A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  Every night, darkness beat the sun down like a hammer, reddening the horizon with its blood. Yet every dawn it struggled back up again, eager for similar punishment.

  Even with Chess, Rook had woken to an otherwise empty bed or bedroll as often as not, yet that fact had never troubled him, no more than when a housecat leapt from your lap, tired of caresses. Most times, he could crack open an eye, roll to one side and find Chess crouching sentinel by the fire’s ashes or sitting in a chair cleaning his pistols, green eyes bright in the gloom. Never far, with something always left behind — some heat, some scent — to hold his place ’til he came back.

  The bed Rook slept in now, in a vast stone room midway up the Temple’s side, was the grandest he’d seen west of the Mississippi: down-filled pillows, silken sheets, rich dark wood ornately carved as any Continental throne. And if it might’ve been nothing but deadfall and grave cloth before the Lady set her power to it, that hardly mattered, for once fixed in shape, the sybaritic softness was real enough. But however many nights Ixchel shared it with him — fewer and fewer, of late — no warmth ever lingered in its hexaciously self-cleaning sheets. The limestone walls held cold silence, as if jealous of the favour their maker showed him; the chalky flint of the floor stung his feet, and shadows sulked in every corner. Rook almost wished he had his Bible back, just so’s he might find words enough to express how deeply he’d come to hate it.

  But a room amongst the people did not befit the High Priest-king of New Aztectlan — and hateful though it might be, Rook had to admit, this chamber did have its advantages: wards fierce enough to keep anybody but Herself from entering without his say-so, for example, or wake him if anyone tried. So when the Mexican girl, Ixchel’s pet — Marizol, her name was, one of the blood-cult’s get — walked in, Rook snapped instantly alert, cold and tense, a literal curse on his lips.

  “Jefe?” Her accent, so like that of dead Miz Adaluz — Ixchel’s unfortunate first vessel — slurred liquid yet higher-pitched, diffident and breathy. “Forgive me — the Lady, she said I could come. That you could . . . use me.”

  Use you? Well, that was mighty nice of her. Like how, I wonder?

  Rook felt the urge to laugh and a surge of anger, but managed to fight ’em both down, hopefully unnoticed. This job certainly was good for his self-restraint, if nothing else.

  “Marizol,” he rasped, scrubbing a palm ’cross his bristles. “I’m sure the Lady must have . . . a sight more useful things for you to do than wait on me. Could be you’re needed at services, maybe? In the Moon Court?”

  Marizol shook her head. “No, jefe, please! I don’t want to go back — you don’t know, I think, how bad it’s gotten. Terrible things are done there. Terrible . . .” She seemed a mere shadow herself, face unreadable. “Lady Rainbow, she knows I like it here, far more than back with mis padres, los Penitentes — I’ll run errands, do whatever’s needed. Anything. So if you truly have no use for me, maybe just send me on to someone who will . . . Mister Glass-eyes Hank, or his ‘g’hals’?”

  “Darlin’,” he said, as gently as he could, “I’m sure you mean well, but — the Missuses Fennig are hexes, you understand? Brujas. Can’t think what-all you might do for ’em that they couldn’t get just as easy from each other, or almost anybody else.”

  As he’d assumed, Marizol had no answer for that one. Just stood still, biting her lip, while Rook let his mind wander back to the rest of her group, whom he rarely saw; they lived sequestered in Ixchel’s throne room, that raw stone hole she’d taken to calling the Moon Court, pouring the juice of themselves out like water for her to feast on — and died, too, the most tapped-out amongst ’em conveniently content to stagger to the window slits and throw ’emselves out, so’s not to stink up the place. But then again, there always seemed to be more where they came from.

  That the cultists’ faith bolstered Ixchel’s power was undeniable — but in a way, it was equally good for everyone else, as well; kept the Machine fed, so nobody had to bleed for it who didn’t want to. And though the Americans had resented the “lottery” system which chose victims at random, these Mex enthusiasts were downright happy to contribute, volunteering with a smile, instead of being tricked or taxed into it.

  Not all of ’em, though, he guessed, looking into Marizol’s frightened eyes while she stared on, mute pleading writ large in every line — older by far than when she’d first arrived, if only in spirit, her slender figure bent with the weight of that moonstone-laden trinket Ixchel’d clasped ’round her throat like some thrall’s collar.

