A Book Of Tongues (11 page)

Chess sighed. “Desertion it is, then.” Continuing, as Rook’s heart
rose in his throat: “Listen — I’ve done most’ve these boys a service
here and there, as you know, but they won’t listen to
me
, ’specially
not shit-scared of the Lieut the way they are. Not like they would to
you
.”

“You want me to — incite a mutiny.”

“I
want
you to tell them it’s all right to leave while they still can,
given the circumstances. You got that Book on your side; tell them
God told you special. For all we’re privy, the damn War’s been over
a sight longer than it took that bird to reach camp, and throwin’
yourself in the cannon’s mouth after Lee’s already kissed Grant’s ass
ain’t honourable, just stupid.”

“So?” Rook shot back. “Best go on, then, if you’re goin’ — which
I’m sure you aim to, considerin’ that’s how you feel. Go on, and good
riddance.”

Yet here he saw Chess was biting his lip, a flush beginning to pink
his
face, for once.

“You really
do
care,” Rook realized, aloud. “Chess Pargeter
actually
cares
what might happen to somebody, other than him — on
occasion, anyhow.”

“You need to maybe just shut up with that Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By charity-school crap, Rev,” Chess said, between his teeth. “I
really do mean it. ’Fore — ”

“’Fore
what
, little man?”

Chess looked up at him. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Goddamnit,
Asher Rook,” he said, low — then hove in and kissed him, same’s he’d
kissed Hosteen.

Except this time it was Rook’s mouth that pink tongue was hard
at work in, all rough and hot and silky. Rook’s lap taking Chess’s full
weight, the delectable print of Chess’s ass cupping him through two
pairs of pants at once, rendering him instantaneously hard. Before
he quite knew what had happened, Rook had both hands dug deep in
Chess’s fiery curls, just letting Chess keep on kissing him with never
a word of protest, ’til they were both left gasping.

“Oh my,” Chess said at length, emerging, that devilish smile of
his already back full force. “Oh
my
, Reverend. Sure you don’t need
some of my more — specialized — help? ’Cause from where
I
sit — ”
(and here he ground his hips just a bit for emphasis, half trick-rider,
half gaiety-hall girl) “ — it pretty much feels like you could pound
nails with that thing.”

“Never said I didn’t
want
none of your stock in trade, you
contentious tease,” Rook replied, hoarsely. “Just how I at least know
that wanting it — let alone doin’ anything to
get
it — is
wrong
.”

Chess smirked.

“Wrong, huh? Well, let’s try it one more time, to be sure — maybe
I ain’t brung out
all
my best tricks, just as yet.”

Now it was Rook’s turn to grind his teeth, ’til they fairly squeaked.

“I can’t,” was all he said.

Unconvinced, Chess went to kiss him again, but Rook grabbed
him by both his wrists and bent them behind his back — not in a
nasty way, not calculated to hurt, just to immobilize. Still, Chess
must’ve felt the emotion that drove it, ’cause he slumped forward,
suddenly boneless, to lay his passion-flushed brow against the
hollow of Rook’s equally feverish throat.

“Maybe not,” he replied, quietly, right into Rook’s clavicle-skin,
like he was trying to reach the Rev’s heart by sheer osmosis. “But
you do know there’s nothin’ good gonna come of lettin’ the Lieut
have his way, and that’s a damn fact. You
know
it, Ash.”

“No. I don’t.” Adding, as he shifted to deposit Chess safely back
on the ground, with far more gentleness than many might have
thought the situation merited: “And I never yet said you could use
my
Christian name, either. Did I?”

Chess turned his head away, and replied: “You did not.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Chess Pargeter.”

Another snort. “Bad, too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

To which Rook simply shut his eyes and commenced to pray, not
quitting ’til he finally heard Chess move away. Then opened them
again, only to find himself once more alone.

The Lieut came out of the bushes, tucking himself away, just as
Hosteen was pouring Rook a tin mug of coffee. He had a wilder
look than usual in his eyes, and Rook perceived that both his pupils
seemed blown, as pin-prick as any concussion case’s. Hell, he even
had his hat on backwards.

“All right, boys!” he announced. “Due time for a last hurrah, don’t
you think?”

“Sir?” Rook asked.

