“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
Chapter One
Sarah lay against the back wall of the long nave of the Temple of the Sun, gazing at the naked Serpent Throne across a space that should have been veiled. She had a long Imperial dragoon’s wool coat pulled over her as a blanket against the chill night breeze wafting into the Temple through the open door.
It was night, and the Temple was dark. Sarah was here because she couldn’t sleep elsewhere, hadn’t been able to catch a moment’s sleep anywhere but atop the Great Mound since the moment she had seen her father’s goddess on the Sunrise Mound.
William Lee had told Sarah that her father occasionally slept in trees. Was it some experience like this that had caused him to do so?
Or was it a taboo he had chosen?
Sarah dozed in and out. When she was awake, her mortal eye saw nothing but gloom and shade. Through her Eye of Eve, though, she had visions.
She saw smoke and pollution. Something was wrong, she saw; not with the throne itself, but with how it had been treated. But beneath the mists of darkness, light shone. It was the brilliant blue light of the eternal Eden into which Sarah had briefly set foot, and yet it had a warm, golden glow, as well.
It reminded her also of the light she’d seen inhabiting the Serpent Mound above the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers, where her father’s acorn, planted, had grown into a tree that was in some sense also her father himself.
The light was power.
Sarah had come far, leaving her childhood home in Appalachee at the word of the monk Thalanes to search after the lost heritage of her father and the stolen wealth of her mother. She had made her journey less for those things than for the sake of the kin she had learned she possessed—a brother and a sister she had never known.
She had found her brother. Her sister was still missing, though, and Sarah and her people were penned within the wall of her father’s city, Cahokia, by hostile Imperial forces. She had seen Eden, the land of her father’s goddess, but only barely set foot in it and had not mastered its power. That power now winked at Sarah tantalizingly through a veil of pollution and wrongdoing.
Sarah needed to get access to that power if she and her people were going to survive.
The throne had an occupant. At least some moments, drifting in and out of troubled sleep, Sarah thought she saw a woman—the Woman—sitting on the throne. Was she smiling at Sarah?
But at other times, she seemed to see a second figure, standing behind the goddess: a tall, green, heron-headed man. Was she seeing the Heron King through her Eye of Eve, or in her dreams? He wasn’t consistently there, and Sarah’s uncertainty built up in her heart as dread.
The Heron King rested one hand on the Serpent Throne, and it seemed to Sarah that the hand sat also on the shoulder of the goddess. In his right hand, the Heron King held a sword.
The one Sarah had given him.
Had that been a mistake? With the Heronplow she had gained in return, she had rescued one of her two siblings, and she had, once, saved her father’s city from an incursion of rampaging beastkind.
Was that enough? Did that make the trade worth it?
Uncertainty became fear, but Sarah was so exhausted that she continued to drift in and out of sleep, fear notwithstanding.
“Beloved.” The Heron King stretched forth his hand. “Beloved.”
He touched her shoulder.
Sarah shrank and cried out—
“Beloved, you’re dreaming”—
and woke up.
Pale light crept in through the Temple’s door. Sarah looked immediately to the throne, seeing the light and the pollution, but neither the goddess nor the Heron King.
“Beloved.” Maltres Korinn knelt beside her. He’d positioned himself carefully, so that the light shone on his face and revealed his identity. That face wore an expression of concern. “Forgive my touch, Beloved. You were crying out.”
“I ain’t made of glass.” Sarah shivered and sat up, pulling the coat up around her neck. “I can stand some handlin’. Iffen I had my choice, I’d rather you shake me than call me that title.”
Korinn didn’t take the bait, but she knew he wasn’t about to stop calling her Beloved.
“Beloved, the Handmaid Alzbieta told me you had disappeared from her home. The wardens and I have been looking for you.”
Sarah took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to force the fear and uncertainty out with the air. It didn’t work. “I can’t sleep there. I can’t sleep anywhere, except here. It’s the damnedest thing.”
“Or the most blessed.”
“You try it for a week, and then tell me that.”
Korinn nodded. “I’ll talk with Alzbieta. I believe there’s a solution.”
“Maltres,” she said, “how did you end up here? I don’t mean looking for me this morning. I mean, how did you end up as Regent-Minister?”
Maltres Korinn eased himself into a cross-legged sitting position. “I love this land. I love the city, too, though I long to be in my own brambles and groves in the north. But this is the city of my goddess, it was the city of my king, and now it’s the city of my queen.”
“I ain’t queen yet.”
“In time. So when your father died and a group of the city’s leaders asked me to take care of the city until a successor was chosen, I couldn’t say no.”
“Leaders, meaning the wealthy?”
“Some of them were wealthy. Others held important titles, like Royal Companion and Notary and Archivist. Or military rank—Jaleta Zorales was one of them.”
“It didn’t occur to you to use their support to just take the throne for yourself.”
“But that wasn’t what they asked me to do.”
Surrounded by Imperial troops and caught between a god of destruction and a cold-blooded necromancer, it touched Sarah’s heart to be reminded that there were still people in the world who acted out of duty, and for love. “I never hear you talk about a wife, or children.” Sarah softened her Appalachee twang, not wanting to sound hostile. “Does that mean you’re…you’re not the marrying kind?”
Korinn laughed. “It means that my wife died, and my children are grown or mostly grown. They have lives of their own, and are not here in the city. But when I can get back to Na’avu, along with harvesting blackberries and cutting dead wood out of the forest, I will read with my daughters and ride with my sons and sit beside my wife’s grave to tell her of my adventures in the big city.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.” Sarah rose creakily to her feet. “I guess that’s all the sleep I’m going to get tonight, though. Time to go fight the good fight.”
* * *
“Foxes have holes,” Etienne Ukwu said, “and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”
He spoke loudly, the opening words to a quick sermon. He stood atop a wooden crate he had placed on an angle on the boardwalk in the Vieux Carré, and he wore neither his black vest, with its Vodun patterns, nor his episcopal garb. He wore his black trousers and a simple white shirt. He counted on his reputation to tell people who he was.