  “Please,” she repeated, without much hope. As though he could do anything about . . . anything.

  Goddamnit, little girl, you’re come amongst nothing but monsters and bad men here, even the ones you think you like. If you’ve any hope of surviving, you need to grow the hell up.

  “Your parents know where you are?” Rook asked her, finally.

  “Mi madre, mi padre . . . they stay with Her, always.” The implied capital rang strangely chilling. “They don’t need me. She don’t need me.”

  Repeating it like a rosary, in fervent hopes that if she said it enough times, it’d make it so. When the truth was, Ixchel did have a very specific use for this girl-child, as the gal herself probably well knew. With her current body withering, held together only by magic and sheer awful will, the dread goddess needed a new one to cram herself inside, and was grooming Marizol for that express purpose — the way her Enemy-brother Smoking Mirror had with Chess, maybe, after Bewelcome’s resurrection left him bled out and on the point of dying. Trying to make her want to submit, aspire to nothing so much as to be Ixchel’s ixiptla, her sacrificial anchor in this world . . . the carrion-fed human tree from which all her grand schemes might finally bear their stinking, blood-soaked fruit.

  Rook remembered walking in on them together, in the Throne Room — Ixchel balancing Marizol on her bony knee like an uncomfortably large child, extolling her loveliness while stroking her up and down. All but counting down the days to Marizol’s “flowering,” the very instant she’d be mature enough to consent, while simultaneously trying to ladle boiled-sugar sweets into her with both hands.

  Dear child, hold still; have more, if it pleases you. Tell me that you love me — that you hold me in your heart, as I hold you in mine. Oh, what a pretty thing you are!

  In his mind’s recesses, Rook heard Ixchel’s deeper dream-voice murmur, as it once had to him alone: This well is full of bones, and all of them have “been” me, little king . . . all of them, and none.

  Sometimes she made the girl thorn-rope her own tongue, dragging each prickly link through in turn, while her cheeks glazed with tears. Then kissed her deeply, spreading the blood between them both like rouge.

  Rook shut his eyes on the image, just for a breath. Choked down a sliver of bile, and tried to cast his mind elsewhere — only to have it slide back to Chess, and all the harm he’d done him, in the process of trying to “save” him. As the God he’d abandoned only knew, Rook had spent some long, numbed time after that last skirmish thoroughly convinced that by struggling to turn Chess’s Hell-bound trajectory Heaven-ward once more, he’d done nothing but get the one man in all the world he’d ever cared for killed outright. But even though he’d since had ample proof to the contrary, he still didn’t believe that the thing wearing his hide “was” Chess, not where it most counted. For nobody could meet that black stone gaze, in battle or out of it, and truly think they saw any part of Chess Goddamn Pargeter staring back . . . not if they were intimately familiar with the original, at any rate.

  Chess, however, had gotten no forewarning of Rook’s perfidy — while Marizol, far as Rook could figure, understood at least a bit of what Ixchel had in store for her, and shunned it. For much as her parents might worship the Lady, this girl had been dragged here, threatened with abandonment and damnation every step of the way. What few charms Hex City held for her all lay outside Ixchel’s quarters, back in the sunlight, amongst people who’d only died o
nce — thus far.

  “Please, jefe,” she said again, “don’t send me back there. Not yet.”

  Did she truly think he could do anything about her lowering fate? If so, she was a fool. Ask anyone and they’d tell you just what Reverend Asher Rook’s role was, in this whole affair: to stand by Ixchel’s side, take her orders and do her will. To watch and wait, raise his hand whenever she voted, and — above all — be silent.

  Rook sighed, and sat up. “Get my boots then, gal, and walk me down to the council meeting — that’s where you’ll find Fennig and company, if nothin’ else.”

  As Marizol ran jackrabbit-quick to obey, gratitude bright in every line of her, Rook felt it sink deep in his side like Longinus’ spear, and twist: Christ’s wounds, stigmata, the old Catholic heresy. As though such as I was pure enough to even imagine such pain, let alone feel it — to hang a second’s tick on His bright cross even in mockery, when merely to contemplate the very idea is error, if not sin outright.

  He shut his eyes one more time, shook his head emphatically, as though to clear it. And swung himself out of bed, joints cracking prodigiously, to face yet another day of war.

