A Tree of Bones (47 page)

“Oh, Asher Rook,” it told him, “if you have still so failed to grasp what I have in common with your beloved boy, the very thing which makes him
such
a perfect vessel, then perhaps you have never understood either of us, at all. For this is the truth: since, with both of us, intention always gives way to instinct, no action of ours ever can truly rise to the lofty level of something like a
plan
.” Here it yawned, black shark teeth flashing, and added: “Besides which, as your minions here can tell you . . . I hardly
walked
.”

“Thing come up through the ground, like a damn fever blister,” Missus Followell cut in, angrily, “with Himself there riding it like his own personal cabriolet. And yeah, we all of us know
your
name, skin-changer, seein’ there’s one more like you told tales on in every place we hails from: coyote, crow, rabbit, spider, fox, whatever. But ain’t a one of us gonna honour such as you by speakin’ it, not ’less you
make
us.”

Tezcatlipoca cut a parody of Chess’s grin over at Ixchel — no cigar, yet well close enough to make Rook clench all over. “Such loyalty!” It complained. “How did you manage to win it, with so indifferent an investment? One more thing to credit that oh-so-able priest-king of yours with, perhaps.”

A taunt, meant to draw ire, if not outright blood. Yet the Enemy’s sister-mother-wife-and-all remained stock still, battered face showing not a hint of reaction — perhaps it
couldn’t
move anymore, Rook thought, beyond the minimum needed for speech.

“Don’t credit him alone!” Missus Followell snapped, fearless, without even a glance in Ixchel’s direction. “This here’s our place now, much as it is hers; we’ll see you out of it yet, or die tryin’, from the Rev on down. ’Cause that’s what happens when hex can stand with hex, finally — and after thirty-odd years abloom, if anyone knows how that’s worth bein’ killed for, I’m her, believe you me.”

“You almost speak as though
she
was of no consequence at all.”

And . . . now those fierce eyes did drop, finally, as though Sal herself realized she’d maybe gone too far. For which Rook found himself surprisingly grateful.

“Wouldn’t say that, no sir,” she told her feet, choosing the words with care. “Without the Lady, there wouldn’t be a City at all . . . we owe Her everything. That’s why we keep the Oath, after all.”

“Aaaah, yes. Your
Oath
.”

Such a strange note in the creature’s voice, neither mockery nor respect, but a strange amalgam of the two, with something else woven in beneath. A sort of yearning. Almost an envy.

Never had worshippers you didn’t have to lie to, huh, Trickster? Though at least you compelled ’em with sweet words and pretty pictures personally, I’m sure, ’stead’a getting someone else to do that
for
you, like some others I might mention.

Over this same thought, however — as though summoned by even the implication of her name, let alone its mention — was where he at last heard Ixchel’s voice intrude, hoarse yet clear, almost raw.

“‘My’ Oath is nothing new, brother . . . as you, like any of us, should know.” Now it was her tone caught Rook off-guard, for she sounded almost as she had in those very first days, when she’d been nothing more than a voice in his head — all impassioned, seductive persuasion. “More than anything else, it is only the old agreement returned in new vestments. Sacrifice as sacrament, true devotion, instead of necessity. Though blood flows still for blood, power for power, the result is shared, sustainable. None
must
die, though they are glad enough to do so.”

“As you are glad enough to let them, my love — of that, I am most certain.”

Ixchel bowed her head, black cloud of hair falling only to drift upward once more, borne on a rising magical tide. “Surely. But
you
received your due share of
ixiptla
, gladly as any of us;
you
, too, flourished off the blood of those we now know to have been hexes-to-be, and like us all, worked wonders in return — preserving cities, renewing the land, shepherding the world through its seasons. Life for life, with pain the coin paid for existence. This has never changed and never will, since even the
conquistadors’
creed admits the same, with their White Christ dying to bring rebirth! And thus it is
we
, we two, who are the very . . .
gears
of this Machine of my husband’s imaginings, its —
workings
, its . . .
motor
.
We
are the Blood Engine, ourselves.” Struggling for proper words, she came as far forward as she could without setting foot onto the Weed, stretching one hand up. Her pithed voice broke, almost pleading, as if she wanted to weep.

