Maude glanced over to where the claw-handed assassin had been, and all she could see now was an endless undulating wall of blue. There was a girl standing at the edges of the cloud, one hand raised as if she were conducting an orchestra. At first glance she didn’t look much older than Constance. She was dressed in a simple, plain skirt and blouse. Her raven hair was in a conservative bun and her eyes were black mirrors reflecting flickers of blue. Spine-back charged into view again, the limp corpse of his comrade still pinned to his back. The killer barreled toward the girl, but she gestured with the hand that wasn’t conducting the butterflies, and Spine-back drunkenly sidestepped a few feet. She easily dodged his attack. Maude recognized the fighting styles both women used all too well; they were Daughters of Lilith. However, whatever the young girl was doing with the butterflies and what she had just done to Spine-back was a mystery.
Maude flanked the smiling man, lashing him with alternating knife-hand and ridge-hand attacks at every vulnerable nerve cluster he should have. The effects should have been devastating pain, and paralysis, and crippling injury, but it seemed to just be annoying him. He swung at Maude and it almost connected but she folded before it and it missed. In the instant he reacted to Maude and counterattacked, the woman in the suit flashed out with a precise and powerful overhead casting punch to just behind his ear at a cluster of nerves. He roared in anger and tried to bash the mysterious Daughter. Maude took the opening and swept his legs out from under him. It felt like she was trying to uproot a redwood, but she pushed with all her might. The smiling man fell to the ground with a crash, the wind seemingly knocked out of him. The woman in the suit nodded to Maude. They locked gazes and Maude returned the nod.
“The only nerves on them that still work like normal people’s are related to their senses,” the woman said to Maude. “Except their sense of touch—it’s been severely diminished as part of their training.”
“Good to know,” Maude said.
“You’ve never faced them before, have you?”
“No.”
“Never? I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“I don’t get out much,” Maude said.
“Amadia,” the woman in the suit said.
“Maude,” she replied. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Amadia said.
There were shouts down the street, calls for aid. Charleston was becoming aware of the war being waged upon the street. Maude risked a glance to check on Constance, only to discover that Spine-back was right above her body, reaching for her. He had snapped one of his own spines off and was brandishing it like a knife. “For the glory of Father Typhon!” Spine-back shouted. “Death to the Daughters of Lilith! Death to the Grail!”
There was a loud boom with a second one following right on top of the first. Most of the back of Spine-back’s skull exploded in red mist and shattered bone. The assassin dropped to the street, dead. Martin Anderton was propped up on one elbow, barely conscious, a smoking, double-barrel parlor gun in his steady hand.
“Get your hands off my granddaughter, you grotesque,” he mumbled and then fell unconscious. Even with most of his head missing, Spine-back’s body attempted to rise again; it tried a few more times and then stopped. The storm of butterflies lifted with a gesture from the raven-haired girl, revealing the body of the claw-handed assassin, lifeless on the street, his head and face a shroud of dead blue insects.
“That was for Kavita,” the black-haired girl whispered to the corpse.
The smiling man had taken advantage of the distraction Martin inadvertently provided. He was gone.
“At least I recognize the vanishing trick,” Maude said. She ran to Constance and gently touched her throat. Her daughter’s pulse was steady and strong. She checked Martin; his pulse was thready, but still there.
“Three dead Sons,” Amadia said, walking toward Maude and her fallen family. “Now I call that a good day.”
“Sons?” Maude asked. “Who were those men? Who are you?” Maude said. “My teacher told me Daughters don’t usually meet one another unless things are terribly dire.”
“True,” Amadia agreed. “They are. I wish that they weren’t.”
Shadows moved at the edges of the street, and scattered voices could be heard. The shrill shriek of watch whistles coming closer punctuated the voices of the onlookers.
“Amadia!” the dark-haired girl called out. “We must go or be discovered! Get the girl!”
Maude looked up from Constance’s face to narrow her gaze at the Daughter. “What?”
“We must take her,” Amadia said. “You do not understand what is at stake—the future of the Daughters, the fate of the world.”
