Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  The men and women standing around the room might be farmers and servants, but they served the Earl of Johnsland. And if they hadn’t gotten rid of the crazy old man after behavior like what Ma’iingan had witnessed that day, they served him loyally.

  And the men in purple coats had rifles.

  And Charles Lee had been a soldier, so somewhere around here there must be more armed fighting men.

  Ma’iingan stooped and grabbed George’s hair. It came away in his hand, revealing much thinner, shorter hair beneath, tied in a club behind the young man’s head.

  “Wiinuk!”

  George held his hands in front of his face, fingers splayed, mouth open in terror. Ma’iingan grabbed him by the collar of his coat with his left hand and dragged him to his feet, putting his stone knife to the Zhaaganaashii’s throat with his right.

  “Nobody move!” Ma’iingan swiveled to be sure his command was obeyed.

  The people in the room all stared at him.

  “Hang ’em!” The earl jumped in simulated flight and settled again.

  “Good! You all keep standing there. I’m a crazy Indian, and you never know what I might do if you push me!” That was a pretty funny joke, except that Ma’iingan was indeed acting crazy, and didn’t himself know what he would do.

  “You’re going to hang,” George murmured.

  “You two,” Ma’iingan said. “And you two at the door. Drop your rifles.”

  The men complied.

  “Get me a coach,” he said. “Something fast.”

  “The Phaeton,” Landon said. Ma’iingan was loath to believe the vicious young man, but then he saw the look of sheer resentment he shot in George’s direction. Landon was giving Ma’iingan good advice, and he was doing it to spite George, who was going to have him whipped, and because Ma’iingan had struck the earl’s heir.

  “The Phaeton,” Ma’iingan agreed. “We Comanche use a carriage much like the Phaeton, that will do.”

  As long as he was going to be a crazy Indian, he might as well not be Anishinaabe. He pressed his blade against George’s throat.

  “Do it,” George muttered. The two purple-clad men at the door shuffled out.

  But of course, Ma’iingan had no experience even with ridden horses, much less with chariots. “You, Landon Chapel,” he said. “You’ll come with us.”

  The look on Landon’s face might have been relief, but it might also have been apprehension. “The Phaeton only rides two.”

  “Remember that, and stay on my good side. I may have to throw one of you Zhaaganaashii boys out of the coach in a mile or two.”

  “Send Lee away,” the earl moaned on his perch. “He killed my son.”

  “I am your son, Father!” George snapped.

  “Caw!”

  Ma’iingan dragged George to the door of the hall in time to see the Phaeton roll up, beside the black-stained altar. He had seen wagons and coaches before, but nothing this slight, this minimal. A partly enclosed bench seat—Landon was right, it was wide enough for two—rode directly on a framework of iron bars, within four enormous wheels. The wheels had once been painted a bright red, but the red was now mostly flaked away, leaving exposed wood and an iron rim nailed to the outer edge.

  Two horses pulled the Phaeton, whickering uneasily. Were they farm animals? The discomfort of the beasts made him nervous.

  How to stop the farmers and servants from chasing him?

  “Can you ride?” he asked Landon.

  Landon rubbed his wrists and nodded grimly.

  “Bring an extra horse,” Ma’iingan told him. The boy headed for the long, low stables at the corner of the house.

  “I hope you have an escape plan,” George said.

  “I do,” Ma’iingan told him. “You drive.”

  “Damn me,” George said. “You are a crazy Indian.”

  Ma’iingan shot one last look at the earl on his perch as he left the building. Was he mad? No. But his manidoo had told him to get this boy Nathaniel on his feet, so Nathaniel could heal Giimoodaapi, and every action Ma’iingan had taken since had been in furtherance of that end.

  And Nathaniel was indeed a young man laid low, and in need of help.

  But what help did he need, that Ma’iingan could give him?

  “Shut up,” he said to George, “and get in the Phaeton.”

  * * *

  Sarah stood at the shoulder of Alzbieta Torias. Alzbieta sat at a table in a room she had described as the council chamber, in a building she’d called the Hall of Onandagos, on the third-highest mound in Cahokia. The only two mounds taller were home to the Temple of the Sun and the Basilica, Cahokia’s royal chapel.

