A Tree of Bones (23 page)

To avoid the temptation to even try to answer, Chess flicked his eyes back over the crowd, searching out faces from Bewelcome or Hoffstedt’s Hoard — but found none, which bemused him. Only those who’d died at his own hand made up the Dead Posse roster, then, which had a bitter kind of sense to it, he supposed. This was the Enemy’s territory, down here, and his way had nothing whatsoever to say about debts of conscience beyond the primal — blood for blood, too book-balancing cold for true revenge.

Christian Hell might be hot, after all, but Mictlan-Xibalba was cold as this place here. And
deep
.

Chess squeezed Oona’s clutching hand, shrugged, and took up his pistoleer’s pose, empty holsters notwithstanding. “Well,” he said, “c’mon, then. Whoever got something to say can just go on and tell
me
’fore we all die again of cold, or boredom.”

The crowd parted. Three personages pushed to the forefront, all wearing the shredded remnants of Confederate greys; one in the middle was a bald-headed idjit, near Rook’s size but flabbier. His smaller, equally ugly friends flanked him close. All three sported knife-slice neckties like that first Pink’s, gone stiff grey-blue in this blizzardly weather; a rime set their lips glimmering, edges a-tremble with the force of their eager dog-panting. The big one expelled a wheezing sigh, half-strained through his brittle wound, like he’d been silent so long he didn’t know which mouth was better for speaking.

“Might almost be worth it all . . . all this sufferin’, here in the dark,” he said, “just . . . t’pay you back, Pargeter.”

“I don’t misdoubt. But remind me, while we’re at it: who the fuck are you meant to be to me, precisely?”

“Oh, you’ll get it, you just try hard enough.” Fists now, steady at the man’s waist; he leaned forward, bringing his weight onto his toes like a pugilist. “We was soldiers together once, back in camp — you with your airs, swannin’ ’round, like you could dictate to real-made men. Thought you’d trade me somethin’ I didn’t want for what I did, ’til I taught you better.”

A preening wisp of a voice, shrunk now almost to nothing. Yet Chess could still catch an echo of what it might’ve been like once, full and mean, telling him:
Guess you’re mine now, bitch.

With that, the other shoe dropped; Chess felt a rib-crack weight across his back and a tearing in his nethers, recalled the world gone dim from both his eyes being so bruise-puffed they barely opened, throat sore from ill use, inside and out. And thought, like he’d snarled through it nonetheless, right at that very moment —

Not likely. ’Cause . . . I ain’t no-damn-body’s, motherfucker.

He spat again just to rid himself from the taste, and grinned.

“Why, Private Chilicothe,” Chess named him. “You who played bad faith with my rules and never did pay me for the privilege, either, so I took my change out on your hide; you’re right, now I
do
recall. ’Specially that part in the doc’s tent, after — how sweet you looked lyin’ there asleep, right ’fore I slit your throat and left you to piss yourself dyin’.”

“Too scared to face me awake, that was all.”

“Ha! You never
scared
me, you sumbitch, not even when you was hip-deep up in my business. Didn’t leave that much’ve an impression.”

Chilicothe’s face shifted, lumpily; probably would’ve flushed, had he still had even a drop of blood to put toward the effort. “Pretend all you want, you little faggot bastard — I know better. Know damn well I
hurt
you, at least.”

“For a minute or two, sure. But I’ve had worse.”

Chilicothe’s shade lashed out, no doubt expecting things to go the same as up top, him still having a good foot and a half on Chess’s neat-made self. And Chess with no guns, plus no hexation to count on either, seeing how it seemed to vary in strength from spot to spot along this endless Hell-bound trudge.

But screw all that. For though he’d stopped looking to get into fist-fights the same day he’d realized he’d never make six feet, Chess’d be gang-fucked (again) if he wouldn’t go down swinging.

Before he could make his move, however — duck in under the bastard’s arm and hook him hard, maybe try to bust a rib, or just give him a good, swift punch to the nuts — Chess saw Oona come down on one knee, shoulders squared, rummaging through the snow. She came up with a sharp-splintered icicle roughly the size of some carved ivory Chinee dildo, and drove it straight into the back of Chilicothe’s calf, deep enough to judder. Then twisted it ’til he howled, so hard Chess swore he could hear the flash-froze hamstring snap.

