This time, the dapper New York gangster didn’t even bother to nod. Just replied, equally nonchalant, “Oh, no more’n any of us, Rev, I s’pose. But more so than Herself, by far.”
Rook inclined his head, reaching to rake up an appropriate verse from deep inside:
Job
27:21,
The east wind carrieth him away and he departeth
, perhaps. Or
Psalms
, 83:15 —
So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm
. Either would do.
Yet hearing in his head simultaneous, as mocking echo, a few more of those Celestial war-wisdom adages Honourable Chu liked to quote:
All war is deception; to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill — to subdue the enemy without fighting, that is the acme of skill; if ignorant of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.
“Let’s to it, then,” the Rev said. And stepped off the ramparts with Fennig and the Missuses trailing behind like a kite’s tail, blown straight into the storm’s beating heart.
The town hall’s roof came off like kindling, as if the storm’d turned one big mouth, opened wide, and took itself a bite. Rook came drifting down inside what was left with the rain still pelting ’round him and Fennig a mere half-step behind, bringing the Word along as well, in silver-black clumps:
Isaiah
13, 6 to 9:
H
owl ye; for the day of the
LORD
is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the
A
lmighty.
T
herefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt:
A
nd they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames
.
B
ehold, the day of the
LORD
cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it
.
The place was gutted, chairs and pews flung every which way, smashed to sodden flinders. A stage took up the back half, uneven now, as though it’d been stamped on — and that was where he found what was left of the elders’ council: some fat man with a broken leg, sprawled with a Manifold clutched to his chest like he thought it could ward off heart attack (Mayor Langobard, probably), plus a roster of other notables, similarly stricken — including a dapper fool Rook could only assume, with a twinge of nasty amusement, must be the town’s new preacher: no Mesach Love, that was for sure. For though this man’s lips moved feverishly, Rook could barely sense enough faith in him to light a lucifer, let alone ward off evil.
In the corner crouched Doc Asbury, managing admirably to not quite cower; might be the last few months had finally inured him to the shock of seeing his theories turned fact. While nearby, half-hid behind a tangle of fallen furniture, a man with similar taste in fashion as Fennig crouched with tablet out and pencil busy, scribbling frantically, as though he aimed to preserve all he saw for posterity’s sake.
But even as Rook took note of them all, they paled to invisibility in the face of his true target, who crouched above Langobard with one hand laid soothingly on his sweaty brow, clutching her baby close with the other: Sophronia Love, the Sheriff’s woman, moral heart of Bewelcome’s resistance. The figurehead all the rest rallied behind.
For a year in the salt, she looked uncommon good, even dressed in black with her hair plastered dark by the downpour’s vigour. As did that fussing boy of hers, whose healthy lungs sent up counterpoint music, loud enough to be heard over the storm itself.
Strike her down, this town dies with her, lit and fig. Strike her down, and victory follows.
Easier said than done, though, he suspected. Since
this
one’s faith was so pure it all but sparkled, even under these circumstances.
“Ma’am,” he addressed her. “As you know, I knew the Sheriff briefly, in both his guises. Are you sure he’d really want you to risk your life, let alone his only son’s, by staying here?”
She met his eyes straight on, without fear. “In the town my husband founded? Where else would I go, Mister Rook?”
“Well . . . many places. There’s a seat left open amongst
us
, for example, for every outcast.” And here he indicated Berta, Clo and Eulie, just settling down behind him. “My intelligencers inform me you’re scorned, accorded not even half the respect you merit — but we’ve more women than men in
our
councils, Missus Love; hell, we’re
ruled
by a Lady, and a most powerful one. We’d grant you authority fitting your mettle.”
“You’re ruled by a devil in woman’s shape, whose laws designate any without witchery in your city as no better than slaves . . . though even those
with
witchery seem like as not to wind up on her altar, sooner or later.” Switching her uncompromising glare to Fennig and the girls, she continued: “Those in Satan’s service meet only one end, however long it takes: They’re eaten by their master, body
and
soul. Are you sure you’re all far too useful ever to be made a meal of?”
Clo’s eyes flashed. “Ye little limb!”
