Ganymede

Twelve

Josephine waited on pins and needles all day.

She fretted, pacing back and forth between her upstairs office in the Garden Court and the desk in the parlor where either Hazel Bushrod or Marylin Quantrill held down the business end of things during the quieter daylight hours. Contrary to popular belief, not all of their business was conducted in the evening. There were a thousand other small beliefs to which brothels ran contrary, but only the regular patrons of such a place had any idea what really went on.

Fenn Calais knew many secrets, but he kept them to himself, a fact for which even Josephine Early, a woman who detested most Texians — though fewer of them than before, it seemed — could give him a grudging ounce of credit.

“Miss Josephine, I was wondering if you could tell me when Miss Ruthie will be back on duty.” The Texian broached the question delicately. “I haven’t seen her around much, these last few days. And I miss her lovely face.”

“I’m quite sure that’s not all you miss,” Josephine said tartly. Her back was to the desk, and to Marylin and Fenn. She was holding the front curtain aside, peering out into the street, certain that any moment would bring word from the bayou boys that Ganymede was on the move — or that it’d be on the move momentarily.

Rather than taking offense, as he might’ve been within his rights, Fenn Calais chuckled and said, “Truer words were never spoken. I was just hoping she wasn’t sick, or nothing like that. Is she even … is she here?”

Josephine released the curtain, vaguely concerned by his query. He was openly fishing for information. It might be innocent, or it might not.

She forced a smile that was cool but not unkind. “I do apologize, Mr. Calais. I didn’t mean to be short with you. We’re all a bit on edge these days, with all the troops moving outside.” As she said this, another row of brown-clad marching Texians went by on the street outside, and a rolling-crawler brought up the rear — its puffing, churning, fume-spilling body making the whole house shake with its passing. “Ruthie has been busy with some personal business these last few days. She’ll be back before long.”

When the vehicle had finally gone, and the last of its rumbles gone with it, Calais said, “These are trying times, and don’t I know it.”

Perhaps he saw the involuntary flinch Josephine made to hear him say such a thing. As if any Texian knew anything about the trouble in this, her city, her home. The occupation had changed the city forever — altering the trade, the population, the economy. It had made her city unwilling host to a few thousand houseguests who never cleaned up after themselves, bolstered a government that stood against everything Josephine believed in, and behaved abominably with impunity. Her home had become a prison, one she loved too much to leave and hated too much to tolerate — not without fighting back.

Fenn noticed her silence. He continued. “I don’t mean to say it’s the same for me as it is for you. I’m only sad to see the state of the place, those stupid crawlers tearing up the curbs and rolling over the plants. Did you know,” he changed his tone, asking almost lightly, “that I’ve lived here since before the occupation?”

“I did not know that, Mr. Calais.”

“It’s true. When I was a younger fellow, and less of a fat one, I suppose … I landed the hand of a Garden District girl. And before you say it, if not before you think it — yes, that was very lucky for me.” He settled into the love seat’s corner, filling it up as if his body were made of liquid. He sighed. “I was an oilman’s boy, or that’s how it looked on paper. My daddy went bust after his well dried up.”

“But a Texas oilman’s son would be a good match for a Garden District lady,” Josephine said politely. The Garden District was a universe away from the Garden Court. The District was a neighborhood of lawns the size of city blocks, and houses as big as churches. It was home to the richest of the white people and virtually nobody else.

“It was rather like being a bastard of nobility. Not a penny to my name, but property in Texas I stood to inherit. Her family let me in, though if they’d looked at us more closely, I don’t think they’d have done so. Within a year of us being married, her daddy died in his sleep one night — God knows what from — and a year after that, her momma drank herself to death, leaving no one but the pair of us and all that stupid money.”

Something like venom made it into his voice. Josephine said, “Strange that you’d put it like that.”

“Money can’t buy happiness, isn’t that what they tell us? Money can’t save a woman when she’s taken in childbirth, or the baby either. No matter how much more you promise a doctor, if he can only save the child.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Mr. Calais. I didn’t know you’d ever had a family, much less that you’d lost one.”

“It was a long time ago. Nearly thirty years, can you believe it?” he asked, but the question was aimed inward, and he appeared to expect no response. “Left me alone with all that money, for all the good it’s done me. Except, I’ve found a comfortable place here — and thanks to all that stupid money, it’s a place I can afford to frequent with great … frequency.”

