“Why? Have you cheated a Hansard recently?”
—
CHAPTER FIVE
“These are Tawa lands,” Alzbieta said.
Cal knew the name Tawa. He sang:
Koweta, Tawa, Adena in the south
Talamatan in the north looks like Germany
Oranbega with its towers on the St. Lawrence mouth
And Talega, full of Lenni Lennape
One Elector each per Eldritch throne
Seven is Cahokia, always alone
Evening approached, and the shadows grew long. Ahead of them marched Alzbieta Torias’s soldiers, with their blue cloaks, gray tunics, and the little steel head-gear Bill called sallet helmets, and at the rear came Sarah’s beastkind. The scout Chikaak paced nimbly alongside the Firstborn warriors in the brush, watching the entire column intently with his glittering black eyes.
“The Elector Songs,” Uris said. He was the senior member of Alzbieta’s party, an old soldier and now her advisor, he’d said. On the march, one of the soldiers carried the priestess’s banner and Uris walked with his hands free. He and Alzbieta’s other two free companions—Sherem the Polite wizard and the scale-mail-clad Yedera, who had introduced herself as “Unborn, an oathbound Podebradan”—insisted on walking, notwithstanding the long string of horses Calvin led. The wizard seemed dazed, occasionally wandering off the path and needing to be called back. “And why is Cahokia ‘alone’?”
“I always reckoned it was because the words rhymed,” Cal admitted. He’d sung the ditty as a way to show off his knowledge, and now instead risked exposing his utter ignorance. “Old Walter Fitzroy had to write a whole lotta songs, they can’t all be works of genius.”
“Mmmm,” the counselor said noncommittally. “But unless Fitzroy meant something by it, I expect him to use meaningful words and good grammar.”
“That ain’t a grammar point at all,” Cal said. “Grammar is knowin’ to say ‘how did my herd git stolen’ and not ‘how did it git stole.’ That’s jest you bein’ grumpy about a perfectly decent Elector Song.”
“I understood that Wisdom’s Bluff was Cahokian land,” Cathy said. “Was I misinformed?”
“You were not, ma’am,” Bill said. “Cahokian land, if designated on a map of the Ohio, would present a rather calico appearance. When I remarked upon it to Kyres, I sometimes teased him for being the leopard of Missouri, spotted here and there as his inheritance was.”
Alzbieta laughed. “That is true. Certain sites—sacred places—were retained by old Onandagos of Cahokia when he and his brother kings shared out the lands of the Ohio, according to the old songs.”
“The St. Lawrence is the passage that runs past Acadia to the Atlantic Ocean,” Jake said. “Is Oranbega land also spotted?”
Uris laughed.
“Not generally,” Alzbieta said. “But the Oranbegans were given the task of keeping the seaways open as the Serpentwars began in the Old World. They purchased land from the Champlains of Acadia, and there at the mouth of the St. Lawrence they to this day maintain watch towers.”
“Though jest about everybody’s come across as is gonna come across,” Cal said. “The way I heard it.”
“Perhaps,” Alzbieta admitted. “Still Oranbega watches.”
“You can’t always tell who’s Firstborn, just by looking at them,” Sarah said. “There may still be Children of Wisdom at the fringes of the Drowned Lands.”
Alzbieta Torias and Uris the counselor both shot sharp looks at Sarah. “You know my people’s history,” the priestess said.
“I know my people’s history,” Sarah said firmly. “Though not as much as I’d like.”
Alzbieta inclined her head respectfully. “At my home in the city I have an archive of old writings you might wish to consult. You must read Priestly Ophidian as well as Common, I take it?”
Sarah didn’t bat an eye. “I look forward to reading those writings.”
“Well, I don’t know what the fringes of the Drowned Lands are,” Cal said. “I mean, iffen anybody thinks it’d be interestin’ to tell me about ’em, I’m listenin’.”
“Thousands of years ago,” Uris said in a gravelly voice, “the Children of Wisdom in the Old World lived in seven kingdoms, four of which lay on a watered plain called Irra-Antum, entirely between what are now the island of Britain and Denmark.”
Calvin shook his head. “Iffen I ain’t walked a land myself, I ain’t much for its geography.”
“That’s a sea now,” Cathy Filmer said. “The North Sea, the English call it.”
