A Book Of Tongues (7 page)

“Is that what landed Chess in the stockade?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But we was deep in Injun country
at the time, so they let it go, ’cause it gave ’em an explanation — plus,
the Lieut still had Bluebellies left needed killin’, and Chess was the
best we had at that particular game.” Hosteen paused. “Then Rook
joined up.”

“And?”

“Oh, Chess wanted
him
right from the start, but the Rev wouldn’t
have none of it, ’cause he said what he really wanted was to save
Chess’s soul instead. So he used to spend a good part of each night
preachin’, while Chess just sat there noddin’ and cleanin’ his guns —
bidin’ his time. What surprised me was exactly how long Chess went
along with it all, considerin’.”

“The Rev seems to have given up on that idea somewhat, since,”
Morrow said.

To which Hosteen just laughed, and nodded. “I reckon how gettin’
hung will probably do that to a fellow,” he said. “’Specially when it’s
for somethin’ you didn’t even do.”

Which probably bore looking into at some point, but not by
Morrow, and especially not tonight. Because tonight would be
when Ed Morrow finally either got that damn Manifold reading
for Professor Asbury, or took off, either way. After the mess at
Songbird’s, he’d had just about enough spooky shit to last him the
rest of this life, or any other.

God knew, it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, before this. Those few
times he had found himself observed at this practice (never by Rook
or Chess, thank Christ, so far as he could ascertain), he’d claimed
the Manifold was simply a tricksy sort of pocket-watch he’d picked
up along the way.
Got it off a dead Pink,
he’d told Hosteen, and felt
his heart drop over the way that otherwise so-congenial old man
grinned wide at the very idea. Fact was, if any of Rook’s bunch were
to find out where his true allegiances were, they’d shoot him first in
the back, then in the skull once he was down, like a broke-leg horse.

But every attempt had ended the exact same way, in confusion
and doubt. Oh, the needles spun all right, into — and immediately
back out of — the coveted red zone. What they
didn’t
do was stay there
long enough to register either way, let alone produce any numbers
for Asbury’s equation . . . as though something was interfering with
the magical heat Rook threw off, or the man’s precious “
ch’i
” was
being blocked by something at least as powerful as
it
was.

Still, Morrow didn’t know enough about the Manifold to guess
at what that might be; if the thing was broke, he not only couldn’t
fix it, but he wouldn’t even be able to tell. Which made this the best
possible time for one more try, since at least he knew Chess and the
Rev were both as distracted as they’d ever be.

Straining to move quietly as possible, Morrow levered himself
up off the bed, feeling his ginger way across the floor, ears peeled
for creaks. His shotgun he left leaned up against the door-frame;
if anyone did happen to spot him in the already-chancy-sounding
act of “looking for a pot to piss in,” he surely didn’t want to have
to explain why he was doing it
armed
. As he shut the door carefully
behind him, he could feel how the Manifold’s indigestible lump,
hidden deep in his waistcoat pocket, seemed to
wake up
at the mere
possibility of getting back near Rook, clicking fast against his ribs
like an extra, malfunctioning, heart.

He mounted the stairs, hoping the romantic din Chess and his
boss were making would cover any mistake on his part. ’Cause they
were deep in congress yet, for maybe the third time in a row, a faint
blur of motion glimpsed reflected in the cheval-glass which hung
overtop the bed they currently shared. And the closer Morrow
drew, the harder he found to tear his gaze from that very same rude
spectacle.

His first thought was,
So, Chess
is
red all over.
Second:
Do people
really
do
that?
But there they were, right in front of him, so the first
conclusion he’d have to venture was yes, “people” did — and when
they did, they enjoyed it. Quite a whole damn lot.

Rook was half-sat up with Chess balanced in his lap, jouncing him
up and down, their mutual effort almost bruising in its enthusiasm.
Chess kept pace admirably, sweat-shiny, hands busy in his own lap
the whole way. And when it seemed Rook finally couldn’t take the
strain anymore, he tumbled them both over and twisted around so
he came out on top, which appeared to suit Chess even better.

“Oh
yes
,” Chess half-snarled, half-squealed. “Pin me down, by
God — go on, work your damn way with me — ”

“My Christ, but you’re an undomesticated son-of-a-bitch,” Rook
huffed.

