Yiska shrugged. “Only that when two gods fistfight, things are not often left the same, in their wake.” Her eyes narrowed, appreciatively. “But then, you are not quite what you were either, are you—you who I last saw in the second Naahondzood, the Fearing Time, after we helped win that War of yours for you, only to be driven from our homes like cattle.”
“Ye’ve come back since then, I see—gathering in force, armed tae the teeth, as the Indian Act forbids.”
“I see no Agents here but yours, bilagaana. And you are but a hex new-made, if that.” She sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. “Ah, chah! Not even. A sham Hataalii, stuffed with stolen might. I am more fit to wield it than you, fool.”
Pinkerton’s brows drew together, beetling. “Ye know . . .” he began, calmly enough, “one thing I’m gettin’ main sick of, these days, is the sound of Chink and Injuns frails callin’ me fool.”
His hands drifted together, all but met, conjuring an even stronger reaction: a minor conflagration, hot enough to make all the non-hexacious step back a tad, dancing between both palms like some captured djinn. But Yiska merely sneered.
“Hear me,” she said, raising her voice slightly—not even deigning to address Pinkerton directly, but rather her band, who grunted and clicked their tongues in appreciation. “It is as Red Cloud of the Oglala spoke: We have now to deal with another race—small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbours away. We cannot dwell side by side. My brothers, shall we submit, or shall we say to them: ‘First kill me, before you take possession of my lands.’”
Pinkerton shook his head. “A pretty speech, indeed. But it’ll no’—”
“Be quiet,” Yiska snapped, with such natural authority that almost all engaged parties did just that, at least for a second; she cocked an ear, listened hard, then laughed out loud, as though she had heard something she liked. “Hah, yes! The Spinner has not forsaken us, after all; she pulls her threads, shaking the web from sky to sky
. This is far more like it.”
“More like what, yeh daft squaw?” Pinkerton demanded, purple to his very hairline.
Yiska gifted him with a smile like a wolf’s, all teeth.
“Change,” she said, happily, throwing back her head. And howled.
While, at the same time:
This is a forked path, dead-speaker, Grandma’s spirit whispered, so low only Yancey might hope to hear. The fabric turns in my hands. Help me, so I may help you.
Since your advice’s always been so good on the whole, thus far—that right? Yancey wanted to say, but merely shook her head, instead, drawing an odd look from Sophy Love. Given the drama currently playing out between poor Ed, Pinkerton, and the Diné woman, however, it was only a matter of time before the woman turned away again, distracted—allowing Yancey to ask, mentally:
How?
Let me come into this world once more, and act, for both of us. Lend me your witch’s strength, freely.
I . . . my Ma said that wouldn’t be a bright idea, for either of us.
And she was right, under most circumstances. Still—have you a better plan to offer?
To hell with all hexes, alive or not, Yancey thought, hopeless—then, as Yiska’s howl split the sky, tightened her finger on the left-hand gun’s trigger, sending a bullet into the ground. It kicked up a distraction’s worth of noise and dust, scattering just enough of the crowd to cut her a clear path. She twitched her other barrel away from Sophy Love’s blank face, getting barely a blink in return for this last misguided spasm of mercy; annoying, but not so much so as to keep her around. Because for all these fools might be fixed to lynch her, she told herself, she really had come here to kill one man only, in the end. And now that that job was done with—she found she didn’t aim to kill more, no matter how much they might pique her. Not ’less she absolutely had to.
Sprinting faster than she’d ever thought she could, Yancey barged past the men who held Morrow pinned, kicking one of them square to the back of the knee as she went and breaking his hold; from the corner of her eye she saw Morrow duck under the other’s wild haymaker swing, moving neatly sidelong to let him lay his own already wavering buddy out. The ensuing chaos sent Sophy Love scurrying back toward her husband’s body, one arm flung out as though to ward off further damage, the other keeping her baby shielded as best she could. Those near enough to see closed ranks around her, while the others joined the general tangle: Pinkerton and the Bewelcomers, Yiska and her braves, a swirl of sand and flying hooves, fresh gunfire blooming wild in her single shot’s wake.
She was almost to Chess’s body, boot-soles already tacky with his blood. A length behind her was Morrow, whose eyes met hers on the back-glance, apparently trusting she had some plan in mind. That one look was sufficient to make him spin on his heel and take up a defensive position, unarmed but game, to block any comers.
A good man. She could only hope he’d come out all right from this, whatever “this” might prove to be.
Hope we both do, come to that.
“Any time,” Yancey said, shutting her eyes; Indeed, Grandma replied. And she felt something pull at her, inside and out, with such force it made her want to scream, fall face-down, be violently ill ’til she passed out. Like the cosmos itself was treating her as its personal spool, winding everything she had and more out of her at once ’til she felt turned inside-out.
And just like Ezekiel’s spinning wheel, their differing degrees of power rose to meet and mingle in the middle of the air.
Morrow knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear anything over the ruckus Yiska and Yancey had kicked off; the Na’isha riders had responded to Yiska’s howl by breaking into yells of their own and sending their mounts into a wild, circling gallop around the flummoxed, infuriated Bewelcomers. For all Yiska’s threatening, he couldn’t help but notice that none of her followers seemed actually to be striking lethal blows—they kicked and slapped, whacking backsides, heads or shoulders with the butt-end of tomahawk or spear, but never drew more than a solid punch’s worth of blood.
Meanwhile, the enraged Pinkerton began trying to lay Yiska out, to no very good effect, raw whiplash arcs of power slashing from his hands—but she, in turn, struck the hexation aside with swift slaps, shrugging it off as she danced her mount aside using only knees and thighs. Something like what Sheriff Love had done himself with Rook, Morrow supposed, right here in the fight that had first set everything in motion. For a moment he had a disorienting feeling of vast, slow-spinning circles coming back round to their starting points; a dreadful sense of futility and inexorability overwhelmed him.
Then Yancey made one of the worst noises he’d ever heard, something that should by all rights have gone utterly missed in the chaos: a small blurt of breath, a whimpering grunt, that reminded Morrow of nothing so much as the surprised gasp of a man gut-stabbed—but far far worse, for being in Yancey’s clear voice. Even as he spun back round, rushing to catch her as she folded, he wondered crazily if he’d heard it with his ears at all. She was grave-pallid, face drawn tight as if in agony, though her eyes stared blindly and all sound but the faint gasps of her breath had stopped.
Of themselves, his fingers moved, stroking a damp lock of hair back from her forehead . . .