A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“No such thing. But you may call me that, if you wish.”

Songbird threw her arms up, white braids swinging wide. “Enough coddling! We must defend ourselves, especially when our enemy knows nothing! I will do it, if you fear to — ”

She thrust one hand out toward Gabe, fingers crooked like horns, knuckle sparking; Yancey seized it without thinking, only to scream when Songbird’s conjured fire seared her palm. “Jesus Christ Almighty!”

“Loose me, dead-speaker!”

A familiar locust-chitter filled the air; Sophy Love whipped

a shiny new version of Doctor Asbury’s toy from her pocket, brandishing it Songbird’s way. “Lay one hand upon him,” she warned, “and I’ll kill you where you stand, you Godforsaken creature.”

But the Manifold’s needle swung back toward Gabe, who was crying harder than ever — slid straight into the red, and stuck there.

And even as his own corona snapped and flared, Yancey heard Grandma say, for once without any real sort of judgement, though equally little sympathy: “Perhaps you should look to your own house, bilagaana. For as that thing you hold can tell you, we are not the only ‘hexes’ here.”

Sophy Love looked down, caught breath balanced between love and revulsion, into her son’s squalling face. Yancey didn’t have to try to rifle through the woman’s thoughts, now; hell, she was hard-pressed to keep ’em out. A dreadful black tide slopping up, transmuting that same maternal pull to bitterest gall: 1 Samuel, 15:53. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry, so Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

Oh, Gabriel — not you, of all people. How will you ever fulfil your father’s legacy now? How could you even live among his own town’s people — good, kind, Christian people — let alone rule them the way you were born to, knowing they’d think you the Devil’s own cub?

Great and powerful God, why must you make only the most devoted of all your servants suffer so?

“Not my boy,” Sophy Love murmured to herself. And sat down in a flump with her skirts pooled ’round her, face turned from the child she still hugged tight.

Yancey took three or four small steps toward the Widow; got down on her trousered knees in the dirt, her joints still stiff. And held out her arms for Bewelcome’s former heir — exiled through no fault of his own to a desert worse than the one where Satan had tempted Christ, where stones could never be made bread, not even by the Word of God.

“I’ll take him if you want, ma’am,” she told Missus Love, softly as she could. “You just rest. And we’ll talk it over later, in the morning.”

Sophy said neither yea nor nay, but didn’t put up much of a fight when Yancey lifted Gabe free and put him over one shoulder, patting his back ’til his wails trailed off into hiccups. Simply sat there slumped with her hair hanging down — mouth moving, perhaps in silent prayer — and looking at her hands, as though she wasn’t quite sure whether or not she had the right to bury her face in them.

“I must get away from here,” Songbird whispered, agitatedly, in Yiska’s ear. “That boy knows nothing, he cannot control himself — ”

“But you can, and set an example, doing so. Has he tried to feed on you, or the Spinner?”

“He will, as any of us would. He is . . . what he is!”

Grandma leaned in: “A Hataalii, yes, but untrained, unblooded; he took his mother away from that woman by instinct, instead of striking back himself. I feel no hunger in him, not as yet.”

“Ai-yaaah! You pretend to great wisdom, as ever, but we Han have known of such things for centuries. Was it not we who first mapped the flow of ch’i through the body, as well as those points where it may escape, or be stolen? It is only because of our knowledge that object works at all.”

On the horizon, further even than half-smitten Bewelcome itself, a foul star seemed to bloom. There was an awful noise; Yancey couldn’t have named it if she’d tried. And out in the darkness, something else laughed long and loud, equally dreadful — as though amusement were its currency, and it accounted itself well-paid.

At the sound, Grandma’s head swung ’round once more, spun on that boneless thing she called a neck ’til it all but made complete revolution, fast as wooden ribcage shutters snapping to over a bloody, beating heart.

“What has that thing the blackrobe Rook married done now?” she demanded, apparently of the universe itself.

SEVEN DIALS: FOUR

Our current world is Nahui-Ollin, the Earthquake Sun. It will shake itself apart one day, after which everything Quetzalcoatl stole will be returned to its rightful owner, Mictantecuhtli. The Seed of All will be re-buried at the bottom of a charnel pit, awaiting its next red watering. And then, eventually . . .

. . . everything will begin, once more, only to die, wither, be reborn. Again, again, again.

Endlessly.

We stole our bones from the gods of the Underworld, over and over — bones and flesh, our souls, our very selves. Which is why we will always try to keep them as long as we possibly can, no matter what the price, no matter how dreadful the reckoning.

No matter what, or who, it costs.

They were well out onto the bridge before he even realized what it was, and when he did, the understanding almost undid him. Chess had no worse a head for heights than anyone else raised up mostly at ground level, but this wasn’t something mortal man was meant to look upon — a thread of black stone, less than a yard wide, stretching impossibly far into the distance without buttress or brace to prop it up, no rail to break your stumble, and sickeningly uneven underfoot. While below, an awful shifting ocean of fire spilled from horizon to horizon, its scorching light a sickly amalgam of pus-streaked blood and fever sweat.