Marylin piped up from behind the desk. “Mr. Calais! We do enjoy having you, you know,” she said, embarrassing her employer but pleasing the Texian on the love seat. “I’m so sorry to hear about your family, and I’m glad you’re happy when you’re here.”

“When I’m here, and when I’m drinking.”

“The two states are not mutually incompatible,” Josephine murmured, gesturing with a look at the cabinet where the “public” alcohol was kept, for distribution to customers. Marylin took the hint, dabbed at her eyes, and rose to pour Calais another beverage. He held a glass in his hand, but it’d run dry.

Another round of Texian foot soldiers went stamping by, and Josephine moved the curtain again to look.

Fenn Calais grunted appreciatively as his glass was refilled, and after a swig, he informed them, “They’re leaving, or that’s how I heard it.”

She turned around quickly, the curtain edge still hanging from her hand. “What? Leaving? Leaving New Orleans?”

“Not all of them. Didn’t mean to get anybody’s hopes up. Most of those fellows, though — they’re the ones who came out when Texas went after the pirate bay. Now that they’ve taken it, they’re heading home.”

“Really?” Josephine asked. “They’re just … leaving it?”

“They’re sticking a small garrison there, just to hold the place down. But whatever they were looking for, I don’t suppose they found it.”

“I thought there was no such thing as small as far as Texians are concerned. Least of all when it comes to garrisons.”

“So take the word small with a grain of salt. I know I did. I’m only repeating what I heard, that’s all. Some of the soldiers are heading out, leaving the bay.”

Josephine closed the curtain again. “Do you think the pirates will take it back?”

“Eventually? I’m damn near sure of it,” said the old Texian. “If you want my opinion on the matter, I’d guess it’ll happen sooner rather than later.”

“Why is that?” she asked.

“Because the pirates want it more than Texas does. But like I said, that’s just my opinion.” He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a cigar, which he proceeded to cut and clean. Running it under his nose, he took a deep whiff of the rolled tobacco and smiled before pulling out a box of matches and striking one up.

Marylin smiled, too. That silly girl loved the smell of pipe or cigar tobacco. It made Josephine’s eyes itch, but considering how much money Fenn Calais had spent in the Garden Court over the years, it’d be daft to tell him to put it away, so she didn’t. Instead she resisted the urge to peek through the curtains any longer, for it would be suspicious — even to someone like Calais, who probably didn’t care.

Shortly after noon — perhaps half an hour later — Marylin announced herself with a delicate knock on the open office door.

Josephine jumped, for she’d once more been looking out a window — at the side street, this time. Watching the soldiers come and go. Watching the rolling-crawlers make their rounds, escorting the military men on their way through the too-narrow streets.

“Yes?” she asked eagerly. “What news?”

Marylin entered and shut the door softly behind herself. “No news, really.”

“Have you a message?”

“Nothing written, ma’am. The boy who did the running thought it’d be safer just to whisper.”

“Did Fenn Calais hear a word of it?”

“No, ma’am. He’s on the second floor with Delphine.”

“Then what’s this news, or this non-news?” Josephine demanded quietly.

“The Texians leaving town are making the scene too crowded, that’s the word from your brother. The bayou boys are holing up and lying low, with Ganymede inside the New Sarpy storage spot where they put it last night.”

“Goddamn.”

“It’s not so bad, ma’am. They got it there in one piece, and everybody’s safe, and nobody bothered them on the way. Everything is fine. They’re just going to wait for one night before they drop her into the river.”

“That’s cutting it awful close. The Valiant … it won’t give them another night to try.”

“I know, and they know it, too. But Deaderick said the Texians have been marching along the main road out of Metairie ever since dawn. Maybe they’ll be finished passing through by sundown, and maybe they won’t. Either way, the boys are staying put. It’ll be all right.”

“It might.” She sat down and squeezed at the arms of her chair, knotting and unknotting her fingers around the padded rests.

“What’s wrong, ma’am?”

“I was hoping for a word with Cly before the boys went all the way to water. When they stop by the wharf, and I join the poling crew for surveillance, I’d hoped they’d pause so I could speak with him.”

“Any special reason, ma’am?” Marylin asked with great and false innocence.

“Not the one you’re thinking. Cly’s a good man and our time together was fine, but that was a long time ago,” she inadvertently echoed Fenn Calais. “I want a word with him because he’s been in Seattle.”

“What’s Seattle got to do with anything?”

“It might have a whole lot to do with the zombis.”

