Free A Book Of Tongues by Gemma Files

about it, then, real damn fast. Thing’s
’bout to give me a headache. Jesus Christ !”
    Reluctantly, Morrow drew out the Manifold, popped its lid —
and gaped, as both spinning needles instantly resolved, a set trap
snapping: red on red, upper part of the scale, same as Asbury’d
always claimed they would. Pointing, for all the Goddamn world . . .
straight at Chess.
    Morrow heard Rook’s velvet rasp pick at his brain’s folds: Thing’ll
come in handy, eventually — you’ll figure out why. Soon enough.
    That’s why I could never get a clear reading, Morrow thought,
helpless to not complete the equation, even when it’d already been
made so mocking-clear. ’Cause Chess is always standing there, right
beside Rook. And Chess . . . vicious little Chess Goddamn Pargeter, who
used to suck cock for bullets, and’ll shoot you just for standin’ still if he
don’t like the look on your face while you’re doin’ it . . . Chess is a hex, too.
    The start of one, anyhow, seeing how true “grievous bodily harm”
hadn’t had its way with him. But more than enough for Rook to
siphon a bit of it off whenever he’d been preyed on, and needed to
do some preyin’ of his own, in return.
    All I need to trust about you , Ed, Rook’s ghost-voice told him, is
that you at least know to do what I tell you. So . . . do you? We good?
    “Yes sir,” Morrow muttered, out loud — then rose in one heave and
walked away fast, while he could still be fairly sure Chess thought he
was talking to him .

BOOK TWO: SKULL FLOWER
    California, Arizona, New Mexico — Beginning April 9, 1865
    Month Three, Day Seven Reed
    Festival: Xochimanaloya, or Presentation of Flowers
    Today’s Lord of Night (Number Six) is Chalchiuhtlicue, “She of the
Jade Serpent-Skirt” or “She whose Night-robe of Jewel-stars Whirls
Above.” Chalchiuhtlicue was the ruler over the Fourth Sun, the world
immediately previous to our own. That world was destroyed by
flooding.
    The
Aztec trecena Mazatl
(“Deer”)
is
ruled
by
Tepeyollotl —
Heart of the Mountain, the Jaguar of Night, lord of darkened caves.
Tepeyollotl is Tezcatlipoaca disguised in a jaguar hide, whose voice is
the echo in the wilderness and whose word is the darkness itself.
    By the Mayan Long Count calendar, the protector of day Acatl
(“Reed”) is also Tezcatlipoaca, who provides the days’ shadow soul.
Acatl is the sceptre of authority which is, paradoxically, hollow.
    Today is a day when the arrows of fate fall from the sky like
lightning bolts. A good day to seek justice, a bad day to act against
others.

CHAPTER SIX
    Two Years Earlier
    Once, the Rainbow Lady had told Asher Rook, in dreams, a human
ball-player was enticed by owls to pit his skills against the lords
of death, and made a descent into what was then called Xibalba.
He swam the river of blood, yet did not become drunk with it. He
reached the crossroads, the Place of All Winds, where he took not
the red road, nor the white, nor the yellow, but the black. He entered
the bone canoe, piloted by spiders and bats. He sank downwards,
through cold water, to the whole world’s bottom.
    Xibalba, as it was called then. Mictlan, as it became. Mictlan-Xibalba, as it is now, and will be, forever more.
    When he arrived, however, he was met only with mockery and
betrayal. The Sunken Ball-Court’s kings set him impossible tasks,
then cheated the rules to make sure he would fail, and sent him to
be executed, decreeing that his severed head should be set in a tree
by the wayside, as a warning to other travellers.
    Promptly, the tree flowered all over, producing a hundred
succulent calabash melons that attracted the attention of Blood
Maiden, the Blood Gatherer’s beautiful daughter. She reached up to
pick one, only to discover she held the ball-player’s skull instead.
The skull spat in her hand, and told her: Though my face is gone, it
will soon return, in the face of my son. And she found herself pregnant.
    Because this is how things begin,