A Calculus of Angels (54 page)

“Tsar!” Charles shouted. “Tsar!” Lightning crackled from his unseen
kraftpistole,
igniting three green uniforms. Ben stood straddling Lenka’sbody.

His own
kraftpistole
had given up the ghost after four shots, its supply of catalyst exhausted. Now he jabbed his sword viciously into the chest of an approaching Russian. The young man looked astonished and horrified, struck as he had been by an unseen ghost. Somehow angered by that pitiful expression, Ben ran him through the heart and watched him fall.

They were doomed. Each of the men on board the
Madman
had been equipped with alchemical weapons and protections— aegis and adamantium—but already three of the hastily built shields had failed. Janissary and Swede alike fought like devils, but there were too many Russians. It had always been a desperate plan, Ben knew, with little likelihood of success, but he had imagined somehow that he would not actually be here. After finding Lenka he should have followed his normal custom and run, rowed for the mainland, hoped for the best. Fortune usually favored Benjamin Franklin when he lived close to his wits and far from his courage. How was it he had not thought to flee?

His brain had tricked him again. Looking down at Lenka’s bleeding form, he A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

wondered if she were already dead.

A fierce hail of fire erupted nearby, and two more men became visible as their aegises failed. One of them was Charles, who still wore a breastplate of shimmering adamantium. His broadsword rose and fell like a terrible machine, surrounding him in a cyclone of blood.

Four men attacked Ben then, apparently having noted his faint appearance when he slew their comrades. Heavy swords slashed at his aegis and were deflected, but the sheer force of their attack was communicated to him, and he went back beneath them, managing to stab one in the belly before they all crashed into the deck together. He winced away from a blow that should have cut his face in half at the bridge of his nose, struggling to free his trapped arms.

One, two, three men fell away from him, as another blur intersected them.

“Ben?” someone shouted. It was Robert.

“Yes, it’s me. Thanks to you, Robin.”

“This is a rout, Ben. We’ve got to get away.”

“What? Where to?”

“We might hide.”

“But Lenka—”

“They won’t kill her if she isn’t dead.”

“But Charles—”

“A madman.”

Charles was still on his feet, back-to-back with one of the Janissaries, fighting ten men. As many Muscovites were closing warily on Ben and Robert.

“I think we will not be able to hide, Robin. I think that we will have to kill them all.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

He felt pressure at his back and knew that his friend stood there. “Well enough,” Robert said.

“You’ve been a dear friend, Robin, better than ever I deserved—”

“Shut up y’r overeducat’d mouth, Ben Franklin,” Robert said. “Save y’r breath for fighting.”

Adrienne found herself swept away from the skirmish in a press of the tsar’s personal guard, frustrating her attempts to organize her djinni in any concerted counterassault. Their attackers wore the same sort of aetheric armor, as had their balloon; but since she could make out where they were, they were more vulnerable. If, that is, the damned soldiers would release her.

Suddenly she got her wish, as the outer shock of a murder gun struck them.

Three of her protectors dropped, groaning, and she was suddenly free.

Through the melee she saw Nico’s basket spinning across the deck, and screamed, clawing her way toward him.

She noted the blur coming toward her almost too late, understood in the same flash that he was probably moving past her and toward the tsar. But she was in his way, and the blast of the
kraftpistole,
while it did not touch her skin, seared her lungs. She staggered. Then Crecy was there, of course, her broadsword a liquid arc. As Adrienne put her back to the rail and gulped the cool sea air, her Lorraine guards were suddenly around her, a phalanx, supporting her.

Crecy’s unseen foe scored a blow on her cheek, marring the perfection of her face, and Adrienne felt filled up with murder. This man was between her and Nico! He had hurt Crecy! But even before she could react, Crecy beat viciously against the unseen, again, again—and suddenly, in a flash of light, there he was, a stone-jawed Swede twice her size, gray eyes shining with malice.

Visible, Crecy’s sword took him in less than two seconds.

