Three Emperors (9780062194138)

by Dietrich, William

  I let it slip and finally popped through.

  “It’s too narrow for Pasques.” Ahead I saw dim light and heard rushing water. Deliverance, except what if our pursuers followed?

  Catherine forced her way back past me, her body slithering along mine. “Pasques!” she called impatiently. “Now!”

  “I cannot fit, Comtesse.” It was sad resignation.

  “Try!”

  “I’m shot through, half-emptied, and too big. The monks are almost on me. Au revoir, Catherine, and now I have the courage to tell what I was always afraid to admit before: You became the only thing I ever cared about.”

  “Pasques, you idiot! Come!”

  “I love you, madame. I apologize, but it is true.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you insane?”

  “I always loved you. I couldn’t say it before. Dying excuses my boldness.”

  “Imbecile!” She stretched her own trembling arm.

  As did he. But instead of grasping Catherine’s hand, he reached up with mighty arms and yanked at the fractured ceiling of the cave. There was a crack as a boulder came loose. The men behind him cried out. More shots came. Then the boulder came down with a crash, there was a rumble of others, and the exit was sealed, dust puffing toward us. Pasques had entombed himself.

  We were on one side, the monks on the other. They could excavate, but it would take hours. They could retreat back the way they’d come and emerge from the tower, but that would take time as well.

  Time enough, perhaps, to get away.

  Catherine backed out, muttering curses.

  “He sacrificed himself,” Astiza said.

  “The fool loved me,” Catherine said with disbelief, but wonder, too. It was not an emotion she was accustomed to.

  “For that you call him a fool?” I said crossly.

  “Love invites weakness.” Her own voice betrayed doubt at this belief. “And I deserve a prince, not a policeman.” She said it doggedly, dealing with his death in her own warped way. “He was a good companion, but a tool, nothing more. I never told him anything different. I never promised. I never encouraged.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “You allowed him to hope.”

  She sensed our condemnation.

  “You think I should cry for an oaf? I’d have saved him if I could. But the Brazen Head is the key—the Brazen Head and me. Thank your pagan gods that I’ve delivered you with it.”

  And she crawled back past us, batting Harry aside and yanking on the android. She dragged it like a corpse, or lover, toward the pale light.

  Chapter 39

  We emerged in a rock-walled canyon, its thundering stream white with winter snowmelt. The slowly lightening sky of dawn was a narrow crack overhead. Somehow we’d passed the entire night underground.

  There was no way to scale such cliffs with the Brazen Head and a little boy. There was no riverbank to follow, just a flume of rushing water. What we did have was a jam of logs that formed a small pool, the wood frosted.

  “Leave the machine,” Astiza insisted again. “Thomas Aquinas was right. It’s evil. Look at the death it’s caused.”

  “On the contrary,” Catherine insisted, with conviction born of desperation. “It will make us rich. Make us queens. We simply haven’t asked the right questions yet.”

  “Time is like this river,” Astiza warned. “It can only flow downhill. To know the future would send time upstream against itself, producing chaos.”

  “That’s quite the hypocrisy from a professional fortune-teller. We don’t need your magic anymore, sorceress, we need machines. This is the real future—a future in which we can abandon your magic mysticism for gears and wires that will predict and protect, making life riskless. The age of alchemists and witches is past, and the age of electricians is beginning. Isn’t that right, Ethan?”

  “I don’t feel this is my era, Catherine. I feel marooned.”

  “The Brazen Head will tell us things scarcely dreamt, and when we anticipate events we’ll avoid misfortune and revel in opportunity.” Her face was exhausted, eyes wild, but the promise of becoming significant instead of ordinary was within her grasp. “We will be greater than Bonaparte, greater than the Russian czar, greater than Francis. They are not the three emperors, comrades; we are, if we keep this automaton to ourselves. We will live as we did in Paris, all of us under one roof, but it will be a palace this time, with a private army greater than that of Baron Richter.”

