A Book Of Tongues

CHAPTER TWELVE

Two days later, as Grandma’s Yellow Abalone Shell mountain rose to scar the sky, Rook suddenly realized that this was the longest he and Chess had been apart since the day he’d been hung. But the desert was a shockingly empty place once you faced it alone, and he’d been walking slow enough now, for long enough, to let it steal a good portion of the daily sound and fury of Chess’s companionship away, though parts of him ached for lack of what he’d increasingly come to regard as their due reverence. In fact, without Chess here to do him worship, Rook’s formerly swelled head was deflating like a popped pig’s bladder.

Like coming down off a three-week drunk, your very piss still alcohol-laced enough to light up blue and high-flaming at the slightest touch of a dropped lucifer. Or maybe the morning after signing up, when he’d come to already in uniform.

Now, Rook stood in the peaks’ shadow, knowing San Francisco lay somewhere on the other side: that terrible city which had spit his own true love out into an unsuspecting world — all teeth from the very start, yet still quite the prettiest thing Rook’d ever seen, let alone killed for.

You’re doing this for him, he told himself. So you can build something together — something ain’t just bed and bullets, something no one can touch but you. Not even —

( She, deep in the murk with her dragonfly-cloak flapping, where all shed blood sluices away down steep black chutes to keep the world’s gears grinding.)

Dragging himself away from the cold touch of Lady Rainbow’s shadow, with some not-inconsiderable effort, Rook forced himself to look up at the mountain instead. He opened his mind wide, and waited.

Eventually, that other voice-in-his-head sent thrumming down the line from the centre of it all: “Grandma,” as he lived and breathed.

Climb up and see me, grandson. Set your feet to the great rock’s hide. You are well come, though perhaps not soon enough . . . well come, and welcome.

Rook looked up the mountain’s face, and sighed. Should’ve known, he thought, shifting his travel-blistered feet. But far as he’d come already, there really was nothing left to do now but either refuse, or obey — stand fast, shout useless imprecations at the sky, fight, flee. Or climb.

He climbed.

Not until Rook had covered two-thirds or so of the upwards-rearing crests of stone, and lay panting on a ledge barely wide enough to hold him, did he wonder why he hadn’t simply pulled one more miracle from the Book to loft him upwards, ’stead of busting his already-bloody finger-pads with hauling himself up — levitation, bilocation or chariots of fire, he hadn’t lacked for choices. Yet somehow, the very notion’d never even entered his head.

Instinctive wariness, knowing himself to be entering the domain of another hexslinger? Or had Grandma’s command to climb held occult force so subtle he’d simply been unable to sense it wrapping its geas around him?

Sudden sweat broke cold on Rook’s forehead as he clung to the mountain with both raw hands, thinking: There are reasons we stay away from each other . . . and maybe what she wants is you out here, all alone. To take what you have. How foolish must you be, how trusting —

(little king)

(husband)

Grandson: CLIMB.

Finally, everything levelled off, and Rook lay — gasping, drenched, so mortal dusty he might as well’ve been hewn from the same stones cradling him — in the shallow slope of scree that lined the inside of the mountain’s pinnacle. The sky above was reddish-purple, draining to black. His lungs felt stuffed with grit. Gulping air and smelling something he couldn’t put a name to, immediately —

. . . heat, smoke. A fire. She laid a fire.

Well, that made sense. Had to see, after all — and eat. Then came the juicy smell of cooking meat, making Rook’s days-empty stomach spasm painfully. Hunger-driven, he rolled over, huge and clumsy — got his hands braced against the pebbled slope and levered himself up, with a groan of effort.

The woman who knelt over that delicious-smelling fire wore her hair in a waist-length pair of braids, thin and fine and strong as sunbleached corn-silk. By contrast, the rest of her was shockingly thick, sturdy to the point of squatness — nose flat and cheekbones broad, her wry-set mouth so wide it seemed virtually lipless. A slant pair of coal-in-paraffin eyes, small as currants, cut sideways over to Rook.

