by D. J. Butler
The two gendarmes removed their masks.
“I’ve introduced myself,” Etienne said. “You, sir, are Cold Heart Hollings.”
“Lieutenant Gerald Hollings,” the gendarme said. “I fought against Jackson. I shot him at least once myself.”
“While he was shooting back at you?” the first gendarme asked. “Or do you mean while you wandered the Place d’Armes, drunk, and he was already dead and harmless in his iron cage?”
“Do not mock me…” Hollings trailed off, flailing to remember a name.
“Eggbert Bailey,” the other man said.
“I don’t know the name Eggbert,” Etienne said. Bondí’s hand was close to a pistol he’d hidden behind the window shutters, but Etienne wanted to defuse the situation if he could. “It almost sounds English.”
“Might be Jamaican,” Eggbert said. His head matched his torso, enormous and solid, framed within a shock of tightly curled braids, and he seemed to wear a permanent confident grin. “I’ve got some of that in me. Some Igbo, too, maybe some Cherokee, who knows what else?”
“A good New Orleans Creole,” Bondí said. “Like me.”
Eggbert laughed. “We could be brothers.”
“My name is Alexandre Durand,” the third volunteered. He looked less cocksure than Bailey, but had a cheerful smile.
“My God,” Hollings said, “I know these men.”
“Of course you do.” Eggbert snorted. “Do you think you’re going to start a revolt with strangers?”
Hollings stood up. “No. But if I were ever to do anything of the sort—and I’m not saying I would, I’m only saying in theory—then I’d do it with men I honored. Men who honored me. Not naysayers and scoundrels.”
“Nobody has said anybody else here is a scoundrel,” Durand said. “You are overreacting, Hollings.”
“Yes,” Eggbert agreed. “You’re out of line, Hollings. Sit down.”
“I’m finished.” Hollings spun on his heel, as if to make for the door.
Eggbert caught his wrist. “I think you really want to consider that carefully, friend.”
“Unhand me,” Hollings said.
Eggbert released the other man, but didn’t move his hand far. “I’ve seen your face, and you’ve also seen mine. If you’re not with us, I can’t really let you leave here with the ability to speak.”
“The ability to…” Hollings’s face turned an ashen gray color. “You’re threatening me.”
“No,” Eggbert said. “I’m only explaining the logic of the situation. Monsieur Bondí has forced our hand. Either we all leave together, wanting nothing to do with this, and we go directly to the chevalier to tell him all the details, or we’re all in together.”
“I’m in,” Durand said.
“You see?” Eggbert said to Hollings. “Now you and I, either we kill Durand and leave here as loyal gendarmes of the chevalier, or we join him.”
Without a flash of warning, Hollings sprang around the table. He scooped up Etienne before Etienne could react, and pressed a cold knife blade to Etienne’s throat.
Bondí had his pistol in his hand, but he wasn’t a great shot, and Etienne wasn’t sure his accountant could hit the big gendarme without shooting Etienne.
“I’ve got another suggestion!” Hollings snarled. “For starters, I don’t like the fact that the two of you are still wearing your masks. It doesn’t show a lot of trust.”
“Easy, lad,” Eoin Kennedie said. “Ye don’t want to do this, I promise ye.”
“Take them off,” Hollings said coldly.
Suddenly, the knife blade disappeared from Etienne’s throat and went flying across the room. In the next instant, Hollings went spinning after it, screaming and clutching at his elbow, which had been smashed so forcefully it was bent backward. With the abrupt movement, Etienne stumbled, but Achebe was there to catch him.
Eggbert Bailey was nearly as fast as the Igbo wrestler. Springing to his feet, he pulled a long knife from his boot. As Hollings caught his balance and turned to face Etienne again, still screaming, Bailey knocked him against the wall with a shoulder and then sank the knife blade into his neck.
The scream cut off with a sudden gurgle and the blade sank all the way into the plaster of the wall. Hollings squirmed, but only for the two seconds it took Bailey to get a firm grip on his weapon’s handle and jerk the blade sideways, cutting Hollings’s head clean off.
