by D. J. Butler
“You haven’t seen anything…it isn’t that close,” Sarah half-asserted, half-asked.
Thalanes shook his head. “I can sense it. I don’t know what it is, but I know it seeks you and it stinks of death.”
Sarah shuddered. “Can you tell where it is? Help me see.”
Thalanes nodded at the Mississippi. “Upstream. A couple of days behind us is my best guess, but I could be wrong. There’s no need to panic.”
Sarah turned her face upstream. A lone German stood in the stern of the keelboat, intent on working his pole against the river bottom and pushing away drifting objects that threatened the vessel and its sweet cargo. She had carefully kept the patch over her eye since Natchez-under-the-Hill, not wanting to be blinded by the proximity of the river, but now she slipped it off her head and looked upstream.
She plunged into a green-stained, multicolored glow that surrounded the boat. Sarah was disoriented for a moment, and then realized that she had expected to see the ley line, and instead she was standing inside it, seeing everything else through it.
“Are you all right?” the monk asked her.
Sarah brushed him away with her hands, trying to concentrate.
She shaped her will. She formed an intention to see upriver, along the Mississippi ley, and she poured her perception into the intent. She wished she had something material she could use—a crystal, a seeing stone, a spyglass—but she didn’t. She was actually touching the ley, standing inside it, that was something. Or was it? Was the ley material, like a physical object? But whether or not it was, she knew it could conduct magical energy.
Sarah considered using the acorn in her dress, which had, after all, spent fifteen years tucked against her eyeball, but that didn’t seem quite right. Then, without knowing exactly what she was doing, she focused her intention through her witchy eye itself, willing the spell through it in the same way she would have through a bit of blood or skin she might use in a hex.
“Hostem video.” She touched her witchy eye and drew the smallest trickle of green-tinged power from the Mississippi. Even that tiny sip jolted through her like lightning.
She sucked in cool morning air as her vision raced along the ley. Faster than falling, faster than flight, her eye rocketed up the river in a tunnel of green, trees and buildings and bluffs and swamps and stockades streaming by in a whirl. She passed Natchez, and the staggering pyramids and necropolises of Memphis, and a high hill towering over the junction of two mighty rivers.
Suddenly, she was there.
She saw a keelboat. Its crew worked with frowns and furrowed brows, and the cabinless boat carried no cargo other than a circle of men huddled in the center. The banner on the back of the boat, a pair of standing sheaves and a rising sun, tickled her memory, but she wasn’t sure whose it was.
Imperial Youngstown, maybe.
“I see them,” she said. Black-evil-murder-smoke wisped off the men, similar to the auras of the Mockers.
“Tell me what you see,” the little monk urged her.
“There are five…six men,” she counted. She absorbed their faces, which were dirty, pale and impassive. Two of the men sat apart, and might have been commanders or leaders of some sort. They all had long hair. “They don’t talk. There’s something wrong with their auras, they’re not natural. They have…their eyes…they’re white. They just sit there. They are all armed, knives and some pistols. They’re on a boat. I don’t recognize any of them. Their clothing is torn up pretty bad. The boatmen are afraid of them.” She paused, focusing to be sure before she said anything. “They seem to be moving much faster than we are, though I don’t know how that’s possible.”
She felt Thalanes touching her arm, as if it were something happening very far away. “Let me see,” he told her, and she nodded.
“Visionem condivido,” she heard him say, and then she felt the monk inside her head. He was there as a weight, a presence that tired her, but only slightly. He gasped. “Sarah,” he murmured appreciatively, “your vision is so…clear…so powerful.”
“Tell me what you think of these men.” Sarah was too nervous to feel proud.
Thalanes spoke slowly. “Look at their hair and their nails. See how long they are? And their skin is so pallid. And their clothing isn’t tattered, it’s rotten.”
“Yeah,” Sarah agreed, “they got a real deficit of fashion sense. What are they?”
“Can’t you guess? They’re Lazars. Dead men,” Thalanes whispered, and Sarah felt a chill in her bones.