Uris nodded. “It was a mighty river valley then, a land of cultivated fields, low hills, and broad lakes as blue as the sky. And then one day the rivers flooded their banks, the seas leaped over their restraining dikes, and those four kingdoms were smashed. Some of the remnant fled to the surviving kingdoms—many to Bohemia, where they prospered a long time—but others came west. They came to the new world before the English, the Dutch, the Germans, the French, the Spanish, and all the other peoples of Europe. They treated with the ancestors of the Haudenosaunee and the Algonks, and here, with Lenni Lenape and other peoples, they again formed the seven kingdoms. But messengers never ceased to travel between the children of Wisdom in the Old World and their cousins in the New, and when the Serpentwars broke out, as Her Holiness indicates, the Oranbegans—who have provided many of our people’s explorers, traders, mapmakers, and wanderers—were tasked with keeping open the gate of the St. Lawrence. So it has been since.”
“The Oranbegans must have received Wallenstein and his Germans, then, as well as the Bohemians fleeing the Old World,” Bill suggested.
Uris nodded.
Sarah shifted in her saddle as if she had an itch she couldn’t scratch. “I’ve never heard what caused the seas to rise.”
Alzbieta looked at her coolly. “No? Perhaps the answer is in those scrolls.”
Cathy Filmer shot Alzbieta an irritated look, but Sarah ignored it.
“All the more reason to look forward to reading them,” she said.
“Ahead lies Chester.” Yedera pointed.
Cal was mounted and taller than the Podebradan and still had trouble making out the buildings she was pointing out. “That don’t sound like a Firstborn name to me.”
“It’s English,” Uris said. “Though most of the residents are German-speakers, and call the town Lager.”
“I’ve always been more of a whisky man, myself,” Bill murmured. “But a lager in a pinch.”
“English?” Cal squinted past the line of Ophidian warriors marching ahead of them, making out the log stockade and the buildings inside, all perched atop a bluff. Below the town, to Calvin’s left, rolled the Mississippi River. It reminded him of Natchez. “It ain’t Hansa, is it?”
“I believe Chester does abide by the Trading League Charter.” Uris smiled, leaning on his spear. “Why? Have you cheated a Hansard recently?”
“I never cheated a body in my life,” Cal said. “I stole a cow or two, but only from folks as had too many to begin with. And I ain’t stupid enough to steal from the Hansa.”
“The Hansa towns are the safest towns on the river,” Alzbieta said.
“Iffen you’re Hansa,” Cal muttered.
“We’ll be fine, Calvin,” Bill said. “Though I don’t believe we’ll find an inn to billet Her Majesty’s entire guard. Nor Her Holiness’s, I should think.”
“No,” Uris agreed. “The warriors will all have to camp outside of town. The people of Chester won’t mind.”
“And the Tawans?” Cal asked.
“My men wear my colors,” Alzbieta said. “I hope yours aren’t taken for vagrants or wild animals.”
“Or worse,” Uris added, “an incursion from the Great Green Wood. There are rumors from the Missouri, isolated tales that the feral beastkind are rampaging.”
“Her Majesty has not yet proclaimed her livery.” Bill’s Cavalier drawl was unhurried, but to Calvin he sounded annoyed. “In the meantime, I suppose we shall have to rely on the natural ferocity and obvious martial prowess of her warriors to deter molestation.”
“Quite.” Uris chuckled.
Bill gave the order for the beastkind to make camp. This was repeated through Chikaak to the rest in a series of barks and yowls, to which Jake listened intently, his head cocked to one side. At one point in the process, he thumbed through a deck of Tarocks as he listened, occasionally staring at one of the cards.
Then Jake dismounted, handing his reins to Cal, and walked with the beastfolk warriors into the nearby trees. He emerged a few minutes later, just as the Cahokian warriors had found a site for their camp a quarter mile away.
“Look,” Cal said to the Dutchman as he handed back the little man’s reins, pointing at the two campsites. “Look at the difference.”
Like any ordinary military unit, the Cahokians had located their camp around a central clearing, where some of them now began to build a fire and erect tents. The beastkind, on the other hand, had chosen a grove, and now they singly burrowed beneath bushes, lay between close-growing trees, hid within snarled brambles, and otherwise bedded down for the night like animals.
Bill, overhearing, snorted. “We have much work to do yet to shape them, Sergeant Hop.”
Jake smiled at the mention of the rank. “Less than you think, Captain Lee.”
Then he leaned in to say something discreet to Sarah, which Calvin didn’t hear.
Chikaak followed them into Chester, where he drew curious looks, but no more than Alzbieta in her palanquin. When Sarah had chosen an inn—the Wallenstein, the biggest, sturdiest, oldest inn in the small Hansa community, and located very near to the stockade wall opposite the river—Chikaak loped back to join the beastfolk.