Hollings collapsed in blood, his head bouncing and rolling across the room until it stopped at Durand’s chair, eyes and mouth gaping at the ceiling.
Durand turned and smiled at Etienne, still calm and cheerful. “You want a revolt. It seems you have your men.”
Eggbert stepped lightly across the room and switched his grip on his knife. Raising the blade, he stabbed Durand downward, through the other man’s clavicle and into his chest. The blade sank all the way up to the hilt; Durand opened his mouth and spewed purple blood in a fountain into his own lap.
Bondí pointed his pistol at Bailey, who raised his hands to show peaceful intention and stepped back. “The problem with Alexandre Durand,” he said, “is that the man was an informer. So you have to ask yourself, what does the chevalier know about this meeting already?”
“Very little,” Bondí said, speaking to Etienne, Onyinye, and Eoin. “I told him to expect a message. He was handed this address on a scrap of paper only an hour before arriving here.”
“An hour is a long time for determined men.” Bailey pointed to his weapon. “May I take my knife back?”
Etienne nodded. “But first, take this.” He tossed a purse to Bailey, who caught it and looked inside.
Bondí kept his pistol trained on Bailey.
“Revenue from your casino?” the gendarme asked.
Etienne shook his head. “That money is the gift of certain wealthy New Orleans families. The chevalier had suggested that a ransom would be necessary to procure the liberation of their loved ones. Since we freed their loved ones instead, the grateful families gave us the cash.”
Bailey laughed harshly. “Or more likely, gave you half what old Gaspard asked for. Good. This will help persuade men to join me, and buy weapons that can be stashed away from the chevalier’s official armories.”
Bondí relaxed his aim.
Eggbert extracted his weapon, wiped it clean on Durand’s sailor’s blouse, and then resheathed it. “We should meet again later. We should go our separate ways immediately, and watch for signs that we are followed.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” Onyinye asked.
Bondí looked shaken at the hotelier’s question, which was reasonable. But the implication was that two of the three men Bondí had chosen had already proved problematic.
“I fought in eighteen-ten,” Eggbert Bailey said. “But I didn’t fight for the chevalier. I fought for Jackson. I marched on those pirate Lafittes and their criminal militia with freedom and liberation in my heart. Many of Le Moyne’s gendarmes died, and in the hectic days after Jackson was killed, it was easy to claim I had been part of the New Orleans militia defending the city. A big man like me, who could fight? They’d have been crazy to turn me away. I said what I had to say and I did what I had to do. To survive.”
“Are ye some sort of Jackson revivalist?” Eoin asked. “Are ye hoping to make yourself King of the Mississippi?”
“No,” Etienne said. “He’s hoping to regain his honor.”
Eggbert Bailey smiled. “With all due respect, You Grace, you’re mistaken, too. I’m hoping to regain my soul.”
* * *
“Tell me what to do, General!”
Luman stayed low on the wall, conscious of the bullets that whizzed over its top as well as the cannonballs—slowly becoming more frequent—that slammed into its length.
Bill was haggard, his complexion gray even in the torchlight that should have left him looking orange. “Can you join the wizards in their effort?”
The Polites, family magicians, priestesses, and other high magicia
ns of Cahokia stood interspersed among Cahokia’s guns. Luman wasn’t sure he knew entirely what they were doing, but he thought that as Cahokians died—struck by musket- or cannonball, or falling off the wall, or for any other reason—the wizards were capturing the soul-energy that was released and preventing it from being sucked into the Sorcerer Hooke’s ring of black fire.
And maybe also using the energy to deflect bullets.
Luman held up open hands. “I’m not a gramarist. I don’t have the power or the flexibility to do what they do, weaving together spells out of thin air. I have spells I’ve memorized, to do specific things.”
“I don’t need a girl to fall in love with me today.” Bill squinted through his spyglass at the Imperial trenches. Dawn was still hours away, so what glints of light the Cavalier might be catching through his seeing tube, Luman couldn’t guess. “Or to find a lost object, or dig a well, or any such country wizard stuff. Can you heal?”
“I can help you see better,” Luman said. “Then I’ll join Mrs. Filmer.”
“Do that,” Bill said. “Only perhaps call her Cathy. She likes that better.”
