by D. J. Butler
“I see you’ve untied the Zhaaganaashii boy-chief.” Ma’iingan knelt to lower Landon onto a bed of horse tackle. “That’s just fine. If I need to, I’ll tie him up again.”
George raised a warning finger. “You—” But then he looked at Nathaniel, frowned, and lowered his arm. “I didn’t cry out. I could have.”
“True. You respect your honor, Zhaaganaashii. Well done.”
“But you’re a liar,” George said.
“Yes,” Ma’iingan agreed. “It’s fun.”
“You’re no Comanche. Zhaaganaashii means a white man. That’s an Ojibwe word.”
“Really, it means an English speaker. We have other words for the French and the Germans.” Ma’iingan gave no sign of being impressed at George’s knowledge. Instead, he crept back to the door through which he’d entered and peered out. “I believe the soldiers will march the wrong direction for a long time before they realize we’ve lost them. I see you’re well, God-Has-Given. I thank Gichi-Manidoo for that.”
“What do you call a Frenchman?” George asked.
“French,” Ma’iingan said. To George’s look of irritation, he shrugged. “There are so many of you English speakers, we needed a word to describe you all. And it isn’t English, since that means something else.”
“I thank you for it,” Nathaniel said. “You brought me to your manidoo, who showed me the way to be healed.”
Ma’iingan’s eyes fell, and then he raised them again to look Nathaniel in the face. “You know I’ve done it for reasons of my own. But I don’t wish to ask for so great a thing.”
“Your son,” Nathaniel said.
“Giimoodaapi.” Ma’iingan nodded. “My manidoo told me you were a healer, and would help.”
“You have promised healing to many people,” George muttered, rubbing chafed wrists.
“I will heal him,” Nathaniel said, but then he heard low, rumbling words.
~Rest. Rest. Give me back my rest.~
He could hear what kind of creature was speaking, and it broke his heart immediately.
“May I take you to the People?” Ma’iingan asked.
“I’ll heal your son,” Nathaniel said. He looked at George. “I’ll try my best, and if your manidoo thinks I am able, then he’s no doubt right. But flight may be difficult. We’re surrounded.”
Ma’iingan shook his head. “I led the soldiers away.”
“We’re surrounded by others,” Nathaniel said.
Ma’iingan raised his long rifle and grabbed his powder horn in his other hand. “To save my son, I’ll kill any number of Zhaaganaashii soldiers.”
“Too late,” Nathaniel murmured, listening again to the rumble of the voices. “They’re already dead.”
“No worse than you, and I ain’t got it in the face.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Duke of Na’avu leaned heavily on his ancient staff, shivering from the cold. The Earthshaker’s Rod wasn’t connected to his Dukedom, but to the throne of Cahokia and to the throne that had preceded it, in lost Irra-Antum, the land of many waters. The horse was the horse of the river and the sea, and the rod belonged to he who held back the waters by sacrifice from the royal herd.
Horses, rather than sons.
By rights, it should be the staff of the queen, not one of the sacred royal items the queen used in ritual and magic, but an external sign by which to recognize her. In the absence of the monarch, Maltres Korinn bore the Earthshaker’s Rod as Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne.
The appearance of the strange-eyed half-Appalachee witch leaning on a rough-hewn imitation of the Earthshaker’s Rod had shaken Korinn.
Her choice to make her rod—and his—flower had shaken him further.
Should he take that arcane act, clearly a spell cast by the girl herself, as the divine hand of Wisdom, selecting Her candidate? The arrangement he and the other candidates had come to had been, after all, merely a mortal truce. Above all, the Presentation was a way to retain the loyalty of important Cahokians who believed they deserved the throne, and whose support Korinn needed, to help his land and people survive the tightening Imperial fist.
But he needed that truce.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps he was choosing his own mortal device over the plain will of the goddess. It wasn’t the girl’s ability to make the staff flower—that was mere wizardry. What Maltres Korinn took for a sign was rather the girl’s choice of the staff and the blossoms. It was too perfect, too right.
But he still needed the seven candidates. Since the arrival of Director Schmidt and her doubling of the imposts and duties, he needed them more than ever.
