by D. J. Butler
He dropped.
“That’s no way to treat a lady,” Cathy said.
Voldrich raised a leg to climb over the wall—
bang!
Cathy shot the Firstborn with her other pistol. He dropped to the rooftop, cursing. Cathy and Bill both approached.
In the moonlight, Bill saw dark blood on Voldrich’s thigh. “Well-aimed, my lady.”
“Might I suggest that I reload my pistols while you take the opportunity to beat this man a little.”
“I am hesitant to compare myself to the Redeemer,” Bill said, “and I believe in the event that He made use of a whip. Still, I am holding a stout staff, and here lies a changer of money who deserves to be driven out of the temple.”
Voldrich shrank back and Bill cracked the man with the stick in the ankle. Voldrich screamed. The crunch was loud enough that Bill doubted the man would be jumping up to run away.
He leaned on the crutch. “Keep an eye out for his servants, my lady,” he said to Cathy. To Voldrich, he said, “And you, suh. Commence your confession.”
“The people will starve!” Voldrich barked. “What is there to confess? I’d have been a hero if you hadn’t stopped me!”
“There may be times,” Bill said, “when the line between a kidnapper and a hero is a fine one. Tonight is not one of those times. Besides, we have days of food in store, thanks to Queen Sarah. Perhaps weeks. I wonder whether you were not more concerned with your land. Is not much of that land outside the wall yours?”
Voldrich grunted, but said nothing.
“I will take that as a yes. And so you thought to turn Sarah over to her loving uncle in exchange for what? An end to the Pacification? No, I think not, not from a man like you. I think you would ask only that your lands be free of soldiers, or that you be given land elsewhere in exchange. Or perhaps you promised that you would open the gates, invite Imperials to all the meetings, and comply in all respects with the terms of the Pacification if only Tommy Penn would make you King of Cahokia. Am I right?”
“She’s not the queen,” Voldrich snarled. “She’s not even Cahokian. She’s only a half-breed usurper.”
“I’ve heard this tune before,” Bill mused. “Only it was in the key of Pennslander. You’re saying you don’t merit punishment?”
“Or in the worst case, a mere slap.”
Cathy pressed two loaded pistols into Bill’s hands.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said.
“You’re welcome, my lord.” She smiled at him and the pain in his legs vanished. “If I might take the liberty of doing the same with your pistols?” She took his smaller flintlocks, which were the same caliber as the Lafitte guns, and went to work.
“You were saying,” Bill mused. “A slap. And yet in addition to attempting to kidnap the goddess’s Beloved—I am no jurist, but it is my understanding that generally a man may be convicted and even hanged of attempting to do a thing, no matter how egregious his failure. Attempted murderers hang. Why not attempted kidnappers? In addition to that, you have assaulted three of Her priestesses. Even if the ablest lawyer in the Cahokian Bottom were to get you off without legal consequence…do you not fear your own goddess, man?”
Voldrich shook his head. “I don’t know that Sarah Penn is the goddess’s Beloved. I woke up feeling good about Sarah a few weeks ago, but that feeling has faded. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was a spell.”
“Maybe it was a spell?” Bill considered shooting the Firstborn on the spot, but held back. “Who suggested that to you?”
Voldrich said nothing.
“Zadok,” Bill said. “Hell’s Bells. You have had the revelation, and you have converted it into mere church.”
“Don’t you go taking liberties, though.
I’m in a vulnerable state.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nathaniel opened his eyes to light that was far too bright. Dark curtains were closed over the tall window, but where daylight came in through a crack between the drapes it was blindingly white and had a shimmering halo.
His head hurt. His shoulder hurt worse.
His closed his eyes again, but not before catching a glimpse of Jacob Hop and his sister Margaret, both dressed in black and looking like a Republican meneer and mevrouw.
“What happened?” His mouth was so dry, his cheeks rasped over gritty teeth as he spoke. His tongue tasted of old blood.
“Ezekiel Angleton attacked you,” Jake said.
“The Yankee? The sorcerer Ma’iingan called a wiindigoo?”
