Book Of Tongues (Hexslinger 1)

shrugged. “Who’d ya think, you ass? Rook.”

Chess stiffened in shock. “Why?”

“’Cause . . .” Morrow took a deep breath. “He said you’d laid a spell on me — not to your knowing, just that you had, on instinct. Said if I wasn’t an idiot, I’d have to keep you alive long enough you’d learn how to take it off yourself.”

“Huh. Sounds the sorta thing he would say.” Chess put one fist to his mouth, eyes narrowed. “Assumin’ it ain’t more’a his bullshit, though. What if I don’t? Maybe I should just shoot your knees out and leave you here.” A sidelong glance. “Let you find out how long it takes whatever it is I laid on you to eat you up, from the inside.”

“Fuck if I know, you little piss-artist!” Amazing, really; no matter how far beyond anger Morrow thought fatigue had taken him, Chess still managed effortlessly to scrape up further irritation. “Think I really give a damn, this point?”

Anger sparked anger, and Chess rounded on him, green light flaring in his eyes. “Oh, but I think you do, Agent Morrow.” He shot out a hand and slapped it upside Morrow’s face, paralyzing him instantly, as swift and effective as Rook’s charm-bag ever had. Chess leaned close in to Morrow, seeming to shimmer as his power roused.

It felt like the Howe-clasp on a rich Easterner’s coat locking shut, mind hooking into mind at a hundred different points at once, rippling painfully through Morrow from scalp to anus. He flinched as Chess mercilessly tore away layers of pretence and wilful blindness, then smiled grimly at what he found. Then let go, as Morrow gasped, reeling.

“Yeah,” Chess said, aloud. “You give part of a damn, at least.” But the smile abruptly crumbled, leaving Chess to peer around the empty graveyard, disconsolate. “Much good as it does either of us.”

He fell back against the sepulchre, boneless with annoyance, then slid down it, taking a seat on the ground. Morrow followed suit, as the truth of their plight sank in deep. Alone, penniless, hunted, and hundreds of miles from the American border, with no gang left on Chess’s side. Hosteen dead — and whose fault was that? Near-equal on each part, Morrow reckoned — Rook rejected and gone, and no Agency on Morrow’s side, not anymore.

“That Goddamn Asher Rook,” said Chess eventually. “I’m gonna find him, and then I’m gonna kill him.” There was no heat in it, no affect at all. “And it sure ain’t to save the damn world, neither.”

“Yeah, well.” Morrow pulled off his hat and raked his hair back wearily. “I think he halfway wants you to.”

Chess shrugged. “Then fuck him, maybe I won’t.” He caught Morrow’s eye for a moment. An urge to smile pulled at them both. Both felt it, and felt the other feeling it, and it died. Carefully, Morrow turned away.

“I’m . . .” Morrow let out his breath. “I’m not sure it matters where you go, or what you do. Rook . . .” He sighed. “Rook beat me, Chess. Outthought me at every step, knew what I was gonna do ’fore I did it and planned on me doin’ it. I don’t know if it’s hexation or just native wit, but if he could do that with me when he didn’t know me from Adam, how the fuck you think you’re gonna surprise him?”

Without looking, changing expression — hell, without even seeming to move — Chess’s gun was in his left hand and raised to point at Morrow’s temple. “By killing you? I mean, he seems to want you to stick by me. So why shouldn’t I make sure you can’t?”

Morrow’s mouth hung open for a moment. Then he closed it. “Shit, I got no answer, Chess,” he said at last. “Do what makes you happy.”

He closed his eyes, wondering if he’d ever open them again.

There was no warning. That hundred-handed grip seized on Morrow’s mind again, twined in and held, painfully hard. As little as six weeks ago the pain would have been bad enough to level him. And even stagger Chess — the mind-lock was hurting both of them, he only now realized.

Both saw in the other exactly what they recognized in themselves — the agonies and memories of their shared journey through Mictlan-Xibalba had changed both of them forever, even if only one of them had emerged as something more than human.

Might have been that resonance that opened up the link. Might have been part and parcel of the connection itself, or maybe only Chess’s complete lack of hex-training. But as Chess’s mind sieved through Morrow’s with clumsy, savage power, his own memory unfolded to Morrow’s sight as well, inverse mirror-images ricocheting off each other from touchstone concepts so fundamental, so absurdly different, it was like learning a new language with next to no terms in common.

Mother —

(a ragged, redheaded English girl curses and spits and beats a small boy with equally red hair, in a dark corner of an opium-stinking ’Frisco brothel / a tall, plain, rawboned woman calls three lanky boys and their father in from the farmyard, while a stew of beef, potatoes and carrots simmers on the stove and five clean tin plates wait on the table)

Fellowship —

(standing with eleven other men as Allan Pinkerton hands out badges, speaks words of congratulations, alive with pride, joy and satisfaction / watching over an absinthe glass as men you’ve bled beside drink and fight and fuck like animals, in absent disdain lessened only by the consolation that at least this vileness is honest)

Desire —

(one night born of boredom, anger, perversity / desperation, fear, loneliness / well-worn paths of flesh limned in shocked discovery / forgotten names of scores of men, release traded for release / a handful of women’s bodies, echoes of clumsy tenderness and soft curves in the dark / the weight of one man, chosen for lust, kept for — )

Love —

(a father’s hand on the shoulder / a young man not yet a Pink, laughing with fellows in a Chicago groggery / a greener, colder graveyard than this, standing silent for a brother fallen in war / a murdered lawman’s wife-turned-widow, weeping with grief and terror, huddled over a wailing infant while awful salt-whiteness creeps up both their flesh at the behest of . . .)

Rook.

Chess tore free in a burst of agony, collapsing back onto his ass with a look of stunned incomprehension. Like any other man might have looked staring on Bewelcome, or Calvary Cross, or Mictlan-Xibalba itself. The shreds of their communion still raw, Morrow keeled over as well, nerves afire with the same pain — but he knew its meaning immediately, because it was no revelation for him. Hoist on the petard of the exact same truth-compulsion he’d turned on Morrow, Chess couldn’t tell himself what he’d seen was a lie . . . and couldn’t lie to himself about what it meant.

You really did think we were all fools, Morrow marvelled, half to himself and half expecting Chess would hear it anyway. You really did think any man talked about love was talkin’ out his ass — lyin’ to himself, or everyone else, or both. And any woman talked about love was just lookin’ to profit, some way or other. Whatever the words, you thought you had the truth of it. Thought you were safe.