by D. J. Butler
“True,” interrupted the chevalier smoothly, “but let us get beyond the general shortcomings of the species and focus on the details of my personal errors.”
Berkeley looked amused.
“Your charm will avail you nothing, nor will your wealth and power! Fear God, who will call in your debt at the last day!”
“Yes,” agreed the chevalier, “and require interest payments until then.” Berkeley snorted a short laugh. “But can you please get to the point, Your Grace? I have business with these men.”
The bishop’s fury rose unabated in the face of the chevalier’s mockery. “You are a blackmailer! I have heard from one of your servants, and I know you are a thug, a criminal, a low extortionist!”
“Yes?” the chevalier asked. “Tell me more, Your Grace.”
Did he want the bishop to chastise him?
The bishop spun and advanced on Ezekiel, but his extended finger rotated away and continued to point at the chevalier. “Your master, Thomas Penn!” Ukwu snapped at Ezekiel. “The chevalier blackmails him for money, and accuses him of murder!”
“Is that so,” Captain Berkeley said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes!” the bishop snapped. “And our emperor, I am sad to say, does not behave in this matter like an innocent man!”
Ezekiel went weak in the knees and stomach. How could this Bishop know anything of Mad Hannah’s death? How could the chevalier know?
He looked over the bishop’s shoulder and saw that Berkeley was white as a sheet, with his mouth hanging open and his hands near his pistols. How did Berkeley know? Perhaps the emperor had taken the Captain of the Blues into his confidence. Ezekiel ground his teeth.
“What murder, Your Grace?” the chevalier asked coolly.
The bishop wheeled back again to face the object of his scolding. “Do not play games with me! You have accused the emperor of killing the Imperial Consort Elytharias! You blackmail the emperor, and he pays! The blood money you thus steal has built the very house we stand in, and you seek to buy your way out of the guilt by plastering images of God’s saints on its walls! Shame!”
Elytharias! Ezekiel felt dizzy. This was not about Mad Hannah, then, it was about her husband. But why would the chevalier think that Thomas had killed the former King of Cahokia? And the chevalier had no right to blackmail Thomas, no matter what Thomas might be guilty of. Thomas was the emperor! Though Thomas was guilty, and so was Ezekiel, at least of the blood of his sister, Mad Hannah.
But…Elytharias?
“Is that all?” the chevalier asked.
The bishop shook his head in sorrow. “I had thought to come here to urge you to repent. I had hoped you would lay aside your evil scheme. I see now that I shall have to take to the pulpit to further persuade you.”
“Please, Your Grace,” the chevalier protested urbanely. “It has been a long time since I’ve been persuaded by anything said from a pulpit.”
The bishop clamped his mouth shut and then, to Ezekiel’s shock, stepped out of his footwear. He bent to the leather sandals, picked them up and deliberately slapped them together, shaking the dust off their soles and onto the marble floor of the Palais du chevalier.
“I curse you,” he said coldly, his calm tone at odds with the fervor of his words. “I curse you that your body will not sleep and your mind will know no rest. I curse you that you will waste and wither, that the tree you plant will bear no fruit and the field you till will lie barren, until the day of your repentance. I will unmask you all, and if I fall in the attempt, then I curse you in the name of the Lord God with a successor who will plague you even more.”
Then he stepped back into his shoes, turned, and stalked out the door.
Ezekiel realized he had been holding his breath. He let the air out in a long hiss.
Berkeley collapsed onto a sofa. “I need a drink.”
“The Imperial Consort!” Ezekiel exclaimed. “Captain, do you know what he’s talking about?”
Berkeley didn’t meet his gaze. “Damned priest,” he said, and Ezekiel felt a chill in his spine. So it was true! Thomas had murdered Kyres Elytharias, and Captain Berkeley knew. Well, he had been one of the Blues when Elytharias had died, fifteen years earlier. Ezekiel couldn’t blame Thomas for removing the Unsouled stain from the escutcheon of the Penns—wasn’t he about the same business, trying to capture or kill Elytharias’s daughter? And the chevalier was blackmailing Thomas; Ezekiel felt anger, but if Thomas wished to pay the chevalier, it was not Ezekiel’s business.