“Nico!” Adrienne shouted, gesturing. She could just see the basket, a few yards past Crecy, his little head peering curiously out. He was still alive! She opened her hand and called her djinni, for now that she had seen the shield fail, she knew how to make the rest fail as well. At the same time, she began to press A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

toward her son, her guard around her.

But then the aether filled with a most peculiar shrieking, a horrible cacophony of mingled triumph and pain. It took only an instant to understand what was happening. Above her, the globes which held the ifirit were unraveling. In seconds they would begin to fall—she, Crecy, the tsar, Nico…

It was a very long way down.

Grimly, she reached up to the ifrit. “Keep to your task,” she commanded.

“Lady, you do not command us,” one shot back. “Our restraints are gone, and we fly.”

“They are not yet gone,” she replied. In an instant they would be, however.

What was happening? And then she saw the unraveling harmonic that spoke to the globes above them. It was strong, subtle, perfect, the hand of a maker unmaking.

She threw the weight of her servants around the globes, adjusting, probing, adding her own voices to the disruptive harmony until it no longer had any effect.

She could not do it for long. Despite the strain, she opened her mortal eyes and saw what she had expected.

Hercule
, she thought, despairing.
Not you, too
.

Red Shoes clung to the capsized boat, gazing at a sky gone more than weird, even in his ghost vision. Something stronger than he had ever seen before was stretching its grasp over that sky. No, not one something, but two, locked in combat.

He was very, very tired. He barely blinked when the Russian airships began to fall from the heavens, conjuring only enough energy to hope one did not fall upon him.

Ben managed to send three more men down before his aegis failed, and then A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

he set his jaw grimly, for he knew that he could match not even the least swordsman if they could see him. There weren’t actually that many Russians left in the fray. Most had withdrawn across the deck, presumably to protect the officers, or the tsar if he really was aboard. Others seemed fascinated by something over the rail. This only angered Ben the more—they should at least be
watching
when he died.

The three men he still faced grinned almost in unison when he appeared, happy to see the devil they had been fighting was really hardly more than a boy with little clear idea how to hold a sword. But almost immediately, their expressions changed, eyes drawn up as if to an angry God, and they scrambled away from him with the same unanimity with which they had smiled. Swaying, Ben watched them go, puzzled. Charles, back against the rail, side to side with a Janissary, also gawked, then redoubled his attack. He caught one blade in the palm of his hand, cut its wielder’s neck so viciously that the head flopped over like a marionette at the end of an act. In two more blows he was free, hurling himself toward Ben.

I don’t understand
, Ben thought.

Then a rope ladder hit him in the face, and he, too, looked up. A small airship stood ten feet over him, Newton’s concerned face looking down from the rail.

“Take hold,” Newton shouted. “The talos will pull you up. You are safe for the moment.” A chorus of muskets barked, balls whining harmlessly away as if to underscore that point.

“Lenka!” he shouted up. “I won’t go without her!”

Newton pursed his lips in annoyance, and then nodded curtly. In the next moment, the silvery body of the talos leapt into view, falling gently to the deck.

He took up Lenka in his arms.

“Climb,” Robert gasped.

He did, struggling up the ladder. When he dragged himself over the rail, Newton clasped him. “I’m sorry, my boy,” he said. “I’ve tried to make it up to you.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“You might have helped sooner—” Ben began, but then he saw the sincere pain in his mentor’s eyes, and he stopped and returned the embrace. Behind him, Charles and the Janissary followed Robert onto the ship, even as the talos settled back onto the deck, Lenka limp in his arms. Groaning, Ben rushed to her. There was so much blood that he could not tell what sort of wound it was, or even exactly where—somewhere in her abdomen, it seemed. Blood bubbled from her nostrils, so she was still breathing.

“We must go,” Newton said. “And quickly. There is something here I do not understand. The ship below us should have fallen by now.”

“What do you mean?”

“The rest have already fallen,” Newton explained, as the ship swiftly rose. “I saved this one for last, but something interrupts the process.”

“I thought you said it was too dangerous, this process.”

Newton didn’t answer, but instead said, “You remember how to steer this ship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do so. I must see to the talos.”