Berta and Eulie, meanwhile, had turned their mutual attention on Catlin, who was scuttling backward with hands flung up, calling (predictably enough) on
Leviticus
, 20:27. Eulie gave a girlish laugh. “Cute, ain’t he, sissy? Like somethin’ off a band-box!”
“A real wedding cake swell, all right — doll-faced little fake priest, playing at toy soldiers. But we’ve no time for diversions, do we?”
“Just as well . . . for him.”
Sophy blinked at Clo, just noticing her condition. “God Almighty in Heaven, you foolish girl, did you actually bring yourself out on a mission of war while
great with child?
” The surprised indignation in her voice was so sharp that Clo actually flushed, putting one hand over her bulging stomach as if to guard it, even as her temper touched up the higher; her hair lifted, lighting from inside, with greenish St. Elmo’s fire.
“And what’s that there in your
own
arms, woman?” she snapped back. “Fine place for a mite like him, on the very line of battle!”
“The Lord is my buckler, sorceress, just as He was for Mesach — Gabriel’s, as well.”
“Oh yes? An’ it’s
my
man can see where best t’make that buckler crumple, he only cares to look for it; can’t ye, Hank Fennig? Well?”
But Fennig, after staring Missus Love up and down, just shook his head. “Can’t see a thing, not where she’s concerned — there’s somethin’ in the way. Though as to whether it’s divine in origin . . .”
“It is.”
“. . . she’s covered. Looks like the ball’s back in your court, Reverend.”
Sophy nodded. “If your business
is
with me in primary, then let be done, and go. You and yours are not welcome here.”
“Unwelcome, in the very town of Bewelcome itself? Some might call that a hypocrisy, ma’am.” Folding his arms, Rook cocked his head to one side, “Tell me, though, for I’m curious . . . do your Mayor and your new Reverend — hell, anybody in this town, save those keeping silent out of loyalty — happen to know how you and the Sheriff weren’t actually
married
yet, as such, the first time somebody killed him?”
Sophy Love coloured, furiously, and though Langobard — who’d finally managed to sit up — seemed too flummoxed to grasp anything of what he’d just heard, the little band-box preacher whipped ’round to shoot her an absurd glare, so offended it made Rook want to laugh.
Face bright red but voice icy calm, the Widow wrapped her child — who seemed to register her agitation, his sobs skipping an upward key — yet closer, and replied: “We were bound in God’s eyes, as you well know, having seen inside of Mesach’s head. But perhaps such distinctions are lost on the faithless.”
“Without doubt. But then again, God don’t really get a vote, come election time — you either, I’m guessin’. So . . .”
From behind Rook, by that heap of splinters where the town hall’s threshold had once lain, a third voice intruded. “Whatever you’re ’bout to say next, Rev, I’m fairly sure Missus Love don’t want to hear it. And that’s why I’d step away from her, if I was you.”
It was a deep voice gone somewhat flat with all too rational fear, yet steady as any soldier’s under fire, and Rook smiled to hear it.
“Hello, Ed,” he said, turning to greet his former employee, who looked about the same, if wetter. Beard no longer neat-trimmed, his muttonchops bristled, almost reaching his duster’s collar; rain sprayed from shoulders and hat alike, while Rook and the others stayed bone dry, safe within their intersecting power-bubbles.
“Heard you got reinstated,” Rook said. “Pinkerton see fit to forgive you your many sins?”
“Probationally.”
“Ah, yes. That do sound like the Law, don’t it? For they sometimes feign to forgive — but
never
forget.” Eyes homing in on the vague flash of grey barrel-metal, then, he asked, “Ain’t a gun you got there, though, is it? I only ask out of concern for your health, which prompts me to warn you how those don’t work too well, on me. Or could that be something the Professor over there dreamed up?”
“It might.”
“You don’t say! Tested it out, as yet?”
Morrow swallowed, sights kept admirably steady on Rook’s midsection. “Nope. But I’m favouring trial by fire, right about now.”
“Enough,” Sophy Love chose that same moment to interject, drawing herself up. “God alone knows my fate,
Reverend
. If this be my day and hour, then it will be His decision — not yours. And while you may have the power, you will
never
have right on your side, for that too is His to apportion.”
