“We’ll find our way, I promise,” Maude said. “Gran used this route many times. Hecate knows the way.”
“Well, if you can’t trust a living magic-tree-ship, then who can you trust, right?” he said.
“Trust me, then,” Maude said and patted Alter on the shoulder. Alter sighed and went belowdecks. Amadia touched the edge of the Hecate’s tray gently. “I’ll come and relieve you in a few hours if you’d like,” she said, and then headed off after Cline. Maude understood why they were worried; this place seemed bleak and devoid of any points of reference or direction. She was worried too. She hoped this worked as she had seen it in Gran’s memory. Maude patted the wheel, allowing Hecate to steer, and fixed her eyes on the hidden horizon, hoping for a sign of dawn.
29
The Queen of Swords (Reversed)
London, England
June 21, 1871
The three-hundred-pound steel-reinforced front door of the townhouse at the corner of Duke and Brooks was designed to hold off a literal army equipped with battering rams and explosives. Maude took it off its hinges with a single spinning wheelhouse kick, powered by all the strength and fury she could summon. The partly crumpled door boomed as it fell to the ground of the foyer. Maude, still dressed in Gran’s buccaneer garb, stepped through the doorway as the plaster dust settled. Rain fell in dark sheets outside, and the slick streets were practically empty.
“That was subtle,” Amadia said, stepping in behind her. Maude said nothing. Alter followed the two women. He had left his rifles on the Hecate and now brandished a revolver. “Up the stairs,” the African Daughter said. “Parlor is on the second floor, the first door on the right.”
Maude bounded up the stairs, from the first landing to the second-floor corridor, and tumbled to a stop before the parlor door, ready for an attack coming from any direction. A single crow’s beak punch shattered the wooden door into splinters. She stepped inside. The fireplace in the room was unlit. A very tall, beautiful young woman in her twenties, dressed in a pale blue brocade dress, was waiting. She had straight blond hair, pale blue eyes and delicate features. She sat alone at a large round table of dark, polished wood.
“From your impeccable manners and refined demeanor, you must be the American,” the blonde said.
“I’d take you for Alexandria Poole,” Maude said. “You’re as much of a bitch as I anticipated, but I expected you to be older.”
“Oh, she is,” Amadia said, entering the room behind Maude. Alter stood guard at the shattered door. Alexandria glared at Amadia but said nothing.
“You get one chance to tell me where Constance is,” Maude said, “or I beat all of that haughty pretense right out of you.”
“I’ll tell you,” Alexandria said, rising from her chair, “but you’re already too late.” Maude’s eyes darkened and she split the round table in two with a knife-hand strike.
“Then I have no reason to keep you alive, you witch,” Maude said, stepping toward her. Amadia put a restraining hand on Maude’s shoulder.
“Maude,” Amadia said, “don’t.”
Alexandria raised a finger, smiling. “Here’s a good reason,” she said. “Look behind you.” Maude and Amadia glanced back. Alter was pointing his pistol at his own head. An odd look of struggle played over the reporter’s face. “You behave,” Alexandria said, “or I’ll have your pet there splatter his brains all over the nice rug. Now, sit down.”
“How are you doing that?” Amadia said, astonished.
“Itzel isn’t the only one to have delved into the more esoteric powers of the Blood,” Alexandria said.
Maude and Amadia remained standing. Alexandria resumed her seat, crossing her legs.
“Alexandria,” Amadia said, “I’ve been trying to convince Maude that we all need each other. Typhon is back in the world, he’s free. I’ve faced him myself, so has Maude. We need all of the Daughters, including Constance, together if we hope to have any chance to stop whatever his plans are. Let’s not forget who the real enemy is.”
“How reasonable sounding, coming from a traitor,” Alexandria said. “The latest in a long line of savage degenerates who should never have been given guardianship of such awesome power for all humanity.”
“Don’t you mean, ‘all white humanity’?” Amadia said. She started to speak again but held her tongue. Alexandria continued as if she hadn’t spoke at all.
