A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  “Aw, that’s horseshit. We bulled our way past enough of this crap together before — just have to push harder, is all. Don’t let it divide and conquer. Ain’t come all this Goddamn way dragging your dead ass behind me just to give up now, Goddamnit — ”

  “It ain’t givin’ up. It ain’t. You just . . . Jesus! Why you always gotta be so bloody difficult?”

  “Look who’s talkin’.”

  Wanted to turn, so they could at least play at being able to see each other, but the rock wouldn’t let him; all these tonnes of earth, these stones and dead things, these endless years of debris and garbage, pressing down unflinching ’til he felt his not-skin bruise, his not-bones bend and start to crack.

  It’ll squash me flat, is what it’ll do, like a wheel-popped roadside toad. Christ, will there ever be an end to this, to us? Or is where we’ve gotten ourselves to yet more of Hell again, over and over, writ meaner and smaller every time?

  Seemed like Oona felt it too, for she could barely draw a full breath before managing, her words thin: “That girl in New York, Mina Whittaker’s ’er name . . . ’eard ’e give ’er a son too, before she did for ’im. Mose Whittaker, the Widowmaker’s get. ’E’d be your brother, I s’pose, by ’alf measures at least.”

  “Why’d you tell me that?”

  “Fought you might want to know. For after.” Another strangled gasp. “Why . . . bloody . . . not?”

  Sure. So now’s when you let it slip, right when it won’t net you anything to hold it back.

  The scar along his jawline crawled as though it was on fire, tracing the path of her yen hock; he could almost remember the look in her eyes when she’d done it, lashing out like a one-clawed cat, trapped into one more move to make him change or run or both, anything but stay and die in that sty she knew would be her tomb. The tears he’d thought drug-addled rheum shone on her cheeks, colour feverish-high already: the germ ripening in her every cough, long before blood began to flow.

  Best I could do for you, so I done it — I ain’t proud. And don’t tell me you wasn’t glad enough to ’ave good reason to ’ate me, in the end.

  “Guess I did ruin your life, in a way,” he said, slowly, into a mouthful of dirt. “Though I still don’t think you had t’let me.”

  “Fanks, ever so. What sort of apology d’you call that, then?”

  “Better’n you rate, taken all in all. ’Less you disagree.”

  “No point to it. Is there?”

  Not really, no.

  Chess reached back, pinched arm straining ’til he thought it might crack its socket, and felt for what he hoped were her fingers. Nothing seemed where he’d left it; the tunnel might’ve been a hand’s-width or a straw’s span, some sort of hexacious illusion snaring them like tar while the walls stretched stars-high on either side. Was there even a floor?

  Nail touched nail, the barest scratch of horn. Followed by something soft on the pad of his index . . . lips?

  Don’t do this to me, old woman.

  Still, it rallied him, at least. With his last shred of effort, he ground out, before heaviness forced his mouth shut: “Ain’t all that much forgiveness in me — you made sure of that. But what there is, you got. Now . . .”

  . . . time to get off my damn back, for good and all. Go where you’re goin’. Stay there.

  “Oona Pargeter, I dismiss you,” he said. And shut his eyes.

  She fell away behind him — tore a patch from him with her passing, hole linked to hole, momentarily open enough to let the dark on either side shine through. But he had no time to allow himself regret.

  Chess came up punching, as if through a membrane, a bag, the same too-small, fetid and unspeakably hot channel which once let him loose on the world. Another audible snap, like bones baked in a fire — and then finally, finally —

  — he was over that last stile, up through the world’s crust, out at last. Crouched panting under a roiling marine sky, at the base of what he vaguely knew to be one of that old squaw Grandma’s sacred places. A circle of people stood arrayed ’round him, to almost every quarter. Grandma herself in her bone-dust reliquary; that war-painted he-she Yiska, The Night Has Passed, with horse-jaw tomahawk upraised in one fist and that crimson-clad bitch-witch Songbird’s pallid hand held gentle in the other. A scattering of men as well, withdrawn to a respectful distance, their bows held ready.

  Beneath his feet, as he rose, something shifted unsteadily; he glanced down, just to confirm what it was — a crevasse big enough to thrust your hand into, cracked on either side like salt-stung dead man’s lips — before cutting a hasty two-step and scrambling alongside, to much firmer ground.

  “Mister Pargeter,” a familiar voice cut in, from behind him, “welcome. Been waiting on you quite some time now — mighty glad to see you could accommodate, eventually, considering how hard it was to send you down directions.”

