A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Sophy tried to think how to answer, but too late: the grief welling from her had already done so. And since nuance meant exactly nothing to Gabe, he felt the loss with all the force she did, unfiltered; he began to wail, full volume, inconsolable. She wept too, wholly unable to resist doing so, and saw that Yancey was crying as well: grief echoing to grief, a tear-stained lodestone.

Suddenly, caught unawares — and Sophy only kept these foreign memories from touching Gabe’s mind with an agonizing wrench of effort — she was watching the massacre in Hoffstedt’s Hoard from the thick of the carnage, while the thing that’d once been her husband wreaked monstrous vengeance in Pargeter’s pursuit on a family and home which Experiance Colder had loved every bit as much as Sophy did Bewelcome, Gabe, Mesach himself. Then forward in time with a horrid jerk, to stand outside some shanty saloon (Splitfoot Joe’s) where Mesach made the dead dance to his will, against all holiness and justice.

And then — oh, God —

Mesach’s death once more, this time from Yancey’s vantage point. But now Sophy could feel Yancey taking her bereavement in along with that one fraction of a second’s useless, impermanent “triumph,” recognizing just how deeply twinned Sophy’s pain must be with her own.

The truth, and nothing but: hollow truth, awful truth. Under her mask of demureness, the other girl’s steel will stood well-roused; she had meant every word of her offer to surrender, as ruthless with her own sins as she was with any other’s.

Enough, Sophy thought, throat salt-clogged, willing the impulse over to Yancey. Enough, enough, enough!

It ended with the same suddenness as it’d begun. Sophy found herself back in the cave, eyes burning, nose thick. Yancey stared at her, face likewise swollen red, panting for breath. And Gabriel continued to scream, till Sophy instinctively reached out with her mind, soothing him.

Mama here, always, she repeated, soundlessly. Mama stays. All’s well. All’s well.

Gabriel stared up at her . . . and shaped what might be intended as a smile, clumsily. Grabbed for her finger with one hand, squeezing tight. From his mind came a wordless surge, a first purposeful sending: MamaMamaMamaMeMyMineMamaMamaLove.

Sophy bent her head again, trying desperately not to start crying again. Hearing behind her, as she did, some quizzical noise from “Grandma’s” direction — absurdly quiet, a single rock shifting over sand.

On the outer edge of her perception, Yiska smiled, broadly. Murmured, approving: “And so, now we know. It works.”

So

ngbird, meanwhile, stared at them all, equally amazed. For once, her look held neither superiority nor sour sullenness, but rather a kind of numb confusion like that felt by someone confronted by a mirage, unsure if what she saw was real.

And, should it finally be proved so, then something which looked almost like fear.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.

For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed.

I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me.

I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.

Psalms, number 31, 9 to 12.

Over Hex City, a moon the colour of bone rose high, overlooking everything beneath. The Lady who ruled it was asleep by now, Reverend Rook could only assume — either laid up in “their” bedchamber, damaged by the explosive force of Hank Fennig’s passing, or busy playing with that creepish new toy of hers, the thing that’d once been Clodagh Killeen. Making it walk the floor with her, leaving its papery mane rustle and shell-bell rattle behind; using those empty blue lungfish eyes of its for lamps, for all he knew. Sending it out to spy on the battlefield or hang above Camp Pink like a miasma, searching always for any hint of where Marizol might be stowed away, so’s it could swoop down to retrieve her.

Must be nice to have something you can rely on, Rook thought. Though granted, he himself’d known the feeling once, of course, and intimately.

But long ago, now. So long.

You will have your husband again, little king, and soon enough, Ixchel had told him, yet again, just before he finally took himself elsewhere. And this time, hadn’t even bothered to answer out loud — why, when he knew damn well she heard whatsoever he was thinking? Just let the words bubble up through him, slow as frog song mud-drowned:

See, honey, you do keep on sayin’ that. But — having seen that thing you claim is him up close, I’m just not sure whether I believe you, anymore. Or if I ever really did, for that matter.

This last was a sobering idea, when so many had already died in its service. Which was why Rook didn’t really care to examine it overmuch, right at this very moment.

So here he was instead, back in the adobe hut where he’d once conjured Kees Hosteen and debated this War’s exigencies with his Council, Fennig and Clo included, what now seemed like years ago. Lying back mother-naked on the heaped-up length of his own clothes and studying what little was visible of the ceiling in the lamps’ flickering light, with two fingers shoved inside Sophy Love’s Bible (snatched up almost without design in all the excitement, as the Hall went to matchsticks and the pre-torrent storm bore them all away, regardless) for a bookmark he didn’t even need, given how the relevant passages were already playing ’emselves out in his head:

For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.

But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God.

. . . Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. . . .