“Over my dead body,” Maude said, rising to her feet. “The Daughters be damned, the world be damned.” Amadia regarded her for a moment. The African Daughter looked to her companion and shook her head. The raven-haired girl’s eyes darkened with anger and she made a sweeping gesture. Maude’s world became flashes of metallic blue and the roar of thousands of tiny wings. Then it was all gone. She was alone on the street; the two mysterious Daughters had vanished. Maude hurriedly gathered Constance and Martin and was away.
10
The Ace of Wands
Kingdom of Dahomey, Africa
July 20, 1721
They were ten days out of Badagry, deep in the belly of the emerald beast, and three men were already dead. If Anne was to be honest, which she tried to be whenever it had no serious repercussions, she didn’t feel bad for their passing in the least. They had been bearers that Adu Ogyinae had selected for the expedition, hopefully to carry back the gold and jewels of the bone city once they found it.
All three of the dead men had been useless in this initial part of the trip. They were lazy, ill-tempered and stirred up trouble with the other members of the expedition. Two days into the bush, one had died from the bite of a black mamba when he blundered into it, almost stepping on it. The snake had been a good four yards long, and it rose up to the height of the man as it struck him. After Anne killed the thing with a quick flash of her blade, Adu tried some local cure he had prepared, but the man had taken too much venom in the bite and died within the hour.
The other two died equally incompetent deaths. They ate some ackee fruit that other bearers in the company—the few that seemed competent and professional—said any local who’d ever been out of their village should know better than to eat when it was not ripe. By the time the expedition had made camp that night, both men were in agony with stomach cramps and violent vomiting. They were dead before sunup the next day.
Today, Anne noticed that several of the bearers had been looking at her with obvious lewd intent on their minds. Out in the jungle it was too damn hot and too damn uncomfortable to bother disguising herself, especially when she was paying these men to ogle her. Her hair was tied back and she wore a headscarf as she had often done on board a ship. She wore a long-sleeved tunic and made no attempt to wrap or tie down her breasts. Her breeches and boots were sensible but the gawking, snickering bearers were obviously titillated by seeing a woman in pants.
The jungle was endless, twisting in every direction. The morning fog had mostly burned away, but it would return with the next tepid downpour. Some of the more competent and well-mannered bearers were at the front hacking away at the bush, creating a barely navigable path through land that seemed as if it had never been seen by human eyes.
“What exactly did I pay you for?” Anne asked Adu. Without missing a step, Adu reached to his leather belt pouch and handed her back the coins she had given him in town the night they met.
“You paid me for nothing,” Adu said. “Is there a problem?” Anne pocketed her coins and continued to keep pace with the large man.
“Aye,” she said. “You’ve hired a mess of thatch-gallows for bearers!”
“‘Thatch-gallows’?” Adu asked, frowning. “I’m sorry, I only speak English.”
“You know exactly what I’m saying,” Anne sa
id. “These men are rotten. I’m pretty sure most of them are plotting to kill you, have their way with me and leave us out here to rot.”
“Quite possible,” Adu said. “They are criminals, and worse. They may have their way with me too. I’m told I can be quite fetching.”
“Have you completely gone mad?” Anne said, glancing back over her shoulder at the surly pack of men admiring her backside.
“No, of course not,” Adu said. “The last time I went mad was … was it that awful business with that Phoenician king, what was his name? At any rate, it was quite a while ago. Not to worry. A good quarter of the men are true and loyal; I’ll vouch for them.”
“Why in hell did you hire a bunch of cutthroats?” Anne asked. “Are you trying to undermine the expedition?”
“No,” Adu said. He and Anne stepped to the side and allowed the rest of the party to proceed on. The other members of the expedition, including the French mercenary who was known as the Hummingbird, moved past them and continued trudging forward. The former Musketeer had told Anne his real name, Renee Belrose, once he had sobered up. Belrose gave the two a glance as he passed but said nothing.