Cal tried not to look like he was staring, but he kept an eye on Alzbieta as they approached the front door of the Wallenstein. Would the sedan chair go inside?
But at the door, one of her slaves—who must have been designated in advance, because Calvin saw no communication pass among any of the Eldritch at the time—stood at the palanquin’s curtain and took Alzbieta in his arms when she climbed out. He held her like a child before him, marching across the common room of the Wallenstein, up the back stairs to the landing, and then through the door into Alzbieta’s room.
“You hopin’ to catch a glimpse of Her Holiness hoppin’ into bed?” Sarah needled Cal.
Cal chuckled. “Didn’t mean to stare, I’s jest…Jerusalem, it’s odd, that’s all.”
They stood isolated from their companions for a moment. Uris had announced he would seek a physician for Sherem, who continued to wander from his path from time to time, and stepped out.
Sarah turned so no one else could see her face, and suddenly she looked very tired, and even scared. “It is odd, Calvin. It’s odd and backward and very old, and I don’t understand it. And no, I don’t read any kind of Ophidian, so what in tarnation am I going to do about that? And…and worse.” She leaned heavily on her horse-headed ashwood walking stick, then reached up with her free hand to touch Calvin’s cheek. “I’m sad Thalanes isn’t here. So I’m glad you are.”
“You want me to carry you, jest say so. Might have to be pig-a-back, though—I ain’t got that feller’s arms.”
After Calvin had finished negotiating and paying for rooms (one for Sarah and Cathy, with two beds, and two spots beside the common room hearth that he figured he, Bill, and Jake would share), Sarah and Cathy went upstairs, and Cal found himself standing at the bar in the inn’s common room, waiting with Jacob Hop for a small beer.
Jake turned away from the bar to look at the common room while they waited. He smiled, and then he spoke to Cal sideways, out of the corner of his mouth, and almost entirely without moving his lips. “Two things are very important tonight, hey?”
“Sure,” Cal said. “Let’s talk about tonight. Shall I git Bill down here?”
“He is already standing outside the women’s door,” Jake said. “Dat is a good thing, let’s leave him there. First, do not get drunk.”
“I ain’t the most blazin’ New Lighter you’ll e’er meet,” Cal protested. “I ain’t a Kissin’ Campbell, nor a Swoonin’ Stone, but I got the New Light, after my own fashion. You don’t have to worry.”
The Dutchman blinked at him. “Sober, begrip you me? I mean, you understand?”
“Yeah,” Cal said. “Jest this small beer and that’s all. I don’t quite trust these Cahokians, despite ’em bein’ Sarah’s people and all.” Or maybe, partly, because they were Sarah’s people, in a way Calvin wasn’t, and couldn’t quite understand.
“Ja, don’t trust them. And here’s the second thing, it’s a distress signal.”
Cal sighed. “I thought you weren’t a Freemason.”
“I am not.” Jake frowned. “Can you whistle?”
“Of course I can whistle. How else you supposed to signal your cousin you’re in position and ready to make off with all them Donelsen cattle?” Cal grinned.
“Hey?” Jake grinned back. “This is the signal if you see anything…dangerous. A threat.” He whistled three tones, high, low, and medium.
Cal whistled it back. “That it?”
Jake nodded. “But outside, begripped? Understood? You don’t have to be especially loud, but you moet whistle it outside.” He whistled the three tones again, and again, and then a third time but finally slipped into some improvised melody to disguise what he’d been doing, just as the beers arrived.
Cal took his small beer, handed the other to Jake, and turned to see that Uris had joined them.
“I don’t know that melody,” the counselor said.
“I moet be doing it wrong,” Jake answered. “It’s a folk song I knew as a boy in New Amsterdam, only I haven’t heard it in many years.”
The Dutchman was a pretty smooth liar, and Cal was impressed.
“You’ve been long in Sarah Penn’s service?”
Cal flinched at the name Sarah Penn.
Jake sipped his beer. “No, I have joined Queen Sarah’s retinue only in recent days. With the beastkind, you know. They needed somebody to keep the animals in line, and I have been a drover and a merchant and many other things. But Calvin here has long been her man, hey?”
Calvin managed not to hug the Dutchman, and took another sip of his beer to hide the grin he felt spreading across his face.
“She’s a surprise to me, your Queen Sarah,” Uris said. “I think she’ll surprise many in Cahokia.”
“You ain’t yet seen the half of her surprises.”
* * *
Bill liked towns, and indeed cities, just fine. He especially liked inns—a good tavern meant a steady supply of whisky, and though he now drank strictly when drinking with Mrs. Filmer, to keep his consumption down, a steady supply was a good thing.
