by D. J. Butler
Nathaniel had only met Sarah in a visionary-transcendent state he experienced as a starlit plain, but which might be something like heaven, but he had rescued her from one kind of prison and she had rescued him from another, and he felt deeply connected to her.
The acorn didn’t point them toward specific paths, but when Nathaniel held it in his cupped palms and thought about his sister—Margaret Elytharias Penn—the acorn rolled to show them which way to go. It always rolled in a consistent direction, northward and eastward.
When Jake held it, the acorn did nothing.
The acorn didn’t do this of its own accord; it was a spell Sarah had cast, and the birth-bond that linked the acorn to both Nathaniel and Margaret was an essential piece of the gramarye.
They had tried other methods first. Nathaniel had ridden across the starry plain of the sky on his drum-horse, listening for a voice that sounded like it might be Margaret’s, and he’d never heard one. He’d heard the rattling voice of Robert Hooke once or twice, and that had given him pause. He’d heard the voice of the wiindigoo Ezekiel Angleton, the dead Yankee Wizard who had attacked him in Johnsland, too.
The voices had settled into Nathaniel’s heart as cold fear. The three fresh scars on his neck, cut by Angleton’s long nails, burned.
Sarah had gifts of sight that Nathaniel couldn’t fathom. She’d tried using them to find Margaret, and they had also failed. Something hid their sibling from them. But the acorn, for whatever reason, pointed the way.
Perhaps, coming from their father as they did, the acorns were the most powerful bond holding the siblings together.
Jake and Nathaniel walked. Nathaniel could only walk; flesh and blood horses shied away from him and, though he couldn’t explain it at all, he shied away from them, too. In the same way that his body didn’t feel right holding a knife anymore, or wearing his coat right side out or his hat forward, he didn’t feel right sitting astride a horse.
Nathaniel’s inside-out coat and backward hat were the reason they trampled through so many brambles and forests. On the road, but especially in towns, Nathaniel drew too many stares. He smiled and, if asked, told people he was a juggler with a circus. When Jake was asked, he said that Nathaniel was touched in the head.
They avoided saying anything at all by staying off the larger roads. Jake didn’t complain and Nathaniel didn’t have to insist.
Jake carried a small sack of coffee beans he said he’d been given by Sarah. Twice a day, each of them chewed and swallowed a single bean, and after eating a bean, Nathaniel wanted to run. Without conscious thought, he tapped his fingers lightly on the large drum he wore slung over one shoulder—that, too, seemed to speed his feet and alleviate his fatigue.
Jake’s hands shook, except when he thumbed through his fraying, water-warped and -bloated deck of Tarocks. He asked Nathaniel many questions and, when Nathaniel asked, he told his own story. Mostly it was the tale of a deaf-mute from New Amsterdam who’d grown up as an unloved errand boy working in his uncle’s merchant venture, but from time to time that tale shaded into something darker and more violent. Sometimes, when Jake told tales of being that terrible god, Nathaniel thought he heard distant screaming. It was as if the Dutch ship-boy had dreamed of being a god of chaos and destruction, and then had matured into a man who couldn’t remember which had been real, the ships or the cataclysms.
This was a reason Nathaniel should enter the starlit plain again, to find healing for Jacob Hop.
But he didn’t dare.
Another reason to enter the plain of the sky would be to locate Ezekiel Angleton. Ma’iingan, the Ojibwe man who had rescued Nathaniel when he’d been abandoned in the forest and then helped him find his way into the sky and a meeting with Ma’iingan’s manidoo, his personal demigod, had called the man a wiindigoo. Sarah had known Angleton from earlier battles. The man had raised the dead to attack Nathaniel, and might now—must now—be on Nathaniel’s trail. If he entered the plain of the sky and listened, Nathaniel thought he’d be able to find Angleton, the better to flee the man.
But whenever the darkness of the forest shadows or the bitter bite of the January wind made him consider doing so, Nathaniel remembered sinking in Robert Hooke’s warm, amber pool, hands trying to drag away his soul for eternity. He’d only been rescued from that attack by Sarah’s intervention, and the enchanted slate that had allowed her to intervene had been shattered in the act.
