A Rope of Thorns (21 page)

Clever
, Rook heard her “say,” abandoning outward speech entirely.
Clever peasants, clever dogs. Sons of a million
tlacotin
-slaves.

The sheer strength of her contempt was hundred-proof at least, good enough to scour pots, and gave Rook the strength to power himself back upright. As he did, his eye fell onto Fennig and his beauties, caught up unknowing in the brawl’s very heart—all three women had their hands linked for protection, a dim flame flowing to blanket Clo in particular, cupping her stomach’s distention. Rook almost thought he could glimpse the child asleep inside, its tiny heart a-pulse with sorcerous potential.

The witch-ménage concentrated mainly on each other, a single unit, eyes downcast, so’s not to attract undue attention. Fennig himself, meanwhile, was staring at Ixchel straight-on, sliding his spectacles down slightly in order to consider her over their rims. If he squinted, Rook could see an image of his queen-wife caught there, twinned on both corneas and clarifying under pressure, the way a daguerreotype takes shape. As though Fennig were somehow incapable of turning away—helpless not to stay and see what might develop, literally.

At the same time Rook regained his, the Diné youth—the only one of the shaman’s donors still left upright—hauled out a knife and jumped for Ixchel’s throat, coming at her silent, blindside-first. The dragonfly cloak parted to allow him passage, buzz-hum ascending to warning shriek; Rook found himself stuck in mid-automatic ward-stance, both hands up, fingers crooked to fire whatever his instincts deemed necessary. Though since he’d once observed Ixchel take a ball to the skull from Ed Morrow’s pistol and still blast him backwards out of Hell, it was all probably pretty moot.

But it was
Fennig
who actually interposed: lunged in fencer-swift, using his cane like an
epée
, to send the Redskin somersaulting face-first into the nearest wall. Gravity, hex-augmented, was enough to snap his jaw one way, neck the other, with a furious crack.

Ixchel looked Fennig’s way, and nodded. To which Fennig tipped his bowler, like she was just another skirt to flirt with.

“Least I could do, ma’am,” was all he said, aloud. Adding, with his mind—
Seein’ this is
your
city, after all. And you the reason, in the end, that me and my g’hals here have free run of it.

Oh,
I like this one, husband.

Times like these, Rook wondered why they ever bothered to speak aloud to each other at all, ’sides from so as not to lose the ability.

The shaman snarled, and wrenched a final helping of power from his bond-donors, who crumpled, curling around their guts. Knowing better than to strike at Ixchel, he sent it whipping at Fennig instead: an arc of liquid lightning, overcooked energies spinning off in all directions.

Fennig, however, simply stepped backward, allowing Berta, Eulie and Clo to join hands around him. Of a sudden, Rook could see the bindings netted between
them
, a living ward-circle: raw ghost-currents drawing only on each other, with not a single thread of the girls’ own power—or Fennig’s—reaching out to drink of the shaman’s spillage. And as the spell broke harmlessly over their hunched shoulders at once, Clo’s mid-section gave an all but imperceptible heave, shrugging the bluish farewell crackle ’round itself and folding it away, all neat and tidy, ’til it winked itself out like a stepped-on cheroot.

I was right,
Rook realized, amazed.
The child, too. All of ’em, working in tandem
.
It’s the Goddamn future growin’ up, right in front of us.

Then:
Time to end all this, ’fore someone gets hurt that shouldn’t.

Yes, little king. And so it shall be ended, now.

Ixchel turned hard black eyes back on the shaman and his donors. “Prostrate yourselves,” she ordered, forcing the fallen hexes to splay themselves instantly flat, muscles spasming; blood broke from eyes, ears, noses, as choked cries of agony squeezed out through their locked jaws. To the Mex, in specific, she continued—“You wish to shed your precious water in my direction—make
chalcihuatl
from
nextlaualli
while seeking
xochimiquitzli
, the flowery death, as was your ancestors’ right, and pleasure. How dearly I love to be reminded of these things, here in this new land! It is a great gift, and I accept it, gladly.”

Oh, what a terrible creature she was, as Rook well knew already. Thinking, numbly:
But I’m the one who’ll have to lie down with her, later on.

Though he somehow thought any one of these fools would be right glad to trade places with him, to save ’emselves from what came next.

