A Rope of Thorns (19 page)

“No.” Fennig narrowed his eyes at Ixchel’s ziggurat, as if measuring it. “Seems like she ain’t quite taken that into account.”

“That’s my lady wife you’re talkin’ about, New York.”

“Apologies, Reverend; I’d never get ’tween a man and his mutton.” He visibly rummaged for the next few words, fitting ’em carefully together. “And yet—there’s none’a the rest of you comes from a city upwards of two thousand strong, am I right? ’Cept maybe for her, an’ I don’t think
she
was the one had administration of it, or wanted such. That’s why she’s got
you
.”

“Ain’t all that many of
us
, either.”

“Not yet,” Fennig shot back. “But more hexes than ever dwelt in one place, more every day—and not hexes alone, either. You know a lot of ’em come in on the very edge of turnin’, and them’s the ones bring along sweethearts, kids. There’ve been others gone out to roust farmers and crafters from any town they can find, bind ’em into service. Hell, who d’you think’s working the crop-plots, out where the Lady’s gussied up the soil? My guess, we got two or three normal folk for every hex—and that’s as like as not to go up, not down.” A deep breath. “Pretty soon, the way we’ve been goin’ on won’t be halfway good enough, any more. And when that day comes . . . well, might be you need to delegate. Might be . . . we can even afford to trust one another.”

He hesitated, considering Rook’s impassive expression. “For now, at least,” he added.

Rook thought it over. In silence, they turned down what had become, by default, Hex City’s “Main Street”—a broad laneway run straight east from the open square before the ziggurat, so the knife-wielders at temple’s peak looked direct into the sun each dawn. Its course was kept empty by something between divine decree and curse—any hex who thought to raise up a structure too near the road found himself suddenly struck down, all forgings collapsed to dust and glitter. Whether he lived long enough after to recover was dependent on Ixchel’s mood, once the case was brought before her.

No matter how ruthlessly she policed her processional, however, the Lady was utterly indifferent to what might spring up just beyond. So instead of epic bas-reliefs and exotic marketplaces, canals to feed the farms beyond or elegant garden-set homes, New Aztectlan resembled some unholy mix of every foreign poor-folks’ quarter Rook’d ever seen, infused with the wrecked, would-be grandeur shared by all too many Confederate towns during the War’s dying days. But better and worse than both, because . . . well, look at who’d built it.

A transparent cube, walls, floor and ceiling all grown from something Rook thought might be actual diamond, with a twirling ribbon of multicoloured light spinning endlessly inside, was home to a barber-surgeon who used his keen-edged fingers for scissors and scalpel. A popular groggery-saloon boasted a façade as grand and glorious as any Parisian vaudevillery’s—’til you passed at an angle and glimpsed it for what it was: parchment-thin, kept upright by hexation and nothing else, with a clumsy thing of sap-weeping planks hid behind. The domed brown blister kitty-corner ’cross from it was, Rook knew, a brothel run collectively by a half-dozen young women who’d masked their true talents in whoring, safe from priest or lawman alike, ’til the Call brought them here. Now they’d carved themselves a fresh business-domicile right out of the earth, with utter disinterest for stylish considerations; those in search of witch-pussy would just have to eat a peck of dirt, or go wanting.

And the general store where the fruits of raids and conjurings were offered for purchase seemed at first glance like a longhouse cabin, ’til a closer look showed every bark-clad log fused smoothly with its neighbour, stumps sprouting green leaves and threading knotted roots down into the earth. Scattered among the larger buildings, like warts on a toad’s skin, were huts housing anywhere from one to a dozen citizens: those who’d staked a claim but didn’t have enough power, as yet, to claim more territory.

It was all so unimaginative, Rook thought, with a spasm of disgust; even the most ostentatious displays were mere peacockery, mundane vanity writ larger, not deeper. As if the only thing these people could think to do, given power and freedom most could only dream of, was to ape the lives they’d left, substituting trade in raw magic for gold or cash.

“Right mess, ain’t it?” Fennig commented, with disturbing acuity.

“Old habits, I s’pose,” Rook allowed.

“Womenfolk like routine.” Fennig glanced sideways at Rook’s raised eyebrow. “Ain’t you noticed, Rev? Near three of every five hex-workers in this town’s of a feminine nature.” He shrugged. “Plain sense, you think about it—power comes to a woman with her first bleeding, but only t’one of us if we’re hurt near to death. Bound t’be more of them than us.”

