Empire of Unreason (18 page)

“I thought as much. They weaken me at the academy, too. And I do
not think they will tolerate Elizavet free for even those few weeks.”

Crecy looked apologetic. “‘There is another thing, one I learned
scarcely an hour ago. I would have informed you, but I imagined
you were asleep and did not think there was aught you could do.”

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“What?”

“Your wheel of Ezekiel has been stolen.”

“Stolen?”

“Or perhaps ‘confiscated’ is a better term. Prince Golitsyn, the
metropolitan, and Swedenborg took it.”

“In what direction did they fly?”

Crecy snorted. “Up.”

“Damn,” Adrienne swore. “That changes things.”

“Do you plan a countercoup?” Crecy asked. “We might just be able
to manage it, with Golitsyn gone—though the Dolgorukys are
formidable. If we wait—”

“No.” Her decisions were emerging like crystals precipitating from
a solution—inevitable, a chemical process. “No, Crecy. I am not
entirely sure what those three are up to with my wheel, but I am
quite sure they must be stopped. Furthermore, I suspect this
and

my son
and
the tsar are somehow all mixed in the same stew. I will
neither wait here to be arrested nor wage bloody war to keep a
throne I am not heir to. No, my roads all lead away from Saint
Petersburg.

“So this is what we will do. Very quietly, we will gather the
household—all my guard, the books I select, some equipment. Two
nights from now, we will seize three airships and leave this city.”

“To go where?”

“To stop Swedenborg and find my son. Hopefully the tsar as well.”

“And if you are wrong—if those three lie in different directions?”

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“Then we will take things as they present themselves. But I feel
certain none of these events are coincidental. The tsar vanishes in
the east, I dream of my son in Chinese garb, Golitsyn and the
metropolitan seize Saint Petersburg and then immediately set
forth, presumably for some distant land, if they needed my ship.

These cannot be unconnected events.”

“Well argued,” Crecy said. “You are certain enough for the both of
us. Though more information would be nice, for the sake of
logistics. China, for instance, I understand to be rather large.”

“I think we can learn more from Menshikov, too. I think he knows
more about this than he lets on.”

“Menshikov is in prison, if not dead.”

“That in a moment. Can you arrange what I ask?”

Crecy nodded thoughtfully. “It will be difficult, making the
preparations. We may have to fight for the airships.”

“Can we win at low cost?”

“Low enough. Lower than a countercoup, anyway. But we have to
get all of our people out, or they will suffer reprisals.”

“Yes. And I want some of my students—and Elizavet, of course. And
Menshikov.”

“You are certain you need him?”

“For more than one reason,” Adrienne replied. “I don’t like
Menshikov, but the tsar will never forgive me if I leave him here to
die.”

“This will not be easy.”

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“Easier than staying here, I think.”

“What of Hercule?” Crecy asked softly. “He has a wife and children
who will suffer if he leaves. Some of the other men in your guard
do, too.”

“They will be given a choice. Staying here will be dangerous for any
of my people, but if they speak ill of me after we’re gone they might
buy some safety. Speaking ill of me should require no acting on
Irena’s part. Hercule…”

“Hercule will leave his wife to go with you. You know that.” Crecy
finished her wine and poured another glass. The dim light made
Crecy’s long, unbound hair the color of blood, and the red wine
seemed to match it exactly.

Adrienne rubbed her forehead. “I’m tired.” She sighed. “Steal four
ships, then. We will take the wives and children of those who wish
it. But they must be here, at the hour. I will not wait.”

She turned to leave, but stopped at the door. “Make your plan to
free Menshikov at the same moment the ships are seized. I will go
with those liberating Menshikov, so you may figure me into the
plan. Good night, Veronique.”

Adrienne felt a certain glee as the stone wall cracked, spalled, and
then collapsed like so much sand. The heavy door fell outward, and
two of her taloi caught it before it could clatter against the stone of
the corridor, the bruise-colored muscles of their arms knotting.

They eased it down gently. Stone was difficult to transform, due to
its complexity. The door would have been easier to destroy, but
would have released lightning—a fine thing to do to an enemy’s
weapon from far away, not so fine in a crowded corridor.

Menshikov lay in the cell, one eye swollen shut.He still wore his
finery, but it had been torn and soiled almost beyond recognition.

He managed to turn his head a bit, but gave no other clear sign that
he noticed them.

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“Carry him,” Adrienne snapped to a talos. Obediently, the
mechanical creature bent and cradled the prince. The taloi were
built on a design discovered in Sir Isaac Newton’s Prague
workshop. Constructed of metal and an alchemical substance
resembling muscle, they translated the will of her djinni into
animal spirit, which in turn allowed them to move physically. They
looked like caricatures of men, with small, mirrored globes for
heads.

Menshikov’s good eye opened and focused on her. She could see
now that he had been knouted—his entire back was an open, oozing
sore, and she realized that the whole rescue might well be for
naught. Menshikov might be dying already.

It was too late now. Getting into the cells beneath the Winter Palace
had been simple. Getting out would be more of a problem, with or
without the prince.

“Adrienne?” Menshikov moaned.

“Never fear,” Adrienne told him. “We are leaving this place.”

They numbered only six—she, Crecy, and four of her Lorraine guard

—plus, of course, the hulking taloi and now Menshikov.

Vague sounds scampered like mice from the corridor ahead.

Adrienne sent one of the taloi to reconnoiter and was rewarded by
the crack of gunshot and whine of bullets rebounding from stone.

She sighed. “No time for caution or mercy,” she murmured, and
then, to the others, “stay back.”

