A Book Of Tongues (13 page)

Fuck them all
, he caught himself thinking, a grim smile curling
his lips.

“No unnecessary casualties!” he roared down at Chess, who
already had the land office manager in his sights; Chess brought his
horse up short, reholstering, so he had both hands free to aid with
his dismount. The manager just stood there trembling, too scared
to even squirm.

“What-all do you men
want
?” he finally got out, through
chattering teeth.

Chess returned Rook’s grin. “Fair question — ain’t it, Rev? What
do
we want, exactly?”

“Money’ll do, for now,” Rook replied. “That suit you?” he asked
the manager. Adding, as if just struck by the thought: “Might end
up bein’ blamed for all this, though, I suppose. For not puttin’ up an
adequate defence of yours bosses’ funds.”

The manager coughed — a sound one-quarter laugh, three-quarters retch. “Ask me how much I care, long’s they don’t turn up
here lookin’ like
you
.”

Rook smiled, yet again. Couldn’t help it, really. It was all just so
funny
. He could see his own teeth reflected in the man’s eyes as he
did it, horrid little flickering red stars.

“Good man,” he said.

And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand
toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of
Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.

And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven. And
there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three
days:

As it turned out, the book of
Exodus
proved wonderfully fruitful
quotation-fodder for far more than just Solomonville’s aftermath.
Might’ve made it to an even ten, eventually, had Rook not decided
that three plagues in a row were probably good enough.

News of their exploits ran ahead of them as they rode on into the
dark, a dry and bitter wind. By the time they reached Total Wreck,
a waiter-gal sidled by to show off their very first official “wanted”
post-bill, slapping it down along with their drinks. Chess was — to
put it mildly — unsatisfied with the crudely inept artistic renderings
attached thereto, especially the one apparently meant to look like
him.

Rook let out a raspy bark of laughter. “You’re peacock-vain, is all,
Chess Pargeter! Don’t cherish the idea of anybody thinkin’ you’re a
skinny little snip with wall-eyes and a beard like the Wanderin’ Jew,
the way this seems to prove.”

Chess studied the thing one more time, then spat on it and
crumpled it up.

“I ain’t
so
vain,” he maintained. “But I damn well know I look a
sight better’n
that
.”

Rook nodded. “And every soul in here knows it, including me.”
Voice dropping further: “Care for a demonstration?”

That night, Rook turned Chess’s many lessons in mutual pleasure
back on him, and drifted off with the ragged sound of Chess’s breath
coming and going straight into his open mouth, head like an echoing
sea-cave. But when he opened his eyes once more, he found that the
bed had somehow dropped away into darkness, and that the body in
his arms was even smaller, far softer — a girl’s. Lady Rainbow, dead
far longer than Rook’s former faith had existed, with her black hair
spread out beneath them like a pair of wings carved from funeral jet.

This close up, Rook could see how each of her delicate ears was
flared in fans of beaten gold, the rope of thorns heavy between her
little breasts. Her gaze seemed both fixed and dead, sheened to a
terrible lustre and unnaturally long-lashed at its lower orbits — ’til
those lashes fluttered, and he realized she had painted false eyes
upon the lids of her real ones, for what reason he couldn’t possibly
stand to guess at.

If Rook really was twice Chess’s size, then he must be four
times hers, yet she held him child-helpless with just a feather-light
touch on either wrist. And beneath him, the jungle vipers which
made up her skirt crept apart, rustling, to disclose the sticky lips
of her hairless sex, then twined fast once more around them both,
pulling them together: cock into cunt, feel of it already slightly
unfamiliar — a flesh trap, snapping shut.

Desire laid lit powder up Rook’s spine, a spasm of pure betrayal.
But when he tried to pull away, she simply laughed, and reached
up to stroke the scar around his neck, twisting its painful residual
energy ’round her fingers somehow, like haltering an invisible lariat.

This is mine, little king,
she murmured,
along with the rest
— can you really have forgotten that, so soon? To give and to
take . . . your death, your luck, your very life.

