A Calculus of Angels (2 page)

Gate guards should know that.

But of course the lanthorn behind them might not mark the gate as he’d originally thought. Stupid of him.

“Let me see your paper,” John crisply ordered.

Red Shoes reached into the deerskin haversack slung at his waist, but even as he did so, the shadow named John suddenly lunged toward him.

His only option was to fall. His muscles were too fatigued and numb to react any other way. He twisted to catch himself, and struck his elbow against the ground as his right hand fumbled into his coat, knowing he could never withdraw his pistol in time. He did the only thing that remained: With his out-blown breath, he released the shadowchild from its prison in his lungs. In less than an eye nicker it leapt to protect him, shrieking its displeasure as the descending sword cut into it, and then it was gone, a dying ghost bound for the Nightland. And so it felt as if a club struck him rather than a sharp-edged blade, slamming his face into the flinty earth rather than decapitating him.

What was worse—far worse—was the pain of losing his shadowchild.

As he lifted his head to gaze at his death, thunder boomed, and the world lit in a yellow flash. As through a curtain of diamonds he saw John, mouth wide, a gaunt man in a black coat and tricorn, sword in hand. The three men behind him showed only eyes and mouths like round dark holes before the night closed again. Another explosion, another flash of light, and John was on his knees, while a second man twirled, and then it was black again, with a groaning louder than the wind.

The shock in his arm had quickened to pain, as if his bones were aflame.

Grimly he flopped across the cold ground, still fumbling for his gun.

“Aye, flee, you fools,” a voice shouted from behind him, a cannon of a voice A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

firing words like red-hot iron.

Red Shoes assumed that his remaining attackers had fled.
He
would have, if he could.

Footsteps crunched toward him as at last he managed to free the pistol from its place in his inner pocket. A boot settled on the center of his back and pressed down.

“Hold on there,” the new arrival said. “Let’s not get off to a wrong start. I’ve just saved your life and expect a bit of gratitude. Now get up slowly, or I’ll be forced to open y’like I did those two.”

Red Shoes let the pistol slide back into its place and painfully pushed himself to his feet. Not only did the man have the advantage of him, but as his ears adjusted after the gunfire, he realized that the newcomer was not alone. This was confirmed an instant later as a warm yellow light was born nearby, expanding to envelop him. This came from a small lanthorn borne by a boy of perhaps sixteen years, perhaps younger. The light bearer hardly held his attention, however, for as Red Shoes stood he found himself face to chest with the wearer of the boot.

He was huge, a bear, clad in a dark red coat faced blue, a black waistcoat, and a tricorn trimmed in silver. His face was mostly beard that was twisted into many braids bound with black ribbons.

“I’ll be damned,” the bear said. “You
are
an Indian. What tribe do you belong with?”

“Choctaw,” Red Shoes answered distractedly. He was busy counting the other men in the party—ten, including the whiskered giant.

“Choctaw? Son, but you are far and far from home.”

“Yes. Thank you for helping me.” He noticed that John had stopped moving and a second man lay equally still. Of the other two there was no trace.

“Would have had to shoot ‘em anyway, I imagine. Common highway thieves.

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

Might have let them have you, though, save I heard you say something about the meeting. You goin’?”

“Yes, that’s so.”

The man seemed to grimace, but it might have been a smile. “How old are you, boy? How many summers have you seen?”

“This is my eighteenth.”

The man laughed harshly. “Doesn’t much seem like summer, does it? A hell of an August, wouldn’t you say?”

Red Shoes didn’t see any point in agreeing. The world had turned upside down, and weather made no more sense than anything else. Besides, he still wondered what the man wanted. He might end up dead yet in this strange country so far from everything familiar. He hoped not; it would be stupid to have made it this far only to die at the very doorway of his destination.

When he didn’t answer, the man chuckled again and shook his head.

“Indians,” he grunted. “Well, come on, boy. You best travel the rest of the way with us. We’re going the same place anyway, me and you.”

“You’re going to the council meeting, too?”

“Yes, of course. Why else be out in this?” He waved at the surrounding night.

