by D. J. Butler
“Eggbert Bailey!” Etienne cried. The four gendarmes all looked quickly at him, then looked away, as if uncomfortable. “I’m the Bishop of New Orleans!” Etienne snapped. When that also failed to produce a response, he elaborated. “I am no friend to the chevalier. When you see Eggbert Bailey, please tell him that Bishop Ukwu is requisitioning the Palais. Invite him to please send refugees there.”
The gendarmes stared in astonishment, then faintly nodded their heads, as if barely comprehending.
Etienne led his two men to the Palais. It was located north and west of the Vieux Carré, in a neighborhood of lovely old homes. Here, too, was a high wall and a gatehouse.
“It looks empty,” Bondí said. “It also looks locked.”
“You are not of my faith, Monsieur Bondí.”
“Either of them.”
“Nor I,” Achebe said. “Will you ask your god Jesus to help you?”
“Jesus is not generally understood as a god of opening doors,” Etienne said. “But Maitre Carrefour is.”
“Your Bible tells me my god is called Mammon,” Bondí said jovially. “He can open doors, but generally only when there is someone inside to do the physical work of opening.”
“Maitre Carrefour is not so constrained.”
Etienne examined the gatehouse. It had a portcullis designed to be large enough for carriages to enter. Absent miraculous physical strength, there was no way to lift the portcullis from the outside. But there was also a small door, made for a person to walk through; that door was of heavy planks and had a large, iron lock mechanism.
“My Brides, come to me,” he murmured.
He felt them awakening to life within him. If only he had brought hot peppers for the Brides, or gunpowder-infused rum, for Maitre Carrefour. But he hadn’t.
“My Brides, I beg you to bring with you Maitre Carrefour, the king of all crossroads, the opener of every way.”
Etienne felt heat and motion within him, swelling as if to a crescendo and then stopping. He took his powder horn, small and elegant as befit a gentleman who shot only rarely, and poured powder into the lock’s keyhole.
“I don’t think you can burn down the door that way,” Achebe said. “But if you tell me it’s possible, I’ll believe.”
“Shh,” Bondí said. “He’s not going to burn it down.”
The sensation of heat and power abruptly returned, snatching away Etienne’s breath. Alongside Ezili Freda and Ezili Danto there was now a third presence, dangerous and definitely masculine.
“My Brides,” Etienne said, “give me strength. Maitre Carrefour, I stand before a way that is blocked. I would move forward, not for myself, but for all the poor of this city. I beg you now, open this door.”
Etienne crouched and blew into the lock.
As if he had just spat a stream of fire, the powder inside the lock ignited. In a bright red flash, the powder erupted and disappeared. Smoke scattered in curling puffs away from the lock, and Etienne stood.
Bondí and Achebe were both watching him, the former with calm confidence and the latter with nervous faith. Behind them now stood others.
Eggbert Bailey, musket in hand, stood at the head of twenty gendarmes with bayonets on their muskets and heavy coats on their backs. Behind them were men, women, and children. They were scorched and bandaged, their eyes exhausted and doubtful.
Beside Eggbert waited several men with light pistols in their hands and light cotton jackets on their backs. They looked impatient—messengers, probably.
“You said to come here,” Eggbert Bailey pointed out. “You said you would give refuge. That’s a timely offer, Your Grace. New Orleans has many who have need of shelter this night.”
“Strait is the gate,” Etienne said, “and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.” He opened the door.
It opened, revealing the cobbled courtyard within and the hulking shadowed Palais.
Etienne stepped aside and ushered in the poor of New Orleans. Some rushed straight in, but others stopped to kiss Etienne’s hand, throw themselves around his neck to embrace him, or kneel to touch their foreheads to his feet.
“Go with them,” Etienne said to Monsieur Bondí. “See what food has been left in the pantries. Feed them and get them back into bed, if you can do it.”
Bondí went.
“They will shoot you for looting,” Eggbert Bailey said.
