by Gemma Files
Geyer shook his head, as though to clear it. “Hold a moment . . . Sophronia Love is dead?”
Ludlow shrugged. “Impossible to tell, truly. I certainly saw her lose coherence in the face of that Paddy witch’s onslaught. But this proves nothing; I’ve seen hexes transport folk from one point to another just as easily, with much the same result.”
“She and her babe might be prisoners, then, inside Hex City’s precincts,” Thiel observed. “A useful idea, ’specially if we wanted to rouse Bewelcome’s survivors for a rescue.”
“True!” said Ludlow. “And what a narrative that would make for . . . saleable indeed, to all possible markets.”
Geyer studied each for some hint of a joke, eyes widening with genuine discomfort when he didn’t find any. “You two make my blood run cold,” he said, at last.
Ludlow puffed up, finally insulted. “Sir, I follow my calling, from which you and Mister Thiel here benefit extraordinarily for very little bodily risk, while I put myself in the very thick of harm’s way. Believe me, if I yearned to be called names, I’d’ve stayed in New York.”
“Desperate times, Frank,” Thiel replied, at the same time, without heat. “Desperate measures. We can’t afford to be — ”
“ — what, human?”
“Over-nice, I was going to say. For the plain fact is, we need every advantage we can gain from here on out, putting our endgame together. What we do here we do for the very literal salvation of all mankind.”
There was little to say in response, so no one tried, simply fell silent a spell, ’til Ludlow said, “Well, moving on to other things . . .
as you know, Mister Pinkerton did not attend the meeting, for which I’m sure he’ll be thankful, once Mister Morrow and Doctor Asbury debrief him on their return. He seldom leaves Camp Pink at all, these days, or so Mister Morrow has tried ably to keep from letting slip.”
“And why’s that, I wonder?” Thiel asked the wind. Beside him, Geyer snorted.
“Still semi-witched, I’d ’spect, from his dabblings in matters arcanistric. You only saw the start of it, George — that wound he took from Pargeter, how Asbury tried to treat it. He was worse when I met him on the Train, by far.”
“Rumours to that effect, yes,” Ludlow agreed. “They do say how the Professor’s engineeringological victories have only made his particular . . . hungers all the easier to satisfy, as the Pinkertons’ supply of collared hexes grows. But this latest miracle of his may well take the proverbial cake.”
“Meaning?”
“Asbury gave Morrow bullets, Morrow shot ’em at the Rev — and they took. From what I could gather squatting behind a brake, everyone seemed pretty much equal horror-struck; Asbury too, now I think. But then, he’s been looking unwell, in general.”
“Tell me more about that,” Thiel suggested.
Ludlow laughed and struck a pose, fair cracking his knuckles. “Oh, that’s been coming on for some time now; going by tonight’s brief appearance, the man looks almost on the verge of a collapse — dispirited, sirs, very dispirited, though not so much so that he’s gone teetotal.” He paused, ruminatorily. “Rather the opposite, really.”
Geyer regarded him with scorn. “Never use a two-bit word when a five-dollar one’s to hand, do you, Mister Ludlow?”
“Vocabulary’s a tool and a hobby of mine, ex-Agent; fills in the blanks and keeps thing sharp, used judiciously. But believe you me, it’s not as though I enjoy seeing one of the finest minds of our generation thus reduced, designing weapons for a second Civil War under the command of a near-madman, a hopeless hophead. It sets me all of a jargogle to think what Mister Asbury might whip up next.”
“We should find a way to talk to him, Frank,” Thiel said. “For months now I’ve tried to deconstruct that Manifold of yours, bend even a tenth of its powers to our side — but all to no avail. I’m but a humble ’tec with some Corps of Engineering experience left over
from the War. Professor Asbury’s brand of science is as far beyond mine as Nobel’s Blasting Powder is to a tinderbox. And if he’s finally reached the limits of his appetite for our old boss’s more off-putting . . .
shenanigans . . .”
