by D. J. Butler
Unseen, she ran as fast as she could to Alzbieta’s city home. The Imperial dragoon’s coat she wore slowed her down, but the night was far too cold to seriously consider abandoning it. She stopped across the street from the Torias house to survey the scene: scruffy soldiers with mixed weaponry lay around the building with weapons pointed at it. Mixed among them were Cahokians, with their bowl-like helmets.
Sarah recognized some of the Cahokians—they had served Sarah. They had served Alzbieta. Now they surrounded Alzbieta’s home like an invading army. Alongside them were members of the Cahokian wardens, the city’s watch, who wore their usual gray but now also carried firearms.
Were any of them wizards?
Sarah had to take the chance. Walking slowly so as to keep her steps quiet, she crossed the avenue. She was conscious of dozens of eyes looking past her, but no one said anything, and no one shot her.
Rather than open a door and risk notice, she walked to an open ground-floor window, cut deep into the earth of the mound. She climbed carefully over the sill, and stepped inside the building. Immediately, she was standing in deep shadow between Catherine Filmer and William Lee.
She stepped away from the window and let her spell drop. “Don’t shoot.”
“Beelzebub’s bedpan!” Sir William made a choking sound, and then laughed. “I pray Your Majesty to forgive an old soldier. Also, to confirm that you’re no apparition.”
“You want to feel my hands and feet?” Sarah asked.
“She casts a shadow, Bill,” Cathy said.
A shadow? From what sun? But then Sarah realized that the western fire threw a faint light on the eastern wall of the room, and she cast a shadow in that light.
She touched Bill’s shoulder to alleviate any last doubts. “I can’t stay. Everything is happening tonight, now. I’ve come for the slate, because I need to get a message to Jacob Hop, and then I must go to the Sunrise Mound.”
Bill nodded, absorbing the information instantly.
“The Sunrise Mound?” Cathy looked intrigued. “The ancient grave on the edge of the city.”
“I don’t think it’s a grave,” Sarah said. “Or it’s not only a grave. I think dawn will prove me right or wrong, one way or the other. Can you hold out until dawn?”
“For Your Majesty, we can find a way to hold out until doomsday. But would you not find it convenient for us to clear the path to the mound before you?”
“I can get around pretty well unseen myself,” Sarah said. “What I would find convenient is for you to keep yourselves alive. Though, if you have the opportunity, I wouldn’t mind seeing those Imperials cleared out of the city.”
Bill nodded. “Understood.”
Sarah left them and returned to her sleeping chamber, hoping nothing had happened to her enchanted writing slate, and that in her absence—or with the interposition of her prison cell’s silver insulation—the magic hadn’t faded.
The slate and chalk lay beneath her wooden bed, and when she picked them up, she felt the usual tingle. “Verba transmitto.”
Power left her as she cast the spell. She had more in her reserves, and the power she’d squirreled away in Thalanes’s moon-brooch, but the experience of feeling the energy leave her reminded her what a boon the regalia were, with the Orb of Etyles’s apparently infinite ability to channel energy from distant ley lines.
She chalked words onto the slate: MY BROTHER NATHANIEL NEEDS HELP. HE IS SURROUNDED BY UNDEAD.
She waited only seconds before her words disappeared, and were replaced by a message from her Dutchman: WHERE IS HE?
JOHNSLAND. THE EARL’S LANDS. WHERE ARE YOU?
CLOSE. HOW DO I FIND HIM?
Sarah wished she had the Orb, but she didn’t. With her own fingernail, she scratched the back of her forearm, drawing blood. With the pad of her smallest and cleanest finger, she collected a drop of that blood—the same blood that flowed through the veins of her brother Nathaniel—and touched her witchy eye.
“Fratrem quaeso.”
She sent her vision to the Mississippi and then let the spell guide her. Seeing as through a veil of red, she watched the Mississippi and then the Ohio River and then a series of smaller rivers flow past, until she saw a tobacco-curing barn surrounded by bare fields. The barn was on fire, and shuffling corpses battered at its walls from outside. Sarah didn’t see him, but she knew her brother was within. She pulled back, looking for landmarks, and saw a crossroads and a double bridge over a creek flowing through a deep ravine. On one side of the bridges was a thick grove of oaks.