“You turned on your sisters in the battlefield,” she said. “As you can imagine, they felt your base betrayal most deeply.”
“That ‘battlefield’ was us abducting an innocent child for you because you didn’t have the nerve to do it yourself,” Amadia said. “You’ve managed to twist everything around.”
Alexandria regarded Maude. “The true enemy, as you have witnessed firsthand, teaches his soldiers to be hard, unmoved by sentiment or emotional weakness. They do what is necessary to triumph. If we are to defeat them, we must adopt the same uncompromising standards. You can understand that, can’t you, Maude?”
Maude felt Alexandria’s words slithering into her mind, making her intent seem more honeyed, more reasonable. Maude felt her own thoughts begin to subsume into the English woman’s desires, her commands. She allowed her thoughts to bend like a reed, to slip into the dark quiet places she had been learning to reach through meditation. There in the darkness was the burning thread of the blood, of the Record. She clutched it like a lifeline and it gave her what she needed. All this happened in the span of a breath.
“Oh, I understand,” Maude replied. “And to a certain extent, I agree. The time for half-measures is at an end. Look over my shoulder, Alexandria.” The British Daughter shifted in her de facto throne. Alter was now pointing the pistol at her.
“How did you—?” Alexandria said, standing. The pistol followed her. “My family has been perfecting the magicks of the Blood for thousands of years. It took me nearly fifty years of my life to master them. It’s impossible!”
“Sit … down … now,” Maude said, lowering her head, her gaze locked on and seared into Alexandria’s own. Alexandria’s expression shifted from surprise to genuine horror. She balled her dainty hands into fists and her legs shook, the muscles locked in effort.
“No!” Alexandria shrieked. Her whole body was convulsing, but she remained standing. Maude’s body began to tremble slightly and a sheen of sweat covered her brow and lip.
Alter blinked and shook his head. He looked at the pistol and seemed confused. “Did I miss something?” he asked Amadia.
“Alter,” Maude said through clenched teeth, not daring to break Alexandria’s gaze. “If Miss Poole doesn’t sit down right now I want you to shoot her in the face, please.”
Without a second’s hesitation, Alter aimed the gun at Alexandria.
“Maude,” Amadia said, “nothing would give me greater pleasure, but we’d be doing the same thing she’s done, if we continue down this path.”
“You can’t afford the effort to physically defend yourself,” Maude said to Alexandria. “And if you do, I’ll have you, like you tried to have me. So, choose.”
Alexandria’s hands took the arms of the chair and she slowly sat down. Both women stopped shaking, and Maude rubbed her face and sighed as she blinked.
“How can you possibly do that, know that technique?” Alexandria said.
“All you need to know is that I do,” Maude said, not about to tell this woman she had no idea how she had been able to do what she just did. That tiny stone of crystallized blood had changed her in some fundamental way, was changing her. It had swung open a door in her mind widely. “You are going to tell me where my daughter is.”
“On my ship, the Caliburn, bound for Africa,” Alexandria said, “for Carcosa. You obviously have knowledge of the Record, but I’ve never known of anyone who could access it so fluidly, so instinctively.”
Maude ignored her observation. “That sentiment you spoke of so contemptuously, those emotions you call a weakness, are at the core of what Lilith’
s Load, our duty, is about. They are our strengths, when tempered with wisdom, and never abandoned. If we compromise, if we adopt the ways of our enemies, we become them—perhaps worse than them—because we knew better.”
“Spoken like a true American,” Alexandria said. “An idealistic child.”
“It’s unseemly for a woman your age to cavort about pretending to be a youth,” Maude said. Alexandria flushed with anger, but stayed seated and silent. “Oh, yes, while we grappled I saw bits and pieces of the real you in there.” Maude tapped her own skull. “Not everything, just glimpses. I know, for example, why you started this horrid endeavor, and I promise you I won’t let you win at this.”
“What are you talking about?” Alexandria said.
