The answer came back similarly, a resonance that became, somewhere between fingertips and brain, a voice—her own voice. That made a sort of sense—the creature would have no physical vocalization of its own, possessing neither lungs nor tongue—and so as the varied business of the universe transposed themselves for her as lines and numbers, so too did the voice of its aethereal creatures become familiar, as well. This hypothesis made her own voice answering her no less eerie, however.
“I translate,” it said. “I make harmony.”
“What do you mean?”
“Between like and unlike I make resolution.”
“Ah. Mediation, you mean.”
“If that is your word for it.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Odjinn,” it replied.
For some reason, rather than being amusing, that sent a little shiver up her spine. “That is what I called you,” she pointed out. “I called you Djinn, for a fanciful creature. But what is your name?”
“My name is Djinn,” it answered promptly.
Names, then, like the visions, like the sound of its voice, came from her. How did this differ from delusional madness? “If I call you that name, you will come?”
“Yes.”
“And why are you here, Djinn?”
“To serve you, lady.”
“And how can you serve me?”
“You command, and I shall serve.”
Adrienne bit her lip and thought for a moment. So far she had merely used the creatures as oculars to view the aetheric world. But could she do more? Could they also be her mortar and pestle, her crucible? It mediated; that was a key concept in science. Water, for instance, could not dissolve copper—the two were too dissimilar harmonically to be sociable—but if the copper were melted together with sulfur first, a solution with water could thence be formed. The sulfur mediated the change, produced a middle ground between the ferments of water and copper. Her hand mediated between the tones of sound and the harmonies of the aether, and so forth. Mediation created, in essence, sociabilities or attractions between things where naturally none existed. However, most natural mediators had limited roles, any one substance able to mediate between only two or perhaps three or four others. Philosopher’s mercury was a powerful mediator, for it was changeable in nature, able to transmit any harmony or set of affinities it was supplied with; and so it was through mercury that many scientifical devices worked, whether it be the work of transmutation or turning a liquid into its natural vaporous form. Was this creature a sort of living mercury? Was that its nature?
She recalled a passage from one of Newton’s books, in which he feigned to explain muscular motion—saying that the animate spirit present in living things was, in its essence, mediation between the aether and the gross expansion and contraction of muscles. Could that be what these malakim were? The same sorts of spirits that animated living things, but without bodies or with bodies of fainter stuff?
Frowning, she returned to her tent, took up a candle, and from the floor a half-empty glass of wine. She dripped a little wax into the cup, where it congealed and floated, two little islands.
“Here,” she said. “Can you mediate between these substances?”
“If you see the substance for me, I will try,” Djinn answered.
“Very well.” She closed her eyes and concentrated through the manus oculatus on the cup, on the wine, on the drops of wax. They appeared as distinct entities, bounded from one another as if by capsules or walls, and yet connected by a thousand wavelet harmonies as well—gravity, magnetism, and many more she had not yet named.
Long moments passed, and she began to grow impatient.
“It is a many-sided task,” Djinn admitted.
“Ah.” She should have started with something simpler: water and copper, lead and tin, or some other simple, unsociable compounds.
There came a hiss and a vapor, as the bones of her hand flared sun bright through her flesh.
“I could not mediate all,” Djinn told her. “Some of the substance was lost.”
“Yes,” Adrienne replied, absently. “I saw the vapor. But sweet God …” She stared at the gray, gelatinous puddle that had once been wine, a cup, and two drops of wax.
8.
A Hunting
Ben groaned at the hollow boom that seemed to rattle his eardrums from within. He opened his eyes to find his face pressed hard against the mattress.
The concussion repeated itself, and this time he realized it was someone hammering on the door. Cursing, he rose—rather drunkenly, though there was no taste of beer in his mouth—and uncapped the small lanthorn near his bed.
His bleary eyes and the clock told him it was six.
