“So. Say the Machine stops, and the Oath falls to pieces — you pondered much on that? A thousand hexes, all turned on each other at once; you an’ your babe, your sisters — yes, your man, too! ’Cause love won’t help, as I’ve lived long enough to know, Miss Clo.” Her voice roughened. “Think on why ‘mages don’t meddle,’ an’ you’ll find the truth right quick. Without the Oath, we’re all of us naked to our own hunger, just meat served up for judgement. Myself, I’ll do whatever best be done, to keep
that
day from my door . . . and y
ou — will — too.
”
Such eyes that old woman had! Rook found himself fair melting under their regard, worn away like soap, reduced to a seat-shifting boy. Knew the others must feel much the same, considering how their own gazes fell, guiltily, to the tabletop. Soon enough, however, the spell was broken by a voice he’d frankly never hoped to hear within these precincts — soft yet horribly present, as though it sprang full-blown from the brainpan of every hex there.
“Well put, my dark daughter. Your wisdom is admirable — your loyalty, also.”
And in stepped the one woman-shaped thing none of ’em would have ever conjured on their own, given the option: Rainbow Lady Ixchel, the Suicide Moon herself, who came melting through the wall like all the chinks between bricks were one door split in a thousand pieces, each opening only to her command. Then hung there by Rook’s side with the exposed bones of her feet barely scraping against the floor, while her dragonfly cloak swarmed in to meet her — wrapping her close ’til nothing remained of that half-flayed corpse-face but a shimmering veil disclosing just her eyes, her too high brow and an inexplicable glimpse of purplish-dark lips strained back over teeth rendered wolf-long by her gums’ retreat.
Catching a view of Marizol cowering in the corner, half-hid behind Berta’s skirts, she smiled; Marizol sketched a sort of answering grimace back at her, then scurried over, head hung low, when Ixchel snapped her claw-tipped fingers, and re-took her kneeling place at that dread queen’s side.
“
Señora . . . mi reina
,” she brought out, tight and high, as though stomach-punched. “
Yo te saludo
.” While Ixchel just grinned all the wider, carding those too-sharp implements carefully through the girl’s hair.
“I have missed you, pet; you did ill to flee me so soon, without any word where you might have gone.” Adding, to Rook, with a creepish airiness: “And you too, of course, little husband. How seldom we see each other, these days, you and I!”
“Business of the War, ma’am,” Rook replied, deadpan. “But I do s’pose as how it’s necessary, much though I might feel the lack myself.”
“The War, yes. Whose direction I have thus far left to you and yours — Mister Fennig, or whatever others you might accord similar trust — since, as my brother Lightning Serpent proves, this is a matter men excel at.”
“And I’m grateful for the opportunity, that goes without saying. Was there something you wanted, wife?”
A bit too off-hand for her liking, perhaps; Rook certainly heard almost everyone else present suck in a gasp, soft as they tried to keep it. But thankfully Marizol, already deft at trying to draw her attention away, chose this very moment to volunteer — “Apologies,
señora
. . . it was remiss of me, I know.
Lo siento mucho, mi dama celestial.
”
Ixchel chucked her beneath the chin, drawing blood. “Ah, child! You are so young. I understand — you meant no disrespect. How could you possibly know how very much you mean to me, and why?”
How indeed
, Rook thought, seeing Marizol shake under the Lady’s touch, a discreet tear streaking from one eye.
Goddamn yet one more time this bed I made, let alone the filthy butcher-shop diablerie I have to practise, daily, in order to stay here!
This was just what came of being a hypocrite, though, he guessed — a faithless preacher, sworn to false idols.
Chess
never would’ve stood for it, in any of his forms, for though ass-kissing was an art he’d excelled at (literally, at least), the mere grinding repetition of paying Ixchel homage would’ve bored him so senseless it’d’ve set him off like a lit fuse long before now, ’specially seeing how he was naturally immune to her mixture of cock-raising glamour and accelerant decay.
Always did make him dangerous to sit still too long — that was one thing she never understood, ’bout Chess. That, along with so much else.
And once things’d come to a head . . . well, that’d’ve been a fireworks show for sure, fit to rock the whole stinking world from horizon to horizon. Something Rook would’ve paid good money for, to watch, and to clap at.
