A Rope of Thorns

by Gemma Files

  At the sight, Chess’s mouth went dry, and stayed that way. Like he’d swallowed a mouthful of salt.

  The man—whom nobody had seen enter—was tree-tall, broad-shouldered but lankier than either the Rev or Morrow, skin a-gleam with an ill patina like dried sweat, or hoarfrost. His hair made a crusted fringe, one short pigtail still left hanging; his torn and threadbare clothes were streaked with the same white that cataracted his eyes clear across, leaving him only the pinpricks of pupils to see through. And on his chest, where a lawman’s vest once might have hung, the cross-cut icicle remains of a six-pointed tin star gleamed sharp.

  That’s not him, though; ’course it’s damn well not. Man’s dead, I saw it done. It . . . It just can’t be.

  “But, even so—” The figure lifted a lengthy hand Yancey’s way, forefinger poised to shake, officious as any preacher. “—I’d far rather you’d let the other song reach its due conclusion, Missus.”

  Yancey, near as white as her own dress, swallowed hard. Yet managed, without visible qualm: “I . . . I don’t hold with taking requests without some prior acquaintance, sir.”

  “No?” Impossible to tell, given his voice’s ruin, if the question held any true amusement for him. “Then let me be known: My name is Love. . . .”

  Sheriff Mesach Love, that was, as the gasp rippling through her wedding party confirmed; decorated Bluebelly war hero, gentleman born, his privilege shelved in favour of church-raising and homestead-building. Mesach Love, who’d been dealt a fate suffered by none since Lot’s wife—widower to a murdered wife, father to a murdered son.

  Late, in short, of Bewelcome township.

  “. . . and I have come a long and tedious way to seek out either Reverend Rook or his creature, Pargeter, recitation of whose life’s works you so sweetly interrupted here—having sworn, no matter which of them I found, to deliver final judgement upon him.”

  At this, Kloves stood out—laid one hand on Yancey’s arm, while the other sought for and found one gun-butt, sure as Christmastime.

  “Even supposing you’re who you say,” he began, “might be your misfortune’s got you all turned around. I’m Marshal for the jurisdiction; this is my wedding feast, and that’s my wife you’re speaking to. If the Rev were anywhere hereabouts, let alone his fancy-boy, I’d know it.”

  Love narrowed his praise-burnt eyes, and set his bitter mouth. “I smell them, Marshal.”

  A shrug. “I’ve no easy answer to that. Except to suggest how, sorry to say . . . might be your nose don’t work too well, these days. Given all that’s happened.”

  “That so?”

  “It is.”

  “Hmm. S’pose we’ll have to see, then.”

  Here Love made only the smallest of gestures—a brief figuring, equal-fit for blessing or curse. But a tremor ran party-wide at the mere sight of it, as though the very dust beneath came skirling at his call; not hexation, but the faint echo of some power far more oblique, implacable, sere. “God’s will” writ small, and bent to another’s service.

  “O Lord God,” the undead intoned, laying his skeletal palms together, “to whom vengeance belongeth; hear me now, in Jesus’ name, amen. O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.”

  Chess heard the Rev read along, behind his eyes. Saw the words all but cast up and glinting, black sparks on bright:

  Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.

  LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?

  . . . Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?

  “Psalm 94,” Morrow whispered, eyes shut, his head half hung down—bent to Love’s yoke, like he was more afraid of some damn quotation than the man’s own black-miraculous spectacle.

  But Kloves, unswayed, replied: “I want you gone, ‘Sheriff.’ Back to your own place. We’ve no need of you here.”

  “And I want Pargeter, or Rook. Give ’em to me, I’ll move on. If not . . .” Love smiled, grimly. “They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood,” he said, to no one in particular—yet his voice wrung ever more horrid, ’til women clapped hands over their children’s ears and a few weak souls doubled over, baptizing the floor. “But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge. And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off.”

  A groan, a whimper—the crowd lurched all at once, aching to cut and run. Chess wondered, for a timepiece’s barest half-tick, if he shouldn’t let whatever was pending happen—he’d survive, almost certainly. But Ed’s fists were closing, like he thought to throw punches at a man Death itself had spit up whole, and Kloves obviously meant the same. And Yancey cast Chess a single beseeching, lash-cut glance.

