The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) (17 page)

She reached him before the others and snapped off a sharp salute. She’d taken to her stint with the city guard without complaint or prevarication. Unlike her father, who, according to all the scuttlebutt in the barracks, continued to gripe about the institutionalized evil of the conscription lottery. She rode well, he noted; took her training seriously, too, by all accounts. He had half a hope that she might actually be useful, unlike two-thirds of the fucking pathetic parade that passed through the conscription lottery. Too early to tell if she’d be any use when the shit came raining down, but for now she wore armor and carried a truncheon. In a civvy’s eyes that made her a real guard, and that belief did half of a guard’s work for her.

“All right, lass. Let’s see if we can make you into a real guardswoman today.” He pointed at the truncheon. “Have they taught you how to use that thing yet, or is it just for show?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir. Not for show, sir.”

The guards at the gate forced a gap in the line so Longchamp and his entourage could reenter the walls. The gap closed as soon as they trotted through the gate. They passed a clump of stonemasons and chemists excavating a narrow borehole in the curtain wall with a water-powered auger. It was but one of
many such teams; the cumulative
screech
of their tools could have raised the dead.

Longchamp led his group through the outer keep at a canter. He reined up when they approached the inner keep. The others followed his example to doff their forage caps and replace them with the inconspicuous knit caps that he produced from his sack. From a barrel under a rainspout, he pulled a mismatched assortment of cloaks and coats. While the guards covered their uniforms and armor, Longchamp gave orders.

He sent Sergeant Chrétien and two others through the inner wall first, with orders to take the long way around and approach the funicular station from the south. Longchamp, along with Corporal Simon and lowly conscript Élodie, would take a more direct path from the north. Both groups were to dismount before entering the square. Then they were to mingle with the crowds around the fountain. He repeated the description of the man they sought.

“And for the love of the Virgin Mary,” he summarized, “stay as inconspicuous as the warts on a toad’s ass.”

Two trios rode through the inner wall, then split. Though the day had dawned bright and still, the cloudless sky made for a frigid morning. The high walls of the inner keep trapped the smoke of a hundred chimneys. They rode through a miasma. It smelled like a campfire built with wet green wood by the world’s most inexperienced voyageurs.

Élodie kept flicking sidelong glances in Longchamp’s direction. The third time it happened, he snorted.

“A question, sir?”

“That is a question. But I’m feeling magnanimous today, so out with it.”

“You stressed that we should stay inconspicuous. But you… Um.” She faltered.

Simon nodded. He mimed running a hand across his chin, as though stroking a beard. “She has a point.”

“It’s not just the beard. Everybody knows you.” She risked a nascent smile. “I mean, you’re the Hero of—”

“Don’t fucking say it.”

The smile died in its crib. She swallowed.

He said, “We think our new friend is recently arrived in town. So he might not know me on sight. But if he does, and the sight of me makes him nervous, well, that’s something useful, too.”

They rode through the waves of heat wafting from the open door of a blacksmith’s shop. No snow dusted the cobbles here. A bald man with sinewy arms, and two lads who must have been his apprentices, hammered on a glowing iron bar in a rapid but steady choreography: one-two-three, tongs, flip, one-two-three… Oscar’s shop was the larger of the two smithies within the inner keep: The smoky hell-glow of two other forges backlit additional trios of Oscar’s employees committing similar abuses upon raw metal. Longchamp wished they could have conscripted some of Oscar’s men and women to man the walls; arms like those could swing a sledge and pick hard enough to give a Clakker pause. But smiths were among the few professions with total immunity to the lottery. Their skills were crucial during a siege, and Marseilles-in-the-West needed more smiths than it had.

Between the smithies’ crash of hammers on anvils from sunrise to sunset, and the bells of Saint Jean constantly chiming the hours of the Divine Office day and night, it was a wonder anybody in the inner keep could string two thoughts together without getting lost. When the din receded to the point where they could converse again, Élodie said, “You chose me for your group.”

“Did I?”

“I assume you did, since I’m here now.”

Though slightly nasal, her voice didn’t carry a tremor. He watched her gloved hands on the reins: no nervous ticks there, either. She wasn’t probing out of fear or anxiety about what they might find. She was genuinely confused.

