“This age,” the Oya said, “is all about change. There are so many opportunities for sweeping good and for crushing evil, so many brave philosophies clashing to challenge crowns and gods. It is an age of great potential, Adu. I hope she is up to it.”
“I hope we all are,” Adu said.
“You are coming too?” Raashida asked.
“Yes,” the first man said. “I’ve never been a pirate. I think I might fancy it.” The two old friends made their way aboard their new home. The two other ships at the dock were roaring pyres now and shouts and alarms were being raised across the water from Badagry.
Anne remained with the chained captives. The stocky merchant glared at her. “You gave those stupid savages your word? What good is the word of a whore and a pirate?”
“I gave them the word of Anne Bonny,” Anne said. A murmur ran through the captives. “It’s worth a damn sight more than the word of a slaver guzunder like you.”
“Anne Bonny’s dead, you stupid slag,” the merchant said, noticing now the freed slaves were encircling the prisoners, “hung by the crown in the East Indies.”
“Well then,” Anne said, walking toward her new ship, “you just had your ships taken from you by a peggin’ dead woman. Oh, and I told these folk,” Anne gestured toward the crowd, “they can do what they will with you, that you’re their ‘cargo.’ I also told them that they don’t have much time to decide what that might be, so … best of luck, lads!”
“No!” the merchant shouted to Anne as she walked away, whistling.
* * *
The until-recently slave ship Ashborne carried over a dozen guns, port and starboard. As they got under way, Anne, Adu and Belrose used them to good effect, broadsiding the hulls of the burning ships on either side of them with massive cannon fire, and then opening up on the slave port docks with chain-shot, wrecking them magnificently, as they turned to starboard and caught the wind. The Ashborne glided out of the bay and into the open sea, burning chaos and a strong wind at their backs.
Anne stood at the helm. She sighed.
“Back to your pirate ways I see,” Adu said, walking up to join her. “I thought you were off to retire, be a lady of means.”
“Time a’plenty for that when I’m old and gray and my tits are saggy,” she said. “I never felt more alive, more free, more myself, than when I was sailing. I’m sticking to it, and I got you and Oya and old stone-ass Nourbese to keep me honest, don’t I?”
“Yes,” Adu said. “You do, captain.” The ancient man looked out at the horizon, where heaven married sea. “Where are we off to?”
“First, Charleston,” Anne said. “I’ve got an overdue date with a wee lord. After that, someplace we can cause a mess of trouble, and maybe a wee spot of good.”
The Ashborne’s sails filled with the warm currents of the Atlantic as they sped away from the coast. Above her, Anne heard the mocking caws of gulls, playing, teasing gravity, laughing at its laws, gliding, balancing, free on the wind. She knew exactly how they felt.
36
The Devil
London, England
July 25, 1871
“Our father has not returned as he planned,” Rory said to the pale, beautiful woman sitting in the throne-like chair at the head of a long, rectangular table. The parlor was dark, save for a flickering black candle at the center of the table. The twelve assembled Sons of Typhon, reeking of the London sewers they lived in to hide their monstrous deformities, stood at Rory’s back, as did the twenty Unfeeling, all of them dressed in black, with cloaks and hoods to hide their faces and to help them disappear into the foggy night from which they had come. “We must assume the worst, and proceed as Father requested.”
“Agreed,” Alexandria Poole said, standing. “Your master gave you explicit instructions, did he not?”
“Yes, Lady Poole,” Rory replied. He opened the case he had brought with him to the Daughter’s chapter house. “He said your part in his design remained unchanged, and that all the Sons and our acolytes were to serve you, and you alone, until his return.” He removed a grisly chalice from the case. Its “cup” was a tiny infant skull, turned upside down. Rory set it upon the table. “Your dowry,” he said, “as promised by Father.”
Rory removed a small vial from his vest pocket, uncapped it and poured a black and oily liquid into the damned chalice. The liquid cast a ghostly, lemony light from the cup and across the table, making the shadows of Rory and Alexandria jump and distort in a way that defied refraction or reason. “The grail,” Rory said.
