Empire of Unreason (25 page)

such you’ve invented for us. We need you as ambassador to those
nations keeping clear of our cause. We need you to get us that city
and that clear path to it, and more men and guns besides.”

“I’m no diplomat, Governor—you’re the one who has been
ambassador to the Indians, not me.”

“Ambassador? I was a
spy
against the French. They still don’t think
well of me down there, the late governor Bienville aside. We need
someone who can shake both the Coweta and the French out of this
reluctance of theirs. Maybe you are no diplomat. I’m no general,
but I’m closer to one than you are. You’ve treated with two kings
and the Venetian Divan before your twentieth birthday, and have
conspired and built alliances all over this new world, and are thus
closer to a real diplomat than anyone handy. I well trust you may
not
like
diplomacy, but I must humbly request that you
do
it, for, of
all the things that need to be done right now, this is the one that
suits you best. And you know it. If you do not accede to my request,
I may be forced to order you and then to remind you of the power
you yourself so recently reserved to me.”

Franklin chewed on that for a moment. What Nairne said made a
good deal of sense, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“You’ll conduct the meeting with the margrave and the others who
come here?”

“I’ll be present, as will you.”

“And you’ll instruct me on Indian diplomacy?”

“As well as I can. I can show you my earlier journals, which I have
used before as instruction.”

“Don’t I recall that you were put to torture once and nearly slain by
the Yamassee?”

“Well, no diplomatic career is without its little bumps, is it?”

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Nairne smiled, but it fled from his face nearly as it formed. “What’s
that sound?”

Franklin heard it, too, a growl like distant thunder but constant—

and approaching.

Nairne took up his
kraftpistole
from the table, shoved it into his
belt, and ran outside. Franklin checked his own weapons and
followed.

The noise was a bit louder out in the open, but though a number of
people were gazing up at the sky, none seemed to have discovered
the source of the racket. Franklin and Nairne hurried to the
stockade for a better view.

Franklin noticed that the margrave’s men, outside and below, were
also warily surveying curdled-cream clouds; so whatever the sound
represented, it was not something the Azilians were familiar with.

Franklin found the tower’s spyglass, but with nothing clear to aim
it at, soon put it back down.

Then, with a faint chill, he remembered Euler’s words, and
produced the compass he had made for the detection of malakim.

The needle quivered oddly. He moved—the needle did not.

“Northwest,” Franklin said, “look northwest.”

The noise, which had receded a bit, now grew louder again.

Suddenly, something damn strange came into view. It seemed at
first a pure geometric form, an oval or ellipse gliding through the
air perhaps sixty feet above the ground. Gliding like a bird but
lacking head, tail, wings—well, perhaps not much like a bird at all.

But more like a bird than any flying machine Franklin had yet seen.

It was flying straight toward Franklin and Nairne; and suddenly, in
the fort yard, a fountain of flame and earth erupted, carrying
maybe six men and women up with it. Or pieces of them, anyway.

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Nairne jerked out his
kraftpistole,
but the little knot of Cherokee,
who had been watching along with everyone else, reacted even
faster. Their muskets roared so close to the explosion in the yard
that the only way Franklin knew they had fired was by the black
trees growing from their weapons. A few seconds later, though, he
heard their shouts.
Tlanuwa! Tlanuwa!
Something in their own
tongue, he guessed. Maybe they had seen one of these things
before, though he much doubted it. It had to be a Moscovado
contrivance. Hadn’t Euler spoken of new sorts of flying craft?

Franklin saw sparks of bullets striking the thing, and then it had
flown over him. He made out four legs, like the legs of a table, set
toward the center. He had an incongruous moment when he almost
laughed—it looked like a badly. designed card table, but flying. He
also noticed now that its structure was ribbed, put together very
much like some kites he had seen.

Now guns were thrown up everywhere, but it was over the wall.

Oglethorpe’s men looked on in puzzlement as the machine slowed
almost to a hover above them. Because of the stockade, they had
not seen the“ explosion, though they had surely heard it.

“Watch out!” Franklin called down.

But Oglethorpe was yelling something at them, and they held their
fire and their ranks.

The
tlanuwa
did not respect their truce. This time, Franklin saw
something drop through an aperture in the middle of the thing. He
wished he could see the upper surface. Were there passengers, or
was this another sort of talos, a mechanical thing to give the
insubstantial malakim working substance?

To many of Oglethorpe’s men, the answer would never matter—

they perished in a bloom of flame that curled over them. The rest
broke formation and retreated, though more than one had the
presence of mind to fire at the thing.

“Man the damn murder guns!” Nairne shouted. “Stop staring and
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shoot!” He fired his own
kraftpistole,
and a jagged line of
phlogistan writhed—apparently harmlessly—against the machine
as it began once again to move, turning in the sky—again, somehow
in the manner of a large bird—and started back toward them.

5.

Irena

Adrienne uncovered the light, but she had already recognized the
voice.

“Hello, Irena,” she said.

Hercule’s wife was an alabaster carving, her hair and skin of the
same white, almost silvery, cast. Her eyes were droplets of blue so
near black her pupils were scarcely distinguishable. Hercule
complained sometimes—in his least charming moments—of Irena’s
too-thick waist and squarish features, swearing that she suffered
much in comparison to Adrienne. It might be so, but her striking
coloring drew the eye and often held it.