But you are
not
him, husband,
Ixchel’s mental voice told him,
as we both know. Conquistador dream of “one flesh” aside, you never were . . . nor will you ever be.
You know what I’m thinking?
Ridiculous as it was, he couldn’t stop himself from forming the question, though it held its own answer.
Of course; I know everything you do, little king, always. And why.
Sal Followell had both hands shading her eyes, like she found Ixchel’s visage too fierce to consider directly, and Rook could tell how much that pleased the goddess by the way she preened, her grim cloak hissing. But in the far corner, Hank Fennig had once more pushed his glasses down so’s he could survey her over their rims with narrowed eyes — taking measurements, perhaps, or tallying some list. Rook made his own mental note to ask him which it was, later on.
“These ideas of yours amuse me,” Ixchel told the others, meanwhile. “I approve — you may do what you must in order to keep the Machine going, just as I will do what
I
must, in order to use its power to its fullest. Thus it is that will we triumph, in the end, together.”
The clear implication being:
I will suffer sedition in speech, if not in deed. For nothing you plot is secret to me, or any sort of threat; you live only at my sufferance . . . even you, my husband.
“Should we expect you along for tonight’s raid, then?” Rook asked. To which she bent her head, regally, fixing him with eyes whose softening ligaments had already started to make them cant in different directions.
“I would not miss such a chance,” she answered. “I have spent too much time in the Underworld lately, to far too little effect. I must show myself to the populace, that their terror may swell and spread.”
Fair enough
, Rook thought.
Besides which,
her mind-voice told him,
I have a new plan which needs must be rehearsed under conditions of battle — a gift for you, of sorts. A terrible weapon, one which will sweep our enemies away before us.
That so, sweetheart? Or do you mean just the ones whose names don’t start with “The”?
Behind Ixchel’s back, the dragonflies snapped and hissed, angered on her behalf. If any of that annoyance reached her, however, it didn’t show; sucking day and night on those Mexes of hers really was altering her, he guessed, making her colder, more dispassionate. Bringing all her most unnatural inclinations to the fore.
He cast his mind back to when Hex City’s foundations were first laid, and she’d at least pretended to care.
Remembered telling her, after they were two weeks and fifty hexes deep in kowtowing, barely able to stroll from here to there with stumbling over some prostrate supplicant:
These people are here at
your
say-so, madam — left everything behind like they was fleein’ Egypt, on nothing but the Call and some bad dreams. Least you could do is walk amongst ’em and grant a few damn prayers beforehand, ’stead of always goin’ straight for the pound of flesh.
She’d nodded, as he recalled. And told him, face so straight it might as well have been the jade chip-scaled mask it sometimes seemed:
But . . . this is what I have
you
for. Is it not?
Original plan was, you’d wake a few more of your relatives and get ’em up here, on our side
, he thought at her, back in the here and now.
What happened to
that
idea, exactly?
The barest hint of a shrug.
Things change, husband. As ever.
Conversation disposed with, Ixchel turned back to Marizol, still frozen in a dumb-show of acquiescence. Telling her: “Now, child, you have spent enough time away from Court. I need you to take up your seat at my side once more, as is your ancestral charge and right, and . . .
feed me.”
Marizol bit her lip even harder, for all the world as though she were trying to make the skin tear. As though she wanted to bring the red flowing freely, if only so she wouldn’t have to make use of the thorn-rope again.
“
Si, señora
,” she managed, through her pain.
“
Good
girl,” Ixchel said, laying a half-fleshed hand to her forehead. And with a concussive flash, they were gone.
From Fennig’s side, Clo Killeen let out one long-held breath in a fit of coughing; Berta embraced her from the side, stroking her chest soothingly, while Eulie — typically the most gentle of the three — squinched her pretty face up, and actually spat.
“She’s gonna kill that girl,” she remarked, to Rook, sounding like she hoped he’d deny it. “Ain’t she?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Goddamn it all to hell, then. She’s — good, that one, even if she ain’t hexacious.”
Rook nodded. “A few more like her on either side, and maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
From her place in the corner, Missus Followell shook her head. “Pure foolishness, and y’all know it. ‘Nice’ that gal may well be, but she ain’t never gone be one of us — no way, no how. Whereas the Lady, awfulness and all . . .
is
.”
