A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

And all without a word thrown his way, staring right on through him, like he wasn’t even worth the hip-check needed to squeeze by.

No Ed to keep him company down here, in his despond. No Rev. No widowed Yancey Kloves, even, that calm grey gaze of hers just a lid ill-set over a hate as hot as his own. Only Chess’s own limping thoughts, slow as freezing, while he sat and shivered amidst the throng, utterly unmarked on.

Why can’t I feel

Ash Rook, at least? Always could, before.

Like an absence, a wound, that was all. A fallen God-botherer-shaped hole.

’Cause he thinks you’re dead, is why, something told him, shortly — not the Enemy, though equally unsympathetic. Maybe even grieves you, in his fashion. But clever as he is, he saw you die and somethin’ else rise up wearin’ you like a coat; knows it was all his fault, too, if he’s halfway honest with himself. That’s got to leave a mark.

And everybody else?

There damn well isn’t “anybody else” down here. Just you and the dead folks, and him, and — her.

“Talkin’ to yourself again, I see,” “English” Oona Pargeter’s shade observed from where she sat, a few arms’ lengths past where his elbow rested — just beyond reach, yet far too close for comfort.

“Yeah, well, might be I got friends you ain’t privy to, woman,” Chess shot back, “which’d be a sight more’n you could ever claim.” A grin, gap-toothed in her raddled face, was her only answer. “Ain’t you got some other place to be?”

“From the look of fings, I’d guess not.”

If he had one last straw left, this was it. Chess threw back his chair and shoved his way out onto the cobbled streets outside, where he couldn’t even muster sufficient dismay worth snarling again to find Oona already standing there in the rain, waiting for him.

Fuckin’ perfect.

You really ought to’ve heard of me, he remembered telling Tezcatlipoca, his first time in Hell. I mean, seein’ how you’re the Devil himself.

And now that very phrase rang in his ears yet, mockingly, as proof of his own naive assumption that every bad thing in every bad place existing should surely be aware of him by name or reputation. Worst moment but one in Chess’s entire life and he’d been so certain he was still somebody’s nightmare, Goddamnit, a skeleton strung with lit nerves tearing ass through the underworld, undebatably bad and unrepentant with it, too. With a cocked gun fisted in either raw-meat-on-bone hand, ready to fire at will.

But he’d been wrong about that in the end, like so much else.

Ripping his own empty chest open in the name of self-sacrifice — or pissiness, more like — aside, he sure hadn’t ever expected to find himself here again, buried alive in one more dark place beneath the world’s skin. The Sunken Ball-Court, the Place of Dead Roads, and now — this crap-hole, named by his Ma as Seven Dials for the same teetery column they stood beneath, from which seven streets radiated, all alike in the awful unending dark. Just a din of muck and yammer cut with a cacophony of clanks a-boom in the middle distance, like faraway ordnance.

Almost enough to make a man miss ’Frisco, Chess thought.

“Gone, that is, in London true,” said Oona, staring up at those looming dials. “Long ’fore I drew a breath, let alone got big enough to — ”

“ — screw your way clear?”

“That’s right. Always did fink yerself a cut above, though, didn’t you? Too good for the likes of anyone else.”

“Never claimed to be ‘good,’ woman, or anything like it.” Chess stuffed his hands inside his coat, trying futilely to warm them while wondering if the truly dead at least got to sleep; felt like he’d been up for days, maybe a week or even more. “Whatever I am, though, I know I’m a damn sight better than you.”

“What, ’cause you was born wiv that piece ’twixt your legs?” And that note, that sneering scorn, going straight to his gut. Fifteen years fell away. “All you are, old son, is lucky. Only wish to Christ you ’ad been born a girl, so’s . . .”

“So’s you’d know what best to charge, I expect,” Chess snarled.

Only to watch her spit, and snarl back: “No. ’Cause then I could’ve made you suffer like I did, just like, and not no different. The exact bloody same.”

“I suffered enough,” Chess said, turning his back. And strode on, boots clopping through the rain, with his spurs trailing a-scratch on the cobbles like a dead man’s fingernails.

Though he might have walked for hours, the stones underfoot did not change, and every wall looked like its neighbour; even the ceaselessly moving crowds had nearly vanished. So when the dry voice came back into Chess’s mind, at last, he was lonesome enough that he didn’t even flinch.

What do you plan to do now, red boy?

Leave this damn place. Kick your damn ass.

Laughter like a desert gust, sere and hot and swift.