“Yes, ma’am, and you’re the lady sheriff I’ve heard so much about. I do hope you’ll pardon me if I don’t remove my mask.”

“Why on earth would you remove your mask?”

“I’m not wearing a hat, and it only seems polite to remove something when meeting a lady.”

She laughed and said, “At least you didn’t offer to take off anything else. Where’d you find this one, Captain?”

“Tacoma. I’ve known him for ages, but don’t believe everything he tells you. I like him better than I trust him.” He said it as if it were a joke, carefully devoid of weight. Then he added, “Anyway, I was starting to wonder if you were going to make it.”

“And let you leave without seeing you off? Not a chance. Is everything ready? You’ve got everything you need, and everything’s working all right? I hope you’ve tested everything, and double-checked everything, and—”

“All of it, and some of it twice,” he assured her.

From within her mask her voice was muffled, but he could still hear the worry when she said, “I don’t mean to nag you like you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s just that New Orleans is an awful long way away.”

“You gonna worry about me?”

She admitted, “More than I’d like to. Three weeks?”

“Three weeks,” he promised. “And if I’m running any longer than that, I’ll send word by telegram. Tell Princess Angeline to keep her eyes open at the Tacoma taps, or get a friend to check it. She’s got friends all over the place, anyway. I swear to God, that woman knows half of everyone on the coast.”

“Just about,” Briar agreed. “I’ll flag her down next time she passes through.”

Underneath the Naamah Darling, the retracting steps quivered as Houjin descended. The seventeen-year-old Chinese boy was accompanied by fellow Mandarin Fang, who had served as Captain Cly’s first mate for over a decade. Both were wearing long sleeves, long pants, duster coats, and gas masks, lest the blight cause itching rashes on whatever parts were exposed.

Houjin cried, “Hey! Are we going to hit the skies, or hang around here all day?”

Fang said nothing, because he had no tongue. But his posture echoed the question, feet apart, arms folded, head cocked to the side.

Cly took a deep breath. It was hard to do so inside the mask, where every intake was hauled through the filters that kept the air from killing him. He said, “I think this wraps up all the official talk, and there’s no reason we can’t be on our way. Everybody inside, and buckle up. I’m right behind you.”

“Behind us?” Houjin asked from the foot of the steps.

“You heard me.”

Andan Cly leaned down to Briar and said, “Hey, do me a favor.”

Behind the lenses, her eyebrows knitted. “What?”

“Take a deep breath.”

“What?”

“Just do it. For me.”

“All right?…” Her chest inflated and she held the air, as requested.

The captain did likewise, and snapped one hand out to her mask, and one hand to his own. Faster than lightning, he lifted the filters on both contraptions and leaned in for a swift, sudden kiss. Seconds later, because there was no time to dare more — not on the surface, where the air was made of poison — he popped both masks back into place and exhaled as hard as he could.

While everyone stared and no one spoke, Briar did likewise, adjusting the fit over her face.

“Now what’d you go and do that for?” she stammered.

“For good luck,” he beamed. “Besides, everybody knows by now, anyway.” He wiggled his mask to tighten the fit and added, “Good-bye for now, Briar Wilkes. I’ll be back in a few weeks, you just watch me.”

Agatha Knotts turned another card over.

The Hanged Man was revealed, suspended by his foot over a grill. The weathered edges of the paper were fuzzy from humidity; a crack in the old stock split across the gallows. The whole pack was worn like this, from years of use by skillful fingers — decades of patterns, possibilities, and promises spread across a bright silk scarf beneath a parasol.

Josephine sighed. “I was hoping for something a little more auspicious.”

Agatha shrugged and said, “It’s not the worst you could’ve pulled. Think of it as balance, your world suspended between two tugging forces.”

“It is helplessness.”

“It is not.”

“Give me the last one,” Josephine urged. She was careful not to glance over her shoulder, or to peer from left to right. The Square in front of the Saint Louis cathedral was not so crowded now. Curfew would descend within minutes. The fortune-tellers with their stands, their small tables draped in bright colors, their battered and mystical tools … they were folding up shop and preparing to leave before the Texians made them go.

The statue in front of the church cast a horse-shaped shadow that stretched the beast into a monstrous mockery of four legs and a rider drawn spiderlike between the angled lines of the church’s pointed spires. Josephine did not look at that, either, because she already knew the hour was late.

The fortune-teller said, “Temperance.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake.”

“Again, you are thinking too narrowly, my friend.” Agatha tapped the card with one long fingernail. “The lady does not stand for restraint — no more than you do. Consider how metal is forged. This is another card for balance, for the subtle power that comes after a trial.”

“You’re making this up.”

With a flick of her wrist and a very fast sweep, Agatha scooped the cards into her palm. “You’re the one who asked me to read. If you don’t believe, I don’t mind. But there’s no need to be rude.” She shuffled the stiff rectangles idly, jostling them in her hands, slipping cards in and out of the stack and massaging them back into the whole. She lowered her voice and was careful to keep her eyes on the orange silk before her. “It won’t be long now.”

“I know. Give me another spread. A short one.”

“Another row for you to mock?” The colored woman in the pretty shawl lifted an eyebrow, mocking back. It was friendlier than it appeared. Agatha and Josephine had known each other since childhood, and their differences ran deep without coming between them.

Josephine dropped her voice as well, making a show of reaching into her bag for another warm coin to set upon the box that served as a table. “Another excuse to linger. I want to see how they clear the Square. I want to see if the new man comes and sweeps it himself.”

“Three cards, then.” She spread the pack in an arc and said. “Choose wisely, and concentrate on your question, so the cards can respond.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” she mumbled. Even so, a query buzzed through her mind in a flash. Will Cly come — or will I have to find someone else? She shook her head, doing her best to empty it of the superstition. Then she randomly tapped three selections. “Those.”

“Very well,” Agatha said with a patient, practiced nod. As she removed the cards and retrieved the rest of the deck, she asked under her breath, without meeting her companion’s eyes, “Hazel said you spoke with Madame Laveau?”

“Yes. Four nights ago. She saved me.” She said it matter-of-factly. Regardless of her opinions on tarot or the stars, or God or the devil, or any other unseen thing alleged to walk the city … she believed in the elderly vodou queen.

Agatha remarked, “She has not spoken much about the Dead Who Walk. Some people think she made them herself. They say she’s building an army of the damned to throw the Texians out of New Orleans.”

“They can say whatever they want. I do not believe she made the zombis.”

“Zombi? Is that what she calls them?”

Josephine nodded down at the cards, maintaining the fortune-seeking charade in case they were being watched. It was safest to assume, in the occupied city. They were always being watched. “Do you know the word?”