Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) (30 page)

That’s layin’ it on with a trowel
. But my admirer ate it all up, so I guess my acting still measured up to Eddie’s standards. In fact, Prince Charming here looked like he wanted to eat
me
up. I half-expected to hear myself say, ‘Why, Grandma, what big teeth you have!’
Careful, kiddo. Your head’s swimmin’ as it is.

“You expressed a desire for a lemonade, ma’am. Do you still wish it? I’d be more than happy to---”

I waved him off. “A lemonade! Oh, flighty old me! I couldn’t bear to indulge in something so selfish with those guns roaring at our men. Dear me, no!” I touched his sleeve with two delicate fingers and looked at him sideways. “However, if you would be so kind as to direct me toward Nine Mile Road, I will gladly sing the praises of your gallantry till they echo from the clouds above.” I’d heard that line in some dreadful touring production only a month ago. It’d made me roll my eyes and gag then, but it seemed appropriate now. My tummy lurched.
And if you don’t get away from this fellow in a heartbeat you’re gonna roll your eyes and gag all over his expensive imported boots.

“Anything for you, ma’am.” In three brief efficient sentences he laid out my route.
Ah, a lawyer, then.
I gushed as my new character required, thanking him as if he’d just given me a new house, and bid him a fond good-day. No sooner had he lifted his hat and headed off down the street than I stepped around the corner of the shop and upchucked whiskey into the alley.

“Hey!” Jasper whined, “I wasn’t done with that.”

“Yes, you were, bucko,” I whispered, wiping my mouth on my sleeve.
Adults drink this stuff? On purpose? They actually pay good money for it?
With that kind of judgment small wonder they’d all blundered into this horrible war. “And for the record, that tasted worse than the tobacco.”

“Been on this earth twelve years and you don’t know how to live,” he clucked.

“I want to keep livin’, that’s the thing. Maybe even see age thirteen or fourteen. And where did you ever get the idea that children should drink whiskey, anyhow?”

“Well, if they’d have given me a grown-up I’d have taken her. Rearin’ you is no picnic, believe me.”

“Rearin’ me? We’re the same age, ain’t we? Technically.”

He tried to speak in a ghostly old-man-in-the-mountain voice. “I’ll have you know that I am as ancient as the Seven Seas and as venerable as the---”

“Oh, shush! You may have been in stuck in that sword forever, but you don’t know beans about real life. If you did you wouldn’t be puttin’ me through these foul experiences so you can see and feel. Don’t come at me with that high-and-mighty tone.”

“Hoo! Ain’t we full of ourselves now that we look all mature.”

I groaned, dizzy and sick. “All I’m full of is alcohol.” Looking around, I could see that no one took much notice of me. Good so far, as long as I didn’t attract attention by any drunken foolishness. “We need to get goin’. Find Romulus. A brisk long walk should help clear this poison out of my system.”

“Poison!” Jasper sounded like he thought I’d gone loco. “How can anything that creates such exquisite sensations be called poison? Ah, the aroma!”

“Smells like turpentine.”

“The delicate flavor!”

“Tastes like cough medicine.”

“The silky mouth feel!”

“Burns like Prussic acid.”

“The dreamy impression of floatin’ on air!”

“The miserable impression of my snoot in the mud if you don’t quit goin’ on about it. Help me concentrate until the wooziness passes. You’re sure this glamour will last till we get out to the lines and talk to General Lee? It won’t fade because of the whiskey?”

“No, you should be fine. It’s not time-limited like the shape-shift. It depends on your energy reserves, which you have plenty of at the moment. Whee!”

At least somebody’s happy about my first and last drink. Twelve years old and a tragic victim of demon rum already. Ick
.

“You’re welcome,” I thought to him in a surly manner. I crept along the crowded street with mincing steps. People stood in clumps, trying to analyze rumors about the battle and make those agree with the sounds of firing that we could all hear from the east. The artillery booming had been joined by massed musketry, which resembled someone tearing a canvas sheet at this distance. I hoped with all my heart that Romulus hadn’t been trapped in the middle of it all.

