“Yancey!” Morrow yelled out again, in despair. And fell to his knees, head bowed, expecting nothing but a bullet for his pains—well-deserved, wherever it might come from.
Above, the sky stretched out blank, an endless darkening bruise; the wind blew cold, ruffling ’round Bewelcome’s reassembled edges, and he thought he could hear the stealthy steps of its returning citizens, none of whom he figured wished him well. But Ed Morrow stayed right where he was, not even bothering to sigh over just how badly his life—already precarious—had gone, in these last few seconds, to complete and irretrievable shit-pudding.
If Chess was still here—the real Chess—he’d’ve made sure it turned out right, somehow, he found himself thinking, foolishly certain. Knowing full well just how insane the very idea of that belief would’ve struck him, just a scant year or so past.
“Aw, pull yuirsel’ together,” Pinkerton said, briskly, from behind him. “For there’s no sight quite as wracking as a grown man gone womanish when there’s work tae be done in Justice’s cause, and vengeance aplenty tae be taken, along the way.”
Here their eyes did meet, at last, with a flinty little spark—and Morrow was somewhat startled to find his former employer rendered either once more human or mostly so, as though the stolen hex-fire were already draining from his veins. Even that accent of his seemed considerably less accelerated, the man himself re-sized to fit Morrow’s memories of him, from the days when both had held each other in good opinion.
“Thought it was me you wanted to wreak justice on,” he said, “not so long back.”
“Did I say that?” Pinkerton asked, with a shrug. “Well . . . might be I overspoke, a trifle. For war’s on its way, and we’ll need every last man standing tae make our assault—and courage in battle washes all clean, or so they say, no matter what mistakes a fella may have made, previous.”
Morrow looked down at the dirt once more, then clambered to his feet a bit unsteadily, and paused to dust his knees, before replying: “This vengeance, then—would it apply to Missus Kloves, as Missus Love surely still desires, or be exercised for her, along with everything else?”
To his credit, Pinkerton didn’t lie—not right then, at least.
“Uncertain, as yet. So . . . are ye amenable?”
“. . . I am,” Morrow said, finally. And reached, shoulders squared, to willingly shake the best-known devil in the current angry mob’s affably outstretched hand.
EPILOGUE
Somewhere else, entirely:
Chess came to by slow degrees, marrow-cold, with something unfamiliarly hard—and wet, and rough, and dirty—incising his cheek. Opened his eyes on darkness and squinted just the same, like he expected that to be any help.
Hollow echoes all ’round him, a great sigh and clatter, congregative. The clop of hooves and grate of wheels over—cobblestones, was that it? Like he’d heard tell they had in New York, a layer of pavers set ’neath the usual street muck and sluiced clean every half-year, shallow enough to be dug up and thrown in a pinch?—plus a distant, mammoth thrum and clank of engines, furnaces burning black, throwing dirt up into the skies.
And now, eking through that stinking yellow fog he’d thought was just his eyes, a whole city street arrived: buildings dilapidated and promiscuously overhung, jammed hugger-mugger as a junk-fiend’s teeth. Half-glazed cataract windows staring down, where they hadn’t been shattered wholesale; stagnant gutters and hinge-fallen doors; a sketchy crush of humanity loitering or roaming, wreathed in grime, ignoring Chess in the grip of their squalor. Raggedy skeleton children ran free as roaches, relieving themselves indiscriminately.
I know this place, Chess realized, a slow hollow birthing itself in his gullet’s lowermost pit. For God alone knew he’d heard it described, a thousand times over—the worst of all possible bedtime stories, told by one who’d been born there, only to steal and screw herself passage to what she’d dreamed was a far more exotic continent.
But this couldn’t be that place, surely—not after the Enemy’d stuffed him into some infernal belly-hole, prisoning him inside whatever tiny outpost of the Sunken Ball-Court that betraying sumbitch of a deity carried under those swinging slatted ribs where his heart should be, from which to pluck and don the faces of the dead.
All of ’em are mine, no matter ’oo. And all of ’em find their way down ’ere to me, eventually.
Chess’s hands slapped leather, automatically; no guns, of course. Not even holsters.
“Hell, then, one way or t’other,” he said out loud, resisting the urge to shiver. “Must be.”
“The ’Oly Land, more like,” somebody corrected him, from perilously nearby. “Or Seven Dials, they calls it, up-town. But close enough.”
A woman stood on the corner, angled toward him with a sort of hunger, as though she’d been following his trail far longer than either of them could calculate. Her hair was a sodden red tangle, grim smile in a fox-sharp face, skin pallid even in darkness, an uneven thumb-print smear—and the voice, Christ Jesus crucified. That bloody, bleedin’ voice.
