“Priests. Shoot me now.”
Chapter Five
“Madam Director! Madam Director!”
In her sleep, the shouting came from a crowd of Philadelphia’s wealthiest and most influential, applauding her as she stood in the deep well of a theater. Notwithstanding Schmidt had brought order to the Ohio by applying the necessary amount of brutality and nothing more, and in that order there had flourished trade and prosperity. She deserved the accolades, as well as her inclusion on the Imperial honors list, and the new building for moral and economic philosophy Harvard was going to name for her.
“Madam Director!”
Schäfer was shouting. He wasn’t touching her, he knew better than that, but he stood over her cot and shouted.
“Madam Director!”
“I’m awake.” Schmidt sat up, throwing aside the wool blanket. The vigorous action, plus the sudden assault of frozen air on her calves, brought her to full wakefulness.
The brazier that had started the night with a merry orange fire now cradled an armful of dusty red embers.
“It’s Dadgayadoh!” Was Schäfer sobbing? In the darkness, she couldn’t see his face.
“What has Dadgayadoh done?” The Haudenosaunee was a dependable man and a hard worker. Schmidt was surprised to hear a complaint, much less a hysterical one. She stepped into cort-du-roy britches, tucking in her long nightshirt and groping in the darkness to find her coat again.
“He’s been killed!”
Schmidt grabbed the brace of loaded pistols from beneath her cot. She had liked to mock her former wizard Luman Walters for sleeping with loaded guns, but only because he thought it kept away evil spirits.
She slept with loaded guns for much more prosaic reasons.
Like the death of one of her better traders.
She pushed through the canvas flaps into the frozen corner of earth bounded by her tent, the Parletts’, and a supply tent, and then into the tent of the three quintuplets. Schäfer followed close on her heels. Had Dadgayadoh died defending an attack on her communication link with Philadelphia?
Dadgayadoh lay on his back, half-covered by furs and wool blankets. He held his hands in front of his eyes, twisted into claws with his fingers forward, as if some beast had leaped on him, attempting to bite his face.
In one hand he held the shredded remains of a beaded Haudenosaunee amulet.
His mouth was open in an expression of fear. There was no blood on him, no sign of any visible injury.
Piled about him like stacked wood were the bodies of Captain Mohuntubby and his soldiers. Schmidt prodded the captain with a pistol grip and was rewarded with a sleeping groan. The soldiers were asleep—ensorcelled? The company trader was dead.
There was no sign of the Parlett children.
The day before, Dadgayadoh had come to her to report the strange behavior of Robert Hooke, circling the city of Cahokia with wooden crosses. Was this death punishment for his spying?
After sunset, she had noted that mobile corpses shambled along the line of crosses.
“Find Hooke,” she said, but she already guessed where he was. “Get everyone up. Find the Parletts.” She raced out.
Just beyond the edge of her camp glowed a blasphemous light. It was wrong, backward. It was black, and though her eyes saw the black glow where Robert Hooke’s largest cross stood on a low mound of earth, her mind could not quite process it.
She felt as if she were seeing a hole in the world. The fabric of the cosmos had split, and something shining and terrible lay on the other side.
The black light didn’t wake the camp. Or had the camp been spelled into sleep?
Why was she awake?
She cocked the pistols and approached.
“Hooke!” she shouted.
A figure in the black light turned toward her. She heard a sound as it moved, or an anti-sound, in the same way that the darkness was an anti-light. She could make out the pale face and the white, black-rimmed eyes of Robert Hooke, and then she heard his dry laughter in her mind.
I bid thee good morning, Director.
“You killed Dadgayadoh. I’ll have you answer for that.”
He would not sleep, and he tried to stop me. As thou wouldst have done, as even Thomas would have. And I am one who will do the necessary thing.
And thou, Madam Director?
She now saw beyond him. Two of the Parletts stood at the foot of the mound, mouths open in shock, eyes rolling back in their sockets.
Bang! Bang!
She shot the Sorcerer in the chest with both pistols. He staggered and collapsed back against the large cross, but when he stood again he was laughing.
I begin now, foolish woman. Out of charity I warn thee, that if thou steppest on this mound during my operation, thou diest. Nevertheless, do thou as seest fit.