“He cut your shoulder with his sword,” Margaret said. “Ambroos and Lotte have been taking care of you.”
“Mostly Lotte,” Jake said. “Ambroos is a good fellow, but his best skill was always talking.”
“Hey now.” This was Ambroos. Nathaniel cracked an eyelid and saw Jake’s cousin standing in the door. “If you want me to show you the way out, you better be nice to me.”
Nathaniel forced himself up into a sitting position. The effort split his head in two. “Way out? Aren’t we at your house, Ambroos?” He recognized the tall white plaster walls and the painting on the wall. He was pretty sure it was a picture of John the Baptist and Salome, just before she had his head cut off. In the background, there were two men, one holding a platter and the other a large axe, but John was dressed like a Dutch burgher. Like Jake and Ambroos, in fact. Salome was dressed like a harem girl from the Caliphate, with a gauzy blouse and pantaloons supplemented by a girdle of large gold coins.
He’d never seen such a painting in Johnsland.
“Ja, natuurlijk,” Ambroos said. “Only the front door is not available right now.”
“I need to heal,” Nathaniel said. “I think…Jake, if you’ll help me, I think I can fix my head in an hour or so.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have time.” Jake’s expression was concerned. “Can you do something to ease your pain a bit now, and then later, once we get you aboard ship, do the rest?”
“The house is being watched by Imperials,” Margaret said. She didn’t look troubled by the information. “Soldiers from the local garrison.”
Nathaniel pushed himself to his feet and headed for the window, but Jake intercepted him. “Whoa, Nathaniel. The house is watched, front and back. You don’t want to be seen.”
“Front and back? What way out is there, then?” Nathaniel asked. “Jake tells me my sister Sarah can fly and turn people invisible, but I can’t do any of those things. I’m a healer.” He felt he might vomit and sat down on the bed, taking deep breaths.
“There are only twelve of them,” Margaret said. “I can deal with them.”
“I don’t see your hair standing on end.” Ambroos said it as a joke, but he looked uncomfortable at his own words.
“If I walk out there and they try to arrest me, my hair will stand up soon enough.”
“This is my fault,” Jake said. “I contacted Temple Franklin in town. He’s a sort of advisor to the emperor, but I thought…well, I had a message, and I thought it was for him. Apparently, it wasn’t. And I think he found out where I was staying.”
“Don’t worry,” Ambroos said. “This is a Dutch house, and it has a Dutch doorway.”
Nathaniel laughed; the laughter made his temples throb, and he massaged them. Under his breath he hummed a tune, and that took the sharpest edge off the pain. “I thought that meant a secret passage, for smugglers.”
“It does.” Ambroos grinned. “And before you ask, no, I’m not a smuggler. But since you know about Dutch doorways, maybe you’ve also heard this about us Dutch: one Dutchman, a preacher; two Dutchmen, a church; three Dutchmen, a schism.”
“I thought that meant you’re quarrelsome about religion,” Margaret said. “You have lots of little churches, instead of one big one.”
“You could say that we’re quarrelsome, or you could say that we permit every person liberty of conscience. But yes,” Ambroos agreed, “you’re right. Lots of little churches. And so a Dutch doorway is useful for more t
han just smuggling in unstamped tobacco. It’s also good for getting an unpopular preacher in or out of a house.”
“Do all the houses of New Amsterdam have Dutch doorways?” Nathaniel asked.
“No,” Ambroos said. “But this one does. It used to belong to a smuggler, and the Dutch doorway is one reason I bought it. I knew I’d be holding house meetings here, and I wanted the option of a discreet entrance or exit.”
“Do we have to go now?” Nathaniel stood, testing his legs. They wobbled, but held.
“I have arranged passage on a ship.” Ambroos smiled. “You see, in addition to being a preacher, I am a director of the Dutch Ohio Company. I have many uses. The ship sails in two hours. That gives you enough time, but not a very large margin for delays.”
“I can walk.” Nathaniel proved it by walking to the door and shrugging into his long coat, which hung on a peg in the wall. Some well-meaning person had turned the coat rightside-out, so Nathaniel reversed it. Taking his hat from another peg, he settled it backward onto his head.
