A Rope of Thorns (31 page)

She seized Yancey’s arm, pointed at the throbbing void centring Bewelcome’s whiteness. “It has reached further down now, to the Ball-Court’s lowest levels. Past the Mexica host, presided over by Mictantecuhtli and his fleshless lady Mictecacuihuatl, into the realm of One and Seven Death and all
their
nightmares.” Grandma’s voice fell into a mesmerizing rhythm, and with each name, images flashed before Yancey’s eyes—too quick to be truly seen, too ghastly to forget. “Jaundice Demon and Skull Sceptre, who cause the flesh to sicken and fall. House Corner, his sharp teeth bared. Lord of Rubbish and the Stabbing Lord, who attack from the blind side. Packstrap and Wing, whose victims die struck from above on the roadway, alone, with the dark wind blowing past.

“And in their company, neither leading nor following, something that has been here already for longer than we dream—enjoying their progress, pointing them the way—”

Yancey felt it in her gut, a landed punch. “The Enemy.”

“We know him by many names, dead-speaker, and sometimes he seems to care for us, if only because we keep him busy. But in this form he is the Trickster without care—the King who Eats Himself, playing his flute on a staircase of human skulls. And this crack he keeps open will be the root his Bone Tree grows from.”

So what does any of that
mean
?
Yancey choked back the urge to yell. As Grandma’d said, the hour was getting late—terminology hardly mattered, considering it all sounded equally bad.

“Why don’t you tell Mister Pargeter all this,” she asked, instead, “seeing he’s the only one might be able to
do
something about it?”

“Because he cannot hear me—
will
not, perhaps. He is a stubborn fool.”

“I can’t disagree.”

“So it is, when a man hates his own mother—the earth opens up under his feet, one way or another. Women live in your warrior’s blind spot; he cannot see them, or see them coming. How else do you think the Rainbow Lady was able to take his man even as he lay beside him, right out of his very bed? How was she able to make
him
come panting at her call, though it goes against his very soul to do so?”

I do wish you hadn’t made me remember that,
Yancey thought.

“Suppose he’d say . . . ’cause she’s ‘a damn hex-god,’” she replied, out loud. “’Cause she’s not like you or him, or Reverend Rook, either.”

“No. She is
exactly
like him, and me, and every other of our kind—puffed up with stolen blood, writ large, gone bad. For whatever she and her Enemy are now, they were once as I . . . as you, even. And though she refuses to see it, her time is already done; what she and Rook have worked with Rook’s little killer proves as much. Gods sleep within us all, waiting to be prayed alive. And gods can kill other gods.”

She turned to fix Yancey with one eye, head cocked like a carrion bird’s. “
You
, meanwhile, the red boy needs, along with his travelling companion—that one man who stayed with him for friendship’s sake, even after knowing what he really was. Which is why he begins to mistrust you both, as he fears anything which might make him weak.”

Yancey frowned. “He isn’t, though. He’s
crazy
strong.”

“Tell him that, then. Make him even stronger. Or he will drive you both away, and ensure all our dooms.”

She turned once more to the horizon, where Hex City cast its weird light upwards, deforming the stars behind. “Something is happening there, in that city Rook’s perfidy helped her build. I did not see it coming, while still in my body; it was as yet hidden in time’s creases, even when looked at through the weave of Changing Woman’s own loom. But now I am bodiless I see my vengeance is less important than the seed these two have sown. Properly nurtured, it will benefit all
Hataalii
, no matter their blood . . . and therefore, though it galls me to say so, it must be preserved.”

“Now you’ve lost me, ma’am.”

The old squaw hesitated, as though she almost feared to speak the words. “In that place,” she said, at last, “we—
hexes
—can work together.”

“That . . . just doesn’t happen.”

“Nowhere but there, dead-speaker. Do you understand me?”

And here Yancey took her own pause, jaw set, frankly afraid to admit that she really didn’t.

“So you need us kept together,” she said, instead. “Is someone coming to help us? One of your—
Hataalii
?”

“
Hataalii
? No. None could stay close to your red boy now, without risking death-duel. Yiska, the one my people sent to, would be a full medicine woman already, if only she could give up her love for weapons—born Diné, but she rides with the Na’isha of late, since all is fallen into confusion. A spirit-talker, like you in some ways . . . in others, not.” She pointed out over the plain, now gone completely black. “She and her band travel quickly, but they do not have the capacities your red boy does. Expect them soon.”

