by D. J. Butler
Instead, he just took a step back to recover his balance.
Roar!
Margarida grabbed the empty chair. It was nailed to the floor but she yanked it free with no effort, then swung it at the old man’s shoulder. The chair came apart in a cloud of dust and splinters, but Franklin only staggered slightly from the force of the blow.
Then he stabbed Margarida.
The split second of surprise she felt at the sensation of her skin being pierced was immediately followed by a much larger pain. The knife Franklin Temple held in his hand was tiny, but it felt like a lance. He stabbed her in her side, but she felt completely impaled and transfixed.
Someone was screaming.
It was her, she realized.
She dropped to her knees, sliding off his blade. Throughout her body, her blood pulsated. She felt poisoned; she felt suddenly slowed.
The dull glint of the blade in Franklin’s hand wasn’t steel, but silver.
“I admit, I’ve never seen anyone quite like you,” Franklin said. “But this is not the first time I’ve had to tangle with an Ophidian.”
His coat. His coat must be enchanted. It had been stopping her blows.
She had lost feeling in her hair. As much as the silver blade had hurt, the other thing it had done was take her out of her combat rage.
“I still want to take you to Thomas alive,” Franklin said. “Are you ready to cooperate?”
Suddenly, Nathaniel was standing behind the old man. He looked ridiculous with his backward hat, his drum over his shoulder, and his purple coat inside out. But he reached around Franklin from behind, grabbed both lapels of his coat, and jerked them back and down—
exposing Franklin’s chest, and pinning his arms to his side.
Franklin shook his head as if he was mildly inconvenienced.
Margarida’s strength was gone, but she picked up a leg of the broken chair and stood.
Franklin struggled, but couldn’t get free of Nathaniel’s grip. The old man’s facial expression grew suddenly alarmed. “You won’t get past the crew!”
She pummeled him in the face. Her arm was weak, but the blow felt good, so she did it again.
And again. And again.
He dropped the knife. His nose split and blood spattered over the floor.
Margarida picked up the blade. Its handle was silver, the mere touch annoyed the skin of her fingers, but she gripped the weapon firmly and stabbed the Emperor’s man through the fabric of his coat.
A blinding flash of light sent her reeling back, and she dropped the blade. Nathaniel fell back as well, dropping Franklin heavily to the floor.
The old man lay still.
“Jake!” Margarida gasped.
Nathaniel leaned over the Dutchman to lay a finger along his neck. “He’s dead.” He frowned, but it was the frown of someone with a problem to solve, rather than a frown of mourning or loss.
“I can’t carry him.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “The body doesn’t matter.”
“My strength is gone,” she whispered.
“They don’t know that.” He grinned. “Look angry.”
He picked up Temple Franklin’s pistols and cocked them.
“Those are empty,” she whispered.
“They don’t know that, either,” he whispered back. “But we have to take advantage of the surprise and go right now.”
There were sailors with clubs belowdecks, but Nathaniel snarled at them. Margarida brandished a chair leg in each hand and made barking noises in the back of her throat. They climbed the ladder unmolested and found the Dutch ship captain waiting for them on deck. He stood with his back stiffly arced, and behind him lurked two officers. They held pistols, but pointed them at the deck. Around the ship, sailors were armed with boathooks, cutlasses, knives, or clubs, but they held back.
And eyed Margarida nervously.
“We don’t want trouble,” the captain said.
“No,” Nathaniel agreed. “You want the Emperor’s guilty money, and you’re happy to kidnap innocent people to get it.”
“Life is complicated,” the Dutchman said.
She tried not to be distracted by it, but there was shoreline visible in the east. Margarida didn’t recognize it, but she saw silver strands of beach and gray forest jumbled under white snow.
“Let me simplify it for you,” Nathaniel said. “You let us down in a boat, right now, or she’ll tear the masts right out of this ship and send it to the bottom.”
Margarida hunched her shoulders and took half a step toward the captain. She growled low in her throat.