“Grandson,” she said, voice at once a gravelly rasp and a smooth, pure tone. It took Rook a second to understand what he was hearing: “inside” and “outside” voice, blended together, to bypass their mutual lack of common language. Trusting his instincts, therefore, he closed his eyes and felt ’round for the currents of power, for once riding them rather than shaping them.

“Grandma,” he replied.

The word itself was spoken in English, by necessity. The meaning, however, went back out to her just as hers had come to him — portmanteaued inside a visceral understanding which neither needed anything as crude as mere language to clarify.

“So. I see you have not forgotten all your manners.”

“Well, I do hope not . . . ma’am.”

And this drew an actual husky laugh, straight from the belly.

Shaking her head, she got to her feet, brushing down her shawl and stamping ash off her shoes.

“Men,” she remarked. “They always hope to charm. But then, even we of the Hataalii are still steered by what the First People put between our legs.”

“I meant no insult — ”

She shrugged. “Of course not. What else can be expected? You know nothing.”

“Hey, now,” he began, flushing — but she merely gestured, curtly, for him to sit . . . and he surprised himself, by obeying. Another laugh followed, equally gruff.

“That angers you, eh?” she asked. “To be ordered, like a child? That boy you’ve roped yourself to . . .”

“He’d just shoot you, you pissed him off bad enough.”

“Oh, he might try — and fail. But why charm, when honesty is better? You barely know what you are, ‘Reverend,’ your head still stuffed with blackrobe chatter-nonsense, while your boy does not even know that much, let alone how easily I have stopped bullets before. I am elder to you both, and worth respecting for it.”

Rook gritted his teeth. “I’d’ve thought the simple fact that I’m here was evidence enough of my respect.”

“Yet you took your time in getting here, and many have suffered. I see no reason for compliments.” She paused, stirring the fire. “And where is he now, your apprentice?”

“Hexes don’t take apprentices, is what I heard.”

“Yet here you are, nonetheless — come to learn from one you think knows more than you do, without even bringing me proper payment, and having left him behind. Did you not think he might benefit from a lesson or two as well, once his true nature is revealed?”

“Well, it ain’t done that just yet, and I don’t aim to enlighten him, either. He’s hard enough to handle as it is.”

“Mmmh. Selfish, secretive. Spoken like a true . . . hex.”

Rook shrugged. “Takes one to know one,” he suggested.

Again, Grandma glanced down at the fire. “The bird has minutes yet to cook,” she said, “which leaves time for one question.”

Rook had to smile. Carefully: “I’d consider it a kindness to be allowed to know my teacher’s name.”

She clapped her hands. “Ah, more manners! How I love the bilagaana way, so long as greed outweighs the fear which makes you burn down everything you do not recognize. But here is a thing you should know already, and do not: no smart Hataalii ever tells their name, to anyone. Most especially not to their own kind.”

“You know my name.”

Grandma nodded. “Exactly so. The more fool you, for telling me.”

Sparks flew up, and the moon blinked like an eye. Then Rook and she sat opposite each other, cross-legged on the dirt, while each tore at the meat they held, firm and hot and full of juice. The swiftness of it all disturbed Rook a tad, as it was probably meant to.

Grandma gave a small belch and licked her fingers, neatly, ’til they shone clean, while Rook wiped his on the tail of his coat.

“So,” she said, abruptly natural, as though their conversation had never been interrupted, “since you present yourself as my student, you will earn the knowledge of my name — until then, I shall stay Grand-mother. Now . . . let me ask you a question.”

“Ma’am.”

“I told you ‘climb,’ and you climbed. Did you forget how to fly?”

“Well . . .” Rook paused. “Seemed . . . I couldn’t think of quite the right way to put it, if I wanted to.” He saw endless flickering telegraph-transcriptions of Bible-verse fragments scoring its way through his brain’s centre-slice, tendrils digging bright hooks into either lobe, and shivered. “Just couldn’t — find the words.”

“From that Book of yours? Though you yourself know you have done without them, before.”

“True enough. But — ” That was when I had Chess with me.

The sudden truth of it stopped him mid-breath. With blessed courtesy, she gave him a moment to ride it out before answering.

