Scrubbed and dressed once more, Morrow walked out, and ran straight into Hosteen, who gave him a look the likes of which he’d never previously seen. Because he knew, of course — hell, the whole of Splitfoot’s probably knew, come to that, since Chess wasn’t exactly quiet.
“Hey, Kees,” Morrow said, flushing hard.
Hosteen sighed. “So . . . you and Chess, huh? Boy, I thought you was smart.”
“Says the same man who give him his knife!”
“That was before the Rev. ’Sides which — Hell, I s’pose it don’t really matter much, in the end; just keep it to your damn self, is all. Considerin’.”
“Considerin’ what?”
“Scouts say they saw Rook comin’ — that cloud he walks around in sometimes, anyhow, tall enough to block out the sun. Should be here by nightfall, if he ain’t here sooner.”
From behind them both, a fresh squeak of the door announced Chess’s presence. The smell of hair-oil made Morrow blush afresh, but Chess didn’t even acknowledge it — just gave the both of them both a cool nod, and said: “’Bout time that son-of-a-bitch showed up.”
Hosteen nodded back. “They said he mighta had somebody else with him,” he said. “A woman.”
There was a general pause, during which Chess stared fixedly at Hosteen, while Morrow tried his level best to look pretty much anywhere else.
“She just better be a fuckin’ hex, is all I’m sayin’,” Chess announced, eventually, to no one. And stalked off past them, hips swinging, to take the staircase down.
Outside,
a storm came in hard and fast — more dust than rain, bright orange-red, lighting up the whole sky from horizon to horizon. What denizens of Splitfoot Joe’s hadn’t already made themselves scarce, got busy either securing shutters or mudding up the various lintel-chinks, and since the chimney had to be blocked off first of all — no point in leaving it open, when all it drew was sand — the fire went out, leaving them to sit idle in semi-darkness, listening to the wind.
“Screw this,” Hosteen said, and started fiddling with a lamp.
Morrow felt his way closer.
“Need some help with that?”
“Had you a lucifer handy, I wouldn’t turn it down.”
Morrow took hold of the lamp’s glass bell and kept it upright, while Hosteen struck a match. The lucifer went blue, then yellow, as he guided it in — but it wouldn’t catch, nohow.
“Might be the wick’s too short,” Morrow suggested. “Or too soaked to light — ”
“Might be you should keep your opinions to yourself, ’less I go ask you for ’em.”
All of a sudden, the wick flared, light swelled to fill the room, and Morrow turned with a sigh of relief — that choked to a glottal sound of shock and fright as Rook’s grin gleamed down on him, from above the sofa on the far wall. The Rev seemed to materialize around that grin, coalescing out of the gloom: slumped at his leisure, one long arm slug over the sofa’s back.
And next to him sat someone entirely different, though — as advertised — visibly female. She was a dim blur, hair hung in a cowl, her haughty face the colour of good blonde tobacco. Had the same stone-black eyes as Songbird, too, albeit cut larger and far more lustrous: flat and glassine, much like the famous Smoking Mirror itself with that gal adorning it — broke apart in sections, forever caught falling downwards, froze in the instant before impact. Her hung-dagger earrings. Her flat nose, sloping forehead, swooped-up frieze of braids.
Her, by God.
Oh yeah, Morrow thought. She’s a hex, all right.
The company cried out, almost as one. Rook’s hand tightened on hers to hear it, in proprietary fashion; he was still smiling, though she looked like she might well not know how. And outside, the wind — that endless scraping trumpet, ubiquitous, deranged — went suddenly silent as an open grave.
“Shut the hell up, you buncha wailin’ jennys!” Chess hollered out, reaching for his guns.
“Boys,” Rook said, at the exact same time. To Chess: “Miss me, darlin’?”
But Chess’s eyes were stuck on Little Miss Nobody, firm as though they’d been glued there. “This her? The one you been dreamin’ on?” No answer. “She a hex?”
Rook’s smile deepened. “Oh, she’s more’n that.” Raising his voice, “Ain’t that right, Lady Ixchel?”
He pronounced the name so easily — Eeshzhel, fluid and guttural as a snake spitting blood — that for an instant it sounded as if some other voice entirely had spoken through Rook’s mouth.