Adrienne snapped back to herself, finding her nightmare of falling all too real; she only barely managed to catch her horse’s mane in time to save her a plunge to rocky ground. Shaking herself, she surveyed her surroundings. Crecy, tight-lipped, rode a few paces to the left with Nico in her lap, Hercule on her right, a bandage made from the hem of her own dress binding his head, nearly saturated with blood. Encircling them some eight of Hercule’s light calvalry listed in their saddles, while behind a line of some thirty horsemen straggled wearily beneath the leaden twilight. In the distance—it was hard to say where in this hilly, echo-filled country—guns yipped and cannon barked.
So she had slept only a moment or two. A moment in—was it two days or three?
Weakly, she tried to use the djinni to find the rest of the army and found a glimpse of a few hundred men, marching in good order but under near-constant harassment by horsemen, with no cavalry of their own to counter. The horse were all here, who knows how many miles away, and each hour taking them farther.
Hercule shot her a narrow, feverish glance. “How do you fare, milady?” he asked.
“Weary,” she said. Then, “I have failed you.”
Hercule shook his head. “It is I who failed. I should have persuaded the duke to another course, but failed. I should have forced him southward after the first attack, but failed there, too. He was so confident—”
“Yes, because of me.”
“If so,” Hercule said, “that wasn’t your fault.”
She lay her head forward on her horse’s neck.
“What shall we do now? How can we rejoin the duke?”
Crecy, at her other side, laughed sharply. “We cannot, and soon there will be nothing to rejoin. We must watch for ourselves now.” She smoothed Nico’s hair, her gaze going down to him and back to Adrienne significantly.
“The duke needs the horse.…” Hercule managed.
“Dead cavalry will do him no good. If we turn any direction but north, the Russian infantry catches us in its teeth,” Crecy said.
“Yes, yes,” Hercule muttered. “They herd us like sheep. But to where?”
“Away from the army of Lorraine, of course.”
Hercule sighed heavily, bowing his own head. “Of course,”
he acknowledged. “In any case, I do not think the men would return, even if we led them.”
Adrienne had no answer; she felt her heart growing chill, for she knew what came next, as their little band lost all purpose save survival.
She got her proof two days later, when they happened upon a small village. Scouts reported that it lacked troops, and Hercule gave the sign to ride down, though a small screen was left to patrol. Unlike many of the earlier villages, this one was not abandoned but had perhaps some forty people in it.
A cluster of them—some five or so—were gathered to confront them in the square when they arrived, led by a priest, an elderly man who nevertheless carried himself proudly, steadfast as the ragged horsemen approached.
“Guten Tag, meine Damen, meine Herren,” the priest said, as they drew up to him.
“Do you speak any French?” Hercule asked, trying to keep his shoulders back.
“Aye. A little French. How is it with you, Monsieur?”
Lacking his customary tact, Hercule merely said, “We need food and drink for ourselves and for our horses.”
The priest nodded, but his tone was anything but welcoming. “Sir, we some hospitality for you can give, but if feed your horses, we survive not the coming winter. I pray you, however, take what little we have to offer.”
Adrienne glanced around the village. It did not look to be starving—its inhabitants appeared well fed.
“We rode through half a day of pasture,” Hercule noticed, “the hay all cut and the grain harvested. I saw fat swine in pens as we rode in. You cannot offer us a single day’s feed for our mounts?”
“Sir,” the priest said, “we already feed one army.”
“I see. The Muscovite one.”
The priest hesitated. “What choice we have?”
“Little, perhaps, for they are stronger. Do I notice a musket in that house over there?”
“We protect ourselves, mein Herr, from outlaws.”
“We are not outlaws. Of late we marched with the duke of Lorraine to the aid of your emperor in Prague—until the Muscovite army you so kindly provided for cut us apart. At least show your friends the same decency you show your enemies.”
