A Tree of Bones (2 page)

November 11, 1867

Month Fifteen, Day Thirteen Eagle

Festival: Quecholli, or Treasured Feather

During Quecholli, prisoners dressed as deer are hunted as sacrifices to the god Mixcoatl, Cloud Serpent, Lord of the Milky Way. Since Mixcoatl was the first to strike sparks from flint, and is also a god of war — though not on the same scale as Huitzilopochtli, the Lightning-Bearer — this may explain why war is known as
in atl in tlachinolli
: “the water, the fire,” a flaming rain.

This Aztec
trecena
(or thirteen-day month) is ruled by Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian-flake Knife, first of all
tzitzimime
, those female warriors who have been honourably killed in childbirth. Itzpapalotl reigns over Tamoachan, the heaven for dead infants. Here grows the Suckling Tree, which bears over 400,000 nipples; here children can rest, nourished and safe, until they feel ready for reincarnation. She stands for purification through sacrificing that which is most precious.

By the Mayan Long Count calendar, today is governed by Xipe Totec, who provides its shadow soul. It is a day dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, Hummingbird on the Left, sometimes known as the Blue Tezcatlipoca — Lord of all warriors, those who willingly lose their lives in order to keep the current age, the Fifth Sun, moving forward. A good day for action, a bad day for reflection; a good day for invoking the gods, and a bad day for ignoring them.

Squinting up at full gallop while the rain pelted hard into his face, cold and raw as judgement, Ed Morrow almost thought he saw Heaven open, as on the final day, for:
behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself
.

Digging his knees in, he wished that that particular passage didn’t remind him quite so much of the red beast earlier in
Revelation
, with its seven heads and ten horns. Let alone that the bulk of his Bible knowledge after Sunday School didn’t come from such a very . . .
specific
source.

Then thunder detonated, haloing Bewelcome’s pitiful excuse for a Main Street in a glare that flashed from blue-white to red to purulent green. As what looked like a blast of lightning whip-struck past, Morrow threw himself free, hitting the mud with a squelching slam that punched the wind from his lungs; as his horse ran on, unconcerned for any safety but its own, the spell-missile he’d just dodged went sizzling through the rain above him to strike one of Captain Washford’s hapless soldiers full in the face.

Yet no shriek or blood spray resulted: instead, a greyish-dun mass like some wad of dough smashed flat by an angry child sealed tight over the bluecoat’s head, a horrible flesh-bag snapped tight. He threw up arms and legs alike, rifle gone flying, and collapsed — a landed fish flopping, so disoriented he barely knew where best to claw.

With no breath left to swear and his bad knee screaming, Morrow scrambled to the other man’s aid, careful to stay flat as possible throughout, so’s to not present a tempting target. He pried his fingers under the thing’s clayey edge (blood-hot, damp and rubbery to the touch, like flayed muscle) and yanked with both hands ’til it peeled back just a titch, revealing one eye rolled up and a wrist-thick tendril shoved deep ’tween the man’s gagging jaws, bloating his neck’s dark flesh obscenely. Revulsion stomach-punched him, loosening his grip; the death mask snapped immediately back into place,
writhing
as it did.

Oh no you
don’t
, you Christ Jesus-puking piece of foulness —

Digging so hard into his breast pocket that the thing he sought fair leapt to his palm, Morrow soon came up with a familiar device, just about the size and shape of a pocket watch. He wound its fob frantically ’til it burst to shrill, buzzing life, then slammed its flat glass face into the wriggling mess, and bore down. A mindless shriek ripped his eardrums under the torrent’s drumming, fierce, yet so high-pitched as to be barely audible — then cut off, sharp as a snuffed candle. Simultaneously, the spell-chunk he gripped commenced to shrivel, gone so fast its dust had washed away almost before Morrow could let go. In its wake, the soldier jackknifed over, retching fit to dump his guts.

Poor bastard
.

