Page 14

Catching a view of Marizol cowering in the corner, half-hid behind Berta’s skirts, she smiled; Marizol sketched a sort of answering grimace back at her, then scurried over, head hung low, when Ixchel snapped her claw-tipped fingers, and re-took her kneeling place at that dread queen’s side.

“Señora . . . mi reina,” she brought out, tight and high, as though stomach-punched. “Yo te saludo.” While Ixchel just grinned all the wider, carding those too-sharp implements carefully through the girl’s hair.

“I have missed you, pet; you did ill to flee me so soon, without any word where you might have gone.” Adding, to Rook, with a creepish airiness: “And you too, of course, little husband. How seldom we see each other, these days, you and I!”

“Business of the War, ma’am,” Rook replied, deadpan. “But I do s’pose as how it’s necessary, much though I might feel the lack myself.”

“The War, yes. Whose direction I have thus far left to you and yours — Mister Fennig, or whatever others you might accord similar trust — since, as my brother Lightning Serpent proves, this is a matter men excel at.”

“And I’m grateful for the opportunity, that goes without saying. Was there something you wanted, wife?”

A bit too off-hand for her liking, perhaps; Rook certainly heard almost everyone else present suck in a gasp, soft as they tried to keep it. But thankfully Marizol, already deft at trying to draw her attention away, chose this very moment to volunteer — “Apologies, señora . . . it was remiss of me, I know. Lo siento mucho, mi dama celestial.”

Ixchel chucked her beneath the chin, drawing blood. “Ah, child! You are so young. I understand — you meant no disrespect. How could you possibly know how very much you mean to me, and why?”

How indeed, Rook thought, seeing Marizol shake under the Lady’s touch, a discreet tear streaking from one eye. Goddamn yet one more time this bed I made, let alone the filthy butcher-shop diablerie I have to practise, daily, in order to stay here!

This was just what

came of being a hypocrite, though, he guessed — a faithless preacher, sworn to false idols. Chess never would’ve stood for it, in any of his forms, for though ass-kissing was an art he’d excelled at (literally, at least), the mere grinding repetition of paying Ixchel homage would’ve bored him so senseless it’d’ve set him off like a lit fuse long before now, ’specially seeing how he was naturally immune to her mixture of cock-raising glamour and accelerant decay.

Always did make him dangerous to sit still too long — that was one thing she never understood, ’bout Chess. That, along with so much else.

And once things’d come to a head . . . well, that’d’ve been a fireworks show for sure, fit to rock the whole stinking world from horizon to horizon. Something Rook would’ve paid good money for, to watch, and to clap at.

But you are not him, husband, Ixchel’s mental voice told him, as we both know. Conquistador dream of “one flesh” aside, you never were . . . nor will you ever be.

You know what I’m thinking? Ridiculous as it was, he couldn’t stop himself from forming the question, though it held its own answer.

Of course; I know everything you do, little king, always. And why.

Sal Followell had both hands shading her eyes, like she found Ixchel’s visage too fierce to consider directly, and Rook could tell how much that pleased the goddess by the way she preened, her grim cloak hissing. But in the far corner, Hank Fennig had once more pushed his glasses down so’s he could survey her over their rims with narrowed eyes — taking measurements, perhaps, or tallying some list. Rook made his own mental note to ask him which it was, later on.

“These ideas of yours amuse me,” Ixchel told the others, meanwhile. “I approve — you may do what you must in order to keep the Machine going, just as I will do what I must, in order to use its power to its fullest. Thus it is that will we triumph, in the end, together.”

The clear implication being: I will suffer sedition in speech, if not in deed. For nothing you plot is secret to me, or any sort of threat; you live only at my sufferance . . . even you, my husband.

“Should we expect you along for tonight’s raid, then?” Rook asked. To which she bent her head, regally, fixing him with eyes whose softening ligaments had already started to make them cant in different directions.

“I would not miss such a chance,” she answered. “I have spent too much time in the Underworld lately, to far too little effect. I must show myself to the populace, that their terror may swell and spread.”

Fair enough, Rook thought.

Besides which, her mind-voice told him, I have a new plan which needs must be rehearsed under conditions of battle — a gift for you, of sorts. A terrible weapon, one which will sweep our enemies away before us.

That so, sweetheart? Or do you mean just the ones whose names don’t start with “The”?

Behind Ixchel’s back, the dragonflies snapped and hissed, angered on her behalf. If any of that annoyance reached her, however, it didn’t show; sucking day and night on those Mexes of hers really was altering her, he guessed, making her colder, more dispassionate. Bringing all her most unnatural inclinations to the fore.

He cast his mind back to when Hex City’s foundations were first laid, and she’d at least pretended to care.

Remembered telling her, after they were two weeks and fifty hexes deep in kowtowing, barely able to stroll from here to there with stumbling over some prostrate supplicant: These people are here at your say-so, madam — left everything behind like they was fleein’ Egypt, on nothing but the Call and some bad dreams. Least you could do is walk amongst ’em and grant a few damn prayers beforehand, ’stead of always goin’ straight for the pound of flesh.

She’d nodded, as he recalled. And told him, face so straight it might as well have been the jade chip-scaled mask it sometimes seemed: But . . . this is what I have you for. Is it not?

Original plan was, you’d wake a few more of your relatives and get ’em up here, on our side, he thought at her, back in the here and now. What happened to that idea, exactly?

The barest hint of a shrug. Things change, husband. As ever.