Adu looked up into the level upon level of branches, vines and dense foliage, scanning for any threat. The relentless African sun gleamed down, its golden late-morning light mostly devoured by the tangled canopy. “They are not here for you. They are here for me. They are here because of their crimes, because of the things they have done to their own people, their own families.”
“What?” Anne asked. “I don’t follow you.”
“In a place like Badagry, these men were safe, even successful,” Adu said. “They were scavengers, feeding on the weak and the unsuspecting. They have murdered and raped, they have sold their own families into slavery. They were protected by other scavengers, the whole parasitic system laughingly called civilization. Only out here, in the purity of the wilderness, can such men be brought face-to-face with their crimes and a fitting punishment be meted out.”
“You hired them because they are evil,” Anne said, “so you could bring them out here and let them die one by one.”
“It is a public service I have performed from time to time,” Adu said. “One of the names I am known by around here is Ogbunabali; it’s a sort of title, I suppose.”
“What the hell gives you the right to judge who’s evil and who’s not? Who’s a fucking criminal and who’s a good man? Plenty of times my hungry belly told me what was right and what was wrong. Leading these people out here to get slaughtered, how does that give you any standing to judge anyone?”
Adu looked slightly amused. “You are young, aren’t you? I’m a traveler, Lady Bonny. I have seen enough, in enough places, gained a thimbleful of wisdom from my copious errors, to know what I know. I once had the same questions, the same doubts you voice. I do no longer. I know right and I know wrong when I see it. I choose to act upon it when I deem it appropriate, when my sensibilities can stomach it being ignored no longer. That is all the answer I feel you need, or could understand at this point in your life. I look forward to the day we can have this discussion again.”
“So you’re the Lord Almighty,” Anne said. “You smite whoever you think deserves smiting.”
“Yes,” Adu said. “And I stand by the consequences of my actions. Surely one such as you has killed in righteous indignation before. If you had the power to lay all those slavers low in the marketplace when you first came to Badagry, you would have. I saw it on your face.”
Anne nodded. “Yeah,” she finally said. “I wanted to, but I wanted to live more.”
“I have the luxury of having reached a point in my life where breathing is not as important to me as principle. It is a rare gift to receive, and not for everyone. You, I think it may suit … one day.”
“I have to admit, it’s a novel notion,” Anne said. “And I’d be lying if I said I’d weep for any of these bastards, but how can I be sure you don’t plan the same fate for me? Lead me out here with a load of shit and promises, just to kill me off with the other jackals.”
Adu began walking again. “Oh, you’re no scavenger,” Adu replied. “You’re a predator.”
* * *
That night, after camp had been made and sentries posted, Anne sat by the fire with Adu and Belrose. The Frenchman sipped from a bottle of absinthe and lounged back. The mercenary offered the bottle to the others. Adu shook his head.
“There are plenty of green poisons all about us, my friend,” Adu said. “No thank you.”
“Ah,” Belrose said, tipping the bottle toward Anne, “but it’s always better to meet death on your terms, is it not?”
Anne took the bottle and took a long drink.
“I wouldn’t know,” Adu said.
“Where’s your fancy little spoon and the sugar lump and the warm water, all that nonsense?” Anne asked, passing the bottle back and wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
“I am roughing it,” Belrose said, and took another drink. “Where are we headed exactly?”
“Abomey,” Anne said. The strange map in the box had been drawing them northwest and when she consulted the French and British maps she had acquired in Badagry, it looked as if the jewel was guiding them on a direct course to the city.
“Ah, charming place,” Belrose said, offering her the bottle again. “Have you been?”
Anne shook her head as she took the bottle, and another drink.
“Nor have I, but I have heard some grand tales.” The mercenary smiled. He had abandoned his heavy doublet for a simple cotton tunic and undershirt, and a well-worn, comfortable looking pair of fall-front breeches, but he was still wearing his cavalier hat with its drooping peacock feather. Belrose’s belt, blade, a Charleville musket and his powder horn and bullet bag were on the log next to him.
