Red Shoes grew, like the giant in the story of the Wichita priest. His feet sank deep into the earth; his head brushed the sky; his skin bloated with the pressure of the rattlesnakes and hornets that filled him up, stretching him toward the stars.
The world turned lazily about him, a disc of shadow and light.
Far below, he could see the meaningless little battle, the wrathful wind the Sun Boy had finally released. He remembered, long ago, telling Thomas Nairne the story of Wind, who killed his enemies and then went to sleep in the deep waters, promising that when he awakened he would sweep the world clean.
Well, Wind had awakened, but even he was as nothing to the stirring of the Great One. Himself.
None of that matters now, he said to himself. Adrienne had tricked the Sun Boy, stolen his fire, but he had tricked her, stolen hers.
I am the oldest there is. I am the youngest. I am every one of my lineage.
Now his thoughts became faces he did not recognize. Now his desires became scents he had never known. Now the clay that was his body itched so he wanted to throw it off.
And still he grew, watching everything that had once seemed so important dwindle, diminish, become a light smaller than a star.
But the real stars—ah …
Soon he would be able to reach to the ends of the universe, and all would be as before, water and stars, nothing between.
How much better this way. The Peace camp, at least, had done this one good thing: if he had managed to slay humanity earlier, this would never have been possible. And these little seeds they planted—no, not seeds, but eggs, like the sort that dirt daubers buried in their paralyzed prey—ah, how well he had turned them to his advantage.
And still she did not know. Still the Sun Boy was oblivious. And still time marched forward to its own end.
He looked and saw that it was good.
“What in the holy hell—” Franklin sputtered, as the ship rang like a bell and the deck fled from beneath his feet.
“The mines are gettin’ through again,” Robert said.
“Mines, my arse. That was no explosion. That was something big, smacking into us.”
“I don't see nothin'.” Tug grunted, looking—as they all were—around and out a window.
“Up above,” Franklin snapped. “They've done our own trick, vanished a ship and crept up on us.”
If they needed further confirmation of that fact, a sudden screech of metal against metal supplied it.
“Grapnels!” Robert said.
“Seal the hatches,” Franklin said, “now.”
Robert and Tug hastened to do so, but even as they did, Franklin noticed that the deck beneath their feet was beginning to get warm. They were through the aegis, whoever they were, which meant they could do all manner of things—melt steel, boil blood, release lightning.
He didn't figure on giving them the chance. He aimed the depneumifier up through the ceiling and fired it. Fired it again and again.
And, not too surprisingly, the ceiling suddenly creaked, as if a hundred tons of brick had been laid on it.
“Brace yourselves! I've robbed ‘em of motive power!”
“That means we're holding both them and us up!” Robert said.
“No, I wouldn't go that far,” Franklin replied, pointing down through the floor portal, where the Earth was growing perceptibly larger each second.
To make matters worse, the ship began tilting, first slowly, then quite quickly, onto its side.
“What in hell's name are you doing?” Crecy shouted, grabbing Adrienne and trying to shake her back to awareness.
“Saving our lives, at least for another few moments. We were already done, otherwise. I advise strapping our friends into the braces, and ourselves as well. I imagine this thing will flip all the way over.”
“If we live through this—” Crecy snapped in a promising tone.
Adrienne and Red Shoes were sleeping through it all, it seemed. They got them strapped in just in time. Once the craft had rolled onto its side, it flipped the rest of the way over quite quickly. The ceiling was now the floor, and they could no longer see how fast the ground was approaching. It couldn't be too fast—his belly wasn't all that light.
He opened the hatch and jumped down in a hold that was now where a hold ought to be, Robert and Don Pedro right behind him, then threw open the upper—now lower—hatch.
A vehicle made of great wheels hung there, latched onto them with clawlike grapnels. Or rather, a sphere compassed by wheels, something like a globe of the Earth mounted with rings around the poles and equator. An open portal was pointed toward them and a hand with a gun poked out of it.
