Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) (17 page)

“Anybody we know?” I asked, eyeing the quartet of unfortunate bass.

Roberta shook her head. “Don’t think so. We did ask.”

“And they said…?”

“Nothin’,” Ernie told me. “And you know what the rule is…silence means assent.”

“I doubt that silence usually means ‘Oh, go ahead and eat me.’ I know my silences don’t mean that.”

“Have to agree with you on that one,” said Roberta.

“So we’re sure that these fellers ain’t part of an unlucky church choir that sang out of tune at a Merchantry function?” I asked.

Romulus shook his head. “Naw. They’s just fish.” He turned them over with his fingers. The pan looked like it’d been abandoned by soldiers when its handle broke off. A stick replaced the old grip. “Not sayin’ it be more right to eat ‘em because o’ that. They’s still dead, shape-shifted or not. It is what it is.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Maybe I’ll just eat somethin’ green and leafy instead.”

Pitts called up at me from his spot near the riverbank. “I heard that!”

Roberta whistled. “He’s a might touchy about vegetarians,” she whispered. “Says they’re just a bunch of murderers and thieves.”

“All in your point o’ view,” nodded Ernie. “I’m biased against cats me own self, but there you are.”

Throwing up my hands, I announced, “I’m gonna go visit the nearest clump of bushes, then dive into a fish dinner. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.” I made my way past the odd assortment of allies I’d collected, needing to piddle in the worst way.

“Keep yo eyes and ears peeled, miss,” said Romulus to my back. “No Bullies in the daylight, but they’s plenty o’ other trouble at hand.”

“Don’t worry,” I replied, starting to skip, “if anybody interrupts my elimination, then elimination is what they’ll get.”

It was quick work to climb farther up the hill, do my business, and start back down. While up there I peered about to see just where we were and where we might be heading. Alexandria was a distant speck upstream. I could just make out the masts of ships moored at its wharves. Other craft, both pure sail and those aided by steam, made their way along the Potomac in both directions. Washington almost seemed lovely from this distance, with the wind blowing away from me. The incomplete Monument and Capitol Dome, rising above the trees, looked like odd white fungi on a lush green lawn. It felt ever so much more peaceful, war or no war, to see it all in the sunlight. No monsters. Leastways, no monsters except the usual ones, those with muskets and cannon, bent on mass destruction of their friends and neighbors.

That thought reminded me that I stood in Confederate territory. I turned to look away from the water, at Virginia proper. Green fields rolled away toward the mountains, cut with a few fences, lots of trees, and the occasional road. A couple of lonely farms sat in the far distance, but I saw no movement around them. The owners had probably lost everything—cattle, horses, chickens, crops—to foraging troops of both armies. It occurred to me that we were in the ranks of the marauders now, competing for supplies with hundreds of thousands of armed men. I should make the most of what Romulus had on the skillet. Pickings might be slim for a while.

Romulus and I devoured the fish, aided by the last of our bread and canteen water, with a maximum of relish and a minimum of guilt. Ernie and Roberta preferred seeds, which might’ve upset Pitts but no one thought to inform him. I ate standing up, keeping my senses sharp for any surprises that might come our way. After our awful night I had already taken on the wariness of a wild animal. No matter how safe and sunny things seemed, I assumed that either the Merchantry or the war could cloud things up real quick.

“We travelin’ by night or by day?” I asked the group. There were advantages and difficulties with either, to my mind.

Roberta squinted through her spectacles and said, “Day means less monsters. Bullies can’t come out in the sun. Venoma can, but it makes her real weak.”

“No ghouls, trolls, or specters till sundown, either,” added Ernie, sitting on a log and burping.

Romulus buried the fish bones with a boot heel and commenced to put out the fire. “But we can fight a few o’ them easier than we can the whole Rebel army. Sometimes it be the everyday enemies that gits you.”

“At least we can see where we’re goin’ by day,” I said, looking around to make my point. “Night time means gettin’ lost or gettin’ ambushed.” I pulled my map of Virginia from the haversack and peered at it. The thing turned out to be too large a scale to show many roads.

I’d hung the Jasper-cup on my hip. He spoke up for the first time that day, in predictable fashion. “‘Why don’t we ask Jasper what he thinks?’” whined the voice in my head. “‘Oh, he’s just an enchanted object, what could he possibly know?’” I rolled my eyes and pointed to my belt, to let everyone else know that there was another opinion being shared. “‘Well, perhaps the poor benighted creatures whom he serves are tragically unaware that he has a map of the whole world at his metaphorical fingertips.’”

