Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

  “We can find a fresh grave,” Bill snapped. “The city is not that large.”

  As the drama had played out between Sarah’s advisors and friends in this very public space, a crowd had gathered. Thin with hunger and blue with cold, Cahokians in their cloaks stared at the party standing on the burial ground with apprehension and judgment in their eyes.

  “Bill,” Cathy said softly.

  He looked, saw, and nodded. Korinn looked around at the crowd as well, and then the men locked eyes.

  “Well, Vizier?” Bill asked. “If we are to find fresh graves, now is the time to do it. Disturbed earth will settle, if it has not been carefully hidden already.”

  Maltres Korinn shifted his gaze, looking back and forth between Alzbieta and the Metropolitan. “Can I persuade either of you that there is some shared rite that will satisfy both your priesthoods?”

  “No,” Tarami said flatly.

  “It isn’t a matter of persuading me,” the Handmaid said. “What would you do to persuade the goddess on whose holy hill you stood?”

  Korinn’s eyes turned and gazed on the Sunrise Mound, as if trying to stare through it.

  “These men were fully buried with the goddess’s rite,” Cathy said. “I saw that myself. Alzbieta, is there no theological case to be made that the burial was sanctified and complete once the burial jars were shut? That whatever happened afterward, however ugly, is irrelevant to the eternal resting place of the dead men?”

  “I do not make theological cases.” Alzbieta finally stood, and the muddy streaks on her knees and forearms underlined her words. “I sing the goddess’s songs, and I ask for Her favor.”

  Cathy suddenly saw frailty and weakness in Alzbieta’s face, and felt moved. She desired above all things to be the Beloved of her goddess. Instead, she had to serve as mere witness to a rival who received the honor.

  “Could you then ask for Her favor on all our behalf?” Maltres asked, shooting a grateful look at Cathy. “If I join you in signs of penitence, sack cloth and ashes, and we implore the goddess for forgiveness, might She give it to us?”

  “She is benevolent,” Alzbieta said slowly. “Let us try.”

  “You are speaking of a demon!” Zadok Tarami snapped.

  “It’s not too late to hang the cleric,” Bill said drily. “Or I can just shoot him where he stands.”

  Maltres Korinn shook his head. “You do not make me miss my berry brambles less, Metropolitan. For the moment, I will do nothing about the desecration of these graves. We will beg the goddess’s forgiveness and understanding. I am tempted to order you to join us.”

  The look of revulsion on the old man’s face almost made Cathy smile.

  “But instead,” the Vizier continued, “I request you to consider inviting your flock to pray with us for peace and forgiveness from God as you understand Him.”

  “I’d suggest adding the customary fasting to the prayer,” Bill said, “only I expect that they’re all in a state of fasting as it is. If you agree to the Vizier’s request, Zadok, I will not shoot you on the spot. What do you say?”

  “That is not a friendly codicil.” Tarami glowered.

  Bill shrugged. “I am not your friend.”

  Zadok Tarami looked up at the iron-gray clouds hanging over the city as if seeking an answer for long moments. Finally, he nodded. “You do as you think right by the…by your faith. I and mine shall pray to the Lord of Hosts for forgiveness for all our misdeeds, for peace, and for aid.”

  “Forgiveness for all our misdeeds is a fine formulation,” Maltres said. “I will have you watched, Tarami. If I hear you pray for forgiveness for worshipping the goddess, the next man to get buried inside a jar with a companion snake shall be you…only you shall go in alive, and the snake will be a cottonmouth.”

  “I forgive you both your threats against me,” Zadok Tarami said, nodding as if finishing a prayer.

  “And the next time we have a public burial?” Cathy asked.

  There was an awful silence.

  “We’re going to fight this out all over again.” Sherem shook his head.

  “No,” Maltres Korinn said slowly. “From now until the siege is lifted, all public burials, including the deaths of all soldiers, will be administered by the Cahokian First Lodge of the Ancient and Accepted Order of Freemasons, Ohio Rite. I shall preside. A soldier’s death can also be commemorated privately by his own people in the fashion they prefer, and no one will molest or interfere. Agreed?” He stared Zadok Tarami in the face. “You’re a Notary, Tarami. I will have seven Notaries sign this proclamation, to give it the fullest authority I can. Will you sign?”

