Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

She told us Washington’s sendin riders here. They’re bringin a load of prisoners. And they wanna turn New Orleans into a prison.

Troy waited, but Sister Sarah said nothing. She kept as still as the saints on the stained glass, kneeling or giving succor or dying forever in their frozen world.

Well? You heard anything like that?

She grunted. You’ve treated me and mine better than anybody else would have, Gabriel. But we can still barely show our faces in daylight. To us, this city, this world has been a prison since the days of Jonas Strickland. What’s a few more inmates, a few more guards?

Troy rubbed his temples. A headache had formed behind his right eye, whether from heat exhaustion or stress he could not have said. Pain stabbed through his skull every time the lamp flickered. They sat for a while without any way to mark time. The world might have stopped turning.

You don’t really believe that, he said.

Her tone softened. Yes and no. My people got quarantined generations ago. That ain’t right. But I’ve worked my whole life in this city. I wouldn’t see it destroyed if I had a choice.

Sure sounds like you’ve heard somethin. You don’t act surprised.

I’m not. More than one Catholic has passed through here tellin tales about mass arrests and chained laborers quarryin rock or choppin down whole forests. Somethin’s goin on out yonder. It could all land here as easy as anywhere else.

Troy rubbed sweat from his eyes. He had soaked through his shirt. His behind felt damp. But if the heat bothered Sister Sarah, she gave no sign. Against her habit’s black cloth and with the sanctuary’s greater darkness, her face and hands seemed to float, disembodied, spectral. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. But what? If Stransky were right, the Crusade had condemned New Orleans. Troy’s people could never live inside the walls with the prisoners. It would mean fighting for their lives every moment of every day. And walled up in the city without supervision, the Troublers would drag the buildings down, set fire to the river, rip open the very sky. Their nature was destructive, their hearts vindictive.

If Stransky were lying, her fiction had taken root in the hearts of the Troublers themselves, so deeply that they lied to Sister Sarah with words that sounded like truth. Either way, the situation was as bad as he had ever seen.

Why didn’t you tell me when you first heard? he asked.

I figured you already knew. And I had no proof. Besides, would you have believed me? You didn’t believe Stransky.

I’ve always believed you. Some warnin would have been nice. Now I got no time to prepare.

Prepare for what? If you believe your cause is just, why are you worried? Sister Sarah stood, leaving the lantern on the altar. She patted him on the shoulder. He tried to ignore how his skin tingled beneath her hand. If all this comes to pass, these prisoners and their guards will trample your life’s work to dust. Can you sit back and watch that happen? she asked.

The first words that came to Troy’s mind would constitute treason: no, he could not watch it happen, would not let it happen, would die trying to stop it. He would ask Hobbes and the rest to stand with him, and if they would not, then he would fortify a position on the causeway and fight until the guards shot him dead or the marchers walked him down. He wanted to say he could not bear to see New Orleans ruined and forgotten, as if none of them had ever acted, loved, or died. But he could not say any of that. He had always served the Crusade, always believed. When he was with Sister Sarah, he often wished their lives had been different. But they had to live the lives God had given them. Those lives and no other.

I don’t know what to say, he confessed.

Sister Sarah patted him again. You shouldn’t be ashamed of strugglin. It only means you’re human. You should only hang your head if you choose the wrong side.

And I reckon you think your side’s the right one.

Sister Sarah picked up the lamp, shadows rolling in and retreating like tidewater. You’ve known me for twenty years. I’m happy here, at peace with my decisions. When everything’s finished, I hope you can say the same.

She glided away as if she were standing on a moving track. For all Troy knew, she might have had wheels under those garments instead of legs. She passed beyond the door without looking back and shut it behind her.

Troy sat for a while, his thoughts following half a dozen paths through the history he shared with his companions. Before the boys could mark their ages in two numbers, Troubler ambushes had slaughtered Troy’s and Hobbes’s parents only weeks apart. They had been Crusaders, not Catholics, but the Troys had died on the steps of this very church, the same spot where, when he was twenty-two, Gabriel met Sister Sarah Gonzales. All part of God’s design. Troy and Hobbes had apprenticed themselves to the office of order before they could understand what the word would mean in their lives, what it meant to New Orleans. Other orphans had, each in their own time, bound themselves to the principality and the Bright Crusade. They were tutored by citizens who spent their lives rearing and training future leaders—those who would keep order, those who would lead the hunts and coordinate the harvests. Ford and LaShanda Long apprenticed two or three years after Troy and Hobbes, Ford’s parents and two siblings shot to pieces during a Troubler raid, Long’s mother dead of disease. Her father fell from a roof and shattered himself on the road. Boudreaux joined much later, when Troy and Hobbes were deputies under Ernie Tetweiller.

Without this city, who are we? Guardians of a cesspool. I reckon that’s what prisons are. The places we dump our turds. The Troublers