Four hours of sleep. He rubbed his eyes and found that even with such little rest, he felt good. The evening with Lenka and the telescope had been a deep breath, clearing his head, reassuring him, leaving him with a powerful sense of optimism and purpose. Today, for good or ill, he would learn what Newton was hiding from him, and know what to do.
But who in the world was banging at the door?
It might be Lenka—perhaps Newton had gone early. Or maybe she had some other reason to see him.…
Grinning at that latter prospect, he quickly pulled on a linen shirt, white satin waistcoat, and rather poofy black Spanish breeches. It would not do for him to appear in the slightest undressed before her, not this time. Smoothing back his hair, he trotted to the door and swung it open.
Two royal footmen replied to his welcoming grin with polite nods. “Good morning, Herr Franklin,” said the one in front, a fellow Ben recognized but whose name he did not recall. “The emperor requests your presence at the hunt.”
“When?”
“The company leaves by the stroke of seven, sir.”
“Leaves? Leaves to where?”
“To Bubeutsch, the hunting park, sir.”
“I …” He cursed inwardly. It was too late to feign illness, not the way he had come up to the door, all grinning and stupid. “I must first have my master’s permission.”
“Not that it would matter,” the fellow said, “for the permission of your master is nothing next to the emperor’s wish—but Sir Isaac is going as well.”
“Oh.” He thought furiously. Would Lenka wonder where he was, come ten o’clock? If he missed their appointment she might claim it canceled her debt, and that wouldn’t do. Damn the emperor, anyway. “In that case, I’ll join you at seven.” He could at least find her and explain.
“We have orders to accompany you, sir. The tailor sent along your hunting clothes.” The second man stepped up, offering a pile of woolen garments.
Ben stared at the suit, but he could think of nothing more to say. “I suppose I’ll dress, then,” he muttered.
He miserably watched the water cascade from the brim of his hat. The dawn had begun to gray the sky a bit as they approached Bubeutsch, but the day it revealed was not promising. A mat of pewter cloud lay low to the ground, and rain came and went. It was coming now. He reached up to unlace the hat, converting the tricorn to a more functional rain hat, and a small flood splashed onto his horse’s mane.
“This is a fine, fine day,” Robert muttered from a few yards away.
“It’s a damn silly day to go hunting,” Ben snapped. “What does this—” He stopped himself. Nobody was in earshot save Robert and Frisk, but he still had his doubts about Frisk, and using the words he had intended in describing the emperor could prove a very foolish thing if they got back to him. Instead, he changed the subject.
“Do you have the smallest notion of how to hunt?”
Robert’s white grin appeared through the double cataracts of their hats. “Well, sure, I’m expert in these highborn hunts—I’ve hunted with the French king, the tsar of Muscovy, an’ the pasha of Persia—but ’tis said the customs of these German folks an’t the same as them courts.”
“Meaning you don’t know either.”
“Meanin’ exactl
y that. What in hell would I know of royal hunts? How about you, Captain Frisk? What’ve you to speak on the matter?”
Frisk shrugged. “I have not hunted in many a day. As a boy I hunted with musket, but the kill was so easy as to seem pointless to me—a sport for weak, fat old men.”
“What did you hunt with, then?” Ben asked.
“In the end, a pitchfork,” Frisk answered.
“A pitchfork? How does one kill a deer with a pitchfork?”
“Ah, one does not,” Frisk answered. “The pitchfork is best for hunting bear.”
“I see,” Ben replied. “And so, in brief, none of us knows a thing about hunting.”
Frisk turned to frown at him. “Are you calling me a liar, sir?”
Ben opened his mouth to retort, but he suddenly saw that Frisk was not joking, and he remembered how little he knew about this man—and what a dangerous man he had shown himself to be. “No, sir,” he said. “I only assumed you were having me on, but now I see that you aren’t.”
Frisk’s severity was cracked suddenly by a smile. “You’ve no reason to credit my tales. What would you know of hunting?”
