by D. J. Butler
He sat at the edge of the pond and thought, while Wilkes sang through the Elector Songs for the Imperial Towns, the Free Cities of the Igbo, and then the Algonks.
Finally, he resolved on a course of action. To call it a plan would be too much—he had an intuition about how he might help Jake.
Taking his friend’s hand, he tried to drag Jake out of the water. Jake wouldn’t budge.
Nathaniel played his drum and sang:
I ride upon four horses, at the water’s side
To free my friend of memories, lodged deep inside
My horses are as strong as heaven is wide
To save my true companion, through heaven I ride
Leaping atop the horses as they appeared, he grabbed Jake’s arm and tried to drag the Dutchman’s spirit with him. He nearly yanked his own arm out of its socket. Again, Jake wouldn’t move.
Time to try something more drastic.
Nathaniel rode his horses a short distance away, to the shore of the pond, and then rode them directly at Jake, trampling the Dutchman. As the foremost horse’s hoof struck him, Jake split open.
What erupted out of Jake was full of fire and noise and blood. Nathaniel and his horses tumbled into the pond, the cool water sheltering him slightly from the sudden hot wind that blasted across the plain. Smoke billowed from Jake’s body and the screams of a multitude of sufferers exploded from his lips. Stone pyramids exploded upward. Jake’s body had become a world, and it was a world in pain.
Above it all, laughing and shrieking, loomed a giant with the head of a crested bird.
“Jake!” Nathaniel yelled. “Jake, this is not real! It’s only in your heart!”
But is that true? What is real? Are only physical, tangible things real, after all?
Jake thrashed in the pond, sucking in water as if the water could douse the fire that burned in him. The giant tore the heart from Jake and ate it, tore out his entrails and bound him with them, shattered his bones, tore out his heart again.
The giant was Jake, with a crest of feathers.
“Jake!”
But the Dutchman didn’t hear.
Nathaniel scrambled onto his horses. He needed to reach Jake, but how?
He drummed his fingers against the horses and sang:
I ride upon four horses, my friend is near
He cannot hear me calling, he rolls in fear
To touch his broken heart, I must catch his ear
I ride upon four horses, Jake, help is here
Nathaniel slapped his own head, opposite the side into which the four ogres in the Pit of the Sky had inserted a quartz acorn, when they had torn Nathaniel apart and then rebuilt him. That acorn now popped out of Nathaniel’s head and fell into his palm.
Order disappeared from the universe. The stars overhead whirled at ten times the speed they should. The blades of grass around Nathaniel whipped like tigers’ tails. Frenzied for blood, the pond began to boil.
Nathaniel raced again toward Jake. Holding the acorn in his fist, he leaned down in the saddle—
the giant grabbed for him, but he swerved aside—
then swung low and slammed the acorn into the side of Jake’s head.
The giant whirled and swung at Nathaniel again. This time his enormous fists connected, and Nathaniel and his horses went tumbling across the frenetic grass. The giant stretched his arms, reared back, and laughed a laugh like an earthquake.
Jake still thrashed in the pond.
“Jake!” Nathaniel cried.
This time, Jake looked at him.
“Jake! That’s not real!”
“It’s in me!” Jake’s eyes were wide.
“But it’s only fear! Get rid of the fear!”
“Where can I put it!”
“Throw it away!” Nathaniel scrambled back onto his horses. They were uncomplaining beasts, being some combination of a drum and the ghosts of dead animals and Nathaniel’s own will.
Jake lurched to his feet. He burst his own entrails standing, and the cavity of his chest gaped wide as he tried to stagger away from the gigantic Heron King. The monster leaped after him, flames jetting from eyes and beak and crest. In the flames Nathaniel saw hidden echoes of Jake’s own face.
The Heron King seized Jake in his grip.
“Drop him!” Nathaniel galloped to his friend’s rescue. Fire fell from the sky all around him. Blood and shrieking sprang from the soil with each touch of his horse’s hooves.
Jake threw something into the tall grass.
Nathaniel kicked his horse’s flanks and leaped directly at the giant. They collided, a blow that knocked all the air out of Nathaniel’s body and filled his mind with fire and fear. But it also knocked the Heron King back. Jake dropped onto Nathaniel’s horses.
