A Tree of Bones (16 page)

“Bet he lied about that one, though.”

“Oh, ’e lied about all of it, from first to bloody last. That was just the topper.”

She looked down, red hair falling curtain-long once more, wrapping her profile away. And as Chess’s gaze followed, instinct-driven, he saw her fold into a squat, balancing on those small bare feet, toes already black with mud. Watched her dip the fingers of one hand through a rut puddle, yet more light trailing in its five-fold wake while shadows bred inside the brightening water, a cloudy mirror full of images he struggled to decode.

This same younger form she wore now stretched out in some foul tenement bed, held down, her mouth wide. A dark man crouched watching, one big hand cupping her jaw, the other stroking her sweaty brow. Gas hissing in the sconce, blue flames pin-pointed in her pupils; the beat of a heart, two hearts, a doubled pulse ebbing in and out.

Give it t’me now, girl. My lovely Oona, my hunger’s bride. Just as you promised, as you want to, along with that brat of yours, poor little sweetmeat. Poor, puling little mage-bred sacrifice.

Reminded him of nothing so much as Dame Ixchel, swimming in blood-drool and other hot juices. Suicide Moon Ixchel, taking his lip between her teeth and grinding ever so slightly, like she meant to tenderize him just a touch, ’fore throwing him on the grill. Or eddying alongside as Rook puppeted him stringless through Mictlan-Xibalba’s rainy corridors, telling him that dying for gods you didn’t even know, making ’em a raw meat meal, wasn’t so much dreadful as
glorious, flowery,
beautifulbeautifulbeautiful —

So sons of bitches ran in his family, apparently. No great surprise, given.

“Sly as the bloody Pope, that one,” Oona spat, one fingertip tracing the dark man’s regal profile, erasing it with a ripple. “So I’m turnin’ inside out from the pain of squeezin’ you clear, feelin’ the ’exation in every part of me ready to pop the exact same way
you
was, an’ I ’ear Columcille call out somefing . . . Jew cant and church-talk all mixed together, what ’urt the ear t’listen to. And it all just
tore
, ripped clean away, so fast I didn’t even feel you drop. Nothing left behind ’cept a hole, raw and sick and covered over in scab — ”

Her voice broke, startling Chess, one thought crystal clear in every rigid line of her:
No more man, no magic, no promises of love — just me, alone, like I’d fooled myself I wouldn’t be. Positionless and street-bound, with one skill only t’my name, ’less I wanted t’swing for thievery; all that, nothin’ more.

Except, of course, for . . . you.

Chess didn’t want to tell her he knew what that was like — to be took up and dropped, have the whole world pulled out from under you like a rug, by one you thought you’d gladly die for. Shouldn’t
have
to tell her, anyhow; could just go on ahead and read his damn thoughts like any other dead person, if she was really interested.

Instead, he cleared his throat. “I never heard of anybody could do that — take a person’s hexation from ’em, without killin’.”

“’Cause you know so much about it, eh?” Oona didn’t look up, staring grimly down at the puddle’s fading picture show. “But no, wasn’t like ’e
took
it, as . . . made it so’s I couldn’t catch ’old of it — so’s it just flowed in one way and out the other. Closed fings up inside me and fused ’em shut, like any back-alley angelmaker.”

“What the hell’d be the point of
that?
”

“’Oo knows? A give-and-take, maybe, for some bigger reward on ’is own end — ’e ’ad ambitions in that direction, though it wasn’t like ’e’d discuss their particulars wiv the likes of me.” Another shrug. “Or maybe ’e was just a bastard.”

More’n likely,
Chess thought.

“Saved your life, though, not that ’e was finkin’ of it — ’cause by makin’ such a mess of me, ’e made sure I couldn’t feed off of you, even if I wanted. And believe you me, I
wanted
.”

“What makes you think I don’t believe you?” Chess asked.

A silence fell between them then, dull as any unhealed break. Chess let it pass without remark, being used to the sensation — pain run through him like a tide, out and in and out again once more. Though it did surprise him just a tad to see Oona wince slightly, for all the world as though she
felt
it, too.

“So,” she continued. “There I was wiv
you
and not enough glamour to light a candle, after I’d been bankin’ half a year on the day it’d all change.” A ghastly smile. “Oh, sonny, you don’t know how many times I almost frew you overboard on our way down the coast, or drowned you in the bath like a kitten . . . not since you were cause of all my sorrows, so much, but just since you were close to ’and. And ’e wasn’t.”

