A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  Resign yourself, red boy, for nothing can be hidden now, Grandma told him, not when you stand at the world’s very turning pivot, as we all do — but you in particular, you Trickster-spawned trickster, most unreliable Hataalii of all. We stand between things. One world ends, almost certainly; this does not mean another will — or must — begin. You have blundered through this world rutting and killing, living and dying — doing only as you pleased and never counting the cost, to anyone. But now Balance itself hangs in the balance, so you must put away childish things, forever. You must be what you claim you are — a man — and act it, before it grows too late to matter.

  Something was gathering together while getting wider over there, even as they watched, bending the air like heat. Behind Yancey, or maybe in front of her — around her? Christ, but this shit was tricksy. His god-stints set aside, Chess truly didn’t ever expect to understand magic, no matter how long he lived to keep on using it.

  Maybe it just ain’t in my nature, he thought, to which he “heard” Grandma snort.

  And this is the worst of your folly, she replied. You have only to think on my granddaughter, to see. Two-spirited like you, a born child of Begochiddy — and like you, too, she craves to ride and kill, to go where her heart pleases to take her, to have her way. Yet still she does her duty, for she at least knows to reckon her actions’ cost to others. That you were raised without a tribe is a wound you did not ask to be given, but that you have never tried to heal that wound, or even wanted to try . . . this decision is yours to pay for or be repaid, in kind.

  Let me ask you this, Red Hair. Do you think the gods love, simply because they make? Do you think they must love what they make?

  Chess shook his head, muzzily; felt her stone chest rake the side of his face, those uneven lumps she was using for tits all but drawing blood. Not the gods I met. ’Sides which, love and me, we ain’t exactly on good terms. I don’t think nothin’ “has” to love nothin’, necessarily. And even if it does . . . that don’t mean it won’t hurt.

  Hmmm. Then, uneducated though you may be, you are smarter than that bilagaana Reverend of yours, at least.

  He ain’t my Reverend. Not anymore.

  Yes, yes. Tell yourself that, if it helps.

  Mutinous on his part, dismissive on hers — he felt like arguing it, but didn’t have the strength. So fucking tapped out, an empty keg stuffed with nothing but the all-sorts dregs of a thousand previous hoorahs and just about to crack, no matter how sharply he drew on Grandma’s bounty. Could feel how it was hurting her, too, but was frankly too exhausted to even enjoy it.

  Is this it? he couldn’t help but wonder. This? Jesus. Stupid Goddamn way to die . . . again.

  Here something popped far off in the distance, mirrored by an ordnance-like boom in the foreground that made dust spray up ’tween him and Grandma and all the rest, a gigantic huff, like the entire world’d gasped for breath. And when it cleared, there was Ed Morrow’s broad back with a darkie bluebelly and yet two more barefoot gals (hexes too, he could smell it on ’em) tight-arrayed all ’round, his long duster bloody and mud-smeared and tore down the back like ill-cut tails, so high you could see his suspenders.

  By unintentional miracle, Ed himself had fetched up straight in front of Yancey, who was staring at him and grinning fit to bust, as though she’d gotten her Christmas present early. And Chess couldn’t help but think he must be grinning back, since the next thing both of ’em did was to grab the other tight and go for each other mouth-first, so well-timed it was like they’d decided on it together as the best of all possible courses of action.

  Well, that’s that, Chess thought, feeling a touch grimmer than he’d expected to over the idea that whatever he’d had with Ed must be good and done with, given the evidence. At least ’til Ed pulled away at last, with reluctance, and looked around — for as their eyes met, the big Pinkerton man’s all but gave out a flash of relief that would’ve been strong enough to knock Chess back a step, had he been standing.

  “So you are here,” Morrow said, grin not slackening a whit.

  “Sure am,” Chess answered, blinking a strange mist from his eyes. And levered himself up as Grandma let go, sliding to re-take his feet — only to be shocked when Morrow crossed the space between ’em with two long strides, caught him under both arms as though his weight was nothing (which, Christ knew, it might be) and swung Chess ’round child-high before planting a kiss almost as good as the one he’d given Yancey on him after all, all teeth and tongue, hugging him so hard he thought his chest might crack.