The smile Ixchel gave was beatific, dreadful as the sickly skull-fragment moon which hung above. “Feed me,” she said.

For just one moment, shaman and followers froze, pain apparently ceased. Then their skins went purple—bloating, glowing—as their blood pushed out and upwards through every pore at once, heating to a boil in mid-rise, flushing a fresh-carved meat-stink throughout the air. Fanning her hands toward her face, Ixchel
inhaled
this sanguinary cloud in a single, impossibly long breath, ’til at last it dissipated, leaving behind a clutch of sinewy stick-figure mockeries: swollen-jointed and crumbly, already disintegrating, with black pits for eyes.

After, it took some effort for her to regain her stillness. Even as she turned and glided over to Rook’s side, she had not mastered it perfectly; the
nox vomica
of pure power she’d swallowed danced behind both furnace-grate pupils, making her twitch.

For a moment, he was eight years old again, caught by his mother in mid-disaster, sick with suspense to learn his punishment. But the goddess who owned him only went up on her toes, so much smaller (and stronger) than him it fairly hurt, to kiss his sweating forehead.

“I have saved you, little king, yet again. Now, seeing I am past due thanks . . . it behooves you to come with me, and do me reverence.”

As if all this had been nothing more than a trivial detail, absently settled. As if none of it really mattered.

We’re dreams to her,
Rook thought,
good, bad or indifferent.
This was nothing, like everything else. A shadow-show between blinks.

“Up in a tick,” he told her, lips dry. “Wouldn’t do to keep you waiting.”

“No,” she agreed. And was gone.

Left behind, the corpses powdered inevitably apart, then blew away on a rising wind. Clo let out a
whoosh
, and folded back onto the others, who murmured at her like doves. Fennig, meanwhile, gave her a quick comfort-clasp of the hand before once more pinning Rook with those oh-so-penetrative re-hid oculars.

“Knowing you’re wanted elsewhere,” he said, “I don’t s’pose you’d care to jaw a while, if the ladies walk on.”

Rook looked at him, face kept strictly unreadable, from half a year’s practice. Did he really dare?

“Have to be quick,” he said, eventually.

“As typhus, Reverend.”

Minutes after, they stood side by side, watching smoke from the Blood Engine’s stacks rise up forever. Even now, Rook knew, there were a horde yet of supplicants massing who’d need to be Oathed, ’fore they grew so weary from the Call tearing at their guts that they turned on each other, and had to be put down for the current citizens’ edification. Ixchel hadn’t thought much on
that
, obviously, when commanding he gift her with both his immediate presence and a workable cock-stand. But then again, such things meant equally little, in her ancient eyes.

“Your hex-work’s in seeing,” Rook said. “Which means you must’ve noted the same bindings ’tween our dead friends I did.”

“Heard what the old man said, too. ‘Power of an oath,’ huh?
Any
oath—’twixt
any
hex? Or hexes?”

“Theoretically.” Rook rubbed his chin, inquisitive mind stirring creakily back to life, with an oddly pleasant ache. “Practically, seems like the stronger the hex, the more who swear, the stronger the oath. Yet their vows didn’t trump the City’s binding.”

“And drained ’em all the faster, for bleeding power twice-a-ways,” Fennig agreed. “Maybe that’s why it never struck Herself somebody else might try it, in the first place.”

“Your g’hals are bound each to each too, though, from what I observed.”

“Each t’each and each t’me, neat as any god-botherer’s marriage-packet—and since that’s what
Señor
Hex-no-more and his boyos seem to’ve done as well, the lesson
I
take is don’t never try your strength outright ’gainst the City’s, no matter how many you got webbed in on the same spell-rope, ’cause it’s doomed to pull every last man jack of you down.”

“Mmm. And yet . . .” Rook paused, brow knitting. “Maybe it’d’ve gone differently, had it
been
every man jack of ’em uprising in the first place, ’stead of just that one.”

Epiphany’s flash lit both their faces at once, small, but bright enough neither risked a glance at the other, for fear of snuffing it outright.

“A true Patriot’s creed,” Fennig said, approvingly. “All hexes created equal; no wonder she never conceived of it.” His serpent’s smile took on a fiercer edge. “Don’t really grasp who-all she’s dealin’ with, hereabouts and today, do she?”

