A Rope of Thorns

by Gemma Files

  Six cars, and none of them an engine: a passenger carriage, black Pullman dining car, plus four rust-and-brown boxcars, the latter three padlocked tight. Chess could feel the power packed dense within these, cramped as contortionists wedged into an impossibly small space, invisibly a-smoke with misery. Around the fourth, meanwhile, a full squad of armed and uniformed Pinks had deployed themselves, shotgun and rifle muzzles levelled steady. It said something for the sick and fevered menace that boiled around Allan Pinkerton, where he stood on the train’s caboose, that these men—Chess’s favourite prey from childhood on—were one of the last things he’d noticed.

  A moment later, he realized, with so little dismay it was a shock in itself: Aw, hell. They look like Ed used to. He tried to summon the old hot hatred—a hundred tales of authority abused, slight well worth killing over—but felt it slip right through his fingers, and soon found that even that failure wasn’t enough to spur him on to new fury.

  God damn, he raged to himself, don’t I get to keep anything I used to love doin’?!

  All the frenzied activity and panicked flight, all that forward-seeking heat and dust and motion, all the destruction left behind, and this was all it got him, faced off like he’d been in that Tampico hotel room six weeks ago, with the exact same suspects: Pinkerton, the Chinee bitch-witch, that idjit tinkerer with his gadgets. And poor Ed for collateral, along with young miss Yancey—would one of ’em go down, like Hosteen had? Both?

  This was different, though; bone and blood told him so. The light itself seemed scarred, imparting a skew to everything, making the salten ground under his feet ring fragile as a canvas scrim. All of it tilted somehow, threatening to tear clean through.

  I shouldn’t be here, he thought. Then surprised himself by following that already surprising statement up with: Nobody else should, either.

  “Mister Pinkerton.” Ed staggered to his feet, bringing Yancey up with him. “You’ve no reason at all to credit my word, not now—but if you stick your oar in here, it’ll cost lives don’t need to be lost.” He turned to Songbird. “And you, lady . . . you must’ve seen what went on in Mouth-of-Praise and the Hoard for yourself, in your scry-mirror; you need to tell ’em what they’re facing. Before—”

  “What we face, Mister Morrow,” Pinkerton’s tar-and-gravel voice boomed out, making an obvious effort to regain intelligibility, “is renewed war wi’ Mexico, over the devastation of their capital by yuir invert sorcerer allies! Do ye no’ ken how fierce President Johnson is tae avoid another conflict, wi’ our own nation still in tatters?” Pinkerton leaned forward, febrile eyes ablaze. “I’ve been given carte blanche to deal wi’ them as I see fit—to purge this hexslinger-birthed rot from American soil. The garrison at Yuma has already been ordered in, plus a full detachment of the Treasury’s Secret Service Division; the Army’s strength is mine, too, for the asking. We’ll start here, and then move on tae Rook’s hex-haven, razing as we go.”

  “Johnson? The man’s a fool and a double-crosser, as you well know, from his conduct during Wartime!” Though Morrow aimed his words at Pinkerton, Chess could tell he meant them for the men below, whose eyes had begun to flicker sidelong, looking for certainty in their fellows, and not finding it. “Don’t let yourself be used, sir. Don’t throw yourself—your men—away.”

  From Pinkerton, no response at all; from Songbird, only a delicate yawn. But from Asbury—a slackened jaw, cut with dismay. Chess watched him look Pinkerton up and down as if truly seeing him for the first time, and saw that dismay deepen.

  “A man might truly believe ye meant only the best for us, Edward, after all,” Pinkerton scoffed. “But then again, seems ye’ve found an innocent of yuir own tae protect.” The collar shifted, hidden smile beneath rendered awful by exclusion, as his regard fell on Yancey.

  Songbird snorted. “No innocent, this one, Pinkerton-ah. She has her own minor witchery, steeped in Pargeter’s taint. Not that it is any match for mine.”

  “I don’t recall giving you permission to speak for me, little girl,” Yancey told her, coldly. To Pinkerton: “Experiance Kloves, sir; widow to the Marshal Uther Kloves, of Hoffstedt’s Hoard, who gave his life against—that thing, over there.” She indicated Sheriff Love, who just stood there with fists clenched, fuming at the interruption. “So I think I’ve as much right to a say in this matter as any of you.”

