A Calculus of Angels (53 page)

Red Shoes balled up what little strength remained in him, crushed it down, concentrated it with anger until it flamed, emptying more and more of himself, becoming a cave of flesh. All of his shadowchildren, Kwanakasha he had imprisoned so long ago—all gone, save one bright point of life, burning so fiercely now it could last only moments before his soul and shadow shook free.

It was the worst and the best thing he had ever known, anguish and rapture bound so tightly he could not tell them apart. In that moment, he saw what he could do. As the Long Black Being fell again upon the faltering Mather, Red Shoes stepped up and swallowed it as it had swallowed Kwanakasha, filled himself with it, and then tightened, tightened, before it could understand what he had done.

When it understood, it was like a wildcat inside him, trying to chew out; but he constricted himself, his shadow swelling with stolen strength. He crushed the places where its awful dark thoughts crawled, until they went out, one by one, like the embers of a fire. Until its soul was dead and its shadow was his.

It seemed like years had passed, but Tug still had hold of him. He was crushed against the big man’s chest, and the pirate was weeping. “Tug…” he managed.

“I can’t breathe.”

Tug thrust him back, his eyes widening. “Y’r alive!”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“You shot yerself in the damned head, y‘ idyot! If I hadn’t a’ slapped you, the ball would a gone straight into y’r teeny Indian brain ‘stead o’ scootin‘ along A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

yer skull like so.” He tapped a scorch mark along Red Shoes’ scalp.

They were still in the place where he and Lenka had been held. Fernando stood by nervously, cutlass drawn. Two other men—Nairne and a young Janissary—stood over Mather’s body.

“How did you come here?”

“I heard that Boston boy talking to the cap’n. Told ‘im you was held here. We followed Franklin as best we could, but he lost us in the canals till we heard the gunfire. We came around the corner an’ found some fellows in a boat. Killed all but one, but he told us what we wanted to know.”

“Thank you, Tug.”

The big man shifted, embarrassed. “Han’t like I don’t owe you a turn or two.

Hell, all the boys feel that way.”

“Mather?”

“Damned if he didn’t insist on comin‘. He kept jabbering about Satan an’

angels and whatnot.”

“Let me over to him.”

Mather’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see much. When Red Shoes took his hand, he understood the touch and squeezed, hard.

“I defeated it?” he managed.

“Yes, Reverend.”

“I feel such despair.”

“It will pass. I did not know you had such power.”

“No one is pure, no one perfectly good.” Mather gasped. “Jesus Christ knows my sins. He knows I let myself be deceived. For all of my talk, it was my own A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

desire…” His pupils were pinpricks. He turned his eyes upward to the dark ceiling, or perhaps the heaven he envisioned beyond.

“The invisible world has always been my armor against doubt,” he whispered.

“It is the unseen that gives faith. If there are devils, there must be a God, and if there are evil angels, then good ones as well. So I thought, though my church does not preach it. But I could not believe, you see, that the angels of light had all left the Earth. I fasted, and I prayed, and the good angel came to me.”

His breath whistled harshly for several moments.

“Jesus,” breathed Tug.

“Yes, Jesus,” Mather whispered. “The angel said it had been sent by Jesus, to answer my questions, to defend me against the devils. They killed my child, the demons did—I proved it scientifically, you see, I knew they incited against me. I fasted, and I prayed…”

“It was with you all along, hidden in you, hidden in your skin.” Red Shoes understood. As it was now hidden in his, albeit on different terms. The sheer power, to disguise itself in the very shadow of a man.

“It is gone now.”

“It told me…” He blinked, slowly, like a tired lizard, his voice very queer,

“Behold, he was a Cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and with a
shadowing shroud, and his top among the thick bows.”

Red Shoes noticed the device curled in Mather’s hand. It was difficult to tell what it was, since black, cracked fingers stuck to it. “And this? In your hand?”

he asked softly.

