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“You ain’t exactly short of guns ’round here.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cathy Filmer told them William’s usual source of cash in desperation was a pawnbroker named Hackett, and then led them to his shop, but by the time they arrived the sun was setting and Hackett was gone. Thalanes thanked Cathy and then suggested that she might go home.

She stayed.

Thalanes worried the expedition was out of his control. On the other hand, it was good that Sarah was taking command. She was his queen, and if she were really going to rule a kingdom—or two powers at the same time—or the empire—she must learn to govern.

So he was challenging Sarah, and she was fighting him back as an equal. And her choices had been as good as any decisions could be, given how blind they were and the dangers that beset her. They seemed close to finding William Lee, and once they’d found Will, they’d find the other Penn children.

Thalanes would hide them further away this time. New Muscovy, or among the free horse people, or somewhere in the Old World, if he had to. The Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire had their own risks and dangers, but he was reasonably sure that their lands were beyond the reach of Oliver Cromwell.

He worried about Cathy Filmer. They didn’t need her anymore, and bringing her along meant one more person’s safety to worry about and one more person who might betray them. He thought Cathy’s interest was in William, but that mollified him only slightly.

They returned through the Quarter and across the Place d’Armes to the Bishop’s Palace. The beastkind didn’t rejoin them, but Thalanes saw, from time to time, the two hooded, robed figures of the Heron King’s emissaries, trailing them.

The beastkind added another unknown quantity to worry about. What did the Heron King want? Who was he, really? What was this strange announcement of the death of Peter Plowshare?

Cathy Filmer walked side by side with Sarah and engaged her in conversation, which was slightly disquieting to Thalanes but which made Calvin look simply put out, like an unwanted and grumpy hound dog.

The youth might just be the Calhoun Elector some day, despite the monk’s warning to him not to go into politicking. That was possible not because Iron Andy was his grandfather—that wasn’t how the Appalachee selected their leaders—but because he had the nerve, the will, and the charisma that could bring him to the top of the heap in the rough-and-tumble political elbowing that determined who was the head of any of the families of the Ascendancy.

Now, too, he was getting a strong shock of world experience that would strengthen him, and if Sarah ever came into any of her birthrights, his connection with her—whatever exactly it ended up being—could only help him. Thalanes had had many occasions to be glad Calvin was accompanying them, though he foresaw a necessary moment when Thalanes would leave the young cattle rustler behind, the better to hide Sarah.

But for now the little monk had more pressing concerns.

As promised, Chigozie put down his reading—Thomas Paine’s last book, the provocative Deistic Reflections upon the Gospel of St. John—and shrugged into his black coat to accompany them. He chatted engagingly with Cathy and Sarah as they turned north and moved behind the cathedral.

They passed through an empty dirt yard, through which Chigozie seemed anxious to hustle them quickly. “This is a notorious dueling ground,” he explained. “It is shameful that men kill each other in sight of the cathedral, but such is New Orleans.”

“Looks like a cattle pen.” Cal scuffed at the hard dirt with his moccasin. “Jest shy a couple fences.”

“No one is here now,” Chigozie admitted, “but it is in the nature of disagreements to heat up quickly, so let us not delay.” Beyond the dueling yard, he led them through a couple of turns and down several long city blocks crowded with nighttime revelers, stopping in front of a large and singular-looking building.

“A fine lair for a bishop’s son, is it not?” Chigozie asked. “You see what my father puts up with?”

“At least he has a sense of humor,” Cathy offered in demure defense of Etienne’s choice, and Thalanes had to admit she had a point.

The boxy structure was built of stone. Multicolored light streamed into the night through its many large windows, stained and patterned like the windows of a wealthy chapel, only the images here were voluptuous, comical, aggressive, and even obscene. Angels defecated onto the pages of books held open by nude women; zodiacal signs copulated dangerously; beast-headed men played at cards with man-headed beasts; it all tumbled together into an abyss filled with fire, the long tongues of which licked lasciviously at the falling bodies.

Above the chaos presided, flinging gold coins from both his hands, a dark-faced man who bore a significant resemblance, even in his stained-glass image, to Chigozie and the bishop. The building was an anti-cathedral.