  Once more, that scrim between them slid back, letting Morrow’s ideas into Chess’s head. You Goddamned little creature, he heard Ed think, incredulous. Whoever would’ve thought I’d’ve missed you so much, so badly?

  Not me, I must admit, Chess thought back. But I’m glad you did, all the same.

  Plucked and humming, Chess pushed back into it, determined to make the most of what was probably their last time together, even if Yancey was watching. But from the corner of his eye he saw her look on not too much appalled, if not exactly approving, while the two new hex-women and that black boy all kept their own eyes carefully elsewhere. Songbird studied her nail-sheaths, Sophy Love the skies; Yiska crossed her arms, and grinned too.

  And Grandma simply waited it out, counting time. “If you are done with your greetings, soldier,” she broke in, at last, “then there is work yet to be done. The red boy needs you, and your woman too. She will counsel you on your part, while the rest of us prepare.”

  Prepare for what? Chess wanted to ask, but that slump hit him one final time and he folded, this time onto Ed and Yancey, together. They knit their hands in his, hoisting in tandem to keep him at least half-aloft, and he was happy enough to let ’em.

  “. . . yes ma’am,” he managed, finally, probably meaning it sarcastically, though the tone of his voice made it hard to tell. “Don’t mind me.” And slipped away.

  Almost literally slipped away, he learned later on, after resurfacing.

  “You came apart — dissolved, like sugar in water,” Yancey told him, shuddering. “Just for a minute, thank God, ’fore Songbird and Grandma stepped in and — gathered you up, I s’pose, stuck you back together somehow, or what-have-you. But I swear, long as it lasted, it was like you were half inside us . . . me, anyways.”

  “No, me too,” Morrow put in, with a shudder. “Goddamn disconcerting, I’ll tell you what.”

  Chess squeezed his eyes tight, head still spinning. “Huh, don’t say. Then I guess there was somethin’ good about it, at least.”

  Which was worth it just to see Morrow get all pink around the ears, then grimace a bit in pain, squeezing his cut wrist into a pottery bowl Yiska’d scared up. On the other side, Yancey was doing much the same, stirring the result up with a murmur of nahuatl and a practical snap and flourish Chess didn’t recall from the last couple of times he’d seen her do this same routine. Spilling blood in his name to root him to this world and trigger the power he drew from it, back at Bewelcome, back at Hoffstedt’s Hoard — not that he wanted to think on that latter one too closely, even now.

  “You’re turned quite the little hexess now,” he told her, hoping that counted as a compliment. And apparently it did, since she shrugged, but smiled doing it.

  “Never that,” she said. “Wouldn’t get all too much if you fed off me, ’less you’re doing it this way, remember? I’m just your priestess, like Ed here’s your priest . . . and he won’t be that for all too long either, probably, after we get that body of yours un-divinified again.”

  So crazed to be having this conversation, throwing ’round words like “god” in reference to himself, even after everything he’d already seen, or done: Chess Pargeter, whoreson and trigger-man, worth (on a good day) about as much as it cost to stock his gun or fill another man’s bed. But then another thing struck him, odder yet, and cooled him to the core.

  “‘Body’ . . .” he repeated. “So — if the Enemy’s still got mine,
then what the hell is this I’m ridin’ ’round in?”

  “A dream,” offered Songbird, who’d been watching from the sidelines. Yiska nodded, and agreed: “The White Shell Girl has the right of it — you are spirit only, with nothing of the flesh about you at all, not blood nor bone nor breath.”

  “That don’t help. What’m I made of, exactly?”

  “Your own thoughts. So long as you believe you are, you are.”

  “So, in other words . . . if I really do fall asleep, I’m fucked.”

  Songbird snorted. “Look around you, English Oona’s son; these are days of wei-ch’i, danger and opportunity both. How likely is it you will have time for that?”