“You still think of yourself as what you were, grandson . . . tied to your bilagaana One-God, even when you know yourself to have already gone beyond His narrow way out into the wider world, where the threads of true Balance may be woven. So when His Book failed you, you climbed. You forgot your own powers, because you thought yourself unworthy of them. That is the first truth.

“The second truth? Your powers are not all you are. To believe you are nothing without them is to be nothing but your own magic. And no Hataalii who makes himself so hollow can still retain his soul.”

“All right, then — yes. It does seem . . . right, somehow.”

“Even though I might be lying.”

Rook stared at her, hard. “Why would you?” he asked, at last.

A shrug. “Why indeed?”

Those flat eyes, so unreadable in the reddish ebb and flow. Rook made himself meet them nonetheless, thinking: Liked you better by far when you were just one more voice in my head, woman — when you had to tempt, not browbeat, in order to get whatever it was you wanted. But that’s just what always happens, I guess, when the honeymoon’s over.

And with that, sure as iron to a magnet, his thoughts went skittering on back to Chess.

If he was here, this old lady’d be no match for us — it’d be Bewelcome all over again, and she and Mesach Love could lick each other’s wounds in Hell. But, then again — maybe she ain’t lying. Maybe she does want to help. And what am I, in the end, if I need Chess to fight all my worst battles for me?

With deliberate care, he took another small bite of the fowl, chewing it slowly before swallowing — then another, and another. Musing, as his vised stomach began to gradually unclench: Been a long time, for her, I expect — out here, all on her own, no other hex to feed from. She must be starved for company indeed. And yeah, could be she really does mean me well, just has a funny way of showin’ it . . . but even if she don’t, well — I think I can take her.

They finished their meal in silence, consuming the bird down to the bones, which the desert witch cast into the fire. Then squatted down to peer at them as they smouldered, and said, “Now, Preacher Rook — look closely, and listen. Let me show you how the world really works: how every world grows out of the one which came before, into the next — and just as all worlds are connected, everything must be paid for.”

“Could you . . . be a touch more specific, maybe?”

Grandma snorted again, tossing back her braids, and rummaged inside the skin pouch she wore on her belt, cross-strapped right at the vague indentation where her waist should be. Withdrawing a smaller bag, she shook a few pale yellow grains out into her big, scarred palm.

“Cornmeal,” she explained. “Now: one more time, listen. And see.”

With two fingers, she twisted a hole in the sand at her feet, shook the meal down and bent to breathe a low croon in after it, then sat back, smoothing it over. Above them, the sky hung heavy with stars . . . until, gradual but unmistakable, those same stars began to go out.

A cloud, Rook thought, and Grandma nodded, like she could hear him. Like she knew he’d already forgotten how she probably could.

“Come down, nilch’i biyázhí,” she called up, into the air. “Wind’s children, hear me — spin your wool to my loom, gift me with threads to weave this working, keep my heart clean. Keep me from misstepping upon the Witchery Way.”

Rook could all but feel their two species of magic pass by each other in the night — her own strong faith, versus his sorrowful lack of it — and when she smiled back over at him, he realized he’d never before been so aware that a person’s teeth were also part of their skull. The sight made the hairs on the back of his neck prick up, a thin violet whining sound echoing through his head. And yes, bellyful of fresh-cooked meat aside, it also made him . . . hungry.

“Give me your hand,” Grandma told him, her deep voice oddly shaky, and Rook felt his scalp tighten. Was that a note from the very same famished scale he heard, behind her words’ bone-born “English” translation?

“Why — ”

“Give it.”

He hesitated — and saw it jerk forward of its own accord, her power a taut-snapped leash around his wrist. Heat flowed swoonishly outwards, dizziness mounting up fast as blood-loss. Scraping down deep to his very marrow, like she aimed to eat it with a spoon — and letting him know just how helpless he was to stop her from doing so, if she happened to choose to.

Two conclusions to be gleaned here, neither welcome. First off: she was much stronger than Rook had thought, or hoped.