The crowd around it, pushing and panting, desperate to get in through its doors, blocked traffic through the street.

“Yes,” Chigozie agreed, chagrined. “His sense of humor is the one piece of our father that my brother inherited.” The bells of the St. Louis Cathedral struck eight o’clock.

“It may not be the best piece,” Thalanes said, “but it’s a good one.”

“That, and they both love tobacco.” Chigozie shook his head.

“I reckon your brother’s business is successful,” Cal observed, “whate’er it is. This palace wasn’t built by no poor man.”

“I try not to ask how my brother makes his money,” Chigozie said grimly, and started pushing through the crowd. “Nor what god he serves.”

Two heavy men in simple black waistcoats and shirtsleeves pushed the bubbling stew of humanity away from the door with cudgels, but when they saw Chigozie, they admitted him and, following his indication, his party. Passing through the door, Chigozie explained to Thalanes, as if apologizing, “it amuses my brother to let me in, anytime I wish to see him.”

“Then you do him a sort of service,” Thalanes suggested.

“Perhaps. I myself am not so amused.”

“That only makes your service all the more charitable.”

A short, broad entrance hall, nearly square, opened up onto a dance floor thumping with a hurricane of noise that snarled out of the unlikely combination of an array of brass kettle drums, a banjo, a fiddle, and a two-headed wooden flute. The same crowd continued inside, drinking, smoking, dancing, and playing various games of chance, and in the writhing mass of bodies Thalanes saw a reminder that he should be grateful he had become a follower of St. Cetes, and not some parish officeholder whose daily burden included the war against this.

Another waistcoat-clad ruffian hulked before a heavy interior door, and Chigozie nodded a wary salutation. “Mon frère Ofodile,” Chigozie addressed the man in French. “Est-il en haut?”

“Oui.” The ruffian showed a row of gold teeth in a smile that looked knowing and vicious, and opened the door. “Montez-vous.”

Behind the door were stairs, and at the top of the stairs was an office. Two more black-waistcoated men loomed up to block their path, but Thalanes stuck close to Chigozie’s shoulder and moved between the thugs easily, Sarah and the others in his wake.

The ruffians faded back into relaxed vigilance.

Ofodile Etienne Ukwu, the bishop’s more entrepreneurial son, stood up from a heavy writing desk where he was reviewing a ledger with a fat, sweating Creole in the waistcoat that Thalanes by now recognized as a uniform. His office was a carefully orchestrated display. The thick carpet on the floor was Arabian or Persian. There were knives on the walls, running from the floor up to eye level. The blades were arranged, but they gleamed from meticulous care and whispered of their own razor sharpness.

Above eye level and up to the ceiling, a mural painting ran around three sides of the room. It depicted an empty plain, with few and unfamiliar stars in a night sky. Two roads converged from opposite corners and met at a crossroads, behind and above Etienne Ukwu’s desk. At the crossroads stood an old man. He wore a broad-brimmed straw hat and simple coat. In his teeth he clenched a smoldering pipe, with one hand he sprinkled something on the crossroads that might have been water, and with the other he leaned on a cane.

He wore a key on a string around his neck.

Behind him came a little dog, wagging his tail and looking at the viewer.

Thalanes had the unsettling impression the dog was laughing at him. He shook it off, and tried to focus on the people in the room.

Seeing Ofodile—Etienne—Thalanes was reminded that Chigozie took after their mother, who had died when the boys were young and Chinwe had not yet been marked for the priesthood, and how much Etienne looked like a younger version of his father. His fingers, though, glittered with rings and held a jaunty cigarette, and his waistcoat flashed carved ivory buttons and silver embroidery in an elaborate pattern of elegant bow-like recurves, straight lines, stars, and leaves. Instead of a belt he wore a red silk sash, knotted on his right hip.

“Mon cher Chigozie,” the younger Ukwu brother said, “tu es venu en cherchant l’emploi au moment parfait! J’ai perdu un croupier ce soir et l’être d’équipe de nuit serait tout à fait compatible avec tes devoirs à la Cathédrale.” He smiled a look of intimate envy and malice at his brother.

“English, please, brother, my guests are not from Louisiana.” Chigozie’s words were peaceable, but Thalanes heard strain in his voice.