Franklin yanked his head back into the ship as a jagged bolt of phlogiston struck the frame of the portal. Then, with a hoarse cry, he leaned back out and fired his own kraftpistole and had the satisfaction of seeing that arm withdrawn with great alacrity.
“How fast we fallin'?” Robert asked.
“We'll find out when we hit the ground,” Franklin replied. “At least they'll break our fall. But let's see if we can't drop a few grenados into that window in the meantime.”
When Oglethorpe's saber broke, he knew he was a dead man, and though he would have hit the ships with a stone, still they were too far away. His mount was long dead, but even mounted—too far.
He couldn't imagine why he was still alive, anyway. More than miraculous, it seemed perverse. But he was alive, with the battle still surging around him. Just now, he wasn't in reach of an enemy—his men had formed a hollow square around him, and the French were accounting for themselves on his right flank. God knew where the Swedes had gotten to. Now that he was in the valley itself, his perspective on the carnage was limited, to say the least.
He stumbled to the ground from sheer weariness, and noticed a tomahawk someone had dropped. He tried to pick it up, and found that he could, just barely. His arms were lead pipes, uninterested in defending him even once more.
One of the regulars nearest him dropped, sobbing, an arrow buried in his chest. Oglethorpe looked for the archer, but couldn't pick him out. Not that it mattered that much anyway. He spared another glance at the unattainable ships— even if they should reach them, they would be cut down by defenders on board.
Well, it had been a fair try.
A hot wind stirred, awash with the smell of thunderstorms and—something else. He ignored it at first, but the wind grew stronger, hotter, and then hot enough to be painful, and with it came a hurricane sound, and behind that a vast tearing, as if a titan were using the crescent Moon to reap a forest.
And indeed, in the distance, on the hilltop above the valley, the forest began to evaporate.
In that moment, whether locked in strangleholds or bludgeoning with ax or sword, a lot of men suddenly had second thoughts about the battle.
For perhaps the first time in history, two opposing armies retreated together, as fast as their legs would take them.
They hit the ground with enough force to rattle teeth and bone, but not enough to break them.
“That's it,” Franklin said. “We're down.” He unstrapped himself and drew his pistols. After the first grenade had bounced off the window frame, the occupants of the wheel ship had wisely closed it. Franklin wondered how many men that meant, but he almost didn't care. They had ruined his chance of stopping the dark engine short of the army, which meant Lenka was dead, and someone was going to pay for that.
No. There might still be time, time to find Lenka and reach the redoubts, which were already protected from the devilish engine.
He jumped out of the side hatch, grunting as he struck the uneven surface of the wheel ship. The impact hadn't done much to it—the frame was probably adamantium. Looking at it again, he felt a little better. It probably couldn't hold that many men.
It held a few, however, and they were struggling out of a hatch only half open, the rest blocked by the ship's unnatural position on the ground. Three were already out, and another still crawling fro
m underneath. They hadn't seen him yet, and Franklin didn't have any nobility left in him. He aimed and shot one with his ordinary pistol. He missed, which drew their fire, but he didn't much care. Now that the aegis of his ship was down—and he needn't worry about the unpleasant effects of wearing an aegis inside an aegis—he inserted the key that activated the one built into his waistcoat. The blood-red streak of a hot bullet scored across the rainbow-tinted field.
Robert landed next to him, a second blur.
“I have to find Lenka, Robin,” he said. “I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.”
Another bullet spanged near.
“I understand,” Robert said. “Me an’ Don Pedro will handle this. A man has to look after his own.”
“You're my own, too, Robert. I love you like a brother— actually, better than my brothers. When you're finished here, clear out south to the redoubts.”
“I love my skin, believe me,” Robert answered.
“I wish I could shake your hand.”
“Don't get all Grub-Street maudlin on me, Ben. Just find y'r wife.”
