“Hell, you’re tryin’ to goad me, ain’t ya? Like always. Get me riled enough to dump you here, thinking that’ll make me kick my own ass up through however long’s left to go. But . . . what happens to you then, Oona? Where do
you
end up, after I’m gone?”
And why should I care? Except how, stupidly — fucking
moronically
, to be exact —
He did, still. Same way as he always had.
Aw, fuck
me
.
A breath, through ragged teeth. His mother’s ghost slumped to rest her forehead ’gainst his shirt, where her cold mouth made a small, wet imprint, about the size of a broke half-dollar.
“It workin’?” she asked, eventually, without much hope.
“Not as such.”
She lay still there a moment, dead weight, like she was gathering her strength. And when she spoke again, a note rung in her voice he never remembered being there before — almost . . . maternal, he had to put a name to it.
“You gotta give me up, Chess. To move on.”
“I don’t ‘gotta’ do any damn thing I don’t want to — you of all people should know that, by now.”
“Then make yourself
want
to, you great git. ’Cause it’s ’ow it’s gotta be.”
Chess hissed. “Says who?”
“Your Missus Kloves, is ’oo. Been sayin’ it these last hours, or ’owever long, for all I knew you couldn’t make it out. And all
I
didn’t want to.”
“Aw, that’s horseshit. We bulled our way past enough of this crap together before — just have to push harder, is all. Don’t let it divide and conquer. Ain’t come all this Goddamn way dragging your dead ass behind me just to give up
now
, Goddamnit — ”
“It
ain’t
givin’ up. It ain’t. You just . . . Jesus! Why you always gotta be so bloody difficult?”
“Look who’s talkin’.”
Wanted to turn, so they could at least play at being able to see each other, but the rock wouldn’t let him; all these tonnes of earth, these stones and dead things, these endless years of debris and garbage, pressing down unflinching ’til he felt his not-skin bruise, his not-bones bend and start to crack.
It’ll squash me flat, is what it’ll do, like a wheel-popped roadside toad. Christ, will there ever be an end to this, to us? Or is where we’ve gotten ourselves to yet more of Hell again, over and over, writ meaner and smaller every time?
Seemed like Oona felt it too, for she could barely draw a full breath before managing, her words thin: “That girl in New York, Mina Whittaker’s ’er name . . . ’eard ’e give
’er
a son too, before she did for ’im. Mose Whittaker, the Widowmaker’s get. ’E’d be your brother, I s’pose, by ’alf measures at least.”
“Why’d you tell me that?”
“Fought you might want to know. For after.” Another strangled gasp. “Why . . . bloody . . . not?”
Sure. So
now
’s when you let it slip, right when it won’t net you anything to hold it back.
The scar along his jawline crawled as though it was on fire, tracing the path of her
yen hock
; he could almost remember the look in her eyes when she’d done it, lashing out like a one-clawed cat, trapped into one more move to make him change or run or both, anything but stay and die in that sty she knew would be her tomb. The tears he’d thought drug-addled rheum shone on her cheeks, colour feverish-high already: the germ ripening in her every cough, long before blood began to flow.
Best I could do for you, so I done it — I ain’t proud. And don’t tell me you wasn’t glad enough to ’ave good reason to ’ate me, in the end.
“Guess I did ruin your life, in a way,” he said, slowly, into a mouthful of dirt. “Though I still don’t think you had t’let me.”
“Fanks, ever so. What sort of apology d’you call that, then?”
“Better’n you rate, taken all in all. ’Less you disagree.”
“No point to it. Is there?”
Not really, no.
Chess reached back, pinched arm straining ’til he thought it might crack its socket, and felt for what he hoped were her fingers. Nothing seemed where he’d left it; the tunnel might’ve been a hand’s-width or a straw’s span, some sort of hexacious illusion snaring them like tar while the walls stretched stars-high on either side. Was there even a floor?
Nail touched nail, the barest scratch of horn. Followed by something soft on the pad of his index . . . lips?
Don’t do this to me, old woman.
Still, it rallied him, at least. With his last shred of effort, he ground out, before heaviness forced his mouth shut: “Ain’t all that much forgiveness in me — you made sure of that. But what there is, you got. Now . . .”
. . . time to get off my damn back, for good and all. Go where you’re goin’. Stay there.
“Oona Pargeter, I dismiss you,” he said. And shut his eyes.
She fell away behind him — tore a patch from him with her passing, hole linked to hole, momentarily open enough to let the dark on either side shine through. But he had no time to allow himself regret.