And second — is this how Chess must feel, he thought, when I do it to him?

“This sort of spell cannot be done through natural means alone,” Grandma told him. “It needs more than one Hataalii’s power, whether or not the other aims to give it. Which shows us why it should probably not be done at all.”

With a flourish, Grandma shook her fingers over the hole, and Rook saw two types of hexation rain down into it, glinting hotly: his and hers, admixed. The earth drank it gladly, puffed up the way dough does in hot oil and shot up one green sprout, blindly seeking for an absent sun.

“Things must be what they are,” Grandma said, stroking the corn-stalk lightly. “From one grain I can make a kernel, and then — from that kernel — ”

Sprout became stalk, grew to nodding-height with startling speed — leafed out, a dancing-girl’s flapping skirts, spun all of a sudden with dry-rustling silken tassels. Ears whose ripe husks budded quick as grenades, golden-juicy fruit beneath aglow with an inner light that stunk so high of artifice it made Rook’s mouth fill with sour water.

“Take one,” she ordered. Rook did, gingerly. Even its weight felt wrong.

“Now eat.”

Rook bit savagely into the ear of corn, chewed, and was halfway through his second bite when the taste struck him at last — dust and ash, warm-slimy with decay. And as he choked down the third, the whole cob disintegrated in his hands, stalk curling over upon itself, shrivelling to the ground. Rook breathed deep, feeling his own stolen power flood back into him.

“That was never meant to be,” said Grandma. “Do you see, now? If I must steal from you to create a good thing, no matter how I try, I cannot make it stay. It cannot be other than it is — one grain of cornmeal in a new dress, sewn from dreams.”

Bread falling from the air, tasteless, unnourishing: Rook remembered. But the bad things you used your own — and Chess’s — power to do, all of them . . . those things stand still. The train, bisected. Bewelcome, in all its salt-slick glory.

Grandma reached down, prising up a rock to reveal the fossil which clung close beneath it, froze in mid-crawl, as though excreted straight from stone.

“Or this,” she said. “This slimy thing . . . something from the Fourth World itself, perhaps. Suck from you — ’til you sleep, or die, and I grow fat and drunk — and I might be able to make it creep, free to roam once more. But how far would it get, before it drowned in air it was never meant to breathe? Its time has passed. So I could feed you for years out here, grandson, just as I have kept myself fed — but never on corn, or sea-insects.”

“Not much of a miracle, then, is it?”

“Only gods do miracles, Asher Rook. Your own Book says as much.”

“And . . . we’re not gods.”

“Powerful, yes: Hataalii, born to Balance or un-Balance, to do right or walk the Witchery Way, perverting our own magic for profit. But we are not gods, and never could be.”

“There’s one I’ve spoke with, now and again,” Rook replied, slowly, “who might tend to disagree with you.”

And we both know who that is, now, don’t we?

No need to even nod. ’Cause from somewhere far below, the threads of his dragonfly-cloaked Lady’s influence came spinning up ’round both of them in a slack silk knot, just waiting for any excuse to tighten. And as she sat on the Sunken Ball-Court’s sloshing sidelines, Rook knew she grinned to hear herself discussed — she, her, the One Now Woken.

You, Rook “heard” Grandma blurt out.

And heard the reply in turn, a barest liquid murmur — Ah, yes: me.

A surging snap lit Rook from within, at the very sound. Not fear, so much, as a terrible urge to run wild and aimless in any direction, run ’til his skin rucked up and his muscles unstrung themselves, leaving his slick red bones to rattle at last into a sticky heap, reconfigured by their own momentum.

Before he could, however, Grandma’s hand moved again, and the unseen leash jerked him taut, puppet-stiff. When he made to protest, she sewed a quick seam across his lips with one needle-sharp nail, muffling them shut — a locked purse, his tongue curled too tight in on itself to even move.

“Stay still,” Grandma told him. “The Lady of Traps and Snares has made threats, made you promises — of this I have no doubt. But even she, powerful as she has become, is no true god, grandson. She is Anaye, a monster. Enemy to all. Did she tell you you could be a god, perhaps, if you only did her bidding? Or was it . . . that he could?”

