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

Which edifices? And what happens when the Troublers start spillin into areas where my people live and work?

Now Royster’s expression hardened. When he spoke, his voice was toneless. We are in control of this situation. We will tell you what you need to know. Beyond that, you must have faith. Those without faith die a thousand deaths in times like these. Do we understand each other, Lord Troy?

The envoy never blinked, nor did he look away. Babb looked constipated. The deputies sat as still as stone.

Yeah, Troy said. We understand each other just fine.

McClure and Bandit waited in Troy’s living room again, the girl sitting on the couch with her boots on the coffee table. She was reading Troy’s copy of Jonas Strickland’s The Unbelievers. Troy had read it a dozen times. Strickland’s sharp suggestions for rooting out heathens had always inspired him, despite the near-extinction of humanity, which had seemed so remote and abstract. Whenever Troy executed Troublers, he drew comfort knowing he would never have to kill on that scale. He would never doom billions to death and hell. Still, what had Strickland felt before giving the order to Purge? Had he known faith could not exist without disbelief, life without death, salvation without damnation? Had he felt comfortable choosing who would see the new world and whose bones would bleach in the sun?

I hold thousands of lives in my hands now. Enough to make ghosts for a hundred boneyards. How far can a man carry that much failure? And where on God’s Earth could he set it down and rest?

His bleary eyes stung.

McClure put the book on the end table. She sat up, boots clumping the floor, and nodded at Troy, who nodded back. Troy took the chair nearest the couch and removed his hat, beating its dust onto his rug. What’s doin over yonder? he asked.

McClure scratched Bandit’s head. Long lines of Troublers chained together on the streets, she said. One guard for every ten or twelve prisoners. A third of the troops mounted. Most of em armed, though I only saw the mounted ones packin guns. Lotta knives, clubs, and so forth. A few swords.

Huh.

Yeah. Why so few guns?

Can’t know for sure, but generally speakin, when you know people can’t trust you, then you don’t tend to trust them either. Or maybe Rook figured the chains and the starvation and walkin unarmed with your family would keep the prisoners in line, and not havin guns or horses would keep the guards from gettin soft-hearted. Just a guess.

Troy sat for a while, sipping water and calculating. The girl and her dog waited, ever patient.

Unless we can harness a load of our folks and all of Stransky’s Troublers, or some of the guards spontaneously combust, our chances of savin this city are slim. My bunch could probably shoot our own way out. Any operation this big will have weak points. But we can’t just leave everybody else to die.

How fucked are we? McClure asked.

Very. So they’re just droppin folks in the street, like Ernie said?

Yep. Minimum rations, doled out every six or eight hours.

Good Lord. The sun will kill a passel before the flood gets a chance.

I heard a couple guards talkin about that near the privies.

Troy leaned forward. Tell me. Word for word.

McClure closed her eyes. Well, one of em said, I almost feel sorry for these folks. It’s a rough way to go. And the second one said, They’re Troublers. They deserve it. Then the first guy said, Yeah, but some of em’s kids. But the other one laughed. If you came across a litter of wolf pups, would you want them to grow up? These kids, they’re liable to shoot you one day. I really wish I was on the wall crew. Then we’d see em put to good use before they die. After that, they left.

Anything else?

One of em had a dingus as long as my forearm. Looked like a dead king snake.

Willa.

Only noteworthy thing about em.

Troy had just been thinking of mass death. These guards made killing children sound as upsetting as taking out garbage.

Did you set that meetin with Stransky? he asked, shaking his head.

The sister said to come tomorrow night. I’d go after dark if I was you.

Troy walked to the nearest window and pulled back the curtain. Another humid night had settled over the city. Lightning bugs zipped over the street like shooting stars. Bats flapped in and out of the streetlamps’ glow. Somewhere out there, the builders drew closer, bearing their tools and arms and Crusade flags. Some might already be here. Explosives were being confiscated from New Orleans’s armories. Beyond that, he knew very little to compare with whatever Stransky would tell him. I reckon I gotta trust her. She’s been straighter with me than the envoys. And if she’s leadin me astray, Lord, please know I’m doin my best.

McClure stood, Bandit at heel, and joined Troy at the window. So. How do we get outta this?

Troy clapped her on the shoulder. You ever wanted to be a Troubler?

She snorted. Hell. Why not?

Twenty hours later, as Troy traveled on foot, the sun hung bright and bloody on the cloudless western horizon. Beneath the usual smells of cookfires drifted the sour scents of the march, unwashed flesh and sweat and illness. The walkers moved from causeway to city streets to bridge, their tread like some great beast’s heartbeat. A low buzzing from south of the river—nonstop movement and conversations, the hum of populace, a microcosmic version of what the city must have sounded like in the time before. It felt both familiar and disquieting, as if Troy had stepped through a hole in his own life and fallen into his city’s past.

Or its future. If there was ever a time when Christians sent so many into bondage and death, our historians didn’t write about it. The south-side streets will probably fill in another day or two. Then we’ll be trippin over prisoners