Antioch

***

  Andalynn was washing dishes in a tub behind the Cauldron, scrubbing them in the suds with a big bristle-brush. Thirty-five years before, when she was eighteen, she worked as a waitress for a woman named Mont’lemayor, also called Money-May. Money-May kept busy around the restaurant’s kitchen, helping with the dishes and floors despite being the one in charge, and often said, if you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean. Andalynn respected that message: if work needs to be done, don’t wait for someone else to do it - do it.

  At that time on any other day, she would have been training with Michael. But, since he started attending services, she had Sunday mornings to herself. So, there she was, proudly washing dishes like Mont’lemayor. Shortly after service let out, she heard some children playing around the corner. They sang a song that sounded like something to skip rope to:

  Churning in the morning

  Up before the sun

  *clap- clap*

  Sister Sophie’s courting

  So she’s never done

  *clap-clap*

  She’ll be picking berries

  A basket of the black

  *clap-clap*

  Butter churned and ready

  Flour in the sack

  *clap-clap*

  The plunger made her blister

  The pie turned out to burn

  *clap-clap*

  Sophie said to sister

  I hate that butter churn!

  *clap-clap*

  Then one of them started to wail as though mortally wounded and the others fell silent. Andalynn assumed it was over nothing but went around anyway, just to be sure. A tearful little girl sat on the Cauldron’s doorstep surrounded by her friends. She’d stubbed her big toe on the cobblestones while running around barefoot. The tip of it hung open in a bloody flap.

  Andalynn said, “You have injured yourself. Do you need assistance?”

  They hushed and stared.

  Though the sailors had been in Antioch for a year, they were still mysterious strangers to the town’s children, who’d spent much of that time carefully hidden away indoors by their parents. The sailors weren’t just foreign to the children, they were alien. Andalynn’s blonde hair and copper skin made her unlike anyone else in the world. The scars and the black scarf made her look dangerous. And, she wore pants. A few whispers passed through the group that she was the one who’d joined the church.

  The girl with the toe was only six years old and too shy to answer. Andalynn sat next to her and said, “May I offer you hospital?” That was the way Michael would have said it.

  The girl nodded.

  Andalynn craned over the injury, checking it for grit, careful not to touch it yet. Then she put an arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Lean into me. I do not want you to fall.” The girl did. Andalynn patted her knee. “Put your foot up here where I can reach it.”

  The girl was frightened. “Don’t touch it! It’ll hurt if you touch it!”

  “Yes, it will. But, not much and not for long. You do not want to lose that chunk of toe, do you?”

  The girl reluctantly did as she was told and when asked if ready, nodded again, grimacing. Andalynn held her close with one hand and pressed the toe back together with the other. The girl took in a hiss and then suddenly fell asleep in Andalynn’s arms. A shimmering line of gold sewed the toe back together under the shadow of Andalynn’s hand. The other children gave appreciative oohs and aahs.

  It would be about a minute before the girl could wake up. Andalynn held her rather than leave her on the ground. A boy sat down next to them and said, “My mom always says to wear shoes on the cobblestones.”

  Andalynn smiled at him. “Your mother gives excellent advice.”

  Others spoke their minds as well:

  “My ma says to eat peas.”

  “Mine says to stay away from sailors!”

  “That’s dumb!”

  Andalynn laughed and talked small with them, which for her was something of a challenge. When the girl woke up, her friends told her what had happened and she said, “Thank you, miss.”

  “You are welcome.” As Andalynn said it, she felt a sudden urge to cry. She controlled it expertly with her path, like closing a curtain over the stage, but the thoughts behind that feeling remained; she was a healer. She brought comfort to those around her. She would never represent the System again.

  The System was gone forever.

  Andalynn expected the boys and girls to run off and continue their game but they did not. They stayed, asking questions and sharing random, embarrassing facts about their parents. Andalynn was entertained to be their entertainment. It wasn’t long before it had been the most time she’d spent with children since having been one herself. She would have spent longer.