Alexandria took the chalice in her pale, perfect hands, and raised it from the table. She balanced the obscene vessel in one hand, and with the other, lifted a single dark red ruby to her lips. She had escaped the Well of the Mother with only her life, the crumbling tablet, and this one stone when she had found Carcosa in 1809, at the age of forty-six. Her doddering, incontinent great-great-great-great-great-grandmother had told her about the City of Monsters and the legends of the Tears of Lilith in one of her rare semi-lucid moments, mumbling in Pict. Alexandria had smothered the thousand-year old woman to make sure she never told anyone else.
When she had looked into the opal eyes of the Mother, Alexandria had seen all her own flaws, all her dirty, sticky thoughts revealed for the universe to see. She saw wrath burning in the crimson rubies of the Golden Woman’s gaze, and Alexandria had known she was damned.
The plan had taken time and patience, a characteristic that the Poole family cultivated as a virtue and an art form. While covertly studying Maude Stapleton and her daughter in Golgotha, Alexandria had felt something calling out to her. It came to her in dreams, and it called itself Typhon. No matter how things had concluded in Carcosa, Alexandria won. She won power and knowledge and all of the considerable resources of the Sons across the globe to add to her own considerable assets. No, she’d known since she looked into those inhuman eyes in Carcosa that she would never settle for being a mere Daughter of Lilith, a foot solider, a pawn, in some cosmic war. And she’d begun to plan how to become the queen.
“Do this in remembrance of him,” Rory said. Alexandria slid the blood stone into her mouth, feeling it begin to change, and raised Typhon’s grail to her lips.
“Do this in remembrance of me,” she said, and drank deeply of the blood of the Father. Rory watched as Alexandria began to choke, gasping, coughing. The grail slipped from her fingers and rattled onto the floor, empty. Alexandria screamed and fell to her knees, convulsing, thrashing, her eyes rolling back in her head and her nails ripping through the thick rug and the hard wood beneath as she clawed the floor, trying to find some anchor, some control over the forces eating her away from the inside, filling her with honeyed acid and fire, chilling in its radiance. She was on her hands and knees now and continued to tremble, but already the palsy was lessening.
Alexandria Poole stood. Her eyes were black, shiny oil. Tears the color of the void ran down her perfect, beautiful cheeks. A perfect smile came to her perfect face. “It is done,” she said, her voice as lilting as ever.
“Hail the Mother!” Rory shouted, throwing himself to his knees, lowering his face to the hem of Alexandria’s dress. “All hail Typhon’s bride, Lady Poole, all hail the Mother of Monsters.”
The assembled Sons and Unfeeling followed suit, kneeling and genuflecting before Alexandria. They raised their voices, making the whole townhouse shake.
“All hail the Mother!” they chanted. “All hail the Mother of Monsters, all hail Lady Poole.”
“Oh, please, my darling boys,” Alexandria said, dabbing the obsidian tears from her new eyes. “That’s such a terrible mouthful to have to say. You can just call mummy Lilith,”
“All hail Lilith, Mother of Monsters!” her new family chanted, and Alexandria laughed like a mad child. “All hail Lilith!” The voices were raised so loud in fearful worship, in horrified adoration, in lunatic abandon, that the evil behind the chant was felt all across the world.
37
The Quee
n of Cups
Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean
July 28, 1871
The Hecate sailed on the sapphire waters of the Atlantic, bound for the port of Charleston. Maude was at the helm, her hair loose and tousled in the sun and wind.
“I think you may want to keep that buccaneer look,” Alter said, coming up from belowdecks to join her, “if I may be so bold. It’s come to suit you.”
“Have you seen yourself lately?” Maude replied. “You look like Blackbeard!”
“Actually, there’s not that much difference between cutthroat skullduggery and the publishing business,” Alter said. “The ship seems quiet with the Daughters gone.” Maude nodded.
“With this mess over,” Maude said, “they wanted to get home. Inna’s going to bury her daughter in the village she was raised in, and then she’s going to hunt Alexandria.”
