by D. J. Butler
Ma’iingan had told his new name to his parents, and he had told it to Waabigwan the day they had married. She had never had a vision—every young man of the People must seek a vision, but young women had the choice—and had no vision-name to share with him. Someday, Ma’iingan had always planned to tell the name Waawoono to his sons.
Could he share it if they had not had their own visions?
Could he share it with Giimoodaapi at all?
“I need guidance,” he said to his spirit-namer.
“You know how to be a man,” the spirit said. “That’s all I have to show you.”
Ma’iingan’s heart fell. Had he come in vain?
But no, spirits didn’t always speak the complete truth. They could even deliberately deceive.
“Why did you bring me here, then?” he asked. “If you can’t help me, why speak with me at all?”
“Maybe I’m bored,” the spirit said. “Maybe I’ve come only out of respect for the People with whom I am connected. Maybe I’ve come merely because you and I are friends.”
“We are not friends,” Ma’iingan said, “though we are bound together. And if you value that connection, I beg you to help me. Show me how to fix what is wrong with my son.”
“Giimoodaapi.”
“He was born late, and so I didn’t capture him for my doodem as I should have. I didn’t fight the Catfish for his spirit, so he’s a person without a doodem. He’s neither Loon nor Catfish. And if he has no doodem, he is not Anishinaabe. He can’t eat Anishinaabe food, he won’t drink from the breast of his mother, and he starves. Help me help him. Show me in vision what I must do to heal him.”
“There is a healer,” the spirit said slowly. “He is far from you, and is laid low by illness himself. If you raise him up, he can heal your son and make Giimoodaapi one of the People.”
“Show me the way to this healer.”
“What will you give me?”
“I’ll give you everything I have.”
“A wiigiwaam, a rifle, a bow? What will I do with these things?”
“I’ll send my sons to you to be named,” Ma’iingan said. What could this spirit want? What did any spirit want?
“When your sons become men, they will wander into the forest. There I will find them if I wish, whether you want it or not.”
Ma’iingan hesitated, silent.
“You have nothing to give me. And you have nothing I want. Why should I do this thing?” The spirit smiled, and his teeth looked sharp and wolflike.
“I offer you no gift,” Ma’iingan said. “Instead, I make a threat.”
The spirit’s wings snapped once, as if in surprise. Glitters of light like tiny falling stars shot from his wings as they did so. “What?”
“If you do not help me, I will give you back the name Waawoono. I’ll cease to be the howling one, I’ll tell everyone I meet of my visions of you.”
The spirit’s brow furrowed. “Is this truly the best you can do?”
“I’m flesh and bone, spirit. Do not doubt my resolve.” Ma’iingan felt lightheaded, but he pushed forward. If he angered the spirit too much, the spirit might kill him and he would disappear forever from the world he knew. Or he might drive Ma’iingan mad, and Ma’iingan might return to his wife gibbering and senseless, a permanent burden.
On the other hand, he didn’t know how else to help his son. And the spirit had said there was a healer. “I’ll creep up to the long lodge when the Midewiwin are meeting,” Ma’iingan continued, “and shout your name through the cracks along with obscenities! I’ll name every dog I own Waawoono, and I’ll beat them all. I’ll write the name Waawoono on birchbark paper and I’ll use that paper to wipe my backside, and then truly will I howl—”
“Enough!” Ma’iingan’s manidoo rose to its full height, eyes flashing. Ma’iingan could now see that the spirit had wolf’s paws to match its ears, rather than feet like a person. “You would do these deeds? You would tread on things the People hold so sacred?”
Ma’iingan shrugged. “I have nothing else. Show me another way, spirit, and I’ll take it.”
And then the spirit laughed. Its laughter was the sound of running waters, a thousand brooks bubbling downhill together at the same time and shaking the land as they went.
Ma’iingan prepared himself for his own destruction.
“Come.” The spirit reached down for Ma’iingan’s hand. “Come and see.”