“It is not too late,” she told him. “Join me now, and all will be forgiven — we shall bring the Fourth World back or enter the Sixth, together. And it will be once more as it was, forever.”

As her voice died away, a silence grew, hollowing Hex City’s heart. Tezcatlipoca stared down at her; for once, his borrowed features wore no smile. Another clench of cold went through Rook — this thing was a liar, he had always known that. Might it change whatever passed for its mind, now, even on the very cusp? How rich a cosmic jape that would be: Chess’s betrayer — himself — betrayed, in turn, by the inhabitant of Chess’s stolen flesh.

“Oh, sister,” the Enemy replied, almost in a whisper. “You
might
make it as it was, indeed, even now . . . but not forever. For just as nothing dead returns for long, nothing can last beyond its appointed time: not you, not me, not all our buried kin, drowned down there in darkness. Nothing.”

“I do not — ”

It sighed. “I know, I know. And still I will try to explain, much as I know it unlikely to help, before we do what we must.

“Listen. From First to Fourth, our worlds grew up around us — we were made and re-made
with
them, as
part
of them. All we ever were was a frightful tale, told so often and so well that all who heard, believed it — and we, ourselves, believed it so strongly that we
became
it. Of course we are the Blood Engine; that is what we were created to be, by the very mortals whose blood we drank to empower ourselves. Ghosts of dead magicians-to-be, grown so fat in turn on others’ unexpressed magic that we warped the very world around us into our mirror, and looked to that mirror as ‘proof’ we were what we thought ourselves to be.

“So we gutted our people to glut ourselves, and grew so dependent on the Machine that when it collapsed — our weakened subjects shattered by the
conquistadors’
plagues, their guns and their greed, far swifter than we had ever imagined possible — most of us simply dissolved into oblivion. Which is as it should be. Because, as it has always been my role to proclaim,
all
things end.”

Astonishingly, the Enemy’s voice took on a note Rook had never heard before, from it
or
Chess: almost sympathetic. “Our time has gone, sister. What is to come will be different, taking place in a world much larger than ours ever was.” It smiled. “I confess, I rather look forward to it.”

Ixchel gaped up at him. “But doesn’t it feel
right
to accept the tribute, brother? Doesn’t it feel
good
?”

At that, Tezcatlipoca really did laugh, a hearty guffaw which threw its head back, making Rook’s throat lock and his eyes burn — for that was
Chess’s
laugh, pure and unalloyed, in all its nasty glee.

“Of course!” the Trickster-god declared, when its mirth had slackened enough to allow it. “Yet the mere fact that we
like
a thing doesn’t make it the right choice. If it did, the world would run on fucking, and not precious victim-king-blood at all.” And here the laughter ceased, as it whispered, eyes locked on hers: “Oh, but wait . . .
perhaps it
does
.”

A moment of silence, only one. Then Ixchel screamed, as much a bitter wail of grief as anything else; went charging up the Weed-slope, smashing the Enemy straight off its throne in a brute, inelegant tackle, strategy-stupid as any drink-addled groggery thug. They rolled over and down, coming to a tangled halt almost at Rook’s feet. He goggled at the dustup, while behind him the City-folk hollered half in horror, half hysteria, like onlookers in any given saloon brawl he’d ever seen.

Ixchel got one leg between Tezcatlipoca’s — Chess’s — knees, and kicked him off, bodily. He cartwheeled through the air only to light down standing, conjuring something out of his palm with a fluid movement: long and thin, shining white, a scaled whip spun from congealed lightning ending in a snake’s crack-jawed head. The creature writhed tail-end from the Enemy’s hand, looped ’round its knuckles, blind skull splitting wide to reveal two layers of yellowed ivory fangs which dripped smoking liquid in time with its own teakettle hiss.

Rook braced for its next move, fingers popping with black and silver print, random words fizzing ’tween his nails like firework sparks: H
e
T
he
LORD D
o not
S
aieth
W
rath
E
nd
R
uin
—

But before he could even consider striking, however, the Smoking Mirror had already lashed out, throwing that snake like a vaquero’s rawhide — whipping an arc which sliced cleanly through Ixchel’s vessel’s neck as though every scale were diamond-edged, sending her head to bounce on the ground once, twice, ’til it fell over, eyes staring sidelong. The headless body dropped to its knees and held there, balanced, same as a coin fallen miraculously on edge.