“I don’t understand?…”

“Neither do I, dear. But I’m working on it, and it’s coming together. Cly knows something important, something he hasn’t told me. I don’t know if he’s keeping a secret, or if it just hasn’t come up yet. But I need to ask him some questions.”

“Does this have something to do with that Ranger who came by here last night?”

“Ranger Korman, yes. And Madame Laveau, too, because she’s the one who put the pair of us in touch.”

“It’s funny, ma’am, you working with a Ranger.”

“I’m not working with him. We have a thing in common, that’s all. We both want the zombis gone. It’d be madness to ignore him if he knows anything useful — and if he’s in a position to be helpful.”

“And you think he can help?” Marylin asked.

“Maybe. Texas isn’t real thrilled with him right now, and Austin might not listen to anything he has to say, but I guess we’ll find out. And Captain Cly might hold a piece to the puzzle, though I don’t think he knows it. It might be worth our time — once Ganymede is safely in Union hands — to put those two men’s heads together and see if they don’t crack some sparks.”

“That’s a violent way of putting it, ma’am. I suppose for now we’ll hope for the best.”

“No, we won’t,” Josephine said, rising from the seat, although she’d only just taken it.

“We won’t?”

“Well. I won’t. There’s plenty of daylight left. I’ll take the street rail out and have a word with the good captain before the sun sets. Maybe this delay is a good thing for all of us. I’m determined to find a bright side, goddammit.”

“It’ll let you spend a little extra time together.”

“That’s not the kind of bright side I meant.”

“Didn’t mean to suggest it, ma’am.”

“Oh, hush.”

Josephine gathered everything she thought she might need for the trip, filling her favorite silk-lined leather bag — the only expensive one she owned, not that it looked half so fancy as the ones she wore with her best dresses. She wouldn’t need a cloak, but it felt like a shawl might be in order, so she threw a light gray one over a similarly colored dress and grabbed a parasol.

With a few parting instructions to Marylin, she set out for Rue Canal to pick up the street rail line that would take her back out to Metairie.

Norman Somers wasn’t hanging around the big lot where the transports parked, but Charlie pointed her in the direction of Norman’s brother, Swinton, who was more than happy to drive her the rest of the way to New Sarpy without asking any questions. Likely as not, Swinton knew the answers regardless, but Josephine didn’t feel like talking and the man didn’t feel like making her, so they rode together in silence to the small riverside settlement.

She descended from the rattling, shuddering transport vehicle and thanked Swinton with a few coins from her bag. He made a polite show of refusal, and she made a polite show of insistence. In the end, he took the money and left her there, standing beside an unpaved road at the edge of a collection of squat, square buildings.

Narrow lines of dirt and mud ran between them, not roads, but walkways and driveways. The grass grew up tall among the spaces where wheels and feet came and went. New Sarpy wasn’t an abandoned place. It simply wasn’t much used.

The coughing of an engine announced the impending appearance of a rolling-crawler, giving Josephine plenty of time to get off the street.

She stepped out of the way and stood, watching as yet more Texians made their leisurely retreat from New Orleans. Not many of them this time, only a few dozen, with the rolling-crawler slowly rolling and crawling to keep their pace — its metal accompaniment serving to tote supplies and offer general marching encouragement, since the machines weren’t big enough to hold more than a handful of men.

Texas had larger devices for transporting personnel and equipment, but Josephine didn’t see any of them on the road. She assumed they were being used elsewhere, or perhaps whoever had recalled these forces figured that they were so tough, they could walk awhile. She didn’t know, and cared only because the swiftness and completeness of their departure would mean the difference between success and a miserable near-miss when it came to her plans for Ganymede.

When they were gone, leaving a cloud of dust and the last echoes of their accompanying machine behind them, she was more alone than not. A pair of ancient colored men with fishing poles chatted on their way to the river. Two dark-skinned children chased a puppy across the road and into a ditch, then ran into the field and toward the forest on the other side. One woman sat reading a newspaper on the stoop of a laundry, while behind her the wet, swishing clank of the clothes-washing devices rumbled and roared indoors.

Josephine knew where the warehouse was, the one where Ganymede would be parked and stored. But it felt ill-advised to go stampeding toward it, so she didn’t. She opened her parasol and held it up, covering herself in a thin black shadow as she strolled in the general direction of the river.

It wasn’t far, barely two blocks before she could smell it in earnest when the breeze kicked air across the wide, muddy expanse of the thing, bringing it up to rattle her parasol and infiltrate her nose. Another block, and she could see the corner of the building in question.

She hesitated.