Even as Ma’iingan was still reaching out to take the offered hand, he and the spirit rose together. The land beneath them was the land he knew, only it wasn’t. Spirits swam in the rivers and walked among the trees. Further north—not as much further north as Ma’iingan would have liked—the ice cannibal wiindigoo stalked the hills. As he and the spirit held hands and rose higher still, he saw his own tribe’s camp, only rather than people, the camp was inhabited by calling loons, wiggling catfish, and martens creeping in the underbrush.
In the sky above them, Ma’iingan saw not the shapes of the Wintermaker and the Moose, but the great giant himself, and the mighty snorting beast.
“Will I survive this, spirit?” Ma’iingan asked.
“You didn’t ask me to survive,” his manidoo reminded him. “You asked me to show you how to find the healer.”
Fear struck at Ma’iingan, but he forced it down. The spirit was right. He hadn’t asked to survive. And if he didn’t live through the night, but his son joined the People, he could accept that.
The spirit took Ma’iingan on a journey at lightning speed along the paths of the air. They raced down smaller tributaries through Anishinaabe lands to the Great River, the Michi-Zibii. At a fork far from Anishinaabe lands, where a river nearly as large flowed into the Great River, the spirit turned east. Up the new river, over mountains, down further rivers and onto a shelf of dark earth, thickly cultivated. Were they still in the Turtle Kingdom, this far from Ma’iingan’s home? He thought so. A farm, around a boxy Zhaaganaashii palace and a cluster of smaller buildings; at the edge of the farm, a small outbuilding.
The spirit took them through the log walls of the outbuilding and into its cellar, where the two of them stood on a dirt floor.
There lay a young man. No older than Ma’iingan had been when he’d first met this spirit, and received the name Waawoono. Zhaaganaashii, by his narrow, pale face. Narrow plank beds lined the wall and a low fire burned at one end of the room. Each bed held at least one young man and several held more than one, all breathing deeply under wool coverings.
The boy slept, but poorly, tossing and turning on the bed, crying out occasionally and slapping his hand to his ear.
“This is the healer?” Ma’iingan asked.
“Yes.”
Abruptly the young man sat up. He pawed at his ear again, and he looked directly at Ma’iingan. His face was pale and his hair dark, like one of the silver-cursed Moundbuilders. “The healer?” the boy asked in Zhaaganaashii. It wasn’t the Pennslander accent Ma’iingan knew, or Appalachee.
And then the outbuilding was gone.
The spirit was gone.
Ma’iingan found himself in steamy darkness. He lurched forward reflexively, burning his hand on the hot stone.
Cursing, he found the entrance to the sweat lodge and stumbled out into cold air and the blue light just beginning to shade into green that announced a coming dawn. He fell to his knees and found that he was shaking. The strength of his limbs was completely drained, and for a time he knelt immobile.
When he could bring himself to move, he tore his blanket down from the sweat lodge and curled up beside the last embers of his fire. He needed whatever rest he could get.
As soon as he was able to travel, he had a long journey to make.
“No, Your Graces. A miracle.”
CHAPTER TWO
Maltres Korinn, Duke of Na’avu and Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne, stood in the busy market square and stared upward. He looked not at the sky, but at the Great Mound that bore at its summit Cahokia’s mighty T
emple of the Sun. As always, the Temple Mound was thick with ravens.
Take this burden from me, my goddess. Choose one of them this year. Choose any of them as your Beloved. Choose Sharelas, and we shall have a warrior-queen to lead us into battle against the choking hand of Thomas Penn. Choose Voldrich, and we will have a cunning merchant-king who may lead us back to prosperity despite the Pacification. Choose Torias, and we may have a priestess-queen whose knowledge of your lore will bring us your favor.
But take the burden from me, and let me go home.
He sighed.
Not that Na’avu was free of challenges either, but they were challenges on a smaller scale. It was true, his neighbors to the north had taken to hanging and stabbing more sacrifices to their dark All-Father. One of these days, one of Korinn’s servants would be in the wrong place at the wrong time and would be taken and slaughtered.
The thought of having to deal with that tragedy seemed light, compared to the grip of the Empire.
