by D. J. Butler
Until Etienne failed at that.
And now: avenge his father’s death.
Kill the chevalier, and take the city. End the power of the chevalier’s family forever.
Etienne didn’t feel the summons of the Brides. Perhaps it was the tobacco smoke, which tended to keep them in check; perhaps it was his failure to eat peppers earlier in the day. Their slumber, in any case, was fortunate. He had much to do before the day ended, and no time for their riotous ministrations.
He replaced the locket as Monsieur Bondí climbed to his feet, rather more ponderously than Etienne. “One more thing, Monsieur Planchet.”
Planchet stood. His cautious smile had broken now into a broad, beaming, grin. “Yes…sir.”
“If you were to fail,” Etienne said slowly. “If you were to fall short of the impeccable standard of conduct I expect of you. If, say, you decided that twenty Louis a month were not enough, and that no one would detect a few extra coins given to untraceable orphans or fraternal organizations, rest assured that Monsieur Bondí would notice.”
Bondí grinned. “I’m a great noticer of things.”
“I’ve never yet known him to make a mistake in a matter of money,” Etienne said. “Monsieur Bondí is punctilious to the sou.”
Planchet nodded. “I believe he would notice.”
“And I would be promptly informed.”
“I’m as loyal as I am discreet,” Bondí said.
Planchet nodded, shuffling back half a step.
Etienne took a final drag on his cigarette.
“And no one would ever find your body. Do we understand each other, Monsieur Planchet?”
* * *
“Don’t worry,” Montse whispered to Margaret. “And stay calm.”
Not that the girl looked worried, despite the shackles on both their wrists. Perhaps because she felt she could walk out at any moment she wished. Perhaps because she trusted Montse. Mostly, she looked impressed. The Palais du Chevalier was enormous, and gleamed with art and silver. Even in what appeared to be the administrative portion of the building, the halls teemed with busy servants and rushing clerks.
“This is a rich man,” Margaret whispered back.
“That’s only to say, aquest criminal és més èxit que jo.”
Margaret laughed quietly, her head bobbing up and down like an amused hyena’s, but it was true. The Chevalier of New Orleans was only a more successful criminal, and Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana was not afraid of him.
Or at least, she wouldn’t admit to fear in front of the girl. She owed Hannah better than that.
Once, she had pledged Hannah everything.
Two of the chevalier’s gendarmes had dragged the smuggler and her charge into a room that looked one part office and one part audience chamber. It had a desk and padded seat at one end, and benches lined the walls. No chairs stood in front of the desk. The gendarmes had pushed the two women onto a bench against one wall and then stood silent, waiting.
The gendarmes might have understood Montse’s joke in Catalan, but they gave no sign of it.
“We’ll escape,” Margaret whispered. “I’m sure of it.”
Montse shrugged. “We’ll buy our way out. A message to La Verge Caníbal and Josep will send bags of money to redeem us.”
That was true, Josep was loyal even though Montse had rebuffed him as a lover. He was loyal because she was generous and fair, and really, where else would he go to take hauls as big as they’d made running stolen silver baked into thick clay dishes across the Pontchartrain Sea? So long as the chevalier was unaware of Margaret’s identity, the bribe he’d require shouldn’t even be very much. His people benefited from Catalan and Igbo smuggling, which provided the necessary market for those who couldn’t afford stamped goods brought in by Castilian and Dutch traders.
The door opened and eight men entered. They were tall and all wore padded black pourpoints that covered them from mid-thigh to wrists to neck. Long beards emerged from faces swaddled in silk scarves. They had the poise and the measured step of warriors, though none seemed to be carrying weapons. They stood, feet apart and hands behind their backs, seven of them in a semicircle several steps from the desk and the eighth directly in front of it.
A section of the wooden paneling at the back of the room swung open. Four more gendarmes entered and stood beside the door. These men were armed with muskets and bayonets, but the last man to enter, who followed them through the panel, carried only a dagger at his belt. He was tall and thin, with a thin French aristocrat’s face, and black hair beginning to be dusted with white about the neck and ears.
