by Gemma Files
And even as his own corona snapped and flared, Yancey heard Grandma say, for once without any real sort of judgement, though equally little sympathy: “Perhaps you should look to your own house, bilagaana. For as that thing you hold can tell you, we are not the only ‘hexes’ here.”
Sophy Love looked down, caught breath balanced between love and revulsion, into her son’s squalling face. Yancey didn’t have to try to rifle through the woman’s thoughts, now; hell, she was hard-pressed to keep ’em out. A dreadful black tide slopping up, transmuting that same maternal pull to bitterest gall: 1 Samuel, 15:53. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry, so Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
Oh, Gabriel — not you, of all people. How will you ever fulfil your father’s legacy now? How could you even live among his own town’s people — good, kind, Christian people — let alone rule them the way you were born to, knowing they’d think you the Devil’s own cub?
Great and powerful God, why must you make only the most devoted of all your servants suffer so?
“Not my boy,” Sophy Love murmured to herself. And sat down in a flump with her skirts pooled ’round her, face turned from the child she still hugged tight.
Yancey took three or four small steps toward the Widow; got down on her trousered knees in the dirt, her joints still stiff. And held out her arms for Bewelcome’s former heir — exiled through no fault of his own to a desert worse than the one where Satan had tempted Christ, where stones could never be made bread, not even by the Word of God.
“I’ll take him if you want, ma’am,” she told Missus Love, softly as she could. “You just rest. And we’ll talk it over later, in the morning.”
Sophy said neither yea nor nay, but didn’t put up much of a fight when Yancey lifted Gabe free and put him over one shoulder, patting his back ’til his wails trailed off into hiccups. Simply sat there slumped with her hair hanging down — mouth moving, perhaps in silent prayer — and looking at her hands, as though she wasn’t quite sure whether or not she had the right to bury her face in them.
“I must get away from here,” Songbird whispered, agitatedly, in Yiska’s ear. “That boy knows nothing, he cannot control himself — ”
“But you can, and set an example, doing so. Has he tried to feed on you, or the Spinner?”
“He will, as any of us would. He is . . . what he is!”
Grandma leaned in: “A Hataalii, yes, but untrained, unblooded; he took his mother away from that woman by instinct, instead of striking back himself. I feel no hunger in him, not as yet.”
“Ai-yaaah! You pretend to great wisdom, as ever, but we Han have known of such things for centuries. Was it not we who first mapped the flow of ch’i through the body, as well as those points where it may escape, or be stolen? It is only because of our knowledge that object works at all.”
On the horizon, further even than half-smitten Bewelcome itself, a foul star seemed to bloom. There was an awful noise; Yancey couldn’t have named it if she’d tried. And out in the darkness, something else laughed long and loud, equally dreadful — as though amusement were its currency, and it accounted itself well-paid.
At the sound, Grandma’s head swung ’round once more, spun on that boneless thing she called a neck ’til it all but made complete revolution, fast as wooden ribcage shutters snapping to over a bloody, beating heart.
“What has that thing the blackrobe Rook married done now?” she demanded, apparently of the universe itself.
SEVEN DIALS: FOUR
Our current world is Nahui-Ollin, the Earthquake Sun. It will shake itself apart one day, after which everything Quetzalcoatl stole will be returned to its rightful owner, Mictantecuhtli. The Seed of All will be re-buried at the bottom of a charnel pit, awaiting its next red watering. And then, eventually . . .
. . . everything will begin, once more, only to die, wither, be reborn. Again, again, again.
Endlessly.
We stole our bones from the gods of the Underworld, over and over — bones and flesh, our souls, our very selves. Which is why we will always try to keep them as long as we possibly can, no matter what the price, no matter how dreadful the reckoning.
No matter what, or who, it costs.
They were well out onto the bridge before he even realized what it was, and when he did, the understanding almost undid him. Chess had no worse a head for heights than anyone else raised up mostly at ground level, but this wasn’t something mortal man was meant to look upon — a thread of black stone, less than a yard wide, stretching impossibly far into the distance without buttress or brace to prop it up, no rail to break your stumble, and sickeningly uneven underfoot. While below, an awful shifting ocean of fire spilled from horizon to horizon, its scorching light a sickly amalgam of pus-streaked blood and fever sweat.