Now,
that
he could almost believe. Same way he’d ended men for not being the ones he really yearned to kill, or fucked ’em for much the same reason.

“And I was the one set you to whore and smoke, too, I s’pose; neat damn trick, with me still on the tit. Next you’ll be sayin’ the Devil made you do it.”

“Was Columcille I’d’ve blamed, like I said, if there was anything to gain by it. You I kept alive, much as it cost me . . . but ask yerself this: given ’ow much I wanted to get rid o’you, why d’you fink I never actually did?”

“’Cause baby killers get the gallows, they get caught? ’Cause I was worth more sold than thrown away?” Chess spread his hands. “Both or neither, don’t even matter, considering how little of a fuck
I
give.”

Yet here another voice came back to him, this one light and clear, pleasantly absinthe-softened, betraying no hint of the steel he knew lurked behind it.
Babies die, Mister Pargeter. Happens lamentably easily. . . . She’d really wanted you dead, you would be.

“You really
’aven’t
wondered, ’ave you, all this while?” Oona cocked her head, disbelief writ wide on every line of her too-young face. “Why I kept on at you, put you straight into ’arm’s path a thousand times over — consider what you know ’bout your father now, ’bout me. Then tell me you really can’t see the why of it all.”

The why of it all: half his life, to this point. That same life had made his double purpose escape and vengeance, without even a hope of prosperity, after. Just hit the ground running and not look back, or fill any motherfucker got in his way with lead.

But yeah, he finally did know what she’d wanted all along, now. So simple, from
this
side of things. So impossible to guess at, from the other.

“You
wanted
me to turn hex,” he said, and coughed up a sick laugh. “Go up like a blow-stick, take the whole show with me when I did — that about the size of it? Christ, no wonder you got more and more pissed, every time I never turned the trick!”

“Contrary to the last, you bastard. You really must be the toughest little shit alive.”

“No thanks to you. But then again . . . how dumb
are
you, woman? In any of the stories I heard tell of, only thing makes a man-hex bloom is threat of death! Ash Rook
swung
, for Christ’s sake, and he had to take my damn heart out to make me what
I
am — what I always was. You telling me that for all the neck-stabbin’ and pimpery, there was never one time you thought of just slittin’ my throat in my sleep and seeing what might happen? Or . . .”

He trailed off. She didn’t answer.

Didn’t have to.

Because — oh God, it was already creeping up like he’d been born saturated, a poison-knowledge tisane, waiting for the right hand to dunk him in boiling water and brew the truth right out of him. The bitter truth, too disgusting for anyone — even him — to swallow.

’Cause . . . if you’d done it wrong, all I’d’ve been was dead, and . . . no.

“No,” he repeated, out loud. “You do
not
get to say that to me, Goddamnit.”

Oona simply stood there, green stare level, now he was the one unable to meet it. Chess shied like a horse, swung away, stormed a few paces off, spun back. “Bitch,
no
. You . . . you don’t get to . . . to even
start
to say . . .”

Appalled, he felt a lump thicken in his throat, and fought the temptation to finish his thought, furiously as he’d ever fought anything. But though she herself showed not the faintest flicker of expression to confirm these traitor words in his head, it was too late — even unspoken, they hung between them, like the stink of powder after gunplay.

You do
not
, not ever, get to tell me you really
did
love me, after all.

Took near a minute of the silence that followed for Chess to realize that the everlasting “London” rain had finally stopped, along with the noise of that threadbare, cycling crowd. Hugging himself hard, he turned a slow circle, blinking. Down all seven streets, from here to their vanishing points, the Dials were empty but for him and Oona: every fellow phantom gone, every building hollow and silent, every laneway glinting slick. No rat-skitter or pigeons’ coo to break the stillness; no footfall over the grey rooftops, pavers dull as teeth below, shingles like scales above. The black sky held no stars.

For a moment, the entire scene seemed to
ripple
, no more than a hastily sketched picture on threadbare black silk curtains, stirred in a cold breeze.

“What’s it matter, any’ow?” Oona asked, finally. “Don’t know why I put myself out. You’re dead now, same as me.”

“I am
not
. My body’s still up there, still alive — ”

“Occupied, too. Which means you can’t do nothin’ wiv it, don’t it?”

