“You go on, the two of you,” was all Hosteen said, his gravelly voice rougher than usual — and pushed them lightly on, “forward” becoming up, the invisible column above flowering iris-bright into a wormy, vertical tunnel, close as any closet. A current took hold, breaking Hosteen’s grip; Oona gasped, hugging on monkey-tight, as the two of them lifted off.
So fast: a mere heartbeat, half a pulse more, and he couldn’t even see Hosteen walk away. Something fiddled beneath his ribs, sharp and new, a painful poke.
“Seems there’s a point t’givin’ it away, after all,” Oona said, shakily, into Chess’s throat.
“Seems like. Maybe you should’a tried it, every once in a while.”
A sudden, vertiginous rush, stomachs roiling, and their feet touched down once more; tunnel became path, similarly narrow, canted so steeply upward they had to half-climb, half-crawl. Oona disengaged, then started to slip, almost immediately — Chess scrambled backward, feeling for her hand again, and grabbed on hard, it being well dark enough no one else could catch him doing it.
“Don’t let go!” she squeaked, breathless.
“I don’t aim to,” he said. And set his feet to the path once more, the long and windy way toward . . . who damn well knew?
Good God, it seemed to drag on forever. Places, the “ceiling” and “floor” alike drew so close together they could barely move, except at the most painfully slow of paces — they wriggled like worms, chasing echoes. At first, these were simply a figure of speech, but as the journey wore on, they became more concrete: whispers yet too high to interpret, flittering like bats. Women’s voices, Chess had no doubt.
Yancey?
There was something lonesome in all-but-knowing himself the last man left standing in his own entire world, misbegotten as he’d always been made to feel. Looking back, young Missus Yancey Kloves was the sole female he’d ever had much in common with, after a point — that same point when cute tyke became scrawny, redheaded bastard, with a later side dish of thief, thug, rowster and (of course) You Goddamned Preening Queerboy.
Babies die, Mister Pargeter. She wanted you dead, you would be.
Gal, you didn’t know her, for which you should give thanks. . . .
But Chess hadn’t either — not really. Simply well enough to imagine her capable of better, having seen her dole out a rough parody of such to any damn jack had the fawney, all the while wondering why none of that act (however ripe its falsity) could ever come his way, apparently. Why he didn’t rate the lie’s effort, not even if he’d been able to pay for it.
Oh, she’d pet me some when she was drunk enough, but otherwise . . . like I wasn’t even there.
In the darkness, with what illusion of air they shared running thin, Chess found it increasingly hard to distinguish the bright, sharp young hex-to-be Oona he’d come to know since Seven Dials — a fair companion with more points of similarity than difference, her hair-trigger temper matching his own, albeit backed up with fists and whatnot rather than guns — from her past or future self, the greasy-haired harridan whose bony fists and poison tongue had crushed his childhood flat. And that old rage welled up acid, a carrion meal’s afterbirth, to scald his stomach lining, fill his lungs with spume he longed to vomit.
Her hand twisted in his, nails digging deep, and he had to force down an urge to kick her where it counted ’til she blacked out — to slam her face-first in the dust and grind, ’til her fine new skin was grit-torn and seeping. Leave her behind, lost and lorn without recourse in an awful, empty universe, and see how she liked that.
Her voice in one ear, hoarse to grating, at exactly the worst time. “You don’t ’ear that?”
“What?”
“Same bitch as before, I’ll lay odds, frowin’ more lines down like fish’ooks. Be nice if she could manage a bloody light, though, wouldn’t it? Some sort’a trail, so’s we didn’t ’ave to nose ’round in the dark like bloody meal-worms.”
Again, Chess’s anger sparked, a well-worn flint struck along its deep-grooved edge. “We ain’t privy to all that’s happening, up there — might be she has her reasons. Might be she’s working just as hard as us, for even less reward.”
Oona snorted. “I knew doss-’ouse cows could knock what was lost outta a petitioner’s own pocket, you asked ’em, so long as silver was involved. ’Oo is this ‘Yancey’ of yours, any’ow? What’s ’er claim t’fame, exactly?”
“Dead-speaker, Goddamnit. You never did listen.”
“I’m the only one can listen, sonny boy, ’cause for all your made-a-god airs, you still ain’t worth nothin’ for nothin’ don’t involve suckin’ cock or shootin’ other fools full’a ’oles. Tits on a bull, that’s what you are — what you’ll always be, now an’ forever more, world wivout end. ’Specially so if you can’t rouse yourself to blood
y break us free of this damn place.”
“You shut your trap, you whore from Hell! I got more hexation in the tip of my faggot dick than you ever would’ve had if you lived to be a hundred-friggin’-ten, Columcille or no — ”
But here the skirling whine of that voice — voices? — came swooping back around ’em yet again, interrupting, so painful-molten pitched he could almost see the angles it carved into the darkness. And all at once, Chess knew what Oona’s plan was, if you could dignify it thus; the last act of a desperate woman in equally desperate straits, determined at least one of them should emerge from this choke-hold where they’d fetched up, only to lodge like they were caught in Time’s own craw.
“Hell, you’re tryin’ to goad me, ain’t ya? Like always. Get me riled enough to dump you here, thinking that’ll make me kick my own ass up through however long’s left to go. But . . . what happens to you then, Oona? Where do you end up, after I’m gone?”
And why should I care? Except how, stupidly — fucking moronically, to be exact —
He did, still. Same way as he always had.
Aw, fuck me.