A Book Of Tongues

CHAPTER THREE

The Present

“They call this Whore City,” Chess said, balancing back on his heels and surveying the area with a cold eye. “Though why folks make that distinction, given the rest of this crap-heap . . .”

“Weren’t you born here?”

“That’s how come I get to say so.”

To the casual observer, ’Frisco’s Chinee-town — or at least the part of it known as China Alley, a dingy passage extending from Jackson to Washington Street — was completely given over to a sprawling tangle of semi-respectable bagnios on the one hand, outright cribs on the other. It had begun to rain sometime during their trek down, reducing visibility considerably, with mist and mud conspiring to further dim the overhanging lurch of shadows. Outside the bagnios red paper lanterns had been posted, casting a hellish light.

Morrow thought they all looked tolerably enticing destinations, when compared to the cribs: cramped, one-storey raw-board shacks, at whose small barred windows girls leaned straight out into the alley, shamelessly bent on advertising their wares. Their top halves were covered with brief silk blouses, but the minute a man’s eyes fell upon them, they opened their drawstrings wide and called out.

“China girl nice! You come inside, please?”

“Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee!”

And most inexplicably: “Your father, he just go out!”

“A white woman would have to be pretty much on her last inch of trim, to end up like that,” Morrow remarked. “‘Course, this is where the smoke all comes from, I’ll bet.”

“There’re plenty,” Chess said, shortly. “And not all of ’em opium fiends, either.”

For a split second, Morrow wondered how he knew — but he made sure not to let it show.

“Songbird’s house should be along here somewhere,” the Reverend broke in. “Selina Ah Toy’s, they call it. Chess?”

“I ain’t been down here in five damn years, as you well know, and my Chinee ain’t worth squat ’cept for negotiating very specific points of sale.”

The Rev fixed him with a sidelong warning look. Chess snorted, and grabbed hold of the next old pigtail who clattered by them.

“Ai-yaaah!” the man yelled out — then stared a bit closer. “You Ingarish Oo-nah’s boy, wei?” he asked, at last.

Morrow noted how the tips of Chess’s ears flushed bright red at being thus identified. But seeing how it was under the Rev’s watchful eyes, he conjured some vile parody of a pleasant expression, replying, “Uh huh. Nee how, uncle — long time no see. Songbird ah?”

“Songbird? No can do!”

“Can do, uncle. Selina Ah Toy’s, cash money ah. This fella jootping, same as her. You bring.”

“Songbird no-go! Chi-shien gweilo, ben tiansheng de yidui rou — ”

And here he went off into some further rattle-fast string of stuff, only stopping short when Chess stuck his gun to the old man’s shiny blue silk-clad chest.

“Listen, granddad,” he said, with surprising patience, “we ain’t leavin’ ’til the Reverend here and Songbird sit down together. So you go tell her that and see what it gets you, ’cause I can tell you right now exactly what it’ll get you, if you don’t.”

The old man swallowed hard and drew himself up slightly, as if steeling himself to refuse once more (and be shot for it, a good Celestial soldier). But an imperious voice issued from just up the street, saying: “No need for that, gentlemen . . . I will gladly see the Reverend, if he cares to come inside.”

Chess shrugged, and put up his gun. The old man ran off without a backward glance, calling out as he did: “Chunren gweilo, waaah! Cao ni zuxian shi ba dai!”

“That don’t sound too nice,” Morrow remarked.

“It is not,” the voice — Songbird’s, he surmised — replied. “He is a foolish old man, and I will deal with him later, harshly, for insulting my guests. But again, gentlemen, will you enter?”

Morrow thought he’d rather not, another thing he knew enough to keep to himself. Instead, he trailed Chess and the Reverend into what proved the most luxurious establishment they’d yet discovered: a snug red brick house, its dim-lit ground floor given over to gambling — fan-tan, mah-jongg, a creepily silent general click and shuffle of plain brass counters and polished elephant-horn dominoes. On a low stage, a four-piece orchestra sat playing some windy chaos which sounded to Morrow like they were still deep in the process of tuning their weirdly shaped instrumentation. Girls swayed back and forth on either side, doing a serpentine dance.

No sign of Songbird, though. Just a curtain made from jet beads swinging back and forth atop a flight of stairs, and the same voice calling down, impatiently: “Up here, Reverend Rook! Bring your men with you, if you must. I mean you no harm, and trust you mean me the same. You would never have come here at all were that not true, wei?”

“Yes ma’am,” the Rev agreed, taking hold of Chess’s arm.

But Chess dug himself in. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere near that bitch,” he said. “You already got her parole, so you don’t really need me. Just the stink of this hole alone’s ’bout enough to make my head split open, anyways.”

