A Book Of Tongues by Gemma Files Page B

down, and answered, without a hint
of equivocation, “I don’t really see how I could , Chess Pargeter. Seein’
how you already move me absolute best of any damn thing I’ve come
across, thus far.”
    He got to his own feet then, towering over Chess, and smiled
at the way his shadow seemed to knit them both together, long
before he gathered him fiercely back in. They collided, mouths open,
tongues working sweetly.
    When he pulled away, at last, he was equally pleased to see how
Chess’s pale eyes seemed all but dazed with arousal. And then
something entirely brand new came into his look, an angry sort of
hope.
    “I . . . wasn’t raised to — care — for no one,” Chess told him. “But if
I did grow fond of any man, outside the usual transactions, well . . .
you might be that one, Rev.”
    Rook nodded, carefully.
    “I think I’d like that,” he replied.
    “You’re damn right, you would,” Chess agreed. And gripped Rook
by both biceps at once, his fingers leaving bruises, kissing him so
hard spit mingled with blood.
    They raised the subject of outlawry that night, ’round the campfire,
and watched it pass unanimously. “Always did think I’d probably
end up robbin’ folks, once the War was done,” was old Hosteen’s only
comment.
    “It’s dangerous work, is what I hear,” Rook pointed out.
    “Sure,” Chess said, “same as anything else. But we’ll be right
enough, I expect.”
    “How’s that?”
    That crooked, dazzling smile. “’Cause we got you .”
    True, Rook thought, as far as that went. The only problem being
he didn’t actually know, himself, just how far that was . . . not with
any true degree of accuracy. Particularly not under pressure.
    Magic had its price, was what Rook had always heard, and that
price was mighty hard. On the one hand, whatever he preached did
come true, indisputably — and since everything he preached came
straight from the Book itself, the direct and truthful word of God,
he believed he might be forgiven for having assumed it would be good work he did with it overall, rather than the reverse. Yet everything
he preached went bad, in the end — swiftly, and often inventively.
    In the Painted Desert, for example — waiting for information on
which trains might be best worth robbing, with what food they’d
brought along running out fast — he turned to the tale of Elijah, who
was fed by ravens. Soon, a plague of black-feathered birds huge as
his namesake descended, dashing themselves to death against the
canyon walls. The gang, starved enough to overcome their disgust
at this haphazard delivery system, handily ate them roasted, only
vaguely plucked and splinter-crunchy with hollow broken bones.
    So Rook turned to Moses and his manna instead, bringing
unleavened bread falling from the air (straight into dirt, soft and
sticky, not exactly nourishing). It was blander, but kept better.
    “Maybe you should seek for other hexes,” Chess suggested. “Chat
them up, get them to tell you what they do, or don’t, in similar
situations. Couldn’t hurt.”
    “Couldn’t it?”
    (Minds always touching his, feeling him out, harrying him: Go
here, do this, do that. Stay clear. Most he couldn’t put a name to, ’sides
from a Chink gal called Songbird to the west whose thoughts coiled
and spat in a venomous centipede nest. Rook hoped to never come
near enough for her to see what he looked like, let alone lay hands
on him directly.)
    “Hell, I don’t know — I ain’t no hex. But I got my best advice from
other gunslingers, same’s I got my worst. Take it all, pick through it
at your leisure . . . and practise .”
    That morning, before dawn, Rook woke first and left Chess
wrapped in both their coats, careful not to wake him. Then sat
down in the dust bare-assed, stretched out a hand, frowned at the
largish, greyish rock set opposite, and ordered it — “Come here, to
me. C’mon, now.”
    Nothing happened.
    “ Here , I conjure thee. I . . . command .”
    Still