“And until then?”

“Delay, child. For as long as you can. I have other plans to set in motion; impossible things, under any other circumstances. But here, now, between the crack and that woman’s ‘New Aztectlan’ . . . yes. I think they can be done.”

“And if I do . . . what’s in it for me?”

Grandma stepped back, blinking—the first purely human expression she’d worn. “Do you
bargain
with me?” she asked, then snorted again. “
Bilagaana
! You do not know even to respect the dead.”

“Mayhap, but since you’re not
my
dead, I owe you no particular restitution. Where I come from, we expect to be paid for our labour, ’specially if it could get us just as dead as you.”

“What is it you want, then?”

This, at least, required no thought at all. “Sheriff Mesach Love, under my grip. Close enough for me to dig my muzzle in, ’fore I plug his dead heart.”

A slow smile spread over Grandma’s ugly face, darkly gleeful. “Ah, you are brim-full with hate, little dead-speaker. But in this, our wants coincide—for where
the
Enemy goes,
your
enemy shall surely follow.”

“A preacher and the Devil—someone else’s devil, anyhow.” Yancey shook her head at the very idea. But Grandma gave only a shrugging
hmph
, unimpressed as any town biddy.

“
Nothing worse, in this whole world, than a bad man who knows his Bible
. So Asher Rook once said, faithless blackrobe that he is, opening his prayer book only to find fresh curses. And as for your Sheriff Love—if he was an honest enough man before Bewelcome’s fall, now he dances to the Enemy’s tune, knowing all along his newfound power comes from nothing good. But like you, he does not care who he treats with, so long as he gets what he seeks. And in the end, this will be his undoing.”

“How so?”

“When he fought with your red boy at your wedding, the town itself was levelled, your husband and kin cut down. You yourself might have died, or either of the Pinkerton men. But did any blow one monster dealt the other do lasting damage? No, because each draws from the same source. It was
as though they fought themselves.
”

A sudden understanding lit Yancey’s brain, from ear to ear. “Was the
Enemy
brought Love back, not God at all . . . he said as much, when Chess quizzed him on it. So—if there was some way to turn him back, to undo what Rook preached on his homestead, with Chess’s syphoned-off hexation as connivance—”

“I knew you would see it, eventually.”

“Not being stock-stupid? Thanks, ever so. But . . .” Here the flash gave out, leaving her once more in darkness. “What I don’t know is how that even
could
happen, let alone how to make it come about.”

“Of course not, for you are no
Hataalii
. How fortunate, then, you have at least spilled your blood to feed one.”

The clear implication being:
Chess Pargeter could, given enough incentive—enough
sacrifice
. Just like he helped Rook turn Bewelcome to salt, he could now turn it back, on his own hook; get him there, pray into him extra hard, see what happens. Unless . . . no, wait . . .

Something was scratching at her, some piece too jagged to fit. And then, all of a sudden, it dropped straight down into her mouth.

“Doctor Asbury says Bewelcome’s a dead spot; no magic gets in, or out. Same for the Weed, and since that’s what Chess gets his mojo from—”

Again, that fierce smile, darker by far than the lips which shaped it.

Your doctor does not know everything,
Grandma said, without using her mouth, for extra emphasis.
Not even the half. Like too many
bilagaana
, he thinks this world works by machinery alone—that it may be solved like a puzzle, written down,
re
-written. Between the two, you would do better by far to follow our Enemy’s counsel.

Yancey bowed her head. “All right, then, ma’am; I’ll do that. Thank you kindly.”

The hex-ghost considered her a moment, and Yancey thought she could almost see something close to affection in those stone-obdurate eyes. But perhaps it was simply a reflection from one light source or another—strange things moving under the surface, a fish’s maw in a murky pond, invisibly toothed. For the dead did not give up their secrets, ordinarily, without great pressure—more than Yancey had thought she’d brought to bear, so far.

But then again, perhaps the pressure just
was
great, all on its own, without Yancey doing a thing. Perhaps things really
were
just that bad for everyone, whether dead or soon-to-be.

By God, she sure hoped she was wrong, even as the insight bloomed. But the look on Grandma’s face said otherwise.

