A Tree of Bones (21 page)

“
When
, not if.”

“So if it’s all the same, I believe I’ll take my chances.”

“Very well.”

Ludlow clapped his hands. “Perfect. How I do love theatricals!”

Once again, both detectives considered him narrowly. “You do know you may see things you don’t want to in that stronghold, Mister Ludlow,” Thiel said, finally.

“Oh, don’t worry yourself concerning the quality of
my
sleep, sir; I was caught downtown during the Draft Riots in ’63. Which sanguinary event marks the very moment I discovered my gorge doesn’t rise too easily, sad to say, when a good enough story’s involved.”

“I read the dispatches, in our Chicago office,” Geyer replied. “But I’ve always wondered — was hexation involved?”

“Here and there, yes. New York’s vastly diverse populace extends even to the hex-born — and since the gangs aren’t exactly inclined to turn down any weapon falls to hand, they tend to use whoever turns hex under combat’s excesses as heavy artillery, clearing the way for more natural incursion: hordes of immigrants and Nativists alike, all wielding bricks, bats, fists, knives, axes . . . but no pistols. Still, with the city a powder-keg always awaiting spark, we’ve never needed
hexation’s
prompting when it comes to exercising our civic pastime, not within Gotham’s precincts — or anywhere else human nature holds sway.”

Above, the moon shone down like a dead man’s eye full of secret glee, absorbing it all. No secrets in Night’s house, after all. Not with everything that ill light touched transformed near-alchemically, the same way a spell renders metaphor real, into a spy for some hidden Enemy.

Miles away, Yancey came to shivering top to toe with her teeth too locked to chatter, tongue worried bloody. Though Yiska and her braves had laid her out already — piling all the rugs they had on top of her, high as they’d go — the chill of the Underneath still ran all through her, worse than before. Just how damn deep had she had to dive, in order to whisper upward directions in English Oona’s slippery ear?

Not as deep as she might yet have to go, she suspected.

Even as she formed this thought, a pale palm appeared at either temple, briskly stroking heat into her. “You look ill, dead-speaker,” Songbird observed, with a nasty touch of satisfaction. “The Ten Thousand Hells do not agree with you.”

“D-don’t think they were . . . made t’appeal . . . t’most,” Yancey said, with effort. “’Sides, that . . . seemed like one Hell only, t’me. An’ . . .
more’n enough.”

“Yes, you long-noses lack imagination, as a rule; I have observed this.”

Yiska laid a gentle hand of her own on Songbird’s shoulder. “
Ohé, bilagaana
, it gladdens me to see you returned safe, after such a long journey. Might it be you caught sight of our Enemy, while you were down there?”

Yancey tried to shake her head, and regretted it. “N’huh, no. Don’t think so.”

“You would know, if you had,” Songbird said. “He is . . . distinctive.”

“I
do
know — met the sumbitch twice before, and not when he was all dressed up in Chess Pargeter’s meat, either. How many times’s it been for you?”

Songbird coloured, flush slight but noticeable. “Never you mind, innkeeper’s daughter. He would have to be clumsy indeed to let either of us see him, if he did not wish to be seen.”

“You speak the truth, for once,” came Grandma’s voice. “He is not to be underestimated, this Smoking Mirror.” She moved out into the fire’s light, earth shaking beneath her tread, then lowered herself down by slow degrees. “The tale of Tollan’s Fall . . . have you heard it?”

“You know very well we have not, old — ” But Songbird found herself pinned by Yiska’s gaze, and amended whatever she might’ve been about to call the older hex. “Spinner.”

“Be quiet, then, little ghost. Attend, for once. There is virtue in the past’s lesson, always, for — since all gods repeat themselves, and most
Hataalii
likewise — it may give us some idea what he plans to do next.”

The words of the story wove themselves out, echoing hexation-aided through bone and blood, in three languages at once. Exhausted, Yancey let her cold-burnt lids drift shut and saw vague shapes unspool behind them — squarish symbols wrought from contorted bodies, all fangs and feathers, tongues and bulging eyes. Ink-black, macaw-red writing scribed on whitewashed walls, so fresh it almost ran, while a steaming green jungle rose behind, and the unfamiliar din of insects.

Her place,
she thought.
Lady Ixchel’s dead world, the one she wants to swap ours for.