  Her vision was a nightmare, of course, a nightmare Astiza and Harry would not long survive. My wife knew this. Catherine didn’t want a real alliance, but a temporary triumvirate, like old Roman warlords. Catherine would get rid of my family, possess me like a spider, and devour me like that same spider.

  My wife and I looked at each other. We were both thinking the same thing. It was a tempting decision, and we let it hang between us while the whitewater roared. A pistol was still in my fist.

  “I have Gideon’s rope,” I finally said, to break the silence. “It’s not long enough to climb out of here, but long enough, perhaps, to lash together a crude raft.”

  So Astiza and I made one, pulling loose lengths of tree trunks from the logjam on the racing water. We tied five of them into a bundle just big enough to precariously carry our weight. Catherine slumped against a rock and watched us, the idea of contributing beyond her. She ignored Harry, who hunched and shivered, crying silently. The last yards of rope were used to tie on the automaton, but it was a makeshift craft with too little freeboard and too much cargo.

  “The worst vessel ever constructed,” Astiza assessed.

  “But perhaps good enough,” I replied, with more optimism than I really felt. “This isn’t mountainous country, and this canyon can’t extend long. We just need to float down these rapids, find a calm pool with a beach, and swim to a safe shore.”

  “I’m so tired, Mama.”

  “Not much more, my love,” she said, her voice breaking. “Not much more.”

  Catherine stood stiffly and moved toward the craft. Astiza blocked her.

  “It will float better with one less person,” my wife said.

  The blond agent was startled. “Get out of my way,” she said uncertainly.

  “We could leave you here, the cave blocked, the cliff impassable, the river death. We could abandon you, Catherine, as you’ll surely abandon us when the opportunity presents itself.”

  “That is my android! I organized the expedition that brought us here! I assembled the men! I enlisted Pasques! I found the clue to search the Star Summer Palace!”

  “Your men are dead. You have no weapon. Why should we save you?” My wife’s voice was cold.

  Catherine’s helplessness was slowly dawning on her. We had no need of her. There were no witnesses. She’d betrayed us and proven herself a murderess. She would complicate any escape. Her eyes were wide, shifting from Astiza’s hard gaze to my own. It would simplify everything, and be justice besides.

  “Ethan, you can’t.” Catherine’s voice caught as she begged, humiliated to have to do so. “I’ll die. I’ll freeze and starve.”

  “I could,” I said. Our chances would improve without her. We had too many people for the logs we’d been able to lash.

  “Please.” It was a sob. She fell to her knees, hands upraised in supplication. “I’m sorry for any discord, our mutual attraction, the problems of politics . . .” It drained away, her teeth chattering from the cold. Her eyes darted.

  “But we won’t,” Astiza said, finishing my thought.

  Catherine bowed her head.

  “We won’t abandon you, Catherine, because forgiveness is more powerful than revenge. Do you understand?”

  The comtesse looked up at us again and blinked. She understood nothing except self-preservation. She understood that the French Revolution had executed tens of thousands, that Napoleon’s campaigns might result in the death of hundreds of thousands, and that the purpose of life was anything but death. It was survival and triump
h. Her look was bleak. She hated the need for mercy. She was propelled by the will to live. Which meant that, for once, she had no answer.

  “We need to go before Richter’s survivors find us,” I finally said.

  Catherine walked numbly past my wife to seize the middle position, lying down to hug the Brazen Head. Astiza and Harry balanced on the stern, if you could call one end of a raft that, and I on the bow, the entire contraption dipping ominously in the water.

  “Paddle as best you can!” I ordered, which meant thrashing the water with sticks and arms. We pushed off into the current, slipping past the remnant of the logjam we’d plundered. Then we rushed down into the deepest part of the canyon.

  It was January, the rocks rimed with frost, icicles hanging, the bare trees up on the canyon rim curved like raptor claws. The river was in flood, Harry moaning as we dashed downstream without rudder or plan. With luck, this sluice of a river would quiet soon, but even as I thought this, its fall seemed to steepen, the current bulging like a muscle. We plunged down into a white pool, caromed off a rock, and whirled on, trivial and helpless. Catherine shrieked, and I sensed the Brazen Head swinging wildly from one side of the raft to the other, half-loose. I risked my balance to glance back. The comtesse was sprawled across her mechanical man, her thighs grabbing its hips, her face just inches above the rushing water.

