“No, Your Graces. A miracle.”
CHAPTER TWO
Maltres Korinn, Duke of Na’avu and Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne, stood in the busy market square and stared upward. He looked not at the sky, but at the Great Mound that bore at its summit Cahokia’s mighty Temple of the Sun. As always, the Temple Mound was thick with ravens.
Take this burden from me, my goddess. Choose one of them this year. Choose any of them as your Beloved. Choose Sharelas, and we shall have a warrior-queen to lead us into battle against the choking hand of Thomas Penn. Choose Voldrich, and we will have a cunning merchant-king who may lead us back to prosperity despite the Pacification. Choose Torias, and we may have a priestess-queen whose knowledge of your lore will bring us your favor.
But take the burden from me, and let me go home.
He sighed.
Not that Na’avu was free of challenges either, but they were challenges on a smaller scale. It was true, his neighbors to the north had taken to hanging and stabbing more sacrifices to their dark All-Father. One of these days, one of Korinn’s servants would be in the wrong place at the wrong time and would be taken and slaughtered.
The thought of having to deal with that tragedy seemed light, compared to the grip of the Empire.
“Regent-Minister.” A voice broke into his thoughts. It belonged to one of the city’s gray-caped wardens, an officer, judging by the stripes on the man’s sleeves. He stood a respectful distance away, two more wardens standing behind him. With the interruption of his thoughts, Maltres Korinn heard again the clinking of iron coins, the dickering of the few traders willing to put up with Imperial interference and stamp duties, and the low drone of a ballad being picked out in Oranbegan mode on a three-stringed fretless Cahokian lute. And he smelled people, sour and tired and hungry, even over the mild miasma of boiling beans and squash.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Two emissaries have arrived and wish to speak to you. We’ve put them in the council chamber. In the Hall of Onandagos.”
Korinn frowned. He wanted to avoid giving his people the impression that he relished ceremony as much as he wanted to avoid coming to love power. The throne wasn’t his, he was only Regent-Minister. And he wanted, above all, to go home. “You could have brought them here.”
“Yes, Regent-Minister.” The officer nodded. “Only…these are unusual emissaries.”
What kind of emissary would the wardens find unusual? “From one of the Brother Nations? From New Muscovy? From the Misaabe?”
The officer lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “They’re beastkind, Regent-Minister. They say they’ve come with a message from the Heron King.”
Marching ahead of the wardens to the Hall, Korinn thought furiously. The Heron King was a real person, or a real being, or at least he had been once. His kingdom was in the Great Green Wood, and the beastkind that stopped in Cahokia, like those in the Missouri and elsewhere, usually claimed they owed allegiance to him.
But other than that claim of allegiance, the Heron King had been quiet all Korinn’s life. He’d become a character in fables and riddles, and the subject of ominous speculation. Was he silent because he had died? Was he silent because he was angry?
Maltres Korinn had invested many hours in learning the political landscape of the Empire, in seeking alliances, and in developing trade networks that might circumvent the grip of the Pacification. Suddenly, he wished he had spent a few of those hours learning his people’s fairy tales.
Entering the Hall, he collected the horse-headed staff. It was his only regular concession to ceremony—he dressed at all times in simple black.
Two beastkind waited in the council room. They stood, respectfully not seating themselves at the table. Club-wielding wardens also stood in each of the room’s entrances, trying very hard not to look at the beastkind.
Both emissaries were tall men in monklike gray robes. One looked like any son of Adam, other than the fact that one hand emerging from his robe resembled the claw of a crab, and from the other sleeve, only occasionally, darted something that might have been the head of a snake. The second emissary looked like a seven-foot-tall badger, standing on its hind legs.
“Thou art the Regent-Minister,” Badger growled.
“I am,” Korinn agreed. “I have been told ye bear a message. May I hear it?”
“Peter Plowshare is dead,” Crab Hand said.
“The Kingdom of Cahokia extends its condolences.” Peter Plowshare was another name for the Heron King. Who would succeed him? “Will there be a state funeral?”
“Simon Sword demands your surrender,” Badger continued. “He offers you generous terms.”
“Is this a declaration of war?” Korinn wished he’d gathered the seven candidates. Especially General Sharelas and the artillerist Zorales.
And who was Simon Sword, if not another name for Peter Plowshare and the Heron King? Wasn’t that the Heron King’s title when he rode to war?
“If ye surrender without struggle,” Badger snarled, “Simon Sword will take one life in ten as tribute. And a further tribute annually.”
“Slaves?” Korinn frowned.
“Sacrifices,” Crab Hand said. “And if ye surrender not, he will kill you all.”
* * *
Etienne Ukwu rode to the crest of the dune and saw the summer palace of the Bishop of Miami.
As palaces went, it was modest. It was built of the adobe clay bricks favored by Ferdinandia’s Hidalgos, two stories tall, and surrounded by an adobe wall. Both the palace and the wall had been plastered with a white stucco in which something glittering was embedded—shards of china, perhaps?—that caused the whole thing to shine in the afternoon July sun.
Men with steel bonnets and long lances walked the top of the wall.
Etienne inhaled deeply, the salt air of the sea mingling with the piquancy of the raw peppers he’d eaten for breakfast. Eating the chilies stoked the fires within him and gave him power.
“Je n’aime pas ça, patron,” Armand said. He was one of Etienne’s largest fighters, a barrel-chested Bantu who had spent years in the chevalier’s service, fighting smugglers. After the third time he’d been passed over for promotion in favor of some Frenchman, Armand had taken offense and killed several of his fellow customs agents. Etienne had given him refuge to save his life, and Armand had found that the same skills that had once helped him stop crime now enabled him to prosper at it.
Once, deep in his cups, he said to Etienne: “if the chevalier won’t pay me willingly, then I’ll make him pay.”
Armand wore three loaded pistols on his person and two long daggers.