Nathaniel splashed back onto the whipping grass on the far side of the pond.
“I’ve made a place!” Jake shouted into Nathaniel’s ear. Nathaniel barely heard him over the shrieks of pain and the crackle of the world on fire. “We’ll throw him into it!”
Nathaniel kicked his horses forward again, shouting without words. He veered left, then left again, then leaped directly at the giant—
feather-covered arms wrapped around him, Jake, and the horses, and squeezed—
Nathaniel heard himself screaming in pain—
ahead of him, looming in the grass, he saw a blond boy with an oversized sword—
all of them crashed together into the boy—
and then Jake and Nathaniel alone tumbled in the grass on the other side, as Nathaniel’s horses galloped away.
Grunting in pain, Nathaniel dragged himself to his feet. He gingerly gave Jake a hand, then reached up to pluck the quartz from Jake’s ear and return it to his own.
The grass stopped moving. The stars slowed. The fire and screaming were gone.
There was no sign of the feathered giant.
“What happened?” Nathaniel asked.
Jake stooped and picked up something from the ground to show to Nathaniel. It was a single Tarock, the card for Simon Sword. Behind the blond, sword-wielding boy who customarily represented Simon Sword, Nathaniel saw within the card a bird-headed giant. “I put Simon Sword into the Tarock.”
Nathaniel sighed. “You mean, you put your memories of him into the Tarock. Your memories of being him. The things he left behind in your soul after he vacated your body.”
Jake seemed to think about that. “Ja, that’s what I mean. Ambroos is not going to be very happy when I tell him the Tarocks worked when he and all his Deacons couldn’t do anything.”
“Maybe don’t tell him,” Nathaniel suggested.
There was an awkward silence.
“I think I’m dead,” Jake said.
“Yes,” Nathaniel agreed. “But Sarah needs your help.”
“I have nothing else to do.” Jake grinned. “What does she need?”
“Wait a minute,” Nathaniel said. “There’s someone else. Come with me.”
They walked along the edge of the pond and upstream, until they came to Isaiah Wilkes. The man had stopped singing. He looked at the two of them with wide-open eyes.
“Who are you?” Wilkes asked.
“My name is Nathaniel. I’m a healer.”
“What did you just do with Simon Sword?”
“Unfortunately, that wasn’t really Simon Sword. It was more a shadow. Not really memories of him, but his memories, trapped inside someone else.”
“Trapped inside me,” Jake said.
Wilkes’s eyes narrowed. “I think I’ve heard of you. You met a friend of mine.”
“I’ve met a lot of people.”
“You would have known her as a tongueless Choctaw whore.”
Jake smiled. “Who visited the prison hulks of the Chevalier of New Orleans? I remember her well.”
“You gave her a coin.”
Jake shrugged. “Simon Sword gave her a coin, but he was inside my body at the time.”
“We need your help,” Nathaniel said to Wilkes.
> “What with?” Wilkes asked. “I’m dead. And even if it was only a shadow you were dealing with, I saw what you just did. I couldn’t have done it.”
“You’re an actor, right?” Nathaniel asked. “You do the Philadelphia Mystery Plays?”
“And other plays,” Wilkes said.
“And you’re the head of a conspiracy that exists to stop Simon Sword’s reappearance in the world,” Jake added.
“I would say a senior figure of an esoteric coalition,” Wilkes said. “Yes.”
“My sister is Sarah Elytharias Penn,” Nathaniel said. “She has taken the throne of Cahokia, and she is besieged there by both the Emperor and the Heron King. She is attempting to reconstruct the enthronement ritual of the Mother of All Living, because she believes that if she can ascend the throne, that will give her the power she needs to defeat her enemies. She needs help with the reconstruction. She also needs two people who…have ears to hear…to participate in the liturgy as guides. I think, on both counts, you two are the best help I can possibly find her.”
Isaiah Wilkes nodded. “I’ll do it, on one condition.”
Nathaniel smiled. “I think you’ll do it anyway, because we want the same thing. But tell me what your condition is.”