“I am happy to welcome your guests, brother Chigozie,” Etienne said with an amicability that threw knives. He sucked smoke in from his cigarette and then stubbed it out in an ashtray.

“Thank you,” Chigozie said.

“Perhaps one of them would like a job dealing cards?” his brother suggested. “Although the tall one looks more like a debt collector, and I can always use another good sticks and stones man. Or are they, like my righteous brother Chigozie, waiting for their fathers to die, so they can inherit thrones and wealth?”

Etienne waved at his fat bookkeeper and the Creole scuttled away downstairs.

“The bishopric is not my inheritance,” Chigozie protested. “You know that is not how it works.”

“Is it not? When my father dies, whom will the Synod anoint in his place? Some stranger? Some nominee of the emperor, or the despised chevalier? Some Geechee tent-worker, an aspiring Haudenosaunee prelate, or a Yonkerman savant? Or will they simply appoint the beloved son of the beloved departed bishop?” Etienne’s smile never faltered. Thalanes frowned; something about the pattern on Etienne’s waistcoat bothered him. It was familiar, somehow.

“The Synod will appoint whomever it wishes,” Chigozie said, “and I will serve however I may.”

The pattern on Etienne’s waistcoat approximately matched the outline of the stars in the alien landscape of the mural.

“I expect so.” Etienne’s eyes glittered like a ferret’s. “Perhaps you will continue to play second fiddle, and it will now be to this monk who stands at your shoulder. How about it, Father? Would you be pleased to be Bishop of New Orleans, if it were offered to you?”

“Not I,” Thalanes said, broadcasting all the modesty he could summon. “I’m a Cetean, and a monk, and I like it that way. No parish for me, thank you, much less a diocese.”

“St. Cetes, of course!” Etienne whistled low. “We do not see many of you this far downriver. Although, to be perfectly frank, I do not see many priests at all, myself. Other than the ones in my saintly family.”

“Perhaps your décor discourages them from visiting.” Thalanes smiled.

“You do not like my windows? I hired the best artists who could be had for money.”

“The building is beautiful, of course,” Thalanes said. “It’s also a joke, of the sort that not all priests will enjoy. Some priests might even think your beautiful building is a joke of which they are the butt.”

“I see.” Etienne nodded. “And do you feel that I am mocking you, then?”

“No.” Thalanes smiled. “I think the butt of your joke is man. And man deserves it.”

Etienne laughed heartily. Thalanes shot a quick look at Chigozie and saw a puzzled expression on his face.

“And my painting, Father Cetean?” Etienne asked. “Do you like my painting, too? Is it an amusing joke?”

Thalanes looked at the painting again, the crossroads, the old man, the dog, the key. He had no idea what it meant, though a vague thought nagged him that he should.

“St. Peter has always been one of my favorites,” he said evenly.

At that answer, deliberately ambiguous, Etienne stopped laughing. The bishop’s son arched his eyebrows at Thalanes and pursed his lips. “Can it be true, Father Cetean, that your order has no hierarchy at all? Once ordained, you are answerable only to God?”

“My name is Thalanes. Yes, it’s true. One spends one’s novitiate studying under a Preceptor, but once ordained, a disciple of St. Cetes serves no ecclesiastical authority. He serves God, and his conscience. Or her conscience, as the case may be.”

“I like it!” Etienne beamed. “No hierarchy at all, just direct responsibility! It seems very Ohioan to me, Father Thalanes, I must say.”

“You are thinking of Talega, perhaps.”

Etienne nodded. “The moundbuilders are not all identical. And some of them are great slavers, too. Isn’t that funny, that a people who are so proud of their own liberty keep slaves? Maybe it was proximity to the Memphites that led them to it. Pyramids on one side of the Ohio, mounds on the other, eh?”

“The kings of the Ohio had been keeping slaves for hundreds of years before the Prester and his sons ever sailed up the Mississippi,” Thalanes said. “And the paradox isn’t all that strange; a society that sees freedom as a man’s greatest good can think of no greater punishment than to take that freedom away from him.”

Etienne nodded. “You are Eldritch?”

“Hey, there!” Calvin snapped. “Be polite.”

