The great figure still had not moved: arms upheld, its flat stone face immobile. Suddenly, Chess saw clearly all the separate pieces of bone and granite that made “Grandma” up, as if he’d never grasped before just how patchwork a construction it really was. One fell from its place, soon followed by another, with a gritty, grinding noise, coming apart by degrees. Then, with a rending crash, Grandma’s fossil-golem body collapsed, resolving into a mound of broken shards atop the titan arachnidan shell.
“Finished,” Yiska said, to no one in particular. “As you knew you would be, after such effort. Oh, Grandmother mine: I will remember you, always. I, and all others who benefit from your sacrifice here, your re-Balancing.”
Songbird goggled, far as her squinched eyes would let her. “We
needed
her!” she complained, finally.
“But we have you,” Yiska pointed out, matter-of-fact as ever. “And Gabriel Love. And, best of all . . .”
As one, they swivelled to look at Chess, significantly. Prompting the man himself to mutter, in turn — or perhaps just to think, not that there was all that much distinction ’tween the two these days:
Great
.
Yiska knelt to rap on the spider’s carapace, hard, like she was ordering up a hansom. “Follow the Crack,” she told it. “To its end. To Hex City.”
The magic that held up the spider-titan’s astonishing size ate the ground in mighty blurring leaps, moving so fast most of the riders had to flop down and grip the shell hairs death-tight to keep from flying off. The smeared-looking landscape shifted beneath them, wrenching at Chess’s missing guts. He looked backward once, and saw ribbons of liquid light trailing out behind them from the creature’s spinnerets, a cascade of red-gold and blue-green energies twining together as they stitched themselves into the earth. Behind the spider’s eyes, Yiska, Sophy Love’s babe and Songbird had wrapped themselves together, wove deep in their own power web, guiding this living shuttle as it knitted the world’s tapestry back together.
A few minutes’ watching was enough; Chess closed his own eyes, and held on grimly. He felt the closing Crack in every quarter, a boxcar door pressing him on all sides at once; every inch it narrowed made the world he clung to stabler, but also thinned away the raw hexation cloud feeding what scant substance he had left. So rather than lament, he set himself to the menial, painstaking work of drawing in every shred of it he could, a weaver’s prentice sweeping scraps from the loom.
Miles passed in minutes, slowing as they closed in on the City, and the depth of the wound being healed grew by fathoms. Before Chess knew it, they were passing what had to be the Texican troop at speed, then onto the battlefield, where a hollering battalion of Mexes were just rushing the walls — the eastern gate, outside which Clo Killeen’s mortal remains kept vigil, while Ixchel Rainbow and her Enemy watched from its already cracked ramparts. It was a sight which sent Chess’s whole being humming with lightning-fed ire.
Two more magicians stood with his Enemy and Enemy’s enemy alike, one Injun, one Chinee. The larger of whom turned now to the smaller, observing, “See — I
told
you it was spiders.”
“Hmp,” was all the Chinaman — “Honourable Chu,” Chess’s hex-sense named him — had to say, in return.
Though fire-scorched and halfway levelled, the defensive ring of black stone
ceiba
trees had one last trick to play, rearing back to vicious life soon as the colossal spider’s legs touched down within ’em — lashing out with razor-edge branches to trap and score the chitinous limbs, making them spill viscous, steaming liquid. The spider gave a shriek like a ruptured boiler and slowed, staggering from side to side as it kicked its way free, only to be grappled once more; trees shattered glassily under its flailing limbs, widening the path of devastation. Morrow fisted a hand in the spider’s hairs, the other gripping Yancey’s so hard he’d have feared to hurt her, if her grip hadn’t been so equally tight on his, and held on for dear life. For a moment, he saw himself rodeo-ing atop two huge broncos roped together, with laughter bubbling like vomit in his throat.
While the careening spider spun nearly all the way about, Morrow risked a look back at the battlefield, and gulped again. Taking advantage of the path being cleared for them, the Mexes were already racing for the breach — no lack of balls, this
comandante
, though perhaps an egregious lack of brains. Morrow opened his mouth to shout a warning, but found Yancey already there before him.
Yiska — company comin’!
Her psychic shout spiked through both Morrow’s temples, and he bit down on a yelp; judging by Yiska’s wince, it hadn’t been ticklesome for her, either.
Gotta get through that gate first, and fast!