There was a note in her double-voice which rung through Rook like a bellyful of angry hornets, and made him just pissed off enough to wrench his sealed lips free — just pop them back open, uncaring of what might rip, and spit a mouthful of his own blood up, before answering: “Don’t you . . . talk about . . . him.”

He’d at least hoped to startle her, but had to settle for a bare smidgen of genuine respect, instead — before, with a flick of her fingers, she wound him tight on himself again.

And here the Rainbow Lady came whispering once more, from deep inside his ear’s shell — You are in a bad place now, little king. Do you wish my help?

Grandma’s head whipped ’round, bent low and seeking, as if she might be able to find the words’ source somewhere in the dust at her feet, if only given enough time to study it. “Do not answer her!” she ordered Rook, peremptorily.

The Lady, ignoring her, continued: For I will give it. That is how close we already are, given the blood we have shared, our marriage pledge. You have only to say the words . . .

Rook managed a groan, nothing more. Kicked out hard against Grandma’s net, and got the blood cut off to all his limbs at once, in return.

“Ohé, grandson — you will only hurt yourself, if you continue to struggle,” she warned him, without much sympathy. “I might have broken you of these bad habits gently, but my dreams tell me there is no time. If you do not learn your business quickly, she will hang you once more, and finish the job, this time — you, me, everyone else. Even that boy of yours.”

“His name is Chess. And he ain’t no boy.”

“No. He is rage and fire, a fierce warrior, one whose blood would enrich any tribe, did he not prefer to lie down with his own sex. I have seen many such, in my time: two-spirited as Begochiddy himself. But love is love, and you do love him, after all.”

Rook swallowed. “The hell’d you think I’d even come here for,” he managed, finally, “if I damn well didn’t?”

“Then why do you fight me, fool?”

Say it, husband.

“’Cause . . .” His head swam, lightening like the sky, as the dying fire sunk lower. “. . . she threatened to kill him . . . then promised to save him — ”

“From what, herself? In her time, the gods ate ones like him every day — the beautiful, the gifted. They ate their hearts, and drank their precious blood, because they could. Because that was what tasted best.”

Little king, say —

“That ain’t even vaguely what she — ”

“Oh, save me from all men, bilagaana or Diné — do you really believe no one but you knows how to lie? Wake up!”

Say it, say the words —

Rook opened his torn mouth wide, only to have it twist shut on him yet again, so fast it burned worse than a swallow of sparks.

“Your mouth stays shut, grandson,” Grandma repeated. “Or — ”

Or what, old woman?

Had he ever truly thought her gentle, kind? Damn, if the bitch wasn’t right: between her and the Lady, he might well be the stupidest whoreson alive.

Grandma gave a sigh, similarly frustrated, and pressed both palms to her eyes, as though to soothe an aching brain. Then continued, after a moment — “When North and South went to War, Rook, you fought, yes? And that young man of yours, too — not because either of you cared one way or another who owned land, who kept slaves, but because you wanted to die and he wanted to live. Because he knew himself born for killing, and saw a chance to trade that skill for a long ride, far away. And neither of you cared who else might be hurt by it — not least because, unaware of your own true natures, you did not see what would happen when one of you was hurt badly enough to come to power.

“Meanwhile, for we Diné, your War was one more theft in a long string of thieveries. Treaties which signed away the land from under us, leaving our horses no place to graze. Two of our sacred mountains taken — as though that could happen! Your greycoats offered us alliance against the bluecoats, but threatened us with death if we did not accept. After, the government men sent Kit Carson to burn us out, calling us traitors. And then, the Long Walk . . . men, women and children driven to Hwééldi like cattle, three hundred miles in eighteen days, on foot.”

She shook her head, her braids’ double shadow lashing the ground. “Bad blood between us, always. Soon my people will march home once more, and there will be war again — a war we will lose. My dreams have shown me. Like the Steel Hats who drove your Lady and her kind under the ground, you will make it so we are forgotten even by ourselves.

