by D. J. Butler
“Should we rise up, Father Tarami?” asked a burly young man in a leather jerkin. “Should we burn the Temple of the Sun?”
“No violence,” Zadok said.
“Not against another Cahokian!” added a woman in the front row.
“She’s no Cahokian,” grumbled a thin man standing right inside the door. “She isn’t even properly Firstborn.”
“No violence at all,” Zadok said.
“But the witch wants to make herself queen!”
“I have no view on who should be king or queen of this land,” Zadok said. “I support the Regent-Minister.”
“You snake.” Cathy hadn’t meant to speak, she had come just to see what Tarami was doing and saying to his people. Nevertheless, she felt she had to. “If you tell your people you have no view, it can only mean you don’t endorse Sarah Elytharias! It can only mean you’re waiting for someone else to present herself…or maybe himself. Do you think maybe you should be king, Zadok?”
Zadok turned his eyes on her calmly. “No. I do not wish to be king.”
“No, of course not.” Cathy crossed her arms over her chest. “Why would you want to be king, when you can hold court just as you are?”
“Why do you think this concerns you, daughter of Eve?” Zadok smiled peaceably, but he showed his teeth.
Several voices in the crowd murmured approval.
Cathy ignored them and barged ahead. “For that matter, when you say you support the Regent-Minister, you’re neglecting the fact that he doesn’t use that title anymore. He goes by Vizier, now, meaning the right-hand man to the queen. If you really supported him, you’d accept the queen as he does. Except that what you really mean is that you support him as Regent-Minister, with an empty throne and more power for the Metropolitan and the Basilica to grab.”
“I have already said I don’t wish to be king.” Zadok smiled as he spoke, and damned if he didn’t sound sincere.
“And your people here are threatening to destroy the throne itself!”
“I said no violence.” Zadok looked around at the crowd, meeting their gazes sternly. “Did everyone hear me? I said no violence against any person, except as needed to defend our home.”
“Neat,” Cathy said. “You say ‘except as needed to defend our home,’ and that could mean you advocate fighting against the Imperials…but it could also mean you think Sarah is attacking your homes, and that violence in defense would be acceptable.”
Zadok Tarami took a deep breath. “You would have me a sophist and a liar. But I am not the one twisting words here. I’m no lawyer, to build a great case on a distinction of language invisible to everyone else.”
“Do you accept Sarah Elytharias as your rightful queen?” Cathy asked.
“She hasn’t been crowned by anyone,” Tarami protested. “She isn’t queen.”
Yedera interrupted. “Everyone here—everyone not out wandering around the Ohio while the city was being besieged—felt the goddess choose Sarah Elytharias as Her Beloved as the sun dawned on the shortest day of the year. Do you deny that, priest?”
“I dispute nearly every word you’ve just said, child. I wasn’t wandering, I was traveling the Onandagos Road, following the sun on my knees through the deeds of the great prophet toward the site of the serpent’s imprisonment. Everyone who belongs to the city felt a great feeling of benevolence toward Sarah that morning, it’s true, but that’s all. I believe that feeling was in response to our many prayers for deliverance. Do I believe Sarah Elytharias has come to benefit the land? Yes. Do I believe she will be queen? That remains to be seen. Do I believe in your goddess? No, I do not, and neither do these good people. The serpent was an ancient demon that plagued this people until Onandagos put the beast down. If it is the serpent that has chosen Sarah Elytharias for her own—and that might be true, based on the pagan funeral liturgy I witnessed yesterday—then we must beware her, indeed.”
“When was there ever a son without a mother?” Yedera snapped.
Zadok pointed at Yedera’s weapons. “Are they handing out falchions at divinity school now?”
“I’ve read the same books as you, Metropolitan,” Yedera snarled.
“When was there ever a mother who remained a virgin?” Zadok shrugged. “And yet that is what we read in the gospels.”
“Mary didn’t push a child out her birth canal and remain a virgin!” Yedera was nearly yelling. It was necessary, given the loud grumbling of the crowd. “What kind of pointless, nonsensical miracle would that be?”