Yiska nodded, turning back to Songbird and Sophy Love. The three put their hands to the spider’s shell, Gabriel’s clasped in his mother’s — and while no light or sound ensued, nothing Morrow could feel, Yancey abruptly shuddered head to toe, while Berta, Eulie and Carver yelled out as one. The spider wrenched itself ’round, ignoring its wounds, and cannoned straight at New Aztectlan’s granite walls.
The forest, however, was still not quite defeated. Less than a score of yards away from impact, one of the largest
ceibas
of all physically tore itself out of the ground, cracking its trunk into twin obsidian scissor-blades and shearing off the spider’s right foreleg at the lowest joint, with enough force to shatter itself. The spider lurched rightward into a sharp turn, stumbling parallel with the wall, ruined leg curling up useless as colourless mucus gushed out.
This violent and sudden dip brought Morrow level enough with those atop the walls to watch shock equal to his own race ’cross their faces — all but the Enemy, that was, who just gave an appreciative little nod.
Though Morrow wasn’t sure if such things felt pain the way humans — or even animals — did, the spider did seem peeved to find itself thus crippled, for all it had seven other legs to work with. Which might be why it presented those horrible mandibles like a pair of ox-horns, and let loose with a spray of smoking poison all down Hex City’s barricades. Hexes and small-folk alike jumped back, some with not quite enough alacrity to avoid being spattered; screams rose up, prompting the Lady to swear in Old Mex and “shout” over at Clo, who was presently engaged in playing hawk-on-doves with the first line of the Mexican charge — her mind-voice a desert wind whipped loud enough to dry everyone else’s thoughts up in their skulls.
To me, daughter! I need your aid!
Mother, yes: I come again, and gladly, for there is little sport for me out here, with these puling men and horses. Give me
epic
blood to shed, I beg you.
Will ichor do?
Oh Jesus: and here she came, blazing the sky, fatal as any comet.
“
Agent Morrow!
” yelled Berta, scrabbling across the spider’s back toward the edge while Carver and Eulie followed, both aghast. “I’ll distract Clo, while you and Missus Kloves get Pargeter in place! As for the rest, you three — ” she nodded at Yiska and her mates “ — get in however you can, and find the Moon Court; Herself’s probably got all her Mex-slaves there, charging her up. Eulie, I’m trusting you to guide ’em in.”
Eulie nodded, eyes tearing. “I’ll do it, honey. For you.”
“For
all
of us, you mean. Hank, too. And what’s left of Clo, likewise.”
“Yes, sissy. I love — ”
“Me too.”
With a quick kiss to her “sister’s” brow, she turned, crouching to leap — only to be hauled rudely back by the ankle, on her first attempt; Private Carver shouted into the wind, holding tight, perhaps trying to suggest alternatives. But Miss Berta, floating free above, only laughed.
“You’re sweet, Private,” she called back, loud enough so’s all could hear — then dove in to kiss him too, a short, intense buss which set him on his heels, blinking. Adding: “If I can, I’ll see you after!”
“And if you
can’t?
”
“Then I won’t.”
Without anything further, then, she was gone over the side in a flap of petticoats, hurtling fast toward death or glory. Eulie dashed salt water from both cheeks, and told Morrow, voice strained near to breaking: “Best get goin’, then, Goddamnit. Take him, her — ”
“I heard, gal. Jonas! Keep this one safe.”
Carver, still staring after Berta, drew himself up. “I aim to, Ed,” he replied.
Yiska shouted commands in her own tongue, and as the spider hauled itself up — flung its entire massive bulk straight at the gate — Morrow took hold of Yancey, who took hold of Chess, who took hold of them both. The world thundered, roaring with the crash of fractured stone and splitting wood, screams of men and women, crack and gush of broken chitin.
As one, they closed their eyes, and jumped.
And let this be a lesson
, Fitz Hugh Ludlow thought, disjointedly, as he drew up his lathered, panting mount at the plain’s edge.
There’s some men don’t need spit and polish to prove their
discipline . . . or courage.
Captain Charles Farris, with Thiel at his side, had rallied the Texican cavaliers more quickly than Ludlow would have believed before seeing it, bawling orders that got them into what seemed a mere semblance of a line — but one that never stumbled over itself, or slowed, even while following the spider’s apocalyptically destructive trail. Sergeant Alvarez found mounts for Ludlow, Geyer and Asbury, giving none of them any chance to beg off before they too were caught up, swept along in the wake of far more expert riders; in what seemed like minutes, they were almost level with the creature’s rearmost shadow. Clinging haphazardly to his horse’s back, Ludlow strained to take notes in his mind even as he urged his steed to a gallop. None would ever believe his account, after all, if he could not tell it proper — but then again, this tangled cascade of events would probably defeat most readers, no matter how it was organized.
