A Calculus of Angels (50 page)

“Hassim,” he yelled. “Quickly! An alley, with a yellow sign. A yellow sign with a bee on it. Do you know where this is?”

“Yes. Hassim believe he knows.”

“Good. Take me there.”

Where was Robert? He cast about for his friend, but he was no longer near.

And Ben didn’t have time to find him.

A number of craft—small boats and gondolas—were moored about the ship.

Ben gestured for Hassim to start down, and made to follow himself. A small sound warned him to turn.

Blackbeard stood less than a yard away, pistol aimed between Ben’s eyes. “I missed y‘ once.” He grinned. “But at this range I think there’s no question.”

“Then shoot and be done with it,” Ben gritted. “For I’ve business to be about.”

“Still the same stupid-tongued boy. And your smart trick with the longboat—that was nearly the end of me.”

“You tried to kill me, remember? Did you think I would just let you row away?”

Blackbeard chuckled. “I suppose I did. But I was a pirate then, and I’m a right legitimate captain now. So you tell me, why are you desertin‘ my ship? So I’ll know what I’m killin’ you for.”

Ben stared at the barrel an instant longer, and then very deliberately started A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

for the rope ladder. “A friend of mine—and the Indian fellow that came with you—they’re being held hostage.”

“I know. We got a letter about him.”

“I know where they are.”

“And y’r going to the rescue, all of your lonesome?”

“Aye.” He was now four rungs down the ladder, and Blackbeard hadn’t fired.

He looked up. “Captain Teach, if you don’t think you and I are even by now, that’s fine with me. But be man enough to let it go until I’ve done this.”

Blackbeard made no other comment, but when Ben reached the boat and looked back up, Teach no longer stood at the rail.

As Ben began to row, another ball of flame appeared in the sky, north. It looked as if the Russian ships had slowed, if not stopped. That was both good and bad; they had learned respect, but with it, caution. He only hoped this new caution would give him enough time to reach Venice, rescue Lenka, and return.

A white ribbon of light as straight as a geometry lesson cracked against the black sky, wreathed a sky ship in an argent umbra. For an instant all Ben could think of was the old tale about Jack who went up a beanstalk.

The Russians had discovered his kites.

* * *

“That was a
kraftpistole,”
she said. “I’ve seen them fired before; this is the same.”

“Impossible,” Peter snarled. “No
kraftpistole
has that range.”

“That one did, Captain,” Adrienne said quietly. “And that,” as another flash erupted. She wished she could see the actual stream of the bolt—something A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

seemed strange about it. Another lit, and another.

“Damn!” the tsar stormed. “It’s like a wall.” His face worked furiously. “I’ve been too hasty,” he muttered. “Give the order to fall back!” he shouted over his shoulder. “We’ve let them guide us into their traps— No more. Night is doing them more a service than us. We’ll rise high and finish this in the dawn. The hell with Venice. I’ve given them their chance.”

His face wrenched itself grotesquely as lightning struck again, again, again.

10.

Canals

The gondola rippled through the still water as if through some stygian pool, some dark and narrow place beneath the earth. The sphere of lanthorn light was bounded by walls and darkness, the glittering red eyes of rats, larger movements that might be merely shadows and might be something more sinister. Ben reminded himself of Lenka—kidnapped, hidden away, possibly tortured or already dead. He needed that thought, that frustration and anger, to inspire his body when exhaustion, the leaking wound in his chest, the battering he had taken at the Divan, and three days without sleep all conspired to drag him to defeat.

“How the lightning?” Hassim asked.

“What?”

“I know about balloons—float up, explode like mines on the ocean. But lightning?”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“Oh.” Ben grunted. “Kites. Kites can fly very high, and the people of Venice make good kites.”

“Yes. You should see festival—many kites, and very beautiful. I saw the men go with kites in their gondolas.”

Ben nodded, remembering the sight. Hundreds of the slender craft, dispersing across the dusky lagoon, kites rising in the sea breeze.

“The string we treated with a kind of iron,” Ben continued. “Tie the point of a
kraftpistole
to the string and fire it, and then—um, lightning—runs up the string to the ships. You see?” The problem had been getting enough
kraftpistoles.
Only seventy had been found—or rather, relinquished. These had been given to the fastest gondoliers, that they might take them where needed.