With his coat and hat in place, the pain lessened considerably.
Then he took his drum from the corner of the room and shrugged under its shoulderstrap. The pain was almost gone. He took a deep breath.
“Yes, you can,” Margaret said.
“You won’t have to walk far,” Ambroos said. “I have a carriage waiting.”
They went downstairs. As they passed the kitchen, Lotte handed Ambroos a lit lantern.
Nathaniel thought her glance at Jake looked hard, and maybe resentful.
The walls of Ambroos’s basement were of red brick. When he depressed an innocuous-looking brick in one corner, a section of wall swung inward without a sound, revealing the dark mouth of a passageway.
Ambroos handed the lantern to Jake.
“I’m not saying don’t come back,” the preacher said to his cousin.
“Ja, I understand,” Jake said. “But don’t come back for a while.”
“She knows it wasn’t you.”
“Only it was me,” Jake said. “The Heron King isn’t in me. Sarah would see him if he were. But the person he left behind is…not stable.”
They walked together down a long, brick-lined passage. At its end, Ambroos looked through a peephole and then pulled open a door using an iron handle. The exit opened in an alleyway between two buildings. No windows looked down on the door; at the mouth of the alley, partly veiled by a curtain of falling snow, was a black carriage.
“We’ll leave tracks in the snow,” Jake said.
Ambroos nodded. “I’ll tramp up and down the alley a bit to hide them. And then the new snow will do the rest. The carriage will take you to the ship. She’s named De Zomerwolf, and her captain is Janssen. They’re sailing to Miami.”
“Perfect,” Jake said. “From there we’ll find another ship.”
Ambroos hugged Jake, and then shook hands with both Margaret and Nathaniel. “Travel safely.”
Nathaniel took long steps to the carriage, conscious of the tracks he was leaving. The carriage was black and sober, with waxed paper curtains that pulled down off a bar hanging over each window. The curtains were already shut, so when Nathaniel scooted across the leather seats, he pushed one sheet aside a fraction of an inch to be able to see where they were going.
With Margaret and Jake aboard, Ambroos shut the door and called to the driver in Dutch. The carriage rolled forward.
Nathaniel saw tall, stone-faced Dutch houses, and two broad streets crossing. Then he saw the houses facing Ambroos’s. There were indeed Imperial soldiers. They had lit a fire in a portable iron stove and stood around it in the snow, warming their hands and staring at the preacher’s house.
Nathaniel let the curtain drop back into place. “You’ve succeeded, Jake,” he said.
Jake jerked when he heard his name, as if snapping out of some gripping memory. Nathaniel heard the faintest hint of a distant scream. Hop took a deep breath, and then plunged a hand into a jacket pocket. Pulling a deck of Tarocks out, he commenced thumbing through them and looking at their images.
“Yes,” the Dutchman said. “Or rather, we are succeeding. But you know, we still need to get to Cahokia. Or wherever the right place is.”
“Tia Montse,” Margaret said. “I need to save my tia.”
“We should discuss it with our sister,” Nathaniel said. “Maybe once we get aboard ship.”
“Your sister,” Margaret said.
“Our sister,” Nathaniel said, trying to sound inviting. “Sarah.”
Margaret’s nostrils flared. “What is Cahokia like?”
“I’ve never been,” Nathaniel said.
“Nor have I.” Jake laughed. “But I can tell you what your sister is like.”
The two Elytharias triplets nodded.
“She’s very smart. She’s a powerful magician. She has an unusual gift of sight. She sees the person, I think. The soul. And she cares very deeply about things, especially, I think, about family. Kin. More than anything else, I think she cares for her kin. The things she has done, she has done them for you. She learned about your existence, she learned you were in danger, and she decided that to save you she would have to make herself queen.”
“She thinks big,” Nathaniel said.
“These things are very impressive.” Margaret frowned. “She doesn’t sound like a real person at all, the way you describe her. She must have some flaws.”
