Empire of Unreason (3 page)

The man hesitated. “As you said, they normally have little influence in our world, the world of matter. But engines have been built—dark engines, which bring their hideous strength from the aether to atoms. A year ago, they had no such contrivances; a month from now—or two—they will. As well, their ancient law still restrains them, a law older than Adam. But that is changing, too, my friend.”

“Call me ‘friend’ again, and I will have your heart.”

The fellow blinked, and was suddenly a blur of motion, a long silver splinter in his hand. Robert moved quickly, too, but the difference was as a hummingbird to a starling.

Robert was not the hummingbird. He managed to slap away the blade darting for Franklin’s throat, but the warlock’s other hand snapped out faster than vision and cracked solid against Robert’s jaw. Franklin had time to sprawl back and drag at his pistol, but had it only half from his belt before the warlock had bounded over the table like a cat and landed with the point of his smallsword pressing into the flesh that covered Franklin’s heart. A small red stain began to spread on the white fabric. Franklin tried to look brave, waiting EMPIRE OF UNREASON

for the yard of steel to slide into his chest.

The warlock stepped back, saluted, and sheathed his blade. Franklin stared at him. About the same time, Robert wobbled up,
kraftpistole
drawn. Franklin held up his hand and signaled not to shoot; Robert understood, but kept the pointed tip of the weapon trained on the warlock.

The patrons and landlord of the Boar’s Head were staring at the three of them, wide-eyed.

Frowning, Franklin took a step toward the man. “And now I am to trust you, I suppose?” he whispered. “Was that the outcome you hoped?”

The warlock unbuckled his sword belt and let it drop. He held up his hands.

“No, I would not expect that,” he replied. “But I place myself in your care.”

Franklin nodded. “You will regret it, if I find this to be some sort of ruse, I promise you.” He looked around at the crowd. “Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted. “My friend and I here had a wager to first blood. As you all will witness, I’ve a bet to pay. I’m sorry if we disturbed you.”

Some nodded, and most looked dubious; but in Charles Town, one rarely asked questions about such things.

“Come along with me,” Franklin commanded.

Once outside, Tupman and Stark joined them. “Is he for the ship or the dirt?”

Stark growled, his intonation clearly indicating his preference.

“Neither, for the moment. He’s for the jail we keep out on Nairne’s plantation.”

He glanced meaningfully at their captive and rubbed the pricked spot on his breast. “For the moment,” he repeated, with feeling.

The warlock turned back to him, and his eyes flashed feral red. “Don’t keep me waiting too long, Mr. Franklin. Things are not as they were. My old masters are troubled and impatient. Their plan proceeds in a new direction as we speak. Their goal is in sight.”

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“What goal?”

“The eradication of that troublesome race of insect, Man.”

2.

A Death

Adrienne rode a wheel of Ezekiel toward the top of the sky, angels burning beneath her feet. The midday sun brightened as they ascended, as the sky paradoxically darkened and the air grew chill. Below, the Earth showed her generous curve.

“Beautiful,” Veronique de Crecy murmured from her armchair. Like Adrienne, she gazed thoughtfully out the thick windows of the carriage, her pale face tinted blue by the light thrown up from distant seas. “How much higher may we ascend?”

Adrienne glanced at the brass banks of dials thoughtfully. “Not much farther.

We are near to six leagues above the Earth now. Outside of this carriage, we would die from lack of air. My djinni keep the atmosphere in the carriage thick, but must draw it from somewhere. If we advance much higher, they will have none to give us.”

“A pity. I should like to walk upon the Moon and gaze earthward.”

“One day.” Adrienne shrugged.

“Before I am a hag, that I might seduce a moon man.”

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Adrienne was considering a remark at her friend’s expense when the death appeared.

Adrienne could see more than most people. With better-than-mortal eyes she could gaze upon the intricate patterning of the aether that gave matter form; she could see the djinni which served her, flitting through that unworldly terrain.

But not with human vision. The aether had no optical reality, no colors, no shade nor line. Her angel eyes were translators, making the language of aether into that of light. Like any translator, they must use words already in existence, and so Adrienne saw those beings and that insubstance as if they were mathematical diagrams, plates from a book of science— translated, so to speak, into the visual language of science.