Then Schmidt saw the third Parlett boy. He was naked and tied to the cross, head downward. His mouth was open in the attitude of a scream—
no, all three of them had their mouths open as if to scream.
No, they were screaming. Schmidt couldn’t hear a sound, but they were screaming at the top of their lungs.
Hooke faced the cross. Schmidt now saw that the cross was the source of the black light, the tear in the cosmos. Come thou, Lord Protector! Hooke shrieked. Manifest and strike down the hopes of thine enemies!
The black light erupted into fire. The flames shot up from the ground in a wall and raced away from the cross in two directions. Schmidt narrowly missed being struck by the fire and she fell back.
She dropped the useless pistols. “Schäfer! Mohuntubby!”
The Cherokee officer stumbled toward her at the head of a ragged file of men. They looked baffled and embarrassed. Schäfer followed.
The wall of black fire curved away from Schmidt as it ran. It curved, she realized, as if to surround Cahokia. Following the line of ash Dadgayadoh had told her about?
She took a step back.
The fire enclosed a corner of the company’s camp. Mules and horses caught within it brayed and whinnied in consternation, and men came running from their tents. Dismay painted their faces, but they lived.
Schmidt almost forgot Hooke for a moment, watching the fire race. It moved in both directions around the besieged city.
Silence.
And then the plants within the circle of black fire began to die.
Schmidt saw it first in a young pine tree, just two paces within the circle. Its needles turned brown, curled, and then fell to the ground, first one or two, and then a steady stream, and finally a single brown avalanche.
A white oak tree, already leafless from the winter, split in two with a loud CRACK!
She turned her gaze to the city.
The leaves fell from the Treewall in a storm of green. Thinking she saw a second light, Schmidt stepped through the wall of black fire—
it didn’t hurt.
Once within the strange veil, she could see that a blue light emanated from the city. Had she never noticed it before? It must be new. But that light streamed out from the trees of the Treewall as if they were bleeding.
As if they were maples, being tapped for their sugar.
Thin streams of blue light arced over frozen ground until they struck the wall of black fire. Along the nearer sections of the wall, Schmidt could see that the blue light intersected the fire at the sites of the smaller upside-down crosses.
No, the blue light didn’t intersect. It entered, and was absorbed.
The black fire rose higher into the night sky. With her rational mind, Schmidt didn’t understand how she could even see the dark flames, but she did.
Enter thou this worthy vessel! Hooke wailed.
The Parlett on the cross writhed. His two feet were riveted to the upright timber with a single nail, with further spikes pinning him to the crossbar through each palm and also each wrist. He wasn’t twisting to try to get away.
He moved as if something was behind him, pushing to pass him.
Or perhaps it was inside him, and wanted to get out.
Hooke knelt and gripped the Parlett boy’s head with one hand behind his neck. That put Hooke’s forearm alongside the boy’s cheek and his open, howling mouth. With a black flake of obsidian, Hooke slit his own wrist.
Black ichor burst from the dead flesh and poured into the Parlett boy’s mouth.
The screaming became a choking, the writhing and violent convulsion.
The other two Parletts fell to their knees and began vomiting black blood.
What was happening in Philadelphia?
“Arrest that man!” Mohuntubby shouted. Not waiting for his soldiers, he leaped forward, drawing his sword—
CRACK!
A flare of black light struck Mohuntubby in his charge and knocked him and all his men flat on their backs in the snow.
Hooke stood and gripped the vertical timber of the cross in both his hands.
I give thee, Lord Protector, this tribute of life!
Arching his back, he snapped the cross. The Parlett boy fell to the ground, his face as white as the snow on which he lay. His two brothers collapsed as well.
The fire flickered, as if under a strong gust of wind.
Hooke moved slowly. He seemed tired. Producing two smaller pieces of wood and a strip of leather thong from inside his tattered coat, he formed a smaller upside-down cross and pushed it down into the earth beside the large one.
The black flames stopped wavering.
This barrier will limit the power of the witch queen, Hooke said. The black slime dripping down his forearm trickled along his long yellow nails and stained the snow. Among other things, we shall not see again this trick of the eldritch spring. Thou must instruct the men of the company not to interfere with my markers.