Franklin nodded, jumped to the ground, and, ignoring the bullets that whizzed by him, started running west, to where he reckoned the army was. He took one look back over his shoulder. He couldn't see Robert, of course, but he could see Don Pedro, who had either forgotten to engage his aegis or disdained to. Franklin figured the latter.
Veronique de Crecy looked up at the sound—a clicking pop, the grating of metal.
“Adrienne—wake!” she said, slapping her friend's face again. Nothing—she was gone into the aether, doing whatever she and Franklin had planned. Even the ships crashing hadn't wakened her. Could she carry her out in time? But Franklin and the rest were fighting someone out there— cries and gunshots were proof enough of that.
She cast about, noticed Euler was still strapped in, looking stunned. “You,” she said. “Carry her out. Now.”
Euler looked up at her with guileless eyes. “I can't,” he said. “She needs me here.”
“Did you hear what I just told you?”
He nodded but said nothing.
“Karevna—you do it, then.”
“We can't disturb her. What she's doing is too important.”
“Not more important than her life.”
“I disagree,” the Russian said, her voice hard.
“Karevna—” But Crecy was interrupted as a part of the metal wall suddenly vanished in a great flare, and a trio of men stepped through.
One of them, of course, was Oliver. One was an ugly, baldheaded Indian she did not know. The third was a boy, and there could be little doubt who he was. There was too much of Adrienne in him.
“Well, Veronique, one last time, eh?” Oliver said. “It's been a merry chase.”
“Stay away from her, Oliver.”
“I intend to, actually. We aren't enemies this time.”
“You're a liar.”
“No, indeed. She's doing exactly what the masters want. The Sun Boy didn't understand that at first—nor did we—but now we are all in accord.”
“Then why did you attack our ship?”
“Well, that's what comes from not understanding—but now, well, there are still those who might interfere.”
“This is nonsense. You just want me to lower my guard. Well, to hell with you, Oliver, the sooner the better.” She pointed the tip of her broadsword at him.
Oliver held up his weaponless hands. “Look, see—I back up. Just wait a moment, Veronique, and it shall all be over.”
Veronique suddenly grinned broadly, and wiped a single copper strand of hair from her eyes.
“You are quite correct, Oliver. It will be over very soon indeed.” And with that she set her stance and bounded toward him.
Curiously, Tug, who had been guarding Red Shoes, did the same, bellowing, waving a cutlass, driving toward the bald Indian.
Nico/Sun Boy seemed to notice none of this, any more than Adrienne did. Like hers, his eyes looked on quite a different world.
The castle was nearly done when Nico appeared again. He regarded her for a moment with his little-boy eyes.
“They say I'm supposed to help you now,” he said, puzzled.
“Really? That's odd.”
“I thought so, too.” He paused a few moments, then asked, “What are we doing?”
“Even I'm just beginning to understand that, myself,” she said. “But it has to do with harmony.”
“I don't understand.”
“You've seen a violin? An instrument with strings?”
“Yes.”
“Long ago, I saw a picture in a book. It was a picture of a monochord—like a violin with only one string. It ran from heaven to earth, passing through the orbits of all the planets. What the picture showed was that the universe is harmonic, like a musical scale. And do you know what was at the very top of the picture?”
“No.”
“A hand, gripping the key that tuned the cord. The hand of God, who made the world.”
She looked again at a few equations, moved things around a bit. “Now, it's really more complicated than that, but in a way the picture said something, the same thing that a philosopher named Newton said—”
“I know who Newton was.”
“Good. They've attended to your education, then. What the picture said was this: the universe needn't be as it is. It can be changed, just as the pitch of a violin string can be changed. And yet it is not a great change—after all, even if you tune a violin up or down a few notes, you can still play the same songs, only in a different key.”
“I still don't understand.”
“We're going to put the universe in a different key, that's all. That's why I have this hand—that's why they gave it to me, the angels, so I could twist the key. That's why you were born, to do the same thing.” Her throat tightened again. Would Nico know if she lied to him?