A moment later, a white glare spilled around the corner
accompanied by a chorus of very brief shrieks.

She tried not to gag as they picked their way through blackened
bodies that had once been human beings.

Taloi attacked them, but that was even simpler. She merely cut the
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bonds between malakim and substance, and deprived of animating
spirit the taloi dropped like puppets.

Alarms were clanging everywhere as they crossed the Neva, and
bullets ticked against ice with almost metronome regularity. Anger
knotted up like a fist in Adrienne’s belly. Who did they think they
were dealing with? She could shatter the Winter Palace if she
wanted to, boil the fools in their skins, send white-hot air through
every corridor. They certainly could not touch her or her friends
with
bullets.
It was only her mercy that saved them, but they were
testing her.

“Ahead,” Crecy murmured.

Adrienne focused on the ice in front of them. Some twelve yards
away, a man sat his horse. Behind him hulked five taloi of the sort
designed for war; their arms ended in knives, and heavy armor
covered their vulnerable integuments.

“Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil,” the man said, “you are
under arrest.”

“I do not know you, sir, and I certainly do not recognize your right
to arrest me. Moreover, I doubt that you have the power to enforce
your command. Stand aside or die.”

The man was silent for an instant, then said, “Adrienne, you pursue
the wrong course. This is unwise, I promise you. Ask your lovely
friend Crecy.”

“Jesus and Mary,” Crecy hissed. “Oliver!”

Adrienne couldn’t help but snap a quick look at the redhead. She
had never heard her sound so.

“Indeed. Will you not counsel your friend wisely, Nikki?
You
are
lost, but she—”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

He was interrupted as Crecy’s pistol roared. Oliver flinched but
otherwise seemed unharmed.

“Nikki, I am hurt and disappointed. I have grown stronger, and you
only weaker. Surely you know that.”

“We are walking around you or through you, sir,” Adrienne
warned. Behind them, the river shattered at her command as the
first of the pursuing soldiers set foot on it. The ice continued to
dissolve until it was only a few yards from them. Near the shore
behind them, the water began quietly to boil.

Oliver looked skeptical. Adrienne shrugged and melted the ice
beneath his feet.

Or tried to. Her djinni would not obey her. She could not make
them attack the man.

Oliver grinned coldly and raised his pistol. He shot one of the
guards in the head—Fritz, who had been with her since Lorraine.

The poor fellow moaned and pitched back.

“Now,” he said, as his taloi started forward.

Crecy howled and leapt. Even now, Adrienne was sometimes
amazed at what her friend was capable of. She hurled forward six
yards and up, sword drawn and held out like a spear. Oliver had
another pistol and fired it, but a spume of ice kicking up proved
that he missed his mark. Then Crecy struck him, and the two went
over the side of his horse.

Her remaining guards acted instantly, kneeling in front of her and
firing
kraftpistoles
at the advancing taloi. Lightning played upon
the things, but they kept coming. Adrienne ordered her own talos
against them, but like her immaterial servants, it too was
insubordinate.

Oliver and Crecy bounced up, swords drawn, and began a peculiar
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dance. Though both bore heavy military basket-hilt broadswords,
they fenced with them as if they were feather-light sabers.

“Go!” Crecy managed. “Go!”

Oliver laughed, but Adrienne thought she detected a hint of
disingenuity in his disdain.

“Quick!” he said. “You still have some of that old fury in you.”

“I still have all of it, you bastard.” She rained a flurry of blows on
him then, and he slipped. For an instant his defense was open.

Crecy’s blade hit something—his arm perhaps— and sudden dark
speckles appeared on the ice. In the brief instant, something else
slipped. The approaching taloi had just speared a young guard
named Alexander in the chest, but now all five machines dropped
as Adrienne finally snapped the stuff that kept them animated.

Crecy slashed down for the kill, but Oliver was up, matching each
stroke again.

“Run, God damn you,” Crecy shrieked at Adrienne.

Stubbornly, Adrienne drew her own
kraftpistole
and shot Oliver.

She was not certain what happened; the man’s body hurled back
into the night and skidded for many yards across the ice. Somehow,
she did not think he was dead.

“To the ships, now!” Adrienne shouted. She pulled up her skirts
and started running as best she could on the ice, and the rest fell in
with her.

All except Crecy, that is, who wiped blood from her ashen face and
started toward her fallen enemy.

“No, Crecy,” Adrienne shouted. “With me. I mean it.”

Crecy hesitated for only an instant, then joined them in flight.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Adrienne glanced back over her shoulder to make certain Crecy
was obeying her and saw a man shape rise, and then five more, as
the taloi stood again to serve their master.

Adrienne and her group reached the banks of the river and flew
through the open fields that lay beyond. Less than a mile away, the
red spheres above the airships winked. Behind them, however,
Oliver and his automatons were gaining ground.

“Let me go back,” Crecy begged.

“No. I need you with me, not dead or captive in Saint Petersburg.”

“He’ll catch us anyway. You don’t know Oliver—”

“But you do. And you’ll tell me about him later.” Her breath was
coming painfully now, ice-cold air cutting at lungs softened by
sedentary life. She could fly, if need be, command her djinni to bear
her up on thickened air, but she could not do that for Crecy and the
rest. Besides, if their attacker could rob her of mastery of her own
servants, that might not be safe.

One of her surviving guards stopped, knelt, fired, and ran after
them, reloading. Another took his place, and they alternated in that
way, a fighting retreat. Adrienne glanced back, saw red eyes like
those of a hound, nearing. »