Etienne turned to look back at the ship that had brought them. La Verge Caníbal was a notorious pirate cruiser, famed for its ability to slip through any blockade like water through a net. Its pirate-queen captain, the Catalan Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana, had brought Etienne discreetly to this beach, and now lay at anchor awaiting his return. She had even received Armand, a former antagonist, as a passenger with a gracious smile and a nod of recognition. Indeed, the rangy pirate queen with long copper-colored hair and hands as big as any man’s had rarely stopped smiling, as if she knew a great secret at which the world could only guess. The pale, tangle-haired girl who never left her side—the captain’s lover, perhaps? The rumors of her sapphism were persistent—had only stared at both Etienne and Armand without expression.
Etienne waved to the ship; it was too far away for him to see whether anyone waved back.
He reached into the pocket of his trousers and removed his mother’s locket. Caressing it with his thumb, he listened and heard her voice: don’t fear, my son. These men can’t harm you.
He popped open the face of the locket, which swung on tiny hinges to reveal a painted miniature of his father’s face. Not the face of the later bishop, but the face of the young married Chinwe Ukwu, who was then a shopkeeper who read theology by candlelight at night, and not yet even a deacon. Etienne’s mother had given Etienne this locket on her deathbed, and made him swear oaths to her, and promised that she would return as his gede loa.
His guardian spirit. His own personal holy ghost. His mother.
She had kept her promise.
“Don’t worry, Armand,” Etienne said, putting the locket away. “These men are priests. They would cut each others’ throats for a sou, but you and I are only in danger of being preached to, or offered wine from the bishop’s famous collection.”
Armand chuckled and the two men walked toward the palace gate.
Etienne had dressed carefully for the occasion. He didn’t wish to hide anything, so he had retained the red sash that marked him as a houngan—one of his promises to his mother had been that he would pursue her spiritual tradition, whether or not he also followed his father. Otherwise, though, he wore simple white cotton, a loose tunic and trousers. He had no illusions that he could convince the bishops he was an angel by merely dressing in white, but he wished to appear vaguely baptismal, like a catechumen or a supplicant.
He was unarmed.
The gate swung open at their approach, and two lance-bearing soldiers ushered them both in. Within the walls, the palace was surrounded by palmettos, and a well stood beside the stone-paved path leading to the front door.
“Su hombre puede esperar aquí,” one of the soldiers said, pointing at a stone bench beside the well, shaded by palmettos. The soldiers wore the jade green of the Bishop of Miami in a tunic over their steel breastplates.
“Patron.” Armand shifted from foot to foot and cracked the knuckles of one hand. He had worn the black waistcoat and trousers in which Etienne dressed all his men, and sweat ran in streams down his face and neck.
“Have a cool drink of water, Armand. Rest. I’m safe.”
Armand sat. He looked like a cat perched above roiling floodwaters, but he kept his hands away from his weapons.
“Take me to His Grace, please.” Etienne smiled at the soldiers, and then followed them into the palace.
The Bishops of Miami and Atlanta both pointedly remained sitting when Etienne entered. Each man rested on a reclining couch that would have made a Roman senator proud; between the couches stood a marble pedestal; a fountain burbled merrily in the center of the room; a wooden mashrabiya lattice shielded the exit into the garden from the sun, while allowing the gulf’s breezes to enter.
Etienne bowed deeply. The two bishops looked at each other, and then Miami extended his ring-heavy hand.
Etienne kissed it, and then did the same with the offered episcopal ring of Atlanta.
He moved slowly, kept his motions humbly constrained and submissive.
“Your Graces,” he said. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“You believe,” Atlanta grunted, “the bishopric of New Orleans is for sale.”
The Bishop of Atlanta was a heavy man whose swarthy complexion hinted at his partly Memphite ancestry. His hair was cropped short and his bulk was draped in yellow silk; he stared at Etienne through slitted eyes.
“My father is the Bishop of New Orleans,” Etienne said. There was a third couch in the room, but he remained humbly standing, and laced his fingers behind his back. “I have no wish to shorten his term of office. He’s a good man, and he does good things for the city.”
“While you are a bad man,” Atlanta snorted. “You corrupt your city in the old de Bienville tradition, and you would bribe us with the hoard you thereby accumulate.”
Etienne shrugged. “I don’t wish anything from you.”
“Not now, perhaps,” Miami agreed. He was bone-thin, with a hooked nose, thick lips, and a mottled complexion. Thick eyebrows clung imperiously to the top of his forehead. “But when your father dies.”
“All men die,” Etienne agreed. “And when my father passes, the Synod will appoint a new bishop in his place. And who will that be? 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 you simply appoint the beloved son of the beloved departed bishop?”
It was a rehearsed speech.
“Ha!” Miami clapped his hands once. Behind his back, Etienne heard the padding feet of servants on the stone floor.
“What makes you think I can be bought?” Atlanta asked.
Because you took the money. Because you invited me here to discuss it. “I’m not trying to buy you, Your Grace. If I were to give the income of my gaming establishment, or my other businesses, directly to the poor, or to the Bishopric of New Orleans for distribution to the poor, would that be wicked?”
Atlanta chuckled. “You would merely give the money to me so that I can distribute it to the poor.”
“Your wisdom and good judgment are famed throughout the Empire.” Etienne smiled. “Didn’t the Lord tell us ‘ye have the poor with you always’? Did he make some exception for the people of Atlanta?”
The Bishop’s chuckle broke into a loud guffaw.
“Vino!” the Bishop of Miami called to the servants at Etienne’s shoulders. “Algo blanco!”
The feet padded away.
“On the whole, the Synod is quite happy with its choice in Bishop Ukwu,” Atlanta said, shifting his bulk about in anticipation of the arrival of the wine. “It has been refreshing to have a genuinely righteous man serving the poor of New Orleans.”
“Was that your desire? Righteousness?” Etienne asked. “I rather thought the goal was to take power away from the chevalier’s family. The Le Moyne branch retained civil leadership, but removing the de Bienvilles from the cathedral was one way to curb the family’s ambitions. And indeed, such an obvious one, I have to wonder whether the Synod alone desired the curbing, or if perhaps other powers in the Empire were also interested.”