  The council met most mornings, always in the same place: that very adobe-walled house, overlooking the Temple, on whose roof Rook had once raised the shade of dead Kees Hosteen, his friend and fellow outlaw. Inside, watery sunlight trickled through the slotted windows, nowhere warm enough to dispel this dull November chill, seeing last night had brought snow in feathery drifts. Someone should’ve already gone ’round the walls, lighting dish-lamps full of stolen oil . . . and would’ve, he supposed, had the group already there not found ’emselves so deep in conversation.

  “I can help?” Marizol asked, at his elbow, looking longingly toward the table’s end, where Three-Fingered Hank and his ladies sat — and as though cued, dark Eulie Parr looked up just in time to catch the girl’s eye and grinned, beckoning. Marizol’s face coloured prettily, a lamp unto itself. Sketching a quick curtsey, she knelt to lay her head in the youngest Missus Fennig’s lap while Berta Schemerhorne reached over to stroke her hair comfortingly, and Clo Killeen continued to whisper away in Hank’s ear, her hushed tones typically ferocious.

  Happy to give little Marizol and her troubles up, Rook conjured a brief flicker between his fingers, and set himself to bringing light out of darkness. The dishes themselves were hex-free; likewise, the splintery table, mismatched chairs and benches had all been brought to the city as they were, without any touch of magic, while the hut itself was one of the few buildings sufficiently well made to stand without active spell-work.

  That was the irony of it — in a city of hexes, where the innate hunger of hex for hex made every flare of power perceptible to any who cared to look, the only way to hide was to disdain hexation. In New Aztectlan, anti-scrying cloaks were nothing but black blankets in a white room — there was no spell another hex couldn’t pierce, given patience or luck. As with so much else, therefore, the best way to avoid detection was to simply never prompt anyone to look, since the only truly unprovable lie was one you never spoke at all.

  But then, we never do have to speak, out loud, we don’t want to — not so’s you’d notice. Ain’t that right, Rev?

  Rook nodded, acknowledging the sly twang of Fennig’s mind-voice, before casting his eyes back over to where his unofficial right hand slouched comfortably, all three of his “wives” chatting away with Marizol, as Eulie and Berta balanced the extremely enceinte Clo precariously between ’em. Rook raised an eyebrow at the Irish girl’s bulging belly, then directed a half-reproving glance to Fennig, who shrugged.

  Can’t get her to do nothin’ she don’t want, Rev, anymore’n you can get her not to do whatever she’s set on. I’m sure you know the type.

  Clo, keen enough to catch the exchange — at least in abstract — went red to her ear-tips. “Something ye want to say, Reverend?” she demanded. But Rook, knowing better, refused to be drawn — he raised his palms, which counted for enough of a surrender that Clo let herself slump back, still scowling, into Berta and Eulie’s supporting grip. “’Tis only that walking’s more labour than once ’twas,” she said. “But I have as much right to a place at this table as any other, caught short or not, as I’ll thank ye to remember.”

  Rook fought the urge to smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Oh, but he could see why the other three loved this girl, difficult as she was, defiant and fiery to the very last. But here remembrance closed his throat once more, crushing it, a second hangman’s noose.

  At the same time, a grey-haired, mahogany-skinned woman whose muscular frame spoke of too much labour and not enough food, rendering what her Maker might once have intended as womanly curvaceousness with unforgiving strokes, was taking her seat on Fennig’s other side. “Brazier and coals still not ready to hand, Rev’rend?” she drawled, passing out a kerchief-wrapped basket of rolls stuffed with meat, peppers and cheese.

  The Rev shook his head. “There’s too many would remember such an odd request, by far. So if these gatherings’ purpose is to remain private . . . .”

  Sal Followell shook her head. “Secrets like snakes,” she grumbled. “Hard t’hold onto, no matter the circumstances — and they slither.”

  “Got that right,” Fennig agreed, glancing ’round. “So where’s the Honourable himself, old Mister Chu?”

  “Ain’t comin’,” Missus Followell replied. “Him and the Shoshone been up all night on war party business, so they sends their regrets — talkin’ ’bout dragons under the earth and such, how best they can entice ’em out t’help us. Well, Chu thinks it’s dragons and the Shoshone thinks it’s spiders, but I ain’t minded much which of ’em’s rightest, so I left ’em to it.”

