by D. J. Butler
“Your valet de chambre.” Mocenigo’s voice was a thin whine, and he bent his face low over the table, until his forehead almost touched the wood.
Gottlieb. Wishing to ingratiate himself further to Thomas, no doubt. But was there more? Thomas resolved to investigate whether his valet had taken money in exchange for arranging this audience. “So my valet told you what little he knew, having heard it from me. And you have transposed these fixed pieces of information into a natal chart for these three children.”
“And extrapolated everything therefrom that I could, yes. I believe you will find that we possess quite a lot of information.”
“To what end?” Thomas drew his saber slowly, then reached forward with its tip to ruffle the corner of the star chart.
Mocenigo’s eyes opened even wider and he swayed back from the blade. “I understood you were sophisticated in star lore.”
“And I thought you were. Explain yourself.”
“If we know the sky at the moment these children were born, Your Imperial Majesty, we will know their strengths. We will know their weaknesses. We will know when we should strike against them, and when to keep our distance.”
“Our. We. You mean me, of course. You mean that I will know when I should act, and what I should do.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You mean that I should let my choices be dictated to me by the stars.”
Mocenigo hesitated. “A wise man does, Mister Emperor.”
Thomas nodded slowly. He raised the saber’s blade and rested it on his own shoulder, composing his thoughts.
“Signor Mocenigo, I have two great concerns with what you are telling me.”
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty?”
Thomas looked at Director Schmidt in the corner. She sat still as a statue, gazing upon a wall of books.
“First, I’m troubled by your incompetence.”
“What? No!” Mocenigo leaped to his feet, but Thomas swung his sword around and pointed it at the astrologer’s sternum, fixing the man in place. “I protest, Mr.…Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Tell me, Signor Mocenigo, how many constellations lie along the path of the zodiac.”
“Twelve, of course.”
“Wrong. This is what comes, you see, of learning your stars from charts only, without ever looking up at the night sky.”
The Venetian stared.
“If you had bivouacked, as I have, in the deserts of Texia, and looked up at the heavens as they revolved—if, in other words, you had to play your own stakes in this game of life, rather than simply gambling the fates of other men—you would know that there are not twelve, but thirteen constellations lying along the path of the zodiac, the ecliptic.”
“But, Your Imperial—”
“The twelve you know. Aries, Sagittarius, Leo…to list them is child’s play. The thirteenth is Ophiuchus. Is there an Ophiuchus in your tables?”
“You know that there is not.” Mocenigo was trembling.
“I know that there is not. And yet there is an Ophiuchus upon the zodiac. And what I also know, what my sister knew and yet chose to ignore, is that all the children of Adam’s cursed first wife are born under the sign of Ophiuchus. Ophiuchus is the serpent bearer and he is the star-sign of all Ophidians. He bears them, if you will, in their escape from the flat plane of the ecliptic in which we children of Eve remain trapped.”
“Sir, Venice does not have—”
“I understand.” Thomas waved his free hand to silence the Italian. “You are from the Old World. You killed most of your Firstborn decades ago, or drove them out. You, Signor Mocenigo, have never considered what being Firstborn means to a nativity. Let me tell you now. Being Firstborn renders your natal chart meaningless.”
“Sir—”
“Nativities have great value for the children of Eve. Only.”
Mocenigo’s shoulders slumped. “I did not know.”
Thomas nodded. “I see you didn’t. The second thing troubling me is of greater concern. Signor Mocenigo, I—I, of all men—do not allow myself to be ruled by the stars. I may seek their guidance, I will endeavor to capture and exploit their power, but I will not be ruled. I will be the ruler.”
Mocenigo stared down at the chart and nodded.
“Even worse than the possibility that I might be governed by the stars, Signor Mocenigo, is the risk that I might instead be directed by the mere men who devised the star charts. You see that, don’t you? You see that if I let my decisions be determined by your casting, then some would ask, who is truly emperor in Philadelphia?”
