A Calculus of Angels (33 page)

“Popish or not, they are Christians,” Mather answered, diplomatically, though Red Shoes was certain he had heard the preacher say otherwise in times past.

“I will take my chances with them.”

Bienville sighed heavily. “I must admit, you make sense, Monsieur Riva. But my heart chafes to find my countrymen.”

“You will find some of them in Venice,” Riva promised.

“Very well,” Bienville said. “I will agree to this—I will accompany you to Venice, but I can promise no more until I have word from France.”

Blackbeard made a disgusted noise. “The Mediterranean is the sultan’s bear trap,” he snapped. “This is foolhardy.”

“Once again,” Mather said, “it appears as if our Choctaw friend might break the stalemate.”

Red Shoes looked wearily at all of them. “I want to go home,” he said quietly.

“I have had more than enough of your Old World.”

“And our wine, I should say,” Mather said acidly.

“And your wine. Yes, I want to go home.”

“Well, then—” Blackbeard began.

“But,” Red Shoes interrupted, “that would be cowardly. That would not be doing what I said I would do. My uncle and many men I loved died on the journey to Philadelphia, and only I remain. I am the eyes of the dead—and the eyes of my people still living—and despite what I wish for myself, I must act for them. I say that we go on to this Venice.”
And I want to know who or what
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has attacked me,
he thought grimly.
Why only after I cross the ocean to the
world of the white men I meet this grief.
The warning of the
oka nahollo
—that the Europeans would be the death of both spiritkind and the Choctaw— he had to know if it was truth or lie. And if it was a lie, what truth was it painting over?

He noticed all but Nairne looked at him in blank surprise for a moment.

Finally Mather crooked his eyebrow.

“I should say,” he remarked, “that it is decided.”

“So it is,” Blackbeard grumbled. “Nine coffins, bound for Venice. ”Twill be a pretty good sight.“

In his heart, Red Shoes could only agree.

15.

Saint

Crecy came beside her about midday, mounted on a handsome roan. “I’m sorry,” she said, without any preamble.

Adrienne smiled generously. “Given the tempests you’ve endured from me,”

she replied, “that was only a zephyr.”

“Still. Wine can wake hurtful words.”

“You seemed the one in pain, Veronique. I suppose I thought you incapable of pain, or I would have tried to be more thoughtful.”

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“Please!” Crecy sighed. “Any more thoughts in your head will surely make it explode.” She glanced off, as if surveying the horizon, and then added, “Well—if we are mended, let’s spend no more time on this. I feel like a silly girl, and I don’t believe it suits me.”

“Very well,” Adrienne replied, a little relieved. “And how is his grace, the duke, this morning? Does he grin?”

“If so, only at his imaginings. Morpheus defeated Eros a moment or two inside the tent.” Her eyes glinted a bit evilly. “But I notice Hercule has some unusual swagger in his step today.”

To her vast surprise, Adrienne felt a blush creep up her neck. “I thought we were against schoolgirl talk.”

“Oh, yes, indeed we were. How do you find the sky today, my dear?”

“With happy eyes!” Adrienne returned, and was rewarded by Crecy’s genuine chuckle.

An hour later, there was nothing happy about the sky at all, for it began to bleed flame. Adrienne saw the first of it, a stream of incandescent gobbets poured into the heart of the artillery. There was no sound save a sort of crackling hiss, like grease striking a hot griddle. For a space of two breaths, there was not even human noise, for the sight was so weird—beautiful, even—that no one understood what it meant.

Flesh was not as easily fooled as the eye, however, and the blackening figures that writhed from the sudden blaze, liquid fire clinging to them like impossibly hot honey, shrieked until their lungs charred. As molten columns splattered all around them, more took up the chorus.

Adrienne remembered little after that; she was too busy, her sight caught between the aethereal world and that of matter. She thickened the air, chilled it, struck waves of repulsions about her, but the screams of pain and terror only mounted, as the air choked with heat and black ash. She did not know what to do, even how to begin, as those who trusted her died.

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She thought she heard her name, as a desperate prayer. They thought she could save them.

