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“Iffen anybody as ain’t William Lee or Obadiah Dogsbody sticks his head in, you knock it clean to Baton Rouge.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The crowd pressed itself against the walls of the ballroom, and Sarah drifted with them. The gendarmes shouldered past her to surround the old Spaniard with his knife to the chevalier’s neck; in the urgency of the sudden threat to their master’s life, they had forgotten entirely about Sarah’s party.

Facies muto.” She willed herself and her companions to again resemble the Prince of Shreveport and his family.

Her own reservoir of magical energy was at a very low ebb, a sensation which felt a lot like exhaustion and fatigue and a little bit like being hungry and thirsty. She still had Thalanes’s moon-shaped brooch, pinned now to the white dress she had borrowed from one of the Machogu women. She hadn’t tapped any of its energy yet, out of a sense that the energy humming within the monk’s bauble was the last piece that remained of the man himself, his pneuma or his psyche, his spiritus or his anima, and once she used it up, he would be irrevocably gone.

Sir William was distracted by the spectacle in the center of the room. “Sir William,” she hissed at him, “let’s go!”

He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Non!” The chevalier raised an arm to direct his men, but his captor cut him off.

“Je le fis!” shouted the old man, and pressed his knife tighter into the chevalier’s cravat. He drew a thin trickle of blood, a shocking crimson flower in the bed of white. “Je suis moi qui l’assassinais!”

“Hell’s Bells,” Sir William muttered. “The old fool will kill himself.”

Sarah thought she saw the Spaniard wink at Sir William, and Sir William tip his head in a slight deferential bow, and then she pulled his elbow and drew him back with her into the hall. “We gotta leave while they’re distracted, out the front door.”

Sir William shook himself like a dog coming out of water and focused on the exit. Calvin, Cathy, and Obadiah fell in behind them. “You’re my queen, ma’am. I will only observe that the Blues and the Lazars remain outside, and if we’re detected we’re likely to face combat.”

“We’re between a rock and a hard place, Captain,” Sarah said. “It’s my choice, and I choose the rock.”

Sir William tucked his pistols into his belt, crooking an elbow toward Sarah. “In that case, Your Majesty, the Prince of Shreveport offers you his arm.”

Sarah took the proffered elbow and followed him out the door.

She and Sir William both inclined their heads to the footmen at the door, ignoring their sour looks in return, and passed into the cool evening air. Behind them she heard cries and blows.

Twenty-odd Blues, the Right Reverend Father Ezekiel Angleton, and several of the rot-coated Lazars stood mounted beyond the front gate. She ignored them and turned right along the face of the Palais, strolling at a casual pace past clumps of magnolia and cherub-festooned fountains toward the white and gold coach they’d left an hour earlier.

“Jerusalem,” Cal whispered. “I ain’t ne’er felt more nekkid in all my life.”

Could Sarah’s enemies see through her disguise? She resisted a strong desire to turn her head and look to see whether she was being watched, and instead focused on the coach. The smooth cobblestones before her stretched like an endless sea to the white and gold wheeled lighthouse on the distant shore, calling her on, guiding her through the shoals of footmen and fountains.

There was a commotion behind her, at the door of the Palais. Sarah willed herself to keep walking.

Closer.

Footmen bowed, and Sarah and Sir William nodded in return.

She heard shouting behind her in French.

Almost there. One of the two coachmen stepped down to hold the door open, while the other mounted the front of the coach to take the reins.

The shouting suddenly got louder. “Emmenez-les!”

“Sarah, they spotted us!” Cal cried.

Sir William dropped Sarah’s arm and pulled both pistols, leveling them at the two servants. “Get away from the carriage, gentlemen, or I shall release you from my service in a fashion you will find most abrupt.”

The coachmen stumbled away in terror and Obadiah climbed, quite spryly for his size, up to the coachman’s seat. “Get in, poppet.” He took the whip and reins. “I can ’andle this well enow.”

They jumped into the carriage and the party’s disguises dropped. Cal tossed the real prince and his family, still tied and squirming, to the ground. As he shut the door again, Sarah heard the clop of horses’ hooves and the coach rolled forward into action.

