“The truly ambitious man raises his fellows.”
Chapter Four
Kinta Jane Embry had become accustomed to riding mastodons. The first few days had been the worst, until she learned to rise and fall with the beast’s rhythms rather than be battered by them.
From Montreal, the St. Lawrence flowed south and west toward the Sea of Ontario, and the Ottawa flowed closer to due west, toward other cities and farmlands of Acadia. Both rivers were followed by footpaths and trafficked by boats of many sizes—the St. Lawrence, from Kinta Jane’s brief views of it in Montreal, seemed particularly traveled by Ophidians.
Mesh followed neither river. Instead, he led their shu-shu caravan north, into mountains that were still thick with snow and rivers still choked with ice. He referred to the mountains, or to the land through which they rode, as Outaouais, but he couldn’t explain the name’s origin. “Algonk, perhaps,” he suggested. “But a person of such mean instruction as I am cannot be expected to know such things with any confidence.”
“Maybe that’s where Ottawa comes from,” Dockery suggested. “That’d be Algonk, all right.”
“If we’re being followed by Algonks,” Kinta Jane suggested, “maybe we shouldn’t travel right in their homeland.”
“I am a fool and I make poor decisions.” Mesh nodded, his head bobbing in a thick, snow-laden wind like the top of a young spruce. “But I don’t believe the lion looks for prey in her own den.”
“Yeah,” Dockery muttered, “but what about when the lion comes home and the prey ain’t left yet?”
They rode north, then west, then south. They rode into snowstorms, the mastodons plodding along without complaint even as Kinta Jane felt she might freeze to death without being noticed, and get knocked off by an overhanging tree branch. The mountains were old mountains, worn down by time, but they still possessed peaks, cliffs, and rugged ridges enough to make travel dangerous.
And there were always the dogs, watching. Within fifty feet or so of Kinta Jane, they fell silent, but she came to find that silence ominous, though her own enchanted tongue was the cause. She listened for the dogs’ footfalls, and turned deliberately to face them, to let them know she knew they were there.
As the snow became cold spring storms, they turned west, tracing valleys muddy with rain and rivers swollen with chunks of ice. Mesh relaxed—was he confident they had lost any pursuit? Kinta Jane no longer saw shadows outside the circle of campfire at night. Mesh took to singing, his rumbling bass with round vowels frightening birds out of many trees as he passed.
I’m going down to New Orleans
I’ll tell you what it’s for
I’m going down to New Orleans
To try to end this war
Dockery joined in at the chorus. To Kinta Jane’s surprise, he harmonized.
Get along home, Cindy, Cindy
Get along home
Get along home, Cindy, Cindy
I’ll marry you one day
Finally, as the cold rainstorms drifted into the gentler, warmer rains of spring, they turned south. Mesh began to strip off his furs, and Dockery bundled up his wool pullover frock.
At a palisaded trading-post town called Sault Sainte Marie, Acadian leatherstockings and trappers walked the streets alongside several different kinds of Algonks, like a small New Orleans in the wilderness. Mesh procured passage on a ferry.
Dropped off by the relentlessly cursing ferryman on a pine-bristling shore, they crossed a narrow neck of land in one long afternoon and then were ferried across a body of water that seemed like the slender arm of an inland sea. Kinta Jane tried to remember the names of the great Eldritch seas some called the Great Lakes and couldn’t. Michigan was one of them.
On the far side, Mesh turned left and followed the sea. “There is copper up here,” he said. “It attracts people from your empire. Other than the copper and furs, your Pennslanders and Germans and Acadians find little of value up in this land. They leave it to us and the Algonks.”
“Copper,” Dockery said, “like that knife you have at your belt.”
The giant glared, his face dropping abruptly into a mask of menace and anger that nearly knocked Kinta Jane from her perch on the shu-shu. Then he seemed to remember himself, and smiled to show all his teeth.
They passed a village of Algonks that Mesh identified as Zhaabonigan. “I think it might mean ‘the sewing needle,’” Mesh explained, “though an ignoramus like myself is not to be trusted. But the village borrowed the name from the river.”
Kinta Jane had lost track of the days, but nearly a season had passed when she and Dockery and Mesh, on the backs of gigantic, hairy shu-shus, rode into a Misaabe village. Kinta Jane had never seen its like—she saw the village coming from a mile away, because a row of wooden poles, broad and tall as enormous tree trunks and each carved and painted with a colorful stack of fanciful creatures, stood along the seashore facing outward. The poles were set into the land, but the Talligewi houses stood on shorter poles, resting directly on the water—the houses were made of wood, thatched, and painted brightly with some of the same characters and creatures that adorned the poles.
