Empire of Unreason (23 page)

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Alexeyevich scowled, but it turned into a wolfish grin. “Even
here

I’m known? Well, I’m pleased to meet you, too,” he replied.

Red Shoes found it hard to sit straight in the saddle. His whole side
stung with the pain of his wounds, but more than that, he felt sick
from the loss of so many shadowchildren. Swallowing the Long
Black Being in Venice had made him powerful, perhaps the most
powerful
hopaye
in the world. But
hopaye
he was. His servants
were not spirits but fragments of his own spirit, and each loss left
him slighter of soul. When he cast no shadow, when it was all gone,
he would be worse than dead. His body would live but with nothing
in it—or worse, with something very bad and not at all human
inside the skin.

“How did you come here?” he asked Peter, to keep his mind from
his suffering. “Was that your ship we came across?”

“Yes.”

“Very far from Russia.”

“First you know who I am, then you know where my country is.

What sort of red man are you?”

Red Shoes sighed. “Tsar, I was at Venice, when your fleet was
destroyed. I fought for your enemies.”

The tsar’s face darkened, but then, after a moment, he chuckled
dryly. “Well. I felt the whole world was arrayed against me in
Venice. Now I know it. A coincidence that we meet so, yes?”

“No coincidence,” Red Shoes said. “I felt the Sun Boy from far
away, and came to see. I felt something else— something to do with
you.”

The tsar regarded him with brooding eyes for a moment. “I once
had a creature who accompanied me, spoke to me—a sort of ifrit. It
saved my life more than once.”

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“But it turned on you.”

The tsar nodded and cast his gaze out to the vast horizon. “I see
why the Mongols like it here,” he said, “and the Cossacks.”

“Mongols? Cossacks?”

“Horsemen from the steppes. It is a long story.”

“We have a long time,” Red Shoes observed.

“Pursuit,” Flint Shouting interrupted, looking back over his
shoulder. A cloud of dust smudged the horizon.

“I know,” Red Shoes replied, “but for the time being, I can keep us
ahead of them. And we can’t run the horses too much.” A thought
occurred to him. “Did I kill the scalped man?”

Flint Shouting shrugged. “I did not stop to check his breath. He was
still, but so were you.”

“Well,” Red Shoes muttered. “In any event, Tsar—”

“Please, call me Peter. I am not tsar here.”

“Peter, please tell me your story. I believe it is of importance.”

Peter nodded. “It may be.” He shifted in the saddle, stretched, then
settled back into his beast’s rhythm. “For years, my empire has
expanded, not just west and south but east. Before the world
turned upside down, I wanted trade with Europe, to get ships and
goods and scientific things. But we had little the proud merchants
of the West wanted— except furs. Siberia is rich in furs, so our
trappers and settlers went east into Siberia, Mongolia—finally
China. The Chinese would not negotiate with us for long years. We
fought minor battles with them; they captured many of our people.

Still they would not recognize us or make treaties. It was only after
the strange times came that we found the key to open them.”

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“To conquer them, you mean?”

“Conquer? No. There has been enough war. I wanted trade with
them. In fact, our key to trading with them was in
preventing
a
war. At first, they treated us like barbarians, no better than the
savages native to Siberia. But then we discovered the Mongols. The
Mongols have conquered China before—Russia, too, for that
matter, if only briefly. The Manchus, who rule China now, were like
Mongols themselves a few generations ago; and though they now
pretend to be like the Chinese they rule, they know very well that if
they could take China from the Chinese, the Mongols could take it
from them.

“You know of the fall of the comet upon England?”

“I saw the hole with my own eyes,” Red Shoes replied.

The tsar arched his brows. “I shall beg your story from you, then.

My agents have seen the crater, of course, but riow a native of
America came to England and Venice should be a tale worth
hearing.”

“I will tell you,” Red Shoes promised.

“In any event, the French king struck England with a comet, but in
so doing he wounded the whole world. My philosophers tell me that
the comet brought with it a subtle atmosphere, one which acted to
cool that of our own. Whatever the cause, winters were long and
hard those first five years, and are still much worse than ever they
were before— especially in Siberia and Mongolia.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Whatever cost was involved in conquering China, the Mongols

—and my own Cossacks, for that matter—saw that it was either that
or freeze to death. Our spies learned that the Mancbus had strife in
the South as well, from other causes. And so, in return for their
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trade and goodwill, we solved their problem.”

“How?”

“Ten years ago, my captain Bering took an airship across Siberia
and found the west coast of America. He claimed much land for me,
and in the next year we started small colonies. I offered to resettle
the Mongols there, if they would accept Russian protection and if
Peking would bear most of the cost. They had no choice but to
agree, despite their Oriental pride. Altogether, it seemed a good
thing—trade with China, new frontiers for Russia, peace with the
Mongols.”

“Something went wrong.”

“Yes. Something always goes wrong, unless I am there myself. I
have always known this, but I suppose in my old age I grew too
trusting.

“I have always loved to sail, whether on the sea or in the air. I am
not content, like some kings, to sit in my palace. I like to go, to see,
to do. I nearly died of illness, rotting in my palace, and I swore I
would be idle no longer. So I provisioned a ship to come here, to
see my colonies, to explore this new land.” His eyes blazed. “But
what I discovered was treachery. My lieutenants had been killed or
turned against me, and all had gathered around this boy, this Sun
Boy. The Old Believers were at the heart of it, from the priests on
down. They had won the Mongols, and the Indians, too.

