A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

You, sir, are a toad, Yancey thought at him, bell-clear and deliberate, blush deepening. Meanwhile snapping, out loud: “None of your beeswax! He’s dead ’cause of you, anyhow—”

“Oh yeah, that’s right: me, not you, for thinkin’ you could handle things on your ownsome. And you really do look like you miss him, too.”

Geyer opened his mouth again, but too late, for Yancey had already punched the pistoleer full in his mocking face. “Oh my Jesus!” Morrow yelled out, and grabbed for her, bent on fending off whatever came next—but Chess just rocked back a tad, putting one hand to his split lip to taste the blood, before barking out a red-tinged laugh.

“Gal,” he said, “I must admit I like you better this way, ’stead of all polite and persnickety; makes you seem like you got fire in your belly. Which you’re gonna need.”

“And I’m supposed to be flattered, I expect? Balls to that! You’re a petty, heathenish deity indeed.”

Chess shrugged once more, split lip already healed over. “Well, you’re the one started prayin’ to me in the first place—but since it’s all the apology you’re like to get, I guess you can either take it, or don’t. ’Cause I surely don’t give a damn.”

A swish of dust, and he was out of reach. Yancey bent over a moment, panting harsh, sick with the helpless urge to kill: him, Sheriff Love, Reverend Rook and that Mexican blood-goddess of his, for gifting Chess Pargeter with such power when they knew him unfit to bear it. God Almighty.

Geyer scuffed the hill with his boot-tip, seeming more embarrassed than anything else. But Mister Morrow’s hand fell on her shoulder, comfort-warm as Uther’s had always been—and though she shouldn’t’ve let it stay there, she did. “We’ll be there soon enough,” he told her.

“Wonderful.”

“Chess . . .” Morrow gave a sigh, choosing his next few words with laudable care. “Listen . . . he knows he’s done wrong by you, by all your folk, and it’s makin’ him hit out. But I know he feels badly, just the same.”

“Really. How on earth can you tell?”

“’Cause you’re still here, ma’am. ’Cause he didn’t just throw you right back no matter how much you pled to come along, and be done with it.”

They trudged along in silence a moment while Yancey mustered her own thoughts, ’til she’d become near-enough calm to voice ’em.

“‘Feels bad,’” she repeated, eventually. “My father is dead, Mister Morrow—husband, too. The town I lived in my whole life torn ear to ear, with my inheritance pushed over and burnt to the ground. Your Mister Pargeter . . . from what I see, he’s been mildly inconvenienced, at best. So thank you kindly, but I could give a horse’s fat ass how that hex-slung son-of-a-slut feels, and that’s a damn fact.”

Geyer stopped short, amazed by her vehemence. “Miss Yancey!”

“Oh, I’m sorry—does my rough speech offend you, ‘Mister Grey’? Besides which, his mother is . . . what she is, isn’t she, Mister Morrow? Didn’t object much to that part of the song, as I recall.”

“She was, yes, like I said. She’s dead now.”

Yancey paused in her tracks, yet again. “Then I’m sorry.”

But Morrow just shook his head. “Don’t have to try and be, not ’less he asks you to. Which he won’t.”

Staring past her, he sought out Chess’s bright purple figure far off in the distance, silhouetted ’gainst the sun. And Yancey saw him narrow his eyes, as though looking into either some unfathomable light, or some equally impenetrable darkness.

“He’s not an easy man,” Morrow said. “Not with himself, and not with anybody else. Only good part is, when you get riled enough to slap back, it does make him respect you.”

“Don’t doubt but you’re right, given you know him best. Still, he won’t get any more of a rise out of me from now on than he already has, if I can help it.”

Morrow nodded, silent, while Geyer looked off into the distance, tracking Chess’s progress by the spindrift he kicked up.

“But can you?” Geyer wondered, aloud. “It’s hard enough for me to keep a civil tongue in my head, and I’m not—a lady, with those sorts of finer feelings t’grapple with.”

Morrow cast him a look that all but shouted: Stop your posturing, idjit. “You do know he’d kill you stone dead, though, if you tried to kick up a fuss about it,” he pointed out. “And that’s equal-true for all of us, in the end.”

Not for you, Yancey thought, remembering how back in the thick of Hoffstedt’s Hoard’s demise, Morrow had been the only one to rein Chess in. Not really. Much as you may want to deny it, in front of me.

And why might that be? Was Chess right, thinking he might have cause for jealousy from Morrow’s eye straying in Yancey’s direction?

Useful, in potential, a traitorous part of her whispered. Now that I’m left to fend for myself in this world, robbed at gunpoint of all protectors, forced to choose ’tween bad and worse to get to what I need.

Oh, she was starting to hate that Satan-practical little voice inside, the one she couldn’t dare claim came from anywhere but her own fast-withering soul.

“Let’s get a move on,” she told both Pinkertons, and set her shiny hex-made boots back to the upwards path.