“The tablet,” Amadia said. “Maude has one like it as well, but in better condition, and she was willing to give me access to it. I translated it, and while it talks of a rebirth and renewal of the Grail, it says nothing about this ritual you concocted, nothing of human sacrifice, nothing that would indicate that Constance is this ‘living grail.’ It says, “one will give up her future to save the past,” but that’s all. The rest are lies you fed to the others. You are the traitor, Alexandria, from a long line of arrogant, selfish elitists. Tell me why. Why are you doing this, what could you possibly have to gain by having us sacrifice an innocent girl?”
“I owe neither of you any explanations,” Alexandria said. “You are both sentimental fools, who cannot read the writing on the wall of this age. I can, and I swear to you both, the Daughters of Lilith will continue on under my auspices when you are both nothing but forgotten dust.”
“You have gone mad from drinking too much from the Grail,” Amadia said. “I always suspected, but I never knew how far you had fallen.”
“If you two think you can eliminate me so easily,” Alexandria said, “you’re welcome to try. We will raze this whole city in the struggle, I assure you. Thousands will die. A battle for poets to chronicle.”
“I know,” Maude said, looking about the room at the woodcuts of ancient Arthurian legends. “I don’t want to kill you, or control you, Alexandria. I want to help you remember who you really are, who we really are.
“I recently did the right thing, using very wrong methods, and it felt like losing, like betraying the principles of the cause I set out to uphold. The true path is hard and long and painful and infuriating, but anything that is truly of value is never easy.” Maude looked at the split table. “Think about it. Try to remember who you are.”
“The world is not merciful to the dreamer, and it certainly isn’t fair,” Alexandria said. “Get out. If I see you two again, I will kill you. You remember that.”
They departed the room. “She influenced some of the other Daughters,” Maude said as they walked down the stairs. “The way she tried to influence me and Alter.”
“Wait, what?” Alter said, holstering the pistol, “I was influenced? When?”
“She’s subtly played to their fears and prejudices,” Maude continued. “It’s going to be hard to convince them she’s lied to them.”
“My guess is Itzel was left alone,” Amadia said. “I suspect she’d notice that kind of tampering with her thoughts. Ya is in Alexandria’s corner, tampering or not. That leaves Inna and her daughter, and I’m betting Alexandria played on Inna’s guilt and worry about her daughter to keep her from thinking too much about the implications of this ritual.”
“Inna’s the one who crippled my father?” Maude said. “The Russian?”
“Yes,” Amadia replied, “but try to remember what you said in there; they were good words.”
“I don’t think they were entirely my own,” Maude said and Amadia looked at her strangely.
“Why didn’t Alexandria try to influence you?” Alter asked Amadia.
“She hates me, and the feeling is mutual; that may have been my armor,” Amadia said, “and as Ya loves to point out, I am a bit of an iconoclast, so that may have helped too.”
Outside, the storm tore across the London skyline. The day was as night, with lightning punctuating the endless torrent of rain.
“Are we going to be able to reach a duskgate or dawngate in this?” Alter asked, pulling the collar on his coat up.
“No,” Maude said. “We’ll have to take the Hecate out the old-fashioned way, and see if we can get free of this storm and find clear sky. Damn it.”
“We’ll beat them there, Maude,” Alter said. “Don’t worry.”
The trio disappeared into the black curtain of the rain. In the ruins of the parlor, Alexandria Poole watched them vanish from sight from a window.
“Having any second thoughts?” The man’s voice said behind Alexandria. “Did the Widow Stapleton sway you with her noble, forthright words, spoken with such sincere intent?”
“No,” Alexandria said, looking out into the storm. “This is all necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. To think otherwise is to play the fool. I was not raised a fool. You are ready to play your part in this?”
“Since before the first Poole was even born,” the voice said. “Of course it all depends on our pawns, your sisters. If they falter, then I can do nothing.”
“They will not,” Alexandria said. “They all think there is no other way.”
“If you are correct, no one will leave Carcosa alive,” the man said.
“Then,” Alexandria said, “our future is secure.”
