The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) (8 page)

Sparks returned, leading Cortland’s horses. The chestnut roan favored a hind leg, probably where it had been shot. They’d have to abandon the poor thing, else it raise far too many questions. The other, a gray, seemed tired and frightened but otherwise healthy. She hoped it was healthy enough to carry her.

“How shall I serve the Verderer’s Office?”

“I want you to forget everything that happened tonight between when you and Mr. Cortland found me on the road and right now, with the sole exception of your reassignment to my supervision. And then,” Berenice said, “I believe you’ll begin your new assignment by showing me the contents of the chest you were guarding.”

T
hick flakes of snow drifted from the darkening sky. It frosted Longchamp’s beard and furred his horse’s mane. A particularly large flake swirled under the hat brim and straight into the eyes of Sergeant Chrétien, riding beside him, causing the man to flinch, swat at his face, and curse.

“Jesus. Be sure to let the civvies see that,” said Longchamp. “They’ll swell with pride and fall over themselves to sign up when they see how our best and boldest bat at snow like frightened kittens. Try to get a little hiss in there next time, if you can, and piss yourself for good measure.”

“Sorry, Captain.”

“Oh, no, don’t apologize. That Goddamned flake came right at you wielding some of the sharpest fucking snow I’ve ever seen. You had no choice but to utilize your years of martial training to defend yourself. Fucking thing could have blinded you. I’ll say so to the marshal general, when next I share a bottle of wine with him, and say a prayer to the Blessed Virgin and all the saints tonight thanking them for delivering you from such grievous fucking harm.”

“Thank you, sir.”

After that they rode in silence broken only by the rattling of Longchamp’s pick and sledge knocking together, and the clopping of their horses’ shod hooves on the cobbles of the Boulevard Saint-Joseph, one of the main east-west thoroughfares through Marseilles-in-the-West. Tall red oak and black maple trees, now denuded of leaves, flanked the boulevard. On a clear day, when the snow wasn’t hurling itself into their eyelashes, they could have seen all the way to the docks where the tulips had sent their mechanical demons through the town like fiery comets; there the Rue Notre-Dame, formerly a jewel of New France, sported only blackened stumps. It hurt the heart, it did. Behind them, low clouds had consumed the tip of the Spire, making the tower look like a broken lance. Though the wind was still, Longchamp could smell the icy river. The glow of synthetic oil from the streetlamps turned their steaming breath into haloes and lent the early-winter evening an unwarranted coziness. With his snowy beard, Longchamp knew he even looked a bit like Father Christmas.

Except he wasn’t riding a donkey and he hadn’t come to spread joy. He’d come to ruin somebody’s day.

The sergeant reined up before a shop. He checked his list, tilting it back and forth to catch the lamplight. “I think this is it,” he said. Then glanced up at the chandler’s shop and sighed. “Free candles,” he muttered. “Better than nothing, but…”

“We’re not in this for the dosh. We’re in this because these selfish motherfuckers think they don’t owe anything to the country that feeds and clothes and defends them.” Longchamp spat. “And I bet their candles give off more greasy smoke than heretics on Judgment Day.”

Though, having said that, it was nice when the families they visited tried to bribe them into turning a blind eye to their conscripted sons, husbands, daughters, or wives. It was the principle of the thing. So yesterday Longchamp had taken it upon
himself to personally retrieve a few of the missing men. It was mere fortune—reward for a virtuous life, he said, and not a benefit of rank—that he just happened to obtain the portion of the list requiring a visit to the most highly regarded chocolatier on either side of the Saint Lawrence. That the dilatory fellow and his wife might have tried to ease the captain’s consideration of the problem with a generous helping of free samples had nothing to do with his decision to participate in the roundups; he was moved entirely by the need to set an example for his men. And besides, the tulips’ trade embargo had throttled the supply of cacao into New France, meaning even chocolatiers couldn’t pony up decent bribes. Truly these were the end-times.

“Cheer up,” said Longchamp. “Maybe they have a nubile daughter who’s just mad about men in uniform.”

Chrétien checked the list again. “They do have a daughter, but I doubt she’s going to be thrilled with the men who come to break up her family.”

Longchamp grunted. The sergeant knocked. A sign in the window suggested the shop was closed for business, but as the family undoubtedly lived upstairs, this seemed the best place to find the wayward conscripts. As it was getting toward supper time, it was likely the family was soon to gather around the table, making this the best time for an unannounced visit. Perhaps they’d luck out and bag both of their wayward birds.