“Too much feminine perfume, and such?”

“Too much junk, more like. Take Morrow, you want some backup.”

Another rumbling laugh. “Your call, darlin’. Hell, though — I thought you were up for anything, Chess. When’d you get so damn nice?”

Chess nodded at the curtain. “You drug us down here to see some baby whore who does table-rappin’ on the side; ain’t my idea of a good time, is all. I’ll stay in easy callin’ distance.”

Morrow, dubious: “Baby whore?”

“’Course,” Chess snapped. “Chinee breed ’em that way — whores, witches, what-have-you. Same as them little mush-faced dogs, or them gold-colour fish with the floppy heads.” He shook his head, nose wrinkling. “It’s creepish, the whole damn thing.”

“Sure you ain’t just jealous?” the Rev suggested. “I’ll be in fairly close quarters with her, after all.” To which Chess’s sharp face coloured and darkened, in equal measure.

“I’ll stay close,” he repeated. “Locked and loaded — all you gotta do is yell. Meet you back out front, soon as you’re done your business.”

Rook shrugged. “Probably the best place for you, you feel that strongly about it. Ed?”

“Sir.”

So they left Chess behind, climbing to meet the only other magician Morrow’d ever run across so far, with nothing but a shotgun and Rook’s Bible for cover. First witch-woman Morrow’d seen since Old Mother Harelip, too, for all she was barely old enough to . . . well, she’d have to at least be old enough to bleed, according to Asbury’s strictures.

The curtain parted with a slither. Inside, one windowless room took up the whole of the house’s second floor — spacious, yet cramped by a stifling forest of screens which had been arranged to turn one end of the room into a haphazard sort of pagoda. Where Songbird slept, Morrow reckoned, and maybe conducted other sorts of encounters.

“You are correct in this conclusion, Mister Morrow,” the voice told him, with uncomfortable acuteness — and now issuing from somewhere roughly behind him, which troubled Morrow even more. “For while my maiden’s flower is far too highly valued to be sold except at auction, there are no strictures levied against my allowing an occasional ‘lookee’ if some white man wishes to pay for the privilege, though I charge considerably more than fifty cents. I say white man, because most Celestials already know that the secret parts of their womenfolk differ in no way from those of any other female, be she yellow, white . . . or dead.”

Morrow felt a small shoulder brush lightly against his elbow and all but fell back, the stock of his shotgun knocking one screen sharp enough that it rang against the sanctum’s wall like a muffled bell. The Reverend, no doubt more used to these sorts of tricks, simply stepped aside, bowing as Songbird settled onto a throne set with a high silk cushion.

“Have to decline the kind offer, Honourable Lady,” Rook said. “Though for all I probably couldn’t afford it, I’m sure it makes a lovely view. What I’m more interested in, however, is your skill — ”

“ — as an interpreter of dreams? I know.”

And here Songbird raised her face to what light there was, revealing herself as a truly spectral vision: twelve years old at most, a porcelain doll dressed all in red bridal silk whose features matched those of the painted courtesans decorating her walls almost exactly, aside from one peculiarity — a near-complete lack of colour in the face under her sheer red veil, pig-pale skin, crone-white hair and faded hazel eyes all bleached by some hideous trick of nature. Her hands she held folded in her lap, interlaced fingers covered with long, gilded filigree spikes which gave off a dry, squeaking tone as they rubbed together, a distant cymbal’s clash.

“Albino,” the Rev observed. “You must be almost blind, I’d think.”

A tiny nod. “Almost. Luckily, I find it aids in my speculative endeavours. And now, since we have dispensed with formalities: your dream. It began when you first came to power?”

“Exactly at that same point, yes.”

“When the gallows-trap opened? Or when your neck broke?”

The Rev took this in. Though still loomingly tall, he seemed suddenly smaller, less assured. “I don’t think it ever actually broke,” he said, at last.

Songbird smiled, thinly. “Such prevarication, for such a powerful man. Show me the kiss she gave you, your ‘Rainbow Lady.’”

“Thought you said — ”

“I can feel very well, Reverend.” Voice dropping further: “Now — I have other business of my own to conduct tonight, as do you, no doubt. So open your shirt, and bow down to me.”

Was there an extra thrum to the words she spoke? For Morrow, it was mere speculation — but from what he could see, Reverend Rook took them full in the face, a thrown glass of cold water. His huge hands were already rising to obey, unbidden, when he shook himself like a dog and hauled them back down again.

“Little girl,” he said, “you’d best be able to give me what I want. Or I will tear this damn place of yours down around you, without ever even opening my Book.”

Songbird yawned, covering her mouth with those huge gilt nail-sheaths. “We will see.”