“Did you try to talk her out of that?” Alter asked.
“No,” Maude said. “None of us did. She’s due … something for all this. I’d be joining her, if…”
“I know,” Alter said, “and I’d be right beside you, being virtually no help whatsoever.”
Constance came up from below, dressed in breeches and a poet’s blouse. The girl had a large bandage covering most of her forearm on the arm that had been opened to bleed her. She was balancing razor-sharp dirks in the palm of each hand as she made her way up the stairs, out onto the quarter deck. Amadia followed her up onto the deck.
“Fight practice today?” Constance asked.
“Have you done your lessons?” Maude asked. Constance had been subdued since departing Africa. She missed Lesya, and had taken her death hard. Maude had held her crying many nights until the girl had no more tears inside her for her friend. The realization that it wasn’t the first death her fifteen-year-old daughter had faced saddened Maude. Constance was healing in all the ways she could, as best she could, but Lesya’s death would leave an emptiness in her nothing would ever truly replace. It was one more sad lesson of life that Maude wished Constance need not have learned so soon.
“I have translated and read Clausewitz’s Vom Kreige,” she said, “and the lessons Miss Applewhite, Miss Anhorn and Grandfather would approve of.”
“And…” Maude said.
“And,” Constance said, making a raspberry noise with her lips and tongue, “I have practiced that boring meditation you are making me do.”
“It may be boring,” Maude said, “but trust me, you’ll thank me for it one day.” She paused for an instant, and realized that she had just repeated, almost verbatim, what Gran had said to her when she was Constance’s age. You didn’t need the Record to be immortal, or cast echoes across the ocean of time.
“If Mr. Cline is agreeable you can practice a few throws,” Maude said. Constance smiled widely, and jumped a little. Alter snapped his head around to glare at Maude and then he looked back to Constance, a smile on his face. Amadia laughed.
“This should be rich,” the African Daughter said.
“I’d be delighted,” Alter said. “Great sport!”
“You’re lying, Mr. Cline,” Constance said, “but thanks anyway.” Alter walked over to Constance on the deck.
“You shall be receiving my medical bills, madame,” he muttered to Maude as he did. “Go slow this time, young lady. I’d like to try to puzzle this out myself.”
“Basic throws,” Maude said. “Don’t break Mr. Cline, dear.”
“Yes, Mother,” Constance said.
If the wind held up, they could make an attempt on the closest duskgate Maude had located on Gran’s cryptic charts tonight and be home in a week or so, but Maude was considering sailing on the Atlantic, taking the long way instead. She found herself enjoying the feeling of her fate being in the hands of the winds and tides that she chose to follow.
Constance was giggling as she sent Alter skidding across the deck. The reporter couldn’t help but laugh, too, then groan as he struggled to his feet again.
“She seems to be her old self again,” Amadia said. “Any dreams?”
“None to report,” Maude said. “I still don’t like the notion of anyone, Typhon or Lilith, using my flesh and blood like that.”
“The powers we have trafficked with,” Amadia said, “their motives are like those of this ocean. We may never understand.”
“I’ll stick to the sea,” Maude said. “It’s the kind of unpredictable I can do something about.”
“Sometimes,” Amadia corrected. “Sometimes, you just get wet.”
The African Daughter began to climb the rigging toward the crow’s nest, calling out encouragement to Constance to hurl Alter a bit harder.
Maude set her eyes on the burning blue horizon. She understood, now, why Gran had always loved this life so much. You set your own course, made your own way, through storms and wrecks, plunder and peril. There was no one to blame or praise, save yourself.
If you were lucky, you’d been taught by an old sea dog, someone who had spit in the eyes of their own hurricanes and lived to tell you the tale. The best you could hope for were good charts, good memories, maps of love, family and friendship to help you find your course through loss and disappointment, straight and sure.
Thank you Gran, Maude thought, for giving me a good compass to sail by.
Maude reached back and gently touched the tray of stones that was Hecate’s soul and told the ship she was going to keep the wheel for a while longer. She felt the sea tug at the rudder, trying to pull her from her course. Maude held the wheel true, and told the sea which way she was going.