“No more pointless than the Lord’s cursing of the fig tree, and yet there it is!” Zadok was red in the face. “We do not believe because we can explain everything, we believe because we read, and because God speaks the truth into our hearts!”
“She was the Virgin because the goddess was with her!” Yedera cried. “You want to talk about what we read, priest? How about the words of Mary herself, ‘Behold the Handmaid’!”
“The handmaid of the Lord!” Zadok’s voice was more shrill the louder he got. “Not the handmaid of the goddess!”
“That’s the same thing!”
“If I say, ‘I am your servant,’ is that a claim to priesthood?”
“If you say it to me, no!” Cathy half-expected Yedera to draw her scimitar and cut the priest to bits. “But if you say it to a god—or a goddess—then yes! What is a priest, but a servant to a deity?”
“Yes, and I serve the god of Heaven!” Zadok lurched to his feet. He flailed a finger in Yedera’s direction as his beard whipped about him in the winter wind. “So do not come to me asking for the endorsement of a demon’s disciple!”
Yedera abruptly calmed, as if her energy had all been deliberately assumed, as a provocation. “Sarah is no demon’s disciple. She is the daughter of Kyres Elytharias, the Lion of Missouri. She is the Beloved of my goddess. I know, because I heard the angel choir. You heard it too, if only in your heart. If anyone can save this city, I believe it is she.
“And will you or nil you, Sarah Elytharias will be queen.”
The crowd stared, stunned. Zadok’s mouth moved, but no words came out.
Yedera turned and marched back down the mound. Cathy nearly had to run to keep up.
* * *
Bill waited behind the bead curtain, leaning on his crutch and controlling his breathing so as not to be noticed. He stood in one of the side passages built into the long wall along the nave of the Temple of the Sun. The curtain separated him from the nave, which was presently dark, but for a faint glow that diffused in through the open door from the stars above and the city below.
Where Bill stood, stairs led up and down. He believed that the rooftop was an astronomical observatory, and that beneath the temple were storerooms and also living quarters for the priestesses. Apparently, many of them didn’t live in the city and only came here for the purpose of fulfilling their service. While they did so, they slept beneath their goddess.
Sarah had taken to sleeping beneath the temple, as well.
Bill carried four pistols, loaded and primed, two of them his long horse pistols from his days as a dragoon. Cathy, beside him, also held two pistols. Hers were the Lafitte pistols, taken from above the altar in the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. She had pronounced them especially suited to the setting when she had declared her intention to participate, and Bill had had to agree. He had also been unable to dissuade her.
Bill himself had also insisted on participating when Maltres Korinn had set forth his plan. Korinn had insisted that he needed more mobile forces, and Bill had promptly rearranged their schedules to free up Sarah’s entire platoon of beastkind warriors. They crouched in hiding now, preparing to leap into action at the right moment. The only reason the Great Mound’s ravens were not sending up an unholy objection at this very moment was that it was nighttime, and the birds were too sleepy.
Bill’s thighs hurt. He took a slug of his cherry brandy to be sure.
And then another to be more sure. He might have to run.
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Also, the second slug was the one that deadened his heart when he thought of Charles.
“Are you not going to offer a lady a drink?” Cathy asked.
She didn’t know about his laudanum. But she would almost certainly taste it if he gave her the flask. Surely, as a Harvite initiate, she had studied the stuff.
“My lady,” he said, “This is too rough a cordial for a person of your refinement. Pray let me find you a better vintage, once we have concluded the evening’s entertainment.”
In the darkness, he couldn’t see her expression, but she said nothing.
He wrapped an arm around her and drew her body to him. She would smell the laudanum on his breath or taste it on his kisses, too, so he satisfied himself with a one-armed embrace.
A shorter man might have found himself reaching up to embrace Long Cathy. Bill delighted in her height.
“And when the season’s entertainment is done, let us be married.” He said it on impulse, but immediately knew it was right. If Bill’s wife was not dead, she had long since assumed he was and moved on.
