by D. J. Butler
Crude shanties and improvised tents crowded what must have been by design broad avenues. Dirty faces stared from them at the company’s people—did they belong to Ohioans, refugees of the Pacification? But only some of them looked Firstborn.
“No, Madam Director. I’m only thinking.”
“Tell me your conclusions.”
“Observations, really. I was thinking that maybe St. Martin had a point, in being concerned about the Firstborn acquiring too much power.”
“You’ll find you don’t encounter any Martinites here, my Balaam. Nor Mattheans.”
Of course. “But doesn’t the Compact protect belief? Can’t a man revere any saint he wishes, and be permitted free access to any public place in the Empire?”
Notwithstanding Schmidt chuckled. “Welcome to Cahokia. Your religious beliefs and practices are protected by law here, but…if those beliefs happen to include too much respect for saints like Matthew Hopkins or Martin Luther, you are likely to receive a late-night visit from a vigilance committee.”
“Tar and feathers,” Luman said. “A one-way ride out of town on a rail.”
“Illegal,” Schmidt said. “Traditional. Common.”
“Part of the justification of the Pacification.”
“Say rather pretext.”
Luman weighed the director’s words. “I’ve chosen a name for my horse.”
“Strictly speaking, of course, I should have insisted you ride upon an ass. A horse won’t balk properly when it sees the angel, I fear. And who ever heard of a talking horse?”
“I’ll call the horse Joe Duncan.”
“Your horse is a mare, my Balaam.”
“A mare named Joe. Does that offend your sense of propriety?”
“On the contrary. It amuses me so much, I’ll give you another clue.”
“I may not be able to place bets with a clean conscience, if you give me any more information than you already have.”
“I care nothing for your conscience, my Balaam.” Schmidt smiled, but then her smile fell flat and she rode in silence for a while. Finally, as if rising from sleep, she straightened in her saddle and took a deep breath. “Joe Duncan was the man I hired to kill my father.”
Luman opened and shut his mouth without sound.
“Means to an end,” Schmidt said. “Means to the right end.”
They reached the base of the city’s largest mound, the Great Mound, at the top of which stood the Temple of the Sun. The herald, a small man with shockingly bright teeth, dismounted. He handed his reins to one of several Cahokians who stood waiting there, apparently for the purpose. “This is sacred ground.”
“Hmmm.” Notwithstanding Schmidt raised her eyebrows briefly, then spurred her mount forward. The animal snorted in protest, but began the steep climb up the earth pyramid.
Luman nearly followed her, but then caught himself.
He had plundered what magic he could from the theurgists of Memphis, from the brauchers of German Pennsland, from the Haudenosaunee wise women at the headwaters of the Ohio River, and from elsewhere. What might he learn from the children of Wisdom?
But could he take any magic from them, if he began by offending their goddess?
Also, Notwithstanding Schmidt’s comment about his conscience stung him. Luman did care about his conscience. He cared, and he had too much weighing it down already.
He dismounted and handed over his reins to the herald.
The ten Company agents hesitated, but then followed Luman’s lead. The eleven men then marched, puffing and muttering, up the steep slope. Before they reached the peak, Luman was sweating heavily, notwithstanding the snow on the ground and the chill in the air.
At the top stood a rectangular building, tall, narrow, and long. The flat mound-top around it was gnarled with the leafless trees of a winter garden, and furrows that looked as if they’d sprout in the spring. The front of the rectangular building was a wide, roofless porch. A golden bough of gnarled ivy lay over the lintel of two enormous open doors; to each side of the doors stood a stylized pillar carved with intaglio leaves and branches as if it were a tree. Ravens huddled all over the structure, including on its golden tree branch, giving the structure the appearance of being dressed in funereal black.
The snorting noises of a nervous horse came from inside the building.
“This is the Temple of the Serpent,” one of the agents muttered, checking the firing pans on his pistol. “Beware.”
“Beware of what?” Luman was genuinely curious. “I had heard it was the Temple of the Sun.”
The agent shrugged. “Just beware. They say dark things about the Serpent.”