“I have received fresh intelligence, Reverend, and sent for
reinforcements accordingly. We, along with Captain Coulson’s
troop, are to immediately assault the local township of Farnham
Ridge. We must then burn it to the ground and kill all within, so
that the pernicious seeds of kiting Abolitionism shall flourish no
more unchecked. Hallelujah!”

Hosteen spoke up: “But — that’s over the border, ain’t it?”

“What matter, if it is?”

“Well . . . sir . . . that’s what direction the bird come from,
yesterday. So . . . I’m thinkin’ it’s probably all already been took by
Union forces, and . . .”

A bit further back, Rook could spot more soldiers nodding. He
didn’t glimpse Chess amongst them, for which he was thankful.

Cut and run
,
he thought.
Practical as the very Fiend himself, is our
little Mister Pargeter. Well, good. I should’ve too, and that’s the truth. We
all
should.

Too late now, though. As demonstrated.

“Plus, how’d you get new word so fast, anyhow,” someone else
called out, “considerin’ you
killed
that damn pigeon? Let alone call
in Coulson, on top — ”

The Lieut drew and shot him while he was still speaking,
cleaving his jaw like a split log — then waved the gun’s barrel slightly
to dispel the smoke, and told the rest of the company, “I will brook
no opposition, gentlemen. We are come at last to the moment of
Apocalypse, where each must make his choice. Stand together, or
fall forever. Are you rabble? What say you?”

Rook caught Hosteen’s eyes, widening further than their orbits
seemed made for, and shook his head just slightly, wondering:
Will
Bible-quoting even
work
here, or is the Lieut far too gone for even God’s
word to resonate? Think fast, damnit: false revelation, uh — dreams sent
by Satan, not by the Almighty — Daniel versus the Babylonians, Joseph
in Egypt?

Before Rook could choose, however, one more shot rang out,
cracking the Lieut’s head apart like a blood-orange set up for target
practice. He gave a little spasmic shiver, then fell without complaint.

Behind him stood Chess, who’d simply walked up in the Lieut’s
blind spot as he blathered on, clapped gun to skull, and pulled the
trigger. He gave the corpse a single sharp kick and reholstered,
asking it: “That do, for an answer?
Sir
.”

Rook felt something on his face, and found on closer inspection
that it was the Lieut’s blood, already a little tacky to the touch. By
mere trick of proximity, more had sprayed on him than had ever
touched Chess, who looked immaculate by comparison.

“I do wish you hadn’t done that,” Rook said.

Chess shrugged. “Somebody had to.”

Then Hosteen stepped in, suggesting: “Better get goin’. We
wanna be elsewheres when they find this fool’s body. Which way,
Reverend?”

Chess looked to Rook, lifting a brow. Rook swallowed hard, and
pointed. “That-a-way, I guess,” he said, at random.

Which did seem a good enough route, to be sure — in those few
minutes before they met Captain Coulson’s boys coming back over
the very same ridge, to rendezvous with the Lieut before that fabled
final charge.

“Who did this?” Coulson demanded, staring right at Chess, who
bared his teeth, shifting both hands to his gun-butts. But there were
twenty of them, all armed, to maybe twelve of the Lieut’s ragged
Irregulars, too ground down by fatigue and shock to offer much
response beyond a general gasp. And Rook knew what he had to do.

“I did,” he said, at last, stepping forward.

Even long after the twister’d moved on, Rook could remember with
exquisite urgency how it’d felt when Chess first knelt down in front
of him in its wake and brought him to absolute ruin. How he’d
fetched himself so hard he’d seen genuine stars flare like Pit-bound
souls in the redness behind his eyes, then hauled Chess up by both
shoulders and told him, hoarsely, “I don’t want you doin’ that with
anyone else again, not ever. Hear me, Private?”

“Or what?”

“Or — I’ll find them. And I’ll kill them.”

Chess just grinned, like this threat was the best compliment anybody’d ever given him.

“Suits me,” he said, and let Rook lift him further — kissed him
with the taste of Rook’s own seed sour on his breath, wound his legs
around Rook’s waist, and gave him his sin again.

The decision to become outlaws proved a surprisingly practical one,
in the end. By limiting Chess’s choice of partners, Rook found, he’d
unwittingly created a situation of scarcity which began to wear on
the gang’s remaining members, as the camp and its horrors fell
steadily behind.

“Find them whores,” was Chess’s sage advice — but whores meant
money, of which they currently had none.

