A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  “I give it up!” He roared, in desperation — unsure who he might be talking to, exactly, if not the God he’d never quite believed in, for all he’d seen small-g gods aplenty. “All of it, all this happy horseshit! I give it up, I give it back, CHRIST — ”

  Too late by far, Chess; you can’t. This is what you are. Wouldn’t make any difference anyhow, even if you could.

  “God damn you, Ash Rook! God DAMN YOU!”

  Oh, I’m pretty sure He already has.

  Those last words barely audible at all, a spray of consonants, petering off into silence.

  With Ed and Yancey looking on, Chess gave yet one more coyote howl, then pulled his own ear-bob out and threw it down where the Crack used to be so hard it skittered ’cross what ridge of knit rock was left, leaving a trail of blood.

  He tore at his own hair with both hands, utterly unheedful of any damage he might do himself, and cried out while he did it, like Rachel at Rama, “Ohhhhhhhh, that damn MAN! Lord God Almighty, Jesus Jesus fuck — what the hell’m I gonna do now, Ed, Yancey — what, for the love of Christ-shit-Jesus, without him to keep on runnin’ after? What’m I gonna do?”

  Hammering on the ground with bloody knuckles ’til Ed grappled even closer hold of him from one way, Yancey from the other, and held on ’til his yells stilled to sobs.

  So that by the time Hex City came back — slowly but spectacularly, by degrees, kept aloft with nothing but the combined willpower of a hundred oath-linked hexes — they found the battle over, the world repaired. And Chess Pargeter — former god of Red Weed and War-Lightning — collapsed in the wreckage, weeping in Ed Morrow and Yancey Colder Kloves’ arms, unashamed as a child.

  The next day, Morrow and Yancey were gone, and Chess with them. But even had they been present to lend a hand, Frank Geyer thought New Aztectlan would still have required far more mending than its citizenry were currently feeling up to. The hex-folk in general, having gutted themselves to work their great translocation, had barely enough strength to keep breathing — not to mention that with the Crack sewn closed, they simply weren’t like to regain their personal power anywhere near as quick as they’d become used to being able to.

  Eventually, seeing how little there was left by way of real food and supplies, Jonas Carver — last survivor of the Thirteenth still present — volunteered the now-empty Camp Pink, pointing out that the quartermasters’ tents were still well-stocked with all manner of usefulness: bandages, bottles of ether and surgical alcohol, provisions and water barrels, cots and blankets for the wounded, and so on. He, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and Sal Followell organized the City’s small-folk, leading them out to scavenge the campsite.

  Meantime, Comandante Delgado of the Mexican Imperial Army cloistered himself with his countrymen, including those poor souls who’d been Ixchel’s blood-cultists; Sophy Love, surprisingly, had joined in his crusade, ministering to men, women and children alike, treating wounds and counselling them on their bewildered loss. Geyer hadn’t known she spoke Spanish, but when he realized she’d borne Gabe with her all throughout, much became clear. Nothing was yet decided, far as he could tell, but it spoke well for Delgado’s common sense that even though he couldn’t possibly have grasped everything which had happened, he saw no fault in ceasing to fight when no enemy remained worth continuing on with. If today’s bloodshed did provide grounds for a true declaration of War some time in the future, therefore, it would not be at Delgado’s exhortation.

  “The Carlotta colonist soldiers demand repatriation,” Sophy told Geyer, during a quiet break near noon. They sat at an outdoor trestle table brought back from Camp Pink, Gabe hungrily feeding at Sophy’s breast. “Back to Texas, with never a care for what agreements they break; just like all men, my Mesach excepted. Those benighted worshippers of Her, though, have so little left to guide them in this world, I misdoubt they have any clear idea where to go.” She paused. “Then again, Bewelcome is still on a new rail line, and has room for any who wish to stay.”

  “You do know everyone there thinks you’re dead, ma’am.”

  “Yes, and telling them otherwise will be awkward. But it’ll have to be done.” She sighed, looked down at Gabe — who had fallen asleep, happily sated — and rebuttoned her dress, briskly. “Perhaps it’s for the best we won’t be staying.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Sophy gave an impatient snort. “Our Oath, Mister Geyer. My son’s bound to Miss Songbird for life, or as good as, so therefore I am too, through him. And with Miss Songbird, in turn, bound to that heathen shamaness, Yiska . . .” Geyer noted with interest that she’d said “heathen” far more as absent habit than with any real judgement. “. . . well, they do seem to prefer not to settle long in any one place, whatever its virtues.”