“God showed me the way,” Mather answered faintly. “Through science. In my experiments with the girls afflicted, I discovered that the evil spirits could be rendered scientifically sensible, and, moreover, affected through the medium of the philosopher’s mercury.” He gasped. “I think I will see my lord Jesus soon,” he finished, and then, weeping, “but no, for I was deceived. I was taken in by a devil. Ah, God, forgive my pride.” He gurgled, and then, almost singing, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

he said,
“The waters made him great, the Deep set him up on high with rivers
running about his plants. His height
—
his height was
—
exalted
—” His back suddenly arched high, and spittle flew from his mouth. “Oh, God, I see—I see

—” He sounded terrified.

“If I were stronger—” Red Shoes began. In fact, he could feel a deep, hard power in him, but it was nothing he knew how to use. He could not help Mather as the old man’s face slackened and his eyes dulled. “Heaven?” he mumbled, and then a slurred mewling.

“What’s wrong with ‘im?” Tug asked in hushed tones.

“He is dead,” Red Shoes answered.

“He still breathes!” Tug grunted.

Red Shoes shrugged. “He is dead, I promise you. The only mercy now is to free him from his body.”

Tug looked uneasy. “I don’t know…”

“Look away,” Red Shoes whispered, realizing that he was weeping. “I will do it, and I will make it quick.”

And so he did.

12.

The Tears of God

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Ben fired the drake back up the envelope, cursing himself for not realizing that the little furnaces did not produce enough hot air for rapid rising. If he had thought of the drake earlier, it might have been mounted, sparing him singed eyebrows and all of them the danger of conflagration. He also wished there had been time enough to test the vehicle and practice in it; it was most difficult to gauge the effect of the drake-warmed air. Whereas he had meant to continue their ascent at a steady rate, his last firing of the flaming weapon had sent them bolting upward, making it clear that they would not pass close enough to their intended target, a rather small airship on their right.

“Never mind, anyway.” Charles grunted, waving at the higher sky. “I’ll wager that the loftiest is also the command ship. The tsar’s ship. Steer us there.”

“The problem, sir, is in the
lack
of steering,” Ben remarked. “We can climb—and fall as the air cools—but otherwise we suffer the vagaries of the wind.”

“We need only come near enough to sink in a harpoon,” Charles noted. “Some sixty yards. Can you manage that?”

Ben gauged the distance. If they rose just a tiny bit faster, it might be possible.

He fired the drake again, trying not to think of what would happen should he be successful. “I’m sorry, Lenka,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’ve taken you from one fire to the next”

She shook her hair back. Her face was drawn and pale in the morning light, but her eyes held an unmistakable excitement. “Never mind, Benjamin, for I’m guessing that there is no safe place right now.” She smiled wryly.

“Just you keep your head low, Lenka, for I’ve no desire to have your being hurt on my conscience.”

“My, how my life has changed since meeting you,” she murmured.

“For better or for worse?”

She laughed and replied, “For richer and for poorer.”

Ben had an even wittier reply, but he lost it as the Russian ships suddenly A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

filled the sky and the
Madman
rocked from the recoil of her three-harpoon-gun broadside.

“I keep losing it,” Adrienne complained.

“It distorts the aether,” Vasilisa said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Aether, light, gravity—all wrap around and vanish. My djinni cannot retain sight of it.”

“Sir Isaac had such a device,” Vasilisa said, “but I was never able to examine it.

Do you even roughly know where it might be?”

“In the air,” Adrienne confirmed. “Whatever it is, in the air, I… Did you feel that?”

“Yes.” Crecy grunted. “Something struck our hull.”

The tsar began bellowing orders in Russian, and musketeers came along the rails. Adrienne was a bit taken aback at how few troops seemed actually to be on the flagship, but reflected that it did make a sort of sense. They expected to be safe, far above the action, while the bulk of the men were needed for the ground assault. But nothing seemed to have gone in accordance with the tsar’s plans, and she feared that this was no exception.

Something bounced violently from the deck next to her, a musket. She stared at it for an instant before looking up. She saw two ropes standing up from the side of the ship, fastened to thin air.

The soldiers around her made this out at more or less the same moment, and suddenly the muzzles of muskets, pistols,
kraftpistoles,
and murder guns all began to shout heavenward, and the sky cracked open.