My eyebrow arched up at that. “No foolin’?”

“Do I look like I’m foolin’?” After a tiny pause he went on, “Don’t answer that.”

“He says he can navigate, no problem,” I told my friends. “But I still think I’d like to try movin’ in the light. It’d be faster, and the troubles we’d meet would at least be human, I expect.”

Ernie snorted. “Keep tellin’ yourself that, duckie.”

“She’s right,” said Roberta, spreading her wings to catch the afternoon breeze. “Merchantry don’t like to show its magick if it can help it. Whatever we meet in the daytime will more’n likely be humans, either paid or enthralled.”

“Unless they gets desp’rate,” Romulus muttered. “Then you can count on battalions of ogres and goblins.”

“Then let’s not push ‘em that far,” I suggested. “Keep our heads down and not rub their noses in anything.”

Ernie jabbed his tiny spear into the log, almost skewering his foot. “We’ll need a cover story. Something to deflect suspicion away from why a white girl’s travelin’ alone with a colored man in a war zone.”

“I’ll think of somethin’ directly,” I said, already going over possibilities in my mind. Jasper could help me develop them. “Then we’ll all have to learn the details and keep to ‘em.”

Roberta flapped up into the elm tree above us. Squatting on a thick branch, she said, “Daytime it is, shipmates. I’ll stand first watch.”

“We can stay put tonight and head out at dawn,” said Ernie, sharpening his knitting needle on a rock. “Get started after plenty of sleep. Might not get a lot of that the farther south we go.”

Having finished kicking out and burying the fire, Romulus straightened up. “Best refill the canteens. They’s a crick to the west a bit.”

“Why not use the river?” I asked.

“Crick water’s cleaner. And the Merchantry’s still lookin’ for us. Best not to show ourselves that direction. They has less eyes in the Confed’racy than they does in Washington. That’s why we crossed the river. They magick is considerable less across that water.”

I frowned and tagged along with him as he started off with the canteens. “The rules of magick don’t seem sensible to me. The Merchantry magick, the black kind, can’t work on or across flowin’ or deep water, right?”

He nodded. “True, mostly.”

“Then how can they function at all? The world’s full of oceans and lakes and big rivers. And how does our magick work in water? I swam in the Potomac for an hour last night, all shape-shifted. Shouldn’t that’ve been affected?”

“Cain’t say I’s an expert, but the way I understands it, strong life wants to fight black magick. And water is all life, missy. So Merchantry magick hits it like an egg against a wall. Course, not all walls is built sturdy. Sometimes they’s cracks and such that let some bad spells through. Even on the sea a Merchantry ship can sometimes call on harpies and change the weather. But they avoids that, ‘cause it’s just as likely to turn against ‘em. So they tends to use normal ways around water…simple boats or bridges to get across, guns instead o’ fire spells, that sort o’ thing.”

An idea came to me. “Then we can use spells around water ‘cause ours is life-magick, not death-magick?”

“Guess so. Our magick gets renewed by water and wind and laughter and such. Theirs is revived by hate and pain and things bleedin’. So we can work with water better than they can. Your spell held last night because it started on land. You prob’ly couldn’t have shifted while you was in the river. Still can backfire, though, so you gots to be careful. Deeper the water, more dangerous to the user. Ocean’s special tough.”

“How does an ostium work, then? Venoma talked like she was on her way to the Sceptr’d Isle.”

“Don’t know. They’s a kind o’ shadow world that the Merchantry knows ‘bout. That’s where Venoma lives. Maybe it bypasses the water somehow.”

“And we can’t use their ostia?”

“Ernie claims he saw a Marshal do it once. He weren’t sure how. Most times the place stays dead if you try. Nothin’ happens.”

“So if we went into the Monument right now…?”

“Just an empty room to us.”

“Then the Merchantry’s people must have a special charm or word or object.”

“Maybe so.”

We arrived at the creek, which turned out to actually be a sweet spring trickling out of a jumble of rocks. As Romulus dipped both canteens into it, making them blurble, I thought about the story we had to concoct to explain our presence in Virginia. The particulars were half-set and I was about to ask Jasper to help me edit them. I concentrated so much on it that I dropped my guard. Romulus couldn’t hear over the noise of the water. That’s how we got surprised.