But having acquired a troop of warriors—however uncouth and barbaric—he was loath not to be surrounded by them. Was he truly worried about threats to his queen, or did he merely feel he’d been stripped of his command again?
Bill growled low in his throat, warning himself away from maudlin feelings.
The Cahokians were noble enough. And Queen Sarah and Her Holiness, Alzbieta Torias, seemed to have reached an accommodation, uneasy though it might be. The war leader, Uris, now sat below Bill at a table in the common room and drowsed over a half-finished stein of beer, hood of his cloak down over his face. The red-robed Polite, after scratching at his mistress’s door—whether hexing it or as the ongoing effect of the mental blow Sarah had dealt him, Bill couldn’t tell—had laid himself out on the corner of the common room floor like a plank and gone catatonic. Seven of the eight bearers had marched with the palanquin, predictably enough, to the stables, the eighth remaining with the priestess, perhaps to carry her to the outhouse, should the need arise. Calvin lay on a straw pallet beside the hearth. Jacob Hop was outside, and scheduled to sleep next; Bill would take his turn to take a few hours’ rest before dawn.
Sarah must have worked her own defensive magic on the room where she and Cathy slept. Why did Bill feel uneasy?
Perhaps he just missed Mrs. Filmer. Though he had not slept with her, as the carnal euphemism went, he had been sleeping quite near her for several nights, and had grown accustomed to it. Her breathing was regular and deep and she didn’t seem to come awake repeatedly in the night as Bill did. He attributed that to her easier conscience, or to the natural grace that made her float when she moved.
Perhaps Bill felt uneasy about the very fact that he loved Mrs. Filmer. He might be, after all, still married.
“Stop reflecting so much, you morose son of a bitch,” he grumbled to himself. “Serve your queen and be patient.”
Bill stood on the wide walkway in front of Sarah’s door. He’d told the innkeeper, a pear-shaped man named Waldrick Dixie who wore an orange tunic over leather leggings, that he would do so, and that it was to protect Sarah, who was his niece. Dixie had accepted this obvious fabrication with good grace, so either he was used to significant persons traveling incognito, or Calvin had correctly judged how much the man needed to be paid.
Bill carried four pistols, loaded and primed: two long horse pistols in the much-darned pockets of his old red coat, and two smaller guns in his belt. He let the coat hang mostly shut, to try not to broadcast to other patrons of the inn that he was heavily armed and ready to fight, though his position and stance should make it clear to any observer at all that he was standing watch.
He’d briefly considered taking a less-worn coat from the loot they’d acquired from the dragoons and the chevalier’s men, as the others all had, but only briefly; blue and gold were definitely not his colors now.
As soon as Sarah declared her livery, he’d have a new coat made.
Two drunks staggered in the front door, laughing. Roused from his sleep, the old man Uris shushed them fiercely, then slumped back. The drunk men giggled, shushed each other more quietly, and staggered toward the stairs.
Bill assessed the two men. They were underdressed for the autumn chill gripping the town outside, in shirtsleeves and trousers. One of them appeared to have misplaced his shoes and the other had a tattered slouch cap clinging to his head.
“You’ve got the key, Ed,” the shoeless man said to his comrade as they reached the top of the stairs and bumped into his other.
“I have not.” Ed belched. “Did you bet and lose the key, Jim?”
This was so hilarious that Jim collapsed into giggles against the wall. Ed helped him up and the two of them tottered toward Bill. Bill smelled cheap rum on them, and urine. He growled, stepped closer to Sarah’s door, and let his coat part to show the pistols in his belt.
“Oh look,” Jim said, “there’s a Dago here who wants to shoot me. A big Dago with a Dago mustache. Don’t shoot me, señor!”
Ed pulled off his cap and peered inside.
“I am no Dago, suh. Indeed, I—”
Ed threw a fistful of chalk into Bill’s face.
Bill was immediately blinded. He was afraid to shoot and accidentally hit Cathy or Sarah, so he reached forward and grabbed his attackers. He got one of them by the throat and the other by the shirt front.
“Cal!” he tried to yell, but as he opened his mouth he inhaled chalk dust, and his voice came out in a dry croak.
“Stab the bastard!” Jim hissed. He didn’t sound drunk anymore.
Bill felt a sharp pain in his side. One of the men had stuck him with a knife. He needed to wake up Calvin and get these two away from Sarah’s door, so he did the logical thing.
Gripping Jim and Ed more tightly, he dragged them with him over the railing and fell.
