by D. J. Butler
They sang and Bill could make nothing of the words, which were in Ophidian. Sarah sang with them.
Bill shot a glance at Zadok. The cords in the man’s neck stood out: was he just that thin, or was his body tensed with anger or the will to strike?
“Remember, Tarami,” Bill murmured, loud enough for only Zadok to hear. “We mourn. We only mourn. Tomorrow you can tell your flock what a bunch of pagan bastards we all are.”
And maybe, after all, the priest was right. Who could really say what God looked like, and whose hymns He liked the most? But when Bill got his judgment, he’d be content to look his Creator in the eye and swear he’d been a faithful soldier.
Sarah passed Bill. If she wasn’t actually in a trance, she looked as if she were. In the center of the Field of Life, a series of pits had been dug in a spiral pattern. The pits were three feet across and four feet deep, surrounded by a crown of loose dirt from the excavation. Sarah walked around the inside of the spiral, slowly, raising the unglazed jar in her hands above her head. The central file of priestesses followed her. Bill now saw that Alzbieta Torias was in that group, as was the Lady Alena. The singers and players peeled away left and right and walked around the edges of the field of life until their leaders met on the far side. That created a cordon around the funeral ground that alternated musician-singer-musician, just within the ring of wardens.
Sarah reached the most inward spot of the spiral, beside the innermost pit, and knelt. After her, Alzbieta knelt beside the first pit, facing it. As each succeeding priestess reached the next following pit she knelt, and each placed the jar in her hands in lap, lid on the jar but facing downward. Or maybe, Bill thought, the jar was next to her womb.
Or perhaps not.
At the rear of the procession, behind all the priestesses, came bearers. Were these men eunuchs, slaves, or volunteers? They walked in pairs, carrying between them a jar identical to the jars carried by the priestesses, only larger, held in a rope sling.
The jars, Bill knew, held his dead soldiers, one man to a jar, curled into fetal position, wounds tended and bodies washed. The Germans of Chicago buried their dead with weapons. Freemasons buried theirs in embroidered aprons and caps. The Firstborn—at least, the Firstborn of Kyres’s faith—buried their dead naked.
The bearers traced the spiral from the side opposite that trod by the priestesses. When each pair had arrived beside a pit, they turned and as one bent to lower their jars into the holes. The graves were precisely dug to barely accommodate the burial jars, so the bearers had to push to squeeze the pottery into place. They removed the lids, set them beside the graves, and retraced their steps out of the spiral.
Behind the bearers came the Podebradan Yedera. She came just within the circle of musicians and stood in the corner of the burial ground itself. She gripped the hilt of her scimitar with one hand, prepared to leap into action.
No one paid her any attention.
The priestesses’ song changed. The crowd sang along. Bill cast an eye on his beastkind soldiers and was proud to see them hold their ground without so much as a whinny or a stray growl.
Sarah leaned over the innermost grave. Opening her pot, she reached into it with a wooden dipstick and pulled out a gob of golden honey. As the musicians and singers arrived at a verse-ending climax, she reached down to swab honey into the pit.
Into the mouth of the dead soldier, Bill had been told. From where he stood, he couldn’t see it himself. But it was no stranger than pennies in the eyes, or ankles stitched together.
The priestess beside the same grave cried aloud as if in pain and leaned away from the grave. At the same moment, she opened her jar and a coiled snake fell into the pit.
“‘He removed the high places,’” Zadok Tarami muttered, “‘and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent.’”
“Not today, suh,” Bill said. “Today he watched and held his tongue.”
The crowd behind the Metropolitan wasn’t singing. They murmured and shifted uneasily from foot to foot.
“This is idolatry.” Tarami looked up at Bill with a mixture of anger and pleading in his eyes. “Are you not a Christian man?”
“I’m a Cavalier,” Bill said. “We take our religion as gentlemen, on whichever side of Byrd’s Compromise we stand.”