Sarah finally risked a glance out the window, and her heart sank. From the Palais swarmed gendarmes, armed and barking. The Blues beyond the gatehouse turned their horses to move in the same direction as Sarah’s carriage, following a course convergent with her own down the street, with Angleton and Hooke at their head, both staring at her.

She snapped her gaze away, remembering with an icicle through her heart the groping hands and endless amniotic sea of Robert Hooke’s spell; she could not afford to meet his eyes again, at least not until she was stronger. She looked ahead.

There was a second gatehouse at the end of the cobbled yard, and the carriages were organized to exit through it. The night still being young, there was no queue ahead of them, but a dozen gendarmes were forming themselves into a line across the gate, drawing pistols and yelling at Obadiah in French to stop.

“Froggez-vous!” Obadiah yelled gleefully back at them.

“Pardon me, Your Majesty,” Sir William said to Sarah, “but would you please keep your head inside the carriage? I believe we’re about to exchange pleasantries.”

“I see them,” she said.

To Cathy, who was loading the Lafitte pistols, the Cavalier added, “Save your powder, ma’am, until they try to board us.”

Then Sarah pulled herself inside and ducked, pressing her body against the heavy back of the coach, while Sir William leaned out the window in her place.

“The portcullis!” Obadiah shouted. “’It that fellow ere he brings the gate down on our ’eads, Bill!”

Bang!

“Drive!” Sir William shouted.

Then the gunfire began in earnest.

The glass windowpanes of the carriage shattered and the wood of its frame spat splinters as lead balls punched their way through. Sarah hunched low with Cathy and Calvin and hoped Sir William could avoid being shot, hanging as he was out the window.

The carriage rattled across the cobblestones. Sarah ventured a glance out the window and saw the Blues, galloping behind Angleton and Hooke; they were behind, but gaining, and Sarah racked her brain for a spell. She didn’t think she had the energy to turn the entire carriage and its teams of horses invisible, not for long enough to make a difference; she knew she hadn’t the strength to turn them into birds; disguises at this point would be useless.

Bang! Bang!

Wheels thundered across stone; bullets ripped the air to dangerous shreds. They must be almost to the gate now. Sarah peeked again across the tall iron fence—she could see Hooke’s pale face and white, worm-seething eyes framed by his flapping scarf, and she ducked.

“Here they come, Mrs. Filmer!” Sir William shouted, and fired.

There was a thud! of colliding bodies as gendarmes threw themselves against the front and side of the carriage. Sarah thought she heard a cry from the roof of the carriage, but gave it no thought in the general ruckus of shots, blades, and flailing limbs.

Bang!

Sir William dispatched a gendarme with an efficiently-aimed pistol ball to the sternum, then drew his sword and swung out the door of the coach to attack someone at the coachman’s seat.

Bang!

Cathy shot one assailant in the forehead, knocking him off the side of the vehicle, then calmly switched pistols and fired into another man’s shoulder. The second man cried out in surprise, and had no strength to resist when Cathy pistol-whipped him in the jaw, sending him tumbling to the ground. Acrid smoke from the pistols filled the coach.

The Imperials clattered through the gatehouse and into the street, and the coach swerved to put the dragoons directly behind them. Sarah still rummaged through her imagination for a good spell. She wanted the horses to go faster, and she remembered Thalanes’s morning coffee spell, and the little sack of beans nestled in the monk’s satchel. The Latin, though…it had been more complicated. What was it Thalanes had incanted? Pedes something, though of course pedes is feet, and horses don’t have feet.

But could she even cast a spell at all, through the silver filigree in the doors and windows of the coach?

Cal, meanwhile, needed help.

He had smashed one attacker away from the door with his tomahawk, but the blow left him open and another gendarme was dragging him slowly out the window by his long hair. Cal’s left hand fought for a grip strong enough to keep him from being tossed overboard, and he couldn’t bring the ax in his right hand to bear. One begrudged inch at a time, the young Calhoun slid closer to a hard fall.

