A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

Lionel looked to Chess, then, like he expected further support for this judgement, and Chess tried to give it him. “Very . . . likely so, I’d guess,” he hazarded, at last.

Lionel thanked him kindly enough, blinking an odd look out of his eye—but moved on fast, and didn’t look back.

“What’d you have to say that for?” Morrow complained.

Chess hissed through his teeth. “I don’t know, Ed—’cause this’s the one and only time I ever seen this done, in my entire life?” He folded his arms, glowering over at the punch-bowls. “Or maybe it’s just ’cause I got a job to pull that’d go a fuck of a lot smoother without me bein’ badgered all up and down each side while I stand here tryin’ to figure out how it works, in the first damn place.”

Ed took the hint and shut up, though Chess suspected he’d be hearing more about this later. But even that small irritation was almost too much of a distraction, right now.

Last night’s boasts to Miz Colder (Missus Kloves, that was) aside, however, this was the very first working Chess had ever chosen to do, deliberately—a harder task than it seemed it should be, at least for him.

So he closed his eyes, wiping away everything but the cold clarity of the moment, thinking, as he did: You were right and wrong, Ash Rook, like always. This ain’t a gun, and I don’t aim to treat it as such. But one thing you did teach me ’bout hexation. It comes out the way means most to a person, no matter who. You and your Bad Book, Doc Glossing’s Jew-homunculus—all in how you, and they, was raised up. What you learned, deep down. What’s you.

Well, I never knew too much: killing, fucking, shooting, drinking, etcetera. But I do know how to hook somebody’s eye, like I know what it feels like to drown your own mind in something—liquor, smoke, fleshly pleasures. So let’s slap ’em together, see what’s like to happen. . . .

It was less like taking aim down a barrel than throwing a glance some man’s way ’cross any given tumult, casting deep, ’fore reeling the poor sucker in. Chess’s favourite recreation, once, aside from killing—and he had to admit how it still made him a bit stiff himself, even now, just thinking on it.

Shrouded in the false face he’d patterned after Ed’s own, Chess meandered through the crowd, spinning a cloud of invisible spider’s-webbery out through the top of his skull. He could feel it latching on to everyone he passed, too, linking brain-pan to brain-pan; by the time he’d covered the church, the pressure of some twelve-score minds on his was a tangible ache. But . . . it’d worked, Goddamnit, in spite of everything. He had them.

The sensation itself was a wonder, too. Same as the way he’d somehow always known where everybody else was in a throw-down, he only now realized, but raised to a whole new order. He could barely resist the impulse to flood those strands with power, take hard hold of ’em and yank. Make all these petty, tiny people know just who they had amongst them, so’s they might render him his due reverence.

But here Chess paused to breathe deep, checking to make sure he’d tied no similar thread to Ed, or to Yancey, and warmed himself again with that little self-congratulatory jolt. Best to keep his eyes firm on the road, lest it lead straight into the Rainbow Lady’s own meshes, where Chess would be trapped by his own blunderings like any other foolish insect.

Then, down those thought-strands, he carefully dripped his memories like hot wax on a candlewick: absinthe’s sour tang; Oona’s eye-watering opium pipe-stink; ether’s blissful lassitude, from those rare occasions a Confederate sawbones had drugged him up; the twitchy punch of good chaw. Spreading, fading, dissolving like ink in water as Chess kept up a gentle but inexorable pressure, casting slow darkness over the whole.

All’s he’d needed was to fire up, by just a smidgen, a place in their brains most of ’em were already hightailing toward at best speed anyway.

The drinks flowed free, and all ’round, an ungodly mess of a hobbledehoy boiled up: every man present spouting frippery to anything in a skirt, with those same skirts batting their flirtatious eyes and cooing ’til Chess fair ached to yell how money should change hands already, before he puked outright. But then, he supposed this ridiculousness was just how “normal” folk comported ’emselves, when struck by the urge to revelry; just too bad for him he’d no one to share that opinion with aside from Ed, who’d no doubt try his best to talk him out of it.

And that, right there, was where he felt the Rev’s loss worst once more, an unset bone. He wasn’t drunk enough yet for it not to discomfit him, and unlikely to become so, if he wanted to stay fit to do his part.

Over at the table’s mid-point, Miz Colder as was—Missus Kloves now, he reminded himself—caught him looking, and gave him a brief smile before turning back to her cunt-struck bullock of a brand-new husband.

Thinking as she did, knowing damn well he’d be able to hear: Your patience’s laudable indeed, Mister Pargeter; I’m very sure it costs you something, to sustain. Yet soon enough, you and Mister Morrow’ll be on your way, unnoticed—all you have to do is just let ’em all get good and snookered, and they’ll mind nothing on the morrow but that they had the world’s best time. And even if any of ’em were to figure out who-all they might’ve missed capturing, later on, the hangovers alone will make ’em think twice about coming after.

So thank you, for that. Thank you for not bringing my home down around my ears, or sinking us all hip-deep in Weed. I sure do appreciate your restraint, seein’ how hard—how unnatural—it is for you to practice. . . .

Meant no insult by it, either. It’d be uncharitable to think so.

When’d you ever reckon things by their charity, though, darlin’? the Rev whispered to him, a lick deep ’cross his inner ear, hot and honey-slow. Woman’s got you tied up tight, doing her will like a dray-horse. That ain’t the Chess I know.

Just shut the fuck UP, you house-size sumbitch, he shot back. I’ll do what I like, and like what I damn well do. Like Goddamn always.

Oh, and now he felt the drunkenness he was bringing forefront in everyone else fine enough, but with no release, no real enjoyment—a ticking timepiece, a lit fuse’s hiss. Decency all ’round him, like an insult by proxy.

On his left a kid sat crying, all by itself, ’til seconds later its dam swept down to pick the little monkey up, cuddling, soothing, stroking. Chess watched the kid latch on like a drunk does to his poison, and felt something inside him give a painful click, like tumblers falling.

He elbowed Morrow in the ribs, hard, hissing under his breath, “Let’s just get the hell gone from this place, Ed—’cause, ’fore God and man, it’s gettin’ so I want to shoot something.”

Morrow gave his head the slightest shake. “Give it another hour,” he murmured back. “They ain’t far enough gone yet. Someone might still remember us, we left now.”

For what minuscule consolation it was, he didn’t look all too much like he wanted to stay, either; more like he had a bee crawling ’round in his britches, fixing to find just the best place to sting. And Chess soon found he well knew why, just from the way he kept on stealing cow-glum glances back in the newlywed Kloves’ direction.

“Christ, Morrow,” Chess snapped, “you want this gal so bad, I could lay t

he Marshal out under the table for a good few hours, while she thanks you proper.” Which actually got Morrow to throw a glare at him, flushing—as much in embarrassment as in anger, though, which cut down on the entertainment factor considerably.

Across the room, a mob of dancers were yelling suggestions at the band: “‘Rake and a Ramblin’ Boy’! Naw, hell—‘West Virginia’!” “‘Buffalo Skinners’!”