by D. J. Butler
They didn’t wait long.
Ka-boom!
The first explosion was muffled. Abd al-Wahid felt it with his feet as much as he heard it with his ears. He saw no visible sign of it, and but for his own part in planting the explosive powder, he wouldn’t have known the explosion had happened in the cathedral.
“The altar?” al-Muhasib asked.
Zayyid shook his head. “When the altar goes, you’ll know it. That was your crypt.”
Al-Muhasib frowned. “I had expected more.”
“You did your work well,” Ravi said. “It’s a solid building. Wait.”
KA-BOOM!
With a brilliant white flash, the powder on the roof blew. One of the pointed spires on the front of the cathedral vanished in the flash, either incinerated by the explosion or perhaps knocked off the front of the building. Abd al-Wahid nodded grimly, feeling no satisfaction other than in the fact of success.
“Indeed, I did my work well,” al-Muhasib said. Ravi clapped him on the shoulder.
“Where is Omar?” Zayyid asked. “Shouldn’t he have rejoined us by now?”
“He’s watching,” Abd al-Wahid said.
The cathedral roof sagged sharply.
“I fear the building will collapse before my true artistry can be seen,” Zayyid murmured.
Ka-boom!
The explosion within the building was followed immediately by the shattering of a large stained-glass window at the rear of the building. The object that hurtled through the glass and wrecked it was large and blocky, and it wasn’t until it thudded to rest, embedding itself several feet deep in the dueling ground behind the cathedral that Abd al-Wahid realized what it was.
The altar, or at least a significant chunk of it.
Zayyid beamed in the dim light. “Now that required the touch of an artist. The chevalier can say that God was so angry with this renegade bishop that He used His lightning to remove the altar from the cathedral.”
“Only there is no lightning,” Ravi pointed out.
At that moment, lightning flashed.
“A little bit late,” Zayyid admitted, “but that will do.”
“I am a little bit late,” said a quiet voice behind them in New Orleans French. “But perhaps my arrival will do, nonetheless.”
Abd al-Wahid turned, hoping to see the rebel bishop, and was disappointed to find instead the idolater’s bodyguard. The large man held a pistol in either hand and his face was stony.
“Armand,” he said, also in French. “Isn’t that your name?”
“Oui.” Armand nodded his head. “And you’re the mussulman fanatics who serve the chevalier.”
“We’re the mussulman warriors who serve God, and God’s deputy. We’ve agreed to perform a task for the chevalier.”
“I can’t kill all of you,” Armand said to Abd al-Wahid. “But I think if I kill you, it will be enough. You’re the leader, aren’t you? The prince-capitaine? If I think if I kill you, the others will be discouraged, they’ll lack direction, a sense of mission, perhaps they’ll simply go home.”
Abd al-Wahid nodded. “But before you kill me, I ask you to carry your master a message from the chevalier.”
“Go to hell,” the bodyguard grunted. “I will carry no message for you.” He raised his pistols, cocking the hammers with his thumbs—
blood spilled from Armand’s mouth suddenly, pouring down his chest as the tip of a knife protruded from his sternum—
Armand sank to the boardwalk, but his eyes glared hatred as he fell. Raising his pistols, he aimed first at Abd al-Wahid—
but his arm skewed sideways, his aim faltering—
bang!
Zayyid toppled backward and fell into the mud, instantly still.
Bang!
Armand’s second shot struck Abd al-Wahid, but in the shoulder. Abd al-Wahid staggered sideways, keeping his footing with effort.
Armand fell to the wood of the boardwalk. Above him stood Omar al-Talib, who now pulled his blade from the dead man’s back and wiped blood from the weapon on Armand’s waistcoat.
“It’s I who am too late,” Omar said. “Forgive me, Prince-Capitaine.”
“Zayyid is dead!” Ravi cried, his voice bitter.
“I take it the bishop himself hasn’t emerged,” Omar said.
“I haven’t seen him. Perhaps he’s too cunning to respond to this bait. Perhaps he’s engaged in other tasks.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t care about the cathedral,” Ravi suggested.
