A Book Of Tongues (9 page)

Think of it, now,
she had ordered him, the black rainbow
snapping around her like storm-clouds across a nervish, lowering
sky.
When the rope tightened around your neck. That moment
of flowering, when your skull cracked open, the seed inside you
began to bloom. . . .

Her words in his ears, ringing. Followed closely, as dream gave way
to memory, by God Almighty’s:

. . . and they four had one likeness: and their appearance . . . was as
it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. . . .

As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful. And their
rings were full of eyes . . . and when the living creatures were lifted up
from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. . . .

The verses were so familiar through long study — and equally long
hours spent quoting them out loud, to prove one point or another —
that he could no longer recall if he’d screamed them, moaned them,
whispered them, in his hour of ultimate need. Only that they’d been
on his lips when the rope finally snapped taut and the trap beneath
him opened, plummeting him feet-first into night —

The drop wasn’t long enough: inexperience on his killers’ part,
or maybe a sublimated urge to punish him further. So he slammed
up hard against gravity itself, every inch of him instantly bruised,
drowning in air. His heart stuttered, his own body’s weight a
millstone, spirits violently pressing upwards ’til they forced their
way to his head. Where he saw a glaring light which seemed to vomit
from his eyes with a flash so bright, so
deep,
it scarred the entire
universe —

— and then, exactly as sudden, he’d lost all sense of pain. A
glacial calm descended.

Rook looked up, saw planks and dust, the gallows’ underside. A
square of blue sky through the trap. His former brothers on the field
of war looking down, some faces frowning, some blank. Some even,
in a bitter way, amused.

Bastards
, he thought.
You know not the day, nor the hour. . . .

Then over further, to where Chess Pargeter still fought with his
captors, next in line for the noose. Which somehow rubbed Rook
rawer than the sight of his own death approaching — the idea of
Chess pissing himself at the end of some rope, all that energy gone,
without a final chance to redeem itself.

Chess, who was burning up with fever ever since he took that
ball in the shoulder — probably turning gangrenous, not that
that’d matter, in a minute or so. Chess, who snarled, and spat: “You
motherless bitches! The Rev’s worth a hundred of you, you slugs!
He’s worth ten thousand!”

“Goddamn queerboy camp-follower sure got a mouth on him,
dirty as one of Hooker’s gals,” the soldier with Chess’s right arm
pinned back told his partner, who had Chess in a headlock. To which
the other soldier just grinned, and tightened up his grip.

“He didn’t even do it, either!” Chess screamed, twisting and
kicking. “
I
was the one killed the Lieut, you morons! Good Christ, no
wonder we lost the Goddamn war!”

Turned out there really was a bone in the throat, just as Chess
had always claimed. Rook felt it go, and felt all the darkness inside
him snap shut again, percolating, a stoppered steam-kettle. Heard
his thunderous preach-voice shrink and grind, as everything went
red.

And thought — prayed, though he no longer quite knew who to —
Oh, give me strength. Strength enough. Give me . . .

But nothing answered save himself, or maybe the wind. And
then, at last —

— her.

Save him, little king. As you know you can.

Kicking, turning. No voice now to scream.

And the blue sky, shrinking. The clouds, rushing in. Fat grey
drops of rain falling, to slick his fevered face. As she spoke on,
that impossible voice, only underlined by the thin, gnawing whine
issuing from his own throat, endless and terrible and raw.

Saying, gently:
Save him, save them. Punish your enemies,
reward your friends. Do as your God does. Become as your God
is.

Save yourself.

No breath left to speak with, not even to beg. Yet the words flew up
anyhow, spilled from his mouth and swam in front of his eyes like
sparks from cinder, molten-silver hot, and burned whatever they
touched, until the whole world howled out in unison —

Therefore saith the Lord GOD. Behold, I, even I, am against
thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the
sight of the nations.

And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and
whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all
thine abominations.

Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of
thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute
judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I
scatter into all the winds.

