A Book Of Tongues by Gemma Files Read Free Book Online Page A

trouble of truckin’ with, no matter the odds.
But did you listen?”
    Rook heaved a long sigh, bracing both hands on the small of his
back and cracking his own spine ’til he groaned like he’d been beat
all over. Finally managing to allow: “I did not.”
    “Nope. And considerin’ we barely got out of there alive, I hope it
was Goddamn well worth it.”
    “Well, since you ask . . . it was. Which means, I suppose, that
I probably need to thank you for all your help on this particular
campaign, in whatever way you might find most congenial. Always
assuming that sounds like adequate payment in kind, to you.”
    A long, cool glance exchanged between ’em followed, with heat
banked none too secretly underneath.
    “We’ll see,” Chess said, at last. And turned away.
    Half a night and a day of hard riding later, they holed up in a shanty
barroom-whorehouse combo called the Two Sisters Saloon, where
Chess insisted on laying out for a bottle all of Morrow’s own, and
stuck around ’til he’d drunk at least half of it. It was probably the
longest he’d been in close quarters with Chess since joining up
without the Rev there to mediate between them, and Morrow was
vaguely shocked to realize he wasn’t actually struggling to stay on
his guard anymore. Mister (ex-)Private Pargeter could be fairly good
company, when he wasn’t determined to pick fights that ended in
murder.
    “Two Sisters,” he said, thickly. “That who started this place up?”
    Chess laughed, a genially smashed cat-sneeze cackle. “Hardly. It’s
the song, you know, with the . . . river, and the mill, and whatnot . . .
you know that song?” Morrow shook his head. “Well, then maybe it was just my Ma, after all — some Limey jig she used to sing, whenever
she got low. Goes like . . .
    “ There lived an old lord by the Northern Sea,
    Bow we down —
    There lived an old lord by the Northern Sea,
    Bow and balance to me;
    There lived an old lord by the Northern Sea
    And he had daughters, one two three . . .
    I’ll be true to my love,
    If my love will be true to me. ”
    Morrow squinted, feeling the room lurch around him. “So he had three daughters.”
    “Yeah, and one of ’em steals the other’s finance, so the other one
throws her in the river to drown. Then she floats downstream and
snags in the mill, and the miller drags her out — ”
    “So she’s rescued.”
    Another laugh. “’Til he cuts the rings off her fingers, and throws
her right back in.”
    “An’ the third?”
    “She don’t even come into it, Morrow; three’s a better rhyme
than two, is all.” Chess shot him a quick glance, and even mellow as
he was, Morrow felt a quick stab of superstitious dread, unable to
deny that even in the bar’s smoky semi-shadow, the pistoleer’s eyes
really did throw back light like a cat’s. “You’re an odd sorta bastard
when you’re drunk, ain’t ya?”
    Morrow swallowed. “Yeah. When I ain’t drunk, too — or so I’ve
been told.”
    And then, because the Two Sisters was so warm and dark, maybe,
packed full to the gills with outlaws and really almost too noisy to
talk at all, Morrow found himself asking, without thinking twice,
“What the hell was that place, anyhow? Back at Songbird’s?”
    But
to
this,
Chess
didn’t
answer
immediately.
Instead,
he
continued to study on his own empty glass a while, once more deep
entranced by what he saw there: that cool, sticky green world where
nothing mattered, ’cause everything was already well-drained hollow.
    “Down in the hole?” he said, at length. “They call it the hospital —
not that it’s for gettin’ better, you understand. ’Cause that’s just
where they put the whores who really are on their last inch of trim.”
    “’Bout how long you think they all got, then?”
    “Oh, not too long. Undertakers’ll be by tomorrow. If they ain’t
dead by then, they better try harder.”
    “So — that woman you were talkin’ with . . .” Another gulp, as the
room continued