A Book Of Tongues (25 page)

Cry ’bout it in the morning, if I have to,
Morrow decided, knowing
he wouldn’t. And pulled Chess back down once more, to where he
could get at him.

Stay with me,
Chess’d ordered Morrow, after their fun was through.
So Morrow had, though he mostly ended up just watching him sleep,
all sprawled out, absinthe-dazed and snoring aniseed.

Even his damn scars are pretty,
Morrow caught himself thinking,
wondering just how God expected to get away with letting anything
be so fair and yet so unrelenting foul at once.

But here Chess yawned wide and stretched, breaking Morrow’s
reverie. He opened one lazy eye, winced at how the morning light
pained him, and demanded — “Where in the hell’s that damn bottle?”

“They only had the one of them left, Chess, remember? And you
drunk it already.”

Chess pulled a face, which seemed to hurt him in an entirely
different way.

“I feel justabout the same, if that helps,” Morrow offered.

“Oh,
do
ya? That’s a comfort. . . .”

He levered himself standing, and stood there rude and proud as
ever, though moving just a tad slower than he usually did, ’specially
in and around the nether regions. Continuing, as he did: “. . . but if
you really
don’t
got any liquor handy, then what I want’s a bath . . .
so call me one, and get the hell out. ’Less you’re thinkin’ of comin’
in with me.”

And with this last part, he shot Morrow yet one more of those
lash-veiled glances, causing him the now-requisite hot stab of equal
parts shock and shame.
I ain’t
like
that,
Morrow would’ve been able
to tell himself, up to only last night — but here it was at least an hour
past dawn, and that once-fine certainty had gone the literal way of
all flesh.

Now Chess was legging it over to the wash-stand, wincing
slightly with each step. Casting back, over his shoulder — “Just so we
understand each other, by the by, I ain’t sayin’ this didn’t happen —
just that the Rev don’t need to know unless it’s from me, and me
alone. You take my meanin’, Mister Morrow?”

“Oh, no damn fear,
Mister
Pargeter — you think
I’m
gonna tell
him? I got at least as much to lose here as — ”

“No. No, you don’t.”

They paused a moment, Morrow studying Chess closely — not the
full spread of him, so much, as the far more telling details.

“Hell, you feel
bad
, ’bout what we did — you ’n’ me, last night.
Don’t ya?”

“Don’t be an idjit. I done a lot worse, with a
lot
of others. You think
you’re special?” Chess shook his head, reaching for his trousers.
“Second after Rook gets back, I won’t even recall that horse’s-ass
face
you make when you’re in your sin — that’s the damn truth.”

Morrow kept on staring, then shook his head in turn, grinning
slightly. “If that don’t beat all,” he declared.

“If
what
don’t, Goddamnit?”

Feel bad for killin’ a man . . . feel bad for doin’ — that — with another
one. Hell, it’s kinda like you ain’t the Chess Pargeter I heard tell of at all.
Like you’re a whole ’nother man, entirely.

But: “How you really
must
love him, after all, strange as that
might seem,” was what Morrow said out loud, instead. “That you
even
can
.”

Chess ground his teeth at that, audibly, so loud it almost made
Morrow take an actual step backwards — but let out his held breath
a moment on, his anger set aside for the nonce: cooled, if never truly
banked. “Yeah, I guess I do, at that,” he allowed.

Didn’t sound much of a happy insight, though.

“Okay, then. But love ain’t so bad, Chess. Is it?”

“My Ma always said love was a trick and a trap; took her oath on
it, more times than I can count. Not that she ever kept her oath.”

“Well . . .” Morrow began, uncomfortably. “Might be . . . she wasn’t
really the best authority on the subject.”

Wasn’t sure what to expect, by way of response — anything from
a sob to a punch seemed just as likely. But Chess simply looked at
him once more, eyes suddenly considerably less forlorn — sniffed
like he’d heard better jests from gut-shot men slow-dyin’ but didn’t
necessarily want to say so. And answered, “Oh yeah, that’s right, I
forgot. You
met
her.”

Scrubbed and dressed once more, Morrow walked out, and ran
straight into Hosteen, who gave him a look the likes of which he’d
never previously seen. Because he knew, of course — hell, the whole
of Splitfoot’s probably knew, come to that, since Chess wasn’t exactly
quiet
.

“Hey, Kees,” Morrow said, flushing hard.