  Chess turned, braced for the sight of her already: small and slim, her dark hair braided in two long ropes ties with beaded leather, Injun-style. She wore almost the same rig he’d made for her out of her wedding-dress, save for those skin slippers she must’ve gotten raiding Yiska’s wardrobe. Looked a bit more sunburnt, a tad older . . .

  but hell, that was all right.

  She’s alive, that’s the important part — not drilled through the head by Mesach Love’s woman, or swung like I thought she might be. And that’s halfway more’n I can say, even now.

  Speaking of whom, now: Christ, if that wasn’t not-exactly-Missus Love herself standing back yet further, on Yancey’s left hand. And holding that boy of hers in her arms as well, with hex-light spilling up from his forehead in a new-grown war bonnet, a guttering twenty-candle crown.

  Biggest damn hen party he’d attended since leaving ’Frisco, one way or the other . . . and looking at Yancey Kloves, all Chess could think of to tell her was that he’d never in all his life seen anyone he was more glad to meet up with, Rook included.

  But still, when he opened his mouth, the very first thing which fell out was — instead —

  “. . . where’s Ed?”

  BOOK THREE: THE SIXTH WORLD

  November 15, 1867

  Month Fourteen, Day Eight House

  Festival: Still Quecholli, or Treasured Feather

  Day Calli (House) is governed by Tepeyollotl, Heart of the Mountain: Jaguar of Night, lord of echoes and earthquakes, so vast that the spots on his coat are said to represent the stars in the sky. Even though Tepeyollotl is a variant of Tezcatlipoca — sometimes called He Who Rules Us All, in his most threatening aspect — Calli is nevertheless considered a good day for rest, tranquility and family life, best spent cementing relationships of trust and mutual interest.

  By the Mayan Long Count calendar, however, Day Eight Calli’s primary influence is that of Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead — a terrible skeleton shown dressed in strips of bark paper, with bulging eyes and a gaping stomach through which the liver, home to the spirit, may be seen hanging. Associated with nighttime animals such as the owl, the bat and the spider, he is also the Fifth Lord of the Night, and ruler of both the tenth day (“Itzcuintli,” or Dog) and the tenth month (“Tecpatl,” or Stone Knife).

  As befits the weapon used to carry out human sacrifices, Tecpatl symbolizes moments of grave ordeal, predestined trials and tribulations — good times to test one’s character, yet bad times to rest on one’s past reputation. Cutting through falsehood like its own blade, Tecpatl warns that the mind, like the spirit, must always be kept sharpened, so it can reach the very marrow of cosmic truth.

  From the archives of the Western Union Company, Telegraph #67-8155, sent November 14, 1867, stamped as delivered same date:

  WESTERN UNION

  PDA FWDSTN NA-1 LONG PD=ALBUQ NM DEL 14 10:39PM [1867 NOV 14 11:22PM]

  FITZ HUGH LUDLOW= :MR G THIEL=

  URGENT EXPEDITE ARRIVAL STOP P HAS DETERMINED ON DIRECT ATTACK UPON PRISM URGED BY NEW ALLY T-CAT STOP I DEEM ALLY MOST DEEPLY UNTRUSTWORTHY STOP MR GREY YET UNABLE TO ESC
ORT GOOD DOCTOR TO NEW POSITION STOP ATTACK PLANNED FOR 15TH TOMORROW STOP PRIVATE ACCESS TO CAMP TELEGRAPH LIMITED BUT WILL DESTROY MESSAGE RECORD HERE STOP URGENT REPLY SOONEST STOP MAINTAIN PROTOCOL STOP FHL

  From the Western Union archives, Telegram #67-81594, sent November 15, no delivery stamp:

  WESTERN UNION

  ALBUQ NM LONG PD=PDA FWDSTN NA-1 DEL 15 01:14AM

  EDITOR IN CHIEF= :FITZ HUGH LUDLOW=

  MATERIAL UPDATES RECEIVED STOP REGRET IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL STAFF SUPPORT AT PRESENT STOP REASON TO EXPECT LARGE PRESS CONTINGENT ARRIVING FROM TWO REPUBLICS NEWSPAPER WITHIN 24 HRS STOP OPERATIVES FROM LONE STAR GAZETTE DETACHED TO PROVIDE BALANCE STOP EXPECT THEIR ARRIVAL SAME TIMEFRAME STOP FACILITATE THEIR OPERATIONS HOWEVER POSSIBLE STOP REITERATE TO GREY IMPORTANCE OF ASSIGNMENT STOP GODSPEED FITZ STOP

