Also thank Adam for his boundless friendship and many indulgences, and remind him of the promise he made to me.
Yours, Julian Comstock (never really a Conqueror) “Do you know what he means, Adam?”
“I think I understand it,” I said in a small voice.
“That’s more than I do!
Damn Julian! It’s just like him to throw a shoe into the works! But about the promise he mentions—”
“It’s nothing much.”
“Do you care to tell me about it?”
“It’s only an errand. Escort Calyxa to the Goldwing, and I’ll join you there.”
Calyxa made some objection to this, but I was adamant, and she knew me well enough to hear the steel in my voice, and she yielded to it, though not gracefully. I kissed her and told her to kiss Flaxie on my behalf. I would have said more, but I didn’t want to increase her anxiety.
“Only an errand,” Sam repeated, once Calyxa was settled in the carriage.
“It won’t keep me long.”
“It had better not. They say the fire is spreading quickly—you can smell the smoke on the wind even here. If the docks are threatened we sail at once, with you or without you.”
“I understand.”
“I hope so. I might have lost Julian—I can’t do anything about that—but I don’t want to lose you as well.”
His statement made me feel very emotional, and I had to turn my head away so as not to embarrass myself. Sam took my hand in his good right hand and gave it a sturdy shake. Then he followed Calyxa into the carriage; and when I turned back they were gone.
All the crowd had gone away before them. Except for a few Republican Guards still keeping a vigil, the street was nearly empty. Only a single horse cart remained at the curb. It bore the insigne of the Executive Branch.
Lymon Pugh was holding the reins. “Drive you somewhere, Adam Hazzard?” he asked.
* * *
A few trucks and carriages passed us as we rode up Broadway, all of them headed away from the burning Egyptian quarter. A brisk wind blew steadily along the empty sidewalks, lofting up loose pages from the special edition of the Spark and inconveniencing beggars in the darkened alleys where they slept.
Sam’s parting words had touched me, and I have to admit that Julian’s unexpected letter caused some turmoil as well. I supposed he had his reasons for doing as he did. Or at least imagined he had good reasons. But it was hurtful that he hadn’t lingered long enough to say goodbye face-to-face. We had survived so many harrowing turns together, that I thought I was owed at least a handshake.
But Julian had not been himself lately—far from it—and I tried to excuse him on those grounds.
“He was probably just in a big hurry,” Lymon Pugh said, divining something of my thoughts.
“You saw the note?”
“I carried it to Sam myself.”
“How did Julian seem when he passed it to you?”
“Can’t say. It was handed out from behind that curtained box of his. All I saw was a gloved hand, and all I heard was his voice, which said, ‘See that this gets to Sam Godwin.’ Well, I did. If I unfolded it on the way, and had a quick read of it, I guess that’s your fault.”
“My fault!”
“For teaching me my letters, I mean.”
Perhaps it was true, as the Eupatridians believed, that the skill of reading shouldn’t be too widely distributed, if this was the general result. But I passed over his indictment without comment. “What do you make of it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. It’s all above my station.”
“But you said he might be in a hurry.”
“Perhaps because of Deacon Hollingshead.”
“What about Deacon Hollingshead?”
“Rumor among the Guard is that Hollingshead holds a personal grudge against Julian, and is hunting him all over the city, with a body of Ecclesiastical Police to help him.”
“I know the Deacon is hostile to Julian, but what do you mean by a personal grudge?”
“Well, because of his daughter.”
“The Deacon’s daughter? The one who famously shares intimacies with females of her own sex?”
“That’s more delicate than I’ve heard it put, but yes. The girl was an embarrassment to Hollingshead, and he locked her up in his fancy house in Colorado Springs to keep her out of trouble. But Deacon Hollingshead’s house was blown up during the trouble with the Army of the Californias. The Deacon was safe here in New York, of course. But he blames Julian for his daughter’s death, and means to take his revenge on Julian directly. A noose or a bullet, it don’t matter to the Deacon, as long as Julian dies.”
“How do you know these things?”
“No offense, Adam, but news that circulates in the Guard barracks don’t always reach the upper echelons. All of us that Julian hired to be Republican Guards are fresh from the Army of the Laurentians. Some of us have friends in the New York garrison. And talk goes back and forth.”
“You told Julian about this?”
“No, I never had an opportunity; but I think the rogue pastor Magnus Stepney might have said something. Stepney has contacts among the political agitators, who pay attention to questions like this.”
Or it might all be hearsay and exaggeration. I remembered how, back in Williams Ford, a head-cold among the Duncans or the Crowleys became the Red Plague by the time the grooms and stable-boys told the story. Still, that was unhappy news about Hollingshead’s daughter. I had always felt sympathy for the girl, though all I knew of the situation was what I had learned from Calyxa’s pointed verses at the Independence Day ball a year and a half gone.
“Any particular reason we’re heading back to the Palace?” Lymon Pugh asked, for that was the destination I had given him.
“A few things I want to pick up.”
“Then off to South France, I suppose, or somewhere foreign like that?”
“You can still come with us, Lymon—the offer stands. I’m not sure what your prospects are in Manhattan just now. You might have a hard time drawing your wages after tonight.”
“No, thank you. I mean to take my wages in the form of a breed horse from the Palace stables, and ride the animal west. If any horses remain, that is. The Republican Guards are fond of Julian, and remember him as Conqueror, but they can read the writing on the wall as well as the next man. Many of them have pulled out already. Probably some of the Presidential silverware has gone with them, though I name no names.”
We call people rats, who desert a sinking ship; but in some cases the rat has the wisdom of the situation. Lymon Pugh was correct about the looting and the reasons for it. Ordinarily the Republican Guard is a non-partisan group, and survives these flurries of Regime Change without much trouble simply by transferring its loyalty to the next man in the chair. But Julian had made the current Guard his own animal, and it would sink or swim along with his administration.
We came to the 59th Street Gate. Apparently some members of the local chapter of the Army of the Laurentians had heard about the sacking of the Palace, and felt they ought to be allowed to join in, since their northern comrades would be marching on Manhattan any day now. A group of these vultures had gathered at the Gate, and were clamoring for admittance and firing pistols into the air. Enough Guardsmen remained on the wall to act as warders, however, and they kept out the mob; and the mob retained enough respect for the Presidential Seal to allow us to pass through, though they did so grudgingly and with some shouted sarcasm.