Should she simply approach it and knock? If the men were inside, they’d surely look first and not merely open fire on anyone who dared give a tap at the door. Anything else would topple past caution into counterproductive paranoia. But what if someone saw her? Most of the bayou knew about the mystery ship, if not its precise location or purpose. Almost everyone was aware that this was an operation against Texas, and therefore, almost everyone agreed to cooperate in a display of blanket ignorance.

Almost.

She made up her mind and assumed her best, most confident posture. Avoiding the huge double doors, she instead approached a person-sized door and gave it a series of raps that said in no uncertain terms that she was here on business, and she had every right to be.

From inside came the sound of absolutely nothing.

She listened, leaning her right ear toward the door. Maybe she caught the distant susurrus whistle of muffled whispers. Maybe she noted the scrape of a boot heel as someone tiptoed carefully. Or maybe she heard only rats and seagulls bickering within. Maybe there was nothing to hear.

No.

With a pop, the door unstuck itself from its humidity-swollen frame, revealing only a narrow slot of the darkened interior, and a fraction of a white man’s face.

Only one eye greeted her, a hazel-colored orb offset by a darkly arched awning of an eyebrow. The eye showed neither surprise nor recognition. But it did not show concern or alarm either, and momentarily the door opened a few inches farther to reveal Cly’s engineer.

He was wearing a floppy brown hat and chewing on the wooden end of a matchstick. He was half a head shorter than Josephine, and he looked at her with his chin angled slightly upward — still fixing her in that cool, dead gaze that told her nothing.

He said, “Hello, there, Miss Josephine.”

“Hello, there, Mr.…” She wanted to say Trout, but she knew it wasn’t correct. Troost, she remembered.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. I was hoping I could speak to Captain Cly.”

Kirby Troost’s teeth worked around the fraying match. “Well, then. I guess you’d better come inside.” He opened the door to admit her, then shut it fast behind her.

Inside, the warehouse was not as large as she’d remembered it, from the one time she’d been there a few months previously. Then again, last time she saw it, the place hadn’t been stuffed with two large flatbeds and the Ganymede—which had been covered with an assortment of tarps roped down over the sides and concealing most of its details.

The interior was shadowed. Most of the light came from a row of small windows up near the ceiling. The rest came from two strands of electric lanterns, hanging from the ropes somebody had strung from two sets of rafters, fizzing and popping.

“You covered it up,” she observed.

“They did.” Kirby cocked his head toward a back door, leading to an alley near the river. Then he said, “I mean, your bayou fellas did it. I didn’t much see the point, myself. Anybody who looks in here will get a gander at that thing, wonder what the hell it is, and take a look underneath the wrappings, regardless.”

She peered up at the loosely swaddled craft, wondering where they’d found so many big scraps of tarp. “Still, I suppose it feels safer this way, rather than leaving it exposed.”

“It’s not exposed. It’s got a whole building over it.”

“At any rate, Mr. Troost, could you tell me where the captain has run off to? I don’t see him.” For that matter, she didn’t see anyone. Troost was the only warm body present. That didn’t precisely worry her, but she wasn’t particularly comfortable with his presence, either. Something about the little man bothered her. He reminded her of someone or something unpleasant, or perhaps it was only the impertinent way he spoke and moved. He was entirely too comfortable everywhere. No one should feel so immediately at home at the drop of a hat.

“Could I tell you where he’s at for certain? No. I could make a guess or two, or you could wait until he gets back. I believe he’s gone down the road to that little bar, the one three or four blocks east. We’ve been coming and going in shifts, and hanging around the one hotel New Sarpy sees fit to maintain. It wouldn’t do anybody any good to see a bunch of men coming and going from this warehouse. I don’t care if your brother says everyone in town is a friend of ours.”

“Almost everyone,” she murmured.

“Yeah. Almost. Almost means room for error, and I don’t like it. So we’re taking turns, just hanging around. One or two of us at a time. But Cly isn’t much of a drinker, and he’s keeping an eye on Houjin, so I predict he’ll get bored and swing this way within the hour.”

Josephine said, “Hm,” surveying the scenery with a critical eye. Then she asked, “Are you from Seattle?”

“Seattle?” he repeated, neither confirming nor denying anything.

“You heard me. Seattle. What can you tell me about it?”

He shrugged and leaned against Ganymede’s shrouded bulk, pulling a tobacco pouch out of his vest pocket. As he delivered a pinch into a white square of rolling paper, he told her, “Not sure what you’re looking to hear. It’s an old port town, up in the Washington Territory. Not much to it anymore.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“What have you heard?”