  The Hall of Onandagos, apparently, was a holy place. Also, it had tunnel entrances hidden in the building around its base, and Sarah and Alzbieta had entered by one of those, climbing long stone stairs by lantern light.

  Around the table sat six other people, all Firstborn, each with an advisor or bodyguard at his or her shoulder. This was the only solution Sarah had found for gaining access to this meeting of the claimants to the Cahokian throne—as the regent didn’t recognize Sarah as a claimant, she was permitted only as Alzbieta’s advisor.

  At Alzbieta’s request, Korinn had also agreed that the meeting could be conducted in English. Sarah’s Ophidian was still rudimentary—she wished she had Jacob Hop’s gift for accelerated learning.

  Above the table arched a high ceiling, reaching a single point that was closer to a cone than to a dome. Seven tall stained-glass windows let in light; a green vine up the center of each window, and Sarah couldn’t help noticing that the vines bore a resemblance to the seven-armed tree Jacob Hop had mapped out as the structure of Irra-Zostim’s palace of life.

  Everywhere she looked, the same motifs.

  At the end of the table stood Maltres Korinn, the Duke of Na’avu. He wore simple black. Was that an affectation or a symbol? The effect it gave was on the one hand to depersonalize him, turning him into a kind of natural active force, and on the other hand to make him appear taller and more frightening than he otherwise was.

  Surely, the fact that he was standing was a symbol. To one side of him, only two steps away, sat the most ornate chair in the room. It was carved of a wood so dark it looked like volcanic glass, with streaks of red through it as if the tree’s rings had pumped blood. The regent stood where the queen would sit. He wasn’t the king, he was only holding a place, and he acknowledged it.

  Was the black clothing a similar acknowledgement?

  Sarah found she was beginning to like Korinn.

  On the other hand, Na’avu was north of Cahokia, closer to the German Duchies (they weren’t really Duchies, but their rulers had German titles like landgrave and waldgrave and margrave and landsknecht, and the English speakers of the Empire generally called the area the Duchies). The Mississippi Germans and the Germans of the Great Lakes were pagan, and favored stark, often dramatic clothing, such as suits entirely of black. So maybe Korinn was just following the fashions of his neighbors.

  Alzbieta sat immediately to the regent’s right (at Sarah’s insistence, following Cathy’s whispered advice that she should arrive early, take advantage, and seat herself prominently). Act as if she were the queen now, already.

  To Alzbieta’s right sat a heavy woman with restless eyes. She wore a leather cape over a yellow tunic and had introduced herself as Jaleta Zorales, a retired captain in the Pitchers, the Imperial artillery corps. An Imperial officer, but also apparently a distant cousin of Sarah’s, and a landowner with farms in three of the seven kingdoms. At her shoulder stood a swordsman in yellow.

  Next was a dark-skinned man named Gazelem Zomas. Sarah thought he looked Bantu, but through her witchy eye (which she kept covered with her bandage for the meeting, but she peeked) she saw his aura was clearly that of a Firstborn. A person of mixed ancestry, like herself, then? Or were there dark-skinned Firstborn? In all the frenzied reading she’d undertaken among the scrolls now housed in Alzbieta’s city house
, she had yet to encounter such a reference.

  But why not?

  Zomas had served in the Hall of Onandagos when her father was King. Alzbieta was evasive about what Zomas’s actual position had been, other than to deny that he’d been a priest. Just before the meeting began, then, Sarah had cornered the dark-skinned man.

  “Folks are uncomfortable about what you used to do around here,” she’d said.

  “You’re the Lion’s cub.” Zomas had smiled; his canine teeth were filed to points. “Tell me your best guess.”

  “Spy.”

  “Close. Poisoner.” Zomas’s smile widened further.

  “My father employed a poisoner?”

  “It’s an ancient art, and we of the lost kinship have always excelled at it.”

  “The lost kinship?”

  The smile hadn’t faltered. “Are you sure you’re prepared to be here, child? Perhaps you should indeed stand by the side of the priestess Torias and watch more experienced actors on the stage.”

  Zomas’s companion, a thin man with straight black hair and yellow tobacco stains on his lips and fingers, snickered. Sarah exited the conversation with a cold bow.