So he would choose his mortal device over what might be the action of the goddess, and he would do so deliberately. He was sinning against light and knowledge, but he did it to keep his oath of office.
If the goddess could lead the young witch to unwittingly mark herself as queen, She could straighten Maltres Korinn’s course, notwithstanding the painful choice he made.
“There he is,” he said to the wardens. “With the gray hair. It’s important not to mark him.”
Alzbieta Torias’s counselor Uris had been a soldier of some renown in his youth. The man had taught Kyres Elytharias to use a sword, when the princeling had been a younger son with no other prospects than to become a soldier, before Kyres had stolen the Heronblade and run off to fight the Spanish with it. Korinn had expected Uris to be the advisor standing at Alzbieta’s side, and the shocking appearance of the half-civilized girl with the Nashville twang instead was another reason he’d found her so unsettling.
The wardens of Cahokia carried clubs, but now, as previously ordered, they gave these to the regent. Instead, they held fishing nets. Cahokia didn’t feed its folk with fish taken from the river, and those who did fish the Mississippi along the Cahokian Bottom generally did so with hook and line rather than by trawling with a net, so Korinn had had to buy these nets from the crew of a German keelboat, unloading cotton bales and telling wide-eyed dockworkers extravagant stories about the atrocities committed by the rampaging beastkind upriver and along the Missouri.
Korinn had heard the same stories from many of the refugees Cahokia had taken in, that it had housed in its public buildings and in the homes of the willing, until they were so numerous they began to spill into the streets. The duke’s own house in the city was stuffed with the suffering poor of Missouri.
And with the city itself starving, why did they flee here? Why didn’t they run for the Igbo Free Cities, or Texia, or anywhere east?
Faith in Cahokia’s walls. Faith in its ancient monarchy.
The memory of the Lion, perhaps.
Uris stood dickering with a Dutch Ohio Company trader, offering way too many iron coins for way too little grain, but there were fewer and fewer options. The Dutch Ohio Company had effectively become smugglers, an outlaw operation along with the few Hansa traders who slipped through the Imperial cordon with merchandise for sale. This explained why Uris, a man of responsibility and prominence, stood huddled over a pile of grain sacks in a tiny square formed by the intersection of two alleys behind a third-rate tavern. Counselor Uris looked calm, but the two sword-armed warriors at his side shifted from one foot to the other and kept their hands on their hilts.
“Now,” the regent said.
The four wardens charged out into the alley. At the same moment, four wardens charged from the opposite side. They ignored the swordsmen and tackled Uris, throwing nets over him from three directions and dragging him down into a thick snowbank under a pile of short gray capes. The swordsmen drew their weapons—
“Halt!” Maltres Korinn cried. He stepped forward into the square and raised his staff of office. “By virtue of the office of Regent-Minister, and in the name of the Serpent Throne, I order you to stand down.”
“I’ve committed no crime!” Uris snarled.
“No,” Korinn agreed sadly. He removed the heavy purse from his belt and pulled supple leather gloves ov
er his hand. “Not yet.”
One of the warriors stepped between Uris and the regent. “Even the Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne can’t arrest a man without cause.” He held his sword in low guard position, ready to attack, and Korinn took care to watch the man’s eyes rather than be distracted by the blade. “Do you have a writ, signed by three Notaries?”
Maltres Korinn sighed. “As you are loyal to your mistress, Alzbieta Torias, stand aside.”
The warrior looked back and forth between Korinn and Uris, growled, and then stood down.
“What is this treachery?” Uris barked.
The Dutch trader, ignored now by all parties, pulled a canvas tarpaulin over his cart and quietly stole around to the driver’s seat. Korinn let him go. His people needed smugglers right now, and if Uris didn’t buy the man’s grain, someone else would.
“This treachery is my best attempt to fulfill my oath.” Korinn took a handful of German silver coins from the purse.
“I too have sworn oaths!” Uris shouted.
“Flat onto his back,” Korinn directed the wardens.
The doubt showed on their faces, but they did as he told him. If the goddess came for their souls, he promised himself, he would stand in Her way and take all the blame.