  Goddamn all “good” people, Chess thought, with a sigh.

  And let his glamour go altogether, with a plaster-rip wrench. In its wake he stood himself once more, purple-suited, to sneer back at the gaping faces which ringed him:

  Yeah, take a look while you can; here I am, life-sized. Small-made, still, but that don’t matter none. As you will see.

  Sheriff Love might have his God, as always. Yet Chess had learned a thing or two ’bout gods himself, in the interim.

  “No Heaven for you, Sheriff?” he enquired, conversationally. “And such a fervent sumbitch, too! You want me? Here I am.”

  Two guns to the Marshal’s one, and a hand on either. Chess grinned at Love, mean as ever, ’til Love grinned back—equal-nasty in his own God-bothering way, and wide enough they could hear his salt-glazed jaw hinges crack.

  “So you are, after all,” he replied. “Praise Him!”

  Chapter Seven

  Mister Frewer gave a slow blink. “By God,” he said, finally, “if that ain’t Chess Pargeter. Been there the whole time, I’d suspect.” A pause. “Think Mister Chester knew it, all along?”

  That Grey fellow replied, “Reckon so, if that’s Chester over there; man’s really named Ed Morrow, who used to be a Pinkerton.”

  Hugo Hoffstedt said, “Sheriff, Marshal—oughtn’t you to do something, here? ’Fore—”

  “You got any real kind of plan of attack on offer, Hugo, do feel free t’let it slip,” Sheriff Haish shot back. And Uther, hand gone automatically to the empty place at his belt where his gun should hang, just blew slowly out through his nose—a bull, matador’s cloak new-sighted, composing itself to charge.

  In that instant, Yancey came painfully closest to loving him outright than she ever had before. He’s good, she told herself, fiercely, and that’s the simple truth. Probably better than I deserve, given . . .

  Given how sadly complicit she was in what was happening—was about to happen.

  Back stiff, she made herself look past to Lionel, who stood there gaping. “I shook his hand,” he told her.

  “I saw, Pa.”

  “Took it right in mine, and shook it, hard. Asked him how he liked the wedding.”

  “I know, Pa—I was there, same as you. Saw it all.”

  Her eyes slid back to Uther, guilt ably disguised as fright—or maybe not, since it wasn’t like she wasn’t verging on terrified, though not on her own behalf. So many people, such a small space, and all of ’em here on her say-so. All of ’em in danger due to her secret glee, now most securely fled, at having known what no one else did—of managing to avert, alone, a menace nobody but her even saw was there, in the first place.

  Oh, it was true what the Good Book said: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Facing Pargeter down had been frightening, but for all the little man’s posturing, he was still human at his core; no different from dealing with the belligerent drunks she dealt with every night’s end, no matter how off-puttingly careless he was in letting his power over-slop itself. Whereas Sheriff Love had been a righteous man once, or so folks said—but Yancey could barely stand to look at wha
t was left of him: this glassine shell of ill-will that crackled as it moved, reeked like spoiled meat cured in hatred . . . by God, it was enough to make her stomach heave.

  They cut a strange pair, posed before the company in pure dime-novel gunfight stance: Pargeter, stood up slim and straight in his purple livery, red-gilt hair lifted like burning corn, and an indefinite blackness a-hover ’round all his edges. About Sheriff Love, meanwhile, clung something white as paper, or leprosy—remorseless, comfortless. A hollow luminescence whose outermost edges tangled with his opponent’s to breed something equally grey, debriding the world’s God-given colours to dust and ash around them.

  As Pargeter bristled, Love stood blanched and granular, dead skin slippy over a raw martyr’s bone-mask. His eyes—so drily pearlescent they ate light—barely seemed to narrow against the hex-pistoleer’s green glare, as though too well-burnt by God’s own regard to find any other more than momentarily inconvenient.

  Whatever I can do to help move this creature where he can do no more harm, I will, Yancey found herself thinking. Even if I have to take Pargeter’s side against him to do it.

  The very idea made her breath catch. But she knew it for truth, inescapably, as such sudden insights always proved to be.