  Geyer hesitated, staring at the table-top. “Friend of mine told me one of his favourite jokes, once — he’d been a chaplain in the Union Army, back in the War,” he said at last. “He said to me, ‘Frank, do you know the one sure way to make God laugh?’” He paused until Sophy finally brought her gaze back to him, then finished: “‘Tell Him your plans.’”

  Sophy blinked, gave an odd, abrupt sound that seemed half sob, half laugh, and wiped her eyes.

  “For who knoweth the hour and the day, indeed,” she agreed.

  As they sat there in companionable silence, meanwhile, Doctor Asbury bustled up, plunking himself down without waiting to be invited. In one hand, he held one of his Manifolds, a sheaf of scribble-covered paper in the other, which latter he brandished at Geyer as if it were a map to buried treasure, blue eyes alight with near-fanatical excitement.

  “These measurements of the ambient ch’i confirm it! They match my calculations — not exactly, but so close as to preclude coincidence. Do you realize what this proves, Mister Geyer? That the relationship between magical energies is exactly that exhibited by Newtonian mathematics vis-à-vis gravity and mass! And this, in turn, only strengthens my primary hypothesis: that what we term hexation, ‘magic,’ must therefore operate not in antithesis to the laws of the physical universe, but in sympathy with them, even when it initially appears to break those same laws, completely!”

  But Geyer had already stopped paying attention by the time he saw Thiel coming up behind Asbury, and stood to greet him. “George,” he said. “See you managed to make Doctor Asbury’s acquaintance without my help, after all.”

  Thiel waved a dismissive hand. “Best laid plans, Frank, just like you said to Missus Love; don’t give it a thought.” He sat down, giving Sophy a respectful nod, and gestured Geyer back to his seat. “I was lucky enough to encounter the Doctor while he took surveys of the City’s, what would you say, magical geography? If his analyses prove correct — and so much of his work has, thus far — well, then . . . they open up some very interesting possibilities indeed, to say the least. For our nation, and the world.”

  “Pinkerton thought the same, you’ll remember.”

  Thiel’s face clouded. “Indeed. But that’s why you’ll need to be a part of it, Frank, from the very beginning — to act as my conscience, a true critic, a friend, rather than an underling. What the boss never had, in other words.”

  The rest of it lay between them, unspoken: A check on me, if needed. To make sure things never go so far again.

  Glancing up once more, Thiel recognized yet another approaching figure and stood, in reflex courtesy; Geyer mirrored him automatically, then saw why. It was Songbird, veiled in new-conjured red silk under an equally new-made parasol. Asbury, still intent on jotting the Manifold’s numbers down in his notes, did not notice until Thiel cleared his throat.

  “Lady Yu,” he announced, loudly.

  Asbury jerked, startled, and jumped to his feet. “Miss Songbird! Most humble apologies — I didn’t, er, I was, well — ”

  “Old fool,” Songbird called him, with something between annoyance and an odd sort of affection. “You wished me to make inquiries. Would you know their results, or not?”

  “. . . please.”

&n
bsp; “I have probed those hexes willing to allow it, studying the binding structure of their Oath, and found that the banishment of their Lady and the death of their High Priest has rendered it much simplified. Each hex of this City is now bound to every other, as safe from their hunger as they are from their own, and with the united power of the whole City to draw on.” She held up an elegant white hand, correctly reading the alarm in Geyer’s eyes, and added: “Subject, that is, to that whole’s consent. Let any hex draw too much of the City’s pooled might for his own ends, and any who objects may draw it back, undoing his efforts. Let Oathbound hexes quarrel, and their own Oath will prevent any true hexacious harm to one another — a mutual neutralization, like the Diné’s Hataalii binding. Only those works on which all, or most, of the City-folk agree may be fed by them all at once, and even those will be greatly weakened if but a small portion actively contests them.”

  Asbury nodded, slowly. “United by common consent, yet self-limited by that consent’s necessity — an elegant solution. And clear reason enough never to give the City-folk a common foe again.”

