A Book Of Tongues (6 page)

Chess snarled. “Yeah? Well, koo nee day, po-foo! You bring your
ass down
here
and say that, ’fore I come on up and — ”

Aw, crap,
Morrow thought, bracing himself. But at that very same
instant, Songbird cried out in a very different way and slid sideways
to avoid the Rev as he crashed through the banister, wood-splinters
bursting to rain every which way, dropping to land heavy almost at
Chess’s feet.

Rook shook himself, groggy; hadn’t quite recovered from
whatever Songbird’d been doing to him, up top. Then reached
’round Chess’s waist with one outsized hand, fisting it hard enough
to keep them locked together, contact sparking between them in a
way that made Chess stagger, guns drooping, like he wasn’t quite
sure what he was here for anymore. Rook rummaged in his coat with
the other, tucking the “smoking mirror” he still clutched away, while
Morrow used the distraction to empty his remaining shells: one in
the nearest lamp, spraying lit oil, and the other into some gigantic
Tong-boy who immediately came jumping back up with an axe even
so, seemingly oblivious to the impact and looking to split a still-dazed Chess in two.

The shot’s report seemed to snap Chess awake again, prompting
him to gut-shoot his potential murderer, then catch Morrow’s eye
on the go-’round as they both went to reload. Morrow found Chess’s
glance uncharacteristically full of surprise and respect, admixed.

“Nice shot,” Chess said, before going back to his usual business, as
Rook finally got his Bible flipped open. Above, meanwhile, Songbird
screamed out some new phrase, prompting Morrow to look up just
in time to see — her
whole bottom jaw
unhinge, snake-wide, and a
stream of live bats pour out of it like fluttery black vomit, filling the
air around all three of them with shrieks and teeth. Chess pivoted
with one of ’em already clinging fast to the side of his head, and
emptied both guns in a matter of seconds. The results, though
spectacular — delicate wings shred-torn, furry bodies popped apart
like clay pigeons full of blood — were so sadly inefficient overall, he
was soon reduced to trying to pistol-whip the damn things to death.

“Jesus fuck-damn
fuck
!” Chess yelled, in disgusted rage. “Fuck
all
y’all, you filthy fuckin’ things! Rook, if you’re gonna
do
somethin’,
best time’d be ’bout
right the fuck NOW —
”

Rook nodded.
“Then the LORD said to Joshua, See, I have
delivered Jericho into your hands. . . . When you hear them
sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a
loud shout. . . .”

“Chapter Six, two to twenty-seven,” Morrow told himself, as the
house began to shake and the Rev preached on. The text spiralled
out of Rook’s mouth flat and quick, a smoky snake-tongue of
close-packed silver typeface, to dart inside the walls through any
available route: old cracks, cracks newly opening in skeleton fans,
every mislaid plank and empty nail-bed.

“. . . and when . . . the wall collapsed . . . they took the
city. They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with
the sword every living thing in it — men and women, young and
old. . . .”

The cracks in Selina Ah Toy’s foundations were wide enough now
to both let in daylight and let out the bats, who almost immediately
tried to get back in, blinded by the dull glare of ’Frisco’s watery
exterior.
“And at that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath,”
the Rev continued declaiming, implacably.
“Cursed before the
LORD is the man who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho:
At the cost of his firstborn son will he lay its foundations; at
the cost of his youngest will he set up its gates.”

Quite some judgement,
Morrow thought. But Songbird merely
spat, unimpressed, maybe hoping it’d hit Chess on the way down.
Hissing at Rook, in turn: “This cannot be forgotten,
gweilo ch’in ta
.
Do you hear me?”

The Rev nodded, equally sanguine. “Goodbye, Songbird,” was all
he said, in return.

One final spasm, a crunching twist that ripped skin and muscle
from the rack of the world, saw all three somehow thrown bodily
straight from Songbird’s bagnio to the muddy river-bank on ’Frisco’s
outskirts where they’d left the rest of their gang: a dry gold-panning
operation with at least one shack left intact, just right for purposes
of shelter and disguise combined.

The sudden rending — and mending — of their arcane passage
was enough to make old Kees Hosteen spill the coffee he was boiling
up, yelling out, as he did, “Christ on a coffin-nailed cross, boys! The
Rev’s come back!”

