A Book Of Tongues (30 page)

Oona reached out, put a too-long finger on his chin; Chess tried
to twist away, but couldn’t. The contact, he realized too late — along
with a pressure that forced his regard back downwards again, into
that time-echo slice of past where Rook and Morrow still held
their secret confab — were both things of spirit rather than flesh,
impossible to fight off, except through magic.

And I ain’t no hex.

“Names later, little one. I fink you might not want to miss this.”

So: Rook and Morrow looking up at the window, behind which
Ixchel had Chess at her mercy.

“Why would you
do
that to him?” Morrow asked, wearing that
same half-puzzled frown always made Chess want to punch it
whenever he saw it, because Ed was far too smart to play dumb as
often as he did. “Let her — ”

“’Cause she needs it.” Rook replied.

“And you need her. To make yourself a damn god, too.”

“You really are a sight smarter than you look, Ed — but yeah. And
no. I need her . . . to make
Chess
a god.”

The hell?

“Oh, he ain’t much enamoured of the idea right now,” Rook
continued, like he hadn’t heard Chess — and why would Chess expect
him to? “But that’ll change. He’ll be a god, I’ll be his priest-king;
hers too. It’ll be choice.”

“And her.” Morrow jerked his head at the window above. “What
does
she
get out of it?”

“Oh, the usual . . . blood, and lots of it. That’s what her kind
like best. How’d it go, by the by? You and him, I mean.” As Morrow
blushed: “Yeah, I knew. But don’t think I’m jealous, Ed; you gave him
what he needed, in the moment. And now — you won’t be so quick to
want shed of us after all, either, will ya?”

“What do you
want
, Reverend?”

“I’m playin’ it by ear, somewhat. Goin’ where the currents take
me. All hexes can, or could, but most don’t listen. So — you send Kees
for the Pinkertons yet?”

Morrow reared back, and Chess could see in his eyes it was true.
White-hot fury: Morrow, a Pink? He’d fucked a damn
Pink
?

You son of a bitch
, Chess raved to himself.
Minute I wake, I’m
gonna —

“Aw, shit! Okay, I give the hell up.” Morrow threw out his hands.
“Why d’you let me do
anything
, exactly? Why ain’t I dead a hundred
times over, by now?”

“’Cause I need you upright, Ed.” Rook came close, put a comradely
hand on Morrow’s shoulder. “Better yet . . . ’cause Chess does. I need
you
for
him — to want to serve him, protect him, bad as I do.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“All you need to know is I
can’t
, Ed. Not right now.” Rook looked
away, eyes shadowed. “I lay down with dogs, and now I gotta deal
with the fleas . . . you understand me?”

“Not even a little damn bit.”

Rook sighed. “Well, it don’t matter too much, really. We all of us
only do what needs doing, or what we’re made to do.” He glanced at
Morrow. “You as much as anyone, Ed, for what that’s worth.”

Morrow frowned. “What — what d’you mean?”

“I mean, that what he needed last night . . . well, that was what I
needed too. To make this whole thing work. So — ” Rook tapped the
coat-pocket which held the mojo-bag “ — I might’ve helped things
along, with you and him. Just a bit.”

“You
made
us do that? Both of us?”

“Ahhhh, I said I
helped
, is all.” Rook waggled a reproving finger
at Morrow, whose hands had bunched into fists. “Didn’t need that
much pushin’, truth be told, for either of you. So what’s
really
gonna
drive you mad, Edward Morrow, is wonderin’ just how much of that
night was me . . . and how much was you.”

For a moment it seemed Morrow might just let fly at Rook,
spells be damned — but Rook just tipped his hat and walked away,
whistling. Morrow watched him go.

Then he walked over to the wall of Splitfoot Joe’s and punched it
so hard the skin on his knuckles burst.

“Oona” shook her head, sadly. “So men are born fools and stay
fools, steered ’round by their pricks ’til the day they die. Too bad the
only way knowin’ that might ’elp you would be if you
wasn’t
one.” She
gave him a considering look. “Poor little bastard. If you
’ad
been a
girl, least I’d’ve been able to teach you ’ow love’s nothin’ but a mug’s
game. As it is, you’ll go on doin’ whatever the little ’ead tells you to,
’til you learn better.”

Chess frowned, having heard all this before — too many times to
count, or register.

“What’s that noise?” he asked, instead.