A bullet plucked Bill’s sleeve to the side, neatly perforating his cuff on two sides.
“May I borrow the glass?” Luman asked.
Bill handed it over and turned, shouting at the Pitcher commander Zorales, fifty feet away. “No shots fired until you can kill a hell of a lot of them! When they come, I want to see bloody furrows!”
Zorales waved in acknowledgement.
Bill turned the other direction and bellowed at a woman with short hair dressed in Polite red. “Protect the cannons if you can, but above all, the wall must stand. As long as we can possibly manage it, the wall must stand!”
Strictly speaking, the powwow Luman was about to attempt was a remedy for poor eyesight. Also strictly speaking, he knew he should repeat the prayer and action over several days. Also, he should use running water.
But he had none of those luxuries.
“May I borrow a handful of water?” he asked the women sighting alongside the nearest cannon.
They dipped a wooden ladle into a bucket beside their gun—whether it was intended for use in cooling in cleaning the gun, or for the gunners to drink, Luman couldn’t tell—and handed him the ladle.
Please, God of Heaven, let this work. My intent is pure; I wish to save life; I have nothing else to gain by this but service to your creatures.
Trapping the spyglass under one arm, he washed the larger lens with his left hand five times. Each time, he repeated the same prayer:
“Wie dieses Salz wird vergehen; sollen meine Augen heller sehen; Christus ist der helfen kann; hiermit fangt der Seegen an.”
After each prayer, he dropped a pinch of salt from a bottle taken from a breast pocket of his coat and dissolved it into the water. After the fifth washing, he poured out the remaining water onto the Treewall. Then he handed the ladle back to the Pitchers and the glass to the Cavalier.
“You may not have the flexibility or power of the Polites,” Bill said, “but I’ll give you this: you have considerably more theatrical flair. I believe I might pay to watch you perform, in better circumstances.”
“Thank you,” Luman said. “I think.”
He carefully took seven steps backward, as required by the working, and then turned and walked toward the stairs. Ideally, he should now walk to his own home to complete the charm.
But where was his home now, anyway? Where had it ever been?
Cahokia didn’t have a Harvite convent. It did have an assortment of herbalists, cunning women, family healers, former ship’s surgeons, and volunteers, who were all organized under Cathy Filmer. Luman found Cathy in the gap between the Treewall and a dense block of residential mounds. She knelt over a man who lay with a twisted back. She was holding his hand and talking to him earnestly.
Gazelem Zomas stood at her shoulder.
“You may die, my friend,” Cathy said. “This is terrible news, and I am sorry. We’ll do everything we can, but the bad news is that our best wizards are occupied catching bullets and throwing them back at the enemy.”
The man with the twisted back wore the gray cloak and tunic of a Cahokian warden, over knee-high boots. He grinned, blood on his lips. “I hope they hit the bastards in the eye.”
“Your duty to your queen now,” Cathy continued gravely, “is to live absolutely as long as you can. We’ll try our best to heal you. We’ll try our best to dull your pain. You focus on living.”
Gazelem knelt beside the broken man. “This won’t heal you, but it will help with the pain.” He tilted a metal flask to the man’s lips and poured several drops of some liquid into the man’s mouth.
Luman recognized the smell of laudanum.
“Our best wizards are on the wall,” Luman said. “However, we do have a few completely mediocre wizards down here among the injured. Let me see what I can do.”
* * *
To Bill’s surprise, the hedge wizard’s abracadabra over the spyglass worked. Looking through it, despite the darkness that reigned more than an hour before the dawn, he saw Robert Hooke. Hooke stood well behind the Imperial trench, immobile and staring. The unnatural posture made Bill uncomfortable—what was Hooke doing?
Was it possible that Cahokia’s magicians were failing, and that the energy of the city’s deaths was, in fact, being stolen by Hooke and his spell?
Bill examined the throbbing wall of black fire and found himself uncomfortably unable to pronounce one way or the other on the subject.
Following the line of the wall of fire, his eye fell on a boy, or maybe a short young man. He might be Sarah’s age. Despite the cold, he stood naked in the snow.