Etienne waved him off. “A Firstborn, is that the polite term? Here in the Quarter we mostly use epithets—iggy, frog, dago, schnitzel, yankee, limey, cracker, bathead, minnie, serpentspawn, kraut, you understand. I know my manners are unfit for polished society. I deal with rough men and I make no apologies. The important thing is that we understand each other.”

“Man’s kingdoms and God’s needn’t have the same power structures.” Thalanes felt he was undercutting Chigozie, though he hoped only slightly. The pattern on Etienne’s waistcoat continued to nag at him.

Did it have some iconographic meaning? Some New Orleans saint?

“But you cannot mean no princes of the church!” Etienne gasped.

“Believe me,” Chigozie said wearily, “that would make me as happy as it would make you. Probably happier.”

“Etienne.” Sarah pushed forward into the center of the conversation. “I was hoping you could help me.”

Thalanes kicked himself mentally—he should have foreseen the possibility that Sarah would jump in and take control. How would Etienne respond? Would Thalanes lose the progress he’d made in the conversation so far? As long as she didn’t slip into her Appalachee patois…

He felt nervous, and he saw an uncomfortable look on Cal’s face.

By contrast, Cathy looked completely composed and self-assured.

Etienne hung paused in mid-thought while he absorbed this new development. “Excuse me, I do not know who you are.”

“My name’s Sarah Carpenter,” she said with a defiant glint in her eye. “These men—” she indicated Calvin and Thalanes, “serve me, and your brother agreed to help me by bringing me to see you.”

Etienne looked dumbfounded.

Thalanes held his breath, waiting to learn how this turned out. He willed Cal to keep his mouth shut; he would talk with the young man later, try to soothe any injured feelings he might have.

Etienne smiled. “Sarah Carpenter, Queen of Priests, with the bandaged head,” he said, and then laughed out loud. “Excellent! You will fit in very well here in New Orleans, you are picaresque enough to be one of us already.”

“I’m not a dancing bear,” Sarah objected.

“No? Disappointing. Very well, Queen Carpenter, tell me what you believe I can do for you.”

“I’m looking for another servant of mine,” Sarah said. How far would she push this approach? “I been told—I understand you may know him.”

“I know many people,” Etienne agreed. “I am a sort of priest, too. I minister to all the gamblers, drunkards, and whores of New Orleans. Is your missing servant such a man?”

At the words I am a sort of priest, too, Thalanes knew where he had seen the image. It was a vevé, an icon of Vodun significance. Every loa had its vevé, or beybey, which was its beacon and which stood in for it, in certain ritual circumstances. Why was Etienne Ukwu wearing a vevé? And to which loa did it belong? And did the vevé have something to do with the old man at the crossroads?

He wished he were not so ignorant. He doubted he could ask Chinwe these questions without wounding him. And he was certain he couldn’t ask Chigozie.

“She seeks Bad Bill,” Chigozie said.

Bad Bill is your servant?” Etienne laughed again, and Sarah nodded defiantly. “Well, I must warn you, Queen Carpenter, that I think you will find him a very poor help. Bill was once an employee of mine, but he was an unreliable drunkard, and I had to let him go.”

“I’m forgiving.”

“How long has he been in your service?” Etienne asked.

“Not long,” Sarah said cagily. “Can you tell me where to find him?”

Etienne took something small from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it; Thalanes saw a flash of silver as he replaced the object.

Finally, the bishop’s son shook his head. “I would like to help you, Queen Carpenter, because you are amusing, but I am afraid I do not know. The chevalier’s men took him two weeks ago, and I have not seen him since.”

Thalanes had recovered from his surprise at recognizing Etienne’s decoration. He was keenly disappointed that Etienne had no information to share, but pleased Sarah had navigated the conversational shoals.

“Thank you, Etienne,” he said.

“You got anything of Bill’s?” Sarah continued as if Thalanes hadn’t spoken. “Clothing of his, mebbe?” It was a good question, and Thalanes both kicked himself and felt proud of her, despite her slouching accent.

Etienne looked at Sarah through narrowed and calculating eyes. “Are you a witch, then, Queen Carpenter?”

“What do you care if I am, houngan?”

Chigozie hissed, and Etienne furrowed his brows.

“What do you know about houngans?” Etienne demanded.