Sarah drew the silver letter opener and moved toward the gendarme. His eyes widened, but he couldn’t free up a hand, either, and so he made no effective resistance when she stabbed him in his stomach. For good measure, Cathy punched him in the temple with the butt of a pistol. Crying out wordlessly, the gendarme let go and fell.

“Thanks,” Cal said to both of them.

Sarah regretted snapping at him in the china closet. Scuffling and thumping sounds continued on the roof, but there were no more gendarmes actually trying to climb inside the coach, so Sarah pulled out Thalanes’s sack of beans.

She poured a handful into her palm and looked at them, wondering how best to use them in an act of gramarye. She wanted to build a conduit for the transmission of power, because that made the transmission efficient, and it cost her less to cast a spell that way. Ideally, she’d like to boil a pot of coffee and give it to the horses, but in the circumstances that was impractical.

She’d use the least power if she could somehow get up onto the top of the carriage and get the beans into physical contact with the horses, but that seemed impossible. If she didn’t simply fall off from all the rattling, she’d get shot.

Looking at Cal, craning his neck to peer out the carriage window as he hefted his long-handled tomahawk, she had an idea.

“Calvin!” she called to him, and he immediately gave her his attention. “I need you to smash open a hole in the front of the coach here.” She had meant to request his help, but it came out sounding like an order.

She pointed at the front wall of the carriage, low and just above the front seat, and drew a little square in the air with her finger. She felt reasonably sure that would be well below where Obadiah sat, holding the reins.

“Big enough for what?” Cal didn’t quite meet her gaze. “You fixin’ to climb through?”

“No,” she told him. “I jest gotta be able to spit through it.”

He shot one last look out the window and then set to the work, hacking at the carriage wall and grunting. The workmanship was solid, but Cal’s axe was sharp and he was an old hand at chopping wood.

Whack! Whack! Whack!

But what was the Latin she needed?

Ungula, that was a hoof, she remembered. Were accelero and augeo the verbs Thalanes had used? Of course, really, she could use any words she wanted. Any that fit.

Calvin had chopped open the hole. It was square, splintered around the edges and about the size of Sarah’s face. The cloppety-cloppety-cloppety rattle of hooves on cobblestones filled the coach, and Sarah could see indistinct brushes of movement through the opening.

He stepped aside to show his handiwork, she nodded, and he went back to the window.

Bang! Bang!

Sarah heard shots from the top of the carriage, and then felt the coach jerk sideways as something hit it from behind. It must be one of the Blues, jumping aboard—they were overtaken.

She lost her hesitation and found her vocabulary.

Ungulas accelero crures augeoque!” She touched the brooch at her chest and threw coffee beans into her mouth.

She bit into them hard as she willed vitality and speed out of Thalanes’s moon brooch and into the beans. She pressed her face to the hole and spat, spraying chewed coffee beans onto the hindmost pairs of hooves and the pole that ran up between them, and the soul energy of the monk Thalanes flowed through Sarah’s mouth, through her spittle and the ground coffee beans, and into the carriage horses of the Prince of Shreveport.

The coach leaped forward, throwing its three occupants to the floor.

A rooftop thump! made Sarah fear she might have dislodged Obadiah or Sir William, but it was followed close on by a snap! and then a cry of pain, and then Sir William poked his head in the window, his body apparently lying flat on the carriage roof.

“Heaven’s curtain, Your Majesty,” he drawled, the seneschal’s white powdered perruque dangling upside down off his bald skull and making him look completely ridiculous, “you’ve lit quite a fire under the horses’ hindquarters.”

Sarah nodded, feeling weak. “It won’t last, unfortunately. Please take us to the river, Sir William.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. “Do we have a plan?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, but I hope to by the time we get there.” She needed to get to the river and its great ley line, where at least she could become magically effective again. Even if it killed her, she’d be able to cast some big spell of escape, or defense, or attack.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sir William acknowledged. “The Englishman has been hit, but I have some experience with carriages myself, and I believe we’ll have no difficulty making the Mississippi.” He pulled his head back in and disappeared.