Chess came up punching, as if through a membrane, a bag, the same too-small, fetid and unspeakably hot channel which once let him loose on the world. Another audible snap, like bones baked in a fire — and then finally,
finally
—
— he was over that last stile, up through the world’s crust,
out
at last. Crouched panting under a roiling marine sky, at the base of what he vaguely knew to be one of that old squaw Grandma’s sacred places. A circle of people stood arrayed ’round him, to almost every quarter. Grandma herself in her bone-dust reliquary; that war-painted he-she Yiska, The Night Has Passed, with horse-jaw tomahawk upraised in one fist and that crimson-clad bitch-witch Songbird’s pallid hand held gentle in the other. A scattering of men as well, withdrawn to a respectful distance, their bows held ready.
Beneath his feet, as he rose, something shifted unsteadily; he glanced down, just to confirm what it was — a crevasse big enough to thrust your hand into, cracked on either side like salt-stung dead man’s lips — before cutting a hasty two-step and scrambling alongside, to much firmer ground.
“Mister Pargeter,” a familiar voice cut in, from behind him, “welcome. Been waiting on you quite some time now — mighty glad to see you could accommodate, eventually, considering how hard it was to send you down directions.”
Chess turned, braced for the sight of her already: small and slim, her dark hair braided in two long ropes ties with beaded leather, Injun-style. She wore almost the same rig he’d made for her out of her wedding-dress, save for those skin slippers she must’ve gotten raiding Yiska’s wardrobe. Looked a bit more sunburnt, a tad older . . .
but hell, that was all right.
She’s alive, that’s the important part — not drilled through the head by Mesach Love’s woman, or swung like I thought she might be. And that’s halfway more’n I can say, even now.
Speaking of whom, now: Christ, if that wasn’t not-exactly-Missus Love herself standing back yet further, on Yancey’s left hand. And holding that boy of hers in her arms as well, with hex-light spilling up from his forehead in a new-grown war bonnet, a guttering twenty-candle crown.
Biggest damn hen party he’d attended since leaving ’Frisco, one way or the other . . . and looking at Yancey Kloves, all Chess could think of to tell her was that he’d never in all his life seen anyone he was more glad to meet up with, Rook included.
But still, when he opened his mouth, the very first thing which fell out was — instead —
“. . . where’s Ed?”
November 15, 1867
Month Fourteen, Day Eight House
Festival: Still Quecholli, or Treasured Feather
Day Calli (House) is governed by Tepeyollotl, Heart of the Mountain: Jaguar of Night, lord of echoes and earthquakes, so vast that the spots on his coat are said to represent the stars in the sky. Even though Tepeyollotl is a variant of Tezcatlipoca — sometimes called He Who Rules Us All, in his most threatening aspect — Calli is nevertheless considered a good day for rest, tranquility and family life, best spent cementing relationships of trust and mutual interest.
By the Mayan Long Count calendar, however, Day Eight Calli’s primary influence is that of Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead — a terrible skeleton shown dressed in strips of bark paper, with bulging eyes and a gaping stomach through which the liver, home to the spirit, may be seen hanging. Associated with nighttime animals such as the owl, the bat and the spider, he is also the Fifth Lord of the Night, and ruler of both the tenth day (“Itzcuintli,” or Dog) and the tenth month (“Tecpatl,” or Stone Knife).
As befits the weapon used to carry out human sacrifices, Tecpatl symbolizes moments of grave ordeal, predestined trials and tribulations — good times to test one’s character, yet bad times to rest on one’s past reputation. Cutting through falsehood like its own blade, Tecpatl warns that the mind, like the spirit, must always be kept sharpened, so it can reach the very marrow of cosmic truth.