“Well, what shall we expect? Not pitchforks, I should think.”
“It differs from court to court. The French ride on horses with spear and sword. I believe they follow the Swedish custom here, taking the quarry on foot. I believe that they will use muskets. Beaters and hounds will chase the beast in toward the hunting party. Always let the king have the first shot, and if your shot should later fell it, you best claim it was the king’s shot which was fatal, though he miss by a league.”
“Hah. Small danger that I shall shoot anything.” Ben grunted. “I wonder what ‘it’ may be.”
“ ’Tis in the wagon up ahead,” Frisk said. “I saw it in passing. I believe it is an East Indian panther.”
Ben remembered the sinuous form in the Stag Moat—and its accompanying malakus—and suppressed a shudder. “How right you are, Robert,” he said. “What a fine day this is turning into.”
The sky paused in its weeping an hour or so later. By that time they had reached the hunting park, a verdant forest with trees spaced wide and manicured, a sort of imperial simulacrum of the wild. The wagon Frisk had mentioned stood with doors wide, and perhaps three score men with pikes and expressions ranging from bored to worried stood in a van on the small meadow where the emperor and his guests gathered. Aside from the huntsmen and guards, the party was small; the emperor, Prince Eugène, Newton, their footmen, and himself, Robert, and Frisk.
Ben gingerly took the musket he was presented. It was heavier than he had imagined, and the scent of wet steel, oil, and burnt powder tickled his nostrils.
“You know how to fire it, sir?” the huntsman asked.
“Yes,” Ben replied, fairly certain that he did.
“Shall I prime the pan for you?”
“Ah—please.” He watched carefully as the powder was measured, then took the musket and horn for himself.
Out in the forest, a faint barbaric music began, as of metal pans being beaten. He felt as if it were a noose of sound tightening on his neck.
The emperor walked up, and to Ben’s vast surprise, clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Come along, Mr. Franklin,” he said, actually smiling a bit. “I’ve a mind to see the hunting prowess of a man bred in the wilderness of America.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Ben replied.
“This way,” the emperor said, indicating the forest. They started along, his three footmen, Robert, and Frisk following at a discreet distance. The dank smell of the woods enveloped them, cleaner and wilder than any city.
“I’ve often wished I might hunt in the New World,” the emperor went on. “I hear so much of the wild beasts and untamed forests. Is it true that it is possible to walk across streams on the backs of the fish?”
“Well, Your Majesty, such is not the case in my native Boston, though I have heard such reports of the lands in the interior. I have never been there myself.”
“Oh,” the emperor replied, sounding somewhat disappointed. “Well, perhaps—after we reclaim our precious Spain—I shall visit our possessions there.”
Ben nodded, not sure what to say, and he wondered, not for the first time, how the colonies fared. He had made every effort to discover what he could of them, but communications were poor even in Europe, and he had found no word of Boston or any other colony. Most surprising, there had not even been communication by aetherschreiber, the miraculous invention that communicated letters instantaneously over any distance. He had hunted the unseen air for messages of any sort, and in so doing made a disturbing discovery. His adjustable variation aside, other aetherschreibers could only communicate in pairs, the glass-and-regulus chimes that lay at the heart of them having been made a single piece and then cut apart. But no pair of aetherschreibers constructed before the fall of the comet still functioned—only those made since. He had proposed a hypothesis to Newton explaining this—that the impact of the comet had created waves in the aether that had slightly changed certain ferments in proportion to the distance from London. A pair of schreibers—one in Holland and the other in New York, for instance—would have been affected differentially, enough to spoil their congruence and thus their usefulness. Like so many of Ben’s theories, Newton had dismissed this as pointless speculation.
“I am not a fool, you know,” the emperor abruptly said.
“Your Majesty?”
“I know that I must seem a fool when I speak of Spain. Have you been to Spain, Mr. Franklin?”
“No, Majesty, I have never had that pleasure.”
