Certainly, in its wake, Rook himself could feel himself becoming nothing but a sad shadow of the man Chess had once known, back during the War . . . same one he’d taken a shine to, flirted with, killed over. Though God knew, he might well’ve done that last part anyhow, considering.
Chess, hung up from the heavens with his red hair a-glisten and his purple coat new-brushed, like it’d come right off the tailor’s dummy; Chess, green eyes narrowed against a light they seemed to share. And Asher Rook in his comparative shabbiness, his remade ordinariness — merely human again, after so long a time as priest, king, consort to two gods at once.
What could there possibly be for him now that would ever compare to this hole at his feet, the one he had helped rip in the world, especially when that was closed over for good?
“No,” Rook said, at length. “Not much call for a faithless preacher in a town that Word-ridden, even with their own minister laid up from havin’ his hand blown off. I believe I’ll have to decline.”
Chess’s brows lowered, brow wrinkling. “Don’t be foolish.”
A hoarse scratch of a laugh, the rope’s passage yet worn rough along every note. “Oh, I’m long gone way past simple folly, darlin’ — wouldn’t you say? Still, I did save your soul from Hell, after all, like I promised . . . and you got to keep your hexation, to boot. Told you so.”
“You didn’t do a thing to get me out of Hell, you great ass, ’cept for puttin’ me there in the first damn place. That was all me, with Yancey Kloves leading in front and my Ma kickin’ my ass from behind. And now look at you!”
“Look at me,” Rook agreed, smiling slightly, as if the idea of Chess being his destruction just warmed him through and through. “And look at you, too, Chess — oh, you are something, all right. Always were.”
That’s why I love you yet, darlin’, in spite of everything — always will.
He saw Chess’s gaze widen, then, like some sense of what Rook was contemplating had jolted itself through this hex-blind shell he now stood stranded in, encased away from the magic that should have lit his veins. As though they still knew each other so well, so intimately, they barely had to speak at all.
“You’re the only thing here I’ll miss, and that forever,” Rook told him, stepping backward.
Chess grabbed for Rook’s hand, quick-draw fast; snatched the air so shy of his fingertips that he could feel their warmth. But Rook opened his wide, the span of it wider than all ten of Chess’s neat pistoleer’s fingers put together, and was gone. By the time Chess dived for the Crack as well, already folding itself shut over the whoosh of Rook’s passage, he found himself caught fast in Ed Morrow’s bear-hug grip with Yancey holding on almost as tight from the other side, as he kicked and flailed and screamed.
“Let go of me, fuckers! I could still — ”
“Chess, you can’t. It’s too narrow, see? You’d never make it back up.”
“I could blast it open, catch him ’fore he reaches where they’re bound; Christ, I know the way, or close as! Let me GO!”
“Not gonna happen,” said Morrow, hugging all the harder.
Yancey nodded. “’Sides which, you pop it again, what d’you think’ll happen to the rest of us, given how much we alr
eady paid to get this thing closed? You really prepared to make everybody else suffer, in order to get your last chance at Rook?”
Chess cast her a glance full of all the venom he could muster, but she didn’t shrink an inch. It’s like you don’t even know me, he thought, grinding his teeth — but nothing came out, no smart words, not even a San Fran gutter insult. Just an inarticulate groan ratcheting up to some sort of howl that dinned so bad in his own ears, he found himself trying to bash his head outright against the scar-rucked ground.
“Was the whole world you just stopped from ending, Chess. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?” No reply, no reply. Simply Ed’s voice continuing in his ear, gentler and far more understanding than he deserved: “Well, wasn’t it?”
Followed by another voice still, faint and growing fainter, seeping up through the ground, into Chess’s aching temples. Which whispered, in a tone so full of affection he truly believed he’d someday surely want to take comfort in its memory, during the awful moment of his own eventual death. Impressed me, all right, that one said. But then, I always knew you had it in you.
“You fuckin’ liar,” Chess whispered back, rolling his tear-stained face in the dust.
Not on this, Chess Pargeter. I told you . . . if one of us has to be damned, let it be me.
“Liar,” Chess repeated, to no one, as Yancey and Morrow exchanged a pair of similarly baffled glances. “Bastard, fool, fucking stupid idjit — I would’ve took damnation, always, if I knew you’d’ve been there with me!”
Ah, but darlin’, I wouldn’t be, since that’s the institution’s whole point, as I think you probably know. Hell’s a prison fitted with nothin’ but solitary cells, where each prisoner makes his way back to God alone, for however long and hard a time it takes.
He saw himself as if from a great height, and wondered at the ridiculousness of it: heartless, restless, wicked Chess Pargeter, left behind yet one more time with the heart he’d so long sought — at such terrible cost — finally regained, finally able to feel it all once more, only to lose what made feeling matter. Chess brought low, furious in his prideful anger, with nothing to do about it but roll in the dirt and shriek. Lost, bereft, utterly alone.
“I give it up!” He roared, in desperation — unsure who he might be talking to, exactly, if not the God he’d never quite believed in, for all he’d seen small-g gods aplenty. “All of it, all this happy horseshit! I give it up, I give it back, CHRIST — ”
Too late by far, Chess; you can’t. This is what you are. Wouldn’t make any difference anyhow, even if you could.
“God damn you, Ash Rook! God DAMN YOU!”
Oh, I’m pretty sure He already has.