  At the foot of the table sat Lady Alena. She was tall and silver-haired, with wide eyes and colorless lips. Like Alzbieta Torias, she was a priestess. Unlike Alzbieta, her vows seemed to require silence, and she watched the proceedings without a twitch of the lip. Behind Lady Alena stood a narrow-shouldered and broad-hipped man whose face was painted in blue and red whorls. On a second glance, Sarah realized that each whorl was a colorful serpent, and the snakes converged with open mouths all pointing toward the painted man’s own mouth.

  Next was Voldrich, whose name sounded vaguely German, but who looked like the most Eldritch person Sarah could imagine; pale, dark, slight, gray-eyed, thin fingers. He looked like a younger Thalanes, and Sarah flinched under a barrage of too many bittersweet memories. The Firstborn’s long tunic was a dark red velvet and his low boots were of soft, fine leather. “I own Cahokia,” he’d said to Sarah by way of introducing himself. It turned out that he meant he owned most of the land directly outside the city’s walls.

  The city itself, of course, belonged to the goddess.

  And technically, the rest of the land was owned by the crown, but since Voldrich’s only obligation to the crown in exchange for tenure of the land was a single pomegranate seed, four days of the year—a token, a symbol—he was the owner. Indeed, once the goddess chose to honor his claim and he sat on the throne, he was considering doing away with the archaic landowning ideas most Ohioans had and moving to freehold tenure…

  Behind Voldrich lurked a fat man with an open ledger. He wrote at a furious pace.

  After Voldrich was seated Eërthes. No second name, no companion, and apparently no land. Eërthes was a young, slender man, scarcely more than a boy. He acknowledged no occupation when Sarah questioned him, but Alzbieta had whispered that he was a poet.

  “A good one?”

  Alzbieta shrugged. “How can you tell? Also, he bears the offices of Royal Companion and Notary.”

  “You’ll explain those to me at some point.”

  “Royal Companion means he has a stipend from the throne. He’s far too young to have earned it, obviously; it was bestowed on his grandfather. The office passes to a child in each generation designated by the previous Royal Companion.”

  “Are there many Royal Companions?”

  “Yes. The stipends are generally small, or sometimes symbolic.”

  “Pomegranate seeds.”

  “Or feathers, or naming rights, or the right to drink from a certain fountain. Notary means he may countersign written acts of the throne. Such written acts require three, or in some cases seven, signatures of Notaries.”

  “You’re going to tell me there are lots of Notaries.”

  “Fewer. I know it seems a strange custom, but consider this, Sarah: it means the queen or king may not act without some amount of noble consent. When acting as queen or king.”

  “Constitutions are queer things,” Sarah had muttered, dropping into an Appalachee accent in the near-privacy of her thoughts. “Mind, that ain’t too different from the Compact. Ain’t much the Emperor can really do on his own, without the consent of the Electors. What do you mean, ‘when acting as queen’?”

  Alzbieta had continued, ignoring the question. “The title of Notary is also inherited. In this case, Eërthes inherited the title from his mother.”

  “A Notary and a Royal Companion married,” Sarah said. “Must have been the wedding of the year.”

  “It was, until the wedding of the Archivist and the Scribe.”

  The final claimant wore a shirt of mail over her heavy paunch. She looked like a veteran fighting bear, complete with short, grizzled hair and five long, thick scars on her face, three down one cheek and two running down the other. She was missing an ear, apparently torn off by the same assault that had left scars down her cheek, and half the fingers on her left hand were stubs ending at the second knuckle. She arrived last, sitting down just as Maltres Korinn stepped to the head of the table.

  “General Sharelas. Valia, if you must know.”

  Behind General Sharelas, a burly soldier in matching chain hauberk stepped into place, heels clicking.

  “Sarah Elytharias,” Sarah said.

  “Penn,” the general added. “Or so you claim.”

  “Do you doubt me?”

  The general shrugged, and looked to the regent before she’d even finished speaking. “It matters little. The goddess will choose whom She will choose…or She will choose none at all. And I will defend this land, regardless.”