It was all chopped into brief portraits in a stream of nonsense. Crecy leading her horse, Nicolas howling—not with fear, but in imitation of those around him. Her glowing hand, a flaming horse thrashing in its harness. Nicole, beating at the fire on a soldier’s back, face grimly determined. Shattered wood stinging her face. Muskets and artillery clattering like a troop of drummers.

And all the while she strove, but her thoughts were slow, so terribly slow. Her djinni finally learned of bullets and began to turn them aside. Lead she knew.

Heat touched them, fierce, and they rode through a tunnel, amber-walled.

They kept going.

Adrienne snapped back to herself, finding her nightmare of falling all too real; she only barely managed to catch her horse’s mane in time to save her a plunge to rocky ground. Shaking herself, she surveyed her surroundings.

Crecy, tight-lipped, rode a few paces to the left with Nico in her lap, Hercule on her right, a bandage made from the hem of her own dress binding his head, nearly saturated with blood. Encircling them some eight of Hercule’s light calvalry listed in their saddles, while behind a line of some thirty horsemen straggled wearily beneath the leaden twilight. In the distance—it was hard to say where in this hilly, echo-filled country—guns yipped and cannon barked.

So she had slept only a moment or two. A moment in—was it two days or three?

Weakly, she tried to use the djinni to find the rest of the army and found a glimpse of a few hundred men, marching in good order but under near-constant harassment by horsemen, with no cavalry of their own to counter.

The horse were all here, who knows how many miles away, and each hour taking them farther.

Hercule shot her a narrow, feverish glance. “How do you fare, milady?” he asked.

“Weary,” she said. Then, “I have failed you.”

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Hercule shook his head. “It is I who failed. I should have persuaded the duke to another course, but failed. I should have forced him southward after the first attack, but failed there, too. He was so confident—”

“Yes, because of me.”

“If so,” Hercule said, “that wasn’t your fault.”

She lay her head forward on her horse’s neck.

“What shall we do now? How can we rejoin the duke?”

Crecy, at her other side, laughed sharply. “We cannot, and soon there will be nothing to rejoin. We must watch for ourselves now.” She smoothed Nico’s hair, her gaze going down to him and back to Adrienne significantly.

“The duke needs the horse…” Hercule managed.

“Dead cavalry will do him no good. If we turn any direction but north, the Russian infantry catches us in its teeth,” Crecy said.

“Yes, yes,” Hercuie muttered. “They herd us like sheep. But to where?”

“Away from the army of Lorraine, of course.”

Hercule sighed heavily, bowing his own head. “Of course.” he acknowledged.

“In any case, I do not think the men would return, even if we led them.”

Adrienne had no answer; she felt her heart growing chill, for she knew what came next, as their little band lost all purpose save survival.

She got her proof two days later, when they happened upon a small village.

Scouts reported that it lacked troops, and Hercule gave the sign to ride down, though a small screen was left to patrol. Unlike many of the earlier villages, this one was not abandoned but had perhaps some forty people in it.

A cluster of them—some five or so—were gathered to confront them in the square when they arrived, led by a priest, an elderly man who nevertheless A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

carried himself proudly, steadfast as the ragged horsemen approached.

“Guten Tag, meine Damen, meine Herren,”
the priest said, as they drew up to him.

“Do you speak any French?” Hercule asked, trying to keep his shoulders back.

“Aye. A little French. How is it with you, Monsieur?”

Lacking his customary tact, Hercule merely said, “We need food and drink for ourselves and for our horses.”

The priest nodded, but his tone was anything but welcoming. “Sir, we some hospitality for you can give, but if feed your horses, we survive not the coming winter. I pray you, however, take what little we have to offer.”

Adrienne glanced around the village. It did not look to be starving—its inhabitants appeared well fed.

“We rode through half a day of pasture,” Hercule noticed, “the hay all cut and the grain harvested. I saw fat swine in pens as we rode in. You cannot offer us a single day’s feed for our mounts?”

“Sir,” the priest said, “we already feed one army.”

“I see. The Muscovite one.”

The priest hesitated. “What choice we have?”

“Little, perhaps, for they are stronger. Do I notice a musket in that house over there?”