The creature now stood in the bow of the ship; Newton stepped up behind it and placed his hands against its back, and suddenly a sort of sheen—not like the aegis, but a silvery film—sprang up around them.

Adrienne gnashed her teeth in frustration; her servants were failing, and there seemed nothing she could do about it. They had managed to reach Nico’s basket—and Crecy had tight hold of it—and so, finally, she could stop dividing her efforts. She stared at the ship above them almost curiously, at the strange gray-blue automaton—the source of the lethal harmony. It was a sort of djinn, but more powerful, more focused than any she had ever seen before. And it was something else, too, something familiar…

The entire ship lurched as one of its supporting globes disintegrated and the A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

captive ifrit went howling free. She grasped after the willful spirit, but her control was stretched thin maintaining the others. Crecy seemed to be shaking her, but she ignored her, seeking the answer, the sum. How could the—thing—be familiar?

She could not fail. If she failed, Crecy and Nico would die, and her own hopes would be at an end.

Another globe went, and the deck jolted to a peculiar angle. From the corner of her eye, she saw Crecy slam into the deck, still gripping the wire hoops at the top of the hamper. She and Nico fetched against the rail and hung there, as the boat tilted farther and farther. A terrible thing broke loose in Adrienne then, something so far beyond fury that it had no name. She drew her djinni to heel beneath her feet and around her hips, and compelled a wind from them, wings to bear her up, for in that instant of clear-eyed rage, she saw everything. The automaton was like her hand—a chime, a pathway, a universalizer. It was a tool, the man behind it the real power. And yet, there was also a resistance between them, a reluctance, perhaps even anger…

Then she laughed, an utterly humorless laugh that was as much agony as anything else, and she reached with her hand and twisted a single unguarded constant, changed one small harmonic. Then, her will spent, she fell.

As she hit the still-tilted deck, she had a glimpse of Nico’s basket, floating languidly out into space. He was waving at her.

“There went a second globe,” Robert chortled. “Whatever he’s doing, it is virtuous!”

“No other ships remain aloft!” Charles said, his voice strangely humble. “What

—”

“Enough of that,” Ben snapped. “One of you see to Lenka. Please, I must—” He knew he could leave the complicated tiller for a moment, but he could not bear it if Lenka died in front of him. Besides that, he had no medical knowledge at all.

In the end, it happened incredibly fast. Ben had a glimpse of a woman in a A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

dress as blue as lightning, black hair cascading around her lovely ivory face like a thunderhead, one hand an actinic slice of starlight. He heard her laugh, a perfect, cold laugh of absolute malice. She was floating in the air. Her fingers spread wide, and Newton screeched, and then the talos turned and seized him.

“Ah, God, no!” Newton wailed. “Benjamin, I’ve lost—” The talos gave Newton’s head one sharp twist; Ben heard the bones of the neck crack like lighter knot popping on a fire. Then, quite casually, the talos tossed Sir Isaac Newton into the morning air, and, as if in afterthought, leapt after him. Ben lurched to the rail and watched them fall, a spot of blood, a dot of gray, until they were lost to the distant, yellow sea. He stayed there until Robert dragged him gently back to the tiller, for they were rising fast and aimlessly. The Muscovite ship dropped off steeply shoreward.

I have no tears to weep,
Ben thought, watching the pearly clouds gathering above.
I have no tears. They are gone, and no science can bring them back.

But moments later, a gentle rain began, and Ben thought, bitterly, that though God seemed to have few other virtues, he had tears enough for them all.

13.

A Bundle of Arrows

Ben stood for some time, gathering his courage, listening to the ululating song of a mullah filtering into the long hall and, as if in counterpoint, the tolling church bells above. Did God care whether he was beseeched by way of bell or song? Probably not. And for the moment, to all appearances, neither did Venice, for the balance of her inhabitants—Catholic, Protestant, Mussulman, Jew—were in celebration over the victory against the Muscovites, whatever differences they might have amongst themselves for the moment set aside. For A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

the first time in almost two decades, the city was free, ready to govern herself.

Ben wished her well.

He had gathered all the courage he could, he realized. Sighing, he pushed the door open, bowing to the nun who greeted him.