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

Troy removed his hat and scratched his head. We do a good enough job without any help.

Yeah. They’ve always seen you lords as cold-blooded killers and tyrants.

You don’t believe that, I hope.

I believe every religion in history has committed atrocities in the name of God. Includin mine. Maybe, when all this is over, I’ll tell you about the Inquisition.

But somebody’s gotta be right, don’t they?

I hope to God. Otherwise, nobody’ll make it outta this world alive.

They sat in silence for a while. Sister Sarah’s hand grew damp in his own, but neither let go. There’s a whole life I’ll never see on the other side of moments like this. Skin on skin. Body heat. Love.

Finally, she pulled her hand away. Your ache’s like a scent. I feel it too.

Troy’s heart hammered. Sarah, do you ever wonder—

If I was somethin other than what I am, you might not love me at all.

Do you love me back? Can you tell me that much at least?

She closed her eyes. Of course I love you. Why do you think I always run off so soon? I can’t afford to be tempted. Too many people depend on me.

He nodded and passed a hand over his face, feeling himself tremble. They had never spoken of their feelings aloud until now. Hearing they were doomed pained him more than he would have believed. A funereal wail emanated from the deepest parts of himself. Yet no matter what happened, he would face it knowing someone loved him, not as a brother-in-arms or as a Christian, but as a man. And how could love ever be wrong?

He cleared his throat and willed his runaway pulse to slow. I reckon Stransky’s told you what the Crusade’s plannin.

Yes, but she says a lot. I don’t know what to believe.

As far as we can tell, she’s shootin straight. They’re dumpin Troublers on the streets. The wall’s comin, and they’re confiscatin our explosives.

Sister Sarah’s mouth pressed into a bloodless line. She looked away and shuddered. How long will it take to build this wall?

It’d take months, maybe years, if they were startin from scratch, but it’s just gonna be a matter of placin the sections and securin em together. I figure we’ve got a few weeks at most.

Sarah looked to the votives and crossed herself. Then I gotta get my people out of town.

Or you could join up with us.

Tears glistened on her cheeks. There’s more of us here than in most places, but that ain’t sayin much. Some of us might wanna stay, but if even one goes, I have to shepherd. It’s my callin.

I know, he said.

Troy put his arm around her. They sat in the dark and the heat for another twenty minutes, listening to each other breathe, feeling each other’s touch through three layers of cloth, which, together, made only one of the many barriers separating them.

11

Lisander Royster watched the flickering streetlamps down on Decatur and thought about change.

Some Troubler in Miami has mucked about with forbidden technology advanced enough to light streets and houses. At least these provincials, doomed though they are, scurry about in the dark, as is proper.

Bits of tech had popped up in recent years. Someone in New York had gotten an old underground train running and caused a riot. The local lord of order had been forced to cleanse the entire area, Troubler and Crusader alike, to keep it quiet. A now-dead Troubler in Detroit had managed to start three automobiles, which meant they had also managed to find a more or less intact chassis, locate and refine crude oil, make those alien rubber wheels, and a hundred other impossibilities. Those rebels had been found and crushed, the technology destroyed, but if one Troubler could make something work, another might take up their mantle. Matthew Rook himself had come to Royster and explained it all—how the world Jonas Strickland created for the faithful was fading, how the Troublers grew stronger even as the Crusaders’ wills waned every year. The only way to stem the blasphemous tide would be the old way—a Purge that would destroy even the double agents, who did much worse damage than the herds of Troublers roaming the world’s ruins.

Though New Orleans seemed like a true Crusade stronghold, it was, in fact, a breeding ground for sin and insurrectionists. Rook had proven it by showing Royster the journals of Jonas Strickland. Rook had brought Royster into his study and opened Strickland’s election-year journal, directing Royster’s attention to one passage.

Of all the areas in this country that must feel the strong right hand of God, New Orleans is perhaps the worst. The city is a wretched cesspool of sin—prostitution, homosexuality, voodoo, fornication and adultery, public nudity and micturition, murder, rape, graft. Its officials are liars, its people decadent, even worse than those in Las Vegas. The hurricanes failed to wipe New Orleans from the face of the earth, but when I am President, that city will be a priority. She will learn to fear God, or she will burn.

As in other cities, much of New Orleans had burned when Jonas Strickland activated the Godwave. Metal wagons called trolleys crushed panicked pedestrians. Flying machines fell from the sky and exploded, destroying buildings and foliage and people. Had it not been for a resourceful citizenry and some unfortunately timed rainstorms, the whole town might have turned to ash. But New Orleans had survived, and so the armies of Jonas Strickland had descended on her like God’s own wrath, slaughtering heathens, driving those who escaped into the dank and pestilential swamps. As generations passed, the rubble had been cleared away, the wreckage hauled to designated sites and buried or burned or melted down in the forges, most of the ruined areas rebuilt. So it was across the world. Travel to any major city and you might not know any disaster had befallen, thanks to the hard work of Crusaders and the labor of captured Troublers, those terrorists who never