“She’s mean,” Jake said. “She’s hard. She’s sharp-tongued. She doesn’t trust easily. She doesn’t always see the full cost of the decisions she makes, especially the prices paid by other people. Do those make her sound like more of a real person?”
Margaret nodded. “They made her sound a bit like my tia.”
They rode without talking into New Amsterdam. Jake hummed to himself and occasionally played his drum very faintly. Strength flowed into him from the drum. Ridiculously, he felt like a bear.
Margaret stared at him.
He smiled back.
The Zomerwolf was a large sailing ship docked on the west side of the island. When the coach rolled to a stop, a thin-legged man opened the door. He had large ears and a sunburned face under blond hair, turning gray and pulled back into a tight queue over his neck. He eyed them briefly.
Did he look surprised to see Nathaniel?
“Ik ben Janssen,” he said. “Komen jullie van mijn vriend Ambroos?”
“Ambroos is my cousin,” Jake said.
They piled out of the carriage and followed Janssen up a broad gangplank. The swaying of the ship made Nathaniel’s stomach a little queasy—he’d crossed the Hudson before, and the occasional river in Johnsland, but he’d never sailed on the ocean. The thought of this much motion, or even more, made him ill.
He rapped his knuckles on the skin of his drum and hummed. The seasickness vanished, and the pain in his shoulder faded further. It was almost gone.
Janssen led them down steps and to a large cabin at the rear of the vessel. Two shelves of books adorned one wall, and a large bed another. Two tables filled the center of the room, covered with open ledgers and nautical maps.
“I didn’t think I’d have a room this large,” Nathaniel said.
“Ximple.” Margaret laughed. The word sounded like an insult, but her voice was friendly. “This is the captain’s room. You and I will be lucky for a bit of net to curl up in.”
Janssen laughed too. “You know your ships. But you must be Catalan. Curious, I’d have said you were Firstborn.”
Margaret shrugged. “Who can really tell where his great-grandfather came from?”
“Mine came from the Zuiderzee.” Janssen opened a hamper nailed to one wall and pulled out a bottle of wine. “But there was more money to be had in the New World, so here I am. If you would open this.” He handed the bottle and a corkscrew to Jake and reached into another hamper.
“Mine as well.” Jake uncorked the bottle.
Janssen produced four pewter cups. “I hope you will forgive
me for not giving you proper glasses. On a sailing ship, it’s best to use glass only where you absolutely can’t use anything else. It would be a shame to bring elaborate wineglasses and have them all shatter in a storm.”
Jake poured four cups of wine and Nathaniel took one. “Thank you for carrying us,” he said. “I don’t know what Ambroos said, but I’m happy to pay our way.”
Janssen shook his head energetically. “Ambroos paid me. He’s a preacher, but he’s not one of those who expects everything for free just because on Sunday he’s the one who reads out of the Bible. Besides, I owe my fortune to the Dutch Ohio Company. I’d to be happy to take you even for free, happy to help any friend of the Company.”
Jake raised his glass. “To friends of the Dutch Ohio Company!”
“To friends!”
They drank.
“When do we sail?” Nathaniel asked.
“Tomorrow, with the early tide,” the ship’s captain said. “Until then, you’re welcome to stay inside our…discreet cabin.”
Nathaniel grinned. “You mean secret?”
“A Dutch cabin, maybe?” Margaret added.
Janssen chuckled. “I like to call it by its other name, the Hancock. It’s not really intended for passengers, so much as for very valuable cargo.”
“Which you don’t wish to show to Imperial customs agents,” Jake said.
“Or any customs agents at all.” Janssen nodded. “But one place to enter it is here. Look, this cabinet will be nailed to the floor before we set sail, but right now it moves.” He dragged aside another hamper. When he pushed the wall behind, it opened inward.
Nathaniel went first. He felt lightheaded and fatigued, but he didn’t try to drum it away—if he could sleep, he probably should.
The Hancock was long and narrow, more like a passageway than a room. Three straw mattresses lay on the floor, each covered with a wool blanket. Nathaniel quickly lay on the last one, bundling himself inside the blanket and his coat.
“Very good,” Janssen said. “Get some sleep. When you wake up…”