Made no difference at all how Yancey called and yelled at him, not even if she broke down and begged outright; Chess might hug himself a little, like he’d felt a draft, or a goose walking over the grave he’d never yet lain in. And then Yancey would feel Songbird and Grandma reel her back up by the silver cord she’d come down on, vaulting levels ’til she thought her chest would crack and her eardrums burst. ’Til she emerged at last from the latest inconclusive session atop Old Woman Butte, sweat-drenched and head banging, only to look up and see the hexes scowling down on either side of her again — equally annoyed (in their very different ways) by her consistent failure to make Chess even register her presence, let alone communicate with him directly.
Crossed legs all pins and needles, Yancey unfolded herself with a grunt of pain, fighting the urge to vomit. The fire had long since died to ashes, leaving them only shapes and sketchy gleams in the starlight.
“‘Dead-speaker,’” Songbird spit out, scornful. “How
polite
you are! Inefficient, as well; ghosts need a heavier hand, a master’s voice. When you travel through the Ten Thousand Hells you must threaten, not wheedle.”
“Don’t notice
you
stepping in for a turn,” Yancey replied, face gone hot.
“That is because she cannot,” Grandma said, shaking her ponderous head and levering herself up as well, every part of her creaking, as though that reliquary she’d made for herself was ’bout to bust apart. “Or me either, much as we may risk ourselves to protect
you
on these fishing trips. Dead-speaking is not the white one’s gift, while I — a ghost myself — am just one more shade to those Below, indistinguishable. Thus it falls to you . . . and you do not deliver.”
Songbird nodded. “Yet you claim to be his friend; that was supposed to help, was it not? Perhaps you do not mean so very much to him, after all.”
All at once, for some reason, this seemed to be the proverbial back-breaking straw — Yancey found herself rounding on her, using whatever inch-and-a-half of height difference there was between them to try making the younger girl feel small. “Me or any other woman, is that what you mean? Well, you can stop talking like you
know
him, Little Miss Hex-no-more, just ’cause the two of you were shat out on different sides of the same sewer!” As Songbird hissed like a scorpion, a fizzing pyramid of sparks rising from her left palm: “Yeah, and
now
you’ve got juice enough to slap at me, don’t you? Better go on ahead, then, ’fore it all goes trickling out the other end!”
“
Ai-yaaah
, daughter of dogs! I will lay you out and fill your mouth with corpse-vomit for such insolence, see if I do not — ”
“
Quiet!
” Grandma roared, her shadow suddenly large enough to chill them both. “You disappoint equally, and for far too long! Are we fools, to waste time on such trifles?” At her shout, Yiska came running, only to halt in dismay near the dead fire, uncertain how best to interfere. “Truly, if my dreams had not told me we
must
bring the red boy back up in order to have even a hope at victory over the Lady of Traps and Snares, I would gladly knock your heads together myself ’til they cracked!”
For one half-instant only, Yancey felt like snarling back:
If you’re dead, and I’m the dead-speaker, seems I don’t have to let you do
nothing
I don’t like!
But the words rang in her head like something Chess Pargeter would’ve never hesitated to throw out, and that alone pulled her up, a sharp jerk of the rein. Face still burning, she clenched her teeth, breathed deep and forced the words of an apology into order, but never got them out.
Screeching something in Chinee, so fast and guttural even Yancey’s talents couldn’t translate it, Songbird flung the gush of pink-green sparks in her hand straight at the two shadowed pits serving Grandma for eyes; they struck and sizzled, throwing off steam. For the first time since Bewelcome’s resurrection, her feet left the earth and she floated up into the air with her white braids stiff as snakes until she was on a level with the giant stony corpus’s head — a pale and monstrous spectre, lit only by her own power.
In response, Grandma just shook her huge head like a dog throwing off water, reached up with one massive hand and seized the current mid-stream, roping it taut. Then lunged out, defter than Yancey could’ve ever believed, and smacked the other palm-first into Songbird’s body. The spread fingers (only three of them plus a thumb, Yancey saw in numb bemusement) spanned the girl’s whole midsection. Then Grandma yanked on the stream, hauling hard.