From the archives of the Western Union Company, Telegraph #67-8155, sent November 14, 1867, stamped as delivered same date:
WESTERN UNION
PDA FWDSTN NA-1 LONG PD=ALBUQ NM DEL 14 10:39PM
[1867 NOV 14 11:22
PM
]FITZ HUGH LUDLOW= :MR G THIEL=
URGENT EXPEDITE ARRIVAL STOP P HAS DETERMINED ON DIRECT ATTACK UPON PRISM URGED BY NEW ALLY T-CAT STOP I DEEM ALLY MOST DEEPLY UNTRUSTWORTHY STOP MR GREY YET UNABLE TO ESCORT GOOD DOCTOR TO NEW POSITION STOP ATTACK PLANNED FOR 15TH TOMORROW STOP PRIVATE ACCESS TO CAMP TELEGRAPH LIMITED BUT WILL DESTROY MESSAGE RECORD HERE STOP URGENT REPLY SOONEST STOP MAINTAIN PROTOCOL STOP FHL
From the Western Union archives, Telegram #67-81594, sent November 15, no delivery stamp:
WESTERN UNION
ALBUQ NM LONG PD=PDA FWDSTN NA-1 DEL 15 01:14AM
EDITOR IN CHIEF= :FITZ HUGH LUDLOW=
MATERIAL UPDATES RECEIVED STOP REGRET IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL STAFF SUPPORT AT PRESENT STOP REASON TO EXPECT LARGE PRESS CONTINGENT ARRIVING FROM TWO REPUBLICS NEWSPAPER WITHIN 24 HRS STOP OPERATIVES FROM LONE STAR GAZETTE DETACHED TO PROVIDE BALANCE STOP EXPECT THEIR ARRIVAL SAME TIMEFRAME STOP FACILITATE THEIR OPERATIONS HOWEVER POSSIBLE STOP REITERATE TO GREY IMPORTANCE OF ASSIGNMENT STOP GODSPEED FITZ STOP
Transcribed from the shorthand notes of Mister Fitz Hugh Ludlow, on the day of November 15th, 1867, at the site of New Aztectlan, New Mexico:
The cold light of a winter dawn creeps over the plain. Near half a mile south of where the Pinkerton forces and Captain Washford’s have assembled before the bloody stone forest of the
ceiba
trees, I stand upon this rocky knoll, at the southward edge of the plain; its altitude, and the telescope obtained from Quartermaster Voormeis, grant me God’s own view of this battle — a privilege of which your humble correspondent is most mindful! Yet dread grips me that before this day is out, I will wish I had never been afforded this opportunity. The most novel of human sciences stands opposed to the most ancient of un-Christian magics, and whatever the outcome of this conflict, it is a certainty that afterward, the world shall not be as it has been.A path leads through the
ceiba
trees to New Aztectlan’s entrance, though with my own eyes I have seen that path vanish in a heartbeat, to leave its travellers prisoned, and presently vivisected, by those malevolent obsidian growths. It is open now, showing the closed gates at their far end; human shapes line Hex City’s walls above those gates. Toward the entrance to that pathway there marches a minuscule advance guard, less than a dozen people. But foolish is he who thinks this party is to be easily dismissed. For new-made “scientific” hex Mister Allan Pinkerton himself walks at its head, with the arcanistric genius Doctor Joachim Asbury at his right hand, supported by Agent Edward Morrow, once an undercover member of “Reverend” Asher Rook’s own bandit gang. But most overwhelming a presence of all is the entity named Huitzilopochtli, incarnate in sodomite pistoleer Chess Pargeter’s flesh, come to challenge his sister deity the Rainbow Lady Ixchel to a fateful, perhaps final, confrontation. With them they bring prisoners of war: trade offerings, warnings, or proofs of potency? We can only pray that the gambit is effective, whatever its reasoning.The party has now stopped in the mouth of the pathway. The god-demon Huitzilopochtli advances now between those trees, and lifts his arms, green-clad in living vine — in God’s Name, even I can hear his declamation, and at this mighty distance!
Ed Morrow came to slowly, half-buried under what felt like a pile of corpses, many of ’em only partially intact, to the hellish accompaniment of screams and curses: Mexico City after the earthquake, this time writ even larger. Through half-slit eyes, he saw the parti-coloured sky above illuminated in obscure flashes, how the clouds above hung snarled and heavy as dye-soaked wool, green and grey and black — hinted-at sun just a bright, flat, colourless coin submerged inside that same darkening knot, while a moment later sheet lightning deformed the sky even as a genuine bolt ripped horizontally, thrashing uncoiled and light-bloody, a severed dragon’s tail caught in mid-fall.
How did we get here?
he wondered, horrified.
Sending his mind back, then, scraping out memory’s bottom-most dregs. A mere half-hour before, the Enemy had stood in front of Hex City’s walls, vine-armour knotted like veins across its blue skin and Chess’s red curls standing up straight, a lightning-lifted crown. And called to its “sister” inside, in a voice both gentle yet impossible to ignore, so penetrative did its timbre seem to rumble for maybe a mile in every direction at once.
Ixchel, come out. Suicide Moon, Black Rainbow, Long Hair of Death; Filth-eater, Serpent-skirt, Lady of Ropes and Snares: arise, and face me as they did at Tollan. For now is the time of reckoning, my love . . . the time when this world we squat on must at last be saved or unmade, for good, and altogether . . .