“On account of my reputation, I thought it best not to bring my ships up in their harbor. But let me introduce myself. The name is Edward Teach.”

“Teach,” Red Shoes repeated. “The king of Charles Town.” “Oh, then you’ve heard of me? All away and over in Choctaw country?”

Red Shoes nodded. “We’ve heard of you.”

The streets of Philadelphia were empty, but Red Shoes’ eyes longingly turned to the warm yellow gaze of the windows surrounding him. He had meant to inquire his way to the town house where the meeting was to be, but Teach seemed to know where he was going, and Red Shoes followed silently.

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

Philadelphia was like the other three white towns he had been in: Biloxi, New Paris, and Charles Town. Like them, it was square. The buildings were square, the windows were square, the streets were square. It appeared to be a sort of obsession with white people, this squareness. It seemed to Red Shoes that it was almost a ritual, might even be the thing—or one of the things—that they derived their vast power from. In particular, there seemed to be some link between this squareness and the magic called science, but just when he thought he understood what it was, it eluded him.

Maybe here in Philadelphia he would come to understand.

He blinked—had he been asleep on his feet? They were mounting the steps of a large building. Teach’s fist made explosions on the heavy wooden door.

The portal swung open, and heat flooded out like a summer wind, so delicious to his exposed skin that he nearly moaned in ecstasy. Privation strengthened one, to a certain point—but beyond that, it only weakened you. He was very weak right now, and pleasure was far more unnerving than pain.

He entered with Teach and his party, and terrible silence came in with them.

“Merciful God,” someone muttered. “It’s Blackbeard.”

A number of men sitting at a large table came slowly to their feet. To Red Shoes, they were diverse only in the way they dressed. Three were clad in austere black with only a bit of white lace at their throats to brighten them.

Others wore brighter clothing—notably the four red-coated soldiers who cast dithering glances at muskets leaning against the wall. Five more at the table were arrayed quite splendidly, at least by European standards, complete with the strange mounds of false hair that so many of them affected. It was one of these— a corpulent fellow with ruddy cheeks—who stabbed a finger toward Teach.

“What gall you manifest by presenting yourself in this place, pirate. I will have your head posted in the harbor.”

Teach grinned broadly and placed his hands on his hips. “That is no fashion in which to address a fellow governor, Mister Felton,” he proclaimed, his voice A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

booming in the hall.

The other man—Governor Felton, Red Shoes presumed— reddened further.

“You are beyond all insolence, Edward Teach. Do you think there is one man in this room—or alive on the face of this Earth—who believes that because you have moved your campaign of terror from the high seas to the statehouse of Carolina you have any legal status except that of a loathsome and hunted criminal? Do not mock us. If you have come here with sword and pistol to bend us to your will, then have done with it or stand to do your worst. If not, get thee hence. This council is of the gravest possible nature and touches upon the fate of us all. We cannot countenance theatrics.”

“Then perhaps you should cease performing them,” Teach grunted. Red Shoes thought he detected a hint of strain in the pirate’s voice, as if the effort to remain amiable were paining his throat. “Who have you invited to this council? The other governors, I see, every man jack of them as helpless as a kitten. Can they provide you with what you need? You know that they cannot. I see a small coven of ministers—the good Cotton Mather, I presume, and his progeny? But I am sure that they have brayed—ah, pardon, me—
prayed
long and loud for what I have come to give you. Now, I admit that the Crown has not yet given me a paper allowing that I govern my colony—”

“Never shall it!” sputtered the scarlet-faced Felton.

Teach paused. When he spoke again his voice carried a palpable danger. “That may be, and when any of you
gentlemen

think to deprive me of what I have won and the order I have brought from chaos in the South, then I welcome your efforts. But until such time as His Majesty across the ocean sees fit to back the paper currency of your opinions with a more solid standard, I will keep my place and claim my due. Is there any of you who has ought than bones in his head and understands I have come to do you a favor?“

“And what might that favor be?” The dark-clad man Teach had addressed as

“Cotton Mather” asked quietly. His pendulous face and bulging eyes should have made him seem ridiculous, and yet Red Shoes sensed authority in him, strength. And perhaps—something more, something that teased at the edge of his vision in a familiar way. When he blinked, however, the something A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

vanished.

