Eternal instinct, along with the brutal hunger of the moment, betrayed her. Within seconds she had seized the dully glowing mass and gulped it back, throat bulging like a bullfrog’s.
Rook kept his head bent, carefully not thinking on the part of the verse he’d deliberately omitted: Therefore Put away the strange gods that are among you.
They had emerged before New Aztectlan’s closed gates, ceiba forest wreckage stretching away to left and right. Rook signalled the sentries above, then turned to look back out over the plain. “If the scouts read things a’right, Lady, that Mex battalion should arrive ’fore sundown,” he said. “They’re still intent on playing coy, so might be I can convince them to stall an attack; depends on whether this comandante Delgado carries as big a stick as he claims to.” He dusted his frock coat down by hand, not willing to draw more power, for risk of re-rousing Ixchel’s appetite. “With your permission, I should go meet ’em alone, seeing how I’ve strength enough to meet treachery and clout enough to deal honestly — ”
“No, husband,” Ixchel interrupted; she’d recovered enough of herself that her voice sounded something like human once again, though sick-grating. “The conquistador soldiers can wait. There is another treachery to face, far closer to hand . . .”
Everything in Rook’s guts froze up; he could feel the blood fall from his face. Oh, shit, was all he could think. Not now, not when the chance to act was so close! Besides which, he could have sworn she no longer had control enough to read him without him knowing it —
“. . . that of my brother,” she finished, at last.
Thank Christ.
Not looking back at Rook, she strode back into the City as its gates rumbled open. Which thankfully gave Rook a moment to master himself, before following.
He’d already sent word to the Council that all City-folk not directly involved in fighting take shelter, anyplace they could, and so far as he could see, that’d mostly held. But many — too many — were now emerging from their various hidey-holes to gawp down Main Avenue at the thing which’d forced itself up smack-dab centre in Temple Square, piercing that long, step-slatted black shadow like some foul bloom, spread sticky-wide and oozing with odd scent.
Not large, Rook saw, as he and Ixchel drew near, just a mound of Weed perhaps eight feet high and as many wide — verdant with new growth but slow-throbbing like some giant egg sac, fit to hatch any moment and pump out some fresh awfulness. Crimson flowers whirled, flared, folded all over, tiny mouths sucking hungrily with stamens and pistils alike fang-sharp at the hexation-rich air.
At the centre, the peak of its height, a tangle denser yet sketched a living, throne-like shape on which sat the Enemy, boneless-slouched as Chess himself might’ve, with one leg kicked over an arm of its living “chair” and its stolen head cocked on the opposite fist. It grinned down at them, slyly flirtatious.
“Took you long enough,” it said.
Honourable Chu, Sal Followell and the Shoshone all faced the mound, aglow with power, though Rook smelled none of the acrid thunderbolt stink of witchery anger-loosed; not yet come to blows, then — simply skirmish-ready, even in the midst of battle. Meeting Chu’s gaze, he nodded toward the busted-in wall, and saw that Celestial gentleman grimace in understanding. Lifting up airborne, he tapped his Injun partner on the shoulder as he did and waited for him to rise likewise, so they could hurtle back and fortify the breach before their newest enemies could take advantage.
Stepping into Chu’s vacated place, Rook glared up at the second body-thieving god it’d been his misfortune to meet up with in as many years. “This your plan all along, then?” He demanded. “Draw us into a fight with the Pinks, make us spend our strength, wait ’til our defences were down so you could finally just up and walk in, ready to destroy us all?”
To this, however, the Smoking Mirror merely chuckled, raising one of Chess’s red-gilt brows.
“Oh, Asher Rook,” it told him, “if you have still so failed to grasp what I have in common with your beloved boy, the very thing which makes him such a perfect vessel, then perhaps you have never understood either of us, at all. For this is the truth: since, with both of us, intention always gives way to instinct, no action of ours ever can truly rise to the lofty level of something like a plan.” Here it yawned, black shark teeth flashing, and added: “Besides which, as your minions here can tell you . . . I hardly walked.”
“Thing come up through the ground, like a damn fever blister,” Missus Followell cut in, angrily, “with Himself there riding it like his own personal cabriolet. And yeah, we all of us know your name, skin-changer, seein’ there’s one more like you told tales on in every place we hails from: coyote, crow, rabbit, spider, fox, whatever. But ain’t a one of us gonna honour such as you by speakin’ it, not ’less you make us.”
Tezcatlipoca cut a parody of Chess’s grin over at Ixchel — no cigar, yet well close enough to make Rook clench all over. “Such loyalty!” It complained. “How did you manage to win it, with so indifferent an investment? One more thing to credit that oh-so-able priest-king of yours with, perhaps.”
A taunt, meant to draw ire, if not outright blood. Yet the Enemy’s sister-mother-wife-and-all remained stock still, battered face showing not a hint of reaction — perhaps it couldn’t move anymore, Rook thought, beyond the minimum needed for speech.
“Don’t credit him alone!” Missus Followell snapped, fearless, without even a glance in Ixchel’s direction. “This here’s our place now, much as it is hers; we’ll see you out of it yet, or die tryin’, from the Rev on down. ’Cause that’s what happens when hex can stand with hex, finally — and after thirty-odd years abloom, if anyone knows how that’s worth bein’ killed for, I’m her, believe you me.”
“You almost speak as though she was of no consequence at all.”
And . . . now those fierce eyes did drop, finally, as though Sal herself realized she’d maybe gone too far. For which Rook found himself surprisingly grateful.
“Wouldn’t say that, no sir,” she told her feet, choosing the words with care. “Without the Lady, there wouldn’t be a City at all . . . we owe Her everything. That’s why we keep the Oath, after all.”
“Aaaah, yes. Your Oath.”
Such a strange note in the creature’s voice, neither mockery nor respect, but a strange amalgam of the two, with something else woven in beneath. A sort of yearning. Almost an envy.
Never had worshippers you didn’t have to lie to, huh, Trickster? Though at least you compelled ’em with sweet words and pretty pictures personally, I’m sure, ’stead’a getting someone else to do that for you, like some others I might mention.
Over this same thought, however — as though summoned by even the implication of her name, let alone its mention — was where he at last heard Ixchel’s voice intrude, hoarse yet clear, almost raw.
“‘My’ Oath is nothing new, brother . . . as you, like any of us, should know.” Now it was her tone caught Rook off-guard, for she sounded almost as she had in those very first days, when she’d been nothing more than a voice in his head — all impassioned, seductive persuasion. “More than anything else, it is only the old agreement returned in new vestments. Sacrifice as sacrament, true devotion, instead of necessity. Though blood flows still for blood, power for power, the result is shared, sustainable. None must die, though they are glad enough to do so.”
> “As you are glad enough to let them, my love — of that, I am most certain.”
Ixchel bowed her head, black cloud of hair falling only to drift upward once more, borne on a rising magical tide. “Surely. But you received your due share of ixiptla, gladly as any of us; you, too, flourished off the blood of those we now know to have been hexes-to-be, and like us all, worked wonders in return — preserving cities, renewing the land, shepherding the world through its seasons. Life for life, with pain the coin paid for existence. This has never changed and never will, since even the conquistadors’ creed admits the same, with their White Christ dying to bring rebirth! And thus it is we, we two, who are the very . . . gears of this Machine of my husband’s imaginings, its — workings, its . . . motor. We are the Blood Engine, ourselves.” Struggling for proper words, she came as far forward as she could without setting foot onto the Weed, stretching one hand up. Her pithed voice broke, almost pleading, as if she wanted to weep.