“Or what? Gonna shoot me? Least you can do — such a big man, you, wiv yer guns.” And here she paused, her ghost-of-pretty face twisted, a bent tin mirror reflection. “Go on, do it!”
Chess considered her, until a look came into his eyes that Morrow couldn’t easily put a name to. “Well . . .” he said, eventually.
“Well, what?”
“Say you was to tell me ‘I’m sorry,’ just the once . . . ’bout — oh, anything . . . then maybe I just might.”
The woman took her own half-moment to think on this, before she shook her head.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t ya? Go on wiv yourself, ya prancing molly. I ain’t done nothin’ in life worth apologizin’ for, least of all to you.”
For a split instant, the green flame Morrow knew all too well danced in Chess’s stare — that sick-lit kill-flash which always came before lightning-fast trigger-cock and a body’s downward thump. But it passed, and just as quickly.
“Yeah,” he said, calm again. “That’s what I thought. And that’s why I wouldn’t waste the damn bullet.”
The woman sagged back, clutching her pipe in both hands. “Then what bloody good are you to me?” she asked. And drew on the pipe, its coal flaring up like she was sucking Hellfire — breathed it in ’til her eyes rolled back, each a mere green thread under a low-slung lid. All the vitriol drained from her, allowing Morrow a glimpse of what she might have looked like young, fresh, even happy, once upon a time. Or good enough at her calling to fake being so.
Conversation over, obviously. But Chess kept on standing there, hands a-twitch like a dreaming dog’s, fingers reaching for the nearest trigger — or for something else entirely, perhaps. To tuck the sackcloth half-thrown across her up further, or at least re-right the opium pipe, so she didn’t set herself on fire.
Morrow cleared his throat. “Hey, Chess — Rook sent me t’ find you. Thought you said you was goin’ to wait outside. . . .”
Chess turned, scowl immediately slapped back on. “Don’t much matter, what I said or what I didn’t — how fast you got here’s your look-out, not mine.” A second’s pause. “So where the hell is he?”
“Uh, back up with Songbird, last I saw. Why?”
All at once Chess was up against him, close enough to lay hold of Morrow’s throat with his teeth. “You left him back there, alone? Stupid fuckin’ ox, you Goddamn skinned bear of a — ”
“Jesus, Chess, he told me to! What the fuck was I supposed to — ?”
“’Sides from come get me?” This last came called back over Chess’s shoulder as he flashed ahead through the tunnel, close to full-out running as the narrow walls would allow. “Don’t you know shit about hexes, Morrow, after all this time? They can’t take just a little
!”
Back through the half-dark, panting and heart hammering, barking shoulders and shins. Then up into Selina Ah Toy’s proper again, blinking mole-ish, to find Chess already on point — both guns out and lips peeled back, ready to go down fighting, while customers and employees alike slid all sorts of crazy mediaeval weaponry out from beneath their coattails.
Above, Morrow could see Songbird stepping out onto her landing with the Rev’s huge shadow looming behind, big as ever, though slightly sleepwalk-swaying.
“Ash Rook!” Chess yelled. “You all right?”
The Rev gave a grunt, neither enough to confirm or deny. But Songbird turned her head, back-tracing the cry and smiling in recognition at Chess’s voice, with a hungry sort of interest.
“And here would be your lotus boy, Reverend — the redheaded man-killer himself. Did you enjoy your sojourn in the tunnels, Mister Pargeter?” Her voice dropped, a wintry whisper. “See anything you like?”
Chess levelled both barrels at her, without a second’s hesitation. “Not too much,” he said. “I’d spent any real money in this joint, in fact, I might feel inclined to put a ball right through your brain. So gimme back the Rev, quick-smart, and we’ll call it even.”
“Such discourtesy. I will excuse it on grounds of loyalty, however — or love, if you prefer.”
There was a wealth of cool contempt packed into that one over-enunciated word. To which Chess gave a nasty little grin of his own, and replied, “My Ma always said love’s the word they pull out whenever they don’t want to pay you. But then again, yours too, probably.”
A general hiss ran round the room. Songbird shook her head, sadly.
“Poor angry little boy,” she said, softly. “And I might have been so hospitable.”
“Uh huh, I’ll bet. You want it in the eye, or should I just aim for anyplace convenient?”
But with this, the crowd surged forward again, and Morrow found himself abruptly kitty-corner up against Chess’s side, wondering just how many blasts he could possibly get off — the full two? Only one? One and a half, however that might work? — before somebody grabbed his shotgun’s stock and wrestled it away. Chess cursed as Morrow jostled his elbow, and let fly, like he was punctuating a sentence. At such close quarters, the same bullet reduced half of one pigtail’s face to raw mash, wounding two others standing behind in the process.
“Now, listen all you motherfuckers — ” Chess began, still keeping the other gun trained vaguely Songbird-wards, but broke off as the gal gave out a sudden teakettle-shrill shriek. She didn’t sound angry, so much, as simply done with playing.