Atlanta cocked his head to one side like a parrot and stared. Miami licked his lips.
“And if such is the case, then I think in choosing a successor to my father, you should desire not righteousness, but effectiveness.”
“Meaning,” Miami said, “that you know how to get things done.”
Etienne shrugged humbly. “I hope my contributions to the poor of Atlanta and Ferdinandia would help convince you of that fact.”
Miami crooked a finger at Etienne’s sash. “The de Bienville Bishops have long been usurers, corrupt simoniacs, and worse. But they have been Christians.”
“Does my traffic with the loa discomfort you?” Etienne smiled. “I understand. You are not of New Orleans, you’ve heard terrible things. You fear witchcraft, Satanism, black magic.”
Miami grunted his agreement; Atlanta shrugged.
“But didn’t God place his host in heaven? And didn’t that same host sing at the announcement of his birth? And isn’t he the Lord of the host?” Etienne touched two fingers gently to his sash. “If I, then, pay special respect to Saint Peter or the Virgin among the host, how am I not Christian?”
“You slippery bastard.” Etienne thought he heard admiration in Atlanta’s voice. “You might indeed make an excellent cleric.”
Etienne nodded his thanks. “Someday, perhaps. When the time has come. And if the other members of the Synod could be persuaded.”
“If,” Miami agreed.
Etienne heard padding feet behind him again. “I’m pleased, Your Graces, that you choose to take a little refreshment. It offers me the chance to demonstrate my…spiritual…efficacy to you.”
“What do you mean?” Atlanta grunted.
The servant was a Hidalgo boy, maybe thirteen years old. He carefully carried a wooden tray on which he balanced a green bottle sealed with wax, a small knife, and three wineglasses.
“May I serve you, Your Graces?” Etienne rolled his tunic’s sleeves up above his elbow as he asked, and without waiting for an answer, he took the tray, shooed the serving boy away, and set the bottle and glasses onto the pedestal.
“‘I am among you as he that serveth,’” Miami quoted. “Luke. God knows, you can cite enough scripture to be bishop, but that’s never been a requirement of the office. Men have become bishop who weren’t previously priests. Knowing your gospels isn’t a sign of spiritual efficacy.”
“Agreed.” Etienne nodded, scraping the wax off the bottle with the small blade. “And this isn’t what I mean.”
“Well, then?” Atlanta’s eyes were so narrowly slitted they almost disappeared. “What are you up to?”
Etienne removed the bottle’s cork. “Our Lord’s first miracle, according to the Gospel of John, was at the wedding in Cana.”
“Water into wine,” Miami said.
“Very good.” Etienne smiled and filled the three glasses. “I see that you also know enough scripture to be bishop.”
“And?” Atlanta asked.
Etienne passed each man a glass, and then took one himself. “And today I perform the miracle in reverse.” He sipped from his glass and tasted cool spring water.
The other men also drank.
And stared.
“Magic?” Miami asked. “A Vodun trick?”
Atlanta shook his heavy head. “Haven’t the Polites warded this building for you? This is more subtle.”
“If you were to descend into your excellent wine cellar, Your Grace,” Etienne said, nodding to the Bishop of Miami, “you would find that all of the bottles of your justly famous collection have become mere water.”
“The cunning little whelp is showing you he can get to you,” Atlanta said to the other bishop. “Don’t you see? If he can bribe or threaten someone into replacing all your wine with bottles of water, what’s to stop him from corrupting one of your own servants into cutting your throat while you sleep?”
“A threat!” Miami gasped.
“No, Your Graces.” Etienne smiled. “A miracle.”
Setting down his own glass, he bowed a final time and left. As he reached the front door his breath was already coming quicker, and he heard the Brides calling.
* * *
Thomas Penn gulped cold wine and stared into the shadowed end of the hall. There, on a low stone dais, sat the Shackamaxon Throne. He’d had it carved from the wood of the elm tree under which William Penn had agreed to his first treaty with the Lenni Lenape. The wood was stained such a dark red it almost looked purple in the dim light, and the throne’s upholstery was blue, bearing the Imperial ship, horses, and eagle stitched in gold thread.
As a seat, it was suitably modest, yet undeniably elegant.
As a symbol of Imperial rule, it would be powerful.
As it was, the Shackamaxon Throne sat unused in this empty hall, forbidden to Thomas Penn by a gaggle of squabbling upstarts who, together with the Lightning Bishop, had enslaved John Penn. Unused, except on such occasions as this.
“I’ve done it, grandfather!” Thomas called.
He knelt on the cold stone floor. By day, light would have filled the hall from its high windows, but instead the room was lit by a single torch Thomas had placed in one of the brackets beside the doors. He set his goblet on the floor beside himself, touched his forehead to the stone in the direction of the Shackamaxon Throne, and called again.
“I’ve done your bidding!” He ached
The man he summoned was already present, at least in spirit and in image. On one high wall hung two paintings of William Penn: one portrayed him kneeling in a tray of earth, abovedecks on a sailing ship, praying for the vessel’s safe arrival at the land in whose soil he knelt; the second show Penn marching alone through the forest, a fanciful representation of the Walking Purchase..
He rubbed his cold fingers together, caressing his rings. On his right hand he wore the ring of Jupiter, tin with a white chalcedony set into it, and inscribed into the stone a man riding an eagle and wielding a javelin. On his left was the ring of Mars, iron, engraved with the image of an armored warrior holding a naked sword in one hand and a severed head in the other. Together, the rings brought him the service of men, eagles, lions, and vultures, and assistance in all the works of those two great planets.
“I’ve done as you asked!”
And then the Presence filled the throne.
Thomas was allowed no closer than this, not yet. He could see that the Presence took the form of a man. He hoped that one day he would sit on the throne and the Presence would fill and strengthen him. The Presence was the shade of William Penn, his ancestor, the true founder of the empire that by rights should bear his name.