  Pinkerton’s brows might have lifted just a notch, while Asbury’s cheeks reddened further. “We . . . we deeply regret the suffering visited upon you, Madam, as on all unwittingly placed in the path of this chaos,” the Professor said, weakly. “But surely, that only shows you how Messrs. Pargeter and Rook must be contained, before they cause more of the same, to others.”

  “Aw, name of Christ Jesus, stop lumpin’ me in with Ash Goddamn Rook!” Chess shouted. “We ain’t joined no more, at the hip or elsewise! I’d spill his blood sooner than any of you!”

  Pinkerton, with high disdain said, “Yuir arrangements are of nae interest tae me, Pargeter. Will ye cooperate peaceful, or must we assert oursel’s? An answer is all I require.”

  But it was Love who replied, finally roused to action.

  “Then I believe you’ll all just have to wait your turn, to get it,” the Sheriff said, and whipped eel-quick to the front of the line, past Chess, Yancey and Morrow alike; his passage’s gust whipped up salt-crystals in every direction, drawing blood and breath, while Chess and his companions just stood fast.

  ’Cause we’re used to it, Yancey thought, with grim humour.

  “We’re taking Pargeter in, Sheriff,” was all the prime Agent replied, however. “That is the fact of it.” Adding, as if he’d only that moment remembered: “And we’ve a raft of charges tae append to you as well, while we’re at it.”

  “I’m surprised you use my rightful title.”

  “Why not? They’ve no’ elected anyone else in your stead, since Pargeter and Rook laid ye low.”

  “No, ’cause there’s none left to vote on the matter. And where was this private army of yours when Satan’s minions made sure of that, I wonder?”

  From Asbury, hastily: “Mister Pinkerton can’t be expected to maintain a presence in every homestead, surely, Mister Love! Besides which, it was your own . . . misfortunes which caused him to send to the Department of Experimental Arcanistry, leading to the engagement of my services.”

  “To do what? Take reckonings, measurements, while my flock wears away by degrees?”

  Asbury blanched, unable to keep his eyes from jittering to a nearby triplicate entanglement of what had once been men, uppermost of whom Chess thought he recognized: Same fucker’d held him down and broke his nose for him while the others laid on the boots, before Rook finally joined the party. Now he was missing half his own beak, left-hand eye socket hollow. And the oddity of it was, though Chess would usually have had to kick himself to rouse even a semblance of sympathy, he now found he felt . . . quite the opposite.

  Like I’d have to work hard not to care ’bout what that sumbitch brought on himself, he thought, panic rising in his empty chest.

  “No’ our charge,” Pinkerton threw back, unmoved. “From all reports, I’d’ve supposed ye a man well capable of looking after yuirself, let alone yuir kith and ki—”

  “You shut your damnable mouth.”

  The sound slid in, so low Chess felt it in his joints and skull-plates, a sickeningly deep roar. Without thinking, he put forth his own power, rooting himself to the ground; Morrow and Yancey, not similarly anchored, clung together, swaying. The hex-run train jolted, cars sent crashing up against one another; thin-voiced cries skirled out from inside locked boxcars. Pinkerton gripped the caboose railing hard as Asbury lurched beside him, wide-eyed. Songbird, meanwhile, merely lifted off, scarlet-lacquer parasol shifting neatly to block the sun as she hovered mid-air a few inches above the planks, staring down.

  And the Pinks, all thirty or so, howled rage that turned swiftly to terror as waves of salt—liquid-flexible yet still stone-hard, and h
eavy—came flowing up their boots and legs, encasing them ’til only their fear-maddened faces remained free. Then put forth yet another delicate membrane at Love’s command, and sealed over the men’s mouths, silencing them.

  “There,” the Sheriff said. “That’s better.”

  Between the paralyzed Pinks and Chess’s fellow travellers, three mighty columns reached high, then bent over, ends splintering to a dozen sharpened points—each of which bore down on a different target: Pinkerton, Songbird, even Asbury, now gone a truly sick-looking grey.

  “You will not interfere with my appointed retribution,” Love stated. “Your men have no power over me, and your allies, Mister Pinkerton . . . like yourself . . . stink of hexation, as the Devil breathes sulphur. Whereas I have divinity at my back. So here’s the choice, plain and simple: let Pargeter and me settle this, and live—or interfere, and face God’s judgement.”