  When Michael came looking for her, they all smiled up at him, said hellos and waved, Andalynn in a copy of their innocence, like a class and a teacher welcoming a visitor to school. Michael acknowledged all of that through a dark concern over another matter and cut the greetings short. “I’ve been waiting for you at the church. We need to speak.”

  Andalynn stood. “Is something wrong?”

  Michael said, “Yes,” and started walking.

  She followed him, leaving the children behind. “What is it?”

  “Over the last three days this has been weighing on me more and more. That’s two of them now, Thomas and Daniel. I’ve been thinking about Samuel and Joseph in Tabor.”

  “Do you believe one of them will come looking for a book?”

  “That would be a great relief, but we can’t afford to wait for it.”

  “What do you mean? You want to go there?”

  “No. I want you to go there.”

  Andalynn paused. He kept a brisk pace toward the graveyard. She caught up with him again and said, “Why?”

  “To find out what has happened there, of course…” There was something else too.

  “Is that really necessary? I am almost ready to take on a student. Our plan was to focus on teaching.”

  “I know. This is more important right now. Come, I’ve gathered a council. I hadn’t expected you to put off training all day to play with children. We’ve been waiting for you. Better to discuss the rest of this with them, in private.”

  When they entered the church, Andalynn saw that the “council” was only Biggs, Harold, Captain and Ditch. They sat at the round table with a map spread out in the center. There was no humor among them. She took a seat there as well.

  Michael closed the door. “We are not to repeat what we discuss in this meeting. Agreed?” The sailors nodded apprehensively. Harold already knew. Michael sat with them and said, “When the Circle split apart, we hadn’t thought the plague would end like this. We anticipated lifetimes of its misery. Now that we’re receiving visits from the others, we need to find out for sure if Abraham is in Tabor.”

  Captain said, “Why would he be?”

  Michael explained. “The shortest path to Salem runs through there. Ever since that horse came back, I’ve been afraid something happened between Samuel and Abraham. Abraham undoubtedly still guards the secrets the rest of us decided to share. He won’t hesitate to kill over that. If those two fought and Abraham won, he might have chosen to stay in Tabor. As strange as it sounds, he may have felt obligated to carry on Samuel’s task in his stead.”

  “Why not just leave him alone then?”

  “Tabor is only four days away. If the plague has truly ended, he might find some reason to come here, like the others have. We can’t wait for that to happen and be taken by surprise.”

  Captain said, “Surely we’d be able to reason with him if he did. It’s a different world than it was...” But as he said it, he thought of Ezekiel’s warnings about the Circle, the ones that had originally made him so leery of Michael.

  Michael was incredulous. “If Abraham is in Tabor, he killed Samuel and left all of Salem to die! You don’t know him like I do. I nearly fought with him myself the day he left. Some
times, now, I regret not having killed him then, when I had the chance. No. We have to strike first.”

  The sailors rubbed their faces and shifted.

  Andalynn said, “You want to assassinate Abraham?”

  “As ugly a word as it is, yes.”

  The table fell silent. The sailors looked around at each other as if to make sure they’d all heard the same thing.

  Captain said, “If you do it, you might as well be doing the same for that entire town. The bauran may seem to be gone, but who’s to say some spore of theirs isn’t hiding under a leaf somewhere, ready to start it all over again?”

  Michael said, “Better there than here.”

  Andalynn was disgusted. “We are not assassins! How could you think we would agree to this?” There was hesitation behind her words. How could anyone think I would not?

  Michael said, “I appreciate your reluctance, but we would be foolish to think of Abraham as anything other than a devil now. If he comes here, he’ll try to kill me. He’ll try to kill Andalynn. He’ll destroy everything we hope to accomplish and any security our people now have against the smoke, solely to uphold his vows. Truthfully, he would be much, much worse than a bauran loose in the city.”

  Biggs didn’t like the idea of someone coming to kill his wife. He felt he could put a bullet in a man for that and walk away from it.