“Be prepared for anything,” Mesh said to Kinta Jane and Dockery as they rode a narrow trail down toward the village of perhaps a hundred buildings, and three times as many decorative poles. “A person who commits such vile deeds as I have is not always welcomed, when coming home.”
The first giants Kinta Jane saw other than Mesh were children, who were nearly six feet tall but had the large eyes and energetic playful motions of youth. They stopped playing with hoops and balls and throwing javelins when the shu-shu caravan passed, and fell into line behind the great beasts, singing.
At the first pair of painted poles, which seemed to indicate the border of the village, two Misaabe men waited. They wore overlapping sheets of leather riveted together and bearing large bronze discs, and they leaned on spears so long you could plant them and hang flags from their heights.
The taller Misaabe spoke first; he had long gray hair and a thick beard. “Prince Chu-Roto-Sha-Meshu, son of Shoru-Me-Rasha,” he said, bowing. “Welcome home.”
The second was even taller, and had hair so bright red it was nearly orange, and a jaw like a granite ridge. In addition to his spear, this giant carried a long ax. “Prince Chu-Roto-Sha-Meshu, son of Shoru-Me-Rasha,” he said. “You are under arrest.”
* * *
Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana stood in the prow of a keelboat, booted foot resting on the gunwale as she watched the dark western shore of the Mississippi under heavy rain. The boat had lanterns, but they weren’t lit—flames on a dark night such as this would only make the boat a visible target. The keelboatmen stood at rest, a light anchor holding the craft in place against the muddy river’s tug; the Eldritch riflemen held their weapons wrapped and plugged against the rain, resting them on the gunwale or on the boat’s narrow roof.
If the rain persisted, the river would begin to flood. Would that make the city’s defense easier? If anything, the beastkind were better swimmers than the children of Adam.
Miquel stood among the riflemen. He was a good shot, and accustomed to firing at men, though not at close range, and mostly at men wearing the uniform either of the Imperial Revenue Men or the customs officials of the Chevalier of New Orleans. He moved easily among the Cahokian musketeers, pushing jokes through the clogged stream of his poor English and clasping arms, and now he sighted along his own rifle, standing beside them.
This was not a vessel Montse was used to; it worked more like a ship’s boat than like her beloved Verge Caníbal. She preferred to raise her flag in her sailing vessel, inherited from her mother and therefore very dear to her, but it served her well to set foot in as many of the keelboats, shallops, bateaux, and Memphite barges as she could. It meant her men could see her, be exposed to her competence, feel her affection, and give her their trust. It also meant she could better understand the capacities and weaknesses of the various kinds of craft she was using to defend the shores of Cahokia.
Beastkind who came to the eastern shore could be shot, if they came by day. Many still did so, their rampaging depriving them of ordinary sense, but the greater challenge for the Cahokian navy was to detect and shoot them at night, and shoot the swimming beastmen who crossed the Mississippi.
This keelboat was one of many ships patrolling the river this night, and Montse’s visit was completely routine.
“Capità,” called the keelboat’s captain. “Are those men?” He pointed, his arm a line of shadow in the darkness.
Formally, Montse’s title was admiral. Following the example of Josep and the crew of the Verge, most of the navy simply called her by the Catalan word Capità. This suited her just fine.
She looked through her spyglass; at first, she saw nothing.
Then she spotted a woman. She wore a tattered cloak that had once been dark red but now looked closer to black, and she scrambled down a steep bank toward the river. She was too far away to be audible, but Montse could see that her face was red and streaked, suggesting tears.
As if she had realized Montse was watching her—which was not impossible, given the waxing moon—the woman started waving one arm.
Only one, because, Montse realized, she held something in her other arm. She trained her eyeglass on the bundle and focused. The woman turned left and right, sloshed her way up and down the mudbank, waving at the river.
She couldn’t see them. She was waving to people she hoped were out there.
“Captain,” she said. “Bring us to shore. That looks like a refugee, and we’re going to pick her up.”
“Yes, Capità.”
The anchor came up quickly, and the keelboatmen sprang to their work. Montse continued to watch the woman, and when she turned again, Montse got a clear look at the bundle—it was a baby.
The woman turned because she was waving at someone unseen, high up on the bank over her head. Moments later, more people emerged and began to creep down the thick mud slope toward the water’s edge.
“Faster, Captain,” she said. “And signal for assistance.”
The keelboatmen ran a banner up the keelboat’s pole. Montse checked her pistols, refreshing the firing pans. In a more well-ordered navy, it might appear peculiar that its senior officer dressed and was armed in such a piratical fashion; as head of what might be termed a mob of keelboatmen, merchantmen, former Hansa traders, and hunters in canoes, Montse wasn’t even close to the most colorful person.
Montse checked the refugees through the glass again. She made them thirty—far too many for her keelboat to carry. Pivoting and looking out over the river, she saw two more keelboats, a wide shallup, and several large canoes following her to shore. It might be enough.