“That afterward, you check on my friend. Her name is Kinta Jane Embry. If she’s alive, she’s headed north to Montreal.”
Nathaniel nodded. “Agreed. Now, let’s look at those Tarocks.”
* * *
At Logan Rupp’s suggestion, Calvin booked seats for the two of them and Olanthes Kuta on an Imperial mail coach. “We’ll make fifty miles a day, riding on stone-paved Imperial pikes all the way. It’ll take us twice as long if we ride our own horses. With the snow, four times as long on some other road.”
Cal objected that he felt uncomfortable in the presence of Imperial officers, even if they were just carrying the post.
“You think too much of yourself,” Rupp said. “No one knows who you are.”
“Yet.” Olanthes smiled. The expression made the scar on his face turn white.
Rupp shrugged. “Fine, yet. This is why you’re going, and not the Elector. If he tried to ride the mails, he’d be noticed for sure. If Thomas Penn has given instructions to stop any person from coming up from Nashville, it’s Andrew Calhoun.”
The three men sat bundled in an Imperial mail coach, Cal and Rupp watching the white-cloaked mountains rattle past through fogged glass windows. Olanthes mostly slept. They rode through Knoxville, past the turnoff to Asheville, and through Blacksburg, all Free Imperial Towns. In each city, Cal huddled down inside his gray coat and tried to look inconspicuous.
“Stop it,” Rupp muttered to him as they climbed back into the coach, shaking Blacksburg snow off their boots.
“Stop what?”
“Stop looking guilty. You carry an Elector’s proxy, and you’re going into the Electoral Assembly to make a formal motion. You can’t do that skulking like a thief.”
Cal’s laugh was dry and short. “I reckon mebbe I’m a cattle rustler, after all.”
“Well, that just makes you Hermes, doesn’t it?”
“I know my Bible pretty well,” Cal said. “Can’t say as I remember a feller named Hermes.”
“He’s not in the Bible,” Olanthes said. “He was a Greek god.”
“He was a messenger.” Rupp smiled cheerfully, the cold and the sips of brandy with which he was warming himself every half hour gave a rosy glow to his cheeks. “So that’s you. As a baby, he got up out of his crib and stole a herd of cows belonging to his brother Apollo.”
“Alright, I reckon there’s a passing resemblance,” Cal allowed.
“You’ll like this, wait.” The coach rattled on. “He walked the cattle out of their pasture backward. That way, it would look like someone else had driven a second herd into the same pasture as Apollo’s cattle, and that both herds had somehow disappeared.”
“Lord hates a man as tells a fib, counselor,” Cal said. “Everyone knows you can’t git a cow to walk backward, not for love or money. Even the Lightning Bishop wouldn’t tell a tall tale like that one.”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?” Rupp glared.
Cal shrugged. “It’s a long way to Philadelphia. I reckon I might as well.”
“Apollo figured out the trick,” Rupp said. “By the time he had found his brother and the herd, though, young Hermes had killed two of the cows and converted their guts and bones into the first lyre. That’s a bit like a banjo—it’s a musical instrument.”
“More like a harp,” Cal said.
“Oh, yes. Well, Apollo was so fascinated by the lyre that he agreed to let Hermes keep the cows if he’d give Apollo the instrument.”
“More fool Apollo.” Cal felt sour. He wasn’t sure what the lawyer was going to do to help him on this trip, but he had definitely been manipulated into bringing the man along. He didn’t trust him, either, not after he learned all the business about his bankruptcy. “He could have taken back ninety-eight cows, slaughtered two, and made his own lyre. Would have still had ninety-six cows, then.”
“Not everyone is as confident in his ability to make things as you are,” Rupp said.
“See, now you got me wrong all o’er the place. Yeah, I rustled cattle. But I ain’t some woodcarver, that’s my grandpa. I’m a trader and a tracker. I can fight and I can find my way jest about anywhere. I seen my share of strange things and I ain’t afraid to stand up and tell the truth, when tellin’ the truth is what’s necessary. But I ain’t a harp-maker and I ain’t a harp player and I ain’t a messenger, except by accident. I reckon iffen Andy felt confident he could trust you entirely, Huber—or Rupp, or whatever your name is—then you’d be here alone and I’d be up in the high valleys, keepin’ an eye out for Donelsens with a hankerin’ for beef.”