The shade wore plate armor, and Thomas couldn’t see its face. Then it spoke, and a voice like bells being hammered against an anvil filled the Shackamaxon Hall.
“I was with thee in the Slate Roof House, my servant Thomas. Unseen, I consecrated the death of thy sister to the good of the Empire, as I consecrated her confinement. I heard thy command to our servant Ezekiel Angleton.”
Thomas liked the sound of the words our servant. They made him feel he was a joint actor with William Penn in creating this bold new world. He forced his forehead to the stone again.
“I receive and bless thy work, my servant Thomas.”
“Thank you, grandfather.” Not his father’s father, John Penn, but his ancestor several generations before that.
Then the Presence was gone.
Thomas rose to his feet, bringing the wine with him. The wine was essential. In truth, Thomas had lost his sister years earlier, when she had married the Ohioan princeling Elytharias. And any part of her or her relationship with Thomas that had survived that corruption had surely shattered after Thomas had arranged Elytharias’s death—under the guidance of his grandfather’s Presence, of course—and Hannah had subsequently gone mad.
Still, however much her spirit and sanity or their joint familial feeling might have been long gone, it had been a blow to see her body finally pass. Especially twisted, as it had been, by the rack.
Had he chosen the rack, or had the Presence dictated it? Thomas no longer remembered. He had done what he’d had to do, for the good of the Empire.
He took another bracing gulp of wine.
The announcement of her passing, if not the details, had been communicated to the news-papermen of Philadelphia the day before she actually succumbed. By that act, Thomas had committed himself and given himself strength to do the necessary thing.
Thomas walked back into the lit portions of Horse Hall. Men in his livery smiled and saluted as he passed. Thomas finished the wine and made a point of saluting back, with volume and cheer. He gripped the hilt of his saber and rattled it in its sheath. His servants responded with bigger grins.
Thomas dallied a moment in the main entrance of Horse Hall, admiring his own portrait. The painting was twelve feet tall, nearly twice his height, and it bore all the marks of Jupiter. Painted, Thomas stood upon the Seal of Jupiter, a circle quartered by a cross with small knobs at each of the cross’s four tips, and the faintest suggestion of stylized zodiacal swirls surrounding the circle; his belt buckle was woven of two interlocking glyphs, the S-like sign of Jupiter’s intelligence and the more angular symbol of the planet’s spirit; the buckles of his painted shoes were zetas, for Zeus. The portrait’s face was Jovian, radiating regnant cheer and benevolence, and his body was Jupiter’s as well, corpulence reflecting physical health and prosperity, flushed pink skin a sure sign of virility. They were the face and body of Jupiter, who ruled over serpents. Thomas had stood for the painting, and the artist had executed his work, only at hours when Jupiter was strong, to capture all the planet’s beneficent influence. This was Thomas as emperor, as ruler.
This was Thomas who bowed to no man.
“Your Imperial Majesty. Lord Thomas.”
Your Imperial Majesty was a form of address prescribed by the Philadelphia Compact, though the Electors had exempted themselves from using it, and instead only had to call Thomas Mr. Emperor. What kind of god-damned form of address was Mr. Emperor, anyway? It was a travesty! Thomas’s servants additionally used the form Lord Thomas, which reminded him of his days as a military man. It also reminded him that his servants were sycophants, but he was willing to accept a certain amount of flattery for the good he did his people.
“Gottlieb,” Thomas said.
Gottlieb was Thomas’s body servant, his valet. He helped Thomas dress for state occasions and he ran small errands for his master at all times. Gottlieb rose from his bow with a dull glow to his pasty block-shaped face and a foxlike glint in his jaundiced eyes. That expression meant Gottlieb knew something secret. At this late hour, he might have foregone the powdered perruque without occasioning any remark, but he hadn’t—Gottlieb’s dress was impeccable.
“Your Imperial Majesty has visitors in the library. Two separate parties.”
The library was Thomas’s private reception room. Thomas changed course to head upstairs toward the library and Gottlieb clung to his flank.
“Tell me more, Gottlieb.”
“Signor Mocenigo has been waiting longer.”
The Italian was an astrologer, exiled from his native Venice and more recently a refugee from the Caliphate. He had composed several charts for Thomas and clearly wished to compose more, though Thomas had never asked him for any. For what preferment did the Venetian hope? Land? A salary? “I will deal with Zuan Mocenigo tonight. And the other?”
“Schmidt has just arrived.”
Thomas frowned. “Schmidt who operates the coal mines south of Pittsburgh? Has he had to close the mines again?”
“Schmidt the Ohio Company Director.”
“Ah, yes.” The Imperial Ohio Company had five Directors, and Notwithstanding Schmidt was one of them. Thomas had promoted her from within the Company’s ranks two years earlier, and Schmidt had shown an admirable willingness to take his orders literally and fulfill them with imagination.
They reached the library doors. Thomas nodded to dismiss Gottlieb and let himself in.
The library was high-ceilinged, its walls lined with books. Divans and writing desks were arranged around the perimeter of the room with deliberate asymmetry. Against one wall was a cabinet containing liquor and planks of imported tea, and in the center of the room stood a single large table. At that table had been sitting the Venetian Mocenigo, who now stood. He was short and slight, and he held his shoulders thrust back and his eyes wide open, which gave him the appearance of perpetual surprise. He wore a blue and gold robe, the sort of theatrical apparel one might wear on a market day to announce one’s status as a wizard or a palm-reader. With his balding head, he looked like a parody of a monk.
In the corner stood Notwithstanding Schmidt. Her strong cheekbones and the mole on her right cheek might have been beautiful on another woman, but Schmidt had the solid physique of a baker, or a farmwife, or a blacksmith. She stood with her feet planted apart and her fists balled in front of her, as if ready to fight, and her short hair might have been worn with equal elegance by a man.
Thomas found that he felt irritated.
“Please sit, Madam Director,” he called to Schmidt. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
She sat.
Zuan Mocenigo bowed. “Mr. Emperor.”