“Don’t you know me, then?” she asked. “For I do know you, believe me, no matter ’ow long it’s been. I’d know you anywheres.”
As she spoke, all the anger flowed out of Chess at once, blood from a cut throat; the hollow at his core had swelled so large now he felt empty, a mere shed skin. Unable to stop himself from replying, though he well knew the error of it.
“Yeah, I know you, all right . . . Ma.”
He said it tonelessly enough, bowing his head down, almost like he meant to pray. And watched “English” Oona Pargeter’s nasty grin widen steadily in return—almost comically so, albeit without a touch of genuine humour—’til she went the whole hog, and dropped him a mocking little curtsey.
“Oh, that’s what you fink, sonny,” she replied.
TO BE CONTINUED in
A TREE OF BONES
VOLUME THREE OF THE HEXSLINGER SERIES
COPYRIGHT
A Tree of Bones © 2012 by Gemma Files
Cover artwork © 2012 by Erik Mohr
Cover design © 2012 by Samantha Beiko
Interior design © 2012 by Danny Evarts
All rights reserved.
Published by ChiZine Publications
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EPub Edition MARCH 2012 ISBN: 978-1-92685-164-8
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Edited and copyedited by Sandra Kasturi
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
DEDICATION
To Steve,
whose contribution grows greater
with every new book:
partner,
support, love.
And to Cal,
who keeps my hours full
and my intentions honest.
Otherwise: Elva Mai Hoover, Gary Files,
my surprisingly large roster of friends,
plus everyone else who has found themselves
developing a sneaking taste for
blood-soaked gay porno black magic horse opera.
The story is never over.
EPIGRAPH
Out there in the large dark and in the long light is the breathless
Poem,
As ruthless and beautiful and amoral as the world is,
As nature is.
In the end there’s just me and the bloody Poem and the murderous
Tongues of the trees,
Their glossy green syllables licking my mind (the green
Work of the wind).
—Gwendolyn MacEwen
Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.
—Suji Kwock Kim
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Book One: Rain-of-Fire Weather
Chapter One
Seven Dials: One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Seven Dials: Two
Book Two: Savage Weapons
Seven Dials: Three
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Seven Dials: Four
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Seven Dials: Five
Seven Dials: Six
Book Three: The Sixth World
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
From a missive sent by former Pinkerton Detective Agency man George Thiel from the Texican “ghost county” of Perdido — abolished in 1858 — to fellow ex-agent Frank P. Geyer, whereabouts unknown. To save paper (and create a crude cipher), sentences are cross-written, first from the bottom left-hand corner to the upper right-hand, then from the upper left-hand corner to the bottom right:
My dear colleague,
I write you this from the shelter of Texas, where fresh disputes w. Mexico are hotly brewing. Though we cannot be sure, repts. indicate a great host ready to march on N. Mexico at the whim of Emperor Maximilian. Said host is composed of Imperial soldiers, Carlotta colonists (who would have ever thought any American, defeated secesh or no, likely to change his citizenship on promise of undisputed slave ownership alone? Yet it has happened, it is happening) and other, even less desirable elements. A second Schism seems almost imminent, and all because cultists conflating Hex City’s devilish doyenne with Mary, Mother of God are streaming up over the Border and making their way to throw themselves at her bony feet, there to gash themselves with stones.
As one might expect, the Hapsburg considers this hexacious seduction of his citizenry further aggression from the United States, moving perilously close to an outright act of war. The Carlottas, in turn, have been ghosting up through Texas to catch and return as many as they can, which doesn’t make our allies happy. Thus far, President Johnson has gotten ’round it by claiming Hex City no longer part of the United States per se, thus implying he has allowed it to secede from the nation — which perhaps explains why he sent Capt. Washford and his Negro brigade down to help Pinkerton in the first place; i.e., so as to not encourage other only recently reintegrated parts of America to backslide. Texas, for example, where civilian government was only restored two scant years back.
One way or the other, our former mutual boss knows neither what he sows nor what the country at large will yet reap, as a consequence. The Texicans, a hot-headed race (to say the least), are poised to meddle, but without information, I fear this would be a fool’s game. So please tell me soonest what has come of your own quest, and address if you will all correspondence to the home of mine inestimable host, Texas Ranger Leander McNelly. Since I have no notion of where you presently reside, I send this via Apache scout. Awaiting further word, I account myself yr. most obt., etc., etc.
From Frank P. Geyer to George Thiel, one week and three days later:
George,
Since Pinkerton’s war on Hex City still rages apace and all notion of intelligence gathering seems frankly to have fallen by the wayside, I write to you directly. I am still wandering the wilderness like Elijah in exile, seeking after those ladies I told you of earlier — Mrs. Marshal Kloves (née Experiance Colder), a Spiritualist of some degree, plus the renegade squaw known as The Night Has Passed and that phantom shamaness she calls “Grandmother” or “Spinner,” who returned from the dead during Sheriff Love’s final battle with Chess Pargeter at Bewelcome.