“And I might have stopped it — I, and every other Hataalii. When the tribes sent warriors to ask us for help, we might have banded together, even at the usual cost. When they said, These bilagaana do not think of us as people, given how they treat us, so why should we think of them as people?, we might have answered, You speak the truth. Let us go to war. Let us answer force for force, and make such a slaughter as the land has never seen.

“But I am the true fool, here. I told them no: Bilagaana are only human beings, and to kill human beings by magic is the Witchery Way. We would become skinwalkers, Anaye, were we to do so. Yes, you ‘whites’ think no one as good as yourselves. You think you own everything, and care for nothing. Yet you are not evil spirits, or even dumb beasts — you love your children, at least, enough to cry for their pain. And even if you do not, you still piss and shit as we do, and know to go outside your own camps before doing so, for the most part. This is human enough, for me.”

That’s quite the little philosophical dilemma you got yourself entangled in, Rook thought. His ears burned, and his forehead was clammy — was that his own tongue leeching iron between clenched teeth, or a knife? How could he have possibly cut himself so deeply he could feel it in every pore, without having said a single word?

Why the hell’re you even tryin’ to sell me this cart-load of Indian horse-crap? he wondered, shame and hate struggling venomously inside him, two snakes in the same bag. Just go on and kill me, same’s I would you, if I thought I was capable of it. ’Cause I could face that a sight better than I can the prospect of being damn well talked to death.

“Because I do not want to kill you,” Grandma said, to herself, her voice full of a dull sorrow. “If only I could be sure you were fully a monster! If I killed you, it would upset her plans, I know that much — I do not think she could get another man to serve her quite as willingly, as quickly. And so long as you practise only for your own pleasure — or your lover’s — you both come closer and closer to being something anyone can kill without guilt, without even having to cleanse themselves of the deed, afterward.”

Chess’s voice, now, answering for him — distinct as the Lady’s, though licking hot against his opposite eardrum — Yeah? All right, then. Bring it on, bitch. Let them damn well try.

“Yes. And this, too, is a monster’s answer.”

As though resolved, Grandma got to her feet, flicking back her braids. Rook found himself jouncing upwards as well, knees popping painfully.

“Has your Lady told you the full extent of her plans?” she demanded. “I doubt it. Even an uneducated bilagaana Hataalii would not consent, if so. Remember what I showed you — there are things which must not be done, because their cost is too dear. To bring the dead back to life tears a hole in the world’s fabric. It is a great crime, a sin against Balance. What your Lady wants is to remake the world, to poison everything. It will destroy her, and everyone else.” She glared at him, suddenly furious. “Yet you think nothing of helping her, if it gets you what you want.”

Rook took her contempt, which stung, but at least gave him enough strength to speak again. “Yeah? Well — screw you, you crazy squaw! All I ever wanted was her out of my head, away from me, from Chess . . . and I thought you were gonna help me with that, by the by!”

Rolling her eyes, at the very idea: “Oh yes, of course — because it makes such sense that another Hataalii would offer to solve your problems, free of charge. Or that I would ever wish to help any white man, let alone two.”

Put like that, it did seem foolish — and though he overshot her by a foot at least, when she thrust her face alongside his, it was he who felt dwarfed. That marrow-deep suck turned on full, guttering him ‘til he watched himself fade away by shades, like windowpane breath.

You can still stop this, husband, the silver-bell voice reminded him. If . . . you want to.

“So . . . this was a trap, right from the start. Right from that first time you spoke to me.”

Grandma nodded, a touch sadly. “Always, yes.”

“Was always my power you wanted, the whole time, like any other hex — ”

“Your power? Tchah! You have nothing I need. But when I saw in my dreams that if you were not stopped everything would die, how could I refuse that call? This being the only time at which I could stop you from Becoming — ”

“Becoming what?”

And here . . . he heard what she was thinking, two equally strange ideas laid overtop each other, contradictorily at odds. Grandma’s double voice with Miss Rainbow whispering underneath, translating the unspoken:

A god’s lover,

Husband to

two gods at once,

And your own lover’s

Killer.