  Tarami looked around at the crowd, then nodded. “I’ll sign.”

  “I’ll sign,” said a grave-faced woman with pale eyes who stepped forward from the crowd.

  Maltres nodded.

  “And I.” This was from a bone-thin old man leaning on a crutch not too dissimilar to Bill’s.

  “I’ll write the proclamation myself,” Maltres said. “And find four more Notaries.” He looked to Alzbieta Torias. “Then I and mine, at least, shall begin a fast.”

  * * *

  Nathaniel awoke slowly, a rocking motion trying to lure him back to sleep while spears of gray light pierced his consciousness and pulled him the other way.

  “Come now, boy, tell me your name.”

  He opened his eyes and looked into the face of Temple Franklin, the man he’d spied on from the starlit plain with Jacob Hop. Franklin’s face resembled his grandfather’s, but where in all his portraits the Lightning Bishop’s eyes twinkled with wit and kindness, Temple Franklin’s eyes were cold.

  “Nathaniel,” Jacob Hop said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Nathaniel looked and found Jake, sitting tied into a chair on the other side of Franklin. Franklin stepped aside so they could see each other better, and Jake smiled.

  “I’m not afraid,” Nathaniel said. “I’m tired.”

  “I drugged you,” Temple Franklin said. “Or rather, that Dutch ship’s captain did. The tiresome thing about all these merchants and smugglers who clamor for free trade and no tariffs is how many of them turn out to be for sale when you make an offer. Just once, I’d like some Dutchman to bite his thumb at me.”

  “I’d bite my thumb at you,” Jake called with a cheerful grin, “only it’s tied down, along with my other fingers.”

  Temple Franklin chuckled drily.

  “Je vuile pannenkoek!” Jake cried. “Je smeerlap!”

  “You should let us go,” Nathaniel said.

  “Ah.” Franklin laid a finger alongside his nose. “Or else what? Or else your sister—don’t deny it, I can see from your faces that you’re siblings—your sister with the strength of a troll will break my legs, is that it?” He laughed.

  Nathaniel said nothing.

  “I’m aware of her prodigious might. That’s why she’ll reach the very end of our journey without ever waking up.”

  “Do you—?” Nathaniel tried to stand, and realized for the first time that he was tied into a chair just as Jake was. The chairs were nailed to the floor, and the floor tilted first one way and then the other.

  They were on a ship.

  “I’m not going to kill her, relax.” Temple smiled. “That’s for Lord Thomas to do, if he chooses.”

  “Please don’t.” Nathaniel pulled, but couldn’t yank his arms from their bindings.

  “Nathaniel,” Jake said softly. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Nathaniel was afraid. He took deep breaths to try to calm his beating heart, sucking air in and blowing it out through pressed lips to try to disguise it.

  “Here’s the situation.” Franklin stepped back and put his hands into the pockets of a long blue coat. “Lord Thomas doesn’t have an heir.”

  Nathaniel knew what Lord Thomas was doing to try to get an heir—marrying into Dutch wealth.

  Which wealth had probably betrayed Nathaniel and his sister into Thomas’s hands.

  “Are we going to Phi
ladelphia?” Nathaniel asked.

  Franklin nodded. “Have you been to Horse Hall?”

  “I grew up in Johnsland.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I’ve never been to Philadelphia.”

  “Except when you were born there, of course. In the Slate Roof House, if Hannah was telling the truth.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Naturally.” Franklin nodded. “I’m taking you to Philadelphia, and to Horse Hall. To meet your uncle Thomas. What do you think about that, Nathaniel?”

  Thomas had killed Nathaniel’s mother, according to the Earl of Johnsland. And Nathaniel’s father, according to Jake and his sister Sarah. Thomas’s face and name had been worn by one of the four cosmic ogres that had torn Nathaniel to bits in the Pit of Heaven, before a Sarah-ogre had reconstituted him. The name filled Nathaniel with dread, and he had no intention of showing that fact. “Did Jake tell you my name?”

