A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city.

31, 13, 22, and none of it damn well helped. Bibliomancy’d failed him, for what had to be the first time. Rook let the book fall, putting both hands over his eyes to block the world out with a double curtain of red-black flesh, and saw . . .

Ixchel, as ever, in her oldest form: that childish one with the high tits and her jade-chip mask, her shut lids marked like eyes, fixed and awful. Descending on him in a cloud, a boiling swarm of black rainbow-winged locusts, and saying, as she did: Why do you hide from me, little king? Where do you think to go, to rid yourself of my presence? We are made one flesh, even by that Book you cling to, ’til death do us part . . . and, since that parting will never happen, long after.

For as you know, there is no real death, for such as you and I.

No death the way he’d been taught to preach on it, certainly: a thousand torments with no hope of anything else once you passed through ’em, not even forgetfulness. Just watery cold and slimy stone, an endless raw-bones ball game played for worthless stakes. Sometimes he wondered why those old Mexes of hers had bothered staying alive at all, riding their nasty, brutish and short existences straight to the Machine’s lip ’stead of hanging ’emselves outright, from the most convenient tree. But he guessed you did tend to dawdle, when you knew the road only went one way; if nothing else, the scenery must make for a welcome distraction.

And that’s where I sent Chess, he knew. Down deep, down under, through awful pain, only to wait there for nothing but more — wait and watch, he could only suspect, while Tezcatlipoca strutted ’round using Chess’s body for a chariot.

Yet he is there, still, in existence, no matter how far my brother may have buried him; we would feel it, were it not so. Which means he will return, eventually.

Rook shook his head. Grandma, though — she told me that should never happen. “For the dead to return unBalances the world.”

A ghost should know better. For he is not dead . . . and she is no god.

Go back to that thing of yours and leave me alone, he thought at her, sure he could hear its skeletal rattle as he “spoke.” Give me an hour to myself, at least.

Let you dream on the past, you mean, ’til your hand cramps? Very well: amuse yourself, then sleep, and be ready to do my bidding once more. For I own you, Asher Rook; your bed is made, just as you always tell yourself. You are mine now ’til Doomsday, in this world, and the next.

She laughed at him then, those old tinkling bone-bells. And eddied away into the ether once more, taking her insectile trappings with her.

It really was getting just like a marriage, ’tween her and him and Chess; the worst sort. Like he was hitched to two equally powerful people at once, one of whom barely tolerated him, while the other wanted to ride him down and eat his beating heart. And neither of ’em even bothered to laugh at his jokes, either.

Fact was, grief and guilt made for a heavy overcoat, ’specially when worn together — and Asher Elijah Rook had spent more time than he now cared to think on in their twinned embrace, muffled from the world with only his dreadful wife and Three-Fingered Hank for company. For far too long, he had felt as though things reached him only at a remove, as though each word spoke worked its way through three separate translations, familiar-unfamiliar.

By law, no mourning would be allowed for dead Mister Fennig, his previous good works in the city’s service being all firmly set aside. Ixchel forbade even the smallest attempt at memorial, on grounds of treason; the sting of Hank’s presence in her court, it seemed, would disappear even more completely than his denuded body had into the gaping maw of what used to be his triangle’s point, the woman he’d loved and quarrelled with most fiercely, of all his ladies.

Yet still Rook couldn’t sleep, here or there. Not with traces of Hank’s mess still on the floor, and Ixchel telling Clodagh: Search, daughter, cast yourself out upon the stars, into the empty places where my own eyes can no longer see — I must have a new body, and soon, if I am to meet my brother on the field. For he will challenge me, I know it . . . and I must meet him, when he does. No matter my state, I must come against him, with all my strength remaining — and in the end, I must win.

I killed the only human being who ever loved me true for you, you horrid creature, Rook thought. That, or to save him from myself. Only one I’ll probably ever love, likewise, when all I ever wanted was the opposite, yet every move I made conspired to lay him low.

Some things can’t be undone, his father had told him, long time gone. Some mistakes are irreparable, Asher. And the only way to pay for ’em is to take responsibility

, accept punishment.

He turned over, groaning, feeling Sophy Love’s Bible nudge sharp ’gainst his side. And flipped it open at random, letting his finger-pads fall where they may; saw the words push up like scars, flower open, each sending out a single puff of poisonous black-silver print-pollen — Isaiah 13 again, 11 to 22, with some small transposition.

And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

And as for that city, Babylon the proud . . . Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Rook ordered the damn thing, frowning. Seeing, as he did, the lamentable spectacle of Chess-but-not-Chess, rising up dry out of the sodden earth, wreathed in lightnings: his lips like clay, breath like dirt, Weed at his loins poking out all a-flower, while the markings all up and down his limbs shimmered like a heat wave. As bad as anything Rook had subjected himself to previously, yet still wearing that shape, that Song of Solomon mask which made him want to sing praises, rub his face in the dust, let the same bad parody of “Chess” bruise his naked heel against his head ’til all their quarrels finally fell away.

For Behold, thou art fair, my beloved; yea, pleasant: also our bed is green. Yet By night on my bed I sought him who my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

Since keeping his eyes shut changed nothing, he opened them, instead. And found, though his head rang, that the silence in this empty room was strangely restful. Here, he could pretend for a moment that the years had fallen away, or spun to a fate altogether different . . . a world without the War, or the gallows; without hexation, without Ixchel . . .

Without Chess.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead again, cursing: no, not that. Never that. Or, by everyone’s God but his, what had been the point of any of it?

But you never could really pretend despair was peace, not for very long.