“Regent-Minister.” A voice broke into his thoughts. It belonged to one of the city’s gray-caped wardens, an officer, judging by the stripes on the man’s sleeves. He stood a respectful distance away, two more wardens standing behind him. With the interruption of his thoughts, Maltres Korinn heard again the clinking of iron coins, the dickering of the few traders willing to put up with Imperial interference and stamp duties, and the low drone of a ballad being picked out in Oranbegan mode on a three-stringed fretless Cahokian lute. And he smelled people, sour and tired and hungry, even over the mild miasma of boiling beans and squash.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Two emissaries have arrived and wish to speak to you. We’ve put them in the council chamber. In the Hall of Onandagos.”
Korinn frowned. He wanted to avoid giving his people the impression that he relished ceremony as much as he wanted to avoid coming to love power. The throne wasn’t his, he was only Regent-Minister. And he wanted, above all, to go home. “You could have brought them here.”
“Yes, Regent-Minister.” The officer nodded. “Only…these are unusual emissaries.”
What kind of emissary would the wardens find unusual? “From one of the Brother Nations? From New Muscovy? From the Misaabe?”
The officer lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “They’re beastkind, Regent-Minister. They say they’ve come with a message from the Heron King.”
Marching ahead of the wardens to the Hall, Korinn thought furiously. The Heron King was a real person, or a real being, or at least he had been once. His kingdom was in the Great Green Wood, and the beastkind that stopped in Cahokia, like those in the Missouri and elsewhere, usually claimed they owed allegiance to him.
But other than that claim of allegiance, the Heron King had been quiet all Korinn’s life. He’d become a character in fables and riddles, and the subject of ominous speculation. Was he silent because he had died? Was he silent because he was angry?
Maltres Korinn had invested many hours in learning the political landscape of the Empire, in seeking alliances, and in developing trade networks that might circumvent the grip of the Pacification. Suddenly, he wished he had spent a few of those hours learning his people’s fairy tales.
Entering the Hall, he collected the horse-headed staff. It was his only regular concession to ceremony—he dressed at all times in simple black.
Two beastkind waited in the council room. They stood, respectfully not seating themselves at the table. Club-wielding wardens also stood in each of the room’s entrances, trying very hard not to look at the beastkind.
Both emissaries were tall men in monklike gray robes. One looked like any son of Adam, other than the fact that one hand emerging from his robe resembled the claw of a crab, and from the other sleeve, only occasionally, darted something that might have been the head of a snake. The second emissary looked like a seven-foot-tall badger, standing on its hind legs.
“Thou art the Regent-Minister,” Badger growled.
“I am,” Korinn agreed. “I have been told ye bear a message. May I hear it?”
“Peter Plowshare is dead,” Crab Hand said.
“The Kingdom of Cahokia extends its condolences.” Peter Plowshare was another name for the Heron King. Who would succeed him? “Will there be a state funeral?”
“Simon Sword demands your surrender,” Badger continued. “He offers you generous terms.”
“Is this a declaration of war?” Korinn wished he’d gathered the seven candidates. Especially General Sharelas and the artillerist Zorales.
And who was Simon Sword, if not another name for Peter Plowshare and the Heron King? Wasn’t that the Heron King’s title when he rode to war?
“If ye surrender without struggle,” Badger snarled, “Simon Sword will take one life in ten as tribute. And a further tribute annually.”
“Slaves?” Korinn frowned.
“Sacrifices,” Crab Hand said. “And if ye surrender not, he will kill you all.”
* * *
Etienne Ukwu rode to the crest of the dune and saw the summer palace of the Bishop of Miami.
As palaces went, it was modest. It was built of the adobe clay bricks favored by Ferdinandia’s Hidalgos, two stories tall, and surrounded by an adobe wall. Both the palace and the wall had been plastered with a white stucco in which something glittering was embedded—shards of china, perhaps?—that caused the whole thing to shine in the afternoon July sun.
Men with steel bonnets and long lances walked the top of the wall.