Hosteen sighed. “So . . . you and Chess, huh? Boy, I thought you
was smart.”

“Says the same man who give him his knife!”

“That was
before
the Rev. ’Sides which — Hell, I s’pose it don’t
really matter much, in the end; just keep it to your damn self, is all.
Considerin’.”

“Considerin’ what?”

“Scouts say they saw Rook comin’ — that cloud he walks around
in sometimes, anyhow, tall enough to block out the sun. Should be
here by nightfall, if he ain’t here sooner.”

From behind them both, a fresh squeak of the door announced
Chess’s presence. The smell of hair-oil made Morrow blush afresh,
but Chess didn’t even acknowledge it — just gave the both of them
both a cool nod, and said: “’Bout time that son-of-a-bitch showed
up.”

Hosteen nodded back. “They said he mighta had somebody else
with him,” he said. “A woman.”

There was a general pause, during which Chess stared fixedly
at Hosteen, while Morrow tried his level best to look pretty much
anywhere else.

“She just better be a fuckin’ hex, is all I’m sayin’,”
Chess
announced, eventually, to no one. And stalked off past them, hips
swinging, to take the staircase down.

Outside, a storm came in hard and fast — more dust than rain, bright
orange-red, lighting up the whole sky from horizon to horizon. What
denizens of Splitfoot Joe’s hadn’t already made themselves scarce,
got busy either securing shutters or mudding up the various lintel-chinks, and since the chimney had to be blocked off first of all — no
point in leaving it open, when all it drew was sand — the fire went
out, leaving them to sit idle in semi-darkness, listening to the wind.

“Screw this,” Hosteen said, and started fiddling with a lamp.

Morrow felt his way closer.

“Need some help with that?”

“Had you a lucifer handy, I wouldn’t turn it down.”

Morrow took hold of the lamp’s glass bell and kept it upright,
while Hosteen struck a match. The lucifer went blue, then yellow, as
he guided it in — but it wouldn’t catch, nohow.

“Might be the wick’s too short,” Morrow suggested. “Or too
soaked to light — ”

“Might
be
you should keep your opinions to yourself, ’less I go
ask you for ’em.”

All of a sudden, the wick flared, light swelled to fill the room, and
Morrow turned with a sigh of relief — that choked to a glottal sound
of shock and fright as Rook’s grin gleamed down on him, from above
the sofa on the far wall. The Rev seemed to materialize around that
grin, coalescing out of the gloom: slumped at his leisure, one long
arm slug over the sofa’s back.

And next to him sat someone entirely different, though — as
advertised — visibly female. She was a dim blur, hair hung in a cowl,
her haughty face the colour of good blonde tobacco. Had the same
stone-black eyes as Songbird, too, albeit cut larger and far more
lustrous: flat and glassine, much like the famous Smoking Mirror
itself with that gal adorning it — broke apart in sections, forever
caught falling downwards, froze in the instant before impact. Her
hung-dagger earrings. Her flat nose, sloping forehead, swooped-up
frieze of braids.

Her
, by God.

Oh
yeah,
Morrow thought.
She’s a hex, all right.

The company cried out, almost as one. Rook’s hand tightened on
hers to hear it, in proprietary fashion; he was still smiling, though
she looked like she might well not know how. And outside, the
wind — that endless scraping trumpet, ubiquitous, deranged — went
suddenly silent as an open grave.

“Shut the hell
up
, you buncha wailin’ jennys!” Chess hollered out,
reaching for his guns.

“Boys,” Rook said, at the exact same time. To Chess: “Miss me,
darlin’?”

But Chess’s eyes were stuck on Little Miss Nobody, firm as though
they’d been glued there. “This her? The one you been dreamin’ on?”
No answer. “She a hex?”

Rook’s smile deepened. “Oh, she’s more’n that.” Raising his voice,
“Ain’t that right, Lady Ixchel?”

He pronounced the name so easily —
Eesh
zhel, fluid and guttural
as a snake spitting blood — that for an instant it sounded as if some
other voice entirely had spoken through Rook’s mouth.

Inside his waistcoat pocket, Morrow’s hand clenched white-knuckled on the Manifold as it jerked Rook’s Lady’s way, holding its
needle still and its gears frozen. Its workings bit into his callused
fingertips, vibrating with the fierceness of their signal: ten times, a
hundred times the strength of Rook.

Couldn’t he tell what she
was?
That she was outside any of
them — outside their whole world?

