by D. J. Butler
At the far end of the nave, the great front door of the cathedral swung open, rain gusting through and a flash of lightning crackling on the other side. Two figures staggered in from the storm. The one in front lurched up the aisle between the pews, reeling as if in some grotesque dance toward the altar, hands held out before him; his companion followed a few steps behind.
The bishop plunged ahead. “More than just the one, you might say, and you would be right. But today I wish to speak to you about the one.”
The dancer held a pistol in each hand, and was headed for the bishop.
Some portion of the crowd reached this realization at the same moment as Bill, and there was a general gasp. Bill knew what he had to do—he had decided that the bishop did not deserve to die because the bishop was, at least with respect to Bill, an innocent man; therefore, the bishop deserved his protection.
Bill rushed past the surprised Jacob Hop, sprinting at the rood screen and vaulting over a small door that cut through it. He landed in a crouch in the broad open space at the center of the cathedral.
The members of the congregation sitting nearest Bill gasped, but no one stood to stop him. Good, that would keep things simple.
“The liar that I care about!... the thief I must reveal!…the corpse in the temple of New Orleans!” The bishop was shouting again.
Bill stood to see that a third man had arisen in the congregation, holding a pistol. To his shock, Bill knew him—it was his former aide in the Blues and fellow gentleman of the Chesapeake, Daniel Berkeley. The crowd burst from its seats in a sudden hubbub.
“…is the Chevalier of New Orleans, Gaspard Le Moyne!” the Bishop of New Orleans howled.
“Berkeley! Help me!” Bill gestured at the lurching man and his companion. Berkeley had been an able lieutenant. The fellow was a skilled horseman and fighter, especially with his sword.
Bill saw the man lurching forward more clearly now; he was tall and rangy, with long red hair tied back on his shoulders, and he wore the breeches, moccasins, and long hunter’s shirt of an Appalachee. He was soaked, and he seemed to be holding on to the two pistols in his hands by main force, being dragged forward by them as if by horses he was breaking.
Stranger still was the fact that Bill thought he recognized the guns—he would have sworn, even from twice as far away, they were his own long horse pistols.
The lurching man’s companion was smaller, pale and dark-haired, and dressed in a gray monk’s robe. His shock continuing to mount, Bill realized he knew this man, too. He was Thalanes, Firstborn, itinerant mage, Cetean monk, chaplain to the Philadelphia Blues when Sir William Lee had been their captain, and Bill’s fellow conspirator in the concealment of the Empress Hannah’s children.
Thalanes carried a sword.
Bill’s sword.
Sweet merciful Heaven, now I’m the one who has gone mad.
Bang!
Bill jerked his eyes back to the Appalachee spastic, but no smoke poured from those long familiar guns. He spun to look at Berkeley, and saw that his old comrade in the Blues had his gun pointed at the bishop—
smoke billowing out—
and the bishop was collapsing sideways, toppling over the railing of the pulpit, crashing on top of the altar, bloodying its covering cloths and dragging them with him in his slow tumble to the floor.
The crowd exploded like a flock of pigeons at the shot.
“Berkeley!” Bill shouted again.
Berkeley turned to face Bill, and time slowed. Berkeley tossed aside his spent pistol, wheeled on the ball of his foot and charged at Bill, sweeping his sword free of its scabbard.
Bill yanked his own pistol from his pocket, raised it, and fired—
click!
“Hell’s Bells!” Bill was a fool to have rushed out of the damp crypt without refreshing the firing pans of his guns, or at least checking them. And then Berkeley was upon him, with his first murderous, disemboweling swing aimed at Bill’s stomach.
* * *
Sarah fought a boiling wave of panic. The first Lazar foot that slapped onto the dock had triggered her spell and her witchy eye had filled with a view of the Mississippi Gate. The sudden inpouring of greenish light almost blinded her.
At the same moment, her mind had echoed with a shout in the groaning rumble of Grungle’s voice. Beware, Your Majesty! The Lazars arrive!
His voice sounded only in her head, and yet it seemed to be coming from the small disk of tortoise shell in her pocket. Instinctively, Sarah wrapped her hand around the bit of shell and squeezed it.
“Grungle!” she cried out.