Usually.

But the death looked like Death. Scraps of skin like black parchment clung to a white skull swaying on rotting vertebrae. From between yellowed scapulae, raven wings sprouted and spread high apart, each feather surrounding an open human eye. Taloned fingers groped for her.

She sat frozen by the sight for only a heartbeat before lashing out. Once her command of the djinni had been clumsy; but over the years they had developed a shorthand together, and now the aethereal creatures carried out her commands almost as she thought them. Air hardened and quivered with bound lightning around her and Crecy, as a hundred djinni grappled the death, tore at it, sought to unravel the subtle harmonies of which it was made.

It shrugged them off, grinning its skull grin. It waved aside her protections.

“Finally, you come where I can reach you,” it said. It spoke in her own voice—as all the djinni spoke to her in her own voice.

Adrienne renewed her attack. It gave back briefly, but then came on again, folding its wings down around her. She caught a last glimpse of Crecy, frantic with alarm. Crecy likely saw none of this, save the air suddenly flashing with light and flame.

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Wrapped in the dark pinions, Adrienne knew she was dying. Her heart shuddered in her chest, and her body faded into unreality.

All but her right hand, her
manus oculatus.
It remained real: an anchor, a beacon, her source of power. She had found it years ago, in a dream, and knitted it to the stump where her real hand had once been. Awaking from the dream, she had found it true. The
mantis oculatus
was her link to the djinni, the source of her power and unnatural vision. Ultimately, it was what kept the Ezekiel wheel in the air, and her and Crecy breathing.

She reached with it and caught hold of something that hummed like a plucked lute string. No, not a lute string, but a string of figures mathematical, almost forgotten, suddenly complete as they never had been before. She pulled on the thread, and it sang a higher pitch.

The death tore apart like a rotten linen cloth hung in the wind. It was gone.

She came to herself with Crecy kneeling over her, lean frame bowed with tension.

“Adrienne, what happened? Are we still in danger?”

Adrienne took a moment to gather the reports of her surviving servants, then shook her head. “No. But start us back down.”

Crecy nodded, and turned the appropriate valves.

“What happened?” she repeated a moment later.

“Shh,” Adrienne replied, closing her eyes. Shards of the death blew about the cabin like snow in a crystal globe, settling on her shoulders and skirt, melting into nothingness. She caught at them, searching for some clue as to its nature

— what it was, who had sent it. She saw some hint of that—an eye, a voice, a unique vibration. She also saw how she had killed it, though that knowledge was vanishing with equal speed.

She saw instantly that she had a choice. She could either learn something of where the death had come from, or she could retain the knowledge of how to EMPIRE OF UNREASON

kill it. She could not do both.

It would be more useful to remember how to kill another such creature, wouldn’t it? But then she saw something she recognized, and she made the other choice, cupped the fragments and nurtured them, melted them together until she had something whole. It was an image, hanging in the frame of her thoughts like a little oil painting. Just an image, but she almost wept at the intensity of her recognition.

She saw a boy, around twelve, sitting on a raised wooden platform. He was clad in a silk robe of Chinese design, surrounded by men in similar dress. But while the boy was pale of complexion, those surrounding him were suited to the raiment, Oriental. Two others—clad in clothing of rougher weave—reminded her of the Natchez and Huron Indians she had seen at the court of Louis XIV.

“Ah,” she finally gasped, and opened her eyes to Crecy’s concerned gaze. “I’ve seen him, Veronique,” she whispered, as gravity sucked them down through thickening air. “After ten years, I’ve seen my son.”

They watched the Earth grow larger for a space. Crecy, long used to Adrienne

‘s moods, waited for her to continue.

“Don’t speak of this,” Adrienne finally told her friend, “neither the attack nor what I just told you. I need to think upon it.”

Crecy nodded. “But what sort of attack was it? I saw some of your defenses. I sensed more, but with each passing year I am less able to see the malakim. It was one of them, wasn’t it? One of the
malfaiteurs?”