Since you do not wish me to claim kinship, I will not,
she replied.
But you should wake now, child. Things are already moving toward their conclusion.

Above them, the dark sky had begun to boil, cones forming along the horizon—sheet lightning dervish-dancing attendance with such frenzy it threatened to let loose a near-mythic deluge. Yancey shivered in the ever colder wind, though Grandma did not.

And that feeling itself, nervishly incontrovertible, was what began to shake her free of the dream at last—to bring her steadily upwards, fingers clutching, legs kicking like a swimmer’s.

Yancey’s eyes opened, gummed deep with sleep, to find Geyer pulling her up and out of bed, while Morrow himself knelt to wrestle her boots back on—and oh, it was a cold joke indeed that never in a thousand years, before the Hoard’s collapse, would she have thought to find her rooms full of strange men. The strangest of all, naturally, being Chess Pargeter, who stood peering out the window with both arms tight-crossed. It was still night by all appearances, maybe the earliest sort of morning, with that gathering storm from her dream-consult casting watery shadows, as though the walls themselves wept.

“You need to wake up now, honey,” Morrow was saying, unaware how he echoed Grandma’s words (while
He called me honey!
was all Yancey’s sleep-stunned mind could yammer happily, in return). “Something’s happened, and we’ve got to get on.”

At the same time, Geyer looked ’round, the hand he wasn’t currently using for Yancey’s support falling to his weapon. Telling Morrow: “Boots, good. You see her coat anywheres ’round? Her gun-belt?” To Chess, meanwhile: “Where’re
your
guns, by the by?”

“Gave ’em to her, this afternoon, for shootin’ so well. Don’t you boys
talk
?”

Yancey pulled herself further upright, shaking the last of her torpor off, along with Geyer’s grip. “Move on . . . why?” she asked Morrow. “It’s the Weed? Weed’s found us?”

“Somewhat worse.”

“
Worse?
”

But before he could elaborate, another voice intruded—from outside, borne on the roiling air, low and booming enough to mimic distant thunder. Sheriff Mesach Love yelling full-on into the wind, syllables breasting it like knives.

“Chesssss Paaaaaaargeter!”

Yancey staggered to Chess’s side, trying her level best to figure exactly what he was staring at, but the darkness defeated her. While he stayed right where he was, surprisingly unsurprised.

Remarking to her sidelong, with admirable calm—“Never did think it’d happen, back when notoriety was a fair trade for bein’ talked up in every bandit hole from here to Tlaquepacque . . . but I’m gettin’
damnable
sick of the sound of my own name.”

Back in the War, Rook had known men from the Ozarks who boasted of those mountains’ caverns’ glories: pink and green crystals force-grown in silence, pools of icy milk-white water, great fluted columns of salt-crusted stone and ropes of glassy quartz. Blind fish whose luminescent guts pulsed visibly under their scales. Though Rook half-dismissed such tales as typical soldiers’ puffery, the images proved strangely persistent, prompting him to wonder what other beauties might lie underground, waiting to be discovered.

The meditation chamber Ixchel had dug out for herself beneath New Aztectlan’s temple-pyramid, however—six-levelled, in either mockery or reverence of Mictlan-Xibalba’s own interior path—revealed none of them. Having been told more than enough times how this journey’s stages were supposed to go, Rook could easily map it out in his head. The Dark House, then the Rattling or Cold House, the House of Jaguars, House of Bats. The Hot House. The House of the Razor . . .

But no. Only the first and fourth were in any way true—empty darkness, supernal stillness punctuated by the steady drip of water. A rough-cut stone room hung with flapping, rabid rodents who plumed up and outwards, chittering, every sunset.

From a corner of their bedchamber, you touched a certain brick and watched a portion of the wall ripple backward, stone flexing like a curtain. The stairs thus revealed spiralled ever downwards, for a long, long time. And at the bottom the passage wore on, the track of a giant worm through rock, ’til it ballooned into a hollow underlying the great ziggurat where a sourceless shaft of light whipped ghost-columns of dancing dust ’round Ixchel-Ixtab-Yxtabay, Lady Serpent-skirt herself, lying death-still atop a black obsidian slab. Rook’s breath hissed in his ears as he approached this altar, reflected off unseen walls—a wool-packed sound which reminded him of nothing so much as that other impossible place between worlds, the Moon Room. . . .