by Gemma Files
Without Chess.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead again, cursing: no, not that. Never that. Or, by everyone’s God but his, what had been the point of any of it?
But you never could really pretend despair was peace, not for very long.
And here, inevitably, memory finally welled up, just as Ixchel had mocked him it would. A scene from two scant years previous, when he and young Mister Pargeter were still poisonously entangled as heartworm through a dog’s ticker — baking in bed together, holed up near the Border in some whorehouse whose accoutrements seemed to make Chess comfortable and uncomfortable in equal measure, and Rook itchy to amuse him out of his mulishness.
The details popped up in a glittering cloud, criminally fresh as ever. He saw them sharing tequila by the mouthful, saw himself dip to lap a bit more from the hollow of Chess’s throat before turning him over and licking a careful trail down his sweat-shiny spine, then bury himself face-first at the musky source. Kissing him wetly open enough so’s he could hook in a pair of fingers and scissor them half-viciously inside, preparing the way, while Chess just hiked his hips and purred out loud into the verminous pillows.
Moaning, as he did: Oh Ash, Jesus fuck, enough with the niceties, already — have at it, make me Goddamn scream! Best be ready to do me through this damn mattress, you know what’s good for you, ’cause I ain’t fit to wait one minute more —
You’re what’s good for me, you awful object.
Yeah? Then hurry up and get goin’, you sumbitch, ’fore I just pop off entire and leave you to ride your hand alone, for once.
Why, Chess Pargeter! You been cheatin’ on me, with yourself? A rap to the back of his skull, sharp enough to make his fist spark pleasantly. Impatient little bastard.
Three fingers now, well below both knuckles; Rook dipped his thumb lower, ran it quick ’cross Chess’s swollen, gilt-furred balls, laughed out loud to see him pant and snarl. And felt that very noise jerk him up in turn, poking his own sensitive head out past the foreskin’s tip like it was a gun and Chess’s yearning hole the target, an inescapable challenge, near-impossible not to thrust himself inside. . . .
He set teeth on Chess’s nape, nipping hard — made him gasp and squeal, then hump back, hump up, strong as some untamed bronco bent on stage-managing his own breaking. While Rook, in turn, found it was all he could do to just grab hold of either hip and enjoy the ride: deep-set, tall in the saddle but wholly at Chess’s mercy, rather than the other way ’round. And well content to be so.
Hit it, Christ! Yes, there, riiiight fuckin’ there, oh Lord Lord Lord —
He was touching himself now, in time to it, shamelessly — dipping low and then dragging up high once more, sweat-greasing his palm to pump out a bead or two of dew, then use that in turn to dig himself yet deeper. Yet feeling something crack wide inside him, as he did — dead flesh maggoted away to expose abraded tissue, exquisite as probing any unhealed wound.
One thing only you ever asked of me, darlin’, he thought, and I went on ahead and did different ’cause I knew better, like I always thought I did. Left you behind, then was surprised when you really couldn’t be held responsible. And look at me now . . .
Trapped between two gods, neither of ’em offering any sort of salvation worth the sacrifice. What he wouldn’t do for just a hint of that still, small voice he’d once glimpsed inside Mesach Love’s mind, or Sophy’s bountiful Saviour! But such never had seen fit to show itself to faithless Asher Rook, no matter how long he prayed, or how hard. Chess, I am . . . sorry, damnit, like I’ve never been. So sorry.
Which is how, with one last, half-despairing grasp, he eventually found himself touching a whole new set of fingers entirely — five cold little digits, each tipped with an obsidian-flake nail, seemingly sprouting up through the tangle of his own belly-fur. Which knit irreparably with his while their owner murmured to him, gently, from somewhere over Rook’s suddenly stiff shoulder: “Oh, how I know he would appreciate that apology, mi conquistador, were your red boy here to hear it! Though he would pretend otherwise, probably, and act accordingly.”