All the power Sarah had collected at the death of Thalanes was gone.

He was gone, however many parts it was that really made him up.

“Good-bye,” she murmured.

Then she chuckled, softly. The little Cetean would probably have been amused to know that when he finally went, the last of him had gone in a spurt of coffee.

“I’m sorry, do you want me up top?” Calvin asked.

“No,” she said. “I’s jest…I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Shall I stay here, then, Your Majesty?” Cal’s eyes were downcast, and his miserable expression stabbed Sarah in the heart.

“Calvin Calhoun, you vex me,” she said. “One minute, I want to kiss you—” here his eyes lit up, “and the next I almost can’t help but whack you upside the head. First of all, you don’t call me Your Majesty, leastways not in private. Second, yes, stay here, iffen we get attacked again, I’ll want more’n this here toy pigsticker to ward off my uncle’s thugs.” She waved Chigozie Ukwu’s silver letter opener.

Cal nodded.

“Third, you and I got to have us a long talk about important things like feelin’s, only it ain’t gonna happen today, so I need you to hold your horses. For now, I reckon I ought to say that there ain’t any feller on earth I like more’n you. Any problems with that?”

Cal shook his head, looking almost hopeful. “No, Sarah, I ain’t got no problems with any of that.” He paused a moment, then continued slowly. “I don’t reckon you believe me yet, but I’m jest crazy about you. Even if I weren’t, though, you’re my friend and my granddaddy loves you like his own child. I promised the Elector I’d keep you safe, and Jerusalem iffen I don’t aim to do jest that.”

“Fine,” Sarah said. “Then for right now, your job is jest to watch the windows, and iffen anybody as ain’t William Lee or Obadiah Dogsbody sticks his head in, you knock it clean to Baton Rouge.”

“I reckon I can do that.”

“I know you can,” Sarah said, “so I’ll git to cogitatin’ about what to do when we git to the Mississippi.”

And for good measure, she kissed him.

* * *

Daniel Berkeley felt a cold ball of fear in his stomach. His hand was steady, his eye fierce, his men would never have detected his uncertainty, but there it was, lodged deep in his bowels.

Why had the Witchy Eye gone back to the Palais? Why had the chevalier excluded him and the parson? Was it, as the chevalier had implied, merely for money?

Daniel Berkeley feared he was about to be exposed.

He didn’t know for certain what would happen if he was unmasked, or if Thomas Penn’s guilt was known. The emperor might lose his throne, but then again, he might not. The Cahokians might want to withdraw from the empire, and that was a potential nest of vipers—it seemed to him, not being a political man—but then, Cahokia had no king, had not had one for fifteen years. Would the other Ohioans withdraw over the death of one of their fellows? Could the Ohioans do anything at all, really, with the Pacification troops encamped in their lands and all their commerce in the hands of the Imperial Ohio Company?

Would the Electors be so offended at the murder of one of their number that they would call a new election and replace Thomas? Would Thomas simply lose prestige and therefore power and be vulnerable to some rebel upstart, some minor figure in the Penn family or even some outsider? Berkeley didn’t know, but he knew Thomas would want his secrets kept. For the same reason that he wanted the girl captured.

So he had had to kill the bishop. He hadn’t wanted to do it, but the priest was threatening to expose Thomas Penn and Daniel Berkeley, and that had forced Daniel’s hand.

Surely, the fact that he had had no choice must mitigate the bad luck, mustn’t it?

But a little bad luck might be worth it. If Daniel Berkeley could continue to keep the stain on the Penn family shield hidden, all would be well—he would remain Captain of the Imperial House Light Dragoons, his own secrets would stay hidden, he would prosper. But if he failed, he would not survive the ensuing storm. He might finish at the bottom of a rope, or at the wrong end of a revenge drama, or even as his master’s scapegoat in front of a firing squad, but, short of turning and running right now into Texia, his death was certain.

And Daniel Berkeley was not a man to turn tail and flee.