“I read books,” Sarah said. “I see an old man at a crossroads with a dog and a key, I know who he is. Jest like when I see you, I know who you are.”

Thalanes almost fell over in surprise.

Etienne laughed, but a little uneasily. “What exactly is under that eye patch you wear, girl?”

Sarah stared back at him without flinching. She did look like a stage witch, with her eye patch and her horse-headed ash staff, burnt black and stained sulfur-yellow.

“An eyeball,” she said.

“And what does that eyeball see in me?” he wanted to know. “Who do you think I am?”

Sarah slowly and deliberately removed her eye patch and looked Etienne in the face. He breathed in through his teeth, whistling slightly, but didn’t look away.

They stayed locked in each other’s gazes for long seconds.

“You’re Ofodile Etienne Ukwu,” she said. “You’re the bishop’s son.”

Etienne sat down, looking suddenly heavier and older.

Sarah put her eye patch back over her face.

“Very well,” said the bishop’s younger son. “It is none of my affair why you want Bill. I used to have a Kentucky rifle that belonged to him, but I sold it in satisfaction of his debts.”

“You have nothing, then?” Sarah pressed him.

“Nothing,” he agreed, and then furrowed his brows. “Except…” He turned back to his desk and plucked a scrap of paper from between the pages of his ledger. “I have this.” Sarah reached out to take the scrap, but he held it back. “It is worth money to me,” he told her. “Cash.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“It is a claim ticket. Before your man Bill was arrested, he pawned his sword and pistols. This is his ticket. I intend to go reclaim the weapons from the pawnbroker, at a price that is very reasonable for weapons of such quality.” Etienne grinned broadly.

“How much?” Cal asked.

“Very direct, my cracker friend. Are you sure you would not like to work as a debt collector?” Cal scowled at him in answer. “Three Louis d’or would make me happy.”

“I can’t reckon it’s even worth one looey to you,” Cal disagreed. “You ain’t exactly short of guns ’round here. I’ll give you a shiny Philadelphia shilling.”

Etienne frowned, looking at the same moment a little pleased, or at least entertained. “Yes, my men use guns and I need a good supply. Three Louis d’or.”

“And yet in the two weeks you had it, you ain’t turned in the claim ticket. Besides, you got better things for your men to do.” Cal dug a finger into the purse at his belt and tossed a single coin to Etienne, who caught it mid-air in his free hand. “One looey, it’s all I got, take it or leave it.”

Etienne rapped the Louis d’or against his desk and then set the coin down. “One is not enough. I am not trying to dicker with you, my cracker friend, I am telling you that I know I can redeem these pistols, resell them and make three looeys. If you can give me three looeys directly instead, so much the better for me. Otherwise, you are out of luck. And the truth is, I do not need the money, anyway.” He gestured at the office around him. “I have money.”

“And I ain’t bargainin’ with you, either,” Cal said. “I ain’t got three looeys. What do you need? I ain’t got time to work it off for you as a sticks and stones man, whate’er that may be. You need a tomahawk? A lariat? A good Kentucky rifle?”

A light flickered in Etienne’s eyes and he handed the single Louis d’or back across the desk. “I would like a lock of Queen Carpenter’s hair,” he said.

“Go to Hell,” Sarah said.

“That is hardly diplomatic, Your Majesty,” he protested. “And it does not respect my faith. A lock of a pretty girl’s hair brings good luck. I am in the business of gambling, Queen Carpenter…would you deny me the luck I need?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I would. So listen close, because I’ll be a-makin’ you one offer, and one offer only. Iffen you don’t take it, I walk away and we’re done.”

“I am listening.” Etienne’s facial expression was focused.

“You give me the claim ticket.” Sarah stared Etienne hard in the face. “You will also give me however much money it is that I will need to redeem the ticket. In return…I will owe you a favor.”

* * *

“Bill, ’e ’as sent for you!”

A light shone in Bill’s sleep-thickened eyes and something wooden thumped in his ear. His shoulder shook. Dreams clattered away, draining out of his skull, dreams of riding horseback, of drill, of barked commands and the acrid smell of black powder burning across a field of bleeding men.

“If you mean Old Scratch, suh, tell him he’s too late. I’ve sold my soul to the army.”

