A Rope of Thorns (29 page)

“. . . they can do what they were jawing over when last we saw ’em, remember?” Morrow asked. “Hunt up them as
could
be hexes ’fore they have a chance to blossom, then raise ’em housebroke to leash and collar?”

Chess huffed. “So they got a
passel
of just-bled bitches like Little Miss Fuck-You-Hard on their side—what’s that to do with me? They don’t get in my road, they won’t get hurt; they
do
, then they will. Day I can’t get shed of a flock of witch-girls, you can lay my ass out and throw dust in my face.”

“It’s not only young ladies, Mister Pargeter—not by a long shot.” Geyer leaned forward. “That train of his . . . last Morrow and I stepped aboard, it was a regular steam-car made commonplace time, and now it can go from Chi-Town to Mexico in under three days. Doesn’t even need rails, nor an engine; it can go through a
mountain
, if that’s what’s on order. And you know how that’s done?”

“I don’t doubt but you’re gonna tell me.”

Morrow, now: “By rounding up folk who ain’t yet come to it wherever they run across ’em, Chess, and packing ’em away in its freight cars like cattle—men and boys, old and young, who’ve been lucky enough to dodge the rope Rook didn’t, or that battlefield harm old Kees Hosteen was talking about, back when the Yanks tried to make a Brigade out of new-minted hexes. Then they ask ’em if they want to serve their country, and if they say yes . . .”

His voice trailed away, run dry at the sheer horror of it, especially from a man he’d once admired. But Chess didn’t take the hint.

“They what, hexify ’em ’gainst their will? Poor damn babies. Bound to’ve happened sooner or later, and if they’re so dumb they
still
turn Pink after, then—”

Yancey sat upright, her final straw snapping. “Oh, let
me
,” she said.

Her hand darted forward, snaring Chess by the sleeve and pulling him so close it made him startle, like she came loaded with some particularly female complaint he might catch through sheer proximity. “Whoa, now! Just ’cause you and Ed been flirting . . .”

“Hush,” she said, severely, and kissed him on the lips.

Purest intuition, same as going skin-to-skin with Geyer had been, the night previous—but she couldn’t fool herself there was no small shred of payback in the gesture, either. If nothing else, it certainly shocked Chess silent.

Both their minds broke open, pulled right on back to Pinkerton’s conclave, together: so close-sat between the predatory trio of Asbury, Songbird, Pinkerton and Geyer’s memory-self it seemed insanity no alarm was roused. The former agent looked uppercut, dazed.

“But . . . these are citizens of our nation, sir, not enemy operatives; fellow veterans, some of them. I thought our charge was the
protection
of such innocents.”

Pinkerton’s dreadful maw quivered, as though striving (yet failing, miserably) to knit itself back together—and it shocked Yancey to realize how shocked
Chess
was by the sight, his unwitting handiwork made flesh.

“We are nane sae innocent as tae be sinless, from Eve’s womb on,” Pinkerton replied, shortly. “But what America stands on here, Frank, is the precipice of a far worse division than that which almost sundered us—one which must be avoided, at all costs.”

“I’m still not sure why that necessitates forcing the unprepared into custody, ripping them from wives and families, subjecting them to—”

“A cocktail of the same sacramental Weed Pargeter sows behind him, only,” Asbury assured him, “creating delirium, followed by a mere shadow-show of impending grievous bodily harm: threat of fire, or approaching bombardment . . .”
Hastening to add, as Geyer gawped at him: “. . . and then, once the deed is achieved, sedation via heroin—a housewife’s cough remedy!—or gentle gastric lavage. It is done with all possible delicacy, Mister Geyer, leaving not a speck of permanent damage; we have no wish, or need, to go further.”

“Yet these medicament-aided vaudevilles of yours must ring convincing enough to make the change occur,” Geyer shot back, “which confirms the whole offensive matter as torture!”

Asbury reddened, from his collar up. “Our processes, however traumatic, allow these recruits to
avoid
such Mediaeval nonsense, sir! No more burnings, hangings or pressings, no more ‘spectral evidence’—no hysteric, misinformed massacres, in fact, such as that which lent Salem its legendarily ill name.”

