Lord of Order

by Brett Riley

  Don’t be bringin God into this, Troy said. I’m gonna ask you nice one more time. It’s your last chance to leave here with all your teeth and both eyes. What are the Troublers plannin, and how many are comin? Where will they be?

  Up your ass, Stransky said. She laughed, the sound like briars scraping broken glass.

  Hobbes raised his hand again. Troy shook his head, and Hobbes hooked his thumb back in his gun belt. When Stransky’s laughter subsided, Troy said, I gotta hand it to you. Ain’t nobody ever laughed at me in this office before. Maybe out there in their little hidey-holes, but never where I can see em. Still, all them guts ain’t gonna help you. These boys are losin patience.

  Stransky spat.

  Boudreaux grunted. Heathen, he hissed.

  You ain’t as smart as you look, Troy said, and you looked pretty dumb in the first place. Gentlemen?

  Hobbes yanked Stransky to her feet. Boudreaux dragged one of the straight-backed chairs into the middle of the room, and Hobbes shoved Stransky into it. Go get them chains, Hobbes said to Boudreaux.

  Boudreaux exited, his boots thundering down the stairs. Troy came around to the front of the desk and sat on its edge. He rested the toe of one boot on Stransky’s knee. You people always gotta do things the hard way. But what good will that do? Even if you don’t tell us nothin, we’ll find out eventually. Look at how we found you.

  Stransky cackled again. Hobbes punched her in the jaw. She crashed to the floor and lay there, still laughing. She spat blood. You think you know what’s goin on in this city. In this world. But you don’t know jack shit.

  Hobbes raised his fist, but Troy waved him off. The lord of order bent and looked Stransky in the face. What’s that mean? What can you and your godless scum friends know that we don’t?

  Stransky tried to sit up. Godless? We don’t lick the boots of the bastards that killed billions of people. Them loony birds in Washington never had nothin to do with God. That was just a mask they wore so dumbasses like you would think you’re on the right side. And look how well it worked.

  Neither Troy nor Hobbes replied. Boudreaux was back on the stairs with the chains, thumping and rattling and creaking. Stransky held Troy’s gaze. If she feared whatever was to come, she gave no sign.

  Let’s get back to the subject at hand, Troy said, and remember—whether you’ll be able to walk afterward depends on what you say. What are the Troublers up to, and where will they be?

  Stransky looked into Troy’s eyes, as intimate and serious as a lover. She moved as close to him as she could before Hobbes grabbed the back of her shirt. I won’t tell you what or where, she said. But I’ll tell you why.

  Troy straightened and leaned against his desk. Boudreaux entered, thick chains hanging off one shoulder and dragging on the floor, the cuffs and locks clanking. After the young deputy stopped next to Hobbes, Troy said, I’m listenin.

  Stransky turned her gaze on each of them, one at a time. I’m only tellin you because I hope you boys love this town. You can kill me, but I won’t say shit else. You understand?

  Get on with it, Troy said.

  I’ve met with runners from our people in Washington. They’ve spent months confirmin rumors we’ve been hearin a long time.

  What rumors?

  She cleared her throat. Rook’s gonna turn New Orleans into a city-sized prison for folks like me. But here’s the real kicker. He’s plannin a new Purge, and we’re standin on ground zero.

  Boudreaux gasped. Troy felt as if she had slapped him. He stared at her, silent.

  But Hobbes scoffed. Garbage, he said. Y’all live hand to mouth out yonder in the muck. Don’t need no Purge. Like usin a shotgun to kill a mosquito.

  Stransky sneered. Your precious Crusade went and got secular in its old age. Rook believes most of y’all self-righteous jackoffs are headin for hell in the same handcart as us, and he wants to speed you along. He’s gonna wipe out everybody but his own inner circle and some hand-picked brood mares with big tits and long legs.

  Horse dung, Hobbes said.

  And it all starts here.

  No.

  Prisoners from all over the continent are on the march. Everybody the other lords locked up, and everybody they can root out on the way. Guards are comin too. Scores of em.

  But why would he drive all the Troublers here? asked Boudreaux.