  “Threaten such an apparently perfect working demonstration model of true democracy,” Thiel replied, “right when it’s still in the process of being born? Why Professor, really; neither I nor Frank would dream of doing any such thing.”

  Asbury squinted at Thiel, as if trying to guess whether he was joking — but since the man had one of the best poker faces Geyer had ever encountered, he got little out of his efforts, and seemed to cotton on to that fact as quickly as one might assume a genius would.

  So he turned back to Songbird instead, bowing stiffly. “I am . . .

  most grateful for your efforts, Miss Yu,” he began. “And, on a more personal note — I must, once again, most humbly apologize the travails visited upon you at my hand, when I attempted to cleanse you of your power.” Asbury paused to clear his throat, then went on. “It was wrong of me to presume to choose for you, however well-meaning I might have thought my own intentions, at the time. Having since reconsidered the results of those actions, I find that since I can offer no true excuse or justification for them I can only beg your forgiveness, most humbly — in full and certain knowledge, frankly, of how little I deserve to gain it.”

  Songbird blinked, seemingly taken aback. It occurred to Geyer that perhaps no one had ever attempted to apologize to her before, for any transgression. After a beat, however, she inclined her white-piled head, stiffly.

  “I cannot say I suffered overmuch from your idiocy, when all is said and done,” she admitted, at last. “Though I may, perhaps, have complained somewhat more than was properly due, at the time. . . .”

  The laugh which burst out at this startled them all. Geyer spun to see Yiska, scuttling up from behind astride the great black “arachnorse” they’d turned over to her during the battle, already moving as easily with the eldritch mount as if she’d been born riding it.

  “‘Somewhat more’?” she repeated, guffawing, as she dismounted.

  Songbird flushed, blotchily, and snapped: “Why were you so long on patrol? You risk yourself stupidly; think if those you lead were to lose you! If . . . what would they do, without you . . . ?”

  But here she broke off again, flustered, while Yiska grinned down at her. “My White Shell Girl,” the shamaness said, and kissed her, firmly. Songbird flailed at her a moment before relaxing into it, as Asbury blushed, and looked away; Sophy Love sighed and did likewise, looking more exasperated than repelled.

  When they finally came up for air, Geyer cleared his throat and stepped forward, prompting Yiska to raise her eyebrows. “And what have you to say, Mister Former Agent Frank Geyer?” She asked.

  “Well,” said Geyer, “you may remember I spoke of my employer to you, during the battle — George Thiel? Thought it might be well you got to know each other, sooner rather than later.”

  He moved out of the way, letting Yiska and Thiel size each other up, and watched. After a moment, Thiel offered his hand. Yiska gave it a sceptical look, and folded her arms. “Bilagaana are not known for keeping their word,” she said.

  “No,” Thiel agreed, “they aren’t.” His hand stayed extended, gaze steady. “But I am.”

  Yiska considered him for a long moment. Then, slowly, she reached out and grasped his forearm, ancient shorthand for: I carry no concealed weapons, parleying in good faith. You? Uninsulted, Thiel simply shifted his hand to grip hers the same way in return.

  At last, Geyer allowed himself to smile.

  And the next morning, a new sun dawned.

  EPILOGUE

  December, 1867 to January, 1868

  In and around New Mexico, and other environs

  Festivals: Suspended

  An agglomeration of yet more representative newspaper headlines filed by former San Francisco Californian correspondent Fitz Hugh Ludlow for his series The Perambulatory 38th: Hexicas and Its Journeys Toward Statehood, in the Days After Allan Pinkerton’s Defeat (to be followed, once complete, by The Sleepless Eye Re-Woken, or Pinkerton’s Legacy: With George Thiel and his Agents from Sea to Sea, in Establishment of a Federally Funded Division of Experimental Arcanistry and Hex-Handling).

  December 7, 1867:

  STILL IN THE WIND

  Of New Aztectlan, once “Hex City”

  (Now the Independent Republic of Hexicas, So-Called)

  There is Much Rumour, but No Sign —

  In Bewelcome Township,

  Mayor Langobard says:

  “Thank the Lord, We Do Not Look To Hear From Them.”

  December 14, 1867:

  FRENZY AT THE WHITE HOUSE!