Longchamp said, “I’ve been a soldier longer than you’ve been a chandler’s daughter. I wouldn’t know how to act like a civilian if the king’s life depended on it. But you,
ma jeune fille
, are a different story.” They came to a plastic footbridge over one of the channels that supplied water for the fountains, the hydraulic pumps for the funicular, sanitary plumbing, and myriad other uses. Longchamp dismounted. The others followed his example, loosely looping their reins through the naked boughs of a pear tree.

He continued, “And I need eyes for this, not fighters. We’re looking for a priest. Worst he could do is swing a rosary or splash us with holy water. So unless you’re the Devil in disguise and likely to burst shrieking into flames when that happens, your inexperience is immaterial. Now clamp your fucking gob holes, both of you.”

His trio was the first to amble into the fountain courtyard. A crowd had already gathered at the base of the Porter’s Prayer, outside the funicular station. As usual a pair of uniformed guards were there to monitor the petitioners, but as per their orders they hadn’t shepherded the hopefuls into a line nor had they allowed any ascents yet. They caught his eye; Longchamp gave a surreptitious nod. Then he settled upon a cold bench under the longest of the three cloisters facing the garth. It put the large but winter-dormant fountain between him and the petitioners. The disused carpenter’s shop in the far corner of the quadrangle had been chained shut by royal decree.

Élodie joined him without having to be told. He hoped they looked like a father and daughter or even an uncle and niece
waiting on a petitioner. From his sack he pulled two needles and a skein of woolen yarn.

The recent conscript slid a finger under the brim of her cloche, scratched her temple. “You made these hats.”

“Hmmm.”

Deeply entrenched muscle memory put his fingers into motion. His gaze flicked back and forth between the scarf in his lap and the civilians in the quadrangle. Nobody matched the bandaged priest’s description. Chrétien strolled into the quadrangle, munching on a slab of fried fish wrapped in wax paper and looking every inch like a groom straight from the stables. He’d found a satchel and had even daubed a bit of mud on his face. In general, the personages of the inner keep—nobles and courtiers, various highly regarded and prosperous tradesmen—attired themselves more brightly than their counterparts in the outer ring of the citadel. But Chrétien fit nicely among the petitioners. He joined the line, eating and looking bored.

The quadrangle had been almost unrecognizable in the immediate aftermath of the military Clakker’s rampage. But the crushed funicular car had been cut up and hauled away, the tracks repaired, the shattered fountain recarved, the body parts sorted and given Christian burials. Today a plaque commemorating the victims of that massacre was the only overt sign that this had been a scene of carnage. But eyes that had witnessed the scene could still pick out hints of that terrible day: dark spots where blood had stippled the porous marble; divots in the stones where talon-toes had found purchase… The soft, steady
click
of the needles in Longchamp’s hands played a counterpoint to his memory of screams, the butcher-shop
snick
of blades through bone, the
whir
of bolas, the peculiar chime of a diamond-tipped pick striking alchemical brass.

More petitioners joined the line. Jean-Marc, one of the men on petitioner duty, unshuttered the heliograph to flash a message up the Spire. Apparently he received an affirmative, because he ushered a man and woman into the funicular. The door clanged shut, and then the funicular ascended with the day’s first pair of petitioners. Still no sign of the mysterious priest.

Élodie murmured, “You don’t look like you’re idly watching passersby, sir. I mean, um, uncle. You look like you’re strip-searching everybody you see.” In a more conversational tone of voice, she said, “You don’t seem the knitting type. How did that come about?”

“Nuns have a saying about idle hands and the Devil’s playthings. They said it to me a few times.”

“Were you a troublemaker in your youth… uncle?”

“Like all good uncles, I was always exactly as you know me now. A godlike figure whom you revere and fear.” His needles clicked. More people joined the petitioners’ line. The cold metal of the funicular tracks squealed under the weight of the ascending car. “And for the purposes of your new vocation,” he added, “I always will be.”

Élodie stiffened. With exaggerated deliberation she laid a hand on the tangle of yarn on the bench between them. Before she gave it a tug and unraveled a piece of scarf, he murmured, “Yes. I see him.”