“Another cannon has joined the shooting.” This observation came from Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana, who stood at Bill’s side.
Bill listened, and then nodded stiffly. “We earned damnably little time with our sacrifices.”
“Was there ever a loss in war that did not earn a damnably small return?” Montse’s smile was rueful.
“I knew you for a hellcat and an adventuress,” Bill said. “It was even money at Hannah’s court whether you would wind up conquering and then dominating some Elector husband, or become openly acknowledged as Hannah’s lover.”
Montse’s response was gentle and quiet. “When you say openly acknowledged, you assume far too much.”
“I do.” Movement in the corner of Bill’s field of vision caught his attention, and he followed it. Something was happening in the trench. “I also presume too much. Your relationship with the Empress, or with the Imperial Consort, is none of my affair. If you will forgive the turn of phrase.”
“I don’t think I will forgive it,” Montse said. “You are saying things about my Empress that should not be spoken.”
“Because they’re not true?”
“Because they should not be spoken. What makes you so envious, Captain Lee? That I had a relationship with Hanna so close as to inspire such rumors? Or that you did not have such a relationship with Kyres?”
“I am not…I am not the sort of man.” Bill felt discomfited. “Hell’s Bells.”
“Yes,” Montse agreed. “Hell’s Bells. I think they will toll today.”
“Not for our queen.” Bill clenched his jaw.
“For many of us, I am sure. May they not toll for Sarah.” Montse looked abruptly sad. “Or Margarida.”
“Or Nathaniel.” Bill looked at the angular, copper-haired Catalan woman, as if remembering for the first time that she had saved Sarah’s sister, as Bill had saved her brother.
“No one at court would have wagered on my becoming a smuggler. Curious, in that it is my family business. The Quintanas, at least. The Ferrers own land—it’s from them I have a castle.”
“You have a castle?” Bill whistled. Something was definitely moving inside the ditch, clambering to get out. “I don’t think the ballroom crowd of Philadelphia knows the Quintanas.”
“No doubt the Quin
tanas prefer it that way. Though they are well known in Louisiana and in New Spain. I have had three uncles hanged by Spanish alcaldes.”
“After your uncles killed how many Spaniards?”
“Considerably more than three. Though I think my uncles’ downfall was due more to the robbery, smuggling, counterfeiting, and theft than the mere killing of a few soldiers and revenue men. Even under the Bourbons, Spain and New Spain have many, many sons to sow into the ground, hoping to find they can grow an empire.”
“It is a grim business.” Bill sighed. “Is it more grim than what you and I do?”
“Yes,” Montse said.
“Why do you fight, then?” he asked her. “And smuggle, and rob, if not to build your own kind of empire? Surely you, too, have thrown the corpses of customs officers into bayous full of gators, or taken the lives of gendarmes who came too close to finding you.”
“Bread and gold are far too easy to come by, for a person of enterprise,” Montse said. “I fight for love.”
“Love?”
Montse nodded. “I always have. I always will. It won’t guarantee that I make no mistakes, but if I kill a man who didn’t deserve it, it wasn’t so I could eat basilisk etouffé or wear a new silk blouse. It was because I was trying to protect the ones close to me.”
“Did your uncles teach you that?”
“My mother and my father. She was Mireia Quintana, born and bred outside the law, and she was a holy terror in the dance halls and customs booths of Louisiana as a young woman. Her family’s home was in the bayous and aboard small ships without names. Then she married Jaume Ferrer, a landed gentleman, a farmer and a scholar, a man who was an advocate and had a career in politics. It was said in his time that Jaume Ferrer spoke every language of the Empire, and as many languages again as were not at home in the New World. In his day, he was expected to be elected to the City Council of New Orleans, though his family lands were closer to Ferdinandia. For his sake, Mireia Quintana swore off the family trade. She loved him more than she loved wealth and fame.”
“That’s very bucolic.” Bill saw men begin to march out of the Imperial trench and, if he wasn’t mistaken, still another cannon joined the firing. “One moment.” He yelled to Jaleta Zorales. “Infantry approaching! Hold your fire until you can shoot into the mass of them!” They just didn’t have that much powder and shot.