drop of blood, her hair and yours tied up in a knot — a damn honey-cake baked with her name on top. Didn’t they cast no charms in old Mexico?”

  Rook simply shrugged, thinking: But it’s not her hair, just like it’s not really her body. And anyhow, as we none of us should forget — she’s different.

  “Wouldn’t bet on her forbearance being a sign of weakness, myself,” he warned.

  “You told me to look — I’m tellin’ you what I see when I do, is all. She has limitations. And that’s more’n we knew, even if we don’t know what, or why. Or what best to do with it, now we do know.”

  Rook felt those black doll-eyes shift his way, and hissed through his teeth, projecting: Shut it, Henry. Felt her alien intelligence stroke his brain almost affectionately at the same time, before moving on — too busy, or bored, to bother probing deeper.

  “She knows everything,” he said, at last. “Told me as much. So I don’t see the point of plotting, let alone anything else.”

  Fennig’s spectacles were already back in place, rendering gaze and expression equally opaque. “Wants you t’think she does, more like — got her consuming interests, just like the rest of us. And contrary to popular belief, she can’t be everywhere at once, neither. I’ve checked.”

  “Henry — ”

  “I’m a big boy, Rev. I slip up, I’ll gladly pay the price; g’hals can look after ’emselves, if they have to.” A thin grin. “Not that I wouldn’t miss their sweet company, from across the river. Still, once we get this War put to bed, we can . . .”

  . . . rebuild, branch out, found schools and hospitals, do all the things necessary to make this means to an end permanent. That’s what Fennig wanted, like most’ve the rest — this haphazard experiment was a paradise to them, or close as they thought themselves ever like to see. Whereas Rook, like Ixchel, saw the edges blurring as New Aztectlan became a portal from one future to another, and knew what was coming would wipe out everything in its path regardless . . .

  that in the end, the Hex City crowd could either join it, get out of its way or be borne away, accordingly.

  Can’t help them with that, though. I’m all hers, bought and paid for. Can’t help anybody, with anything.

  Chu and the Shoshone, having gotten the storm where they wanted it, had spun it free and let it expand, eating what was left of the twilit sky. Now Fennig’s ladies stood with arms still linked, thrilling to the thunder’s rumble as the first intimations of lightning swirled around them; Clo was already starting to drift up a tad in sympathetic response, her swollen belly lit from within, the other two just managing to keep her anchored.

  Ixchel, meanwhile, was somehow already halfway out atop the cloud itself, which parted to let her pass. Her train and cloak formed a second funnel, sucking up a dose of darkness that spawned yet another roiling energy ball between her own hands, charge concentrated enough to lift the bulk of her hair by sheer galvanization.

  With a tiny kick, she swum upward still, turning toward the east, where a dry riverbed snaked through two miles of canyons. And even without her mind touching his — not so’s he could notice, anyhow — Rook nevertheless thought he began to see what she might have in mind.

  Time to go. To lay her vengeance down on Bewelcome — could’ve been anywhere, Rook supposed, but he could see why that place in particular held a certain charge, seeing how it was the last place she and that “brother” of hers had thrown down — and watch what rose to greet it, then crush that thing in turn with all the force of a dead pantheon, a living yet absent God.

  At his elbow, Fennig still watched Rook from behind those lenses, twisting his cane — like he hoped for some sort of elaboration, but understood if none was forthcoming.

  So Rook made himself look up, and tell him, lightly enough: “Best not to rely on me too much, maybe, when all’s said and done; not with your women on the line, and your child likewise. As the Lady’s own property, I’m hardly trustworthy.”

  This time, the dapper New York gangster didn’t even bother to nod. Just replied, equally nonchalant, “Oh, no more’n any of us, Rev, I s’pose. But more so than Herself, by far.”

  Rook inclined his head, reaching to rake up an appropriate verse from deep inside: Job 27:21, The east wind carrieth him away and he departeth, perhaps. Or Psalms, 83:15 — So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Either would do.

  Yet hearing in his head simultaneous, as mocking echo, a few more of those Celestial war-wisdom adages Honourable Chu liked to quote: All war is deception; to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill — to subdue the enemy without fighting, that is the acme of skill; if ignorant of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.