“No…”
“And others would answer, why, Signor Mocenigo, who binds the Emperor’s mind with his triplicities!”
“But no!”
“Shhh. I am certain you intended no such thing, Signor Mocenigo.”
Mocenigo’s expression showed gratified relief, and he nodded vigorously.
“Though it occurs to me, Signore, that I’m troubled by a third thing.”
“Please tell me, Your Imperial Majesty, how I may relieve your worry.”
“I’m troubled that you know too much, astrologer.”
“But—”
Thomas stabbed the stargazer in the heart.
The sharpened and polished weapon slid between the man’s ribs and he died with his mouth open, his face frozen in a fishlike expression of astonishment. When Thomas pulled out his blade, blood spilled both from the wound and from the dead man’s open lips.
Mocenigo fell sideways to the floor.
“There,” Thomas said. “My worry is relieved.”
He dropped his blade onto the worthless nativity, spattering the astrologer’s own blood over the circles, dots, and quarterings that were to have told him how to find and destroy his sister’s secret children.
And indeed, he did feel better.
Thomas crossed the library, his steps light. Notwithstanding Schmidt stood to meet him, her eye keen but her face as sober as a priest’s on Sunday. “My Lord President,” she said.
That was the form of address for Thomas as President of the Imperial Ohio Company. It cheered Thomas to hear it.
“Madam Director,” he said. “Please sit. Do you know why my empire is called the Empire of the New World East of the Mississippi?”
She sat. “I understand that was agreed in the Philadelphia Compact.”
“Of course. But it’s a terrible name. Any other name would have been better. The truest, most natural name for the empire, of course, would have been Pennsylvania. But Columbia would also have been a good name, even if it did mean naming my empire after a dream-addled Jew. Even one of the Italian cartographers’ names—Verrazzania or Vespuccia—would have been acceptable, if somewhat uncouth. So why does my kingdom have such a mockery of a name, awkward in the mouth and resistant to poetry?”
Schmidt looked Thomas in the eyes and nodded. “Power.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“If your empire had a glorious name—like Pennsylvania—then you would have been Emperor of Pennsylvania. ‘The Empire of the New World East of the Mississippi’ sounds like a purely technical designation, like a bureaucratic label, like one of Napoleon’s Departments. The awkward name is a means to restrict your power.”
Thomas nodded, feeling a mixture of satisfaction and fatigue. “Did you receive my instructions?”
“I did, my lord.”
“Good.” Thomas flung himself into an overstuffed divan facing the one in which Schmidt sat. “I don’t have the Electors’ approval to raise additional troops to tighten the Pacification as I would like, and if I raise more without their consent, I violate the Compact. I’m not prepared to do that…yet. As a Director of the Imperial Ohio Company, you’ve come here to tell me what you need from me to carry out your orders—to redirect Company resources to the Pacification.”
Schmidt nodded again. “I’m going to need a hell of a lot of boots. And feet to put in them.”
* * *
“Harder,�
�� Nathaniel Chapel murmured.
Clang! Clang!
The banging of the smith’s hammer on the bar of iron produced a dull, repetitive racket. It was almost enough to drown out the shrieking sound of the world in Nathaniel’s bad ear.
He rubbed at it, but the whine didn’t go away.
Nathaniel hid in the corner of the Earl of Johnsland’s stables, just out of the blacksmith’s sight. He didn’t need the man’s attention, didn’t want a lecture on the virtues of Wayland Smith, England’s god of the Furrow. Like many practitioners of his craft, Benson was an initiate of the Smith; his devotion showed not only in his lectures, but also in the anvil and horseshoe tattoos on his arms and in the miniature anvil that presided fixed to a beam above the working anvil.
Nathaniel just needed the noise.
~It burns! The fire burns!~
“Burns,” he whispered.
Nathaniel resisted the temptation to touch his strange ear at the bodiless voice, and felt a tugging at his elbow.
“Jenny,” he said.
Jenny Farewell was, like Nathaniel, an orphan and a ward of the Earl of Johnsland. She had one dress that she wore all the time, and at this moment she complemented it with a mischievous smile. The smile brought out the brightness of her green eyes.