  Songbird said, “A god, yes. But which one?”

  Love’s face tightened in a snarl. Perhaps only by contrast, he looked strangely more human than Chess had seen him, since—well, before.

  “Any that’ll answer,” he ground out, eyes roaming from figure to motionless figure. A faint skitter of powdered salt blew harsh over the granulated crystalline ground. “This is my place. I raised this town. My people, my wife, my boy stolen from me, hand over fist—” His ash-and-grit voice almost broke, but not quite. “If such reckless injury was wrought upon Union Pacific, would you do less? No. So I will have full measure. I will have what I am owed.”

  In front of him, the air shimmered. For a moment, Chess almost feared he was crying, and felt aghast—but no. It was more as though Chess could see time itself peel back, by five years, by ten. The town it had been, unpolished, but reared with dedication; Love and his woman Sophy, hugely gravid, laughing over their work; the empty plain of grey-green scrub and grass, waiting for Love’s arrival. And then . . . something else again, incomprehensibly old, a wild moonscape of shale and sandstone that knew no human footfall at all roared softly with a phantom slosh and moan, melting wax-cylinder imprint captured from the memory of some aeons-gone sea.

  Over and above one another the images wildly slid like shuffled cards, the heart of this gutted place anchoring everything to its dead centre. Past overlaid present in bare, dark-on-dark fragments, atavistic shadows reared up behind muslin hung to dry, lizards bigger than grizzly bears that jostled and snapped at each other, with nothing on what passed for their minds but kill-or-be-killed carnage.

  It was this place, itself. This place had always been weak, a sore in the world’s hide that never wholly healed, only broke open again and again beneath time’s ceaseless friction. The crack through which both light and darkness seeped in.

  As Love turned to face him, Chess wondered whether the Sheriff had chosen it for that same weakness—knowing he heard his God so much clearer here, yet never thinking to ask why.

  Or maybe it’d just been Goddamned shitty bad luck.

  The laughter which exploded out of him caught even Chess by surprise, stopping Love flat in his tracks. Even Songbird frowned.

  “Silence!” But Love’s cry was too cracked for real power, his clenched fists impotent. “You will not make a jest of this! His Judgement—” As Chess drowned him out with another helpless squall, the man’s bloodless face looked fit to explode. “STOP that!” he screamed.

  “Muh . . . make me, ya fuckin’ puppet.” Chess had to brace his hands on his knees, whooping deep gasps. “Still think you’re some kind’a holy vessel? God’s Left Hand? Only if his Right don’t know what you’re doin’!” Eyes swimming, he forced himself to straighten. “You want payback, then take it in your own name, and spare me the God-botheration. Hell—” He grinned, and Love visibly recoiled. “I always figured whoever took me down, it’d be someone had good reason to be pissed—and you do, for sure. So just end it. Now.”

  For half a second he thought Love might actually refuse.

  The sheer unlikeliness of that idea turned to laughter once more—an uncontrollable gout of it—and Love’s expression changed, accordingly. The need to be morally in the right was gone. Only the need to hurt remained.

  Chess watched with an almost euphoric detachment as a fourth spear-headed limb of salt burst up out of the ground, circling to orient its razor-sharp tip upon him. Come on, you bastard, he mouthed, come on, come on—

  NO.

  Yancey’s warning struck him like a slap; he spun, and her eyes met his, as angry as Love’s had ever been. I haven’t hurt him how he merits, yet, she complained, lips unmoving. So if you won’t fight of your own choosing . . . I’ll damn well make you fight!

  And with that, the reckless bitch sunk her teeth into her own wrist.

  “Jesus!” Morrow yelled out, as blood welled up and spattered down, soaking swiftly into the salt-crust, and Chess felt the power explode back into him, hitting every internal pleasure point at once. Head thrown back, he was unable to prevent the sheer brutal ecstasy of sacrifice from swirling into him; he felt green light flare from his pores, reflecting off every salt-crystal, as Love’s spear broke apart like icing sugar. And the feeling only got better when Morrow snatched out his knife, cut his own palm open and wrapped it ’round Yancey’s wound, a flesh tourniquet.

