A Rope of Thorns (37 page)

Cool-headed to the last even when set in sorcerous mayhem’s path, Love took advantage of the rout to snatch up Pinkerton’s discarded pepper-box, discharging it straight at Chess’s face. But Chess merely opened wide and swallowed the shots down whole, not even bothering to gulp.

“Lose more bullets that way, don’t ya, Sheriff?” he asked.

“Oh, don’t
dare
mock me, you nasty creature. Sinner from a line of such, born gallows-fruit—”

“All that, yeah; still not ashamed. So what’s your point?”

A sigh. “Only this . . .”

Love closed his eyes, bringing his fists together. His lips moved. Yancey could hear nothing over the beasts’ approach, but the words went straight to her brain:
For one last jolt of strength I ask you, who have named yourself Chess Pargeter’s Enemy; be you angel or no, fallen or otherwise, I beg your favour.
The prayer went tumbling into that void Yancey could feel yawn wide, beyond this world. . . .

And something answered.

Behind Love, above him, the air turned smoke-dark. A figure took slow shape, intangibly immense, shoulders wrapped in a mantle of blue fire. Its face remained featureless, for which Yancey, her skin crawling, offered devout thanks. Love bowed his head, letting this phantom form flow ’round him; his own seemed to blur and stretch accordingly, as though viewed through water. Until he towered erect once more, furiously large, long lines dreadfully magnified: Sheriff Love gone almost entirely, leaving some new creature entirely—neither the Enemy nor Love, but some obscene mix of both—to stand, swaying slightly, in his place.

Then he lunged forward and dealt the creature leaping upon him a stunning blow that knocked it sideways, popping its jaw clean off. Yancey felt the punch in her own mouth—sheerest agony, though it meant she had nothing left with which to scream. So the undead creature screamed for her, ’til Love wrung its too-long snake-neck like a chicken’s. Some vital current of power snapped; the thing collapsed, disintegrating as it went, reverting to fossilized bone dust. Love did not stay still to watch. He spun, and charged another creature, seizing it by two of its three horns and forcing its nose deeply enough into the ground to suffocate it. Smaller monsters swarmed him; he shrugged them off, insultingly casual.

Pinkerton lay curled into a foetal posture, shuddering spasmodically, jerking with each impact; Chess joined him, staggered with the shared pain of his grisly satellites. Ed, too, curled inwards—half-hiding Yancey, half attempting to hide himself
in
her, as his blood-loss finally exacted its price. It took all the little strength Yancey had left to lift one arm, touch his cheek.

If this was the end, right here, no one could say they hadn’t fought it every damn step of the way.

The blows hurt, and then some. Chess could feel power torn from him with each new strike—but in a strange way, this was more bearable than anything that had gone before. One thing Oona Pargeter’s only son knew how to do was take a beating.

So he let himself flex on the backhand, loosening his focus, and let his mind hiss like hot metal in the tempering quench, spinning his conjured pets ’round Love in a distracting flurry. He could draw this out, but to what point? No matter how much blood Ed and Yancey spilled for him, Love’s emptiness would eventually devour it all, choking down Pinkerton and him alongside; the man seemed made to be his natural undoer. Yet this here was the only place Love could be put down, or so that Sapphist Injun—Yiska—had claimed. If hexation wasn’t the answer, what was?

A voice came back to him then, brimstone-hoarse, once beloved, warning:
Magic ain’t a gun, Chess. Can’t treat it as such, or it’ll blow up in your hand.

Power he had in spades, so it wasn’t that. What he needed was
knowledge
.

He didn’t bother trying to form clear words; couldn’t’ve kept them together under this sort of pressure, anyhow. Instead, he flicked a sharp mental slap ’cross the inside of Asbury’s temples, hard enough to bust his hysteria. Minds met—Chess had a dim sense of labyrinthine lattices, incredibly complex, though choked with terror and confusion—and the clash threw up a memory: the Tampico hotel room, where Songbird’s and Asbury’s different expertises combined to trump Chess’s dead-god mojo hand.

As predicted, Asbury seized on the idea, a lifeline in a drowning sea. Spinning, he shouted: “Miss Songbird, listen; this is simply the same magic you once countered, writ larger, all connected—and therefore it
can
be stopped, if the circuit be broken somewhere . . . anywhere!”

“Foolish old ghost!” she shouted back, shield-muffled, her halo gone thick to stave off flying bone shards. “I would as soon be able to stop the Yang-t’se in full flood! Why should I even try?”