Fear spiked down through Rook at those last four words, a shooting metallic pain. He looked down at the ashy remains of the conjured cob, and it was almost a relief to realize how sick he still felt at the thought of Chess hurt, dying. Let alone —

“So.” Grandma reached up, prodding his cheek, and brought it away wet. “If you do still care, this much . . . then there may yet be a way to save you both. A way to live in Balance, without one of you devouring the other — if you are willing to pay the price.”

“What . . . price?”

“There is a binding,” Grandma said, “that makes a circle of two willing Hataalii. It sets their power to feed each upon each other, a combat which becomes partnership, perfect Balance. Each takes power from the other, and is instantly restored by the power they have taken. They may then live together, so long as chance permits.”

Rook blinked. “Doesn’t sound so — ”

“Listen, fool: they may live, I said. But not as Hataalii.”

It took a long time for Rook to find the words. But even when he said them, they sounded meaningless — ridiculous.

“You mean give up the hexation. Both of us.”

Grandmother didn’t move, even to nod — so Rook leaned forward instead, barely aware that some range of motion was beginning to return. “But . . . not permanently, right? You can break it, when you need to. . . .”

I could live with that, his mind gibbered to itself; Chess need never know what he didn’t already suspect. Keep the law’s eyes off each other, mask themselves to stay safe then unsheathe the power only when absolutely necessary, a lock-boxed magic shotgun.

And now Grandmother did shake her head, of course. Dashing all his hopes with one simple word: “No. It can be broken, yes. Once broken . . . never remade. Because the power, once bound and balanced, cannot be divided again. It must go with one or the other. And the one left empty . . .”

. . . dies. Anyhow.

“Did you really think there would be no price?” Grandmother asked, after long silence — more honestly curious than contemptuous, for once. “Even foolish as you are, have you really learned so little?”

No, thought Rook, numbly. Knew there’d be one, ’cause there always is. Just — not this.

Take away the magic, and Reverend Rook was just a fallen preacher turned outlaw, gone in one fell swoop from demigod to dirty joke. Everything Rook had been, he had thrown away for hexation’s sake. If he gave that up, what was left?

But then again . . . Chess would be losing more than he knew, too: his miraculous marksmanship, lizard-swift recovery from wounds and such. Hell, even the slow-burning brightness that turned men’s heads might drain away, leaving nothing behind but a too-pretty little man with a too-bad attitude, no longer fit for his formerly natural-born twin occupations of shooting and screwing. Could he ever forgive Rook, if he learned the Reverend had bargained away what made him special? Even if it saved his life?

If neither of us were hexes, could we even stand each other?

Grandma still held him down, a hundred ghost-hands ’round his throat, unwilling to give him even the slightest chance to refuse. Like she didn’t trust him far as she could throw him — by magical means, or otherwise — to not want both his cake and eat it too.

Knew him pretty well, all told, considerin’ how recently they’d met.

“. . . no,” he managed, at last, then coughed hard and spit, half-expecting to see a chunk of lung in the sputum. “I think — not.”

Grandmother’s brow, already hard-rucked, threw up fresh lines. “What?”

He could see it in her eyes, again — that brief flash of weary sympathy. Oh, grandson, do not make me make you do right —

Don’t worry, lady. You won’t get the opportunity.

“I accept,” he said, out loud. And — not to Grandma.

Then saw her draw breath to protest, just barely — begin to, anyhow. But the answer was already returned before the old woman could even complete the action, through channels so obscure he had to strain to even perceive them fully: a tintinnation, borne by dust and blood.

That silver no-voice, so sweet and dry and dreadful: husband, husband, yes

(you will not regret this)

No? Rook thought. Then: Probably not, no. Knowin’ me.

And — back to Grandmother, still caught in that half-tick of timelessness, her brown face turning purple. Rook felt her influence fall away, probably only accelerating as her head grew lighter, her eyes stung and swum. It occurred to him that putting her out of her misery sooner rather than later would be a truly Christian mercy.