She crossed her arms. “There’s gas in Seattle, isn’t there? Turns men into the walking dead, isn’t that right?”

He didn’t bother to deny it. “Something like that.” He scrunched the paper into a cigarette and pulled the match out of his mouth. Lifting a corner of the cloth that covered Ganymede, he struck the match on the craft’s rough-edged side. It sparked to life, and he used it to light the cigarette.

“How does anyone live there, if it’s full of this poisonous gas?”

“So this is what you want with Cly.”

“He’s been living there in Seattle, hasn’t he?”

Troost’s eyes did not exactly narrow, since they had never been open all the way, but now Josephine felt as if she were being squinted at. “No. He’s got a flat in Tacoma, about thirty miles to the south.”

“But he comes and goes from Seattle a lot, doesn’t he?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I haven’t been with his crew terribly long.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

They stared each other down, him smoking carelessly and her braced for a fight that he wasn’t prepared to give her.

Kirby Troost repeated, “I’m not lying. I don’t know how much time he spends in Seattle, but I know he visits regularly. There’s a woman there, and he’s sweet on her. I think he’d like to settle down, if she’ll have him.”

“Inside a poisoned, abandoned city?”

“People still live there, underground. It’s … complicated. They’ve got this wall around it, and a crazy system of air tubes and vents, and filters, and whatnot.”

“And this woman of his, she lives there?” she asked without really meaning to. She didn’t care. She wasn’t even curious. She wasn’t sure why she’d pressed the issue.

“Her, and her son. She’s a widow.”

“Is she—” Josephine wasn’t sure what she wanted to ask. “—good for him?” she finished weakly.

“I don’t know, I’ve barely met her. He sure likes her a lot, and that’s what’s important, as far as I’m concerned. He’s got this plan to set up an airyard dock inside the city wall. The people who live there are willing to pay him to maintain it.”

“Why?” she asked. It was a why that applied to any number of questions she couldn’t yet formulate more specifically.

“It’s hard for them to keep contact with the outside world. It’s practically a secret, them living there. They like to be left alone; to their own devices, if you know what I mean. They don’t bother nobody, and they don’t want anybody bothering them. But sometimes they need supplies. They need to send letters or messages. Things like that.”

“And if Cly does this, if he starts a business there — he’ll live there, too, and marry this woman?”

“Yeah, I’d say he’ll marry her if she’ll have him.” Then he turned the conversation just a notch to the right, in exactly the direction Josephine didn’t want him to go. “You and him — the captain, I mean. There’s history there, ain’t that right?”

“He told you?”

“He mentioned it. Didn’t say much, except that it was years ago, and it didn’t work out.”

She only just noticed that he almost never blinked. “That’s about right.”

Kirby Troost, still mostly unblinking, said, “I can see it.”

“See what? Andan and me?”

The shadow of a smile tugged at the corner of his lip. “Yeah. I can see it. Not exactly two of a kind, but I suppose — given what I’ve heard — he’s got a certain type he prefers.”

“And you think I fit that type?”

“Smart and tough. You’re taller, though. Taller than Miss Wilkes.”

“I thought you said she was a widow.”

“I did, but it’s complicated.”

“So complicated, you call her miss?”

“Complicated enough. We mostly call her ma’am. She’s a yitty-bitty thing. A little smaller than me, even. But I don’t know too many men who’d argue with her, push come to shove. That’s what I mean, about him having a type. Not many men argue with you, either.”

The back door squeaked open, and before Josephine even noticed him reaching for it, Kirby Troost was holding a six-shooter primed and ready. Upon seeing Cly and Houjin, he lowered it and tucked it back into his belt.

“Cap’n,” he said. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“Josephine,” he greeted her with a nod. “Something I can do for you?”

“A word in private, if you please.”

The oriental boy’s face constricted into a sneaky grin, as if he looked forward to embarrassing the captain with this moment later on — but it would wait. He opened his mouth to say something, but Cly didn’t give him time.

“Huey, you and Kirby stay close.”

Kirby Troost said, “Great.”

To which the captain said, “You can teach him to play cards if you want. Just keep each other out of trouble, will you? Josie, how about we go out back and walk along the river.”

“That sounds fine,” she told him stiffly, and she followed him as he went back out the way he’d come in, holding the door for her and — like his engineer — shutting it firmly and quickly as soon as they were through it.

