by D. J. Butler
“Easy, child,” Montse said in French, smiling her most gentle smile. “Josep won’t hurt you. Unless I tell him to, of course, in which case he’ll kill you in a single painless instant.”
“I don’t have any gold,” the young woman said. “My family has no money.”
“We don’t want your master’s gold,” Montse said. “We’re looking for a friend of ours.” Une amie, a friend who is a woman.
Ah, Hannah. You were ma grande amie. I miss you.
“Who is your friend?” The young woman’s eyes were opened wide, and leaped back and forth between Josep and Montse.
“Young,” Montse said. “And not a willing guest of the chevalier. Something closer to a prisoner.”
“The witch,” the serving girl said.
The chevalier had discovered something. How much did he know? What had Margaret done? Montse nodded. “Where is the witch now?”
“She rarely leaves her room,” the girl said. “Other than in the company of those foreigners.”
Montse’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of foreigners? Pennslanders?”
The girl shook her head. “From France. The Old World. I think…the men are mussulman warriors. Assassins.”
Montse frowned, weighing this information. “Where is her room?”
“I haven’t been to it. It’s down the west hallway. Only the senior maid knows the incantation that will let you pass. Otherwise, the Polite said, you die.”
“The hall is ensorcelled?”
The girl answered with a nod.
“The senior maid.” Josep sighed. “How many maids does she want from me, this buccaneer princess?”
“No,” Montse told him. “You stay here, and hidden. You, child—tell me where this west hallway is.”
“One floor up.” The girl trembled. “Down the long hallway, and it is the final turn on the left.”
Montse met Josep’s gaze. “I can make myself vomit,” her lieutenant said in Catalan. “You wouldn’t want to swallow that silver again, but you could hold it in your hand.”
Montse shook her head. “If I’m not back in half an hour, run.”
Josep snorted. “If you’re not back in half an hour, I’ll kill the chevalier in revenge and then die tragically, cut down by his countless soldiers. This is what you do when a man kills the love of your life.”
“I may yet be alive.”
“Then you’d best return within the half hour, to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings.”
Montse laughed out loud. The girl shrank from the laughter, terrified. “Give me an hour before you shed any blood.”
Josep nodded and Montse left.
She moved quickly, averting her gaze from everyone she saw and taking measured, purposeful steps. In a household this large, who could be certain that a person moving alone through the building wasn’t simply a guest who had lost her way, or a new servant?
She climbed to the floor above, nodding to a burly man in blue who passed her in descent, carrying a tray of fine china dishes. Having stripped off the stolen grocer’s clothing, she wore a clean silk blouse and cort-du-roi trousers tucked into the tops of knee-high boots made of supple soft leather. The blouse was scarlet and the trousers were a pale brown; her only weapon was the knife at her belt.
Halfway down the long hallway on the floor above, a plump footman with a sallow complexion bowed to get her attention. “Et qui êtes-vous?”
“L’amie particuliére du chevalier!” she snapped, not slowing down. Let the man fret. Likely, he’d run to ask a more senior footman, or the butler, who the chevalier’s special friend wandering the Palais unaccompanied was. That gave her time.
She found the left-hand turn the maid had described. The hallway looked utterly plain, its walls panels of dark wood, and had only a single door at the end. Montse stepped into the hall.
An invisible force punched her in the belly.
The silver! Sweet Virgin, if the lump of metal in her gut had felt like an unborn child, then this was a searing miscarriage, an abortion gone wrong, the stillbirth of a shaky grenado that was in the process of exploding in slow motion as it emerged.
She hit the wall with one shoulder and fell to her knees.
Pain shot across her body like a thousand needles simultaneously pushed into her skin from all directions. Her vision swam and her muscles trembled; sweat beaded suddenly under her arms and around her neck, staining her silk instantly.
The fist in her gut twisted. Montse ground her teeth, refusing to let out the scream boiling up within her.
The needles sank in deeper.
The fist opened. The knot in Montse’s belly pushed out, and it felt as though all her innards were torn from their proper place, but then suddenly the knot of pain from the silver struck the penetrating needles—
and the needles disappeared.
“Mon dieu!” she heard behind her.
Montse rose deliberately, placing one hand against the wall but trying desperately to look strong. She turned, knowing that sweat poured down her skin, and stared at the plump footman, whose mouth hung open and whose eyes bugged wide.
“That’s right,” she said in French. “I’m that kind of friend.”
He staggered back. She turned and opened the door.
Behind the small door she found the room she’d expected, with a cot and no windows. But instead of Margaret her ward, she found a dark-skinned girl in a white shift, kneeling at a colorfully cluttered Vodun altar and chanting.
“You’re not Margarida,” Montse said in French.
The sorceress stopped chanting. “I’m Marie. Margarida is the Penn girl? The Eldritch?”
“Where is she?” Montse snarled, whipping her dagger from its sheath and pointing it at the mambo.
“Ayizan told me you were coming.” The girl’s eyes were utterly calm.
“Margarida!” Montse demanded.
“I advised the Chevalier to send her away. I told him not to tell anyone where she was going, not even me.”
