A Tree of Bones by Gemma Files

fact. Yet sacrifice is simply death, placed in special context. And when we speak of creatures as powerful as Lady Rainbow, let alone that Other, are we even really speaking of
death
, per se? Disruption alone might suffice, if it lasted long enough. The resultant backwash of released mantic energy, horrifyingly strong as it would have to be . . . I see no reason why Mister Pinkerton might not use it to elevate himself to their power status, if only temporarily.”
    Temporarily’d be bad enough, Morrow didn’t have to say, since he could only suppose they were both thinking it. And a few minutes later, Asbury put his head down on his folded arms for “a short rest,” never lifting it up again ’til morning.
    And here I am, stranded right in the middle of a pile of shit, just like effin’ always
, Morrow concluded, his long musing over.
Sure hope Yancey and the others have found the
real
Chess by now, wherever the Enemy might’ve stashed him — that they have a plan to go with that idea, too, if and when . . .
    Up on stage, Langobard raised “his” new Manifold to the light, admiring its shine. A second later, however, he almost dropped the thing as though burned — for it had begun to twist in his hand, buzzing waspish, mercury popping like it wanted to escape.
    “The hell — ?” was all he had time for.
    Outside, the thunder cracked like God’s own whip, shaking Nazarene Hall to its foundations. And between them, on the table, a noise rose up that Morrow’d hoped never to hear again: ticking and chattering, magnified by fifty-odd. The Manifolds themselves, rattling like bees in a sack.
    “. . . what?” This from the Reverend Catlin, still left off to one side, pathetic in his lack of practical understanding. But the rest of them knew better.
    “Hexation,” was all Sophy Love said, folding her little boy close. While Morrow just shifted back into fighting stance, one hand automatically going to his gun.
    It’s on
, he thought. And ran for the door.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Atop Hex City’s southernmost ramparts with Fennig at his elbow, Reverend Rook looked down on a four-foot-wide bowl that had been made by hexation-gloved hands digging up the stone like wet clay, tossing it pell-mell over the edge to shatter. Then filled by bucket after bucket hauled laboriously up from the city’s wells — that part had to be done
without
magic, the man who’d designed it had told them, or the reflections it cast would be false, and therefore impotent.
    The water must be a mirror, the mirror an eye, without flaw or artifice. It is known, barbarians. Everywhere, it is known! All civilized places, at least.
    Have you truly no system of traditions here, in this empty pigsty of yours, this bone-kennel? Do you not at the least strive to educate yourselves, knowing no one else will do it
for
you?
    The voice in Reverend Rook’s mind didn’t much sound like Songbird’s except in terms of tone — that damnable Celestial arrogance, a thousand years of Chinee witchery made literal flesh. For the Emperors and mandarins had done with both their ancestors what Auntie Sal’s Marse Followell had only dreamed on: in- and out-crossed ’em generation after generation like any other owned creature, culling their bloodlines for potential, power and amusement-value deformity — as pets and slaves, equally. Living weapons used ’til they broke, then bred again and again ’til their children outstripped them, or died trying.
    And here he was now, the man himself — the Honourable Chu, squatting over that same pool like a snapping turtle. He was short and broad, black eyes narrowed, the water below him rippling in red circles as he stirred it with a handful of long yarrow stalks. With his frayed black cotton pyjama pants and callused bare feet, he looked most like what he’d once masqueraded as: a scholar reduced to beggary, escaping his inherited yoke by slipping on the uniform of a simple railway-labour coolie. One thing alone marked him