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

Benn led them downstairs. The morning cleaners dusted and swept, raising small clouds that hung in the air. Several said hello. Boudreaux nodded and tipped his hat. Benn and Clemens ignored them. When the three men passed the front desk, Norville Unger saluted. Neither Benn nor Clemens so much as glanced at him. He scowled and seemed about to speak. Boudreaux shook his head, and Unger’s mouth snapped shut. The old desk sergeant would make a loyal addition to whichever side he chose. Troy’s Conspiracy grew by twos and threes every day. Had Unger already been approached? Boudreaux wished all of them could share their lists of loyalists. But then, if someone were captured or turned, everyone else would be at hazard.

And the worst part? That might be best. A man could go mad tryin to figure this out. Maybe that’s why Royster met with me and LaShanda and Santonio—not because we’re valuable, but because we’re uncertain.

The sky was overcast and gray, with clouds hanging so low it seemed you could stand on your tiptoes and touch them. To the west, they grew darker. A cool wind blew, carrying the promise of rain. Should have brought my duster. Boudreaux’s horse waited next to the Jesus statue. The animal smelled the air and shifted from foot to foot as grooms led the envoys’ horses across the square. Benn and Clemens took their reins without a word, Benn patting his horse and rubbing its muzzle. They saddled up and rode out of the square.

Boudreaux could feel Clemens staring at his back.

They rode through the Lower Garden District and across the expressway. Boudreaux broke into gooseflesh, and not just because of the breeze. They had crossed into the regions from which locals had been forbidden. Perhaps the deputy envoys planned to initiate him into their inner circle. Or maybe his old jurisdiction would be his dying ground. He knew where they were going. Not far from a bend in the great river lay an old base that had once lodged part of the ancients’ armies. Since the Purge, it had held enormous stores of weapons and gunpowder, dynamite and plastic explosives, guard quarters. With Dwyer’s arrival, the Conspirators had managed, with the help of a few sympathizers, to move some of the stores and alter the records, but the place still housed plenty of goods.

Perhaps Benn and Clemens planned to interrogate him about the missing ordnance. Or maybe they wanted him to confirm the records’ accuracy.

All around them, prisoners baked in the morning sun. Whenever one dared look at the passing figures, a Crusader lashed them until they screamed and fell, pulling their fellows down with them. Sweet Lord, how do they relieve themselves? How do they sleep? The whole area stank of human waste and rotting food, both of which littered the streets. Gulls and crows swirled overhead and pecked at the refuse. Adults moaned and children cried, their lamentations mixing with the calls of the great flock. Would bigger animals maraud among the Troublers at night? Would the guards drive predators away? Or would the wildlife take as it pleased, human flesh or otherwise? The whole cityscape south of the river suppurated like hell itself. At this rate, they won’t even need the flood to kill everybody.

Soon enough, Boudreaux, Benn, and Clemens entered the base proper. The last time Boudreaux had visited, it had teemed with life—the guards, their families, their pets. Now it was nearly empty. Strangers manned the gates and towers. All New Orleans natives had been relocated into the city as if the generations who had lived and died on these blocks had been stricken from the cosmic record. The world had fallen into slippage, schism, dissolution.

Boudreaux and the deputy envoys reined up and hitched their horses in front of a drab two-story bunkhouse. The sky had gone a deeper gray. Thunder muttered in the distance.

They walked inside. The bunks and furniture had been ripped out. Iron-barred doors had replaced the wooden ones. The inmates, filthy and malnourished and broken, watched the floor as Boudreaux and the envoys passed. Some wept. More than a few had deep, dark patches on their skin, bleeding gums, bulging eyes, distended bellies. My Lord, they’re malnourished and scurvied worse than I’ve ever seen. Ain’t we even feedin these wretches? Down the corridor in the kitchen, an enormous wood stove sat against the back wall, but someone had boarded up the heat vents and installed chains and cuffs on each corner of the island. Chairs were nailed to the floor. The double sink against one wall had also been fitted with restraints on either side. The back door was barricaded, the inner door barred.

It’s a torture room. Sweet Jesus.

Benn and Clemens looked at him as one might inspect sides of beef.

Somethin’s about to happen.

He eased his hands near his holsters.

They might kill me, but they won’t torture me. I can do that much.

Footsteps in the hall. Boudreaux turned. A guard was shoving an emaciated, grimy thing toward the room, its long greasy hair hanging over a face like a gutshot, filthy rags billowing around stick limbs. The figure stumbled and fell, coughing. Through that veil of hair, a hint of beard—a man. The guard kicked him in the hindquarters, sending him sprawling on his face. A bloody tooth skittered across the floor.

Get up, pond scum, the guard barked.

As the man struggled to comply, his hair parted enough to reveal bleeding gums and bulging insectile eyes. Boudreaux did not recognize him. He regained his feet and started toward the chamber again, the guard prodding him in the back every few steps. The prisoner whimpered like a whipped puppy. He could have been anyone, a long-time preacher of the Word who had spoken to the wrong person, a hunter who had demonstrated too much skill and not enough lock-step dogmatism, a deputy lord who had followed orders right into the jailhouse. He could have been Jack Hobbes or Santonio