Miqui and the riflemen with him were focused on the approaching shoreline with deadly calm.
Then she turned back to look at the shore and saw changing shadows. At the top of the slope, the silhouettes of what might be more men, but looked too bulky and misshapen. She examined the moving figures under the moon’s gray light, looking for the indications she feared she’d find.
There—a pair of horns.
There—wings, like a bat’s, but larger than an eagle’s.
There—a thing with two heads, and a forest of tentacles sprouting from its chest.
Beastkind.
They were close enough to shore that she could hear the shouting refugees. There were English cries, mixed in with French and Ophidian. She had thought Missouri had already been scraped empty of its population—where were these people coming from?
“Captain,” she said. “The hill behind these people swarms with beastkind. Prepare to fire, and to put ashore as many fighters as possible, so we can carry away the largest number of refugees. Signal our intentions to the others.”
The captain, a man with a large forehead, curly red hair, and tiny eyes set deep into his head, nodded. “Aye aye.” He turned and bellowed orders to his sailors, who checked their muskets and pistols and took aim at the shadowy bank. Every man on the ship was either poling, or prepared to shoot. Even the captain took a carbine into his hands.
If only she had a few cannons. A single ball, even a small three-pounder, bouncing through several ranks of an enemy, made a big impression.
Montse looked through the glass. The beastkind were hard to see, shadowed, hidden by trees and tall grass. The refugees didn’t see them, and were screaming and signaling to the ships on the river.
“Aim over the heads of those refugees!” the captain called.
The shore drew closer.
Canoes and other vessels of the Cahokian river-navy were a couple of minutes farther out. How long would it take them to reach the shore?
The beastkind charged.
At first their motion was a mere ripple, a shadow that shifted upward and then settled back into place, but Montse saw the outlines picked out against the hill change with that ripple, and then change again.
Beastkind were charging, and more beastkind were taking their place.
There could be thousands of them.
The captain saw it too. “Fire!” he yelled.
In the darkness, the volley of musket and pistol fire erupted red. The wall of smoke was quickly battered flat by the rain.
Yelling turned to screams.
Montse had pulled both pistols, but she didn’t fire with Miqui and the others. Instead, she took one in each hand. As the keelboat’s shallow bottom bumped from hitting river bottom, she jumped out of the boat. The sudden shock of cold water from the waist down was an old friend to Montse.
She sloshed up onto dry ground and found herself face to face with the first woman she’d seen through the spyglass. Meeting her face to face, she saw that she hadn’t realized the woman’s age earlier—she was young. So young, the baby might be her sibling, or if it was her child, it was her first.
With her were other women, children, and old men.
No warriors, and no visible weapons.
There were dogs, though. A line of mastiffs at the back of the refugees slowed the beastkind advance, biting hands and heels. But hoof and spear were gradually crushing the dogs, small bodies being cast aside.
“Cahokia and Elytharias!” Montse shouted. A beastman with the head of a goat and a third eye, set into its forehead, trampled over the corpse of a hound dog and lunged for the young woman with the baby.
Bang!
All three of its eyes closed forever, and the beastman fell onto his back. Montse realized she was weeping, and she wasn’t sure why.
Did she miss Margarida?
A beastwife with horse’s hooves and a turtle’s shell charged. Bang! Montse’s shot took her in the center of her chest and she dropped.
She heard the splash of the keelboat’s riflemen jumping into the water to join her on the shore. More beastkind ran in her direction, so there was no time to reload. Montse barely had the time to sling the two firearms back into her belt and arm herself with her saber before a third beastman fell on her and the young woman.
Was is that defending this young woman with a child felt so much like defending Sarah?
Montse forced aside a spear tip, stepping boldly closer to its beastman wielder with heavy jaws and long fangs, and then grabbed him by the horns, forcing his face down into the water.
“Behind me!” she yelled to the young woman.
Carrying her baby and sloshing awkwardly through the muddy water, the young woman complied.
As two more beastkind charged Montse, the one face-down in the Mississippi stopped struggling, and she was able to let him go. One spear, though, was difficult to defend against. Two was nearly impossible, especially if one had noncombatants to defend.
Montse parried the first attack, and prepared to take the second attack in her own body.
Her tears, she thought, came from her failure to save Hannah. She had failed Hannah, Hannah had been imprisoned and died, and Montserrat had only ever been able to save one of her children.
But this young woman, and this child…she could save them.
Even if it killed her.
She braced her teeth to take the blow—
bang!
The sudden musket shot at her side left her with ringing ears, but it cut one of the beastmen down, reducing it in one second from a raging, berserk man-beast to a corpse floating on the river’s muddy breast.