“Sorry.”

“No, you ain’t.”

“True ’nough. But I’d sure try to be, if I thought that’s what you —
uh! —
wanted
. . . .”

“Shut up, Chess,” the Rev just growled — came in hard and fast,
possibly hitting that unnamed
thing
a few times in quick succession,
’til Chess clutched and arched beneath him. The results sprayed
up between them, splashing sheets and skin; Rook groaned, firing
deep. Chess sprawled back, panting and glistening like he’d been
shot through the heart.

Saying, a mere breathless moment later: “Let’s do it again.”

“Let’s not, for now,” Reverend Rook replied, “seein’ how it ain’t
yet light out, and I’m thirty-eight years old.” He closed his eyes on
Chess’s disappointment, stretching. “Go get yourself cleaned up,
give me a minute or two to collect my faculties. After that, I’ll fuck
you ’til you can’t ride, if you’re still so all-fired up for it.”

“That wouldn’t be too smart.”

“You make me a lot of things, Chess. I’ve never noticed smart to
be one of ’em.”

Me either,
Morrow thought, as he watched Chess sigh, rise and
pad away — the splash of a wash-basin, light flap of soaked cloth.
Then saw the Rev jump a bit to feel that same cloth applied deep
between his own thighs, with surprising skill and delicacy — gentle,
almost reverent.

“That good?”

“Yeah, darlin’. That’s damn good.”

The intimacy of it all made Morrow blush, in turn, at the unlikely
thought of ever taking his own turn under those pretty killer’s
hands. To distract himself, he eked a little further toward the door,
sidelong, as Chess climbed back in to fit himself up against Rook’s
side.

“Yeah, well . . . you ever want to receive that sort of service
again, Reverend, then you better get it through your head how
San Francisco ain’t
no
fit locale to do business, in future. Christ
on a cross, I’ll burn that damn place down myself, if I have to. An
earthquake needs to swallow that shit-pit whole.”

Rook laughed. “Poor angry little boy,” he mocked, in fair
approximation of Songbird’s voice. “Aw, don’t sulk, Chess — it don’t
become you. Let’s talk ’bout something else.”

“Like?”

The Rev’s rumble dipped. “Hear your Ma’s in ‘hospital’; means
she’s on her way out, from what I gather. That a prospect bothers
you much?”

Chess drew a long breath, and seemed to give the idea some fair
amount of thought, before answering: “I don’t rightly know. Best
she go quick and quiet, I guess, considering.”

“I could make sure of it. If you wanted me to.”

That same cat-sneeze laugh. “’Course you could. Hell, I know
that
. . . .”

The Rev propped himself up on one arm, staring down at
him — cupped Chess’s face in one huge hand, and said, with perfect
seriousness: “But do you
want
me to, Chess? End her now, easy and
pleasant, or let her go rough and slow, for all she done to you — all
she
let
be done, ’fore you finally broke yourself free of that place?
You just have to say the word, is all. Just say . . .”

You ain’t no God, Ash Rook,
Morrow thought, abruptly gone weirdly
cold around the pounding heart,
not vengeful
or
benign . . . no matter
how Chess Pargeter might set you up as a false idol, and do you worship
on bended knee. ’Cause often as you might read that Bible of yours, it ain’t
exactly like you wrote the damn thing, is it?

Morrow watched Chess stare back up at Rook, his green eyes
gone somehow wistful. Saw the pistoleer’s gold-shaded brows knit
a moment, snarled in what almost seemed like genuine distress —
then smooth out once more, signifying he’d come to a conclusion.

“Okay,” was all he said.

Which was more than enough for Rook to work his magic with,
or so his cold but gentle smile appeared to indicate. That, and the
Bible on his nightstand.

“So be it,” he told Chess, like it’d been Chess’s idea, all along. And
flipped the book’s black-bound cover open.

Back in the lime-walled depths of Selina Ah Toy’s, that pit of
whoresome darkness, English Oona Pargeter stirred in fitful, over-drugged sleep — turned in on herself, shivering, and assumed the
same position her son once had while he still floated inside her
womb. Listening as Asher Rook’s voice seeped through one wall
and out the next, near fifty miles away, the close-packed silver
Scripture typeface spiralling quick and deep as smoke inside her,
some unanswered prayer made flesh.