His reputation, and the Brides.
The women within earshot noticed him first, turning to look at him as the Brides touched their souls and their bodies. The men took only moments longer.
Etienne had chosen this corner because there were no gendarmes in sight. Still, they would hear of his appearance and they would come. He had to speak quickly.
“A keen-eared critic will say, ‘ah, this Ukwu compares himself to Jesus,’ but no. I am not the Son of Man, but only the son of a man, the son of a poor man who served this city. And I, too, have tried to serve the city, and look at me now. The fox of a chevalier has a hole. The vulture bishop, my former beadle, has a nest. And I, the son of your poor servant?”
A crowd was forming. There were nods and murmurs of agreement.
At the back of the mob, someone ran off—to fetch the constabulary, most likely. Etienne had only moments left.
“Do not give the robber what he demands!” Etienne shook his fist in the air and several women fainted. “The only way to defeat this beast is to starve it!”
“Starve it!” someone yelled.
“No more taxes!” Etienne cried. “Justice for the bishop!”
“No more taxes!” the crowd roared.
“No more taxes!” he shouted one last time and then jumped down from the box. The gendarmes were coming.
As Etienne slipped down an alley to disappear, he thought he heard someone whistle a jaunty and familiar tune behind him.
* * *
Thomas discreetly touched the Jupiter ring on his right hand as he followed Temple Franklin into the Walnut Street Prison. He always walked with an erect posture—it strengthened his air of command—and he consciously threw his shoulders back and his chin up.
He wasn’t wearing his town coat because he didn’t want to be recognized. Instead, Temple had brought a three-chinned, eight-fingered gramarist from the College to ward him with hexes of protection. The magician had done his job efficiently in the library at Horse Hall, repeatedly invoking both St. Reginald Pole and also the Dagda. He had not sat down, had kept his back to the corner at all times, and had politely declined Temple’s offer of a drink.
The College feared Thomas. Excellent.
Now Thomas and Temple, both wearing brown coats and brown tricorn hats such as any Philadelphia burgher might don, walked from cell to cell. Temple had the ring of keys, and they stopped to open random doors and look at the men behind them. No light came through the high, tiny windows of the cells because of the late hour; in addition to the keys, Temple carried a fat taper.
“The problem with these men,” Thomas said, “is that they’re not warriors.” He gestured with disdain at three unshaven, foul-smelling prisoners. Emaciated and filthy as the men were, they still had the soft look of clerks and merchants.
The gesture itself hurt him. He had been shot in the shoulder by Wilkes the actor. Thanks to the ministrations of College magicians, the wound had almost entirely healed, but he still ached when he made certain motions with his arm.
Thomas shut the door and they moved on.
“I see that as an advantage.” Temple fluttered his fingers, a gesture vaguely reminiscent of a cheap stage magician’s theatrics.
“I see it as a sign that we have drained our prisons of their most brutal and dangerous men, and now we are reduced to scraps. I want more marauders for the Ohio, Temple. Look at these fellows—they’re bankrupts and frauds, not cutthroats.”
“They’re men with families.” Franklin smiled.
They opened another door. Here too, the prisoners were ragged scarecrows whose hair had not been cut in weeks and perhaps months, but they bore sure signs of middle class Pennslander living: they still had teeth in their mouths, for instance, and Thomas had yet to see a tattoo or a ritual scar.
Thomas considered, then dismissed an idea. “But they’re in prison because their families can’t pay their debts. There’s no ransom to be had here, Temple.”
“No ransom,” Franklin agreed. “But men with families won’t desert, or turn against you. Children and wives of men released from prison via your benevolent work-release program—”
“Fight-release,” Thomas said, “let us be honest. Or even better, pillage-release.”
“Even better,” Temple agreed. “If your father is released from prison and brings home plunder from war, do you not feel benevolently toward the emperor who released him?”
Thomas thought about that possibility. “You, there,” he called to the nearest prisoner, a man whose belly fat had not been completely drained by Walnut Street. “What say you? If you could be released from prison and also be paid to fight for your Emperor, say, in the Pacification of the Ohio, would you do it?”
The prisoner raised a befuddled face into the greasy yellow light of Franklin’s taper. “Would you consider advancing me some of the money on credit?”
“An enlistment bonus, eh?” Thomas snorted. “The Emperor’s shilling? But if I am to pay in advance, I could have free men. Let us go, Temple. These fellows have clearly not been in here long enough.”
“But,” the prisoner said. “But—”
Temple Franklin slammed the door shut.
* * *
They followed the acorn.
The acorn had apparently been wrapped inside Nathaniel’s ear when he was born, and the Cavalier Captain Sir William Johnston Lee carried it with him along with an enchanted, milk-giving rag from Philadelphia to the home of the Earl of Johnsland, not far from Raleigh. The earl had kept the acorn and rag all Nathaniel’s life, clutching it to himself through years of madness. Now Nathaniel had both objects, in a small wooden box, and his sister, a Firstborn witch named Sarah, had enchanted it to lead him to their third sibling.
Nathaniel had only met Sarah in a visionary-transcendent state he experienced as a starlit plain, but which might be something like heaven, but he had rescued her from one kind of prison and she had rescued him from another, and he felt deeply connected to her.
The acorn didn’t point them toward specific paths, but when Nathaniel held it in his cupped palms and thought about his sister—Margaret Elytharias Penn—the acorn rolled to show them which way to go. It always rolled in a consistent direction, northward and eastward.
When Jake held it, the acorn did nothing.
The acorn didn’t do this of its own accord; it was a spell Sarah had cast, and the birth-bond that linked the acorn to both Nathaniel and Margaret was an essential piece of the gramarye.