The lawyer was stiff and silent for a moment. The postal carriers sat atop the carriage, wrapped in furs and watching for outlaws the Foresters didn’t manage to deal with. Cal, Rupp, and Olanthes were alone with canvas bags full of mail.
“I understand that the Elector was surprised to learn of my prior life,” the lawyer said slowly. “My name is Rupp. And given the time that has passed, and the Elector’s letter, I intend to be called Rupp in public in Philadelphia. So please, let’s get used to that now.”
“Fine,” Cal agreed. “Rupp.”
“And I don’t believe that the Elector mistrusts me. I don’t think he’d have sent me along at all if he didn’t trust me really well. I think if he thought I’d betray you or fail you, he’d have had me thrown off the top of Calhoun Mountain without a second thought.”
Cal laughed. “Mebbe.”
“I admit to ambition. I admit to wanting to get back to Philadelphia and, Calvin, I did try to outmaneuver you. But I thought you were just an errand boy, one of the Elector’s many kin who didn’t know how to do more than take orders. I thought I’d serve the Elector better than you could.”
“You thought I was Hermes,” Cal said. “Jest a messenger.”
“Touché,” Rupp said. “I apologize for the story and I retract it entirely. Calvin, you’re your own man and I respect you.”
“You shouldn’t ought to overestimate my kin, though,” Cal said. “Most of ’em don’t know how to take orders.”
“Let’s be allies, Calvin.” Rupp smiled broadly and stuck out a hand.
Cal took it, trying not to show the wariness he felt.
“While we’re all agreeing to be allies,” Olanthes said, “can you tell me the plan?”
“I’m sorry,” Cal said. “I thought the Elector—”
“He told me he was sending all the men he could to Cahokia.” Olanthes was very pale. Cal wasn’t sure whether that was just his complexion, or because of his recent tangle with death. “I said I’d return with them, and he asked me to go with you to Philadelphia as a witness instead.”
“I’m gonna need your testimony about the siege of Cahokia,” Cal said. “I ain
’t seen that part with my own eyes.”
“Are we going to try to get the Electoral Assembly to end the Pacification of the Ohio?”
Rupp laughed. “That sounds like a good idea. We’re going to attempt something much less prudent.”
Olanthes’s face showed mild surprise. “What’s that?”
“We’re going to try to get Electors to vote to impeach the Emperor,” Cal said, “and then remove him from office.”
Rupp positively cackled and began to count grounds off on his fingers. “One, conspiring to murder Kyres Elytharias, an Elector. Two, conspiring to keep that crime secret, including by paying blackmail with funds raised from Imperial taxes. Three, contriving a war against Kyres’s daughter Sarah, in order further to conceal his crime and its consequences. Four, the sequestering on false grounds of his sister, at the time the Penn Landholder as well as an Elector. Five, her murder. Six, the Pacification of the Ohio and specifically the siege of Cahokia. Of course, we may allege fewer formal grounds—easier to prove—but the Electors will be considering all of these.”
“How does this work?” Olanthes asked. “I barely know my Elector Songs, much less the technical details of the Compact. Is there some list of deeds for which the Emperor can be removed from office?”
“I wish it were that simple,” Cal said glumly, and returned to staring out the window.
“Simple, no,” Rupp said. “But it will be exciting!”
“It is a grim business.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A few miles north of the city, in a thick stand of pine trees, Mesh brought Kinta Jane and Dockery to his camp. The first sign Kinta Jane noticed of the camp was a deep growling sound.
“Chak! ’Uutz!” Mesh snapped, but the growling only increased.
“I apologize for my dogs,” the giant said. “I live a lonely sort of life, despicable person of no social standing that I am, and they keep me company. Like me, they’re not civilized. At least, not by your standards.”
“I’m from New Orleans,” Kinta Jane said. “My standards as to what’s civilized might surprise you.”
She walked forward toward the camp, pushing through snow up to her knees.