Belrose was an odd one, Anne thought. He was obviously well-versed in surviving the African wilderness, and he hadn’t uttered a complaint. Yet he still insisted on maintaining his grooming, neatly trimming and waxing his goatee and mustache each morning. He drank like … well, like she did, but he never seemed to suffer a hangover, or if he did, he kept his bitching to himself. Anne liked that in a tippler. You’re going to pull that trigger, you best be able to handle where the bullet goes.
“Abomey is the capital city of the Kingdom of Dahomey,” Belrose said. “We’re headed past the edges of the Yoruba’s empire.”
“This is the territory of the Fon?” Anne asked.
“Depends on who you ask,” Belrose replied with a chuckle.
“‘The Fon’ is a rather sizable conglomeration of peoples from the inland territories,” Adu said. “They banded together to resist the demands for tribute and slaves from the Yoruba, who consider them subjects. It’s ironic, since the Fon now trade captives and political dissidents as slaves to the French and Spanish for guns to continue their war against the Yoruba.”
“Guns, rum, flesh, gold,” Belrose said. “It’s what makes the world go round, my friends. Doesn’t matter where you are or when.”
“Sadly, Monsieur, you are more right than you know,” Adu said.
“The Fon are great warriors,” Belrose said to Anne. “They prize martial prowess above all other virtues. They’ve had to in order to unite and keep fighting the Yoruba. I heard tales that King Agaja employs Amazons in war and as his personal bodyguard.”
“Amazons?” Anne asked. She looked to Adu, who was quietly staring into the flames of the fire. He looked up.
“You shall see,” Adu said.
* * *
That night, Anne was awakened in the dead darkness. She couldn’t quite recall what had stirred her from sleep, but she knew it made her reach for her blade. She pushed the netting aside and exited the tent as quietly as she could. A thick, humid fog clutched the ground like a desperate lover. The fog swirled and obscured everything more than a few feet away. It seemed to glow in the vine-choked moonlight.
There was no sound from the sentries, no sound from t
he other tents, no sounds from the jungle at all. The fog was eating all the noise, devouring it. Anne turned slowly, her machete ready, her palms and throat were dry.
Chirk, the sound came from behind her. Anne spun. There was a bird, a kite, crouched on a branch. The bird’s body was marked with dark brown feathers, slowly shifting to tan on the lower edges of the feathers. Its sharp, prominent beak was bright yellow. Its blazing yellow eyes looked into Anne’s and a voice spoke inside of her thoughts. It was a woman’s voice.
“Odu Ifa,” the voice inside her said. “Aje.
“You trample upon the brush. I trample upon the brush. We trample the brush down together. Ifa was consulted for Odu by these Awos. They said, ‘Odu is going from Heaven to Earth. Whenever she arrives on earth.’ They said, ‘Thee Odu, this is your beginning.’”
The bird’s glowing gaze shifted to the floor of the jungle. Anne looked down and saw a panther with a hide as black as a starless night upon the sea. The big cat seemed to grow up out of the shadows of the jungle floor, partly hidden by the fog.
It snarled at Anne and she saw, for an instant, the force operating behind, through, the panther. A presence that permeated the icy cold between the stars, and the whispering poetry within every living body that made it unwind, unravel and, eventually, cease. The gulf between the lights in the sky, the inevitable failure of all breathing, bleeding flesh machines, the panther, all the same.
The panther was close enough to strike Anne. She tried to raise her blade but her arms were like stone. Her eyes could still move and they flickered to the kite’s. The bird met her gaze.
“Olodumare gave her a bird,” the voice continued in Anne’s mind. “She took this bird with her to Earth. Aragamago is the name that Olodumare gave this bird. Aragamago is the name that Odu’s bird carried. He said, ‘You Odu, any undertaking upon which you send this bird, it will do.’ He said, ‘Any place that it pleases you to send this bird, it will go.’ He said, ‘If it is to do bad or good.’ He said, ‘Anything that it pleases you to tell it to do, it will do.’ Odu brought this bird to Earth.”
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