And then Miquel charged past her with bayonet fixed to the end of his musket. Bayonet against spear might be an even match, but Montse saw no reason to leave her young crewman fighting even matches. She joined him, and together they killed this beastman, Miqui delivering the coup de grâce with a slash of a bayonet across a throat that looked like an alpaca’s.
Montse immediately sheathed her saber and began loading her pistols. “As many as can get on the boat, go now!” She turned to face the young woman and pushed her in the right direction with her own shoulder. “You first. You and your baby. Go!”
Half the keelboatmen pulled in their poles. While their colleagues held the boat in place, they pulled aboard refugees. At the captain’s direction, small children came aboard first, but soon panic overcame order and women and men came aboard without differentiation until the captain stopped them and the keelboat poled away. It rode low now, the water lapping nearly over its sides, but the keelboatmen had strong arms and knew how to exert leverage with their instruments, and the boat was soon away from the shore.
The next nearest boat was still a minute out, and it was a canoe.
Montse turned to face the oncoming beastkind. Her pistols were loaded, and she stood side to side with Miquel and a handful of Cahokian marines. “Load!” she shouted.
“Aye, aye, Capità!” A few of the marines followed her instruction—the others aimed already-loaded weapons forward.
Maybe as many as twenty people huddled in the water behind Montse and her men. An old man holding a hayfork pressed himself to her side and stationed himself with his fork pointing at the beastmen.
“Where are you from?” Montse asked. “Missouri?”
“Beyond Missouri.” His voice cracked with fatigue. “Zomas.”
Montse had a much better idea of the geography of places that bordered the sea, or major rivers, than of landlocked cities. She had heard of Zomas, mostly in connection with the slave trade. “That’s an Eldritch city? Inland?”
He nodded. “Destroyed eight weeks ago, by the Heron King. Her people have been fleeing on foot, first through the snow, and now in the mud. We have been hunted by the beastkind at every step, and our numbers have been reduced from the population of a mighty capital to enough people to fill, perhaps, a town. We are dispossessed, starving, and desperate. And we are but the first.”
Montse nodded grimly. “Welcome to Cahokia.”
The beastkind charged.
“Fire!”
* * *
Etienne Ukwu found himself thinking of the Appalachee Queen of Cahokia often.
It seemed clear that she was indeed the queen. He’d received her messengers to that effect, a week after the rising of the basilisks over Bishopsbridge. He’d sent her congratulations and had notice of the fact published in both the Picayune Gazette and the Pontchartrain Herald. In those notices, he had been careful to refer to himself as the Bishop of New Orleans, and not to claim the title of chevalier.
Additional verses to “Le Sou de l’Evêque” had sprouted out of the Mississippi mud the very date of the announcements, verses in which Sarah made war alongside Etienne. There was even a verse about the basilisks, although it left out all the most astonishing parts of that encounter—the Brides, Etienne’s mother, the strange space underground with Sarah and her magician—and reduced the event to a joint spell to summon flying snakes.
Eggbert Bailey also made no attempt to claim the title of chevalier; he called himself General, the title, Etienne knew, that Andrew Jackson had used when he had laid siege unsuccessfully to New Orleans. His men called Bailey the Midnight Captain, for his habit of prowling the city at all hours, or sometimes, less respectfully, the Midnight Creeper.
New Orleans had no chevalier.
Etienne didn’t know the Philadelphia Compact well, but he had learned his Elector Songs as a boy, and he thought that the empire had no right to interfere in deciding who the Electors were, other than in the case of barring them for misbehavior, or other extreme possibilities. It was up to Louisiana to decide who the Chevalier of New Orleans was, and for that person to present himself to the Electoral Assembly.
But that Appalachee rube Etienne had met in his casino had commenced impeachment proceedings against both the Emperor Thomas and the chevalier. Monsieur Bondí had been summoned to Philadelphia to confer with Electors. In theory, he might be called to testify, over his repeated objection that he would never in this life do such a thing. However, he was willing to tell Electors how to find the evidence of malfeasance they were looking for.
As a result, Bondí was away from New Orleans. Therefore, Etienne spent more time with the City Council, that now included him and Eggbert, along with Onyinye Diokpo, Renan DuBois, Holahta Hopaii, and Eoin Kennedie. Eggbert headed the city’s military and law enforcement operations, the others administered the city as, in theory, they should have been doing under the Chevalier le Moyne, and Etienne, in name, was the city’s spiritual prince. He preached and administered mass in the Place d’Armes, in sight of the new cathedral just beginning to rise on the foundations of the old one.
In fact, Etienne gave all the others leadership, and sometimes command.
The entire city of New Orleans was now, whether it knew it or not, bent on avenging the murder of Bishop Chinwe Philippe Ukwu. Though so far, Etienne’s nocturnal invocations of the mystères had not, as far as he could tell, struck down his enemy.