Gaspard Le Moyne, the Chevalier of New Orleans.
The door stayed open behind him. Through the open panel, Montse saw dim yellow light but no details; a passage of some sort. She heard muffled murmurs.
Le Moyne sat, then looked up at the man standing before him. “How is the Caliph?”
The men in the pourpoints placed right hands over hearts and bowed slightly. Then the one directly before the chevalier lowered his scarf to reveal a small mouth with thin, chapped lips. “Insha’allah, well. He was prosperous when I saw him last, and God continues to send him victory.” Even his lips moved with such economy that he resembled a statue.
Both men spoke French, which was Montse’s second language, and came as naturally to her as cheating.
“You’ve come about my letter,” the chevalier said.
“I don’t know anything about a letter. I’ve come to take possession of a prisoner.”
“The Abbé de Talleyrand is an Elector.” The chevalier said this as if he were thinking aloud and uncertain of what he would do.
The scarfed man stood silent.
“That means he’s an important man in his native Acadia.”
“He’s an important man in France.”
“I understood the Caliph had taken his family lands and confiscated his wealth. What importance could he have in the Caliphate now?”
“The Caliph wants him dead. That fact makes him important.”
“And here, he’s important because he’s entitled to vote emperors in and out, as well as consent to taxes. And he is protected by wealth and power. So if I am to deliver this man to you, I think you realize, the price will be high.”
The scarfed man considered. “I had been given to understand that you already had the Abbé in your custody. Perhaps this was what you wrote in your letter.”
The chevalier arched his eyebrows and pursed his lips.
“I am Ahmed Abd al-Wahid. I am mameluke-born and mameluke-bred, and prince-capitaine of that order. If I have been summoned here with a lie, the Caliph Napoleon will regard this as a declaration of war. His expectation of me is that my first act will be to kill as many enemies as I can before my own inevitable destruction. Is this what you seek?”
The chevalier chuckled. “Bring him in!” he called over his shoulder.
Four more musket-bearing gendarmes came through the short passage. They dragged a prisoner, an ageing man with hair spilling down his shoulders in tight white curls and a broad forehead. The man’s mouth was gagged, but he murmured loudly when the gendarmes threw him to the floor.
“Let us be clear.” Gaspard Le Moyne stood and rested his hands on his belt. “This Abbé is highly inconvenient for your master. He writes letters of encouragement to French Christians, and shelters them as refugees when they flee to Acadia.”
“Oui.”
“He funds the partisans who seek to overthrow the Dhimmi Kings of Spain.”
“Oui.”
“Some say, indeed, that there is no Bourbon worthy to retake the throne. Some say that if a mussulman Napoleon can take it for himself and found a Caliphate, may not the Abbé de Talleyrand take it back, and return France to Christendom? Isn’t this so, Prince-Capitaine Ahmed Abd al-Wahid?”
“Certes, some say these things.” The mameluke’s face had no expression.
Montse had never seen the Abbé de Talleyrand. He was one of the thr
ee great Electors of the Acadian north, benevolent and rich, though some said he was a manipulator behind the scenes. It was believed Franklin had personally invited Talleyrand to come to the New World after the Caliph’s Grapeshot Massacres. The elector’s hands were tied together and his mouth gagged, but he knelt now in a posture of prayer or supplication, and craned his neck, trying to catch the chevalier’s gaze.
“Good,” the chevalier said. “We’ve established his value. Now let’s consider his cost. Men delivered him to me, men who ran great personal risks, men whom I had to pay good sums of gold.”
The mameluke nodded.
“At some point, my deed will be discovered. This may result in war with Acadia, or a trial before the assembled Electors. Thomas Penn has reasons to be annoyed with me, and will certainly try to say that what I’ve done is treason.”
“Yes.”
“In addition, the Abbé is known to be a sainted man. It grieves me greatly to act against such a holy man.”
“Indeed?” The mameluke’s face was still as stone. “I had heard the opposite.”
“What would that be?”
