A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Well, then.”

Chess scoffed. “Who was s’posed to tutor me in these skills of yours, exactly — Ash Rook? There’s your answer on that one: fucker tried to kill me and this’s the result, so everything I’ve learned since’s been on the run, like always.”

“Yes, and given how much damage you did while running, I would have expected you to know more, at the end of it. But it seems we are both fated to be disappointed.”

Songbird grimaced, but when she spoke, her voice was calmer than Chess’d ever heard it before — enough so he’d’ve rubbed his eyes, if he hadn’t somewhat feared that’d scrub ’em away like chalk marks. “This bickering is neither here nor there,” she said, “and beneath us as well, even him. What must we do?”

“Let me think,” Grandma growled.

“Yes, let us both,” Yiska agreed. “For I think you already know — ”

“Be quiet, granddaughter!”

“No.” Yiska stepped in front of Grandma. “The time for that is over, Spinner: decide, or do not. This is what you would tell me.”

The hulk stood there silent a long moment, looming over her, a landslide waiting to happen. “Very well, then, come here,” it said, at last. “Let us speak on it further.”

Their subsequent palaver — conducted quietly, in their own language — seemed to go on far longer than it had to. Luckily, Yancey’s shoulder was small but warm, surprisingly hard with new-grown muscle. What’d they had her doing out here? Chess’d have to remember to ask, whenever they next got time for impractical conversation.

Even as he thought this, however, he felt that same ripple of unreality sift those approximations he was using for bones, frighting him with the idea that he might fall through her supporting grip at any moment. So he spat, and eked out: “Didn’t mean to . . . horn in on your territory, gal. With Ed, and all.”

“What?” She blushed like the flower-faced innocent she’d been, not so long back. “Oh, I think we’re all three pretty equally entangled at this point, don’t you? What with him your priest and me your priestess, I mean.” Adding, lower: “Actually, I think might be that’s why you got such a longing for him, all of a sudden. You need us both, to shore you up, just like before.”

“By cuttin’ on yourselves, you mean? I don’t — ” He grabbed himself by the mental scruff and shook, hard. “There’s other ways,” he said, finally.

“Like what?”

Chess snorted. “Oh, hell if I know, woman! Just seems like there’s likely to be, and you’d know better’n me ’bout it anyhow, wouldn’t you? Like every-damn-body.”

Instead of snapping back in return, she smiled again. “Now, this is more like what I expected. That you’d roll out of Hell like you were getting out of bed, see me and scowl, and say: ‘Took you long enough.’”

Chess managed a half-grin of his own, and agreed. “’Cause you did, that’s for damn sure. But much as I couldn’t see nor hear you down there, I already know the whyfore of that.”

“In that Oona told you, you mean.”

His brows knit. “Saw that, too, huh? Well, ’course you did . . . sent her to me in the first place, whispered advice in her ear. Two of you must’ve had some deep discussions, knowin’ I couldn’t listen in.”

“We might’ve, at that. You jealous, Mister Pargeter?”

He suspected she was twitting him, and felt a strange stab of pride not only that he could identify such japery, but that it didn’t make him want to punch anyone, when he did.

“A little, Missus Kloves,” he said, at last. “But only that. She and me still ain’t friends, as such.”

Quite some change from the horned-up rake and ramblin’ boy who’d put a bottle upside Sadie Whoever’s head and left her to die on a dirty saloon floor, over the grand sin of flirting with “his” duplicitous hulk of a man. For a second, Chess almost wanted to slip back down into Hell and apologize to the poor little bitch, which rocked him back yet further, as though the “him” he’d always known was peeling away by degrees, shedding like skin. What could possibly be left underneath, after, when every bit of scar was finally gone?

“That’s a sad story,” Yancey told him, all humour suddenly gone from her voice. To which he shrugged, as best he could, and said: “It’s a sad world.”

Which, by God, they both well knew for nothing but truth.

But here were Grandma and that man-gal of hers stepping over now, finally done with their parlay. The rock-creature shook her massive-jawed head, with a noise like bones grinding, and told Yancey: “So, it is decided — you must bring your other half here, that soldier Morrow, if he yet lives. Then you and he will keep this one from losing sense of himself, until we get him to where he and the Smoking Mirror may confront each other.”

Yancey sighed. “After which?” ”

“They will fight, and this working will reach its end, one way or another.” Grandma looked down on Chess, haughty as a thing with no eyes to narrow or nose to sneer through could be. “I hope you prove worth all this effort, red boy.”

“Didn’t think so already, why’d you bother bringin’ me up at all?”

“Because we all have parts to play. I know it — and now, so do you. Do not fail.”