Page 45

The Lady, then, in reply — triggering her Traps, flicking shut her Snares, with him a mere struggling fly at her web’s sticky heart:

But she would have done the same to you, given half a chance. For all her talk of sacrifice and Balance, of Doing Right, she is our kin, her hungers the very same. Would you refuse a meal offered in starvation, on moral grounds?

Embrace what you are; take her defeat, my gift to you. Grow strong, to shelter him from your needs. Then find your way back to me, at last, and give me — in turn — due payment.

I’ll do it before Chess has time to manifest, Rook thought, to Become himself — ’cause oh, but he’ll burn and shine, shed light so hard it hurts to look, a bonfire of bones. Gotta pay her back before that, or there’ll be great feasting indeed, on that day. . . .

So: done deal. He took a step, grabbed his “Grandma” by one braid, brought his free hand up instinctively, and plunged it somehow through her chest, elbow-deep — not into gristle or grue, but right into the seed-sac of boiling energy she carried ’round her heart.

Saw her grimace and almost cry out, and “heard” someone else — many someone elses? — call back, in answer: a vague sympathetic notion, her solitary hurt multiplied and reflected, fragmentary, fleeting. And along with it, the realization that she herself was severing this contact, breaking it off mid-stream before he could think to back-trace it — crying out (a warning? an order?) in her own language, all trace of English kicked to the wayside.

Gone, now, with only they — three — left.

Rook sucked hard, piggish, already brim-full of everything which had made Grandma her, and slid his hand down even further, with a wet, hot crack, to touch her heart’s fluttering meat-lump through broken ribs. There was a last rising sigh, warming him to his own hollow core — the sound a coal makes when it cracks across, releasing a last rush of embers.

“You are . . . a monster,” Grandma told him, painfully, blood leaking from her mouth. “Bilagaana with a Bible . . . your One-God tells you this whole world is yours, so you . . . think that means you can use it up, throw it away. That all things conspire to serve you.”

And now she spat, hot and sizzling, to scar the ground. “Such shit. If I could help that boy of yours drain you dry before you get the chance to do the same to him . . . teach him to dance with your heart in his mouth, as one should, after slaying foulness . . . then I would. I would.”

Rook didn’t try to deny it. Just shrugged, and answered, “Well . . . that’s kinda what I thought, all along.”

One more wrench, and she was emptied — he saw her spirit pass him by obliquely, a star falling the wrong way.

Rook just stood there panting, and watched.

Damnation didn’t feel so bad, on consideration; not bad as he’d feared, anyhow. Felt like, well — nothing, mostly.

Which was probably why it gave him not a moment’s pause when all Grandmother’s blood humped itself up and sprayed blowhole-high to form a geyserish pillar — the midtop of which bowed slightly, spread outwards in a cowl, to let a too-familiar face push through.

Rook gave the Lady a stiff little bow. “Ma’am,” he said.

Little king, my affianced. It does me good to see you, face to face.

“Likewise.”

We are allies now, after all. Such courtesy is the least I owe you.

“’Spect you’re right,” Rook agreed.

Go back to your lover, now, she instructed him. Do not feed overmuch from him, if he can help it. Just keep yourselves alive and free, until you find a way to speak with me directly.

Rook frowned. “But — how’m I supposed to — ”

Oh, it will come to you. It comes even now, as we speak. Have faith, husband — as I have faith in you. The blood-face smiled, too full of sly glee to bother approximating anything recognizable as human, any longer. You knew how to do that, once. . . .

With that, the inevitable wind whipped up — pillar boiling back to dust with nauseating speed, a pale red cloud which blew away, leaving him alone, in silence.

Sighing, the Reverend turned back for Bewelcome, and Chess.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Things went quicker, after that — like every other foregone conclusion.

Rook returned to find Chess still waiting for him in Bewelcome’s frozen ruins, even more parched and sunburnt than he otherwise might have been, due to the salt’s coruscating glare. Hardly the best place for any redhead to linger, let alone one who’d apparently fallen asleep — or lightly comatose, perhaps, after what Rook later worked out had been near two weeks of dehydration — with his shirt spread out under him, to keep the ground from rubbing his back raw.

Two days, from Rook’s point of view. One less fourteen, for everybody else. But that was magic for you, he thought, idly — ten pounds of trouble in a five-pound sack.