Morrow nodded. “If you ever let me.”
“Good.” Morrow looked at him. “And now you wonder what game I play, soldier? A long one, very long. So do not worry yourself; nothing you do, or think of doing, will inconvenience me much. What you want is what I want, after all.”
“For now.”
“For now, yes.”
Riled, Morrow tried to turn away, but got caught by the wrist, and went rigid — there were things moving around inside the Enemy’s hand that made him want to puke to feel, and when he checked, he thought he saw “Chess’s” face ripple, like a mirage. Still, the Enemy — who truly seemed to take no insult at his disgust — merely laughed, and let him go.
It is decided, it “said.” You will march with your army to Hex City, and wait for my signal. My order.
“Don’t work for you,” Morrow muttered, mutinous, into his own neck. While beside him, Chess Pargeter’s mostly naked ghost raised a quizzical brow.
Oh no? Then for who, I wonder?
And was gone, leaving Morrow to wonder, too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sunset poured blood across the snow-streaked desert, cold for all its brilliance. Half a mile to the northeast it struck dark bronze light off the western wall of what the shamanesses — human and inhuman — called Tse Diyil, that great slab-sided mound of rock thrust out up of the desert like God’s fist punched up through oilcloth. It sparkled on the waters of the Chaco Wash, and stretched the shadow of the woman kneeling alone in the wasteland out behind her; her bent head gave it a distorted look, sending wraiths of darkness spiralling ’round with each shuddering breath.
For Sophronia Love, née Hartshorn, what little she’d experienced directly of the War herself had been enough to break her of the idea that meekness was an inherently blessed condition. She and Mesach had both seen enough of the Beast’s face to know what needed to b
e done, and most efficiently minimize the chances of anything similar ever happening again. They would discuss it late at night or early in the morning, immediately before or after prayers, and sometimes during; the fact that they had been of one mind as well as one flesh — potentially — was what drew her to him, in the first place. Bewelcome had been their shared dream. Not the true New Jerusalem — they were neither of them so proud as to aspire that far — but a place for the faithful to live as they would, making a fresh start after the sins of war and civilization. To build lives in that they would not be ashamed to show their Saviour, when their time came.
Somehow, though, it had never occurred to Sophy how Mesach’s time might come so much sooner than hers would. Or that the very duties they’d undertaken together would be the things which kept her behind, alone, unable to follow him until that burden was justly laid down. For whatever gifts God had given her to help meet those duties — even the outright miracle of her own rebirth, along with all Bewelcome’s — they still could not undo the ache in her life that Mesach had left, bereft of his voice, his touch, his unwavering certainty.
Oh God, she missed him, her beautiful man.
One might think her time in the salt should have prepared her, but it hadn’t — the passing year had seemed only a dream, the heartbeat between one drawn breath and the next, an upward-cast plea. She remembered folding Gabriel in, forming herself ’round him like a shield, then . . . nothing. The tumult had ceased instantaneously, leaving only absence and long darkness, without even a sense of time’s movement to anchor her in its face, ’til that same timelessness had dissolved on the instant of her shattering re-entry into life, leaving not even a wrack of memory behind.
She had seen Mesach fall to Rook’s and Pargeter’s mingled devilry, been struck down herself — then come back, reunited for one shining instant, before losing him yet again to Yancey Kloves’ bullet. And all of it so quickly that both days often seemed equally more nightmare than truth, lost in the black chasm which split her life in two pieces.
Thus far, that second life had been much less joyous than the first. She had buried herself in labour, overseeing Bewelcome’s recovery, then integrating the town into Pinkerton’s war against Hex City even while doing her best to keep Gabriel fed and healthy. True, his beauty (particularly as he grew, so sunny, so smart) provided some small annealment to her grief, but never anything near completely, and the secret hope which lay hidden beneath her maternal dedication — that she might one day become a casualty of war herself, liberated without guilt to thus rejoin her Mesach — was a shameful consolation.
And even so, it had still taken months before she could pass a single night without weeping, wrapping her head in blankets to keep her muffled sobs from waking Gabe.
God’s strength was bottomless; that was what Mesach had preached, what she herself had seen proven, over and over. Yet what Sophy knew now, most dreadfully, was that hers was not — that when a second shattering blow cut her life apart again, her faith alone might not see her through the pain of rebuilding a third new one. And for the one soul she still truly loved, the only purpose left worth suffering for, to be himself the cause of that inevitable blow . . .
What did it say of her, that she was grateful another woman had her son — and that woman her own husband’s murderer — because she feared being tempted to smother him, the first time an opportunity presented itself? That she could no longer give her baby the untainted love of days before, could barely stand even to look at him, because the forces he’d used to save them from death were drawn of the same darkness his sainted father had died fighting against?
Give him over to her, to them — his own kind. The words dinned in Sophy’s head, barely recognizable as her own. Then walk away into the desert, let the thirst and the cold take me, if some savage doesn’t slay me for trespassing, first. It is the only answer. And I could still do it, I swear; I can do anything, for him. Maybe . . . it would be better, that way.
“Perhaps, yes.”
So quiet was this new voice that the start Sophy gave on realizing she’d actually heard it was far more muted than she would’ve expected it to be, had she been watching herself do so. She looked up, blinked watering eyes at the figure silhouetted against the sunset; it tilted its head her way like some watchful bird, apparently nothing but honestly curious.
“But could you, in truth, do such a thing?” it asked. “Are you really so desperate, salt-man’s wife?”
I am interested, you see. For, even as your husband did — you interest me.
Sophy stood, shading her eyes, able to make out more of the thing only as her vision cleared. The fear which pierced her struck an oddly welcome note, driving home a simple truth: No, she thought, I do not want to die, not yet. And not at this creature’s hands.
“Despair is an affront to the living God,” she said out loud, voice hoarse, but unflinching.
The being who wore Chess Pargeter’s mostly naked flesh gave a black-toothed smile, almost cruel as Pargeter’s own. And for just a half-instant, she could hear him in her head once more, screaming into the sandstorm as Mesach went white, froze in place, began to crumble under the wind’s incessant howl: Yeah, go ahead on and cry, little boy — your Daddy ain’t comin’ home anytime soon, not now, not ever.
That wasn’t this man, though, for this wasn’t a man, at all; not even the negotiable sort Pargeter claimed to be, with all his perverse appetites, his “love” that’d set Reverend Rook on her path, in the first place. You only had to look in its eyes the once, and not for long, to know that it had already far outstripped its Hell-bound original a thousandfold, in terms of being evil.