“They tried to capture me and destroy my ship; and when we
escaped, they pursued. We could not find a clear way back to
Russia. We were forced farther and farther inland, and at last I
determined to sail around the world. It would have been the first
time such a thing was done in an airship. But then my own
guardian angel turned against me. It told me to go back, to join
these rebels, to lead them as tsar in conquering all.”

He stopped, then, and Red Shoes did not prod him. Men spoke
when their words were ready to be released.

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“My Catherine was with me.” Peter sighed, at last, and Red Shoes
noticed tears beneath his hard eyes. “She was always willing to
come with me. Once, in Persia, she cut off all her beautiful hair
because of the heat, but she stayed by my side…” He trailed off,
began again. “I buried her. If you saw the ship, you saw the grave.

When I refused my angel, you see, I learned who the master was.

They play at being servants—great tsar this, great tsar that—but we
are
their
servants, made so by our stupidity. I should have known,
when they helped me win the Old Believers. They never planned to
help us, only to use us.” He turned to Red Shoes. “When I refused
it, the angel tried to kill me. But one of my philosophers had given
me a gift, for she never trusted them, not entirely. And so I killed it

—or was rid of it, anyway—but it got its revenge. It freed those ifrit
that kept my ship aloft, and we fell.” His tears were still flowing,
but his voice did not catch. “Ah, how we fell… But I lived, more’s
the pity, and then they captured me, made me a pet. The pet tsar.”

He snorted bitterly.

“I will show them they were foolish not to kill me. I have dealt with
many revolts. The heads of the Strelitzi rolled like so many stones,
and their blood soaked the ground. Now the rivers of America will
run like opened veins.”

Red Shoes grinned wryly. “With your army of five and only one
spare horse?”

For a moment, the tsar’s face burned as red as a torch, and then he
bellowed out a laugh so loud and painful that the others turned in
alarm. “Yes, yes. A minor setback, I should think,” he managed. But
then he sobered again. “It is more than just my pride, this thing,”

he said. “My poor dead son, he was right— bless his soul and damn
mine. These creatures are devils, and I know their plan. They plan
to kill us all: Russian, Frenchman, and Indian alike. They set us
against one another to bring the Apocalypse, and, Lord save me, I
was long their tool. We are on the brink of the end of everything,
my friend, and God has turned away his eyes.“

Red Shoes clenched his teeth against a spasm of pain, and then
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looked steadily at the tsar. “That’s what I think, too. It’s what I
expected to find out here—a great death walking.”

“Let me congratulate you then,” the tsar said, “for you have found
it.”

4.

The Margrave

The worst of the thunderstorm had slackened, but Franklin and
Voltaire were still drenched by the time they reached the stockade.

Robert was already on the wall, gazing down at some fifty men
arranged in formation below. Out in front of them, a tall, slim
fellow—he looked to be in his late thirties— sat on a Chickasaw
pony and gazed impassively up at them through the water sheeting
from his hat. All wore coats of a dark umber.

The fellow on the horse took his hat off.

“The margravate of Azilia answers the call for parley,” he said in a
high, penetrating voice.

Robert whistled, low. “That’s Margrave Oglethorpe himself.”

“I know. What do you think?”

“I think he’s Jacobite to the core.”

“He’s also a man of honor,” another voice said. Franklin turned to
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see Thomas Nairne. “If he says he came here to parley, he came
here to parley.”

“Well, it’s your decision, Governor,” Franklin said.

“Is it?” Nairne replied, perhaps a bit bitterly. “I’m sure it’s been
declared by now that I’m no governor of South Carolina. The Junto
is our government now, and in the Junto one
of your
words is
worth five of anyone else’s.”

Franklin sighed. “We should settle this now, Governor. What you
say may be true, and I’ll not murk the water with false modesty—

I’ve much popular support in all the colonies. But if I won’t shy
from that, I’ll not shy from the other side—I don’t have the political
and military experience to make proper use of that popularity in
this situation. You are the governor of South Carolina. You are
also, until better comes along, the supreme commander of Junto
troops in the Carolinas and backcountry. You act that role, and
leave me to worry about those things I’m best equipped for.”

Nairne gazed at him steadily for a moment, and then seemed to
both grow in stature and bow with a certain extra weight at the
same moment. “Very well,” he said. “I hope I’m equal to the task.

My training in military strategy leaves much to be desired, but I’ll
allow I have more than you do.” He nodded toward the men outside
the stockade. “And Oglethorpe more than any other here.” He
sighed. “Oglethorpe, whom we can’t yet count friend. But we can’t
let them stand there in the rain, can we? Let them in.” He turned to
the ladder, to go down and greet them. Franklin followed.

Oglethorpe bowed stiffly—not to Franklin but to Nairne, despite the
older man’s assessment of his position. “My men will remain
outside your gates, Governor,” the margrave said.

“They are welcome within,” Nairne assured him.

Oglethorpe smiled thinly. “I shan’t waste time before saying this,
Governor Nairne. I am not at all convinced that our mutual
protection pact binds me in this instance. It may be that when I
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leave these gates again it will only be to turn and storm them. Given
that, it would be ungallant of me to accept your hospitality—for
myself or for my men. Indeed, I won’t come in myself, other than to
inquire when the meeting is.”

Nairne cleared his throat carefully. “You are the first to arrive.

We’re still waiting for the Spanish, the French, the Creek, the
Cherokee, the Maroons—”