  To get us all in one place, dumbass, Stransky said. It’ll be an event for the histories, the one that links Rook’s name to Strickland’s. He’ll butcher us, and then, with nobody left to resist, he’ll move on to the rest of the world. Kill off the wolves, and the sheep go easy.

  She’s crazy, said Hobbes. We’re loyal. And saved.

  In Rook’s world, everybody’s a Troubler except them that kiss his feet every day, said Stransky. And we’re a long way from D.C.

  Troy shook his head, frowning. I figured you for better than this. That’s the most far-fetched lie I ever heard.

  It ain’t no bullshit. You’ll see. Today we got word a rider’s comin from the capital. Be here before you know it.

  More lies, said Hobbes.

  Stransky ignored him. This fella’s gonna give you a new mission. He won’t go into much detail, like about how Rook’s ordered raids from ocean to ocean, or how the prisoners have been quarryin rock and fellin trees and forgin iron from Canada to Mississippi. But the orders will confirm what I’m sayin about New Orleans. They’re gonna make it sound like you’re bein done a favor, but once them prisoners show up, once they start droppin big-ass sections of fortified wall along the city perimeter, you’ll believe. If you can’t live with yourself at that point, come see me, and I’ll tell you the rest.

  She looked neither sardonic nor angry, even though they had beaten her and killed at least seven of her friends that very day. No, she looked frightened. Something about the bags under her eyes, the lilt in her voice. Troy had been trained to spot falsehood, and he saw no lie here. She ain’t scared of us. But she’s scared all the same. Something transferred from this woman to his spine and rattled his bones. Why would anybody want another Purge? We’re winnin the war. Her information’s gotta be wrong.

  He crossed his arms and tried to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. Who told you all this?

  Stransky grinned. I told you. A runner. Call him a little bird that flew into town today. And back out again. You didn’t get us all, Gabe.

  All right. Leave that for now. What do your people intend to do?

  She looked at him as if he were mad. We’re gonna fight. What the fuck do you think we’re gonna do?

  He waited, but she did not elaborate. He sighed and rubbed his temples. He had been chasing her for years, and now she knelt before him—Lynn Stransky, leader of the principality’s Troublers, a terrorist and a heretic. He should have been lying in bed with an iced tea in one hand and the Jonas Strickland Bible in the other or indulging himself with a rare drink at Ernie Tetweiller’s. Instead, he stood in his stuffy office, sweltering and uncertain. What if it were true? What if Matthew Rook had come to worship Jonas Strickland’s acts more than God Himself? From the perspective of generations, the Purge seemed almost theoretical, abstract. The thought of it happening here, to people Troy knew, to his town—he could not force his mind to travel that road. It was the difference between watching lightning play over the horizon and being struck.

  Boudreaux unfurled a length of chain. Its clinking disturbed Troy’s contemplation. He shook his head. No. We won’t need that. Take her to a tower cell. I ain’t buyin your lies today, lady. Maybe you can peddle em some other time.

  Boudreaux dragged Stransky to her feet and yanked her toward the door. She looked back at Troy. Like I said. Come see me when you learn who’s really lyin.

  They exited, thumping up the stairs. Stransky’s cackles drifted down like the call of a carrion bird. Troy walked back behind his desk and sat in his cha
ir. The day’s weariness pulsed through his legs and lower back. Hobbes took a seat across from him. He removed his hat and fanned himself, looking worried. And something stirred in Troy’s gut because Hobbes never worried.

  So what do you think? Troy said.

  Sounds like bull dung. But she believes it.

  Troy nodded. I read it that way too.

  Hobbes fanned himself a while. Troy stewed in his own sweat, thinking hard.

  So what now? Hobbes said.

  Troy took a deep breath. Go celebrate. We caught a big fish. Me, I’m gonna visit the sisters and sound them out. Maybe they’ve heard somethin.

  And then?

  Troy traced the loops and swirls of his desk’s grain. If the sisters supported Stransky’s story, things would change, irrevocably and fast.

