by D. J. Butler
* * *
To her surprise, Kinta Jane Embry survived the night. While she slept shivering, slowly coming back to a decent temperature, Dockery somehow managed to act. By the time the sun rose again on the Hudson and she poked her head out of her cocoon of wool and fur, her clothing and most of his all hung dry on a neatly lashed frame that hung over a small but hot fire.
He wore a blue linsey-woolsey shirt and baggy long underwear. His feet were in moccasins. He crouched over the fire, tending with a short stick to several fillets of fish that lay cooking on a low, flat rock surrounded on three sides by hot coals.
“Glad you’re awake,” he said.
“Glad I’m not dead.” She looked around and saw white snow, a broad sheet of brown river, black tree trunks poking vertically from the white, and the dark hint of evergreen boughs hiding under the thick winter mantle. No sign of other people. “Did Wilkes make it?”
“It’d be a miracle.” Dockery hung his head. “I’m sorry.”
“He wasn’t my friend or yours,” Kinta Jane said. She meant it, but as the words came out she felt a pang in her chest that told her they weren’t quite true. She was shaken and hurt by the loss of Isaiah Wilkes, the man who had given her back her tongue. “But he was our leader, and his loss is…serious. You and I have a task to accomplish.”
“Yeah,” Dockery agreed. “And I don’t even know what it is.”
“I don’t know that I do, either.” Kinta Jane took her clothing from the rack and climbed into it. Her motions were awkward because her limbs were all stiff, but the cloth was warm and felt good on her chilled skin. Dockery looked away as she dressed, a gesture that she found gallant. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You love Julia Stuyvesant.”
“Loved, maybe. No more. I was just standing around that house bored forever and she was there, is all.”
“You love her now, Dockery. I’m not an idiot.”
Dockery looked away at the river and a tear rolled down his unshaven jaw. “They’re going to kill the baby. They have to. Maybe poison, maybe a doctor’s knife, maybe they let it see the light of day and then they leave it out in the snow.”
“Does she love you?” Kinta Jane asked.
“I doubt it. But what man ever knew, really?”
Kinta Jane sighed. “Maybe they’ll put the baby with foster parents. Or in a home.”
“Maybe I’ll never learn the end of it,” Dockery said, “since you and I are bound for the frozen north.”
“There are caves beneath Montreal,” Kinta Jane told him. “All I know is that Wilkes was going to make some kind of signal to someone living around Montreal, and they would meet us in the caves.”
“Someone who?”
“Do you know the story of the three brothers?” Kinta Jane asked.
Dockery shook his head.
“In that case…maybe an Algonk ally. I’m not sure.”
“I figure you ain’t sure about the signal, either.”
“If I knew it, I’d tell you.” Kinta Jane sighed. “I guess we have a little time to think about what kind of signal to send when we get there.”
“I was always partial to fireworks,” Dockery said.
Dockery built a canoe. He urged Kinta Jane to stay close while he did it, but she ignored him and wandered downriver.
Was she hoping to find Wilkes alive, huddled over his own fire? Or his corpse, frozen and battered on the rocky shore?
In either case, she was disappointed. But she did find another of the fur bundles. It lay waterlogged in the shallows of the river, but she managed to drag it out of the water and pull it behind her, back to where Dockery crouched beside the fire, finishing up their new boat.
The sun was low in the west. “Maybe we wait until tomorrow to get back in the river?” Kinta Jane suggested.
Dockery agreed and they examined the second fur bundle. It was Wilkes’s, which was just as well—Dockery could fit in the actor’s clothing, though they’d be slightly loose. And wrapped in a small packet of personal effects—a razor, a bar of soap and shaving brush, a penknife—she found her own dried tongue, pierced and labeled and hanging on a leather thong.
Wetting her finger with spittle, she wiped off the ink writing that identified the tongue as hers and slipped the scrap of leather over her neck.
Dockery laid out the furs and wools from Wilkes’s bundle on the far side of the fire. He also loaded and primed a pistol and handed it to Kinta Jane before stretching himself out in Wilkes’s bedding. They silently gnawed pemmican, drank melted snow, and then fell asleep.