He was tired.

“I know well the purpose of this council,” Teach explained to the preacher.

“For two years, no word has come from England, no ship, no aetherschreiber communication. Likewise none from Holland, from Spain, from France. Nor have any ships you sent come back. Nor do you have spare ships left to send, not when you must watch for the prowling French corsairs north— ‘Tis true?”

The roomful of men had no answer. They gazed sullenly back at Edward Teach. He surveyed them all with satisfaction. “Nor can you build more than a handful, not with this witchy cold and the Indians gone wild amongst the trees you might use for masts.”

“We have ships!” another of the splendidly dressed men claimed, at last returning his lips to the pipe that had smoldered unsmoked since the pirates had made their entrance.

“Oh, indeed, one small sloop and a frigate that has seen far better days. But ‘tis all apparent now that whatever has befallen Albion is an eater of ships and men, an unknown thing, and ’twill require men-o‘-war to go and return, to discover the truth of our long isolation.”

“And why should you care about that, Blackbeard?” Felton asked, picking an imaginary hair from his velvet coat. “As you say, you have benefited by our isolated state. Why would you want our enterprise to succeed?”

Teach trembled perceptibly as he answered, the muscles of his great shoulders bunching beneath his coat. “I will say this once, Lord Governor, and I will ne’er repeat myself save to write it in your blood. Whatever else Edward Teach might be, he is an
Englishman.
There is evil blood between myself and his German majesty, King George, and there was wrong done me which I have returned fivefold. But I love my country, and I fear what may have befallen her.”

“Beside all that,” Mather quietly added, “if you were to aid us in restoring our link with the sovereign, what benefits might not befall you? A pardon, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

perhaps?”

Teach shrugged. “I can’t say that would displease me, but it is nevertheless a risk to my neck, is it not? And if I risk that, then you gentlemen should be willing to risk my aid. I offer you not one ship, but four ships o‘ the line with forty cannon on each, the men to crew them, and my personal service as admiral.”

“A pirate in command of His Majesty’s ships? Preposterous!” Felton exclaimed. But his eyes were those of a small dog backing away from a larger one.

“Well, good sirs,” remarked a fellow in a blue coat, “the choice now comes to a devil or a Frenchman. Which more frightens you?”

All eyes turned toward the speaker. He had a strong face, careworn about the eyes, and a round chin that stuck out a bit. He was perhaps in his fortieth summer. By his silver gorget and plumed hat, Red Shoes took him to be the selfsame Frenchman he spoke of.

“Monsieur Bienville,” Felton said in a heavily taxed tone, “surely you can understand our position. The last we heard from England or Europe, our countries were at war, and now the raids on our coast from your brethren in the north occur almost daily.”

Red Shoes shook his head to clear it. Bienville? He looked more closely, and the recognition came. He had seen this man perhaps five times as a boy, come to the village of Chickasaway to parley with his uncle and the other leaders. He and his companions had been the first of the white people Red Shoes had ever seen.

The Frenchman cleared his throat. “I name you governor, Sir Felton, because your king has made you one. Will you do me the same courtesy, please?”

Felton blushed and nodded briskly. “My apologies,
Governor
Bienville.”

“Thank you, sir. As to the matter you justly raise, I cannot speak for the men of New France and Acadia, Governor, save to say that if winters are hard here, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

they are most assuredly harder in those latitudes; and men made desperate by cold and hunger will do awful things. I have had little communication with them, and I believe that the government has fallen into the hands of ruffians—something the English colonies surely understand.” At this last he boldly rested his gaze upon Blackbeard, who shrugged.

“And yet, as governor of Louisiana, have I not ceased all aggressions in Florida and the West, and concluded an armistice? Gentlemen, we all of us must discover what has become of the world. Are we truly alone? If so, we must know of it. We must prepare ourselves, and we must ally. For I tell you that without our mother countries, we are all of us at the mercy of a thousand evils.