Asbury hesitated, ’til his eyes fell on Pinkerton’s fallen form. “Because you’re the only one who knows how—and you’ve taken Mister Pinkerton’s money.”

Songbird closed her eyes tight—then lofted herself yet still further up, as Love round-housed the last of Chess’s whatever-they-were so hard it exploded. Twisting to face Chess direct, he heard her start to chant, and froze, like she’d pulled his key out: a high, atonal keening, incomprehensible to Chess, whose Chinee ran rudimentary at best. As her pale hands sketched ideographs on the air, red robes swirling about her, Chess saw patterns rise through their folds, arcane embroidery coming to light like flaws on a blown coal: Black dragons, silver phoenixes, silk-trapped and squirming to be free.

Love pointed up at her. “Keep back, you pagan necromancer!” he hollered. “I’ll brook no interference in my—
aaaagghh
!”

He broke off, mid-tirade, as the shadow-shapes on Songbird’s robes suddenly all came free, swooping down on him in a gouge-happy swirl of talons, spilling powdered salt like blood. As he beat at himself in annoyance, batting her fetches away like so many mosquitoes, Songbird’s incantation was already complete. She spread her fingers wide, and shook the resultant spell-net out over the whole battlefield at once.

Memory possessed Chess again, lighting him up from the inside: crouched at Ma’s ankle in the red lantern-lit dimness of Laugh-Laugh Sally Yee’s, watching two Chink zither-players “duel” by tossing phrases back and forth, each adding a bit more flair to the last improvisation: one repeating the other’s notes in perfect reverse, each pitched to be a precise harmonic counterpart of the other. And between the two, audible only in the echoes, a single pure note resonating, more felt than heard—the exact midpoint, caught between mirrored melodies.

Good call;
he threw the thought her way like Hosteen’s knife.
Get him right ’tween the eyes for me, and hard—and don’t stint just ’cause you’ll be getting me on the backstroke, neither.

Ai-yaaaa!
As if I would. And the instrument in question is a
gu zheng
, you garbage-eating dog of a whore’s crotch-dropping!

Won’t get to paste me good ’n’ proper ’til you’re done with him, though, will you? So just hush up for now, you pompous bitch, and keep on with what you’re doin’.

I will, if you let me!

As Songbird’s spell slid stiletto-smooth into the magic-flood torrenting from Chess to Love, he heard that same tone once more. Two patterns meeting, one reversed—matching and cancelling like ripples, flattening each other out. The current collapsed with shocking speed, and stayed pinned down—a cessation of pain so sudden, it dizzied. Love actually fell to one knee, while Pinkerton blinked and slowly uncurled, his once-monstrous face now only slack and jowly and old, beard and hair gone white as Songbird’s own.

Chess, meanwhile, found his balance, glancing over at Ed and Yancey.
Have to be fast, ’fore the storm’s eye passed over. S
hould he try to reach her, plant an order so deep she thought she’d come up with it?
Might still be possible to save ’em both—

Too late, red warrior-boy
, yet another mental voice told him—not Yiska’s, though similar. Older, and far more knowing.

Aw, horseshit,
Chess cursed.

Love snarled. He fisted his hand in the ground, salt coagulating ’round it like it was wet clay, and pulled it free—then threw it hard, straight up. Magic-sink that it was, it passed straight through Songbird’s shields and smacked her ’cross the face, sealing her stillborn scream shut.

A half-second’s suffocation was all it took. Chess saw her resolve snap, smug sorceress collapsing back into a hysterical girl. Panicking, she clawed at the rigid mask, lost all control—plunged like a rock, hitting the ground at Asbury’s feet with a
crack
that meant the fall’d cost her at least one limb.

The binding-spell stuttered, then snapped outright. Chess roared and doubled over, power-drain opening up again—and this time Songbird, too, was set thrashing in its grip, magic leaping from her in streaks of pink-green lightning to vanish into Love’s body, just like Chess’s hex-blasts. She’d brought her own power into the circuit, and now it had closed once more she was trapped, ’long with the rest of them. Her body smoked and steamed; a horrid flush swelled the edges of her face, puffing ’em ’round the mask, like it was eating its way inside.

Chess swayed, everything he had left bent on keeping upright. Damned for his sins he might be, but he’d be damned twice over if he died on his knees.

