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

them. Then he threaded the padlock back through the chains and clicked it shut.

When he was done, Tetweiller turned to the guards and said, On your knees.

The kid spat. His companion stared straight ahead, expressionless. Neither knelt.

Good for you, boys, thought Ford. Sorry about this. He stepped behind them and kicked them in the backs of their knees. They fell, and before they could speak, he bashed them in the head with his big hunting knife’s handle. They slumped, one on top of the other. Ford and Tetweiller each grabbed a guard under the arms and dragged them into the bushes near the gate. They bound and hid the guards and then crept through the foliage until they were as close to the Temple as they could get.

Long, McClure, and Bandit skirted the streetlamps on Decatur until they reached the building nearest a lot where fishermen brought their daily hauls for cleaning and distribution. In the evenings, the lot was empty, so there would be no collateral damage except for some wooden stalls. The building itself had once served as a tavern. Now, Ford’s workers used the old tankards to make and cask wine for the Lord’s Supper. After hours, no one guarded it, for it had never been considered a strategic point, one reason Ford and Long had picked it. Folks could always crush grapes somewhere else.

McClure patted Bandit on the head and whispered something in his ear. The dog walked a block back the way they had come and lay down with his snout on his paws. The girl joined Long, who stood in the old brewery’s doorway.

He minds you better than most kids mind their parents, Long whispered.

He’s a good boy. What if somebody found your stash?

Pray they didn’t.

Long pulled out her lock picks and opened the front doors in less than a minute. Then she and McClure circled to the back door.

Four casks stood underneath the tarp, where she and Ford had left them last night. Always thinking of what might happen if Troublers caught her unprepared anywhere in the city, Long had been stockpiling materials in hidden caches ever since she learned to make her first pipe bomb. These casks would not even put a dent in her personal stores, but rolling them through back alleys and from building to building, two at a time, while avoiding the roaming guards had been quite the chore. She and Ford had been up most of the night, and she had muddled through her daily tasks, telling her workers she might be coming down with a cold, her arms and legs aching.

She had no idea what story Ford had concocted or whether he had bothered. Few people questioned Santonio Ford. Only thirty years old and already the chief hunter, he could have been a deputy lord if he had wanted it. But Ford’s first impulse had always been mercy. He would spend his days hunting human beings only when the Crusade required it.

I would have been a good deputy lord too, but God had other plans.

No one else had demonstrated her flair for weaponry and ammunition. And so the last primary law enforcement opening had gone to Gordy Boudreaux, who, except for his occasional naivety, made just as good a deputy as anyone would have been, and better than most. His heart was as gentle as Ford’s, but he could harden it when he had to. Yet most times McClure seemed more world-wise than him. How would he survive in a cabal?

She and McClure started rolling and heaving the casks inside. As they wrestled the first one over the threshold, McClure asked, How unstable is this shit?

Long panted. It’s dynamite, but it’s new. We should be good. And if we ain’t, we won’t find out till St. Peter tells us.

So we’re only half crazy.

Once they had gotten the casks inside, they rolled them into the four corners of the wine-making room, the old tankards looming above them. Long dug the fuses out of her satchel and moved from barrel to barrel, working by feel, prying off the tops with a small hatchet, attaching the fuses to a stick, running them to the center of the room, plaiting them into one.

When she was done, she said, We’re late, so I can’t run these outside. I want you gone before I light em. Meet me at the checkpoint. Don’t dawdle, you hear?

That goes double for you, McClure said. Then she was gone.

I hope three-minute fuses do the trick. If they burned too slowly, Tetweiller and Ford would pay the price. If they burned too fast, nobody would ever find a trace of her.

She pulled a match out of her bag and lit it. Then she held its burning end to the four braided fuses in her hand. They caught, the fiery ends racing away. She dashed through the darkened building, praying she would not run face-first into something, wishing she could have risked a lantern.

The two guards on the Temple doors had not moved. The muted sound of their conversation drifted across the courtyard. Ford leaned in close to Tetweiller and whispered, We can’t sit here all night.

Tetweiller grunted, his bent knees aching. You know LaShanda. She’ll do her part.

Ford was right, though. Long had completed half a dozen practice runs from the Riverwalk to the target, but so much depended on timing her diversion with the guards’ shift change, on her encountering no unexpected obstacles, on the casks still being where she and Ford had left them. If anything went wrong, Ford and Tetweiller would have to abort or shoot their way inside.

Ford tapped him on the shoulder and gestured toward the gate. Three guards armed with shotguns were gathered there, talking in whispers, looking about for the missing gatekeepers.

Damn it all, Tetweiller whispered. We can’t wait. Let’s go.

Then an explosion shook the ground and lit up the night sky, its roar deafening. Tetweiller barely kept his balance. The courtyard was bathed in light as