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

A clumsy test, Envoy. I reckon he knew what he was doin.

Of course he did.

Benn wrote, drew, annotated. Finally, he finished his notes and sat back, wiping sweat from his face. Dark stains had spread from his armpits to his chest and back. He huffed in the hot, still air.

What else? Troy asked.

That will do for now. Royster stuck out his hand. Thank you, Lord Troy.

Troy shook with him. We’ll have the offices ready by tomorrow. Gordy?

Boudreaux took the three men downstairs. Troy sat and rubbed his temples. Another headache had begun to throb behind his left eye. He had hoped the Crusade would make at least some pretense of relocating the population, but Royster’s flickering eyes said no.

Stransky had been right. About everything.

Chain gangs trooped across the causeway and through the city ceaselessly, the reverberations of their footfalls shaking jars off shelves and pounding into dreams. All those people moving at once suggested months, perhaps years, of planning, which belied Royster’s claim about the recency of Rook’s vision. Did the envoy think no one would realize that, or did he not care? Guards poured into town on horseback, on foot, in supply wagons. Shots had been fired eight or ten times already. The first time, when Troy tried to dash out of the office, Royster assured him some Troubler had gotten too uppity or had attempted escape, an unfortunate but inevitable occurrence. Troy stayed.

Boudreaux and Ford had joined Tetweiller in directing the prisoners as far south as Estelle and Woodmere. No one had indicated whether the Crusade planned to let the southern bogs function as a natural border or wall them off or drain the swamps and raze the whole place. Troy had chased Troublers out there for years, running them to ground and dragging the survivors back to the city in chains. The dead he left for the gators and insects. Now, if he returned to the bogs, he would likely do so as an outcast, as much a traitor as those whose bones he would tread on, because where else was there to hide?

He managed to get away from Royster around five o’clock. The sounds of the march drummed against his temples as he and Japeth rode through town. The buildings’ shadows stretched like the talons of some unimaginable prey bird. Every glance at the prisoners yielded a fresh crop of expressionless faces and bobbing greasy heads. The deep suspiration of thousands of lungs created its own breeze, fetid and swampy. Troy rode among his own people, going to or coming from work, their faces wan, their bodies hunched. They looked to him as he passed, and the hope in their expressions broke his heart, for what was hope in the face of genocide?

Later, on empty thoroughfares, solitary in the gloaming, Troy ambled toward Sister Sarah’s, and then, thinking better of it, turned for home, his new office, a token of both his authority and the loss of it.

I’ve probably used my Temple office for the last time. His eyes stung with the salt of unfamiliar tears.

Jack Hobbes sat on the front steps, his saddled roan tethered to the hitching post near the street. Troy dismounted and hitched Japeth. Then he walked up and sat next to Hobbes, who was wearing a sling, the poultice and bandages hunched beneath his shirt. The men sat in silence for a bit, listening. Hobbes smelled of mustard.

Racket got old real quick, the senior deputy said.

Troy laughed, humorless and bitter. How’s the collarbone?

Arm’s stiff, but I’ll live. Been workin the shoulder as much as I can without poppin the stitches. What’s our next move?

We need to talk about that. All of us, includin Willa. Everybody should get a say.

Hobbes nodded. Seen LaShanda today. A guard told her the wall’s already built. They got the Troublers draggin it here in sections.

Troy spat. I knew Royster lied. He knows exactly what’s comin.

Whole thing ain’t seemed real till now. But it is. They’re gonna turn New Orleans into a lake, with us still in it.

When we meet, Stransky’s gotta be there.

And if one of us decides their salvation depends on killin the rest?

I reckon somebody will die.

The horses shifted. What moon and stars there were rode between cloud banks pendulous and jagged. Up and down the avenues, candlelight flickered in windows. Gray smoke from cookfires drifted along the blue-black horizon. It would be nice to live in a peaceful world where a man could stretch out on his porch and sleep in the drowsy heat, but the world ain’t never been peaceful and never will be. All my life I’ve fought to keep order, but if it ain’t the Troublers, it’s men like Rook. I might as well try to sop up the ocean with a bath towel.

They sat for a while longer, and then Troy invited Jack Hobbes inside, where they talked long into the night.

During Sunday morning services, the envoys sat in the front row on the left-hand side of the Temple. Royster sang bass, Benn tenor. Clemens sounded more like a cat somebody had stepped on, but none could say he had not made his joyful noise. When Babb took the podium and spoke for an hour and a half on I John 3:4, Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law, Royster amened so loudly that he sounded as if the Holy Spirit had overcome him, making him forget the august dignity of his office.

Ford cut his eyes at Troy. The lord of order’s jaw was set, his right fist clenched, but his face betrayed nothing. Nor did Jack Hobbes’s or LaShanda Long’s. Perhaps they agreed with Babb in their hearts. Perhaps they kept still through sheer will, like Troy.

I don’t know how them folks in the back can even hear Jerold, what with all that noise from the city.

The Office of Order had never been able to afford taking the Sabbath off, as