Abd al-Wahid turned to look at the church, just in time to see the roof collapse, and flames lick up the sagging walls.
“Perhaps.” He leaned on Omar’s shoulder, both to keep himself upright and to reassure al-Talib. “But you will carry a message, my friend,” he said to Armand’s corpse. “You will.”
* * *
Sarah awoke to burning pain.
“Please don’t resist,” said the voice of Maltres Korinn in her ear. “The pain will end soon.”
“Son of a bitch!” she snapped.
The darkness she saw out of her natural eye told her it was still night—in fact, that it was the wee hours of the morning, when all the city’s fires had all been dimmed—and the sky was still overcast.
Through her unnatural eye, her father-gifted witchy eye, she saw the auras of men. Calvin, on the ground in the corner of the room, resentful and angry—tied up? Counselor Uris, who seemed conflicted; the satisfaction of revenge struggled within him against tendrils of doubt. Her gramarye-powered hold on him had disappeared. Warriors she didn’t know, dutiful, confused, indifferent. Maltres Korinn leaning over her, trembling with fear.
Silver manacles on Sarah’s wrists.
“Damn you!” she raged. “I’m your queen!”
Alzbieta Torias had betrayed her. It had to be the case—she and the Handmaid had agreed that Sarah would accompany her unseen to the Presentation, and now that the rite was imminent, her cousin had had second thoughts.
“I have no queen,” Korinn said softly. “Not yet. And as regent, I’m taking the only course of action I may.”
The men dragged her to her feet and along the tunnel toward the nearest exit. She kicked, but fighting not to scream in pain took most of her strength, and her kicks were feeble and inaccurate. Calvin staggered behind her, also prisoner and held by two men.
At the exit, Uris tugged Korinn’s elbow. “Is it safe to leave the man Lee here? He and his beastkind rabble are dangerous.”
“Safe?” Korinn’s laugh was dry and mocking. “Safe, counselor Uris? When was the last time you did anything that was safe? When was the last time I did a safe thing?”
“Lee is dangerous.” Uris’s voice was sullen.
“By my count, I haven’t done a safe thing in fifteen years. We leave Lee and the woman. And all the beastkind. We don’t have enough cells to hold them all in the Hall of Onandagos, and I have no will to pay what it would cost to kill them now. Frankly, the beastkind within the walls of my city are much less of a threat than the beastkind without. Besides, they are surrounded.”
“Be wary of him,” Uris insisted.
“As I’m wary of everyone,” Korinn agreed. “Come.”
Maltres Korinn, Sarah now saw, carried the regalia. His own staff he had laid aside somewhere, and he carried Sarah’s satchel holding the Sevenfold Crown, the Orb of Etyles, and the Heronplow in front of him with both hands. His erect posture, his stiff arms, and his bowed head made him look like a page, carrying out an official duty, or a priest carrying forward wafer and wine to the altar.
In the street, Cal made his move.
He threw himself sideways and into one of the men holding him. Wheeling and off-balance, he then slammed his own forehead into the face of the other man and lurched away. Sarah could only see his aura, but somehow Cal must have removed a gag from his mouth, because he staggered across the street shouting. “O Lord, is there no help for the widow’s son?”
Two of the warriors tackled him, one kicking his l
egs out from under him and the other cracking the pommel of his sword into Calvin’s skull several times.
“Cal,” Sarah called. “Calvin, stop!”
“Is there no help?” Cal tried again, and got punched again in the temple. “Help for the widow’s son…?”
“Cal!” Sarah cried.
He fell silent, and his captors dragged Calvin Calhoun to his feet.
“As it happens, Mr. Calhoun,” Maltres Korinn said slowly. “I’m Grand Riverine Master of the Na’avu Lodge.”
“Riverine…?” Cal’s voice sounded groggy.
“Ohio Rite.”
“You think you’re actin’ on the square with me, do you?” Cal demanded.
Korinn shook his head. “I would very much like to come to your aid, as I’d very much like to do anything other than what I find myself compelled to do. Gyntres, Kallyr…I know you.”
Sarah looked at the two men he addressed. Their auras looked less conflicted than his did.