A fragile plan—all of it improvised, contingent on the cooperation of too many people. And yet, it had borne fruit, the more so because the Russians had attacked at night. It had been Charles who had guessed that would happen. He understood the tactical mind of the tsar and his generals better than any man alive—any enemy, that is.

Ben realized that it had been some time since he had heard the crack or boom of combat, and wondered what that meant. Retreat? Victory? How soon before Venice began to shatter around him?

He hoped the Russians meant to spare the city. What use a city in ruins? But the tsar was undoubtedly angry by now, and his anger was legendary.

“Here,” Hassim murmured, as they came around a corner.

Even by lanthorn light, he recognized the yellow sign of the bee, and that renewed his conviction.

Now what? He closed his eyes, remembering. Water, suffocating him, a rope.

Ben’s eyes flew wide as it came back with sudden force. He felt his lungs squeezing smaller and smaller, panic rising…

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“No!” he muttered angrily. He was not afraid of swimming, below the water or upon it. Even as a boy, he had been the strongest swimmer he knew; and in Prague, he had taught lessons in swimming. Why these feelings?

But he knew the answer. They were not his feelings at all, but those of whatever malakus had assaulted him. Of course, that meant that he might be walking—or, it seemed, swimming—into a trap.

It didn’t matter. Too many people had suffered or died in his wake: his brother, parents, John Collins, Sarah Chant, the archduchess. At seventeen, the list was already too long. At that rate even the high worth he placed on his own skin would require outside moneys to justify.

He stripped off his coat, waistcoat, shirt; unbuckled his shoes and lay them in the bottom of the boat; and then shucked his stockings. “If I do not return soon, Hassim, go tell the others where I went.”

“Where
did you
went?” Hassim asked, clearly puzzled.

Ben pointed at the water.

“Ah. Hassim go with you.”

It came to him that he had not been thinking of Hassim as a person, but as a sort of thing—a Turk he could talk to. Hassim’s limited fluency in English helped that impression, filtering out many of the nuances that made a person unique. Now Ben suddenly saw the great hope, fear, need of the boy; and it came as a shock.

An epiphany he did not need right now.

“Do you know the way underwater?”

“No,” Hassim admitted.

“Then I would rather you stayed here, to bring word should I be killed or captured.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“Hassim cannot be Janissary like his father,” the boy said, trying to sound fierce, “but he can help!”

“You
have
helped me, and will help more if you wait.”

Hassim looked uncertain, but Ben had no more time. He had done what he could. If the boy followed him now and got himself killed, it was no longer Ben’s fault. He eased himself into the canal. The water was cold and dirty, repellent; but he took the lanthorn, a deep breath, and kicked downward, letting the “memory” guide him.

The first two dives he found nothing, but on the third, he located a cracked and crumbled place in the building, well below the waterline. The lanthorn light did not carry very far into the breach, but it appeared to be a low-roofed room, full of water. Perhaps it had once been a cellar. Had the sea risen or the building sunk? He went back up, gasped deeply for air, and then dove again, kicking in through the hole, hoping he chose the right direction—that there
was
a right direction.

Adrienne rocked Nico, awaiting the dawn, trying not to wonder which of the ships Hercule had been on. He had taken most of the men from Lorraine, leaving her a guard of five.

She remembered giving them her blessing, remembered the ridiculous trust they placed in her; and her heart felt cold.

In the hours since falling back, they had discovered that six ships had either been destroyed or damaged so badly by fire and blast as to be useless. Losses had been great, especially on the packed infantry carriers. That left sixteen ships in the windborne fleet; and so, despite everything, the tsar was still confident of victory. Victory would mean little to Hercule if he were on one of the lost ships.

It would mean even less if something happened to Nico, but in the small hours of the morning, she had turned her thoughts to providing for that. “Here, little darling,” she whispered to her son. “I want you to do something for me.”