Bill hit a tabletop and two of the table’s legs collapsed, turning it into a ramp. He and his attackers bounced off the ramp and onto the floor, and the fall, the two impacts, and the flow of his own tears cleared one of Bill’s eyes, at least enough to see.
He staggered to his feet, yanking the two men with him. He felt another stabbing pain in his side—it was Jim stabbing him, because Ed was the one Bill could see, and Ed’s neck was kinked at such an improbable angle that he must be dead.
“Bill!” Calvin cried, unseen. “The door!”
Bill spun toward the tavern’s door, hurling Ed. Ed struck the first of a wave of dirty men armed with clubs. From the back of the crowd surging into the inn, Bill thought he smelled tar. For good measure, he picked up Jim and hurled him into the onrushing crowd. Men at the front of the assault tripped and fell.
Bill heard running footsteps behind him. He gripped his horse pistols and turned, only to see Uris charging him, spear lowered—
and then Calvin Calhoun’s rawhide lariat settled around the Firstborn’s neck. His feet flew forward, his head stayed in his place, his eyes bulged, and then the old man crashed hard to the floor.
“Drop the guns!” Waldrick Dixie yelled. Blinking back tears, Bill saw that the innkeeper held a scattergun aimed at him.
Outside the inn, he heard a queer little three-note tune whistled, over and over.
“Of course, suh,” Bill said.
Then he and the innkeeper fired at the same time.
Bill felts the nails and other metal scraps strike him in the thigh. That was bad, the thigh housed a large vein and a man could bleed to death quickly if wounded in just the wrong part of the thigh. But he had the satisfaction of seeing Waldrick Dixie take one bullet to the forehead and a second to the sternum. The innkeeper fell backward into a shelf full of bottles of cheap liquor.
Bill heard guttural chanting and spun about, grabbing for a pistol in his belt with his left hand and pulling the long horse pistol from his pocket with his right. It was fired, but he could still swing it like a club.
The Polite Sherem, looking not at all dazed, held a paper cartridge over his head. Just as Bill turned to see him, the wizard hurled the cartridge—
bang!
A second shot hit Bill, this time in his other thigh. He buckled and fell backward, catching himself on the bar with his elbows. Before he could shoot, though, Calvin Calhoun swung his tomahawk down at the wizard’s head.
Deliberately, no doubt, the Christian Appalachee had the head of his war axe turned. The blade would have split the sorcerer’s skull like a ripe pumpkin, but even the side of the weapon knocked him to the floor and left him still.
“Sarah!” Cal shouted, and staggered toward the stairs.
Four men slammed into Bill. He fired the pistol in his left hand, hitting one in the center of his kneecap. The man fell screaming. Bill swung his horse pistol horizontally and felt a second assailant’s windpipe crumple.
He saw the Cahokian Uris on the ground, choking and clawing at the leather lariat around his neck.
He heard the odd whistles again.
Two men threw Bill onto his back on the table. One held a long triangular blade to Bill’s neck.
“We just want the witch!” the other barked. He stank of rotting fish.
Bill answered by kicking the knife-wielder in his crotch as hard as he could. The three fell together as this table also collapsed. In falling, Bill got an upside-down glance at Calvin, racing up the stairs with his tomahawk in his hand. At Sarah’s door stood the woman warrior, still in her scale mail and with her scimitar held high, ready to slash downward at the young Appalachee.
Something hit Bill on the top of his head. Glass broke, he smelled rum, and the vision in his one working eye wobbled.
Then, to his surprise, he heard the barking of a dog.
* * *
Jacob Hop led Chikaak and twelve hand-selected beastkind warriors through the front of the Wallenstein like an ocean wave through a sandcastle. In light of the possibility that that the fighting might be at close quarters, the twelve Jake had chosen were not necessarily those who had trigger fingers or had eyes in the right place so they could shoot; they were the biggest, smelliest, most terrifying warriors in Queen Sarah’s company.
The hired Hansards didn’t expect a charge of bison, sloths, coyotes, and mustangs at their rear, and they broke immediately. Some rushed out the back of the inn, others crashed through windows. Some threw themselves behind the bar looking for shelter, and a few lay still and played dead.
A Hansard stood over Bill, holding a triangular short sword to the Cavalier’s eye. “I’ll kill him,” the Hansard warned.
Rohoakk, a fighter with bison shoulders and legs, though his face was that of a man, barreled the threatening swordsman aside with his shoulder and then trampled him to death before Jake could draw a pistol.
