Chess drew a long breath, oddly ragged; felt his own eyes slide to Oona, who stood there hugging herself again. “Does like to ’ear ’imself talk, don’t ’e?” she asked, of no one in particular.
Chess shrugged. “They all do, the preachers. Or so’s I’ve noticed.”
“You may mock,” Love told them. “But believe me when I say that God withholds nothing from the truly contrite, no matter who they may be.”
“Even if what they ‘be’ goes against Bible itself, at least according to one particular part? ’Cause forgiven or not, I ain’t never gonna lay down with a woman like I do with a man, Sheriff — be unnatural to my person, like it’d be unnatural to
you
to do the opposite, what with that gal of yours waiting for you.”
“Sophy, you mean.”
“Yeah, her. Granted, I used to think I hated all females, and that turned out t’be tripe — but I ain’t about to change my habits now, even so. Not after all this.”
“You already have, though, where it matters. I was
there
, at Bewelcome — saw first-hand how you saved me, my boy, my wife and all the rest, at the cost of your own skin. That you
are
capable of great good, no matter your inclinations . . . or how fervently you may claim the opposite, either.”
“Oh, that was just for pique, to fox Rook’s plans — to stick my dick in that infernal Machine of his wife’s, and see what-all popped off.”
“Yet you ended up doing the Lord’s work nonetheless, if unintentionally; that counts for something.”
“Does it?”
“Why would it not?” A pause, as Chess felt the exhaustion of the last few . . . days, hours, who the hell knew . . . wash up over him in a single flood, high enough to choke on. But the Sheriff went on, unabashed. “Though once I might have believed differently, I no longer consider your proclivities, your upbringing, the source of your
truly
sinful behaviour, since I know all too well that I too was guilty of real sin, before
and
after death — the sins of pride, of wrath, of despair. At the War’s end, when I vowed to hammer my sword into ploughshares, but did not; when I judged myself fit to pass judgement on Reverend Rook and you, along with all your fellows; when I blamed you for your part in Bewelcome’s fall, but took no responsibility for my own. Yet this is the charge God laid upon us all when first he gifted us free will, bittersweet fruit of that fateful Eden-tree, and I take it up happily now, in my time of need — bite down and swallow gladly, to its veriest dregs, regardless of the taste.”
Jesus
, Chess thought,
this really is some sermon. Too bad I ain’t got a watch to set.
The Sheriff went on, fervently unaware of his audience’s growing restlessness. “I eat of the tree, and true knowledge at last is mine — I feel His grace falling down on us, like sunlight: even here, even me, even
you
. These others too, if they’re amenable. All we ever have to do is accept it.”
Oona was outright staring at him now, red brows knit; Chess wasn’t sure if she was stuck between a gawp and snort, too dazed by Love’s oddity to quite let loose with either. One way or the other, he didn’t care to argue the point.
“Listen,” he said, finally, “I do see that woman of yours, what d’you want me to tell her?”
“Tell her I’ve seen her already, in dreams. That I look to see her hereafter, once I’ve done my time.”
“No reason to stay on in Hell if you don’t need to, Sheriff.”
Love shook his head, smiling. He was almost healed now — back to the way he’d been when they first found him. “Oh, but I do,” he said, gently enough. “And besides — all places alike are Hell, without my Lord. Or Sophy.”
He turned on his heel, then, and left them, retreating into the distance ’til he was only a line bisecting the horizon, a mere speck. Then gone, as though he’d never been at all.
Chess, Oona and Hosteen walked on, in the opposite direction.
The crags became steeper, a mountain range, then one particular mountain, vertiginously high. Eventually, it all ran out — there was nowhere left to climb. Only a sawbacked ridge, flint-sharp, curving ’round a small dip of frost-cracked stone and pebbles just big enough for all three to stand in. Beyond, merely black sky, with one sharp spike of grey rock thrusting rudely starward.
“Now what?” Oona demanded.
Chess was Christ Almighty tired of shaking his head. “Wait?” He took a deep breath, trying to think. “Hey, Kees — considering how high up we are, why is it we ain’t havin’ any trouble breathin’?”
“We’re dead,” Oona reminded him. “Breathing’s nought but a mind-trick any’ow, so what’s ’at prove?”