“Old One Eye is here,” she said.
Old One Eye didn’t always humiliate George Isham. But sometimes he did, and that possibility made the godi’s arrival interesting to Nathaniel and Jenny both.
Nathaniel heard a shriek like rusted metal shearing apart. Whimpering slightly, he followed Jenny away from the smithy, the stables, and the outbuilding where Nathaniel and other less-important men of the earl’s company slept, and into the earl’s hall.
Jenny skipped as they went, and sang. It was a song Nathaniel knew, a ballad about the Cavalier settlement:
I watched that Roundhead captain march his muskets to our door
My father cried, “God save the King!” and they cut him to the floor
I dragged that Roundhead down the moor and I drowned him in the sea
And then I heard Old Skull and Bones had set his cap for me
So it’s down the Dart, into wooden walls, and over the salt and foam
How I miss my old West Country home
Her song, clear and golden, almost drove away the voices and the whine that Nathaniel always heard. Almost.
The great hall of the Earl of Johnsland looked like a cave. Its walls were thick with moss like green fur and its floor was littered with the filth of the children of Adam, much of it the earl’s own—in his lifetime, Nathaniel had never seen the hall cleaned.
~Abomination! The land is polluted!~
“Polluted,” he murmured.
It wasn’t a requirement that a godi, a sheep-sacrificing priest of Woden, be tall, but Old One Eye was. And like his god, he lacked one eye, or at least, he always wore an eyepatch. Though his dark hair began to go silver, his frame beneath his black wool cloak was heavily muscled, and he leaned on a rune-carved spear.
Two men in similar cloaks stood behind him. They were both godar, and a fourth godi, the man permanently attached to the earl’s lands—a scowling old man named Wickens—skulked to one side, nearly hidden under a green fringe of moss.
The earl’s throne was turned to face the rear of his hall. The earl himself crouched on the seat of the chair and hid behind its back, making soft birdlike cries. From the front of the hall, standing among the few bent and breaking servants who dared to stay for Old One Eye’s appearance, Nathaniel could just make out the earl’s gray hair and the little wooden box he never released from his grasp.
Two men stood beside the Earl of Johnsland, one to either side, both wearing the earl’s purple. Charles Lee was a military officer in his service; George Isham was the earl’s youngest legitimate son and, because he was the only legitimate son surviving, the earl’s heir.
“I didn’t summon you, godi.” George’s voice trembled slightly.
“I don’t need your leave to stand here,” Old One Eye said.
“This man is your earl!” Charles Lee barked.
“I see the amulet around your neck,” Old One Eye said slowly, his voice full of gravel. “Is that the hammer of Thunor, or the mallet of the carpenter of Galilee?”
“Cuius dominium,” Charles muttered.
“Eius deus,” Old One Eye said, more loudly. “Yes, I acknowledge Byrd’s Compromise. And if the earl, good servant of the Old Gods that he is, wishes to permit his tenants Christianity, that is his affair, as it is his dominion. For now.”
“Forever!” George Isham snapped.
“Nothing is forever but the tree of life,” Old One Eye responded. “Which brings me to the reason for my visit.”
“I will burn the Yule log this year, godi,” George said through gritted teeth. “Or if not I, my father.”
“Your father is mad,” Old One Eye said. “You are a child. If either of you attempts to burn a log this Yule, know this: I shall place Woden’s curse on you. Your few remaining people will leave. Your lands will be blighted. Death itself will stalk at your heels. You have a godi, and he shall burn the log, at my direction.”
“To all the hells with you.” George sneered at the priest, but his lip trembled.
Old One Eye only laughed. “I shall leave men behind to ensure that the worship of Woden is not undertaken by the unfit.”
At that, soldiers in black entered the hall. Black was the color of the College of Godar, but Nathaniel hadn’t realized they had their own soldiers. These men carried muskets, pistols, and knives, and they formed two columns leading to the door.
