For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) (27 page)

“Such as?”

“Ask Elwyn, he’s a mortal, he knows what mortals talk about.”

“That’s rather missing the point, I want the president to be met by someone from the Dominion. Someone who can show a charming side.”

She stretched out on her sofa and basked in the glow of the compliment. “I am terribly charming.”

“You’re capable of pretending as much,” Lucifer agreed, looking out across the square at the bustling streets beyond, “and that’s almost the same thing.”

“Still,” she insisted, “I don’t see why I should put myself out. Ask Meridiana, she can show him some of her attractions.”

“I want to impress him, not kill him.”

“I think she’s strictly monogamous these days. Certainly she shouldn’t be hungry, I hear them at night. She moans awfully, egging his withered genitals on to further acts of heroic savagery. It’s quite disgusting.”

“They’re happy.”

“Oh, to be so easily pleased.”

Lucifer sighed and tried his best to keep his anger in check. He had swapped a life of wandering for one of complication and responsibility, two things he had happily given up long ago. “The American president is a very important man.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms,” she smiled, “present company excepted. He’s King Ape of a trifling land mass, I fail to be impressed. Now, Queen Victoria...”

“She’s not paying a visit, President Harrison is. Besides, America is hardly a trifling landmass, it’s young but growing in power all the time.”

“So you talk to him.”

“I’m intending to, clearly, I’m just asking you and Forset to be the welcoming party.”

“Sat out there in the dirt waiting on a monkey. In the company of another monkey. It is not an attractive proposition.”

“Nonetheless, you’ll do it.” Lucifer’s patience was running thin. “Because I’m telling you to.”

Agrat sighed and threw her arms in the air. “Very well, as a favour to you.”

“A favour given freely,” he insisted, knowing full well how Agrat might choose to turn the situation to her advantage otherwise.

“Naturally,” she replied, begrudgingly. “When is he due to arrive?”

“Forset’s calculations are far from precise, there may be a couple of hours in it either way, but he thinks it’ll be around noon our time.”

“You’re not making this seem any more attractive, you know.”

“Take a book.” He stepped back inside the house, before briefly reappearing. “But not the brandy.”

“Spoilsport,” she said, draining her drink and setting her thoughts as to what she should wear.

After some consideration, she settled on a frock hand-woven by the Needle Babies of Albeer. She decided it was intimidating enough to create an impression and yet not as violent as some of her wardrobe; Lucifer would hardly be pleased if she wore something potentially fatal. She took a few passes in front of the dressing room mirror, delighted by the noises the frock made, like a host of chattering teeth.

Satisfied, she went looking for Forset. He was hiding in his room at the hotel, hyperventilating.

“I can’t abide this sort of thing,” he wheezed, “ceremonies and handshakes. I was tempted to crawl under the bed and stay there.”

“I’m not exactly brimming with enthusiasm either,” she admitted, “but if I have to suffer so do you.”

She led him out of his room, he still fussing over his tie as they descended the stairs.

They met Elisabeth and Billy in the foyer.

“You look very respectable,” Elisabeth told her father, pulling his hands away from the knot of his bow tie. “But stop trying to choke yourself.”

She readjusted it for him.

“I don’t suppose either of you have seen Popo?” Billy asked.

“Certainly not,” said Agrat. “I make a point of avoiding doing so wherever possible.”

“You wouldn’t have had to try hard for the last day or so, nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him.”

“No doubt he is soiling some poor creature’s bed linen,” she replied before snapping at Forset, “Are you coming or not?”

“Of course, of course...” he gave Elisabeth a grateful kiss on the cheek and followed Agrat out of the building.

Agrat had drawn to a halt, looking up and down the street. “Where in damnation’s name is he?” she wondered aloud.

“Who?” Forset asked,.“Popo?”

“Of course not!” she muttered to herself and began striding towards the edge of town. “He’d better already be there, that’s all I’m saying.”

Forset decided against cross-examining her, she was clearly singularly disinterested in his having the first idea what she was talking about and he had enough to worry him already. With a fatalistic sigh, he followed the sound of her chattering frock and began mentally rehearsing what one said to Presidents when one met them.

3.

H
ICKS MISSED HIS
horse. He just wasn’t built for getting anywhere fast on foot. He looked around the ramshackle group and wondered if he might convince any of them to carry him. Perhaps he could feign some sort of ankle injury and throw himself on their mercy. Then he saw the kid who was striding on with nothing but fresh air and flies where his stomach should be and decided a sprained ankle probably wouldn’t cut it. These people made corpses on a battlefield appear in good shape.

It wasn’t far, that was some consolation. The confidence with which he had claimed to know the route to Wormwood had been somewhat exaggerated—when you found yourself outnumbered and disadvantaged you made yourself indispensable, that was his thinking, and it had saved his neck several times. Not that the last time he’d played that particular hand it had fared him so well, he decided. He’d been heading towards that elusive damn town, with Henry Jones and his band of outlaws in tow, and earned a bullet in the head for his trouble. While it hadn’t been Jones or his damned hoity-toity wife that had pulled the trigger they’d not exactly leaped to his defence. In fact, the last words to pass through Hicks’ head before the bullet swept them away had been Harmonium Jones wishing death on him. Well, as much as he might miss the feel of her scrawny neck between his thighs as she carried him around, he could at least reassure himself that she’d had a considerable time to regret making him her enemy. Nothing quite enriched the soul like emptying your bowels over the back of someone you hated.