They’d already crossed into Arizona almost by instinct, making
for the empty places, and spent a length of time wandering amongst
the stones there, like Legion. Occasionally, they saw what they took
for Apaches off in the distance, and Rook wondered if any of these
could be numbered amongst those myriad spectral intelligences he
now felt crowding in on him whenever he closed his eyes — as he had
almost since that first morning he woke up sprawled next to Chess,
sore with love-wounds, his head already a-ring with other people’s
voices.

Chess stirred and murmured, sleepily. Rook hugged him a bit
closer, and knew himself reborn, in far more ways than the not-so-simple fact of having merely fucked another man could ever explain.

“Hey,” he asked Chess, poking him lightly. “You think they heard
us?”

“What, Hosteen and the rest?” Chess replied, muffled, into the
broad expanse of Rook’s chest. “I think dogs for a mile ’round could
probably
hear
us, if I was doin’ my job right. Why — prospect of bein’
known as queer make you antsy, Reverend?”

“Not . . . as such, surprisingly.”

“Well, ain’t you sweet.” With a smirk, Chess sat up, right into a
particularly luxuriant stretch — stark naked, and not seeming to
give much of a damn who might be watching. Rook saw scars on
him, both old and fresh, which hadn’t been quite so obvious in the
hours before: a pink curlicue tracing one rib, the pale flowery knot
of a plugged bullet hole punctuating one shoulder blade.

Chess turned back to catch Rook gaping at the fierce white slash
that hooked from right-hand sideburn to just under his jaw —
suddenly visible, even beneath the red — and said, airily: “Yeah,
that’s where my Ma stuck me with her yen hock, same night I told
her I was signin’ up. Stung like a bitch, the whole time I was growin’
out my beard to cover it.”

“My God!”

Chess shrugged. “Suited me fine; I’m prettier shaved, which gave
her the grand idea she might rig me up as some she-he, sell me that-a-way to fools who crave somethin’ extra up under the skirts. But
I ain’t fit to be no girl, much less a poor jest of one — while I may
not be the sorta man most think they are, I’m a
man
, just the same.
Made to ride and fight, take what I want or swing tryin’, not die on
my back or live on my knees. Knew
that
the minute I first touched
a gun.”

“Colonel Colt, et cetera.”

“Exactly so.” He cast Rook a sidelong glance. “Think you’d like me
better if I
was
a gal, Ash Rook?”

The Rev looked him up and down, and answered, without a hint
of equivocation, “I don’t really see how I
could
, Chess Pargeter. Seein’
how you already move me absolute best of any damn thing I’ve come
across, thus far.”

He got to his own feet then, towering over Chess, and smiled
at the way his shadow seemed to knit them both together, long
before he gathered him fiercely back in. They collided, mouths open,
tongues working sweetly.

When he pulled away, at last, he was equally pleased to see how
Chess’s pale eyes seemed all but dazed with arousal. And then
something entirely brand new came into his look, an angry sort of
hope.

“I . . . wasn’t raised to — care — for no one,” Chess told him. “But if
I did grow fond of any man, outside the usual transactions, well . . .
you might be that one, Rev.”

Rook nodded, carefully.

“I think I’d like that,” he replied.

“You’re damn right, you would,” Chess agreed. And gripped Rook
by both biceps at once, his fingers leaving bruises, kissing him so
hard spit mingled with blood.

They raised the subject of outlawry that night, ’round the campfire,
and watched it pass unanimously. “Always did think I’d probably
end up robbin’ folks, once the War was done,” was old Hosteen’s only
comment.

“It’s dangerous work, is what I hear,” Rook pointed out.

“Sure,” Chess said, “same as anything else. But we’ll be right
enough, I expect.”

“How’s that?”

That crooked, dazzling smile. “’Cause we got
you
.”

True,
Rook thought, as far as that went. The only problem being
he didn’t actually know, himself, just how far that was . . . not with
any true degree of accuracy. Particularly not under pressure.

Magic had its price, was what Rook had always heard, and that
price was mighty hard. On the one hand, whatever he preached did
come true, indisputably — and since everything he preached came
straight from the Book itself, the direct and truthful word of God,
he believed he might be forgiven for having assumed it would be
good
work he did with it overall, rather than the reverse. Yet everything
he preached went bad, in the end — swiftly, and often inventively.