“And we're ready to do that?”
“Yes.”
“That's good, then.”
“Yes, that's good.”
And she was ready. Her castle was the monochord, anchored at the poles of creation, held at one end by her son and at the other by herself. She had turned the key once already— when the death attacked her, in Saint Petersburg. She had tightened it just slightly, just enough so the death her son had created to kill her could no longer exist—and then let it go back to where it had been.
When it passed over, it twisted everything in me, the Siberian woman had said. And of course, it had. He did. She did. Tree, monochord, castle—all the same.
“When I turn, you must hold fast, Nico. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I can do that.”
She hesitated, remembering him as he had been—a strange, silent child. But she loved him—he had given her a reason to live when all other reasons were gone.
“Do you remember?” she asked softly. “Do you remember when I showed you the moon? La lune?”
The boy's eyes grew even wider then, and he pursed his lips. “La loooon,” he said.
“Yes. You do remember. Will you take my hand?”
Hesitantly, he reached out, and as their fingers touched, the monochord she had written became real, rushing into existence with all of the certainty in her.
But something was wrong. There was the monochord, yes, but there was—something else, something climbing up it, something she hadn't made. In her angel sight it was a tree of fire, then a serpent uncoiling—its tail in the deeps and its eyes in the stars. It was Red Shoes, and then it was a creature with six times sixty wings, and on each wing as many eyes, and black scales covering all. And it was a diagram, a scientific drawing of some hellish thing dissected.
“Thank you,” the creature said, as always, in her own voice. Now Red Shoes, now a fountain of blackness.
“Thank you,” it said again. “At last!”
“No,” she said. “Red Shoes?”
Its laugh was fingernails on slate. “Yes. Or no. I move through him,
my little clay doll. Do you prefer him?”
It formed into Red Shoes again, squinted at the long strand.
“Ah, you see? It was well that I did not trust you. You and Franklin—you made this to deceive me. So similar, but so wrong. You would tune it the wrong way.”
“Who are you?”
“What could a name possibly matter? I think I have been called Metatron, and Lucifer, and Jehovah. No such names matter.”
“You are God's enemy.”
“And you are a superstitious beast of clay. There is no God. There is only us, and you. Soon there will be only us. Everything else is a lie, a pandering to your idiot minds.”
“I have heard differently, from your enemies among your own kind. You—”
“They are gone. The war in your imaginary heaven is over. I won.”
Tug howled as the scalped man ducked under his swing and snapped the tomahawk into his arm with such force it sent him smashing into the wall.
“Futt'r y', but y'r not gettin’ near him,” he growled, and slashed again.
The scalped man answered in a language Tug didn't know, even as he hopped nimbly away from the blade. Tug watched the Indian, who was dancing lightly on the balls of his feet. How could he be so fast? Tug circled a little more warily, aware that all his wounds were open again. Still, he felt only a little dizzy, even with the new one.
“Y'know what he did one time?” Tug said. “When we first met? All I could do was insult him, make fun o’ him. But when the lot o’ us got captured, he grabbed a red-hot musket barrel in his hands. They were heatin’ it up to torture ‘im. Swung the motherfucker right at ‘em, he did, laid about foursquare. That's why I'm alive today, alive so'as I can do—urk.”
He hadn't even seen the move, and suddenly the edge of the ax was in his throat. He could sort of taste it, even, or maybe that was the blood. The scalped man grinned cruelly.
Tug dropped his cutlass and grabbed the scalped man by the throat with both hands. The scalped man kept grinning— only now he smiled like one of those college boys who thought they knew so damned much and didn't mind lording it over you. Like he knew something Tug didn't.
Oh, he did. He was strong, stronger than Tug. His neck was like the rope of a ship's anchor, and now he was prizing Tug's hands from his throat, and it wouldn't take long, not with all of that red life coursing out of his own veins and filling up his windpipe.
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