Down along the river, there was a path built on old railroad ties and bleached-bone boards pounded into the mud. They walked slowly along this, going nowhere in particular, unwilling to look at each other.

After a minute or two of unhurried shuffling, he finally asked, “What do you want, Josie? Or what do you need? Why’d you come all the way back out here from the Quarter?” His words were tense, like he was afraid to hear the answer.

“It’s about the zombis, Andan.”

That caught him off guard. Whatever he’d been expecting or fearing, this wasn’t it. “The what now?”

“Zombis. That’s what we call them here, though you must have a different word for them in Seattle.”

“In Seattle?”

“The walking dead, Andan.”

“Yeah.” He scratched at the back of his neck, feeling the sweat already gathering there, from the warm wet air by the river and from the company, as well. “We’ve got some of those. We call them rotters. I don’t think there’s any real word for them. They aren’t like animals, or bugs — we don’t have scientists falling all over themselves to catalog ’em.”

“Madame Laveau calls them zombis, and she’s the only woman on earth who seems able to control them at all.”

“Laveau? The Queen? Hot damn, is she still alive?”

“Yes, dear,” Josephine said without thinking; the phrase simply fell out of her mouth. “She’s still alive, and she’s brought me a Texas Ranger who thinks he knows what’s making them. She wants me to work with him.” She sighed.

“What’s the Queen got to do with the dead things? You said she controls them? Maybe they aren’t the same problem we’ve got. Ours don’t answer to anybody,” he replied, but he didn’t sound certain. Suddenly he added, “Come to think of it, I’ve seen them answer to a machine. My buddy Jerry, he has this gun he calls Daisy — and it shoots a big gong of sound. It stuns them into holding still, but only for a few minutes.”

Josephine remembered watching Marie Laveau clang her cane against the lamppost. That was the same thing in its way, wasn’t it? A big gong of sound? She did not believe in coincidences, so she filed this information away. “I need you to tell me about them, Andan. Tell me everything you know.”

He did.

It came out haltingly, as he fumbled around the conversation — trying to spare her the things she already knew, and pass along only what was helpful. Much of what he told her was truly revolutionary, particularly one important point confirming what the Ranger had told her: One way or another, the zombis, or rotters, or whatever they were … they originated in the walled-up, poisoned city.

Seattle was the source. Seattle was the problem.

“No,” he corrected her when she said as much aloud. “People like me, we’re the problem. We moved the gas out, so the chemists could turn it into sap. We spread the poison around because we’ve been paid well to do so, but that shouldn’t have mattered. We shouldn’t have done it.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. All of us, everywhere, everything we do … it hurts someone, someplace. I’m convinced of it.”

“That’s a god-awful philosophy, Josie.”

“It’s not a philosophy; it’s an observation.”

But privately she could only agree. She also understood that his desire to settle down and do something else had as much to do with someone named Briar up in the Washington Territories as it did with his own guilt.

She briefly considered bringing up this Briar person, then felt silly for the impulse. It didn’t matter. When this was over, and Ganymede was in the appropriate hands, she and Cly would go their separate ways on the same grand scale as before, and that would be the end of it.

Sentimentality would do neither of them any good. She fought it hard, and turned it off, and walked beside him without thinking about how much she’d once enjoyed doing so.

She did not think about how much it’d warmed her, and been an odd source of pride, to roam with the giant pirate whom no one ever stopped or bothered, or assaulted or robbed, or even questioned — no matter how softly he spoke or how friendly his words. She did not recall how she’d appreciated his strength, even seeing it used against others when he’d fight for money in the ring, and she refused to consider for even a moment how she’d lengthened the bed they’d so often shared in order to make him more comfortable.

She worked hard to keep from considering the way things could have been, and might have been, but were not. Things had gone another way, and this other way had been best for them both. Or so she was forced to assume, not knowing what might have happened if she’d bundled up and headed north, and west … or if he’d taken off his coat and parked his dirigible in the delta.

Before he could mention that she’d grown uncharacteristically silent, she made some excuse to be done. “Tell your engineer I said thank you, and that it was a pleasure to meet him. And it’s been … it’s been good to talk to you again. I’m glad to see you’re still doing well, and thinking of ways to do better.”

Then she left him there, still standing by the river, his hands in his pockets, wondering whatever things he was wondering, but not following her.

She hitched a ride back to the Metairie station, sitting beside a sharecropping woman and her oversized, dull-faced son with sloping shoulders and enormous hands. At the station she waited for the correct street rail car and took it to Rue Canal, opting to walk from the final stop rather than hail a cab. It was only a few blocks back to the Garden Court, and she felt restless for reasons she could not explain — or chose not to.