He itched to cast the Tarock—the parson had returned his cards to him with a haughty sniff. Addicted to card-reading like some gypsy crone, but as the Andalusian gray beneath him surged through the dark New Orleans streets, and the heavy carriage ahead somehow pulled away, Daniel Berkeley felt the heavy hand of fate closing about him.

He had sins to pay for, and his Tarock these days seemed to contain nothing but Simon Sword. Judgment, judgment, judgment.

“Gee yap!” he shouted, spurring his horse harder.

He’d seen the Andalusian foaled and raised it himself, on his family lands. They were too high above the Chesapeake to be any good for farming, but they had plenty of good pasturage for horses, and as horse people the Berkeleys had thrived. Their horses had thrived, too, and were prized by discerning riders from Champlain’s Acadia to Igbo Montgomery. Now this animal responded magnificently, straining and accelerating.

But Berkeley could see it would not be enough.

“Can you do nothing, then?” he turned to shout over his shoulder at his two spell-wielding companions.

Father Angleton shook his head and shouted back. “I am spent!”

“Blazes!” Berkeley shouted, wishing the Blues rode with a real combat wizard.

The witch will tire, the Lazar reassured them both in his mindspeech. Do not fret, she cannot last. All the same…The white-skinned dead man seemed to focus his mind for a moment, and then two horses, the mounts of his two dead companions, burst forward ahead of the pack, closing the gap with the coach.

* * *

The Englishman didn’t look well.

Several fingers were splinted, making his grip on the reins awkward. He bled from at least two wounds Bill could see, one in his thigh and a more disturbing one in his chest. Blood soaked his waistcoat and breeches and he sat in a sticky pool, giving hee-ya! to the horses as vigorously as a man in perfect health, though pallor crept into his face under all the stubble.

The man had animal qualities. He’d have been a good soldier.

Bill himself had been lucky not to be shot. Surely, this luck could not last.

Not hatless as he was.

He finished loading both pistols and tucked them into his belt, then looked back at the pursuit. The Blues had fallen behind but were still visible, a spectral posse comitatus slipping in and out of pools of light in the distance.

For a moment, Bill entertained the notion of trying to hide the carriage somewhere, perhaps turn a sharp corner and plunge into the thick trees of a park, or into some alleyway. Maybe Sarah could disguise their coach, make it appear to be some other wagon.

He dismissed the idea. It would be a gamble on a single throw of the dice, and if they were caught, they were doomed; no, their best hope lay in flight. They were outnumbered five to one, not even taking into account the Lazars.

As if his train of thought had brought it on, Bill noticed that two of the horses following them were drawing nearer, and that their two riders were Lazars: the burnt one missing an eye and Tom Long-Knife. Bill shuddered. Only hours earlier he’d chopped the fingernails off Black Tom and left him incapacitated, and now the undead rebel was riding again.

“We’re about to receive visitors, suh,” he informed Obadiah. “Are your pistols loaded?”

“Aye, an’ primed.” The Englishman laughed a death-defying chuckle.

Bill watched the two undead edge closer; as they splashed through a pool of yellow light he saw the white of their three eyes between rotting hat brims and moldering scarves. He hated to risk a bullet on any shot from such an unstable platform, but the thought of fighting two of the Lazars simultaneously soured his stomach. Bill knelt, bracing himself on the coach roof, and fired.

Bang!

Some irregularity in the street’s paving jostled the carriage at the wrong moment, throwing off his aim.

“Damn,” Bill muttered.

The Lazars grinned and leaned lower over their mounts.

Bill looked over his shoulder at the inky road ahead. “Try to avoid the potholes, suh.” Obadiah laughed in answer and cracked the reins. Bill took aim again, carefully. The Lazars were closer now, twenty feet behind the carriage’s rear wheels, fifteen, ten—

Bang!

Bill hit his target between the eyes. The recipient of his attention—the horse of the burned Lazar—plowed into the stone of the street, throwing its rider to the ground.

Bill tucked both pistols into his belt and drew his sword as Tom Long-Knife jumped, flying through the air like a grasshopper and alighting on the coach roof.