They had tried other methods first. Nathaniel had ridden across the starry plain of the sky on his drum-horse, listening for a voice that sounded like it might be Margaret’s, and he’d never heard one. He’d heard the rattling voice of Robert Hooke once or twice, and that had given him pause. He’d heard the voice of the wiindigoo Ezekiel Angleton, the dead Yankee Wizard who had attacked him in Johnsland, too.
The three fresh scars on his neck, cut by Angleton’s long nails, burned.
Sarah had gifts of sight that Nathaniel couldn’t fathom. She’d tried using them to find Margaret, and they had also failed. Something hid her. But the acorn, for whatever reason, pointed the way.
Perhaps, coming from their father as they did, the acorns were the most powerful bond holding the siblings together.
Jake and Nathaniel walked. Nathaniel could only walk; flesh and blood horses shied away from him and, though he couldn’t explain it at all, he shied away from them, too. In the same way that his body didn’t feel right holding a knife anymore, or wearing his coat right side out or his hat forward, he didn’t feel right sitting astride a horse.
Nathaniel’s inside-out coat and backward hat were the reason they trampled through so many brambles and forests. On the road, but especially in towns, Nathaniel drew too many stares. He smiled and, if asked, told people he was a juggler with a circus. When Jake was asked, he said that Nathaniel was touched in the head.
They avoided saying anything at all by staying off the larger roads. Jake didn’t complain and Nathaniel didn’t have to insist.
Jake carried a small sack of coffee beans he said he’d been given by Sarah. Twice a day, each of them chewed and swallowed a single bean, and after eating a bean, Nathaniel wanted to run. Without conscious thought, he tapped his fingers lightly on the large drum he wore slung over one shoulder—that, too, seemed to speed his feet and alleviate his fatigue.
Jake’s hands shook, except when he thumbed through his fraying, water-warped and -bloated deck of Tarocks. He asked Nathaniel many questions and, when Nathaniel asked, he told his own story. Mostly it was the tale of a deaf-mute from New Amsterdam who’d grown up as an unloved errand boy working in his uncle’s merchant venture, but from time to time that tale shaded into something darker and more violent. Sometimes, when Jake told tales of being that terrible god, Nathaniel thought he heard distant screaming. It was as if the Dutch ship-boy had dreamed of being a god of chaos and destruction, and then had matured into a man who couldn’t remember which had been real, the ships or the cataclysms.
This was another reason Nathaniel should enter the starlit plain again, to find healing for Jacob Hop.
But he didn’t dare.
A third reason to enter the plain of the sky would be to find Ezekiel Angleton. Ma’iingan, the Ojibwe man who had rescued Nathaniel when he’d been abandoned in the forest and then helped him find his way into the sky and a meeting with Ma’iingan’s manidoo, his personal demigod, had called the man a wiindigoo. Sarah had known Angleton from earlier battles. The man had raised the dead to attack Nathaniel, and might now—must now—be on Nathaniel’s trail. If he entered the plain of the sky and listened, Nathaniel thought he’d be able to find Angleton, the better to flee the man.
But whenever the darkness of the forest shadows or the bitter bite of the January wind made him consider doing so, Nathaniel remembered sinking in Robert Hooke’s warm, amber pool, hands trying to drag away his soul for eternity. He’d only been rescued from that attack by Sarah’s intervention, and the enchanted slate that had allowed her to intervene had been shattered in the act.
He felt Sarah’s eye on him, from time to time, and even without leaving the mortal world he could sometimes hear her. She might not be able to rescue him again, but he believed she was following his progress toward finding their sister.
During the brief periods when Nathaniel lay trying to sleep, he thought he also heard Margaret. He thought the voice belonged to Margaret because it sounded like his voice, and Sarah’s.
Mostly, he heard Margaret weeping.
“Don’t worry, Margaret.” He huddled deep into his inside-out coat, the wrong-turned collar chafing his neck. “We’re coming.”
* * *
Bill hobbled on two crutches toward the Mimir’s Well. The Well was a tavern just inside the western wall of Cahokia, whose signboard depicted a cup of some dark red liquid with a one-eyed crow perched on the rim. It had survived the fires on the night of the Heron King’s assault, despite being an aboveground building of half-timber construction with a thatched roof. Good luck on the proprietor’s part, or maybe a hex against flame. The warehouses and receiving offices built in the manner of the children of Eve around the Well had mostly burned down and had not yet been rebuilt.
The mounds were much less damaged, the wood of their structures being sunk into the cold winter earth.
Even if the neighborhood hadn’t burned in the assault, it would have been quiet. The docks on the other side of the Treewall were destroyed by rampaging beastkind, and the beastkind still prowled the frozen riverbank, cutting off river traffic into Cahokia. The Treewall’s western gate, called its Mississippi Gate, was shut, warded by Cahokia’s too-few wizards, and watched by armed men from the ramparts above. So were its Chicago Gate (on the north side), its Ohio Gate (on the east), and its Memphis Gate (on the south). The Imperials cut off traffic on these three sides, bottling the city up and forcing her to live on stores that had already been meager to begin with and were now running out.
Children, skinny but bright-eyed, played across the street and sang:
I’ll sing you seven, O
Green grow the rushes, O
What are your seven, O?
The spirit of the Lord
And it ever more shall be so
The words didn’t sound right to Bill, but it had been a long time since he was a child, innocently singing Christmas shanties.
It was also a long time since he’d seen a goat or a chicken. He hadn’t seen a horse or a dog in a week. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a rat.
The Treewall had been scorched as well, but it had grown new bark and leaves. That was Sarah’s doing. Bill had been fighting elsewhere, but he’d heard from Maltres Korinn how Sarah had run the Heronplow around the entire city. That spell had restored life to the wall and stopped the raging of the beastkind still within it.
The thought reminded him that he wasn’t alone.