And Ezekiel needed the chevalier’s help to find Witchy Eye.
Ezekiel sat down and took deep breaths.
The chevalier was eyeing Berkeley closely; scrutinizing him.
“Gentlemen,” the chevalier finally said, setting his cigar down. “I believe I can be of assistance to you.”
“You ain’t exactly short of guns ’round here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cathy Filmer told them William’s usual source of cash in desperation was a pawnbroker named Hackett, and then led them to his shop, but by the time they arrived the sun was setting and Hackett was gone. Thalanes thanked Cathy and then suggested that she might go home.
She stayed.
Thalanes worried the expedition was out of his control. On the other hand, it was good that Sarah was taking command. She was his queen, and if she were really going to rule a kingdom—or two powers at the same time—or the empire—she must learn to govern.
So he was challenging Sarah, and she was fighting him back as an equal. And her choices had been as good as any decisions could be, given how blind they were and the dangers that beset her. They seemed close to finding William Lee, and once they’d found Will, they’d find the other Penn children.
Thalanes would hide them further away this time. New Muscovy, or among the free horse people, or somewhere in the Old World, if he had to. The Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire had their own risks and dangers, but he was reasonably sure that their lands were beyond the reach of Oliver Cromwell.
He worried about Cathy Filmer. They didn’t need her anymore, and bringing her along meant one more person’s safety to worry about and one more person who might betray them. He thought Cathy’s interest was in William, but that mollified him only slightly.
They returned through the Quarter and across the Place d’Armes to the Bishop’s Palace. The beastkind didn’t rejoin them, but Thalanes saw, from time to time, the two hooded, robed figures of the Heron King’s emissaries, trailing them.
The beastkind added another unknown quantity to worry about. What did the Heron King want? Who was he, really? What was this strange announcement of the death of Peter Plowshare?
Cathy Filmer walked side by side with Sarah and engaged her in conversation, which was slightly disquieting to Thalanes but which made Calvin look simply put out, like an unwanted and grumpy hound dog.
The youth might just be the Calhoun Elector some day, despite the monk’s warning to him not to go into politicking. That was possible not because Iron Andy was his grandfather—that wasn’t how the Appalachee selected their leaders—but because he had the nerve, the will, and the charisma that could bring him to the top of the heap in the rough-and-tumble political elbowing that determined who was the head of any of the families of the Ascendancy.
Now, too, he was getting a strong shock of world experience that would strengthen him, and if Sarah ever came into any of her birthrights, his connection with her—whatever exactly it ended up being—could only help him. Thalanes had had many occasions to be glad Calvin was accompanying them, though he foresaw a necessary moment when Thalanes would leave the young cattle rustler behind, the better to hide Sarah.
But for now the little monk had more pressing concerns.
As promised, Chigozie put down his reading—Thomas Paine’s last book, the provocative Deistic Reflections upon the Gospel of St. John—and shrugged into his black coat to accompany them. He chatted engagingly with Cathy and Sarah as they turned north and mov
ed behind the cathedral.
They passed through an empty dirt yard, through which Chigozie seemed anxious to hustle them quickly. “This is a notorious dueling ground,” he explained. “It is shameful that men kill each other in sight of the cathedral, but such is New Orleans.”
“Looks like a cattle pen.” Cal scuffed at the hard dirt with his moccasin. “Jest shy a couple fences.”
“No one is here now,” Chigozie admitted, “but it is in the nature of disagreements to heat up quickly, so let us not delay.” Beyond the dueling yard, he led them through a couple of turns and down several long city blocks crowded with nighttime revelers, stopping in front of a large and singular-looking building.
“A fine lair for a bishop’s son, is it not?” Chigozie asked. “You see what my father puts up with?”
“At least he has a sense of humor,” Cathy offered in demure defense of Etienne’s choice, and Thalanes had to admit she had a point.