Really, Etienne should have been chevalier. In practice, maybe now he was. But he had followed the paths that had been laid out before him, and they had made him bishop instead. He had become bishop to undertake to avenge his father’s murder on the Chevalier le Moyne.
He must now defeat the Spanish in the field to complete that vengeance.
And then…Thomas Penn? But Penn seemed far away, and embroiled in his own struggles. Including a struggle with Sarah Elytharias, Queen of Cahokia, and Etienne’s strangest and also most sympathetic ally.
Etienne and Eggbert rode to Bishopsbridge to examine the city’s defenses. It was not routine—Etienne avoided routine because he feared assassins—but the Mississippi was a key defense that kept the Spanish out of New Orleans, and Bishopsbridge one of the key vulnerabilities.
Achebe Chibundu, the Igbo fighter who sometimes wrestled under the name Lusipher Charpile, rode silently with them. He had become expert at maintaining an invisible station just out of Etienne’s sight, and at leaping to intervene at the slightest threat.
Attack by sea was also a possibility. Jean and Pierre Lafitte and a naval militia of Catalan and Igbo smugglers gave Etienne and Eggbert regular reports on their activities sinking Spanish ships, and setting fire to Spanish ships in ports that were too close to New Orleans. The occasional Spanish ship that slipped past the Lafittes was blasted to pieces by the guns of Fort St. Philip and Fort St. Henri. Fort St. Henri, on the far shore of the Mississippi, was protected from Spanish investment by its swamps, which not only bogged down approach and rendered the work of sappers impossible, but also swarmed with basilisks. The small garrison in Fort St. Henri could only be supplied by small unmanned boats, dragged across the river from her sister fort by means of pulleys.
Upstream of the two forts, a pair of chain booms stretched across the Mississippi and anchored to sunken hulks provided an additional line of defense, one that had not yet even been reached.
The basilisks had not returned to sleep. They had hatched in astonishing numbers and awakened early and were far more active than usual, rendering the lower Mississippi more dangerous than it had been in decades, more dangerous than it had been since the original le Moyne and de Bienville leadership of the city had come down to the river with smoke and fire, and smothered or burned every winged serpent they could find. Stories from that time spoke of the stench of scorched and rotting flesh, and a jungle that bloomed the following spring on the nurturing flesh of the basilisks.
And now the serpents defended the city. They ignored Etienne, but any other person, friend or foe to New Orleans, was in grave danger if he attempted to cross the river.
And when winter came, and the snakes returned to their long sleep?
After the rising of the basilisks, at Etienne’s direction, Bishopsbridge had been converted into a fortress, with a thick-walled wooden barbican at the near end. Eggbert’s forces manned the fortress, keeping an eye on movement on the western shore as well as on the river itself.
The general and the bishop surveyed the men—a motley assortment of New Orleans inhabitants, men of all nations and fiercely loyal to each other and to their adopted city—confirmed their morale, and checked their supply of food and ammunition. Etienne pronounced a blessing over them.
Then the two men rose halfway across Bishopsbridge, Achebe Chibundu at their shoulders. Before them, the swarm of snakes parted, given passage.
“Jackson was your leader and your hero,” Etienne said to Eggbert. “What were you to Jackson?”
“An aide-de-camp,” the Midnight Captain said. “Nothing more.”
“Would you have been made a Prince of the Mississippi, when Jackson had himself crowned?” The words were strange and slightly ludicrous, but Etienne meant the question seriously, and tried not to smile. “Or the Baron of Baton Rouge, or something?”
“I don’t think so,” Eggbert Bailey said. “Jackson never promised me such things, and I rarely felt I truly understood his actions.”
“I can understand his actions easily enough,” Etienne said. “Ambition, lust for power, lust for the flesh and for wealth, a desire to grind the faces of your fellow man, pride—these are the ordinary accouterments of the soul. It is the exceptional man who, having the opportunity, would choose not to conquer New Orleans.”
They rode back toward the city walls.
Bailey shook his big, shaggy head. “No, that’s not it. Jackson was ambitious, but his faithfulness was bigger than his ambition, and he knew the most important thing about ambition.”
Etienne looked and Bailey and smiled. “Tell me the most important thing about ambition.”
Eggbert chuckled. “You laugh, because you’re thinking, this fellow showed no ambition at all until my accountant found him, deemed him corruptible, and used him to organize a revolt.”
“I laugh because I find wisdom in unexpected places,” Etienne said. “It’s a laugh of delight. I don’t believe you are corruptible, Eggbert Bailey—I believe you were biding your time until the right opportunity came along.”
“That is correct.”
“So tell me the most important thing one should know about ambition.”