  “He didn’t have to. I have an informer in Johnsland. Oh, don’t look surprised, I have them all over the Empire. They keep me abreast of the undertakings of the Electors, the ones they don’t publish in the news-papers. The only interesting ones, really. We have been looking for you for months. After the events of the recent Yule, with your disappearance, we realized who you had to be. Nathaniel Elytharias Penn. And then this idiot brought you right to me.”

  Nathaniel tried not to show his confusion on his face.

  “Perhaps you were sleeping at the time.” Franklin smiled. “He and your sister, whose name I have not yet teased out, assaulted me in the lobby of my hotel. From there it was a simple matter to bribe the right people on the docks and wait. You can’t leave New Amsterdam except by water.”

  Jake hung his head.

  “Don’t judge the Dutchman too harshly.” Franklin tut-tutted. “He tried his best. He only thought he was on the trail of a great conspiracy, perhaps one that would help restore you to your family’s wealth and lost power. After all, in an extraordinary act of great courage…he did call me a pannenkoek.”

  “I don’t want anything from Thomas,” Nathaniel said. “Let us go, and we’ll go away forever.”

  “Don’t say that,” Franklin said. “There’s only one way to go away forever, and I don’t think you really mean it.”

  “We’ll sail to England,” Nathaniel pressed. “You’ll never see us again.”

  “I think you’re missing the point here.” Franklin scratched his chin in thought. “Thomas needs an heir. He will yet try to produce one himself, yes, but he’s not such a fool to put all his eggs in one basket, as my grandfather might have preached against. There’s an opportunity for you to prove yourself amiable.”

  “To Thomas?”

  Franklin nodded. “And to me.”

  “What does ‘amiable’ mean?”

  Franklin shrugged. “In this case, it means willing to help. Willing to help Thomas with his plans for the Ohio. Willing to be an ally, not an enemy.”

  “Nathaniel,” Jake said. “Listen to me; there’s something you must know.”

  Nathaniel tried to pay attention to Jacob Hop, but Temple Franklin stepped in the way. “Picking me up and throwing me, for instance, would not be the act of an amiable person.”

  Margaret must have done that. Which must be why Franklin is talking to me and not to her.

  “I have something I must tell your sister,” Jake said. “Sarah, I mean.”

  Franklin spun on his heels, and Nathaniel suddenly saw a knife in his hands. “Shut your mouth, Dutchman.”

  “Come find me,” Jake said. “Tell her to come find me. It’s about the Tarocks—”

  Temple Franklin lunged forward, slashing with his blade. It was a tiny weapon, but Jake was bound and couldn’t dodge. Franklin rose and fell and rose again like a bird of prey, striking with his hand. Great loops of blood rose with him and splattered across the cabin. The Dutchman shuddered and twitched. When Temple Franklin finally stood back, Jake sat dead in the chair.

  Temple dropped the knife to the floor. It clattered on hard wood and then bounced away into a corner.

  “Now, then,” he croaked. “We were discussing amiability.”

  * * *

  After Hooke raised the wall of black fire around Cahokia, Notwithstanding Schmidt feared a conflict in leadership. Cromwell’s was a name to curse by, but for some it would be a name to follow. But Hooke seized the tent Dadgayadoh had once occupied, posted the shuffling, dull-eyed, dead Haudenosaunee at the door, and hid Cromwell inside.

  Schäfer was forced entirely out of the tent. The Youngstown German trader began volunteering for tasks that would keep him away from camp.

  Immediately upon seeing Cromwell occupy the body of one of the Parletts, Schmidt had acted to protect the other two, which constituted her quickest communications link to Horse Hall. But was that link now compromised? Assuming the Parletts on the other end of the link still lived, did Cromwell share with them their mind-connecting link?

  She tripled the size of Mohuntubby’s command, giving him her best militiamen.

  She wished she hadn’t lost Luman Walters; the Sorcerer Hooke was powerful. Schmidt felt no compunction about being allied with men of dark art, but she wasn’t entirely sure Cromwell and her shareholder had the same strategic objectives in mind.

  She made Captain Mohuntubby take her Himmelsbrief. She explained it only minimally, but he nodded as if he were accustomed to having to unpick the lining of his coat and then restore it in order to be able to insert letters written in German. She ordered him not to leave the presence of the Parletts other than to go the latrine, and in that instance to leave his coat behind.