The boxy structure was built of stone. Multicolored light streamed into the night through its many large windows, stained and patterned like the windows of a wealthy chapel, only the images here were voluptuous, comical, aggressive, and even obscene. Angels defecated onto the pages of books held open by nude women; zodiacal signs copulated dangerously; beast-headed men played at cards with man-headed beasts; it all tumbled together into an abyss filled with fire, the long tongues of which licked lasciviously at the falling bodies.
Above the chaos presided, flinging gold coins from both his hands, a dark-faced man who bore a significant resemblance, even in his stained-glass image, to Chigozie and the bishop. The building was an anti-cathedral.
The crowd around it, pushing and panting, desperate to get in through its doors, blocked traffic through the street.
“Yes,” Chigozie agreed, chagrined. “His sense of humor is the one piece of our father that my brother inherited.” The bells of the St. Louis Cathedral struck eight o’clock.
“It may not be the best piece,” Thalanes said, “but it’s a good one.”
“That, and they both love tobacco.” Chigozie shook his head.
“I reckon your brother’s business is successful,” Cal observed, “whate’er it is. This palace wasn’t built by no poor man.”
“I try not to ask how my brother makes his money,” Chigozie said grimly, and started pushing through the crowd. “Nor what god he serves.”
Two heavy men in simple black waistcoats and shirtsleeves pushed the bubbling stew of humanity away from the door with cudgels, but when they saw Chigozie, they admitted him and, following his indication, his party. Passing through the door, Chigozie explained to Thalanes, as if apologizing, “it amuses my brother to let me in, anytime I wish to see him.”
“Then you do him a sort of service,” Thalanes suggested.
“Perhaps. I myself am not so amused.”
“That only makes your service all the more charitable.”
A short, broad entrance hall, nearly square, opened up onto a dance floor thumping with a hurricane of noise that snarled out of the unlikely combination of an array of brass kettle drums, a banjo, a fiddle, and a two-headed wooden flute. The same crowd continued inside, drinking, smoking, dancing, and playing various games of chance, and in the writhing mass of bodies Thalanes saw a reminder that he should be grateful he had become a follower of St. Cetes, and not some parish officeholder whose daily burden included the war against this.
Another waistcoat-clad ruffian hulked before a heavy interior door, and Chigozie nodded a wary salutation. “Mon frère Ofodile,” Chigozie addressed the man in French. “Est-il en haut?”
“Oui.” The ruffian showed a row of gold teeth in a smile that looked knowing and vicious, and opened the door. “Montez-vous.”
Behind the door were stairs, and at the top of the stairs was an office. Two more black-waistcoated men loomed up to block their path, but Thalanes stuck close to Chigozie’s shoulder and moved between the thugs easily, Sarah and the others in his wake.
The ruffians faded back into relaxed vigilance.
Ofodile Etienne Ukwu, the bishop’s more entrepreneurial son, stood up from a heavy writing desk where he was reviewing a ledger with a fat, sweating Creole in the waistcoat that Thalanes by now recognized as a uniform. His office was a carefully orchestrated display. The thick carpet on the floor was Arabian or Persian. There were knives on the walls, running from the floor up to eye level. The blades were arranged, but they gleamed from meticulous care and whispered of their own razor sharpness.
Above eye level and up to the ceiling, a mural painting ran around three sides of the room. It depicted an empty plain, with few and unfamiliar stars in a night sky. Two roads converged from opposite corners and met at a crossroads, behind and above Etienne Ukwu’s desk. At the crossroads stood an old man. He wore a broad-brimmed straw hat and simple coat. In his teeth he clenched a smoldering pipe, with one hand he sprinkled something on the crossroads that might have been water, and with the other he leaned on a cane.
He wore a key on a string around his neck.
Behind him came a little dog, wagging his tail and looking at the viewer.
Thalanes had the unsettling impression the dog was laughing at him. He shook it off, and tried to focus on the people in the room.
Seeing Ofodile—Etienne—Thalanes was reminded that Chigozie took after their mother, who had died when the boys were young and Chinwe had not yet been marked for the priesthood, and how much Etienne looked like a younger version of his father. His fingers, though, glittered with rings and held a jaunty cigarette, and his waistcoat flashed carved ivory buttons and silver embroidery in an elaborate pattern of elegant bow-like recurves, straight lines, stars, and leaves. Instead of a belt he wore a red silk sash, knotted on his right hip.