“Tollan was chief city of the Tolteca,” Grandma said, somehow not stumbling over the names, though they couldn’t’ve come any more easy to whatever she used for a tongue than to Yancey’s own. “A great nation which existed before the Mexica built their Empire, down where the sun meets the swamp. But their last king, Huemac, fell into evil ways, and was punished. It began when a
Hataalii
who called himself Toveyo appeared in front of the city, a beautiful man painted all over in green, and was invited inside.

“With sweet music and spells, Toveyo tempted Tollan’s people to dance in their marketplace, making the song he played swirl faster and faster until it finally drove them into such a madness they rushed out through the city’s gates, throwing themselves headlong into a canyon in the earth. As they fell, they bounced off the walls, breaking all their bones, and when they finally reached the bottom, their bodies turned to stone.

“Moments later, the mountains overlooking Tollan began to growl and belch flames, in which the city’s priests saw figures making terrible gestures. Surely, they thought, the gods must be angry — and when Huemac ordered an offering to appease them, Toveyo was the first one seized. But when the priests bent his body over the altar stone and opened up his chest, they found he had no heart at all. His veins were also dry and empty, sending no precious blood spilling onto the temple’s stones. Then a stench rose from the body, and though the priests and onlookers fled, an epidemic of foul wasting diseases followed.

“For choosing a man with neither the heart nor the blood that creatures such as She of the Ropes and Snares require as a sacrifice, Tollan was punished with crop-killing frosts and summer droughts, wild storms, floods. Huemac fled, leaving his illegitimate son in charge. Two armies of invaders were bought off with the last of the city’s riches before the northern nomads known as the Sons of the Dog finally descended, at which point the first two armies turned back, and joined forces with them. For three years, the people of Tollan held them off with only a company of old men, boys and women, but eventually, the walls were breached. Tollan fell.”

“So Toveyo got his will,” Songbird said, examining her sheathless fingernails, while Yancey levered herself into a sitting position, each bout of shivering slightly less frantic. “He tricked Tollan into insulting their own gods, and those gods destroyed them. A victory for our kind.”

Grandma shook her head. “No. For according to the Mexica, Toveyo was simply a face worn by the Smoking Mirror, Rainbow Lady’s Ixchel’s ‘brother’ — Night Wind Tezcatlipoca, Enemy of all, who loves to stir up chaos for its own sake: god of all
Hataalii
, all hexes. Who some say stands for nothing less than conflict as a means to change itself.”

Songbird bristled. “He is not
my
god.”

“Mine either,” Yancey chimed in, surprised to find herself agreeing. And might be Grandma would’ve struck them both down in her rebuttal, had they not been interrupted.

“I should . . . hope not, Missus Kloves,” said a new voice, hoarse and desert-dry. “For little as we see eye to eye in other ways — murderous revenge as . . . justice, for example — I’d never’ve took you for a . . . heathen idolater.”

There, by the butte’s foot, right where its shadow would’ve fallen in the day: that was where Sheriff Love’s widow stood barefoot, her weeds ripped, long yellow hair unbound and heavy with dirt. Hoisted in her arms, she carried a good-sized baby boy who looked as though he’d been through similar straits, but was managing to sleep it off. Yancey felt her heart go foolishly soft at the very sight of his lumpy, boneless weight, mouth slack around one pudgy thumb.

“It
is
you, isn’t it?” she asked, looking straight at Yancey, freckle-set brow furrowed. “I mean . . . haven’t seen you since that . . . awful day. At Bewelcome.”

When I blew your man’s brains out, right in front of you? Yes ma’am, I recall it well. That
was
me, and so’s this.

“How’d you get here, though, Missus Love, exactly?” she made herself say instead; polite, like they were taking tea. “Was it Reverend Rook sent you?”

Sophy Love shook her stately head, clutching her baby all the tighter. “No, one of that New York hex’s three — women; the Irish one, I believe. Tell the truth, I could barely understand her! But I knew she wished harm on Gabe and me, so I called on the Lord to aid us. And then . . .”

She narrowed her eyes, as though she couldn’t quite recall the specifics. But as she did, her son shifted in his slumber, gurgling — and beside her, Yancey felt Songbird suddenly stiffen and hiss, like a spooked cat. Felt something spike from her, and Grandma too: a pulling at the air, a pressure drop, as though before a storm. A hungry cry pitched almost too high to hear, so sharp it plucked even at her, and she wasn’t a hex at all; Yiska, too, hand falling automatically to her tomahawk’s grip.