“Is that a formal proposal?” Cathy asked.
“No,” Bill said quickly. “The formal proposal will be more elaborate. Heralds, fireworks, fountains, a masquerade ball, things of that nature. Or at least something more prepared than a fumbled embrace in the dark.”
“I rather like the fumbled embracing in the dark, Bill,” Cathy cooed. “It makes me feel young again.”
“What does again mean in that sentence, my nymph?” Bill squeezed her again. It made him feel younger, too. Too young to have a murdered son.
Dammit.
“Stop trying to distract me, General.” Cathy eased out of his grip. “I believe I see lights.”
She was right. They each readied a pistol as torches came through the front door and into the nave. Bill counted eight men in dark cloaks and a ninth in red velvet. With them were three young women who lay aside gray cloaks and were wearing long white linen tunics.
“Youins are most kind to think on our safety this evenin’,” the young woman in the center said. She had Sarah’s face and voice, though her Appalachee twang was overstated.
“She plays the Cracker too hard,” Bill whispered.
“She plays it as one for whom it is mostly an imagined accent,” Cathy whispered back. “Voldrich is also unlikely to have spent much time in Appalachee.”
“Your Majesty.” The man in red velvet, Voldrich, bowed. “It is my pleasure to serve my people.”
“I doubt it’s him,” Bill said. “The other fellow looked like an evil star incarnate. This man is merely wealthy.”
“Iffen you don’t mind watchin’ the door, then, I’ll commence the ritual.”
The priestesses were all volunteers. Bill respected their courage. The same Polite who had hexed Sarah’s face onto the priestess that most closely approximated her size and frame had also hexed into invisibility the door through which Bill and Cathy now looked, as well as an identical opening opposite.
Two of Voldrich’s men paced down the nave and back. Others stood in the main entrance and looked out. False-Sarah knelt and faced the Serpent Throne, a barely visible bulk in the gloomy apse, and began chanting.
Was it gibberish, or was she reciting some real Ophidian text?
The two adjutant priestesses knelt to either side of False-Sarah and faced the apse with her. If all went well, they’d kneel on the stone for fifteen minutes, pronounce the magic inconclusive, and walk away.
Voldrich stood two paces behind False-Sarah, two men to either side of him. They watched the apse. Bill wished he could see the expressions on their faces. Hopeful? Fearful?
All five men slowly put on gloves.
“Bill,” Cathy said. “I believe we’re about to see action.”
The priestesses’ chant droned on.
The men reached into pouches at their belts and filled their hands with something. “I don’t see a weapon,” Bill said.
The men leaped forward. Three of them fell on False-Sarah, slapping something into her flesh. The priestess in disguise as her Beloved shrieked sharply, and then fell silent. The other two priestesses merited one attacker each. Again, the men pressed unseen objects to the women’s flesh, and then the five men trussed the three women up with cords.
“Is this her?” Voldrich asked his men. “Bring the torch over her. I can’t see.”
A torch was brought, and Voldrich cursed.
“Serpent’s tooth, it’s not her!”
“It looked like her,” one of his men said. “I would have sworn.”
“Of course it did!” Voldrich snapped. “That was gramarye, you idiot! The silver we touched to her skin ended her illusion.” As he spoke, Voldrich headed for the exit. “This is a trick. Out of here, all of you!”
As the first of Voldrich’s men exited the main door, Bill stepped through the beads and fired a pistol.
Bang!
That was the signal. Outside, Oriot, Chikaak, and every other beastman soldier who could fit had hidden crouched on the stylized vine above the door. Given Bill’s signal as Voldrich’s men exited the building, the beastkind dropped on top of them and attacked.
They were treating the Temple of the Sun in a deeply profane manner. Bill hoped the goddess would forgive him.
The use of a pistol shot as a signal had two virtues. One, it was loud. And two, Bill hadn’t fired at the air. He’d shot one of Voldrich’s men. The fellow fell to the floor, clutching his side and screaming.