“We understand, Riverine Master,” one of them said.
A patch of open star-filled sky and Sarah’s normal eye adjusting to light allowed her to see as the soldiers pulled a gag back up over Cal’s mouth, and then drag the two of them away. As Alzbieta Torias’s house receded into the night, Sarah looked back with her witchy eye and saw squads of soldiers squatting behind protective barricades around all sides of the house. Within, through the windows, she saw hints of beastkind auras crouched defensively.
Someone had broken her magical hold over counselor Uris. Had Alzbieta done it?
Uris pulled a bag over Sarah’s head, shutting off all her vision.
Her captors dragged her through snow and over stone. A bitterly cold wind scorched the skin of her neck and arms where it was exposed. She tried to count to be able to guess at the passage of time, but the shattering pain in her arms and the occasional thumps as she was knocked against a wall or bumped on steps distracted her and she gave up. Still, the time that passed was minutes, and not hours, and then she was dropped onto a wooden board. Her manacles were stripped away and she smelled greasy straw.
Another body struck the board beside her, and then she heard a loud click.
Sarah pulled the sack from her head.
She and Calvin lay on a broad plank bed, strewn only thinly with old straw. The bed hung by two chains from one stone wall of a windowless cell. Three walls of the chamber were stone, and the fourth consisted of iron bars, including an iron door, that was shut. Beyond the bars, in the other half of the stone chamber, stood Korinn, Uris, and the Cahokian warriors. Korinn held her satchel with reverence. A bracket in the wall clutched a single torch, and smoke drifted lazily up to a barred skylight Sarah could barely see, far overhead.
“Dormite!” she shouted, and felt the spell die within her.
“We Firstborn are a race that produces many wizards.” Maltres Korinn seemed sad. “The Queens and Kings of Cahokia have long experience imprisoning upstart sorcerer cousins. The mortar that holds together the stones of this chamber is wound through with threads of silver filigree. It would take a mighty wizard to cast any kind of spell in here.”
“Dormite!” Sarah shouted again, willing her soul into the spell, trying to knock her captors unconscious.
Instead, her mind hit a wall, and the sheer force of the rebound hurled her to the floor and took her breath away.
“Until the Presentation,” Korinn said. “I have no legal cause to hold you, and I do this out of political necessity. But I must lock you away for now.”
“When I become your queen, you’ll regret this day.”
“I regret it already.” Korinn raised her shoulder bag slightly. “I’ll take good care of these. I know what they are.”
“And you, Uris,” Sarah hissed. “Oathbreaker.”
“You forced an oath upon me,” Uris said. “I have older and greater oaths, to the lady Torias.”
“Is she complicit in this?” Sarah asked. “She breaks her oath, too.”
“I know the lady Torias to be compassionate,” Uris said. “After the Presentation, when the goddess selects her, I know she’ll show you as much mercy as you’ll accept.”
“If the goddess selects her,” Korinn said pointedly.
Uris nodded his head in deference. As the front of his tunic opened with the nod, Sarah saw a constellation of blisters, welts, and boils across his chest. Looking down at her own wrists, she saw the same corruption.
“You made him do this,” she accused Korinn.
“I freed him of your spell,” the Regent-Minister admitted. “And I invited him to help me protect the Presentation from your interference.”
“And when the Imperials find out what you’ve done, and ask you to turn me over to them?”
“I don’t intend to tell them what I’ve done,” Korinn said. “Indeed, I’m hiding you from them.”
“But if they directly asked, you’d do it, wouldn’t you? You’d talk about how sorry you feel, and how it’s just your duty, and you don’t really want to…but you’d hand me over in a heartbeat, if you thought you had to.”
“With regret, yes. If you truly belong to the goddess, and I truly had to do so…I would trust in Her to save you.”
“You’ll pay for this,” Sarah promised.
“I’m already paying.”
Without another word, Maltres Korinn turned and left. His warriors followed him, leaving Uris behind.
“Want to gloat?” Sarah goaded the man, but she knew better. Storming through his aura was a mixture of emotions, only one of which was satisfaction. Mostly, she saw regret, uncertainty, hesitation, and sorrow.