“That is simple,” the Dutchman agreed. “You can have a boat.”
Margarida continued her pantomime of rage while the ship’s crew quickly lowered a boat. Then she and her brother scrambled down the sides of the ship.
Settling onto the benches, Nathaniel said, “I’ll row.”
“I’ll row,” Margarida told him. “I know how to do it.”
Nathaniel laughed softly, and sat facing the Dutch ship as Margarida worked the oars and they pulled away. He held the empty pistols with their butts on his lap and their open mouths pointed up at the ship.
If at any point, the Dutchmen decided to start shooting, Margarida and Nathaniel were doomed.
But whether it was out of fatigue, disinterest, or fear, the sailors watched them go and did nothing.
Having had many years of practice, Margarida had the knack of rowing with her legs and back. This spared her arms and shoulders, and very quickly sent the wooden boat skidding toward the beach.
“This is much better than the last time I escaped a ship,” she said.
“You mean, in some smuggler adventure you once had?”
“I mean, when I discovered the chevalier had sent me from New Orleans to prevent my rescue. That time, I did tear the mast out of the ship.”
Nathaniel stared.
“It was a small ship. Tearing out the mast sank it, and then the next thing I remember, I was talking to you and Jake.”
They arrived at the beach and stepped into the freezing surf. Out of habit, Margarida dragged the boat up the beach and out of the reach of high tide. “Where are we?” she asked.
“I think this is Pennsland,” Nathaniel said. “Franklin must have been taking us to Philadelphia. A little farther south, and I think we’d have turned north and west into the Delaware Bay and then the Delaware River.”
“These are our trees.” She smiled at her brother.
“Or Sarah’s, maybe? I’m not sure what Pennsland law says. Or the terms of the grant.” Nathaniel shrugged.
“I’m sorry about Jake,” she said.
They trudged into the trees.
“So am I,” Nathaniel said. “We need to find somewhere warm and dry and safe. So I can talk to him.”
“Did I hear you right?” Margarida stopped walking and looked back at the Dutch ship. It had resumed its course southward. “You want to talk to Jake?”
Nathaniel nodded. “He had something to tell Sarah. Sarah wants to hear it, because…well, because she thinks Jake has figured out something that will help Sarah ascend the Serpent Throne. Something our father never did. And obviously, I’m the only one who can connect them.”
“What do you mean, ‘obviously’?” Margarida felt concerned. “Are you some kind of necromancer?”
Nathaniel laughed. “No, I’m not. Only in what I do…it seems that there’s a fine line between the living and the dead. Or maybe the line isn’t what it appears to be to mortals. But you make an interesting point. Cromwell might be able to do it, too, I suppose. Though I don’t think he’d want to.”
Margarida sighed and resumed walking. “Family was so much simpler when it was just me and my tia.”
“Onandagos’s staff was carved of this same sacred wood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After sunset, the booming of the cannons grew louder and the shuddering of the Treewall with every impact was greater.<
br />
Cathy followed the Polite Sherem into a residential mound not far from the eastern wall of the city. At a knock, they were admitted into a room lit by few candles and ripe with the scent of children of Adam.
He hadn’t invited her to follow him, but once she’d realized what he was planning, she had begun, and he hadn’t stopped her.
“Don’t do this,” she’d said to him in the street.
“How great is my witness,” he’d mused in response, “if I’m not willing to die for it?”
“To die is one thing. To kill one’s self is another.”
“Didn’t St. William Harvey write in his Exercitationes that it is acceptable to kill when mercy requires it?”
“Yes, he did.”
“I read that he even attempted self-slaughter at one point, using an overdose of the Paracelsian Tincture.”
“He suffered from disease,” Cathy said. “He was in great pain. You are whole.”
“My city and my people are not whole.” Sherem shrugged. “And I am driven by the requirements of mercy. I have given my charms, my tools of gramarye to those who may still use them. Today I will give more. Today my testimony will be sealed with my blood, my commitment to the goddess and Her city will be written on the face of the land itself, and my people will be saved.”