“If the chevalier begins to shoot looters for actions taken on this night,” Etienne said. “He will have to shoot half the city, at least.”
“Including me.” Eggbert laughed. “It warms my heart that you and I are in the same predicament.”
“Is this the revolt of the gendarmes?” Etienne asked.
“It started as the revolt,” Eggbert said. “We stole rifles, we burned barracks. But then the city was attacked by a horde of beastmen from the Great Green Wood. Our revolt has become the defense of New Orleans. Perhaps they will sing such songs of us as they now sing of Jackson.”
“Perhaps we too will be executed by firing squad,” Etienne suggested, “and then allowed to molder in iron cages on the Place d’Armes.”
“You are so cheerful.”
“Did the chevalier hear in advance of the revolt?” Etienne asked, gesturing at the dark house. “I worry we have an informer, someone who allowed the chevalier to escape.”
Eggbert shrugged. “Maybe we do. But isn’t the other possibility worse?”
“You mean the possibility that he knew in advance about the attack of the beastkind.”
Eggbert nodded solemnly.
Etienne considered. “I hope the chevalier knew the beastkind were coming. We should certainly put that story about, whether it is true or not. New Orleans is loyal to its own, and a man who would throw the rest of the city into the fire in such a manner would lose a great deal of respect. He might not be able to return.”
Bailey smiled. “Perhaps, once the fire is under control, you might consider preaching a sermon. Perhaps from this very spot. Leaning out one of the chevalier’s own windows, for instance.”
“It would be effective proof that the man was gone,” Etienne agreed. “Get me gendarmes to keep the fires from the Palais tonight, and send me refugees to fill the chevalier’s beds. I will consider a fitting sermon for the morning.”
Eggbert Bailey bowed slightly, and then bellowed orders to turn his men around and head north into the city. As he ran, he rattled off instructions to the runners, sending them flying in other directions.
“Come,” Etienne said to Achebe. “Let’s get a view of this revolt.”
There was no central staircase within the Palais, but with enough wandering around by lantern light, Etienne and the wrestler found their way up five flights of stairs, to the top of something like a tower that jutted out on the north side of the building. The tower had a walkway around its circular perimeter. Standing on the walkway, Etienne felt a cool breeze blow through his hair. The Mississippi and the city were far enough below that he couldn’t smell the stink of either.
Walking around the tower, he could see great distances north, east, and west; to the south, the bulk of the Palais itself blocked out anything else. The forest east of the city was dark, as it should be. To the north, within the city walls and beyond them, fires burned. The raging, uncontrolled flames burned buildings and leaped from tree to tree. The beastkind.
Why would the beastkind rise up to smash New Orleans? It seemed too formal, too much effort. Mere feral rampaging would leave them farther north, in the Cotton Princedoms, or the Ohio, or Memphis.
This was organized.
Mulling over the questions these thoughts sparked in his mind, Etienne almost didn’t look westward. When he did, he was stunned.
To the west burned additional fires. These were not the wild fires of looting and destruction, though, but the organized fires of a marching company. A large marching company. On the far side of Bishopsbridge and strung out for miles, Etienne saw torches, lanterns, campfires.
An army.
No army that large ever marched out of Texia; the Texians were fierce, but simply not that organized. Texians resisted being told what to do even by their own leaders. This was an army fielded by a large and wealthy power.
The Empire was a possibility.
But New Spain was much more likely. The army approached by land, from the west.
“What is that?” Achebe asked at his shoulder.
“I believe we have found the chevalier,” Etienne said. “And I’m afraid it is up to you and me to stop him.”
“Fools. Peter Plowshare makes the bounds, yes.
And Simon Sword breaks them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Boom!
The big Imperial guns punched a second hole in the Treewall. “To the breach!” Bill shouted.
He was gratified that Cathy and the other healers had withdrawn farther from the fighting. He was grateful to Montserrat for saving Cathy directly from the shuffling, undead Voldrich.
