A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  Unprompted, she put one hand to Gabe’s dear, slack face, felt him relax beneath her too-long-withheld touch with a tiny, relieved sigh. Then her eyes blurred again, and she bent over him, touching his forehead to her own.

  My boy, she thought. My son, my Mesach’s son; Lord, let this cup pass from me.

  But only if it be Your will.

  “He’s a baby, barely knows his own name. He . . . won’t understand one thing about what you want.”

  “No.” Inexorable, despite this agreement: “But that’s where you come in.”

  “Drawing upon the secret tongue shared only by mothers and infants?” Sophy shook her head. “Can we not at least wait ’til morning? Let him sleep?”

  “Well, time’s tight, ma’am, as you yourself just pointed out; we don’t dare wait, really. Also — the Spinner says this should be done at night to have the best chance of working; the Crack gets wider in the dark, apparently, or some such. So, I’m sorry, more than you can know. But . . . no.”

  Sophy cradled Gabe, rocking him quietly, while she collected herself. “Will it hurt him?” she finally asked.

  “Truth? I’ve no idea,” said Yancey. “How could I? I’ve never tried anything like this before. You?”

  While Sophy couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh, she did manage a snort, at the absurdity. “Hardly.” Then, shifting toward Yancey so they sat face to face on the cavern floor, with Gabriel sweetly asleep on Sophy’s lap between them, she looked down at him, and sighed. “Very well. Let me wake him, first.”

  Gently, she eased him up in her arms ’til she could place her head beside his, coo softly in his ear, sleek his cheek with hers. He came awake slowly, goggle-blinking and dazed, as though trying to decide whether he was hungry or scared. Though still too young to smile a-purpose, his face relaxed at his mother’s sound and smell. He yawned, widely.

  Yancey, too, seemed unable to resist smiling down at him — but then placed one hand over his head, resting thumb and forefinger on both soft temples. As Gabe looked ’round in vague suspicion, she lifted the other to Sophy’s forehead, pausing at the last instant, a question in her eyes. Sophy closed her own and nodded once, short and sharp. She felt Yancey’s palm settle over her brow; it was surprisingly cool, and a little damp.

  Long moments passed. The clamp of fear in her throat and chest eased off, though what replaced it was, illogically enough, irritation rather than relief. “Well?” Sophy demanded.

  “I’m trying,” said Yancey, equally impatient. “For yourself, Missus Love, you might try not to — ” She stopped, let out a breath. “No. I can’t tell you not to be afraid, when I am. Just . . . try not to be afraid of me.”

  Sophy opened her eyes and stared, so incredulous the girl coloured a little. Then asked, simply: “How?”

  “Because — I’ll swear you on a stack of Bibles, if we both survive and your boy likewise, then I’ll go to Bewelcome after and put myself in your hands for you to execute, as a cold-blooded murderess.” Nodding stiffly, as Sophy’s jaw dropped: “Yes, I mean it. Bad doesn’t wipe out bad, so I should answer for what I’ve done.”

  “My Mesach being the bad, I suppose?”

  “You’ll never believe me on that, I fear, but he was bad enough, to me. It doesn’t matter, though. I mean it, all the same.”

  “Easily said. But how can I know?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Sophy stared back, then closed her eyes again, with a huff. Loosened all the muscles she could by force of will alone, and prayed: Lord God, help me know and do what is right. . . . Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be —

  There was no warning, and no transition. Simply the sudden feel of every voice in some million-strong choir broken at once into song, a single overwhelming note in twelve octaves, blotting out everything but pure, vibrating power. Even Gabe’s sudden shriek of fear was only another note in that great song, mirrored by Sophy’s own terror — and yes, she knew it now for nothing but truth, Yancey’s as well. Three lives instantly laid open, decades of memory pouring torrential into each other, and all channelled through Gabriel’s terrified conduit.

  Oh Lord, Gabriel!

  In an instant, the fear she felt was only for him. It made her brace herself, master the flood, wrap Gabriel’s mind in hers; abandon all words and the ideas attached to them, shuck herself of everything pure expressions of love, conviction, protection.

  I’m here, she sent, unable to think of anything else to “tell” him. Always. Mama is always here.

  Experienced this way, there was dismayingly little to Gabriel’s thoughts yet except the rawest of impulses: Want; Hungry; New?; No!; Away! And most terrifying of all, lurking there in the very background lay something dark and vast and dangerous, all possibilities rolled into each other at once, something Sophy could only think of as . . . Wish.

  Distorted sensations, compiled through touch and taste as much as through sight or sound: her own grip; the taste of her milk; blissful smell of warm wool blankets; a half-formed thing that Sophy realized with a wrench was all Gabe could remember of Mesach’s face. She twinned it with her own memory and sent it back to him, attaching her own love for Mesach and mirroring it with Gabriel’s love for her. Papa, she willed him to hear. Papa.

  The memory sharpened in Gabriel’s mind, feeding Sophy a leap of joy, as: Papa! came back strong and clear.

  And then, on that miracle’s heels, a question — Where?

