“Hmm. You need less theory and more experimentation,” he observed.
She folded her arms and smiled her daunting little smile, at which he shrugged his shoulders and started down the stairs, activating the aegis as he went.
The archduchess’ entourage was just coming around the corner from Golden Lane, and as Ben had anticipated, in full regalia. The guard was nowhere to be seen, and so it was an easy matter to slip in behind that last dwarf, one of five in the parade wearing luminescent golden lanthorn armor. Ahead, the sedan chair of the archduchess was surmounted by gently bobbing metal birds, the chair itself bedecked with glowing jewels. In such a procession, his own ghostly form was likely to be unnoticed or ignored as more magical frippery.
And in their train, a light mist arose, at which Ben smiled hopefully.
The procession marched on until it came to the gates, where the guards hastened to perform the Spanish genuflection to Her Royal Highness. Ben, meantime, searched across the great square and its border of ornate palaces, looking for ghosts like himself.
Up ahead, he heard Maria Theresa shout, “Show yourself, villain!” In a short time, the soldiers began shouting as well, as a thick cloud appeared and rapidly expanded to fill the yard. At the same moment, across the square, the geometrical black-and-white façade of the Toscana Palace seemed to waver, and Ben clenched his fists in jubilation.
A few moments later, he thought he heard his friends run by, and turned to race into the less misty precincts of the third courtyard, and then, for certain, he made out two optical distortions moving down Saint George Street toward the Black Tower. The strident shouts of the archduchess and bellows of the guards faded behind.
Even in his triumph, he began having second thoughts. The guards at the gate would not dare to question the archduchess about her strange behavior, but they would report it, and then someone would question her. How long before—advertently or inadvertently—she gave an answer that led them to the Black Tower?
He hoped a few hours, at least.
In the distance, a titan stuttered and then moaned, a long, drawn-out shuddering of the air almost below the level of hearing. Stone quaked beneath his feet. Puzzled, Ben looked up, but the sky was still blue, nowhere grayed or blackened by storm clouds. He stared, frowning, and suddenly was surrounded by blinding light.
He screamed and shut his eyes, but it filled his head, pulsing, and his belly seemed to open. On that dazzling backdrop his panicked brain painted an image: a black-tailed comet, its nucleus the mocking red eye of a malakus. Newton had been wrong, or lied, and in an instant or two now it would all be over, when the thing struck them with hideous speed, scattering the very atoms of the castle.
And yet, a moment passed and he was still alive, though his eyes burned, and some rational part of him fumbled for the aegis key and removed it.
He was a few steps from the basilica, spots before his eyes still blackening the largest part of his vision. A group of black-clad nuns began pointing at him, shouting. That cured his paralysis, and he started to run again. Not far ahead, Robert and Frisk staggered like drunks.
“This way,” he shouted.
“Ben?” Robert gasped.
“Hurry!” The explosions in the distance were as steady as heartbeats, and as his vision was restored, he saw with dull understanding that the sky still carried a rainbow patina. Not because the colors of the aegis had been burned into his corneas, but because the city shield was on.
Prague was under attack.
“What in hell happened?” Robert snarled as the three of them ran up Saint George Street. Crowds were darting into the narrow lane, but none were paying attention to the three men, pointing instead to the sky and shouting.
“The city shield is on. It is a sort of aegis built large, and so when it went on while we wore ours—” He didn’t have the breath to explain: two lenses, separate, were magnifying glasses. Placed in line they were exponentially more powerful. Something like that had happened with their “garments of Adam.”
“Never mind,” Robert shouted. “Wait till we reach safety.”
A throng coursed out of the Lobkovic Palace, just next to the tower, and in the press, the guard nearly missed them. At the last moment, when they began shouldering past him, the guardsman shouted and raised his halberd. Frisk broke his nose with the hilt of his saber, and the soldier fell groaning to the flagstones.