The arachnid behemoth, one leg foreshortened and useless, half-climbed, half-crushed the City’s main gates, cracking the big wooden doors off their hinges in several pieces. Its legs flailed for a moment before several minuscule figures took to the air above — Ludlow thought he saw the blue tunic of the Chinaman named “Honourable,” though he spotted neither Ixchel or Huitzilopochtli’s nightmare figure — to fling lashes of power down on the spider’s towering mass, blasting it so badly it slipped and belly-flopped atop the mound of collapsed rock. And then, as it staggered back, the death’s angel shape of Clodagh Killeen fell burning out of the sky, straight for that narrow join where thorax met abdomen.
Half an instant before impact, a ribbon of light lassoed Killeen’s ankle, just sudden enough to re-stave the star-demon’s trajectory into the ground; she struck with a thud Ludlow swore he could feel where he sat, spurring old reflexes — he rummaged in his bag, hauled out his spyglass and opened it, almost jabbing one eye out in his haste. Back-tracing this latter hex-work back to its originator, he saw Missus Fennig Number Two, Berta Schemerhorne, drift sky-high over the spider, tapestries of shimmering air trailing from her fingers. Back down, and there was Killeen again, rising unhurt from the pit she’d carved on impact, fang-forested jaws yawning in hungry fury to pay blow for blow, hurt for hurt.
NO!
Though Ludlow could see Ixchel nowhere, that voice — spectral, inhuman, enraged — was unmistakeable.
KILL THE BEAST! THIS ALONE MATTERS!
Clo screeched in reply and changed course again, dropping back down onto the spider — then commenced ripping and shredding its back open with both clawed fists, efficiently as she’d torn wide Asbury’s Ironclad. The spider reared, shrieking, and overbalanced; fell upturned with a terrifying
crunch
, all its legs flailing at the air at once.
But now it was Berta’s turn to hawk-plunge, stooping on Clodagh like some crazed embroiderer set to undo all her life’s stitchery in a night. She threw out hooks and nets, razor-edged, which sliced through Clo’s shroud of flame to take off hands, lower legs, and in one strike chop off an arc of skull, as if opening a hard-boiled egg. Clo’s only response was to slap her own amputated limbs back on, squashing them into place like potter’s clay, seeming more inconvenienced than hurt. But Berta’s spells kept coming all the same, tangling Clo up in knots of power, slowing her progress. The spider, forgotten, righted itself, and went stumbling for the wall again.
Suddenly, Ixchel burst into existence in the air above Berta, flinging a boulder-sized sphere of flame at her. Though Berta dodged, the missile erupted, flashing the sky scarlet; back-punched by the blast, Berta’s spread-eagled form could be glimpsed hurtling away into the City itself with her burning hair trailing smoke, ’til she arced down to vanish amongst the buildings.
A second lash of hexacious might shredded the spell-webs entangling Clo, freeing the demon-girl to fall upon the spider again. Within seconds, she had bitten through and burrowed wholly
inside
the monstrous creature’s shell, vanishing from sight. At the same time, Ixchel twisted in the air and disappeared into herself, likewise gone.
“Gonna stand there gawping all day?” Geyer’s yell went off practically in his ear. Ludlow nearly screamed, dropping his spyglass, while the former Pink reined up beside him, Doctor Asbury gasping miserably behind. “C’mon, scrivener — wall’s down. We need to get in there.”
“What in hell
for?
” Ludlow shouted back.
“Stop American citizens dying, for a start! Not to mention if it
was
Chess Pargeter riding that beast, then Ed Morrow’s surely here, too; Missus Kloves as well, I’d bet. So I’m not leaving friends to lay their lives down alone, ’specially if might be I could help.” He gave Ludlow the stink-eye, cold and sidelong. “Now, you can be a man and stand with us, or you can be a vulture and hang back to make your living off the ruin — you decide.”
Not waiting for a response, Geyer snapped his reins; with a whinny, his chestnut gelding plunged down the slope. Asbury shot Geyer a helpless shrug, then followed. Ludlow watched them go, clenching his fists.