  Clo had already finished her portion, devouring it like a feral dog. Rook gave her his too, earning a brilliant smile from Clo and a glare from the old Negress, who snapped: “You ain’t too much hex to need to eat, Reverend.”

  Fennig took a ginger bite, with rather less enthusiasm. “Much obliged for the thought, Missus F.,” he said, “but, ah . . . exactly what’s this we’re eating, again? Wasn’t just conjured, was it?”

  “An’ what if it was, Yankee man?”

  “Pax, Missus F.; truce. No insult intended. It’s just that me and the g’hals, we tried that, travellin’ here. Didn’t yield much pleasantness.”

  Rook remembered a hex-crafted cob of corn, melting to slimy decay in his mouth, and wanted to spit. “True enough,” he said. “Well, ma’am? Have we come to that pass?”

  Followell sighed. “Stores is tight,” she admitted. “With Pinks camped all ’round the outside walls, we can’t take no small-folk on raids anymore, and there ain’t many strong enough to wind-walk over them, or side-slip beyond. If we weigh our stocks careful, and ain’t too fussed ’bout what we eat — not like some — we can go ’nother four, six weeks. Longer, we get some more strong hexes come to join us.”

  Fennig cleared his throat. “Yeah . . . might not be much cause for cheer on that front, neither.” As Rook motioned him to continue: “Since you delegated Oath-takin’ duties to me and the g’hals, Rev, you probably ain’t had opportunity to notice, but we ain’t been gettin’ much new blood for some weeks now. Stragglers, mostly — and they’re weak, too. Some of them’s still gettin’ pressed by the Pinks, sure, but . . .” Fennig doffed his smoked-glass spectacles a moment, rubbing at the marks they’d left on his nose. “I’m beginnin’ to think how maybe the well’s just run dry.”

  Never so many of us in one spot before, his mind-voice echoed, unheard by any but Rook — or was that true? Probably the Missuses could listen in to that particular telegraph line too, they cared to bend their will to it. Yet still it struck an intimate chord, a note of desperation Rook couldn’t ever remember having heard in Fennig’s roguish waking speech. What if the Call’s finally brung all there was to bring? What if we’re all there’s left to feed —

  The Machine, Rook completed. To feed the Machine.


  They were all still predators, however much the Oath kept them from each other’s throats. Perhaps Fennig thought Rook had forgotten that . . . or perhaps, in his Utopian blur, he’d all but forgotten it himself.

  Still, the one thing left he couldn’t afford was for any of the rest to think him afraid.

  “I’ve been advising the Lady to stop the Call for some weeks now,” Rook lied. “Obviously, it’s done all it can; just swelling Pinkerton’s ranks more than our own at this point, anyhow. Once it’s no longer drawing power, meanwhile, the Machine’s . . . appetite should diminish, enough to give us time enough to find another source.”

  “Source of what, exactly?” Clo asked. “Feedstock?”

  “Sustenance,” Rook corrected. “All cities are gluttons on their own flesh. New York any different in that respect, Hank?”

  “New York’s got close on a million lives to spare, Reverend,” Fennig replied, “whereas if we’ve topped five thousand, it’s news to me. How many hexes die a day on the Moon Court’s altar? Six? Eight?”

  “Used to be, sure. Less by far, since the Mexes turned up.”

  Leaning forward, Fennig’s three-fingered hand jabbed the tabletop. “’Kay, then: let’s say, without the Call, the Lady don’t need more’n one or two. Anyone care to wager on her choosin’ to settle for what she ‘needs,’ ’stead’a whatever she damn well feels like takin’?”

  Rook’s voice hardened. “We’ve all gone that bet, Henry,” he rumbled. “All staked our lives on her bein’ wise enough not to waste what she can’t replace yet, not before we’ve won for good. You’re lettin’ your fear run away with your temper, and this ain’t the time.”

  Fennig held still a moment, but subsided, his breathing harsh. “Not like we don’t have options, either,” Rook added, “unkind as they might strike certain tenderer ears amongst us. Auntie Sal — in your informed status as Midwife General, how many of our hexaciously inclined female citizens are currently about to bear progeny, ’sides from the obvious?”