“I don’t know. It was different from any djinn I have ever known.”

“But no match for your own guardians.”

“No. It was more than a match for my djinni. I don’t know how I survived, or even what I did.”

“But—
if
brought you a vision of
Nicolas
?”

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“Yes.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“I know. He has his father’s face, and—” She paused, considering. “—I just know.”

“We will find him, then,” Crecy vowed.

“Yes, we will,” Adrienne agreed.

A long silence seeped into the cabin.

“Congratulations, by the way,” Crecy added after a time. “Your wheel seems to be a success.”

“I suppose it is,” Adrienne replied.

“You don’t sound pleased. Did you hope to fail?”

“No, of course not. But this device is nothing very new, really. The same sort of articulator, a somewhat different variety of djinni, nothing more. Indeed, in some ways it is not as impressive as the winged flying machines Swedenborg invented five years ago.”

“Nevertheless, I’m sure the tsar will be pleased by yet another sort of flying engine.”

“I suppose. If he ever returns,” Adrienne replied. “He has not been heard of for three months, since he left Peking.”

“Little point in worrying about it.”

“It may be time to
do
something about it.”

The great wheels surrounding their suspended carriage slowed as they neared the ground.

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“Right back to the square,” Crecy noticed. “How did we manage that, with the Earth spinning beneath us?”

“The djinni know their way home. It is a simple matter,” Adrienne replied.

Something had been bothering her all day, even before the attack; and that statement seemed to sum it up without actually revealing it to her. For ten years she had commanded the malakim, and the number of her servants had grown. She had built devices—like the one they rode in now—that she could only have dreamed of as
a.
younger woman. What then seemed so pale about it all?

They emerged into the square before the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, greeted by cheering and applause from hundreds of voices and hands. Peasant and aristocrat alike crowded near to see the angelic device and its creator.

The tsar’s lieutenant, Prince Menshikov, met them as they stepped from the carriage. Dressed jauntily in a sanguine and gold coat and waistcoat, he swept his plumed tricorn from his head and bowed deeply.

“Ladies, how was your voyage? We followed you until even telescopes could show us nothing.”

Adrienne smiled diplomatically. “Our journey went well. Perhaps next time you would care to ride in it yourself, sir.”

Menshikov’s return grin was tight. She knew he did not like flying machines, even the proven—if ponderous—airships of early design. “It would by my honor, lady,” he replied. Whatever Menshikov was, he was no coward.

Together they walked back to the academy, accompanied by the jubilant crowds.

“Still no word from the tsar?” Adrienne asked Menshikov. There was no chance that they would be overheard amongst the tumult.

“No. I rather hoped you would see him from up there.” He paused. “I’m joking, of course.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Of course. But with the wheel we can at least mount fast expeditions, faster by far than the old airships.”

“How quickly before one could cross Siberia to North America?”

“I thought he vanished in Peking.”

“We now have reliable intelligence that he left there— headed, we presume, toward the American settlements. I wonder, as one crosses the demarcation, if somehow aetherschreibers are rendered useless?”

“It’s possible,” Adrienne replied. “I shall send servants to investigate. But the wheel could close even that distance in mere days.”

“Very good,” Menshikov said. “Perhaps we could discuss this more fully later—in private?”

After two or three beats, when she did not respond, he patted her on the shoulder. “I’m joking, of course!”

“‘Of course,” Adrienne said. She did not particularly like Menshikov, with his sly suggestion of a leer, but he was the tsar’s closest friend and, for the moment, ruler of Russia. There was no point in insulting him.

“I’ve prepared something of a celebration,” Menshikov went on.

“My lady is somewhat taxed—” Crecy began, but Adrienne lay a hand on her shoulder.

“Nonsense,” she said. “If the prince has prepared an entertainment for us, Veronique, we shall not refuse him.”

“You won’t regret it.” Menshikov beamed.

It was more than a small entertainment, but a lavish feast and ball. Menshikov was very free with the treasury—so free that much of it ended in his own pocket. Each time the tsar left his best friend in charge, he returned furious with Menshikov’s avarice, but each time forgave him.