“Well, I ain’t about to stop tryin’!”

She gave him a long look — and smiled again, finally, with far more warmth than last time. “That’s different, then. Now, you ready to get out of ’ere, or what? ’Cause I sure am, and I’m thinkin’ it’ll take the both of us.”

“Be one fancy piece of work if it did, seein’ as how you ain’t even a hex no more.”

“You neither, cully — not down ’ere. But I’m sure we can figure out
somefing
.”

Chess’s lips drew back. “Fuck ‘we,’
Ma
. Might’a slipped your mind how you ain’t ever been exactly reliable — for me, anyways.”

Oona slid one small hand out from under his cuff, considering her fingernails as though they were little horn mirrors, nonchalant. “Oh, I could be, wiv the right incentive. ’Sides which,” jabbing a thumb skyward, “them lot upstairs been droppin’ lines for weeks, trawlin’ for your attention, and
you
can’t even see ’em. Can ya?”

Christ, how Chess loathed this feeling of being just a step behind, that glee some so-called “smart” people took in changing subjects too fast for him to follow: Oona, Songbird, the Enemy. Hell, even Ash Rook’d talked down to him at first, though — give the big bastard his due — he’d also been the one person ever tried to break himself of that habit, if for no other reason than Chess had told him to either do so, or get reacquainted with his own right hand.

“Seems not,” he said, between clenched teeth. “Can’t even say I know which ‘lot’ you’re talkin’ on, unless — ” But here memory broke past anger. “Yancey,” he breathed.

“That’s her name, then, Miss Table-tapper?” He nodded. “Well, la di da. Strong little missus, ain’t she? She’s been yammerin’ away at you for donkey’s years, wiv never a bit o’ joy. Which might be why she’s suddenly decided t’talk t’
me
, instead.”

Chess’s hackles rose. “Right now?”

“Says ’er friends are layin’ a trail for you, to take you up an’ out. Which makes sense — this place’s been flush wiv silver, the last few days. But you don’t know why that is, do ya? ’Scuse me again, for not rememberin’ you don’t know nothin’.”

“And whose damn fault is that?”

“Patience, boyo. The way a call from Up Over looks down ’ere, it’s like a silver thread you catch ’old of, then tug at it t’follow it up.” She plucked something from the air alongside the dial-column, traced it, as though running her fingers up an invisible wire. “And that’s where you’ll need
me
, to show you the way. The show you where any one of ’em
is
.”

“You been’ . . . seein’ these call-threads. All the time. Since I got here.”

“That’s when they started, yeah.”

“And you never told
me
.”

“Didn’t fink you’d be amenable. Was I wrong?”

“More like ’cause you already tried to tug on one yourself and didn’t get nowhere, is what I’d guess.”

Oona let her eyes drop. “’Course,” she admitted. “Can’t expect you to trust me now, though, can I? Not when I always did leave you to pay the butcher’s bill whenever I could, ’cause on the pipe, it’s take what you can and keep it, wiv barely any room for anything else. No changing it now. But I never did nothin’ to you I wouldn’t’ve took myself.”

“Oh, no doubt. And that’s what taught me to reckon my own price higher.”

Oona nodded, face rigid, silver gleam of the rain-drenched streets reflected in her downcast eyes. They stood there a moment, long and longer. Chess would’ve reckoned it by heartbeats, if either of ’em had had one.

“Maybe it’s that I ’ad to be like I was,” she offered, at last. “So you’d turn out like
you
are. Like you ’ad to be.”

Raw as he was feeling, the guffaw that burst out of Chess at this last piece of ridiculousness caught him by surprise, but he was grateful for it all the same.

“Oh, fuck
that
horse-crap,” he said. “You ‘had’ to ruin your life just to ruin mine, ’cause soft don’t win the race? Makes it sound like Rook’s Book without the poesy. At least that Hell-whore Ixchel and the Enemy got a bit of patter to go with
their
craziness, even if it’s all in some palaver I can’t speak. So apologize or don’t, but save the excuses, ’cause I don’t want none.”

“Little boy. You don’t want none of nothin’ . . . never did.” Oona shook her head once more, half rueful, half malicious. “But you’re gonna get it.”

Then, catching hold of what Chess could only assume was that phantom cord again, she reached out for him, fingers flickering impatiently. “Now — shall we?”