  “Let’s to it, then,” the Rev said. And stepped off the ramparts with Fennig and the Missuses trailing behind like a kite’s tail, blown straight into the storm’s beating heart.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The town hall’s roof came
off like kindling, as if the storm’d turned one big mouth, opened wide, and took itself a bite. Rook came drifting down inside what was left with the rain still pelting ’round him and Fennig a mere half-step behind, bringing the Word along as well, in silver-black clumps: Isaiah 13, 6 to 9:

  Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt:

  And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

  Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

  The place was gutted, chairs and pews flung every which way, smashed to sodden flinders. A stage took up the back half, uneven now, as though it’d been stamped on — and that was where he found what was left of the elders’ council: some fat man with a broken leg, sprawled with a Manifold clutched to his chest like he thought it could ward off heart attack (Mayor Langobard, probably), plus a roster of other notables, similarly stricken — including a dapper fool Rook could only assume, with a twinge of nasty amusement, must be the town’s new preacher: no Mesach Love, that was for sure. For though this man’s lips moved feverishly, Rook could barely sense enough faith in him to light a lucifer, let alone ward off evil.

  In the corner crouched Doc Asbury, managing admirably to not quite cower; might be the last few months had finally inured him to the shock of seeing his theories turned fact. While nearby, half-hid behind a tangle of fallen furniture, a man with similar taste in fashion as Fennig crouched with tablet out and pencil busy, scribbling frantically, as though he aimed to preserve all he saw for posterity’s sake.

  But even as Rook took note of them all, they paled to invisibility in the face of his true target, who crouched above Langobard with one hand laid soothingly on his sweaty brow, clutching her baby close with the other: Sophronia Love, the Sheriff’s woman, moral heart of Bewelcome’s resistance. The figurehead all the rest rallied behind.

  For a year in the salt, she looked uncommon good, even dressed in black with her hair plastered dark by the downpour’s vigour. As did that fussing boy of hers, whose healthy lungs sent up counterpoint music, loud enough to be heard over the storm itself.

  Strike her down, this town dies with her, lit and fig. Strike her down, and victory follows.

  Easier said than done, though, he suspected. Since this one’s faith was so pure it all but sparkled, even under these circumstances.

  “Ma’am,” he addressed her. “As you know, I knew the Sheriff briefly, in both his guises. Are you sure he’d really want you to risk your life, let alone his only son’s, by staying here?”

  She met his eyes straight on, without fear. “In the town my husband founded? Where else would I go, Mister Rook?”

  “Well . . . many places. There’s a seat left open amongst us, for example, for every outcast.” And here he indicated Berta, Clo and Eulie, just settling down behind him. “My intelligencers inform me you’re scorned, accorded not even half the respect you merit — but we’ve more women than men in our councils, Missus Love; hell, we’re ruled by a Lady, and a most powerful one. We’d grant you authority fitting your mettle.”

  “You’re ruled by a devil in woman’s shape, whose laws designate any without witchery in your city as no better than slaves . . . though even those with witchery seem like as not to wind up on her altar, sooner or later.” Switching her uncompromising glare to Fennig and the girls, she continued: “Those in Satan’s service meet only one end, however long it takes: They’re eaten by their master, body and soul. Are you sure you’re all far too useful ever to be made a meal of?”

  Clo’s eyes flashed. “Ye little limb!”

  Berta and Eulie, meanwhile, had turned their mutual attention on Catlin, who was scuttling backward with hands flung up, calling (predictably enough) on Leviticus, 20:27. Eulie gave a girlish laugh. “Cute, ain’t he, sissy? Like somethin’ off a band-box!”

  “A real wedding cake swell, all right — doll-faced little fake priest, playing at toy soldiers. But we’ve no time for diversions, do we?”

  “Just as well . . . for him.”

  Sophy blinked at Clo, just noticing her condition. “God Almighty in Heaven, you foolish girl, did you actually bring yourself out on a mission of war while great with child?” The surprised indignation in her voice was so sharp that Clo actually flushed, putting one hand over her bulging stomach as if to guard it, even as her temper touched up the higher; her hair lifted, lighting from inside, with greenish St. Elmo’s fire.

  “And what’s that there in your own arms, woman?” she snapped back. “Fine place for a mite like him, on the very line of battle!”

  “The Lord is my buckler, sorceress, just as He was for Mesach — Gabriel’s, as well.”

  “Oh yes? An’ it’s my man can see where best t’make that buckler crumple, he only cares to look for it; can’t ye, Hank Fennig? Well?”

  But Fennig, after staring Missus Love up and down, just shook his head. “Can’t see a thing, not where she’s concerned — there’s somethin’ in the way. Though as to whether it’s divine in origin . . .”