Her eye grew accustomed to the light of the Mississippi ley, and she saw she had a river’s-eye view, looking up at boats, wharves, and the shoreline. She saw the tattered brown backs of the Lazars’ coats as they disembarked. Their boat bobbed as they stepped onto the wharf, and the last one to come off the vessel held a long straight blade in his hands, something like an Arkansas Toothpick.
Black Tom Fairfax, wielding the knife that had taken its owner’s life and damned him to Cromwell’s service. Blood dripped from the weapon, and the sails of the Lazars’ hijacked ship were spattered with the blood of its crew.
Untied, the little yacht drifted out of her vision.
Run away, disengage! Sarah’s mind screamed, but a need to know the outcome kept her pinned. The Lazars padded toward the bank, Hooke and Tom Long-Knife striding quietly in front and the others clustering behind, hunched, gangrel things, rancid and festering.
She wondered what horrible services the other Lazars had done Cromwell, or what outrages they had perpetrated against him, that had led them to this end.
People on the shore pointed, stared, or ran away, and someone shouted for gendarmes. A thick-chested harbormaster with a blue cap bearing a gold fleur-de-lis stood with feet apart and a truncheon in his hand in the middle of the dock.
“Arrêtez-vous! Stop right there!” he barked.
Black Tom swung his long knife once, lightning-fast, and the harbormaster crumpled to the ground in a fountain of his own blood.
Splash!
His head landed separately, in the water.
Picaw and Grungle blocked the end of the dock to keep the Lazars from dry land. “No further, death-slaves!” Grungle croaked, and he produced from beneath his robes a pair of sharply curved blades. He swung them left and right and advanced upon the walking corpses, a thresher of men.
His forward motion halted in mid-flourish. His body slumped, but his eyes stayed fixed forward, and Sarah felt cold fear; the Heron King’s tortoise-headed servant had been snared by the Sorcerer Hooke. Whatever trap Hooke had been trying to lure Sarah into when their minds had touched on the Mississippi, had instead seized the beastman.
“Don’t look at his eyes!” she shouted.
Picaw cried something in a tongue Sarah didn’t recognize, and an array of knives, like a crescent of green-streaked steel, whipped from her hands. The weapons flashed and bit into the Lazars—
and they kept coming forward, knife hilts protruding from their cold chests.
Grungle seemed to be shriveling. His black eyes no longer glittered, his mouth hung open, and Sarah saw a green glowing vapor rising from him. The beastman’s aura faded and Robert Hooke sucked the bright mist into his own body.
“No!” Sarah shouted.
Black Tom Fairfax stepped past Grungle and lunged at his companion. Picaw, too, produced a scimitar from under her robe and gamely parried several quick stabs at her torso. When she counterattacked, though, Black Tom ignored it, and even as her blade bit into his ribs, cutting a deep slice into the tattered brown coat—but otherwise having no visible effect—Tom Long-Knife plunged his long dagger into her neck.
Picaw dropped her blade and as her blood jetted down the front of her robe, Black Tom jerked out his weapon. Seizing the beastwife by the tip of her beak, he dragged her to her knees and raised his blade over his head like a cleaver.
He’s going to chop off her beak! Sara
h felt sick, and she jerked her vision away from Picaw and back to Grungle.
Thwack!
Grungle was gone, his aura snuffed. His body collapsed forward onto the planks beside the dead harbormaster. Further up the slope, gendarmes and the customs toughs backed off, making way for the wrath of the Sorcerer Robert Hooke and Black Tom Fairfax.
She wanted to scream.
I believe we are being spied upon. The Sorcerer began to turn back in the direction of the river, in Sarah’s direction, and she saw his pallid forehead over his shoulder, then his eyebrow, then—
Sarah yanked herself out of the vision.
“Sarah!” Cathy was shaking her. “Sarah, are you all right?”
They were not half a mile away; she had no time.
And now Obadiah Dogsbody wanted a wee chat.
Sarah pried herself from Cathy’s grip and faced the Englishman. He held a pistol in his hand, cocked and pointed at her.
“Obadiah,” she gasped, “terrible evil men’re not ten minutes from this here room, men as’ll jest as soon kill you as me. We gotta git outta here!” She hoped the truthful plea might soften the Englishman up.