Apparently, however, this one was an old hand — experienced enough to get himself under control within a few whooping breaths, if nothing else. “Th’ hex . . . one who threw this . . .” he gasped out, casting ’round for his lost gun. “Where’d she . . . ?” Bolting back upright, just as fingers met stock, to holler: “
’Hind you, Pinkerton man!
”

Morrow hurled himself clear, Manifold punched up like a tiny shield ’fore he even had a chance to register who “she” might be. Only instinct and speed, along with the device’s last few whirrs, saved his life as another lit cannonball of hexacious smother-flesh struck like a haymaker, knuckle to knuckle; it put him over with his wrist on fire, either broke or paralyzed. The Manifold, caught in between, burst outright, taking the spell with it — greasy shreds and gears sprayed everywhere, pattering down into the muck, while impact knocked what was left of his weapon from his hand, leaving him defenceless.

Morrow rummaged for his pistol, praying ’gainst all hope he’d somehow managed to keep his powder dry. But his eyes stayed on the girl, similarly froze maybe ten feet away, rain skittering clear of her like she was galvanized: no more than twenty, tall and lovely, her hair a braided mahogany crown. The ragged hem of a once-fine green dress mended with thread of living light just brushed her ankles, disclosing bare feet sheathed in black mud.

Poised to attack? No. Might be she didn’t understand his Manifold was gone, or had actually never before seen one at work, in close quarters. Might be she was an essentially gentle girl in bad circumstances, unfit for fighting, except at self-elected Hex City general “Reverend” Asher E. Rook’s beck and call. One way or the other, however, and with all power disparity momentarily set aside — in that same throat-catching shared heartbeat, she seemed almost as terrified as they were.

The instant Morrow finally got his gun free, her horror flashed to panic like lucifer-lit touchpaper. She flung one arm skyward, calling out to someone unseen: “I’m threatened, can’t see my way clear — help me, sissy!”

Was that flat-vowelled accent of New York extraction?
One of Hank Fennig’s wives, then
, Morrow thought, only to have it confirmed when the answer came back from high above — feminine likewise, but well-touched with County Cork, its hoarse musicality worn thin by shouting above the storm.

“Berta? I see you,
acushla
. Now
stay still!
”

The girl — Miss Schemerhorne, the files named her — nodded, and shut her eyes.

All at once, the air seemed to twist ’round her, lariat-style; a black whirling strand of wind and dust lashed down, falling neat into one hand as any rope flung to some drowning man. Skilfully, she whirled her forearm in the cyclone-cord to wrap it tight, then leaped; it caught her up and bore her high into blackness, beyond the range of sight.

Prone in the mud, Washford’s soldier stared up after with eyes gone silver dollar-sized, their already vivid whites set in stark contrast with a face the same shade as Bewelcome’s freakishly arable new earth. “You all right there?” Morrow asked him, gently.

The man shook his head first one way, then the other — a cleansing shake, chased with a grim nod. “Me? Hell, I’ll be fine enough if you gimme a slug an’ a minute, or maybe just a slug, t’wash the taste of that damn thing out my mouth. I’m workin’ for the Kingdom, sir, like all the Captain’s people; ain’t got time to die.” He pushed himself to his feet as thunder boomed once more and retrieved his well-worn bummer’s cap, canting it so icy rain would splash off what little brim it had left. “Gotta wonder, though — are these the End Days come to pass, way some say? Fallen angels walkin’ the Earth, Devil’s children like that gal there runnin’ wild?”

Getting up cost Morrow more than he’d thought it would, so much so he had to spend a few hacking breaths fighting not to cough up a lung before he could reply. To say this weather didn’t agree with him was understating things substantially, considering how it’d left him with a gasping ague that all too often kept him from what little sleep he could afford, and his bad joints — the knee, particularly — in near constant misery. “Might seem that way, I’m sure. But you can take it from me, Private — Private . . . ?”

“Carver, sir. Jonas Carver.”

“. . . good to know you, Carver; Ed Morrow’s my name.” If Carver’s eyes widened further still at this disclosure, Morrow affected not to notice. “All spectacle left off, these folk’re human as you or I, and a bullet
will
drop them, so long’s you catch ’em with their guard down.”

“That ain’t all too easy, from what I seen.”

“No, sure ain’t. But it can be done.”

The two men exchanged a species of grin, equally wry. Briefly, as he watched Carver start to reload, Morrow thought about telling him what Doctor Asbury’d promised him those fresh shells in his own gun might be capable of, if put to the test. However, he decided against it; there was no time, and the risk of false hope was too high.