  Sophy tried to think how to answer, but too late: the grief welling from her had already done so. And since nuance meant exactly nothing to Gabe, he felt the loss with all the force she did, unfiltered; he began to wail, full volume, inconsolable. She wept too, wholly unable to resist doing so, and saw that Yancey was crying as well: grief echoing to grief, a tear-stained lodestone.

  Suddenly, caught unawares — and Sophy only kept these foreign memories from touching Gabe’s mind with an agonizing wrench of effort — she was watching the massacre in Hoffstedt’s Hoard from the thick of the carnage, while the thing that’d once been her husband wreaked monstrous vengeance in Pargeter’s pursuit on a family and home which Experiance Colder had loved every bit as much as Sophy did Bewelcome, Gabe, Mesach himself. Then forward in time with a horrid jerk, to stand outside some shanty saloon (Splitfoot Joe’s) where Mesach made the dead dance to his will, against all holiness and justice.

  And then — oh, God —

  Mesach’s death once more, this time from Yancey’s vantage point. But now Sophy could feel Yancey taking her bereavement in along with that one fraction of a second’s useless, impermanent “triumph,” recognizing just how deeply twinned Sophy’s pain must be with her own.

  The truth, and nothing but: hollow truth, awful truth. Under her mask of demureness, the other girl’s steel will stood well-roused; she had meant every word of her offer to surrender, as ruthless with her own sins as she was with any other’s.

  Enough, Sophy thought, throat salt-clogged, willing the impulse over to Yancey. Enough, enough, enough!

  It ended with the same suddenness as it’d begun. Sophy found herself back in the cave, eyes burning, nose thick. Yancey stared at her, face likewise swollen red, panting for breath. And Gabriel continued to scream, till Sophy instinctively reached out with her mind, soothing him.

  Mama here, always, she repeated, soundlessly. Mama stays. All’s well. All’s well.

  Gabriel stared up at her . . . and shaped what might be intended as a smile, clumsily. Grabbed for her finger with one hand, squeezing tight. From his mind came a wordless surge, a first purposeful sending: MamaMamaMamaMeMyMineMamaMamaLove.

  Sophy bent her head again, trying desperately not to start crying again. Hearing behind her, as she did, some quizzical noise from “Grandma’s” direction — absurdly quiet, a single rock shifting over sand.

  On the outer edge of her perception, Yiska smiled, broadly. Murmured, approving: “And so, now we know. It works.”

  So
ngbird, meanwhile, stared at them all, equally amazed. For once, her look held neither superiority nor sour sullenness, but rather a kind of numb confusion like that felt by someone confronted by a mirage, unsure if what she saw was real.

  And, should it finally be proved so, then something which looked almost like fear.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.

  For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed.

  I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me.

  I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.

  Psalms, number 31, 9 to 12.

  Over Hex City, a moon the colour of bone rose high, overlooking everything beneath. The Lady who ruled it was asleep by now, Reverend Rook could only assume — either laid up in “their” bedchamber, damaged by the explosive force of Hank Fennig’s passing, or busy playing with that creepish new toy of hers, the thing that’d once been Clodagh Killeen. Making it walk the floor with her, leaving its papery mane rustle and shell-bell rattle behind; using those empty blue lungfish eyes of its for lamps, for all he knew. Sending it out to spy on the battlefield or hang above Camp Pink like a miasma, searching always for any hint of where Marizol might be stowed away, so’s it could swoop down to retrieve her.

  Must be nice to have something you can rely on, Rook thought. Though granted, he himself’d known the feeling once, of course, and intimately.

  But long ago, now. So long.

  You will have your husband again, little king, and soon enough, Ixchel had told him, yet again, just before he finally took himself elsewhere. And this time, hadn’t even bothered to answer out loud — why, when he knew damn well she heard whatsoever he was thinking? Just let the words bubble up through him, slow as frog song mud-drowned:

  See, honey, you do keep on sayin’ that. But — having seen that thing you claim is him up close, I’m just not sure whether I believe you, anymore. Or if I ever really did, for that matter.

  This last was a sobering idea, when so many had already died in its service. Which was why Rook didn’t really care to examine it overmuch, right at this very moment.

  So here he was instead, back in the adobe hut where he’d once conjured Kees Hosteen and debated this War’s exigencies with his Council, Fennig and Clo included, what now seemed like years ago. Lying back mother-naked on the heaped-up length of his own clothes and studying what little was visible of the ceiling in the lamps’ flickering light, with two fingers shoved inside Sophy Love’s Bible (snatched up almost without design in all the excitement, as the Hall went to matchsticks and the pre-torrent storm bore them all away, regardless) for a bookmark he didn’t even need, given how the relevant passages were already playing ’emselves out in his head:

  For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.

  But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God.

  . . . Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. . . .

  Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city.

  31, 13, 22, and none of it damn well helped. Bibliomancy’d failed him, for what had to be the first time. Rook let the book fall, putting both hands over his eyes to block the world out with a double curtain of red-black flesh, and saw . . .