Nobody answered. The sergeant knocked again, but no more loudly than before. Longchamp spat a long dark stream of tobacco into the street.

“Put your fucking wrist into it, for Christ’s sake.”

Longchamp took the hammer from the sling on his saddle. He didn’t need his tools today, and hoped to hell he’d never need to use them again. But he also knew that they had more use than fighting rogue Clakkers; they’d become a symbol of
a story, and stories had power. So Longchamp elbowed the sergeant aside and pounded on the door with the haft of his sledge, hard enough to rattle the hinges.

Inside the shop, a staircase creaked under heavy footsteps. The door opened; a woman peeked out. White wax caked her fingernails.

“You’re too late. We’re closed, sir.”

“Then I’d say our timing is perfect. We’re not here to buy candles.”

She frowned at the soldiers. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me? I’m fucking Père Noël.”

She looked behind him, and the sergeant, to study the horses. “Then where are your gifts?”

Longchamp clucked his tongue. “Gifts are for people who have been good. So I don’t bother anymore. Haven’t you heard? Nowadays I take naughty husbands and sons. Daughters, too, if you have them. And I believe,” he said, twice flicking the sergeant’s paper with his fingernail, “that you do.”

Her face crumpled with anger. Longchamp took the door gently, saying, “Sergeant, why don’t you and me come inside and discuss it with these well-meaning citizens of New France.”

She stepped aside. A witty man might have called her manner glacial, in both speed and warmth. But Longchamp couldn’t stand witty men and he despised wordplay. Longchamp removed his hat when he entered, as did the sergeant, who shut the door behind them. The shop smelled faintly of beeswax, though no such candles were visible on the shelves and counters. Candles half as tall as Longchamp stood in one corner of the shop, and from long racks overhead; these were marked with fine gradations to mark the passage of time.

“Thank you, ma’am. I gather you know why we’re here.”

“What gives you the right to come in here and tear our
family apart? We’re good citizens. We pay the taxes that pay your wages!”

“And we thank you for it. Don’t we, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir. Very much, sir.”

“But in addition to paying your taxes, you enjoy living in beautiful New France, where everybody is free. And in so doing you enjoy access to our docks, and our river, and our trade ships, all to fuel your business, while your shop and home benefit from such lovely municipal perks as indoor plumbing and sewage, while your apple-cheeked children attend schools to fill their heads with wisdom both practical and philosophical, and all the while swarthy gendarmes patrol the streets and keep you and yours safe.”

“Captain Longchamp is right. There’s more to living here than just taxes.”

“Sergeant. Do you understand what your job here entails?”

“I’m here to do what you tell me to do, sir.”

“Good lad. Right now I’m telling you to shut your gob hole before something embarrassing happens to it.”

A man came down the stairs. He wore a leather apron; myriad stains of different hues speckled the sleeves of his shirt. He had the reedy build and thick spectacles of a tradesman whose life is spent at a counter, or standing over a bench. Longchamp doubted he’d be able to lift a bola, much less a sledge, if it came to close quarters. But he ran a business and so knew numbers and might be useful as a clerk or quartermaster.

Longchamp said, “Aha. The first of our wayward lambs.”

The man looked like he’d almost forgotten he was supposed to be hiding from the conscription. “Did I hear that name correctly? You’re the famous Sergeant Longchamp?”

“He’s the sergeant,” Longchamp said, pointing to his colleague. “I’m just a lowly captain.”

The woman said, “Our apologies, Captain Longchamp. My
husband misspoke. Of course he knows you! We all do. Our little Marcel knows every story about you.”

The sergeant quickly raised a hand to his mouth and barked something that was half laugh, half cough, and half choke. Longchamp said, “I hope, for all our sakes, that he doesn’t.”

Chrétien said, “You must know why we’ve come. And that you’re in a bit of trouble for making us come out here.”

“We’re law-abiding citizens,” said the chandler’s wife. She doubled down on her intransigence. “So no, your visit is a surprise to us. Obviously there’s been a mistake.”

The sergeant rolled his eyes. He looked at Longchamp. “Are they serious?”