For all his concerns over the precise location of the town—and quite how he’d avoid a beating, at best, when his fellow travellers realised he didn’t have its precise location to hand—things had worked out just fine. They’d bumped into a man on the outskirts of Sepulchre Heights who had given them precise directions. Quite why the man, a strangely refined gent for that part of the Dominion, had been so eager to tell them the way, Hicks didn’t know. They’d stopped for some provisions when the man had suddenly walked up to them and begun listing the route, step by step, answering a question that nobody had asked. Hicks wasn’t complaining, and would have offered thanks towards the divine if there was such a thing anymore. He’d made a good show of agreeing with the man’s advice, pretending he was only being told something he had already known, and they’d carried on their way, following the man’s directions to the letter.

“We’ll be there in an hour or two,” he said to Kane, who was also struggling with the pace, dragging that fatty carcass mile after mile. “Then we can both get some rest.”

“We’ll rest when we’re on mortal soil,” Kane replied, “and not a minute before.”

“Fine,” said Hicks, “you do that. Me, I’ll just be glad to see another town, book myself a bed and someone compliant to lie in it with me.”

They continued to walk and, after a short while, the landscape grew emptier around them, the landmarks falling away so that their surroundings became more insubstantial.

“We’re on the cusp of it!” Hicks shouted, “can you feel it? We’re crossing over from the Dominion.”

Kane, who certainly could feel something, beyond the usual gnawing in his ever hungry gut nodded. “Come on!” he shouted, determined to be the one who was seen to lead, rather than their wizened little guide. “We’re almost there! Follow me!”

4.

A
THERTON’S BULLET WENT
wide as a polished boot nudged the stock of his rifle.

“God damn you,” Atherton said, turning his rifle towards the newcomer.

“No,” the man replied. “He’s beyond such things. You’re still pointing your gun in the wrong direction.”

The man was English, Atherton noted. Was he one of the people who had travelled over here with the monks?

“I was sent by Admiral Clemence,” the man said, adjusting his cuffs, as if nothing were more important out here in the middle of nowhere than maintaining a civil appearance. For some reason, this ludicrous affectation helped convince Atherton as much as the accent. There would always be a certain breed of Englishman abroad that considered the state of their tie of the utmost importance.

“Where are the others?” he asked. “I was led to believe there was to be a sizeable party arriving.”

He had lowered his rifle but not yet discounted the notion of using it. He wasn’t about to let his moment in authority pass painlessly. If this man was from the ministry then he’d adjust his plans, but quickly. Once the diplomats took over his window of opportunity would be closed.

“They’re still en route I’m afraid,” the man replied. “I came ahead. Shipped up from Mexico where I’ve been keeping an eye on Diaz. A little interim assistance, if you will.”

“Don’t need any,” Atherton replied. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Not a criticism old chap, it’s just that I have new orders.”

“Let me guess, you want me to set up talks with these things?”

The man frowned. “I hardly think that’s a good idea, we want them wiped out not befriended.”

Atherton’s hand loosened on his rifle. Was it possible that his lack of faith in his employers had been unjustified?

“Even more importantly,” the man continued, “we need to ensure that the Americans don’t try and form an alliance. The last thing this troublesome country needs is friends of that calibre.”

“So what are the orders?”

The man nodded at Atherton’s gun. “First we want your people to stage an attack on the town.”

“Already planned,” said Atherton, relishing the fact. “Though they don’t stand a chance, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.”

“Naturally not, but their noble sacrifice will make excellent reportage for the gathered press, there’s quite a representation down there by now.”

“Second?”

“Ah... well the second part of the plan involves you and that rifle,” the man nodded at the weapon, “and the very important targets we wish you to point it at.”

5.

A
GRAT AND
F
ORSET
had taken up position on a large wooden bench just outside the barrier to the town.

It seemed to Forset that they were sat on a stage, their audience the gathered crowds of journalists and spectators that now filled the plain outside the town in anticipation of the President’s arrival. He had never felt quite so uncomfortable in all his life. Including, he decided, during the several recent instances when he was being shot at or threatened with immolation.

A large party of workmen had constructed a tent housing a meeting table and refreshments, the venue where the President and his colleagues would sit down with the Governor of Wormwood and his chosen representatives and discuss exactly what the future held. It was no great surprise that the President refused to enter the town itself. That, it had been accepted, would be a security risk too far. Better, his people had suggested, that the initial meeting took place out here in neutral territory, where initial discussions could be carried out in an open and friendly manner.

Forset was quite sure that the gathered crowd would be as unwelcome to the President as it was to him—he knew of no politician that relished such delicate conversations being carried out in the public eye—but this situation had gone past the point of secrecy. The world was hearing all about Wormwood, better then that the American government seemed to be conducting itself in as open and frank manner as possible, both for the confidence of its people and the fears of foreign governments.

The notion of the plain being a place of neutral safety was, of course, an utter nonsense. Several divisions of infantry were surrounding the area, their guns not quite pointing directly at the town. “Security,” one of the officials had said, “you know how it is.”

Indeed, Forset did. He had no doubt that those guns would be aimed more directly at the very moment the men commanding them felt it necessary.

Perhaps they thought that such a show of strength would intimidate the people of Wormwood. Forset, knowing the sort of strength that lay within, and indeed beyond, that small town, knew better. Not that it reassured him particularly. Knowing that the mortal army could not win the day didn’t mean they couldn’t clock up a few casualties in the attempt. Forset was not a man who enjoyed the experience of having a gun pointed at him. Though even that was preferable to the lens of a camera, several of which were aimed in his direction, ready to pounce. He made a point of crossing and uncrossing his legs as frequently as possible, worried that if he sat completely still one of the photographers would take advantage of the fact.