Bill turned to Chikaak. The beastman warrior, a man-sized and man-shaped coyote who stood on his hind legs, was Bill’s sole remaining sergeant. Faithful Calvin Calhoun had fled after committing sacrilege against Sarah’s goddess, and Sarah had sent the odd Dutchman Jacob Hop after her other siblings. The Firstborn counselor Uris had died at the hands of Cahokian wardens, bribed by a traitor. That left Chikaak, bound by a magical oath upon Cahokia’s Sevenfold Crown, an oath that Bill knew could be disrupted by a thing as small as the physical application of a bit of silver.
Bill felt dangerously exposed.
“I shall not require your assistance here, Sergeant,” Bill told the beastman.
Chikaak didn’t move. With his tongue lolling out his mouth, the damned fellow looked as if he were grinning. “You’re seeking relief from pain.”
“Hell’s Bells, yes, I am. My legs are both broken beyond healing. I shall never run again and I walk only with difficulty. My…physician,” he had almost said lady, which would have been closer to the truth, though Cathy Filmer had been a Harvite novice and was the closest thing to a doctor he’d seen in years, “tells me I am likely to feel pain the rest of my life. Yes, Sergeant, I would like a little relief, and some of us are not constituted so as to be able to lick our own wounds.”
Chikaak’s expression didn’t change.
“You’re not following my instruction, suh,” Bill growled.
“You’re my commanding officer,” the beastman said, “but my oath is to the queen.”
Dammit. “Very well, then. Come watch me drink.”
Bill stumped into the Well. Years of walking into taverns had conditioned him to expect the smell of food, and his mouth was watering even as he pulled the door open. The bitter gush around his tongue sharpened the pang in his stomach as he realized that the tavern smelled only of sweat and candle wax.
No food.
There was drink, at least. Men huddled over tankards and cups at the Well’s scarred tables, sipping without speaking. And there was music: a man huddled beside the fire plucked slowly at a lute that seemed to be missing strings—this, too, likely an effect of the siege—and sang an English ballad.
It’s been a long, hard journey since Peterborough burned
Many a good man buried, many bitter lessons learned
I’m sunk up to my shoulders in this thick black Ely mud
My eyes are full of chainmail and my heart is full of blood
I’m not the last man
I’m just the last man standing
It was an English tune, and after a moment, Bill recognized it. It was a ballad about Hereward the Saxon, last resisting warrior against the Norman invasion of England in the eleventh century. It was a fitting song for soldiers trapped and determined to fight to the end.
I’ve seen the girls of Flanders dance in taverns by the way
And English girls on alder trees by Norman nails did sway
We fired the wall, and William’s witch fell broken all apart
My oath on Etheldreda’s bones goes dancing through my heart
I’m not the last man
I’m just the last man standing
Bill would be the last man standing, if need be, but right now the mere thought of standing pained him. He dragged his carcass across the floor to a table beneath two smoked-paper windows. Hurling his crutches into the corner, he crashed onto the chair; it wobbled, and so did the table, but they held.
Chikaak had the wit to remain skulking by the door, out of Bill’s way.
The serving boy who approached was skinny but clean. He had the milk-white face and teeth of a pure-blooded Wallenstein, and hair so blond it nearly glowed.
“Whisky.” Bill tried not to growl. “Please.”
“No whisky.” The boy had a hint of a Chicago V in his W, and he smiled hopefully. “Wine?”
“Dammit.” Bill sighed. “Wine.”
By habit, he had sat with his back to the wall, facing the tavern’s door. The sight of Chikaak, tongue dangling, waving away the serving boy and staring at Bill, brought up a wave of impotent rage, so Bill dragged himself around the small table until he faced the corner. That left his back exposed, but if Chikaak was bound and determined to stand and watch Bill drink, he could rely on the beastman to sound an alarm if anyone attacked.
Besides, Bill was in priestly, mystical, alien Cahokia, not stab-you-in-the-back New Orleans.
The wine came in a wooden cup carved with German images: a tree, a serpent, a squirrel, a bird. Bill deliberately ignored the smell and drained half the cup in one long gulp.
It tasted more of vinegar than of wine.
“Heaven’s footstool, what have I come to?” he muttered.
A man stepped past Bill and sat at the same table. Chikaak bore down on them both, growling, but Bill raised a hand to restrain the beastman. The stranger looked Firstborn in the fineness of his facial features, though with darker skin than usual, as if he had Indian or Africk ancestors. He wore a green tunic with gold abstract patterns embroidered around the neck and sleeves, and he smiled at Bill.
“The man is unarmed,” Bill said to his sergeant. “At ease.”
Chikaak withdrew, snarling, and the Firstborn smiled again. “Thank you, Captain Lee.”
Bill instantly regretted calling off the beastman. “You have the advantage of me, suh.”
“You must surely recognize that you are well-known in this city. A few—myself among them—remember your days of riding in the Missouri with Kyres the Lion, but everyone has heard of your part in driving the Imperial Ohio Company militia from Cahokia.”
“So that we may starve,” Bill said. “What a hero I am.”
“There is still wine.”
“Two parts water, at least.”
“Only two? I’d have guessed four, by now. My name is Gazelem Zomas.”
“Zomas.” Bill sighed. “The eighth kingdom. Deep in the Missouri, or beyond it, the white towers of Etzanoa built by those who would not accept the rule of the great Onandagos, or some such tale?”
“That is one story. Another story is that the man who should have been King of Cahokia was driven out by Onandagos, and built Etzanoa as a refuge for all Adam’s children who could find no other home.”
Bill shrugged. “As you like. We are speaking of the same place.”
“Did you know that the southern gate of this city was once called the Zomas Gate? Relations have not always been hostile.”
“And yet now it is the Memphis Gate.”
Zomas shrugged. “You haven’t been to my home, I take it.”
“I’ve seen the towers from afar. Kyres Elytharias did not regard the King of Zomas as his friend.”
“He and my uncle were rivals in the Missouri. Some of what Kyres saw as doing justice, my uncle saw as interfering in the affairs of another man’s realm.”