“Bill, it is ze chevalier’s men!” Bill forced his eyes open and found Bayard Prideux standing above him with a lantern, shaking Bill by the shoulder—

within reach.

Bill grabbed Bayard by his wooden leg and rolled away, jerking Prideux off his feet.

Foot, rather.

The Frenchman executed an unplanned one-legged hop backward and planted himself solidly onto the deck, the air whooshing out of his lungs and the lantern flying against the wall. Bill staggered up and found he was still holding the wooden leg, a leather strap with a shattered buckle dangling at the end of it.

“Ze chevalier!” squealed Bayard.

“Damn the chevalier!”

And any other Frenchman who stood between him and justice. Bill brought the peg leg club down hard. Bayard flung up his hands defensively, and Bill hit his forearm with a loud wet crack!, the leather strap whipping around to further sting the murderer.

“Bill! What are you doing?” Bayard shrieked.

Visions of his murdered friend and lord, Kyres Elytharias, flashed before Bill’s eyes, and he continued to pummel the downed Frenchman.

“Do not—”

crunch!—

“mistake me—”

thwack!—

“for a friend!”

Bill found himself standing above Bayard and looking down, his chest heaving. As his blood cooled and his head cleared, he saw the lantern had shattered, spraying burning oil across the wall.

A curtain of flame rose from floor to ceiling.

Bayard trembled slightly.

“Suh!”

Smash!

Bayard lay still; justice was served.

Bill threw the peg leg aside. He’d killed many men in his career, but he’d never killed anyone whose death he’d wanted more than Bayard’s. Still, looking down at the French traitor’s broken body, he felt no satisfaction.

In the end, he and Bayard had been too similar—old, broken warhorses, isolated in their stables and waiting to die.

Bayard might have the key to his shackles in his pocket, but Bill couldn’t bring himself to care. Sally might be alive, but he couldn’t know, because she hadn’t written him, not one damned time. That was hard, however much he admired the woman for keeping her promises, even when the promises were terrible threats. Cathy…he thought of Long Cathy’s long brown hair and gentle voice and felt a warmth inside…he cared for Cathy Filmer, and in other circumstances he might even have loved her.

Bill wished he had a king to serve again, a banner to ride under. But he was an exile, and a cheap killer, and those days were gone.

The fire crackled as it spread along the floor, sending up an inarticulate jangle of whimpering and moaning from the lost souls chained in the Incroyable’s hold. He looked into the flames to welcome them, and he fancied he could see Bayard there, already roasting on the Devil’s spit. Well, you rotten French bastard, I’ll have a spit of my own soon enough.

But there were others who belonged in Hell too, for what they had done.

His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Thomas Penn.

And the other…the ‘ozer’ that Bayard had been afraid of. Whoever he was.

Bill couldn’t let himself die—he still had justice to seek. His muscles aching, he dropped to his knees to fumble through Bayard’s pockets.

Bayard had a ring of keys. Bill snatched it and began shoving keys one at a time into the lock on his shackles, trying to find the one that would set him free. The heat from the flames grew more intense.

The lost souls began to scream.

Click.

Bill unlocked himself. He crouched, rubbing the painful chafe-wounds on his wrists and ankles and looked up to find an exit.

The fire was a solid wall now, cutting him off from the ladder. Bill heard the dying screams of the other prisoners, and the choking as their lungs gave out. The air filled with bitter gray smoke. He looked around him, the fire providing the best illumination he’d had since he’d been imprisoned. There were no windows, no hatches, no other ladders, no escape.

Something was moving on the far side. A thick plank was shoved through, and then another, and a third. They fell to the deck and made a causeway across the fire. Across the flames Bill saw a man—features unrecognizable through the smoke and the dancing orange light—beckoning to Bill to come out.

“Hell’s Bells.”

Bill lurched across the wooden bridge. He arrived at the other side coughing, his eyes and lungs seared, and the unknown man took him by the arm and half-dragged him up the ladder. Bill couldn’t see for the tears pouring from his eyes, and he cursed as his bare toes repeatedly kicked the solid wood.

The cool night air soothed his face as he stumbled onto the deck, coughing and spitting. His vision still swam, but Bill could make out enough now to help his rescuer get him to the side of the ship. Other men moved around in the night, shouting.