Songbird threw her head back, jaws straining wide in silent agony, as something
tore free
from her in a single wrenching yank: a naked ghost image in rose and viridian of the girl herself, hex-power spun from its navel like an umbilical cord. It held its shape in mid-air for a moment before dissolving, disappearing into Grandma like spilled ink being absorbed.
“Yes,
little ghost
,” Grandma told her, viciously — either unaware or uncaring how Songbird used that term only as insult, applied to every white person who got in her way. “The hunger is still there, even now. Always. And you too will try to feed it if you can, given opportunity, after
your
death . . . to chew its brief warmth down and revel in the taste, no matter how briefly.
No matter what the cost.
”
Songbird collapsed, dropping limp. Her slant hazel eyes bulged wildly, rolling in terror, as her remaining breath huffed out while the stone giant’s grip tightened on her waist, flint and granite knuckles swelling. Rock grated in Grandma’s throat — a snarl, bestial, rabid.
“Such
children
you are,” she said, as to herself. “Headstrong, stupid. You know
nothing
. You
are
nothing.”
“
Loose
me, damn you,” Songbird barely managed, though Grandma didn’t seem to hear. “Uh, aaah . . .
aaah
, it hurts! For all gods’ sake,
please
. . . let me
go
!”
It was more panic-edged courtesy than Yancey’d ever heard her use previously, to anyone. And Yiska just stood there throughout, staring up at the tableau with fingers clawed, face rictused — probably racking her brains for some way out that didn’t involve her throwing down with the strongest hex of her tribe, and getting either of them killed, in the process.
She does love that old monster
, Yancey thought, amazed.
And that young one, too.
Strangely, it was this last that spurred Yancey’s next shout, surprising herself with its force, not just for volume but also for the eerie
weight
of the cry, as if the words had tangible physical mass shooting from her lips. “She
said
put her the hell
down
, Goddamnit!”
Grandma’s hand jerked open, on purest reflex; Songbird fell hard to earth, whooping out one great sob. Yiska rushed to her side and gathered her up, cradling her like an infant, and Songbird clung to her in much the same way.
Again, Grandma did not appear to notice. She had switched her glare to Yancey, a sickly yellowish-blue light dancing about her. What little heat there was left in the desert night air dropped out of it; ice touched Yancey’s bare face and hands, freezing the sweat in her clothes. The menace trembled above her, a weight so massive it would crush her if it fell upon her yet so perfectly balanced a mere finger’s jab would send it the other way — if she could jab quick enough, precisely enough.
Don’t test me, lady
, Yancey willed at her, silently, not looking away.
Said yourself how you need my skills, even if they’re not up to your idea of snuff; meddle with me, whoever wins, we all lose.
But it was Yiska who broke the silence, this time. “Nothing more can be done tonight,” she said, Songbird still pressed face-first to her vest. “We need rest, all of us. I will take her down.” Then paused, to point out: “Consider this, though — if either of you hurt the other, tomorrow night’s work will be made the harder. And our task seems hard enough to me, as it is.”
Yancey’s head dropped, shamed; she was about to finally voice that apology, and mean it. But before she could, Grandma replied — so little heat in her “voice” she might’ve been chatting about the weather, for all the coiled menace in every inch of her hulking stance gave that the lie, “She could not hurt me, even if she tried. But she should not try, either.”
Or you, granddaughter.
Yiska nodded, then walked away — quickly, without glancing back. And when Yancey finally had the heart to look Grandma’s way one more, she found her gone, as well.
Somehow, Yancey let herself sit down, and if it was faster and weaker-kneed than she wanted, at least it wasn’t a fall. She covered her face with her hands, making herself breathe slow, forcing back a thick-throated wave of wanting, badly, to weep.
Goddamn, these women could be difficult. Songbird with her ridiculous airs, Grandma, held together with spit and will; Yiska, that proud oddity, monster-slaying when circumstances demanded and hounding after what had to be the worst possible option every other hour of the day. Hell, she’d be better off going sweet on Yancey herself, but for the fact it wasn’t as though that version of the story’d end up anyplace
more
joyful.
Rage and fear at last subsiding back to manageable levels. It only now occurred to Yancey that in her whole life thus far, the only people she’d never lied to about herself — who she was, what she was capable of — were Chess Pargeter, Ed Morrow . . . and them, her kidnappers turned companions, fellow prisoners of the Crack. Those who stood beside her now at the very edge of the Underneath, squashing whatever came welling up while trying to suture it shut. That alone had to count for something, surely.
