by Gemma Files
“Do not flatter, Experiance Kloves. Even one so old as I does not always sense everything, immediately.”
“Mmmm, and the eddies of the ch’i still swirl in disturbance,” Songbird agreed, conjuring a marshlight sphere between her palms, illuminating her frown of concentration. “There may be more on the way, requiring vigilance from all. We have been undeservedly lucky.”
“In more ways than one,” Yiska murmured, smiling. To which Songbird looked down, unmistakably pleased, and Yancey grinned again.
For a moment, only — a wholly uncharitable one — Sophy’s thoughts went back to Chess Pargeter and his Reverend, Leviticus 18:22, and everything similar. But . . . if whatever had grown up between these two ladies was somehow helping Songbird to find her place in the world, she felt unqualified to resent it; they already were unnatural, after all, to begin with. A bit more wouldn’t hurt, probably.
Nothing ’gainst it in Holy Writ that I can cite to the contrary, either — not specifically.
Grandma said, “We must close this fissure, that much is clear. But how, even with the red boy’s help?”
Songbird cleared her throat. “In Ch’in,” she offered, “our doctors say that sometimes a wound must be unpicked, in order to heal cleanly.”
Didn’t mean much to Sophy, on the face of it — or the others, outside of those two. But Grandma nodded, slowly. “I see your meaning — it gives me an idea, though we will have to wait until the red boy comes back up to try it, for it will require all our strength. And so . . .”
Songbird nodded. “So.”
She looked to Yancey, then. As, one by one, so did the rest of them.
Yes, Sophy realized. Because — just like her part in the Oath, guiding Gabe through me, this is something only she, of all of us, can do.
Yancey sighed, and nodded too. “Down again, then,” she said, to herself. “Always down.”
They hadn’t bothered to re-light the conjure-fire, since the light pouring from Songbird and Gabe — along with the harsher white radiance of Grandma’s unlocked power — cast all the luminance they could possibly need. Beyond it, forewarned, Yiska’s warriors stood in a further circle, with spears, knives and bows at the ready. Yancey couldn’t say she minded.
She sat cross-legged at the circle’s centre with an ally at every compass-point, feeling their varying degrees of power weave around her like a bridled cyclone, pulling the lips of the Crack farther apart than they’d ever before reached. A feeling of thinness, insubstantiality, coiled in Yancey’s gut; she had to breathe slow and even to steady herself, eyes tightly closed. On either side, the hexes blazed pyre-bright in her awareness, while Yiska and Sophy were blank spots, deep-rooted as rail spikes — different by faith, yet identically solid in their convictions. Yancey fixed each location in her mind, sensing their pull, the anchoring she counted on to call her home, if she happened to slip too deep.
Then, without ritual or hesitation — she was long past the need for either — she whooshed out her breath like a diver, and let go of the world.
That the plunge always felt “downward” was probably mere sophistry, since she’d never believed in the Underworld actually being under everything. But her dream-self, which thought in such terms, always held more power than her waking one, especially here.
Too quickly to reckon, Yancey’s sense of the others shot upward and away, receding with blinding speed; a thundering wind and a sickening weightlessness engulfed her, as though she’d flung herself off some impossibly high cliff. The first time, hurtling abyss-ward, she’d screamed her throat raw. Now she only clenched her teeth and held focus, falling.
Within moments (or hours), she felt the track she’d worn on previous descents closing ’round her, a tunnel burrowing between worlds. The fall became a slide, at first smooth, then painfully bumpy, ’til her feet touched down on something like rock: black, ice-streaked, biting with cold. Yancey cupped her arms ’round herself, and shivered. This was farther down than she had ever gone, and she was dismayed to realize that — like a hawk stooping on prey, and missing — she had lost the bird’s-eye sense of where Chess and Oona were, in the sprawling tapestry of deadlands. She’d come too close to the map, and could no longer read it.
The bleak, colourless terrain of the half-world spread out below her in all directions, falling away from the mountain peak on which she stood; above, the conduit connecting her to her body stretched upward, taut and humming. Reflexively, she touched Chess’s guns, or their memory, to confirm they still hung at her belt. Thus reassured, she sprang downward from ledge to spire to boulder, each step only firm beneath her feet because she willed it so. In minutes, she stood on the plain, casting about.
