Free A Tree of Bones by Gemma Files Page A

husband. As ever.
    Conversation disposed with, Ixchel turned back to Marizol, still frozen in a dumb-show of acquiescence. Telling her: “Now, child, you have spent enough time away from Court. I need you to take up your seat at my side once more, as is your ancestral charge and right, and . . .
feed me.”
    Marizol bit her lip even harder, for all the world as though she were trying to make the skin tear. As though she wanted to bring the red flowing freely, if only so she wouldn’t have to make use of the thorn-rope again.
    “
Si, señora
,” she managed, through her pain.
    “
Good
girl,” Ixchel said, laying a half-fleshed hand to her forehead. And with a concussive flash, they were gone.
    From Fennig’s side, Clo Killeen let out one long-held breath in a fit of coughing; Berta embraced her from the side, stroking her chest soothingly, while Eulie — typically the most gentle of the three — squinched her pretty face up, and actually spat.
    “She’s gonna kill that girl,” she remarked, to Rook, sounding like she hoped he’d deny it. “Ain’t she?”
    “I think so, yes.”
    “Goddamn it all to hell, then. She’s — good, that one, even if she ain’t hexacious.”
    Rook nodded. “A few more like her on either side, and maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
    From her place in the corner, Missus Followell shook her head. “Pure foolishness, and y’all know it. ‘Nice’ that gal may well be, but she ain’t never gone be one of us — no way, no how. Whereas the Lady, awfulness and all . . .
is
.”
    “She’s a monster,” Clo whispered, lips barely moving, so fast Berta didn’t have time to clap a hand over her mouth. But Followell merely turned her too-calm eyes back on the Irish girl, replying, “And we ain’t?”

CHAPTER FOUR
    “From my vantage, those who do not consider themselves entirely committed must, of course, feel free to move on,” Sophronia Love said, voice even, though still loud enough to fill a close-packed room. “Each of you must seek grace in your way, as your understanding of the Lord’s word prompts you, since I believe we all share the sure and certain knowledge that each man’s path is his own business.”
    The small group of supplicants before her — disadvantaged by a good three feet of extra height granted the woman most simply called “Widow,” along with Bewelcome’s other town elders, by virtue of the stage on which they sat — shuffled where they stood, leader shifting his hat from hand to hand. “Ain’t like we
want
to go, Missus Love, what with the town still under fire. But . . . our families . . .”
    “Mister Trasker, if you truly feel your family better served by cowering upon your land and hoping to be overlooked, then by all means — go ahead and cower. I’ll note, however, that this same strategy entirely failed to save either the Harmons’ cattle, the de Groots’ breeding studs, or those men who died in guarding them.” Her eyes flicked sidelong, to skewer a man uncomfortably tapping one boot in the front row. “And you, Mister Russell — Hiram? Did a similar policy save your daughters, when Satan’s servants came to carry them away?”
    “You know full well it didn’t, ma’am.”
    “Well, then.”
    From the back of the hall, Morrow and Doctor Joachim Asbury watched this spin out, in silence. For the sin of arriving late, they’d been forced to seat themselves next to a frantically scribbling Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose Palmer Method shorthand was as unintelligible to Morrow as his overtures of friendship were unwelcome. A yellow journalist of some repute in first New York, then ’Frisco, this fashionably dressed fool had been touring the area writing exposes on Hex City when Pinkerton began his assault, and stayed to play war correspondent — from a safe distance, naturally. He had a way of smiling that barely reached his eyes, and a vulture’s keen instinct for the unwary quote which made Morrow almost loath to open his mouth