Unable to restrain herself, Songbird giggled behind her fan, drawing Pinkerton’s roar. “Be still, both o’ ye!” To Geyer: “I
must
ha’ men around me I can trust, Frank,
sincerely
, and not worry over. If you canna play that part for me, then tell me now, and we’ll ha’ ye back Illinois-way on the instant.”

“I . . . that wasn’t my intent, boss, by any means. It’s simply . . .”

He shook his head, amazed, while Pinkerton merely shrugged. “Aye, it’s a conundrum—how tae comport ourselves as true Christians, gi’en what we deal wi’? We can’t do much tae hurry the lassies along, and setting one hex to make another is a witless errand, for they eat ’em right after, or at least try damn hard. Savages!”
Songbird laughed again. “But the Professor here’s figuring a way tae keep ’em in line.”

And here things froze, a print-run newsbill settling from ink to image. Cutting out the middleman, since they were there already, Chess turned directly to Geyer’s shadow-self, and asked: “What’s he on about? Those grounding-wires the Doc uses to suck up magic?”

First Yancey’d heard of such a thing, but Geyer-of-the-past—perhaps somehow combined with his current self through hexological miracle, so that the “person” they spoke to was as much Geyer as its original?—nodded quick enough, like it was familiar business. “Says he can boil it down into a spring or cog and add it to the Manifold’s next generation, so’s we won’t even need the whole rigmarole with casting a circle or dispersing the result—just point and shoot, and the thing takes more the more your target tries to fend it off, ’til they run plumb dry.”

“For permanent?” asked Chess.

Geyer shrugged, blankly. “Asbury says magic’s a natural force, like gravitation, so no . . . every hex can take a charge of it, like running electricity through metal, which means it’ll build up again, eventually. But the rest of that stuff he talks of—build a machine that can
extract
magic, let alone store it so any normal man can use it, later on? That’s like sayin’ you can build an engine that flies to the moon, or a bombshell fierce enough to level an entire city. No, if the last century’s taught us anything, such foolery is the province of hexation alone.”

“So what broke you free of Pinkerton’s sway, exactly, and sent you chasin’ after me?”

Geyer looked down, abashed. “He sent me away with George Thiel, his second-in-command ’til then—doing work Pinkerton no longer trusts himself with, be it purging Weed or rounding up potentials. He feared Thiel’s loyalty was slipping, that the man intended to form his own Detective Service Agency, in direct competition to our own. So Pinkerton told me to ride along with him on a fact-finding mission up Bewelcome way, watch for my chance, and—when I saw it—act.”

“Back-shoot the fucker, in other words.”

“I said: ‘Given provocation?’ To which he replied: ‘Provocation’s a thing can always be decided upon, after.’”

“Wouldn’t expect any better, from the same man had agents dress like ghosts to scare a nut-house confession from Alex Drysdale.”

“No, no.”
Geyer shook his head fiercely. “That was justice, however rough. But how could I follow his orders after that, knowing he held a loyal man’s life in such disregard? Worse still, when I broke the bonds of silence to warn George, he was unsurprised—he’d known it was coming, and made his plans accordingly. Fly north and east, back to the government, and tell them first-hand what hay Pinkerton’s been making of his authority . . . convince them how vitally important it is not just that Hex City be overthrown, but that Pinkerton
not
be its conqueror, lest he use such victory as an excuse to seize power for himself.”

“Shut up,” Chess ordered him, turning back to Yancey, who braced herself. “As for you—that was a dangerous game you just played, missy. Last woman who kissed me . . . well, turnabout is fair play, or so I’ve heard. . . .”

Before she could ask what he meant, it was his lips on hers, tongue tracing the seam in one hot, abrasive lick. The charge of it broke outwards, sweeping Geyer, Pinkerton and the rest clear, and what followed came as a series of blood-tinged blinks, viler than anything Yancey’d ever dreamt on: all limbs and motion, a serpentine coiling, pinned hands and feet, imposed desire and vivid rage co-mixed. Chess lay trapped in its midst, prone and horrified; a looming man-tower she could only assume was Reverend Rook stared down on his humiliation, purring, with horrid affection:
Soon be over, darlin’. Just let her have her way.

At the very centre of this storm, meanwhile—his tormentor, the cyclone’s bride. The aforementioned Lady.