“Seems like thankless work on the face of it, I know,” was what he said, instead, scanning the mud for any trace of his Manifold’s empty casing — ah, and there it was, right by his boot-heel; he knelt again to snag it, then heaved back up, with a painful huff. “But Christ knows, we in the Pinkerton camp’re all glad enough to have you backin’ us up.”

Around them, the rain pelted Bewelcome township ceaselessly, unseasonably, much as it had almost since the morning after Chess Pargeter’s sacrifice and Sheriff Mesach Love’s murder — too cold by far for fall, let alone for summer, and hard as a bruising kiss. Behind this latest tempest, meanwhile, Allan Pinkerton’s endless assault on Hex City ground on: rocket-trails of spells and spell-passage alike could be glimpsed ’cross the sky like ball lightning, throwing off icy sheets of green, blue, purple which wavered groundward; just like every other night this week, the earth shook intermittently too, probably from shelling. Above, even the traitor moon — Rook’s dread wife’s symbol, through which popular rumour had it she could spy on whatever luckless creatures slept beneath — hid its face at the sight of such rough work.

On every side of the rut-puddled cow trail the Bewelcomers claimed was called Love Avenue, the land was now all torn to hell with constant skirmishing, an indiscriminate churn of muck where nothing grew but the Red Weed that came in the Enemy’s wake, and graves. And the rain, unnatural itself, brought far more natural threats in its wake: fever, rats, plus a palpable fear of flash-flooding through nearby canyons, producing an artificial river strong enough to wash the whole village itself away.

“Naw, sir,” Carver continued, yanking Morrow back from his reverie. “My troop an’ me, we’re
glad
to be here, never you doubt that. When we heard the witch-folk was slavin’ folks on top of everything else, even after the War seemed to leave all that over and done with . . . well, none of us was too keen to leave the job half done. Though I can’t lie — there
was
a few here ’n’ there said how turnabout might be fair play, once we heard they wasn’t just puttin’ the chain on Negroes, this time.”

He followed this remark with a look, cool and level, as though assessing whether or not Morrow would take offence. But Morrow was far too tired to bother, even had he been so inclined.

“How they do it’s called layin’ a geas,” he said, turning to limp into the wind; Carver followed along, seemingly genuinely interested. “It’s a sort of a spell, goes without saying, but a love-working, more’n anything else — kind that hooks ’em deep and ties ’em tight, makes ’em
want
to come, and want to stay.”

“That don’t beat all.”

Morrow shrugged. “Well, they got a fair bit of practice doin’ it by now, since it’s how the Rev and Lady Ixchel bind ’em to themselves, and the City. Only makes sense they’d start to tinker ’round with it after, I guess, the hexacious being who — what — they are.”

And then there are the others who come and stay, those bound by something deeper
, Morrow thought, but didn’t add. For far too many of the Hex City host, blood tied tighter than magic: men following after wives, women after husbands, children all too aware that having a hexacious sire or dam would ruin their name no matter what, even if it later turned out the power didn’t breed true. Like the girl last month he’d watched dump whole buckets of lime off New Aztectlan’s North Gate wall, six years old if she was a day and pale-faced with effort, teetering on the barricade in a tight-tied pair of ladies’ high-buttoned boots. She’d paused to giggle at the way the Pinks below scurried, rabid to avoid burning their skin or eyes — ’til somebody (he still didn’t know who, and hoped he’d never learn) had pocked her straight through the forehead with a long-range rifle.

Oh, the Rev might’ve planted the first seed and Dread Moon-Lady Ixchel made it grow — sure and foul, like a cancer — but Hex City was only half theirs now, maybe less. Others had built it up since and would die to maintain it, without being asked, let alone compelled.

Yet it
would
fall, if Pinkerton and the rest of the compact had their way: the Agency, Bewelcome, Washford’s brigade. That was their task — to make it so, or die trying.

“But like you saw, the Manifold can break any chantment, you happen to get a strike home with it in hand — ah, crap.” Having flourished it out only to drop it again, Morrow bent to scoop it back up; Carver peered at it over his shoulder, wincing when another lightning flash showed the broken glass face and sprung gears inside.

“That’s one of ’em, huh? Doc Hex’s Manifold?”

“One of the original models, believe it or not —
was
, anyhow.” Morrow stuffed the useless item back in his waistcoat; least it wouldn’t be galling him with its obsolete clatter, anytime soon. “Where you headed?”