“Will gain respite,” Cathy said. “For perhaps a day.”
“In a day, Queen Sarah may have returned and ascended the Serpent Throne. In a day, the longships of Chicago or the long rifles of Appalachee may have arrived. And if the city falls in one day, then I have given all the goddess’s children here another day of glorious life.”
“Dammit,” Cathy grumbled, “that’s the logic of a fanatic.”
“Of a committed man. And I’m not alone. You can’t stop us. We’re going to save you in spite of yourself.”
So she had followed.
Now she pushed through the crowd into what must ordinarily have been a living room, but the furnishings had all been removed. A circle of women and men stood around the edges of the chamber. Within the circle, sitting on the floor cross-legged, was a second ring.
Cathy realized she’d seen the standing circle before—they were the wizards with whom Sarah had mounted her attack on Robert Hooke’s wall of black flame. The attack that had failed.
Sherem pushed through the wizards and took his place at the last vacancy of those seated cross-legged.
“Don’t do this.”
The voice shocked Cathy; it belonged to Zadok Tarami.
Zadok stood on the far side of the room, behind standing wizards. He pushed forward slightly to become more visible, without penetrating either ring of people. The Metropolitan looked exhausted.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The words were spoken by a thin man who stood in the ring of magicians. His shoulders hunched forward, which gave him the appearance of a feeding animal, and his large eyes seemed to glow in the dim light.
“Josiah,” Zadok said. “You will be excommunicated for this. You’ve already been stripped of your priesthood.”
“Your messengers reached me.” The man shrugged. “Every saint is seen first as a heretic.”
Zadok snorted. “St. Josiah Dazarin, is that it?”
Josiah shook his head anxiously. “St. Jock of Cripplegate. But if in my humble way I can help bring forth St. Jock’s miracles, then I will be grateful to have had a ministry.”
“St. Jock will perform the miracle of self-murder?”
“St. Jock will save this people. Greater love hath no man.”
“You pervert the word of God,” Tarami said.
Sherem shook his head. “I find that I can’t tell where the word of God stops and the word of man begins.”
Zadok turned his attention back to the Polite. “I can tell.”
“Lucky you.” Sherem laughed, unexpectedly. “And yet, luckier me.”
“I baptized you,” Zadok said. “I saw the joy in your parents’ eyes when you were born again unto Christ. Don’t do this thing.”
“And I shall see joy again in their faces,” Sherem answered. “Soon.”
“In death you escape nothing,” Zadok said. “In death you will have to face the consequences of all your sins, including the self-slaughter you now perpetrate.”
Sherem ignored his words. “Lucky me, for I have stood on the goddess’s holy hill. I bear you this witness, Zadok Tarami. There was an Eden that fell, but there is an Eden that is eternal. I have breathed its scented air and heard the buzzing of its bees.”
The Metropolitan’s face looked sunken under the weight of grief. He said nothing.
“There is a goddess there who knows you as Her child, and who waits eagerly for your return.” Sherem looked shockingly serene; Cathy found her own breath coming in ragged gasps, as if she were fighting back tears. “And I offer you this blessing, Zadok Tarami, if I have any blessing to give. A blessing for you, and also for all this people: you, Zadok, will witness what I have witnessed. You will see the spring and the tree that are forever, and you shall have eternal life.”
“If you are determined,” Zadok said slowly, “then let me give you one final blessing.”
“Gladly,” Sherem said.
“God forgive you.”
The two men locked eyes for long moments, and finally the Metropolitan of Cahokia nodded. He ignored Josiah Dazarin entirely. Stepping back, he sank into the crowd.
Four others stepped forward, into the center of the two rings. One was Yedera, the oathbound Podebradan, but Cathy didn’t know the others. In total, two women and two men. They all wore armor of no particular consistency. Each carried a sword unsheathed, and each was festooned with pistols and powder horns.