  Though Chess was damned if he knew, he opened his lips to answer nonetheless, only to have Yancey lay a finger ’cross them, stopping his mouth with worship-charged blood. The jolt hit him like a dose such as his Ma would’ve been proud to suck down, in her day — and when Ed tipped the rest of it up to his tongue, he drank greedily, feeling himself gain solidity with every fresh swallow. He shivered all down along his spine, curled his toes inside his boots and sent a dark red-green pulse back through ’em both as payment, sealing their wounds shut with new skin fine as corn silk.

  Who says I don’t pay my debts? Chess thought, semi-drunkenly. Pay my way, at the least, when I’m asked to, or even if I ain’t. And that’s ’cause I don’t want to owe nobody nothin’, in this world or the next, if I can possibly help it.

  Grandma was starting in to jaw again, though, beckoning all parts of their odd little consort closer, so’s they could formulate a plan of action. And though Chess didn’t think it was likely she’d want his opinions on the matter, he drew up tall, blinking himself as awake as could be, under the circumstances — ready and willing to offer ’em, nonetheless.

  “I have spoken with the dead northman’s women,” Grandma began, indicating those two hexes new-fled from Ixchel’s City; “Glass-eyes Hank, the visioneer, as others called him. They tell me that neither expected to be able to do as they did in bringing you, soldier, and your fellow warrior — ” She flipped a paw here at Carver, who looked damned uncomfortable indeed to find himself ’sconced up amongst such a freakish pack of circus-turns. “ — from the battle’s path. Not without their other sister-wife, at any rate.”

  “Clo,” the lighter of the women offered. “She was always the strongest of us, ’sides from Hank himself; that’s probably how the Lady was able to do . . . what she did, with her. Make her what she is now.”

  “And that’d be?” Chess asked.

  “Bad,” Morrow supplied. “Awful enough it’ll take the whole lot of us to make a dent in that bitch’s hide, and even then . . .” He shook his head. “Well, right now, I’m damn glad they were able to get you top-side again for better reasons than the usual — ’cause ghost or no, you’re just about the biggest gun we got.”

  Not that he wanted confirmation of Morrow’s words, but flashes reached out from the big man nevertheless, whether Chess called ’em or no: a swooping, skull-faced creature with two fistfuls of razors, wigged in bells and wreathed in cold fire, tearing men seam from seam the way a hawk will mice; someone so horrifying that Ixchel was content to simply stand by as she did her will, picking her teeth. The idea that Chess, especially in his current state, could form any viable sort of opposition at all to such a creature would’ve seemed purely laughable, had it not been for the sadly hopeful look Ed was throwing his way — as though if Chess didn’t suck as much blood as it took out of he and Yancey and step on up, even if he left ’em emptied in his wake, then everybody might as well either put up their hands and go home, or just shoot each other outright for good measure.

  And how fucked are you, exactly, if that’s so? Chess thought, stolen warmth deserting him somewhat, as his stomach thicked with cold. How fucked are we all, for that matter?

  No point in asking, red boy, Grandma’s pitiless mind-voice told him — and Yancey too, he suspected, from the way her eyes fell and her breath quickened, like she’d been caught peeping. As I said, we stand at the crossroads — and these people, only, opt to fight with you, no matter the cost. Which is why they need as much hope as they can dream up for themselves.

  “There is a reason these women’s powers have increased,” Grandma said, aloud, before he could object, “and I think we all know it. In the wake of this morning’s battle, the Crack has opened yet further, tearing Balance from balance, as threads cut crosswise destroy any fabric. It must be shut again before we have any hope of confronting the Mother of Hanged Men, let alone of defeating her — or the Enemy.”

  “And why do I think you already got some sort of plan in mind?” Morrow asked. But Yancey already had her brows knit, grey eyes all the paler for intent concentration.

  “Songbird’s wound-suturing,” she said, at last. “We’re gonna . . . what? Travel along the Crack itself, pouring in hexation like mortar, so we’ve already got the war half-fought by the time we arrive?”