“That killing a holy man didn’t trouble your conscience. That maybe you were even known for such acts.”
The chevalier chuckled. “That’s not quite right, though. I don’t rejoice in the blood of priests, Prince-Capitaine. But I do what needs to be done.”
“These are the costs of this man.” The mameluke caught Talleyrand up with a sweep of his arm. “High, indeed. Now tell me the price that will make your trouble, expense, and risk worth while.”
“I have my men counting the gold.”
“Excellent. We brought it for you, of course.”
“All thirteen chests?”
“The wealth of Italy and Egypt.”
“I am pleased.” The chevalier inclined his head slightly. “It’s almost enough.”
“What final feather in the scale would you require, O great chevalier?”
“Only one.” The chevalier held up a finger. “As I have given you one Elector, O prince-capitaine, I require that you deliver an Elector to me.”
“The poet tells us to seek, for search is the foundation of fortune.” The mameluke nodded. “Tell me.”
“He hasn’t yet been appointed Bishop of New Orleans, but my agents tell me that he will be. The prior bishop’s son. Unexpectedly, not the pious one.”
“An Elector for an Elector would be an even trade, no?” The mameluke cocked his head to one side. “Shall I pack up the Caliph’s gold for return shipment to Paris?”
“I think not,” the chevalier said. “You see, the Elector I require you to capture for me is here in New Orleans. Indeed, he is not yet even an Elector. He is a criminal, and but for the fact that he is soon to be an Elector under the Compact, this would be a simple police action for my own gendarmes.”
The mameluke was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “Agreed. Then the renegade Abbé is ours?”
Talleyrand squirmed.
The chevalier gestured with an open hand. “Please feel free to pack him up for return shipment to Paris.”
“We won’t be taking the entire Abbé back to Paris. Only his head.”
Talleyrand leaped to his feet, and Ahmed Abd al-Wahid caught him. The chevalier drew his dagger and handed it across the desk, hilt-first. Montse saw all the chevalier’s men grow tense.
The mameluke grabbed the Abbé’s head with both hands, and Montse got one last look at the terrified cleric. With a single motion, the mameluke twisted at the waist and pulled through with both hands—
snap!
Talleyrand’s neck pulled into an unnatural angle and his body went limp.
“You are my witnesses, with God, that this man’s death was merciful.” The mameluke then took the dagger from the chevalier’s unresisting hand—Le Moyne’s face bore an expression of surprise and maybe disgust—and promptly pushed the blade into the dead man’s throat.
Blood gushed onto the chevalier’s stone floor. Several of his men gripped their muskets as if to respond, but the chevalier inhaled sharply and raised a hand to restrain them.
Abd al-Wahid sawed through Talleyrand’s head in several long strokes and then handed back the chevalier’s blade politely. The Abbé’s body hit the stone floor with a thud. The chevalier laid the dagger on a stack of papers, marring them with the Acadian’s blood. Then the mameluke reached under his pourpoint and produced a red silk sack, pulling it over Talleyrand’s once-white locks. He handed the bagged head to one of his seven men, then nodded to the chevalier. “And this new Elector?”
“I must consider.” Le Moyne’s voice was calm. “For the moment, once you’ve shipped the Abbé off to your master, please feel free to move your possessions into the Palais. I have a room in which you may sleep, and a separate room in which you may pray.”
“Your men have our weapons,” the mameluke said. “There is nothing else.”
The chevalier snapped his fingers and pointed to one of his men. “Their weapons, Bertrand,” he said.
The mamelukes bowed slightly and left by the door by which they’d entered.
The last to depart hesitated in the doorway. “L’Abbé,” he said. “The body.”
“Leave it for now.” The chevalier dismissed his man with a wave. “Later, the river will do.”
Montse was trembling. She touched the arm of her charge and found the girl was also shaking.
The chevalier left his bloody dagger where it lay. Crossing the audience chamber, he stepped over the headless corpse on his floor and seated himself on the bench on the far side of Margaret. Looking at the dead body, he sighed and shook his head.
