A Book Of Tongues (27 page)

At all.

Come half of midnight, Morrow went looking for Hosteen and found
him outside in the scrub, smoking and staring up at Chess’s window,
like he was expecting Shakespeare’s Juliet to lean out at any second.

“You care for him, don’t you, Kees?” Morrow said.

Hosteen shrugged, like he’d never made any real attempt to deny
it. “Used to think it was because he was nice t’me, back in the War —
but I paid him for it, so . . . hell, I
don’t
know. Just do, that’s all. . . .”

“Pretty sure
I
know the reason, if you’re interested.” Then, as
Hosteen looked at him: “It’s ’cause he’s a hex.”

“And he believed you,” Allan Pinkerton said, four weeks later — in
that cramped Tampico hotel he’d engaged for Morrow’s debriefing,
with Songbird and Doctor Asbury in attendance. The faint Scots
burr still audible in Pinkerton’s voice sounded doubly incongruous
in the white-plastered, Spanish-style dining room, bright with rich
sunlight falling through slitted windows. “Just like that.”

Morrow sighed. “Hardly. But . . . yeah, he came ’round to the idea
eventually, given time and talk enough. I made him a pretty good
argument, obviously.”

“Obviously?” Asbury repeated, with that same air of constant
vague puzzlement Morrow had long forgotten attended most of his
pronouncements.

“Got y’all here, didn’t he?”

He knocked out another shot of the tequila Pinkerton had given
him, to the skittery accompaniment of one of Miss Songbird’s dry
little laughs. “So he did, Mister Morrow,” she agreed, smiling at
Morrow’s bosses, her mouth safe-shrouded behind those filigree
claws of hers. “Much to our . . . mutual satisfaction.”

Four weeks after Rook had led them into Hell, and Morrow had
clawed his way back up somehow, into the Agency’s loving arms.
And Chess —

Morrow decided not to think about Chess; not right now, at least.
So he slammed the shot and continued with his report.

“Said it yourself, Kees. How is it Chess can shoot somebody standin’
thirty feet behind him, ’fore they even have a chance to squeeze one
off? How is it two men as dog-on-cat different as Chess and the Rev
ever tripped over each other in the first place, let alone got stuck at
the dick?”

“Hexation?” Morrow nodded, quickly. Hosteen just snorted.
“Naw,” he said. “You’re thinking crazy, Ed. Rook’s more’n man-witch
enough for both of them, without tryin’ to bring Chess in on it.”

“What if I had proof?”

“Christ, what
if
? What’m
I
supposed t’ do about it, exactly?”

A fair question. With, much as Morrow might hate to admit it, only one real answer.

“Kees . . .” He stopped. Then continued, reluctantly: “. . . there’s
somethin’ I need to tell you — ”

“Aw, shit.” The older man put a hand over his eyes. “This never
goes nowhere good.”

“ — I’m a Pink.”

Hosteen stared. “Why . . . in the
hell
. . . would you tell me a thing
like that?”

“Oh,
I
don’t know. Have to be pretty damn desperate, wouldn’t
I?”

They glared at each other a spell, ’til Hosteen sighed deep, and
Morrow let out his own held breath at almost the same exact time,
in grateful sympathy.

“Look,” he began, “Rook’s got a mojo-bag held over my head,
that’s the long and the short of it. Chess and me, last night —
wouldn’t surprise me if he had a hand in it, though I’m damned if
I know why. But as it is, I have to stay the course, for fear of bein’
blasted. So if anyone’s left could do anything for Chess, Kees, it’d be
you . . . assuming you were willin’.”

“You offered him a pardon.”

Morrow shook his head. “No, sir. For Kees it’s all about loyalty
to the old cohort, and he’s known Chess a damn sight longer than
he’s known the Rev. I did tell him your plans, though, Doc — how
you were fixin’ to build a hexacious reserve. Gave him the idea that
Chess might be worth more to the Agency alive than dead, for once.”

“That’s all well and good,” Pinkerton said, and sat back to mop his
shining brow. “But as to Pargeter — just what
is
he now, anyways?”

“’Sides from not to be trifled with, or only at your own peril?”
All Morrow had to offer was another shake, for that — plus a further
swig, while Asbury and Pinkerton swapped significant glances.

Songbird rapped her gilded knuckles impatiently on the table-top. “My choice would be your genuine opinion on the matter,
Mister Morrow. If you please.”