  Grandma inclined her “head,” rock dust puffing quietly. “It will take all our effort,” she confirmed. “My granddaughter will lead and guide, while the White Shell Girl and red boy unseam whatever infection keeps these lips from closing and lay down healing instead, as though spinning silk for a web — and though it is hardly in his nature to cure instead of kill, you will teach him, dead-speaker, even while shedding blood along with your soldier to keep him rooted here, until he can re-take what is his. Sophronia Love will do the same for her son, of course. And the others, Glass-eyes Hank’s wives and this man who risked himself to free them — they will do their best to protect us on our journey, ending off whatever horrors slip through from Beneath.” Turning, she addressed the rest once more, all at once: “Do I have your promises?”

  Young Mister Carver exchanged a glance with the first witch-girl — Berta, something whispered behind Chess’s eyes, in that way he’d finally brought himself to trust; other one was Eulie, casting her own eyes on Carver behind his back, unnoticed, and getting nothing but a squeeze on the hand from that “sister” of hers as reward. Yet he seemed to have made his mind up, all the same.

  “Ma’am,” he told Grandma, gruffly, touching hat and rifle-stock together, in an odd sort of improvised salute. “Don’t know how much it’ll help, me bein’ only humanish — but given the stakes, I’ll sure as hell do my best if I can’t do any better, an’ keep on ’til I can’t do no more.”

  “You do us great honour, soldier,” Yiska said, seeming to mean it. “A brave man is welcome always, no matter where he comes from.”

  Berta and Eulie turned Grandma’s way. “Us too,” Eulie said. “That’s right, ain’t it, sissy?”

  “It is.”

  And so it went ’round the circle, faster and easier than Chess could ever in his life have suspected it would: Songbird (with a shrug for Yiska), Missus Love on her boy’s behalf, Yancey and Ed, Yiska herself. By the time it came down to him, he felt almost guilty for hesitating — almost.

  “What is it you’re gonna be doin’, meanwhile, while all this is goin’ on?” he demanded, of his fellow not-ghost.

  To which Grandma didn’t quite shrug — her frame wouldn’t support the movement required, he suspected — but answered, just the same: “Oh, one thing only, but without it . . . no plan, no hope, no chance at all. Better simply to lie down and let them walk on us. Ixchel, her demon and the Enemy, too.”

  So tell me, red boy, will you do your part or pout over some mistreatment while the rest die, along with all this world? Give me your vow as well, to stand with the others so long as they need you, and I will count myself well repaid for the sacrifice I am about to make.

  Again, temper swept Chess up and down, pricking him all over: oddly pleasant, a tonic, raising his fever ’til he felt like he could ride bulls and throw cows. Making him snap back at her, if only inside his own head —

  Think I won’t, you rattletrap? Well, maybe you ain’t been payin’ attention: I’m Chess Pargeter, him who
laid Mesach Love’s town to waste and brought it back, likewise; killed bluebellies, robbed trains and burned homesteads groundward too, plenty times over, and that was long before I even got myself hexified. So don’t you dare think there’s any damn thing you name I can’t do, I only put my mind to it.

  “Count me in,” he told her, loud enough so’s everyone in earshot could hear. And saw her slab-face crinkle with just the slightest hint of a smile, in return.

  “Then I am answered. Yet now I must do something for which the Old Drying Woman, this rock’s protector, will be very angry with me. And rightly so.”

  “Why?” Yiska asked, a hint of fear in her flat black eyes.

  Grandma raised those four-fingered rakes she used for hands, conjuring a flash between ’em might’ve made a blind man think he could see once more. Replying, as everyone else cringed away: “Because . . . of this.”

  Elsewhere, while Clo still harried the hex-train’s remains and Geyer, Asbury and Fitz Hugh Ludlow made their escape from the Emperor’s forces, Rook pulled Ixchel back up out of the earth by her blood-fused topknot, and stood back a deferent pace or two.

  She spat mud, clearing her throat enough to snarl: What did you mean by this, little king? I gave no orders!

  Rook shrugged. “Sorry for that, ma’am; thought you might’ve not wanted to be crushed, considering the difficulty you were already expending to keep that body of yours intact. My mistake, and my apologies.” He glanced skyward. “But may I ask you to consider the sun a moment? Most specifically, its position?”

  Ixchel glared at him, but couldn’t help a quick look, after which she met his eyes with no less anger, but more uncertainty. An hour has passed? More? How have I lost this time?