TOBACCO-CURING BARN, ON FIRE, NEAR A FOUR-WAY CROSSROADS, A DOUBLE BRIDGE, AND AN OAK GROVE. BRING FIGHTING MEN, IF YOU CAN. THE ENEMY IS NUMEROUS.
BUT WE ARE FIGHTERS, Hop wrote. GOING NOW.
If she’d had more time, Sarah might have written words of encouragement. Instead, she hung the slate around her neck and pocketed the chalk.
Before leaving, she looked through her blood-borne vision one more time. At the edge of the orange firelight, she saw a presence she recognized—Ezekiel Angleton. She looked closer and saw the Yankee preacher’s face; it was ghastly pale, and his teeth were longer than she remembered. His shoulders were wrapped in a ragged brown coat. He was chanting and cutting into the flesh of his own palm with a small knife. Sarah had to do something to help her brother survive until Jacob Hop arrived.
She touched Thalanes’s brooch. “Flammas amplifico.”
The effort to send power that far left her reeling, but the flames around the barn shot up and out. One of the corpses trying to pry a board from the wall caught fire, and shambled away with wordless shrieks.
Ezekiel looked around, as if sensing her presence.
She blinked hard, shutting off her vision. “Oculos obscuro,” she said again, and looked for another window to exit.
* * *
Calvin raced up the Great Mound. Despite his long legs and his many weeks of lung-strengthening and muscle-hardening travel since he and Sarah had left Nashville, he lagged behind Maltres Korinn and Yedera both. The regent ran like a man with three legs, springing off his black staff of office as well as his feet. The third contact with the ground give him an advantage especially on the long stretches where the steps were iced over. The Daughter of Podebradas blew up the steps like a storm, scale mail rattling and sheathed scimitar clutched in one hand.
Alzbieta, Uris, and Sherem followed. The priestess’s slave bearers and palanquin stood at the bottom of the mound.
At the height of the stairs, Maltres came to a halt. Twelve men stood before shut doors. Under their short gray capes they wore gray tunics and trousers and curious sandals, which looked like they might be woven of straw or rope.
“Open up!” Maltres barked. “Now!”
One of the twelve had a helmet with a high crest of colorful plumes, and was armed only with a long sword, where the others leaned on spears. He held up a restraining hand.
“Captain,” Maltres growled. “I said let me in or stand aside, now.”
The captain smiled and nodded. “You say that now, but earlier you told me to open to no one.”
Calvin hooked his thumb into his belt, near where his tomahawk hung.
Korinn’s face drained of color, from some combination of shock and rage. “I didn’t mean don’t open to me, you idiot.”
“How do I know you’re really the Regent-Minister? Maybe you’re that witch in disguise.”
Yedera whipped the scabbard from her scimitar, striking the captain with it across the face. Spinning forward with the bare steel in her other hand, she sank eighteen inches of her blade into the captain’s neck.
The eleven other men stepped back, uncertain.
Yedera stepped on the dead man’s forehead and pulled out her sword. She snapped it once to clear it of blood, flinging a scarlet arc down the stairs. “Your captain was bought,” she said slowly to the soldiers. “Traitors meet a traitor’s death.”
“Open the doors,” Korinn said again.
The soldiers obeyed, pushing
the doors open wide, and Calvin heaved a sigh of relief.
Within was the scene he’d seen earlier, with the veil open. The difference now was that the lamp bowls on the Serpent Throne were lit, and six people he didn’t know stood in a strange pattern across the floor. Squinting at it, he realized that their arrangement corresponded to the arrangement of the throne’s lamps, and also put each of them standing on a point where lines in the floor’s tiles intersected. The intersection points lay in the same arrangement with respect to each other as the lamp bowls, as if the Serpent Throne were casting a shadow forward into the floor tiles. Examining the pattern, he found the seventh spot, where Alzbieta Torias should be standing, and wasn’t.
On the seat of the Serpent Throne rested Sarah’s shoulder bag. Funny that Korinn hadn’t taken the regalia out of the satchel; in time, would the shoulder bag that once carried Thalanes’s coffee beans become part of Cahokia’s regalia? Was that how these things happened?