“Why?” Montse stepped closer and pointed the dagger at the mambo’s eye.
“Because otherwise, Ayizan told me, you would take her back.”
Montse spat on the floor. “Did Ayizan tell you whether I would cut out your eyeball right now?”
Marie laughed softly. “She offered no guarantees, but she said most likely not.”
“Fotuda!” The girl was telling the truth. Montse slammed the door behind her and headed back along the west hallway. She feared the defensive spell would assail her again, but it didn’t; perhaps it was spent from its first attempt.
The footman stood at the end of the hall. Now he was the one sweating. “Madame, je vous prie…”
Montse swiped the blade of her dagger past her own throat, making the most terrifying face she could at the chubby servant. At the same time, she spread her index and pinky finger apart like a bull’s horns and waved them in his direction in a wide circle. It was her best theatrical impression of a sorceress.
The footman shrieked and fell to the ground.
Into the larger hallway, Montse sheathed her knife. She turned and picked up her pace, heading to rejoin Josep. Margaret was gone, and she had no idea where she’d disappeared to. Short of interrogating the chevalier himself, she had no way to find out, either.
She had failed.
All she could do now was obey the chevalier and take his embassy north, to Hannah’s other child.
Hannah, forgive me.
Montse broke into a run.
* * *
“The day’s runners have returned. We near a quorum.”
The Clerks of the Rolls stood in Thomas’s office. His shoulders sagged permanently to one side, apparently from a Haudenosaunee arrow he’d taken as a young man at the Ohio Forks. The long tufts of completely white hair sprouting from his crown, his eyebrows, the back of his neck, and even the backs of his hands, along with stray threads rising from the loosening seams of his old black coat, made him look like a dandelion heavy wi
th spores, bobbing in a breeze and about to throw its hopes of future progeny to the wind.
“Have you word from other Electors?” Thomas set down the letter he’d been reading, an encrypted account from Director Schmidt of her compromising of the Hansa towns, ordering of affairs at Company trading posts, and raiding of Ophidian stores across the Ohio.
“Two weeks, Mr. Emperor.” The Clerk of the Rolls bowed.
Thomas gritted his teeth at the offensive title, but the Clerks—like the Electors—had the right to use it. He smiled and inclined his head, slightly. The Clerk was a small man, whose sole but essential task was to certify that enough Electors were present to constitute a valid Assembly, and in the event of a motion requiring any sort of supermajority, to again certify sufficient electoral presence. Under the Compact, no Assembly action was valid without his seal, so Thomas would put up with his scrupulous correctness, even when the scrupulosity offended.
“And will the quorum consist of Electors in viva persona?” He directed this question at both of the men standing before him in his study.
The second man was the Clerk of Proxies. His task, also stipulated under the Compact, was to certify the validity of the proxy sent by any Elector. The Clerk of Proxies and the Clerk of the Rolls worked hand in hand at all times, and while the Assembly was not actually in session, they engaged in continual correspondence with the powers of the Empire so as to stay current as to who the Electors actually were at any given moment as well as to be informed as to the appropriate local judicial authorities who might notarize each proxy. Collectively called the Clerks of the Assembly (or sometime the Electoral Clerks, though that title didn’t actually exist in the Compact), both men lived on pensions secured by a fund of bonds originally purchased by the combined powers. It was supposed to make them independent, as was the fact that the offices were hereditary.
The sheer number of Electors, along with the hodgepodge of local rules that determined who held any electoral seat, rendered the Electoral Clerks necessary. The result was always chaos, but chaos that gave Thomas some comfort—there were so many Electors, and from such different lands and peoples, that they had difficulty organizing to act against Thomas.
The Clerk of Proxies was young. His father, also a veteran of the Ohio Forks War, had passed away two years earlier. The new Clerk was tall and broad-shouldered, with a long, square beard that would have looked patriarchal on an older man but on him looked like an affectation or a mask. His bottle-green coat was new, and the coat and his breeches both seemed one size too small for him. His height was all in his torso and his legs were thin, so all in all he looked vaguely wrong-way-up and ill-balanced, like an upside-down wine bottle about to topple over.
“Approximately two-thirds of the currently present group consists of the actual Electors themselves,” the Clerk of Proxies said. “Our correspondence suggests that those to arrive in the next two weeks will shift the balance further in favor of Electors in viva persona and away from Electors per procurationem.”
Did the big-bearded dandy know any Latin other than those two professional phrases? Unlikely, but it didn’t matter.
“Good.” Thomas smiled to show his pleasure. “If they’re coming in person, that suggests they’re at least considering voting yes.”
“There is grave concern about the Ohio.” The Clerk of Proxies clasped his hands behind his back and thrust his chest forward. Trying to appear knowledgeable? Trying to drop some hint? He had no obligation under the Compact to share any intelligence with Thomas.
“You mean…some of them may wish to challenge me?” Thomas’s smile dropped into a frown.
“Perhaps.” The clerk nodded. “Or perhaps they’re willing seriously to consider the possibility of voting additional funds to the Imperial Crown, in order to deal with the situation.”
“In any case,” the Clerk of the Rolls said, in a voice dry as dust and creaking like a rusted weathervane, “they wish to discuss.”