  If this rider don’t show up, he said, then Stransky’s a liar, and we can hang her. In public, where the rest of em can see. But if he’s real, we’re gonna listen close to what he says. If we don’t like it, seems we’ll have three choices. One, go along and let the city die. Either it’ll be Purged, or the prisoners will raze it to the ground. Two, try to get our populace outta town and abandon the city. If there’s enough guards comin, they might kill you and me and Gordy, but maybe we could save some of our people first.

  When Troy fell back into silence, Hobbes said, And three?

  Open rebellion.

  Hobbes whistled, low and long. Rebellion’s a mortal sin.

  Yep.

  Hobbes chewed on the possibilities. The weight of the conversation pressed on them, as omnipresent as the city’s wet heat. A heap of bad choices, he said.

  Yep. We gotta prepare for the worst.

  How, without startin a panic? Don’t reckon we can just ask folks to move outta the city for a month or two.

  We should start small. You, me, and Gordy already know. Ernie and Santonio. LaShanda Long and Willa McClure. That would give us the folks in charge of order, food, and weaponry, plus Willa’s information.

  Anybody else?

  Not till we get a better idea of what’s true and how our group feels about the options.

  Hobbes nodded and passed a hand over his face.

  Troy got up and headed down the stairs. He needed a meal and a cool bath and a quiet house in which to think. Not for the first time, he wished Lynn Stransky damned to hell for what she had said and done.

  3

  Troy and Japeth clopped down Camp Street in fading amber light. The gray’s hoofbeats echoed against the buildings. Two children dressed in deerskin sat on the walk, playing Go Fish. They glanced at Troy as he passed and then went back to their game. He had come here so many times that his presence no longer inspired awe, except when he shot somebody. Then, it seemed, everyone genuflected.

  He reined up at the Church of the Sisters of Mercy and Grace, once known as St. Patrick’s. Just after the Purge, Jonas Strickland had outlawed all non-Christian religions and sent his new lords of order to slay any adherents who survived the Purge. His new world church absorbed every Protestant denomination. He marginalized Catholicism but did not outlaw it, perhaps knowing only his most radical followers would countenance the extermination of Christian peoples. Thus, the Sisters still existed and performed their ancient rites. In his capacity as lord of order, Troy had long ago learned that some Troublers attended those services, but they never broke Crusade law during Mass. He respected the Church’s status as a sanctuary, much to Jerold Babb’s displeasure.

  It’s part of your duty to stamp them out, the old man was wont to say, jabbing a crooked, palsied finger at Troy. They are heretics.

  Not even Rook calls the Catholics heretics, Troy usually replied. I won’t turn my gun on other Christians. And if we disrespect sanctuary, what’s to stop some Catholic from bombin our services?

  Still, Babb lectured him about the Papists at least once a month.

  The sisters’ priest was an octogenarian who, except during Mass or confession, barely stayed sober long enough to string two sentences together. Troy had conversed with the man perhaps five times and could not remember when he had last seen the old rumpot. He might have left town or died. Sister Sarah Gonzales truly led the church. At forty-two, she was New Orleans’s de facto Mother Superior, her elders having died or ridden away on missionary work. Sister Sarah’s contacts with Troublers meant she held valuable information. The problem lay in how to get it out of her. She feared no earthly power, not even Matthew Rook. She could not be convinced the Crusade acted as God’s earthly hand. She would not be tricked. One could only ask her what she knew and hope for the best.

  Troy tied Japeth to a rusty metal post with a bulbous head, the previous function of which he could not fathom, and approached the church. He took off his hat, as he always did before entering, and glanced at the empty thoroughfare as a matter of habit, but the Troublers dealt their violence from the shadows, from around corners, from behind trees. They would not confront him in the open unless they could sneak a whole regiment onto Camp. And so, with no heretics to shoot, Troy pulled open the heavy doors and stepped inside.

  Past the foyer and the swinging wooden doors leading to the sanctuary proper, darkness and the heat of closed spaces enveloped him. Up front, dozens of votive candles flickered on their bier. Weak sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows. Dark lamps hung on the walls. The pews sat empty, the confessional doors open.

  He took a deep breath. Hello! he cried.