  Transcribed from the shorthand notes of Mister Fitz Hugh Ludlow, on the day of November 15th, 1867, at the site of New Aztectlan, New Mexico:

  The cold light of a winter dawn creeps over the plain. Near half a mile south of where the Pinkerton forces and Captain Washford’s have assembled before the bloody stone forest of the ceiba trees, I stand upon this rocky knoll, at the southward edge of the plain; its altitude, and the telescope obtained from Quartermaster Voormeis, grant me God’s own view of this battle — a privilege of which your humble correspondent is most mindful! Yet dread grips me that before this day is out, I will wish I had never been afforded this opportunity. The most novel of human sciences stands opposed to the most ancient of un-Christian magics, and whatever the outcome of this conflict, it is a certainty that afterward, the world shall not be as it has been.

  A path leads through the ceiba trees to New Aztectlan’s entrance, though with my own eyes I have seen that path vanish in a heartbeat, to leave its travellers prisoned, and presently vivisected, by those malevolent obsidian growths. It is open now, showing the closed gates at their far end; human shapes line Hex City’s walls above those gates. Toward the entrance to that pathway there marches a minuscule advance guard, less than a dozen people. But foolish is he who thinks this party is to be easily dismissed. For new-made “scientific” hex Mister Allan Pinkerton himself walks at its head, with the arcanistric genius Doctor Joachim Asbury at his right hand, supported by Agent Edward Morrow, once an undercover member of “Reverend” Asher Rook’s own bandit gang. But most overwhelming a presence of all is the entity named Huitzilopochtli, incarnate in sodomite pistoleer Chess Pargeter’s flesh, come to challenge his sister deity the Rainbow Lady Ixchel to a fateful, perhaps final, confrontation. With them they bring prisoners of war: trade offerings, warnings, or proofs of potency? We can only pray that the gambit is effective, whatever its reasoning.

  The party has now stopped in the mouth of the pathway. The god-demon Huitzilopochtli advances now between those trees, and lifts his arms, green-clad in living vine — in God’s Name, even I can hear his declamation, and at this mighty distance!

  Ed Morrow came to slowly, half-buried under what felt like a pile of corpses, many of ’em only partially intact, to the hellish accompaniment of screams and curses: Mexico City after the earthquake, this time writ even larger. Through half-slit eyes, he saw the parti-coloured sky above illuminated in obscure flashes, how the clouds above hung snarled and heavy as dye-soaked wool, green and grey and black — hinted-at sun just a bright, flat, colourless coin submerged inside that same darkening knot, while a moment later sheet lightning deformed the sky even as a genuine bolt ripped horizontally, thrashing uncoiled and light-bloody, a severed dragon’s tail caught in mid-fall.

  How did we get here? he wondered, horrified.

  Sending his mind back, then, scraping out memory’s bottom-most dregs. A mere half-hour before, the Enemy had stood in front of Hex City’s walls, vine-armour knotted like veins across its blue skin and Chess’s red curls standing up straight, a lightning-lifted crown. And called to its “sister” inside, in a voice both gentle yet impossible to ignore, so penetrative did its timbre seem to rumble for maybe a mile in every direction at once.

  Ixchel, come out. Suicide Moon, Black Rainbow, Long Hair of Death; Filth-eater, Serpent-skirt, Lady of Ropes and Snares: arise, and face me as they did at Tollan. For now is the time of reckoning, my love . . . the time when this world we squat on must at last be saved or unmade, for good, and altogether . . .

  Behind him, the aggregate mass of two armies stood clustered, poised at the ready: Washford’s Battalion and Pinkerton’s Agents, plus the ever-growing cadre of collared hex-handlers and their equal-collared hexes. To Morrow’s right was Carver, pistol in one hand, spun magnesium double-tailed leash in the other; Eulie Parr stood with drooping head on left, while Berta Schemerhorne glowered unbroken on his right, and it afforded Morrow some odd sort of comfort to note that Carver seemed to find his dominant position over the two girls far more embarrassing than victorious.

  Back of Morrow’s left shoulder, meanwhile — ordered by Morrow himself, in a low voice, into that place of what little safety might be found — hunched Doctor Joachim Asbury, face sharp with full-sober misery and terror; Frank Geyer stood guard adjacent, in his James Grey guise, wearing what seemed to be one of Asbury’s hex-nullifier bracelets clasped ’round his wrist. This’d puzzled Morrow greatly when first he’d noted it — Geyer was no hex — but once he’d seen how Pinkerton’s power-addled gaze passed over Geyer as if he had never known him, he’d realized it might be more for disguise than restraint.

