A Book Of Tongues (19 page)

That’s quite the little philosophical dilemma you got yourself entangled
in,
Rook thought. His ears burned, and his forehead was clammy —
was that his own tongue leeching iron between clenched teeth, or
a knife? How could he have possibly cut himself so deeply he could
feel it in every pore, without having said a single word?

Why the hell’re you even tryin’ to sell me this cart-load of Indian
horse-crap?
he wondered, shame and hate struggling venomously
inside him, two snakes in the same bag.
Just go on and kill me, same’s
I would you, if I thought I was capable of it. ’Cause I could face
that
a sight
better than I can the prospect of being damn well
talked
to death.

“Because I do not
want
to kill you,” Grandma said, to herself, her
voice full of a dull sorrow. “If only I could be sure you were fully
a monster! If I killed you, it
would
upset her plans, I know that
much — I do not think she could get another man to serve her quite
as willingly, as quickly. And so long as you practise only for your
own pleasure — or your lover’s — you both come closer and closer to
being something anyone can kill without guilt, without even having
to cleanse themselves of the deed, afterward.”

Chess’s voice, now, answering for him — distinct as the Lady’s,
though licking hot against his opposite eardrum —
Yeah? All right,
then. Bring it on, bitch. Let them damn well
try
.

“Yes. And this, too, is a monster’s answer.”

As though resolved, Grandma got to her feet, flicking back her
braids. Rook found himself jouncing upwards as well, knees popping
painfully.

“Has your Lady told you the full extent of her plans?” she
demanded. “I doubt it. Even an uneducated
bilagaana Hataalii
would
not consent, if so. Remember what I showed you — there are things
which must not be done, because their cost is too dear. To bring the
dead back to life tears a hole in the world’s fabric. It is a great crime,
a sin against Balance. What your Lady wants is to remake the world,
to poison everything. It will destroy her, and everyone else.” She
glared at him, suddenly furious. “Yet
you
think nothing of helping
her, if it gets you what you want.”

Rook took her contempt, which stung, but at least gave him
enough strength to speak again. “Yeah? Well — screw you, you crazy
squaw! All I ever
wanted
was her out of my head, away from me, from
Chess . . . and I thought you were gonna help me with that, by the
by!”

Rolling her eyes, at the very idea: “Oh yes, of course — because
it makes such
sense
that another
Hataalii
would offer to solve your
problems, free of charge. Or that I would ever wish to help any white
man, let alone
two
.”

Put like that, it
did
seem foolish — and though he overshot her
by a foot at least, when she thrust her face alongside his, it was
he
who felt dwarfed. That marrow-deep
suck
turned on full, guttering
him ‘til he watched himself fade away by shades, like windowpane
breath.

You can still stop this, husband
, the silver-bell voice reminded
him.
If . . . you want to.

“So . . . this
was
a trap, right from the start. Right from that first
time you spoke to me.”

Grandma nodded, a touch sadly. “Always, yes.”

“Was always my
power
you wanted, the whole time, like any other
hex — ”

“
Your
power? Tchah! You have nothing
I
need. But when I saw in
my dreams that if you were not stopped everything would die, how
could I refuse that call? This being the only time at which I
could
stop you from Becoming — ”

“Becoming what?”

And here . . . he heard what she was thinking, two equally strange
ideas laid overtop each other, contradictorily at odds. Grandma’s
double voice with Miss Rainbow whispering underneath, translating
the unspoken:

A god’s lover,

Husband to

two gods at once,

And your own lover’s

Killer.

Fear spiked down through Rook at those last four words, a shooting metallic pain. He looked down at the ashy remains of the
conjured cob, and it was almost a relief to realize how sick he still
felt at the thought of Chess hurt, dying. Let alone —

“So.” Grandma reached up, prodding his cheek, and brought it
away wet. “If you do still care, this much . . . then there may yet be
a way to save you both. A way to live in Balance, without one of you
devouring the other — if you are willing to pay the price.”