And the glow starting to leak from every pore, laid overtop her lines like a badly exposed plate, emulsion popped and bleeding black light . . . all that wouldn’t have the slightest bit to do with him feeling oh-so-forgiving, would it? The magnetic pull of one hex for another, increased thousandfold by proximity to death.

A departure-born mutual arrival, rape and sex combined, with only one still left standing to savour the doubled load. . . .

Oh Jesus, it’s not like that. Can’t be. I just want — I don’t — I don’t hate her that much.

The Lady, then, in reply — triggering her Traps, flicking shut her Snares, with him a mere struggling fly at her web’s sticky heart:

But she would have done the same to you, given half a chance. For all her talk of sacrifice and Balance, of Doing Right, she is our kin, her hungers the very same. Would you refuse a meal offered in starvation, on moral grounds?

Embrace what you are; take her defeat, my gift to you. Grow strong, to shelter him from your needs. Then find your way back to me, at last, and give me — in turn — due payment.

I’ll do it before Chess has time to manifest, Rook thought, to Become himself — ’cause oh, but he’ll burn and shine, shed light so hard it hurts to look, a bonfire of bones. Gotta pay her back before that, or there’ll be great feasting indeed, on that day. . . .

So: done deal. He took a step, grabbed his “Grandma” by one braid, brought his free hand up instinctively, and plunged it somehow through her chest, elbow-deep — not into gristle or grue, but right into the seed-sac of boiling energy she carried ’round her heart.

Saw her grimace and almost cry out, and “heard” someone else — many someone elses? — call back, in answer: a vague sympathetic notion, her solitary hurt multiplied and reflected, fragmentary, fleeting. And along with it, the realization that she herself was severing this contact, breaking it off mid-stream before he could think to back-trace it — crying out (a warning? an order?) in her own language, all trace of English kicked to the wayside.

Gone, now, with only they — three — left.

Rook sucked hard, piggish, already brim-full of everything which had made Grandma her, and slid his hand down even further, with a wet, hot crack, to touch her heart’s fluttering meat-lump through broken ribs. There was a last rising sigh, warming him to his own hollow core — the sound a coal makes when it cracks across, releasing a last rush of embers.

“You are . . . a monster,” Grandma told him, painfully, blood leaking from her mouth. “Bilagaana with a Bible . . . your One-God tells you this whole world is yours, so you . . . think that means you can use it up, throw it away. That all things conspire to serve you.”

And now she spat, hot and sizzling, to scar the ground. “Such shit. If I could help that boy of yours drain you dry before you get the chance to do the same to him . . . teach him to dance with your heart in his mouth, as one should, after slaying foulness . . . then I would. I would.”

Rook didn’t try to deny it. Just shrugged, and answered, “Well . . . that’s kinda what I thought, all along.”

One more wrench, and she was emptied — he saw her spirit pass him by obliquely, a star falling the wrong way.

Rook just stood there panting, and watched.

Damnation didn’t feel so bad, on consideration; not bad as he’d feared, anyhow. Felt like, well — nothing, mostly.

Which was probably why it gave him not a moment’s pause when all Grandmother’s blood humped itself up and sprayed blowhole-high to form a geyserish pillar — the midtop of which bowed slightly, spread outwards in a cowl, to let a too-familiar face push through.

Rook gave the Lady a stiff little bow. “Ma’am,” he said.

Little king, my affianced. It does me good to see you, face to face.

“Likewise.”

We are allies now, after all. Such courtesy is the least I owe you.

“’Spect you’re right,” Rook agreed.

Go back to your lover, now, she instructed him. Do not feed overmuch from him, if he can help it. Just keep yourselves alive and free, until you find a way to speak with me directly.

Rook frowned. “But — how’m I supposed to — ”

Oh, it will come to you. It comes even now, as we speak. Have faith, husband — as I have faith in you. The blood-face smiled, too full of sly glee to bother approximating anything recognizable as human, any longer. You knew how to do that, once. . . .

With that, the inevitable wind whipped up — pillar boiling back to dust with nauseating speed, a pale red cloud which blew away, leaving him alone, in silence.

Sighing, the Reverend turned back for Bewelcome, and Chess.