“The gangplank is gone.” His rescuer spoke with a soft French accent. “Can you climb?”

Bill nodded. His rescuer—a tall, fit man with iron gray hair, who looked familiar—gave Bill a hand over the lip and onto the ladder, and Bill scrambled down a few rungs on his own.

Then other men grabbed him, pulling him to safety on an adjacent, smaller ship.

A yacht.

A very expensive yacht, trim and sleek. It was large for a yacht, with two masts and elaborate carving in the woodwork, the ship of someone very wealthy or very powerful or both. Bill’s eyes were clear now and as his rescuer followed him down the ladder and joined him on the yacht, they opened wide in surprise.

“I see I’ve chosen the right man,” his rescuer said. Bill could only stare, open-mouthed.

His rescuer was the Chevalier of New Orleans.

Bill said nothing. He didn’t know what he could say to the man who had imprisoned him, the man who had sheltered Bayard Prideux, the man who had blackmailed the emperor.

The man whose son he’d killed.

A wool blanket was thrown around Bill’s shoulders and he stared about the yacht. All of Bayard’s men—the frog imbeciles and also the surprisingly verbal deaf-mute Hop—stood against the rail, watching the Incroyable burn. As Bill looked at him, Jake met his gaze and smiled. Men in gendarme uniforms dropped from the hulk to the yacht, and then the yacht pushed away from the burning ship and turned out onto the Pontchartrain, its sails bellying gently in the cool night breeze.

“Excuse me,” the chevalier said, and stepped down a ladder in the center of the deck, disappearing into the hold.

Bang!

Bill heard a gunshot and wheeled to look. One of the French morons crumpled overboard into the water, his skull blown open by a gendarme. The other imbeciles squeaked and honked in protest as the chevalier’s men raised pistols to dispose of them similarly.

Jake! Bill wanted to cry out, but didn’t. But where was the little Dutchman? Bill couldn’t see him anywhere. Had he been shot first, and was he already overboard, silting up the Pontchartrain with his bones?

In any case, there was nothing Bill could do.

The chevalier reappeared, holding a long bundle wrapped in cloth under one arm and a bottle in the other. “Come with me, Captain.” He turned and walked toward the slightly raised back of the ship. Was that the poop deck? Bill followed, and found himself alone with the chevalier.

Before them lay a spangle of glimmering yellow that was New Orleans. What Bill saw was the Pontchartrain docks, ill-lit this late at night, but beyond them and behind the city’s walls rose a more general glow where the all-night neighborhoods lay.

Bill heard further gunshots, and then the whimpering sounds stopped.

Would his head be the next one shot? Or might he be given food instead?

The chevalier uncorked the bottle and handed it to Bill. Bill couldn’t read the label in the darkness, but he could smell the bourbon. “Honor,” he toasted the chevalier, taking a sip and passing the bottle back. He wanted to take a bigger drink, but now wasn’t the time.

“Yes, to honor.” The chevalier took a drink before stoppering up the bottle.

Bill found himself frowning, though there was no reason he should—he’d survived the fire, he’d escaped imprisonment. The chevalier could not possibly have come out onto the Pontchartrain personally for the purpose of killing him, Bill reasoned. Still…best not to hide anything at this point.

“Suh,” he began, unable to remember what honorific one was supposed to use to address the chevalier, “you know that I killed your son.”

The chevalier set the bundle at his feet, then turned and looked at the shore, knuckles resting lightly on the polished handrail. Bill didn’t dare say anything else, and just waited. What did this man want? Why did he not shoot Bill and throw him overboard with the idiots?

“Three hundred thousand,” the chevalier said at last. “That we can count.”

“Pardon me, suh, but I don’t follow your meaning.”

The chevalier turned to look at him directly, and his face was unsentimental flint. “I have three hundred thousand children,” he explained, gesturing with one hand at the shore. “At least. When you add in all the uncountables—the illiterate, the homeless, the traders who identify some other place as their home, but who are here all the time—it may be five. Five hundred thousand children, not counting the loa and the rats.”

“Yes, suh,” Bill said, unsure where the conversation was heading.