The only warning was a jewellery-latch click, followed by some massive, indeterminate flare—instantaneous, blinding. Then the power-circuit burst apart, every mote of hexacious might flung away into the air, concussion knocking the train-cars on their sides and Love down too, back-first. The cyclone winds went slack, airborne dirt and rock pattering ground-wards. Songbird’s salt-mask poured off, leaving her to whoop a great gasp, double over and puke more salt into Asbury’s lap; her white hair, released from its confines, hung down like a second veil. And the Professor held her all the while, tender as though she were his own granddaughter.

“Oh, my dear,” he told her, with pleased relief, “do you know? I wasn’t entirely sure that that would work.”

It took Songbird a few seconds to regain awareness, after which she tried to stand but cried out, falling back into Asbury’s arms. Twitching the robe back, the injury became plain: her leg was indeed broken, bent where no joint should be. With a snarl, she contorted her hand arcanely over the injury, Chink-speak spilling from her lips.

Nothing happened.

Face shocked blank, she repeated the spell, again to no result; a third time, a fourth, faster and faster. Similarly amazed, Chess only noticed the trinket responsible at almost the same time she did: a silver-coloured bracelet of interwoven metal rods, closed over her wrist. Songbird froze, staring.

“What have you done?” she whispered. Then, twisting to face Asbury: “Old idiot, what have you
done
? Put it back!
Put it back!
” She clawed at the bracelet futilely, but it seemed locked in place: too tight to slip off, too strong to break. “
Release my
ch’i
,
gweilo
bastard!
”

“It was the only thing,” was all he whispered, in reply. “The circuit had to be broken, and . . . you were there, nearest to hand. The only one on whom I
knew
this would work.” He gazed at her, imploringly. “I meant to save your life—!”

Songbird screeched, and clawed him ’cross the face, screaming again at the jolt to her leg. Spent, Asbury made no attempt to get back up but merely lay blinking, gouges trickling thin red down both cheeks while she dragged herself close enough to do more damage, bracelet-side hand clenched in a tiny fist, like she was fixing to hammer this frail old man to flinders. And Asbury, regret-paralyzed, might just have let her—had Pinkerton not grabbed hold instead, hammer-sized grip encircling Songbird’s wrist completely.

He pulled hard and clenched, cracking metal like tinsel, then stuffed the bracelet-shards headlong
down his own gullet
, swallowing hard; pink-green lightning burst from every pore, rimming him head-to-toe. His skull flared, briefly visible inside his skin, free-swung jawbone clear as day. Then the light grew so blindingly fierce, even Chess had to shade his eyes—and when he
could
look, he found Pinkerton changed, yet again.

All final traces of corruption gone, face intact, healthy, flushed with life; even his bulk had tightened, fat sloughed off to reveal a leaner, more muscular build. And the great height he’d kept, with that moose-sized beanpole Love—feet regained—only coming up to his shoulder. Shirt and shoes and stockings had burned away, only the barest tatters of his check trousers preserving any semblance of decency. Pinkerton’s chest rose and fell, a pure delight glowing in his grin, as he turned to look down at his now-crippled former comrade.

“Never did quite grasp yuir taste for this,” he remarked—and hell if even his voice wasn’t healed, clear and resonant once more. “Damnable heathen cannibalism, ’specially when practised on yuir ane. But now. . . well, madam.” The grin widened. “I can only hope ye enjoy never havin’ tae worry o’er anyone doin’ it tae yeh again!”

Songbird rolled her face in the dust, giving out a funereal keen: “Ohhhhh, thieving
wu ming shao jiu
scum!
Yet I will regain my power, all of it, now that trinket is removed; I
will
! And
then,
we will see—”

Pinkerton shrugged, grin vanishing. “Maybe, maybe not . . . but one way or t’other, ye’d do best tae gie it a rest.” He turned to Love, slapping his hands together. “Now. Where were we?”

For all that look of bemused wariness was probably near as Love could come to fear, nowadays, it was still oddly heartening to see. “Nowhere, Mister Pinkerton, my quarrel not being with you. You remain entirely irrelevant.”

Deliberately, the Sheriff turned his back—but the king of Pinks couldn’t leave it at that, obviously. He half-raised one fist, already ghost-fire-rimmed, only to see Love deflect the result with a single palm contemptuously raised over one shoulder, not even bothering to turn around. The blast caught Pinkerton himself on the rebound, knocking him unconscious. Asbury squawked; Songbird, too exhausted to laugh, showed her teeth in malicious glee.