38
The World
Golgotha, Nevada
August 25, 1871
The letter arrived at Auggie Shultz’s General Store, and Mutt knew who it was from even before he turned it over and saw the delicate, complex and beautiful lettered script. He had caught her scent on the paper as soon as he walked in the store. It made his heart beat faster. He walked out the door, nearly bumping into Alton Sprang and Dex Gould as he did.
“Careful there, Mutt,” Alton said. “Don’t be in such an all-fired hurry. You know you don’t know how to read that letter.” Dex chuckled. Alton waited for Mutt’s caustic reply, but the deputy slipped past him and out into the blazing noonday sun.
“What’s got into him?” Alton asked Dex.
Mutt didn’t want to wait to read the letter, so he sat down on the dusty steps leading up to Auggie’s store, facing Main Street, and ripped the envelope open. Her scent was stronger on the paper.
Dear Mutt,
How are you? Safe and sound, I pray. I wanted to thank you for your letter. It did make a difference in very dark times. It, and you, sustained me. The awful business I had to leave Golgotha for is concluded, as much as anything is ever concluded. Constance is back with me. I have come to a better understanding of, and with, my father. My inheritance is mine to do with as I please.
While I wasn’t able to change the laws here, I was able to not let them change me. I think you might be one of the few people who can understand that distinction, and see it as a victory. You and I continue to live in a world that has no place for us, and yet I have learned, as you had to, so long ago, to make my own place and refuse to let the world budge me.
I will save the details of what has happened for when I can tell you in person, but it’s quite a tale, even by Golgotha standards. This experience has shown me many things about myself that I was not aware of, some good, others bad. It is better to know these things than not, I think. The more you know yourself, good and ugly, the harder it is to have yourself stolen away. Painful truth is far better than a comfortable lie.
One truth I have learned is that the gifts Gran gave me include responsibilities in a larger world. Lilith’s Load is a duty that goes further than being Constance’s mother, further than the borders of Golgotha. I can’t ignore that, I can’t go back to just living and fighting for my small little corner of this world …
Mutt lowered the paper and st
ared at a patch of sandy soil between his feet. He heard the horses and wagons moving along Main Street, the crowded staccato of conversations along the busy street. He felt the hot afternoon sun baking his brain through the brim of his battered hat and the still, thick, oppressive air of the desert, wrapped about him like a mantle.
Mutt sighed and looked back to the letter.
… I am preparing Gran’s old estate, now mine, Grande Folly, to become a gathering place for the small circle of people who have undergone the education I have, so that we may better understand each other and act as a single sword against the dark forces I have come to realize exist unopposed in this world.
At Constance’s urging, I am also considering making the home into a haven for those young women, like Constance, whom we may find who need a safe place to learn what Gran has taught me, and to give them the educational opportunity to become truly free in this world, even if it is only their minds I give them back, even if they never take up the Load of Lilith as a Daughter. I must admit, Mutt, the notion of becoming a governess fills me with a certain amount of dread …
“Aww, Maude,” Mutt said chuckling. “You’d be a fine schoolmarm. You can teach ‘twenty ways to kill a body with a poisoned hairpin,’ and such.” He returned to his reading.
… I got to meet the other Daughters during this tumultuous time, and I think it’s important we work together. The others are, for the most part, in tacit agreement to my proposal, although we are a contentious and stubborn lot!…
“Yeah, big surprise there,” Mutt muttered.
… We have all agreed to try to meet at Grande Folly in a year’s time and share all that we have come to learn of our enemy’s agency upon the earth. I won’t and can’t go into detail in a letter, but there is an evil afoot in this world, and while we may have been able to stymie it, its agents still exist. I freed this evil during Ray Zeal’s time in Golgotha. I let it back into the world to do mischief. It’s my responsibility to stop it from hurting more innocents and destroying more lives. This will be difficult with me spending time going back and forth between Golgotha and Charleston …
The Queen of Swords Page 42