Ben led the way up the winding stairs, at the end of his wind, carried along by sheer purpose. It was as if the world had suddenly begun tearing apart around him, like the time he had come back to the print shop to find James murdered, the shop in flames, and a devil after him. He had a sudden, clear understanding that this was how life really was: insanely chaotic and unplanned. Men constructed fantasies, explanations to try to make reality seem coherent, but it wasn’t, any more than a crazy dream was because you spent an hour discussing it.
That hung in him, a crystal caught in his throat, as he reached the door and battered into it, found it locked.
“Lenka!” he howled, pounding on the heavy door. “Lenka, open the door!”
Only then did he realize that he had the key.
He gaped for an instant at what he saw when he opened the door. Or rather, what he didn’t see. The glowing globe, the wooden boat, all the things he had packed up—all were gone. Of Lenka there was no sign.
One section of the roof stood open to the shimmering sky. Outlined against that was the moon ship, red light winking above, and standing in the prow the unmistakable figure of Newton, vermilion coat as clear as a distant cardinal on a winter landscape.
And farther away, across the expanse of golden Prague, a fleet of black ships sailed the winds, suspended from points of sanguine light, raining fire.
Part Three
THE DARK AER
At our service are very wise spirits who detest the bright light of the other lands and their noisy people. They long for our shadows, and they talk to us intimately. Fiolxhilde to her son, Duracotus.
—Johannes Kepler,
Somnium, 1634
1.
Vasilisa
Adrienne rested her cheek against Hercule’s chest, imagining it a universe: the hard muscle and skin its outer boundaries; the dark hollow within swirling with jeweled, mysterious planets; the thumping of his heart the tempo to which they danced, the single, simple rhythm behind the music of the spheres. In the universe of Hercule, his heart was God; without it all of his orbs would become still, the stars of his eyes dim, the warmth of his lips cool forever.
“Thinking again?” Hercule whispered, stroking her head.
“Yes.”
“May I ask of what?”
“Why, of you, my dear.”
He grunted in satisfaction, and afterward seemed content, gently dropping off to sleep, the meter of his solar system diminishing.
The real universe must have such a heart, she insisted to herself. Must have. And yet, though she could see the tracery of a thousand forces, watch the djinni burrow through the aether like worms through rotten meat, she could not perceive the beating heart behind it all. She could not, in short, see God.
Could it be that the Korai were right after all? That their superstition of a world damned to exist without God was true? And if that were so, how could one achieve grace, forgiveness, salvation?
For certainly she needed all three.
And yet, she almost had to smile at this thought, for it was not one she would have had, traveling with Le Loup, not one she could have tolerated. Then she could not feel, or think, or speculate. Now she could, though once again she rode with orphans of civilization. Now she could, because though she sat a wild horse, she had at least one hand on the reins.
Hercule was warm, and in her drowsy mind her own body became a planet, lazily spinning about the axis of her brain, even more sedately falling along an elliptical orbit, so that, year after year, she moved through the same places: now near the sun and its bright warmth; now, at aphe
lion, farther from the life-giving rays. In that moment of near dream, she experienced a hard kind of comfort: that her life was not an ascending or descending arc, but like this, a repeated path. And yet, even the orbit of a planet was not fixed. The gentle tug of other bodies created subtle harmonies, never the same; and so, as her life repeated itself, it did so always with variations, like a fugue. In time, the sum of these would ruin her orbit and send her to dwell forever with the sun or in the dark regions beyond.
Thus, for a moment, though harried and pursued through an unfriendly land, Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil knew a moment of peace, knowing also that it was transitory but that it would come again. In that pax between sleep and dream, a voice spoke to her. It was the voice of one of her djinni—and thus her own voice—and yet the cadence of the words was not at all like anything she had heard before from her aethereal servants.
“Mademoiselle, how fortunate that I have found you,” the voice said.
“Who has found me?” she asked.
“One who has long searched for you.”