“I was there.” Bill took a sip of the wine, tasting it more this time and regretting that fact. “You can go to hell.”
“But Kyres and I were friends. I served him, after my fashion.”
Bill wasn’t sure whether to feel offended, curious, or friendly. He resolved his uncertainty by grunting.
“You were injured in the battle.” Zomas nodded at Bill’s crutches.
“I’ve been injured in more than one. I fear my legs have finally lost the power to recuperate.”
“You must be in great pain.” Gazelem Zomas furrowed his brow in a compassionate expression. “I’m very sorry for that. I doubt Mimir’s Well has enough wine in it to ease your suffering even for an hour.”
Bill grunted again. “I intend to test that proposition. I shall tell you what I learn.”
“What if I could offer you another solution?”
Bill’s heart leaped at the thought. “I hadn’t heard that Zomas was famous for its healing magics.”
“We aren’t,” Zomas admitted with a faint smile. “We’re famous for our thoroughly creoled population, and for our hounds, and for being the biggest market for Comanche slavers raiding Texia and New Spain, for guarding the overland route to New Muscovy, and for the standing bounties we pay on beastkind. But I myself am, among other things, an apothecary. What do you know of the Paracelsian Tincture?” He produced a small glass bottle full of a dark liquid from under his tunic.
“Laudanum? That it is costly, and I have no money. That it is given to hysterical women, of which I am not one.” Bill eyed the bottle. Laudanum eased coughing and diarrhea, and for that reason was sometimes given to the small children of the New Orleans wealthy, but it also relieved pain.
“It is also given to wounded soldiers, of which you are one, sir.” Zomas set the bottle on the table between them. “And I am wealthy enough, and grateful enough, that I will give this to you as a gift.”
Bill looked at the bottle without touching it. “How do you profit from the gift?”
“Ah, direct. A soldier’s vice.” Zomas smiled. “But you’re right. Sarah has defeated me, and all seven claimants putting themselves forward at the solstice in hopes of becoming the goddess’s Beloved. But Sarah needs help still, if she is to free the city from the Imperial chokehold.”
“You hope that if you help her, she will help you?”
Zomas nodded.
“Help you what?” Bill asked.
“Help me win the right to return home.”
Bill’s legs stabbed him; he had little interest in the details of the man’s exile, at least at the moment. “I have heard that some soldiers come to depend on the tincture.”
Zomas nodded. “As other men come to depend on liquor or coffee. All things in moderation, Captain. If I were you, I would not plan on taking the drops my entire life, but only until the siege is lifted and a better medicine can be found. Or until a healer more talented than our queen can come to your assistance.”
Was Gazelem Zomas’s offer much different from Bill’s own plan? He had come to the Well hoping to get drunk on whisky, and when that plan had failed, had set about trying to achieve the same thing with watered-down wine.
Surely, if he used the Paracelsian Tincture sparingly, the bottle would last him a long time and be no more dangerous than wine.
“I think you’ll find that a drop or two of the solution will cause the suffering to go away,” Zomas said. “Or if not, it will cause you to no longer be troubled by the pain.”
“God’s teeth, suh, that sounds like the same thing to me.” Bill took the bottle and glared at it, tiny and dark in his big hand. “What do I do?”
“It has a bitter taste,” Zomas told him. “And in large quantities it can kill. You put only a single drop into a drink, say, that glass of wine. If one drop doesn’t give you relief, try a second.”
Bill had enough experience with apothecaries to know they never properly accounted for a man’s size when recommending a dosage. He carefully poured three drops into the wine glass. Without looking at Zomas to see the man’s reaction, he drained the cup. Then he closed his eyes.
“Give it a minute,” he heard Zomas say.
Bill took a deep breath. The aftertaste of the laudanum on his tongue was bitter and vegetable, though there was also a pleasing touch of brandy. He inhaled again and felt the tincture’s fumes burn in his nasal cavity and the back of his throat.
He felt lightheaded, as if he were floating.
“I can still feel the ache in my legs.” His voice sounded far away. “But it is lessened. It no longer feels urgent.”
“You may be tempted to try walking without the crutches,” Zomas said. “Don’t surrender to that temptation. Precisely because you don’t feel the pain, you can do more damage to your body by pushing it too far. Try to enjoy the blessing of Paracelsus without attracting his curse.”
“If that doesn’t describe all of life in a single sentence, I don’t know what does.” Bill opened his eyes and saw Zomas smiling at him. “Thank you. Will you share a glass of watered-down wine with me, as a small expression of my gratitude?”
“It is I who am grateful to you, Captain,” Zomas said. “However, I will happily share a glass of wine as an expression of mutual respect.”
Bill raised a hand to summon the serving boy again. He determinedly ignored Chikaak, who stared from the Well’s doorway.
When the wine came, Bill put the Paracelsian Tincture away in his coat to resist the urge to add a few drops to his drink.
* * *
“You are not young,” Temple Franklin said.
The two men sat in Thomas’s carriage outside an immense stone house glittering with light.
“I’m not old,” Thomas shot back. “And if I’m old, you’re older.”
“Yes,” Temple agreed. “Which is why I’m so very concerned about generating heirs. If I do not marry and have heirs before I die, my bastard nieces and nephews with whom I am at war will inherit my vast wealth and undo my works. They will squander it on their strange Cahokian goddess rather than on feeding the poor and building highways in my name and in the name of my illustrious ancestor. My empire will not hold together, but will fall apart, to exist as separate little fiefs or be swallowed up by the New Spanish or cut to pieces by the Free Horse Peoples. I have done so much in life, and it must not be undone!”
“You bastard,” Thomas said drily. “How long is the list?”
“Seven.”
“Seven women who wish to meet the dashing Lord Thomas.”
“That’s one way to think of it. Or seven fathers who hope to trade their daughters for family advancement.”
“Cynic.”