Rumour has it that the Celestial sorceress “Songbird,” once Pinkerton’s confidante, may also be in their camp, making it the fullest roster of hexation-inclined females we might possibly hope to encounter. But since those same rumours imply she may yet be suffering from what other hexes fallen subject to Doctor Asbury’s vampire methods call the Little Death — i.e. been emptied of her reserves, down to the dregs and after — the prospect of her participation in any sort of revolt against our former boss may be considered moot.
As previously discussed, we have engaged a source inside Bewelcome itself to make contact with Ed Morrow, and possibly gain his observations from inside Camp Pink (since, loyal as I know him to be by nature, I suspect his true allegiance may lie elsewhere). While I fear the man in question essentially unreliable, I yet trust utterly in his ambition, as well as his skills at rhetorical politicking. I will retain his name for now, ’til next we meet in person.
Meanwhile, for all that Chess Pargeter remains supposedly dead, his influence — like that of his former paramour, Reverend Rook — seems to have infected the very landscape around us, altering it almost beyond recognition. Each night and morning, the weather witches of Hex City brew storms, lashing Bewelcome like a second Deluge; monstrous rumours abound, trumpeting creatures unrecognizable by any report. The Red Weed, too, still ranges apace, impinging on settlements with hideous results. What steadholders remain have resorted to routine self-exsanguination in order to drive it back, which in turn only serves to further establish the presence of that thing currently wearing Pargeter’s shape: Lady Ixchel’s sibling and rival, a black god which styles itself our whole world’s Enemy.
This entity roams the battlefield, appears in dreams to voice cryptic warnings, even pops up here and there to “help” one side or the other (its aid, like hers, bought always at the price of fresh-shed blood), before making itself once more scarce. Yet just as its overarching goals remain mysterious, its thirst for the same substance that powers the Lady’s soul-hungry Machine renders the very notion it might be somehow more trustworthy, laughable. Tezcatlipoca is, after all, the god of Chaos, Night, and Magic . . . as much a hex as any other, though writ so much dreadfully larger.
Reverend Rook and his kith aside, George, we are rolled like toys between two opposing devils — one angry, one amused. And increasingly, I cannot any longer begin to decide whose victory frights me more, as a prospect.
Your friend and ally,
Frank.
From a representative agglomeration of newspaper headlines recently filed by San Francisco Californian correspondent Fitz Hugh Ludlow for his series Notes on a Tenth Crusade: At the New Aztectlan Front, with Allan Pinkerton and the 13th Louisiana Regiment of Infantry (African Descent) —
THE HEXACIOUS — THEIR LATEST DEPREDATIONS EXPOSED
Fresh and Exciting Report
of how a Combined Battalion of Pinkertons and Negro Troops
Liberated, at Great Personal Cost,
<
br /> 23 Captives of No Magickal Skill,
Enticed and Enslaved by the Hex-Horde!
HORROR IN THE MOON-LADY’S STRONGHOLD
True Testimony of Victims Reveals
how Men, Women and Children of all ages, all races
Continue to Suffer Imprisonment, Assault (and Worse).
While Pinkerton and his Compact struggle
Vainly against Incalculable Odds,
Innocent Americans still fall Victim to the
Barbarous Old Mexican Practice of
Human Sacrifice!
FRESH NEWS OF THE HEX-WAR’S MAJOR PLAYERS
Agent Edward R. Morrow, Fully Reinstated
After his Flirtation with Outlawry,
while Professor Joachim Asbury,
Pinkerton’s Witch-Finding Weapon Master,
is even now Employed in Discovery of
New Anti-Hexological Methods;
In Bewelcome, Widow Sophronia Love makes no effort to Disguise her Disappointment over the Sad Fact that
Mrs. Kloves, Vigilante Murderess of Sheriff Mesach Love,
Remains, as yet, Un-apprehended.
Pinkerton’s Response: “We have more
Pressing Matters to Worry Over.”
And finally, a notice published in Bewelcome Township’s own Daily Letter:
All citizenry to assemble as of Four O’clock Sharp at the Nazarene Hall for Town Meeting; grievances aired and debate heard.
Resolutions to be voted upon accordingly.
In attendance: Mrs. Sophronia Love (Widow), Reverend Oren Catlin, Mayor Alonzo H. Langobard, with testimony on recent breakthroughs in all matters arcanistric from Doctor Joachim Asbury.
(Though most probably unable to join with us himself, Mister Pinkerton has promised at least one more high-placed representative of his organization will also be in attendance.)
The Hexslinger Omnibus Page 61