“No,” said Rook, softly.”To her, what swears to her is hers—full stop—and four centuries back, her subjects felt the same. Threw ’emselves headlong into the fire, and thought ’emselves blessed. But when an American swears to something . . . it’s a two-way street. He expects to get what he pays for, and keep what he earns.”

“He was
right
, ’bout her—the Mex, I mean. Wasn’t he?”

Rook didn’t quite allow himself to agree, he certainly didn’t argue. Nodding to what little enough was left of the coupsters, by now: “You see what came of
that
, though.”

“What I
see
is, if he knew more’n most, he didn’t know near enough. Like . . . where best t’hit.”

“And you do, I suppose?”

“No. But I will.”

At the sound of those four small words, Rook felt a shiver of something fragile, almost hope-flavoured, so deep down he could’ve easily chosen to ignore it entirely.

Instead, he made sure to point out: “She’s a god, you know.”

“Oh, cert. But ain’t we all, to some degree?” Here Fennig chuckled, only partly amused. “Philosophy aside, though, no God ever did nothin’ much for me, Rev; you neither, I suspect.”

Not for the first time, Rook wished (
devoutly
would be the first word to his tongue, had it not tasted so bitter) that he could still pray; that he had the right, let alone the capacity. Granted, he’d never gotten much of a reply, when he had. But given how, this time, it wouldn’t be strictly on his own behalf—well. So odd a display of unselfishness from a career hypocrite like himself should really count for
something
, surely?

Apparently not, judging from the Almighty’s characteristically unbroken silence.

“But there’s a crack in everything, y’see, Reverend,” Fennig continued, all unknowing. “You just have to keep handy to find it, keep quiet . . . and
pay attention
. So what I’ll do is all the above-mentioned, while lookin’ t’me and mine in the interim. And since you’re the biggest dog I can count on to try and keep the Missuses Fennig and I out of Saint Terra, I’ll stand by you as well, back you up ’gainst all comers. Sound fine?”

“
All
comers?” Rook repeated.

“Even Herself, needs be . . . eventually.”

Again, there seemed not much to add. So Fennig touched his three fingers to hat-brim and specs-rim together, in half-salute. “Be seein’ you?” he asked.

“Can’t see how not,” said Rook.

A final shrug. “
Bene
.”

And with a furl of his cane, he walked on.

When the moon rose, the newest entrants were thrown a roustabout all up and down Temple Street. Like most Hex City hoys, it spun on the same discovery Rook and Chess had once stumbled on without knowing, to their mutual satisfaction: How, when jammed in proximity, the hex-hunger often became carnal rather than fatal, though equal-voracious and undistinguishing—meat being meat, after all, just like blood was blood.

Rook usually put in an appearance at these shindigs, partly to seed the impression his approval was required for them to continue, but he never stayed long, drank little, and refused all offers of companionship; stayed faithful to Ixchel, after both their fashions. Not that she cared if he had it off briefly with some light-skirt—or equal-light pair of britches, come to that—but to do so risked entanglement, accusations of favouritism, trouble. And more trouble, at this point, was the very last thing he needed to buy.

Were-lights of a score of different hues floated ’round the mob, throwing shadows in red, yellow, silver-white, green. Those folk whose craft ran to brewing and distillation set up dispensary stations on the crowd’s edges, while on a platform raised up by a moment’s impulse, a score of musicians hammered away with enthusiasm, englamoured clouds a-moil above. The hexes danced on earth, air, roofs, walls, indiscriminately; some put on and flung off new shapes, casual as most changed hats. And wherever the crowd fell away, sorcerously inclined revellers could be glimpsed . . .
taking
one another . . . in any and every sense one might conceive.

Tonight, however, Rook leaned down over the same balcony whose architecture he’d planted in Chess’s dreams, while the Mother of all Hanged Men ran her icy little fingers up the inside of his naked thigh to cup him from behind. And damn if he didn’t rouse at the pressure, still, to meet her halfway—purple-swole, dripping. Like any qualm-free monster.

Far beneath, he glimpsed a figure climbing onto one of the tables, and noted how the celebrants gathered ’round fell immediately quiet: Fennig’s sweetheart, the gravid one, Clodagh. Who lifted her Irish voice in a familiar tune, snapping her fingers for accompaniment.

“Oh sis, come down by the water’s side, sing I down, oh, sing I day—