“It won’t do to be idealistic or squeamish about this. Very few people are able to live the romance of a Hannah Penn in this world.”
“Including Hannah, at the end.” Thomas remembered for a moment the bloodied, dying face of his sister and forced it from his mind. “I’m far from squeamish, Temple.”
“Good.” Temple pushed open the carriage door and eased himself out onto the cobblestones between two waiting footmen. “Then let us go ravish some maidens.”
He must ignore the attractions of their persons, Thomas knew. Even the power of the ladies’ families was only a secondary consideration, as were many kinds of wealth—land, for instance, or illiquid shares in a joint-stock company.
What he needed was ready cash, and a steady source would be preferable to a large pile. Though best of all would be both, combined.
It was time for another payment to the cutthroat Chevalier of New Orleans. Now, of all times, Thomas did not want the circumstances of the death of Kyres Elytharias coming to light, and his own cash resources were strained by the costs of raising an Imperial army to march into Cahokia. The increased tariffs the Electors had approved would eventually defray some of the heightened expense, but they had only just begun to be collected. Any raised tax pushed some citizens at the margin into tax evasion and other forms of lawlessness.
Franklin knew all of it.
Franklin stepped aside to wait as Thomas straightened his cravat and then rattled his Mars-sealed dress saber once in its scabbard for luck. Then the counselor followed Thomas through the wide front door. The building was the Philadelphia house of one of the great cattle-driving grandees of Ferdinandia and New Spain, His Excellency Felipe Albanez, Marqués de Miami. Cattle was a business that generally consumed as much cash as it generated, and in bad years more, which made the Marqués’s daughter Alejandra an unlikely candidate even if she had been pretty. Unsightly Dago clabbernapper that she was, she—
“Buenas tardes, Señor Thomas!”
Thomas leaped aside as the very lady he had been contemplating thrust herself into his view, and very nearly into his embrace.
“Lady Alejandra! I have not seen you since your quinceañera, and you are even more lovely than I remembered!” This was literally true, inasmuch as a thick plaster covered all three of the birthmarks Alejandra bore on her face. Nevertheless, they were striking enough for Thomas vividly to recall their locations, and the plaster did nothing to ameliorate a nose that resembled nothing so much as an oversized bobbin.
“And you are so vital! On behalf of all the ladies of the Empire, I must beg you to reveal your secret, Lord Thomas—you do not appear half your age!”
Thomas tried not to furrow his brow. “And how old do I appear, then, Doña Alejandra?”
“Not more than thirty!” she cried, trilling an exuberant R that would have been the pride of Madrid.
Not more than thirty? Half his age? How old did she take him for? Focus on the cash, Thomas reminded himself. There is no room here for your vanity. Felipe was powerful enough to be a fit ally and father-in-law, an Elector as well as possessor of some sort of title under Napoleon’s Spanish puppets. How much cash did he have?
“You are too kind,” Thomas said. “How fare the herds, my lady?”
Alejandra made a sour face that thrust her cylindrical nose downward. “The winter has been only ordinarily bad, of course, but this rampaging of the beastkind has interrupted the transport of beef to important markets. My father says that they shall eat cheap beefsteak in Knoxville this spring, and expensive pork in Chicago! Praise God, he always has more land he can sell!”
“Praise God!” Thomas agreed, with the biggest smile he could muster. “Would that God granted your father a herd of pigs to match the size of his wealth in beef!” He swung easily into a ninety-degree pivot, and a long step that would take him out of the hidalga’s clutches.
Franklin swooped down on him and clung to his shoulder like a sorcerer’s bat familiar. “That was one,” Temple said. “How did you find her?”
“She’s cash-poor and she’s too honest to hide it. What are you thinking?”
“That there are only so many decent choices.”
“You cannot quote one of your grandfather’s tiresome sermons at me and say ‘beggars can’t be choosers.’ I’m not a beggar, I’m the Emperor.”
“Yes, but what you have asked for is a woman who is connected with both cash and Electoral votes.”
“More importantly, the cash.”
“Still, that is a small field, and the winner may not be as impressive in her person as you would wish.”
“Let us see the other horses, Temple. But no more ambushes, I beg you. No, I command you. There is a gazing pavilion in the garden behind the house. I shall conceal myself there; if asked, say I am contemplating difficult issues of state. Bring the ladies out one at a time to meet me. Do not send one until I have sent back her predecessor.”
“I could have brought them to you at Horse Hall on such terms.”
“Yes, but now the Marqués will be able to say that I attended his soirée. And others will remember having seen me. Besides, Venus is strong for me tonight, and what better place to capture the influence of Venus than at a ball?” In answer to Temple’s slight disapproving cluck, he added, “I am wearing my Town Coat, Temple. This is hardly more dangerous than attending the theater.”
The pavilion was what some were beginning to call a gazebo, though Thomas hated the new-fangled word for its macaronick Latinity. It was a wooden pavilion encircled by inward-facing benches, creating a space for lounging on a summer evening. The Marqués, anticipating guests’ expectations or perhaps hoping to show off the large magnolias of his garden, imposing even in the leafless winter, had had a brazier heaped with burning wood placed beside the pavilion.
Thomas stood in the pavilion, at the edge of the circle of light and heat, and waited. When the women began to come to him, he counted down.
Six was plain, but scholarly. Her Cavalier father in Henricia—or as some called it, pining for England’s last Stuart king, Carolina—had trained her in the Classics and left her utterly without preference as to gods. She launched a rapid series of apothegms at godar and bishops alike, in which Thomas joined with great amusement until she inadvertently reminded him that her father’s vast fields were planted with tobacco, cotton, and maize. She lauded the fertility of the river-bottom soil, the size of the cotton bolls and the natural juiciness of the tobacco leaves, but Thomas’s answering smile was completely formal.
No cash.