Now what held Adrienne’s attention was the old-fashioned pistol
aimed at her heart. The lock, as she had heard, was drawn back,
and the pan seemed to be primed. Irena knew how to use the gun,
then.

“Do not move,” Irena said. “Make no signs with that devil hand of
yours, nor mutter any strange curse.” »

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Why should I obey you, if you mean to kill me whatever I do?”

“I
do
mean to kill you. But I would have you confess to me first.

Confess your affair with my husband.”

Adrienne arched her eyebrows in genuine surprise. “Must I? I
suppose I thought you’d always known.”

Irena’s finger twitched then, and a flash of utter hatred moved
across her face, but she managed herself. “Yes, of course I knew.

And you knew I knew. And the whole court. But I want to hear you
say it, here, now, to my face.”

“Very well. Since long before you married Hercule, I was sleeping
with him. After you were married, he continued to come to my bed.

I did not turn him away.”

Tears sparkled in Irena’s eyes. She blinked them clear. “Thank you.

Now I can send you to hell.”

This time, she did pull the trigger. The powder flashed, and the next
instant, the cabin rang with a deafening explosion.

The smoke stung Adrienne’s eyes and filled her nostrils with, at
least, the brimstone Irena had promised. But the lack of pain—and
a brief examination of her chest—proved that Adrienne was still in
the world of the living. It appeared that her djinni still honored
their obligation to protect her.

Peering through the serpentine coils of smoke winding and
slithering in the lanthorn light, she saw Irena collapse against the
bulkhead, clutching at her thigh. The pistol lay on the floor,
forgotten.

Adrienne hesitated a moment, then approached her.

When the other woman saw Adrienne was alive, she closed her eyes
wearily. When Adrienne lifted the Russian’s skirts, she did not
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object.

A deep red stain spread on Irena’s white hose. The bullet, turned
from striking Adrienne, must have ricocheted to return to its
mistress.

At that moment the door was nearly ripped off its hinges. Crecy
towered over them, naked save for her sword, her fiery hair
unbound. It took her only a few seconds to utter a low laugh.

“Well, well,” she said. “The girl has some claws.”

“Hush, Veronique. And for heaven’s sake, don’t stand there naked.

The last thing we need right now is
more
attention.”

“Oh—yes,” Crecy said, as if realizing for the first time her state of
undress. “You’ll pardon me if I didn’t stop to think—”

“I much appreciate it, Veronique. It’s good, as always, to know you
are watching out for me.”

“I’ll throw on a dressing gown and return, if you have the situation
in hand.”

“I have it in hand—and there’s no need for you to return. If,
instead, you could deflect any others who come to investigate with a
tale of a misfired weapon?”

“Of course.” She gave a little bow and started toward her own
quarters, flicking the door shut behind her.

Adrienne turned her attention to Irena’s wound. It was not
bleeding as much as she’d first thought.

Irena was watching Adrienne, not the hole in her leg. She was
obviously in pain—and just as obviously trying not to cry out.

“Will you let me dress this?”

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“I would rather bleed to death.”

“Very well. Would you like me to call someone else?”

Irena bit her lip, then shook her head. “Why?” she asked huskily.

“Why what?”

“Why did you send her away?”

“She was naked.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant to kill you. I tried to kill you.”

“Yes, and in a perfectly just world, you would have succeeded. In
your place I might well have done the same thing.”

“You never thought that I would, then—is that your meaning? You
flaunted your liaison with my husband because you thought I
would accept it forever?”

“You stood it for seven years. I suppose I thought you might stand it
forever, yes.” She paused. “You
do
know that Hercule ended our
affair?”

Irena’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Last week. Which, I suppose, makes me wonder why you chose
now, of all times, to try and solve the problem of Adrienne.” She
glanced back down at the wound. “Come. Let me bandage this.”

Irena hesitated again, but her eyes showed her confusion. “All
right.”

Adrienne went to her cabinet and found some linen bandages and
ointment. She probed for the bullet in Irena’s leg while Irena
sucked in gasps of pain.

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“It’s been a long while since I doctored a bullet wound,” Adrienne
mused, “ten years, when I was riding with the army of Lorraine.”

“Where you met Hercule.”

“Yes. He rescued me from a gang of brigands. He was kind to me.

We became friends.”

“You became lovers.”

“Eventually. Friends—comrades in arms—first.” She wiped away
more blood, and Irena gasped again. “I don’t think the bullet is in
there,” she observed.

“He is my husband now. He married me because you would not
marry him.”

“You knew this when you married him?”

“Yes. I thought he would come to love me. He didn’t.”

“Ah,” Adrienne said. The bullet was on the floor. “See?” she said,
holding up the deformed lump. “It was already spent when it found
you.”

Irena laughed, bitterness tinged with hysteria. “Much like Hercule,
yes? When he found me then, and when he troubles to find me
now.”

Adrienne wiped blood from the wound and put some ointment on
it, and Irena’s laugh became a moan. Adrienne began wrapping the
linen around the other woman’s thigh. “Do you love him at all,
Irena, or is it just your pride that’s hurt?”

“How can you ask that?”

“The timing of this. All those years in Saint Petersburg, you made
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no protest. After all, in the court all men have affairs, and most
women. Didn’t you?”