The priest’s face contorted in anger. “You not our friends! Muscovys not our friends! The emperor not our friend. All of you take, and nothing you give us back! Nothing you will take. Nothing!” And with that he dropped to his knees and began to pray, crucifix held before him.
He dropped the cross when it suddenly turned red-hot, and leapt back to his feet, gaping at Adrienne, whose raised fist still flickered with eldritch light.
“Give us what we need,” she said. “Please.” Then, lower, “You don’t think we can control these men, do you?”
But the priest was still staring at her hand. “Eine Hexe,” he muttered, and then, shouting in a voice that suddenly filled the square, “eine Hexe!”
An angry hornet stung her cheek, as her horse screamed and bolted forward. Distantly, she heard a second shot, saw beads of blood appear on her mount’s neck. Before she could comprehend that, the priest jerked like a puppet in the hands and twisted to the ground, vomiting life from four or five wounds as the air swarmed with lead insects.
The villagers didn’t have a chance, of course. A handful of muskets, blunderbuss loaded with nails and rocks, and a dozen swords forged almost a hundred years before, during the Thirty Years War, were no match for even the most bedraggled group of trained soldiers. Some villagers ran and some tried to fight; most of the latter fell in seconds.
In instants, guns were empty and sword work had begun. The men—earlier so disciplined—were suddenly raging madmen, unleashing all their anger and frustration on the hapless townspeople. Adrienne, stunned by her wound and the sudden eruption of chaos, was dragged by Hercule to an empty cottage. Crecy came with them, Nicolas in one arm, broadsword in the other, eyes darting about like a bird of prey’s.
“Stop them,” Adrienne managed weakly. “Stop them. I’m not hurt.” Blood rolled down her face and pooled at her collar, but the cut on her cheek, while deep, was far from mortal.
Hercule nodded wearily and patted her shoulder. A moment later she heard him barking orders. The shrill screams continued, however.
She could not stand it. “Pox on this,” she hissed. “I won’t live with brigands again.” She followed Hercule back outside, despite Crecy’s protests. Her legs felt like pillows, but within she felt strong, energized by a paradoxically composed rage, her anger simplifying everything, bringing order to the confusion around her.
Houses were already in flames, and as she watched, two of the Lorraine soldiers dragged a girl—she was at most thirteen—into another building.
“No,” she snapped. “No! Crecy, we escaped this life.”
“Illusion,” Crecy murmured. “We were on holiday.”
“No. No! Watch Nicolas.”
She strode purposefully across the square, calling her djinni to her, telling them what to do. In the house, she found one of the men sprawled atop the girl while the other stood guard. The latter’s eyes widened when she swept in.
“Lady …” he began, but never finished, for she struck him in the mouth with the butt of her pistol. It was not a hard blow, but it was a sufficient surprise that his head snapped up and he took two jarring steps backward before tripping over a stool and falling.
She cocked the pistol and placed the muzzle against the rapist’s temple.
“Get up.”
He did so, murmuring protestations, while the girl, eyes mad, kicked her way across the floor and into a corner.
“The three of us are going back into the square,” she said, “or I shall strike you both very dead.”
&nb
sp; “But, lady,” one said, gesturing at her cheek, “they did shoot you.”
“Did she?” Adrienne asked, stabbing her finger at the cowering girl. “Will you tell me that she shot me? And that poking your prick into her will heal my wound? Goddamn you, answer me that!”
His face transfigured in horror then, and she realized that her hand was flaring due to her continued orders to the djinni, now assembling overhead. She sneered at his fear and motioned him toward the square. Both men followed without further protest.
When she reached the middle of the square, her djinni did two things at her command. First, they created a vacuum above them and suddenly filled it again, so air clapped like a bell shattering. Second, they lit the sky with a fine mist of flame, harmless but effective in attracting attention. In under a minute, she had a mute audience gathered in the square.
