Empire of Unreason (8 page)

of, which is much. They certainly would not come for you here, in your own house with all of its protections and soldiers.”

“You think they seek to lull me.”

“I say we must consider it, that is all.”

Adrienne nodded. “One thing puzzles me, however. If the attack on me yesterday was part of the coup, why did the malakus carry an image of my son, far away, in China?”

“What is this?” Hercule erupted.

“I will explain it to you soon, Hercule.”

“I think I see an explanation,” Crecy said. “The tsar has been in China, yes?

And Vasilisa Karevna with him. You well know how jealous she has become of you. Suppose that the coup, the sending, the disappearance of the tsar are all connected to her?”

“You have a suspicious, devious mind, Veronique. You really think Karevna would betray another Korai?”

“The Korai is a sisterhood, Adrienne, and sisters can be the most bitter rivals of all. I think this all a trap. If the malakus failed to kill you, then Golitsyn lulls you into a falsasense of security until he murders you here. Or you run off to China, in search of your long-lost son, and they catch you there.”

“You should have told me all of this,” Hercule hissed. “How can I captain your spies if—” He stopped, too angry to continue.

Adrienne got up and crossed back to the window. “I think Veronique is right,”

she said, after a moment. “I think this is all an elaborate trap of some sort. But set by whom? I think it beyond Karevna, frankly.”

“More important,” Crecy said, “what will you do about it?” Adrienne looked at them both and smiled fiercely. “Why, walk into it, of course.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

6.

The Scalped Man

Red Shoes prowled to the edge of the valley. The ghost country had long since swallowed the moon, but to his owl eyes the stars burned brightly enough to let him see each leaf on the scraggly trees along the ridge. Below, there were no trees—only endless waves of tall grass, rolling hills fading silver, then gray, becoming stars again at the horizon.

He strained, listening for sounds few men could hear, and that none could perceive with their ears. A faint call, or the memory of a call, lingered in the still air.

A chill breath of wind sighed across the grass, and Red Shoes shivered. He was far, far from home—two weeks past the Wichita village, almost two months from the village of his birth.

It might be best to return to camp, and Tug. But something was out here…

Across the prairie, the something stood up from the grass, the shape of a man.

In all that vastness, it seemed both tiny and gigantic.

“You do not belong here,” the shape told him. At such a distance, even a loud shout would have gone unheard, but this was a whisper, carried by the winds behind the world.

“Nevertheless, I have come,” Red Shoes replied.

“For what purpose? To die far from your kind?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“My purposes are not yours to ask after,” Red Shoes replied. He was aware of his shadowchildren, gathering near in his defense.

“Walk back over your footsteps,” the creature said, “or I shall walk over them. I shall walk over your soul.”

Red Shoes laughed. “Better you walk on fire, on the spine of a lightning bolt.”

The shape said nothing more. It vanished back into the grass. The wind stilled.

Red Shoes waited.

His shadowchildren warned him, as the thing came up at his back. He turned to find it hurtling toward him.

It looked like a Wazhazhe warrior, eyes circled with black, the arc of a tomahawk gleaming above his head, cleaving toward Red Shoes. The warrior’s eyes burned like hot coals, and his lip was twisted into a sneer. He had been scalped, and his bald head was mottled with scars. Red Shoes dodged nimbly aside, drawing his own ax. He was fast enough to avoid the stranger’s weapon, but the two of them still crashed together. It felt like running full force into a tree. He caught hold of the man’s weapon arm and tried to swing his own around and lay open the back of his enemy’s head, but his own wrist was caught. They strained there for a moment, muscles taut as wires. Then, slowly, he began to feel his own strength give way. The scalped man was very strong.

Red Shoes pushed forward and then jerked back, kicking his foot up into the scalped man’s groin. Falling backward, he threw his antagonist over, then scrambled up, ax at the ready.

The scalped man was faster, a panther leaping. Red Shoes knew instinctively he would never be able to meet the savage attack. But something struck the scalped man suddenly, sent him snarling and tumbling aside. Red Shoes understood an instant later, when he saw an arrow standing in the scalped man’s arm. Despite this, his foe laughed as he landed, rolled, and bounded to his feet. Then he leapt again, the height of two men.

