A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Well, that’s that, Chess thought, feeling a touch grimmer than he’d expected to over the idea that whatever he’d had with Ed must be good and done with, given the evidence. At least ’til Ed pulled away at last, with reluctance, and looked around — for as their eyes met, the big Pinkerton man’s all but gave out a flash of relief that would’ve been strong enough to knock Chess back a step, had he been standing.

“So you are here,” Morrow said, grin not slackening a whit.

“Sure am,” Chess answered, blinking a strange mist from his eyes. And levered himself up as Grandma let go, sliding to re-take his feet — only to be shocked when Morrow crossed the space between ’em with two long strides, caught him under both arms as though his weight was nothing (which, Christ knew, it might be) and swung Chess ’round child-high before planting a kiss almost as good as the one he’d given Yancey on him after all, all teeth and tongue, hugging him so hard he thought his chest might crack.

Once more, that scrim between them slid back, letting Morrow’s ideas into Chess’s head. You Goddamned little creature, he heard Ed think, incredulous. Whoever would’ve thought I’d’ve missed you so much, so badly?

Not me, I must admit, Chess thought back. But I’m glad you did, all the same.

Plucked and humming, Chess pushed back into it, determined to make the most of what was probably their last time together, even if Yancey was watching. But from the corner of his eye he saw her look on not too much appalled, if not exactly approving, while the two new hex-women and that black boy all kept their own eyes carefully elsewhere. Songbird studied her nail-sheaths, Sophy Love the skies; Yiska crossed her arms, and grinned too.

And Grandma simply waited it out, counting time. “If you are done with your greetings, soldier,” she broke in, at last, “then there is work yet to be done. The red boy needs you, and your woman too. She will counsel you on your part, while the rest of us prepare.”

Prepare for what? Chess wanted to ask, but that slump hit him one final time and he folded, this time onto Ed and Yancey, together. They knit their hands in his, hoisting in tandem to keep him at least half-aloft, and he was happy enough to let ’em.

“. . . yes ma’am,” he managed, finally, probably meaning it sarcastically, though the tone of his voice made it hard to tell. “Don’t mind me.” And slipped away.

Almost literally slipped away, he learned later on, after resurfacing.

“You came apart — dissolved, like sugar in water,” Yancey told him, shuddering. “Just for a minute, thank God, ’fore Songbird and Grandma stepped in and — gathered you up, I s’pose, stuck you back together somehow, or what-have-you. But I swear, long as it lasted, it was like you were half inside us . . . me, anyways.”

“No, me too,” Morrow put in, with a shudder. “Goddamn disconcerting, I’ll tell you what.”

Chess squeezed his eyes tight, head still spinning. “Huh, don’t say. Then I guess there was somethin’ good about it, at least.”

Which was worth it just to see Morrow get all pink around the ears, then grimace a bit in pain, squeezing his cut wrist into a pottery bowl Yiska’d scared up. On the other side, Yancey was doing much the same, stirring the result up with a murmur of nahuatl and a practical snap and flourish Chess didn’t recall from the last couple of times he’d seen her do this same routine. Spilling blood in his name to root him to this world and trigger the power he drew from it, back at Bewelcome, back at Hoffstedt’s Hoard — not that he wanted to think on that latter one too closely, even now.

“You’re turned quite the little hexess now,” he told her, hoping that counted as a compliment. And apparently it did, since she shrugged, but smiled doing it.

“Never that,” she said. “Wouldn’t get all too much if you fed off me, ’less you’re doing it this way, remember? I’m just your priestess, like Ed here’s your priest . . . and he won’t be that for all too long either, probably, after we get that body of yours un-divinified again.”

So crazed to be having this conversation, throwing ’round words like “god” in reference to himself, even after everything he’d already seen, or done: Chess Pargeter, whoreson and trigger-man, worth (on a good day) about as much as it cost to stock his gun or fill another man’s bed. But then another thing struck him, odder yet, and cooled him to the core.

“‘Body’ . . .” he repeated. “So — if the Enemy’s still got mine,

then what the hell is this I’m ridin’ ’round in?”

“A dream,” offered Songbird, who’d been watching from the sidelines. Yiska nodded, and agreed: “The White Shell Girl has the right of it — you are spirit only, with nothing of the flesh about you at all, not blood nor bone nor breath.”

“That don’t help. What’m I made of, exactly?”

“Your own thoughts. So long as you believe you are, you are.”

“So, in other words . . . if I really do fall asleep, I’m fucked.”

Songbird snorted. “Look around you, English Oona’s son; these are days of wei-ch’i, danger and opportunity both. How likely is it you will have time for that?”

Though Chess was damned if he knew, he opened his lips to answer nonetheless, only to have Yancey lay a finger ’cross them, stopping his mouth with worship-charged blood. The jolt hit him like a dose such as his Ma would’ve been proud to suck down, in her day — and when Ed tipped the rest of it up to his tongue, he drank greedily, feeling himself gain solidity with every fresh swallow. He shivered all down along his spine, curled his toes inside his boots and sent a dark red-green pulse back through ’em both as payment, sealing their wounds shut with new skin fine as corn silk.

Who says I don’t pay my debts? Chess thought, semi-drunkenly. Pay my way, at the least, when I’m asked to, or even if I ain’t. And that’s ’cause I don’t want to owe nobody nothin’, in this world or the next, if I can possibly help it.

Grandma was starting in to jaw again, though, beckoning all parts of their odd little consort closer, so’s they could formulate a plan of action. And though Chess didn’t think it was likely she’d want his opinions on the matter, he drew up tall, blinking himself as awake as could be, under the circumstances — ready and willing to offer ’em, nonetheless.

“I have spoken with the dead northman’s women,” Grandma began, indicating those two hexes new-fled from Ixchel’s City; “Glass-eyes Hank, the visioneer, as others called him. They tell me that neither expected to be able to do as they did in bringing you, soldier, and your fellow warrior — ” She flipped a paw here at Carver, who looked damned uncomfortable indeed to find himself ’sconced up amongst such a freakish pack of circus-turns. “ — from the battle’s path. Not without their other sister-wife, at any rate.”

“Clo,” the lighter of the women offered. “She was always the strongest of us, ’sides from Hank himself; that’s probably how the Lady was able to do . . . what she did, with her. Make her what she is now.”

“And that’d be?” Chess asked.