sent white steam billowing into the misty dark. If some few of the gentlemen at the other tables looked askance at Hannibal for eating with a colored man, the lateness of the hour and the laxness of Carnival season kept them quiet about it. In any case, Hannibal was well enough known that few people commented on his behavior anymore.
Beyond the arcade's brick pillars dyed gold by lamplight, past the dark lift of the levee, the black chimneys of steamboats clustered like a fire-blasted forest in the dark, spiked crowns glowing saffron with the fire reflected within and glints of that feral light catching the gilded trim of flagstaffs and pilothouses. The thin fog tasted of ash, and drifting smuts had already left streaks on the two men's shirtfronts and cuffs. "Monsieur Janvier."
Augustus Mayerling appeared in the shadows of the arcade. He had removed his mask but wore the Elizabethan doublet of black-and-green leather he'd had on for Thursday night's ball. Despite his short-cropped hair and the four saber scars that marked the left side of his face and must, January reflected, make shaving a nightmare for him, the high-worked ruff and the odd glare of the cafe's lights gave his beaky features an equivocal cast, almost feminine in the iron gloom. "Hannibal, my friend. I had not looked to see you."
"What, and miss a duel?" As usual for this hour of the morning the fiddler looked as if he'd been pulled through a sieve, but his dark eyes sparkled with irony. "The single, solitary chance of an entire lifetime to see a Creole and an American actually taking potshots at each other? Heaven forfend." He raised the backs of his fingers to his forehead in the manner of a diva quailing before circumstances too awful to endure. "It's all a matter of timing," he explained and went back to the dregs of his coffee.
"When now Aurora, daughter of the dawn, With rosy luster purpled o'er the lawn...
"The very hour, my friends, when the sporting establishments in the Swamp customarily close their doors and disgorge the flatboat crews into the-er-I suppose I have to call it a street. They'll still be drunk, but not drunk enough yet to pass out, and they don't go back to work until sunrise. If I come along to the duel I only have to worry about one bullet."
"I like to see a man who is provident as well as talented." Mayerling nodded gravely, then held out a gloved hand to January. "Thank you again for agreeing to accompany us. It's a nuisance, and cuts into your rest -and mine, I might add-but they seem to think their manhood will fall off in the dirt if they are deprived of the chance at least to put their lives in danger to prove the veracity of their claims. You're familiar with their quarrel?"
"Only that it's the biggest shouting match since that last mayoral election when the editors of the Argus and the Courier got into that fistfight in the Cafe Hewlett," said Hannibal cheerfully.
"I gather Granger started out by accusing Bouille of deliberately voting against the proposed streetcar route of his LaFayette company in favor of another one that he says would favor the French population."
January finished the last scrap of beignet, and he and Hannibal followed the Prussian through the clutter of tables and patrons toward the street. "Bouille came back saying Granger was only angry because he, Bouille, hadn't accepted the bribes offered by the LaFayette and Pontchartrain railway, and from there they went on to accuse each other of cowardice, bastardy, enticing young girls to run away from convents in order to lead them to ruin, infamous personal habits, and accepting a slap in the face from the mayor without demanding retribution."
January tucked his music satchel under his arm and sprang lightly across the gutter, the weight of his black leather medical bag a weirdly familiar ballast in his hand.
"I am armed with more than complete steel," quoted Hannibal expansively. "The justice of my quarrel."
"My mother says she can't believe Bouille didn't accept whatever bribes Granger was handing out because Bouille's palm is greasier than a candlemaker's apron, but that Granger makes his money stealing cows in St. Charles Parish and selling them back to their owners, so what does he care about his silly streetcar line anyway? I'd forgotten," he added reminiscently, "how much I loved New Orleans politics."
The sword master gave him a quick grin. "Better than Balzac, no? I am a peaceful soul... no, it's true," he added, seeing January's eyebrows shoot up. "Fighting is either for joy, or for death-to push and test yourself against your friend, or to end the encounter as quickly as possible so that your enemy does not get up again, ever. This silliness..." He waved a dismissive hand, as they dodged through the early traffic of carts and drays and handbarrows in the flickering oil-lit darkness of Rue du Levee.
Mayerling's students were waiting for them around the corner on Rue Conde, clustered beside a chaise and a barouche. It was a smaller group than had formed his court at the quadroon ball, but the faces were much the same. The red Elizabethan costume was familiar and the rather sissified Uncas; a blue-and-yellow Ivanhoe and a corsair who looked as if he'd be more familiar with the interior of a jewelry shop than the deck of a pirate vessel. City Councilman Jean Bouille had eschewed his Renaissance trunk hose in favor of evening dress and a crimson domino. January wondered if this had something to do with uneasiness about the possible dignity of his corpse.
"Come to watch the show?" January asked, as he, Mayerling, and Bouille got into the chaise. He stowed his medical bag under his feet-the usual collection of cupping glasses, calomel, opium, and red pepper. At least, he thought, this would be a straightforward matter of wounds, bleeding, possibly broken bones. The four revelers piled into the barouche and dragged Hannibal in after them, all plying him in turn with their flasks, to be rewarded with an impassioned recitation of Byron's "Destruction of Sennacherib," as the vehicles pulled forward.
"They have come to witness justice being done against a perjured and impotent Kaintuck swine," declared Bouille, with comparative mildness and restraint, for him. "For me, I am glad of their presence. I would not put it past that infamous yellow hound to appear with a gang of like-minded bravos and ambush us, for he knows well he cannot prevail honestly in a man's combat."
Mayerling only raised his colorless brows.
Crowded close against him-the single seat of the two-wheeled chaise barely accommodated three people at the best of times, and only the Prussian's slightness made it possible for a man of January's size to fit-January said softly, "Young Peralta's taking it hard, isn't he? Mademoiselle Crozat's death."
The strange eyes cut to him, then away.
"It takes a lot to make a Creole absent himself from backing a friend's honor."
"The boy is a fool to mourn," said Mayerling, his voice cold. "The woman was evil, a poisonous succubus with a cashbox for a heart. Whoever he marries will have cause to thank the person who wielded that scarf."
January glanced in surprise at the ivory profile. "I didn't know you knew her." He remembered the way the Roman had lurked and lingered in the ballroom, the way masculine conversation stopped when she appeared, like a glittering idol of diamonds, in the ballroom doorway, the way all men had clustered around her.
Except, now that he thought back on it, Mayerling.
"Everyone in this city knows everyone," replied the sword master. "Trepagier was one of my students. Did you not know?" He returned his attention to the road.
The duel itself went as such things customarily did. The two carriages followed the Esplanade to the leaden, cypress-hung waters of Bayou St. John, and as dawn slowly bleached, the mists reached a patch of open ground on the Allard plantation, near the bayou's banks, overshadowed with oaks the girth of a horse's body.