“Listen to me,” Adrienne shouted, her body shuddering with anger, “Listen to me, you brave soldiers, you men of Lorraine. You may take food for yourselves and your horses. But the people of this village, save those who try to harm you, you will not touch. If they lift ax or gun or sword against you, kill them. But otherwise, if you touch them—for pleasure, for perversity—I shall smite you dead, I swear it by God almighty. You are men, not dogs! If you behave like dogs, I will treat you as such, and bring you to heel.”
They ate, fed their horses, slept in short shifts and were under way again before dawn. There were no more incidents, the townsfolk supplying everything they asked. As the east rouged herself with sunrise, Adrienne counted their number at six less than it had been the previous evening, and was not greatly surprised—two of the missing were those she had stopped from raping the girl.
“I expected it,” Hercule commented quietly.
“They misliked my command,” Adrienne replied. It seemed almost that she should apologize, but could not quite bring herself to do it. “It is just that I have seen men at their worst, and I cannot ride with such again,” she explained instead.
“Nor will you,” he vowed. “They may have resented you, but that is between them and the devil. You did what was right, what I should have done.” He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are a better man than you pretend, Hercule d’Argenson.”
“And you a better woman than I have ever known.”
That struck deeply, somehow. It was the sort of easy compliment he always gave, but this time he used no bantering tone, affixed no suggestive addendum. It troubled her to hear him so serious, but then, their situation was serious. When they came on better times, he would reform.
At noon they reached a small river—no one knew which—and paused for half an hour to water their horses. Adrienne sat with Nico beneath a tree, surveying the brambled, abandoned fields that stretched to the horizons, broken only by the dense hedges which now forced their flight into a labyrinthine course—a league north, a league east, a league north again. The djinni could no longer show her the duke and his forces, whether because they were dead or simply lost she could not say.
She turned when someone approached, and to her surprise saw that it was one of the men, a young fellow everyone called Mercure, for his fleetness of foot.
He bowed to her as if she were an empress, swallowed, swallowed again.
“Sir?” she prompted.
“Milady. The men have elected me to speak to you.”
“Concerning what?”
“They wish to apologize. You did remind us that we are soldiers and not mere cutthroats, and we are grateful for that. I, that is, we—” He stuttered off as he reached into his haversack and withdrew a wad of cloth—several steinkirks such as the men wore around their throats.
“What is this?” she asked.
“The men, the ones who—ah, went too far yestereve—”
“The ones who deserted.”
“Oh. No, milady, they did not desert. We—well, we punished them for you. We executed them. We kept these as token.”
“What?”
“Without you, we have no hope, lady. These men displeased you, and to the rest of us, that is a great sin. We wanted to make it clear that your word commands us.”
A peculiar feeling tickled in her belly, a sort of horror, and yet it also felt … something else. Pleasing, almost.
“Hercule was involved in this?” she asked, fighting for composure.
“No, Mademoiselle. We did not bother either of you with it. The lady de Crecy told us that we should not.”
“Crecy? Crecy came to you with this plan?”
A frightened look crossed Mercure’s face at her rise in tone, and he quickly shook his head. “No, milady. We went to her, once we made up our mind. To make certain we were doing right.” He looked down at his feet and added, “She told us that we were.”
Adrienne gazed at him for a long moment, remembering the girl, remembering her days with Le Loup and all the things she had witnessed. She smiled what she hoped was an encouraging smile. “You did the right thing,” she told him. “Tell the men that I thank them. But do not do this again without asking me or Hercule, please.”
“Yes, milady.”
“You may leave the cravats. I will keep them.”
His flush and furtive smile were so young, so endearing, that she could scarcely believe he had been a party to the calculated murder of six men. She watched him go, and, when he was out of sight, covered her mouth, fighting a sudden wave of nausea, but it passed. Nicolas hummed softly, paying no attention to any of it, beating a little rhythm on his leg with hands half closed.
16.
Matter and Soul
“Stay hidden,” Ben hissed to Lenka, “no matter what.”