Her real name is Ixchel
, Chess told Yancey, dispassionate. While his own memory-self, bound fast as Leviathan, struggled against her toils with everything he had, only to prove it wanting. Thinking furiously, with the only part of him left free:
Oh, I’d kill you right now if I could, scatter your bones and dance on ’em, in a fuckin’ instant. Bite your lips off, bitch. Rip out your lyin’ tongue, and hang it for a party favour. Just kill and kill and kill—

And her, nodding, black hair ’round his face like a curtain, funereal flag of some overthrown nation. Thinking back, in vaguely amused return—
If you could, yes. Yet you cannot; you are made for this, little
ixiptla
, my husband’s husband. It will happen.

Chess bucked and writhed, but in his mind’s eye alone. He chewed at his own tongue ’til his teeth almost met, and still she rode him down through the storm, the rainbow’s black core, a cauldron of hissing dragonflies. Rode him ’til an ending of sorts lit up the hollows of their skulls, and all their eyes turned black.

Motion through darkness, vertiginous downward plunge, and Yancey hit bottom at last. That dreadful female form had absented itself, along with the Reverend’s ghost; the two of them were left alone, nose to nose, and the weight of what she’d inadvertently done to Chess pressed at her chest like some massive iron bell’s clapper.

“I’m so sorry,” Yancey said, eventually, knowing it made not a whit of difference. “I didn’t . . . I couldn’t’ve . . .”

Thankfully, all Chess’s anger seemed to have fled in transition, leaving only gruffness behind. “’Course you couldn’t. Just don’t do it again—not without warning.”

She hesitated, then ventured: “You must truly hate me.”

That irritable spark flared up once more, though no longer directed her way; a flare of insight blooming, uncomfortable, undeniable. Snapping back: “Jesus, what for? You ain’t her, just ’cause you got a few of her particulars—ain’t my Ma, either. You’re—”

—something different, the like I’ve never seen, with your clumsy-true aim and your high moral quackings. More akin to me than not, even folding in your choice of where to lay a roving fancy. Though he was with me last night, in the flesh, and don’t you ever forget it.

More an ally than an enemy, in other words. One of the current gang, so tiny there was no point in either mistrust or rank, beyond the barest rudiment: Chess in front, the others behind, for protection—theirs, and his. Shedding blood in his half-deified name. Watching his back.

Hell, even
I
can see
that
.

Close as they were at this moment, the thought could’ve come from either, and still be just as true.

Night’s house rose everywhere. From horizon to horizon, the desert filled with its whisperings.

To the west, a train powered by anguish rode ghostly rails, heading swift and sure for a certain hidden valley. Inside, its master dozed, sedated to a less immediate level of pain. His partners sat in the dining car, one watching the other throw a series of three coins over and over, noting down the results, which were—unsurprisingly—always the same.

“Your divinatory scholars call this the
I Ching
, I believe,” Asbury said.

Songbird did not bother to nod, let alone look up. “When Fu Xi first compiled them, the hexagrams were cast using a handful of yarrow stalks, but that method has been lost for centuries. The Han gave us coins instead, which serve.”

“And the outcome?”

The bleached girl-witch bent lower, studying the latest compilation of broken and unbroken lines. “
Tui
above, the joyous lake.
Sun
below, a gentle wind through the wood. Weakness outside, strength inside—a situation out of balance, extraordinary, dangerous. Such a condition cannot last; it must be changed quickly, or misfortune will result.”

“I thought that was the path we were already embarked upon.”

Her weak eyes flicked to rake him, visibly unfocused, yet too sharp too evade. “Did you? This is Pinkerton’s crusade, Professor, as you well know, though you raised no objection—but then again, neither did I. I keep my own counsel, with the
Book of Changes
as my advisor.” Colourless lashes drooping, as she quoted from memory:

Nine in the third place:

The ridgepole sags to the breaking point.

Six at the top:

One must go through water that goes over one’s head.

Misfortune, but no blame.

“Meaning?”

“There are things more important than preserving one’s own life, so long as the right prevails.” She hissed through her teeth. “
Ai-yaaa!
Such foolishness. Yet the true reading is plain. If anyone is doomed to sacrifice himself to rebalance the whole, it will be English Oona’s son, not anyone sworn to
our
cause.”

“Why cast these runes at all, then, if you see the future they speak of so clearly?”

“Because luck can change, always; that is its nature. And always in more than one way.”