by D. J. Butler
Ravi shrugged. “Those two things have little to do with each other. But still, the man escaped our trap.”
“He fell into it easily enough,” Omar said. “As the chevalier said he would.”
“I thought the two bishops might wind up in cahoots.” Ravi said “in cahoots” in English, though they were otherwise speaking the tongue of the Prophet. It was a word he was convinced existed only in the New World. “I admire Ukwu for killing the other man when he got a chance.”
“To kill a man is easy,” Abd al-Wahid said. “Your admiration is cheaply bought.”
“Not so,” Ravi disagreed. “This was not just any man, but another priest. His death would be made public, and Ukwu knew it. He was willing to suffer the disapproval and hatred of some to accomplish his ends.”
“He wins admiration from others,” Omar said.
“Yes,” Ravi agreed. “From me, for instance. Consider also that there was gold in play. Ukwu can’t have been certain the information he had from Planchet was accurate, but he preferred killing the man to keeping him around to be useful in the future.”
“He wants revenge,” al-Muhasib said.
“He wants revenge,” Ravi agreed.
“August Planchet had already outlived his usefulness,” Abd al-Wahid disagreed. “He was a thief, and the bishop knew it. The old bishop, I mean.”
“You see?” Ravi said. “You admire the man, too.”
It was true. Abd al-Wahid had expected the houngan bishop to try to take the gold ship by force of arms, or possibly replace the pilot and change its course. He had never considered the possibility that the man might prefer to sink the ship, depriving the chevalier of his wealth without taking it for himself.
The gold lay on the bottom of the Mississippi near Natchez-under-the-Hill now. Did the Hansa know about it? Mulling over the events of the night assault, Abd al-Wahid concluded that if he were in the young bishop’s place, he’d have offered the Hansa the unimpeded right to salvage the gold in exchange for their cooperation.
But the dockmaster had been a woman, and Ahmed Abd al-Wahid had already seen the ecstatic power Etienne Ukwu could exercise over women.
“I admire him,” he admitted, “and now I am going to rob him.”
They rode into the plaza holding Etienne Ukwu’s casino. Though it was early morning, Abd al-Wahid was surprised to see the building unlit. He had never seen it shut its doors before—the debauched wealthy of New Orleans were apparently willing to gamble, drink, and dance at all hours of the night.
“Arm yourselves,” he said.
“Are we ever not prepared?” Omar grumbled, but all four drew their weapons.
They left their horses lashed to a post across the plaza, and Abd al-Wahid led the way. They crept forward beneath the stares of the obscene stained glass, a sure confirmation if ever he had needed one of the wisdom of God’s prohibition against images. Despite years of discipline, he struggled not to glance up at the voluptuous, carnal images, making a mockery of mortal society and the divine at the same time.
He spat to steady himself, then moved around to the front of the building.
The lights were out, shutters were closed…but the front door was ajar.
“Prince-Capitaine,” Ravi said. “Perhaps wisdom would dictate a withdrawal at this point.”
“Come in,” a voice called from behind the door.
“At least, let me do it,” Omar said.
Abd al-Wahid nodded and stepped back from the door, into the mud of the street. Al-Muhasib and Ravi joined him and the three mamelukes stood with scimitars drawn, watching as Omar opened the door.
Within, at the center of the room, lay a pile of bodies. He couldn’t see faces, but from the clothing the corpses wore, Abd al-Wahid knew they were the gendarmes who had stood in for the mamelukes, dressed as them, to convince the bishop that his casino was being watched by the chevalier.
Sitting atop the corpses was the bishop. He wore a black waistcoat and trousers and a red sash around his waist, garb which made him resemble a Castilian bullfighter. Standing, he opened his hand and it was filled with a tall red flame.
“Please come in,” the bishop said again. “I know you have been looking for me.”
“He’s alone, Prince-Capitaine,” Omar murmured in Arabic.
“What I don’t understand,” the bishop continued, “is why you are working for the Chevalier of New Orleans. The man is a murderer, but he’s also more or less a Christian. Aren’t you Napoleon’s elite, the famed mamelukes of Paris and Cairo? Why are you willing to serve such a man?”
“Prince-Capitaine,” Omar urged.