  Ditch had almost died three weeks before; on his knees there in front of the stable, he’d unexpectedly welcomed it. Facing death had altered his perspective on life. He said, “If the guy’s such bad news, let’s just take him out.”

  Andalynn covered her face and groaned, wanting nothing to do with it. She wanted to be back on the doorstep with those little boys and girls or doing the dishes or doing anything other than talking about an execution. “No!”

  Captain had seen more death and destruction than any of them. He believed himself, through his inventions, to have caused more suffering than any single person in the history of the world. He hated war. But, for every one he’d taken part or profit in, he’d been a recluse on the outside of society. Antioch had become dear to him as a home and Michael was convincing him it was threatened.

  Harold said, “Abraham isn’t the only reason to go. Commander Cumberland was on his way to Tabor with fifty King’s Men at the same time my troop was coming here. I mean to find out what’s become of them. Cumberland, the Circle and the bauran were all in the same place at the same time. Also, Michael’s told me a band of outlaws was already there causing trouble. Anything could have happened.”

  Michael nodded. “The Carter-Miller Gang. I can’t imagine a few outlaws being of much consequence to those others, though. There’s no need to worry about them.”

  Ditch had an unsettling thought and leaned over to find Tabor on the map. “This place is four days out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Might be nothin’ but a mess a’ bauran there now, man. Back on the boat, if things got nuts, we’d just put the water ‘tween them and us, you know? But if we get too many a’ them little skinny ones out in the open like that, we’re gonna be dead, no escape. We can’t run four days straight. They can.”

  Michael hadn’t considered that.

  Captain slapped the table. He was coming in. “You won’t need to run. You’ll have more than milk and rifles on your side this time. Aye, the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to support an expedition. We’ll learn a lot from it. And, we’ve got a lot worth fighting for here.”

  The others nodded. Then all of them looked at Andalynn.

  Michael said, “Hopefully Samuel and Joseph are fine and only missing a horse. Hopefully, the plague has run its course. But I’ll not rely on hopes or prayers where Abraham is concerned. If you refuse, I’ll go myself.”

  Andalynn closed off what she felt about that. “I do not refuse.”

  Biggs said, “Oughtta try gettin’ the line back together for sump’n like this.”

  Ditch said, “Right on, man.”

  Harold said, “I’m coming with you. Count on that.”

  Captain said, “Well, I’m not one to get in a dinghy, but I’ve other ways to lend a hand. I’ll just need a few days to make them happen.”

  Michael said, “It’s decided then. But all other concerns aside, we must be agreed on this - if you see him, use your Springstien BOSS. Kill him on sight.” He looked around for arguments. Though it was hard for the others to hear it like that, they agreed.

  Michael was satisfied. “It shouldn’t take much. He’s just an old man when he’s not channeling. That being said, it would be unwise to go within ten feet of him. Now, you can take a wagon along this route here…”

  He pointed out the way. They gathered around and spent the rest of that day plotting the death of Abraham.

  ***

  Captain had a lab behind the candle shop. It contained a jungle of local plant life that he’d collected for study. Shoots, creepers and cuttings flowed from pots and troughs all around the work benches and hung from the ceiling. He brought a few precision machine tools off the Grace, lathes and the like, capable of threading, boring and rifling metal. They hid among the leaves and the vines like miniature silver cities in a wilderness.

  Tendrils of smoke curled up from his pipe through the greenery. It was the middle of the night and he was cleaning a homemade grenade launcher by candlelight, the exploder. Its revolving, six-shot chamber whirred and clicked easily. It was a product of his terrible genius, more advanced than anything he’d contributed to warfare in the old world. Each round of its ammunition was a cylinder the size of two hen’s eggs end to end. It could deliver its payload from a thousand yards.

  Captain looked through the barrel’s hollow, examining the way for imperfections, and said to himself with a morose sort of resignation, “It’s not a war. It’s only a murder.”