He felt Sarah’s eye on him, from time to time, and even without leaving the mortal world he could sometimes hear her. She might not be able to rescue him again, but he believed she was following his progress toward finding their sister.
During the brief periods when Nathaniel lay trying to sleep, he thought he also heard Margaret. He thought the voice belonged to Margaret because it sounded like his voice, and Sarah’s.
Mostly, he heard Margaret weeping.
“Don’t worry, Margaret.” He huddled deep into his inside-out coat, the wrong-turned collar chafing his neck. “We’re coming.”
* * *
Bill hobbled on two crutches toward the Mimir’s Well. The Well was a tavern just inside the western wall of Cahokia, whose signboard depicted a cup of some dark red liquid with a one-eyed crow perched on the rim. It had survived the fires on the night of the Heron King’s assault, despite being an aboveground building of half-timber construction with a thatched roof. Good luck on the proprietor’s part, or maybe a hex against flame. The warehouses and receiving offices built in the manner of the children of Eve around the Well had mostly burned down and had not yet been rebuilt.
The mounds were much less damaged, the wood of their structures being sunk into the cold winter earth.
Even if the neighborhood hadn’t burned in the assault, it would have been quiet. The docks on the other side of the Treewall were destroyed by rampaging beastkind, and the beastkind still prowled the frozen riverbank, cutting off river traffic into Cahokia. The Treewall’s western gate, called its Mississippi Gate, was shut, warded by Cahokia’s too-few wizards, and watched by armed men from the ramparts above. So were its Chicago Gate (on the north side), its Ohio Gate (on the east), and its Memphis Gate (on the south). The Imperials cut off traffic on these three sides, bottling the city up and forcing her to live on stores that had already been meager to begin with and were now running out.
Children, skinny but bright-eyed, played across the street and sang:
I’ll sing you seven, O
Green grow the rushes, O
What are your seven, O?
The spirit of the Lord
And it ever more shall be so
The words didn’t sound right to Bill, but it had been a long time since he was a child, innocently singing Christmas shanties.
It was also a long time since he’d seen a goat or a chicken. He hadn’t seen a horse or a dog in a week. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a rat.
The Treewall had been scorched as well, but it had grown new bark and leaves. That was Sarah’s doing. Bill had been fighting elsewhere, but he’d heard from Maltres Korinn how Sarah had run the Heronplow around the entire city. That spell had restored life to the wall and stopped the raging of the beastkind still within it.
The thought reminded him that he wasn’t alone.
Bill turned to Chikaak. The beastman warrior, a man-sized and man-shaped coyote who stood on his hind legs, was Bill’s sole remaining sergeant. Faithful Calvin Calhoun had fled after committing sacrilege against Sarah’s goddess, and Sarah had sent the odd Dutchman Jacob Hop after her other siblings. The Firstborn counselor Uris had died at the hands of Cahokian wardens, bribed by a traitor. That left Chikaak, bound by a magical oath upon Cahokia’s Sevenfold Crown, an oath that Bill knew could be disrupted by a thing as small as the physical application of a bit of silver.
Bill felt dangerously exposed.
“I shall not require your assistance here, Sergeant,” Bill told the beastman.
Chikaak didn’t move. Wi
th his tongue lolling out his mouth, the damned fellow looked as if he were grinning. “You’re seeking relief from pain.”
“Hell’s Bells, yes, I am. My legs are both broken beyond healing. I shall never run again and I walk only with difficulty. My…physician,” he had almost said lady, which would have been closer to the truth, though Cathy Filmer had been a Harvite novice and was the closest thing to a doctor he’d seen in years, “tells me I am likely to feel pain the rest of my life. Yes, Sergeant, I would like a little relief, and some of us are not constituted so as to be able to lick our own wounds.”
Chikaak’s expression didn’t change.
“You’re not following my instruction, suh,” Bill growled.