  Marshals Baffled as President Johnson

  Receives Contact, in Person,

  From a Witchy Coterie of Hex City’s

  all-Female Elected Emissaries:

  Songbird Yu, Business-woman, late of San Francisco;

  “The Night Has Passed,” Navaho Woman Chief (Federally Pardoned for Former Offences);

  and Mrs. Sophronia Love (Widow, un-Hexacious),

  Representing her Son, Gabriel.

  December 20, 1867:

  “A SPECIAL CASE”:

  New Territorial Declaration and Constitution

  Drafted for Hexicas

  To Be Entered Into by Mutual Agreement —

  Annexation Impossible, President Johnson Admits,

  “Since the Territory in Question cannot

  be Tracked, or Even Entered,

  Without Express Permission from Its Inhabitants.”

  Spokeswoman Mrs. Love Maintains “All Hexicans

  Consider Themselves U.S. Citizens,”

  Even Though some have Sought Refuge from

  American Laws or Mores.

  “We Embrace All, Refuse None, Hex or No.”

  December 25, 1867:

  FIRST HEXICAN NOEL!

  Christmas Festivities to be Held Throughout the City-State,

  Though Attendance of Religious Component is Hardly Mandatory.

  Yr. Humble Correspondent, for One, Will be There.

  And from various January, 1868, editions of Bewelcome Township, New Mexico’s Daily Letter —

  HEXICAS GLIMPSED OVER OWN RUINS

  Tourists Making Pilgrimage to the Crater

  Where this Devil-City Once Sat

  Report “Great Light & Show, Fiery Clouds & Odd Noises” —

  Say Hexes Alighted to Accept a Party of Varying Indians, Mennonites, Freed Slaves & Coolies

  Before Transporting them Inside & Making Off.

  Reverend Oren Catlin Petitions Thiel Agency,

  on Behalf of Frightened Congregation:

  “Can Nothing be Done About Such Intrusions?”

  GEORGE THIEL’S ANSWER TO REVEREND CATLIN, VIA POST:

  Pres. Johnson’s Instructions on Matter Clear Indeed —

  “Hexicas, as Sovereign Area, is To Be Left Alone.”

  SUSPECT HEXATION?

  Whether in Yourself or Others,

  This Former Scourg
e may now be Converted

  to a Badge of Honour

  Earned in Governmental Service:

  Therefore, if Seeking Registration or Forced Expression

  through Asbury’s Proven Process,

  Citizens are urged to Contact their local

  Thiel Agency Field Office at Once.

  OUR NEW NEIGHBOURS

  In Wake of Hexicas’ Relocation and the

  Rainbow Lady’s Toppling,

  Those Mexican Blood-cultists not Repatriated Across Border

  Have Opted to Stay, Buy Farms, Work Land.

  Claim Mrs. Love Told Them: “My Husband’s Town is

  Home to any Who Wish Solace.”

  Rev. Catlin: “Can They Be Called True Christians?”

  A Vote Taken at Nazarene Hall to Resolve this Issue

  Would Seem to Prove Yes:

  Yeas win over Nays, 47 to 13.

  WEEDING COTILLION

  Science Confirms It: Red Weed Keeps Our Lands Arable!

  All Those Wishing to Contribute to our Moat’s Feed and Care

  Are Therefore Directed to Assemble and Donate.

  Cotillion Begins at Sun-down, with Prayers

  (Rev. Catlin, Presiding);

  Medicos in Attendance to Treat Wounds;

  Food, Drink and Dancing to Follow.

  FINE ARACHNORSES, NEW-BROKE

  An Assortment of these Inestimable Creatures, Locally Bred,

  Are Now Available for Purchase at Luffy’s Stables:

  Since All Survived the Season, they are Tough & Active —

  Good Spinners, Faster Than Horses, Very Cheap.

  In Interest of Public Safety, Mister Luffy Cautions that

  only Seasoned Riders Need Apply,

  and “Remember to Feed them Much Sugar, Often, or Face Mutiny.”

  (Those Unhappy with their Mounts should Note that the

  U.S. Army is now Paying Top Dollar

  for Arachnorses and Riders with Night Travel & Climbing Experience, to be part of new Spider Cavalry Units.)