Charles Lee continued to glare fiercely at the priest, but George’s face fell. Old One Eye ignored them both as he and the two godar from the College passed through the two columns of soldiers—Nathaniel counted twelve of them—and left.
He turned to Jenny and saw a bitter smile on her lips. Nathaniel knew why he enjoyed seeing George bullied.
Why did it amuse Jenny Farewell?
* * *
Montse stepped from her flat boat onto the long dock. The wood of the dock groaned and she felt its supporting pylons shift under her weight, but the half-rotted construct held, probably kept together by the bayou’s mud as much as by anything else. She took the line from her craft and looped it quickly about the strongest-looking of the pylons, then laid her pole in the boat.
“Qui va allà?” a man’s voice called from the shadows.
“Jo sóc la Montse,” Montserrat replied. “Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana. She expects me.”
On this bayou, the mere ability to answer in Catalan likely would have saved a traveler’s life, or at least extended it long enough for the sentry to get a better look at the speaker’s face. As it happened, though, Montse was expected.
“Come, Margarida.” She held out her hand; the girl took it and climbed onto the dock with her.
“Getting your fortune told again, tia Montse?” Margarida asked. Like Montse herself, the girl wore a long coat, a man’s coat that would downplay her femininity. Where Montse wore a tricorn hat cocked at a jaunty angle over her long hair the color of a copper pot, Margarida’s head was bare. In the dark, the high tangle of her hair made the silhouette of her head look enormous. Margarida’s skin was so pale, it almost glowed in the darkness, as if she were the daughter of the moon itself, walking among the cypress trees.
Which perhaps she was.
“You are confused, neboda. My fortune is a thing already known to me. I’m a merchant at all times, a smuggler when the profit margins outweigh the danger, and a pirate on rare occasions for the sheer joy of the chase. This is a good fortune, and I would have traded any other fortune in the world for this one.”
“Hola, Montse,” the sentry said, stepping forward into a sliver of moonlight to reveal his face. He held a short carbine with both hands, and had a heavy cutlass hanging at his belt.
“Hola, Carles.” She recognized the man. “New rings?”
Carles shrugged, pulling his hands back into shadow to hide them.
Montse patted him on the arm. “Don’t be ashamed of success, Carles.” She and the girl continued up the dock as Carles slipped back into shadow and disappeared. “Just be careful who notices.”
“You have good fortune now,” Margarida insisted. “But if one of the Imperial Foresters caught us with unstamped goods? Or if that gangster son of the bishop decided he wished to be rid of the witnesses to his journey to Ferdinandia? Or the chevalier’s customs men ran across us by accident in the fog?”
“The customs men could only do that by accident.” Montse chuckled. “They’re far too stupid to do it on purpose.”
“Still. Perhaps you should have your fortune told.”
Montse hissed her disapproval. “No, neboda, my cake is baked. We are here, as always, to know your fortune.”
“I have the fortune to have you for my tia. That means I’m fed and clothed and I sail with you both up the river and down the coast. I’ve seen the Igbo Free Cities and the Draft Men of Memphis, and if I’m not allowed to participate in your daring smuggling operations, at least I’m allowed to listen to the stories.”
Montse laughed.
The dock climbed over the bent knees of cypress trees and onto the land. There it became a path raised two feet off the ground, keeping walkers out of the mud and reducing the chances of stepping on an unseen snake or alligator. Shifting patches of darkness below the walkway probably indicated just such hazards, if not worse things. Montse had seen only a few live basilisks in her time on the bayous, but they were reputed to live here. Fortunately, they were also reputed to sleep buried in mud except during the very hottest months of the year.
She led the young woman she called her neboda, her niece, past the first few wooden shacks. They were all dark. It must be later than she had realized.
“I find it strange how superstitious you are,” Margarida said. “You of all women, who have made your own luck in the world. And it’s stranger still that what you are superstitious about is not your life, but mine.”
“You’ll find, Margarida, that there are some charges you may bear that are more important than your own life.”