Bill was in bad shape. He bled from both legs, dark blood and lots of it, and he was covered in white powder. Jake checked his pulse—weak and thready, but still beating. He needed Cathy’s help, or Sarah’s, but Jake didn’t see either woman. Hopefully they were still behind the closed door in their room and safe, though Jake couldn’t be certain they hadn’t also been attacked through the windows.
On the walkway outside Sarah’s door, the Unborn and Calvin swung at each other. His axe bit a chunk out of the railing when he missed, and then her sword gouged the wall. Ferpa stood on the stairs behind Cal, ready to charge but unable to intervene until Cal was struck down, due to the narrowness of the passage.
“Sarah!” Jake shouted.
He knelt, tearing strips from his own shirt. He didn’t have the art to save Bill, but he could at least slow the bleeding. Jake quickly knotted a tourniquet around each of Bill’s legs, shoving a club dropped by a fleeing Hansard underneath each and then turning the clubs to tighten the bands. Too long, and Bill would lose his legs. But if Bill lost too much blood, he’d simply die.
“Sarah!” he called again. “Cathy!”
He heard a choking sound and saw the Cahokian Uris, gasping around a leather lariat tightened about his neck. “Take this!” Jake called to Chikaak, and the beastman took over the tourniquets, holding them steady.
Jake kicked a chair out of the way, flipped Uris over onto his back, and loosened the lariat. As he pulled the Cahokian to his feet, he thrust a pistol into the man’s nose. “You did this!”
“I serve my queen,” the taller man said.
“Ik ook.” Jake grabbed the Cahokian by the hair and spun him around to face the Podebradan, pressing his pistol now to the man’s temple. “Drop your sword, Ophidian!” he yelled.
In answer, Yedera lunged at Calvin again, pressing her attack with a ferocious series of sweeping blows that backed the Appalachee almost into the arms of the beastwife Ferpa.
“Sarah!” Jake yelled.
“Stop!”
A door opened on the walkway, but not Sarah’s. In Alzbieta Torias’s open doorway stood her bearer, stooping, with the priestess in his arms.
“Stop, Yedera!” the priestess cried again. “Lay down your sword.” She looked at Jake, meeting his gaze across the common room that now stank of blood. “We’ve failed.”
* * *
Sarah dreamed of faces and hands, and far away and beyond her reach, a lost father.
Her arm burned, and she came to wakefulness, finding Cathy pressing a small silver blade—a letter opener, the gift of Chigozie Ukwu, the good son of the Bishop of New Orleans—to her forearm.
Cathy’s hair was disheveled from sleep, but her eyes were alert and calm. “Your Majesty, you and I have been ensorcelled. I suspect that bitch Torias.”
“Sarah,” Calvin said. He stood in the doorway, bloodied and bruised, and he held his tomahawk in one hand. “Your Majesty. Bill needs you now.”
Sarah had gone to sleep with her satchel tucked between her side and her elbow; she was relieved to find it still there. She stood quickly, slinging the bag over her shoulder, and pushed her way past Calvin.
She left the bandage on the bed.
“What happened here?” she asked him.
Looking down at the common room, she saw still bodies on the floor and all the windows shattered. Jacob Hop held guns on the Podebradan and Uris the counselor. Yedera stood with her arms crossed, staring hatred at Sarah; Uris knelt over William Lee, holding tight what appeared to be tourniquets.
“Treachery,” Cal said. “Jake figured it out and pulled us out of the tar. But Bill’s a-bleedin’ out iffen you don’t save him.”
Cathy pushed past Calvin and the two women rushed down the stairs together. “There are arteries in the leg,” Cathy said. “He’s bleeding out of one of them. See how much blood there is on his left leg? Can you close that wound?”
Sarah nodded grimly. Returning Yedera’s look with a hostile glare of her own, she removed the Orb of Eyles and held it in her cupped right hand, placing her left on Bill’s leg. She might not need the energy of this Mississippi ley, and using it would hurt her, but she would take no chances with Bill’s life.
“St. William Harvey,” Cathy whispered, “guide now this woman’s art. As I have faith and seek to follow thee, restore thou health to this suffering child of Adam. Amen.”
“Venam restauro,” Sarah murmured. She chose the bandage on the leg, already soaked in Sir William’s blood, as a conduit, and she willed energy through her own left arm and that bandage. She envisioned in her mind’s eye the torn artery, and looked at the leg. She saw Sir William’s large vein there as a thicker thread of white light pulsing within the general glow of his aura, but lying beside it were gray specks. “Pallottolas extraho. Venam restauro. Vitam do.”