Nothing.
All the curse words she’d ever learned from Chess and Ed came spilling out, under her breath. Neither time nor geography stayed steady here, once you got out beyond where things echoed the living world, and while she’d known that, she’d still unthinkingly assumed her talents would somehow account for it — clearly a mistake. The very idea that, after everything they’d sacrificed and accomplished, she would find herself stymied by a simple inability to find that contentious creature at the vital moment . . .
Typical, Goddamnit. Typical Chess.
Turning in a slow circle until the mountains were once again at her back, she squinted hard, and still found nothing. Should she wait, or walk? Waiting made more sense by the odds — if Chess made it to this place at all, he would eventually start to climb — but she could barely stand the thought of coming so far to do nothing but stand still.
Yet however she stretched out her time, it was limited. Granted, she never tired down here, but her flesh still bore the weariness, up above; if she pushed herself too far, she would get no warning before her body’s collapse wrenched her back into a day-long blackout. And it might seem to take only minutes or days before Chess and Oona found their way here. That was, of course, even assuming they escaped the legions pursuing them, those maddened mobs of revenants she’d heard Chess call his Dead Posse. . . .
Yancey smiled, grimly. No, when it came down to sheer defiance, she somehow couldn’t believe Chess Pargeter would ever let himself be beaten. Again, she touched the guns that had once been his, palms atop their stocks; so strange, to take comfort from such death-dealing implements. Yet no stranger than the man himself.
With no heartbeat in her ears or breath to plume in the air, it took her some moments to realize that the darkness some ways out was moving — a man-shaped shadow, pacing steadily toward her. In an instant, she had both guns out and cocked, with a speed Chess might have applauded. Her fear she pushed to one side, wasting no more thought on it. These guns were real only because her mind made them real, made them work — would make them work. No matter what, or who, this foe proved to be, either; it was of the dead, and it was given to her to command the dead.
Then enough of the alien starlight outlined it to make the figure’s face visible. And Yancey straightened, grip slackening, ’til the guns almost fell unheeded from her hands.
“Uther,” she whispered — tried to whisper, anyhow, as breathlessness made the name a mere mouthing. But the man who’d been her husband, if only for less than a day, clearly didn’t need to hear his name to recognize it. He smiled, and opened his arms.
And she flung herself into them, straightaway, headlong. Childish as little Gabriel Love.
A bare parody of a true embrace, yet she clung fast anyhow, not wanting to face the truth of it yet, while every moment drove it deeper. Uther had held her before, even kissed her, though they had gone no further; she knew his smell, all the minor irregularities of a living man — scratch of his beard, sweat and stink, slight off-balance pressure of his left arm from an old knife-wound, ill-treated. Here with her now, he was solid and warm, yet she felt no pulse under her cheek. His chest did not move.
And as she slowly withdrew and looked up at him, even his face gave it away — the nascent crow’s-feet at his eyes, the tan of t
he New Mexico sun, the scattered faint pockmarks of a childhood bout with chickenpox . . . gone. He had been remade but not reborn, smoothed into a perfection found only in death.
“Oh, God,” she heard herself say, without meaning to. “I did love you, Uther. . . . I always will! But — ”
Uther’s reaction, however, was the last thing she’d expected; he threw his head back and laughed, then looked back down at her, still chuckling. “Oh, sweetheart, do you really think I need proof of your heart now, where we both are?” With a shrewdly raised eyebrow: “Or that it troubles me someone else could maybe make you happy . . . happier than I might’ve, even?”
Yancey would have flushed, if she could’ve, but Uther laughed again, and folded her back in. “Morrow’s a good man, in the end,” he told her. “Sometimes a little too prone to give in to lesser evils out of fear of greater ones, but you could do well with him, like he could, with you.” As she stared: “Yes, we know. We see more than we can ever tell, Experiance. And though you’ve got a mighty strong sight in you, you’d better take care never to think you see everything there is to see.”
