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

Bodies crumpled. Booming gunfire covered the screams and gurgles of the dying. Smoke roiled, heavy and thick like a fire made from human fat. Seeing their fellows shot down like clay targets, perhaps a dozen Crusaders, Glau among them, took their chances and jumped over the far side.

It was over in thirty seconds.

Cease fire, croaked Troy.

Jack Hobbes and Ernie Tetweiller rode up and down the line, repeating the order. The shots tapered off and finally ceased. Ford slumped in his saddle, holding his injured ribs. He holstered his pistols and tried to smile. Screams emanated from outside as the Crusaders who leaped for safety bemoaned their broken ankles or worse.

When this is over, Troy said to Stransky, let’s send somebody up top. Put them wretches out yonder outta their misery.

Stransky snorted. You old softy.

On the wall, five Crusaders half crouched, their hands still in the air. They prayed aloud. Babb led them. Royster kept silent.

Don’t worry, Envoy, Troy said. We’re gonna let you live. Might as well get up.

Boudreaux helped Royster to his feet again. The envoy leaned on him and sneered. You have won your precious city, Royster said. But Gordon and I will stand by the Lord’s side when you are judged. And when He tosses you into the pit with the rest of demonkind, we will celebrate with the longest hosanna in heaven’s memory.

I got a feelin you ain’t gonna have much better luck in the next world than you had here, Troy said. Now come on down. Use the ladder or jump. Either way, you’re done.

Behind Troy, everyone roared in celebration. The five living guards descended, shaking like palsied elders. A brief, almost transcendent cool breeze sprung up and passed, leaving the dump’s stink and the matted rats and crows slinking throughout the city even now, drawn to the putrescence that would only get worse in the damp heat. Standing beside Boudreaux, even Royster, envoy to the world’s largest and bloodiest charnel house, seemed cowed. Then he turned and whispered to Boudreaux.

Troy caught Hobbes’s eye. Be ready, said the lord of order.

53

When the last Crusaders surrendered, Royster turned to Boudreaux. I don’t believe they’ll let us live, the envoy said. No, they have some pageant in mind for us. A show for their Troubler comrades. But take heart. The Most High will welcome us into His everlasting arms. Here on Earth, Matthew Rook shall spread our names throughout the realm. We are martyrs. And that means we never truly die.

He’s right, Gordon, Babb said, his voice a thin reed in a strong wind.

The Conspirators’ thundering cheers broke into pockets of catcalls and taunts. Troublers from the swamps and bayous, former Crusaders, and frail freed people stretched back as far as Boudreaux could see, individuals merging into a composite mass covering the streets like floodwaters. Smoke and the thick smells of slaughter hung over the city. But Boudreaux registered all this with only part of himself. The rest of him studied the envoy.

Look at all that gray hair, them wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Like he climbed that ladder and stepped into his own future.

Royster’s blood loss had paled him, as if he were already shifting into whatever translucent form might come next. Below them, the cheers and jeers died down. Royster smiled, as he so often did, still confident in his mission, his faith. Even after all the murder. This man had forced Boudreaux to torture, to stand against his friends, to kill in cold blood.

Except that ain’t true. I always had a choice. I could have died a man of God. Instead, I did what some boss asked me, just like I always have. I did it for my friends and my city, but I also did it for myself, because I was scared. Well, I lived. And it only cost me my soul.

Gordon Boudreaux, former deputy lord of order, New Orleans principality, was a husk without bone or sinew or gut, so that none could say what it once might have held. Perhaps nothing.

He shoved Royster away.

The envoy stumbled into Babb, who fell. Royster tripped over him and sprawled against the fortifications. The envoy’s eyes widened. His shark’s grin disappeared.

Movement from behind, a form rising from underneath bodies. Boudreaux whirled and fired. The architect, Melton, fell back onto the dead, a hole in his forehead. Blood trickled from it and ran down his face like tears.

Boudreaux turned back to Royster. You ain’t no martyr. You lost a whole army and made one for your enemy. You think Rook’s gonna sing your name for that?

Gordon, we can—

You keep talkin about we. But you wasn’t never on my side. Or God’s. You’re just a madman’s errand boy. Well, you picked the wrong damn city.

Royster held up his hands in surrender. Wait—

Boudreaux shot Lisander Royster in the head.

The Troublers roared again. Royster lay on the wall, fingertips brushing the balustrade, eyes open to the sky, as if searching for a heaven that would accept a craven, bloodthirsty piece of trash like him. The real shame of it is that I ain’t so sure he’s wrong. About heaven and hell, about God, about wipin away all our stinkin blasphemy in a Purge. We deserve it. The void inside Boudreaux howled, but now, looking on the mounds of corpses, amid the chittering rants of the mad crowd and the smells of garbage and death, that void had spread everywhere else too. They were all flotsam, wave- and wind-tossed, now submerged, now breaking the surface. But always and forever trash. Him most of all.

He turned to the crowd below. It fell silent, as if he had slit its collective throat. He stepped over bodies until he stood over a ladder notch and looked down at Troy.

Come on down, Gordy, said Troy.

No.

It’s over.

Boudreaux sighed. He took off his hat and laid it on the nearest body. I never stopped bein your friend, he said. But you asked too much of me.

Gordon? Babb said from