With her cupped right hand, she reached through the Orb and into the deep burning flow of the Mississippi River. Her skin burned, but she drew that power up through one arm and sent it down the other.
Her breath came shallow.
A shard of metal popped from Sir William’s leg and fell to the floor. Then a second. He breathed deeply and cried without a word. Then a third shard.
Then Sarah felt the artery close.
She staggered back, shutting off the flow of the ley and sucking in cold night air. Cathy leaped into her place with bandages, needle, and a bottle of whisky. Calvin, who had treated more injured cattle than children of Adam, knelt to help her.
“You said you didn’t have the regalia. You lied.”
Sarah took in the room again. The accusation came from Alzbieta Torias, who was cradled in the arms of one of her bearers. Sarah hadn’t seen her before because the Eldritch priestess was beneath the walkway. The beastman Chikaak stood beside her, pointing two loaded pistols at her.
“May I shoot her?” Chikaak’s tongue lolled out of his mouth and he hopped up and down like an excited child. It might have been a grin. “Or her beast of burden? It might be amusing to see what happens when she touches the floor.”
Sarah shook her head at both of them. “I never said I didn’t have the regalia.”
Outside the Wallenstein’s shattered windows, she saw the backs of her warriors. Some of her soldiers pointed carbines, some pikes, and some teeth, but they all faced out at the blue-cloaked Eldritch troops of Alzbieta Torias in the darkness beyond. A cold wind groaned through the shattered windows.
“You betrayed me, Alzbieta,” she said.
“I did it,” Uris said immediately. “I am the one who contacted the Hansa, and paid them to intervene.”
“Was I to be killed?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” Uris said. His voice was gravelly, his face solemn. He had a bright red weal on his neck, as if he’d survived a hanging. “It’s the best outcome for my mistress.”
“I told him to,” Alzbieta said. “If someone must bear the consequences, let it be me.”
“Well, ain’t you jest a bunch of self-sacrificin’ sweethearts.” Calvin spat on the floor.
“Shut your mouth, Cracker,” the Podebradan muttered.
“Silence!” Sarah roared. She looked down at Cathy and her ministrations. “Will Sir William live?”
Cathy nodded. “He will not be walking great distances in the near future.”
“I know where we can git a sedan chair,” Cal muttered. “And eight big oafs to carry it.”
Sarah turned to face her cousin and steadied herself with a deep breath. “Your wizard lives.”
“I haven’t been allowed to look.” Uris’s gaze was steady.
“You’ve become a living Tarock, Uris,” Sarah said. “Did you know that?” She pointed to her own neck. “The Hanged Man. Curious. And yet, unless I missed some daring piece of wizardry indeed in my unwanted sleep, you have not become Alzbieta Torias.”
“I only—”
“Stop! If you open your mouth again, I’ll kill you myself.” Sarah turned her attention again to Alzbieta. “Your wizard lives. That is not a question, it’s a statement. I can see his orenda now. He weakens. He’s dying. But he isn’t gone.”
When he did die, the Polite Sherem would explode in a burst of mana-energy, as Thalanes had done, as Sarah had seen Firstborn travelers on the Natchez Trace do, murdered by the Imperial dragoons.
“Thank you,” Alzbieta said. She looked skeptical.
“I believe I can kill you and your companions here, now, if I wish. I believe in a battle with your men, I would prevail. I’m certainly willing to try. Do you see it differently?”
The burning hatred in Alzbieta’s eyes suggested she did not.
“Here’s what I offer.” Sarah took the Sevenfold Crown from her satchel and placed it on her own head, feeling the iron cold through the scant stubble that served her for hair. She knew it must give her a scarecrow appearance, dirty and thin, with mismatched eyes, and she embraced her own strangeness. “You will swear an oath of my devising on the Sevenfold Crown. Your companions will swear it with you. Then we’ll revive your wizard, he too will swear, and we’ll travel on to Cahokia together.”
“You’d compel me to swear an oath to help you take the throne?” The priestess looked offended.
“Of course,” Sarah said. “And not harm me or any of my companions.”
She looked at her cousin and saw herself. Ambitious, willful, disbelieving.
“I might be willing to do that,” Alzbieta said.
“Spoken with a lying heart.” Sarah pointed at her own witchy eye. “I see you, Alzbieta, do you understand? I know you think I can’t compel an oath from you. You believe you can make reservations in your mind, you can outwit me. Perhaps you think that if you make an oath you don’t intend, the Sevenfold Crown won’t enforce it.”
Alzbieta grew paler but said nothing.