“Proves what we should’ve kept
in
mind, all along — ” Chess grabbed two spars of rock and hauled himself up, balancing precariously. “It’s
all
tricks. Don’t take nothin’ for what it looks like.” He licked one finger and held it up. “I got a breeze here, from the east — Kees, check the other side, see if it keeps goin’.”
Hosteen’s upward scramble took longer, but at length he balanced opposite Chess, testing the wind the same way. “I got it comin’ in from the west.” Looking to Oona: “Ma’am — if you don’t mind?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Oona muttered — then wet her finger and simply stuck it straight up, reaching high as she could. “All right, I feel it. Comin’ from . . .” She trailed off as she turned, tracing its path from south to north, ’til she ended up pointing straight
at
the spike itself.
“Not comin’ from,” said Chess, voice tight with excitement. “Goin’
to
.” Swinging from spar to spar along the ridge ’til his boots were braced on the ridge, he wound up holding onto the spike with one hand. His other slid to where jagged point ran out — and beyond, curving ’round a column of pure blackness, hitherto invisible against the sky, that gave back the tactile sensation of rock.
And something more, now that he concentrated — a faint thrum, like he’d grabbed hold of a telegraph cable in mid-send; a feeling of
pulling
, as though the column had hold of him, too. His throat went dry, voice hoarse. “Think I found our next thread, Ma — the thread of all threads.”
“Christ on churches.” Oona tipped her head back, looking higher and higher, clearly seeing nothing. “We ’ave t’
climb
that?”
“We’re hexes, woman; sure we can figure out some other means of locomotivating, we have to.” Grinning, Chess looked to Hosteen. “You comin’ too?”
Hosteen swallowed. “You know where that’s goin’?”
“Not a clue. But I’m willin’ to bet you don’t want to stay here, any more’n we do.”
“Ain’t a question of ‘want’, so far as I can see. One way or t’other, though . . .” Carefully, Hosteen clambered down, dusting himself off. “I’m pretty sure this is far as I go.” At Chess’s double-take, he shrugged, almost sadly. “Got some time left yet t’do, Chess, and I know it. Like the Sheriff said.”
“Aw, shit — ” Covering up something he didn’t want to think on too closely with anger, as ever, Chess jumped down. “Don’t act like you believe some God-botherer’s gasbagging
now
! I’ve
seen
the shit waits back down there. You ain’t a bad enough man to deserve that.”
“Wasn’t that good a man, either.” Hosteen glanced back to the head of the trail they’d just climbed. “I got blood and suffering on my hands too, you know. We all did. Any of us try to stop the Rev ’n’ you, at Bewelcome? Did we say, ‘No more!’ afterward, or walk away?” He shook his own head, slowly. “In the end, we all gotta answer for what we done, no matter how much we might’ve thought we
had
t’do it, or didn’t want to — ’specially if we went on ahead and did it, anyways.”
Chess wanted to punch something — Hosteen, the wall between worlds, he didn’t know, as he somehow knew the older man could tell. But Hosteen regarded him still, unflinching.
“I shouldn’t have . . . treated you the way I did,” Chess said, at last. “You know. Triflin’ with your affections, and suchlike.”
Hosteen laughed. “Hell, I never minded too much! You were . . . precious to me, Chess Pargeter. More’n you know.”
“If that’s the best you had, Kees, then I’m sorry.”
Hosteen shrugged once more. “I ain’t.”
Gently, he took Chess by the right hand, shaping its fingers ’round Oona’s startled wrist before hoving in for a kiss, brief yet firm, smack dab on Chess’s surprise-slack lips. His breath still tasted of tobacco, though Chess could only assume he hadn’t smoked any since before his death. Funny how things clung, down here.
“You go on, the two of you,” was all Hosteen said, his gravelly voice rougher than usual — and pushed them lightly on, “forward” becoming up, the invisible column above flowering iris-bright into a wormy, vertical tunnel, close as any closet. A current took hold, breaking Hosteen’s grip; Oona gasped, hugging on monkey-tight, as the two of them lifted off.
So fast: a mere heartbeat, half a pulse more, and he couldn’t even see Hosteen walk away. Something fiddled beneath his ribs, sharp and new, a painful poke.
“Seems there’s a point t’givin’ it away, after all,” Oona said, shakily, into Chess’s throat.
“Seems like. Maybe you should’a tried it, every once in a while.”