Red Shoes drew his
kraftpistole
and fired. A serrated white tongue licked at the air, but tasted no flesh. When the flash faded, he saw the scalped man EMPIRE OF UNREASON

bounding off through the grass like an antelope.

“I have scented you now,” the voice came. “Next time I will devour you.”

Red Shoes repressed the urge to follow, dropping instead into the cover of the grass, wondering where the arrow had come from. The enemy of his enemy was not necessarily his friend.

“Hey! It’s me!”

The thickly accented French was familiar. Red Shoes stood slowly. Loping toward him, bow slung over his shoulder, was Flint Shouting.

“I got to thinking I was really going to miss something,” the Wichita explained.

“I was halfway to the western hunting lands when I turned back and found your trail. Just in time, it seems. A scalped man! You were right—you have enemies of consequence. And now they are my enemies, too, I suppose. Ah, well. My fame will be great, though I live a short life. Who can ask for more, yes?”

“Tell me about them,” Red Shoes said, ignoring some obvious jibes at that.

“These scalped men. We don’t have them in the Choctaw country.”

“They don’t live in villages. They sneak about. Some say they are good, others bad—but they are always alone. Driven out.” He twisted his mouth. “I have never known one to be good.” He grinned. “Yes, this makes me happy. How often does a man get to kill a legend? A scalped man? Bring him to me!”

“Brave talk from a man who turned tail once already,” Tug grumbled.

“Not from cowardice!” Flint Shouting said. He sounded genuinely outraged.

“Why should I help you, who are not my kin or even of my nation? No reason I could think of.”

“We saved you! Y‘ gave y’r word.”

“Hah. Such words only count with real human beings— Wichita—which you two are not. But now you have more than words. You have my heart. This EMPIRE OF UNREASON

interests me, now.”

“Well, we are fortunate then,” Red Shoes said, not entirely sarcastically. After all, the Wichita had saved his life. “Can you tell us anything else about these scalped men?”

Flint Shouting shook his head. “Not much. They are not just men who have been scalped. They are—Dreams. Dreams-Closest-to-Men.”

“Huh. Like a warlock? So what’s this fellah want?” Tug asked.

Red Shoes pointed with his jaw. “He wanted to keep us out of the valley up ahead. He’s guarding it. I think he’s done a good job, up until now. Those Kapaha we met two days ago went all the way around it—I found their tracks and a dead man. They just left him.”

Tug lifted his brows in surprise. “Them Kapaha are pretty fierce. This one fellah put ‘em off?”

“It would seem so. But they were warriors. Warriors prefer to fight flesh and blood. It’s what they understand.”

“I’m with ‘em, then,” Tug replied. “So now what?”

“You sleep. Tomorrow we go down there.”

“All three of us,” Flint Shouting clarified.

Red Shoes gave him a long look. “All three of us,” he said at last.

“Looks like a whale carcass,” Tug remarked as they drew near the thing.

Red Shoes didn’t answer. He was concentrating on his shadowchildren. The night before, his spirits had been unable to come here, challenged by fiercer ones. Today there was no sign of the aethereal enemy or of the scalped man.

Flint Shouting noticed it, too. “Where is the coward?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Red Shoes answered reluctantly. “I think he knows I’m too strong to beat when I’m alert, especially when I’ve got you two helping. And he’s injured, thanks to you. But he’s out there somewhere, waiting for me to relax.”

The “whale carcass” had vanished for a moment, hidden by a small rise. Now it came into sight again.

“Holy Mother,” Tug swore. “It’s a
ship
.”

It was. Red Shoes and Tug had met on board a frigate—the
Queen Anne’s
Revenge
—and Red Shoes had thought it a large vessel. This ship had been twice the size, before she shattered, before her nose plowed into the prairie and her spine snapped.

“An airship,” Tug went on, “like we fought at Venice.”

“Indeed,” Red Shoes replied.

“You mean it flew through the air?” Flint Shouting asked. Now
he
sounded skeptical.

“I’ve seen it myself,” Red Shoes confirmed. “The Russians have such ships.”

“Russians?”

“Europeans, but as different from the English as the Spanish are.” As he spoke, they rode into the shadow of the dead ship. Near it was a pile of casks and crates. “These were dragged out and opened,” he said. “Either someone survived, or the ruin was looted.”