The real Oona, embarked on a philosophical tear, would’ve
slapped him for interrupting; this one just grinned. And replied, “A
fair question. What’s it sound like?”

Several phrases popped into Chess’s head at once, all equally
unlikely. In rough order —
slammin’ door . . . a wood bell tolling . . .
something . . . rotten
.

Back and forth, in and out, a decomposing heart’s mushy beat. It
had started low-down, but now it mounted steady, so the walls fair
rung with it.
Don’t rightly know
, he thought — had halfway opened
his mouth to say — but stopped. Because his eyes had gone lower,
drifted to “Oona’s” skinny chest, and
seen
.

And now she was looking down too. “Ah,
that
,” she said,
unsurprised. “Want a better look, do ya?”

She shrugged her skinny shoulders, let the fabric fall away.
Revealing — a torso like an awful wax-rendering, anatomically
denuded: bloodless neck, skin to her cleavage, and from thence
on down nothing but a set of flapping ribcage-sides all wet red
and whitish yellow, gristle-strung haphazardly together only at
the bisected breastbone, the glistening spinal column. Guts coiled
inside, and above that the heart, hung like a fruit — bright, hot,
fluttering with life.
Smoking
with it.

He felt the sight of it in his own empty chest, like a fist. Felt his
own
response
to it setting brain and gut afire, and found himself not
cringing away in disgust, but reaching forward, fascinated, almost
desperate. Wanting to feel that sheer pulsing
force
under his fingers,
unbarred by fat and skin.

“Reach in, little brother, if you wish.” By pitch and timbre it was
still Oona’s voice, but the Limey drawl was fading, washing away
into an accent like ink stirred into blood. “Reach in, and perhaps I
will give you a
new
heart, to fill the hole.”

Her smile was half invitation, half mockery — and it was the
mockery that broke his daze, reminding Chess far too sharply of
what no longer lay beneath his own scars. So he flushed, scowling,
stopping his hand in mid-air . . . while, inches from his fingertips,
cradled under dripping bones, the heart beat a little faster — as if
amused, or excited.

The bony arches of the ribcage reminded Chess for a moment
of the whorled-dome walnut halves old Chang used to run games
for the waiting pikers, back at the whorehouse. The salient point of
suchlike endeavours, whispered slyly to him one night while setting
it up, having been:
Trick, boy-ah, is not put ball under one shell, make
gweilo
pick other shell.
Trick
is —

“ — make sure there’s no ball in the game, at all,” Chess murmured,
almost under his breath. “That every shell’s empty, no matter what
they pick — so you can make ’em always lay something out, but get
nothin’ back in return.”

Then added, voice rising again: “As you’d goddamn well know
already, you actually
were
my Ma — ’cause she’s the exact bitch first
gave me any version of that same advice, her own damn self. So you
can keep your ‘new’ heart; old one’ll do me
just fine
, once I find out
where to go get it.”

“Oona” stared at him, that sugary smile well-gone now, for good.

The movement of her upper body was so small that Chess almost
didn’t see it in time. It was the noise alone warned him, a dampish
whicker, as the open ribs suddenly spread wide — then lashed back
together, almost chipping each other with the force of it, to mesh
sharp as a shut clam-shell.

“
Jesus!
” he shouted, whipping his hand back with only a cunthair’s
width to spare, feeling what had once seemed normal bone slice the
air coldly over his skin. Because it was all black and matte and glassy
now, like tar-smoked quartz, and made a horrible glutinous sound
as its razor-edges sheared the heart in half, mid-beat.

Wide-eyed, Chess recoiled, cradling his hand to his chest.

Stone grated on stone as the obsidian rib-blades slid over and
through each other, like interlocking fingers.
This is the church, this
is the steeple,
Chess heard faintly sing-songing, in his mind.
Open
the doors —

A wavering pane of flat smooth blackness assembled itself before
him, his own face dimly visible in its glassine dark. For a beat of the
heart neither now had, he recognized himself.

Then — change.

Crimson feathers, gold, ivory-hued bone and strips of reddish-dark leather adorned him. A long black wig streamed glossy hair
from his head, and a pale, oddly tailored coat clung tight around
shoulders, wrists and waist. He seemed to have four hands, and his
face —
his
face, still — looked slack and empty.