  Luman’s Himmelsbrief drove back Ezekiel Angleton. Will it be enough to stop Oliver Cromwell?

  The snow continued to fall. She had the manpower to collect it and have it thrown into melting pots, while scooping the remainder aside. The perpetual task helped her keep discipline in a camp that every day felt less like a trading post and more like a siege.

  The spring thaw, when it came, would be brutal.

  Encountering Hooke beside a campfire, Schmidt nodded. “Don’t worry at our delay,” she told the Lazar. “We are only waiting for reinforcements. We are not sending mines under the walls because the ground is so wet. They would fill in, and the engineers would drown.”

  And because thou canst not fathom the depth of the Treewall’s roots. I have seen sieges before, Madam Director, Hooke replied. Fear not. Thy sole task is to keep the Serpentborn enclosed. Mine and my master’s craft will inevitably take their souls in time.

  “Is that the goal, then?” she asked affably. “To take their souls? I had thought it was the suppression of revolt and the defense of the throne of Lord Thomas.” The true unification of the Empire: the bringing of a stronger peace; prosperity for all.

  Methods she found acceptable; goals she desired.

  Yes, he cackled. Yes, that’s it.

  “I had rather hoped that I’d see more battle magic from a magician of your fame,” Schmidt said. “Lightning bolts, curses. That was why I was willing to part company with my previous wizard, who was perfectly serviceable.”

  Thou hast seen the battle magic. Hooke stared at Schmidt with his white eyes, that trembled in black, worm-filled jelly. And thou shalt see it yet.

  And then he stalked away into the snow.

  Two days later, General Sayle arrived.

  Theophilus Sayle was whisper thin, with fine strands of white hair that blew distractedly about the sides of his head and dark liver spots on his bald pate. He wore a blue coat in recognition of his position as Thomas’s General of the Army of the Ohio, but otherwise was dressed in sad Yankee browns and orange. The effect was like a bright blue sky over an autumn landscape, as incongruous as it was striking.

  He arrived with his first scouts ahead of a force that Schmidt’s own intelligencer, coming quickly down the Ohio River by canoe, told her numbered ten thousand men. She hadn’t thought Thomas had that many soldiers—he must have acted quickly
to recruit, once the Electors gave their assent.

  Sayle’s eyes were a sad brown that matched his trousers. He entered Schmidt’s tent airily, as if blown in on the bitter winter air that followed him.

  “Madam Director,” he said, extending a hand.

  “General.” They shook. “Whisky?”

  “Thank you.”

  Schmidt poured them each a glass and they sat on stools across her camp table from each other.

  “I won’t command your forces directly,” Sayle said, “but I expect you to report to me.”

  Not the first time she had heard such a message from such a man. She kept her facial expression carefully neutral. Do I move now, or later? “I have no military experience.” Schmidt sipped her whisky. “I can feed, organize, and direct, but I am perfectly content to hand the siege over to you.”

  “The Emperor informs me he wants you to stay. He feels it’s very important that Cahokia have a head of civil government after the siege ends.”

  Schmidt nodded. “I’m prepared for the task.”

  “I’ll attempt to leave you as much of the city intact as I may,” Sayle offered. “To that end, I would like to consult you regarding the concentration of my fire.”

  Schmidt set down her glass. “Do you mean artillery?”

  “Of course.”

  “You aren’t going to starve them out?” But she knew the answer already.

  Sayle snorted. “Giving every chance for aid to come and raise the siege? No, I intend to batter a hole in the wall the size of the Charles River and march through as soon as I possibly can. If the Emperor has selected me, it can be for no other purpose. I am a cannon man. And I’d like you to help me choose the location of the hole.”

  Schmidt smiled, feigning a contentedness she didn’t feel. “When do the guns arrive?”

  “In two days.”

  * * *

  “I am beginning to admire this priest,” Ravi said.

  The four surviving mamelukes rode through the streets of New Orleans. It was two hours before dawn and the sky was at its most opaque. Their horses—the third set they’d employed on the ride—were exhausted, and Abd al-Wahid had slowed their pace to a canter that permitted conversation.

  “Do not admire him too much,” Abd al-Wahid growled. “We are to kill him.”