“‘We’?”
“Me, your father, your mother. Both said to say they love you, by the way.”
Yancey blinked, swallowing. “They — couldn’t be here?”
“They are here. It’s just you can’t . . .” Uther hesitated. “There aren’t really words for it — has to do with you still being alive and all, only grasping one point in Time. And that was your Pa’s attempt at an explanation!” He snorted. “Mala just gave me my marching orders and sent me on my way, to do what I can to help.”
Yancey startled herself with a gulp of laughter. “Sounds like Ma,” she admitted. “But — if you see it all, then you must know what I did — before the wedding, and after.” Her throat hurt to say it. “I brought Chess there, and all that followed down on the Hoard, likewise. Did for Sheriff Love again, too, eventually; murdered him, right in front of his wife and child.”
“Many have, honey.” Uther sighed. “Can’t say it didn’t hurt to learn, either, or to watch. But I don’t begrudge you none.”
Yancey stepped back, breaking the contact. She didn’t deserve even its shallow comfort. “Uther . . . I got you killed.”
Uther shrugged. “Halfway, maybe — rest of it I did myself, and gladly. But that don’t mean I’m unhappy you’re still alive.” More gently: “Stay that way, will you? We don’t need you to think like you gotta hurry up and join us, seein’ we’re with you already. Always will be.”
“I’ll try,” Yancey barely whispered.
“All I ask.”
He took her into his arms again, and she let herself rest there for a while. Did it always hurt, to be forgiven? she wondered. But maybe that was why folks called God merciful and cruel. Some mercies hurt, and probably should, with an ache that was oddly pleasing.
“So you came to help,” she said, presently. “How?”
Uther drew back a little, so’s he could study her face. “You got a lot of clout in this place, honey; more than me, truth be told. But I got one thing you don’t — time. I can take as long as you need to find the man you’re looking for.”
“Problem is, Uther, if he sees you comin’, he’ll think you’re part of those huntin’ him — one of those he did for, in a long and bloody line of such. That’s why it’s got to be me — somebody he knows, and trusts.”
Uther stroked his chin. “Huh. Well, I think I might have another option, come to think.” With a deadpan humour that fair made Yancey’s heart turn over, for sheer familiarity: “Don’t go nowhere, will you?”
And just as suddenly, she was alone again.
Yancey sank to the grey grass and buried her face in her palms, unsure whether to laugh or sob.
When she finally became aware of Uther standing before her again, she looked up — and leaped to her feet, mouth open at the sight of the man beside him. A man she’d only seen once, and only as a ghost, for the most fleeting of seconds through a third man’s memories — but all the same, she knew him.
“Experiance Colder,” said Uther, “this is — ”
“Kloves,” said Yancey, putting out her hand. “Yancey Kloves, Missus. We’ve never met, sir, but I know you through a mutual acquaintance . . . Chess Pargeter.”
Kees Hosteen stiffened — then unlocked, a slow smile splitting his greying beard.
“Shouldn’t surprise me, I guess,” he replied. “Man does get around.”
“True enough.”
“So, what the hell’s the little bastard gotten himself into this time?” Then, holding up a hand: “Actually, don’t bother; take too long to explain anyway, I’m sure. Just tell me what I can do to help.”
Yancey matched his smile, and did.
SEVEN DIALS: FIVE
Here at the bottom, in the underneath. The end of all things, and the beginning.
This is where the root grows down, snaking its way through layer upon layer, ’til it reaches at last the skull-seed of all life. And this is where the tree grows back up, accordingly — widdershins, counterclockwise, winding the world’s watch the wrong way ’til its coils cry out, ’til time itself runs a path so crooked it crosses over itself. ’Til the blood-choked channel between the two breaks, at last, through that crust which separates life and death, sleep and waking, dream and reality.
After which, fuelled by burning bones and sweet decay alike, it stretches up impossibly high, reaching to scar the sky’s very face: crack things apart, score them so badly they can never be mended, never return to what they were before, no matter what sacrifice is made. To birth a new world, whole, complete. Entire.