The six had been facing the throne, but with the opening of the doors they turned to look behind them. One of them, a dark-skinned man out of place among the pale Eldritch, smiled. “You’ve brought Torias, I see.”
Cal looked to his side, and found the slower members of the party catching up, panting.
A heavy woman wearing a leather cape frowned. “Only just in time. The night grows old.”
A slender man, the youngest of the six, clapped his hands together. “And we’ve been having visions, have we not?”
A silver-haired woman frowned and shook her head.
A thin, pale man with receding hair shot a sour look at the young man. “Eërthes mocks us. Or if he’s had visions, he’s the only one, and he desecrates the very gift with his mockery.”
“Come,” Eërthes said. “Surely, of all beings in the cosmos, the goddess has a sense of humor.”
Leather Cape growled. “Even a person with a sense of humor doesn’t enjoy being the butt of every joke.”
“We’ve been mistaken all along,” Korinn said. “I don’t have time to explain, but this isn’t the place, and I believe…She won’t choose any of you.”
“Come,” the black man said. “You wouldn’t alienate your allies now. Surely, you must at least allow us to await the dawn.”
Maltres hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” he agreed. “Await the sunrise, and perhaps it is I who am now mistaken. Perhaps the goddess will select one of you, and I’ll return and abase myself as your servant.”
“Excellent.” Eërthes clapped his hands together as if finishing a performance. Cal wanted to punch him in the nose.
Korinn walked toward the throne.
The silver-haired woman hissed. The last of the six, a heavy woman with impressive facial scarring, who wore plain white tunic and trousers, stepped into Korinn’s way.
“What are you doing?” the regent asked.
“What the Lady Alena is trying to tell you,” the scarred woman said, “is that having begun a ritual in the sanctum, it would be foolish to now interrupt it.”
“I agree that I’m a fool.” Korinn stepped around the scarred woman.
“Desecration!” the silver-haired woman hissed. “Blasphemer!”
The other five candidates turned to stare at her.
“I reckon you ain’t generally much of a talker.” Cal had had enough of the ritual and the posturing. Lord hates a man as values empty performance over the true worship of the heart, he’d once heard Barton Stone himself say, and the true worship of Calvin’s heart was to help Sarah. He started forward across the tile.
“Men!” Eërthes shouted.
Cal heard a scream behind him. He turned and saw counselor Uris, impaled on a spear and sinking to the floor. With his dying breath, the old man lurched forward, arms outstretched and reaching for the Serpent Throne. The eleven soldiers who had guarded the gate now advanced on Calvin and his friends.
The Cahokian wizard Sherem raised his hands and shouted something in a gibberish Cal didn’t understand. Nothing happened, so he raised his hands and shouted again.
A spearman thrust at him—
and Yedera intervened, knocking the spear aside lightly and then slicing the attacker across his exposed throat.
“Mother of the unborn, fill me with blood!” She yelled and hurled herself upon the remaining ten soldiers.
Cal sprinted toward the far end of the sanctuary. To his left, Maltres began a parallel race, but he was immediately tackled by the scarred woman. The Lady Alena, if that was the woman with silver hair, sat on his sternum and pointed a dagger at his face.
The tall, very Eldritch-looking man wagged a finger of protest, but Calvin ignored him and ran past.
Eërthes moved into Calvin’s path and tried to grab Calvin by his loose hunter’s shirt. Cal pounded the young fellow in the nose with his fist. It was just one blow, but Cal was on the move and irritated, and he threw his whole body into the punch.
Eërthes went down.
Cal crossed to the center of the hall and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t an especially spiritual man, but looking up at the Serpent Throne from its foot, he felt the presence of something.
Was it just the throne itself that awed him with its gleaming gold, its seven fires, and its fine craftsmanship?
Or was it the goddess?
He imagined himself fleeing. He imagined prostrating himself on the floor before the throne. He did neither.
He climbed.
In the space behind the veil, the feeling was stronger. His whole body hummed. He picked up Sarah’s satchel and looked inside—the Orb of Etyles, the Sevenfold Crown, and the Heronplow were all there. He threw the bag over one shoulder.
Something hit the back of his skull.