Fire blazed in Rook’s memory, silent and searing: a haystack beneath a ladder upon which a poor boy with one square pupil was bound, his skin blackening, mouth open in a wail so soundless even the sparrow-marking God had not answered.

“Perhaps,” he said quietly. “But that might be why they get caught so easy, too. Not to mention how witches bear witch-children, eventually—and more than half the time, both drink each other dry. We men are spared
that
bargain, at least.”

“Except,” Fennig countered, “here, we don’t need t’be.” He looked at the people beginning to gather along both street-sides, watching them pass: a hodgepodge of male and female, old and young, black and brown, red and pale, even a sprinkling of true Chinee-yellow, the sort Miss Songbird’s pig-pale skin would never support. Plus various children, owl-blinking at their parents’ elbows; Fennig nodded their way. “Some of those might be hexes-in-waiting already, but that don’t mean we gotta be fearful. I could raise up a son, here, Reverend . . . you, too.”

The truth of that shook him, twisting Rook’s gut in a way he could never have expected. With numb dread, he thought:
What we do here has changed things already. Won’t stop, either, just ’cause
she
don’t see it happening.

“A man wants to change his circumstances might do better to have no kin in tow, though,” Rook observed, voice deceptively even. “One thing I’ve learned in this vocation, Henry . . . trust comes easier, when there’s less to lose.”

The three-fingered hand danced lightly up, making some mock-casual adjustment—and Rook felt the icy touch of Fennig’s regard fix on him, peering inwards. For answer, he drew on his own mojo, like a lawman clearing his guns; force pressed ’gainst force a moment, as the air seemed to hush. Then Fennig let his breath out, dropping hand to belt, and Rook showed his appreciation for the gesture by returning the favour.

“Don’t dream too big, son, is all I suggest,” he told Fennig, without rancour. “’Cause Christ knows, this ain’t no democracy, and it ain’t our dreams take pride of place. That’s the kind’a mistake leads a man to the Machine.”

Fennig’s jaw tightened. “There’s some might be thinkin’ to make that mistake, sure. But I ain’t one of ’em.”

“Just as well. Those risin’ against
me
might have some chance. Those risin’ against
her
? None at all.”

“Well, laying any talk of ‘rising’ by . . .” Fennig waved his hand, dismissing all thoughts of conflict. “Don’t see no reason we can’t make some improvements, nonetheless. For all our benefits.”

“Laudable goal, Henry. Others feel the same, you know of?”

“Not all of ’em, no. But we don’t need
all
—some’s bound for that Machine of yours, just like you said, no matter what they do.”

“And more arriving every day,” Rook agreed, echoing Fennig’s earlier remark. Then, having reached the processional’s penultimate length, “Temple Square” itself, he paused, then asked: “Care to help me welcome some more of ’em, Mister Fennig?”

“Rev . . . I’d count myself honoured.”

With no tangible walls to defend, travellers to New Aztectlan
could
simply make their way in from any compass point over the newly be-greened plain, straight for the city’s heart—but only if they were a hex, or in a hex’s company. Any Call-deaf mundane stranger got within a thousand paces was sent on his way, memory glamour-blotted. And when a hex found his way in at last, he was drawn to the square before the Blood Engine’s ziggurat like iron to a magnet, knowing in his bowels to wait ’til the Rainbow Lady or her consort appeared to administer the Oath.

Ixchel had first taught Rook the Oath as a long invocation in her native speech, its meaning only made clear through shared hexation; Rook hadn’t stumbled through it more than twice before substituting a shorter, English version, rightly sensing that the words mattered not nearly so much as the fundamental consent they articulated—a permanent locking in of souls.

Service I pledge to the Suicide Moon
,

Obedience to Her High Priest;

Fellowship to the City’s children—

This I swear, on my own power’s pain;

This I swear, to loss of blood and life,

That the Engine fail not to bring another World.

Once voiced, the Oath branded itself scar-black on the brain, unforgettable, yet almost never truly understood. All its adherents knew was that on the Oath’s last word, as they let their blood fall upon the Temple’s soil with whatever was nearest to hand, both the aching pull of the Call itself and that maddening lifelong hunger they’d all carried simply
broke
, like a fever . . . washed away, its last remnants retreating deep within. And suddenly, they were free.

