A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“It is not too late,” she told him. “Join me now, and all will be forgiven — we shall bring the Fourth World back or enter the Sixth, together. And it will be once more as it was, forever.”

As her voice died away, a silence grew, hollowing Hex City’s heart. Tezcatlipoca stared down at her; for once, his borrowed features wore no smile. Another clench of cold went through Rook — this thing was a liar, he had always known that. Might it change whatever passed for its mind, now, even on the very cusp? How rich a cosmic jape that would be: Chess’s betrayer — himself — betrayed, in turn, by the inhabitant of Chess’s stolen flesh.

“Oh, sister,” the Enemy replied, almost in a whisper. “You might make it as it was, indeed, even now . . . but not forever. For just as nothing dead returns for long, nothing can last beyond its appointed time: not you, not me, not all our buried kin, drowned down there in darkness. Nothing.”

“I do not — ”

It sighed. “I know, I know. And still I will try to explain, much as I know it unlikely to help, before we do what we must.

“Listen. From First to Fourth, our worlds grew up around us — we were made and re-made with them, as part of them. All we ever were was a frightful tale, told so often and so well that all who heard, believed it — and we, ourselves, believed it so strongly that we became it. Of course we are the Blood Engine; that is what we were created to be, by the very mortals whose blood we drank to empower ourselves. Ghosts of dead magicians-to-be, grown so fat in turn on others’ unexpressed magic that we warped the very world around us into our mirror, and looked to that mirror as ‘proof’ we were what we thought ourselves to be.

“So we gutted our people to glut ourselves, and grew so dependent on the Machine that when it collapsed — our weakened subjects shattered by the conquistadors’ plagues, their guns and their greed, far swifter than we had ever imagined possible — most of us simply dissolved into oblivion. Which is as it should be. Because, as it has always been my role to proclaim, all things end.”

Astonishingly, the Enemy’s voice took on a note Rook had never heard before, from it or Chess: almost sympathetic. “Our time has gone, sister. What is to come will be different, taking place in a world much larger than ours ever was.” It smiled. “I confess, I rather look forward to it.”

Ixchel gaped up at him. “But doesn’t it feel right to accept the tribute, brother? Doesn’t it feel good?”

At that, Tezcatlipoca really did laugh, a hearty guffaw which threw its head back, making Rook’s throat lock and his eyes burn — for that was Chess’s laugh, pure and unalloyed, in all its nasty glee.

“Of course!” the Trickster-god declared, when its mirth had slackened enough to allow it. “Yet the mere fact that we like a thing doesn’t make it the right choice. If it did, the world would run on fucking, and not precious victim-king-blood at all.” And here the laughter ceased, as it whispered, eyes locked on hers: “Oh, but wait . . .

perhaps it does.”

A moment of silence, only one. Then Ixchel screamed, as much a bitter wail of grief as anything else; went charging up the Weed-slope, smashing the Enemy straight off its throne in a brute, inelegant tackle, strategy-stupid as any drink-addled groggery thug. They rolled over and down, coming to a tangled halt almost at Rook’s feet. He goggled at the dustup, while behind him the City-folk hollered half in horror, half hysteria, like onlookers in any given saloon brawl he’d ever seen.

Ixchel got one leg between Tezcatlipoca’s — Chess’s — knees, and kicked him off, bodily. He cartwheeled through the air only to light down standing, conjuring something out of his palm with a fluid movement: long and thin, shining white, a scaled whip spun from congealed lightning ending in a snake’s crack-jawed head. The creature writhed tail-end from the Enemy’s hand, looped ’round its knuckles, blind skull splitting wide to reveal two layers of yellowed ivory fangs which dripped smoking liquid in time with its own teakettle hiss.

Rook braced for its next move, fingers popping with black and silver print, random words fizzing ’tween his nails like firework sparks: He The LORD Do not Saieth Wrath End Ruin —

But before he could even consider striking, however, the Smoking Mirror had already lashed out, throwing that snake like a vaquero’s rawhide — whipping an arc which sliced cleanly through Ixchel’s vessel’s neck as though every scale were diamond-edged, sending her head to bounce on the ground once, twice, ’til it fell over, eyes staring sidelong. The headless body dropped to its knees and held there, balanced, same as a coin fallen miraculously on edge.

Rook’s legs folded under him, as if all his strength had simply decided enough, and shut itself off; he thudded to the ground beside Ixchel’s popped-off skull, knees on fire, wondering if death was ’bout to seize him, too.

But not so much, no. For in the world they now shared, as already established, death did not mean as much as it otherwise might.

Instead, Ixchel’s eyes rolled to meet his, dread stare strangling a half-born shriek in Rook’s throat; she bit into her own lower lip and chewed, almost hard enough to sever it.

With black syrupy blood pouring down her chin, her impossible voice pounded into the Rev’s head, rail spike deep: Fool! He thinks to show me weak — prove him wrong!

Overcome by a dreamlike detachment, Rook somehow knew what to do without even asking — so he picked the head up by its tresses, coated his palm with blood and smeared it over the neck stump like caulking, then lofted it in a hexation-boosted throw toward the kneeling body, where it landed angled so as best to set vertebra to vertebra, neat as you please. While the smoking blood sealed together like boiling oil cut with molasses, Ixchel heaved herself to her feet, black-shrouded in counter-luminance.

Through jaws clenched so tight Rook thought they might have fused likewise, she grated out, “Not enough, brother. Not nearly enough.”

The grin the Enemy gifted her with, in return, seemed to rock ground and sky at once: purest berserkery, without any of Chess’s usual sense that no matter what, he would survive. This was a grimace which risked everything, at once utterly aware and utterly unafraid of mortality — its own, obviously, along with everyone else’s.

Very well, then, sister, it replied. We start over, though not in the way you mean.

And as she blinked her slow, dead lids at him, not understanding, Rook saw the Weed around him begin to flex, to stir . . . to grow.

Too soon, Rook thought, desperately. Christ Jesus Almighty blast other gods small and large alike, altogether! Too Goddamn soon, entirely.

He slid a hand into one pocket, reaching for the token he’d hid there: just a dried spruce wand, nothing to look at, a mere peeled twig — but trigger, nonetheless, for the mightiest spell Rook’d yet devised, so powerful he’d had to work it in careful stages throughout the night while Ixchel slept, weaving it into the wards over the entire City and tying its activation to a single, simple physical event, for fear she’d sense its presence. Worthless, perhaps, depending — yet it was all he had. So he braced his thumb on the wand’

s middle and pushed, felt it bend . . .

Then froze, as did both undead gods and all their watchers, as a sharp and steely call stabbed into every mind within the City’s walls. It had no words, only the simplest possible meaning —

Danger comes! Danger! To the East Gates!