She looked up from her reverie to note that the sky was going gray. At first she thought it was because the hour was swiftly growing late and the curfew coming soon, then realized that the sky must be shuttered with clouds, and not quite so far toward evening as it felt at first. The river smelled like summer coming in, and dead fish and waterlogged vegetation, and the air that carried those scents from bank to bank and beyond was dragged along the ground by those same dark clouds that blackened like spilling ink up from the south. She regarded the sky and said, to no one but herself, “A storm’s coming.”

Her parasol wouldn’t help her if the bottom dropped out. But she’d been wet before, and she’d be wet again before she died, and it’d never been a catastrophe yet. So onward she went, deeper into the Vieux Carré.

She walked briskly past people who were opening windows to catch the breeze that would billow through before the rain came up behind it. They were tying back curtains and inviting the air to sweep on through, push out the odors of cayenne and Tabasco, crawfish and rum, red beans and rice, and cigars and cheap tobacco. The Quarter exhaled paraffin and charcoal, incense and manure. It breathed diesel and industrial lubricant, barbecue and salt.

It whispered.

Josephine stopped, unsure of what that sound had been — uncertain if it meant anything, or if it’d only been her imagination. A tumbleweed of newspaper went skipping across her path, rolling into the street and stopping in a puddle, where it unfurled to reveal the headline. The first words were blurred, but the remainder of them read, AT THE ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL. As she stared, dirty water soaked through, obscuring even that scant message, but somehow revealing another, farther down the page — before the whole thing disappeared into soaked, illegible pulp.

GARDEN

She looked away from the sopping paper. It meant nothing, after all. She found herself casually surprised that she’d bothered to stop for it, and wondered why it’d seemed — even for a moment — like something worth examining.

She resumed her pace. Her feet clapped against the hollow sidewalks with their planed slats, and her skirts skimmed the splinters. Still, she felt odd, as if she’d heard something but failed to understand it. As if she should’ve listened harder. Like she was being chastised at a distance, by a mother or grandmother whose voice she couldn’t quite pick out of a crowd.

The creak of a sign hanging on a chain tickled at her ears. She spied it up ahead, and, catching its text from the corner of her eye, she drew up short again. She could’ve sworn — would’ve sworn, and at great length — that it’d said, TOO LATE TO WAIT. But it read only, TULANE WAITMAN, advertising a minister’s office.

She stared intently at the sign as she passed beneath it. It performed no further tricks; it only swung squeakily in the shifting air ahead of the incoming storm.

Where was she again? Oh, yes. Rue Galvez, just past Esplanade. Funny how she felt so turned around.

She took the next turn and proceeded via dead reckoning, the kind that was engraved in her blood. She’d lived in the Quarter all her life, and she knew it like the corridors of the Garden Court. She could have navigated it blindfolded, in the fog, at midnight. Even so, her heart pounded, and she did not know why. She knew only that she had to keep moving. “Because of the curfew,” she muttered to herself, but did not believe a word of it.

The streets were nearly empty, and this, too, was strange. True, the businesses were closing up shop against the storm, against the limits imposed by the Texians, but there was also … something else? It was a ridiculous thing to think, but Josephine thought it anyway, and she kept walking, and faster. Just short of a run.

Running would draw attention. She did not want attention, did she?

Well, why not? She was doing nothing wrong. It mattered little if anyone stopped her.

A seagull squawked loudly and flapped far too close to her head, startling her into flinging her hands defensively upward. The bird chattered its displeasure and dropped with a soft slapping of its splayed, webbed feet onto the planks immediately in her path. It stretched its wings, opening and closing them as if in warning, or summons, or some other gesture the woman couldn’t decipher.

“What?” she asked it, feeling ridiculous. “What do you want? Get out of the way,” she said, and prepared to aim a kick in its general direction. She knew from long experience that she’d never hit the thing; it’d be out of her way well in time, which was just as well. She didn’t care to hurt it, but she would not be bullied by a creature the size of a cat.

It cawed once more and stared at something behind her, so she looked over her shoulder and spied — at a brief, outrageous glance — a storefront window that made her gasp. A large white skull filled the entire pane, but only for a split second … before it was replaced with a dress stitched for a bride, advertising the stock at Miss Delia’s Dresses and Wares.

