A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Berta? I see you, acushla. Now stay still!”

The girl — Miss Schemerhorne, the files named her — nodded, and shut her eyes.

All at once, the air seemed to twist ’round her, lariat-style; a black whirling strand of wind and dust lashed down, falling neat into one hand as any rope flung to some drowning man. Skilfully, she whirled her forearm in the cyclone-cord to wrap it tight, then leaped; it caught her up and bore her high into blackness, beyond the range of sight.

Prone in the mud, Washford’s soldier stared up after with eyes gone silver dollar-sized, their already vivid whites set in stark contrast with a face the same shade as Bewelcome’s freakishly arable new earth. “You all right there?” Morrow asked him, gently.

The man shook his head first one way, then the other — a cleansing shake, chased with a grim nod. “Me? Hell, I’ll be fine enough if you gimme a slug an’ a minute, or maybe just a slug, t’wash the taste of that damn thing out my mouth. I’m workin’ for the Kingdom, sir, like all the Captain’s people; ain’t got time to die.” He pushed himself to his feet as thunder boomed once more and retrieved his well-worn bummer’s cap, canting it so icy rain would splash off what little brim it had left. “Gotta wonder, though — are these the End Days come to pass, way some say? Fallen angels walkin’ the Earth, Devil’s children like that gal there runnin’ wild?”

Getting up cost Morrow more than he’d thought it would, so much so he had to spend a few hacking breaths fighting not to cough up a lung before he could reply. To say this weather didn’t agree with him was understating things substantially, considering how it’d left him with a gasping ague that all too often kept him from what little sleep he could afford, and his bad joints — the knee, particularly — in near constant misery. “Might seem that way, I’m sure. But you can take it from me, Private — Private . . . ?”

“Carver, sir. Jonas Carver.”

“. . . good to know you, Carver; Ed Morrow’s my name.” If Carver’s eyes widened further still at this disclosure, Morrow affected not to notice. “All spectacle left off, these folk’re human as you or I, and a bullet will drop them, so long’s you catch ’em with their guard down.”

“That ain’t all too easy, from what I seen.”

“No, sure ain’t. But it can be done.”

The two men exchanged a species of grin, equally wry. Briefly, as he watched Carver start to reload, Morrow thought about telling him what Doctor Asbury’d promised him those fresh shells in his own gun might be capable of, if put to the test. However, he decided against it; there was no time, and the risk of false hope was too high.

“Seems like thankless work on the face of it, I know,” was what he said, instead, scanning the mud for any trace of his Manifold’s empty casing — ah, and there it was, right by his boot-heel; he knelt again to snag it, then heaved back up, with a painful huff. “But Christ knows, we in the Pinkerton camp’re all glad enough to have you backin’ us up.”

Around them, the rain pelted Bewelcome township ceaselessly, unseasonably, much as it had almost since the morning after Chess Pargeter’s sacrifice and Sheriff Mesach Love’s murder — too cold by far for fall, let alone for summer, and hard as a bruising kiss. Behind this latest tempest, meanwhile, Allan Pinkerton’s endless assault on Hex City ground on: rocket-trails of spells and spell-passage alike could be glimpsed ’cross the sky like ball lightning, throwing off icy sheets of green, blue, purple which wavered groundward; just like every other night this week, the earth shook intermittently too, probably from shelling. Above, even the traitor moon — Rook’s dread wife’s symbol, through which popular rumour had it she could spy on whatever luckless creatures slept beneath — hid its face at the sight of such rough work.

On every side of the rut-puddled cow trail the Bewelcomers claimed was called Love Avenue, the land was now all torn to hell with constant skirmishing, an indiscriminate churn of muck where nothing grew but the Red Weed that came in the Enemy’s wake, and graves. And the rain, unnatural itself, brought far more natural threats in its wake: fever, rats, plus a palpable fear of flash-flooding through nearby canyons, producing an artificial river strong enough to wash the whole village itself away.

“Naw, sir,” Carver continued, yanking Morrow back from his reverie. “My troop an’ me, we’re glad to be here, never you doubt that. When we heard the witch-folk was slavin’ folks on top of everything else, even after the War seemed to leave all that over and done with . . . well, none of us was too keen to leave the job half done. Though I can’t lie — there was a few here ’n’ there said how turnabout might be fair play, once we heard they wasn’t just puttin’ the chain on Negroes, this time.”

He followed this remark with a look, cool and level, as though assessing whether or not Morrow would take offence. But Morrow was far too tired to bother, even had he been so inclined.

“How they do it’s called layin’ a geas,” he said, turning to limp into the wind; Carver followed along, seemingly genuinely interested. “It’s a sort of a spell, goes without saying, but a love-working, more’n anything else — kind that hooks ’em deep and ties ’em tight, makes ’em want to come, and want to stay.”

“That don’t beat all.”

Morrow shrugged. “Well, they got a fair bit of practice doin’ it by now, since it’s how the Rev and Lady Ixchel bind ’em to themselves, and the City. Only makes sense they’d start to tinker ’round with it after, I guess, the hexacious being who — what — they are.”

And then there are the others who come and stay, those bound by something deeper, Morrow thought, but didn’t add. For far too many of the Hex City host, blood tied tighter than magic: men following after wives, women after husbands, children all too aware that having a hexacious sire or dam would ruin their name no matter what, even if it later turned out the power didn’t breed true. Like the girl last month he’d watched dump whole buckets of lime off New Aztectlan’s North Gate wall, six years old if she was a day and pale-faced with effort, teetering on the barricade in a tight-tied pair of ladies’ high-buttoned boots. She’d paused to giggle at the way the Pinks below scurried, rabid to avoid burning their skin or eyes — ’til somebody (he still didn’t know who, and hoped he’d never learn) had pocked her straight through the forehead with a long-range rifle.

Oh, the Rev might’ve planted the first seed and Dread Moon-Lady Ixchel made it grow — sure and foul, like a cancer — but Hex City was only half theirs now, maybe less. Others had built it up since and would die to maintain it, without being asked, let alone compelled.

Yet it would fall, if Pinkerton and the rest of the compact had their way: the Agency, Bewelcome, Washford’s brigade. That was their task — to make it so, or die trying.

“But like you saw, the Manifold can break any chantment, you happen to get a strike home with it in hand — ah, crap.” Having flourished it out only to drop it again, Morrow bent to scoop it back up; Carver peered at it over his shoulder, wincing when another lightning flash showed the broken glass face and sprung gears inside.

“That’s one of ’em, huh? Doc Hex’s Manifold?”

“One of the original models, believe it or not — was, anyhow.” Morrow stuffed the useless item back in his waistcoat; least it wouldn’t be galling him with its obsolete clatter, anytime soon. “Where you headed?”

Carver wiped rainwater from his face. “Captain sent me to scout southward. All activity’s been to the north; he had it in mind might be a distraction.”

“Good thought, but wrong approach.” At Carver’s half-raised brow: “Washford’s thinking like an officer facing others, Private; Rook’s a hex, leading hexes. We’ve already seen how they move, in ways we sure as hell can’t stop ’em from going — all’s we can do is try and predict where they’ll light down next, and be there waitin’. Which means, if this was a distraction, it’d be from . . .” Morrow cut off, like he’d been slapped. “Oh, shit.”

“Sir?”

Morrow weighed his options, mind bu

zzing. “Private, I can’t trump Captain Washford’s orders, but I can tell you where you’re really needed to intercept the enemy.” More lightning roared past above, screams drifting back from what would have been the township’s limits, had the posts once indicating it as such not been either washed or blasted away. “Does your boss trust your judgement? And if he does, do you trust mine?”