  “It is.”

  “. . . she’s covered. Looks like the ball’s back in your court, Reverend.”

  Sophy nodded. “If your business is with me in primary, then let be done, and go. You and yours are not welcome here.”

  “Unwelcome, in the very town of Bewelcome itself? Some might call that a hypocrisy, ma’am.” Folding his arms, Rook cocked his head to one side, “Tell me, though, for I’m curious . . . do your Mayor and your new Reverend — hell, anybody in this town, save those keeping silent out of loyalty — happen to know how you and the Sheriff weren’t actually married yet, as such, the first time somebody killed him?”

  Sophy Love coloured, furiously, and though Langobard — who’d finally managed to sit up — seemed too flummoxed to grasp anything of what he’d just heard, the little band-box preacher whipped ’round to shoot her an absurd glare, so offended it made Rook want to laugh.

  Face bright red but voice icy calm, the Widow wrapped her child — who seemed to register her agitation, his sobs skipping an upward key — yet closer, and replied: “We were bound in God’s eyes, as you well know, having seen inside of Mesach’s head. But perhaps such distinctions are lost on the faithless.”

  “Without doubt. But then again, God don’t really get a vote, come election time — you either, I’m guessin’. So . . .”

  From behind Rook, by that heap of splinters where the town hall’s threshold had once lain, a third voice intruded. “Whatever you’re ’bout to say next, Rev, I’m fairly sure Missus Love don’t want to hear it. And that’s why I’d step away from her, if I was you.”

  It was a deep voice gone somewhat flat with all too rational fear, yet steady as any soldier’s under fire, and Rook smiled to hear it.

  “Hello, Ed,” he said, turning to greet his former employee, who looked about the same, if wetter. Beard no longer neat-trimmed, his muttonchops bristled, almost reaching his duster’s collar; rain sprayed from shoulders and hat alike, while Rook and the others stayed bone dry, safe within their intersecting power-bubbles.

  “Heard you got reinstated,” Rook said. “Pinkerton see fit to forgive you your many sins?”

  “Probationally.”

  “Ah, yes. That do sound like the Law, don’t it? For they sometimes feign to forgive — but never forget.” Eyes homing in on the vague flash of grey barrel-metal, then, he asked, “Ain’t a gun you got there, though, is it? I only ask out of concern for your health, which prompts me to warn you how those don’t work too well, on me. Or could that be something the Professor over there dreamed up?”

  “It might.”

  “You don’t say! Tested it out, as yet?”

  Morrow swallowed, sig
hts kept admirably steady on Rook’s midsection. “Nope. But I’m favouring trial by fire, right about now.”

  “Enough,” Sophy Love chose that same moment to interject, drawing herself up. “God alone knows my fate, Reverend. If this be my day and hour, then it will be His decision — not yours. And while you may have the power, you will never have right on your side, for that too is His to apportion.”

  “Little lady, what makes you think there is any right?”

  “If you truly believe that, sir, then strike me down this moment and do not hesitate; I fear no judgement. You?”

  Fennig’s brows raised. “Stargazer’s got sand, ain’t she?” he muttered to Rook, who merely shrugged; the quality of Missus Love’s courage had never been in question, at least for himself. Still, while her willingness to throw her own life away might have no limit, did that willingness extend equally to others’ lives? Like, for example —

  “Your day and hour, maybe,” Clo Killeen put in, unexpectedly completing the thought. “For a Jaysis-jabberer like yerself, I’m sure that’s of no moment. That boy of yours, though — ”

  — young Master Gabriel —

  “ — how would he feel about bein’ bargained away with only Heaven’s promise as a get-out, if he was old enough to know better?” As Sophy’s face whitened: “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought on it, woman.”

  “That’s none of your concern.” But Sophy’s free hand had clenched to a fist, and she turned her body in blind reflex, shielding Gabe as best she could. Clo grinned, as lightning flashed above with the rolling boom of field cannon.

  “All right, then, since logic doesn’t seem to appeal . . .” Rook raised his voice, through the thunder. “Look out there, Missus Love! See what’s comin’, and ask yourself if you wouldn’t rather remove you and Gabe from its path.”

  He flung out one long, black-clad arm. All heads swerved together, as though magnetized. And there on the horizon, just where the canyons gave out onto what had once been flood plain, Rook watched the clouds and rain alike twitch apart, one huge, liquid curtain. To reveal —