Bill slashed at the Lazar’s knees. Tom shuffled back and drew his famous long knife, and Bill pressed his attack, leaping onto the roof to swing again. The Lazar took the blow on the shoulder with a grin, then slashed repeatedly at Bill, Bill barely managing to parry the hard, swinging blows. Then Bill battered the long knife aside and plunged his own blade deep into the Lazar’s chest.

The wound would have instantly killed a living man, but in the moment he inflicted it, Bill knew he’d made a mistake. His face inches from Tom’s, he saw in stomach-unsettling detail the pallid flesh of the creature’s face, his bulging white eyes, and the worms boiling in his eyesockets. Death-reek hung like a cloud about him, and where Bill expected gushing blood, there was none.

There was only a yellow-toothed, humorless smile, and then the Lazar swung his knife again.

Bill stepped in closer to the dead man to make his attack ineffective. He yanked on his sword’s hilt to no avail—he had buried his own Excalibur in a stone of necromantic flesh.

He stepped too close; Black Tom bit Bill’s ear.

Bill yelled, punching the undead and separating the two fighters. They both tottered, a long pace apart, each struggling to regain his balance. Spanish moss-hung oaks flew by in the darkness like half-seen trolls and the cool, damp air of the night whipped away Bill’s stolen perruque.

Beelzebub’s topknot. Where’s my hat when I need it?

He saw Calvin’s red head peeping out from the window of the coach. “Stay inside, Cal!” Bill yelled. “Watch the queen! There’s no room up here!”

Black Tom lurched forward, stabbing at Bill’s stomach.

Bill narrowly managed to step aside, his heels slipping at the edge of the coach roof but not quite losing their grip. He grabbed the Lazar’s knife hand in both his own, stepping with his left foot inside the dead man’s stance. They grappled for control of the blade, the hilt of Bill’s own weapon teasingly poking against his shoulder.

He felt the long sharp fingernails of the dead man; how had they grown back so fast? That was what he needed to do, ideally, chop off the thing’s nails off again. On the top of a rolling coach, though, was not a great location to attempt such precise maneuvers.

Worms dropped from Black Tom’s eyes onto his arm, and Bill felt faint from breathing in the grave-like exhalations.

Bang!

The Lazar staggered from the bullet’s impact and Bill took the opportunity to kick his foot out from under him. He dropped the Lazar bodily to the rooftop.

“I’ve done for you now, you rotten bugger!” Obadiah roared, and laid his empty pistol beside him on the seat.

The dead man had fallen back with the point of Bill’s sword aimed down at the rooftop, pushing the weapon out of his chest. Bill took the hilt and jerked it clean, staggering to his feet and slashing hard at Black Tom, aiming for the right hand of the walking corpse.

The Lazar sprang to his feet, avoiding the blow and raising his guard again. No blood, no black ichor dripped from the gaping hole in his chest where he’d been impaled, nor from the bullet wound Obadiah had put in his cheek.

How to kill such a monster?

More trees whizzed by, and Bill looked at the dark ground. He smelled the river and knew they were getting close. He didn’t know what Sarah planned to do when they arrived, but he was sure her plans couldn’t include having a Lazar aboard.

He engaged with Tom again, parrying a flurry of attacks, and in the repeated clash of steel Bill let himself be backed into a corner. He carefully felt out his footing on the rumbling, jittery coach rooftop, preparing to grapple his enemy again, careful not to back too close to Obadiah, who had enough to do with handling the horses, and didn’t need Black Tom Fairfax falling on top of him.

When he was ready, Bill feigned an overextension and dropped to one knee—

the Lazar stabbed for Bill’s exposed head—

Bill twisted, parried, and got his basket hilt and his free hand pinched around Tom’s sword hand. He threw his body back toward his own shoulder and pulled, meaning to yank the Lazar over his own back and throw him to the street.