But that “freedom’s” truth lay hid in the Oath itself, for those wise enough to parse it proper; the hunger was not gone, just transmogrified. Which left their pledge a hook sunk deep into every heart, key to an ever-leaking sluice gate that could be flung wide at any moment, emptying them of hexation and life both in one bright, fatal flood.

Might be that was why some balked at the last second, sensing the trap, and fought rather than submit—much good though it did them against Rook, let alone Ixchel. The Oath, once broke, drunk them
up altogether, leaving their blank-eyed bodies to be bent backwards over an altar stone.

In New Aztectlan, blood was the key to every door: those leading in, and out.

Inside the square, Rook was met by a small crowd of petitioners, all of them murmuring requests while offering up small gewgaws, which straightaway disappeared into the many pockets of Rook’s capacious black coat. He could never give as much help as he might wish, but he always accepted the gifts; taking someone’s tribute meant you took ’em serious, and ofttimes that simple feeling of having been heard, acknowledged, was help enough. Priesthood was priesthood.

Fennig, meanwhile, was met by his own little knot of followers: three young women—two brunettes, one blonde, and none of them, Rook guessed, past twenty summers—who bestowed looks on him which ranged the full spectrum from worshipful-affectionate to outright exasperated. Shrewd face lit up by their approach, Fennig bussed them all with impartial enthusiasm, then turned back to Rook, beaming.

“Rev, it’s my right and honest pleasure to introduce you to my ladies.” Fennig spread his three fingers and twitched each in turn toward a girl, a mountebank’s flourish. “Miss Berta Schemerhorne”—the first brunette, tall and willowy in dark green—“Miss Clodagh Killeen”—the blonde, a pert, freckle-faced miss—“and Miss Eulalia . . . Eulie . . . Parr.” The second brunette was dark-complected enough to make Rook suspect some hopped bedsheets lay behind her distinctly English surname. “All of courage uncommon, and toughness unmatched by any dockside bingo-boy you could name.”

Berta glowed; Eulie coloured yet darker; buxom little Clodagh scowled.

“Fine words, ye flimmery Nativist fancy-man,” she snapped, “given how little the choice we any of us had in coming here.”

“Aw, Clo—”

“Don’t you ‘aw, Clo’ me!”

He raised his hands, but she slapped them away. And as she did—Rook glimpsed a spark pass between, skin to skin: Blue-white, bending the air, leaving an ozone whiff behind. The other two saw it, cutting eyes at each other; the Schemerhorne gal laid a calming palm on the small of Clo’s back, sending some sort of shimmer pulsing forward to outline the restive heart beneath in light.

While Eulie, in turn, made a cat’s cradle flicker with both hands, casting threads fine as spider’s silk to pull Clo closer, hug her tight. Saying, as she did: “Can’t take on so at every little thing, sissy, and you know it—now, don’t you? Ain’t good for the baby.”

Rook straightened slowly, breathing suddenly difficult; those corset-stays of hers
were
loose-laced, now he looked closer. And set damnable high, to boot.

“You’re—
all
hexes,” he said, at last. “And . . .”

Fennig nodded. “Clo’s caught short, yeah. So’s you can understand my investment in makin’ this place a true home, stead’a just once more room in Herself’s house.”

Miss Berta turned Rook’s way, dropping a polite curtsey, to add—“We didn’t suspect, not at first. Back in the Points, it was only Henry, and when he said he had to go, well . . . I wasn’t too minded to stay behind, without him; thankfully, the others agreed. Then, on the road, it came to us each one by one: dreams at night, tricks and spells by morning, and then—” She looked down at her feet, which were bare but white, soles soft, as though she’d worn shoes most of the rest of her life. “It
was
hard to stay together, for a while. But we didn’t want to leave Henry, no matter what Clo might say.
None
of us.”

Sound familiar, Reverend?
his own mind whispered, mockingly.

True, it didn’t seem reasonable to think he and Chess had been something wholly unique in the annals of all hexation, but still . . . it hurt, more than Rook would’ve guessed, to see his own story played out again, threefold.

Three women, each equal-powerful. Three chances to speak plain, be heard and understood, be forgave your trespasses. A three-fold marriage without any of ’em
harried by the thought of mutual damnation, or love turned to murder in a nightmare-swift eye-flick.