“Do you mean they’re like Black Tom Fairfax?” she asked. “And the sorcerer Hooke?”
“They aren’t like them,” Thalanes said. “They are them.”
Sarah’s mind revolted at the thought and she started to panic…the vision blurred…
“Calm down.” Thalanes squeezed her forearm. “Breathe.”
Sarah took a deep breath and re-inserted herself into her vision.
“We have a great advantage,” she heard the monk say. “You have an extraordinary natural talent, a seer’s gift. They’re far away, and we can see them.”
“They’re coming fast,” Sarah objected in a whisper. “Lazars.”
“True,” Thalanes agreed, “but the river’s long, and they’re still a couple of days behind us. We know they’re coming, we can keep track of them and maybe throw them off the scent.”
“What else do we need to look at?” she asked.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said, and as he let go of her arm, she felt his mind withdraw.
She released the vision and it disappeared, leaving her again on the roof of the keelboat in cheerful autumn morning sun. She looked north into the green ley energy and realized now that she could see flecks of black filtering to her witchy eye. Those were hints of the band of dead men on her trail, hundreds of miles upriver.
“I can see so much,” she whispered, and she slipped the patch back down over her eye. “But I know so little.”
“You can.” Thalanes lay down on the roof of the cabin. “And you know much more than you think you do. It gives me comfort to know that I’m traveling with such a visionary. So much comfort that I’m not afraid of a couple of old Englishmen, just because they have a bit of grave-mold on them.”
“I thought Lucky John’s men killed them in Putney,” Sarah said. “Wasn’t that the whole point of the Silver Lancers, John Churchill’s special squad? I read that equipping those men sucked the coffers of William of Orange dry. All that, and they failed?”
“All that and they won,” the monk reminded her. “They drove the Necromancer out of England, along with Tom Long-Knife and the Sorcerer Hooke.”
“And sent ’em on over here to the New World so’s they could chase after me. I jest git luckier by the day.”
Thalanes waited a moment. “Are you frightened?”
“Hell yes,” Sarah shot back. She could feel her pulse racing and her breath was short.
“Would it help you to think of them as tragic figures?” Thalanes asked.
“I don’t reckon it would,” she guessed.
“Tom Fairfax was a rebel,” Thalanes said, as if he was bound and determined to make his point anyway. “He rose up against his king, and then when he realized Cromwell was worse than what he’d replaced, he rebelled against Cromwell, too. Cromwell crushed the Rising of York, and his punishment for poor Black Tom was cruel.”
“Black Tom killed a lot of people with his knife, afore and after he was dead. I reckon that was cruel, too.”
“Yes,” Thalanes agreed. “And then his old friend Cromwell killed him with his own knife, and bound Tom into Cromwell’s service, forcing him to wield that same knife in the service of the man he hated, eternally.”
“Cry me a river.” Sarah gestured beyond the boat. “Cry me the damn Mississippi.”
“And Hooke asked to become what Cromwell made him.”
“What?” Sarah was startled. “Why in Hell would anybody ever want to become a walking corpse?”
“To live forever,” Thalanes explained. “Hooke was a great wizard, practical and theoretical, much like Sir Isaac. When the only thing that drives you is curiosity, the thing you want most is time.”
“And then what? They all jest came to the New World and hid for a hundred years, waitin’ to jump out and grab me?”
“No one knows quite what happened to Cromwell,” Thalanes said. “There are persistent rumors that William Penn sheltered him.”
“My grandfather?” In context it was only a minor surprise. Sarah was beginning to regain control of herself and her accent. “Why would he have done anything so stupid?”
“Great-great-grandfather. Cromwell gave him his original land grant. That’s where your family estates come from, Sarah…they were bestowed by the Necromancer. And after he’d been driven out, the Penns were established and King John had his hands full of other matters and no one was in any position to do much about it. Besides, people liked William Penn. He was a good man.”
“Who made a deal with Hell.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he didn’t shelter Cromwell, and those rumors are just the baseless gossip of your family’s enemies.”