Maltres Korinn ran toward the new gap, a group of wardens at his heels. The hole was too big, there were too many Imperials—living men in blue coats now, as well as the rotting, mobile dead—and Maltres and his men were too few. But he had a gray banner tied to his horsehead-tipped staff of office and he raised it high, charging into the face of the foe.
Two birds were on the banner, one black and one white.
A curious choice.
Then a third gap opened in the wall.
Sharelas saw it. Shouting, she sent soldiers down the steps toward the new breach, and others toward where Sarah’s beastkind drove back the earliest incursion of damned corpses. They were few, though, and men in blue coats battered their way past the first Cahokians—
to be met abruptly by the Podebradan Yedera.
Flashing her scimitar and emitting a blood-curdling yell, the Unborn Daughter hurled herself into the Imperial soldiers from the side. Closing to such proximity that their bayonets became an awkward liability, she held her weapon laid alongside her own forearm; in her other hand, she held a dagger.
Spinning and leaping, she seemed to be battering the advancing soldiers with her fists and elbows. In her wake, men fell screaming or dead.
The Imperial tide rose, a wall of blue surging through the gap in the Treewall, pushing Yedera out ahead of it—
and another squad sent by Sharelas arrived to reinforce her, setting spears and halting the charge.
Bill blew fall in on the Heron King’s horn. Chikaak, blood on his muzzle and on his sword, withdrew from the fighting and presented himself for orders.
“Help me get on this horse, Sergeant,” Bill grunted.
Chikaak was man-sized but stronger than any child of Adam Bill had ever known. He hoisted Bill up and into the saddle. Bill snapped his spyglass to his eye and looked at the Temple of the Sun.
No sign of Sarah. The Imperial hedge wizard Luman Walters had also disappeared.
“Her Majesty,” Chikaak said.
“My thoughts exactly.” Bill blew fall in again, and rode toward the Great Mound.
Sarah’s beastkind responded with enthusiasm. Despite their unequal speed, they duly fell in and followed together. Bill was certain that some of those warriors were capable of outracing his horse. They were ragged and wounded, but their discipline held, and they marched double-time as a unit.
He let Chikaak bring them up, and rode ahead to the top of the mound.
Once, not long ago, horses had ridden on the top of the Great Mound, and even into the Temple of the Sun. Now his mount shied back, whinnying uncomfortably, as Bill approached the peak. Several lengths short of the summit, he lowered himself to the ground.
There was nothing to lash the animal to, so he let it go. It bolted.
He hobbled around the top of the mound quickly on his canes, surveying the battle below. Another hole had pierced the Treewall on the north, and yet another on its south side. The wall was giving way.
A body wearing a long blue coat, such as the Philadelphia Blues wore, lay slumped in the temple’s doorway. Sarah had such a coat.
Bill lurched toward the body, and then caught himself short.
A feeling of dread and awe seized him two steps from the doorway. He shook his head and inhaled deeply, but it didn’t fade.
It felt like…like the sensations he’d felt as a much younger man, at the outset of his earliest battles in the service of the Earl of Johnsland. A grim and transcendent sense that he stood in the presence of a mighty power, something that could strike him dead and would do so without a second thought.
Was this the feeling that had driven off his horse?
The prone person lay with face turned away from the daylight, but the curly hair and heavy shoes told Bill it wasn’t Sarah. It was Walters, the magician.
Only he was wearing Sarah’s coat.
The open space behind the doors of the Temple of the Sun was dark, and no sound escaped it.
Bill took another deep breath, planning to bellow into the temple, to ascertain that Sarah was safe. The feeling of dread stopped him.
Sarah was in the arms of her father’s goddess now, and whatever she was doing, Bill was of no use to her.
“Serve her well,” he grumbled to the sleeping wizard, and then returned to the eastern face of the mound. For his part, Bill would serve Sarah by buying her all the time he could.
The beastkind had nearly reached the peak. Below, Maltres Korinn and his men had stopped up one gap in the Treewall. The unhallowed dead shambled steadily in through the others.