Five was an Ottawa princess. At least, she was a princess in Thomas’s imagination, and when she told him of her love of dancing and swimming, her lithe physique informed his imagination vividly. Her people’s wealth was in furs: beaver, hare, marten, and fisher. Thomas knew well that a shipload of New World furs brought to market in London, or even in Philadelphia, could make a man’s fortune.
He also knew that the business was risky, both on the supply side—which could be physically dangerous as well as subject to the vagaries of climate—and on the demand side, which was enslaved to the whims of fashion. His own Imperial Ohio Company was already driving down the price of furs with the huge volume of beaver pelts it was currently bringing to market.
The best reason to marry Five would be to induce her people to stop bringing their furs to market. While that would help Thomas by driving up the price of Company fur, it would impoverish the Ottawas. With visions of divorce and war against a confederation of cheated Algonks, he sent her back.
Four was a younger sister of the King of Oranbega. Her Firstborn features were softened with an obvious strain of hearty blonde German, and she brought with her a queer three-stringed guitar no longer than her forearm, flat, and fretted diatonically. When she had finished singing a lilting ballad about the love of some queen who died as her realm was flooded by the sea, she reminded Thomas of her land’s wealth in coal and salt deposits, as well as its famously fertile soil.
But it was no good. Thomas would have the wealth of Oranbega in any case, by the relentless working of the Pacification. And the shade of William Penn had insisted he show no mercy to the Firstborn. Could Thomas hope for success in ruling his grandfather’s empire if he began by traducing his grandfather’s will?
When Thomas shook his head and invited her to go back into the house, the Firstborn princess boldly pressed her body against his and lifted her lips in the most elemental of pleas for grace.
But Thomas was fixed of purpose. He was gentle as he steered the young woman back toward the ball.
Three was an Igbo woman from Birmingham. She disavowed that she had any connection with the Lord Mayor there—who Thomas thought was the Elector, though that was a vote that was often cast by proxy. While lovely, she was the oldest of the seven, and also the calmest. She smiled, recited a lengthy poem in Igbo when asked, and talked about how much she missed the weather on the Gulf coast. When Thomas grew tired of equivocation and directly asked her about her family’s wealth, she would only admit to owning a fishing boat.
By this time, Thomas had grown short-tempered. “Very well, then!” he snapped. “Enjoy the remainder of the ball!”
She smiled as she left.
At the door, Thomas met Temple Franklin. “What were you thinking?” he demanded. “She says she doesn’t even know the Elector!”
“You said cash was more important!” The spectacles quivering on the tip of Franklin’s nose made him look as if he were about to fall over under the force of Thomas’s irritation.
“What cash?” Thomas snorted. “The woman owns a boat!”
“A boat?” Temple guffawed. “That’s what she said to you?”
Thomas waited for Temple’s rolling belly-laugh to end.
“That woman,” Franklin finally explained, “is John Hancock’s sole trading partner in Birmingham.”
“She’s a smuggler?”
“A very wealthy one.”
“Who either didn’t want to admit it, or isn’t interested in an alliance with me.”
Temple arched his eyebrows. “Shall I bring her back?”
“No,” Thomas said quickly. “I was impolite, and she is uninterested. Bringing her back will only compound the offense by making me look stupid as well. Bring out the next lady.”
Thomas instantly knew Two was Acadian from her growled Rs and pure vowel sounds. She was a cousin of La Fayette and her father was a banker. She claimed a talent for language, and without further provocation launched into a monolog that would have been at home among the workmen of Babel, shifting language every three sentences as she recounted her travels to London, Paris, and elsewhere with her father. Thomas followed her through English, French, and German with satisfaction, and then endured five minutes of gibberish that nearly left him unconscious.
He had finally convinced himself that he could tolerate this woman as a wife, especially if she would agree to stay in Quebec most of the year, when she concluded her oration on the delighted note that her father would be so pleased to see her make an alliance with the Penns, especially with the capitalization problems his banks had had in the last few years.
Thomas wished her and her father good luck, concealing the white knuckles of his clenched fists behind his back.
He recognized the last young woman with a shock, though he could not remember her name; she was the oldest daughter of Kimoni Machogu, Prince of Shreveport. She had her father’s fierce stare and the curve of his lip that hinted at his piratical ancestry. Thomas listened to her genealogical recitation along with a surprisingly detailed inventory of facts about the cotton wealth of Shreveport and several songs. Finally, he wrapped both her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
“Please tell your mother and your father that I am trying very hard to marry a wealthy woman, so that I can bring as much help as I can to Shreveport, as quickly as possible. Are you going back home?”
The girl’s hands trembled as she shook her head. “No, I am staying here, with my sisters.”
“Good,” Thomas said. “For now, that’s wise.”
Temple Franklin found him a few minutes later, leaning his forehead against the cool trunk of a magnolia tree and sinking his nails slowly into its bark.
“I take it none of them was a match,” Temple said.
“You do so many things well,” Thomas said slowly. “It turns out that finding a suitable bride for me is not one of them. Did you try the Lord of Potosí?”
“He’s so wealthy, he’s not interested in you.”
“What about the silver miners in Georgia?”
“Ben Yehuda said he’d be willing to talk. How do you feel about wearing a little round cap and giving up pork?”
“I suppose I’d be willing to wear a cap.”
“I rather think it’s the other requirement that is non-negotiable.”
“Next, he’ll be wanting to discuss circumcision.” Thomas sighed. “Well then, Temple, I think our course of action is obvious.” He straightened, stretching the muscles of his back and looking up into the night sky for guidance. Obscured by winter clouds and the lights of Philadelphia, the stars gave him nothing. His burdens felt, if anything, heavier.
“I haven’t yet consulted with the Anakim,” Temple pointed out.
“The wealthiest of them will be the one with the largest pile of lake fish and otter’s bones,” Thomas said. “Not a help, however interesting it might be to make love to an eight-foot-tall red-headed woman with hands like coal scuttles and a bed perched atop a pole. No, our solution is rather nearer to hand, in New Amsterdam.”