The hammer of a pistol clicked overhead. A smooth Southern voice drawled, “Afternoon. Name’s Captain Laurence Tyrell, CSA. And who might y’all be?”

14/ Tyrell’s Pistol

When in doubt, always tell a man he’s God’s gift to women.

“Okay, Jasper,” I whispered to myself, “a stranger’s pointin’ a gun at us. How’d you let that happen?”

“Hey,” the boyish voice in my head protested, “you’re the Stone-Warden here. I’m just a lowly servant. Put those wonder senses to their proper use.”

“
Ain’t you supposed to protect me from imminent danger?”

“Don’t seem imminent to me.”

“He’s got a gun!” I shouted aloud, before I could catch myself.

The strange voice said, “So I do. Thereis a war on. Can’t be too careful.”

My eyes rose to the top of the highest boulder to my left. Silhouetted by the setting sun, the speaker was just a long-haired shadow in a gray kepi. I shaded my eyes and edged sideways to try for a better look.

“Ah-ah,” he said, scolding me with the barrel of his enormous pistol. “You didn’t say ‘mother-may-I.’ Hands where I can see them, please.”

With a disbelieving snort I pointed out that I was only twelve, and a girl, to boot. That didn’t wash with our new friend. “I’d be tempted to sympathize, but it just so happens that a sergeant in my troop got shot off his horse by a Federal drummer boy who was merely ten. And you’re a sight bigger than him. Look to be a cooler customer, too…er, ma’am.”

I held my hands up and turned around in a full circle. “Look. No gun, no knife, nothin’. Not even a slingshot.” At a nod from me Romulus did the same. “We’re harmless, sir.”

“I don’t know about that. Your darky there looks like he could pick up this rock and heave it to Richmond. He yours?”

“Yes, sir. Bought and paid for.”
Sorry, Romulus. I’ll make it up to you later.

“Who else you got with you?”

“Nobody. Just us.”

He seemed to be considering something. After a short pause he slid backwards out of sight. When that happened Romulus moved over so that he could shield me if the Reb came back shooting. I motioned for him to stop. The Marshal would have to pretend to be a slave again, submissive. Small and young as I was, I should still be the white person in charge. This stranger had to be led to believe that, or he might send for more soldiers. It seemed unlikely that he was here on his own.

Romulus got the message at once. He seemed to shrink to half his size and stared at the ground. It broke my heart to see him do it, but knowing that it was just an act reassured me. I did my part by puffing up as if I bossed around giant Negroes every day. I’d seen others do it in Maryland. Though it left a bad taste in my mouth, I was stuck until we could get rid of this fellow.
At least the Stone’s still warm. That’s a good sign.

Tyrell eased around the side of the rock pile as if he had not a care in the world. Now that we weren’t staring into the sun we could see him clearly. Tall and lean, but not scrawny, he wore a dusty Confederate uniform. The coat was short, trimmed in yellow, and had three bars on its high collar. Thigh-high black boots with silver spurs clung to his long legs. At one time the kit must’ve cost a pretty penny. You could’ve said the same about its owner. He carried himself with the same haughty air that Booth did. In fact, he might’ve been the actor’s kin, seeing as how he had a similar dark moustache and handsome profile. His face looked longer and sharper, though. More fox-like, with a clean white scar along the left jaw line. Brown as fine chocolate, his eyes gave the unsettling impression that they could both read your mind and see your underclothes.

“Now, then,” he said, slapping rock dust from his clothes while keeping the gigantic pistol trained on us, “you have the advantage of me. I’ve told you my name but I don’t know yours.” His voice betrayed some fine schooling, maybe in Europa. I wondered what had made him join the army. Some fool lust for excitement, I imagined, like most of them.

“Mary Williams,” I answered, picking the name of one of my school friends. Giving this fellow my real name didn’t strike me as sensible. I had no reason to believe he was a Merchantry man, but better safe than sorry at this point. With a nod toward Romulus I added, “This here’s Tom.”

Tyrell leaned back against the rock as if he was safe in his own home. “Well, Miss Williams, I can’t help but wonder why someone of your tender years would be between the lines. Do you live hereabouts?”