The Rev turned his head just one tiny bit more, straining his neck muscles to their limits, and found himself eye to poison-green eye with the same thing that’d taken his measure at Bewelcome. There, however, it’d been far enough away to deny; here it was closer, very much so, flesh firm as Chess’s own.
“You,” he named it. “Enemy of All, right? We Are Your Slaves?”
“So I have been called, yes. And in my sweet sister’s time I was K’awil, God K, who is also known as Bolon Dzacab, Serpent-legged and Powerful, He of the Nine Innumerable Maternal Generations.” The creature smiled at him, showing those shiny black teeth. “But really, does it matter? Do you wish to be enslaved to me, Asher Rook? Or . . . to him whose meat I come wrapped in?”
Rook swallowed, dryly; felt his blood beat still all through the tenderest parts of him, every pulse a scrape, an implicit skinning.
“One thing you’re not, though, is Chess — at all. Are you?”
“Not entirely. But thinking you might be able to swap me for him is as good a reason as any to want to see us all back underground, is it not? I offer you a chance here, priest-king — only be ready to rise and I will lift you up further, if you swear to give me what I want.”
“Which’d be?”
“Words with my sister, face to face. Time to put my argument.”
“She don’t respond too well to arguin’, from my experience.”
“Ah, but I have known her the longer, by far. Trust me in this. . . .”
“If nothing else?”
“I see we understand each other.”
Rook pulled himself upright, pushing the Enemy’s hand away, and tried to position his bedding so’s to hide his only slightly flagging proof of interest — a move the thing all but snickered at. Still, it shifted back, crossing its legs like an Injun; folded palm against palm, primly, and allowed him time to collect himself.
“No offence,” he said, “but I thought I was alone. How’d you get in here, anyhow?”
A shrug. “In your position, you are never alone, truly — here, most especially. As to the other, how can I be kept out? Like my sister, I came in through your dreams . . . an easy entrance, especially when you are hurt and disconsolate, reaching out for any shred of comfort your mind can conjure.”
“That’s all it took, huh?” Rook shook his head. “Best to keep my hands out of my pants from now on, then.”
“Desire is a spell in itself, ‘Reverend’ — all wants are. But you cannot stop yourself from wanting, any more than you may choose to swear off breathing.”
“Guess I can’t, at that.”
“It is indubitable. And so — let us skip ahead, ask and answer that most central of questions. What do I want? For you have been wondering, have you not?”
“Much as you were doing to distract me, yes.”
“What I want is what you want, what your red boy wants. To see my sister fail.”
“And how’s that to be achieved? Seen that creature she made, yet?”
“The tzitzimime are not to be trifled with, yes. Like anything spawned from blood, however, they are difficult to control. Even one of them may be more risk than reward.” It smiled, sidelong. “Besides which — I think you know something she does not, regarding this new ‘daughter’ of hers. What your maim-handed friend saw through his little clear mirrors, the ones he slipped you in that final fray, before his woman’s shell ate him whole. Those you glanced through later on, just the once, when my sister was distracted by her victory.”
Rook swallowed again. “Glasses, that’s what we call those. ’Cause they’re made of glass, this stuff we conjure out of sand and lime — cook it at high heat then blow it out, cool it, grind it so’s you can see things clearer.”
“I neither know nor care what ‘glass’ is, priest-king. Tell me what you saw, through your dead ally’s eyes.”
“I . .
. saw . . . Clo, I thought. Still in there, under everything — the way Chess is in you, I only squint hard enough. And I thought I saw her looking back, too, almost as though . . .”
“As though some part of her were still the woman you knew, regardless of how my sister had remade her. As though, if you only found a way — she might be restored, and turn against the woman who killed her, killed her son, made her kill her man. Deformed her into this dreadful thing and laughed over it, then made her laugh, as well.”
“You really hate Ixchel that much? Though she was your sister, or your wife.”
“My sister, my wife, my mother, my all: my self. So no, little meat-thing, I do not hate her. How could I? Only we are left awake now, alone and alike — only us, in this whole mis-made world. But I cannot allow what she would see done. It is . . . foolish. Messy.”
