Empire of Unreason (14 page)

hide my studies; and I began to dream of something… different. I decided I did not want to be a wife, nor enter a convent, but that I wanted to be free, at liberty to pursue my own interests. A third path, you see, between the two available to our sex. But I was not bold—I kept my plan hidden, and it nearly undid me.”

“Before I left France… I heard… some said that you were a witch. That you killed the king and thus brought this blight upon the world.”

Adrienne laughed bitterly. “Would that I had killed the king. But it was he, Louis XIV, who brought our world to this state. He had embroiled France in a great war with half the world, and he was losing. As England was his chiefest enemy, he directed his philosophers to destroy England. And so they did. I was amanuensis to the philosophers, but their plan was secret even from me; and by the time I had riddled it out, it was too late. I did try to kill the king then, and stop the comet besides. I lost my hand, my true love, everything.”

Emilie stared at her. “Your hand?”

Adrienne held up her right hand. “An angel protected the king. It burned my hand away. Somehow they replaced it. It is now a hand, but not a hand. It allows me to view directly the forces and ferments of the aether. The formula you hold—I once thought I understood how my hand was made and what its purpose was. Now, I do not understand it at all. That is why you must help me, Emilie.”

“But in the end, you found your third path, yes?” Adrienne continued regarding her hand. “In the end,” she said softly, “I learned not to be timid, and, yes, I found that path. But now I wonder if there might not be a fourth…”

Later, in her room, she sipped a pale wine and wondered why she had told Emilie—a girl she hardly knew—the story of her life. Oh, she had omitted much. Most particularly, she had neglected mention of the Korai, the secret sisterhood that had first nurtured her and then used her to reach the king.

Soon enough she would mention the Korai to Emilie, for she seemed a worthy candidate for the cabal. But now, as she had for many years, Adrienne wondered how worthy the Korai were. Those in Saint Petersburg were a contentious lot: mystical, more interested in the formalities of meetings and the recitation of old wisdoms than in accomplishing anything new.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Of course, she now realized that she had fit in rather well. Ten years of research wasted.

Not wasted,
a voice said, humming through her hand.
You are a queen of
angels.

Adrienne looked up and regarded a seraph.

She had seen exactly two seraphim in her life up until then. The first had been the guardian of King Louis, and perhaps driven him mad. It had attacked her and burned off her hand. The second guarded the tsar, and she had seen it more often.

This was a third one, different from the other two somehow, though she could not qualify how. Like them, it had six dark wings quilted with eyes, like the tail of a peacock, and eyes on the joints of its fingers and in the palm of its hand. It seemed made of shadow, its human face obscure save for the lamps of its eyes.

It was sexless, and reminded her more of a giant moth than of a man or a bird.

“Who are you?”

“Name me what you want. You know what I am.”

“I have suffered because of your kind.”

“And benefited. I gave you your hand. It was once a part of me.”

It held up one of its arms, and with a tingle up her spine she saw that it terminated in a stump.

“And yet—” She had to stop, and start again. Her hand suddenly felt—repulsive. “And yet, in all these years, you have not come for thanks?”

“You have not needed me, and I was needed elsewhere. Do not fear me, Adrienne. The one who took your hand was my enemy. I gave it back.”

“I do not fear you,” she lied.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“You should not. You command me, as you command my own servants.”

“The djinni are yours?”

“Yes. I left them to serve you. I am pleased; you have done well with them.”

“And why, after all this time, do you come to me now?”

“There are new motions in the world. Our enemies are abroad, and there are many of them. And my—our—servants believe you are… upset.”

“Perhaps because I am.”

“Can you explain?”

“You seem to read my thoughts. You tell me.”

“I cannot hear all your thoughts—only those with the force of spoken words.

Only those you let trickle through your hand.”

“You tricked me.”

“How so?”

She sipped the wine. “I make miracles. I make them every day. And through these miracles I have gained all this around me—wealth, power, prestige, followers. And yet it’s all a lie, isn’t it?”

“How can it be a lie?”

“Because tomorrow, if you will it so, the miracles stop, and I am without power.”

“That need never happen.”

She smiled ruefully. “First, I doubt that, and the fact that I must be content to trust you is the very thing I’ve sought to avoid in life. I avoided marrying so I EMPIRE OF UNREASON

would not have to trust a man, and now I find I
have
married—married the least trustworthy bridegroom of all. Second, power aside. I wanted knowledge

—and my knowledge of science remains what it was when first this hand became mine.”

“I hardly see how that is
my
fault,” the seraph said. “I offered you a gift. You took it. There was never a condition that you had to use it, that you should cease doing your sums or whatever you think you have neglected. And did you really not want the power it brought? Would you give up that power now?”

Adrienne quirked her lips, thinking of all she had lost. Her first love, Nicolas.