He looked guilelessly up at her, seeming attentive. She took him over to a large A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

wicker hamper—one of the smaller ones used to pull food and supplies up from the ground. She had modified it a bit: four iron wires wove through it like lines of longitude on a globe, forming a sort of dome above. “I need you to stay in this basket, Nico. Can you do that? I will be near, and Crecy, and your nurse.

But you
must
stay in the basket.”

He blinked at her and smiled, which she decided would do for a yes, but resolved to have Crecy keep an eye on him.

“Some protection for Nico?” Crecy asked, emerging from the shadows aft.

“Yes. I’ve set four djinn about it—I’ve shown them the iron and they can see that. They will deflect bullet and flame, lightning—anything else I could think of. Should the ship fall, they will bear him down gently to the earth.” She pursed her lips. “It is not good, but it’s the best I can think of.”

Crecy mussed the boy’s hair. “You’ve your own airship, now, Nico! What do you think?”

“La loon,” the boy replied, quite seriously.

“I should hope it won’t fly that high,” Crecy answered fondly. “Now, be a good fellow, and soon enough we’ll be living as dukes and duchesses in the Muscovy land.”

“Yes indeed,” Adrienne answered. “You shall have a room of your own, and toys, and when you’re old enough, a pony…”

He looked so fragile, sitting there in that basket, and for an instant she felt a surge of panic. Trying to push it down, she turned to Crecy. “I’ve solved the mystery of the lightning bolts,” she said.

“Oh?”

“The conducting strands are borne aloft by kites. Like the balloons, they write no unusual sign in the aether for me or Karevnatoread.”

“You have to admire them,” Crecy said. “Who would have thought of such A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

things?”

Adrienne crooked a little smile. “I like to think I would have. What I wonder is why Vasilisa and the other philosophers gave no thought to such countermeasures.”

“They have not encountered them before. As I say, who would think a balloon or a kite might be a weapon?”

“Anyone thinking clearly, knowing an attack was coming from the sky.”

Crecy shook her head. “No. Men have been thinking on how to wage war by land and sea for many thousands of years, and that many years of contemplation wears deep ruts. Look, even, at this amazing fleet. With ships that can move at will through the very air, why would the tsar sweep in from the most obvious direction? Why in a single front? The maneuvers are still naval maneuvers, though there are a thousand better uses for a fleet like this.

Why attack at night, when balloons and kites could go unseen?” She shook her head. “No, the sort of ingenuity we see below us is rare.”

Adrienne shrugged. “I prefer to think you exaggerate. At any rate, I’m sure the tsar will shift tactics now.”

“It’s still misty below?”

“Yes. I believe that small boats are constantly renewing the mist.”

Nico pointed at something in the darkness and laughed.

“I hope I’m doing the right thing,” Adrienne said softly, studying her son’s face.

“I can think of no better plan,” Crecy said.

“Nor I. But thus far I have failed.”

“Ah, but you have done more than Karevna. The balloons and kites, at least, are no longer a threat—thanks to you, not to her. The tsar will remember.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

Adrienne shrugged. “My concern now is with the survival of my son and friends, not with the tsar’s grace.”

The east was graying, and the highest clouds powdering themselves pink. The battle would begin again, soon, and because of her, men would die. Listening to Nico’s soft cooing, she found that she could accept that, so long as the right people lived.

Ben tunneled through the murk, feeling more like a mole than a fish, the lanthorn grasped in his teeth. Finding his way was easier than he thought; the rope in his vision was not there, but the marks where it had lain in the muck were clear. At the end of that wormy trail he would find Lenka, he was certain.

By the time he reached the end of the marks, he still had breath to spare, if not much. The problem was that the track led to what looked like a cellar door.

A closed cellar door.

For an instant he hesitated; he might just barely be able to make it back to the canal. What if the door were locked from the other side?

He pushed on it, gently, but it stayed firm. He shoved harder. Now his lungs were starting to hurt, and he knew he had forfeited his chance to go back.

Fighting panic—both his own and that which he had been poisoned with—he let drop the lanthorn, braced his back beneath the slanted doorway, steadied his feet on the step below him, and pushed with all his might. Black spots appeared in his eyes, and now his panic became all his, running out from his aching lungs, strengthening him as he strained once more.