“I can’t allow myself to become too maudlin about any one of them.”

Bill thought a moment.

“Your son was a brave fighter and a gentleman,” he offered, and he meant it, but it didn’t sound like enough. Damn your French eyes and your cold French heart, he wanted to shout, I regret that I killed your son, I regret that I am the man I have become, I certainly deserve to die and you have the right to kill me!

The chevalier nodded. “Thank you.”

“My Lord Chevalier,” Bill said, remembering the form of address now and wishing he had more clothing, “I don’t know why you’ve freed me.”

“My children are threatened, Captain Lee. They need you. I free you in exchange for your assistance.”

Bill’s mind raced. What assistance could the chevalier possibly need from him? He still half expected one of the chevalier’s men to put a gun to his head and blow out his brains.

“I hope I may help, suh,” he said neutrally. He almost laughed at his own reluctance—he had nothing to lose, so why did he care what the chevalier asked of him? Was there really anything he was unwilling to risk, anything he wouldn’t do?

“There’s an insect at the heart of New Orleans,” the chevalier continued slowly, gesturing at the veiny yellow lights. “A tiny, wicked, spiderlike man, a parasite who threatens the prosperity, and therefore the safety and the very life, of my half million children. Rid me of that man, and I will not only free you, but will take you into my service and pay you handsomely.”

Bill nodded. Easy enough. “What man, suh?”

The chevalier looked at him closely. “The Bishop of New Orleans.”

Bill spat into the water. “Damned money-lender!”

The chevalier regarded Bill with a detached and curious look. “Yours is not the gift of tongues, I understand.”

What kind of question was that? Bill shrugged. “I can Frog it up a little—I beg your pardon, suh, I mean to say that I speak some French. Comment ça va? for instance, and ça va, ça va, and the like. And I possess a similar level of mastery of a smattering of other New World dialects: Igbo and Castilian, among others.” He felt like this was an unflattering portrait of himself and that he needed to say something in his defense. “As much as your predecessor, the old Count Galvéz, I understand.”

The chevalier snorted an angry, derisive laugh, his disciplined façade splintering. “La Bête was in no sense my predecessor, Captain!”

“No?” The count had ruled New Orleans for several years on behalf of New Spain, and Bill had always felt kinship for the man who had governed the city without speaking a word of French. “I had heard he was the chevalier for a period, during the war. Though he spoke Dago, I expect, and not English.”

The chevalier collected himself. “The Chevalier of New Orleans has been a Le Moyne as long as there has been a chevalier. The Beast was a usurper, an interloper, an affront.”

“Yes, My Lord Chevalier,” Bill agreed quickly. “But my true spiritual inheritance, suh, is the gift of mayhem.”

The chevalier nodded solemnly. “I could use you in my service, Captain Lee. The gift of mayhem, indeed. Will you undertake this commission for me? Will you rid me of this criminal?”

Bill looked to the Incroyable, Bayard Prideux’s outsized funeral pyre, burning down now almost to the waterline. His head was spinning, and he tried to think through his situation. He could serve a real lord again, again be Sir William. He could bring justice to the unknown ‘other’ man, and maybe even to the emperor.

Was this a trap?

But why would the chevalier need to do anything to trap Bill, when he could simply shoot him on the spot, or could even have left him to burn on the Incroyable? He considered the fact that the chevalier was blackmailing the emperor and found he didn’t care. Bill had half a mind to kill the bishop anyway, for the beatings he’d received at the hands of Etienne and his thugs.

He nodded. “My Lord, as you’ve likely noticed, I’m unarmed.”

The chevalier stooped to pick up the bundle from the deck and uncovered it. Within the cloth wrapping, the bundle contained Bill’s coat, a shirt, neckcloth and cravat, belt, stockings, boots, even his black perruque, all of which gave him an unexpectedly large amount of comfort, as well as a long, sturdy saber—not his own, but it certainly looked deadly enough for the job—and one more thing.

One more thing that the chevalier took from the top of the long bundle and handed to Bill.

Bill fist-blocked it into decent shape and pulled it over his short white hair.

His lucky hat.

“Very good, suh,” he said, pushing his hand firmly into the saber’s basket guard. “Consider the bishop dead.”


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Framed