Ludlow glanced from man to man. “I believe I begin to reckon what you have in mind, Mister Thiel — and as it just so happens, I can help. You see, though he chose not to attend the maybe-late Missus Love’s little shindig, I received a secret communiqué from Mister Pinkerton this very morning. He wants an interview, a general-at-the-front sort of deal, and believes I would be the perfect . . .
now, what was the phrase he used? . . . ‘chronicleer’ to record his upcoming Campaign against the Hex for journalistic posterity. I’ll need a bodyguard on my journey, of course, things being chancy as they are right now. Any volunteers?”
“Given the last time Pinkerton saw you, he called you out as a traitor — ” Thiel began, to Geyer.
“Last time he saw you,” Geyer pointed out, in return, “he ended up sending me to kill you — and the way he is these days, I doubt he’d even notice I was there, I took enough pains with my appearance. You’re needed elsewhere anyways, to lead the Texican charge, if and when the Mexican attack occurs.”
“When, not if.”
“So if it’s all the same, I believe I’ll take my chances.”
“Very well.”
Ludlow clapped his hands. “Perfect. How I do love theatricals!”
Once again, both detectives considered him narrowly. “You do know you may see things you don’t want to in that stronghold, Mister Ludlow,” Thiel said, finally.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself concerning the quality of my sleep, sir; I was caught downtown during the Draft Riots in ’63. Which sanguinary event marks the very moment I discovered my gorge doesn’t rise too easily, sad to say, when a good enough story’s involved.”
“I read the dispatches, in our Chicago office,” Geyer replied. “But I’ve always wondered — was hexation involved?”
“Here and there, yes. New York’s vastly diverse populace extends even to the hex-born — and since the gangs aren’t exactly inclined to turn down any weapon falls to hand, they tend to use whoever turns hex under combat’s excesses as heavy artillery, clearing the way for more natural incursion: hordes of immigrants and Nativists alike, all wielding bricks, bats, fists, knives, axes . . . but no pistols. Still, with the city a powder-keg always awaiting spark, we’ve never needed hexation’s prompting when it comes to exercising our civic pastime, not within Gotham’s precincts — or anywhere else human nature holds sway.”
Above, the moon shone down like a dead man’s eye full of secret glee, absorbing it all. No secrets in Night’s house, after all. Not with everything that ill light touched transformed near-alchemically, the same way a spell renders metaphor real, into a spy for some hidden Enemy.
Miles away, Yancey came to shivering top to toe with her teeth too locked to chatter, tongue worried bloody. Though Yiska and her braves had laid her out already — piling all the rugs they had on top of her, high as they’d go — the chill of the Underneath still ran all through her, worse than before. Just how damn deep had she had to dive, in order to whisper upward directions in English Oona’s slippery ear?
Not as deep as she might yet have to go, she suspected.
Even as she formed this thought, a pale palm appeared at either temple, briskly stroking heat into her. “You look ill, dead-speaker,” Songbird observed, with a nasty touch of satisfaction. “The Ten Thousand Hells do not agree with you.”
“D-don’t think they were . . . made t’appeal . . . t’most,” Yancey said, with effort. “’Sides, that . . . seemed like one Hell only, t’me. An’ . . .
more’n enough.”
“Yes, you long-noses lack imagination, as a rule; I have observed this.”
Yiska laid a gentle hand of her own on Songbird’s shoulder. “Ohé, bilagaana, it gladdens me to see you returned safe, after such a long journey. Might it be you caught sight of our Enemy, while yo
u were down there?”
Yancey tried to shake her head, and regretted it. “N’huh, no. Don’t think so.”
“You would know, if you had,” Songbird said. “He is . . . distinctive.”
“I do know — met the sumbitch twice before, and not when he was all dressed up in Chess Pargeter’s meat, either. How many times’s it been for you?”
Songbird coloured, flush slight but noticeable. “Never you mind, innkeeper’s daughter. He would have to be clumsy indeed to let either of us see him, if he did not wish to be seen.”
“You speak the truth, for once,” came Grandma’s voice. “He is not to be underestimated, this Smoking Mirror.” She moved out into the fire’s light, earth shaking beneath her tread, then lowered herself down by slow degrees. “The tale of Tollan’s Fall . . . have you heard it?”
