A Calculus of Angels (25 page)

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 A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

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 Eugene, 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.

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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 A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

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 ajar.” 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?”

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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 on. “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.

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“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.

“Quickly!” the emperor snapped, and then, suddenly, threw his gun up and fired.

The shadow of a huge cat appeared, hurtling toward them, above its head a flaming eye. In a blurred instant, Ben felt a familiar touch. Two years before, he had met the villain Bracewell on the Boston Common, seen the sorcerer’s strange familiar for the first time: a glowing red sphere in a misty cloud.

Somehow, it had touched his brain lightly—it had seemed to Ben accidentally—but the moment had changed his life. He had seen the solution to tuning an aetherschreiber, and that in turn had led to everything since. Everything.

Now that sickening, alien taint invaded him again, and he suddenly saw Ben A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

Franklin, a colorless image in hunting outfit, musket gripped in one hand, gaping. The emperor stood next to him, smoke pouring from his gun barrel.

Less than a yard behind the gray, astonished image of himself, a man aimed the black maw of a pistol at the back of his head.

He let his legs go and dropped toward the muddy ground. A fusillade of shots exploded, but he was already hurling his heavy gun away, legs churning him back upright and then pumping like steam pistons through the woods. He did not look back, but simply ran, and when he came to a steep bank and hurled himself down it, something like a hornet whined by. He was briefly tangled in a vine, tore free, and continued.

More running. He wasn’t afraid anymore—just angry, determined. He wished now that he had kept the musket, to make at least one of these lackeys pay for serving such a treacherous king.

But of course, the damned musket had probably not even been loaded.

He curved his course, trying to remember where he had last heard the beaters, not wanting to run into them, searching for the Moldau, which must be near.

He was a strong swimmer, stronger than almost anyone else he knew. If he could cross the river unscathed, his opportunities for survival would increase somewhat. But how to find the river?

He studied the treeline as he ran, trying to make out where it seemed thinner.

Spying what might be a gap, he jogged toward it, as the rain began again. That brought him a sort of joy; it would be harder to find him in the rain.

His exultation diminished when the earth began sucking at his feet, and he realized that he had run into a swamp. A few more steps would have him trapped, floundering in viscous water choked with dead grasses and rotted trees. Cursing the quagmire, he searched for what pursuit there might be. The gnashing of his breath, the thunder of his pulse, and the wet susurrus of rain made it impossible for him to hear.

For an instant he saw nothing, and then two dark figures resolved themselves.

He hissed in frustration and crouched down. If one would come close enough, he might deprive him of his weapon. A slim hope.

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“Ben!” A voice came to him, thin through the pouring rain. “Ben, f’r God’s sake!”

He blinked water from his eyes. It was Robert and probably Frisk. The question was, did he trust them?

He looked at the swamp again, saw how hopeless it would be. And now he heard more men, shouting, and dogs.

“Here, Robin,” he hollered.

The two paused and then crashed through the undergrowth toward him.

“Are you hit?” Robert asked, coming closer. “Wounded?”

“No.”

Frisk waved his hand impatiently. “This way, or they shall find us.”

“You know this land?”

“No. But I know land, and I know retreat.”

“Retreat. Now, that sounds better than ‘running like a shitting hare.”“

Frisk grinned. “Doesn’t it? Come!”

They started off together at a trot.

“Where is the rest of the pursuit?” Ben asked a few moments later, suspicion freshening.

“The panther proved much for them, I think. It was attacking the king, when last I saw, and being unaccommodating in its expiration.”

“But you two came right after me.”

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“You’re my friend,” Robert snapped. “The emperor an’t.” He paused. “Beside that, Frisk saw ‘em try an’ kill you. Shot the man dead,” he added, “just as he fired on you. How did y‘ know’t’ dodge? That was fair impressive.”

“I… I don’t know. The emperor as much as told me what they were planning.”

“Well, there he made a mistake, I think.”

They crested a bank, and there lay the Moldau, its surface beveled and misted by rain.

“You can both swim?” Frisk asked.

“Certain,” Ben replied, and Robert shrugged.

“Once out a hundred feet, they’ll have nothing to train guns on, so I suggest we haste.”

Ben was already stripping. He threw shoes, cloak, coat, and waistcoat into the dark waters, and then, as he heard the shouts approaching nearer, himself.

9.

Crucible

Crecy groaned as the carriage shuddered to a halt, and then, with a hideous grinding, lurched into motion again.

“Enough of this.” Adrienne gasped, renewing her hold on Nicolas, who had nearly escaped her embrace in the upset. “The carriage is no longer a quieter A CALCULUS OF ANGELS