A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Guess I can’t, at that.”

“It is indubitable. And so — let us skip ahead, ask and answer that most central of questions. What do I want? For you have been wondering, have you not?”

“Much as you were doing to distract me, yes.”

“What I want is what you want, what your red boy wants. To see my sister fail.”

“And how’s that to be achieved? Seen that creature she made, yet?”

“The tzitzimime are not to be trifled with, yes. Like anything spawned from blood, however, they are difficult to control. Even one of them may be more risk than reward.” It smiled, sidelong. “Besides which — I think you know something she does not, regarding this new ‘daughter’ of hers. What your maim-handed friend saw through his little clear mirrors, the ones he slipped you in that final fray, before his woman’s shell ate him whole. Those you glanced through later on, just the once, when my sister was distracted by her victory.”

Rook swallowed again. “Glasses, that’s what we call those. ’Cause they’re made of glass, this stuff we conjure out of sand and lime — cook it at high heat then blow it out, cool it, grind it so’s you can see things clearer.”

“I neither know nor care what ‘glass’ is, priest-king. Tell me what you saw, through your dead ally’s eyes.”

“I . .

. saw . . . Clo, I thought. Still in there, under everything — the way Chess is in you, I only squint hard enough. And I thought I saw her looking back, too, almost as though . . .”

“As though some part of her were still the woman you knew, regardless of how my sister had remade her. As though, if you only found a way — she might be restored, and turn against the woman who killed her, killed her son, made her kill her man. Deformed her into this dreadful thing and laughed over it, then made her laugh, as well.”

“You really hate Ixchel that much? Though she was your sister, or your wife.”

“My sister, my wife, my mother, my all: my self. So no, little meat-thing, I do not hate her. How could I? Only we are left awake now, alone and alike — only us, in this whole mis-made world. But I cannot allow what she would see done. It is . . . foolish. Messy.”

“Thought you liked chaos.”

“Chaos is one thing. This — is idiocy.”

“I ain’t about to disagree.”

“But what will you do about it? This is the question.”

Rook pondered this, for what felt like a lamentably long time. And found it actually hurt him to admit, at last: “I can’t work against her, you know.”

The Enemy reached over, stroked his cheek with Chess’s gun-roughened hand, almost sympathetically. “You will not have to.”

Think on that Oath of yours, priest-king, the Enemy told him. Its strictures, which once seemed so completely to my sister’s benefit — were they really so? Might some lines be left to read between, some tiny chinks or “loopholes,” as you call them, through which your own desires might yet crawl?

Having heard it administered or administered it himself, a thousand times over, Rook did not even need to cast his mind back. Each phrase came easily to his tongue as a hot oil blister, blooming to flow between his lips.

Service I pledge to the Suicide Moon

Obedience to Her High Priest;

Fellowship to the City’s children —

This I swear, on my own power’s pain;

This I swear, to loss of blood and life,

That the Engine fail not to bring another World.

“Okay,” he said, out loud; “I know it off by heart, as you can damn well see. What’s your point?”

Think further, little king; remember your dead friend’s words. It will suggest itself.

“‘Service’ pledged to the Suicide Moon,” Rook began, carefully, “but ‘obedience’ to her priest — to me. So whatever I say, they have to do, on pain of the Blood Engine’s maw. I could’ve ordered Berta and Eulie not to go, like Hank said; might be able to bring ’em back now if I knew where they were, or compel ’em to produce Marizol, likewise. But Ixchel’d need me to do it, and she wouldn’t be able to make me do it, either.”