It stank, too; a rip-throat stench, vile as any sulphur spring. Between those virulent tongues of flame, countless shapeless forms writhed while screams struck upward, so skull-splittingly loud the wall of noise hit almost as hard as the heat.
Hell — true Hell at long last, straight out of the Book itself. One a’them like Ash was always rabbiting on about, in between the Thou-Shalt-Not chorus.
Gehenna, Chess could almost hear Rook rumble, as he went reeling down the bridge after Oona. Where the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abhominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone . . . . Revelation, darlin’. No man can pretend he doesn’t know his fate, he’s only got ears to hear.
Just shut up, you Goddamn man! Chess longed to scream, clinging precariously to his balance and his Ma’s ghostly hand. But demanded instead: “The fuck’s all this? What’s a Bible-thumper’s perdition doin’ down this-a-way, lodged fast in the Enemy’s own gullet?”
Ixchel’s voice, cooing up through his gullet: Tezcatlipoca, who — Mictantecuhtli’s claims to the title of Death’s rulership aside — truly contains all those gone on, since he is the very Night the dead swim in . . .
And you shut up too, you unhallowed bitch: shut up, shut up, shut up —
“’Ell should I know?” Oona yelled back. “Fings all run together down ’ere, if you ain’t already noticed — I’ve seen men runnin’ through the Dials what looked like bloody Swedes all got up for battle, or looked through mirrors an’ seen places like them Chinks talks about — rooms full of knives and snakes, and whatnot. . . .”
She glanced back over her shoulder, like she expected to find ’em nipping at her heels — and shrieked out loud, face spread flat with sudden terror, when she saw what really was. The sight sent Chess whirling ’round to deliver the same sort of back-kick he’d used to fell Doc Glossing’s corpse-doll, back in Mouth-of-Praise — ’til he caught sight of what he was about to go toe-to-toe with, and thought better.
That giant black thing already reared up cavern-roof high, one limb drawn back as if to scythe his head clean off at the shoulders with its foot-long talons, swept its blow instead near a yard too high; its great leg, lifting forward for a further step, snagged on Chess’s boot-heel, and folded. Released at last, Oona’s fright-yell disappeared into the cacophony as the thing overbalanced, staggered too far to one side, and went over the edge. It spun as it fell, topmost portion dimming to a vague point, oval enough to form some sort of head; the blank where a face should have been, which turned to Chess’s until for half an instant, it was a face. A human face, bloodstained and familiar, contorted into something no longer sane beneath its over-groomed crown of Bushwhacker locks, with the wreckage of an officer’s grey shell-jacket flapping away on either side like dirty wings.
The name came up with an agonizing tug, yanked from his brain as if by hooks: Saul Mobley. Or — as Chess’d thought of him for half a year, before blowing out the back of his skull to escape his maddened death-charge plans, after which he’d never thought of
him again — the Lieut.
So here’s where you fetched up, Chess thought, viciously, all mortar fire and smoke, worse by far than any earthly battlefield — you who wanted to fight on even after the War was lost, ’til all of us were dead, or crazy as yourself; almost got Rook and me hung, too, but not quite. Hope you relish it, you jackanapes motherfuck.
If there was recognition in that hate-crazed gaze, however, Chess couldn’t see it — the Lieut, or what little was left of him, was gone too fast anyhow, plunging into the inferno below. Chess stared after, a reckless mistake, as vertigo made him gasp. For an instant, the impulse to fling himself forward as well took hold, stomach seeming to float, bilious yet barely tethered, as if he’d already taken the final dive.
Then two small hands seized him by cheek and jaw, hauling his head back up for Oona to whack her forehead impatiently against his — a Bristol kiss, she’d called it, first time he’d run home with a split skull after having that same move demonstrated on him. And while no blood flowed, Chess’s eyes teared up, nonetheless.
“Ow, Christ! Son of a mother — ”
“Yeah, all that. Now stop sightseein’, pull yer bloody trousers up, and run!”
He opened his mouth to complain again, but realized she was right — for that familiar rhythm was once more coming up from behind, shaking the bridge like a twanged guitar string. The Dead Posse itself, closing in like nightfall. Morbidly curious, he squinted, trying to tell features at this rancid-lit distance, even as Oona tried her best to haul his arm from its socket.