“Can it be money? Surely not. But in case it is, please allow me now to offer to double whatever the chevalier is paying you.” The bishop smiled. “You don’t know how much I can afford, but you do know that the chevalier’s resources are overtaxed. He has mislaid a little cash flow in recent days.”
“Kill him,” Abd al-Wahid muttered.
Omar leaped into the casino, scimitar raised—
KABOOM!
The casino erupted in a gout of fire, and Omar al-Talib was gone.
* * *
Etienne leaped back from the mirror. He had crafted his spell by means of a doll of himself—it was for the best that the doll was now incinerated—perched atop the pile of dead gendarmes he’d stacked in the casino’s common room, and two mirrors. One mirror stood in the casino, facing the doll. The second was in a nondescript garret in a lodging house owned by Onyinye Diokpo, not far away. Through the mirrors and his own sweat and blood, he’d projected his image onto the doll. Through the mirrors, he’d also prayed for Maitre Carrefour to ignite the kegs of gunpowder he’d stacked in the casino’s basement and under tables in its common room.
“That did it,” Achebe Chibundu said. The wrestler wore Etienne’s uniform now, black and white. He topped it with a round, flat-brimmed hat, cocked at an angle that was surely meant to be jaunty, but somehow seemed a few degrees off. In the flickering candlelight that illuminated the garret, he smiled.
“Shame to lose the casino.” Monsieur Bondí frowned. “That was a fine business.”
“It was too visible,” Etienne said. “And we took out all the cash there was.”
“It gave you more than cash. It gave you cash flow.”
Etienne shook his head. “It accumulated cash, but in a fixed location. The logic of our battle is such that if I destroy his gold, the chevalier must surely sequester mine in turn. To avoid restoring him to wealth, I had to destroy the casino.”
Bondí scratched his chin. “Yes, I see. As also in wrestling, if a man wishes to gouge out my eyeball, clearly the wise maneuver is to gouge it out myself first. Is this not the case, friend Achebe?”
“No.” Achebe sounded slightly puzzled.
“No? Peculiar.” Bondí frowned.
“Whether it was wise or not, it is done.” Etienne felt tired. “Do we have peppers here?”
“I’ll get peppers from the publican,” Achebe said. He left, his footsteps rumbling heavily down the stairs.
“It’s done. I’m only sad because I don’t see that you have any need for an accountant now.” Bondí smiled.
“Perhaps I don’t,” Etienne agreed. “But I always have need of a shrewd man. And besides, I don’t intend to be poor forever.”
“How will you fight this war, then? As a pilgrim, sleeping in tents and wandering from place to place?”
“I could do that. I believe it is the way saints traditionally fight. St. Francis, for example, and if not St. John Gutenberg, then his Wandering Johnnies. But I don’t need to fight a war,” Etienne said. “I only need to kill one man.”
“The richest man in New Orleans,” Bondí said. “A man who has set foreign assassins on your trail.”
“He’s not the richest man,” Etienne disagreed. “I’ve interrupted his taxes and now I’ve interrupted his silence money, too. And I’ve done it at a time when he has taken on more obligations than ever before,
hiring hundreds or maybe thousands of new soldiers. However big the pile of cash he started with, it is surely dwindling.”
“You’ve impoverished yourself and he has many soldiers.” Bondí nodded. “Yes, I see the wisdom of this plan very clearly.”
“Those soldiers want to be paid,” Etienne said.
Bondí shrugged. “Admit that I see some intelligence in what you are saying. Where will we sleep, boss?”
Etienne smiled. “You have listened too much to your own singing. Ne sais où dormira, eh?” Achebe Chibundu re-entered with a bowl containing several pickled peppers. “Very well, Bondí. Let me eat a little to restore my strength, and I will show you where we will lay our heads.”
* * *
Luman awoke in the night belowdecks in the Verge Caníbal, suddenly certain that Reuben Clay had breached his agreement with Notwithstanding Schmidt.
The knowledge came so completely out of nowhere that it shocked a laugh from his lungs and sent his hammock rocking from side to side.
“What you laughin’ at, wizard?”
Sarah spoke with a thick accent, but she didn’t call him a hedge wizard and she didn’t say my Balaam. Luman felt respected, though of the two of them, she was clearly the greater mage.