“That is a title permitted to Electors under the Compact.” Thomas sighed. “Thou mayest address me as Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Forgive me. Your Imperial Majesty.”
Thomas nodded. “Signor Mocenigo. I was not expecting thee.”
Mocenigo bowed again and sat. Before him on the large table lay spread a nativity, thoroughly filled in. “I have heard that my services may be of use to you. To thee.”
Thomas felt empty. “Speak thou clearly, Chaldean.”
Mocenigo looked suspiciously at Schmidt in the corner and then back at Thomas. “Thou hast recently learned of the birth of children to…thy sister Hannah.” The astrologer whispered slowly, as if the Jacobean pronouns of Court Speech were a challenge.
Thomas kept his voice low as well, and dropped into Penn’s English to speed up the interview. “I had imagined you were here to tell me of an auspicious day to move against the Cahokians.”
Mocenigo shook his head. “I have taken what data the Empress…that is, Mad Hannah was able to give you, and I am attempting to construct a nativity.”
“Of the three children.” Thomas gripped the hilt of his saber. “And who passed this data on to you, stargazer?” It wouldn’t have been Ezekiel Angleton; the Covenant Tract man hated astrology and everything that resembled it. Curious, given what a star-enthusiast old John Winthrop had been. And the famous Covenant with the House of Spencer had been the repudiation of Oliver Cromwell and his works, not any of the other arcane arts. Angleton himself was something of an accomplished gramarist.
“Your valet de chambre.” Mocenigo’s voice was a thin whine, and he bent his face low over the table, until his forehead almost touched the wood.
Gottlieb. Wishing to ingratiate himself further to Thomas, no doubt. But was there more? Thomas resolved to investigate whether his valet had taken money in exchange for arranging this audience. “So my valet told you what little he knew, having heard it from me. And you have transposed these fixed pieces of information into a natal chart for these three children.”
“And extrapolated everything therefrom that I could, yes. I believe you will find that we possess quite a lot of information.”
“To what end?” Thomas drew his saber slowly, then reached forward with its tip to ruffle the corner of the star chart.
Mocenigo’s eyes opened even wider and he swayed back from the blade. “I understood you were sophisticated in star lore.”
“And I thought you were. Explain yourself.”
“If we know the sky at the moment these children were born, Your Imperial Majesty, we will know their strengths. We will know their weaknesses. We will know when we should strike against them, and when to keep our distance.”
“Our. We. You mean me, of course. You mean that I will know when I should act, and what I should do.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You mean that I should let my choices be dictated to me by the stars.”
Mocenigo hesitated. “A wise man does, Mister Emperor.”
Thomas nodded slowly. He raised the saber’s blade and rested it on his own shoulder, composing his thoughts.
“Signor Mocenigo, I have two great concerns with what you are telling me.”
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty?”
Thomas looked at Director Schmidt in the corner. She sat still as a statue, gazing upon a wall of books.
“First, I’m troubled by your incompetence.”
“What? No!” Mocenigo leaped to his feet, but Thomas swung his sword around and pointed it at the astrologer’s sternum, fixing the man in place. “I protest, Mr.…Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Tell me, Signor Mocenigo, how many constellations lie along the path of the zodiac.”
“Twelve, of course.”
“Wrong. This is what comes, you see, of learning your stars from charts only, without ever looking up at the night sky.”
The Venetian stared.
“If you had bivouacked, as I have, in the deserts of Texia, and looked up at the heavens as they revolved—if, in other words, you had to play your own stakes in this game of life, rather than simply gambling the fates of other men—you would know that there are not twelve, but thirteen constellations lying along the path of the zodiac, the ecliptic.”
“But, Your Imperial—”
“The twelve you know. Aries, Sagittarius, Leo…to list them is child’s play. The thirteenth is Ophiuchus. Is there an Ophiuchus in your tables?”
“You know that there is not.” Mocenigo was trembling.
“I know that there is not. And yet there is an Ophiuchus upon the zodiac. And what I also know, what my sister knew and yet chose to ignore, is that all the children of Adam’s cursed first wife are born under the sign of Ophiuchus. Ophiuchus is the serpent bearer and he is the star-sign of all Ophidians. He bears them, if you will, in their escape from the flat plane of the ecliptic in which we children of Eve remain trapped.”
“Sir, Venice does not have—”
“I understand.” Thomas waved his free hand to silence the Italian. “You are from the Old World. You killed most of your Firstborn decades ago, or drove them out. You, Signor Mocenigo, have never considered what being Firstborn means to a nativity. Let me tell you now. Being Firstborn renders your natal chart meaningless.”
“Sir—”
“Nativities have great value for the children of Eve. Only.”
Mocenigo’s shoulders slumped. “I did not know.”
Thomas nodded. “I see you didn’t. The second thing troubling me is of greater concern. Signor Mocenigo, I—I, of all men—do not allow myself to be ruled by the stars. I may seek their guidance, I will endeavor to capture and exploit their power, but I will not be ruled. I will be the ruler.”
Mocenigo stared down at the chart and nodded.
“Even worse than the possibility that I might be governed by the stars, Signor Mocenigo, is the risk that I might instead be directed by the mere men who devised the star charts. You see that, don’t you? You see that if I let my decisions be determined by your casting, then some would ask, who is truly emperor in Philadelphia?”
“No…”
“And others would answer, why, Signor Mocenigo, who binds the Emperor’s mind with his triplicities!”
“But no!”
“Shhh. I am certain you intended no such thing, Signor Mocenigo.”
Mocenigo’s expression showed gratified relief, and he nodded vigorously.
“Though it occurs to me, Signore, that I’m troubled by a third thing.”
“Please tell me, Your Imperial Majesty, how I may relieve your worry.”
“I’m troubled that you know too much, astrologer.”
“But—”
Thomas stabbed the stargazer in the heart.
The sharpened and polished weapon slid between the man’s ribs and he died with his mouth open, his face frozen in a fishlike expression of astonishment. When Thomas pulled out his blade, blood spilled both from the wound and from the dead man’s open lips.