  Christ Almighty. This curse of a “gift,” always showing a thousand terrible things converging, but not one damn hint of which way to turn in order to throw ’em off. She’d’ve passed the weight of it on gladly to anyone fool enough to ask, were it not still the only weapon she had: weak, inaccurate, impossible to control. The proverbial knife to a gunfight.

  How in Jesus’ name can I hope to save them, any of them? I can’t even save myself.

  Which was when another voice, softer-than-soft, came licking at her skull’s insides, offering this advice: Not for the present, no. But you know these guests of yours, little dead-speaker; good folk in the main, strong, and capable of much. If given opportunity, the right sort of push . . . might they not save themselves?

  Yes, she thought, not knowing who she answered. Deciding, on her father’s soul and marriage-vow alike, to believe it—or act like she did, at least, ’til experience proved her right.

  In front of her, at the same time, the stand-off played on—and whatever else he was, that mean-mouthed Mister Pargeter sure didn’t seem to lack for courage.

  “What say we take this outside, so nobody has to get hurt?” he suggested, back-shifting to balance on his heels, as though this whole unnatural paradiddle were little more than the prelude to a simple bar-fight. “This bein’ a house of God, and all.”

  Love made a dry sound, half-hiss, half-snort. “Hadn’t known you to be quite so particular, in previous circumstances.”

  “Yeah, well—that was with your people, you’ll recall. And considerin’ they’d all just finished kickin’ the crap out of me, I think I showed undue restraint.” This, Love didn’t even deign to answer—just stared, his awful eyes level, prompting Pargeter to continue. “The rest . . . your wife, and such . . . that wasn’t even my idea, anyhow. Was strictly the Rev’s doin’, all of it.”

  “You know yourself how that’s an arrant lie.”

  “Not back then, I didn’t.”

  Love’s gaze went sliding right overtop the outlaw’s head, to some far-off place beyond. “And what earthly good does knowing that fact do me now?” he asked, of no one visible. “Though it does beg the question—where is your whoremaster, exactly, ‘Private’ Pargeter?”

  “Rev and I had us a falling out, sad to say.”

  “Ah.” Love nodded, sagely. “Most sodomitical liaisons end likewise, I’d think.”

  “Oh, wasn’t over that. But tell me, Sheriff, now we’re all caught up: how’s it happen you come to be upright again, exactly?”

  “Through God’s own bounty.” He spread his long arms, palms lifting to the roof. “An angel appeared, and told me he had been sent to intercede, on my behalf. Me.” An awestruck smile stretched the preacher’s face, making salt powder down from his mouth corners. “For all my many missteps, my sins unforgiven, because I had further work to do upon this earth . . . I was spared. And sent back.”

  Pargeter thrust his thumbs through his belt, cocked his head. “Mmm. Sure it was God who made that particular call, Sheriff?”

  Love took the implication full-face, producing a blank, inhuman immobility more terrifying even than Pargeter’s killing grin. While, at the same time—

  “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Uther murmured, to Sheriff Haish.

  “How I’m just about to shit my britches?” Haish replied, just as low, eyes still fast on Love and Pargeter.

  To which Uther opened his mouth again, to elaborate, only to hear Yancey chime in, before he could: “Long as they keep intent on each other, now might be a goodish time to start getting folks out the back.”

  This brought both men swivelling to scrutinize her, with Lionel a close third. “There’s nobody can say my girl’s not smart,” her Pa observed, at last.

  “Nobody damn well better try,” Uther agreed. And crushed her briefly to him, searing her lips with what was only their second kiss thus far, but might well be their last.

  Morrow didn’t know where best to put his eyes—on Love, that awful object? Chess, obviously poised to draw, making Morrow’s fingers itch for the feel of his own shotgun? Or the Marshal and his lady, who seemed to be using this pause to lay a few plans of their own?

  When hexes get to wranglin’, plain folks should stick together, he thought, feeling helpless.

  Though Sheriff Love’d probably take it as deadly insult to be named a hex, even now—drawing himself up once more, creaking like salt-crusted leather. To say: “God does provide, Mister Pargeter, even to the unbelieving. Why not to me?”