Really, what can I do to help her?
“A spell I set weeks ago for Director Schmidt.” Luman knew he couldn’t lie. He couldn’t even see her in the darkness of the Verge Caníbal’s hold, but he knew from experience that she could see him, in unnatural and piercing ways. “An alarm has been tripped.”
“Anythin’ of consequence to me, you reckon?”
Luman considered carefully before answering. “I doubt it. A Hansard who agreed to betray his fellow-Hansards in order to squeeze the Imperial fist more tightly around Adena’s throat has reneged. Somehow.”
“Maybe he’s loosened up that fist.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just taken too big a cut. Or maybe he’s had Schmidt’s man Oldham killed. Or maybe it’s something else. Do you want me to try to find out?” It was what he would have done if the Director had been present.
“No,” Sarah said quickly. “That’ll do. We’re almost to the Serpent Mound.”
“Are you looking…through the walls?” Luman asked.
Sarah laughed. “I could do that, but no. I can jest feel it comin’. I can feel my father, I think. And the goddess.”
“I haven’t known you long, Your Majesty,” Luman said slowly. “But you seem…changed.”
“Prettier, I hope.”
Luman laughed, and then caught himself. “That was a joke, right?”
“Luman Walters, I gave up hope of bein’ good-lookin’ the first time I e’er looked into a mirror. Weren’t no one but Calvin Calhoun e’er fool enough to think I’s a looker, and that man was a plumb fool.”
The sudden pang of loss in her voice unsettled Luman, and he tried to change the subject. “I’m sorry you’re awake.”
“I ain’t slept since we left the city,” she said.
“Are you…afraid?”
“Hell yes, I’m afraid. But that ain’t what’s stoppin’ my sleep. I can’t sleep, except on the Great Mound. I’ve tried hexin’ myself, but it does no good. I feel scratchier and more burned by the day, and I’m leanin’ on my gramarye pretty hard. I need to talk to my father quick, and git back home.” She laughed, a hollow sound. “By which I mean, Cahokia.”
“What do you hope to learn from your father?”
“Well…well, dammit, everything. He ne’er became king, at least not by any rite Alzbieta acknowledges. So why not? He ne’er shut the veil over the Serpent Throne. Why not? Can he give me knowledge to do those two things, so I can draw power from the goddess like I think She wants me to, and save his city? Her city. My city.”
“I’ll do what I can do help,” Luman promised.
“I know you will.” The twang softened out of her voice. “I don’t expect miracles, Luman. It’s just that…I was raised New Light, more or less, with naught but a pinch of ceremony on the rarest of occasions. Girl that I was, I didn’t even get to become a Freemason, like all my uncles. Like Cal, I believe. As a result, I have precious little sense of ceremony, and I’m afraid a sense of ceremony is the thing I might need most right now.”
“It’s customary for any initiate to have a psychopomp to guide her through the rite.” Luman laughed out loud. “Of course, it isn’t customary for that psychopomp to be blind himself.”
“Jest don’t trust him any further’n you need to.
He’s a lawyer, after all.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The chevalier was speaking in low tones with a vistor when the mamelukes arrived. Abd al-Wahid didn’t understand all the words, but he caught a few that he recognized.
“No es una retirada,” the stranger said. “Es una garantía de su compromiso, una evidencia de su buena fe. Y insistiremos.”
With those words, the visitor left. Abd al-Wahid met the man’s gaze as he left the chevalier’s office. He had a deeply bronzed triangular face, with a wide forehead and a pointed chin. The long nose, up-swept white hair, and steeply arching eyebrows all gave the face a vertical dimension that made the man appear two feet taller than he really was. Only his narrowly slitted, suspicion-filled eyes and a dark black mustache gave the face any horizontal dimension at all. With his lips pressed tightly together, his mouth almost entirely disappeared. He wore a frock coat and riding boots. He nodded at the mamelukes.
“Señores,” the man said.
Abd al-Wahid nodded in return.
“Señor,” al-Muhasib said.
The stranger disappeared down the hall, bootheels clicking on the stone floor.
“That man is demanding the chevalier withdraw from New Orleans,” al-Muhasib muttered in Arabic. “He says it will demonstrate the chevalier’s commitment, and it is not negotiable. What is this, Prince-Capitaine?”