Etienne inhaled deeply, the salt air of the sea mingling with the piquancy of the raw peppers he’d eaten for breakfast. Eating the chilies stoked the fires within him and gave him power.
“Je n’aime pas ça, patron,” Armand said. He was one of Etienne’s largest fighters, a barrel-chested Bantu who had spent years in the chevalier’s service, fighting smugglers. After the third time he’d been passed over for promotion in favor of some Frenchman, Armand had taken offense and killed several of his fellow customs agents. Etienne had given him refuge to save his life, and Armand had found that the same skills that had once helped him stop crime now enabled him to prosper at it.
Once, deep in his cups, he said to Etienne: “if the chevalier won’t pay me willingly, then I’ll make him pay.”
Armand wore three loaded pistols on his person and two long daggers.
Etienne turned to look back at the ship that had brought them. La Verge Caníbal was a notorious pirate cruiser, famed for its ability to slip through any blockade like water through a net. Its pirate-queen captain, the Catalan Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana, had brought Etienne discreetly to this beach, and now lay at anchor awaiting his return. She had even received Armand, a former antagonist, as a passenger with a gracious smile and a nod of recognition. Indeed, the rangy pirate queen with long copper-colored hair and hands as big as any man’s had rarely stopped smiling, as if she knew a great secret at which the world could only guess. The pale, tangle-haired girl who never left her side—the captain’s lover, perhaps? The rumors of her sapphism were persistent—had only stared at both Etienne and Armand without expression.
Etienne waved to the ship; it was too far away for him to see whether anyone waved back.
He reached into the pocket of his trousers and removed his mother’s locket. Caressing it with his thumb, he listened and heard her voice: don’t fear, my son. These men can’t harm you.
He popped open the face of the locket, which swung on tiny hinges to reveal a painted miniature of his father’s face. Not the face of the later bishop, but the face of the young married Chinwe Ukwu, who was then a shopkeeper who read theology by candlelight at night, and not yet even a deacon. Etienne’s mother had given Etienne this locket on her deathbed, and made him swear oaths to her, and promised that she would return as his gede loa.
His guardian spirit. His own personal holy ghost. His mother.
She had kept her promise.
“Don’t worry, Armand,” Etienne said, putting the locket away.
“These men are priests. They would cut each others’ throats for a sou, but you and I are only in danger of being preached to, or offered wine from the bishop’s famous collection.”
Armand chuckled and the two men walked toward the palace gate.
Etienne had dressed carefully for the occasion. He didn’t wish to hide anything, so he had retained the red sash that marked him as a houngan—one of his promises to his mother had been that he would pursue her spiritual tradition, whether or not he also followed his father. Otherwise, though, he wore simple white cotton, a loose tunic and trousers. He had no illusions that he could convince the bishops he was an angel by merely dressing in white, but he wished to appear vaguely baptismal, like a catechumen or a supplicant.
He was unarmed.
The gate swung open at their approach, and two lance-bearing soldiers ushered them both in. Within the walls, the palace was surrounded by palmettos, and a well stood beside the stone-paved path leading to the front door.
“Su hombre puede esperar aquí,” one of the soldiers said, pointing at a stone bench beside the well, shaded by palmettos. The soldiers wore the jade green of the Bishop of Miami in a tunic over their steel breastplates.
“Patron.” Armand shifted from foot to foot and cracked the knuckles of one hand. He had worn the black waistcoat and trousers in which Etienne dressed all his men, and sweat ran in streams down his face and neck.
“Have a cool drink of water, Armand. Rest. I’m safe.”
Armand sat. He looked like a cat perched above roiling floodwaters, but he kept his hands away from his weapons.
“Take me to His Grace, please.” Etienne smiled at the soldiers, and then followed them into the palace.
The Bishops of Miami and Atlanta both pointedly remained sitting when Etienne entered. Each man rested on a reclining couch that would have made a Roman senator proud; between the couches stood a marble pedestal; a fountain burbled merrily in the center of the room; a wooden mashrabiya lattice shielded the exit into the garden from the sun, while allowing the gulf’s breezes to enter.