In the morning, before the sun was up, they were paddling northward. They paddled five days before they left the river, stopping to eat dried meat and twice-baked bread, washed down with water. Twice they had portable soup, boiled over a small fire; the hot broth felt like a luxury. In the mornings they added coffee to the meal and in the evenings a little brandy.
They saw Indians, twice on the river and once on shore. They weren’t the Choctaw and Cherokee and Caddo that Kinta Jane knew—Haudenosaunee or Algonk, maybe—but Dockery waved at the Indians and they waved back and everyone went on their way each time.
She and Dockery spoke little. He had jokingly suggested fireworks, but really, what would the Conventicle’s planned signal be? Some kind of password, given to the right person? Maybe, as the Franklin, Isaiah Wilkes had known the people in or near Montreal to contact. Or perhaps he knew the location of a blind drop, as Kinta Jane knew a blind drop in Philadelphia in the event that she lost contact with the Conventicle and had something to communicate. As had actually happened. But Kinta Jane didn’t know anyone at all in Acadia, and was unaware of any drop location. Could Wilkes have known a recurring place and time to show up at, to hold a meeting?
The place could be the caves. But what would be a recurring time? The first of the month? Maybe the seventeenth of the month—hadn’t the Lightning Bishop been born on the seventeenth of January? Maybe the meeting date was annual, and was the seventeenth of January.
In which case, she had already missed it, by a month and a half now.
Or it could be something connected to the heavens, rather than the paper calendar. The full moon, the new moon, the rising of a new constellation in the east.
Kinta Jane racked her brain for hours and could remember no reference the Franklin had made that gave her any sort of clue at all.
She would have to devise her own signal.
Dockery was gloomy. He was also helpful, gentle, kind, and hard-working. Obviously, he was trapped in his own thoughts about his unborn child. Or possibly, aborted child, at this point.
Kinta Jane wished she had words to help or distract him. Other streetwalkers from New Orleans surely did, many of them being masters of the arts of small talk and flirtation. But the period in which Kinta Jane had worked as a prostitute was also the period in which she had had no tongue. Pleasant, time-passing, jest-filled chatter was beyond her.
She ventured a song. Not having sung for years meant she had forgotten the words to most tunes, but she did remember an old love song.
Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea
Silver buckles at his knee
He’ll come back and marry me
Bonny Bobby Shafto!
Bobby Shafto’s bright and fair
Panning out his yellow hair
He’s my love for evermore
Bonny Bobby Shafto!
Bobby Shafto’s got a bairn
For to dangle on his arm
In his arm and on his knee
Bobby Shafto loves me.
She sang it in her best Scotch accent, which was pretty terrible. She hadn’t thought of it as being applicable to their own circumstances until the words came out of her mouth, but the song got Dockery to smile, so it was worth it. They kept paddling.
* * *
Jake awoke and found himself tied into a chair, his wrists strapped to its thick wooden arms and his ankles bound to its legs. He f
elt sick to his stomach. He pushed with his legs, tried to move the chair and fight through the fog that filled his brain at the same time. The chair didn’t move.
Nailed to the floor.
He was on a ship.
He felt the sway of the room and realized that was why his stomach was turning. The knowledge of the cause instantly banished his nausea.
He remembered being bound to a stone slab under a sky of fire and smoke. Mortals with iron knives had stabbed at him and plucked out his organs to feed them to his infant son. He cried out, without words.
“You must have terrible dreams.” The voice belonged to Temple Franklin. Shaking sleep from his eyes, Jake turned and saw Franklin sitting in a similar chair a few steps away. “Guilty ones. Are you a criminal?”
“You know the saying. I’m one Dutchman, I must be a preacher.”
“If I’m to judge by what you say in your sleep, I’d say you were a regicide, parricide, cannibal, sorcerer, priest. Are you maanziek, meneer?”
“Just tired. My cousins and I have been walking a long way. Is that why I’m tied up? You think I’m insane?”