Rook’s legs folded under him, as if all his strength had simply decided
enough
, and shut itself off; he thudded to the ground beside Ixchel’s popped-off skull, knees on fire, wondering if death was ’bout to seize him, too.

But not so much, no. For in the world they now shared, as already established, death did not mean as much as it otherwise might.

Instead, Ixchel’s eyes rolled to meet his, dread stare strangling a half-born shriek in Rook’s throat; she bit into her own lower lip and chewed, almost hard enough to sever it.

With black syrupy blood pouring down her chin, her impossible voice pounded into the Rev’s head, rail spike deep:
Fool! He thinks to show me weak — prove him wrong!

Overcome by a dreamlike detachment, Rook somehow knew what to do without even asking — so he picked the head up by its tresses, coated his palm with blood and smeared it over the neck stump like caulking, then lofted it in a hexation-boosted throw toward the kneeling body, where it landed angled so as best to set vertebra to vertebra, neat as you please. While the smoking blood sealed together like boiling oil cut with molasses, Ixchel heaved herself to her feet, black-shrouded in counter-luminance.

Through jaws clenched so tight Rook thought they might have fused likewise, she grated out, “Not enough, brother. Not nearly enough.”

The grin the Enemy gifted her with, in return, seemed to rock ground and sky at once: purest berserkery, without any of Chess’s usual sense that no matter what, he
would
survive. This was a grimace which risked everything, at once utterly aware and utterly unafraid of mortality — its own, obviously, along with everyone else’s.

Very well, then, sister,
it replied.
We start over, though not in the way
you
mean.

And as she blinked her slow, dead lids at him, not understanding, Rook saw the Weed around him begin to flex, to stir . . . to
grow
.

Too soon
, Rook thought, desperately.
Christ Jesus Almighty blast other gods small and large alike, altogether! Too Goddamn
soon
, entirely.

He slid a hand into one pocket, reaching for the token he’d hid there: just a dried spruce wand, nothing to look at, a mere peeled twig — but trigger, nonetheless, for the mightiest spell Rook’d yet devised, so powerful he’d had to work it in careful stages throughout the night while Ixchel slept, weaving it into the wards over the entire City and tying its activation to a single, simple physical event, for fear she’d sense its presence. Worthless, perhaps, depending — yet it was all he had. So he braced his thumb on the wand’s middle and pushed, felt it bend . . .

Then froze, as did both undead gods and all their watchers, as a sharp and steely call stabbed into every mind within the City’s walls. It had no words, only the simplest possible meaning —

Danger comes! Danger! To the East Gates!

A voiceless “voice” that carried the Honourable Chu’s unmistakeable harsh tones. And simultaneous with it, something else: a vibrant pulse, so deep as to be felt more than heard, the lowest string of some Titan’s harp plucked once and then again, each note just slightly louder. Sal Followell turned at its call, shoulders hunched and eyes wide to their whites, her fear freighted with an awful fatigue, thirty years’ worth of disasters in the making:
What
now
, for all God’s love? What next?

“What . . . is
that?
” Ixchel rasped, echoing her, all unawares. And addressing the question neither to Rook nor any other human but to her fellow petty deity, with all the casual thoughtlessness of kin before strangers, as if their duel was already forgotten.

Rook, too intent to feel insulted, was already whipping back a reply to Chu, along the same channels:
Mexes here already, that it? Laying down fire, preparatory to attack?

No. They
are
here — but —

A most curious sensation: Chu’s mind went blank and grey, an empty sheet, as if sheer bewilderment precluded any coherent image.

And almost simultaneously, the Enemy’s next words wiped Rook’s own mind equally blank, as it observed:
Aha, I see. Interesting, indeed. The Crack . . . is closing.

Soft, and so awed that even the god’s infuriating sly glee had faded; the lightning-snake danced forgotten on its wielder’s palm, finally folding back inside once Tezcatlipoca remembered it the way a frog’s tongue retracts.