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

overcast sky and strike him down, but nothing happened, and nothing would. God had turned His back again. Boudreaux did not blame Him. Nothing but blight here, foul excretions waiting for the cleansing waters.

Lange prayed faster and faster as if keeping time with frenetic music only he could hear. At the first pause, Boudreaux jammed his pistol against the back of Lange’s head and fired. Brains and blood and chunks of skull spattered the water. Lange fell facedown into the shallows, legs on the ancient steps. His feet drummed a rhythmless tattoo for a handful of seconds and then stilled.

Boudreaux holstered his weapon and unbuckled his gun belt and set it on a higher step. Then he grabbed Lange’s belt and shirt collar and towed him into the water. The cold Mississippi filled Boudreaux’s boots. The mud sucked at him. He shoved the body outward. The current caught it and spun it away, just another piece of flotsam. Boudreaux turned and labored out of the water, wiping his hands on his shirt and taking up his weapons of office again. He fastened his belt and righted the weight of the guns against his hips, and then he trudged back toward Decatur. By tomorrow, everyone would know what had happened, what Lange had done, who had killed him. Boudreaux mounted up and rode home in the otherworldly dark, the chained choir’s demonic moans keeping time with his hoofbeats. Later that night, he would find deep red stains on his garments. And when he saw them, he would not even weep. At least the brains and bone had washed away.

From the moment Boudreaux and Lange left the Temple, Jevan Dwyer followed, moving like a deer, flitting from shadow to shadow. He witnessed the execution and let Boudreaux pass. Then he went down and watched the body drift downriver. It would bloat and rot and fragment in the mouths of river creatures. If nothing snagged it, the trunk might reach the sea.

Then Dwyer turned and scampered after Boudreaux, following the horse’s easy amble, pausing on occasion to clout a Troubler and move on before the man, woman, or child even saw him. As if the universe itself had clenched its fist and pounded them for the effrontery of living so long. And when he had watched enough and noted what there was to note, he turned back, reaching the Temple sooner than should have been possible for anyone afoot. He walked past the guards, who still refused to look at him unless they had no choice, and ascended the stairs, laughing as if their fear amused him. In Royster’s office, he reported that Gordon Boudreaux had performed well, that he belonged to the Crusade, that he would, in Dwyer’s considered opinion, execute his own mother if Royster ordered it.

Soon they would stand together on the wall and listen to the righteous sound of the levees and canals exploding, to the screams of the damned. They would see the Troublers of New Orleans floundering like ants swept from their hill in boiling water. And then they would go back to Washington and await the pleasure of Matthew Rook, whose judgment and purity stood second only to God’s.

When Ford got home, Long waited on his walk beside her hitched horse. He dismounted and hitched up and led the new lord of order inside. Then he made two glasses of cool water with molasses. She sat in the den as he lit a single lamp and turned it low. Long watched him, sipping her drink. Ford sat in his favorite chair, the sweat in his hair glistening like goshenite. He’s thinkin about Lange and Gabe and Gordy and the people bound in the streets prayin for a Moses. Long knew how Ford felt. The cries of the dying echoed in her dreams. New Orleans now housed the insane and the criminal alongside the true and the just, and she carried all their weight. Sometimes she wanted to shoot them all just to shut them up, to kill every Crusader for bringing them here.

Thank you, Lord, that this is almost over.

Tomorrow’s sun would bring the culmination of all their planning and prayers. One way or another. She needed some sleep, but she could stand vigil with Ford for another half hour. Perhaps he would sleep tonight too. Perhaps he would even dream of better days, of his favorite game trails and lush crops and soil pregnant with possibility and a city without walls.

At his desk that night, Royster ate a plate of beefsteak and roasted corn, a napkin tucked into his shirt. Benn stood before him, nostrils flaring, licking his lips. The deputy envoy had not eaten all day. The aroma of the peppered, buttered steak must have been driving him mad.

Yet he has not looked at my plate once. Admirable.

And so the wall is done, Royster said, his mouth full.

Benn’s face was unreadable, though Royster could have sworn the man’s stomach growled. Yes, sir. The men have been instructed to hold the last section, as you ordered. They’ll be waiting for us tomorrow at sunrise.

Royster swallowed and smiled. Almost time to solve our vermin problem.

Yes, sir.

And then we can go home.

Yes, sir. Then we can go home.

Royster smiled wider and returned to his steak. He wished he had ordered a baked potato with butter and fresh chives. He would truly miss New Orleans’s food. Ford’s hunters and farmers were excellent, the city’s cooks peerless. Even leaving out what you could get anywhere—a pork chop or a roasted chicken—the city swam in flavors and odors, jambalayas and etouffees and gumbos and boudin balls, fried alligator and smoked fish, everything teeming with bell peppers and onions and celery, rich spices in every dish and remoulade sauce on hand for all occasions. If he could have saved anything from this festering boil of a city, Royster would have taken its food stores whole, every last head of cattle, every fish from the great