The Rev exhaled through his nose, then popped the requisite buttons, shrugging collar aside from the puckered rope-scar which still encircled his thick neck, bent himself until Songbird could reach up and place her naked palm against the furrowed flesh without having to rise. She stroked the burn, delicately, like she was planning to buy more of it by the ell.

Creepish, Morrow heard Chess’s voice remark, from the back of his brain.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Reverend Rook?” she asked, at last.

“Sure,” the Rev replied, straightening up again. “Why?”

“And do you believe in God?” As Rook stared: “Gods?”

This drew a frown. “Old heretic deities, the things they worshipped in Philistine times? Baal and Moloch, and such?” Songbird nodded once more. “I was taught those were devils, sent by Satan to fool with unbelievers. Like Solomon with his wives’ idols, or Ahab and Jezebel.”

Songbird shrugged. “Gods or ghosts, energy begets energy — prayer, worship, sacrifice, revenge. Like the ch’i, which you and I both carry inside us; a stream the whole universe drinks from, for good or ill. Nothing really dies.”

“I do hope there’s some point here beyond the merely philosophical you’re eventually aimin’ to make, for both our sakes.”

“Certainly. This woman of yours — who watches over all hanged men, and claims you for her own — is both god and ghost. Doubly powerful, and thus doubly dangerous. She demands something from you . . . and until you render it to her, she will never let you go.”

“Well, that ain’t actually too helpful, since Goddamn if I know what that might be.”

“You must ask her.”

“She don’t really speak my language.”

“No — or you hers, I gather. Few probably live who do. This is why you must speak to her directly.” Pinning Morrow with a red-tinged glance: “If you would be so good as to reach behind you, Mister Morrow . . . yes, there, exactly. Thank you.”

The item in question proved to be a long slab of black stuff like congealed tar, four inches by six, inscribed all over one side of it with queer figuring. Peering closer, Morrow thought he could make out the remains of a prehistoric murder, some creature left in dismembered wreckage — but no, it was a woman, her cheeks picked out with spiral patterns, black breasts pendulous and stiff coif balanced by a massive pair of dagger-sharp earrings, fit to carve someone else the same way she herself had already been unstrung.

Rook shook his head. “That ain’t her.”

“Not completely,” Songbird agreed. “And yet . . . I was given this in tribute, by a man from Tlaquepacque. He called it a ‘smoking mirror.’ Your Rainbow Lady will respond to it favourably, if given the right sort of impetus.”

“Which would be?”

She beckoned him back down again, and whispered in his ear. Slowly, Morrow saw a cold understanding wash across Rook’s face.

“Uh huh, all right. How much?”

“It depends. How much are you prepared to pay, Reverend?”

“Enough.”

“And by . . . ?”

“. . . the usual method.”

Songbird breathed in, hungrily. “Aaah,” she said. “I had hoped you would honour the traditions.”

“I’m a man what keeps his bargains.”

“Oh, not always, I think.” Songbird’s eyes flicked back to Morrow. “Perhaps you should send your friend away now,” she suggested.

Rook nodded. “Go find Chess for me, Ed, would you? You may’ve noticed how he tends to make himself some trouble to get into, whenever he’s riled.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be back out in a minute.”

Morrow nodded as well, but found himself lingering — so obviously, even Songbird couldn’t fail to notice. She smiled, in a way that made Morrow’s hair rise like quills.

“He will be quite safe with me, Mister Morrow. After all, I am only a young maiden . . . no fit threat at all to the Reverend. What he does here, he chooses to. Yes, Asher Rook?”

“Yes.”

“Then . . . it is decided.”

She grabbed hold of the back of Rook’s head with both hands, so fierce and fast it made Morrow take yet another step back, rattling the screens’ slick-painted forest. This sly little thing with her sugar-stick bones, digging her golden claws deep in the Reverend’s hair, kissing him like she meant to suck out his very soul. Which she maybe might’ve, since he could see something pass between them, blurred and subtle, a sort of heat-shimmer that tugged at the corners where their two mouths met and puffed both their throats out like frogs’.

They prey on each other, Asbury had said.

Songbird gulped hard, and Morrow heard the Rev’s usual rumble become a species of moan that scared him more than anything else he’d seen thus far. He knew that Chess would’ve tried to do something about it and screw the consequences, had he only been in range. Perhaps that was why the Rev had taken pains to make so damn sure he wasn’t.

But that was Chess, and this was Ed, who didn’t love Reverend Rook at all — not more than his life, at any rate.

So all Morrow did in response was grit his teeth hard, stop his ears and take to his heels, shotgun snapping up like a third arm, already cocked. And left ’em to it.