A single figure approached the head of the line. Rather than joining the tail, he went straight to Jean-Marc and Felix at the funicular and heliograph station. He wore a hat low over his brow. Its brim was wide enough to conceal any bandages, if there were any to conceal. The top two buttons of his overcoat were unfastened, deliberately displaying the clerical collar underneath. The gray in his eyebrows and lines in his
face roughly bracketed his age—Longchamp put him somewhere between a hard-earned early fifties and an uneventful midsixties. Longchamp caught Chrétien’s eye, who returned the slightest nod. The fellow had a brief conversation with the guards. Longchamp couldn’t make out what they said, but the interaction was animated because snippets of voices reached him across the quadrangle. Based on the way his men reacted, and pointed to the line, it seemed the newcomer had tried to talk his way to the top of the queue. But they’d been ordered not to be swayed by pushy men of the cloth.

They were adamant. The trembling newcomer shuffled past Chrétien, who ignored him, to the end of the queue. Aside from the occasional stamp of feet or breathing into gloves, it wasn’t so cold that folks shivered like the priest. Longchamp watched him struggle to get the agitation under control.

Normally, if a priest needed to approach the king, he’d go through the bishop of Marseilles. But the old bishop had died of pneumonia during the previous siege, and then the pope had been murdered before the Holy See in Québec could appoint a successor. For months, turmoil had beset the Catholic hierarchy of the southern reaches of the Saint Lawrence. In such troubled times, a humble priest would have to bring business before the king like any civilian. Particularly if he were a recent arrival lacking personal connections with the local diocese.

But then, if he were so Goddamned humble, why try to talk his way to the head of the queue?

Longchamp laid his knitting aside. He stood, hiked his pack over his shoulder. The hafts of the pick and hammer clattered together like wooden chimes.

“I’m suddenly feeling very pious,” he said. “Let’s go find a man of the cloth.”

Élodie rose to her feet. “Oh, no.”

Somebody else had joined the line behind the priest.
Longchamp blinked. It was Zacharie Chastain, Élodie’s father. The chandler who had tried to duck the conscription lottery.

“You have to be fucking kidding me. What in all the hells is he doing here?”

Élodie faced Longchamp, looking panicked. “I swear I knew nothing about this.”

“Your family excels at being a pain in my ass. Are you certain you’re not part Dutch?”

“I’ll go get him.”

Longchamp grabbed her arm. “No. We’re here for the priest. If your da wants to act like a braying donkey before the king, let him.”

They ambled around the fountain. Sergeant Chrétien saw them approaching; one hand slid into his satchel, probably where he’d stashed his truncheon. Longchamp silently prayed his career wouldn’t culminate in the beating of an innocent priest. How he’d hate to prove the nuns right.

Another squeal, this one approaching rather than receding, announced the arrival of a funicular car from above, twin to the one that had just brought the first two petitioners atop the Spire. Three of the king’s servants emerged, carrying a bundle of bed linens, a tray, and the last crumbs of His Majesty’s breakfast.

Élodie’s father saw them before the priest did. Longchamp quickened his stride. The chandler opened his mouth as if to call to his daughter. She shook her head, touching a finger to her lips.

The man in the clerical collar turned just in time to see it.

Frowning, he looked from her to the others in line, looking for the man she shushed. Instead he noticed Chrétien several spaces ahead, casually pulling from his satchel fourteen inches of maple cudgel. The priest turned again and saw Longchamp striding toward him.

Longchamp was still halfway across the quadrangle when white limned the rabbit’s eyes as he realized he was cornered. Now the priest looked frantic, studying his surroundings. Looking for an escape.

Goddamn it.

Longchamp raised his arm in greeting. “Father Visser!”

The priest froze, trembling, like a hare that had just felt the shadow of a hawk. Yes. This was the man Berenice had described in her letter.

Longchamp grinned.
See my big smile. My big friendly smile. Nothing to worry about here. I’m just somebody who is pleasantly surprised to see you. No need to bolt. No need to make a scene. We’re all so fucking friendly here, can’t you see?

He said, “Is that really you, Father? Why, I haven’t seen you in years!”