A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Holy Christ, Reverend, what was that?” shouted the first hex back on his feet — Arkwright, as it happened. “Look at my friggin’ shop — the whole damn city! Ain’t felt anything like that since . . . well, since the last time some fool tried to . . .”

He trailed off, hoarsely, as Rook completed the thought for him: Last time anyone tried to feed on you — or last time She fed on us all, puttin’ down trouble? Too bad the woman herself ain’t on hand just right now to take questions. . . .

Sucking in a breath, he recalled his old preaching techniques — breath control and dialectic, nothing fancy. “Friends,” he began, “we won a victory tonight, striving against Bewelcome’s witch-hunters and He Who Cannot Be Named himself, and this . . . was all part of the victory price, in ways I can’t detail just now. But I promise you, once the Lady — ”

Uncertain how to proceed, Rook paused to clear his throat, and realized that none of the crowd was looking at him, Marizol included. Instead, she was staring back over both their shoulders at the Temple, face fixed as though she’d spotted a rattlesnake nesting exactly where she was next about to step.

From the shadows within, Ixchel emerged. Even at this distance, she stank like rotted flowers, her borrowed flesh gone drawn and leathery, a bad imitation of dead Miz Adaluz’s luscious curves. But beneath the jade-chip mask, her eyes glowed with a heat as fierce as an open cook-stove. Behind, Fennig made his slow way out into the starlight as well, looking like he’d gone seventy rounds with a pugilist who’d somehow managed not to break his spectacles. To see sharp young Hank so dazed and stumbling gave Rook a start, fresh pain skewering his breastbone straight where that burnt-out lump he called a heart resided; when he opened his mouth to commiserate, Fennig only shook his head, in mute misery.

“Mother and child?” Rook asked Ixchel, who gave no reply. So he went on, reminding her: “As I recall, before we left, you promised us a terrible weapon — and if you’d delivered on that, ma’am, then Clo might’ve lived. Might be they both would’ve.”

Those knobs where her eyebrows should’ve been twitched upward, as if on strings. “Ah, but she died a warrior’s death, little king,” the goddess said, and Christ, even her voice was different — its liquid music gone to a harsher timbre, more in keeping with that high-breasted ghost-girl from his first visions. Yet entirely the same, in all other essentials: remote, cold, disdainfully amused. “A hero’s death, taking a baby in battle, at great

cost of blood. And now, while her child hangs on the Suckling Tree, she too will live again . . .

as that very same weapon.”

Beyond the Temple’s gates, the blackness remained impenetrable, no matter how Rook stared. Fennig turned to look as well, but either his vaunted interior sight was failing him, or there was simply nothing to see. Until bare feet scuffed rock floor and the darkness parted, to show —

— Clo, standing there. Upright, if not alive.

Strips of torn parchment were woven through her tangled hair, Aztec characters sketched in smeared blood upon ’em, spelling out God alone knew what. A leather cord hung from her neck, strung with gristly lumps and irregular twig bundles that proved, on closer examination, to be shrivelled human hearts and hands. From her own limp fingers black talons protruded, shaped more like a rose’s thorns than a beast’s claws. Strange tattoos like eyes or stars circled every joint Rook could see, while more blood had been used to paint the stylized shapes of skull and crossed bones on her ruined dress, whose skirt hung thick with bone-bell shells. Her pert Irish miss’s features had drawn in so gaunt upon her skull that for a moment, Rook actually thought her face had been flayed.

Her eyes, meanwhile, were — gone, entirely. Only a cold blue radiance filled their blown orbits. And when she turned to fix Rook with those orbs, smiling, he saw her teeth had become a hundred jagged bone needles, densely packed as tiny spears.

Fennig took one stumbling step backward and fell right on his narrow behind, all dignity shucked, scrabbling for his dandy’s cane against the flagstones. Marizol screamed and buried her face against Rook’s side, shaking; Rook watched Clo’s smile widen at the sound, lips parted, as though savouring fear’s ozone-stink. He thought of Chess’s glee in those seconds before lead began flying — that look, presaging chaos and ruin, which said, Finally, we’re doing what I like!

The world changed for Rook in that instant, with no marker other than a silent, almost resigned thought: Ah, shit.

“So,” he said, to Ixchel. “Seems like you managed to get at least one other relative to join the party, after all.”

She shook her head. “Alas, no. My brother, loath as I am to admit it, is right. They who sleep Below will not rise, at least for me. Which is why I have shepherded our Clodagh to another gift, different from that you and I gave to your lover, yet nearly as great — brought her into our ranks as tzitzimihtl.” The word had a rattlesnake sting, scarring the eardrum. “Because of their courage, those who die in childbirth may ascend the tzitzimime’s roads, travelling the deep dark between stars until the day comes for the Fifth World to die. And what will happen then, daughter?”

Clo spoke, startling Rook badly; her voice sounded shockingly like it had in life, though her Irish lilt was slurred by fearsome dentistry. “Then, mother, we will descend from the night sky in our thousands, rending every human left living, so all the empty world is drowned in blood.”

Ixchel clapped her hands, affectionately. “She is young yet,” she told Rook. “At her full power, you shall need a maguey-fibre mask to view her safely. But she is strong and fast enough to lay waste to our besiegers with only teeth and talons, nevertheless — faster than any spell-breaker bullet may be aimed, or magic-eating wheel-work brought to bear. So, husband — are you not satisfied? Can you say I have done ill?”

At their feet, Hank Fennig stared silently from behind his spectacles’ smoked-glass protection — stiffened his long spine by slow degrees, like the man was bracing himself for something.

“Thought you weren’t too worried over Pinkerton’s armaments, last time we spoke on it,” Rook observed.

“I have revised my opinion. Is such not the prerogative of a queen?”

“Mmm,” Rook agreed, raising his voice a trifle, to make sure all the City-folk within range could hear. “’Stead’a the whole god-passel, then, what we get is one measly demon? Strikes me we’re still in a bind, he comes against us with everything.”

“One tzitzimihtl is worth a thousand soldiers, hex or no. Her effect is . . . shattering.”

“So you say.”

Ixchel’s grin vanished. “You require proof?”

Wouldn’t have cared, once, Rook thought. Not so long as I got what I wanted — Chess by my side, alive, and fixed to stay that way. But . . . I need to show them just how bad it is. Her, in all her glory.

Damn, if he wasn’t feeling his responsibilities. That never led anywhere healthy.

Deliberately: “Call me Doubting Thomas, but proof’s always nice, yes. You offerin’ any?”

“Daughter.”