He pressed the first handful of silver coins against Uris’s chest. The pale, loose skin of the old man’s sternum blistered immediately, and he let loose a howl. He writhed and buckled, pushing to escape, and Korinn leaned forward, pushing all his weight down on the other man’s ribcage.
Then he poured the rest of the coins onto Uris’s chest and neck.
Each coin that struck the man raised a welt. Where a coin struck flesh and rested, it raised a blister. Korinn was no magician, and he had no way to know when the magic that bound the counselor might be canceled, so he knelt on the old man and watched until blood flowed.
Then he relented and stood.
The wardens didn’t need to be told. They dragged Uris to his feet and shook him. Most of the coins fell into the snow; with gloved fingers, Maltres Korinn tore out two last thalers that had sunk into marred flesh.
Uris hung between two wardens, panting with pain…but his eyes were clear, and the look he directed at Maltres Korinn was not a glare of rage.
It was a knowing look. And it contained a hint of gratitude.
Korinn picked up his staff and leaned on it, feeling heavier than ever. “Your oath. Tell me about it.”
“I swore an oath to the witch,” Uris said slowly.
“Sarah, daughter of Kyres Elytharias,” Maltres said. “Who might, after all, be—or become—the chosen Beloved of our goddess.
“The same. It was taken under threat of violence. And it was bound upon me with the Sevenfold Crown.”
“And Alzbieta Torias?”
“The same. And the Unborn Daughter of Podebradas, Yedera.”
Korinn nodded. He’d thought as much. The use of the Sevenfold Crown didn’t itself make the oath illegal or unbinding; use of the crown was the prerogative of the King or Queen of Cahokia, used when necessary and not relied upon too much. If the goddess truly wanted this child as Her queen, it might be completely proper.
But Korinn knew that he might be going against the will of the goddess.
And he was resolved to do it, anyway.
* * *
Lightning flashed on the other side of the stained glass, and the images on it glowed dimly and briefly, like the fleeting infidel icons they were. If you ever commit idol worship, God had caused to be written, all your works will be nullified. Surely, if those words applied to anyone, they applied to Etienne Ukwu.
And also to the Chevalier of New Orleans, with his many saints.
“Do we wait for an actual bolt of lightning to strike the building?” Al-Muhasib asked.
“Bah.” Ravi snorted. “What for?”
“To give countenance to the lie. I’ve placed gunpowder on the roof. I can ignite it when lightning strikes close enough.”
“You imagine there will be witnesses.”
“This is a large city, O son of Isaac. Perhaps you’ve noticed this. And it’s a city accustomed to rain. Someone will notice that the fire appeared to begin inside the building.”
“The Bishop of New Orleans is a man of many and strange resources, O son of Ishmael. Perhaps you have noticed this. Even if lightning were to strike the roof of this Christian temple and ignite it in truth, I have no doubt the bishop would suborn a mob of witnesses to perjure themselves and claim they had seen the chevalier himself lay a torch to the altar.”
“And the chevalier would suborn a separate mob to claim that God Himself had rolled back the thundercloud, shouted aloud the sins of the bishop in evident displeasure, and then personally hurled the thunderbolt, being divinely disappointed only in the fact of having not in fact killed the bishop with the same throw.”
“Here you’re mistaken theologically, Nabil. I don’t think even the Christian god would miss, once he started throwing lightning. Certainly, the God of Sinai would not.”
“Nor would the Lord of Mecca.”
“You’re both correct, and therefore you should both shut your mouths in satisfaction at having won the argument.” Abd al-Wahid rolled a casket of powder into place against one of the nave’s columns. “Each man will blame the other, regardless. Each will have witnesses, each will have believers.”
“I would be sad to believe that this rendered our actions pointless.” Zayyid had placed a cask of powder on each of the four sides of the altar, and was now binding them together tightly with rope.
“You’re fools if you imagine that this is a contest about right and wrong.” Abd al-Wahid wiped sweat and humidity from his forehead as thunder rolled in the Place d’Armes outside. “This is a struggle between wrong and wrong. Between two wicked men, two idolaters, a corrupt governor and a racketeer. And most of the people of New Orleans see them clearly as such, and are perfectly content to have a corrupt man as their leader. This contest is simply to decide which corrupt man it will be.”