Adrienne felt a faint tingle of worry. This was something new. Cautiously, she called her djinni to stand near her. Was this one of the malfaiteurs, the murderous faction of which Crecy had warned her?
“Reveal yourself, then. Are you human or djinn?”
A suggestion of a chuckle. “I am no malakus, if that is what you ask. I am human, Mademoiselle, as human as you. I am your sister.”
“Sister? What nonsense.”
“Not nonsense at all. Chairete, Korai, Athenes therapainai. ”
A shock ran through Adrienne, as almost reflexively, she answered “Chairete.”
“Enthade euthetoumen temeron,” the voice chanted.
“He glaux, ho drakon, he parthenos,” Adrienne finished, and then—forcefully, “Enough of this. Who are you?”
“One of the Korai.”
“You only tell me what is obvious. Tell me your name.”
“That is hardly fair,” the voice said. “For I do not know yours. Still, it is my wish for you to trust me. My name is Vasilisa Karevna.”
“A Muscovite name,” Adrienne guessed.
“Yes, Mademoiselle, a Russian name.”
“You are among my enemies, then.”
“Were I your enemy, I would have given you a false name, with no hint of Muscovy in it. Were I your enemy, I would command the troops surrounding your company to slay you all—”
“There are no troops,” Adrienne said. “My djinni would tell me of them.”
“You are not the only sorceress, my dear,” Karevna replied, “nor have you been at it the longest. There are tricks of which you are doubtless unaware. The djinni, as you call them, are not bright creatures—at least not those you and I deal with. They are limited and easily deceived.”
Adrienne could hardly argue with that. Were they really surrounded? She hoped that did not mean the sentries were dead. “What do you want?”
“I want my sister Korai at my side, of course. In this world of men, we need each other, you and I.”
It sounded almost like something Crecy would say.
“That is no answer. You want me for what? To do what?”
“Why, to join me, of course. To join me where we might talk in the flesh, where we might—”
“Whom do you serve?”
“I serve the Korai.” And then, it seemed, reluctantly, “I serve the tsar of all the Russias. He values our kind, Mademoiselle, as other kings do not.”
“Values the Korai?”
“Ha. Of course, he knows nothing of the Korai. No, I mean to say that he values philosophers, scientifics. He gives us refuge, solace—the things we need to continue with our studies. Do you have that now, Mademoiselle?”
“Until your tsar’s troops slaughtered my friends, yes.”
“That was unfortunate, but not my doing. The duke was bound for Bohemia, and Russia is at war with Bohemia.”
“I remember no chance to surrender.”
“These are hard times, and, as I say, that was not my doing. Still, I find it difficult to believe that you had library and laboratory in your camps along the way. If you believe the so-called Holy Roman emperor would have supplied you—a woman—with such things—then you are mistaken.”
“But the tsar is different,” Adrienne said skeptically.
“The tsar is a realist. He is not bound by the nonsensical conventions and delusions of the European courts. He chooses people by their merit, rewards them by their merit. Under his rule, the lowliest peasant can become like a lord if he—or she—has sufficient talent and ingenuity. His own empress was a Lithuanian slave, his closest advisers of common birth. And I—also of humble origin—occupy a regarded position in his court.”
“How did you find me?”
“Need you ask? You have used the power of the malakim freely, without guile. Naturally you have been noticed; the reports came to me by aetherschreiber, and I hastened here to find you. Now I have found you, and I am glad. And you should be glad that it was I who discovered you first.”
“I’m sure I am.”
“Mademoiselle, you must understand me. I can save your life; more, I can save the lives of your companions. But I will not mislead you: to his friends, the tsar is magnanimous. To his enemies he is remorseless. You eluded him for a short time, but that time is over.”
Adrienne smiled without humor, her head still pressed against Hercule’s gently moving chest. “Then it is a matter of joining you or dying?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, what an unusual offer. I think I should discuss this with the others.”
“Please do so.”
“And I think you should come here, in the flesh, to present your terms.”
“I agree completely. Shall we say tomorrow afternoon, around six? I shall bring repast.”