“You have someone in mind?”
Thomas nodded. “It’s time to settle a lawsuit.”
The Marqués’s city house blazed with light, and Thomas couldn’t bring himself to go back inside. Crossing abruptly to the edge of the garden and ignoring sudden yelps from Temple Franklin, he climbed the tall iron fence and vaulted over into the alley beyond.
He stalked across Philadelphia alone, with his Town Coat and his dress saber to protect him.
Three streets from Horse Hall, he collided with a staggering drunk. The man vomited on Thomas’s shoes, then emitted an odor like that of a charnel house and something that might have been an apology, rolled into a single belch.
Thomas beat the man until he stopped moving.
He would marry, by damn. He would pay his bills. He would pacify the Ohio. He would hold the Empire together.
He would live up to the hopes of William Penn.
* * *
Ahmed Abd al-Wahid rose from prayer in the mamelukes’ simple chamber, adorned only with mats for sleeping and prayer. Omar and al-Muhasib rose with him.
In the hall, Ravi sat with his face in a book. When Abd al-Wahid emerged, the Jew stood.
“The poet says, ‘I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul.’” Abd al-Wahid smiled. “What are you reading?”
Ravi showed him the cover, with the English title embossed in silver: POOR RICHARD’S SERMONS.
“Is that Christian, O son of Isaac?” Abd al-Wahid was surprised at the thought that after all these years of exposure to the true faith, his Jewish companion might become a follower of the man from Galilee.
“Yes, O son of Ishmael, these are famous sermons written by a famous Christian priest of Philadelphia. But fear not, I have no interest in his words.”
“What possible reason could you have for reading a book, if not the words contained therein?” Omar al-Talib asked. “When I read every book in al-Qayrawan, was it not for the sake of their words?”
“Your question about al-Qayrawan is fascinating,” al-Muhasib said. “Tell us more about that experience. Which book was your favorite?”
“Who can love one star more than another?” Al-Talib shrugged. “Who can truly say that one flower has a more delicate scent than another?”
“I like lilies,” al-Muhasib said.
“I read this book,” Ravi said, “not for its words, but for its language.” He switched suddenly to English. “‘Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.’ ‘Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’”
Omar, who knew no English, frowned.
Al-Muhasib clapped Ravi on the shoulder and spoke in English as well. “Very good, my friend! I like the way you talk!”
Abd al-Wahid returned the conversation to Arabic. “And there is even wisdom in the words you have chosen. Well done, Ravi.”
He turned and led them to the chevalier’s audience chamber. The other three followed.
Omar snorted. “If I did not read the words in one of the books of al-Qayrawan, then the words cannot contain wisdom worth learning.”
“‘The way to see by faith,’” Ravi declared in English, “‘is to shut the eye of reason!’”
“And the way to learn by hearing,” Abd al-Wahid told him, “is to shut the jabbering mouth.”
Ravi fell silent, but his smile was contented.
“How long do we remain here?” al-Muhasib asked. Al-Muhasib had two wives in Paris, and one of them was quite young.
“I’ve received a letter from the Caliph’s secretary,” Abd al-Wahid told him. “We are instructed to kill this Bishop Ukwu and then come home.”
It was no longer a matter of Ahmed’s own deal with the chevalier. Implied in the Caliph’s missive: do not come home until you have killed the bishop.
Abd al-Wahid had no feeling about the matter; he didn’t hate the young bishop. But he would do as he was ordered.
Only as he thought about the task, he realized that he did have a feeling; he felt camaraderie. He had chosen the mameluke warriors to come with him for their skills and by reputation, but, to his surprise, he found he had begun to think of them as his friends.
“If you had told me this before we began our attempts on this man’s life, I would have pronounced it an easy task,” Omar said. “Now, I am not so certain.”
“A dagger between any man’s ribs will bring his days to an end. Probably, Ravi’s Richard the priest even says so in one of his sermons. It can only be a matter of bringing the dagger to the man.”
They entered the audience room of the Chevalier of New Orleans. The discovery of the Vodun curse doll—and whatever the mambo had done to counteract its efficacy—had restored color to the chevalier’s face and breath to his lungs. He looked up as the mamelukes entered with a folded letter with a large, official-looking seal.
He saw it only for a moment, but he thought the seal showed the eagle, rattlesnake, and cactus of New Spain.
“Thanks be to God,” Abd al-Wahid said. “You are looking well.”
“Thanks be to you,” the chevalier answered.
“The witch also should receive credit,” Abd al-Wahid said.
“I have been considering the challenge we face with our enemy, the bishop,” the chevalier said. “And trying not to repeat previous errors.”
“‘Today is yesterday’s pupil!’” Ravi blurted out in English.
The chevalier squinted at the Jew. “Are you quoting Bishop Franklin to me?” he asked, in the same language.
“Yes.” Ravi grinned. “I am sorry.”
The chevalier laughed. “You have been here too long. We must end this now. The challenge, as I see it, is that in destroying the cathedral, we have driven the beast from its lair rather than kill it. Now it stalks free in the woods, and we do not know where to seek it.”
“We must make it come to us,” Abd al-Wahid said.
“Agreed,” the chevalier said. “And I believe I know just how to do that. In addition to you, my plan has two components. First, these men.” He raised his voice and called out, “Come in!”
The door behind his desk opened and four men trooped in. They were unarmed, and they trooped slowly up to stand beside the mamelukes, one Frenchman with each mussulman warrior.
Abd al-Wahid saw it and laughed with immediate approval.
A few moments later, his comrades began to bob their heads up and down as they too began to understand the chevalier’s thinking.
“And what is the other component, O Chevalier?” Abd al-Wahid asked.
“We only need one other thing, which is the bait. The thing to which the beast must come, sooner or later.”
“And do you possess this bait?”
The chevalier laughed and rubbed his hands together. “Yes I do, my friend. Yes I do.”