A sudden, vertiginous rush, stomachs roiling, and their feet touched down once more; tunnel became path, similarly narrow, canted so steeply upward they had to half-climb, half-crawl. Oona disengaged, then started to slip, almost immediately — Chess scrambled backward, feeling for her hand again, and grabbed on hard, it being well dark enough no one else could catch him doing it.
“Don’t let go!” she squeaked, breathless.
“I don’t aim to,” he said. And set his feet to the path once more, the long and windy way toward . . . who damn well knew?
Good God, it seemed to drag on forever. Places, the “ceiling” and “floor” alike drew so close together they could barely move, except at the most painfully slow of paces — they wriggled like worms, chasing echoes. At first, these were simply a figure of speech, but as the journey wore on, they became more concrete: whispers yet too high to interpret, flittering like bats. Women’s voices, Chess had no doubt.
Yancey
?
There was something lonesome in all-but-knowing himself the last man left standing in his own entire world, misbegotten as he’d always been made to feel. Looking back, young Missus Yancey Kloves was the sole female he’d ever had much in common with, after a point — that same point when cute tyke became scrawny, redheaded bastard, with a later side dish of thief, thug, rowster and (of course) You Goddamned Preening Queerboy.
Babies die, Mister Pargeter. She wanted you dead, you would be.
Gal, you didn’t
know
her, for which you should give thanks. . . .
But Chess hadn’t either — not really. Simply well enough to imagine her capable of better, having seen her dole out a rough parody of such to any damn jack had the fawney, all the while wondering why none of that act (however ripe its falsity) could ever come
his
way, apparently. Why he didn’t rate the lie’s effort, not even if he’d been able to pay for it.
Oh, she’d pet me some when she was drunk enough, but otherwise . . . like I wasn’t even there.
In the darkness, with what illusion of air they shared running thin, Chess found it increasingly hard to distinguish the bright, sharp young hex-to-be Oona he’d come to know since Seven Dials — a fair companion with more points of similarity than difference, her hair-trigger temper matching his own, albeit backed up with fists and whatnot rather than guns — from her past or future self, the greasy-haired harridan whose bony fists and poison tongue had crushed his childhood flat. And that old rage welled up acid, a carrion meal’s afterbirth, to scald his stomach lining, fill his lungs with spume he longed to vomit.
Her hand twisted in his, nails digging deep, and he had to force down an urge to kick her where it counted ’til she blacked out — to slam her face-first in the dust and grind, ’til her fine new skin was grit-torn and seeping. Leave
her
behind, lost and lorn without recourse in an awful, empty universe, and see how she liked
that
.
Her voice in one ear, hoarse to grating, at exactly the worst time. “You don’t
’ear
that?”
“
What?
”
“Same bitch as before, I’ll lay odds, frowin’ more lines down like fish’ooks. Be nice if she could manage a bloody light, though, wouldn’t it? Some sort’a
trail
, so’s we didn’t ’ave to nose ’round in the dark like bloody meal-worms.”
Again, Chess’s anger sparked, a well-worn flint struck along its deep-grooved edge. “We ain’t privy to all that’s happening, up there — might be she has her reasons. Might be she’s working just as hard as us, for even less reward.”
Oona snorted. “I knew doss-’ouse cows could knock what was lost outta a petitioner’s own pocket, you asked ’em, so long as silver was involved. ’Oo is this ‘Yancey’ of yours, any’ow? What’s ’er claim t’fame, exactly?”
“Dead-speaker, Goddamnit. You never did listen.”
“I’m the only one
can
listen, sonny boy, ’cause for all your made-a-god airs, you still ain’t worth nothin’ for nothin’ don’t involve suckin’ cock or shootin’ other fools full’a ’oles. Tits on a bull, that’s what you are — what you’ll always be, now an’ forever more, world wivout end. ’Specially so if you can’t rouse yourself to
bloody break us free of this damn place.
”
“
You shut your trap
, you whore from Hell! I got more hexation in the tip of my faggot dick than you ever would’ve had if you lived to be a hundred-friggin’-ten,
Columcille
or no — ”
But here the skirling whine of that voice — voices? — came swooping back around ’em yet again, interrupting, so painful-molten pitched he could almost see the angles it carved into the darkness. And all at once, Chess knew what Oona’s plan was, if you could dignify it thus; the last act of a desperate woman in equally desperate straits, determined at least one of them should emerge from this choke-hold where they’d fetched up, only to lodge like they were caught in Time’s own craw.