He could not see her, but she shifted, and he felt the sudden tickle of breath on his cheek. “Be safe,” she said.
“My word on it,” he replied, and then quickly—before Newton himself came to investigate—slid from beneath the tarpaulin and stood, straightening his waistcoat, seeking as much dignity as one crawling from hiding could manage.
Sir Isaac sat at one of the tables, red waistcoat unbuttoned, steinkirk hanging undone, shaking his head. “It is you.” He rose, a very peculiar expression on his face. “Where have you been?”
“Where have I been?” he asked, incredulously. “You ask where I’ve been? I’ve been hiding from the army of the Holy Roman Empire, or don’t you remember a certain hunting trip? I do hope you weren’t inconvenienced, sir. I hope you did not need me to find you another book.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Benjamin. Of course I remember. I only meant to say that—well, I’m happy to see you alive, though I wonder that you came back to the castle.”
“Well, sir, I do not intend to stay long,” he said, but it did not come out quite as forcefully as he’d intended. Newton sounded concerned—from him that was almost shocking.
“Not long, eh? And yet you have some sneak-thief business in my private laboratory.”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Ben retorted. “I have been neglected by you, nearly murdered by the emperor, chased through wood, river, and alley—and oh, yes, attacked by a demon—and I’m damn well past the point of needing the by-your-leave of anyone to do what I think needs doing.”
“And what is that, Benjamin?”
“I don’t have enough fingers to count.”
“Try.”
Ben pursed his lips. There was something odd about this confrontation. Newton remained calm, even reasonable seeming, while he found himself nearly shouting in rage. Not that he didn’t have the right, no. But an angry man was a stupid man, as his father used to say. This was no time to be a stupid man.
“Well, then,” he said in a quieter voice, “here is what it comes to. The first thing is to stop your murdering innocents.”
“My murdering?”
“The monster that guards The Sepher Ha-Razim has killed at least three servants in the palace on account of you. I intend to end its threat.”
“Very well. P
lease go on.”
“I have also taken it as my duty to discover whether your claims of a ‘new system’ have any substance, whether it can avert a comet, and if so whether you have any intention of trying to. If not, I shall raise the alarm.”
Newton nodded, his brow puckered but otherwise calm. “Despite how shamefully the emperor has treated us?”
Ben snorted. “When I see you chased through the woods by hounds and falsely accused of assassination, I’ll allow that you have been treated shamefully, Sir Isaac. Do you know the reason for that theatrical?”
“Of course. The emperor is trying to frighten me into explaining my new system and giving details on what happened to London.”
“If only he knew how little regard you had for me, he could have saved substantial effort.”
“Indeed,” Sir Isaac said mildly. “He could have merely contracted you to steal my secrets for him.”
Ben suddenly found himself nearly shaking with fury. “God strike you for saying that. He offered me my life to betray you, Sir Isaac, and I did not. It isn’t the emperor I came here for. Most people in this city have nothing to do with these petty intrigues, and they do not deserve to die—not for the emperor and not for your damned secrets.”
“I see.” Newton calmly reached for a decanter of red wine, poured himself a glass, and beckoned Ben closer. “Would you care to sit while I answer your charges, Mr. Franklin?”
Ben shook his head. “The subject stands while his majesty reclines. I shall continue standing.”
Newton sighed. “Very well, Benjamin, if you insist on childishness.” He sipped his wine. “Let me first congratulate you on entering the tower. It must not have been an easy thing, and I would never have known that you were here were it not for my servants.”
Ben bit his tongue; he was sure he knew what “servants” Sir Isaac meant, but there was no point in saying so. He hoped Newton did not also know about Lenka.
“Next, let me ease your mind as to that first matter. The malakus that guarded the book has been contained.”
“Contained?”
“Yes. It took me some small time to contrive it, but it is no longer a threat.”
A Calculus of Angels Page 26