Following my admirer’s careful instructions, and stopping once more to fertilize an alley, I made it across Richmond without getting too lost. Everybody I met beamed and said hello. The disguise worked like a charm (an appropriate figure of speech, considering). I suspected Jasper of having added some passion glamour to it, making folks see me as their best friend or favorite relative, but he said no. I’d just overdone the attractiveness of my false image when I’d engaged the spell. A common problem with beginners.

“Truth to tell, this glamour may be worse than stayin’ as yourself,” he nagged. “Nobody pays any never-mind to kids, especially grimy ones on side streets. But now you’re strollin’ down a main avenue of the capital of the Confederate States of America, lookin’ like every man’s notion of a plantation princess and givin’ out signals like a queen bee in heat. Stop grinnin’ at everybody!”

Sure enough, I held a perpetual smile that I’d been sharing with all and sundry. My face ached from flashing my new gorgeous teeth, like I led a grand illumination on a national holiday. I forced my face into a more neutral pose. “I can’t help it. Must be the novelty of the whole thing. Most of the time nobody pays me the slightest attention.”

“That’s ‘cause you dress like a plow hand.”

“Hey!”

“Uncle Jasper calls ‘em as he sees ‘em.”

“This is practical. I work backstage a lot.’

“Whatever you say. All I know is that your boyfriend wears a dress more than you do.”

“Boyfriend? Eddie is not my---!” That brought me up short.
This’ll bear thinkin’ about, I suppose. But not now.
“Dresses are uncomfortable, itchy things. They trip you up with all of their petticoats and skirts. Hoops are ridiculous and corsets are a crime. Only men could’ve invented it all.”

“That’s just the liquor talkin’. I think, deep-down, you love to get all frilly.”

“This from a dumb old boy. What do you know, Mr. ‘ancient as the Seven Seas’?”

He sighed. “Maybe nothin’…yet. But one of these days you’ll need a magick favor and then I’ll get to romp through your brain’s attic. I can hardly wait.”

That made whiskey and cigars sound like a church picnic. Time to change the subject. “Um…This glamour will hold no matter what, right? Even if somebody touches me? Shakes my hand, or kisses it? They like to do that down here.”

“The vizard is solid, don’t you worry. I’m a trained professional. Can’t you still feel it on you?”

I focused my foggy senses on my outsides. Sure enough, the tightness on my skin, like what you’d get from a real long scrub with too-strong soap, still pinched me. A sort of buzz, different than the whiskey thrill, hummed through my bones. It felt like the aftershock of a close lightning strike. Beneath it all lay the faint tang of brimstone and lilies that always hit my nose when Jasper did something special.

“Yep, I feel it, all right. I just hope it works on General Lee.”

“It should, unless he’s even more of a paragon of virtue than they say he is. Why do you need to see him, anyway? The passes are probably bein’ handled by some major workin’ for the Provost-Marshal.”

Keeping my face frozen into a widow’s mask, I worked on ignoring all the people I passed. We’d been walking for nigh on an hour and not much of Richmond proper was left. Soon we’d be out of town and into the danger zone. “Because I don’t want to waste time arguin’ with a lackey if it turns out he wants to be troublesome. Better to go straight to the top and get a signed order nobody can challenge. We can’t afford to risk lettin’ Romulus get caught in Army red tape. The longer he lingers in some trench the more danger he’s in.” I touched my imaginary dress where the Stone lay hidden. “And while I’m there, I want to see if my Stone goes cold. Find out just how high up the Merchantry mages go in this war.”

“Makes sense, exceptin’ that your general’s up in the thick of the action right now, judgin’ by the noise.”

He had a point. Now we stood twice as close to the point of contact as before. The din of cannon and muskets hit me like an angry slap in the face. Granted, my hearing made it much louder than it was, but still I felt it rather than heard it. It no longer sounded so much like thunder as it did standing inside of a giant steamship engine going over a waterfall.

“Not much we can do about that now,” I told him. “Just keep goin’ and try to make somethin’ happen. If we throw up our hands and sit, hopin’ for a miracle…”

“Disappointment is likely to ensue,” Jasper muttered, finishing my thought. We were starting to sound like an old married couple.