Zadok beat his breast and moaned loudly.
“Those are my soldiers receiving an honorable burial.” Bill raised the pistol slightly. The weapon remained within his pocket, but Zadok noticed the gesture and must have realized what Bill held. “I will shoot you, suh, if you cannot show them and their queen respect. And then I’ll see to it that you, too, are stuffed into a jar, fed honey, and given a snake to play with.”
“They don’t play with the snake,” Zadok growled. “They believe it can pass between worlds—it was in Eden with our first parents, and then came with them in their exile. The serpent is capable of retracing its steps, so it will lead them along the invisible part of the spiral and into the arms of the goddess. Also, the snake is reborn, as the dead are reborn into life.”
“Heaven’s curtain, suh,” Bill said. “To what can you possibly object in that?”
“Have you read your Bible?”
“I’ve had it read to me, at various times.”
“The serpent is Satan. The serpent is the tempter of Eve.”
There were good snakes in the Bible, too. Bill just couldn’t remember what they were. “I’m little interested in and poorly equipped for a theological debate, priest. I dimly recall that the issue is more complex than that, and I invite you to take it up with my queen. After the funeral.”
“The Revelation of John says, ‘He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.’ This is Satan-worship, Captain Lee!”
Bill spat on the ground. “Captain was my Imperial rank, suh. Here you will find I am General Lee.”
“And I am Metropolitan of the Basilica!”
The crowd behind Zadok Tarami was muttering openly now. Bill heard words like wickedness and appalling and riot.
“I did call you suh,” he pointed out. “And I believe now is the time for you to get your people under control. Quietly.”
“Or you’ll shoot me?”
“Yes, suh. With pleasure.”
Tarami ground his teeth, but he turned to face his followers and shushed them, a stern expression on his face.
Across the avenue, Bill noticed Maltres Korinn. The vizier was dressed all in black, as always, but he wasn’t holding his staff. And he was looking at Bill.
Bill nodded.
Maltres nodded back and flashed Bill a grimly satisfied smile.
The priestesses shattered the small jars they had carried to the burial ground, dropping the shards into the graves. Then they finished the interments, placing the lids over the corpses and pushing earth into place over the jars with their bare hands. As each buried her dead man, she exited along the inside of the spiral, forming up behind Sarah, who stood holding her jar of honey.
Yedera now stood at Sarah’s side.
Sarah looked at Bill and Zadok with her fierce eye. What was she seeing in Bill? His loyalty, he hoped.
And in Zadok Tarami?
With the burials finished, the song changed again. Sarah fixed her eye on the Temple of the Sun and began her march. As she left the burial ground, the musicians and singers formed up to either side of her, and the priestesses filed away from the graveyard in a stately unwinding motion.
Like a snake, uncoiling to move.
As he did at mass, Bill knew he was in the presence of a knot of intertwined symbols to whose meaning he was totally oblivious.
“You see, suh?” Bill said to the Metropolitan as the final priestess passed them. “No orgies, no blood sacrifice, everything carried out with the most solemn decorum. Nothing that couldn’t be done before the entire Electoral Assembly in Philadelphia.” Except perhaps the part where the ladies gave
birth to snakes, but Bill was willing to regard that as a detail. “Now aren’t you glad you helped me keep the peace?”
“You cannot stop me from preaching against this. Against her.”
Bill sighed. “Nor would I wish to. But I intend to stand here until you leave, suh. And if I catch you preaching against my queen or her goddess on this spot, today or ever, know with a surety that I will shoot you dead immediately and feed you to the dogs.”
Chikaak’s appearance at Bill’s shoulder at that moment was so perfectly timed, Bill wished he’d arranged it in advance.
“You would commit murder? And you think this would be righteousness?”
“No, suh. We are under siege, and I think it would be an appropriate response to sedition.” Bill turned to Chikaak. “Sergeant, post a guard at this spot. If the Metropolitan or any of his people preach here, or interfere with the graves, arrest them immediately and bring them to me.”