The captain said, “No, there’s no mistake. See, there was this little war a while back. Perhaps you heard about it? Maybe some of your customers mentioned it? Half the city burned down. Maybe that rings a bell? No?” Longchamp didn’t give them a chance to answer. Instead he shook his head, as though in wonderment, continuing, “Now, I know we live in a time of wonders. Because I could swear that very boulevard”—here he jerked a thumb toward the shop window—“runs straight to the edge of the burn. A simple man like me might have thought you could have smelled the Goddamned smoke from here—hell, that you could have cut it with a knife and used it for lampblack, as I seem to recall there was a fucking lot of it—but then I suppose when you work with candles all day long, you get sort of used to smoke and soot.”

The chandler started, “We understand—”

“Don’t interrupt the captain when he’s on a roll,” said the sergeant. And he was.

“The thing about that little war, you see, is that sure as my shit smells there’s going to be another. I know you’re hardworking souls with no time for gossip or news from across the river, so I assume you don’t know this, but the tulips, you see,
hate our fucking guts
. And sooner or later, they’re coming. And that means we have to be ready to defend our home. And that means you have to be ready to defend your home. And that means you need to flush your girl out from wherever she’s hiding before I lose my legendary patience.”

“It’s okay, Papa. I want to do my part.”

Now a younger woman descended from the family home above. She was in her early twenties, according to the conscript list, and to Longchamp’s eye far more promising raw material than her father, with her wide shoulders and thick arms. Hers was a frame that could hang some muscle. And at least she wasn’t entirely craven.

“Ah, and here’s our second wayward lamb,” Longchamp said. “See, Sergeant? Didn’t I tell you that clean living and a positive attitude can put the world aright?”

“Yes, sir. The gist of it was certainly there, if not exactly in those words.”

Longchamp beckoned to the chandlers’ daughter. “Time to leave the farm, little lamb, and become a lion.” To her father, he said, “You, too. Time to become… well, something else.”

The chandler’s wife said, “You’ll make a widow of me.”

That might be true
, thought Longchamp.
Your husband has the martial potential of a motherless hatchling.
He sighed.
But from such dross I shall miraculously cast new swords to defend my king and my country.

“I think you’re both being overdramatic,” said the lass. “I apologize for my parents. I’m their only daughter.”

Her father said, “We’ve heard about what happened inside the keep! The day the fountain ran red, the day three dozen people were cut apart like butcher’s scraps, the day they made you a captain. You can’t expect ordinary citizens to fight machines like that! It’s inhumane, it’s senseless, and it’s
tantamount to murder.” He raised his arms, as if in comparison to the soldiers’. “Look at me! I can’t do what you do!”

The chandler was mistaken. It hadn’t been like that at all. It was much later, during the unending series of funerals, when the marshal general had conferred Longchamp’s promotion. Gave him a shiny metal gewgaw on a bit of ribbon, too; Longchamp crammed that at the bottom of his chest.

The sergeant caught Longchamp’s eye. He had the measure of this family, too. The daughter had her horsey head screwed on right. Her father was the craven. But he couldn’t try to duck the conscription while his daughter merrily went off to join the guard; he had to hold her back, too, lest he be unable to use her as an excuse.

Chrétien said, “The whole purpose of the conscriptions is so that nobody has to do what Captain Longchamp did, ever again. We fight to keep the metal men outside the keep. If we have enough men and women who know what they’re doing, and can follow orders, they’ll never gain entrance. And our country will remain our country.”

Hmmm. The lad could speak when he had to. Longchamp gave him a nod. Though he was fairly certain he’d told the boy to keep his gob nailed shut.

“It’s okay, Papa. We’ll be in it together.” She kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’ll still be home for supper now and then.” She looked at Longchamp. “Won’t I?”

He shrugged. “When you’re not on duty, your time is yours. There isn’t a lot of that, but you’re not being conscripted into slavery.”

She said, “See, Mama?” The sergeant took her by the elbow and guided her toward the door.

“No!” Her father backed away from Longchamp. Taking his daughter by the arm, he pulled her away from the sergeant and
tried to put himself between her and the soldiers. “You’re taking her to die!”

“Sir.” Longchamp found it difficult to speak quietly when he seethed. He redoubled his grip on the sledge until his knuckles turned bone white in the half gloom of the shuttered shop. The anger boiled up from his core, and tasted like the blue cheese and wizened apples he’d eaten for lunch. “There is one person in this room likely to die rather sooner than later, but it is not your daughter.”

“She isn’t a soldier,” the man pleaded.

His wife added, “Who will make all the candles for the keep if you take all the chandlers to die?”