I don’t owe you a damn thing, you devil!
Rook roared, soundlessly.
With a shrug, she drew what Rook all at once knew was a stingray
spine from her hair, licked quickly along its crabbed grey length
(splitting her tongue crossways, to show meat within), and then —
without even a wince — ran it through her bottom lip, piercing
herself so deeply her chin slicked red, and the spine rang sharp
against her teeth. She dragged him in so hard his neck cried out and
smeared their lips together, laughing as he bit at her instinctively,
the dew of her dripping straight onto his taste-buds, with all the
kick of wine steeped in garbage.

There,
she told him.
You have tasted me, in honour of our
marriage-pledge. Now — return the favour.

He shook his head. Then roared again as she slid the spine
through his earlobe, freeing another hot spurt.

I have told you already,
she said, as he clapped his palm to
the wound,
when I pulled you from the tree: you are Becoming,
magician. You are the seed, the flower from the skull. So you will
bend to me eventually, or go back down into darkness — under
black waters, deep and deeper. Never to return.

Rook snarled back at her:
You talk like I got no choice. Like I’m not
still a child of God, free-willed from my mother’s womb, same as I was
born from Original Sin into tribulation.

True,
the Rainbow Lady agreed,
I do not know much of this
Fatherly One-God of yours, except as He may twin with my
brother Feathered Serpent, the God-Who-Dies. Yet you do not
have a choice — nor do you want one, in truth. You enjoy what
you are Becoming far too much, for that.

A lie, he could only hope. Because yes, he could feel it curl inside
him now, waiting to explode outward with wild new growth, to
spray its poison pollen over everything he touched.

Then the world tipped up, and Rook realized they were flipping
over. Lithe muscles gripped him, inside and out, the juice of their
exertions drenching them both further in sweet foulness. The skirt-snakes rose up hissing in every direction from their sudden shift
in momentum, tongues like little flickering flames, and the Lady’s
dragonfly cloak rippled outwards, wrapping them as tightly as his
sword fit her sheath.

Enraged, Rook fought her harder than he would have most men,
but got nothing but laughter once more, for all his pains.

Enough talk,
she said, at last.
Bow your head to the yoke, little
husband. The king must give blood, always — give blood to get
blood. Or the land dies.

Rook scoffed.
This ain’t
your
land, woman — mine either, come to
think. This is the desert. It’s been dead a long damn time.

But it could be . . . something else.

And the red vine exploded, everywhere. Blooming and burning,
flowers opening like firecrackers with a sound of fifty thousand
dead hands clapping, a tumult-choir of stone bells and thighbone-carven flutes. The Rainbow Lady closed her true eyes once more at
the sound of it.

Do what I tell you, little king,
she warned him.
Or I will take it
back — all of it. And not from you only, either. . . .

Chess
, he thought, helpless.
She means Chess.

You . . . leave him the hell . . . alone,
he managed, as the rest of it
began to fade — knowing full well how useless it was to threaten her
with anything.

She licked at his wounded ear, utterly predatory, weirdly loving.
Whispering:
And what will you do, to make me?

. . . whatever I have to
, Rook thought, drowning in his own blood.

Instants (or years) later Rook woke, sun in his eyes and head
buzzing, to find Chess watching him — already dressed, his eyes
uncustomarily impossible to read.

“You’re bleedin’,” Chess said.

Startled, Rook slapped at his ear, and saw his palm come away
thinly red-smeared, though the lobe itself seemed still intact.

“So I am,” he agreed, at last.

“Must’ve been some dream you were havin’.”

“I . . . don’t rightly recall.”

“Uh huh. So who is she, exactly?” Adding, as Rook looked at him:
“Yeah,
I
heard you, yellin’ her damn name in your sleep!”

Rook shook his head, as though to clear it, then looked over at
Chess again, and this time found him fairly bristling mad. Like he
wanted to get into it right then and there, only held back by not
knowing where to find this phantom woman whose face he so
yearned to scratch.

“Are you
jealous
?” Rook asked.

Chess’s eyes flared. “Why? You think I
can’t
be?”

“Well, uh . . . no, ’course. Just seemed . . . somewhat unlikely.”

