A Rope of Thorns by Gemma Files Read Free Book Online Page B

Pargeter gave just as good as he got, in that direction.”
    Haish blew out a breath. “Well,
that
ain’t good news. Damn little redheaded . . .
creature
was touched enough, back when he was only humanish. And how’d two mages get cleft together in the first place anyhow, even with one of ’em not yet at full effect? ‘Don’t meddle,’ my ass.”
    The other conclavists looked each-to-each, equally unhappy. “Maybe it really
is
catchin’,” Mergenthal suggested.
    “Highly unlikely, I’d think,” Pa began, in reply, colliding headlong with Haish’s: “Goddamn, man, shut your hole! Think we most’ve us all know a happy load’a horseshit, when we hear it. . . .”
    “As it turns out—yes.”
    Marshal Uther Kloves normally spoke so deadpan that most folks tended to suspect him of jesting, whatever he said. It was one of the things most endeared him to Yancey, but it did make for difficulty in terms of figuring out exactly where he was headed, in public addresses.
    “I’ve had telegrams from all the other Territories,” he explained. “Utah, Colorado—far north as Wyoming, even west of the Colorado River. Always it’s the same: once the Weed gets a foothold, there’s only one thing makes it die.”
    “Fire?”
    “Blood.”
    “
Any
blood?” Mergenthal said, his interest suddenly piqued—he’d his share of back-stores, after all, Yancey knew. And if perhaps there was money to be made . . .
    Yancey could imagine Kloves giving that near-imperceptible little shake of his head. “Human. Fresh-spilled.”
    A beat of silence, eventually broken by Pa, bewildered: “But . . . that don’t make any
sense
.”
    “Hexation’s at the bottom of all this, Lionel,” said Kloves. “Don’t go holdin’ your breath, waitin’ for things to add up square.”
    Someone else cleared their throat. “Well, they do say the Weed doesn’t usually grow up so fast as Mister Frewer tells of.” Incongruously light and pleasant, this voice, though Yancey thought she recognized it as belonging to the mysterious Mister Grey, a tall, youngish fellow just starting on a serious walrus moustache, who’d rode into Hoffstedt’s Hoard only a few days ago. “But that may indeed be overspillage from this hex-battle ’twixt Pargeter and—Glossing, was it? The blood part, however, that’s true. I’ve seen it. Bleed a cupped double-handful from, say, five or six folks, spill it over the Weed and it dries up to powder inside of three days.” He paused. “Even heard a few claim their soil was the richer for it, after.”
    “That so?” Frewer’s mouth twisted, teacup slipping to thump the thick carpet, thankfully unbroken. “So all’s we have to do is offer up abomination, like the damn Philistines and Pharisees, and hey presto? Good Christ above, let
that
rumour fly free and folk’ll be pulling bad neighbours in off the streets, tellin’ ’emselves it’s better to cut one to save ten! You ever
seen
Weed-infected livestock, Mister?”
    Yancey hadn’t—but recalled all too well accounts she’d read, sprinkled over every news-sheet the Cold Mountain Hotel received. A cattle drive coming up through Bisbee had stopped in the wrong place for the night; the cowboys had woken to find their thousand head staggering ’round like they had worms—kicking, falling, dying. And then, once the renderers arrived to do due diligence, they’d found turkey vultures scattered dead every which way, wings and beaks entangled with fibres . . . after which the first tentative cuts had loosed a flood of guts stuffed with Weed, whose blossoms raised themselves up like snails’ stalk-eyes to the sun, seeming to peer ’round for fresher prey.
    Excise such places by fire, to the ground, then salt them over as Biblically prescribed, that was the common-held wisdom. Or wait for the government men to do much the same, under strict legality—but people seldom did. Most, like Mouth-of-Praise’s former citizenry, this ragged band of new-made