Above, the open sky growled. Chess hugged the Rev to him, wet
to both knees and virtually holding him up — most of him, anyhow.
Frilly little catamite’s a sight stronger than he looks,
Morrow found
himself thinking — then kicked himself in the mental ass, hard, for
being so surprised.

“You are a
damn
fool,” Chess told Rook. “I
told
you them Chinee
witches ain’t worth the trouble of truckin’ with, no matter the odds.
But did you listen?”

Rook heaved a long sigh, bracing both hands on the small of his
back and cracking his own spine ’til he groaned like he’d been beat
all over. Finally managing to allow: “I did not.”

“Nope. And considerin’ we barely got out of there alive, I hope it
was Goddamn well worth it.”

“Well, since you ask . . . it was. Which means, I suppose, that
I probably need to thank you for all your help on this particular
campaign, in whatever way you might find most congenial. Always
assuming that sounds like adequate payment in kind, to you.”

A long, cool glance exchanged between ’em followed, with heat
banked none too secretly underneath.

“We’ll see,” Chess said, at last. And turned away.

Half a night and a day of hard riding later, they holed up in a shanty
barroom-whorehouse combo called the Two Sisters Saloon, where
Chess insisted on laying out for a bottle all of Morrow’s own, and
stuck around ’til he’d drunk at least half of it. It was probably the
longest he’d been in close quarters with Chess since joining up
without the Rev there to mediate between them, and Morrow was
vaguely shocked to realize he wasn’t actually struggling to stay on
his guard anymore. Mister (ex-)Private Pargeter could be fairly good
company, when he wasn’t determined to pick fights that ended in
murder.

“Two Sisters,” he said, thickly. “That who started this place up?”

Chess laughed, a genially smashed cat-sneeze cackle. “Hardly. It’s
the song, you know, with the . . . river, and the mill, and whatnot . . .
you know that song?” Morrow shook his head. “Well, then maybe it
was
just my Ma, after all — some Limey jig she used to sing, whenever
she got low. Goes like . . .

“
There lived an old lord by the Northern Sea,

Bow we down —

There lived an old lord by the Northern Sea,

Bow and balance to me;

There lived an old lord by the Northern Sea

And he had daughters, one two three . . .

I’ll be true to my love,

If my love will be true to me.
”

Morrow squinted, feeling the room lurch around him. “So he had
three
daughters.”

“Yeah, and one of ’em steals the other’s finance, so the other one
throws her in the river to drown. Then she floats downstream and
snags in the mill, and the miller drags her out — ”

“So she’s rescued.”

Another laugh. “’Til he cuts the rings off her fingers, and throws
her right back in.”

“An’ the third?”

“She don’t even come into it, Morrow; three’s a better rhyme
than two, is all.” Chess shot him a quick glance, and even mellow as
he was, Morrow felt a quick stab of superstitious dread, unable to
deny that even in the bar’s smoky semi-shadow, the pistoleer’s eyes
really did throw back light like a cat’s. “You’re an odd sorta bastard
when you’re drunk, ain’t ya?”

Morrow swallowed. “Yeah. When I ain’t drunk, too — or so I’ve
been told.”

And then, because the Two Sisters was so warm and dark, maybe,
packed full to the gills with outlaws and really almost too noisy to
talk at all, Morrow found himself asking, without thinking twice,
“What the hell
was
that place, anyhow? Back at Songbird’s?”

But
to
this,
Chess
didn’t
answer
immediately.
Instead,
he
continued to study on his own empty glass a while, once more deep
entranced by what he saw there: that cool, sticky green world where
nothing mattered, ’cause everything was already well-drained hollow.

“Down in the hole?” he said, at length. “They call it the hospital —
not that it’s for gettin’ better, you understand. ’Cause that’s just
where they put the whores who really
are
on their last inch of trim.”

“’Bout how long you think they all got, then?”

“Oh, not too long. Undertakers’ll be by tomorrow. If they ain’t
dead by then, they better try harder.”

“So — that woman you were talkin’ with . . .” Another gulp, as the
room continued on its merry, wobbly way. “. . . who was
she
?”

And here Chess’s eyes flicked over yet again, all the more
disturbing for their unpredictable
lack
of anger.

“Well, hell, Morrow,” he said, lightly, “I’d’ve thought you’d’ve
already guessed.
That
there was the famous English Oona . . .
Pargeter.”