“What are you, deaf?” she yelled. “We ain’t got time to ponder, boy — ’oo knows but there’s a door on the other side, and that already ’alfway shut? Let’s go, you stupid little molly!”
Old habits, but it worked; Chess let the surge of anger pull him upright once more, and scarpered. This time he took the lead, dragging Oona headlong, holding his gaze steady on the path ahead as sweat stung his eyes, teeth clenched ’til they ached. Behind, the hammering was occasionally broken up by thuds and cries of squabbling collisions, along with a single horrific wail, by which Chess could only assume one of his spectral hunters — indistinguishable from the shadows they rode — had managed to throw itself over.
Eventually, a new black wall loomed up, stone pathway plunging straight into it through the tiniest of cracks, while Chess and Oona went careening along with it.
The transition from heat to cold was fierce as a blow. Snow slashed horizontally into their faces, so sharp the Seven Dials’ chill rain seemed a friendly shower by comparison, and Chess and Oona stared down a zigzagging track onto a vast white plain. From where they stood they could see its centre, red and muddy, as great masses of fur-clad men hewed each other fiercely back and forth, armed with axe and sword and spear. Bodies fell, only to be dragged away by comrades and rise again, replacing their severed limbs as they did so; giant figures moved amongst the armies, some inhumanly handsome, others grossly trollish.
And off to the right, over the track’s edge, yawned a black chasm at least as depthless as the lake of fire, breathing out a wind so freezing Chess could feel it sear his eyeballs. He knuckled them to bring tears, then blinked to keep ’em liquid. “Jesus shit!”
“Amen,” Oona agreed, and lurched on, picking her way deftly down the track, bare toes already turning purplish-blue as they sank into the snow. Chess risked one quick glance back, and saw the Dead Posse’s black train negotiate the curve at full steam, right after them. Here too, though, their own fury was their undoing — yet another went slipping off into the dark, knocked sideways by its fellows’ mindless rush, disappearing without a sound.
Chess snorted, calling out to Oona: “Give these clowns another half an hour and they’ll end ’emselves, with no help from us whatsoever!”
“Uh huh. But no matter where they do ’appen t’fall, odds are they’ll be back.” She made as if to peer into the crevasse, but stopped herself just in time; gave a quick head shake instead, as if throwing something off. “Nothing ever really ends, anywhere. Wish I’d known, before’and.”
“Sounds like you learned a thing or two out of the experience, if nothin’ else.”
“Yeah, sure. First off bein’: don’t never bloody die.”
Chess snorted up another laugh at this, and she matched it — chattered it out between clenched teeth, which fed Chess’s own hilarity in turn. Moments later, they were all but howling, holding each other up as they staggered along, when the path debouched onto the plain at the side of a giant upthrust spike of snow-crusted rock. Arms linked, they rounded it together — and drew up, slapped to silence by what they found waiting for ’em.
Somehow, the Dead Posse had outflanked them, waiting patient to be discovered. And as Chess let memory’s tide pull his gaze from face to face, he found he did know them, after all — each and every one. Had he only thought he’d forgotten?
Hoped, perhaps.
There stood the Lieut, no worse for his abyssal plunge; next to him that flibbertigibbet Sadie from the Two Sisters, whose head he’d broke open for daring to drop a lure in Rook’s lap, with her red-faced country beau not far behind, who’d caught up with Chess in Splitfoot Joe’s only to get drilled twice before even clearing leather. The holes in the boy’s chest were still open, leaking ichor so pale it had only a hint of pink left to it. Close by, almost two-score men in bluebelly do-up — white and otherwise — stood shot-riddled or torn by old Kees Hosteen’s knife, scooped guts bulging their tattered shirts. The nameless Pink from ’Frisco who’d been Chess’s first real kill kept ’em company, razor-cut throat-grin gaping wide — laid low in back-alley garbage with his gun took while Chess just lit the hell out, man’s murder nothing but a ticket to get him shed of ’Frisco, and Oona along with it.