“I must do no such thing,” Notwithstanding Schmidt said, but she said it softly and under her breath.
What had Thomas seen? What did Thomas know? What did Thomas want her to do?
Pacifying the Ohio by coercion sat uneasily on her conscience, but she had made her peace with it. But this?
However exalted the goal, was this a necessary means?
Captain Mohuntubby stood. “You killed that boy. I’ll see you tried for it.”
Hooke laughed. I did not.
Mohuntubby pointed at the boy’s body, facedown in the snow, arms still nailed to the beam. “I know what I saw.”
Dost thou?
At that moment, the crucified Parlett brother stirred. He drew his knees up underneath him in the snow. Arms still nailed to the timber, he got one foot beneath him, and then the other, rising into a squatting posture, face still looking down.
He stood, and as he stood he raised his chin to look at Captain Mohuntubby. The boy’s eyes were completely white, and a thick, black fluid welled up at their corners.
Mohuntubby gasped and stepped back.
Schmidt heard the other Parlett children weeping. “What have you made him?”
The crucified Parlett turned his head to meet Schmidt’s gaze. When his face was turned directly toward her, she seemed to see a different face overlaid upon the boy’s features. It was an older man’s face, with a long, somewhat bulbous nose, and curly hair falling down from a point high above his forehead.
She heard a voice in her mind, but where Robert Hooke’s voice sounded like dry leaves, this voice sounded like breaking glass.
My servant Robert made the boy a glorious thing. Consider thou young Parlett the horse I ride, or the cup containing the wine.
Oliver Cromwell.
Or the glove masking the fist.
The Necromancer.
Bringing his arms down with abrupt force, Cromwell shattered the bar that bound his arms. The broken halves fell aside and pulled away from the wracked little Parlett body, leaving nails behind in the cold flesh.
Cromwell stepped forward, the nail prints in his feet leaving black spots in the snow.
I am come to break the city of the serpent.
Director Schmidt stood her ground. “Robert Hooke killed my man Dadgayadoh. I will let Lord Thomas demand recompense for the child’s life, but Hooke must stand trial for the life of my agent.”
Thine agent lives, Cromwell said. Even now, he comes to thee.
“Protect the director!” Captain Mohuntubby shouted.
As she turned to see where Cromwell was pointing, Schmidt found a half-circle of muskets forming around her. She found the fact somewhat comforting, though beneath her comfort was the nagging thought that a sorcerer who could kill the Treewall of Cahokia could sweep these men away with little trouble.
And that was just Hooke. What about Cromwell?
Silhouetted against the cool blue-white pre-dawn glow of the sky, Dadgayadoh walked toward her.
His confident, upright step had fallen into a slouch; he wore his red blanket and his silk top hat, but whout his usual somewhat jaunty look. For a moment, Schmidt thought she must have been mistaken earlier. He must not have been dead, only sleeping, like Mohuntubby and his men. Awakened by all the noise, her excellent Haudenosaunee trader now rejoined her. He was tired, but alive.
Then she saw his bare feet, the black nails of his fingers and toes, leaving behind a scratchy, confused trail in the snow. His blank stare. His slack jaw.
“Poor Dadgayadoh,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
The draug who had once been Dadgayadoh only groaned.
* * *
“Deu meu!” Miquel gasped as a wall of black flame raised to encircle the city. “What is that?”
“Fire, you idiot,” Josep said.
The two men leaned on the taffrail of the Verge Caníbal to either side of Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana. The ship lay at anchor in the center of the Mississippi and slightly downstream of Cahokia’s walls. This didn’t put it out of reach of the beastkind—the Caníbal’s crew had killed three of the creatures trying to swim, climb, or fly aboard their ship in the few hours they’d been there—but it put the smugglers mostly out of the beastkind’s notice.
The keelboatmen in Baton Rouge had explained that the Mississippi was too shallow for the Verge Caníbal, and had insisted that the best way upriver was to be poled or pulled in one of their coffin-shaped punts. They boasted they could make as much as a mile an hour upstream.
At that pace, Montse had calculated that she may as well walk. After a brief flirtation with the idea of horses—but few of her crew knew how to ride, much less care for such an animal—she had found a rivermage.