Chikaak stepped to the top of the mound at the head of the file of beastkind and saluted.
“Sergeant,” Bill growled, “we are too few to surround the mound with an unbroken square. Should it come to it, we will make a last stand in the doorway of the temple. For now, post scouts on every corner of the mound. Three men at each corner, and skirmishers prepared to respond to any enemy that attempts to ascend.”
Bill didn’t have nearly the combination of calls on the Heron King’s horn he would need to give such complex orders. He thanked God in his heart for his coyote-headed sergeant as Chikaak barked out a series of instructions in tones Bill didn’t know. The fastest of the beastkind split out in groups of three and headed for the corners.
The slowest remained with Bill and Chikaak, facing east.
“Your eyes are keen, Sergeant.”
Chikaak nodded, a growl low in his throat.
“Keep an eye out for my lady,” Bill said. “I believe she is with the healers. You and I will die here, but if there is anything we can do to save her, consistent with our duties to our queen, we will.”
Chikaak nodded again.
“Now have every man who can shoot lie on his belly. The mound itself will afford us our best protection.”
Bill himself stretched out on the cold ground, carefully setting his hat beside him and laying his powder inside it.
Below, dead men were climbing the base of the mound. Mingled in their ranks were dead beastkind, with limbs and snouts Bill recognized.
Sarah’s own warriors, turned against her by the foul power of Robert Hooke.
He checked his firing pans. “Don’t waste your ammunition. Hold your fire until you can see their eyes.”
* * *
Sarah walked through a dark forest. Somewhere behind her, in some space, she knew that Luman Walters lay asleep on the ground. But Luman Walters also walked beside her. She wore his coat and he wore hers, but it felt as if they standing together inside a single long woolen garment.
For the first time in months, she looked with both eyes and saw a single, unified view of everything.
That fact made her uncomfortable.
She stepped on a path. The ground beneath her feet was rocky and pitted, as if it had been carved through the earth against the earth’s will. Twisted boles of pine trees leaned in close against her on either side, casting shadows deep and dark enough to make her doubt her eyes even as to the very existence
of a path. Her horse-headed staff was useful, giving her in effect a third leg to balance with. It saved her from falling more than once.
The sky above her was pure white. The sun shone from directly ahead of her, as if lying on the horizon in a permanent dawn. She heard the buzzing of bees, a comforting sound. The air was tinged slightly with the smell of spice and citrus.
“The first trump card is the Highway,” Luman Walters said. “Or else possibly the Widow.”
Sarah shook her head. “Iffen you’re seein’ what I’m seein’, Walters, you know this ain’t no Highway.”
“It’s no Widow, either.”
Sarah laughed sharply. “Dammit, I like you, Luman.”
Luman Walters bowed his head. “But maybe our guess is wrong. Maybe there’s no connection with the Tarock, after all.”
Sarah shook her head. “I feel you’re on a good track. Everything is connected, I think. And this is a kind of a highway we’re on.” She heard the lonely hooting and growling of unseen beasts in the forest around her. “What should we expect to see coming up?”
Luman turned and spoke to the empty air beside him. “What’s in the next room?”
She kept walking.
“Peter Plowshare,” Luman reported. “The Drunkard. The Horseman. The Bird. These are the trumps indicated by the characters on the shelves in the second and third room. Assuming, also, we’re right to walk this path sunwise.”
“I don’t see any of that,” Sarah said, but as she said it, the path turned toward a thick knot of evergreen trees and abruptly forked. One branch of the path shot right at a ninety-degree angle, and the other shot left, at the square.
Above the path to her right, perching on a branch directly over the rocky trail, a white dove stared at Sarah with its yellow eyes. Clinging to a branch over the path on her left hand, a black raven stared at her.
A man lay slumped on the ground, just before the fork. He leaned up against an object that Sarah took at first to be a boulder, but after a moment she saw that it was a barrel. The man wore stained gray travel woolens. In his hand he clutched a powder horn, flat against his belly.