“I fear I have forgotten my clock,” Adrienne retorted.
“I shall send a—what did you call them?—djinn to remind you. On the morrow then?”
“Tomorrow,” Adrienne agreed.
“How can we trust her?” Hercule asked.
“Oh, that answer’s simple,” Crecy replied. “We can’t.”
“What have the scouts seen, Hercule?” Adrienne asked.
Hercule grimaced and brushed mud from his riding boots. They sat together in a copse of ancient oaks, gazing out over a plain, speckled purple with thistle. Behind them spread a dense forest whose unfriendly inhabitants had been sniping at them for three days.
“They are there,” he said, thrusting his arm toward the western horizon, “and there,” pointing north. “There,” east. “Of the forest I don’t know, but if I were at a gambling table, I would not wager against it.”
“Then in that sense we can trust her,” Adrienne said.
“In another as well,” Crecy said, tilting her nose east, where Adrienne suddenly made out eight horses approaching.
Hercule nodded. “Just eight of them. They have stones on them, these Russians.”
Adrienne chuckled. “At least one of them does not.”
Hercule leaned and kissed her ear. “The women of my acquaintance these days carry bigger stones than most men.”
“Can we escape them? Fight our way through?”
“That all depends upon you. Can you best this sorceress of theirs?”
“I would guess not,” Adrienne admitted.
“Do not be deceived by her, Adrienne,” Crecy warned. “She may present herself as accomplished, but it may well be a façade. This could all be a trick by your lesser, a peasant conniving to rid a knight of her sword.”
“That could be true. But that many men …”
“Let us hear their terms,” Hercule said reasonably.
“Agreed,” Adrienne replied.
Crecy only shrugged, and decapitated a thistle with the point of her sword.
Vasilisa Karevna was a tiny woman with night-black hair and slanting, almost Oriental eyes. She wore a riding habit of
bloodred velvet, a cape of heavy black fur, and a cylindrical hat of sable. The men with her wore the typical green Russian coat and black tricorns, but their faces had the same foreign cast to them that Karevna’s did. Their saddles bore twin kraftpistole holsters, and exceedingly heavy, curved sabers flapped at their sides.
“Good day,” the Muscovite said as she approached. “I hope you are in the mood for a picnic.”
One of her men dismounted, carefully keeping his hand far from his weapons, and began to unload baskets.
“I would prefer to talk,” Adrienne said quietly.
“Surely we can do both. You are …”
“Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil. These are my companions Monsieur d’Argenson and Mademoiselle de Crecy.”
Karevna made to slide down from her saddle and, pausing, glanced at Adrienne. “If I may?”
“Please.”
The sorceress finished her descent and then curtsied. “So happy to meet you all. Mademoiselle Crecy, your reputation precedes you.”
Crecy smiled faintly. “How unfortunate,” she said.
Despite Adrienne’s admonition, the horseman had begun unpacking the baskets. Adrienne suddenly found her resolve to refuse the meal weaken as plump quail, black bread, wine, and roast boar appeared. It was a violent assault on senses weakened by hunger and rough meals.
Trying to ignore her salivating mouth, Adrienne gestured at the ground. “I’m afraid we left our chassetes and armchairs back with the duke.”
Karevna shrugged, and, carefully arranging her skirt, folded gracefully down.
“You’re certain you won’t eat first?”
“Very certain,” Adrienne replied.
“Ah, well—then shall we cover the business at hand, so that we might then enjoy our meal?”
“I very much doubt that we will enjoy it, Madame,” Hercule interjected, “after we hear what you have to say.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Is monsieur a reader of thoughts and futures? If so, he should know that I am a mademoiselle, not a madame.”
Hercule frowned, but did not answer. Karevna took this as a sign to continue. “This is what the tsar offers you,” she said briskly. “For you and your close companions, Mademoiselle de Montchevreuil, rooms in the palace in Saint Petersburg.”
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