Zadok Tarami nodded, cold but polite. He addressed his ash-touched followers. “I will now speak at the Basilica. My text will be Second Corinthians, chapter eleven.” He looked at Bill as if daring him to respond.
Bill shrugged. “My friend Calvin Calhoun might know the reference. I do not.”
Tarami raised his voice nearly to a shout. “‘But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.’”
Bill was tired. His head ached, and the dull throb in his legs threatened to overcome the calming veil of the laudanum. He drew the long pistol and pointed it at Tarami’s belly. “You’ve been warned, suh. Fly to your Basilica and preach all you like there, but not another word on this spot. And know this: I am watching you. Stick to talk of anointings and burials, and say nothing about who should rule.”
Zadok Tarami left the plaza with long, purposeful strides.
* * *
Sarah stood with her advisors at the base of the western Treewall. The sun was setting, and the deep shadows the wall cast over this side of the city hid the fire damage from the first night of the beastkind’s rampage. She wore her dragoon’s coat again against the chill, and Thalanes’s shoulder bag.
“I’m not fleeing,” she said. “I’m not abandoning you or the city.”
“No one thinks you are,” Alzbieta answered immediately.
The others nodded agreement. Sarah looked at them in turn: Maltres Korinn, Yedera the Podebradan, Sherem the Polite, Cathy, Bill, Luman Walters, Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana. With her Eye of Eve, Sarah saw fear and doubt, but none of it directed at Sarah herself.
“We all want to come along,” Bill said.
“And we are somewhat concerned about your choice of companions,” Cathy added.
“For those who do not know me, my name is Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana.” The Catalan bowed deeply, sweeping her hat. “My family lands lie on the Gulf, in Igbo territory. I have been a pirate and a smuggler for fifteen years, but once I was a true friend of Queen Sarah’s mother, Hannah.”
“You are a true friend still,” Sarah said.
Was that a tear in the corner of the pirate queen’s eye?
“I’m Luman Walters.” The hedge wizard nodded, his hands in the pockets of his long, bulky overcoat. “I’ve offered my services to Her Majesty, knowing that as a magician I have at best a little talent.”
“Recently in the Imperial service,” Cathy observed coolly.
“I was once in the Imperial service,” Sir William muttered.
“A long time ago,” she reminded him. “And you rode with Kyres.”
Walters shrugged. “I was recently on the staff of a director of the Imperial Ohio Company. Not for very long. She found me to be insufficiently powerful.”
“And how will you be of assistance to Sarah, then?” Sherem pressed the wizard.
Sarah intervened. “Like me, Luman seeks light and knowledge. Initiation. He’s familiar with various traditions, and I hope he’ll be able to help me interpret whatever information I’m able to gather from my father.”
Luman nodded deferentially.
“I could send Chikaak and the beastkind with you,” Sir William said. “They could open the road before you, at least.”
Sarah smiled at him. “They’re needed to defend the wall. Sneaking is our best option here, and to sneak I need the smallest number of companions.”
“I am captain of a sailing vessel,” Montse said. “The ship, she waits downriver. We will not go very far before we signal La Verge Caníbal to pick us up and bring us to the Serpent Mound. I only ask that you care for my crewman, Miquel.”
Cathy nodded. “We will.”
“And I’ll come directly back,” Sarah added. “In the meantime, Maltres and I are in touch.”
The vizier nodded. He had half a broken slate, enchanted as Sarah had once enchanted and broken a slate she’d sent with Jacob Hop.
“I am familiar with Your Majesty’s spells of disguise and concealment. Will you climb down the wall, as the Catalan came up it?” Cathy asked. “Or should we prepare a volley and open the gate?”
“I have a different idea.” Sarah set the Heronplow on the ground, pointing directly into the Treewall, and took the Orb of Etyles into her hands. “Montse, Luman—stand as close to me as you can.”