The man was Dutch, and a smuggler. His name was Pieter, and he insisted on being called Piet. He had only seven fingers and considerably more than seven tattoos, which mostly consisted of images of fantastic creatures, including basilisks, a two-headed alligator, and a pair of mating krakens. He claimed to be an Ohio River hansard, and to be able to navigate the curves of the Mississippi in the dark even without the magic that allowed him to command his exorbitant rates. He also said he’d been up and down the river six times in the last twelve months. He claimed to know all the sandbars, including the newly formed ones, by heart.
Piet hadn’t exaggerated. They’d come up the Mississippi on a strong wind and pushed through the shallows by Piet’s incantations. They only had to drag the ship off a sandbar once—and that had been Montse’s fault, when she’d ignored Piet’s strong warning and tried to cut through an ox-bow lake.
They’d outrun a tax cutter of one of the cotton princes, and a couple of Imperial Ohio Company canoes. They’d fired on a third Imperial craft to warn it out of their way, and bribed a fourth when it caught them in a slack breeze.
They’d arrived in the middle of the night and had spent the last several hours trying to calculate their best approach into the city. On the one hand, an army of Imperial irregulars surrounded the city entirely on the landward side. On the other hand, beastkind prowled the riverbank.
They didn’t just prowl, they rampaged. In addition to fending off several attacks themselves, Montse and her crew watched beastkind gore each other, kill small river creatures, and even tear to pieces someone who might have been a fisherman—or maybe a Cahokian scout or spy—leaping from hiding as the poor man tried to stow his coracle under a shattered dock. They’d seen two climbing beastkind with sloth arms and powerful hind legs get nearly to the top of the wall before finally succumbing to the bullets and arrows pouring from above.
Then the fire had encircled the city.
“It’s an opportunity,” Montse said. “Look.”
She pointed to the riverbank, where beastkind squawked and hooted, racing away from the walls.
“This fire isn’t made by the Firstborn.” Josep sucked a lemon drop.
“Lower the boat!” Montse ordered, and her men raced to obey.
“You race into a besieged city that is now also on fire,” Josep said. “Only you, Capità.”
Montse took a coiled length of cord with a steel grapple on the end. Her insides still hurt when she moved. “Sail downriver. I’ll come down and signal when I can.”
“If only you were so anxious to race into my arms.” Josep sighed. “At least take Miqui with you.”
Miquel grabbed another line and grapple and patted the pistols in his waistband. The boy wore a heavy wool coat over his ridiculously light cotton clothing. None of them had been really ready for the Ohio’s cold, and Piet’s river-magery, as powerful as it was, only extended to navigating and sailing the ship. It would not raise the temperature. “If nothing else, we can get off two more shots before the beasts overwhelm us.”
Montse raced down the ladder, not looking to see whether the boy followed her. “We go now!”
Miquel landed with the grace of a lifelong sailor as Montse pulled away with both oars. “Capità,” he protested. “At least let me do the rowing.”
Montse acquiesced, switching places and leaning forward in the graying light. She kept an eye fixed on the beastmen, who splashed into the river or hid in the wreckage of the docks.
The Imperials, peering from their trenchworks, seemed equally surprised, but they weren’t running away.
“Speed is everything,” she said to Miquel. “We run to the wall, throw the grapples up, and climb. The Imperial soldiers might shoot us, and the beastkind might come up after us. Move fast.”
“Do you have any good ideas for preventing the Cahokians from shooting us?” Miqui asked.
Montse shook her head. “Do you know any good prayers? Maybe something from St. Robert Rogers?”
“Maybe we can smile as we climb.”
Montse laughed. “For you, that would work. For me, I fear my white teeth will only give them a target to shoot at. Are you ready?”
Miquel grunted assent as his last stroke on the oars drove the boat up the shallows and into the muddy bank of the river. Montse leaped ashore, shrugging out of the coiled line and freeing the grapple to throw it.
The great advantage they had was the strange nature of the Treewall. Montse had never seen it, but the wooden palisade with the natural branches at its height was legendary. She’d never seen the city of Hannah’s husband, and she hadn’t expected those branches to actually have green, living leaves on them.
Still less had she expected the leaves to fall out the very minute she hurled her grapple into the branches.