Cal bounced off the hard throne and fell to the floor. He saw people running his way across the hall and climbing the stairs. He rolled over; standing above him was Eërthes. Blood poured from the young man’s nose and he raised a spear high, preparing to impale Calvin.
Cal kicked his assailant’s feet out from under him.
Eërthes fell sideways, landing on the seat of the Serpent Throne itself. Cal grabbed the arm of the throne and dragged himself up with one hand, freeing his tomahawk from his belt with the other. His vision blurred.
Face twisted in a knot of fury, Eërthes gripped the spear with both hands and stabbed—
Cal dropped to one knee, sliding under the blow—
and swung downward with the axe, splitting open Eërthes’s skull.
The humming feeling Cal felt tripled in intensity. Blood spattered across the back of the throne and poured down over the seat and arms.
“Calvin!”
Cal turned, bloody axe in his hand. His head throbbed.
The spear-armed soldiers lay dead in a heap, surrounding Yedera. Her scale mail was bloody and so was her face but she stood, scimitar in her hands.
Uris was dead.
Maltres was on his feet—Sherem the Polite and Alzbieta stood beside him, having pulled off the Lady Alena and the scar-faced woman.
The black man, the woman in the leather cape, and the tall Ophidian all stood on the stairs leading up to the inner sanctum.
Everyone stared at Calvin.
Cal stared back. The feeling of holiness swelled to a feeling of dread, as if a thousand ghosts surrounded him and silently screamed. He swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to kill him, he forced me to it. But I reckon now you can see I intend business. And iffen your goddess ain’t struck me down, mebbe that means she’s lookin’ favorably on the business I’m about. Either way, now is the time to stand aside.” He hefted his tomahawk.
The three Cahokians at the bottom of the stairs stood back.
“If the Presentation fails, Korinn,” the silver-haired woman said, “it’s your fault. You brought this Appalachee maniac in here.” Her voice was scratchy, as if from long disuse.
“Your vows, Alena,” Alzbieta Torias said.
“What do my vows matter now?” Alena snapped. “I
f I stand by and allow the goddess to be desecrated without objection in this manner, merely in order to keep a vow of silence, I am faithless!”
Cal descended the stairs, each step jarring new pain into his skull, and headed for the door. Sarah needed him.
“And what about when you allowed Eërthes to bribe the wardens to keep me out?” Maltres Korinn straightened his full height, holding his staff in front of him as if he were about to fight with it. “Wasn’t that a desecration also? Or did you do more than merely allow him?”
“It wasn’t you!” Alena screamed. “It was to stop the witch, and Alzbieta Torias, who betrayed us in favor of that Appalachee—”
“Enough of this!” the dark-skinned man said. “You’re armed, Maltres. The Unborn Daughter of Podebradas and the Appalachee…what did you call him, Lady Alena? Maniac? The weapons are on your side, Korinn. Take the regalia and go. You must understand that if the goddess chooses one of us at dawn, you will suffer severe…repercussions.”
“I ain’t a maniac,” Cal muttered. He met Yedera’s gaze and they nodded respectfully at each other.
What was it she had said about herself? Something about not having to follow the rules. That sounded just fine to Calvin.
Korinn, Sherem, and Alzbieta Torias walked toward the door. Korinn stopped to answer the black man. “And you must understand, poisoner, that if the goddess chooses someone else as queen tonight, She will require your loyalty and cooperation just as surely as if She had been standing here among you. And as Duke of Na’avu, or in any other capacity in which I may serve, I’ll do my utmost to serve the queen and the realm.”
“You sound sure,” the dark man said.
Stopping in the doorway, with Cal and the others already standing on the porch in front, Maltres shook his head. “What in life is certain? But I feel more confident than I have for a long, long time.”
Cal offered Alzbieta Torias his arm and they headed down the steps of the mound.
* * *
Luman had stationed himself on the porch of the Basilica of St. Eve and St. Adam thinking that he’d turn aside Imperial Ohio Company agents, and maybe even Company Regulars, if they came to loot the building. He was well-enough known to the various followers of Director Schmidt that they might take his instruction seriously and stand down. Exactly why he thought this was an important use of this time, he couldn’t be certain.