Temple Franklin, reclining wholeheartedly in a soft chair across the office with his face hidden behind an upraised news-paper, snorted out loud. “Great god of heaven! It’s almost as if this were a democracy!”
“Surely not,” Thomas said drily. He dismissed the two clerks with a wave of his hand, then sagged back into his own slat-backed wooden chair as they trooped out. “Do you think they want democracy?”
“The Electors are wiser than that.” Temple dropped the news-paper into his lap and gazed at the Emperor over the top of his lunette eye-glasses. “They know that a small democracy may burn brightly—as in Switzerland or Athens—and even for a long time—as in Venice—but that a large democracy must soon collapse under the weight of the rabble.”
“Do they know that?” Thomas murmured, gazing at the door and reflecting.
“If they don’t, then they know at least this: their positions as Elector, their ability to negotiate trade agreements and tariffs with the Imperial state, their common defense against the Free Horse Peoples, the Wild Algonks, pirates, bandits, beastkind, New Spanish lancers, and whatever other threats may arise—all depend on the Compact. They’ll support the Compact that empowers you, because it also empowers them.”
“Your grandfather didn’t want me empowered very much.”
“Nor did yours. John Penn signed the Compact, and sat through every discussion of its terms.”
“I’d say damn him, but it wouldn’t seem very gracious on my part.” Thomas sighed. “Well, one step at a time.”
“Or one death,” Temple said, “a propos of your next appointment.”
Two sharp knocks on the door only barely preceded its swinging open. Gottlieb’s powdered wig poked through first, followed by Gottlieb, followed closely by an unexpected visitor.
“Damn me,” Temple said, giving voice to Thomas’s thoughts. “The actor.”
The visitor accompanying Gottlieb was indeed the actor from The Walking Purchase, the man who had saved Thomas’s life at the Walnut Street Theater. He wore a kilt in some highland plaid Thomas didn’t know, and slung over one shoulder he carried a long-necked instrument that was a member of the lute family. A cittern, maybe? His long, black locks were tied at his neck with a gray ribbon.
Gottlieb bowed low. “He was insistent, Your Majesty. He said you would admit him.”
“He’s right.” Thomas waved Gottlieb back out the door again.
“Thank you.” The actor bowed with one knee locked and one bent, a movement that looked almost like a curtsey.
“You’ve come in costume, this time.” Thomas tried to look amused. “You were writing an opera about the Battle of Prestonpans, as I recall. From the point of view of a-not-entirely-willing recruit of the House of Spencer. Will you now perform the part of Cromwell’s highlanders?”
“The opera is about the entire Forty-Five Resurgence, in fact.”
“And you’ve come to sing me a song. How charming. I have come to move in rather artistic circles recently.” Thomas liked thinking of himself as a patron and friend of performers. That, and the fact that he owed this man his life, made him willing to talk to the actor.
The Franklin’s Player raised his fingers to the strings and began to play. The chords were slow and simple.
I was born a free man
And I thank the heavens still
For giving me the bubbling brook
And the heather-covered hill
I had a wife and two braw boys
What man could ask for more?
I left them all for endless life
Upon Culloden Moor
Stinkin’ Georgie Spencer
Pursued us o’er the fen
With his filthy lies and his basket hilts
He slew three thousand men
Bonny Charlie Stewart, boys
To the Isle of Skye’s bright shore
As Betty Burke, the spinning maid
Fled Culloden Moor
The King Across the Water
The king will ever be
The man who frees my soul from death
Is king enough for me
I lie here a free man
And I’ll walk forever more
Head held high, and heart in hand
Across Culloden Moor
“The haunting of Culloden Moor,” Thomas said as the last chord died away. “The naming of the Sweet George.”
“Or the Stinking Georgie.” A faint smile played about the actor’s lips.
“You write with sympathy for the partisans of the Necromancer.” Thomas pursed his lips.
“Don’t you feel any sympathy for them, Brother Onas?”
He couldn’t have said why, but the question made Thomas want to punch the actor in the face. He refrained. “That’s the second time you’ve called me that name. What do you intend by it?”
The actor’s eyes narrowed, in an expression that seemed sad. “Don’t you know?”
Thomas sighed. “I’m not in the habit of asking things I already know. That’s a lawyer’s trick.”
“Your grandfather knew the name. He bore it.”
“You mean my ancestor, speaking poetically, I presume. William Penn was called Brother Onas by some.”
“So were his descendants after him, including John.”
Thomas was keenly aware of the fact that Temple Franklin was listening. “Well, I bear the name Thomas. Indeed, if you consult the birth registry in the flyleaf of the Slate Roof House Bible, I think you’ll find that Onas made no part of my grandfather’s name, either.”
The actor studied Thomas with his gray eyes. “Your grandfather never told you.”
“He never told me he was secretly called Onas, no. But in fact, this is the third time we’ve met, and you’ve never told me your name.”
The actor’s smile was faint. “Say rather that this is the third time we’ve met, and you’ve still never asked me my name.”
Thomas nearly stood in indignation. “I’m your emperor, man. Tell me your name.”