  His voice seemed to fade in the soupy heat before it could travel ten feet. Sweat poured down his face. He wiped it on his shirtsleeve and walked down the central aisle, pausing before the votives. They sat side by side on old chipped saucers marred by scattered blobs of wax. Perhaps three dozen flickered. Seventy or eighty more were dark. Apparently Sister Sarah’s followers felt easy about their souls today. Often the altar appeared to be on fire. Troy passed his hand over the wicks. They flickered, though none went out. His shadow cavorted in the aisle, long and angular, somehow disturbing. No one answered him.

  Reckon I might as well go. He thought of knocking on the closed door set into the back wall, but he had never been invited into the recesses of Sarah’s church and probably never would be. He turned to leave, but the door opened on creaking hinges. When he looked back, Sarah Gonzales stood there, hand on the doorknob, her dusky face curtained in her black habit’s coarse cloth. She held a lantern and wore a frown.

  I’ve asked you a million times not to bring that gun in here, she said.

  Troy looked down. He had slapped leather when she opened the door. He let his hand fall away from the weapon. And I’ve told you a million times, I don’t take it off. I’ve been known to bathe with it.

  The way she carried herself, her assurance, her dignity, her commitment to her work and her people—she was stronger and more beautiful than anyone he had ever known, even when she angered him. Perhaps he even loved her, despite knowing they could never be together. Neither nuns nor lords of order took spouses or consorts, married as they were to their churches, their duty.

  How could she stand to wear that habit in such heat? Troy had never seen her hair, though Sister Jewel had told him it was black and curly and long enough to reach her hindquarters. Even in the shifting light, her almond-colored eyes, her full lips, and the sharp slope of her nose aroused him. Shame burned in his breast. She considered herself a bride of Christ. Even if he did not share that conviction, honor bound him to respect it.

  She hung the lamp on a hook and sat on the altar, hands in her lap. Just remember this is God’s house. Keep your fightin in the streets.

  He sat on the nearest pew, facing her, elbows on his knees. I ain’t lookin to fight. I need information.

  You know I won’t betray sanctuary or confession.

  I caught my limit today. I reckon you heard we got Lynn Stransky.

  Sister Sarah gestured dismissiv
ely. I doubt you’re foolish enough to believe it’ll change much. The rebellion is bigger than one person. Even her.

  It’s too hot in here to debate, Troy said. The lantern flickered, though the air seemed still and dead. Perhaps their breath troubled the flame. Its light danced across Sister Sarah’s face, now revealing her eyes and mouth, now casting her in darkness. He looked away and waited for her to ask what he wanted, but she remained silent, as patient as time.

  Stransky told us somethin that’s got me a mite concerned, he finally said.

  I doubt she’d tell you anything true.

  It ain’t her secrets she’s tellin.

  Sister Sarah might have raised her eyebrows. Perhaps her mouth opened, just a little. What, then?

  She told us Washington’s sendin riders here. They’re bringin a load of prisoners. And they wanna turn New Orleans into a prison.

  Troy waited, but Sister Sarah said nothing. She kept as still as the saints on the stained glass, kneeling or giving succor or dying forever in their frozen world.

  Well? You heard anything like that?

  She grunted. You’ve treated me and mine better than anybody else would have, Gabriel. But we can still barely show our faces in daylight. To us, this city, this world has been a prison since the days of Jonas Strickland. What’s a few more inmates, a few more guards?

  Troy rubbed his temples. A headache had formed behind his right eye, whether from heat exhaustion or stress he could not have said. Pain stabbed through his skull every time the lamp flickered. They sat for a while without any way to mark time. The world might have stopped turning.

  You don’t really believe that, he said.

  Her tone softened. Yes and no. My people got quarantined generations ago. That ain’t right. But I’ve worked my whole life in this city. I wouldn’t see it destroyed if I had a choice.

  Sure sounds like you’ve heard somethin. You don’t act surprised.

  I’m not. More than one Catholic has passed through here tellin tales about mass arrests and chained laborers quarryin rock or choppin down whole forests. Somethin’s goin on out yonder. It could all land here as easy as anywhere else.