Didn’t it?
The next night, roasting corn and squash ’round the fire with Yiska’s braves while Songbird pouted up in their mutual “sleeping chamber,” Yancey caught the war-squaw sidling off and rose as well, claiming she had to go do her business. Instead, she followed after — tracing that supposedly fatal track back up through the butte’s coils, to where Grandma kept sleepless vigil on top of the Old Drying Woman’s own seat.
“I need speech with you, Spinner,” Yiska told the hex-ghost’s broad back, sitting down cross-legged with palms on knees, eyes calmly trained on the mismatched exposed bones of her spine.
“Huh,” Grandma huffed. “Because I spoke harshly to that girl of yours?”
“She
is
difficult, though not ‘mine.’ But no. This is something else, more important.”
“Tread carefully, then, granddaughter.”
“As you say.” Yiska straightened her own spine, and said, “Spinner, when you anger yourself thus you risk losing control, knowing that to do so is to set your foot upon the Witchery Way. You risk Becoming what you fight —
Anaye
. And who will it fall to, then, to deal with you, as you hope to deal with the
bilagaana
blackrobe Rook?”
“Is it The Night Has Passed, scalper of Pinkertons and burner of ranches, who warns
me
against risks?” Grandma sounded half amused, half annoyed. “There
is
no safe choice for us, granddaughter. We face too many monsters. Like all of us, I do only what I must to fight them.”
“
Anaye
-power used against
Anaye
.” Yiska shook her head. “How is this different from the Reverend and his bride?”
“You dare ask me that, who lost my body at Rook’s own hands? Since I have shed no undeserving blood to return here, I have earned the right to restore that Balance myself — ”
“ — a Balance that cannot be restored so long as you
stay
here,” Yiska rejoined, unflinching. “‘The dead are dead, and must move on.’ You told me that yourself, Spinner. What would you have done with Yu Ming-ch’in, had Yancey not stopped you? Tell me plainly she was never in any danger — that you sought only to frighten her, if you could.” The fact that Yiska knew Songbird’s true name was only slightly less startling than the honest pain in her voice. “Truly, Grandmother, I would hear that from you. Please.”
Grandma’s golem-body neither breathed nor stirred of itself, when not wilfully moved by its rider, and though it didn’t slump, the long silence that followed made it seem empty as a dropped puppet. Yancey held her breath.
“I cannot slacken,” said Grandma, at last. “This city is Rook’s dream, and I will see it fall.”
“
Her
dream,” Yiska pointed out. “How often have you said that
Hataalii
should find a way to band together? Now look — here are
Hataalii
, a whole city of them! It is
their
dream, too. What better revenge than to help them take it from Rook and the Lady, to make it ours . . . and
theirs
?”
My God
, Yancey thought, forgetting entirely to mask herself, so stunned was she by the very idea, which had frankly never hitherto occurred to her.
Could that
work
?
“I see no reason not, dead-speaker,” Yiska replied, without moving, as Grandma’s “head” slid ’round, grating in its socket. “It seems to work well enough for them now, even under Rook and Lady Suicide’s reign.”
Hex City as destination rather than obstacle, then: a refuge for all hexes, if events saw Rook and Ixchel removed. As already proven, it could certainly sustain itself; once Oathed to each other instead of the Lady, its inhabitants wouldn’t feel the need to parasite on newcomers, or even on the non-hexacious. In fact, so long as that Balance Yiska and Grandma were always chawing over stayed preserved, it might go even further than accepting “just” hexes — considering how well-defended and powerful such a place would be, Hex City could provide a refuge for all peoples who felt themselves not part of “the Union.” Natives, for example, starting with these two’s own tribes. Freed slaves, Chinee ’scaping ’Frisco’s immigration quota; Jews, like Yancey’s Pa; gypsies, like her Ma. The two-spirited, even . . . hard women and frilly men, like Yiska, or Chess. Any-damn-one.
No one would feel they had to hide themselves anymore, to take a false name or put on a false face. No one would feel they had no place of refuge, no Promised Land to flee to.