“Capità!” Miqui was only a moment after her, hurling the steel toward the top of the wall. “You have killed the trees!”
The grapples caught and both smugglers began to climb. The riverbank mud on Montse’s boots made footholds trickier, but this was a climb to be accomplished by arm strength. She dragged herself up cursing, knees and toes banging against the bark of the wall. Green leaves fell about her, striking her in the face and threatening her grip.
Miquel whistled, the cheerful bastard.
Halfway up the wall, the leaf-fall ended and she began shouting. It was a calculated risk. Would she attract Imperial fire? Perhaps, but she hoped that the darkness, and the strange wall of black flame would spoil their shots. But she worried that if she simply vaulted over the top of the palisade wall without warning, she’d end her days impaled on a Cahokian spear.
“Sóc amiga!” she shouted. “Je suis une amie! Ich bin eine Freundin! Abu m enyi! I am a friend!” The words stole her breath and slowed her progress, but when she reached the end of her scant repertoire, she started it again from the beginning.
Miqui joined her as best he could. “Friend! Freund! Amigo!”
Steel Ophidian-style sallet helmets peeped through the branches at the top of the wall. The black fire gleamed dully on the metal, and also on the metal of what Montse took to be musket barrels.
“Friend!” she shouted.
Her rope went suddenly taut. Her feet lost their purchase on the wall and she slipped, catching herself only after sliding down several feet and burning the skin of her hands. Only a lifetime of clinging to ratlines in Gulf storms kept her from losing her grip entirely and falling.
Below her, something with a head like the rhinoceros she had once seen in a private garden in Miami, only covered with fur, leaped upward, climbing the rope.
Stupid. She should have pulled it up behind her.
Hooking one booted toe around the rope to stabilize herself, Montse grabbed the hilt of her saber—
bang!
The shot came from beside her, rather than from above.
The rhino-headed beastman lost his grip and fell back.
Bang! Bang! Further shots came, but these were from the Imperial trenches, rather than Miquel or the defenders.
“Go!” Miquel shouted. “Climb!”
He slid down past her, and she resumed her upward progress. In his hand, she saw the flash of steel as the young sailor pulled a knife. Her rope went taut again and shook as the rhino began again to climb—
and then Miqui cut the line, and the rhino fell.
“Go!” Miquel shouted. “Go!”
Her hands and her guts both torturing her, Montse flung herself up the wall. She heard shouting in Ophidian—of which she only knew a few words—and braced herself to be shot from above, but the attack never came.
More gunfire came from the Imperial trench, but then Montse was into the branches. She released the rope. As blood flowed into her hands again she felt the burning of her abraded skin more intensely.
She stopped on the lower branches and reached out a hand for Miquel.
The boy pulled himself up to within reach, gripped a branch and then took Montse’s arm.
Bang!
Miquel fell. Montse jammed one boot into the crotch of a branch and pulled her sailor up, but he was heavy. She hit the branch behind her, heard a loud crack, and then she and Miqui began to slide.
“Help!” She flung an arm over another branch, trying to wrap her elbow around the wood and stop her motion, but her arm slid along the limb, and she and Miqui rolled toward the edge—
below, she saw the snarling rhino face—
would she even survive the fall?—
and then hands caught her from above. Two men grabbed her by the shoulders of her coat. Two more grabbed Miquel, by one leg and one arm. The crew of four rescuers dragged the two Catalans up and over the top of the palisade, dropping them gently on the wooden walkway on the other side.
“Gràcies,” Montse said. “Thank you.”
Then her rescuers stepped back and she saw what they were.
Beastkind.
Farther away on the walkway stood men in the silver helmets the Cahokians favored, leaning on spears or holding muskets in the crooks of their arms. But the four who had rescued Montse all had animal features. The one who stood closest and now grinned at her had the head and upper body of a coyote and wore a pair of pistols in holsters hanging from bandoliers over each shoulder.
“Keep your hands away from your weapons,” the coyote said.
“I’m a friend,” Montse said.
“I heard you the first time.” The beastman grinned. “My queen will know for sure. Until then, you’re my prisoner.”
Montse didn’t resist as the beastman stripped her of her sword and her pistols, and disarmed Miquel.