  Ixchel, as ever, in her oldest form: that childish one with the high tits and her jade-chip mask, her shut lids marked like eyes, fixed and awful. Descending on him in a cloud, a boiling swarm of black rainbow-winged locusts, and saying, as she did: Why do you hide from me, little king? Where do you think to go, to rid yourself of my presence? We are made one flesh, even by that Book you cling to, ’til death do us part . . . and, since that parting will never happen, long after.

  For as you know, there is no real death, for such as you and I.

  No death the way he’d been taught to preach on it, certainly: a thousand torments with no hope of anything else once you passed through ’em, not even forgetfulness. Just watery cold and slimy stone, an endless raw-bones ball game played for worthless stakes. Sometimes he wondered why those old Mexes of hers had bothered staying alive at all, riding their nasty, brutish and short existences straight to the Machine’s lip ’stead of hanging ’emselves outright, from the most convenient tree. But he guessed you did tend to dawdle, when you knew the road only went one way; if nothing else, the scenery must make for a welcome distraction.

  And that’s where I sent Chess, he knew. Down deep, down under, through awful pain, only to wait there for nothing but more — wait and watch, he could only suspect, while Tezcatlipoca strutted ’round using Chess’s body for a chariot.

  Yet he is there, still, in existence, no matter how far my brother may have buried him; we would feel it, were it not so. Which means he will return, eventually.

  Rook shook his head. Grandma, though — she told me that should never happen. “For the dead to return unBalances the world.”

  A ghost should know better. For he is not dead . . . and she is no god.

  Go back to that thing of yours and leave me alone, he thought at her, sure he could hear its skeletal rattle as he “spoke.” Give me an hour to myself, at least.

  Let you dream on the past, you mean, ’til your hand cramps? Very well: amuse yourself, then sleep, and be ready to do my bidding once more. For I own you, Asher Rook; your bed is made, just as you always tell yourself. You are mine now ’til Doomsday, in this world, and the next.

  She laughed at him then, those old tinkling bone-bells. And eddied away into the ether once more, taking her insectile trappings with her.

  It really was getting just like a marriage, ’tween her and him and Chess; the worst sort. Like he was hitched to two equally powerful people at once, one of whom barely tolerated him, while the other wanted to ride him down and eat his beating heart. And neither of ’em even bothered to laugh at his jokes, either.

  Fact was, grief and guilt made for a heavy overcoat, ’specially when worn together — and Asher Elijah Rook had spent more time than he now cared to think on in their twinned embrace, muffled from the world with only his dreadful wife and Three-Fingered Hank for company. For far too long, he had felt as though things reached him only at a remove, as though each word spoke worked its way through three separate translations, familiar-unfamiliar.

  By law, no mourning would be allowed for dead Mister Fennig, his previous good works in the city’s service being all firmly set aside. Ixchel forbade even the smallest attempt at memorial, on grounds of treason; the sting of Hank’s presence in her court, it seemed, would disappear even more completely than his denuded body had into the gaping maw of what used to be his triangle’s point, the woman he’d loved and quarrelled with most fiercely, of all his ladies.

  Yet still Rook couldn’t sleep, here or there. Not with traces of Hank’s mess still on the floor, and Ixchel telling Clodagh: Search, daughter, cast yourself out upon the stars, into the empty places where my own eyes can no longer see — I must have a new body, and soon, if I am to meet my brother on the field. For he will challenge me, I know it . . . and I must meet him, when he does. No matter my state, I must come against him, with all my strength remaining — and in the end, I must win.

  I killed the only human being who ever loved me true for you, you horrid creature, Rook thought. That, or to save him from myself. Only one I’ll probably ever love, likewise, when all I ever wanted was the opposite, yet every move I made conspired to lay him low.

  Some things can’t be undone, his father had told him, long time gone. Some mistakes are irreparable, Asher. And the only way to pay for ’em is to take responsibility
, accept punishment.

  He turned over, groaning, feeling Sophy Love’s Bible nudge sharp ’gainst his side. And flipped it open at random, letting his finger-pads fall where they may; saw the words push up like scars, flower open, each sending out a single puff of poisonous black-silver print-pollen — Isaiah 13 again, 11 to 22, with some small transposition.

  And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

  Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

  And as for that city, Babylon the proud . . . Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

  And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Rook ordered the damn thing, frowning. Seeing, as he did, the lamentable spectacle of Chess-but-not-Chess, rising up dry out of the sodden earth, wreathed in lightnings: his lips like clay, breath like dirt, Weed at his loins poking out all a-flower, while the markings all up and down his limbs shimmered like a heat wave. As bad as anything Rook had subjected himself to previously, yet still wearing that shape, that Song of Solomon mask which made him want to sing praises, rub his face in the dust, let the same bad parody of “Chess” bruise his naked heel against his head ’til all their quarrels finally fell away.

  For Behold, thou art fair, my beloved; yea, pleasant: also our bed is green. Yet By night on my bed I sought him who my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

  Since keeping his eyes shut changed nothing, he opened them, instead. And found, though his head rang, that the silence in this empty room was strangely restful. Here, he could pretend for a moment that the years had fallen away, or spun to a fate altogether different . . . a world without the War, or the gallows; without hexation, without Ixchel . . .