Eggbert Bailey drew himself up straight in his saddle and threw back his chest. He was resplendent in his uniform, which was still the uniform of the chevalier, blue with the gold fleur-de-lis, repurposed to be the livery of the city rather than the livery of its former nobleman. Bailey’s stature added weight to his words, which he spoke slowly and for dramatic effect. “To be ambitious is a correct principle. To seek to better one’s self is desirable. But the only true way to better one’s self is to better those around you. The truly ambitious man raises his fellows, so that in doing so, his own influence becomes greater over a kingdom that is more powerful and more extensive. And the first and most constant pursuit of power in which such an ambitious man must engage, is the pursuit of power over one’s self. Self-discipline, generosity, and ambition—properly understood—ride farthest when they ride hand in hand.”
Etienne stared.
“You cannot persuade me otherwise,” Bailey said. “I have thought long on this subject.”
“I do not wish to persuade you otherwise,” Etienne said. “I am considering whether I should make this the subject of my next sermon, or invite you to speak on the subject yourself. You have impressive charisma.”
“Surely, there are better things to think on than my thoughts.” Bailey shrank to normal size as he spoke.
“As bishop, I have to speak often. Ambition would be far from the most trivial thing I have spoken about.”
The walls of the city were in view, rising above the Spanish moss-draped oaks and the cypress trees.
“Jackson was ambitious, and disciplined,” Eggbert Bailey said, “and he did not come here to make himself a despot.”
“What, then?” Etienne asked.
“I do not know.” Eggbert frowned and shook his head. “Only that a great crisis is coming. He spoke often of Franklin’s dream, as if that were somehow key to this crisis, or perhaps was a dream of the crisis itself. And somehow, New Orleans was key to the coming events, and had to be taken from the chevalier.”
“Could he not have asked the chevalier to cooperate in managing the coming disaster?” Etienne asked. “Or paid the man? If you seek a corruptible person, you’ll find few more despicable examples than Gaspard le Moyne.”
“I believe Jackson did approach him, and was rebuffed.” Eggbert Bailey shrugged.
“And you don’t know what the crisis is?” Etienne asked. “The invasion of the Spanish? The rampaging of the beastkind? Perhaps even the rise of the basilisks?”
“I do not know,” Eggbert Bailey said.
They rode into the city of New Orleans, Etienne deep in thought.
* * *
General William Lee gazed at the muddy ribbon of the Wabash River from the low height of an old mound, surrounded by water on three sides. His horse muttered a protest against the uncertain footing of the rain-hammered slope, and Bill eased the animal back a length. “Tell me again what they call this place, suh,” he said to Landon Chapel.
Bill tried to remain mounted as much as he possibly could; his shattered legs would hold him only with pain, leaving him able to run a very short distance, or stand with walking canes. But mounted, he was the man he had always been.
Chapel fidgeted, even mounted. He was brave enough, and could ride and shoot, but the man fidgeted. He was handsome, with long brown hair that required no perruque to hide it and reminded Bill of someone, though he could not have said who; but Landon was also young. Bill hoped his own son Charles had more self-possession. Charles would be older. Charles must be riding with the Earl, defending the borders of Johnsland. Bill had written letters to inquire after Charles’s health, but after years of writing similar letters and never receiving a single answer, he was accustomed to silence.
More than once, he had wanted to ask his three hundred Johnsland riders if any of them knew Charles, but it seemed indecorous. In time, he would learn how Charles fared.
“Waayaah-tenonki is the Indian name,” Chapel said. “I think the French call it Ouiatenon. I do not know whether the Wigglies have their own name for it.”
Bill nodded and watched the trees on the far side. The sound of shooting was distant. The bulk of Bill’s forces were at his back, but a raiding party of riders, including most of the men from Johnsland, chased Imperials to drive them back.
“Send someone to the village up the road,” Bill ordered. “I’ll want to use the Firstborn name of the place in my report to Her Majesty.”
“Yes, General.” There was a brief silence. “Will we be defending the Wabash?”
Bill felt happy to receive the question. At Cathy’s urging, he had appointed the young man to be his aide, though Chapel had expressed several times a preference to be fighting. Bill would like to be teaching his protégé something worthwhile, but found he had no head for saying anything systematic about war and its prosecution. A question from Chapel gave him the chance to say something discrete, and hopefully wise.
“It is a mistake to conceive of a river as a wall,” Bill said. “Unless your opponent is fashioned from crêpe paper and therefore unable to swim and terrified to board a boat, it is much more clarifying to regard a river as a highway. We may make some desultory defense at places such as this, which are easy fords for Tommy Penn’s conscripts, but the empire can easily fell some of those trees on the west bank and fashions rafts or bridges anyplace along this river it wishes.” Bill frowned, unsettled at the thought. “It bears remembering that our enemy’s commander, or at least one of them, is a Director of the Imperial Ohio Company who has spent her entire adult life in a canoe.”