“It is a pleasure, make no mistake,” the emperor assured him. “The happiest times of my life were spent there. The sunlight is like—like a sort of honey, sweet and warm. It is almost as if you could capture it in a jar.” He sighed. “I understand, you see, that Spain is forever lost to the empire—or at least for many, many years to come. I make the appearance that it is still ours because I must, because the seeming of confidence is one of the few powers that an emperor—and an emperor alone—wields. Do you know what I mean? Law must be wrestled through the Diet. War is conducted by generals and soldiers, and they find their salvation or their doom short of my word, whatever may be said. But an emperor is the soul of the empire, its hope and its dream. The difference between a good emperor and a bad one is his ability to make these things manifest to his people. And so Spain is lost to us, but I can never credit that, do you see?”
“I believe so, Sire.”
“I am perhaps not as good an emperor as I could be,” he admitted, “but I do what I can. And so I have lost Spain and Vienna and Hungary—indeed, I have lost all but this city and the dream.” He turned to Ben, his face rather tight, eyes showing a rare sort of fire. “Whatever sacrifice is required, I will not lose Prague, Mr. Franklin. I am most determined about that, do you understand?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Good. Prince Eugene believes that Sir Isaac is hiding something from us, something concerning the ravings of a certain Muscovite prisoner. Is this the case or isn’t it?”
Ben hesitated for a bare instant, and then shook his head. “Sire, I cannot speak for my master.”
“No?” The emperor’s voice had a rather queer ring to it. His gaze now darted about the forest, strangely hawklike in that sad, doggy face. “It approaches, and who shall say which of us will fall, man or beast?”
“Beast, I should hope, Majesty,” Ben replied.
“One hopes. But I tell you truthfully, men die on these hunts.”
A sort of frozen horror evolved from the base of Ben’s spine. He saw Sir Isaac, not far away, conversing with Prince Eugene. Robert and Frisk were thirty paces back, compassed by royal guards and huntsmen. He suddenly felt very alone, very vulnerable, despite the crowd. Idly, he reached to fondle his aegis key, and with a falling sensation understood that he wasn’t wearing it.
“Of course, I have been most careful,” the emperor went o
n. “Sir Isaac is valuable to us, even when he is uncooperative; and so he will be well protected, better even than myself.”
Ben understood that. Newton was in no danger, but he was. If Newton would not cooperate now, perhaps he would when the emperor proved his point by killing Ben.
“I hope Your Majesty exaggerates the danger,” Ben said. His pulse had moved into his head, the wet air suddenly seeming inadequate to sustain him.
“I do not,” the emperor said, softly. “So look to yourself, Mr. Franklin. I am fond of you, and so is my daughter—as, I believe, are a number of young ladies both in the castle and out.”
“I endeavor to guard myself,” Ben answered, mouth dry.
“And so you should.” They walked a few more paces, and with each step Ben seemed to hear the clatter of skeletons behind him, grinning their bony grins, of James waiting patiently in the dark cottage, of the million souls in London, hands reaching up to pull him into a hell.
“You were in the observatory all night, two nights ago—just after Prince Eugene told you that Prague’s doom had been forecast as coming from the heavens. Were you doing a horoscope?”
“No, sir. I was worried by the Muscovite’s claim, and I was searching for its basis.”
“And what basis do you think that might be?” The beating was very near now. “Quickly,” the emperor commanded, “before it is upon us.”
“I don’t know, Majesty. I was looking.” He felt suddenly calm, as if his head had detached from his shoulders, mocked at gravity, and stared down from above at an amusing scene. When would it happen? Where would it come from? He looked around, gripping his musket, feeling the noose tighten.
“Something came from the sky and destroyed London.” The emperor’s voice came from far away. “What was it?”
“I don’t know, Majesty,” Ben lied.
“You were there. You lived. What was it?”
“I don’t know.” He was trembling, he knew, which was silly, but his body seemed possessed of fears of its own.
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