Morrow threw a glance upwards, speculating on exactly how high
you’d have to go before the roof above became the floor of Chess’s
impromptu prison — that room where he lay asleep, ensorcelled deep
in a trance of Songbird’s own making. Maintaining the same fierce
slumber he’d endured ever since they’d both . . . resurfaced from
their scramble through the depths, with Morrow clawing his way up
mindlessly with one arm dug death-grip tight ’round the raw neck of
what he could have sworn was Chess Pargeter’s gutted corpse.

How he’d ever found Chess down there, in the first place — laid
a hand on his collar in the dark, once it’d all gone predictably to
shit — that, even now, Morrow didn’t quite know himself. Only that
during what he’d thought was three days ago and the month or
so Pinkerton assured him had actually elapsed, enough “grievous
physical insult” had occurred to make Chess exactly what Rook
and his dragonfly-cloaked Lady had planned for: a sacrifice to dead
forces, a new-expressed mage not yet aware of his own power, a son-of-a-bitching reborn “god-to-be.”

Songbird had to feel it, surely. Wasn’t the tasty pull of Chess’s
power what had led her, Asbury and Pinkerton to Mexico City,
where they’d dug Chess — and Morrow — up out of the earthquake’s
rucked hide? But then again, perhaps it was just
too
big, too . . . alien,
for her to fully realize. Which was why she still had to ask.

And that, if handled correctly — could be an advantage, for Chess.
Morrow, too.

“Fuck if
I
know what he is,” Morrow lied, therefore, right to the
former witch-queen of San Francisco’s pig-pale face, with far more
sass than was probably warranted, or safe. And went to pour himself
another, regardless of Pinkerton’s disapproval.

“Good enough, Mister Morrow,” Asbury said. “You
are
no expert
in hexology, sad to say, as we are all of us aware. But if, barring such
sidebars, you might continue with your recitative nevertheless.”

Morrow nodded. “Why not?” he asked, of no one in particular.

“Think they’d want Chess for that hex-army of theirs, if only we
could get him took into custody?”

“Think Chess’d stand still for it, if we did?” Morrow shot back,
without thinking. Hosteen’s face fell at the idea, a whole dropped
wedding-cake of dolefulness.

“Maybe not . . .”

“But . . . maybe so, too,” Morrow suggested. “’Cause much as
Chess may not mind dyin’, he still takes awful good care to keep
himself alive.”

“Yeah. Maybe . . .”

They looked at each other, then, and knew it: a compact had been
sealed.

“So here’s what you do,” Morrow told him — risking another
glance upwards only to find the window gone dark, and shuddering
to think what-all might be in progress behind it. “Go west nor’west,
fast as you can. We got an outpost, maybe a day’s ride to get to,
but they’ll bring you back a deal quicker, ’cause they got Songbird
to work it for them — hell, she can probably slingshot Pinkerton’s
private train right into the middle of Joe’s, she takes a damn mind
to.” Hosteen stared. “C’mon, Kees! Can’t make fry-cakes without you
break — ”

“ — eggs, yeah, yeah, I get it. But . . . Ed, you at least got credit with
those fuckers, you pull out your badge. They ain’t got no fit reason
under Heaven’s sky to believe
me
, on anything.”

Maybe not,
Morrow thought.
But they’re gonna
want
to.

“They will,” he said. “Long as you show them this.”

He reached inside his vest, where the Manifold clicked and
chittered, to grasp it firm, pull it out, giving it no time for nonsense.
And dropped it in Hosteen’s outstretched hand.

“I was
very
happy to receive my little device once more, by the by,”
Asbury assured him. “The readings you’d taken, their impressive
range of resonances . . . well, they were more than I’d hoped for. It
was they which formed the spectrum allowing me to confirm your
diagnosis of Mister Pargeter’s — condition — last night, once he was
. . . secured.”

“Glad to be of service, Doc,” Morrow replied.
And t’ finally get the
damn thing off my chest . . . literally,
he thought.

“Strange,
however,
that
Reverend
Rook
would
not
have
immediately gleaned your intentions in this matter,” Songbird
remarked. “Or this
goddess
of yours, either . . . powerful as you make
her seem, in your report.”

“Did seem to me how Rook was probably just a bit distracted,
right at that very moment. And the Lady? Well — she probably didn’t
much care
what
we did, either way. From what I’ve seen, we’re dirt
under her feet.”

Pinkerton: “Mmm. Well, then, by all means . . . continue.”