Montse tried to find her equilibrium and couldn’t. Would the chevalier now kill them as witnesses? But if that was the plan, why let them see anything at all?
She decided to gamble on silence.
“Vous êtes une contrebandière,” he said.
“We’re your prisoners,” she answered, in French. It seemed safe because it was neutral, it only restated the obvious, without even admitting to the relatively harmless fact that yes, she was a smuggler.
She was also, after all, Catalan.
The chevalier smiled and turned to Margaret. “Mais vous,” he said. “Vous êtes une princesse.”
Montse forced herself to breathe. Margaret’s hair swayed slightly, though there was no breeze, and Montse took her hand to calm her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“There is no need to lie, Ferrer i Quintana,” the chevalier said. “One of my most trusted servants recently died, and I discovered by fortunate accident that he had been lying to me since the day we met. I learned that he was a member of a conspiracy, and when I gathered up some of his fellow-conspirators, I found out astonishing things. The man was in league with Jackson!”
“I am Ferrer i Quintana,” Montse admitted. “Not Jackson. This is my niece.”
“No,” he said. “This girl is a Penn. The conspiracy I speak of has been watching her for some time, but now I have use of her.”
* * *
René must be dead.
They hadn’t admitted as much to her at the Palais, turning her away with no answers. But he hadn’t answered her messages either, including the letter in the secret drop, and though the chevalier had returned to New Orleans, his seneschal hadn’t returned with him.
René only left New Orleans when his master did. His responsibility was to keep order and function in the Palais, this was why he was called its intendant, or in English, its seneschal; a seneschal held a castle for his lord. René oversaw cooks, maids, and butlers, but also the gendarmes who secured the Palais, the grooms who kept its horses, and the gardeners who carved its bushes into the shape of exotic beasts. He also ran certain discreet errands indicated by the Palais’s great inhabitant, the chevalier.
He hadn’t answered, so he must be dead.
René was dead and Simon Sword was active. Had the Heron King discovered him?
Would the Heron King discover Kinta Jane? Was the Conventicle itself already revealed and broken?
Regardless, the combination of René’s death and the return of the god left Kinta Jane Embry only one course of action—she was traveling to Philadelphia.
She packed nothing but a few clothes, and those into a single carpetbag she bought for the purpose, second-hand from a blind Portugee pushing his two-wheeled cart through the Vieux Carré. She wore her luck in the form of her cluster of beybey medallions, hanging around her neck. There was no point in telling Elbows Pritchard, her useless drunkard pander; he might beat her out of sheer spite, but even if he had any ability to help her, he wouldn’t offer it. He would get angry about her disappearance and likely batter another girl, but she didn’t see a way around that for certain, and decided that if she left without a message, he might assume she’d died.
All in all, that would be for the best.
Kinta Jane came up the Mississippi River the same way she’d gone everywhere in her life: working.
A keelboat full of Ohio Germans with crates of New Orleans-woven cotton fabric packed into their hold took her with them, favorable winds initially filling the narrow vessel’s sails. The boat flew no banner aft. The keelboatmen were mostly married, several of them to more than one woman at the same time, each in a different port. Few of them turned Kinta Jane away. None of them turned their backs.
It wasn’t painted on the side, but she thought the name of the keelboat was the Stolze Marie.
Of all the boatmen, Johannes was her favorite. He was young and shy, with bright blue eyes and long hair down to his shoulders. When they stopped at Natchez-under-the-Hill, Johannes disappeared for an hour, much to the agitation of his fellow-keelboatmen. When he returned, he had three apples, late and small but tartly delicious, and he gave them all to Kinta Jane. Johannes had a wooden box like a snuffbox in which he kept anis seed, and before seeing Kinta Jane he always chewed a handful of it to sweeten his breath.
Before they reached the Mississippi’s junction with the Ohio, the tide of traffic turned, boats of all descriptions beginning to stream southward past them. Some of those boats looked unmolested, the ordinary agents of planters, manufacturers, and middlemen, moving goods up and down the watery highway that bounded the western edge of the Empire of the New World.