Other Pinks too, aplenty, like those three he’d shot on their knees after that first train job, ’fore Rook had slapped his gun away. Or former gang-brother Petrus Kavalier, done over the shoulder without even a glance, for the crime of merely raising a gun in horror at Rook’s dark craft. A sprinkling of Injuns too, plus a scattering of “good citizens,” men he’d thoughtlessly hoorawed past during some raid or other; gunslingers who’d ridden the exact same road, only to end it in front of his muzzles. Even that fool of a miner in the ’Frisco melodeon who wouldn’t damn well give over on Rook, his Ma, him, ’til Chess gave him one back, between the eyes.
Too damn easy, Ed Morrow’s voice told him, disapprovingly. You knock ’em down and giggle over it, after.
Over fifty, all told — maybe a hundred, if he wasn’t flattering his own capacities somewhat. And all of ’em equally dead, cold in ways mere landscape couldn’t explain, warmed only by hate-burnt eyes and wounds wisping steam.
My work, Chess thought. Mine, and no one else’s.
Once, he’d’ve preened to own it, but now . . . now, it just made him tired. All of it. All of them. Man lived twenty years or more in this world, shouldn’t he have something a bit better to show for it? Something more — permanent?
This is heresy, red boy, the Enemy told him, from nowhere, degrading to your nature. Besides which, what can be more permanent than the grave . . . the split earth, Cipactli’s open mouth, or all that comes after?
To avoid the temptation to even try to answer, Chess flicked his eyes back over the crowd, searching out faces from Bewelcome or Hoffstedt’s Hoard — but found none, which bemused him. Only those who’d died at his own hand made up the Dead Posse roster, then, which had a bitter kind of sense to it, he supposed. This was the Enemy’s territory, down here, and his way had nothing whatsoever to say about debts of conscience beyond the primal — blood for blood, too book-balancing cold for true revenge.
Christian Hell might be hot, after all, but Mictlan-Xibalba was cold as this place here. And deep.
Chess squeezed Oona’s clutching hand, shrugged, and took up his pistoleer’s pose, empty holsters notwithstanding. “Well,” he said, “c’mon, then. Whoever got something to say can just go on and tell
me ’fore we all die again of cold, or boredom.”
The crowd parted. Three personages pushed to the forefront, all wearing the shredded remnants of Confederate greys; one in the middle was a bald-headed idjit, near Rook’s size but flabbier. His smaller, equally ugly friends flanked him close. All three sported knife-slice neckties like that first Pink’s, gone stiff grey-blue in this blizzardly weather; a rime set their lips glimmering, edges a-tremble with the force of their eager dog-panting. The big one expelled a wheezing sigh, half-strained through his brittle wound, like he’d been silent so long he didn’t know which mouth was better for speaking.
“Might almost be worth it all . . . all this sufferin’, here in the dark,” he said, “just . . . t’pay you back, Pargeter.”
“I don’t misdoubt. But remind me, while we’re at it: who the fuck are you meant to be to me, precisely?”
“Oh, you’ll get it, you just try hard enough.” Fists now, steady at the man’s waist; he leaned forward, bringing his weight onto his toes like a pugilist. “We was soldiers together once, back in camp — you with your airs, swannin’ ’round, like you could dictate to real-made men. Thought you’d trade me somethin’ I didn’t want for what I did, ’til I taught you better.”
A preening wisp of a voice, shrunk now almost to nothing. Yet Chess could still catch an echo of what it might’ve been like once, full and mean, telling him: Guess you’re mine now, bitch.
With that, the other shoe dropped; Chess felt a rib-crack weight across his back and a tearing in his nethers, recalled the world gone dim from both his eyes being so bruise-puffed they barely opened, throat sore from ill use, inside and out. And thought, like he’d snarled through it nonetheless, right at that very moment —
Not likely. ’Cause . . . I ain’t no-damn-body’s, motherfucker.
He spat again just to rid himself from the taste, and grinned.
“Why, Private Chilicothe,” Chess named him. “You who played bad faith with my rules and never did pay me for the privilege, either, so I took my change out on your hide; you’re right, now I do recall. ’Specially that part in the doc’s tent, after — how sweet you looked lyin’ there asleep, right ’fore I slit your throat and left you to piss yourself dyin’.”