Chilicothe went down, face-first into Chess’s fist. It was a good jab, right from the shoulder, and Chess felt the man’s ghost-nose squish. The other two jumped to help, but Oona moved herself sidelong, hunching up to form a brake; one skipped over her like a thrown stone, went right into the other and carried him away down the hill in a flurry of thrashing limbs, snow-scree and bruises. Which left only Chilicothe behind, pinned as Chess stomped on him once, twice, whole chest coming down like a rotten wall, to where Chess thought he felt the fucker’s wizened heart go
pop
, a mojo bag of vile intentions.

Chess spit down at him one more time, taking care to aim well. The result crackled mid-air and froze solid, falling dagger-style to embed itself a half-inch from the eye, then lodged and crusted over, bonding ice to skin. Chilicothe’s mouth dropped open, too shocked to yelp, as Oona made her blackening feet once more.

“Better get while the goin’s good, I’d fink,” she suggested, throwing back her hair.

“Maybe I ain’t finished yet.”

“Suit your bloody self, then. But them rest over there won’t wait forever.”

Chess nodded, and bent down just a tad further, not deigning to hold himself out of Chilicothe’s reach. “I never did scream, no matter how you tried to make me,” he reminded him, voice flat. “’Member
that
? How it took all three of you to hold me down long enough, which only showed me what kind’a cowards you were, not to mention stick-stupid. And why? ’Cause you let me
live
, you shithead.”

Up once more, then, back on his feet; he turned his scornful eyes to the rest as his grin widened. “But Christ knows I do like it rough, too, so if any of you dead fools feel up for a second go-round, let’s get to it. I got nothin’ but time to kill.”

Chilicothe turned his face to the ground. But the rest of the mob shifted forward almost like one, closing in; Chess saw ’em coming and shifted stance, ready to once more take up nonexistent arms.

Well, there goes
that
bright idea.

Oona, by his side: “Just couldn’t keep your bloody mouth shut, could ya?”

“Aw, Ma. Thought you’d’ve known me better’n that, by now.”

As they got closer, however, Chess angled away, so’s she wouldn’t see his smirk fail. Last time things’d gotten this bad had been outside Splitfoot’s, with Sheriff Mesach Love’s Weed-puppets making a shambly forward-march on him, Ed, Yancey, Geyer — yet once a deathblow freed the last shreds of leftover soul, there had been no will in the Weed-things’ eyes, no memory nor hatred. These revenants were equally dead, but every pair of eyes stayed stuck on him, brim-full with an aching need to punish.

On pure reflex, he slipped past, pushing Oona behind him with one hand. Lifted the other,
thinking
it wrapped in blue-white threads of lightning, concentrating harder than he had at anything since he first took up the gun — then yelped as a slap cracked ’cross the back of his head. “Jesus
shit
, woman!” he roared, catching hold of the hand she still held high. “The hell’s this? Stop it!”

“You stupid bloody git,” Oona yelled back, and Chess almost let go, in shock; were those actual tears in her eyes, rimming green with red? Cold truly must be getting to her. “Tryin’ to play the ’ero, now an’ ’ere? Get us
both
stuck, for good? What’d I always tell you, eh?”

“That’d be ‘Save yerself, ’cause won’t nobody else do it for ya,’ I’d think,” he mocked, vowels flat-mashing, Limejuicer style. Then pulled her hard back into his embrace, dipping to snarl, in one ear: “Yeah, well . . . I
ain’t
you.”

Around them, that bitter wind keened yet higher, sent snow-ghosts sifting through the crowd, tearing each from each; but a slight twist more and it broke upward into a shriek, unbearably pitched, as though the sky itself had torn. The light collapsed, grey as grave mould. And in its wake, a twister touched down, ripped straight from Chess’s own memories — bomb-burst back-slap of Rook’s gallows resurrection, sending all them manning the trap one way and those still waiting to swing the other. Its fury had crushed him facedown into the mud even as the Rev came up rocket-fast, hemp necktie still a-flap ’round his raw neck.

This one’s funnel speared straight down, locking to earth ’round Chess and Oona: half trap and half shield, capping a perfect circle no more than a yard wide, while solid-turned air smacked outward in all directions.

In the real world, this was the kind of force would’ve torn men limb from limb, flung ’em hundreds of yards, to decorate the wrecked trees in scraps. Here, the Dead Posse mainly only lurched, ground backward, like mud-locked wagons hauled by straining men; a few busted free and rose up, splatting ’gainst the mountain’s hide. But it was enough. A path had opened — several. Now, all they needed to figure was which one led where, and take it.