“Come now. They’re not your cousins. You’re tied up for the same reason I keep the two of them drugged and unconscious. Now, you tell me who they are, so that I know you know, and we can have a serious conversation.”
Jake hesitated, but only for a moment. He was being interrogated, but he didn’t think he was being tricked. “They’re the children of Hannah Penn and Kyres Elytharias.”
“Two of the children, more properly. The third being the witch who squats on the Serpent Throne and tries to make trouble for Lord Thomas. Ironically, I’ve been looking for these two. My spy in Johnsland only realized who ‘Nathaniel Chapel’ was after he had left. And wherever did you find the girl?”
“Acadia,” Jake lied.
“Hmm.”
“You’re planning to give them to Thomas Penn,” Jake said.
“Of course.”
“He’ll kill them, as he killed their mother. As he tries to kill their sister.”
“Or if he doesn’t kill them, he’ll trade them. Maybe he’ll give all three Elytharias bastards their lives if they’ll go away into quiet retirement. Let us call it the Washington Plan.”
“I don’t believe in the Washington Plan,” Jake said.
“Thomas has no child of his own,” Franklin pointed out. “Perhaps he’ll take them in, recognize them, and raise them as his heirs.”
“This is exactly why there is no Washington Plan,” Jake shot back. “If these two are alive, there will always be someone who wants to use them to raise a banner of revolt, even if they themselves do not wish it.”
“Thomas might surprise you. We have been seeking these children for months, and I have never been instructed to have them killed. If I had been, they’d be dead right now, rather than sleeping peacefully.”
“Drugged.”
“Yes.”
“The real question,” Jake said, “is why you’ve kept me alive. I’m no Elytharias. I’m just a servant who was sent to find two children.”
“Hardly children. Perhaps I’ll torture you for information.”
“I doubt I have any. I haven’t seen my queen in weeks. Surely your spies in the Ohio have more current news than I do.”
“Perhaps you have information on other subjects.”
“The Tarock,” Jake suggested. “I know the Tarock pretty well. If you free my hands, I’ll do a casting for you.”
“Do you know grandfather’s cards?” Franklin smiled. “And have you found the puzzles?”
Jake frowned and said nothing. Puzzles?
“Grandfather insisted he’d hidden puzzles in the cards. In any case, now we get closer. I’d like you to tell me all you know about Simon Sword.”
Jake held his tongue. Was there a lie he could tell to Sarah’s advantage here? Maybe if the Imperials believed Simon Sword was on her side, that would put them in fear of her. Or maybe he could deny the existence of Simon Sword, to increase their surprise when they encountered him?
He remembered fording the Mississippi, waters knee-high, with a solemn-faced Eldritch king holding spear and shield waiting on the opposite bank to meet him.
“Let me tell you what I know,” Franklin continued. “I come from something of a peculiar family. I don’t mean the fact that I’m a bastard’s bastard—don’t look shocked, that’s a matter of public record—I mean my grandfather. He collected me from the orphanage and bestowed his name on me…as Thomas might do with that surprisingly strong young woman you travel with. Likely not the young man. I assume that he wears his clothing inside out because he’s an idiot. Thomas doesn’t need an idiot for an heir.”
“Perhaps Thomas can keep him about the court and consult him as an oracle. I heard they do that in Pennsland.”
“Divination by consulting idiots, yes. I don’t know the theory—I imagine they’re believed to be closer to God, or something. If their idiocy is believed to relay the emanated power of the stars, Thomas may be interested. And my grandfather told me the most ludicrous stories. He said, you see, that this land, everything between the Appalachians and the mountains in the far west, the whole great bowl that drains into the Mississippi, belonged to an ancient god. Or, you know, the land was the god, or the river was the god, might be how the story ran, that being the logic of gods and fairy tales.”
“The Heron King,” Jake said, without meaning to.
“Yes, that’s the one. Folk hero and bugbear. My grandfather, the saintly Lightning Bishop, believed he was real. Ot at least, he claimed to believe. Real, and possessed of two sides that alternated. One side was peaceful. He stopped diseases and taught people how to farm maize.”
