A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  Pinkerton loomed above her as a half-dozen sentries rushed over, ringing the captives with rifle muzzles. “Oh, aye? And what would yuir man Fennig think of that, I wonder?”

  “Nothing,” Eulie said, softly. “Hank’s dead — Clodagh too. Lady Rainbow killed him.”

  “Killed them both, the bitch, and after all he did for her, as well. Though, with Clo . . .” Berta shook her head, angry tears leaking

  free. “. . . hell, you’ll see soon enough, I guess,” she concluded, at last.

  Pinkerton nodded to the child. “So who’s this?

  The girl gulped back her sobs. “Marizol es mi nombre, jefe,” she got out. “Mi madre e padre — mama, papa . . . they bring me to the City, to worship the Lady with them. I am not bruja, I swear it! I grow up in Huejuquilla, I am no one — I only wish to go home. Please . . .” As she slumped, Morrow knelt, circling her with one arm; she pressed herself into his side, shivering, with cold and fever mixed. “Please,” she whispered. “I wish to go home.”

  Morrow looked to Pinkerton, who snorted in exasperation. “Sweet Christ, Edward, we’ve neither time nor men to spare on repatriations — how close do you think any State-uniformed man would get to the border, with the Hapsburg on the march? Still . . .

  belike the Bewelcomites could be persuaded to handle one more refugee.” With a small but real smile: “She’s no’ much of an eater by the looks of her anyways.”

  Marizol blinked at Pinkerton, then flung herself over and grabbed him by the knees, sobs and rapid Spanish rendering her babble unintelligible. Pinkerton looked discomfited; Ludlow hid a smirk. Berta and Eulie exchanged looks of relief.

  “She is thanking you for saving her,” the Enemy explained, smirking.

  Morrow’s hackles abruptly went up.

  “Saving her?” He asked, warily. “From what?”

  Though he’d directed the question to the Enemy, it was Eulie who answered. “We’ll tell you gladly, sir: the Lady, Ixchel — ” She pronounced it eetch-ell, mangling the name unmercifully. “ — is in bad straits indeed. That body she uses is rotting ’round her, so she’s desperate for a new one, with poor Marizol her first choice.”

  Berta nodded. “It’s true,” she agreed. “Keep her from acquiring a new vessel, and your war’s more than half-won.”

  Pinkerton’s face went terrifyingly still. “Then you’ve just brought something the Lady wants most desperately right into me own camp,” he replied, flatly. “What makes you think she’ll not rend heaven and earth to get this little chit back?”

  “Oh, there is no point to that.” Again, the Enemy interjected, as if it found nothing more enjoyable than to be helpful. “My sister’s great honour has already been openly rejected — cast back into her teeth, before all her subjects! For one must love a god to become the god’s ixiptla, and this girl does not love my sister . . . nor, I think, will she ever.”

  “Easy enough to say,” Pinkerton mused. “But Doc Asbury’s spoke enough on the workings of this Oath, and claims it’s no’ love ye need — only consent, which ye can get in many ways. What assurances do I have that the Lady won’t reach for this girl again, even here? That she won’t rise up from the earth, say, seize you two and tell the girl if she doesnae cooperate, you’ll be killed?”

  Eulie gaped, while Berta sputtered. “I, I — don’t think it works like that, Mister Pinkerton — ”

  Morrow cleared his throat, loudly. “Sir, we get her far enough away, fast enough, and she’ll be safe. The Lady barely ever leaves the City — hasn’t travelled beyond since it first went up, aside from the attack on Bewelcome, and she sure went home fast enough after that. Might well be she can’t go any farther, or the Oath ties her to her seat of power, sure as it does all the others; she’s got to know that if she leaves her folk for too long now, they’ll lose all hope — and then she’s lost. I’m telling you, sir, she won’t risk it for one girl this late in the game, new vessel or no. She ain’t that foolish.”

  Pinkerton returned Morrow’s gaze, gave a slow, considering nod. “You make good sense, Edward.” As Morrow let out his breath, however, Pinkerton went on: “But I’m no’ sure I credit the Lady with your brand of logic. ’Sides which . . . I dinna see a point in taking the chance.”