But Tom Long-Knife was more cunning than Bill had planned, and had kept his center of gravity low. When Bill yanked, the Lazar dropped to one knee himself and jammed a sharp elbow into Bill’s throat, knocking Bill onto his back, gasping, vision spinning, and perilously close to falling off the top of the coach.

The Lazar raised his blade overhead to deliver a killing blow. Bill held his own weapon up to parry, but his arm was weak and his fingers nerveless, and he felt himself staring into the rotten white eyes of death. Hell’s Bells, just when life was beginning to get interesting again.

Someone had said those words to him. Who was it?

Something crashed into the Lazar, grabbing the dead man and dragging him by sheer impetus away from Bill. He felt the carriage slow and drift, and Bill realized semi-consciously that Obadiah had left the reins to attack the dead man. He choked and coughed, trying to gasp out words of encouragement and warning, but could say nothing other than “O…badi…ah!”

“Now I’ll finish the job, you bloody stinkink ’eathen!” Obadiah headbutted Tom Long-Knife in the nose. The Lazar punched him back and then bit the Englishman in the shoulder.

Bill struggled to sit up, his breath coming in gasps, and faced an immediate choice. Obadiah Dogsbody might or might not be able to handle the Lazar by himself. On the other hand, the horses, left to their own devices, would either run amok or stop, neither of which was acceptable.

Bill looked past Obadiah to see their pursuers. Did he have the time to split the difference by helping Obadiah and then taking control of the horses? He saw the Blues, less than half a mile behind, and he knew he had no time to spare.

He sheathed his sword and slid awkwardly down off the front of the rooftop and into the coachman’s seat, where Obadiah had left the guiding lines wrapped around the seat rail. Bill took the reins.

But on the blood-smeared seat, wedged between its leather cushions, he saw Obadiah’s two pistols.

Bill snapped the reins to get the horses back to speed, though it seemed to him that they weren’t going as fast as they had been. Maybe Sarah’s magical burst of speed was exhausted. Sitting at the front of the coach, he now knew where they were—coming down Canal, with a left turn onto Decatur just ahead.

The quickest route to the river would be down Decatur and to the docks.

Fortunately, Canal had a variety of light traffic, foot and the occasional horse but no other vehicles. “Scatter!” Bill roared at the pedestrians in his path. He took the turn onto Decatur wide, cutting through the traffic and sending strollers flying in all directions.

The horses neighed in objection—

the coach creaked and lifted briefly onto two wheels—

Bill made the turn without slowing down—

crash!

the raised wheels of the carriage slammed down again onto the ground, and Bill found himself staring down the straight shot of Decatur at the Mississippi Gate.

Bill wrapped the reins around his left fist, grabbed one of Obadiah’s pistols in his right (one of them, he knew, had already been fired, and he hoped he’d grabbed the loaded gun), stood, turned, and looked for a shot.

Obadiah grunted and swayed, locked in a mortal embrace with the decaying Tom Fairfax. Blood pooled on the rooftop, and one of the dead man’s thumbs lay twitching in the pool. Blood poured down the Englishman’s chest, and from his mouth, where he seemed to have lost teeth, and out of one gaping eye socket, but he looked indomitable in his rage, shouting obscenities as he pushed his dead foe’s neck back with both hands.

The dead man struggled to bring his knife down in a chop on Obadiah’s neck, but could not quite do it.

Bill took careful aim at Black Tom’s knee and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Damn gun. Bill shoved the pistol into his belt and cast a glance forward as he picked up the other.

Decatur Street, being the southern border of the Quarter, was thick with evening traffic, traffic that leaped and skidded out of the way of Bill’s six rampaging white horses. The Mississippi Gate loomed nearby; it was recessed from the street, creating a plaza, and Bill intended to try to turn his carriage and race through the gate without stopping. If any gendarmes expected to stop him and exact a toll, so much the worse for them.

The Blues were gaining ground, his old lieutenant Berkeley in front, beside the Martinite and the third Lazar. The Prince of Shreveport’s teams were tired and their magical enhancement had definitely ended. The Blues might be only a quarter mile behind. He had to take the gate at a run, and he hoped Sarah had a good plan, because the only idea Bill had was to commandeer a boat and flee on the river, and he didn’t think he had the time or the firepower to pull it off.