  And ahead of them all, Pinkerton himself, standing only steps behind the Enemy, big hands knotting and unknotting as if already savouring the feel of Ixchel’s flesh beneath his fingers. He’d doffed his civilian garb for the rudiments of a uniform, including a blue jacket with colonel’s insignia, worn loose and open; the act had won him no affection from Washford’s soldiers, but he seemed beyond caring. The air outlining him shimmered with power, and Morrow wondered sickly how many captive hexes had been sucked dry like oranges to bring his employer to this horrendous apex.

  “Takin’ her sweet time about it, isn’t she?” Pinkerton demanded, of his Trickster “companion.” Before adding, with an ostentatious guffaw: “Just like a woman!”

  The Enemy shot him a black-on-black side-eye, unimpressed. I would conduct myself more quietly, Pinkerton-creature, were I you, it told him. For she comes, even now.

  And oh, Jesus Christ Almighty, if she didn’t, at that.

  Rising up over Hex City’s western walls, eddying high on that dragonfly cloak of hers, which seemed — denser than usual, a living veil, those faceted wings shielding what little could be glimpsed of a jade-scaled forehead, sunken eyes and tattooed cheeks, lips peeled back over vulpine teeth, the thorn-rope at her throat lying slack between those leathery horrors that had once been her vessel’s fine, firm breasts. Beneath two sub-swarms of dragonflies that drooped like sleeves, her hands, fingers and wrists alike could be seen, if you squinted, to gleam with bone, much like the exposed tips of her doubly bare toes. Only her black flower of hair seemed intact, stiff and queenly, fresh braids high-piled ’round a knot of sharp stone knives.

  On her right and left, meanwhile, came two more figures, hanging from the air like Juno enchained. The Rev was one, of course, recognizable even at this range — though now Morrow came to consider on it a moment, he did look different, somehow: stretched thin for such a massive brute, as though he’d been hollowed and restuffed, a mere shell of his former self. And the other —

  My God, I do believe that is the wreck of Hank Fennig’s last wife, just like her two “sisters” already said. Sorry for doubting you, ladies.

  What sketchy breath he was able to draw at the sight of her seemed to burn like lye, or strangling mountaintop air. Like a mouthful of the same lime they’d thrown into the blood-pit, ’fore tossing the sandy earth it’d taken to carve it out back in and piling a bunch of rocks on top of that so she’d rest still, if not easy. The former Clodagh Killeen, shining skull-face set with corpse-lamp eyes and every other joint of
her body lit up too, a star map of hellish constellations . . . just riding the sky as though it were sea while the sound of a million swelling rattlesnake bells tumbled to earth beneath her, pocking the dust like hail.

  Jesus, Morrow thought again, while also sending up a brief prayer to anybody else who might be currently out there, listening. And I thought the bitch who made her over this way was bad.

  Inclining her head, Ixchel stared down, and seemed to smile. Brother. You are arrogant, as ever. I had expected you sooner.

  A shrug. I needed time, to put things in place — and see what you have put in place, likewise.

  “Things.” Like this . . . pretender you ally with, perhaps?

  Pinkerton’s face darkened. “I’ll thank ye tae address me directly, ye high-nosed heathen hoor!” he called up, making fists yet harder, so’s his knuckles spat sparks.

  Be silent, was all Ixchel told him, without even deigning to look his way. You are amongst your betters now, mud-toy. It does not behoove you to try and speak to me directly, any more so than it would a beetle to hold congress with jaguars.

  “Hah! The day such as ‘Reverend’ Asher Rook stands my equal, let alone my better, will be a cold one in Hell indeed.”

  But Hell is cold, Pinkerton-thing. As you would know, had you ever truly been there. She turned her eyes to him at last, so dark they almost seemed to cast their own negative light. Still, if — not trusting my testimony — you wish to confirm it for yourself, I believe I might be persuaded to assist you.

  “I’d heard you rumoured beautiful, not so long ago,” Pinkerton replied, grinning. “Right now, though, Lady, I must admit — I’m disinclined tae believe it.”

  I am not . . . at my best, no. But that will change.

  “Oh, ye think? Once ye locate that little Mex girl of yuirs, mayhap?”

  The Enemy cast another look, less annoyed than slyly amused, this time. Be careful, Pinkerton, it warned him; be circumspect, if you can be. You tread unwisely.