  For the first time since the War, under fire, Morrow froze — so was therefore unable to do anything about it when, without changing expression, Pinkerton put his quick-drawn pistol’s barrel against Marizol’s forehead, and fired. The back of the girl’s head blew out in a burst of bone, atomizing gore. Her eyes still wide, she let go and toppled limply back into the trough, splashing heavily, vanishing from sight.

  Ludlow threw up his hands; Eulie collapsed in a dead faint; Berta shrieked like a gutted horse and flung herself against her restraints, twisting madly, while the hex-handlers forced her down onto her face. “Marizol!” she screamed into the cold earth, voice muffled. “Marizol!”

  Only sheer numbness (another War-time legacy) kept Morrow from doubling over and retching in similar fashion. And from the greyish undertone to Carver’s face, he saw, the Private felt much the same way.

  The Enemy, on the other hand, closed its eyes, breathed deep and smiled — and God damn it all if this too wasn’t a Chess-smile, recognizable from close-quarters inspection: blissful grin of satiation achieved, absinthe after long dryness, violence after long restraint or climax after celibacy.

  Sacrifice received once more, however inadvertent, or unasked. And accepted.

  Morrow remembered little of the rest, though he vaguely recalled Carver taking charge of Berta and Eulie, shepherding them off to the stockade. A moment stood out peculiarly, tintype-stamped on his brain — Berta staring at Carver in dazed recognition, as if only now realizing how close she’d come to killing him, bare hours earlier. Nearby, Ludlow sat on the ground, once more examining his blood-drenched notebook, like a child does a broken toy.

  The Enemy’s words, too, he had somehow managed to file away, as it thanked Pinkerton for the life rendered up to it, and gave its counterproposal: The day after the day after tomorrow, at sun’s highest apex, I will stand before the walls of New Aztectlan — challenge my sister to leave her City and do me battle, god against god. If she dares not accept, even more loyalty and will to fight will be lost amongst her retinue; if she does, then surely you shall see, and seize, an opportunity. Whatever the result, your victory will be that much closer.

  “‘God against god’ . . . that suggests ye might lose,” Pinkerton observed, so incautiously it made Morrow want to scream. “Mayhaps there’s other reward in it for yuirself, though, hmmm? Something worth the risk?”

  But the Enemy only laughed.

  Avoidance of boredom is reward enough for me, Allan Pinkerton, it said, then sunk back into the trough, taking its bounty along with it — disappearing so utterly that nothing whatsoever remained in its wake, not even little Marizol’s pathetic corpse.

  Lying fully clothed on his cot yet again, Morrow stared up at his tent’s canvas ceiling in silence, then closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slowly, letting fatigue bear him down. He thought on Geyer, most likely still hidden in Asbury’s tent; wondered how long it would take for Asbury to hear what had happened, and if that would finally be enough to drive him to flee with Geyer, after all. Then turned his mind to Yancey, knowing he had to dream of her if he could, for she needed to know what was happening — just how bad things already were, and would likely become.

  And God, but he just needed to touch her, be with her — so much so he was almost afraid she would recoil, if she sensed that depth of need in him. The world grew fuzzy; his heartbeat slowed. His limbs were heavy. Soft darkness enshrouded him. Morrow went into it gladly, waiting for contact . . .

  . . . only to open his eyes again but one second later, and find the Enemy in his bed.

  “Christ,” he said, disconsolate, “not you again.”

  It was like some bad parody of more memories than he liked to tally up: Chess Pargeter’s fa
ce hanging over his, studying him while he slept; one deft little set of pistoleer’s fingers tracing his body up and down, admiring it for handholds. As though he was just considering where best to clamber on and amuse himself a while, seeing what-all he could get away with before Morrow returned enough to his senses to object to the indignity.

  “No one will miss your presence, soldier,” the Enemy replied, coolly. “I only thought we should talk further, before my arrangement with your general comes to pass.”

  “Yeah, that was quite the bill of goods you sold him on. I’m takin’ it things won’t happen exactly the way you gave him t’understand they might, come mornin’ after next.”