“Dammit,” Sarah complained, “life is complicated.”
“Many atrocities committed along the banks of the Mississippi over the years have been attributed to the Lazars,” Thalanes continued. “Your father hunted them, though without much success.”
“Oliver Cromwell is my enemy, then,” Sarah said.
“The Lazars are, at least,” Thalanes yawned again, “but we have a head start and we can see them. I’m sorry that you feel disquieted; your vision has put my mind at ease.” He lay flat on the cabin roof and laced his fingers together over his breast. “So much so, that I’m now going to take a nap, and you’ll have to drink my share of the coffee.”
He shut his eyes and instantly he was breathing the soft, deep rhythms of sleep.
Calvin clambered back up onto the cabin roof. “I put water on the stove,” he said, and then he saw the monk dozing. “I reckon it’s jest coffee for two, then.”
“Cal,” Sarah told him, feeling shaky, “best keep the Elector’s gun loaded with silver from now on. We got trouble a-comin’.”
The talkative deaf-mute returned the next night. At Bill’s politest request, he disappeared again for a few minutes and came back with writing materials.
Bill lay on his belly and spread the sheet of paper out before him. He dipped the quill into the pot of black ink and considered carefully.
“Hell,” he said.
“What vexes you, William Lee?” Hop sat cross-legged across the sheet from Bill, and he looked amused.
“For starters, Mr. Hop, you might consider calling me Bill. When you call me William Lee every time, it sounds as if you’re reading an obituary.”
Hop looked delighted. “Very good, Bill. I do not know what an obituary is, but perhaps you could call me Jake.”
“Excellent, suh,” Bill agreed. “Don’t be offended at my provincialism, but YAH-cobe is difficult for me to remember, and Mr. Hope makes you sound like a fairy.”
Hop laughed.
“An obituary, Jake,” Bill continued, “is a printed notice, in a news-paper or similar publication, of a person’s death. I’m surprised to learn the Dutch don’t publish them. I’ve been to New Amsterdam, and it seemed a civilized enough place.”
Hop shrugged.
“Secondly, although you’ve promoted my scheme in a most excellent and prompt manner, Jake, procuring these writing implements as you have, I find myself realizing that there are at least two tremendous weaknesses in my plan.”
“What weaknesses? Perhaps I can help,” Hop said.
“I can write well enough,” Bill said, “to my grandfather’s shame, who thought it beneath a gentleman, but I can’t write Frog, and I don’t expect that the chevalier will read a letter in English and believe it comes from Bayard Prideux. In addition, I find that I have no way to get a letter to the chevalier. My plan is ill-thought out and I am thwarted.”
Hop clapped his hands together once. “I can solve both those problems, friend Bill!” He leaned forward, touched the inkpot, and muttered some jibber-jabber that didn’t sound Dutch to Bill—or French, or Castilian, or Latin, or anything else remotely familiar.
The quill Bill was holding tingled to the touch.
“Why, Jake,” Bill was surprised. “Have you been holding out on me? Are you a knickerbocker wizard, my good meneer?”
“I have some talent,” Hop conceded, smiling.
“Heaven be praised,” Bill said. “I may get out of here yet.” He held up the quill and admired it in the candlelight. “And what will this enchanted pen do?”
“Write what you will, my friend,” Hop explained. “The pen will turn it into French.” He furrowed his brow. “You did mean French, yes, and not actually the language of frogs?”
Bill laughed loud. “Yes I did mean French, you delightfully simple Dutchman! The language of frogs, indeed!”
Hop only raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“Very good, Jake!” Bill shook his elbow out of habit, as if shaking a sleeve out of the way, though he was naked to the waist. He dipped the quill into the inkpot again and attacked the blank sheet. “My dearest Gaspard,” he said aloud as he laboriously wrote. “Gaspard is the chevalier’s Christian name. A touch of insolence will help provoke the desired reaction,” he explained in an aside to Jacob Hop.