“And my friend?” she pressed. “The boy? Do you have healers?”
“We’ll look to his wound,” the coyote said, looking over the wall. He seemed distracted and surprised by the wall of flames. “In due time.”
* * *
Sarah sat at a table in the Hall of Onandagos, beneath the stained-glass images of tall vines. The last time she’d been in this room, she’d been the second of Alzbieta Torias, who had been one of the candidates to be chosen by the city’s goddess as the next king or queen.
This time, she sat at the table and no one objected.
The other former candidates weren’t present. The landowner Voldrich and the poisoner Gazelem Zomas were the two about whose whereabouts she knew nothing. The Lady Alena seemed to have fallen into line, and the two military women were both now working with Sir William.
Confirming and learning such details was the purpose of the meeting. Cahokia had continued to be governed as it had been before, lightly, and by Maltres Korinn (as Vizier now rather than as Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne, though it wasn’t clear to Sarah that either position was very clearly defined).
It was time for Sarah to exercise a little control. To do that, she needed to get a clearer picture of what the pieces were and how they worked.
Around the table were Maltres Korinn, Alzbieta Torias, William Lee, the Polite Sherem, and Cathy Filmer. In the door stood Yedera the Podebradan. Outside the door were several of Alzbieta’s warriors.
“I don’t want his arrival to surprise anyone.” Sarah pointed at the one unoccupied seat as she started the meeting. “I’ve invited Zadok Tarami.”
Sir William snorted and the Duke of Na’avu looked dubious, but Alzbieta nodded. “It’s a wise move, Beloved. Show his followers that you respect him…and them.”
“Is it so wise, though?” Cathy asked. “Maybe he shouldn’t be invited to all the meetings. Maybe we shouldn’t say anything in front of him that can be used against you, Your Majesty.”
“In what capacity are you here, Mrs. Filmer?” Alzbieta Torias asked. “Sir William leads our combined army. Maltres has been head of the civil government for years, and—forgive me, Maltres, if I give away secrets—is a well-connected Freemason. Sherem is connected with the wizards of Cahokia, in their various groups. I represent the Handmaids of the Virgin. Even Metropolitan Tarami’s presence makes sense to me, representing the priests of the Basilica and those who worship with them. What constituency do you represent?”
Sarah knew by now that Cathy’s perfectly still expression concealed rage.
“She represents me,” Sarah said. “Cathy is here precisely because she is not connected to any of Cahokia’s groups. She is here to be my second soul.”
Cathy smiled faintly and nodded.
“I’m inclined to agree with…Cathy, Your Majesty,” Sir William said.
Maltres inclined forward across the table. “How are you feeling, Sir William?”
Sarah expected a droll quip or a fiery rebuff. Instead, Sir William seemed to shrink into himself. “Your question is reasonable. I apologize for the state in which you saw me on the ramparts the other day, suh. I was not myself.”
“And you are yourself now?”
Sir William fixed the Vizier with a steely green eye. “Yes I am.”
Maltres nodded.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Sarah said. “I need each of you to operate at full power and to be available to me at all times.”
There was a round of general nodding.
“Beloved,” Maltres Korinn said. “Might we begin by articulating the basis on which we are here?”
“We are the government of the kingdom,” Cathy said.
“Yes,” Maltres agreed. “Let us be clear about it. Sarah is the Beloved of Wisdom, First Handmaid of the goddess of Cahokia. Everyone in the city knows that.”
“That is not what everyone in the city knows.” Zadok Tarami spoke from the door. With a subtle show of her teeth, Yedera let him in.
“You weren’t in the city,” Alzbieta Torias said. “You didn’t feel it.”
Zadok Tarami took the empty seat. “By your account, you weren’t, either. You were in a place I do not believe to exist, a magical land called Unfallen Eden, in which Adam’s tragic decision was never made, and all the children of the primeval demon serpent Lilith worship her in happiness, surrounded by buzzing bees and purring lions.”
Alzbieta shook her head. “Say rather that essential portion of Eden that was not affected by Adam’s choice, where the goddess has always remained and will always remain, undiminished by the necessary echoes of her in this mortal world.”
“Priests.” Sir William leaned toward Cathy. Sarah barely heard him. “Shoot me now.”