  ***

  In the dark before sunrise, Andalynn stood looking out of her bedroom window. She’d seen movement in the tree outside. Biggs woke up and watched her from their bed. Her naked shoulders looked strong in the moonlit blue.

  “You alright?”

  “No. I am not.” She was holding a sword.

  Before Daniel or Thomas came, Michael asked Jacob to make that sword, as he would have done for any other acolyte. It was only a token of the Circle’s history, however, in honor of both their new imperatives and of Andalynn’s accomplishments. She did not know anything about swordplay and was not inclined to learn.

  It was slimmer and a few inches shorter than Michael’s, but still as heavy as a sledgehammer. Jacob considered it to be a feminine caligan. Traditionally, those weapons had four symbols etched into the blade’s fuller, the script for a paladin’s vows: Silence, Obedience, Poverty and Chastity. Andalynn had often poked fun at those promises. When Michael and Jacob presented her the sword, they pointed out three different symbols etched into it, the script for Knowledge, Healing and Peace.

  She thought it was a beautiful sentiment and that Jacob’s craftsmanship was that of an artist. Michael said he’d chosen the symbol for Peace to represent her path, because that is what he believed it to be. It had been touching at the time.

  Biggs sat up in bed. “Could just let him go. Was his idea in the first place.”

  “No. He was right in bringing this to me. Michael’s family is here. Mine is on its way to Tabor today. I have no choice in the matter.”

  Biggs got out of the covers, went over and put a warm arm around her. Her skin was cold. He didn’t know how long she’d been standing there. He said, “This is sump’n’s gotta get done. We’ll just get it done n’ then come on home, alright?”

  She nodded, lost in thought.

  “I love you, you know.”

  “I love you too.”

  ***

  Ditch did his pushups on the rug as the sun came up. It was the same room he’d been in for a year but now he had it all to himself. The roommate had moved out.

  His workouts didn’t last half as long as they use
d to, even less if he tried to sing. He kept it to himself but it felt like he had a hole in his tank. There were two short, thin scars, one on each side of his body, where Daniel had skewered him.

  Ditch shaved, put on his leather jacket and went downstairs to have a bad breakfast, trying not to think about all the things he should have done differently. You can’t win a fight if you don’t throw a punch, you know? Yeah, but what if you shouldn’t a’ been in the fight in the first place, dummy?

  Then he was out the double doors, ready to go. The old laundress across the way had just started to work. She smiled at him and waved. “Good morning, Ditch! What is up?”

  ***

  At ten after nine, Welles kissed his wife goodbye. He’d married a local girl and was in her family’s employ. They had a baby on the way.

  Welles had outright refused to take part in the mission at first. But after giving it more thought, he decided that by going they were protecting their new homes and their new families. He didn’t know that he could live with himself if he stayed. He headed toward the east gate with a duffel bag, his mask and his rifle.

  30 The Massacre at Sawmill Proper

  Harold said, “I’ll just have to see one in action before I’ll be convinced, that’s all. I can’t imagine one of those tubes being more effective than a stout king’s-issue crossbow. Mine was on my horse or I’d show you.”

  He was speaking to a wagonload of sailors armed with rifles and a grenade launcher. Biggs and Ditch shared a look. Welles clicked his tongue at their cows from the driver’s seat. Andalynn and the other two kept to themselves.

  Since no one else felt like talking, Harold closed his visor and sulked in his armor, the full suit of plate. “I’m only trying to make conversation... This is going to be a long trip.” His speech was muffled some in his helm.

  Ditch felt sorry for him, Harold being an outsider among them, so he said, “Who does this guy remind you of?” The sailors chuckled. The muffling helmet and the general, unwanted chattiness were a little similar to Drake. Ditch decided to cut him a break and talk shop. “Look, man, some old-timey bow shot aint nothin’ next to a BOSS.”

  Harold lifted his visor. “Old-timey? I assure you, the king’s-issue is state of the art.”