“What . . . price?”

“There is a binding,” Grandma said, “that makes a circle of two
willing
Hataalii
. It sets their power to feed each upon each other,
a combat which becomes partnership, perfect Balance. Each takes
power from the other, and is instantly restored by the power they
have taken. They may then live together, so long as chance permits.”

Rook blinked. “Doesn’t sound so — ”

“
Listen
, fool: they
may
live, I said. But not as
Hataalii
.”

It took a long time for Rook to find the words. But even when he
said them, they sounded meaningless — ridiculous.

“You mean give up the hexation. Both of us.”

Grandmother didn’t move, even to nod — so Rook leaned forward
instead, barely aware that some range of motion was beginning to
return. “But . . . not permanently, right? You
can
break it, when you
need to. . . .”

I could live with that
, his mind gibbered to itself; Chess need never
know what he didn’t already suspect. Keep the law’s eyes off each
other, mask themselves to stay safe then unsheathe the power only
when absolutely necessary, a lock-boxed magic shotgun.

And now Grandmother
did
shake her head, of course. Dashing
all his hopes with one simple word: “No. It can be broken, yes.
Once broken . . . never remade. Because the power, once bound and
balanced, cannot be divided again. It must go with one or the other.
And the one left empty . . .”

. . . dies. Anyhow.

“Did you really think there would be no price?” Grandmother
asked, after long silence — more honestly curious than contemptuous,
for once. “Even foolish as you are, have you really learned so little?”

No,
thought Rook, numbly.
Knew there’d be one, ’cause there always
is. Just — not
this
.

Take away the magic, and Reverend Rook was just a fallen
preacher turned outlaw, gone in one fell swoop from demigod to
dirty joke. Everything Rook had been, he had thrown away for
hexation’s sake. If he gave
that
up, what was left?

But then again . . .
Chess
would be losing more than he knew, too:
his miraculous marksmanship, lizard-swift recovery from wounds
and such. Hell, even the slow-burning brightness that turned men’s
heads might drain away, leaving nothing behind but a too-pretty
little man with a too-bad attitude, no longer fit for his formerly
natural-born twin occupations of shooting and screwing. Could he
ever forgive Rook, if he learned the Reverend had bargained away
what made
him
special? Even if it saved his life?

If neither of us were hexes, could we even
stand
each other?

Grandma still held him down, a hundred ghost-hands ’round his
throat, unwilling to give him even the slightest chance to refuse.
Like she didn’t trust him far as she could throw him — by magical
means, or otherwise — to not want both his cake and eat it too.

Knew him pretty well, all told, considerin’ how recently they’d
met.

“. . . no,” he managed, at last, then coughed hard and spit, half-expecting to see a chunk of lung in the sputum. “I think — not.”

Grandmother’s brow, already hard-rucked, threw up fresh lines.
“What?”

He could see it in her eyes, again — that brief flash of weary
sympathy.
Oh, grandson, do not make me
make
you do right —

Don’t worry, lady. You won’t get the opportunity.

“I accept,” he said, out loud. And — not to
Grandma
.

Then saw her draw breath to protest, just barely — begin to,
anyhow. But the answer was already returned before the old woman
could even complete the action, through channels so obscure he had
to strain to even perceive them fully: a tintinnation, borne by dust
and blood.

That silver no-voice, so sweet and dry and dreadful:
husband,
husband, yes

(you will not regret this)

No?
Rook thought. Then:
Probably not, no. Knowin’ me.

And — back to Grandmother, still caught in that half-tick of
timelessness, her brown face turning purple. Rook felt her influence
fall away, probably only accelerating as her head grew lighter, her
eyes stung and swum. It occurred to him that putting her out of her
misery sooner rather than later would be a truly Christian mercy.

And the glow starting to leak from every pore, laid overtop her
lines like a badly exposed plate, emulsion popped and bleeding black
light . . . all
that
wouldn’t have the slightest bit to do with him feeling
oh-so-forgiving, would it? The magnetic pull of one hex for another,
increased thousandfold by proximity to death.