The harpoons bit and the balloon continued to rise, swinging them over the prow and yanking the
Madman
so that her deck was halfway to vertical. Ben hung on and gaped; fifty feet below him lay the deck of the Russian ship, soldiers lining its rails. Quite near, strangely, were three women: a redhead and two brunettes. One of the brunettes seemed familiar.

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Then someone—one of the Swedes—cursed, and a musket dropped for what seemed like a long time to the deck of the ship below.

“Ready?” Charles asked.

He was answered by Muscovite guns. The ship’s aegis held a few seconds, and then suddenly flashed white and was gone. Ben had the presence of mind to activate his own, hoping Robert had done the same as the balloon shredded apart above them, and they dropped laconically toward the deck.

He turned to Lenka, saw the blood, and realized that she, of course, had no aegis at all.

As they crashed into the Russian deck, Charles managed to fire the murder gun, and Ben saw perhaps ten of the green-uniformed men collapse in the mist of molten metal. He drew his own
kraftpistole
and began to fire, screaming.

Brick and tile fell like rain, the flesh and bone of Venice, chewed and spit up by Russian bombs. The air shuddered with what seemed a single explosion gone on and on. The airships had reached Venice at last, and they were making her pay for her resistance. Red Shoes hardly cared. Better that such a place never existed; better it return to the deeps.

The Venetians had a different opinion, that was clear. From every wall and rooftop, the Janissaries fired cannon, pistol, musket, murder gun, firedrake,
kraftpistole,
and even crossbow, to no obvious effect. The ships dropping the bombs came in high, though some could now be seen approaching at lower altitudes, presumably so that they could disgorge ground troops in the areas already bombed clear of resistance.

“God almighty,” Tug shouted, pointing across the water.

It was the
Prophet.
One of the airships sat practically on her mast, and her deck swarmed with green figures. Red Shoes made out Blackbeard, fighting on the forecastle, shrugging men off him right and left.

“Faster,” Tug urged. “We have to get there.”

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Red Shoes wearily felt for the ax at his belt, wondering how long he would last.

At least he would die in battle, and not as Mather had.

As they drew nearer, their hearts sank. The surviving crew of the
Prophet
and their Janissary allies—perhaps ten men— had drawn into a clump near Blackbeard. The pirate was streaked and spotted scarlet from head to toe, but there was no telling how much of it was his own blood. While they watched, the giant staggered as a pistol was fired into his chest, point-blank. His bellow was audible, even at that distance. Teach decapitated the offending attacker, and then, as if not content with the place he had chosen to die, suddenly began charging forward. Those with him fell in behind him, cheering, and for an instant they made headway, cutting a steady, bloody lane through the sea of attackers. But where were they going? To the side of the ship, to jump overboard?

Nairne understood first.

“The fervefactum!” he gasped.

“The what?” Red Shoes asked.

“It’s hanging beside the poopdeck there, you see? Covered with a cloth.”

Red Shoes wanted to ask what a fervefactum was; but at that moment, Nairne stood, aimed, and fired his pistol. Tug and Fernando followed his example.

“Go, Cap’n!”Tug shouted. “Go, ye great, bloody bull!”

The fighting converged on the tarp-covered device, swirled in confusion for a moment, and then stopped, rather suddenly, when every man on the ship suddenly fell to the deck as if their legs had been cut from under them. A hundred inhumanly tortured cries rose up beneath the belly of the Russian ship.

“A siege weapon,” Nairne muttered, voice shaking, “It boils blood. We loaded her on board last night.”

“For what?” Red Shoes asked, staring at the shipful of dying men. “It kills all A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

alike.”

“We had a different plan—
Mother of God
.”

A shuddering figure had arisen from the dead and dying, smoke from the matches in his hair and beard mingling with the steam rising from eyes and mouth. He swung his cutlass once, twice. Two of the cables holding the massive machine slackened, and for an instant it remained, slanting, on the persistent restraints. Then a third cable snapped, a fourth—the rest, and it plunged into the water.

“Oh, God, hold tight,” Nairne said.

And then the sea itself seemed to lift from her bed, throwing herself in a boiling column, up through the
Revenge,
up through the Russian ship. Red Shoes had time to see the airship spin and flip completely over before the bottom bloom of shock and steam struck the longboat back toward burning Venice like the fist of a thunder god.