Free A Book Of Tongues by Gemma Files Page A

always, little king: in
darkness, in chaos. In blood.
    The world we know, a child conceived in death, a saviour made
from bones. The flower from the skull.
    This is what I want you to understand, as you already
should. You died in my way, after all — a valid sacrifice, whether
ordained or not. And ignorance is no excuse.
    Think of it, now, she had ordered him, the black rainbow
snapping around her like storm-clouds across a nervish, lowering
sky. When the rope tightened around your neck. That moment
of flowering, when your skull cracked open, the seed inside you
began to bloom. . . .
    Her words in his ears, ringing. Followed closely, as dream gave way
to memory, by God Almighty’s:
    . . . and they four had one likeness: and their appearance . . . was as
it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. . . .
    As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful. And their
rings were full of eyes . . . and when the living creatures were lifted up
from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. . . .
    The verses were so familiar through long study — and equally long
hours spent quoting them out loud, to prove one point or another —
that he could no longer recall if he’d screamed them, moaned them,
whispered them, in his hour of ultimate need. Only that they’d been
on his lips when the rope finally snapped taut and the trap beneath
him opened, plummeting him feet-first into night —
    The drop wasn’t long enough: inexperience on his killers’ part,
or maybe a sublimated urge to punish him further. So he slammed
up hard against gravity itself, every inch of him instantly bruised,
drowning in air. His heart stuttered, his own body’s weight a
millstone, spirits violently pressing upwards ’til they forced their
way to his head. Where he saw a glaring light which seemed to vomit
from his eyes with a flash so bright, so deep, it scarred the entire
universe —
    — and then, exactly as sudden, he’d lost all sense of pain. A
glacial calm descended.
    Rook looked up, saw planks and dust, the gallows’ underside. A
square of blue sky through the trap. His former brothers on the field
of war looking down, some faces frowning, some blank. Some even,
in a bitter way, amused.
    Bastards , he thought. You know not the day, nor the hour. . . .
    Then over further, to where Chess Pargeter still fought with his
captors, next in line for the noose. Which somehow rubbed Rook
rawer than the sight of his own death approaching — the idea of
Chess pissing himself at the end of some rope, all that energy gone,
without a final chance to redeem itself.
    Chess, who was burning up with fever ever since he took that
ball in the shoulder — probably turning gangrenous, not that
that’d matter, in a minute or so. Chess, who snarled, and spat: “You
motherless bitches! The Rev’s worth a hundred of you, you slugs!
He’s worth ten thousand!”
    “Goddamn queerboy camp-follower sure got a mouth on him,
dirty as one of Hooker’s gals,” the soldier with Chess’s right arm
pinned back told his partner, who had Chess in a headlock. To which
the other soldier just grinned, and tightened up his grip.
    “He didn’t even do it, either!” Chess screamed, twisting and
kicking. “ I was the one killed the Lieut, you morons! Good Christ, no
wonder we lost the Goddamn war!”
    Turned out there really was a bone in the throat, just as Chess
had always claimed. Rook felt it go, and felt all the darkness inside
him snap shut again, percolating, a stoppered steam-kettle. Heard
his thunderous preach-voice shrink and grind, as everything went
red.
    And thought — prayed, though he no longer quite knew who to — Oh, give me strength. Strength enough. Give me . . .
    But nothing answered save himself, or maybe the wind. And
then, at last —
    — her.
    Save him, little king. As you know you can.
    Kicking, turning. No voice now to scream.
    And the blue sky, shrinking. The clouds, rushing in. Fat grey
drops of rain falling, to slick his fevered face. As