“Maltres Korinn is a good man, doing the best he can by his lights. He won’t turn you over to the Emperor.”
Sarah snorted. “Every man does the best he can by his own lights. Somehow, half of ’em still end up murderers and thieves.”
“I owed it to Sherem,” Uris said. “I had to do this. I won’t let Korinn turn you over to the Emperor Thomas.”
“The hell you won’t.”
Uris took a deep breath.
“The hell you won’t!” Sarah screamed again as he passed out a doorway and disappeared. “The hell you won’t!”
“Mmmng,” Calvin groaned from the bed.
It hurt her to use her hands, but Sarah pulled the gag off Calvin’s mouth and then untied his wrists. He looked bad—dark bruises were quickly filling in his eye sockets, and the skin around both temples and along one side of his jaw was lacerated.
He noticed her staring. “Jerusalem, Sarah, I weren’t e’er a good-lookin’ man.”
She shook her head. “Handsomer’n I am, Calvin Calhoun.”
“That’s a confounded lot of nonsense and you know it.” Cal looked her right in the eyes as he spoke. “You’re beautiful, Sarah. Most you can say about my face is it’s got character. More character than e’er, right about now.”
She found her vision blurred by a sudden upwelling of emotion. Thank goodness only Calvin was here to see her cry. “You’re a good man, Calvin.”
Cal shrugged, grinned, and then winced at the pain the grin cost him. “Lord hates a man as can’t call a spade a spade.”
“Then I reckon I better point out another spade. We’re prisoners. Stuck here, and I got no idea what’s comin’ down the pike.”
Cal groaned as he climbed to his feet. Shuffling across the cell, he tested the door, then each of the bars in turns—all firm. He tried and found he could pass his skinny arms between the bars, but to no purpose, as there was nothing within reach.
“I heard that about the silver,” he mumbled. His lips were starting to puff up. “I reckon they’s no hexin’ us outta this jam.”
She nodded. “Sir William might break free, but it don’t look too good for him, either. I reckon he’s outnumbered four or five to one, hunkered down in that house.”
Cal saw her wrists for the first time and gasped. “What happened?”
“Silver,” she said. “Stopped me from
hexin’ us free when they captured us.”
“You’re all torn up.”
“No worse than you,” she said, “and I ain’t got it in the face.”
He lowered himself heavily onto the planks. “Well, at least we’re torn up together.”
* * *
“In the name of mercy, do not do this!” Chigozie begged.
Kort looked at him with cold black eyes. “Mercy? Mercy isn’t a quality of beasts. To rut, is a thing a beast does. To eat, yes. To battle for territory, for food or for a mate. To sleep. To show mercy? It is not of the beasts.”
Chigozie stood on a boulder, raising his hands heavenward and imploring. In one hand, he held his cross. Below him stretched out a rocky, irregular slope that descended toward the Mississippi, strewn with chasms, boulders, and stunted trees; the worst of its irregularities hid beneath a thick blanket of snow, stained with mud and blood. A horde of beastkind descended the slope, slinking, creeping, or leaping as suited their respective limbs. On the other side of the river lay docks, from which now fled a motley assortment of galleys, yachts, and keelboats. Behind the docks rose walls that must belong to Cahokia—they looked like tree trunks, closely knit together by their limbs, and on the ramparts stood Ophidians with their rounded steel helmets and their longbows and rifles.
The beastkind were gathering on the western shore, gibbering and roaring challenges, and Cahokia battened down its hatches for an animal storm.
“I have known beastkind to read,” Chigozie said. “I have known them to recite poetry.”
“In the heart of the Heron King’s palace, the beastkind learn to do many things to please their lord.”
“You see? And may you not learn to show mercy to please the Lord?”
“My lord.” Kort’s eyes glittered. Behind him, the lamprey-headed, cat-limbed beastman Aanik hissed, a noise that sounded like laughter. “My lord, not yours. And what pleases my lord Simon Sword now is that we destroy the Firstborn. Zomas in the south, and Cahokia in the east.”