Obadiah was hunched down, now, with his hands around Tom’s wrists and his head pounding into his foe’s chest, so Bill had a clear shot at the Lazar’s face, and almost took it. At the last moment, though, he remembered Tom’s nails, lowered his aim and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

Bill’s bullet tore through the walking corpse’s long, gnarled toenails, breaking them and scattering them to the dark night winds. Black Tom stumbled, spinning awkwardly on one suddenly useless leg—

but as he staggered away, Obadiah lost his grip, too, and slipped forward—

and the Lazar rammed his knife into the Englishman’s chest.

Obadiah roared as the tip of the blade poked out between his shoulderblades. “You miserable nuffink!” He lurched forward to headbutt the Lazar one last time.

Crack!

Tom lost his grip on his knife and fell off the back end of the carriage. He hit the cobblestones at a bad angle with a sickening crunch! and lay in a heap. Obadiah collapsed to the rooftop of the coach, blood gouting from his chest.

“Hold on, suh!” Bill tucked the fourth pistol into his belt and turned to pay all his attention to the team of horses and the Mississippi Gate.

The pistol shot had helped scatter the crowd. Also, the gendarmes didn’t have the heart to get in Bill’s way, maybe because he wore the Prince of Shreveport’s clothing and drove his coach. For all the chevalier’s men knew, he was some servant of the cotton prince on an urgent errand, and they stood away as he turned the horses in the direction of the gate.

The horses were tired, and didn’t respond as quickly as he’d like. Bill hauled on the reins with all the strength of his upper body, the horses whinnied, they turned, the coach rose up onto two wheels, Bill pulled, and the lead left horse barely, just barely, missed the stone wall of the gate and made it inside.

But the wheels of the coach were not gripping the wet stone, and as Bill turned into the short tunnel that was the Mississippi Gate, the carriage slid left.

Crash!

The left side of the coach smashed against the wall, and Bill felt both the left wheels shredded instantly into toothpicks. “Hell’s Bells!”

The axles screeched against the stone and kept the coach upright on two wheels as it plunged through the gate, but this was the end. Once out of the tunnel, the carriage would collapse, and within seconds they would be overtaken.

He looked back at Obadiah. The Englishman had pulled the blade that killed him out of his chest and lay in a pool of his own gore, breath rattling thick and hard in his throat. He caught Bill’s gaze with his bloody, one-eyed stare and managed something that was almost a jaunty grin. “Tell my poppet,” he wheezed, “I mean, tell ’Er Majesty, I was a brave man in ’er service, at the end. Please.”

Bill nodded. “You were indeed, suh.”

Obadiah closed his remaining eye and breathed deeply. “An’ tell Peg I always loved ’er,” he added, and then expired.

Peg?

The end of the gate loomed before Bill, the horses emerging from the tunnel to pound down the gravel slope toward the river and its wharves. He tightened his grip on the reins and prepared to battle with the animals against the coach’s collapse.

Instead, to his utter astonishment, the lead horses lifted off the ground and into the air.

And then the second team followed, and the third.

And then the coach burst from the outer mouth of the Mississippi Gate and took flight, rising into the cool night air. The reins hung slack in Bill’s hands. The carriage ascended and turned and above the Mississippi River it climbed, as if the river itself were a great black highway on which it alone of all coaches knew how to travel.

Bill reached back to grab Obadiah’s body, to keep him from falling off the carriage. He looked down, thankful he’d never been afraid of heights, and both amused and slightly disturbed to see Berkeley and the other Blues, pouring en masse down onto the Mississippi wharves and pointing up in his direction.

Shots were fired, but it was too late. Even as its horses realized they were no longer pulling any burden and stopped moving their legs, the Prince of Shreveport’s coach rose, picked up speed, and slid away into the night, shedding its other two wheels with faint splashes into the water below.

Hell’s Bells, Bill thought. I could really use a shot of whisky.


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Framed