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“Friend, I think — close enough, anyhow. C’mon, woman.”

“Sure? You ain’t got all too many friends, from what I’ve

observed. . . .”

“You should talk. C’mon!”

He grabbed for her hand, and she came — learning to trust him, for once, or could be she was just too damn tired to fight. And thus they pulled up fireside, where the man was already getting to his feet, turning his bearded face Chess’s way, still seamed and burnt with weather that’d never touch him further. And grinning just a little bit, cheeks creasing further. “So there you are,” he said. “Took long enough.”

Kees Hosteen, as Chess didn’t live or breathe.

There was nothing to eat, naturally — not even a pretence of coffee boiling on that smokeless fire, which barely gave off light, let alone heat. Yet Chess felt a sentimental rush of homeliness nonetheless, just to be once more sharing a hearth with the old Hollander, the only former Confederate fellow soldier he’d been proud to travel with, saving Ash Rook himself. Not to mention a man he’d twitted and teased unmercifully, extorting weaponage and such from in return for small intimacies — but someone he’d always been able to depend on, who’d always had his best interests at heart, even when Chess himself couldn’t’ve named them if asked.

“I got you killed,” Chess found himself telling him, again without really meaning to — and hell, what was this? Like his mouth had slipped its bridle, leaving no brake at all between thought and speech. But thankfully, Hosteen didn’t seem to hold a grudge.

“Oh, as to that . . .” He shrugged. “Would’ve happened sometime anyhow, no matter what — wasn’t none of us gonna see old age, not the way we carried on. Then again, you always did say you didn’t expect to die any way but with a bullet . . . and look how that turned out.”

Silence in his chest, as always — but keener this time, a side-slipped knife, twisted. Chess pressed one hand to his breastbone, as though to keep whatever might be left under there firmly in, and nodded. “What’re you doing here, Kees?”

“Well, I am dead, but — chasin’ after you, mostly. Like usual.”

Chess snorted. “The hell for? Places I’ve been down here, you should be grateful you didn’t catch me up ’til now.” He glanced at Oona, then amended, before she could tell him to: “Us up.”

“Yeah, I was wondering ’bout that. Care to introduce me?”

He gestured between Oona and their rescuer. “Oona, this is an old war buddy of mine, Kees Hosteen. Kees . . . this is ‘English’ Oona Pargeter. My mother.”

Hosteen’s jaw dropped; he looked Oona up and down. “Ho-lee shit,” he blurted, then flushed. “Uh — sorry, ma’am, but — you’re not — um, you don’t look like, uh . . .”

“Like I’m dying of poppy-smoke underneath some Chink brothel?” finished Oona, acidly. “Not any more, I ain’t.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna — ”

“Why not?” said Chess. “Go ’head, she’s heard worse.”

“You shut yer gob.”

“Make me.”

Hosteen looked back and forth between them, grey brows hiking. “Oh yeah,” he said, at last. “I definitely see it now.”

That seemed to defuse things, at least; Oona huffed, shrugged his coat closer and folded herself down into a cross-legged squat, while Chess gave a snort, and followed her.

“It was the Rev started it,” Hosteen told him. “Had him a lock of my hair in a bottle, or some-such; called me up, sent me off t’spy on the Pinks. Leastways, he said that’s all he wanted — asked me to look for you, too; tried to make out like it was just an afterthought, but . . .”

He shook his head. “I did find you, once. Watched you for a bit.” He paused. “Never could tell if you knew or not.”

Chess grimaced, not sure what irked him more: the thought of Ash pretending not to care, or the thought of him truly not caring. “No. I . . . suspected it, but I never knew.” A sharp, sidelong look: “How’d you get away, then?”

“You think I’m still on his leash?” Hosteen glowered at him.

“I think nothin’ down here’s what it seems, Kees, and I’m through with bein’ the idjit never asks questions ’til it’s too late.”

Hosteen slumped, staring into the pale fire. “Hell, I can understand that. Truth is, he kept his word after all; broke the bottle and freed me, once I’d told him all I saw. Which I guess was how I ended up here.”

“No Heaven for you either, huh?”

“Not yet.”