“Little lady, what makes you think there
is
any right?”
“If you truly believe that, sir, then strike me down this moment and do not hesitate; I fear no judgement. You?”
Fennig’s brows raised. “Stargazer’s got sand, ain’t she?” he muttered to Rook, who merely shrugged; the quality of Missus Love’s courage had never been in question, at least for himself. Still, while her willingness to throw her own life away might have no limit, did that willingness extend equally to others’ lives?
Like, for example —
“
Your
day and hour, maybe,” Clo Killeen put in, unexpectedly completing the thought. “For a Jaysis-jabberer like yerself, I’m sure that’s of no moment. That
boy
of yours, though — ”
— young Master Gabriel —
“ — how would he feel about bein’ bargained away with only Heaven’s promise as a get-out, if he was old enough to know better?” As Sophy’s face whitened: “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought on it, woman.”
“That’s none of your concern.” But Sophy’s free hand had clenched to a fist, and she turned her body in blind reflex, shielding Gabe as best she could. Clo grinned, as lightning flashed above with the rolling boom of field cannon.
“All right, then, since logic doesn’t seem to appeal . . .” Rook raised his voice, through the thunder. “Look out there, Missus Love! See what’s comin’, and ask yourself if you wouldn’t rather remove you
and
Gabe from its path.”
He flung out one long, black-clad arm. All heads swerved together, as though magnetized. And there on the horizon, just where the canyons gave out onto what had once been flood plain, Rook watched the clouds and rain alike twitch apart, one huge, liquid curtain. To reveal —
— Ixchel, Lady of Traps and Snares, the Goddess of the Rope, suspended there between sky and earth like Juno enchained. Looking genuinely eerie in the storm’s shifting light, an icon shadowed with tarnish like gangrene, lambent skin slightly fallen in over the moon-sharp points of her black-spiralled cheekbones, her chin, the sunken orbits of her eyes. Somehow visible in clear detail to them all, despite rain and distance; as angels and saints were said to be, in legends. Yet not even the reaping angel of Egypt’s firstborn could seem so dark as this.
The new preacher muffled a tiny squawking sound; Asbury’s jaw dropped and Langobard gaped. Sophy’s face slackened in the first thing resembling true fear Rook had ever seen from her. In her arms, Gabriel screamed on and on. Even Rook’s hexmates were silent — Fennig audibly swallowed, and Clo crossed herself in what must be sheer childhood habit, the gesture giving Rook a sudden pang. Only Morrow did not turn, though he tightened his eyes near to slits, as if fighting the pull with everything he had.
“Did you really think,” Rook asked Sophy, “if I decided this job was big enough to come in on myself, that she wouldn’t come in on it with me?”
“As I’d heard, was
you
she once trusted, to do her dirty work.”
“Oh, that’s still true, in the main. But actually, it was her idea to pull Bewelcome back down, in the first place — let many waters quench Love, in literal as in figurative, and make a clean sweep. And in this, as in all things, we are her creatures.”
“That’s nothing to boast on, Reverend.”
“Ma’am, I don’t disagree.” Rook sighed, suddenly sick of this game. “You and I know that even such a deluge as this won’t end this town completely, not so long as its people have you to look to, for inspiration to rebuild — so I’ll make no more false offers concerning
your
life.” He willed more power into his shields until they blazed, looking to fend off whatever attack Morrow might mount in return. “Instead — surrender, let us end you clean here. I’ll guarantee young Gabriel grows up safe and sound. Swear it on my power itself, if you wish it — and there’s more happens when a hex breaks an oath than you know.” He extended his hands to either side; Fennig took one, Clo the other, their force-bubbles bleeding together into a single crackling halo, hissing with rain-steam. Behind Clo, Berta and Eulie put their hands on her shoulders, adding their strength to the moil.
On the horizon, the raindrops around Ixchel turned to swarming dragonflies, their buzz rising up in a deadly drone even through the thunder; light rippled beneath her, horizon turning fluid. And below that, a rumbling, more felt than heard.