“This way!” Voldrich shrieked to his own men. “There’s a door over here!” He turned and bolted to the bead-filled doorway opposite the one where Bill and Cathy had waited. The wall on that side looked like uninterrupted stone and tile, but when Voldrich slapped his silver-filled hand to it, the camouflaged door appeared.
The three remaining inside with Voldrich grabbed False-Sarah and dragged her with them toward the door. They were not especially expert, carrying her to one side rather than as an effective shield.
Bang!
Bill’s shot went high, a disappointing error in marksmanship that nevertheless had a satisfactory conclusion as a second man fell to the ground, shot through the head.
Then the two uninjured men followed Voldrich into the doorway.
Bill lumbered across the room. “Hell’s Bells!” Lightning struck his legs with each step, despite the laudanum. Passing the first injured man, Bill took a moment to club him in the face with his crutch. The man tried to draw a sword to parry, but didn’t get the weapon out in time.
Bill shot a glance out the main doorway and was satisfied to see Chikaak and the others pressing Voldrich’s men hard. The fight would last no more than a few minutes.
Still, that meant Bill faced a few minutes without aid. “Cathy!” He continued his dogged run.
Cathy was nowhere to be seen.
Bill had two shots, a heavy wooden crutch, and his cavalry saber. So far, Voldrich’s men didn’t seem to have firearms. To reload, Bill would need to stop.
Of course, Voldrich’s men had no idea how many guns he had.
The bead-blocked doorway loomed large before Bill. If one of the Firstborn warriors waited inside with his sword planted, Bill might impale himself with no effort on their part.
“Damn me,” he muttered. Pulling a long horse pistol, he fired into the dark doorway, then hurled himself through.
No one stabbed him immediately. Here too were stairs up and down. Down lay darkness and silence. Up, Bill saw faint starlight partly blocked by the shadows of running men.
The rooftop. Would they jump down? Or had they some mechanism to fly, such as he had experienced with Queen Sarah, leaving New Orleans?
In any case, they had rope.
“Chikaak!” he yelled. “The roof!”
Had the beastman heard him? Bill had no time to wait. Cursing, he threw himself up the stairs.
His legs felt as if they would snap off. Maltres Korinn had given in to Bill’s insistence that
he participate, but had assigned Bill to the target he thought most likely to be innocent, and had also put him in the location where the target would have less ability to run.
They had underestimated Voldrich.
As he stumbled to the rooftop, Bill took his crutch up into his left hand and his last unfired pistol into his right. A dark shape leaped toward him—
bang!
Bill fired and swung his hard stick at the same time. The attacker’s sword grazed Bill’s leg, but did little damage. The man fell to the rooftop. Bill smashed his stick down three times, striking tile, then tile, then flesh.
The man’s throat.
The scream became a gurgling choke. The former attacker rolled over and crawled away from both his sword and Bill.
The rooftop was a flat rectangle with a low wall around the outside. If it was an observatory, the tools escaped Bill’s notice. Cold wind bit Bill’s face. From here, the highest point for many miles around, he saw the few and small nighttime fires of Cahokia—wood couldn’t be brought into the city any more than food could—and the many and large fires of the surrounding Imperial forces.
Voldrich and his one henchman still standing were near the wall. The henchman held the captive priestess to his chest, protecting his body, and pressed the blade of a long, straight sword to her throat.
In the moonlight, Bill could see the girl’s face. She wasn’t crying. She had welts like Sarah had had when Maltres Korinn had rescued her from Cromwell by slapping silver all over her body, but she was calm.
Indeed, she was smiling.
Voldrich had tied a rope around some feature of the wall Bill couldn’t make out—a crenellation or a knob of some kind—and was throwing the cord down to the plaza. Where were Bill’s beastkind? If they were still distracted fighting Voldrich’s men, then the traitor might get away.
“Stop there!” Voldrich called to Bill.
Bang!
Bill was surprised by the shot, and even more by the source. Cathy stood a few steps behind Voldrich and his man—she must have come up the other staircase. And she had shot the henchman right through his skull.