  “What he thinks is none of my concern, soldier. Though I take it you would prefer they go badly, rather than well, for a man who blinked not one eye before killing that child my sister covets, for the grand crime of being a potential inconvenience.”

  Morrow snorted. “Say it again, why don’t you. And try to pretend like any of it means a damn thing, this time.”

  “For a man so lacking in power, you accord me very little respect. Is this wise?”

  “Hard to tell, t’be frank. I mean, I do fear you, if that counts for anything — same way I would a wild dog, or one of them poisonous snakes.” It almost felt like he was roaring drunk, this apparent freedom to insult something so powerful to its — Chess’s — own visage. But here he willed himself sober, stringently, before he made choices he maybe wouldn’t have time to regret; sat up straight and looked the Enemy in what passed for its eyes, only to watch it smirk back up, charmlessly.

  “I know what you’re doin’,” Morrow told it. “Ain’t anything new, you know. Our Devil plays his cards just the same.”

  It shook Chess’s red curls at him. “Yet again, I do not know this name, soldier. However many times I hear it spoken, from however many of your kind, the concept makes no more sense to me than it did the first time.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that kinda figures. Seein’ that’s just what we call the thing that passes close enough for you, as regards our own single-God creed.”

  “Your All-Father’s rebel child, who lives under the earth and roasts dead souls on a fire pit, behaving in ways that would make my Lords One and Seven Death or Mictantecuhtli laugh? Yes, I have heard of him — how he tempts those not yet condemned to do ill by promising repayment, taking their afterlife as collateral. It is a pleasant fable.”

  “I can see how it’d strike you that way. Point is, whenever Satan wants to get things goin’, he doesn’t ever really put himself out at all, not like we think — just shows whoever he’s after things that’re are happening already, then steps back and lets ’em draw their own conclusions, so he can see what-all they’ll do with the information.”

  “Ah. And this, you believe, was why I told my sister’s secrets to your Mister Pinkerton . . . to find out what he was capable of, if he thought to gain some benefit.”

  “You saying I’m wrong?”

  “Not entirely. But let me show you something now, without asking a fee in exchange, and then see what might follow, after.”

  Images flashed inside Morrow’s head, quick and flat, yet sticky red-rendered: Pinkerton as one of those curlicued Old Mex stone images, dipped in blood and printed on a wall, acting out all sorts of secret mayhem — having fresh-turned hexes brought to his tent each night when the camp was too asleep to come looking and sucking ’em down like oysters, or making do with energy siphoned off those defeated by the hex-handlers instead; anything for a fix, just like the junkie he’d never stopped being. And all of this conducted under Asbury’s auspices, with the ruined scientist’s connivance, going along to get along, since Asbury sure as hell knew he couldn’t hope to stop him.

  Berta and Eulie, brought down like fleeing cattle, to be milked of their bounty at the boss-man’s convenience. Or maybe done away with entirely once he was finished with ’em, like that child they’d tried so desperately hard to save, by bringing her all the way to their chief persecutor’s camp — an object lesson in just how little Pinkerton cared for anybody outside of himself, these days, hexacious or not.

  The “old complaint,” all right, which Asbury’d claimed to be ministering to, and lied right to Morrow’s face in doing so. He ain’t gettin’ better, Morrow thought, appalled. Oh no.

  No indeed, soldier.

  He’s getting worse.

  Yes. Something should be done. So ask yourself: is that opportunity I spoke of earlier to be his, while my sister and I come to blows? Or might it be someone else’s . . . yours, perhaps?

  “Shut your hole, you awful creature. I can’t trust you no more’n the Fallen One, or any other demon.”

  Or Pinkerton, either. Better to trust yourself, then, and do as your conscience dictates, when the time comes . . . as I know you will.

  “Think you know me that damn well, huh? I just might surprise you.”

  It gave him Chess’s smirk again, and Morrow found himself gob-struck by the way that tiny flash of sharp black teeth travelled straightway to his groin, like a shock.

  “Unlikely, I think,” it replied. “Now come closer; let me show you something to remember me by, before I depart.”

  “Didn’t think you creatures got itchy in that same way.”

  “Part of me is your red boy, soldier. And where he is now, he misses you — badly.”