Chapel looked up at the iron-gray storm clouds. “If it rains enough, the rivers may become more effective barriers. At least to artillery.”
“If it rains enough, you and I shall become superfluous, and the navies shall enter the valley to fight.” Bill barked at his own jest.
“It’s a shame we have no high ground to defend,” Chapel offered.
“True,” Bill acknowledged. “Her Majesty’s kingdom may be the flattest land on this continent. Nevertheless, that is the land that we shall defend, when the Imperials receive enough reinforcements to turn around and march in our direction again, as they must inevitably do. As we have no wall, we must consider alternatives.”
“Mounted raiders,” Landon said immediately. “Horsemen who can strike the sides and rear of the advancing army.”
“Spoken like a true man of Johnsland.” Bill smiled his approval. “Yes. Horsemen and any other rapid skirmishers we can field.” He wished he still had his platoon of beastkind—for all their noisy, stinking peculiarities, they had been fierce, fast, and loyal.
Only in their death had Oliver Cromwell turned them.
“If the river is a road, then we must control it,” Landon Chapel added. “If we do, then we can land skirmishers at the Imperials’ backs.”
Bill nodded. “And if we do not, then they may choke us off from our sources of food. Our Chicago Germans may prove to be vital in this regard, though I also find myself quite glad of our Catalan admiral. In a land as flat as this, movement will be key. And our lines of supply.”
“Perhaps we can fortify some of the…Firstborn…towns,” Landon suggested. “With artillery and cavalry, a fortified town at an important crossroads might significantly delay the Imperial forces. Many of the Moundbuilder towns are surrounded by banks of earth, which are already a good beginning to fortifications.”
“You make excellent suggestions, suh.” Bill’s legs ached, and he wanted to dose himself with the Paracelsian Tincture that the Zoman princeling Gazelem supplied him with. He must be careful, though—he knew that each time he used the drops, the tincture itself would whisper to him, suggesting that he shorten the period that passed before his next dose. He limited himself to one dose daily, after he had eaten his afternoon meal. “In every case, the particularities of the battle and the terrain shall govern. We shall attempt to choose the place and time of battle, and always outnumber our foe, and take him by surprise.”
“General.” Landon’s voice dropped in pitch and slowed down. “General Lee, you know that I am a man of Johnsland.”
“As am I.” Bill nodded proudly. Was Landon Chapel now going to tell him about his son Charles?
Landon was silent.
“Am I correct to think that you were raised alongside Her Majesty’s brother, Nathaniel?” Bill prodded the younger man.
“You are.” Landon gulped and nodded. “And it was you who saved him at birth from the Emperor Thomas, carrying him to the Earl. I saw the miraculous milk rag from which the boy nursed—the earl had kept it ever since.”
“I don’t know that the rag is miraculous,” Bill said, “so much as magical. My old friend Thalanes was a hell of a magician, including in a pitched battle, but even he would balk to think of himself as a saint.”
The thought of Thalanes’s face painted onto votive candles or tiled into a mosaic behind a devotional altar, though, made Bill smile. Perhaps one day he would endow a chapel, and at least place therein a monument to his friend.
“And also…” Landon hesitated. “And also, I know that you fought a duel with the Earl’s son.”
“Richard.” Bill sighed. “Hell’s bells. I did not want to kill him.”
“You had to choose between two loyalties,” Landon said. “It was a knightly dilemma, and you had to either serve Kyres Elytharias or respect the Earl. You chose Kyres. Earl Isham respects that, however many years of…discomfiture it caused him.”
“Say madness, rather. A soldier should speak clearly.”
“Yes, General, he was mad. We were a laughing stock.” Landon Chapel’s face twisted into a grimace. Chapel was the surname of a bastard—whose child was Landon Chapel? It would be someone of worth in Johnsland. Chapel himself might know, but it was not polite to ask. “At the hearing of a cuckoo’s cry, my ears fill with the hateful ballads that were sung of him. But Nathaniel Chapel…that is, Nathaniel Penn…healed him. Completely. You might say magically, but I would not hesitate to pronounce it a miracle.” Chapel’s face shone.
“Yes. I would like to meet Her Majesty’s brother again.” Bill frowned. Sarah hadn’t been able to heal Bill’s legs completely—would Nathaniel be able to accomplish such a feat? But a man who could heal madness might be fundamentally different from a physician who could straighten shattered legs. “Perhaps I acted out of loyalty. But also, I acted out of fear. Perhaps with a wiser head, I might have been able to serve both my lords, and avoid an unnecessary death. Instead, I killed a young man who did not deserve it, and I spent fifteen years—sixteen, now—separated from my wife Sally, my two daughters, and my son.”
