A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

From another pocket, Rook drew a smallish glass bottle. Atwood’s Jaundice Bitters, the raised letters blown down one side and up the other proclaimed: Moses Atwood, Cambridge Mass. He popped the cork, up-ended it and beckoned the curl of hair-smoke inside, an Indian rope-trick in reverse.

“Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live. . . .”

There, done—one more whispered word ’cross the neck and the cork went back in, sealed with a curse. The charm, wound up.

“Ye shall live,” he repeated, louder. “And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.”

The words of his mouth, a black-letter banner, spilled forth and up to roost like bats in the filthy twilight air. While something else took shape beneath ’em, man-sized in darkness: a far too familiar-aspected, scowling shade who, once coalesced, spoke just as gruff as ever, unimpressed by Rook’s diablerie on simple principle.

And why don’t this surprise me, said Kees Hosteen.

Rook had risen early, intending to walk back alone through Hex City’s streets in these birdsong hours, usually the only time of day he could expect anything close to a genuine block of solitude. But all planning aside, it just wasn’t to be.

“Reverend.”

Rook turned to find one Three-Fingered Hank Fennig, late of New York City, leaning up against a nearby house’s mud wall with his arms crossed (maimed left hand topmost, as befitted any southpaw) and regarding him over the rims

of his ostentatiously expensive smoked-glass spectacles.

“Out early, ain’t ya?” he asked Rook, amiably enough.

“Well, that depends. Don’t look to me like you slept too long yourself.”

Fennig was a viperishly lanky young buck, and his shrug travelled the length of him without much effort, since he didn’t have breadth enough to interfere with the motion. “Oh, me? I ain’t yet been t’bed, as it happens. Thought I’d take the air, instead.”

The glasses, Rook knew, were far more than an affectation; having seen Fennig in operation a time or two against similarly foreign challengers, he surmised his hexation worked directly with the eyes, thus necessitating some sort of shield—that the boy could see through people, or even into ’em, discovering exactly which flaws to press on in order to force a break.

The results could be spectacular, as in the case of a provoking young witch from down Texas way—not an Injun, though certainly burnt brown enough to pass—whose elaborately coiled ’do had suddenly cut loose like an octopus knit from hair under Fennig’s direct gaze, then ripped itself from her scalp and gone foraging, leaving her to bleed out in the dust.

“Surprised our infant metropolis holds any interest for you at all, considering where you’re from,” he told Fennig, drawing nearer.

Another shrug. “Oh, it’s got a rustic charm, and these Territories is a prime place for them as likes to brawl, in general. A rowster could live easy here, once the cobbles was laid down and the jakes-house row finally decided upon for sure, ’stead’a every man-jack just shittin’ where he pleases.”

“And not even kicking dirt over it, after,” Rook agreed. “But I somehow misdoubt you’ve come to discuss the state of New Aztectlan’s sanitation with me, Henry.”

They strolled back together, Fennig with both hands kept carefully in his pockets, to defuse any appearance of threat.

“Back home, Rev, I’m what’s called a Bowery B’hoy,” he explained, as they rounded first one corner, then the next, “with my born ’legiance t’wards the Glorious Know-Nothin’ Order of the American Eagle—Nativists, they likes t’name ’emselves, and pound down hammer-hard on any damn dirty immigrant sons of bitches wants entry t’their streets. ’Course, what a year or two out here’ll teach you is, we all of us come from somewheres else.”

“Go on.”

“So . . . due to circumstances don’t bear goin’ into, here’s where I find myself. And never before in all my life have I made my bed near so many other magickals, for fear of constant challenge—not that there ain’t none of that either, mind. What interests me, though, is how what there is seems mainly by rote, from habit, not necessity.”

Rook turned on his heel, his own eyes narrowing, thinking: Smart fellow, this—someone worth the cultivating, perhaps, if his motives might only be clarified. Or the using, anyhow.

Dangerous too, of course. But then . . . dangerous men were, ofttimes, the only kind of any worth.

Ah, God, he missed Chess. Like half his guts were gone.

“Gift horses and mouths, is what comes first to my mind,” he replied, casually. “For myself, I know I’m right grateful to live someplace I don’t need to scrap any more—’less I feel like it, that is.”

Fennig gave a little nod. “True and fair. Hell, I spilled my claret and said your words quick as any, didn’t I, when you and Her told me to?” A sudden flickering grin, cut with another sly, sidelong glance. “Still, it does strike me that—well—maybe things could go further, down this new road you’ve opened up.”

“How so?”

Fennig paused, maybe thrown by the directness of the question, and gave it some thought.

Then swept one long arm in an arc, encompassing the whole of Hex City in at once, and began—“Like I said, we all of us come from elsewheres—all heard the Call of this place and answered it, to our costs; a long, hard road, full of toil and tribulation. And in return . . .gained entrance here, this town, a place where for the first time any of us’s heard of, we can share space without drinkin’ each other dry: outcasts and devil-spawn, the suffered-not-to-live. A place we can damn well call home.”