The woman raised her head slowly, as if her black gaze took effort
to lift. “So pleasant to meet you at last, Mister Pargeter,” she said to
Chess, her tone absurdly gentle. “The Reverend thinks of you, oh,
so
often.”

Rook placed a hand on her knee. “Don’t scare him, Lady. Please.”

And at that, she finally smiled, a slow and awful snake’s-jaw
stretch. “I doubt I could,” she returned softly. “Husband.”

The room went dead.

Chess’s shoulders actually shook. “
What’d
you just call him?” he
whispered.

“Never you mind.” Rook stood, clapped his hands. “Boys,
gather ’round — your patience is about to be rewarded. Got a few
announcements.”

He twitched his fingers toward one wall, then the other, and all
the lamps sprang into flame, sending the gloom fleeing. Morrow
had a queasy feeling they would have lit even without wicks, or oil.

“You boys already heard about Songbird, I take it.” the Reverend
said. “Well, since the Pinkertons turned her, seems they’ve been on
quite the tear. Any hex don’t sign up, they either clap them in jail or
throw them to the ’Frisco Madam . . . grist for their mill, and hers.
By reports, must be damn near a hundred of them arrayed ’tween
here and the Border.”

“A
hundred?
” Morrow blurted. “Pinks’d be lucky to pull an even
fifty off of — ”

Too late, he stopped, realizing there was no way he should know
that — not plain Ed Morrow, outlaw. But the rest were too busy
goggling at Rook and each other to notice, while Lady Ixchel barely
seemed aware he had spoken at all.

“Well, be that as it may . . . it’s Songbird I’m more worried over.
Morrow here’s seen her at her work — ain’t you, Ed? Chess, too. She’s
no one to trifle with.”

Hosteen lifted an awkward hand. “But Rev, you — you can
beat
her, right?”

“Fast enough to keep a hundred — sorry, Ed —
fifty
Pinks from
drillin’ the rest of you full of lead, in the meantime? Hex cancels
hex, Kees. You know that.”

“What’re you saying, Rook?” One of the new signups, this one, a
burly mean-eyed fellow named Wade. “You’ve brought a fight on us
you’ll be no good in? Maybe — ”

Chess turned — but Rook had already flipped a hand up, the air
between them whip-cracking. Wade catapulted away, struck the
saloon’s wall hard enough to shatter four-inch planking, then hit
the ground, a render’s discards.

“Sorry, darlin’,” Rook told Chess. To the others: “Anyone else
care to weigh in?” He waited, then nodded. “All right — best go get
snookered. Come mornin’, we’re off for Mexico.”

“And how is it you figure on gettin’ from here to Mexico, exactly,
without Songbird and that army of Pinks findin’ out, and blockin’
our way?” Chess asked.

Rook went to answer, but it was his odd companion who got there
first.

“We will go by the low way, through the Place of Dead Roads,”
she told Chess. “As to the mechanism of entry, meanwhile . . . the
whole earth is a corpse, little warrior — the corpse of my mother,
whose mouth opens into the Land of the Dead. And she is
covered
with mouths.”

“That’s handy, ain’t it?” said Rook.

Chess just blinked. “So . . . in other words . . .”

“That’s right. In
other
words . . . we’re goin’ by way of Hell, itself.”

Hosteen’s eyebrows soared, but he kept whatever disbelief he
might have to himself.

Chess, though — secure in what had always, hitherto, been his
cocoon of privilege — snapped: “Say what?”

“He means the land which was once called Mictlan, or Xibalba,”
Ixchel told him, gently. “Now known as Mictlan-Xibalba, since all
things run together down in the darkness, where even the gods
forget their own names. The Sunken Ball-Court.”

“Hell.”

“Not
your
Hell, little warrior. But . . . yes.”

“I’m not sure I trust you, woman,” Chess said, bluntly, showing
that same disregard for danger which had served him so well — ’til
now. “And seein’ how every other hex the Rev’s met so far has tried
to drain his juice and kill him dead, I sure as
hell
don’t know why
he
does.”

Ixchel tilted her head at Chess, as if examining a bright-carapaced insect. Rook gave an exasperated headshake, and opened
his mouth — then surprised Morrow by closing it again, suddenly
thoughtful. For if Chess was the only one with the nerve to protest,
none of the other men in the room looked particularly happy, either.

“Private Pargeter’s reservations,” he said. “Am I right in guessing
they’re shared at large, fellows?”