“I should tell you, suh,” Landon said, “that Sally is no more.”
“No?” Bill found himself surprisingly affected, perhaps because he was already in the grip of emotion. “Tell me, how did she die?”
“Illness, I think, some years ago. As a child, I knew who she was.”
Bill sighed. “I thank you. You have relieved me of a significant burden. I feared I might be about to make myself a bigamist, whatever the lawyers say. And my children?”
“I believe that at least one of your daughters has married and moved away.”
“And Charles?”
Landon hesitated. “Charles…had his commission.”
“Of course, he did.” Bill’s chest ached. “And is a damned fine officer, I’d wager my soul.”
Tears pooled in Bill’s eyes. It seemed manlier to him to let them run down his face than to dab at them like a lady, so he allowed them to flow.
After a minute of silence, Landon Chapel cleared this throat. “I’ll look into the name of the town, then, General.” Were there tears in his voice, too?
“Yes, suh,” Bill said.
Landon Chapel rode away into the wind and rain, and Bill found himself thinking of the young man as a son.
* * *
Gazelem became aware that he was being followed when he was crossing one of Cahokia’s great plazas.
All his life, he’d lived with the possibility of assassins and spies. As a young man, he’d developed habits that had protected him since: he made his own food, he didn’t drink from open bottles of wine, and he carried various purgatives and antidotes on his person; he’d become an expert in the effects of plant and mineral decoctions that healed and harmed, he never walked the same route twice, he deliberately circled back on his own tracks at least once on any journey, and more.
Who would be following Gazelem now? The wardens of Maltres Korinn again?
But no, he thought the Vizier had learned to trust him, and besides, the Vizier and his men were too busy finding homes for refugees and bringing food to those who had suffered from earthquakes.
The wind and lightning had let up, though the air was still damp with drizzling rain, and brown water pooled in every depression of the city. Circling back on his own tracks in a plaza now, he saw that he was being followed. The other man might be Zoman, with bright blond hair, dusky skin, and a broad nose that together suggested some sort of Creole origin. Also, he wore the wooden breastplate lacquered red, along with a steel sallet helmet, and Gazelem came up behind him as the man was trying to follow Gazelem through an elbow created by the shop tents of a couple of German provisioners.
He noted the sword hanging in its scabbard from the man’s belt, and then he pressed the point of his long, thin dagger against the man’s black tunic, angling its blade to reach up and underneath the breastplate. At the same time, he put his left hand on the other man’s shoulder, to hold him in place to get leverage if he needed to take.
“Hey, hetar,” he whispered. “You must be just about the clumsiest assassin that’s ever come after me. You’re so awkward, I’d feel bad killing you, so let’s walk down to the wharf together, and put you on a boat.”
“Going where?” the other man asked, in Zoman-accented Ophidian.
“Home, I assume,” Gazelem said. “But really, I don’t care.”
“Home is gone,” the man said.
Gazelem wiped water from his face. “Zomas?”
“Gone. Its people dead or refugees. Some of them must be here.”
Gazelem had seen refugees from his homeland. He’d done what he could to help them, but none of them had said that his city, his fathers’ city, had been destroyed. “When?”
“Two months ago. More. I saw it fall.”
“And didn’t die defending it?” Gazelem sat. “Once, Zomas had warriors worthy of her.”
“I saw it from afar. I was returning from a…raid General Varem had sent me on.”
“You’re not here to kill me?”
The blond man turned slowly. The black-crowned cuckoo painted on his breastplate was scratched and grooved, but not obliterated. The man bore wounds on his face and his arms that hadn’t yet healed, and had the lines of a thousand miles in his face. He smiled, then knelt. “Gazelem Zomas,” he said. “I am Captain Naares Stoach. I served the Lord of the White Towers while they stood, and I swear on all my dead that I haven’t come to harm you. To my knowledge, you’re the last surviving member of the royal house of Zomas. You might be the last surviving descendant of Onandagos through the male line. I have come to serve you.”
Gazelem stepped back and put away his knife.
“There is nothing left to serve,” he said. “If Zomas is gone, perhaps we can gather her people. If we can bring all the survivors here under the nose of the rampaging Simon Sword, then perhaps we can persuade Queen Sarah Elytharias to take them all in. I have lost friends and good servants in the recent siege, so there is room in my household if you would join me. Perhaps we can at least build a memorial of Zomas here, that will do her honor.”
Naares Stoach nodded. “And what if there were a power that could be turned against Simon Sword?”
Gazelem frowned. Had Stoach been reading his thoughts? “What kind of power would that be?”
“A power that comes from the Heron King himself. The only power to which Simon Sword is truly vulnerable.” Naares Stoach smiled. “The son of the Heron King has been born.”