“Where are the corpses, I wonder?” Tug grunted.

When they reached the other side of the ship, they saw. A low tumulus of earth had been raised, perhaps fifteen paces in diameter. Nearby was a cook fire and signs of eating. Scattered about like broken puppets were fifteen corpses. The three of them dismounted, letting the horses wander to graze.

They were Europeans, very pale in death. All had been scalped. They wore EMPIRE OF UNREASON

dark green knee breeches and bloodstained white shirts, but no coats. A few waistcoats lay here and there, but the buttons had been cut from them.

Red Shoes, Tug, and Flint Shouting walked carefully around, taking turns keeping watch.

“Well, Tug, what do you think?” Red Shoes asked, after a time.

The big man pushed his broad-brimmed hat back and scratched his head.

“They wrecked here. The livin‘ buried the dead. Then somebody come along an’ killed the livin‘, took their guns and things. In’yuns, I guess.” He grinned, proud of his newfound tracking ability.

Flint Shouting was still examining the bodies. “Most died from gunshot. Very strange, this far away from places to trade for bullets. Just one arrow.” He turned the shaft this way and that. “I don’t recognize the tribe. Not Awahi, not Kapaha, not Wazhazhe—not Throat-Cutters, either. Someone from far away.”

Red Shoes said, “I trust you to judge. But if you don’t know who they are, they must be from very far away indeed.”

Tug had returned to looking at the ship. “Muscovados,” he mumbled. “We came all the way out here’t‘ find Muscovados. An’ what now?”

Red Shoes pointed to hoofprints, leading away. “We keep following them.

Some of them may have been taken captive. Besides, I want to see these Iron People.”

“West, looks like.”

“Northwest.”

Tug sighed and shrugged. “Further on, then? Well, I always did want’t‘ see the Parcific from this side.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

7.

Pretender

“Oh, merciful heavens,” Franklin said, when he saw the statehouse.

It had always been a gaudy affair. Built by Edward Teach— better known as Blackbeard—during his rule of the city, it was a Rococo nightmare, laced with gilded arabesques and iridescent pastel murals of Blackbeard doing various noble deeds. There had long been talk of painting over the latter, but in the days since Blackbeard’s heroic death, his legend had grown; and over the ten years he had been transformed, in the minds of the people, into a sort of benevolent monarch who had saved the city from chaos.

“Blackbeard would have been proud of this,” Franklin murmured.

It wasn’t a compliment. As garish as it might normally be, today the center of South Carolina’s government was positively florid. Banners of the Stuart coat of arms draped every available surface—pennants, ribbons, and scarves waved everywhere. Guards in velvet and gold patrolled the crowd with comically useless halberds.

And the crowd! More than a thousand strong—singing, shouting, beating drums and jangling bells, sprawling out from Teach Square into New Market and the old Church Yard. Children pranced about, clad in Stuart red and white. Women wore flashy, low-cut gowns that had been out of fashion in the colonies for ten years. The guards had herded them into a sort of double line flanking Broad Street, the approach to the docks on the Cooper River.

“This is unbelievable,” Franklin said, staring. “Don’t they remember that this is the king they exiled? Have they forgotten that little more than a decade ago they hated him for being Catholic?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Which I seem’t‘ remember y’ thought silly,” Robert reminded him.

“I did. They put an idiot in his place who hated England and could not even speak English, all to have a Protestant on the throne. If you must have an English king, best that he be English and love his country.”

“Then what is your objection?”

“I wasn’t objecting,” Franklin protested. “I was only commenting on the fickleness of men, is all.”

Voltaire placed his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Mr. Franklin was just bragging to me that your country no longer has need of kings.”

“Nor do we,” Franklin affirmed.

“The people seem to think otherwise.”

“So they do,” Franklin admitted. “Some of them, anyway. But what of the Puritans, the Quakers, the Anabaptists, the French and Dutch Protestants?

Not to mention the Negroes—”

“If I don’t mistake m’self,” Robert said, “I see some of each in the crowd.

Catholic or not, I reckon most people believe that any king is better than no.”

“You mentioned Negroes,” Voltaire commented. “The town looks to be more than half of that African complexion. But they are slaves, are they not? You speak as if they have some say.”