Abd al-Wahid reflected for a moment. “Say nothing of it to the chevalier,” he said.
They entered the office.
Chevalier Gaspard Le Moyne looked tired and old, small behind the large desk, yellow in the late afternoon light streaming in through the windows. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I’m out of money.”
Despite all the wealth the mamelukes had brought him. “We have seen the flogged tax evaders,” Abd al-Wahid said, “and the paintings disappearing from your walls.”
“I’ve tried confiscating their property,” the chevalier said. “No one will buy it from me at a decent price, so it is not worth the effort. And now that I am unable to pay the gendarmes, I fear that they will no longer help me collect taxes or confiscate property at all.”
“There is a traditional solution,” Abd al-Wahid said. “Give your gendarmes the right to confiscate criminals’ property and dispose of it for themselves.”
Le Moyne seemed to think about it for a moment, but then shook his head. “This is a traditional solution for an invading army, Prince-Capitaine. It would be tantamount to declaring war on New Orleans. I would be the city’s savior, not her oppressor.”
“The difference between the two is not always clear,” Abd al-Wahid said.
“Merde. You speak a deep truth, Prince-Capitaine. But I am going to take a different path. You saw the Spanish ambassador?”
Abd al-Wahid nodded.
“I am going to invite two armies to invade New Orleans.”
Abd al-Wahid held his tongue, but Ravi couldn’t. “This is a very subtle plan, My Lord Chevalier. So subtle, I’m not certain I understand it.”
“I will be at the head of one of those armies,” the chevalier said. “I will come as the city’s savior.”
“A Spanish army,” Abd al-Wahid said.
The chevalier nodded. “You will accompany the mambo Marie north, to provoke the assault of the other army.”
“Shreveport?” al-Muhasib asked. “Memphis?”
“I am here to kill Etienne Ukwu,” Abd al-Wahid said. “Nothing more.”
&n
bsp; “This is how we kill him,” the chevalier said. “And I need to send the witch with men I trust.”
“With men you don’t have to pay, you mean.” Abd al-Wahid smiled grimly. “Must we take the witch? The prophet commands us to take refuge from those who blow on knots, and I have already spent more time with this sorceress and her tabletop godlings than I would like.”
“You must,” the chevalier said. “The witch is essential. In fact, the plan is hers.”
* * *
Maltres Korinn wore the garment Alzbieta Torias provided him. It was a long linen tunic, almost dress-like in falling all the way to his knees. Beneath, he wore a knee-length pair of linen drawers, pulled tight with a linen cord.
Sherem wore a matching outfit, as did Alzbieta herself, and all eight of her former palanquin-bearers. These eleven, without much planning or discussion, had become the platoon of elite fasters and prayers.
They had discussed where to approach the goddess. The Sunrise Mound was an obvious candidate, as was the Temple of the Sun. Less obviously, Sir William offered a military escort if the prayer cadre wished to make their plea in the Basilica.
Finally, they had settled on the Sunrise Mound, for the same reasons for which it had been chosen as the site of burial for the city’s soldiers. Sarah had consecrated it, while the Temple of the Sun had been defiled by Calvin Calhoun’s killing of the poet Eërthes. The Temple of the Sun was visible all over Cahokia, but its height gave it a forbidding aspect. The Sunrise Mound was low, familiar, public…and surprisingly sacred.
Also, the graves were there at its side.
“What ceremony will you follow?” Cathy Filmer had asked.
“There is none,” Alzbieta had said, then blushed. “Or if there is, I don’t know it. We’ll offer the perfumes and incenses we know to offer at the goddess’s home on the Great Mound. We’ll light lamps with Her sacred oil. And we’ll pray.”
The morning was cold, the sun not yet up. If Alzbieta didn’t know an appropriate liturgy, she was improvising with great energy.
Korinn held a clay oil lamp, a simple thing such as his ancestors must have used in the Drowned Land thousands of years earlier. He stood within the apse beside the Serpent Throne; coiled, muscular, and sheathed in gold, the presence of the mighty chair made him uncomfortable, as it if were a beast that might unwind and attack at the slightest provocation.