Josephine’s throat went dry, and a warm flush began creeping up her chest. Her hands tingled and went numb. “What’s going on?” she asked no one in particular. “What’s happening?”

The gull answered with a scrap of stationery in its mouth. It hadn’t been there at first, but it was present when she turned around. The bird dropped the shred of paper printed-side up, declaring in someone’s overelaborate handwriting, Join us for something garbled and runny, dampened into meaninglessness. Then, at Jackson Square, the north corner gardens!

Jackson Square. The Cathedral.

A message, but from whom? From what? And who would communicate in such a fashion?

It would be better to go find out than to always wonder — or that’s the conclusion she came to as the bird flew off, taking the paper with it. She adjusted her trajectory and increased her pace. At first she merely hustled, walking too fast for decorum, but soon she was all but skipping, then dashing outright.

She wasn’t sure why she was running, or what she was running from, though she could take a guess.

“Not yet, not yet, not yet,” she said under her breath as she tore along, ducking down alleys and cutting across intersections.

The whole Quarter ushered her along, clearing the way.

The doors moved and the sweepers stepped aside. Horses drew carriages out of her path, and rolling-crawlers lurched off as she darted toward them. Wisps of fog frayed and split at her approach, and Jackson Square was closer, closer, and closer.

Her chest ached against the bones of her corset, straining against the stays as she panted her way closer to the river. Her skirts tangled around her ankles, twisting around her knees and trying to slow her, but failing. She kicked herself free and pushed onward.

The texture of the streets beneath her changed. They shifted from the wood slats of lifted walkways as those side paths ended, then became the slick cobbles of humidity-damp stones that slipped beneath her feet despite her rubber-bottomed boots. She stumbled and recovered, ran out of steam, and leaned against a large, cool, stone square that turned out to be the foundation of the equestrian statue directly in front of the church.

Gazing up at it, she wondered if it, too, might have some arcane message to pass along. But the rider and horse both kept their silence.

Back behind the church, or somewhere past it, she heard a dull mumble punctuated with gasps and small cries. Catching her breath, she pulled herself together and continued onward, toward the ornate, dark church doors illuminated by fizzing electric torches on either side. She turned to pass them, still tracking the sounds and pushing toward their source.

A tall black fence cordoned off the church’s back yards.

It walled off the gardens.

A crowd was gathering. Josephine joined it at full speed, stopping herself hands-first against the rails, leaving bruises on her palms that she wouldn’t notice for days. She thrust her face between the bars and gazed openmouthed at the scene framed in the vivid green grass of the shadowed yard behind the city’s holy Christian center.

There on the ground, faceup in a state of peaceful repose with arms at her sides, Marie Laveau lay unbreathing, unmoving.

On the lawn around her, items were accumulating. As Josephine watched, three gold coins were pitched through the gate with a prayer, shortly to be joined by hastily improvised bags as small as her thumb. One gris-gris after another went sailing over the fence or through it, to land in a gentle plunk near the serene, still body.

Josephine wrapped her fingers around the chilly bars and struggled to breathe. She watched the small things fly — the ribbons, the coins, the buttons. The bags and beads, the twine-twisted bracelets and bootlaces, the flowers, pebbles, and nails. They accumulated around the queen’s corpse, yet none landed upon her. They gathered like a full-body halo, drifts of clutter, a fog of tiny gifts dredged from pockets and purses.

“No,” she said in half a breath, and with the other half she said, “Not yet. It’s too soon,” she added. “There’s too much I don’t know!”

More mourners gathered, brought to the spot by whatever means had brought Josephine, or by word of mouth filtering from churchyard gardens throughout the Quarter. They joined her at the fence, gawkers who stood with eyes wet and heads bowed, whispering prayers or moaning.

No one heeded the curfew, and as the sun set more fully, the Texians came out to see the fuss. The first who came started with commands to disperse, then saw the uncanny tableau spread out within the fence. They recognized the body lying there and stopped yelling their orders. They, too, joined the lookers at the fence, drawn up close and made quiet by awe, or shock, or some other odd familiarity that told them this was not the time to insist upon anything.

Someone at the back cried, “What’s going on? What’s the meaning of this?” Josephine knew that whoever this was, he’d find his silence, too. But she recognized the voice and turned to spot the speaker. At the nearest corner where the gas lamps were sputtering to light under a colored child’s expert spark, she saw Horatio Korman.

She watched understanding dawn on him and, closely following that, a nervous kind of horror. Their eyes met across the now-crowded side street.

They shared the moment, the fear of knowing — alone, together.