“You’re mistaken. We’ll stand here until you’re ready. Your wizard Sherem will die first. He must have enjoyed the irony of putting me into enchanted sleep after I had done the same to him. That irony will be the last thing he enjoys. I’ll consume his soul as it evaporates on his death.”
Alzbieta shuddered. Sarah sharpened her stare.
“When Sherem has died, you’ll weep for your loss. You’ll pretend then that you’re ready, you’ll swear you’re prepared to fully mean your oath, but I’ll know it’s false. I’ll personally slit the throat of your Hanged Man, Uris, and as his life’s blood pours out onto this floor, I’ll drink his soul as well, and my power will grow.”
“That would be cold murder.” Small tears formed in the corners of Alzbieta’s eyes.
“Colder than your plan to assassinate me? At that point, your men outside, and the Unborn of Podebradas here, will make a desperate attempt. I won’t even turn my back as my beastkind tear them limb from limb, but I will savor their mana and fuel the fire of my own sorcerous might. I’ll enjoy your tears, too, which by then will be flowing. You’ll beg to die, I’ll refuse you, and finally, you’ll truly mean it when you ask to swear your oath.”
Alzbieta Torias trembled. “I will swear.”
“Then kneel.”
Alzbieta hesitated. Sarah stared at her.
“Set me down,” the priestess said to her slave.
He complied.
“See?” Alzbieta knelt in the dirt and the blood. “You take my priesthood from me, and I let you.”
Sarah shook her head. “If the gods wish you to have priesthood, I can’t take it from you, no matter what taboos I force you to violate.”
“Say the oath I must swear.”
“The Unborn and the Hanged Man must join you.”
“Your Holiness,” Uris said roughly to his mistress, “I will die for you.”
“I am asking you to live, instead.” She smiled at him, and Sarah felt a small pang of guilt. She shoved it down deep inside.
Uris and Yedera both knelt.
Jacob Hop suddenly laughed out loud.
“What is it, Sergeant?” she asked.
“You said it yourself, Your Majesty.” Hop pointed at the three kneeling Cahokians. “Tarocks. The Hanged Man and the Priest. With the Daughter of Podebradas as the Virgin, they make a casting.”
Sarah permitted herself a soft chuckle. “And will you tell me how you read it?”
“Good things, Your Majesty. An unexpected birth after death. Consecration to a higher life. Meaning and reorientation. Surprise insight.”
“I’m ready,” Alzbieta Torias said. “We are ready.”
Sarah looked at them with their Second Sight, and saw that they were. “I,” she began, “say your name.”
“I, Alzbieta Torias…”
“I, Uris Byrenas…”
“I, Yedera, Unborn Daughter of St. Adela Podebradas…”
Sarah continued, “swear that I will provide every assistance I can, asked or unasked, to Sarah Elytharias Penn in her attempt to become crowned Queen of Cahokia.”
She opened the Orb’s conduit to the Mississippi. Light no one else could see flowed through her and the Crown and into the kneeling Cahokians as they took the oath.
“I further swear,” she continued, “that I will neither seek nor permit any harm to any loyal servant of Sarah Elytharias Penn.”
They swore.
“I swear that I shall be honest with her in all things. By my life and by the life of all my gods, amen.”
They finished the oath, and the Crown released them.
“Hell’s Bells, Your Majesty,” Sir William drawled weakly, his eyes fluttering open. “You write oaths like a lawyer.”
Sarah smiled at Sir William to show her relief.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Alzbieta said.
“Wait.” Sarah wasn’t quite sure how to accomplish what she wanted to do next, but ignorance and inexperience hadn’t stopped her yet. She raised the Orb of Etyles over her head, drew power through it and through the Crown and focused it this time on herself.
She felt the burning crackle of fire flowing through her, and she felt something else, too. She felt extreme concentration. The world had fallen away, and all that existed was the cosmic chamber of her heart, a dark and warm space into which she spoke.
Reorientation. Unexpected insight.
“I, Sarah Elytharias Penn, swear that I shall reward your good faith with loyalty, with protection, and with every blessing I can bestow. By my life and by the life of all my gods, amen.”
The words fell into her heart and stayed there.
The Crown released Sarah.
She replaced the Orb in her shoulder bag. Slowly, because her skin was tender and her joints ached, she lowered herself to her knees facing the three oathtakers. Alzbieta, Uris, and especially Yedera stared at her.
Careful not to let the crown slip, Sarah bowed slightly toward the Cahokians.
“I need you to guide me,” she said. “I need you to help me find my way among my people, whom I do not know. I need you to help me take back my father’s throne.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” they said.