  “Welcome, all,” the Duke of Na’avu began, launching into a meeting with no preamble. “I remind you that this meeting is in direct violation of the terms of the Pacification, in that we have invited no Imperial representation. No minutes will be taken. Understood?”

  The seated people all nodded and murmured their assent.

  “Voldrich,” Maltres Korinn said. “Your man puts the ledger on the floor right now or I’ll have you both killed.”

  “He’s only doing accounts!” Voldrich’s voice was flustered, but his companion obeyed the duke directly.

  Korinn continued. “I wish to share with you disturbing reports of a large force of Imperial Ohio Company forces gathering in Tawa lands. Adena tells us the depredation of its winter stores is nearly absolute, and it blames that fact on the Company. For unknown reasons, many of the Ohio Hansa towns are refusing to trade at any price, and the few that will sell food do so at prices that amount to extortion. Adena and Koweta starve, and take to raiding across the Ohio and into Pennsland and Oranbega. Gazelem, is there are any reason to doubt that the Emperor is behind these moves?”

  Sarah was astonished by the efficiency of the conversation and its direction. She had expected ceremony, and that the subject would be the goddess’s hoped-for decision, which would select one of these seven people to replace her father on the Cahokian throne. Instead, the subject seemed to be governance.

  Curious. Expecting one of these seven people might succeed as queen or king, the regent involved them in his decision making. To make the transition from his interim rule to the chosen monarch’s reign smoother?

  “This is as predictable as winter snow,” Gazelem said. “The Pacification tightens its grip. We are to be starved into submission.”

  “We should expect further raids on our own stores, then?” Maltres nodded.

  “As at Wartburg,” Sarah said aloud.

  “Point of order!” the man with snake tattoos on his face bellowed. “Who is she?”

  “Lady Alena is surely not so secluded in her sanctuary as to be unaware of the return to us of the daughter of Kyres Elytharias, our late king,” Alzbieta said. “This is Sarah, Kyres’s daughter by his wife the Empress Hannah.”

  “Mad Hannah,” Snake Face rumbled.

  “Slander!” Sarah tightened her grip on her ashwood staff, resisting t
he urge to step around the table and crack the pear-shaped man over the head with it.

  “Hold your tongue!” Snake Face roared. “Whisper in the ear of your priestess, that’s your place in this council, if you’re not a claimant to the throne!”

  “Are you a claimant, then, eunuch?” Eërthes asked, gently stroking his own fingernails. “Remind me of the substance of your claim!”

  “I’m the Lady Alena’s voice!” Snake Face waved his arms in rage. Was it his anger, or the Lady’s? “As well you know!”

  The Duke of Na’avu rapped the table with the knuckles of one hand. “I don’t feel it is my place to silence my lord Elytharias’s daughter, regardless. It would be an act of disrespect. An impiety.”

  Snake Face licked his lips and looked at Alzbieta with a sly expression. “And how is it that this whelp returns to us? Was she born here, in the City of the Goddess? Or was she conceived in the Slate Roof House? Or indeed, in the dungeons of Horse Hall, squired upon Mad Hannah by some obliging turnkey?”

  “Silence, Lady!” the duke roared. It was a strange command to hurl into the face of the tattooed man, but in some way, the man was only speaking for Lady Alena, and now he and the Lady both stared down at the floor, fuming.

  “A being who is eternal,” Alzbieta Torias said, “is forever returning, and can never be truly gone.”

  “You missed your calling, priestess.” Eërthes leaned forward, steepling his fingers together and resting his elbows on the table.

  The general snorted and shook her head. “You babble in the language of holy writ and liturgy, Torias. Let us speak plainly. This woman is a claimant.”

  “No!” Maltres Korinn’s voice had a sharp edge. “We agreed to the rules of this council and our supplication to the goddess, and I haven’t broken them. Sarah Elytharias is admitted as bodyguard, advisor, and witness of Alzbieta Torias only. But I won’t bar her entry, and I won’t insist upon her silence.”

  “I thank you, Regent-Minister.” Sarah stepped back from the table, leaning on her staff and removing the patch from her witchy eye. “I see that you serve the kingdom well, that you carry out your office with wisdom and faithfulness.”

  Korinn bowed his head in silence.