“Thought you liked chaos.”
“Chaos is one thing. This — is idiocy.”
“I ain’t about to disagree.”
“But what will you do about it? This is the question.”
Rook pondered this, for what felt like a lamentably long time. And found it actually hurt him to admit, at last: “I can’t work against her, you know.”
The Enemy reached over, stroked his cheek with Chess’s gun-roughened hand, almost sympathetically. “You will not have to.”
Think on that Oath of yours, priest-king, the Enemy told him. Its strictures, which once seemed so completely to my sister’s benefit — were they really so? Might some lines be left to read between, some tiny chinks or “loopholes,” as you call them, through which your own desires might yet crawl?
Having heard it administered or administered it himself, a thousand times over, Rook did not even need to cast his mind back. Each phrase came easily to his tongue as a hot oil blister, blooming to flow between his lips.
Service I pledge to the Suicide Moon
Obedience to Her High Priest;
Fellowship to the City’s children —
This I swear, on my own power’s pain;
This I swear, to loss of blood and life,
That the Engine fail not to bring another World.
“Okay,” he said, out loud; “I know it off by heart, as you can damn well see. What’s your point?”
Think further, little king; remember your dead friend’s words. It will suggest itself.
“‘Service’ pledged to the Suicide Moon,” Rook began, carefully, “but ‘obedience’ to her priest — to me. So whatever I say, they have to do, on pain of the Blood Engine’s maw. I could’ve ordered Berta and Eulie not to go, like Hank said; might be able to bring ’em back now if I knew where they were, or compel ’em to produce Marizol, likewise. But Ixchel’d need me to do it, and she wouldn’t be able to make me do it, either.”
“Nor would you, in turn, be constrained to tell her that she could,” the Enemy added, softly. “Yet there is more.”
Rook thought again, frowning hard. “That title of hers,” he said, eventually. “Something . . . about that, isn’t there?”
“Only one of many,” the Enemy agreed. “And therein lies her trouble.”
Hank Fennig up on the ramparts, staring down into the storm, gaze fixed on Ixchel’s back: She’s got a hole, a plug stuck in it, like a cork. Or telling him, back after that first uprising, the Mex shaman and his tied-together band: But there’s a crack in everything, y’see, Reverend. You just have to keep handy to find it, keep quiet . . . and pay attention.
“Theophagy,” Rook said. “She ate those other goddesses, way down in the Sunken Ball-Court: Ixtab-Yxtabay-Coyotlaxquhui-etcetera, and all that. But that’s why she ain’t really one thing nor the other now, isn’t it? What with Ixtab the Rope being true Suicide Lady, and Ixchel herself just the Moon part. . . .”
“And Coyotlaxquhui, who Huitzilopochtli tore apart, being another kind of Moon entirely.”
“Yeah, right. Not to mention that Filth-eater, or the Long Black Hair, or Mother Earth with her snake skirt, and her head like two other snakes kissing. ”
Now it was the Enemy who nodded, approvingly. “You recall them well for a steel hat, though your tongue stumbles over their true names.”
“Listen up, Smoking Mirror: one of these days, one or the other of you needs to understand that Americans are not Spaniards. Hell, even Mexes ain’t Spaniards, not completely.”
Rook sighed. “Hank Fennig once told me the Oath was a true Patriot’s creed — all hexes created equal. And that was something Ixchel never could grasp, being how she’s unused to a world where people expect a two-way street — to get what you pay for, to keep what you earn. To her, she’s the only one gets to give or take, so she don’t have any call to account for any of it; we live and die at her sufferance, and she thinks we should be grateful to do so.”
“A view so many of us share, yes. It became habit, which in turn became a weakness, by our end. And yet — it is so very hard to think clearly, little king, when drunk to the dregs on flowery wine.”
“‘The blood of men is sweet,’ huh?”
“Exactly so.”