A departure-born mutual arrival, rape and sex combined, with
only one still left standing to savour the doubled load. . . .

Oh Jesus, it’s not like that. Can’t be. I just want — I don’t — I don’t hate
her
that
much
.

The Lady, then, in reply — triggering her Traps, flicking shut her
Snares, with him a mere struggling fly at her web’s sticky heart:

But she would have done the same to you, given half a chance.
For all her talk of sacrifice and Balance, of Doing Right, she is
our kin, her hungers the very same. Would you refuse a meal
offered in starvation, on moral grounds?

Embrace what you are; take her defeat, my gift to you. Grow
strong, to shelter him from your needs. Then find your way back
to me, at last, and give me — in turn — due payment
.

I’ll do it before Chess has time to manifest,
Rook thought,
to Become
himself — ’cause
oh
, but he’ll burn and shine, shed light so hard it hurts
to look, a bonfire of bones. Gotta pay her back before that, or there’ll be
great feasting indeed, on that day. . . .

So: done deal. He took a step, grabbed his “Grandma” by one
braid, brought his free hand up instinctively, and
plunged
it somehow
through her chest, elbow-deep — not into gristle or grue, but right
into the seed-sac of boiling energy she carried ’round her heart.

Saw her grimace and
almost
cry out, and “heard” someone else —
many someone elses? — call back, in answer: a vague sympathetic
notion, her solitary hurt multiplied and reflected, fragmentary,
fleeting. And along with it, the realization that she herself was
severing this contact, breaking it off mid-stream before he could
think to back-trace it — crying out (a warning? an order?) in her own
language, all trace of English kicked to the wayside.

Gone, now, with only they —
three
— left.

Rook sucked hard, piggish, already brim-full of everything
which had made Grandma
her
, and slid his hand down even further,
with a wet, hot
crack
, to touch her heart’s fluttering meat-lump
through broken ribs. There was a last rising sigh, warming him to
his own hollow core — the sound a coal makes when it cracks across,
releasing a last rush of embers.

“You
are
. . . a monster,” Grandma told him, painfully, blood
leaking from her mouth. “
Bilagaana
with a Bible . . . your One-God
tells you this whole world is yours, so you . . . think that means you
can use it up, throw it away. That all things conspire to serve you.”

And now
she
spat, hot and sizzling, to scar the ground. “Such
shit
.
If I could help that boy of yours drain you dry before you get the
chance to do the same to him . . . teach him to dance with your heart
in his mouth, as one should, after slaying foulness . . . then I would.
I
would
.”

Rook didn’t try to deny it. Just shrugged, and answered, “Well . . .
that’s kinda what I thought, all along.”

One more wrench, and she was emptied — he saw her spirit pass
him by obliquely, a star falling the wrong way.

Rook just stood there panting, and watched.

Damnation didn’t feel so bad, on consideration; not bad as he’d
feared, anyhow. Felt like, well — nothing, mostly.

Which was probably why it gave him not a moment’s pause when
all Grandmother’s blood humped itself up and sprayed blowhole-high to form a geyserish pillar — the midtop of which bowed slightly,
spread outwards in a cowl, to let a too-familiar face push through.

Rook gave the Lady a stiff little bow. “Ma’am,” he said.

Little king, my affianced. It does me good to see you, face to
face.

“Likewise.”

We are allies now, after all. Such courtesy is the least I owe
you.

“’Spect you’re right,” Rook agreed.

Go back to your lover, now
,
she instructed him.
Do not feed
overmuch from him, if he can help it. Just keep yourselves alive
and free, until you find a way to speak with me directly.

Rook frowned. “But — how’m I supposed to — ”

Oh, it will come to you. It comes even now, as we speak. Have
faith, husband — as I have faith in you.
The blood-face smiled, too
full of sly glee to bother approximating anything recognizable as
human, any longer.
You knew how to do that, once. . . .