“Oh, aye?”
“Liberate nos!” She willed all the energy she could from Thalanes’s moon brooch through her words at the smiling Obadiah, commanding him to set her and Cathy free.
Obadiah stopped, cocked an ear, and seemed to think a moment. “What was that, poppet? I ain’t ever ’ad mickle of an ’ead for Latin.”
He slowly, melodramatically turned his free hand around, and then suddenly uncurled his fingers to show her his palm. Obadiah Dogsbody held a tarnished silver coin.
“Hell,” Sarah said.
“It be a bit ’arder when a chap ben’t taken by surprise, ben’t it?” His face tightened into an expression that hung between sweetness and a snarl.
“What do you want, Obadiah? If we don’t leave now, we’re dead, all three of us.”
“I want to come wiff you, poppet,” he said. “An’ I want you to forgive me.”
“What?” she and Cathy asked together.
“I fink I might love you,” he explained. “I ben’t right sure ’ow to explain myself, it’s been a confusing few weeks. But I definitely want to come wiff you.”
Sarah had no time to argue. “I might jest be able to agree, iffen you can git us outta here!”
Obadiah eased the hammer of his pistol back down, turned it around and offered its grip to her. “You take it, pet. Token of good faiff.”
Cathy Filmer leaped to her feet. “Let me get my things.” She knelt to pull up a loose floorboard, hoisting out from beneath it a stitched leather shoulderbag.
Should Sarah take the Englishman’s gun and then shoot him?
Or just leave him?
But she might need him to get past the soldiers out in the hall.
And besides, astonishingly, he seemed sincere.
She waved the offer of the pistol away, and Obadiah tucked it back into his belt beside its mate. “Can you git us outta here?” she asked him.
Obadiah smiled. “Of course I can, poppet.”
* * *
Berkeley’s blow was rushed, trying to take advantage of the fact that Bill had no sword. It was unlike the Daniel Berkeley Bill had known, who was a cool and efficient swordsman.
Bill deflected the attack with the metal barrel of the hidalgo’s pistol and then stepped inside Berkeley’s lunge to headbutt Berkeley in the nose.
Except that Berkeley slithered under Bill’s blow and the two men collided, shoulder to chest, neither very well balanced. Bill hopped back and drew the other pistol, leveling it at his former comrade-in-arms. People ran for the exits, swarming all around the combatants, but it was a close shot and Bill wouldn’t miss.
“Put down—” Bill started to demand Berkeley’s surrender, but the younger man regained his balance and flicked the tip of his sword, jostling the gun, so that Bill fired—the bang! was loud in the hollow drum of the church, with its people noises receding—and missed, the bullet gouging a bite out of the rood screen.
Berkeley’s backhanded return swing of the blade came for Bill’s face, but Bill was already in motion, retreating. “I would say it’s a pleasure to see you, suh,” he commented, “if you weren’t wholeheartedly engaged in seeking my death. Was it something I said?”
Berkeley made several neat slashes and pokes at Bill, never exposing himself to counterattack and forcing Bill back.
“Are you the bishop’s man, Lee?” Berkeley asked. “Is that how he knew? Blazes, did you tell him?”
Lucifer’s codpiece, what was Berkeley nattering on about?
Thalanes hovered at the outer ring of the fight, but as Bill sidestepped another series of jabs, the red-headed man came barging toward Bill, through a knot of frightened women and past Berkeley, catching the dragoon in the elbow.
Bill saw his chance and hurled a spent pistol at Berkeley, but the red-haired man was moving faster than he had thought—
the pistol clubbed the stranger in his head—
and he collapsed, Bill’s long pistols falling at Berkeley’s feet. Bill lunged for them, but was deterred by a length of sharp steel he suddenly found at his throat.
“These look like your pistols, Captain Lee,” Berkeley drawled. “You were once a famous shot. Are you still any good?”
Bill nodded warily.
Berkeley was breathing hard from the exertion, but Bill was breathing harder.
“Naturally, you’re hoping I will test you,” Berkeley ruminated. “You’re hoping we can resolve our differences with a pistol duel, which you believe will give you an edge, and remove my advantages of youth, strength, speed, stamina, and superior swordsmanship.”