Things sunk a level further, then, to where Rook no longer had to speak aloud at all; the truth of it came at him all at once, a kindled shoal of bottom-feeding trench fish coming on like lamps out of endless black, lit one after the other from their predecessor’s flame. Slice by slice it presented itself, an unfurled pomander-orange stinking of secret wisdom, and the Enemy’s Chess-eyes crinkled to see him cobble it back together — those cold fingers stroked at his forearm, raising gooseflesh.
Yes, priest-king; yes. Now say it, so I know you know.
“Them that took the Oath don’t see things like she does, though, not in their hearts, where true hexation comes from. Which means . . .
what they swore to never was her, per se, or me either. They swore to each other, to this place — Hex City. Only real power she has in this arrangement is as the City’s protector, its occupying spirit. But she don’t care about that, and she’s shown it a hundred times over — by killing Hank over what she wreaked on Clo and her baby, most recently. Which means . . . they’re freed from serving her at all, though they still gotta do what I say. Because — ”
“ — you care for them, for this place, and have proven it. Absolutely, mi conquistador. Much as you may wish otherwise, you have bound yourself to these people, their future. It has become a — religion of sorts, to you. Is that not the best of jokes?”
“They finally get wise and throw her out, though, then I go, too. Can’t be High Priest for a goddess no one worships.”
“Ah, true. But . . . would that not be best, really? For with both of you gone, alive or otherwise, the City could live still, every one of its citizens protected in their own mutual embrace; untroubled by hunger, no longer set to roam and rage across this world. You would have helped birth a paradise for your people, something unseen in all worlds, ever. A race of hexes neither outcasts nor victims nor gods, but men, women, children of great power, all bound willingly together for the common good.”
America, Rook thought, way it’s s’posed to be, but ain’t. Like what the War was fought for, but real. And all I have to do, to make it come true — is die for it.
Or, at the very least . . . be willing to.
The Enemy clapped Chess’s palms together. “Yes. Now say the rest, before you persuade yourself you have misunderstood.”
Oh, for the Devil really is a lawyer, just like they say . . . and you really ain’t Chess, no matter the resemblance, since Chess never would’ve had the perspicacity to notice the Oath’s discrepancy —
But no, Chess would’ve seized fast on any escape clause he could, on his own behalf and Rook’s too, without even consulting Rook first. Because he always had been the truly practical one, in their arrangement.
Pretty little red-headed Satan of a man. My sin and my salvation, just like I always wanted to be, for you. Just like I never could’ve managed to, even if I hadn’t lied to myself at every step of the
way, and you too, darlin’. You, too.
“Nothin’ in the Oath that says that ‘other world’ the Engine brings on has to be the same one Ixchel dreams on, either,” Rook said, at last, staring down at his empty hands like he thought he could read their creases.
“Not at all, no.”
“It could be anything.”
“It could.”
“So, again, and having finally talked myself through all of this, ’til I’m ’bout to lose my Goddamn voice: what is it you want from me, that you can’t get elsewhere? Specify.”
Once more, it turned those eyes on him, and Christ if he didn’t rouse in reply, shamefacedly.
“Were you a different man, Asher Rook, then I would tell you what I told this red boy’s soldier, earlier tonight,” the Enemy said. “To ‘trust yourself and do as your conscience dictates, when the time comes.’ But since you and I both know how unlikely it is you will listen to that most flaccid and decayed of organs, perhaps it is better for me to simply make you a promise, and take one in return: that if you agree to say what I tell you to whoever I tell you to say it to at the proper moment, then you will get what you want most.”
“Chess back, I take it?”
“Once things are in their proper places, I will have no need of this body. I can feel your lover on the rise already, clawing his way up through the earth; should he reach me in time, I will be glad to step aside.”
“And if he don’t get here by then?”
“He has you on his side, does he not? You, the soldier and the soldier’s woman, whose gift works best in graveyards, along with his own, not inconsiderable powers. So long as none of you allow this flesh to lie empty long enough to rot, I trust you to find some way.”
“The hell kind of god are you?” Rook asked it, amazed.
“Not yours, obviously. Which is just as well, seeing you owe him so very much, and have paid him so very little.”