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

Temple and past the empty front desk. Unger’s gone. I ain’t never seen that desk without him. It looks like a face without a nose. Did they do somethin to that poor old man? The night guards stood at attention against the walls. Clemens’s Crusaders joined them as Boudreaux, Clemens, and Babb marched Lange upstairs and found Royster’s door open, the man himself standing at the stained-glass window looking onto the courtyard, the buildings across the way reduced to pure geometry and shades of dark.

Royster turned and smiled. So this is the traitor in Mister Ford’s territory, eh?

No, sir, Lange blubbered. I—

Clemens pistol-whipped him across the back of the skull. Lange sank, moaning, blood dribbling from the wound.

Royster watched without expression. You will speak when prompted, or Mister Clemens will pull out your tongue. Brother Babb, has this man confessed?

No, sir. He claims innocence. His story hasn’t altered a jot.

Royster shook his head and tsked. I suspected as much. Most captives turn sarcastic and indignant, but sometimes they show their cowardice. Or is this strategy? Perhaps you hope we will let you go back to your hell-bound friends if you refuse to confess. Is that it, Troubler?

No, sir, Lange whimpered.

Clemens kicked him in the ribs. Babb winced. Lange crawfished and gasped for breath, slobbering all over himself and the floor. Royster looked at Clemens, who shrugged. I figured the question was rhetorical, the deputy said.

He dragged Lange to his feet. Royster turned back to the window. Normally, we would interrogate you. But our time here grows short, and frankly, what you know or don’t know matters little. This is your last chance to confess. Do it or don’t.

Babb put a hand on Lange’s shoulder. Fleming. I beseech you. Set your burdens down before it’s too late.

Lange looked into Babb’s eyes for a long time. Then his fists clenched. He set his jaw and slowed his breathing and drew himself up to his full height. It ain’t me that needs absolution. You’re murderin an innocent. May the Most High forgive you.

Royster laughed. Mister Boudreaux, take him out and dispose of him. You may choose the method.

Yes, sir, Boudreaux said.

Father, receive him into Your kingdom, Babb said. Your glory to behold.

Clemens grabbed Lange’s elbow and yanked him toward the door. Lange held his head high. They had never uncuffed him. Boudreaux followed, his face as blank as an overcast sky.

Minutes later, Boudreaux and Lange passed the Jesus statue. The night grooms sat on one of the courtyard’s benches, talking low. The horses watched the deputy lord and condemned prisoner pass and then turned back to whatever contemplations occupied their minds. Lange wept but did not speak. Boudreaux would not have heard anyway. He had burrowed deep inside, hoping to unearth the self he had once been. I’ve rode to the river at least half the days of my life. I always knew the way. Now my head’s all aswirl, and I’ve lost the light of the Lord. Troy and Royster, the city and the Crusade—hands molded and stretched him beyond the most tangential human shape. He never smiled or laughed anymore, his mouth always the same thin line, his eyes dead. At least Lange’s cryin. He knows what’s about to happen ain’t deserved. When was the last time I felt so sure of anything?

Before crossing the river. Before Kouf.

The gate guards saluted. Boudreaux ignored them. Lange wept and wept, tapping some unfathomable reservoir. Perhaps, before the end, he would reach into his guts and find his dignity again, as he had in the lord’s office. But it would matter little, as nothing mattered. Lange would die. The Crusade would crush Boudreaux’s closest companions or shatter itself against the Troublers’ resolve. Eventually, time itself would forget the Crusade and all its deeds. Boudreaux would die, shot off his horse or run through by some scraggly Troubler, or perhaps he would grow old and become a limping shadow, like Tetweiller, a man who had once ridden into a nest of Troublers and killed them all, three with his bare hands, a man who could barely get out of bed these days. The winds and rains and searing summer heat and transitory human memory would erode every achievement, every hope and dream, leaving only bleached bones and crumbling buildings that might have housed anyone at all. What trace would linger for the next world’s historians, and what would they make of the strange effluvia?

Boudreaux and Lange crossed Decatur and mounted the steps to the levee and crested and went down the other side to the water’s edge. The mud smelled strong and rich, like new copper. Lange had stopped crying. He watched the river, a great snake with its mouth open to the Gulf. In that water swam catfish and bass and bream and gar and alligator and, near the mouth, bull sharks capable of ripping a man in half. In it floated the bodies of prisoners, Crusaders who stumbled into Troubler nests, small children who wandered too close to the edge, and youngsters who swam out past the easy water and foundered in undertows as strong as gravity. And of these bodies the fish would eat, and then people like Ford would catch those fish and fry them or roast them over open fires and feed them to the hungry population. Cannibalism after the fact, a circle of consumption. And in a world where such was possible, what consequences from one more death? What price the life of men like Lange, who chose wrongly once in their lives and walked the earth dead without knowing it until their fates caught up to them at last?

Boudreaux put a gentle hand on Lange’s shoulder and exerted pressure. Have a seat, he said.

He expected Lange to turn and fight despite his bonds, but he did not resist. Instead, he prayed aloud—for his soul, for redemption. In that moment, Gordon Boudreaux hoped those prayers would be answered, that a bolt of lightning would burst from that