“I was unaware that we had differences, Lieutenant Berkeley,” Bill said, as placatingly as he could through the huffing of his old man’s lungs. “I only hoped for an explanation as to why you’ve killed the bishop, especially in this manner. It is a surprising act for a man who once fought for the credo honor in defense of innocence.”
“It’s Captain Berkeley. I’m Captain of the Blues, now.”
“Someone has to do the job.”
“What are you up to, Lee?” Berkeley knelt, his sword still between them, and scooped up one of Bill’s guns.
To both their surprise the gun jerked forward, pulling Berkeley off balance. He stumbled over the unconscious Appalachee man and fell to his knees.
“Will!” Thalanes yelled.
Bill turned in time to catch the saber, his heavy cavalry saber, that the little monk had tossed to him, hilt-first and still in its scabbard.
Bill whipped the scabbard off and held it in his left hand.
The crowd was dissipating. Would the gendarmes show up? If they did, would they recognize him as a colleague, or would he find himself in chains and bound for the Pontchartrain again? Would the chevalier be upset that someone other than Bill had killed the bishop? Did Bill even want to serve the man?
Bill sighed. Life had once been so simple.
Berkeley regained his feet. “Who told you, Lee?” He leaped to the attack. Bill retreated, turning aside Berkeley’s attacks with a curtain of defensive steel.
Behind Berkeley, Thalanes chanted some hocus-pocus and then rushed over to the fallen man.
Why had Lieutenant Berkeley—Captain Berkeley—killed the Bishop of New Orleans, and why was he now attacking Bill? Could it possibly be coincidence that Thalanes had reappeared at the same moment as Berkeley, and carrying Bill’s weapons?
“Captain Berkeley,” he said in his most polite tone, barely parrying a blade that whistled at his throat. Berkeley was right; he was a better swordsman than Bill was, and he was younger and stronger. “I congratulate you on your preferment. I regret I was unable to attend the ceremony.”
“You left the court.” Berkeley pressed his attack. “You became a deserter.”
That stung. “Captain Berkeley, suh, that’s hardly…”
“What were y
ou thinking, Lee?” Berkeley pushed Bill hard. Bill retreated back at a ninety-degree angle around a cluster of pews, forcing Berkeley to come around the long way and gaining precious seconds.
“I had my reasons, suh,” Bill muttered.
“Where did you go, old man?” That jab hurt, and the anger almost distracted Bill from the attack that immediately followed. Berkeley lunged and Bill danced sideways between two pews. Berkeley chopped at him again and he skittered back further, slashing at Berkeley to keep the pursuit from being too eager.
“I bear you…no ill-will, Captain…but I insist that you…account to me for this death.”
“You have no authority to insist upon anything!”
Slash, duck, slash, and Bill stepped back again.
He and Berkeley had once been friends and fellow soldiers, and he had to believe Berkeley was attacking him now, somehow, by mistake. Maybe he’d also killed the bishop for mistaken reasons.
“A request, then,” Bill puffed. “If I lay down my blade, suh…will you do likewise…that we may converse?”
The bishop’s congregation had all emptied out, other than a lone woman who bent over the bishop’s body. She wore a white nun’s habit with a red cross on it over a stylized heart—a Harvite, a Bleeding Heart, a Circulator; one of the Sisters of St. William Harvey, and for a moment hope sparked within him that the bishop might yet survive.
“What have you been doing in this pit of whores?” Berkeley’s eyes boiled. “And does Sally know?”
Bill leaped forward with an attack that caught his opponent by surprise.
“I was minding—”
He slashed at Berkeley’s face, and the man parried, trapped between pews—
“my own—”
Bill whipped Berkeley across the head with his scabbard—
Berkeley crouched, trying to avoid the blow, but still took it in the ear, and yelped—
“damned business!”
Bill planted his boot in the dragoon’s teeth, sending Berkeley tumbling back, almost losing his grip on his weapon and falling out from between the pews onto the broad flagstones of the aisle.
With the kick Bill had lost his own balance, and he fell onto one knee on the seat of a pew. Berkeley spat blood and leaped to his feet, firming up his grip on his sword hilt.