Mocenigo fell sideways to the floor.
“There,” Thomas said. “My worry is relieved.”
He dropped his blade onto the worthless nativity, spattering the astrologer’s own blood over the circles, dots, and quarterings that were to have told him how to find and destroy his sister’s secret children.
And indeed, he did feel better.
Thomas crossed the library, his steps light. Notwithstanding Schmidt stood to meet him, her eye keen but her face as sober as a priest’s on Sunday. “My Lord President,” she said.
That was the form of address for Thomas as President of the Imperial Ohio Company. It cheered Thomas to hear it.
“Madam Director,” he said. “Please sit. Do you know why my empire is called the Empire of the New World East of the Mississippi?”
She sat. “I understand that was agreed in the Philadelphia Compact.”
“Of course. But it’s a terrible name. Any other name would have been better. The truest, most natural name for the empire, of course, would have been Pennsylvania. But Columbia would also have been a good name, even if it did mean naming my empire after a dream-addled Jew. Even one of the Italian cartographers’ names—Verrazzania or Vespuccia—would have been acceptable, if somewhat uncouth. So why does my kingdom have such a mockery of a name, awkward in the mouth and resistant to poetry?”
Schmidt looked Thomas in the eyes and nodded. “Power.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“If your empire had a glorious name—like Pennsylvania—then you would have been Emperor of Pennsylvania. ‘The Empire of the New World East of the Mississippi’ sounds like a purely technical designation, like a bureaucratic label, like one of Napoleon’s Departments. The awkward name is a means to restrict your power.”
Thomas nodded, feeling a mixture of satisfaction and fatigue. “Did you receive my instructions?”
“I did, my lord.”
“Good.” Thomas flung himself into an overstuffed divan facing the one in which Schmidt sat. “I don’t have the Electors’ approval to raise additional troops to tighten the Pacification as I would like, and if I raise more without their consent, I violate the Compact. I’m not prepared to do that…yet. As a Director of the Imperial Ohio Company, you’ve come here to tell me what you need from me to carry out your orders—to redirect Company resources to the Pacification.”
Schmidt nodded again. “I’m going to need a hell of a lot of boots. And feet to put in them.”
* * *
“Harder,” Nathaniel Chapel murmured.
Clang! Clang!
The banging of the smith’s hammer on the bar of iron produced a dull, repetitive racket. It was almost enough to drown out the shrieking sound of the world in Nathaniel’s bad ear.
He rubbed at it, but the whine didn’t go away.
Nathaniel hid in the corner of the Earl of Johnsland’s stables, just out of the blacksmith’s sight. He didn’t need the man’s attention, didn’t want a lecture on the virtues of Wayland Smith, England’s god of the Furrow. Like many practitioners of his craft, Benson was an initiate of the Smith; his devotion showed not only in his lectures, but also in the anvil and horseshoe tattoos on his arms and in the miniature anvil that presided fixed to a beam above the working anvil.
Nathaniel just needed the noise.
~It burns! The fire burns!~
“Burns,” he whispered.
Nathaniel resisted the temptation to touch his strange ear at the bodiless voice, and felt a tugging at his elbow.
“Jenny,” he said.
Jenny Farewell was, like Nathaniel, an orphan and a ward of the Earl of Johnsland. She had one dress that she wore all the time, and at this moment she complemented it with a mischievous smile. The smile brought out the brightness of her green eyes.
“Old One Eye is here,” she said.
Old One Eye didn’t always humiliate George Isham. But sometimes he did, and that possibility made the godi’s arrival interesting to Nathaniel and Jenny both.
Nathaniel heard a shriek like rusted metal shearing apart. Whimpering slightly, he followed Jenny away from the smithy, the stables, and the outbuilding where Nathaniel and other less-important men of the earl’s company slept, and into the earl’s hall.
Jenny skipped as they went, and sang. It was a song Nathaniel knew, a ballad about the Cavalier settlement:
I watched that Roundhead captain march his muskets to our door
My father cried, “God save the King!” and they cut him to the floor
I dragged that Roundhead down the moor and I drowned him in the sea
And then I heard Old Skull and Bones had set his cap for me
So it’s down the Dart, into wooden walls, and over the salt and foam
How I miss my old West Country home
Her song, clear and golden, almost drove away the voices and the whine that Nathaniel always heard. Almost.
The great hall of the Earl of Johnsland looked like a cave. Its walls were thick with moss like green fur and its floor was littered with the filth of the children of Adam, much of it the earl’s own—in his lifetime, Nathaniel had never seen the hall cleaned.
~Abomination! The land is polluted!~
“Polluted,” he murmured.
It wasn’t a requirement that a godi, a sheep-sacrificing priest of Woden, be tall, but Old One Eye was. And like his god, he lacked one eye, or at least, he always wore an eyepatch. Though his dark hair began to go silver, his frame beneath his black wool cloak was heavily muscled, and he leaned on a rune-carved spear.
Two men in similar cloaks stood behind him. They were both godar, and a fourth godi, the man permanently attached to the earl’s lands—a scowling old man named Wickens—skulked to one side, nearly hidden under a green fringe of moss.
The earl’s throne was turned to face the rear of his hall. The earl himself crouched on the seat of the chair and hid behind its back, making soft birdlike cries. From the front of the hall, standing among the few bent and breaking servants who dared to stay for Old One Eye’s appearance, Nathaniel could just make out the earl’s gray hair and the little wooden box he never released from his grasp.
Two men stood beside the Earl of Johnsland, one to either side, both wearing the earl’s purple. Charles Lee was a military officer in his service; George Isham was the earl’s youngest legitimate son and, because he was the only legitimate son surviving, the earl’s heir.
“I didn’t summon you, godi.” George’s voice trembled slightly.
“I don’t need your leave to stand here,” Old One Eye said.
“This man is your earl!” Charles Lee barked.
“I see the amulet around your neck,” Old One Eye said slowly, his voice full of gravel. “Is that the hammer of Thunor, or the mallet of the carpenter of Galilee?”
