03 Graveyard Dust

CONFESSES HEINOUS CRIME.

"What was it?" He made a mental note to buy serious gris-gris from Mamzelle, if she hadn't already put a fix on Burton Blodgett. "In the food, I mean?"

"The world's full of things it could have been." Marie Laveau set his boots down in front of him.

The room, he saw, had been cleared and cleaned. It smelled of burned herbs now, and soap.

"Maybe two or three together. Fricasee, they call it in Haiti, or akee. It was one of those they brought over from Africa. It takes time to act, so there'd be none to point and say, 'This man was poisoned.' They'd only say it was the cholera, and run away." She brought a cup over from the desk, and held it out to him. Sweetness and salt, soothing as it went down. Some of the strangeness seemed to go out of the room, as if a necessary ballast had been added to his brain.

"If I'd eaten as much of the stuff as you had, I'd probably have been dead when you got back," said Hannibal in his thread of a voice. "I still don't think I'll ever be able to look at beans and rice again, which is a pity, since some weeks that's all I live on. 'nocrcov Eyw xpEi,av ovx?xw', and I suppose Socrates ought to know. Are you sure our friend didn't put a hex on Bella's room as well as yours?"

"Rose," said Mamzelle, as January dug under the mattress for the pistols and the powder flasks he'd taken from the corpse of Killdevil Ned. While he was checking the loads he heard her go on,

"If you can't find this Shaw at the Cabildo, go to M'sieu Tremouille's house..." January's hands shook as he thrust pistols and flasks through his belt, slung the spares around his neck on their long piratical ribbons.

". a child been kidnapped, held at Dr. Yellowjack's house on the bayou. Tell him Yellowjack will kill the boy..."

A skinning-knife in his boot and another in his belt. He'd be hanged, he reflected bitterly, if he was seen with this much weaponry on him. He could hear Cut-Arm's laughter now.

"Tremouille's a smart man, and he's no coward." Looking around, January saw that Mamzelle Marie had kilted her bright skirt high, as she had the previous after noon to trek through the cipriere. "If this Shaw isn't there, Tremouille's the best we can do."

If Shaw wasn't there, thought January, the chances that any of the other Guardsmen would be bright enough-or have sufficient woodcraft-to rescue Gabriel before the wangateur killed him were slim.

The voodooienne turned back from the door as Rose's shoe heels clattered away down the steps.

Her long coppery fingers curled around the crucifix at her breast. "Virgin Mary, Mother of God," she said softly, "take us there safely." Then she snapped her fingers and made a sign with her hands, and spit into the corner. "Papa Legba, who has the keys to all doors, we need your help, too."