“They say dark things about the Imperial Ohio Company,” grunted the agent to his side, who now followed his fellow’s lead in checking his weapons.
“Yes.” Luman laughed. “And we know those things are true. Rest easy, gentlemen. We aren’t here to fight. Yet.”
“Do we take our orders from you,” growled the first agent, “or from the director?”
“Director Schmidt gives us all our orders,” Luman acknowledged. “But I’m the one who can turn you into a frog.”
He entered.
The interior looked like a church with its transepts shorn away. A long, straight nave ended in a wall that abruptly shot up, creating a cubical apse raised above the nave. A steep, narrow staircase climbed from the plain of the nave up to the apse. The apse was empty, but for a single spectacular piece of furniture.
It was a tree, whose boughs and branches ended in fine golden leaves. It was also a serpent, consisting of piles and piles of coiled reptile musculature, carved into the trunk and branches of the tree. It was a lamp; Luman saw seven bowls shaped from the branches in which oil could burn. And it was a throne, with a flat seat and back, just large enough for one person, cut into the heart of the trunk. The head of the serpent, as large as the head of an ox, rose and protruded above the back of the seat, so that a person sitting in the throne would almost appear to be wearing the serpent’s head for a crown.
The throne was covered in hammered gold; its leaves were of gold foil. The walls and ceiling of the apse were covered with gold, as well. A curtain woven of multiple colors could conceal the apse, but clung instead gathered to either side of the opening by heavy purple cords.
“Disgusting,” the irascible agent muttered. “They worship the serpent who made Adam fall.”
“So did Moses,” Luman murmured.
“The hell he did,” the agent growled.
Luman shrugged. “He did if you believe the Bible. Be careful how you exercise judgment, my friend.”
In the walls to Luman’s left and right, and near him, curtained entryways suggested additional chambers. They’d have to be narrow, given the width of the nave. Perhaps storage rooms, for cult paraphernalia? Perhaps waiting alcoves, where liturgical actors could stand concealed until it was their turn to appear in the ritual? Stairs up to the roof—or down, to caverns below?
“My Balaam,” Notwithstanding Schmidt called. “You’ve lost your horse.”
“I didn’t think Joe shared my interest in architecture,” Luman said.
Schmidt stood, holding her own horse’s reins and smiling. The smell of the animal filled the hall, which otherwise held little: a square altar, a table. The colored tiles of the nave’s floor and walls suggested a landscape, with a desert near the doors separated from a garden at the deep end of the building by stylized blue waves. The upper walls and the ceiling were painted with an astral scene, which looked wrong to Luman—the northern stars were too high, by a handspan at least.
“No,” Schmidt agreed, “neither does my beast. See how he objects.” The horse pulled at the reins, its hooves clattering loud on the tile floor.
“Have you named him yet?”
“I’m considering calling him Thomas.”
“I would be happy to accommodate Thomas in lodgings he might find more familiar.” These words came from a tall, thin Elf, who might have been h
andsome but for the marks of acne or smallpox on his cheeks. He wore all black, and was unarmed, unless the staff he leaned on was a weapon. Judging by the iron horse’s head affixed to the rod’s tip, though, Luman took it for a badge of office. Two more of the Fey stood behind him, similarly dressed in black, though with no marks of rank.
“Thank you.” Schmidt handed over her mount’s reins to one of the two servants, who promptly walked the animal out of the doors. “You’re Maltres Korinn, the so-called Regent-Minister of this city.”
“Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne, and therefore caretaker of the Serpent’s realm.” The Ophidian bowed. “In my capacity as regent, administering the throne and court until the goddess sees fit to give us a new monarch, I also administer the city.”
Schmidt snorted. “Your people look poor and hungry, Regent-Minister. Inside the city walls as well as without. Your management seems to leave much to be desired.”
Korinn raised an eyebrow. “The Emperor’s tolls and taxes have been heavy. And someone has been stealing our stores. And we’re also stretched thin, trying to gather in the refugees from the Missouri and from…elsewhere.”
“Good of you.”