With a shrug, Chess banished the twister as though throwing off a mile-high coat fashioned from the Devil’s own storm-blown hide, and bolted straight into its tail, yanking Oona along after him. “
Ma!
” he screamed, above the roar. “The Call,
where?
Which damn
way
?

“Dunno . . . can’t bloody
see
— !”

Chess broke into a tripping run, following the base of the rock wall bounding the plain; Oona fell once, with a squawk, then righted herself and hiked his coat immodestly, matching him as best she might. Though the cyclone had stripped snow from the earth, carving a black mud track, more snow cascaded down from the peaks above, throwing up plumes so blinding white Chess was forced to shield his eyes as he ducked through them. Too close behind for comfort, he could feel the Dead Posse’s renewed pursuit in his boots, pounding up through the ground.

He almost missed the gap;
would
have missed it, in fact, if a hand hadn’t thrust out from it at the last second, palm up-angled toward him, all but beckoning.
Grab hold
, its unseen owner seemed to say, though no voice spoke.
Grab hold, and see where
this
takes you.

He grabbed fast, felt a moment’s swooping relief when the hand proved at least as warm as his own, and did not resist as it pulled him into — through — the gap beyond, and Oona too.

Once past the barrier, Chess stumbled to his knees, cold stone firm under his palms and shins. The lack of wind was a Goddamn blessing. At his elbow, Oona wept in pain, cursing her feet for their slowness in resuming their normal colouration. Sounded like she would’ve stamped, if she hadn’t figured that would probably hurt the more.

The floor beneath was flat, expert-laid, of smooth but unpolished granite. As his breath came back in gulps, Chess looked up and ’round, taking in yet another passageway. Like all the tunnels before, it stretched on into the distance to a vanishing point teasingly set just beyond his sight, but these walls, this roof and floor, looked
built
. A faint light, cheerless and dusty, trickled through high slits, giving off no sort of shade to indicate its source. Silence weighted the air.

In recessed alcoves set at intervals on each wall, men and women sat like stone — stiff and stock-staring off into the distance, at the floor, or their own folded hands. Might’ve been wax, but that Chess’s keen sight detected the faintest movement at chest height. Unlike the crowds of Seven Dials, their getup covered every time and place Chess had ever known — serapes, dusters, flash check trousers, denim and silk gowns, nought at all — plus dozens he didn’t, their skin, hair and eyes culled from every mix imaginable.

No ropes or chains to bind ’em fast, no dust to suggest how long they’d sat; only the figures, the corridor. The silence.

“Chess . . .” Oona whispered. And
Christ
, he thought, uncharitably.
Can I
never
have one damn minute to myself, a minute to stop and fucking pause?

He turned, too exhausted even to sigh — and wound up looking straight into the face of the one person he’d genuinely never thought to find down here, in all his ramblings . . . but who else could it possibly be, really? Considering how recently he’d been thinking of him?

“Sheriff,” Chess named him, finally. To which the man gave but a single bow, grave as ever, bones creaking. And though those little-girl pigtails of his swung back and forth with the motion, infinitely ridiculous, Chess felt absolutely no impulse to laugh.

“‘Private’ Pargeter,” Mesach Love — dead twice-over and double-damned as well, if present circumstances were anything to go by — replied.

By the time Bewelcome’s wounded and dead had been seen to, Ixchel’s conjured floodwaters had subsided and the soldiers of the Thirteenth had hacked exit passages out through the Weed-walls which the Chess-Enemy had (oh
so
thoughtfully) left intact around the town, it was well past midnight. Ill-lit darkness and roads flooded fetlock-deep in mud cost their horses near an hour getting back to the camp — Morrow wound up tying a drink-exhausted Asbury to his mount, letting him sleep most of the way.

They passed the sentries at Camp Pink, many of whom still glared at Ed with suspicion, and found the plain canvas tent Pinkerton had assigned him near the camp’s south edge. Morrow tipped the Professor into one of the empty cots without waking him, only pausing to strip off his own mud-caked boots before collapsing onto another. Before he closed his eyes, he realized the storm’s dregs had finally cleared enough he could see the smoky lights of New Aztectlan’s pyramid-temple glowing dimly through the open entry flap, far to the west — a dim line of arcane flame fringing the sky, just above its guard-woods’ contorted shadows.