As though everything at once were commanding, or perhaps pleading: O you who die to live and live to die, gods and monsters — victims, killers, magicians of every world, together — kill yourselves, now, while you still can. Make the sun and moon come up, make it all afresh, anew. Start over, while you still can.
And do it now. Before it is too late.
Though Sheriff Love — Chess still couldn’t think of the man without his former title, for all he doubted the dead got to hold onto such things — stretched up as lean and tall as ever in his familiar dusty black, the rest of the lawman’s aspect was a strange cross-breed of the last two times Chess had seen him: hair caught back up in those two shortish ear-locks, parted severely and braided at the bottom, while his faith-hollowed face still bristled with that shaggy year’s growth of beard Bewelcome’s un-salting had gifted him, groomed only minimally (with fingers, perhaps), and honest-to-Christ knotted to keep it up out of his way.
What he looked most like was one of those old-time preachers whose Word Rook had liked to cite, back under the Lieut’s command–Preparers of the Way sent out into the desert to await God’s view-halloo, fed on honey and locusts, harassed by titty-shaking devils. Like those left behind in War-Heaven, however, Love bore the marks inflicted by his last go-out with lamentable clarity. That powder-burnt hole in his temple, for example, cracks starring out all ’round, with what rougher-yet damage the bullet had made coming out on the opposite side no doubt well-hid beneath his mane.
“Hadn’t looked to see you here,” Chess told him, studying for its traces — and vaguely recalling, as he did, how that might well have been the exact same thing he’d said to him when they’d met up at Yancey Kloves’ wedding, all that time ago . . . or not so much, maybe. Hard to Goddamn tell, down here.
But the Sheriff didn’t seem to notice. “Where else would you have thought to find me, ‘Private’?” He answered. “Judgement, once met, is swift, and terrible; when released from the flesh, all men resolve to their proper places, and stay there long as the Lord deems fit. Though, that said . . .” He looked Chess up and down. “. . . you obviously haven’t exactly resigned yourself to whatever fate He threw your way. Have you?”
Chess raised a brow. “You expected any different?”
“Given your nature? Not really, no.”
“Huh. V
ery . . . Christian of you, I guess.”
Nearby, Oona — frostbit feet miraculously returned to their normal hue — straightened up, buttoning Chess’s jacket closer about her, and tapped one hand impatiently on her still too-much-revealed thigh. “So ’oo’s this, then?” she demanded, of Chess. “’Nother of your God-botherer fancy-men?”
Chess almost spat, at that. “Hardly,” he managed.
“Well, I’m not likely t’know, am I?”
“You sure ain’t. So why don’t you keep your mouth shut and let me get my bearings, after which we’ll move on?”
Oona made a huffing noise, and tossed her red hair like a colt. The Sheriff, on the other hand, regarded her at first with interest, then outright startlement.
“Pargeter,” he said, at last, “is . . . that a woman?”
“What gave it away?”
“I — hadn’t known you to keep female company, is all, aside from Missus Kloves. And I know she isn’t yet in our same situation.”
“Yeah, and how’d that be, I wonder? No, wait, I got it . . . God told you.”
Too much fun entirely, almost, to twit this great fool, now he’d recovered his vaunted reason and charitableness along with his salt-free skin. And yet — Chess had to admit it didn’t bring quite the charge it once might’ve, under different circumstances. The stakes were just too high, too immediate, to be worth indulging himself over something so . . . petty.
“God doesn’t speak to me,” Love said, at last. “Not any more. Not — yet, anyhow.”
To which Chess had no earthly idea what to reply, in all frankness. So they simply stood there a minute, glancing elsewhere, ’til Oona finally put in, “I’m ’is mother, in case you was wonderin’.”
Again, Love gave half a moment’s face-slapped double take, before rallying himself. “Really,” was all he replied.
Yeah, really. Think I dropped out of the air full-made, preacher-man, or came up a-bloom from perdition’s own root?
The usual quick connective spark between those words buzzing ’round Chess’s skull and his own sharp tongue, however, seemed to have gone fallow, making it lie surprisingly quiet in his mouth.