“You’re my commanding officer,” the beastman said, “but my oath is to the queen.”
Dammit. “Very well, then. Come watch me drink.”
Bill stumped into the Well. Years of walking into taverns had conditioned him to expect the smell of food, and his mouth was watering even as he pulled the door open. The bitter gush around his tongue sharpened the pang in his stomach as he realized that the tavern smelled only of sweat and candle wax.
No food.
There was drink, at least. Men huddled over tankards and cups at the Well’s scarred tables, sipping without speaking. And there was music: a man huddled beside the fire plucked slowly at a lute that seemed to be missing strings—this, too, likely an effect of the siege—and sang an English ballad.
It’s been a long, hard journey
since Peterborough burned
Many a good man buried,
many bitter lessons learned
I’m sunk up to my shoulders
in this thick black Ely mud
My eyes are full of chainmail
and my heart is full of blood
I’m not the last man
I’m just the last man standing
It was an English tune, and after a moment, Bill recognized it. It was a ballad about Hereward the Saxon, last resisting warrior against the Norman invasion of England in the eleventh century. It was a fitting song for soldiers trapped and determined to fight to the end.
I’ve seen the girls of Flanders dance
in taverns by the way
And English girls on alder trees
by Norman nails did sway
We fired the wall, and William’s witch
fell broken all apart
My oath on Etheldreda’s bones
goes dancing through my heart
I’m not the last man
I’m just the last man standing
Bill would be the last man standing, if need be, but right now the mere thought of standing pained him. He dragged his carcass across the floor to a table beneath two smoked-paper windows. Hurling his crutches into the corner, he crashed onto the chair; it wobbled, and so did the table, but they held.
Chikaak had the wit to remain skulking by the door, out of Bill’s way.
The serving boy who approached was skinny but clean. He had the milk-white face and teeth of a pure-blooded Wallenstein, and hair so blond it nearly glowed.
“Whisky.” Bill tried not to growl. “Please.”
“No whisky.” The boy had a hint of a Chicago V in his W, and he smiled hopefully. “Wine?”
“Dammit.” Bill sighed. “Wine.”
By habit, he had sat with his back to the wall, facing the tavern’s door. The sight of Chikaak, tongue dangling, waving away the serving boy and staring at Bill, brought up a wave of impotent rage, so Bill dragged himself around the small table until he faced the corner. That left his back exposed, but if Chikaak was bound and determined to stand and watch Bill drink, he could rely on the beastman to sound an alarm if anyone attacked.
Besides, Bill was in priestly, mystical, alien Cahokia, not stab-you-in-the-back New Orleans.
The wine came in a wooden cup carved with German images: a tree, a serpent, a squirrel, a bird. Bill deliberately ignored the smell and drained half the cup in one long gulp.
It tasted more of vinegar than of wine.
“Heaven’s footstool, what have I come to?” he muttered.
A man stepped past Bill and sat at the same table. Chikaak bore down on them both, growling, but Bill raised a hand to restrain the beastman. The stranger looked Firstborn in the fineness of his facial features, though with darker skin than usual, as if he had Indian or Africk ancestors. He wore a green tunic with gold abstract patterns embroidered around the neck and sleeves, and he smiled at Bill.
“The man is unarmed,” Bill said to his sergeant. “At ease.”
Chikaak withdrew, snarling, and the Firstborn smiled again. “Thank you, Captain Lee.”
Bill instantly regretted calling off the beastman. “You have the advantage of me, suh.”
“You must surely recognize that you are well-known in this city. A few—myself among them—remember your days of riding in the Missouri with Kyres the Lion, but everyone has heard of your part in driving the Imperial Ohio Company militia from Cahokia.”
“So that we may starve,” Bill said. “What a hero I am.”
“There is still wine.”
“Two parts water, at least.”
“Only two? I’d have guessed four, by now. My name is Gazelem Zomas.”
“Zomas.” Bill sighed. “The eighth kingdom. Deep in the Missouri, or beyond it, the white towers of Etzanoa built by those who would not accept the rule of the great Onandagos, or some such tale?”