“Because the people of New Orleans wish to see which corrupt man God will choose to anoint?” Al-Muhasib scratched the back of his neck.
Abd al-Wahid shook his head. “The people of New Orleans wish to see which corrupt man is more powerful. The more powerful their corrupt leader, the more he can do for them.”
“Has it always been this way in New Orleans?” Ravi sloshed oil over several pews. “In the New World?”
“It has always been this way among the children of Adam. For this, thank God that you are a mameluke. Devotion brings clarity. Simplicity makes it easy to be honest.”
This observation occasioned emphatic nods all around, curses of agreement, and spitting on the cathedral floor.
“If the chevalier burns down the cathedral,” Zayyid asked, “and appoints his own bishop, what will Ukwu do to retaliate? Burn down the Palais?”
“I expect we’ll find out.” Abd al-Wahid took a deep breath. He wanted this contest between petty thieves and corrupt murderers to end, so he could return to the presence of the Caliph and reap his reward for having done away with the rebel Talleyrand.
“Shouldn’t we just kill the priest?” Al-Muhasib asked.
“We’ve tried, fool,” Ravi said.
“If he comes out tonight, we try again,” Abd al-Wahid added. “For al-Farangi. For now…fire the gunpowder.”
Al-Muhasib padded amiably to the staircase, where gunpowder fuses climbed up the steps to the rooftop and down into the crypt. Zayyid laid a gunpowder fuse from the altar to the staircase and joined al-Muhasib. They both nodded at Abd al-Wahid.
“Give me a moment.” Ravi smashed a jar of oil against the cathedral’s rood screen, and then hurled one more against the wooden furnishings of a side chapel.
“Always the slow one, O Jew,” al-Muhasib teased his friend. “Always last.”
“The first shall be last.” Ravi walked toward the other two. “By which we see that my tardiness i
s a true sign of the excellence and primogeniture of Abraham’s son Isaac.”
“Isaac by your own Jewish record was the second son.”
“So was Jacob, who supplanted Esau.” Ravi shrugged. “And neither was Joseph the eldest, and yet he rose to the throne of Egypt. If you were to read the words of Moses, O son of the desert, you would see that sometimes God favors one of the sons who is not the first. The last shall be first.”
“The words of Moses are the words of a Jew.” Al-Muhasib shrugged. “If I wish to hear the words of a Jew, I can go to any bazaar and haggle to buy an ass.”
“Moses was a Levite, in fact.” Ravi’s cheerful smile was illuminated in many colors by another flash of lightning outside. “King David was a Jew.”
“You make a Jew distinction. I understand it not, and neither do I care. In any case, we know from the Qur’an that the son who ascended Mount Moriah with his father Abraham was Ishmael, and not Isaac. Now get over here so you aren’t blown to pieces when I ignite this fuse.”
The four knelt together, facing four separate directions, each holding flint and steel in hand. “I shall count down,” Ravi offered. “Shalosh, shtem, achat…”
The numbers were in Hebrew.
“Jew,” al-Muhasib muttered.
“Ephes,” Ravi said, finishing his count.
They struck fire.
Four gunpowder fuses ignited, burning quickly into the stairwell, toward the altar, toward the columns lining the nave, and in the direction of the pews. The sudden red flame threw tall shadows against the walls and ceiling of the cathedral, shadows that didn’t illuminate any of the idolatrous art but instead made glorious patterns of light and darkness. For the first time, Abd al-Wahid found the interior of the building beautiful, and he stood to look at it.
“Call it the action of a Jew if you will,” Ravi said, “but I’m leaving now.”
The four of them exited the rear of the cathedral onto a dirt courtyard, the dirt packed so hard by a century of feet that even this torrential winter rain could not turn it into mud. Only a few lights shone in view of this tiny plaza, from the windows of the Polite monastery and from the City Council building. The mamelukes crossed the square and walked as far as they could down the street beyond and still keep the cathedral in view. Finding an open tavern with a boardwalk beneath a long balcony, they turned and waited in the shadow outside dimly lit windows.