“You know very well we have not, old — ” But Songbird found herself pinned by Yiska’s gaze, and amended whatever she might’ve been about to call the older hex. “Spinner.”
“Be quiet, then, little ghost. Attend, for once. There is virtue in the past’s lesson, always, for — since all gods repeat themselves, and most Hataalii likewise — it may give us some idea what he plans to do next.”
The words of the story wove themselves out, echoing hexation-aided through bone and blood, in three languages at once. Exhausted, Yancey let her cold-burnt lids drift shut and saw vague shapes unspool behind them — squarish symbols wrought from contorted bodies, all fangs and feathers, tongues and bulging eyes. Ink-black, macaw-red writing scribed on whitewashed walls, so fresh it almost ran, while a steaming green jungle rose behind, and the unfamiliar din of insects.
Her place, she thought. Lady Ixchel’s dead world, the one she wants to swap ours for.
“Tollan was chief city of the Tolteca,” Grandma said, somehow not stumbling over the names, though they couldn’t’ve come any more easy to whatever she used for a tongue than to Yancey’s own. “A great nation which existed before the Mexica built their Empire, down where the sun meets the swamp. But their last king, Huemac, fell into evil ways, and was punished. It began when a Hataalii who called himself Toveyo appeared in front of the city, a beautiful man painted all over in green, and was invited inside.
“With sweet music and spells, Toveyo tempted Tollan’s people to dance in their marketplace, making the song he played swirl faster and faster until it finally drove them into such a madness they rushed out through the city’s gates, throwing themselves headlong into a canyon in the earth. As they fell, they bounced off the walls, breaking all their bones, and when they finally reached the bottom, their bodies turned to stone.
“Moments later, the mountains overlooking Tollan began to growl and belch flames, in which the city’s priests saw figures making terrible gestures. Surely, they thought, the gods must be angry — and when Huemac ordered an offering to appease them, Toveyo was the first one seized. But when the priests bent his body over the altar stone and opened up his chest, they found he had no heart at all. His veins were also dry and empty, sending no precious blood spilling onto the temple’s stones. Then a stench rose from the body, and though the priests and onlookers fled, an epidemic of foul wasting diseases followed.
“For choosing a man with neither the heart nor the blood that creatures such as She of the Ropes and Snares require as a sacrifice, Tollan was punished with crop-killing frosts and summer droughts, wild storms, floods. Huemac fled, leaving his illegitimate son in charge. Two armies of invaders were bought off with the last of the city’s riches before the northern nomads known as the Sons of the Dog finally descended, at which point the first two armies turned back, and joined forces with them. For three years, the people of Tollan held them off with only a company of old men, boys and women, but eventually, the walls were breached. Tollan fell.”
“So Toveyo got his will,” Songbird said, examining her sheathless fingernails, while Yancey levered herself into a sitting position, each bout of shivering slightly less frantic. “He tricked Tollan into insulting their own gods, and those gods destroyed them. A victory for our kind.”
Grandma shook her head. “No. For according to the Mexica, Toveyo was simply a face worn by the Smoking Mirror, Rainbow Lady’s Ixchel’s ‘brother’ — Night Wind Tezcatlipoca, Enemy of all, who loves to stir up chaos for its own sake: god of all Hataalii, all hexes. Who some say stands for nothing less than conflict as a means to change itself.”
Songbird bristled. “He is not my god.”
“Mine either,” Yancey chimed in, surprised to find herself agreeing. And might be Grandma would’ve struck them both down in her rebuttal, had they not been interrupted.
“I should . . . hope not, Missus Kloves,” said a new voice, hoarse and desert-dry. “For little as we see eye to eye in other ways — murderous revenge as . . . justice, for example — I’d never’ve took you for a . . . heathen idolater.”
There, by the butte’s foot, right where its shadow would’ve fallen in the day: that was where Sheriff Love’s widow stood barefoot, her weeds ripped, long yellow hair unbound and heavy with dirt. Hoisted in her arms, she carried a good-sized baby boy who looked as though he’d been through similar straits, but was managing to sleep it off. Yancey felt her heart go foolishly soft at the very sight of his lumpy, boneless weight, mouth slack around one pudgy thumb.