“That is one story. Another story is that the man who should have been King of Cahokia was driven out by Onandagos, and built Etzanoa as a refuge for all Adam’s children who could find no other home.”
Bill shrugged. “As you like. We are speaking of the same place.”
“Did you know that the southern gate of this city was once called the Zomas Gate? Relations have not always been hostile.”
“And yet now it is the Memphis Gate.”
Zomas shrugged. “You haven’t been to my home, I take it.”
“I’ve seen the towers from afar. Kyres Elytharias did not regard the King of Zomas as his friend.”
“He and my uncle were rivals in the Missouri. Some of what Kyres saw as doing justice, my uncle saw as interfering in the affairs of another man’s realm.”
“I was there.” Bill took a sip of the wine, tasting it more this time and regretting that fact. “You can go to hell.”
“But Kyres and I were friends. I served him, after my fashion.”
Bill wasn’t sure whether to feel offended, curious, or friendly. He resolved his uncertainty by grunting.
“You were injured in the battle.” Zomas nodded at Bill’s crutches.
“I’ve been injured in more than one. I fear my legs have finally lost the power to recuperate.”
“You must be in great pain.” Gazelem Zomas furrowed his brow in a compassionate expression. “I’m very sorry for that. I doubt Mimir’s Well has enough wine in it to ease your suffering even for an hour.”
Bill grunted again. “I intend to test that proposition. I shall tell you what I learn.”
“What if I could offer you another solution?”
Bill’s heart leaped at the thought. “I hadn’t heard that Zomas was famous for its healing magics.”
“We aren’t,” Zomas admitted with a faint smile. “We’re famous for our thoroughly creoled population, and for our hounds, for being the biggest market for Comanche slavers raiding Texia and New Spain, for guarding the overland route to New Muscovy, and for the standing bounties we pay on beastkind. But I myself am, among other things, an apothecary. What do you know of the Paracelsian Tincture?” He produced a small glass bottle full of a dark liquid from under his tunic.
“Laudanum? That it is costly, and I have no money. That it is given to hysterical women, of which I am not one.” Bill eyed the bottle. Laudanum eased coughing and diarrhea, and for that reason was sometimes given to the small children of the New Orleans wealthy, but it also relieved pain.
> “It is also given to wounded soldiers, of which you are one, sir.” Zomas set the bottle on the table between them. “And I am wealthy enough, and grateful enough, that I will give this to you as a gift.”
Bill looked at the bottle without touching it. “How do you profit from the gift?”
“Ah, direct. A soldier’s vice.” Zomas smiled. “But you’re right. Sarah has defeated me, and all seven claimants putting themselves forward at the solstice in hopes of becoming the goddess’s Beloved. But Sarah needs help still, if she is to free the city from the Imperial chokehold.”
“You hope that if you help her, she will help you?”
Zomas nodded.
“Help you what?” Bill asked.
“Help me win the right to return home.”
Bill’s legs stabbed him; he had little interest in the details of the man’s exile, at least at the moment. “I have heard that some soldiers come to depend on the tincture.”
Zomas nodded. “As other men come to depend on liquor or coffee. All things in moderation, Captain. If I were you, I would not plan on taking the drops my entire life, but only until the siege is lifted and a better medicine can be found. Or until a healer more talented than our queen can come to your assistance.”
Was Gazelem Zomas’s offer much different from Bill’s own plan? He had come to the Well hoping to get drunk on whisky, and when that plan had failed, had set about trying to achieve the same thing with watered-down wine.
Surely, if he used the Paracelsian Tincture sparingly, the bottle would last him a long time and be no more dangerous than wine.
“I think you’ll find that a drop or two of the solution will cause the suffering to go away,” Zomas said. “Or if not, it will cause you to no longer be troubled by the pain.”
“God’s teeth, suh, that sounds like the same thing to me.” Bill took the bottle and glared at it, tiny and dark in his big hand. “What do I do?”