  Up on the train, Pinkerton’s eyes caught that same green glare and drank it in, his unwieldy coat going up like tinder; heavy wool was scorched by green fire, crumpling away from Pinkerton’s body like parchment. Eyes wide, Songbird spat some incomprehensible Chink oath and lofted herself even further, safe out of reach, power-halo cocooned. And Chess just stared, understanding at last what he’d sensed all along—why that feverish power bleeding off Morrow’s ex-boss had felt so familiar.

  Because . . . it was his.

  That last moment of the Tampico confrontation came back, daguerreotype-sharp: cross-drawing his empty guns and firing all the same, loaded at a blink with nothing but spellcraft, and driven by the same instinctive rage Bewelcome had fallen to. Breaks outta me and busts through you like the ball I made of it—Chess could almost see it happening—then dashes itself to pieces, same as any other ordnance, leaving a shred of itself behind in the furrow . . . a seed.

  Taking the top off the Scotsman’s ear had birthed an unnatural, gangrenous infection in its wake, eating into body and mind alike: Chess’s magic, worming its way into Pinkerton first as something fought, then embraced. Hexation treated with hexation, breeding a taste for the same. Thus making this—disease of his the issue, come to term in a storm of pure man-witchery.

  From that one moment had come all the lunacy that followed: paranoid mistrust of his own underlings; support for Asbury’s projects, from mass-produced Manifolds to this train itself, driven by hexes chained up like Roman galley slaves; the mad determination to destroy any obstacle in his path. The obsession which had brought him here, setting him on a collision course with Ash Rook, the Rainbow Lady, Hex City.

  All my fault, Chess thought, and Christ, he was so tired of that not-so-simple truth. Just like every other Goddamn thing.

  Pinkerton’s coat was gone, the collar concealing his face burnt away. What lay beneath was awfully familiar, in both senses.

  Chess remembered his Ma, droning away—Oh, the drip’s bad enough, Christ knows, or them itchin’ bloody warts, but the Germ? The French Complaint? Might as well save up for a bullet an’ shoot yerself, do yerself a friggin’ favour. ’Cause that’s one case where the cure really ain’t worse than the disease, by ’alf.

  Lion-faced, lips and nose all blurred together with sores, an inward-seeking pit that ruffled with each breath; his spit welled up silver, like Pinkerton had taken the mercury dose already. Ore cinnabar rimmed his single nostril, furled bat-snout lips, the exposed top teeth. And those piggy little rogue-elephant eyes, so full of rheum and ire . . .

  Asbury made the single most ridiculous sound Chess’d ever heard a grown man let fly, a squeak muffled behind both fists—all but threw himself back against
the railing, as if trying to push his way right through it. Seeing his reaction, Songbird whirled in mid-air, red skirts belling, and though she made no sound, her shock showed equal-fierce: her shield-aura blazed up, too bright to look at. Morrow took a stumbling step backward, jaw similarly slack; this time, it was Yancey’s turn to support him. To knit her hand with his, and let their blood fall where it might.

  “Boss . . .” Morrow rasped.

  “This is what yuir comrade made of me, Edward.” Gluey decay permeated Pinkerton’s voice, yet it rang with good cheer, as though abandoning any attempt to still sound human was purest relief. He was bigger than he’d been, too, shirt all but buttonless, braces strained over swollen shoulders. “Dinna fret, though—it’s no’ nearly so unpleasant as it appears. I barely sleep; my perceptions are clearer, keener. And I’m strong now, Edward—so strong, it beggars belief!” Ham-hands closed on the ironwork railing before him, and tore it out of the caboose’s frame with a screeching snap. Contemptuously, he cast it down, then hopped out after it. With one fist, he smashed the base of the nearest salt-spear; it burst like cheap porcelain, gone to dust and powder in an instant.

  Sort of behaviour’ll sure change your image of a man, no matter how “good” you reckon ’im, Chess mused, seeing how the salt-trapped Pinks’ eyes bulged, on finally glimpsing their leader in the altogether. Or maybe ’specially so, you were dumb enough to think that well of anybody, in the first damn place.

  Love stepped forward. “Thought as much,” he spat. “You wish him kept alive because his Devil’s might sustains you; you crave it all, for yourself. By God, that shall not be!”