That night, Morrow lay awake without wanting to, trying not to
listen to Chess and the Rev fuck. Which was damn hard, since they
were so damn
loud
at it — Chess mostly, Morrow reckoned, though
the Rev sure did his share. The racket dripped down through the
ceiling, incautious and unashamed as all get out; creak and thump
of bedsprings and other accoutrements, plus Chess himself riding
Rook like he was some sort of trick horse with a whoop and a holler,
singing out his usual refrain at the top of his lungs: “Oh yeah,
hit that, God
damn
!
Hit
that thing, uh, Good God Jesus! Christ
Almighty, go on ahead and
hit
it!”

While Morrow didn’t really want to know
what
-all was getting hit,
necessarily, the sheer crazy spectacle of it still amazed him somewhat.
God knew, he’d never heard a man and a woman get quite so rowdy
with each other, not unless incipient physical damage was involved.

“There’s things you need not to ask, concernin’ Chess and the
Reverend.” Kees Hosteen had taken Morrow aside and told him,
back when Morrow first joined up.

To which Morrow had blurted back, “Those two screwin’ each
other, or what?”

Hosteen gave him a long look. “Not
each other
, as such,” he said,
finally. “But Chess takes it from the Rev whenever the Rev cares
to give it, and if you feel you gotta make hay on that bein’ against
nature, or some such — ”

“Chess’ll shoot me for it.”

“Right where you stand, boy. I’ve seen it done, and more’n just
the once.”

“Reverend feel the same way?”

“Who knows what the Reverend feels? Them hexacious ones ain’t
for us to understand. But Chess don’t seem to care either way — so
watch yourself, or watch the damn wall.”

Pinkerton Agency records didn’t say much about Rook, or his
proclivities, back before the hanging.
Had he always liked men?
Morrow wondered. Maybe the Rev just considered himself so
damned it didn’t much matter
who
he found himself at play with.
Or did they consider themselves some version of married, with
or without the Rev’s former deity’s permission? That seemed to
jibe, though for all Chess might be the one on the receiving end,
Morrow somehow doubted Rook thought he was the wife in their
arrangement.

So Reverend Rook was a sinner and maybe a hypocrite, according
to the tenets of his own Good-turned-bad Book. Chess, though . . .
Chess Pargeter was by nature an outlaw born and bred, just like his
Ma, and couldn’t’ve ever been anything else, not even if he’d never
robbed his first stage, or killed outside of the War. The big decision
Chess had probably made before leaving San Francisco hadn’t been
to not be a
whore
, per se, ’cause from what Hosteen let slip, he’d
certainly taken payment for favours since — it’d just been to not
ever let himself be what Chess considered a victim.

“He’s a mean little man, that’s for sure,” Hosteen had said, half-admiringly. “You know where Chess come from, right?”

Morrow nodded.

“Well, listen. I once went to a cat-house, up on Black Mountain —
them gals was so tough they didn’t even have pimps. They set their
own rates; enforced ’em, too. I saw one cut a notch in a trick’s ear
’cause he shorted her the minimum — said she’d’ve done it on his
tallywhacker, but she wanted to give him a chance to pay her back.
And the next week, there he was again! Chess strikes me that way.

“Very first time he come into camp, lookin’ — and actin’ — like he
does, the men got to talkin’. Damn if he didn’t even blink, though —
just gave out how sure, he’d suck your cock for ya, long as you washed
it first. But he always wanted something in return.”

“Money?”

“Naw, trade, usually. Dry boots, bullets . . . you see that knife of
his? I give him that. Wouldn’t let you fuck him, though, no matter
what.
You can do that with your wife
, he used to say. Then this one big
bastard tries it, and Chess fights back so hard he gives him two black
eyes. ’Course, he
was
big, and he had friends. After, he says:
Guess
you’re mine now, bitch
. But Chess didn’t cry about it none, just said:
I
ain’t no-damn-body’s, motherfucker.

“And after our next engagement, what do you know? All three
of ’em ended up in the doc’s tent, and all three of ’em died ‘of their
injuries.’ Which is real interestin’, considering how the only thing
that big fucker had was a cracked head, all one of his friends’d lost
was a finger, and the last one’d just been shot in the ass-cheek.
But there they were the next mornin’, blue and stiff . . . with their
throats cut, ear to ear.”