Richmond lay behind us. Ahead Nine Mile Road, a narrow dirt path starting to go a little bit muddy with the light rain, ran over rolling fields into a line of trees. Somewhere beyond them and to our right raged the fighting, near the Williamsburg Road. A few houses, some shacks and a handful of nicer, more substantial dwellings, sat scattered along our way. None looked to be occupied by their owners. Lots of the front yards were full of officers on horseback, consulting maps or peering through spyglasses. One property had been turned into a hasty storage depot for ammunition boxes and such. I saw no civilians at all. Everybody’d skedaddled when the guns had started, if not before.

We kept on going. After a few more minutes we came upon Battery Number Five that the plump soldier had mentioned. It looked out to the east on a vast field of stumps, where a small forest had been cleared to make a good field of fire, as well as to build the bastion itself. The Rebs had made it of earth reinforced with logs. Gabions, giant wicker baskets filled with dirt, lined the outside wall to absorb shells. Shaped like a star, the fort squatted low, over fifty yards across. Each point of the star could reinforce another, so that an enemy reaching, or even breaching, a wall would take crossfire from other areas of the bastion. Lee’s troops had porcupined it with cannon, threatening the north, east, and south. A couple hundred men manned the guns, ready to deal death to any attacker. They were supported by at least one regiment of infantry, standing alert with shiny bayonets fixed on their muskets. I’d read about this type of defense in
Harper’s Weekly
not too long before. Trying to force your way into Richmond along this stretch of road would make for a bad and bloody day.

I resisted the temptation to drive their commander crazy by waving and giggling at them all with my saucy glamour.
Best to keep your head down, kiddo, and not draw attention till you have to.
Maintaining my pace, I plodded down the road, expecting at any moment to be challenged by somebody from the fort or a cavalry patrol. Nobody did so. I guessed that the bastion’s defenders had their own worries and left that sort of thing up to the scouts. Passing the fort with a sigh of relief, I checked on how my real self was doing. Most of the wooziness from Jasper’s vile whiskey had gone. My feet didn’t stumble or slide, nor did my stomach heave.
That’s good. Need a clear head here directly, I expect.
But now I felt so thirsty that my tongue seemed to swell up. Guzzling the last of the water from my canteen, which I’d poured into my tin cup so that it would look less suspicious, me dressed so fine and civilian-like, I felt a lot better. Except for the fierce headache that had just started, I gave myself reason to hope that I might survive my youthful brush with intemperance.

“So far, so good,” I said to Jasper, eyeing the road in front of me. Stumbling into a hole in my weakened condition wouldn’t be good. The fort lay a few hundred yards behind us. Somewhere near ought to be the Dabbs house, if that Provost sergeant’s information was to be trusted. He’d been accurate enough about the battery.

“Good for you, maybe,” Jasper moped. “The whiskey’s all gone and I have a headache.”

“What do you mean
you
have a headache? I’m the one with the hangover. You’re a disembodied spirit moochin’ off my intake.”

“Oh, don’t I wish that was true.” He sounded genuinely miserable. “Seems when the rules changed my energy got even more mingled with yours than before. Believe me, right now I feel your pain.”

I tried to conceal my delight from him, not sure if that was even possible now. “Honest? You ain’t just joshin’?”

“Do I sound like I’m joshin’?” What he sounded like was a kid with the influenza.

“Hard to tell with you, boyo.” I made a nasty spike out of the cup, grit my teeth, and jabbed a little finger onto it.

“Ow!” he yowled. “What’re you doin’?”

Sucking on my finger, I let out a muffled laugh. “Just checkin’ on your veracity.”

“Well, check it some other way. Don’t have to poke me full o’ holes. Darn!”

“You know, to be strictly accurate, you just stabbed yourself.”

He let out a growl. “Go ahead. Have your fun. Your next favor’s gonna be a doozy.”

“Good luck comin’ up with somethin’ worse than the first two. If I understand you right, you’ll feel every bit of it right along with me.”

“That may be, but my evil creative imagination can dream up things that’ll gratify me but horrify you.”

His tone of voice made him sound like one of those stage villains out to have his way with the ingénue. I didn’t much care for it, but right then I had bigger worries, like the butternut-clad soldier standing in front of me with his hand raised. Stopping as ordered, I stood as sweet and pretty as I could manage.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” he drawled. “I’m ‘fraid you can’t go any further.”

Pouting, I stuck my hip out and put a hand on it. “Can’t I?”

“General Lee’s strict orders. No civilians in the battle zone.”