“She’s a monster,” Clo whispered, lips barely moving, so fast Berta didn’t have time to clap a hand over her mouth. But Followell merely turned her too-calm eyes back on the Irish girl, replying, “And we ain’t?”
“From my vantage, those who do not consider themselves entirely committed must, of course, feel free to move on,” Sophronia Love said, voice even, though still loud enough to fill a close-packed room. “Each of you must seek grace in your way, as your understanding of the Lord’s word prompts you, since I believe we all share the sure and certain knowledge that each man’s path is his own business.”
The small group of supplicants before her — disadvantaged by a good three feet of extra height granted the woman most simply called “Widow,” along with Bewelcome’s other town elders, by virtue of the stage on which they sat — shuffled where they stood, leader shifting his hat from hand to hand. “Ain’t like we
want
to go, Missus Love, what with the town still under fire. But . . . our families . . .”
“Mister Trasker, if you truly feel your family better served by cowering upon your land and hoping to be overlooked, then by all means — go ahead and cower. I’ll note, however, that this same strategy entirely failed to save either the Harmons’ cattle, the de Groots’ breeding studs, or those men who died in guarding them.” Her eyes flicked sidelong, to skewer a man uncomfortably tapping one boot in the front row. “And you, Mister Russell — Hiram? Did a similar policy save your daughters, when Satan’s servants came to carry them away?”
“You know full well it didn’t, ma’am.”
“Well, then.”
From the back of the hall, Morrow and Doctor Joachim Asbury watched this spin out, in silence. For the sin of arriving late, they’d been forced to seat themselves next to a frantically scribbling Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose Palmer Method shorthand was as unintelligible to Morrow as his overtures of friendship were unwelcome. A yellow journalist of some repute in first New York, then ’Frisco, this fashionably dressed fool had been touring the area writing exposes on Hex City when Pinkerton began his assault, and stayed to play war correspondent — from a safe distance, naturally. He had a way of smiling that barely reached his eyes, and a vulture’s keen instinct for the unwary quote which made Morrow almost loath to open his mouth wide enough to spit, whenever he chanced to find himself in the man’s company.
“She’s quite the fearsome virago, our Missus Love,” Ludlow murmured, admiringly. “A true Madonna-in-armour, equally suited for battle and worship alike. And pleasingly buxom, too; that boy of hers is a fortunate young man, indeed.”
“Sheriff Love sure wouldn’t’ve approved of you saying so, at least within his earshot.”
“Oh, no doubt. How lucky for me, then, that my arrival in this town chanced to fall
after
that inestimable gentleman had already been dispatched to his reward!” Ludlow turned, hand still scratching away unchecked at his note-tablet. “But I’d almost forgotten: you were there that day, weren’t you, Mister Morrow? Quite close by, as I recall — though the mysterious Missus Kloves, naturally, was closer. Perhaps you might see your way clear to relating the story of that adventure to me, one of these days, in detail. . . .”
“Sir, if you’ll excuse me, I really am trying to listen.”
Sophy had already returned her attention to Trasker, who seemed increasingly spooked, while the dignitaries sharing podium space with her — Mayor Alonzo Langobard, his bulk more fat than muscle, white shirt already sweat-stained in the stuffy hall; Captain Washford, looking somewhat embarrassed to be so elevated; young Reverend Oren Catlin, not half the Nazarene Sheriff Love had been, who’d nevertheless taken up the town’s vacant ministry under the apparent conviction that an easy smile and clean-cut good looks were all a new pastor needed in order to thrive — stirred in a milder form of discomfort.
“We will miss you, of course,” Sophy told the man, “you, and all you take with you. But I will have no compelled soldiers in my husband’s army.”
Here Mayor Langobard cleared his throat and sat forward, perhaps hoping to regain control by sheer force of bodily mass alone. “Widow Love . . . much as I hate to be indelicate, your
husband
has nothing to do with this.”
“He was Sheriff here, sir. He founded this town, along with its militia — swore in each and every man-at-arms who defended this place against iniquity in its infant stages, long before Mister Pinkerton or Captain Washford made their appearance, on this very Bible.” She tapped the tome, drably bound in practical oilskin, which even now rested close by her right hand, where her gurgling son could play with its well-worn edges. “My
husband
is the reason Bewelcome exists.”