“We are ready,” Yedera said.
One of the standing ring-members was a woman with short gray hair and sleepy eyes. She held out her hand, and each of the four warriors unbuckled their sword belt and handed belt and scabbard over to the woman.
The woman kept one of the scabbards herself and passed the others to her left around the circle. They passed from hand to hand and when they came to rest, they were held at four equidistant points around the circle.
Then the standing outer circle—comprised of wizards, Cathy now saw—joined hands. Those holding a sword belt looped it over their own hand and the hand of a neighbor, so that the belts and scabbards became part of the ring of magicians. Then they chanted.
Cathy didn’t know the words, but she felt them resonate deep inside her chest.
Yedera and her three warrior companions—were they all Podebradan Daughters?—bowed deeply. Then they left. The wizards didn’t break their circle, raising their arms to permit the warriors to pass beneath.
“I have written a song.” Josiah looked at Zadok Tarami as he spoke. “Or, if it isn’t too impudent to say it, a hymn. I hoped you would all sing it with me while the warriors travel to their positions.”
There was a murmur of approval, and Josiah began to sing. At the end of each line he stopped, so the others in the room could echo his lyric and melody. Sherem’s voice was the loudest in the chorus. Cathy found herself singing along.
Every man a murderer
Every man a thief
Every man a malefactor
In need of sweet relief
Poor St. Jock of Cripplegate
Hear my words I pray
And bear my soul to Eden fair
A sacrifice this day
It wasn’t long, and its melody could have come from any New Light hymnal, but music and words together were effective. Cathy desperately wished she could walk out of the mound, because she knew what was coming and she didn’t want to see it.
But she owed it to Sherem to stay.
“It is time,” the short-haired woman said. She and her fellow gramarists began chanting again. The words must be Ophidian, but whatever they were, the sounds were guttural and brutish.
In the background, someone took up She
rem’s hymn again and the crowd joined.
“This is my witness!” Sherem cried. “As I live, She lives! As She lives forever, I shall live forever, in the Eden that cannot be destroyed!”
Cathy never saw the knife, but suddenly Sherem’s wrists both bled from long, deep gashes. He rolled his head back and opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. “St. Jock!” he cried. “Take my gift, and let my people live!”
The others sitting on the floor were bleeding, too.
Cathy half-expected the blood the fly through the air, into the circle of magicians or perhaps into the scabbards they held. That didn’t happen; the blood poured onto the floor. But as the blood flowed, as the willing sacrifices grew paler and paler, and one by one toppled to the floor, the wizards’ chant grew louder, faster, and more rhythmic.
Cathy wished she had Sarah’s gifts. What would the Beloved of the goddess see here? Light flowing around the room? Light flowing from the dying into the circle of wizards and then along an unseen line toward Yedera and her squad?
Sherem the Polite fell over last of all the sacrifices to St. Jock of Cripplegate. He landed facing Cathy, with a smile on his face. On striking the floor, air was forced from his lungs; Cathy thought his last word sounded like “Sarah.”
Zadok Tarami sobbed.
* * *
Director Notwithstanding Schmidt posted herself near one of General Sayle’s long guns. The inscription around the gun’s mouth—she had looked before the firing began and the sun set—read: Let us also go, that we may die with him. Did that make the gun Thomas? Or Philip?
She stood near the gun, near Sayle, to observe. The Yankee artillery commander sat still astride his horse now with shoulders thrust back, hands on his hips, and a riding crop in one hand, staring at the Treewall. From time to time, he shouted orders to his men to adjust their aim or rate of fire. The artillerists sang sea shanties to time their work together, punctuating the verses of “Oh, Shenandoah” and “Drunken Sailor” with the explosive firing of the Apostles.
Reason suggested that, under the relentless salvo Sayle had begun pouring against the walls of Cahokia, the city couldn’t last long. Schmidt didn’t want the walls to fall while she slept. She would participate in the Emperor’s victory, if only by being awake and watching.