“What I have been told by my congregants,” Tarami shot back, “was that at the rising of the sun on the solstice they felt a powerful feeling of love and wellbeing directed toward Sarah Elytharias.”
“There you have it,” Maltres said.
“I believe God has chosen her,” Tarami said. “I believe He chose her in answer to my prayers and the prayers of the thousands of others who have begged for relief from the Pacification. I am honored to be included in this council, and I will do my best to help Sarah achieve God’s purpose for her.”
“And if I believe I am meant to become queen?” Sarah asked him.
“One can be chosen by God and fail. Our Lord himself chose Judas Iscariot.” He looked at her with unblinking eyes. “My fellows and I will be happy to instruct you and advise you. Traditionally, the Metropolitan of Cahokia has crowned the land’s kings.”
Meaning Tarami thought he had a veto right.
“That is only the public coronation,” Alzbieta said. “The second coronation takes place within the Temple of the Sun and is necessary for a person to truly take the throne.”
“Last I heard, you and your sisters didn’t even know of what the so-called second coronation consisted.” Tarami’s smile was warm and benevolent. “As much as we may hope for the blessed revelation of such a thing, for now, the coronation within the Basilica is all there is.”
“Thank you for these competing views,” Sarah said, cutting Alzbieta off. “This is precisely why I invited you all into this council. If you all agreed, your advice would not be useful to me.”
Tarami smiled.
“Here is the situation as I see it,” Sarah said. “Those who were with me know that the goddess chose me as Her Beloved.”
“Amen,” Alzbieta, Maltres, and Sherem said together.
She continued. “I am therefore titular head of an order of priestesses I scarcely understand. Also, all the Firstborn in the city at that time felt…something. That feeling is the basis on which I govern. I may have rivals, either among former claimants to the throne or from quarters as yet unseen. One thing I intend to do is consolidate my power by quickly accomplishing my coronation.”
“There may be other reasons my Beloved would wish to take the Serpent Throne,” Alzbieta said.
“Mmm,” Tarami murmured. “Didn’t John tell us that ‘Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world’?”
Sarah ignored the tension between her priestess and her priest. “I want to hear about the state of the city. I need you to teach me about Cahokia. And I want to hear about the claimants under the presentation. But there’s something more urgent than that.”
“The food supply is secure,” Maltres said. “We harvested every grain, seed, melon, squash, fruit, and legume we could find in the bounty the goddess sent us.”
Zadok Tarami opened his mouth; Sir William fairly leaped over the table to jab a finger at him. “Don’t say it, suh. We all know what you think, and we’ll take it as said. Do not waste my queen’s time.”
Tarami smiled and sank back into his chair. “Forgive me. I’m an old man and a debater of many years’ experience. It’s hard for a leopard to change his spots.”
“I, too, am resisting old spots,” Sir William told him. “Only I believe my spots were considerably more violent than yours.”
“What happened this morning?” Maltres looked about the table at all the participants as he asked, but his gaze came to rest on Sarah.
They all knew what he meant. They all knew he was asking her. In the early morning, before dawn, the abundance of plants that had sprouted in the thoroughfares and plazas of Cahokia had entirely wilted. By midday, when they’d come together for this conference, the plants had begun to rot where they stood.
“The foliage and buds of a new crop of fruits and nuts fell from the Treewall,” Sir William said.
Sarah nodded. “I would have guessed as much. I will tell you what I know, and what I guess.
“I was awakened before dawn with a feeling of intense pain. It was if all the blood in my veins had been sucked out in one moment, and I was instantly parched to dust. I sneaked out and climbed the wall—”
“You shouldn’t get ahead of your bodyguard like that,” Maltres said sternly.
Sarah laughed. “Iron Andy Calhoun is the best man between New Orleans and Philadelphia, and he couldn’t keep me penned. You’re welcome to try, Maltres Korinn, but you’re going to have to get up really early in the morning.”
Maltres and Alzbieta both looked embarrassed. They shouldn’t feel that way; Sarah had used an oculos obscuro incantation, and there was nothing they could have done to stop her.
“You were on the wall,” Sir William said. “Chikaak told me he smelled you, and I doubted him.”