“Mornin’ came. Rook got us all together. Told us what was gonna
happen. Chess . . .” Morrow paused, the image still fresh in his mind.
“He just stood there, with that woman, that thing — Lady Ixchel —
holdin’ his hand. Didn’t say a damn word. Like he was — ”

“In a sort of trance?”

“Hypnosis,” Asbury said to himself, quietly. “Or perhaps as in the
Codex Magliabecchi
, when the deity-impersonator is ‘made drunken’
and ‘painted white’ in anticipation of transformation . . . though
that may only be a metaphorical intoxicatory state, to be sure.”

“All right, Doctor,” Pinkerton said. “I’d suggest we can address
that issue in fine detail some other time, assumin’ it even comes up.”

“They didn’t ask about Hosteen,” Morrow went on, “and I sure as
Christ didn’t volunteer. Then, after the Rev’d said his piece,
she
just
all of a sudden up and grabbed big Cow-Puncher Pete Van Damme
by the head and bent him back over her knee. Pulled a knife out of
her hair, cut his throat. And where his blood fell on the floor, it . . .
opened up a hole. . . .”

“A hole,” Songbird repeated. “Which . . . you went through.”

“That’s right.”

“Into Hell.”

“Yup.”

Asbury gave himself a shake. “Gods and monsters,” he said,
musingly. “You have glimpsed wonders we can only dream of, Mister
Morrow.”

“Yeah, well — you’d seen even the half of what I saw down there,
you’d be happy to keep it that way,” Morrow replied.

In the end, the voyage itself had seemed . . . impossibly easy. A
plunge, taken. Like stepping off a cliff.

That yellow sky, leering down. The rain of knives, falling. No
wonder Rook’d wanted the rest of his gang to come along, haplessly
unsuited as they were to hexacious labours — they made for perfect
cannon-fodder.

The Rev kept them moving steadily forward, with Chess on one
arm and Morrow clinging tight to the other, a protective envelope
of lightning a-snap in all directions. And the Lady Ixchel glided on
effortless behind all three — behind, beside, around. Ixchel, bent
near-double in the darkness to murmur in Chess’s ear — Ixchel,
darker by far than anything around her, no matter how deep they
went.

Wrapped in her buzzing dress of devil’s darning needles, with
her copper limbs unstrung at the joints and set drifting in Mictlan-Xibalba’s current like kelp — her flesh shiny as burnt bones, hair
a net of hooks, voice like broken bells chiming:
. . . but there is
nothing like death in war, a flowery death, so precious . . . I know
you can see it far off, my husband’s husband, as you always have.
Far off, and not so far. I know how you yearn for it!

The words thrumming
through
everything at once, every
one
,
reverberate eternally on a shimmering thread of prayer, both
answered and not. The yearning witchery of each dead and living
supplicant, each made and unmade name all crying out, together —

To die for a god

To die
as
a god

To die, in Pain, in Glory, wrapped in Hot Heart’s Blood, is

beautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautiful

Morrow heard Rook’s voice rise above the din, so heartbreakingly
human
amidst all this spectral awfulness.

“Where
is
this place you’re takin’ us, woman? I didn’t get swung
by my neck and lose my damn
soul
just to get eaten by someone else’s
demons in a hell I don’t even believe in — ”

Be silent, husband. I will not be spoken to thus, not in my own
place. There is nothing here that poses any danger.

“Says you!”

Yes. The only ones of any consequence awake down here are
you, I and he, little king. All others lie asleep, dead and dreaming.
These are their nightmares, nothing more. And besides — we are
here.

“Cow-Puncher Pete,” Pinkerton mused. “So that’s who was on
that floor. Was a five grand reward on for him, I recall — spares
us that expense, any road.” He gave Morrow a steady look. “They
let us through, you know. First time we’ve ever been welcomed to
Splitfoot’s vale without gunplay; Joe himself wouldn’t go inside his
own tavern. And the body we found looked dried ten years in the
sun.”

He drummed his fingers pensively upon the table. “I’ve seen
hexation. But . . . Hell?” He took off his bowler hat and turned it
over in his hands, as if wondering how it’d gotten there.

“There
are
ten
thousand
different
Chinese
hells,
Mister
Pinkerton,” Songbird put in. “And
our
explorers have drawn maps —
detailed ones, or so my tutors claim. Fifty of them in the Emperor’s
library alone.”