  “I’m losing my grip! Get us to shore!” she screamed.

  “I can’t.”

  Another plunge, the air nothing but foam, a smack as we hit harder water, and then we were through, clinging to the bucking contraption for dear life. Catherine, Astiza, and Harry were still there. Freezing water slapped our eyes, mouths, and ears. Ice clotted our hair. We shot into swift but calmer water, an ominous dark gray.

  “Is everyone all right?”

  “We almost drowned,” Astiza gasped. “I barely have a grip on Harry. We need to stop, Ethan.”

  “Where?”

  Indeed, there were boulders the size of hay wagons on the river’s edge, but they gave access only to sheer cliffs. It was as if we were trapped in a pipe. So we whirled on, fast as a bird, Harry sobbing, Catherine cursing, and Astiza chanting a prayer.

  “Catherine, pull yourself higher. Your skirt is dragging.”

  She shook her head violently. “I’ll lose my grip if I shift. The logs are coming apart. The automaton is coming loose. You did a poor job, Ethan.”

  We needed to reorganize ourselves. “There’s an outcrop ahead. Paddle for that!”

  But our raft was unwieldy as a barge, and even though we splashed furiously, we couldn’t direct it. We flashed by the refuge, the current quickening.

  When would the canyon end?

  Then I heard a roar, as ominous as the bellow of a monster’s throat.

  Looking ahead, I saw the river disappear.

  “It’s a waterfall!” I shouted. “Abandon the raft! Swim for shore!”

  “We can’t swim with the Brazen Head!” Catherine screamed.

  “Leave it!”

  “No!” Catherine twisted to address my wife, her wet hair flying and slapping across the face of the machine. “This is the masterpiece of Albertus Magnus, Astiza, the treasure we’ve both come a thousand miles to seize. Help me save it!”

  “Catherine, there’s no time. Abandon the raft.”

  “Leave it to the river?” She barked a mad laugh.

  “Leave it to save your life!” I roared, yanking her shoulder, but she furiously slapped my arm away.

  So I deliberately rolled into the frigid water, came up blowing, flung my arm around the waist of my wife as she passed, and pulled her and my son into the stream with me, the raft hurrying on.

  “Swim, swim,” I cried, “or we die!”

  With our weight off it, the raft bobbed higher. Catherine cackled in triumph. She clawed her way up the length of her brass man, thrashing with her arms to try to guide the raft to shore.

  Astiza and I were half-paralyzed from cold, but terror can do wonders. We swam as if prodded by the devil’s pitchfork, Harry between us, and barely reached a last boulder on the right bank before the ominous lip of the waterfall. My hand slapped rock, slid on wet moss and ice, and then found a crevice and held. My family bumped beside me, my arm lassoing them.

  Cold mist rose like steam from the abyss beyond. The raft spun merrily toward the drop.

  “Catherine! Don’t be a fool! Jump!”

  She looked back, torn by indecision. Even she could see there was no longer any chance of navigating the android to shore. The falls were roaring, fog boiled like a cloud, and the cliffs ahead were painted with rime. Showing regret she’d never shown poor Pasques, she finally pushed into the river, shoving the raft and its inhuman cargo away.

  Then her eyes widened.

  Something caught and yanked her after the android.

  Catherine’s head snapped, and she floated on her back while she was towed, kicking in frantic fear.

  Her hair, those beautiful blond tresses that had taken my breath away when we first partnered, had become wound into the automaton’s machinery.

  “Ethan!” It was a shriek, a plea, a last expression of despair. She finally had a companion she was married to, wed inextricably in thousands of gears and wires, her hair clogging any attempt to foretell her future.

  “The android has me!”

  Or she had it. Perhaps it had simply made one last prediction, the one she dreaded.