30
The Six of Cups
Somewhere in the Atlantic
June 7, 1871
For the first week at sea, Constance was locked in her cabin aboard the Caliburn. Food was brought to her by at least two of the Daughters and several armed crewmen every time. Constance made no attempts to escape. She spent her time practicing her katas and reading the few books brought to her by her captors.
During the second week there was a knock on the cabin door late at night. Constance heard the lock click and the door open. It was the Russian girl, Lesya, who Constance had put in a submission hold back in Charleston. She was pale with fierce blue eyes and long white-gold hair that fell beyond her shoulders. She wore a nightshirt that fell to her ankles. The shoulder where Grandfather had shot her was heavily bandaged. She held a lantern and the key to the cabin door.
“May I come in?” Lesya asked. Constance had been reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood at the table. She nodded and closed the book.
“I couldn’t do much about it, even if I did mind,” Constance said. “But yes, please.”
“I am feeling better,” Lesya said. “The wound is healing well. My mother tells me I should be fully recovered by the time we reach England.”
“I’m glad,” Constance said. “I hope my grandfather and mother are well too.”
The girl entered the cabin and locked the door behind her. She sat on the edge of Constance’s bunk. “I am sorry for all of that. I was trying to show off to my mother, and your grandfather was only trying to protect you. My mother feels very guilty about it. I’ve heard her talking to one of the other daughters, Itzel, about it. I am sure Amadia helped them. She is very powerful and skilled.”
Constance said nothing.
“May I ask you a question?” the Russian said.
“Of course.”
“Why did you let me break that submission hold?”
“I didn’t…” Constance began, but the other girl cut her off, shaking her head.
“Please,” Lesya said. “You let me get out. I do not think you a fool. Please do me the same courtesy.”
“Yes, I did. I knew the counter to that hold,” Constance said. “I also knew that if I maintained that hold, you’d bleed out and die before your mother could help you.”
“How could you know that?” Lesya asked.
“I had dreamed it, earlier that night. My dreams come true,” Constance said, “unfortunately. I decided I had to try to change this one. I didn’t want you or anyone else to die. Bad things usually happen when I try to change the dre
ams. Grandpa got hurt, most likely because of me.”
“No,” Lesya said. “I do not believe that you had anything to do with that.” Constance said nothing. “Thank you for trying for me. I am Lesya Barkov.”
“Constance Stapleton. It’s nice to meet you. I wish it wasn’t like this.”
“As do I,” Lesya said. “I am sorry our mothers are fighting. We are supposed to all be on the same side, all Daughters of Lilith.”
“Your mother didn’t have to throw my grandfather like that, he’s not trained like us,” Constance said.
“She got upset when I got shot. I was … showing off. I am sorry. She is too. She is very proud and it is hard for her to admit when she makes a mistake, but I can see it. She wishes it had not happened too.” Lesya paused for an awkward moment. “I wanted to say hello and see how you were.”
“I am being treated very well,” Constance said. “Thank you, Lesya. It’s a kindness for you to check on me.”
Lesya smiled and departed, locking the door behind her.
The next night, Lesya returned to visit once again, lantern in hand.
“How old are you, Constance?” Lesya asked.
“What’s the date?” Constance asked.
“June eighth,” Lesya said.
“I’ll be fifteen in six days,” Constance said.
“I’ll be fourteen this November,” Lesya said. “I’m sorry you have to spend your birthday on this old ship. If you could spend your birthday with anyone who would it be?” Constance blushed a little, and Lesya giggled. “A boy? Back in Charleston, yes?”
“No,” Constance said. “He’s back west, in Golgotha.”
“Ohhhh,” Lesya said, trying to affect a western accent poorly, “a cowboy, yes?”
“Hush!” Constance said. “He’s a nice fella. His name’s Jim. I’d like to spend my birthday with him. You got a fella back in Russia?”
Lesya placed the lantern down on the floor, and slid down to join it, her back against Constance’s bunk. Constance slipped free of the chair and joined her on the floor. They huddled almost conspiratorially around the lantern.
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