Yet even as Chess realized that the person in that mirror was
wearing
his own flayed skin as a cloak
(his staring eyes rimmed not
in red paint but the naked flesh left behind after their violent
striptease), the image changed again. Now the headdress was a
bright and virulent turquoise, and a monstrous head reared over it,
while the figure clutched a serpent made of fire and considered him
with a face similar to Chess’s own, but older — a man past thirty, his
wars all behind him, and settled into ruling . . . what?

Some place
I
ain’t never seen, and ain’t too like to.

A further ripple of light and colour brought change, once more.
Now the man was white-haired, white-feathered, a pectoral like a
conch shell cut in half dangling on his chest and books and scrolls
tucked beneath one arm. Yet the face, the face . . . was still
Chess’s
,
old as he had never thought ever to be. Venerable, respectable, even.
Respect
ed
.

And behind all the faces, he heard cries and chants in a language
unrecognizable, the frenzied howls of thousands in ecstatic
adoration. Felt the huge, tremendous pulse of the earth’s long slow
turnings, the piling up of seasons upon seasons into centuries. The
taste of blood at the base of his tongue, salty-sweet as Rook’s seed,
but richer, hotter, smoother.

Blur yet again, and now the face in that reflection was nothing
near Chess at all, barely human: black-skinned, monstrously tall,
knives of night-coloured stone sheathed everywhere. A buzzing
corona of blue flame lifting from its slumped head. And one foot,
one foot . . . was gone. In its place, an oblong plaque of stone, ornately
carved. Like that thing — hell, it
was
the thing! Same one Rook had
torn down Selina Ah Toy’s to get hold of. . . .

Smoking Mirror.

And with that, it was no mirror at all anymore. “Oona’s” head
was gone, her slender white arms now long and coal-coloured, the
monstrous face he’d seen reflecting his now rearing tall above him.
The thing sat on his bed, huge and inhuman and steaming, and still
all Chess felt was that leap in his heart, that excitement, that alien,
utterly natural-seeming joy.

This is me. I’m with my own, at last. I have come home.

He fought it down, though, tooth and goddamn nail. ’Cause if
there was one thing Chess Pargeter had learned never to trust, it
was happiness.

“You’re
her
kind,” he said, “that bitch of Rook’s, Ixchel, or
whatever. Ain’t ya.”

The enormous face tilted, pensive. “Might could be,” it replied,
tone — and jargon — now mimicking his.

“Thought she said all y’all were — ”

“Asleep? Well, that was her error. She woke me. With
you
.”
Chess blinked. “She tried to make you into me, little brother. One
of me, anyhow. But you ain’t made to cooperate, for which I love
you dearly — so now you’re only half me, and
I
am awake once more,
wholly. Which, given I woke
her
in similar fashion, once, will be
interesting, yes. Perhaps even satisfying, eventually.”

Which made sweet fuck-all sense to Chess. “How many of you are
there? You got a name?”

“Oh, many.” The thing chuckled like the largest railroad engine in
all the world grinding forward into motion, indicating its reflective
stone foot. “Some call me, on account of this — ”

“Smoking Mirror.” Chess scowled, suddenly faint, and struggled
for his next idea. “Yeah, uh . . . I remember the Rev showin’ me
that . . . thought that was just the thing, though — the
plaque
, what-friggin’-have-you.”

“That was
a
Smoking Mirror, carved in my sister’s image, by
worshippers so far removed from our glory days as to confuse us for
each other.
The
Smoking Mirror — ”

“ — is you.”

“Yes, little brother. And now . . .” Shockingly, the thing laid its
hand on Chess’s shoulder, fatherly gentle. “. . . you, too.”

Chess’s head swum and throbbed like that bisected heart. His
mouth was wickedly dry, tongue all buds, barely cogent. “Getcher
meat-hooks offa me,” he said, or tried to — muzzily at best.

Such ridiculous creatures we are, in the end
,
the Smoking
Mirror continued, as though Chess hadn’t even spoke — and was
it
even speaking, as such? Not out loud, at any rate.

Oh Christ shit fire, my head, my
head.

So powerful. So unrestrained. Yet so dependent on the
very things we all too often kill with kindness, to survive. We
blunder from Sun to Sun, seeking after humanity, nurturing it,
destroying it. All the while refusing to accept that without it,
we — the blood engine’s crew, centrepiece of an entire universe —
are nothing.