The funnel, that moving finger, swept in on a slather of whipped
dust, a froth of stones and swirling brick-bats. To either side, the
sky remained clear — grey-blue with a messy touch of pink to it,
frostbit flesh turned inside-out. But inside the twister was only rain
and darkness, so cold it tore skin wherever it touched. And yet the
wavering path of its eye swept over Rook’s fellow prisoners entirely,
while pivoting to tweeze the rest of Captain Coulson’s company
out of Heaven’s reach. They scatter-shot in all directions, spread so
far that the only sign that the camp had ever been inhabited was a
single torn grey sleeve full of shattered bone and red muck poking
up through the debris, its buttons still a-glint, intact.

Then the rope finally snapped, and Rook dropped to his hands
and knees as the scaffold broke apart around him, watching through
blood-dimmed eyes as the pieces flew up and away, into the whirling
sky. Blood and spirits forced themselves into their former channels,
a flash flood through a needle’s eye, nerves pin-pricking so
intolerably he spent a breathless moment cursing himself, paralyzed
with pain — wishing himself hanged again, a thousand times over,
for the unforgivable crime of cutting himself down too soon.

The twister spent itself in an outward rush and dissipated, slung
clouds and rain across the horizon, leaving only wet dusk behind.

All around, nothing still stood except the things
he’d
allowed to
survive. The rest was laid waste, sure as Gideon left Jezreel. Like
Chorazin and Bethsaida, whose smoke goes up forever.

Which made him . . . one of
them.

Exodus,
22:18. Fit only to be weeded out, burned and buried, their
graves sown with salt. Just like that poor boy with the one goat’s
eye, trembling in fear with his sidelong pupil opening squarish, as
he stared headfirst down into the flames.

Back in Missouri, in Rook’s first parish, “good” people had tied a
sick child to a ladder and cooked him over a flaming stack of hay, for
the grand crime of being born a witch’s get — while Rook had done
nothing but watch and pray, because they were his, and he theirs.
Which was why he’d left under cover of night soon after, fled as far
as the stage-ticket bought with his flock’s money would take him,
then got roaring drunk enough to join up. Fleeing from what he’d
seen, and done, by not arguing other parts of the Good Book, for
fear of suffering similar excision and execution.
Matthew
, 7:3 to 7:5,
for example. 1
Corinthians
13.

Born different, that boy — and through nobody’s fault, not even
his own. Same as Chess, always flaunting his slick little occasion-for-sin self around, with what he refused to pretend not to be
writ large on every inch of him. Or Rook, too, with his doubts and
deficiencies, the Bible leaping in his breast-pocket every time he
heard something he felt he couldn’t speak out against for himself,
without using Jesus’, Moses’ or Ezekiel’s words as back-up. Rook,
washed white as snow with God’s word, then damned black as night
with the discovery of his own power.

“Whah . . . happen . . . ?” Rook rasped at last, shaking his head
to flick wet hair from his eyes, down on his hands and knees in the
wet black muck. Then looked up to meet Hosteen’s horrified eyes —
for between them lay Chess, his crumpled face pallid, wounded arm
crooked behind him in a very unnatural fashion.

You could save him,
that voice in Rook’s head suggested.

At almost the same time, like he’d somehow heard her, Hosteen
grabbed Chess up and dropped him almost in Rook’s lap, intent
plain, if impossible:
Here,
you
fix this!
Rook looked down, one palm
cupping each side of Chess’s slack skull — and God damn, but his
hands were either far bigger than he’d ever thought, or Chess’s face
was far smaller. Or maybe it was just that he’d so rarely seen Chess
Pargeter this still or silent, before.

I don’t know what comes next,
he thought — and knew he
must
be
lying, because . . . well, shit, take a look around.

Rook shut his own eyes, squinched them hard and cleared his
mind, swiping an elbow ’cross a spectral blackboard. Then leaned
down, kissed Chess for the first time, on his own hook — deep and
probing and tender — and whispered a Bible verse into his mouth, as
he did it: “
Psalms
, 51-7 to 51-10.
Purge me with hyssop and I shall
be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me
hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice
. . . .
”

The rain fell, a booming drum. Rook sat surrounded by his own
words, glittering letters turning in the air, a slow cascade of evil stars.