“Think I don’t care, right? Or shouldn’t, maybe. ’Cause whores’
boys grow up whores themselves, no matter what . . .” Here he broke
off. In a savagely choked voice: “Well, fuck
you
, Reverend. Even a
whore — ”

Rook wasn’t about to argue the point. Especially not since he felt
the definite flicker of something rising up in him to meet Chess’s
rage — similarly hot, if far blacker. Half of him could taste Chess’s
true pain buried beneath the bluster, more fully than Chess himself
was equipped to, and ached to salve it even while the other half
savoured it, drank deep. Licked its lips, and wanted more.

Ah, but the blood of men is sweet, little king.

“Chess . . .” Rook began again, “. . . who is it you think I’ve had
instance to get close with, in all this time, ’sides from you?” Chess
didn’t reply. “I was
dreamin’
, sweetheart.”

“Don’t you ‘sweetheart’ me, Ash Rook.”

“What’s all this about? C’mon, now. You can’t possibly think
yourself cheated on, not ’cause I had a damn nightmare — that
woman’s not anybody I
want
to spend time with. And I don’t think
you’re a whore.”

“Then
don’t treat me like you do
.”

A whole new note quivering at the very lowermost range of
Chess’s voice now, plaintive with injured pride and barely masked
need. It hit Rook in a dark stream pumped straight through the
heart, and he rode its current without effort, fascinated by the ill
strength of his own arousal.

Rook laid one huge hand on the younger man’s jaw-hinge, and
turned his face ’til their eyes locked fast. “Look at me,” he ordered.
“C’mere — sit a while. Be with me.”

Chess shook his head. “I got things to see to — ”

“What’d I
say
, Private?
Come here
.”

Rook
wove
the
geas
instinctively,
fingers
flexed
like
a
mountebank’s, shuffling Fate’s card-rack. The gesture kicked up a
fresh ripple of energy that drew Chess close enough so the Reverend
could collar him by the shirt-neck and kiss him hard, suck down
breath and soul-juice together, in a dizzying, drunken exchange
which left Chess looking drained.

“God
damn
— ” was just about all Chess could say, once he had
most of his breath back. “You work a hex on me, right then?” he
demanded.

“Was that what it felt like?”

“What it
felt
, was . . .” Chess stopped a moment. “. . . like I didn’t
like it, was how. You hear? Do any damn thing similar to me again,
and I’ll — ”

Rook laughed out loud, needlessly cruel. Could’ve said,
You’ll do
what
, little man?
— just to add insult to injury — but in all fairness, he
didn’t see the point.

So he crushed Chess’s mouth back to his, instead, before Chess
could even think to protest, flipped him prone and squirming with
one hand shoved quick down the front of his fly, and worked him
’til Chess’s eyes rolled back. Lowered him onto the bed and rumpled
him all over, not letting go ’til he was good and done with him.

There,
Rook thought.
That’s an end on it, for now.

In Calvary Cross, to cover their escape, Rook turned to
Exodus
once
more, and sowed a rain of fire. It worked the trick, all right — then
kept on falling for three more full days and nights, pinning them
down into a humid, smoky and woefully over-extended billet with
the staff and patrons of Ollemeyer’s Saloon. Knowing that fear of
Chess’s guns and his own witchery were the only things keeping the
company safe from night-slit throats, Rook put the two of them on
rotating watch — six hours up, six hours asleep, with one ready at all
times to spill blood, should any of their terrified co-residents make
a move.

As early as the first changeover, Chess growled under his breath,
as Rook got dressed: “Ten minutes, Ash. I could clear this place for
good in ten.
You
could do it even faster, I bet.”

Rook pulled on his boots. “Might, at that.”

“Then why
don’t
you?”

“’Cause I’ve no clear idea when that — ” Rook nodded through a window at the dull red streaks lashing down outside “ — will be
lettin’ up, and no great wish to share the roof with a score of corpses
on the rot. Or to send one of our own out to die, trying to toss them
out. ’Sides, you know well enough my work ain’t the equal of yours
for precision . . . not yet.”

Chess snorted at that, and let him go with only a kiss, laying
down to get what sleep he could. But as the hours wore on into days,
Rook could see that unwillingly banked fire burning ever hotter
in Chess’s eyes, an inner mirror of the fire-rain falling relentlessly
outside.