You, sir, he continued, owe me. I have shared my secret with you, and it has made you great wealth. The source of your new riches, in turn, I have told no man, but I find that the recompense for service to you is miserable. You treat me as a prisoner, sir, as an outcast and as a disgrace. I deserve better. You should share your bounty with me, and give me place at your side. I warn you out of the warmest affection I have for you, that failure to so reward me may result in the alienation of my regard.
He looked back at what he had written and what he saw made him laugh out loud. Not only was it all French—he could barely puzzle out the odd word, here and there—but Bill’s native hand, hacked out of the page like fire-cleared brush, had been transformed in the act of writing into something elegant, letters curling and twisting on the paper like dancing sprites.
“This is the first time I’ve ever written a French letter.” He winked. “You’re a genius, Jake!” He signed the letter with the initials B.P.
“Very good, Bill,” Hop said, beaming. “Shall I see to the delivery as well?”
Bill folded the letter, printing to the Chevalier on the outside in his accustomed blocky letters and marveling again that it came out as au Chevalier, in lovely script. “Can you? Will you give the letter wings?”
Hop laughed. “No, I cannot do that. Not here. I told you before, friend Bill, my power is weak upon the sea. There are other powers here, and they contest me, and then I am not yet come into my full strength. It is hard enough for me to be here at all, and to accomplish small magics, like putting words into your pen. I do not have the strength to manipulate physical objects on this ship—if I did, I would simply remove your manacles and we could swim away. It would be another matter entirely, you understand, if you were imprisoned upon the Mississippi.”
Bill was disappointed. “You will find someone, though, to deliver it.”
“Yes,” Hop said. “Yes, Bill, I will. Besides, what madman would take delivery of a letter that arrived flapping its own wings?”
* * *
Kinta Jane Embry pitied the Frenchman on the hulk. She pitied most of the men she knew, and all of the men she served. They were lonely, they were needy, they were sad. Whatever it was they paid her to do, however much of her time and body they bought, what they really wanted was someone to pay them attention.
And most importantly, the men who hired Kinta Jane were usually men who wanted a woman who wouldn’t talk back. They got what they wanted; for years, Kinta Jane had been an expert in keeping her mouth shut.
The Convent
icle had equipped her for that.
The saddest of them all, though, was the Frenchman on the hulk. He talked so much. She understood him and she let him speak, but she tried to ignore everything he said and hold him, and she did what he wanted when he was ready.
His talk was insane, drunk talk, the grand scheming of every failed criminal, with constant hints at dark secrets and at his importance to the chevalier. He was pathetic, he was lonely, he was eager, he was desperate. And if he was so important to the chevalier, why was he a guard on a rotting prison ship? Her half-brother René was important to the chevalier, and he lived in the Palais.
Not that the chevalier’s motives mattered to her. She served René and the Conventicle, René and the Conventicle wanted the Frenchman watched, and Kinta Jane was the one to do it. She took the Conventicle’s orders—when the Conventicle gave her orders, which was a rare event—but it was the chevalier, or at least, René, who was the chevalier’s seneschal, who paid her every month to visit the Incroyable. Paid her, and gave her money to pay the scarred boatman who rowed her out.
Kinta Jane did her duty by the sad Frenchman, and when she could she made a little extra cash by letting the Frenchman’s idiot assistants grope her or kiss her for whatever copper coins they had scavenged. Visiting the sad Frenchman did not bring Kinta Jane much money, but she had other clients.
She needed those other clients—the Conventicle didn’t pay. One joined the Conventicle and did its work for the greater good, in order to protect Adam’s children from the coming storm, because one believed in Franklin’s vision. Kinta Jane believed in Franklin’s vision. She also believed in René, who had recruited her and who was her cell leader. To this day she only knew two other people in the Conventicle—the other members of her cell. That, and she had an address in Philadelphia to which she could send a message, if something happened and René, her cell leader, was disabled.
She finished with the Frenchman and held him while he fell asleep. Then she dressed, first pulling the cluster of beybey medallions over her head and laying them on her breast, then covering them with her tight blouse and stepping into her wide-flounced skirt.