“Peter Plowshare,” Jake murmured. He remembered trampling a thousand miles of rows of beans, corn, and squash planted together, uprooting the plants and sowing in their place the bones of men. “He did those things.”
“The other brought war and catastrophe,” Franklin said. “He demanded the sacrifice of men; he toppled kingdoms; he made away with virgins, cheated at cards, fixed elections, smoked too much, and committed every other conceivable sin.”
“No,” Jake said. “You joke, and this isn’t a matter for joking. He shatters power and brings civilization crashing down. You mean Simon Sword.”
“Fine,” Franklin agreed. “He shattered power.”
“Shatters,” Jake said. “He shatters power. He is doing it now.”
For once, Franklin hesitated, giving Jake a queer look. “And my grandfather insisted that a cabal of men had been formed to pass on the knowledge of Simon Sword and make preparations for his destructive reign.”
“Your grandfather formed this cabal?”
“Others have said that he did, and that he called it his Conventicle. But that wasn’t how my grandfather told it. He pointed at William Penn as one of the founders. Penn and his allies and their successors existed in a kind of Masonic fraternity, hidden from the eyes of others. But in places of power that would permit them to stand against Simon Sword when he came again.”
“That would be a good thing,” Jake said. “Did your grandfather tell you where to find them?”
Franklin shook his head. “At a young age, I took to whoring and dice, and my grandfather stopped telling me those stories. I assumed it was because they were fairy tales and I had outgrown them. Lately, I have been given reason to understand that other men believe and still pass on such stories. Whether or not there is such an organization, there are people who believe it exists, and believe themselves to be in it.”
“The Conventicle,” Jake said. “It’s more than a folktale.”
“Yes. A man presented himself at Horse Hall. That’s the Emperor’s palace in Philadelphia. He called himself the Franklin. He called Thomas ‘Brother Onas,’ and begged him to take up his burden and fight Simon Sword.”
Jake felt dread. He had come to the wrong man. “You imprisoned this Franklin, of course.”
“Oh, we tried to kill him. But he escaped us. I can see in your eyes you’d very much like to talk with that Franklin, wouldn’t you? You must have been carrying a message for him, and by mistake you delivered it to me. How disappointing for you. Do you belong to the Conventicle?”
“I don’t know anything about the Conventicle,” Jake said. And because he didn’t know anything about the Conventicle, he decided he’d try the truth. “Though perhaps I met one of its members. He was a man in the entourage of the Chevalier of New Orleans, and he died. In dying, he gave me the message I gave you.”
“That the sword had gone back.”
Jake nodded.
“Did he say the message was for Temple Franklin, then? Or for the Franklin?”
Jake’s scalp itched, and he wished he could scratch it. “As far as I can remember, he just said Franklin.”
“What does it mean, that the sword has gone back?” Temple Franklin leaned forward in his seat, eyes glittering.
Jake found himself unexpectedly eager to answer the question. “I think he wanted the Franklin to know that it was all going to be worse than the Conventicle expected. Much, much worse.”
* * *
Cahokia was surrounded by tilled farmland. Etzanoa, her unruly sister, rose out of tangled forest.
Chigozie had seen the city coming for miles, or at least, he had seen a ring of white towers looming above the tops of the trees. Beneath the towers of Etzanoa, I spoke this prayer for Shenandoah, was a lyric he’d heard traveling up the Mississippi. The white spires gave the words sudden flesh and bone.
Chigozie and Kort walked along a forest path behind the three riders of Zomas. Kort and Ferpa had both asked to come, despite Chigozie’s pleading that at least one of them should stay at the Still Waters with the Merciful.
The towers of Etzanoa were built of white stone. Chigozie hadn’t seen stone like it anywhere in Missouri—where had it come from? The white stone statues leaning out from the bases of the towers, depicting heroes and monsters in equal measure and in equally ecstatic poses of battle, were worn and crumbled with age. A small city surrounded the towers, and it was ringed about with a wall of white stone. Behind a thin veil of drifting snowflakes and perched on a high bluff above the Missouri River, it almost looked angelic.