While the colour came seeping back into Chess’s face by degrees,
Rook moved his broken shoulder back into place, as gently as he
could, and felt the bone pop together once more, whole as though
never split. Felt the sinews blossom beneath his fingers.

Eventually, Chess opened his eyes anew, pupils tiny, as though
contracted against a bright, wild light. He grinned back up at Rook,
happily, teeth sharp as some snapping dog’s in the storm’s half-darkness.

“It
was
you,” he said. “I knew it. Oh, I
knew
it. Goddamn! You
killed them all, them sons of bitches, didn’t you? But
good
.”

A sliver of ice pierced Rook’s chest, then, encircling his heart
so quick he wondered whether it would ever melt away again. Or
whether he ever wanted it to.

“Yes,” he agreed, unable to deny it. “Yes. I did.”

Nine months before the twister. That was when Rook had first heard
the Lieutenant say —

“And this’d be Private Pargeter.”

A grey day, that first camp even greyer, all their uniforms dirt-stiffened and indistinguishable. But Chess still stood out, hair and
beard bright as a brand. He’d been butchering livestock yanked as
tribute from a local farm, and his hands were bloody to the wrists.

Looked up mildly from cleaning his knife, to answer —
“Lieutenant. Reverend.”

“Pargeter’s our very best man for close work, ’specially during
nighttime incursions,” the Lieutenant told Rook, an odd note in his
voice blurring what seemed like praise with something else. “He rode
after us when we passed through California, rarin’ to volunteer. Fair
scout, excellent killer.”

Eyes like sweet poison, too
,
Rook thought, and blushed.

Chess caught him at it, and grinned. “You’re thinkin’ how I’m
small-made, to merit that kind of reputation,” he said.

“Oh, no, I . . . hadn’t thought about it, really,” Rook replied,
reddening further. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Accuracy hardly counts as insult,” the Lieut said.

Chess nodded. “Oh, I ain’t insulted. But then again, that’s the
glory of the army, ain’t it? For folks like me.”

“Meaning?”

Those green eyes narrowed, as one hand sought out his most
convenient gun-butt, caressing it the way most men might a pretty
girl’s dropped handkerchief. “
Meaning
,
Lincoln may aim to free the
slaves, Rev, but it was Colonel Colt really made all men equal — my
size, your size. And everything else, to boot.”

That night, Rook gave a homily from
Jeremiah
, 7-26 to 7-34,
as martial a passage as any he could think of. The Lieut sat there
nodding, his transplanted Bushwhacker hair groomed like Custer’s,
while the other men mainly got about their business, not ignoring
Rook, exactly, but not exactly cheering him on, either.

All but Chess, that was, who watched him with a quirked gold
brow and an odd little smile playing about his mouth — those deft
hands of his cleaning and reassembling his guns by rote, without
any need of close attention, while his gaze travelled the length and
breadth of Rook’s long body . . . complimentary and predatory, at
once.

The next two weeks brought three separate engagements, fast
and hard as anything Megiddo’s plains might eventually deal out.
Almost every day, the Lieut received fresh intelligence by bird,
inevitably coded — and since only he had the cipher, they were forced
to take his word for each subsequent target. Their primary duty, he
often told them, was self-sacrifice. To rush any given breach, paving
the way for more potentially damage-inflicting crews like Captain
Coulson’s, who moved far more slowly, on account of the cannon
they still dragged along behind them.

The cost was dear, both in men and morale. Rook buried three in
shallow graves that fourteen-day span alone, and one sewn in a sack,
far too crushed for any sort of memorializing. The Lieut told Rook
to cheer them up, or at least on, and he did what little he could —
thumbed the Bible for inspiration, looking out on a narrowing clutch
of faces whose eyes slid from his, increasingly emptied of anything
but fear and doubt.

And there in the background, Chess, always whistling at his
work, untouched by any of the above. Chess, for whom war seemed
a form of recreation — something he revelled in excelling at, with no
hint of regret that such victory always came at someone else’s loss.