A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

A hoarse, hacking cough: “Don’t see — ”

“I can. Keep on.”

“Bloody am, but where? I don’t — ”

“Damnit, Ma, stop arguing with me, and keep ON!”

So close, Jesus, behind and in front; he could almost feel that bastard Chilicothe’s breath on his nape — cold-stinking, where once it’d been hot. And with that, the last of Chess’s patience (never in great supply) snapped like a shot horse’s legs. One step back, and he simply flung them both headlong at the wall, crashing their combined full body weights through it like some luckless pair of drunks through a saloon window. He felt her skull smack against something as they went — one of the displaced blocks, maybe.

Passing through one more membrane, they fell soft on cold earth, dry and thick with sere, sharp grass, then rolled twice and came up gasping — Oona with her hair all in disarray, a bruise big as his palm coming up on her forehead. With a wordless scream, she slapped him ’cross the face, hard enough to rattle his teeth; he shrugged the pain off, then glanced past her back the way they’d come, and laughed out loud.

“You son of a bitch!” she raved at him, all uncaring how she was mainly insulting herself. “Piss-poor spawn of a clap-rid Lime’ouse gin-doll!”

“So you’ve told me, yeah. Want to see something?”

“I’ll give you ‘somefing,’ you bloody ball-less pillow-biter — ”

“Oona, Christ. Turn ’round, ’fore you give yourself a conniption.”

He could see her fairly strain not to, just to spite him. But temptation was far too strong — and when at last her head swung the way he’d indicated, he found himself at just the right angle to admire the way her jaw dropped.

Nothing there, no matter which way you looked: No wall, no rubble, no crack. Only empty air. Like none of it had ever even been.

The breach must’ve closed almost fast as they’d flown through it,. And maybe it was that realization which sent Oona wobbling back, forcing Chess to catch her — no great task, for she’d always been a tiny thing. He held her up a moment ’til her breathing slowed, faces pressed so uncomfortably close he could see her too-wide pupils start to contract once more, before carefully letting her back down again.

“Sorry for that,” he found he’d somehow already let slip, before he could think better.

“Don’t do it again,” was all she said in return, eventually. “Not wivout you bloody well warn me, first.”

“All right.”

He stood still a moment, trying to decide as he did if he found this odd protective urge toward her welling up inside him gratifying, or infuriating. Might be she felt the same, though; she sure was quick enough to pull away, twitching his coat yet closer.

“Cold,” she muttered, shuffling her bare feet.

“It is that,” Chess agreed — and shivered, barely resisting the urge to hug himself. Wondering, as he did: Where to now?

The ice plain War-Heaven they’d passed through had been more frigid, but there, they’d been driven by fear and amazement, like cattle before dogs. Here, however — in the empty silence of this dry flatland, everything dusk-coloured for ash, or stone, or coal — their travels’ exhaustion was suddenly that much harder to stave off, dull wind-chill leaching heat straight through the illusion of clothing. And for all the stars overhead were those Chess knew, their unnatural brightness and colourless light betrayed the truth. This was not the real world, still.

Jesus. How much further, exactly?

All directions looked alike, from where they stood. The grass was silver-grey, motionless even under a steady breeze, the soil it grew from black; Chess raised one hand to shade his eyes and scowled at his flesh’s flinty hue, far too much like a (truly) dead man’s for comfort.

“So now what?” he asked Oona, who shook he

r head.

“Still can’t see the trail — can’t see nothin’ else, neither, for that matter. You?”

Shrugging, he squinted hard into that bleak wind, felt it draw phantom tears. ’Til, vision clearing, he finally caught sight of a slight variance in the general scheme of grey on black. Saw how, though the light in the distance had much the same washed-out pallor as everything else, its wavering movement identified it as — a campfire, by Christ, flames shimmering pearlescent and oily black by turns, coldly insubstantial. A second later, Chess could just make out the black silhouette of a man sitting just before it, and tensed as that same man — square-set, face hidden by darkness and distance alike, yet with something distinctly familiar to his whole bearing — twisted in his seat to look back at them.

Who . . . ?

He knew far too many of this underworld’s denizens, it occurred to him, and not for the first time. Probably shouldn’t’ve gotten so damn many people killed, while Up Top.

As if cued by that thought, the man raised one arm and swept it back and forth, impatiently, the gesture plainly beckoning — like he knew full well who Chess was, and wasn’t too pleased by his tardiness.

Chess made a half-step forward, stumbling at first, then striding; Oona took off likewise, scrambling to keep up. “Where we goin’? ’Oo is that?”