Genesis, 15:16 to 15:18 —

But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again:
for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it
was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that
passed between those pieces . . .

Above her, the gals sharing her hospital rack began to twist and
moan, sniffing the air like dogs who dreamt of meat. Because that
familiarly enticing smell rising up toward them was nothing less
than opium boiling off, issuing from Oona’s pores as she cooked
from the inside; eyes gone soft and gleeful under their heavy lids,
glazing over, unaware even in death how much they resembled
Chess’s own.

Oh God,
Morrow thought, that primal fear suddenly set back down
bone-deep in every part of him.
How can I know this?
Any
of this?

The Manifold burned and chattered against his sweaty palm
while he leaned against the wall, bracing himself against the wave
of nausea that swarmed from fever-froze head on down, roiling
stomach on up. As though the Manifold had seized onto Rook’s spell
and conducted it
into
Morrow as a counter-natural lightning-charge,
imprinting it onto him the way a daguerreotype’s acid-etching made
a plate. This ill beat in his blood, telegraph messages hammering
silently, from one world to the next . . .

“So,” Chess said, finally. “That’d be it, then.”

“It would.”

Chess nodded, and kept his eyes firmly locked ceiling-wards — not on anything in particular about it, so much, as just trained in
that general direction, but it obviously helped him talk. “She’d’ve
killed
me
if she could, a hundred times over; tried hard enough, ’fore
I even came out of her. That was back when she still thought she
could be some big man’s kept girl, ’stead of a penny whore. But there
I was anyhow at the end of it, redheaded and screaming, like Judas
himself.”

“Uh huh,” Rook said, stroking lightly down Chess’s red-and gold-sheened belly, like he was gentling a horse.

“Kept me on her tit ’til I was three, ’cause she heard it’d keep her
from gettin’ knocked up again. Had me goin’ through tricks’ clothes
by the time I was four. Oh, she’d pet me some when she was drunk
enough, or gay enough on smoke, but otherwise — I wasn’t even
there. ’Til the day she figured out what I was, and what that could
maybe get her, she let only the right sort of people know.”

“Well, she’s dead now, if that helps,” the Rev said, still stroking.

But Chess reared back up, gaze abruptly furious as ever once
more, and fixed Rook with it, so sharply Morrow could almost feel
the big man’s surprise. “Just don’t
you
never leave me behind,” he
told him. “’Cause if you do . . . I won’t be held responsible, for what
comes after.”

A weirdly ineffectual threat, one might think. Yet even from
where he stood, Morrow could see the effect it had on the Rev.

“How could you even say such a thing? Look what-all I just done
for you, Chess Pargeter.” He hugged Chess to him in a way designed
to make anyone’s head swim, and growled, into his open mouth, “I’ll
damn my own soul for you, gladly, and that’s a fact. Now — what’ll
you
do for
me
?”

“Anything. Like you already know, you king-size bastard. . . .”

“Oh, yes. I surely do.”

Now’s another good time,
Morrow thought, and hauled the Manifold
out into the light — to find it still spinning with a horrid rattlesnake
chatter, teeth shook in a box. To find
himself
simultaneously caught
up and shook alongside: transfixed, unable even to cry out in agony.
As though one long javelin made from glass barbs and Jericho thorns
had entered through his mouth and bisected his tongue, plunging
straight through his trunk and out between his shaking feet to pin
him to the floor where he stood.

Don’t anybody ever think to creep up on ’em when they’re . . . engaged?
he heard his own voice ask Hosteen.

Saw the old man shake his head, cheerfully:
One fool did, sure —
planned on turnin’ ’em in to the Pinks, and gettin’ hold of that reward they
was offering. But he run ’cross some mojo the Rev laid down all around the
room him and Chess were stayin’ in, instead, and it stuck that fucker right
to the spot. We found him still there come mornin’, after a whole damn
night of hurtin’ too bad to scream. Probably didn’t even feel it, when Chess
blew his brains out.

That’ll be me,
Morrow thought, helpless.
Oh Jesus, what an idiot. I
am
so damn screwed.