  We hung on the mossy boulder, the current pummeling past. We saw a last flash of foot, whether human or brass I knew not, and then heard a faint scream as Catherine Marceau and the android rode the thundering cataract down.

  Finally there was only the pounding of the river.

  We shuddered, and not just from cold.

  We still had just enough strength to drag ourselves out of the water and up onto the rock. Harry was squeezed between, squirting water like a sponge. It drained from mouth, nose, and ears. We pumped him to keep his spark alive, thrilled by his every cough. We were all near dead.

  And yet we’d escaped. I knew this as firmly as if a fortune-teller had proclaimed our fate. The Brazen Head had indeed given a future to my family—and taken it from Catherine Marceau. I felt escape, relief, and a somber depression that everyone’s desire had come to nothing. We’d discovered a miracle, but we had let it sink away.

  Deliverance also gave me a flicker of energy. I spied a crevice and ledge in the cliff face, which we could follow toward the forest above. The canyon was lower here, diving to follow the plunge of the falls, and climbable. We crept up a slit of wet rock, trembling with exertion and panting with hope. A slip meant death for all of us.

  So we held on.

  We crawled onto flatter land with the joy of shipwrecked sailors—gone from Richter, gone from Catherine, gone from the Invisible College, and gone from the madness of war.

  “Some farmer will take us in,” I whispered. “We’ll hide.”

  “I love you, Ethan.” Astiza’s tone was utterly spent, our lips too numb to kiss.

  “I love you. You saved Harry for all these long, terrifying months. Your alchemy saved all of us in Richter’s prison.”

  “Now let’s save our marriage.”

  Shakily we stood. We could see the falls, a long, dizzying plunge into a black pool rimmed with foam and ice. We watched for life but saw none. The shaky raft had disintegrated, and the metal man would be an anchor that dragged its lover down. Catherine was at the bottom of the pool somewhere, forever in its embrace.

  All triumph for a time, the Brazen Head had foretold.

  I carried Harry as tightly as a puppy as we worked away from the river, our exertions keeping us alive. The light was growing, and we might even get some January sun.

  It was over at last. My family back, my enemies vanquished.

  I stopped a moment simply to suck in great drafts of breath.

  And then a nasal voice gave challenge.

  “Where have you hidden it?”

  Th
e voice made Astiza jump and Harry cringe, but at first I couldn’t see its origin. My eyes flickered along the spine of the ridge as if hunting for deer.

  “You didn’t think you could keep it for yourselves, did you?”

  With sickening realization, I cast my gaze lower. The sun hadn’t reached this part of the forest, and so the dwarf was still in shadow, but his calm menace reinforced my memory of gnomish malevolence.

  “Don’t worry about the boy,” he added. “I’ve got a way to get him warm.”

  “Auric!” My wife’s voice was a wail.

  “You thought you killed me, didn’t you, witch? Maimed me with your evil trick. But I’m not one to die.”

  He stepped forward, or rather staggered, a cross between a waddle and a limp. If Richter had lost his lower face, Auric had lost his right side, the very bones of his jaw caved in and his triumphant grin missing half its teeth. His leg was twisted, his hands burned even more horribly than before. Yet those hands gripped a new set of small pistols.

  I realized that he’d been the rider I saw splitting from Richter’s group, sent to guard against any escape through a backdoor in the castle.

  “Why can’t you leave us alone?” My question was as hopeless as it was pointless.

  “I swore eternal vengeance, Ethan Gage. Burned, crushed, bleeding, and I knew I had only one purpose left in life. I insisted to Richter that he bring me on a pony, and when the others blundered ahead into the castle and fired off enough shots to win at Austerlitz, I wondered what other escape you might find. You’re a worm, but a clever one. A knife to a farmer’s eye won me word of an old cave entrance, and the place on the river where you’d either exit or die.” He looked past us. “Where’s Catherine?”

  “Dead. Drowned.”

  “Richter? The others?”

  “Dead too.”

  “And where’s the Brazen Head? Where did you leave it?”