“Cuius dominium,” Charles muttered.
“Eius deus,” Old One Eye said, more loudly. “Yes, I acknowledge Byrd’s Compromise. And if the earl, good servant of the Old Gods that he is, wishes to permit his tenants Christianity, that is his affair, as it is his dominion. For now.”
“Forever!” George Isham snapped.
“Nothing is forever but the tree of life,” Old One Eye responded. “Which brings me to the reason for my visit.”
“I will burn the Yule log this year, godi,” George said through gritted teeth. “Or if not I, my father.”
“Your father is mad,” Old One Eye said. “You are a child. If either of you attempts to burn a log this Yule, know this: I shall place Woden’s curse on you. Your few remaining people will leave. Your lands will be blighted. Death itself will stalk at your heels. You have a godi, and he shall burn the log, at my direction.”
“To all the hells with you.” George sneered at the priest, but his lip trembled.
Old One Eye only laughed. “I shall leave men behind to ensure that the worship of Woden is not undertaken by the unfit.”
At that, soldiers in black entered the hall. Black was the color of the College of Godar, but Nathaniel hadn’t realized they had their own soldiers. These men carried muskets, pistols, and knives, and they formed two columns leading to the door.
Charles Lee continued to glare fiercely at the priest, but George’s face fell. Old One Eye ignored them both as he and the two godar from the College passed through the two columns of soldiers—Nathaniel counted twelve of them—and left.
He turned to Jenny and saw a bitter smile on her lips. Nathaniel knew why he enjoyed seeing George bullied.
Why did it amuse Jenny Farewell?
* * *
Montse stepped from her flat boat onto the long dock. The wood of the dock groaned and she felt its supporting pylons shift under her weight, but the half-rotted construct held, probably kept together by the bayou’s mud as much as by anything else. She took the line from her craft and looped it quickly about the strongest-looking of the pylons, then laid her pole in the boat.
“Qui va allà?” a man’s voice called from the shadows.
“Jo sóc la Montse,” Montserrat replied. “Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana. She expects me.”
On this bayou, the mere ability to answer in Catalan likely would have saved a traveler’s life, or at least extended it long enough for the sentry to get a better look at the speaker’s face. As it happened, though, Montse was expected.
“Come, Margarida.” She held out her hand; the girl took it and climbed onto the dock with her.
“Getting your fortune told again, tia Montse?” Margarida asked. Like Montse herself, the girl wore a long coat, a man’s coat that would downplay her femininity. Where Montse wore a tricorn hat cocked at a jaunty angle over her long hair the color of a copper pot, Margarida’s head was bare. In the dark, the high tangle of her hair made the silhouette of her head look enormous. Margarida’s skin was so pale, it almost glowed in the darkness, as if she were the daughter of the moon itself, walking among the cypress trees.
Which perhaps she was.
“You are confused, neboda. My fortune is a thing already known to me. I’m a merchant at all times, a smuggler when the profit margins outweigh the danger, and a pirate on rare occasions for the sheer joy of the chase. This is a good fortune, and I would have traded any other fortune in the world for this one.”
“Hola, Montse,” the sentry said, stepping forward into a sliver of moonlight to reveal his face. He held a short carbine with both hands, and had a heavy cutlass hanging at his belt.
“Hola, Carles.” She recognized the man. “New rings?”
Carles shrugged, pulling his hands back into shadow to hide them.
Montse patted him on the arm. “Don’t be ashamed of success, Carles.” She and the girl continued up the dock as Carles slipped back into shadow and disappeared. “Just be careful who notices.”
“You have good fortune now,” Margarida insisted. “But if one of the Imperial Foresters caught us with unstamped goods? Or if that gangster son of the bishop decided he wished to be rid of the witnesses to his journey to Ferdinandia? Or the chevalier’s customs men ran across us by accident in the fog?”
“The customs men could only do that by accident.” Montse chuckled. “They’re far too stupid to do it on purpose.”
“Still. Perhaps you should have your fortune told.”
Montse hissed her disapproval. “No, neboda, my cake is baked. We are here, as always, to know your fortune.”
“I have the fortune to have you for my tia. That means I’m fed and clothed and I sail with you both up the river and down the coast. I’ve seen the Igbo Free Cities and the Draft Men of Memphis, and if I’m not allowed to participate in your daring smuggling operations, at least I’m allowed to listen to the stories.”
Montse laughed.
The dock climbed over the bent knees of cypress trees and onto the land. There it became a path raised two feet off the ground, keeping walkers out of the mud and reducing the chances of stepping on an unseen snake or alligator. Shifting patches of darkness below the walkway probably indicated just such hazards, if not worse things. Montse had seen only a few live basilisks in her time on the bayous, but they were reputed to live here. Fortunately, they were also reputed to sleep buried in mud except during the very hottest months of the year.
She led the young woman she called her neboda, her niece, past the first few wooden shacks. They were all dark. It must be later than she had realized.
“I find it strange how superstitious you are,” Margarida said. “You of all women, who have made your own luck in the world. And it’s stranger still that what you are superstitious about is not your life, but mine.”
“You’ll find, Margarida, that there are some charges you may bear that are more important than your own life.”
Montse found the door she sought, a door she’d known for many years. She could almost imagine that the indentation at her shoulder height had been pounded into the wood by her knuckles alone, over time, but that wasn’t really true. Still, she threw her fist against the worn spot now, thumping out the announcement of her arrival.
“Jo sóc la Montse!” she called again, though of all the people she might visit in the bayou, this one likely did not need to be told her name.
“Endavant!” an old woman’s voice cried from within.
Montse hesitated. Something in the tone of the voice; something in the way Carles hadn’t wanted her to see his hands.
She pointed to a shadowed corner between two nearby huts. “Allà,” she whispered. Just in case.
Margarida was quick enough to sense there might be a problem. She raised her eyebrows in question at her aunt, but did as she was bid.
“And stay calm, no matter what happens.”