“We do what we can. If the goddess finds my administration unsatisfactory, She hasn’t yet told me so.”
“Ah, you have a complicit priesthood. Convenient.”
“If only that were true.” Was Korinn himself a magician? Was his staff magical?
“And whom will your goddess choose, then?” Schmidt asked.
“Me.”
The new voice spoke with a sharp, high-pitched tone, with just a hint of an Appalachee twang in it. Luman turned along with Schmidt and Korinn, but a look at their faces told him that, of the three, he was the only one who was really surprised.
Four newcomers stood in the open doors. Three were tall men, but Luman’s eyes were immediately drawn to the fourth, who stood in front, and who had spoken. She was small and slight, pale of skin and dark of hair. Her hair was short as a boy’s, but the really striking feature of her appearance was her eyes. They were mismatched, one a cloudy dark blue and the other a gray-blue so light it was almost white. It looked like an animal eye, and as it stared at Luman it seemed to pierce his soul. She wore trousers and a thin Appalachee shirt underneath a blue wool coat that looked as if it might more properly belong to an Imperial soldier.
She leaned on a staff, too, and hers came to a tip in a wooden carving of a horse’s head. Two small blower buds gripped the wood of her staff, which was strange, since the wood appeared old and well-cured.
“You’re Mad Hannah’s illegitimate daughter,” Schmidt said. “The rebel queen.”
“The goddess hasn’t chosen a queen,” Korinn said again.
“Illegitimate, in a pig’s eye,” the young woman shot back. “My father was Kyres Elytharias, king of this land and Imperial Consort.”
Schmidt shrugged, a chuckle escaping her lips. “Hannah is known to have played the whore.”
One of the newcomers lunged forward. “Lies!” He was a large-framed man bordering on old who wore a red coat and a hat that had once been crisp and black, but was now faded and battered into shapelessness. His accent came from the Chesapeake. “Thomas is a usurper and a scoundrel! A man who would imprison his own sister should not be believed when he calumniates her as well.”
Schmidt regarded the Cavalier coolly. “A man who would care for his sister through a decade and a half of her madness should be considered for sainthood, not to mention respected in his solemn secular calling.”
Luman kept an eye on the other two men standing behind the witch, who both fidgeted as if they were anxious to start a fight. Perhaps they would already have done so, had Schmidt’s party not outnumbered them two to one. One was a rangy, big-knuckled Cracker with long red hair; he stared at the Serpent Throne as if deep in thought. The final member of the group was a beastman, with the head and hindquarters of a coyote, whose eyes and ears darted back and forth alertly and who shifted from foot to foot.
“If you knew Kyres Elytharias,” Maltres Korinn said, stepping in between the snarling parties, “you would only have to look at this girl to know the truth. She’s his daughter, I have no doubt.”
“Good,” Schmidt said. “As it happens, I didn’t know the King of Cahokia.” She turned to the witch. “My name is Notwithstanding Schmidt, and I’m a Director of the Imperial Ohio Company. We conduct all the Ohio Valley trade for the Emperor in his capacity as our sole shareholder.”
“Funny,” the witch said. “I’d have said you looked more like an army than like a caravan of merchants. I’ve seen a few burned towns on the road this winter, and my best guess is the burning was done by your men.”
Schmidt shrugged and waited.
“My name is Sarah Elytharias Penn,” the witch said. “As the eldest child of Hannah Penn, I’m by legal right the Penn landowner, which I expect means by legal right I’m your sole shareholder. If you’ve come to make your report, I’m ready to hear it. In fact, I think I’m prepared to declare a big fat dividend.”
“Show me a Philadelphia court judgment declaring you to be the Penn landowner, and we can talk,” Schmidt said. “Until then, I serve His Imperial Majesty, Thomas Penn. And I haven’t come to Cahokia to give you money, child, but to deliver a message.”
“I ain’t deaf,” Sarah said, her accent cracking into full-blown Appalachee, “and I ain’t gittin’ any younger, either.”
“He begs you to rebel.”