The wizard and the smuggler huddled close.
“There,” Alzbieta said. “Now you look properly Firstborn, standing shoulder to shoulder like that.”
Sarah gazed into the Treewall. She had chosen this spot deliberately, as it was closest to the Mississippi. That might make it easier to draw power through the Orb. More importantly, it meant they had less distance to go.
She saw the wall’s roots with her Eye of Eve, deep in the earth, stretching toward the water. She examined them, looking for the longest, thickest, straightest root she could find.
“I’m not sure what I’m seeing,” Cathy said.
“I think I know.” Sherem’s voice was barely a whisper. “She’s looking for a way under the river.”
She found it. Several of the largest roots stretched all the way across, in fact. She repositioned the Heronplow slightly.
“We’ll be back,” she said. “Hold on.”
Then she knelt and touched the plow. “Traductum aperio me occultoque,” she said. Her Priestly Ophidian—an archaic dialect that appeared in scripture and ritual—was still rudimentary. For casting spells, anything she had to do on her feet, Sarah needed to rely on Latin.
But she thought that Priestly Ophidian would give her a closer connection to the goddess. In Her city, especially, that seemed important. It seemed powerful. She aimed to master it as soon as she could.
The thought that Thalanes would approve of her incantation made her smile.
The words meant I open a tunnel and I hide myself.
The plow moved forward into the Treewall. Where it touched the base of the wall it split the bark, creating a crack. Pushing deeper into the wood, like a lumberman’s wedge, the plow widened the crack and split it upward, until it was as tall as a man and two feet wide.
“Join hands,” Sarah said. She took the pirate’s hand, Montse took Luman’s, and Sarah led them into the crack.
She walked several steps forward, just behind the plow as it opened the passage before them. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Montse and Luman and the rest of her friends in the open air behind them—
and then the crack’s entrance closed.
“I’m blinded,” Luman said.
“I also,” Montse agreed.
Sarah’s natural eye saw nothing, but through her Eye of Eve she saw the golden-green plow continue forward, opening the way. She saw the contours of the tunnel around them as faint blue-white lines.
“I can see,” she told them. “Trust me, and walk slowly.”
Once the crack closed, the inside of the passageway was warm.
They inched their way forward. There were no stairs or sense of descent, but after a dozen steps, S
arah felt the throbbing energy of the Mississippi River overhead. She looked up and saw a faint greenish glow above them. Within the light, she saw the brighter green of torpid fish and sleeping frogs.
Suddenly, she was seized by a terrible fear. The river belonged to the Heron King. In some sense, perhaps, it was the Heron King. And now she was daring to cross beneath it.
Had she put herself into his power?
She stopped, and Montse bumped into her.
“What is wrong?” the pirate asked.
The wizard muttered something that sounded like Greek.
“I…nothing,” Sarah said. She pressed forward again.
She looked about as she walked. Over her shoulder, she could see the blue of the Treewall, and also the blue and white auras of people with her city. Outside the wall, she saw greenish glows and black lights of rampaging beastkind and besieging undead.
She saw the smoking black light of Hooke’s spell.
Not Hooke’s alone, but Cromwell’s.
Had she made a mistake? She’d chosen this underground route rather than, say, flying, because she thought she’d be less visible. But was that a miscalculation?
Too late. She was committed.
Ahead, she saw beastkind, but not many. She saw animals, but only small ones—rabbits, foxes. Presumably the beastkind had eaten the others.
And she saw when the edge of the Mississippi River drew near and they were about to emerge. “One moment.”
They stopped. She knelt and found moist earth on the floor of the tunnel. She took a trace amount of it onto her finger and touched it to each cheek, and then also smudged faint rings around both her nostrils. “Oculos obscuro et nares obturo.”
She added the piece about plugging noses out of fear that if she didn’t, wild beastkind might smell them.
“Redundant in here.” Luman Walters chuckled. “We must be about to emerge.”