“It is you, isn’t it?” she asked, looking straight at Yancey, freckle-set brow furrowed. “I mean . . . haven’t seen you since that . . . awful day. At Bewelcome.”
When I blew your man’s brains out, right in front of you? Yes ma’am, I recall it well. That was me, and so’s this.
“How’d you get here, though, Missus Love, exactly?” she made herself say instead; polite, like they were taking tea. “Was it Reverend Rook sent you?”
Sophy Love shook her stately head, clutching her baby all the tighter. “No, one of that New York hex’s three — women; the Irish one, I believe. Tell the truth, I could barely understand her! But I knew she wished harm on Gabe and me, so I called on the Lord to aid us. And then . . .”
She narrowed her eyes, as though she couldn’t quite recall the specifics. But as she did, her son shifted in his slumber, gurgling — and beside her, Yancey felt Songbird suddenly stiffen and hiss, like a spooked cat. Felt something spike from her, and Grandma too: a pulling at the air, a pressure drop, as though before a storm. A hungry cry pitched almost too high to hear, so sharp it plucked even at her, and she wasn’t a hex at all; Yiska, too, hand falling automatically to her tomahawk’s grip.
They feel somebody, all of ’em, someone like them. Someone who could eat everything they have or be eaten, in turn. But . . . who?
That was when the baby — young Gabriel Love — jerked awake for good, seeking with barely focused gaze for a brace of rivals he couldn’t possibly spot, even at this distance, and sent up what seemed like the ghost of the same squalling, thin as fine-chopped bones. All of an instant, then, Yancey could almost see what they saw, plain as Songbird’s skin or Yiska’s nose. Plain as the flare ’round Grandma’s helmet-skull, lighting up her upturned bucket of a no-face, revealing her true nature to anyone.
“So sad,” Sophy Love said to herself, completely unaware; she looked almost drunk, to Yancey’s bar-bred eye — drunk on loss, on fatigue, on sorrow too long deferred, in favour of cold responsibility. “How I’ve hated you and prayed not to, for so long; foolish, really, for all the good it did me, either way. But now I see you again, you have my pity — to see any white woman so abandoned, fallen amongst savage witches.”
“Wouldn’t be so quick to insult them if I was you, ma’am,” Yancey replied. “These ladies are powerful. They might yet be the ones to save your son’s life.”
“Is that a threat?”
Yancey almost laughed, hearing Songbird’s mental speech yammering at her inner ear, at the same time — an endless reel of: Kill him, while we can, before he strikes at us! Kill her!
No, she thought. But that is.
&n
bsp; Yiska tsked, out loud. “You disappoint me,” she said — to Songbird, though Sophy Love no doubt heard it directed at her. “This is a chance we have, here . . . to do right even when doubted, to teach this bilagaana Book-babbler by example. Do not let your fear control you.”
Songbird hissed again. And Grandma, stirring in her seat with the groan of a mountain settling, told her: “She is right, little ghost. The salt-man’s wife knows no better.”
Sophy’s eyes went wide, for all the world as if she hadn’t really noticed Grandma sitting there, ’til part of the butte itself took on life; her whole body recoiled a step, grip tightening on poor Gabe ’til her knuckles whitened. “My good Jesus,” she said, with admirable calm. “You’re . . . that other demon.”
“No such thing. But you may call me that, if you wish.”
Songbird threw her arms up, white braids swinging wide. “Enough coddling! We must defend ourselves, especially when our enemy knows nothing! I will do it, if you fear to — ”
She thrust one hand out toward Gabe, fingers crooked like horns, knuckle sparking; Yancey seized it without thinking, only to scream when Songbird’s conjured fire seared her palm. “Jesus Christ Almighty!”
“Loose me, dead-speaker!”
A familiar locust-chitter filled the air; Sophy Love whipped
a shiny new version of Doctor Asbury’s toy from her pocket, brandishing it Songbird’s way. “Lay one hand upon him,” she warned, “and I’ll kill you where you stand, you Godforsaken creature.”
But the Manifold’s needle swung back toward Gabe, who was crying harder than ever — slid straight into the red, and stuck there.