The pirate stepped off the walkway. The ground was muddy, but firmer with the October chill in the air than it would have been in July. Please, Mother Maria, do not let me step on a sleeping basilisk.
The mud was why she wore her tall, thigh-high leather boots. She couldn’t run as fast, but her legs were the most protected part of her body. This was important for a woman who made her living jumping in and out of bayous at night.
She thought she was far enough away that Carles wouldn’t see her. She hoped her intuition about him was wrong, but she’d start with the most pessimistic assumption possible. She began creeping around the outside of the hut.
“Endavant!” the old woman’s voice called again. The voice belonged to Cega Sofía, the seeress Montse had come to see, as she did every month. She came to learn whether her lady and friend Hannah yet lived, and whether she had been restored, so that Montse could return to her her child.
But Cega Sofía was choking as she called. Whoever was forcing her to call Montse was relaxing a grip around her throat only enough to let her yell endavant.
Montse looked back to Margarida or, as her mother had named her, Margaret. The girl held still where she had been told and peered out from her hiding place with large eyes.
Montse finally got to a large enough crack in the shack’s wall that she could place an eye to it and peer through. Within she saw the fortuneteller in her brightly colored silks, seated. Two men in blue uniforms stood beside her, one at each shoulder. One held a pistol to Sofía’s head.
From a nail on the opposite wall hung an oil lantern, lit and full.
Montse looked closer at the uniforms; their blue was not the Imperial blue, but the blue with gold fleurs-de-lis of the Chevalier of New Orleans.
Customs men? Gendarmes?
They must be here for Montse.
Montse looked back toward Carles and saw no movement. She waved an arm in Margarida’s direction and was pleased the girl promptly slipped across the walkway and into the mud to join her.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Montse whispered to her neboda. “But you’re about to have an adventure. When I shoot, you run that way—” she pointed, “and you’ll find moored boats. Not our boat, but others. Take one, and wait for me only for a minute. If I don’t join you within a minute, flee. You know where to go.”
“Back to La Verge Caníbal.”
Montse nodded.
“Montserrat!” Cega Sofía howled. “On ets?”
Montse drew one pistol from her coat pocket and sighted along the barrel through the crack. She squeezed the trigger—
bang!—
Margarida ran—
somewhere in the darkness, Carles cursed—
and the lantern exploded as her bullet struck it, throwing flaming oil up and down the wooden wall on which it hung.
Montse replaced the empty pistol in her pocket and drew her second. Pressing her eye to the crack again, she saw the larger of the chevalier’s two men dragging Cega Sofía to her feet and pressing a pistol to the old woman’s temple. The smaller man turned to face Montse, and was staring at the wall…looking for her.
She cocked her pistol and shot the larger man, immediately afterward throwing herself to the side. She heard his cry of pain and the muffled crash as he fell, and then the sound of answering gunfire from within the seeress’s hut. She heard the snaps of the wall’s wood giving way to two bullets that would have hit her had she not dodged.
Then she ran into the trees after Margarida.
The fire would force the chevalier’s men out, and it might give Cega Sofía a chance to flee. Maybe someone else in the village would help her run.
The thought made her stride falter. Where was everyone else in the village? Sofía didn’t live alone. This wasn’t a prosperous place, but there was an inn and there were several family homes. Other than in Sofía’s shack, Montse hadn’t seen a light.
She redoubled her pace, and when she caught up with Margarida, she almost knocked the girl down.
Margaret Elytharias Penn, known to herself and to the world as Margarida, stood at the edge of the bayou and wept. The wooden walkway here also ended in a rickety dock extending out into the water, but there were no boats.
Instead, there were bodies.
In the darkness, Montse couldn’t see faces. She was grateful, because that meant the girl couldn’t see faces either, and the faces of the dead can haunt one’s dreams.
As Montserrat had reason to know.
“No time to weep!” Montse grabbed her ward by the elbow and dragged her away from Cega Sofía’s cabin and deeper into the woods. “Breathe deeply!”
The seeress’s shack burned like a hundred torches, throwing light out into the swamp. The chevalier’s men—four of them now, no, five, surrounded Sofía herself on the walkway. Montse dragged Margarida behind a large cypress, shushing her with a finger over the girl’s mouth, and crouched to watch.
Clearly visible now in the light of the fire, Carles swaggered up the walkway toward the chevalier’s men. His thumbs were hooked in his broad leather belt, and his unshaven face cracked into a lopsided grin.
Carles said something Montse couldn’t hear.
Sofía spit at him, and he laughed.
Then one of the chevalier’s men pointed a pistol at Carles’s head and fired. The Catalan sentry dropped, hit the walkway, and bounced off into the mud.
“Montserrat!” Cega Sofía wailed. “Mata-me!”
Margarida looked at Montse, startled. “What, she asks to be killed?”
“Yes,” Montse muttered. She pulled her powder horns and other tools from her pockets and began to reload both her pistols.
“Are you going to do it?”
The fortuneteller clawed at one of the chevalier’s men. He held her off with a hand to her forehead, laughing.
Montse sighed. “If I were alone, yes. With you…I don’t know yet, let me think.”
“Why does my presence make a difference?” Margarida’s face looked angry in the dim light.
Montse did not want Margarida to get angry.
“It does, neboda. Shh. And be calm.”
Bang!
Montse looked up, caught by surprise, just in time to see Cega Sofía fall to the ground, dead. She felt ill at the sight. Monthly at least, for the last fifteen years, the old witch had given Montse the best news she could get about her friend and lady Hannah. Sofía had been her strongest connection to the Imperial household, and now the seeress was gone.
Margarida’s hair was beginning to twitch, switching back and forth like the tail of an agitated horse.
“Shh,” Montse whispered. “Calm.”
“I’m trying.” The girl took a deep breath.
“Come.” Montse pocketed her pistols, took Margarida by the elbow, and stood—
facing into a thicket of heavy pistols.
Four men stood with their guns trained on her and on her ward. There was nowhere to run.
“Nous nous rendons,” she said. “We surrender. Don’t shoot.”