“Hell’s Bells,” growled the ageing Cavalier. “What nonsense is this?”
“Does he recognize my rights?” Sarah asked, her face impassive.
“Absolutely not. None of them. Not a one. You’re a pretender, a fake, or at best the bastard of a desperate madwoman tupped by her footman. And he earnestly hopes you’ll rise against him in revolt.
“And when you do, he’ll grind you into the dust from which you came.”
* * *
“There’s a man here to see you.”
Kinta Jane looked up from her feet. She sat beneath one of the tall windows in the room that Sister Eliza Erikson insisted was the Solarium, though most of the other beguines followed the lead of the would-be Ranger Gerta von Humboldt and called it the Reflectory, with a mixture of affection and disdain. The Reflectory’s windows, wide as well as tall and occupying most of the chamber’s largest wall, faced south, so that even in a winter as cold as this one, as long as there was sun, the room heated up, and it did so without the wood- and-kerosene smoke that made breathing difficult in some of the other rooms.
This was Kinta Jane’s first real winter, and she was still shocked by the three-foot drifts of snow outside. And she was appalled at the poor air quality inside the cloister.
She had lost three toes to frostbite, all on her left foot. It meant she walked with a slight limp now. She found if she swung her hips in the way she did when she aimed to attract a man, the limp was nearly invisible.
Of course, if she swung her hips like that in the cloister, Sister Erikson harrumphed if the First Sister was having a good day; if she was having a bad day, she might slap Kinta Jane.
Kinta Jane pulled on her stockings—beguine-knit, and woolen—and stood.
Gerta von Humboldt was broad-shouldered and bluff as any man, and after her husband had died she’d taken to the woods in what she herself described as a fit of madness. She’d ended up in the cloister, having walked hundreds of miles following no trail, and she alternated between periods of intense commitment to the cloister—building and repairing, planting, hunting to add to the stores, leading trading expeditions to Youngstown—and equally intense periods of wandering on her own in the woods, praying to St. Robert Rogers to descend as Wobomagonda and reveal the next stage of the forest path to her. Some of the sisters whispered that she had had children with her husband, and that in her initial madness, she had torn them limb from limb. They never said it louder than a whisper, and Gerta never said anything of the ki
nd.
Now the would-be Ranger leaned in to whisper to Kinta Jane Embry. “I wouldn’t say he’s handsome, exactly, but neither would I turn up my nose. He’s in the Library.”
Kinta Jane smiled, squeezed her friend’s hand, and made her way to the Library. She was glad now that she had insisted on keeping her stiletto; who, after all, could possibly be here to see her? Some Imperial officer, coming to arrest her for killing his men? A bounty hunter in the pay of Mrs. Meeks?
Some agent of Simon Sword?
She ascended the front stairs and entered the Library.
Each beguine cloister had its own personality, the sisters had told Kinta Jane, and this one was decidedly bookish. It had a flock, and fields, and an orchard, and an apiary, so it could feed itself; it also owned a woolen mill and a flour mill, both of which were shuttered for the winter, so it made goods for trade.
But what made the cloister stand out, for fifty miles around, was its books.
Kinta Jane entered the Library and looked immediately at the books, as she always did. She’d tried to count them one day, and lost track shortly after two thousand—five thousand, more or less, was her best estimate. Eliza Erikson’s father had been a publisher and a bookseller, and when both her parents had died of the same bloody flux one spring, she had driven a wagon up to Palmyra in Haudenosaunee territory and brought back their entire stock.
Before that, this room had been an empty dormer.
“I know why you don’t speak,” said the man sitting at the Library’s reading table.
He was slightly taller than average, lean with the sort of leanness that suggested lots of physical activity—a hunter’s leanness, rather than a beggar’s. Long black hair lay tied into a queue behind his neck with a black ribbon, and large gray eyes looked at her warmly.
She saw no sign of beastkind features. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be a servant of the Heron King, of course. And he didn’t look like any kind of lawman she had ever seen before.
He appeared to be unarmed.
On the table in front of him lay a sheet of foolscap, an ink bottle, and a quill pen.
