A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Two months ago, as Pinkerton’s forces began trickling onto the surrounding plains, Ixchel had stood atop Her temple and spoken to the earth, which answered by thrusting great walls of granite and sandstone up ’round the city in a perfect circle. Those dwellers caught outside, their houses not within the walls’ arc, had scrambled fiercely to get back in — and strangely enough, not all had succeeded, exploding when they touched the wall-wards. She’d called that cull a Flowery War, its lost citizens martyrs to their cause . . . but what she’d really been after was the blood they left behind: tribute, tithe, tool. A red ring which was then met and matched by just as many “volunteer” lottery sacrifices on the Temple’s top, Machine-grist sent flowing down to sink into the soil, causing a forest of ceiba trees to blossom as a second defensive ring, tight enough that there was barely a handsbreadth left between brick and bark.

The ceibas’close-set branches had leaves sharp as obsidian, sap smoking and venomous, and whenever anyone tried to slip between they were met with swift-strangling vines that snaked out to lasso unwary scouts, dragging them off in pieces. The City folk on the wall had cheered to watch Pinkerton’s men die, until one had overbalanced and fallen; his magic was enough to break his plunge safely upon the ground, but not enough to save him from the trees, either.

Maybe a mile beyond the forest, meanwhile, a wide swath of fires and lanterns eventually began to appear as the sky darkened, sketching the outlines of hundreds of tents and a few new-raised buildings, all raw plank and whitewashed adobe: Camp Pink, meeting place for Agency and Army alike, with old Doc Asbury running interference between — yes, and that traitor Ed Morrow too, if rumour spoke fact.

Ed hadn’t been anything b

ut a toy tossed between competing currents, though, if Rook forced himself to be charitable; a good man torn between bad people, put in untenable situations mostly by the Rev’s own hand, and acting as he saw fit. Hell, Rook couldn’t even really resent him having shared Chess’s bed, not when he’d sent him there himself — for if he did, he’d soon be forced to scour the whole West for other men he’d be similarly constrained to waste his precious time killing.

Doesn’t matter, anyhow, a thin voice whispered, nastily, at his inner ear. All that with you and Chess, the epic tryst? Gone, never to return. One thing alone he ever asked of you, and you, you son of a bitch, went on ahead and left him.

He won’t forgive you now, no matter what. Not if you tore your own damn heart out and gave it to him, still beating, to plug up the wound where his used to be.

“Nor should he,” the Rev said out loud, to no one but himself.

“What was that, Rev?” asked Fennig, from behind him.

“Nothing, Henry.”

Rook turned back, encouraged to see Chu and the Shoshone engaged over their work once more. The yarrow stalk bunch discarded, both mages wove their fingers in opposing cat’s cradle patterns across the pool, rolling energy back and forth like they were carding wool. Soon enough, its surface began to dance and dimple, slopping up ’til it sprouted a funnel the size of a wine-ready goblet, above which a storm-cloud bloomed — bruise-dark, small but intense, rotating at a slow tilt. And growing.

“You must wait for it to swell further, before letting it slip,” Chu ordered. “Not too soon! Let it reach the size of a small dog, or a large child.”

“Who d’you think you’re talking to, railroad man? I was making rain before you ever knew this place existed.”

“Making water, perhaps. But a storm, large enough to destroy whole towns — this is different.”

“You don’t stop flapping your tongue sometime, it’ll split in two and fall off. And wouldn’t that just be a shame.”

A bit further down, Fennig’s three Missuses watched the hex-whores from the Blister shaking sand, salt and rice in a great glass bottle, patiently raising dust devils into tornados, then knitting the results together to release them, sending twister after twister sidewinder-shuddering ’cross the plains toward Camp Pink. The principle was basically the same, for all Chu and the Shoshone seemed to think they had an all-male lock on something twice as fierce.

“Won’t be long now, looks like,” Rook told Fennig, who nodded, then pulled his glasses down his nose, scanning the courtyard behind them. Ixchel was emerging from her seclusion, shadow-wrapped ’cept for where the largest of her insects perched here and there on her like living jewels, their wings throwing off minor rainbows. All around, a veritable tide of self-flagellating Mexicans eddied, lashing themselves with thorn-studded dried gut whips; in her wake, Marizol — already bled a shade or two lighter — padded glumly along like the world’s least happy bridesmaid, holding her mistress’s train up out of the dust.

“Explain it me again,” Fennig said, to Rook, his sharp eyes never stirring from that dread form. “How she got herself out of Hell, exactly.”

“Cannibalism, of a type. Theophagy. She ate other gods, like hexes eat hexes.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And that’d be why she has a plug in her back, right there, ’tween the shoulder blades — a hole she can’t fill no-how and with nothin’, I’ll venture. ’Cause takin’ a bite out of them took a bite out of her.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Don’t you? Where do any of us get our power from, Reverend?”

Rook considered that question a while, crossbreeding mythology and metaphor with observed fact. From what-all he’d seen, there seemed to be a strain of magic all hexes could tap, perhaps the same universal flow drove Songbird’s ch’i or required Grandma’s Balance — inexhaustible, hard-won and hard-wearing. Yet this was cut with two other streams, one bolstered by hex-vampirization, one pure dream-stuff, bastard child of fantasy and will. A sort of poetry made flesh, living or dying on the hex’s own confidence in the innate truth of whatever they could conceive of.

“I’ve seen her gulp witch and wizard alike down like an after-dinner shot,” Rook said. “So’ve you — remember? Looks aside, she don’t seem to be hurting much, in that direction.”

Fennig clicked his tongue. “So why don’t she fix herself up, at least, or skip bodies into that girl of hers, ’fore bad gets worse? Ain’t natural for any female to let her appearance slip so, even if she does derive some extra mojo from seemin’ an object of fear.”

“Needs Marizol to love her, apparently, or the trick won’t take. That takes time.”

“Hmmm. And she can’t push that part along any faster, either? All it takes is a word and a drop of blood, her hair and yours tied up in a knot — a damn honey-cake baked with her name on top. Didn’t they cast no charms in old Mexico?”

Rook simply shrugged, thinking: But it’s not her hair, just like it’s not really her body. And anyhow, as we none of us should forget — she’s different.

“Wouldn’t bet on her forbearance being a sign of weakness, myself,” he warned.

“You told me to look — I’m tellin’ you what I see when I do, is all. She has limitations. And that’s more’n we knew, even if we don’t know what, or why. Or what best to do with it, now we do know.”