They feel somebody, all of ’em, someone like
them
. Someone who could eat everything they have or be eaten, in turn. But . . . who?

That was when the baby — young Gabriel Love — jerked awake for good, seeking with barely focused gaze for a brace of rivals he couldn’t possibly spot, even at this distance, and sent up what seemed like the ghost of the same squalling, thin as fine-chopped bones. All of an instant, then, Yancey could almost see what
they
saw, plain as Songbird’s skin or Yiska’s nose. Plain as the flare ’round Grandma’s helmet-skull, lighting up her upturned bucket of a no-face, revealing her true nature to anyone.

“So sad,” Sophy Love said to herself, completely unaware; she looked almost drunk, to Yancey’s bar-bred eye — drunk on loss, on fatigue, on sorrow too long deferred, in favour of cold responsibility. “How I’ve hated you and prayed not to, for
so
long; foolish, really, for all the good it did me, either way. But now I see you again, you have my pity — to see any white woman so abandoned, fallen amongst savage witches.”

“Wouldn’t be so quick to insult them if I was you, ma’am,” Yancey replied. “These ladies are powerful. They might yet be the ones to save your son’s life.”

“Is that a threat?”

Yancey almost laughed, hearing Songbird’s mental speech yammering at her inner ear, at the same time — an endless reel of:
Kill him, while we can, before he strikes at us! Kill
her
!

No,
she thought.
But
that
is.

Yiska
tsked
, out loud. “You disappoint me,” she said — to Songbird, though Sophy Love no doubt heard it directed at her. “This is a chance we have, here . . . to do right even when doubted, to teach this
bilagaana
Book-babbler by example. Do not let your fear control you.”

Songbird hissed again. And Grandma, stirring in her seat with the groan of a mountain settling, told her: “She is right, little ghost. The salt-man’s wife knows no better.”

Sophy’s eyes went wide, for all the world as if she hadn’t really
noticed
Grandma sitting there, ’til part of the butte itself took on life; her whole body recoiled a step, grip tightening on poor Gabe ’til her knuckles whitened. “My good Jesus,” she said, with admirable calm. “You’re . . . that other demon.”

“No such thing. But you may call me that, if you wish.”

Songbird threw her arms up, white braids swinging wide. “Enough coddling! We
must
defend ourselves, especially when our enemy knows nothing! I will do it, if you fear to — ”

She thrust one hand out toward Gabe, fingers crooked like horns, knuckle sparking; Yancey seized it without thinking, only to scream when Songbird’s conjured fire seared her palm. “Jesus Christ Almighty!”

“Loose me, dead-speaker!”

A familiar locust-chitter filled the air; Sophy Love whipped
a shiny new version of Doctor Asbury’s toy from her pocket, brandishing it Songbird’s way. “Lay one hand upon him,” she warned, “and I’ll kill you where you stand, you Godforsaken creature.”

But the Manifold’s needle swung back toward Gabe, who was crying harder than ever — slid straight into the red, and stuck there.

And even as his own corona snapped and flared, Yancey heard Grandma say, for once without any real sort of judgement, though equally little sympathy: “Perhaps you should look to your own house,
bilagaana
. For as that thing you hold can tell you,
we
are not the only ‘hexes’ here.”

Sophy Love looked down, caught breath balanced between love and revulsion, into her son’s squalling face. Yancey didn’t have to try to rifle through the woman’s thoughts, now; hell, she was hard-pressed to keep ’em out. A dreadful black tide slopping up, transmuting that same maternal pull to bitterest gall: 1 Samuel,
15:53. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry,
so
Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

Oh, Gabriel — not
you
, of all people. How will you ever fulfil your father’s legacy now? How could you even live among his own town’s people — good, kind,
Christian
people — let alone rule them the way you were born to, knowing they’d think you the Devil’s own cub?

Great and powerful God, why must you make only the most devoted of all your servants suffer so?

“Not my boy,” Sophy Love murmured to herself. And sat down in a flump with her skirts pooled ’round her, face turned from the child she still hugged tight.

Yancey took three or four small steps toward the Widow; got down on her trousered knees in the dirt, her joints still stiff. And held out her arms for Bewelcome’s former heir — exiled through no fault of his own to a desert worse than the one where Satan had tempted Christ, where stones could never be made bread, not even by the Word of God.