  Over the Sheriff’s desiccated shoulder, Morrow watched the Marshal, Haish and Colder Senior fan out through the crowd, tapping shoulders, bending ears; saw folks link arms, scoop up their children, backing away, quick and soft as their liquored-up feet would take ’em. While Missus Kloves worked her own way slowly forward, like she thought there was anything she could do to help. . . .

  Go BACK! Morrow tried to mouth, without moving his face far enough to tip Love off. He suspected he must look somewhat like a fish caught in mid-hooking; that alone would’ve warned most folks away.

  But not her, Goddamnit.

  In front of him, meanwhile, Chess’s smile took on a knowing edge. “Why indeed? But enlighten me, Sheriff: just who did this ‘angel’ of yours say he was, anyhow?”

  Love’s gaze dropped, just for a moment. “He said . . . your Enemy. Yours and your Reverend’s, both.”

  Chess shot a sidelong look at Morrow, shared knot of memory flaring, a pine-knot cookfire-cracked: ENEMY, by Christ—

  A plate-etching behind the eyes, bouncing from Chess to Morrow to poor Missus Kloves in turn—I see him standing behind you, she’d said, voice gone colourless. Huge, black; stone-stiff, knife-toothed, mirror-footed. That bottomless stare and that name, at last . . . the one he’d somehow let slip only to her, without ’em ever having met. . . .

  (Tezcatlipoca)

  Morrow saw Missus Kloves reel under it, gut-punched, before handing her way back up; damn but that gal had grit, even with her face gone white as her wedding veil. Caught her mouth shaping words in turn, and strained to read them—

  Hold him . . . while longer, ’til . . . Pa comes back. Gone . . . get . . .

  Was that last one “weapons”?

  Morrow risked an “okay” sign with one hand, thumb set to forefinger and shook, hard; Missus Kloves nodded, just the once, but definite.

  While Love repeated, harsh mouth a-twist once more—bitter as the salt that filled it—“Your Enemy. Yours. Just like you’re mine, and God’s. So, whatever else, that’s good enough for me.”

  “Likewise,” Chess snapped, eyes flaring. And clenched both gunless fists on empty air without fanfare or flourish, causing Love to burst apart suddenly, as though he’d swallowed a m
ortar.

  Screams ripped up from the crowd; furniture crashed and fell, glass shattering, as those onlookers still left backed away even further. And the grey-white cloud that had been Sheriff Mesach Love settled slowly to the clapboard floor, pattering like rain.

  Chess, meanwhile, simply stood there, admiring his own works, unmoved. As though he’d all of a sudden decided there was no point even pretending he was still pistoleer first, hex after—let alone the damn god that Enemy of everyone’s had so often named him.

  No need even to draw, let alone aim, or shoot; I think a thing, it happens, and that’s all. Like it has to. Like it’s got no earthly Goddamn choice. Like I don’t, neither.

  Well, that’s one way, Morrow thought, numbly.

  “Holy Christ,” whispered Hugo Hoffstedt, so quiet Yancey wasn’t even sure she’d actually heard it. Her eyes stayed locked on Chess Pargeter’s terrible aspect, refusing even to flick away. Had she really so recently felt sorry for such a creature, back when the band’s mockery brought hot blood to his face?

  He’d been just a man, then, boy-sized, tough outside and bruised in-, wounded by love, then mocked for caring. Never having seen Reverend Rook, let alone his works, she’d almost envied him for having loved someone so much he was ready to cry—or kill—over it.

  Yet love can be terrible, too, the nameless voice told her, sadly. You have far too few words for so many things, granddaughter.

  Who is that? Yancey considered her life to have been far easier when she hadn’t had to ask herself such questions.

  Most ’specially so when the phantom intelligence in question didn’t even pause, before replying: No matter. Now watch—and be ready.

  For what?

  Just like that, however, the voice was gone.

  Pargeter, all blissful-unaware of this exchange, caught Yancey looking and sketched a mocking bow while Mister Morrow hurried to his side, muttering something Yancey couldn’t make out. But right as he got there, his foot stepped awry, bringing him down heavy on one knee. Shock lit Morrow’s face.