“Mon cher Chigozie,” the younger Ukwu brother said, “tu es venu en cherchant l’emploi au moment parfait! J’ai perdu un croupier ce soir et l’être d’équipe de nuit serait tout à fait compatible avec tes devoirs à la Cathédrale.” He smiled a look of intimate envy and malice at his brother.
“English, please, brother, my guests are not from Louisiana.” Chigozie’s words were peaceable, but Thalanes heard strain in his voice.
“I am happy to welcome your guests, brother Chigozie,” Etienne said with an amicability that threw knives. He sucked smoke in from his cigarette and then stubbed it out in an ashtray.
“Thank you,” Chigozie said.
“Perhaps one of them would like a job dealing cards?” his brother suggested. “Although the tall one looks more like a debt collector, and I can always use another good sticks and stones man. Or are they, like my righteous brother Chigozie, waiting for their fathers to die, so they can inherit thrones and wealth?”
Etienne waved at his fat bookkeeper and the Creole scuttled away downstairs.
“The bishopric is not my inheritance,” Chigozie protested. “You know that is not how it works.”
“Is it not? When my father dies, whom will the Synod anoint in his place? Some stranger? Some nominee of the emperor, or the despised chevalier? Some Geechee tent-worker, an aspiring Haudenosaunee prelate, or a Yonkerman savant? Or will they simply appoint the beloved son of the beloved departed bishop?” Etienne’s smile never faltered. Thalanes frowned; something about the pattern on Etienne’s waistcoat bothered him. It was familiar, somehow.
“The Synod will appoint whomever it wishes,” Chigozie said, “and I will serve however I may.”
The pattern on Etienne’s waistcoat approximately matched the outline of the stars in the alien landscape of the mural.
“I expect so.” Etienne’s eyes glittered like a ferret’s. “Perhaps you will continue to play second fiddle, and it will now be to this monk who stands at your shoulder. How about it, Father? Would you be pleased to be Bishop of New Orleans, if it were offered to you?”
“Not I,” Thalanes said, broadcasting all the modesty he could summon. “I’m a Cetean, and a monk, and I like it that way. No parish
for me, thank you, much less a diocese.”
“St. Cetes, of course!” Etienne whistled low. “We do not see many of you this far downriver. Although, to be perfectly frank, I do not see many priests at all, myself. Other than the ones in my saintly family.”
“Perhaps your décor discourages them from visiting.” Thalanes smiled.
“You do not like my windows? I hired the best artists who could be had for money.”
“The building is beautiful, of course,” Thalanes said. “It’s also a joke, of the sort that not all priests will enjoy. Some priests might even think your beautiful building is a joke of which they are the butt.”
“I see.” Etienne nodded. “And do you feel that I am mocking you, then?”
“No.” Thalanes smiled. “I think the butt of your joke is man. And man deserves it.”
Etienne laughed heartily. Thalanes shot a quick look at Chigozie and saw a puzzled expression on his face.
“And my painting, Father Cetean?” Etienne asked. “Do you like my painting, too? Is it an amusing joke?”
Thalanes looked at the painting again, the crossroads, the old man, the dog, the key. He had no idea what it meant, though a vague thought nagged him that he should.
“St. Peter has always been one of my favorites,” he said evenly.
At that answer, deliberately ambiguous, Etienne stopped laughing. The bishop’s son arched his eyebrows at Thalanes and pursed his lips. “Can it be true, Father Cetean, that your order has no hierarchy at all? Once ordained, you are answerable only to God?”
“My name is Thalanes. Yes, it’s true. One spends one’s novitiate studying under a Preceptor, but once ordained, a disciple of St. Cetes serves no ecclesiastical authority. He serves God, and his conscience. Or her conscience, as the case may be.”
“I like it!” Etienne beamed. “No hierarchy at all, just direct responsibility! It seems very Ohioan to me, Father Thalanes, I must say.”