“We protect ourselves, mein Herr, from outlaws.”

“We are not outlaws. Of late we marched with the duke of Lorraine to the aid of your emperor in Prague—until the Muscovite army you so kindly provided for cut us apart. At least show your friends the same decency you show your enemies.”

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The priest’s face contorted in anger. “You not our friends! Muscovys not our friends! The emperor not our friend. All of you take, and nothing you give us back! Nothing you will take. Nothing!” And with that he dropped to his knees and began to pray, crucifix held before him.

He dropped the cross when it suddenly turned red-hot, and leapt back to his feet, gaping at Adrienne, whose raised fist still flickered with eldritch light.

“Give us what we need,” she said. “Please.” Then, lower, “You don’t think we can control these men, do you?”

But the priest was still staring at her hand.
“Eine Hexe,”
he muttered, and then, shouting in a voice that suddenly filled the square,
“eine Hexe!”

An angry hornet stung her cheek, as her horse screamed and bolted forward.

Distantly, she heard a second shot, saw beads of blood appear on her mount’s neck. Before she could comprehend that, the priest jerked like a puppet in the hands and twisted to the ground, vomiting life from four or five wounds as the air swarmed with lead insects.

The villagers didn’t have a chance, of course. A handful of muskets, blunderbuss loaded with nails and rocks, and a dozen swords forged almost a hundred years before, during the Thirty Years War, were no match for even the most bedraggled group of trained soldiers. Some villagers ran and some tried to fight; most of the latter fell in seconds.

In instants, guns were empty and sword work had begun. The men—earlier so disciplined—were suddenly raging madmen, unleashing all their anger and frustration on the hapless townspeople. Adrienne, stunned by her wound and the sudden eruption of chaos, was dragged by Hercule to an empty cottage.

Crecy came with them, Nicolas in one arm, broadsword in the other, eyes darting about like a bird of prey’s.

“Stop them,” Adrienne managed weakly. “Stop them. I’m not hurt.” Blood rolled down her face and pooled at her collar, but the cut on her cheek, while deep, was far from mortal.

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Hercule nodded wearily and patted her shoulder. A moment later she heard him barking orders. The shrill screams continued, however.

She could not stand it. “Pox on this,” she hissed. “I won’t live with brigands again.” She followed Hercule back outside, despite Crecy’s protests. Her legs felt like pillows, but within she felt strong, energized by a paradoxically composed rage, her anger simplifying everything, bringing order to the confusion around her.

Houses were already in flames, and as she watched, two of the Lorraine soldiers dragged a girl—she was at most thirteen—into another building.

“No,” she snapped. “No! Crecy, we escaped this life.”

“Illusion,” Crecy murmured. “We were on holiday.”

“No. No! Watch Nicolas.”

She strode purposefully across the square, calling her djinni to her, telling them what to do. In the house, she found one of the men sprawled atop the girl while the other stood guard. The latter’s eyes widened when she swept in.

“Lady…” he began, but never finished, for she struck him in the mouth with the butt of her pistol. It was not a hard blow, but it was a sufficient surprise that his head snapped up and he took two jarring steps backward before tripping over a stool and falling.

She cocked the pistol and placed the muzzle against the rapist’s temple.

“Get up.”

He did so, murmuring protestations, while the girl, eyes mad, kicked her way across the floor and into a corner.

“The three of us are going back into the square,” she said, “or I shall strike you both very dead.”

“But, lady,” one said, gesturing at her cheek, “they did
shoot
you.”

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“Did
she?”
Adrienne asked, stabbing her finger at the cowering girl. “Will you tell me that
she
shot me? And that poking your prick into her will heal my wound? Goddamn you, answer me that!”

His face transfigured in horror then, and she realized that her hand was flaring due to her continued orders to the djinni, now assembling overhead. She sneered at his fear and motioned him toward the square. Both men followed without further protest.

When she reached the middle of the square, her djinni did two things at her command. First, they created a vacuum above them and suddenly filled it again, so air clapped like a bell shattering. Second, they lit the sky with a fine mist of flame, harmless but effective in attracting attention. In under a minute, she had a mute audience gathered in the square.