  The offer tugged at him, just like it was supposed to. But how much of Chess really could be left, inside there? Any, at all? Didn’t matter; regardless of how his gooseflesh might prick and his pants might tighten, Morrow wasn’t anything like fool enough to feel like taking a chance on finding out.

  “Well, tell him I miss him too, then,” he said, finally, flushing to where his collar would’ve reached, had he been wearing one. “But not that bad.”

  “I could show you your woman, then — Mictlantecihuatl’s handmaiden. Would you prefer that, as a gesture of my respect?”

  “I’d prefer you not gesture my way at all, thanks. I’d prefer to sleep, alone.”

  “Will you tell her what passed here tonight, when you do?”

  Morrow nodded. “If you ever let me.”

  “Good.” Morrow looked at him. “And now you wonder what game I play, soldier? A long one, very long. So do not worry yourself; nothing you do, or think of doing, will inconvenience me much. What you want is what I want, after all.”

  “For now.”

  “For now, yes.”

  Riled, Morrow tried to turn away, but got caught by the wrist, and went rigid — there were things moving around inside the Enemy’s hand that made him want to puke to feel, and when he checked, he thought he saw “Chess’s” face ripple, like a mirage. Still, the Enemy — who truly seemed to take no insult at his disgust — merely laughed, and let him go.

  It is decided, it “said.” You will march with your army to Hex City, and wait for my signal. My order.

  “Don’t work for you,” Morrow muttered, mutinous, into his own neck. While beside him, Chess Pargeter’s mostly naked ghost raised a quizzical brow.

  Oh no? Then for who, I wonder?

  And was gone, leaving Morrow to wonder, too.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sunset poured blood across the snow-streaked desert, cold for all its brilliance. Half a mile to the northeast it struck dark bronze light off the western wall of what the shamanesses — human and inhuman — called Tse Diyil, that great slab-sided mound of rock thrust out up of the desert like God’s fist punched up through oilcloth. It sparkled on the waters of the Chaco Wash, and stretched the shadow of the woman kneeling alone in the wasteland out behind her; her bent head gave it a distorted look, sending wraiths of darkness spiralling ’round with each shuddering breath.

  For Sophronia Love, née Hartshorn, what little she’d experienced directly of the War herself had been enough to break her of the idea that meekness was an inherently blessed condition. She and Mesach had both seen enough of the Beast’s face to know what needed to b
e done, and most efficiently minimize the chances of anything similar ever happening again. They would discuss it late at night or early in the morning, immediately before or after prayers, and sometimes during; the fact that they had been of one mind as well as one flesh — potentially — was what drew her to him, in the first place. Bewelcome had been their shared dream. Not the true New Jerusalem — they were neither of them so proud as to aspire that far — but a place for the faithful to live as they would, making a fresh start after the sins of war and civilization. To build lives in that they would not be ashamed to show their Saviour, when their time came.

  Somehow, though, it had never occurred to Sophy how Mesach’s time might come so much sooner than hers would. Or that the very duties they’d undertaken together would be the things which kept her behind, alone, unable to follow him until that burden was justly laid down. For whatever gifts God had given her to help meet those duties — even the outright miracle of her own rebirth, along with all Bewelcome’s — they still could not undo the ache in her life that Mesach had left, bereft of his voice, his touch, his unwavering certainty.

  Oh God, she missed him, her beautiful man.

  One might think her time in the salt should have prepared her, but it hadn’t — the passing year had seemed only a dream, the heartbeat between one drawn breath and the next, an upward-cast plea. She remembered folding Gabriel in, forming herself ’round him like a shield, then . . . nothing. The tumult had ceased instantaneously, leaving only absence and long darkness, without even a sense of time’s movement to anchor her in its face, ’til that same timelessness had dissolved on the instant of her shattering re-entry into life, leaving not even a wrack of memory behind.

  She had seen Mesach fall to Rook’s and Pargeter’s mingled devilry, been struck down herself — then come back, reunited for one shining instant, before losing him yet again to Yancey Kloves’ bullet. And all of it so quickly that both days often seemed equally more nightmare than truth, lost in the black chasm which split her life in two pieces.