A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Don’t tell me it was Rook sent you this time, too,” Chess said.

“Naw, that’d be that other female of your acquaintance: Miss Experiance herself. Got hold of me like she did with your Ma, or so’s I heard tell, though I don’t think she ever spoke to her quite so direct.”

Oona huffed again. “Fought there was somebody puttin’ ideas in my ’ead! But seein’ ’ow she never knew me, ’cept by whatever she gleaned from you — ” a nod Chess’s way “ — then maybe that’s what explains ’ow she went about it.”

“Makes sense,” Chess allowed.

“I’ll take your word,” Hosteen said. “Still and all, can’t say it wasn’t off-putting — she’s hellish strong, that girl is, considerin’ she ain’t even a hex.”

“I know it. So . . . why’d she send you, anyhow?”

A raised eyebrow: “You sayin’ you don’t need help?”

Again, it struck Chess that not so long previous, even if he’d known himself in such deep and desperate straits that only an offered hand would save him, he’d’ve thrown such a demand right back in the questioner’s face, hard enough to break noses. So it was curious — continued to be curious — how he found himself more grateful than resentful that anyone gave enough of a damn to want to extricate him from this hole he’d dug for himself, let alone two people . . . both of whom he’d wronged, in their own ways, and one of whom wasn’t even here, to boot.

“Don’t think anybody’s saying that,” he told Hosteen, quietly. And saw the older man’s shade smile, slight yet genuine. Felt it lift his missing heart’s hollow like it’d been hooked.

“Okay, then. You two better come with me.”

Seven Dials: Six

Worlds, like gods and babies, are born in blood; for this reason alone is the first dawn’s light so blinding, the first drawn breath’s cry such joy to hear — not that we may forget the agonies of their making, but that those agonies may be accepted, made worthwhile. Though life be bought with death, joy with sorrow and creation with destruction, yet they are life, joy, creation; if the price must always be paid, it is never paid for nothing. In the moment of birth, when Time awakes, all things are possible.

It is in the silence after dawn, as the light’s sharpest edge slowly softens to day, that the weight of an altogether different price is felt: a price which terrifies not for what it demands, but for what it does not. For time, once awoken, cannot be stopped. And even newborn gods may know confusion and fear, look upon their fresh-forged world and think, as moments trickle irretrievably away: What now? What next?

And this, ofttimes, is fate’s greatest cruelty: that for all creatures born of blood-watered earth, brought forth in that light, the infinite freedom between birth and death only reveals the most horrifying price of all.

Choice . . . and its consequences.

They walked carefully, picking their way ’cross a gathering litter of beach-smooth stones, while the oil fire fell behind. Oona turned her ankle once, and swore; Chess slipped an arm ’round her waist and braced her, playing human crutch, ’til she could limp on her own. And though neither of them thought to acknowledge — let alone thank — the other, it made for a moment of truce, warming in this cold wind.

“Missus Kloves said for me to tell you she can’t see you plain, which is why she had to send me down,” Hosteen told Chess. “Might be ’cause you ain’t really dead as such, might not — but one way or t’other, she’s been waiting on you a sight longer than I have, and things are gettin’ hot. So she wants to point you out an exit, before you and your Ma here ramble all over the rest of Creation’s underbelly.”

“That’d’ve been bloody welcome, a few turns of the road back,” Oona pointed out.

“And it’s just as welcome now, Kees,” Chess hastened to add, “thank you kindly. So — where next?”

Hosteen paused a moment, regarding Chess narrowly. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘thanks’ for nothin’ before,” he said.

Yeah, well, stick around. Might be I’ll start apologizing again, and we’ll both fall over.

“Two of you like some time alone, then?” Oona asked, waspish.

“Ma!”

> “No, ma’am, I don’t think so. But then again, I don’t think you get to make those sorts of calls on his behalf — not anymore.”

“Ah. So ’e’s told you about our old . . . arrangement.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Chess cast her a side-eye, wondering if she at least had the grace to look shamed, but his angle was off — and as she stood there, face hidden behind her hair, he decided he didn’t much care. Better to remember the way she’d acted over this journey, rather than dwell on old times.

My Ma, all right. Half of me, with the other quarter-or-so this Malcolm Devesstrin, whoever the hell he was; no better, and probably much worse. And the rest . . .

The rest was him: hex, pistoleer, sodomite. A flesh-bound god cast down, wrung out of god and flesh alike but alive, still, even here in death’s grip. Alive, and free.

Nothin’ she can do to me, now. Nothin’ she ever could.