Sarah didn’t love to hear that she had been smelled, but she let it pass. “A mighty spell has been cast in the Imperial camp.”
Zadok turned his head sharply. “Walters?”
“No. Robert Hooke, I think. I recognize his…visual stink, so to speak.” How much could she really tell them about the spell that forced her to kill Thalanes, that nearly killed Sarah and her brother Nathaniel both, the vortex of groping hands in a sea of amber death? “I think I know the enchantment he has worked. We’re trapped inside a spell of his, a spell that kills.”
“The whole city is trapped?” Tarami asked.
Sarah nodded.
Sherem sighed. “I…fear I may know the spell of which you speak.”
Sarah hadn’t expected help, but she was happy to accept it. “Will it…kill people?”
The Polite was slow to answer. “Maybe. Perhaps eventually? Perhaps it will close in and become more potent? Perhaps if the Sorcerer can channel additional power into it?”
“That’s a lot of perhapses,” Sir William growled. “If a subaltern offered me that many maybes, I’d break him down to a corporal, if not worse.”
“This is gramarye.” Sherem shrugged. “Not bricklaying. Perhaps the spell will do nothing. Perhaps we will merely starve to death when the supplies run out.”
“At least the goddess has given us more time.” Sarah shot a warning look at Tarami, and he said nothing. “Maltres, I’ll need to know how much.”
“There are many variables,” he said. “I’ll give you my best estimate.”
“I am grateful for the fruits and nuts,” Bill murmured. “But I would have been more grateful for behemoth.”
Alzbieta Torias laughed. “To fight our battle for us, you mean?”
Bill frowned. “No, to eat. Behemoth means many cattle.”
“Behemoth is a monster.” Tarami glared at both Bill and Alzbieta.
“And yet that is now what I remember from Harmonszoon,” Bill muttered. “He behemoth is beeves, I would swear to it.”
“How are we doing on getting messengers out?” Sarah asked Maltres.
Maltres Korinn frowned. “Poorly. My men are being intercepted by the Imperials.”
“Is that just bad luck?” Sarah frowned.
“Maybe,” Korinn said. “Or maybe it’s because the Imperial web is strong and thrown wide. And I am hesitant to send men out the Mississippi Gate. It seems certain death. We’ll continue to try.”
“I think for now I can forego a detailed description of city functionaries,” Sarah said. “And I reckon we’ve all heard enough for today on the differences between the Temple Handmaids and the Basilica gang.”
“We do more than operate the Basilica,” Zadok Tarami said. “We run multiple charitable organizations and two schools.”
“And we curate a large library,” Alzbieta said.
Sarah nodded. “Understood. And I urgently want to know more about the arcane resources we may have at our disposal. But most urgently, I want to make sure we have something resembling an army coming together.” She looked at Sir William and was gratified to see that he didn’t flinch. “Joleta Zorales and Valia Sharelas. Are they with us? I think I could stand a rebellion of poets, but I want the cannons pointing away from me.”
The Cavalier cleared his throat. “Zorales commands Your Majesty’s artillery. The majority of the soldiers under her command are former Pitchers. They are also largely women and Firstborn, and I understand they are particularly enthusiastic for Your Majesty’s cause.”
Even Tarami laughed at that.
Sir William continued. “Valia Sharelas has also agreed to serve Your Majesty. With Your Majesty’s permission, I should like to offer her the second position after myself, with the appropriate rank. She is acting in that capacity already.”
“Of course. And our forces?”
“It is a small army,” Sir William said. “Barely fit for the defense of a city, and certainly unfit for sallying forth to attack a larger enemy. We have artillery for the walls. Most of the wealthy families of the city have contributed some or all of their retinues. Along with the wardens and the beastkind, we are drilling the new recruits. Thank Heaven that, for the moment, the forces outside the walls are nearly as motley as ours.”
Sarah breathed a sigh, if not of relief, exactly, then of a slight lowering of the tension that knotted up her spine.
“Still, to break this siege, we will need more forces than we presently have at our disposal. And one more thing, Your Majesty,” Sir William added. “We have taken two prisoners this morning, climbing the western wall.”
Sarah frowned. “Beastkind?”
Sir William chuckled. “Pirates, as it happens. And I think you should see them.”