Her son. Hercule. “No,” she replied. “No, the power suits me. But as I said—I no longer trust its source. What are you up to, you creatures?”

“What do you want?”

“An answer to that last question.”

“Not just yet. What else do you want?”

“I want my son back, first. Your kind took him, and I want him back. Second, I want knowledge and, yes, I suppose, power—but power that I do not owe to you.”

The seraph flexed its wings. “You keep saying that. What matter that you owe it to me? I owe
my
power to God, as do you ultimately. Do you revile that debt, too? Do you believe things can begin and end with you,
that you
can be the alpha and the omega? What a conceited race yours is—what an o’erblown example of
it you
are.”

“What did you come here for?” she asked, trying to pretend his words had no effect on her, that they did not strike bone and leave her breath uncertain in her chest.

“I am your ally, Adrienne; and if you care for your race, you need such an ally.

The
malfaiteurs,
as you call them, have begun the final phase of their program. They believe that they have found the solution to their problem.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“I am not clear as to what their problem is, exactly. Perhaps you can explain.”

“They wish to eradicate humanity, as I think you know.”

“Why?”

“Because they are jealous and you are troublesome.”

“That is not sufficient explanation.”

“He whom you call God made us first. He made the world, but since He is unlimited and the world is, by definition, limited, it was necessary to create a place where He was not. If God reaches into the world, He will destroy it. He called upon us, the malakim, to come into this world and build it as He commanded. But once here, some among us understood that they were as free to defy the will of God as to follow it. They created mankind as directed, but then proceeded to play at being gods themselves. This displeased God, but He could do nothing to remedy matters short of destroying the world—or so we thought. But the world is made of harmonies, of law. From outside, there were certain minor things He could change, and He did. He changed the law just enough to rob my brethren and me of much of our potence. We became shadows in the world of matter.

“This angered those who would be gods, but over time most were reconciled to the new way of things. Then human philosophers began affecting the aether with their experiments and inventions. For the
malfaiteurs,
this was insult added to injury; imagine how you would react if upstart children began wandering through your rooms beating cymbals and blowing horns, farting, leaving their excrement on the floor. And so the
malfaiteurs
acted, using what power remained to them. They killed individual philosophers, fomented wars.

At first it was easy—philosophers of sense were few, and once those were killed, it took centuries for them to be replaced. Now there are too many of you, and the
malfaiteurs
see that keeping you in check is like trying to hold back the tide. So they have decided to drain the ocean.”

“I have heard this fable from human lips,” Adrienne remarked, “but none of you malakim have seen fit to speak so to me.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Those who serve you are not capable of doing so, any more than a mean and uneducated peasant can discuss calculus. I am different; among my kind, you might say I am a philosopher.” It paused. “Do you doubt what I have told you?”

She shrugged. “I doubt assertions without proof, and I am doubly skeptical these days. But let us say, provisionally, that I accept your explanations. What have the
malfaiteurs
discovered that changes the conflict?”

“They discovered nothing themselves—they merely guided you. Newton mastered the articulation, which allowed us to more readily act in your world.

You improved it. Now your colleague Swedenborg has created the dark engines.”

“What is this? I have heard of no such engines.”

“Only a few of your kind know of them. They allow our kind to exert our full might in the world. They remain to be perfected; but once they are, it is the end of your kind, unless my faction triumphs. The chances of that are not good, for we are much outnumbered.”

“And what of ‘your faction’? Why are you not annoyed by us children, banging and shitting in your houses?”

“We are. But God made this world for you, not for us. If we aid you, we hope He will forgive us, liberate us into the infinite world beyond the universe, where we were born, and belong.”

“Rather to serve in Heaven than reign in Hell, eh?”

“Yes,” the seraph said, with no trace of irony.

“I suppose English poetry is no more fit for angels than for the French,” she replied.

“I don’t understand you.”

“Never mind. These dark engines. What do they do? How do they work?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“I am not certain. The only thing that I am certain of is that they involve your son. He is the key.”

12.

Assembly

Franklin and Robert padded barefoot through the streets of Charles Town, racing against the end of night. The sea in the east had already begun to mist green.

“I think only one is still after us,” Robert hissed, staring at his compass. “Will y’r exorcister put it to rest?”

Franklin shook his head. “Its catalyst is all spent.” He glanced around, struck by a vivid sense of deja vu. “Where are we?” The street ended suddenly against the banks of a canal, where a couple of small boats were tied up. Across the way, lights blinked on in a tidy house. Somewhere, a dog was yapping. The air had a peculiar smell—salt, spices, garbage.

“Little Venice,” Robert said.

“Oh. By damn.”

Across the canal, a door banged open, someone’s shadow outlined in it.
“Chi e?

Eh?”

“It’s Benjamin Franklin,” Robert hissed. “An‘ he needs your help!”

“ Wha’s that?” A lanthorn shone suddenly in their faces.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Robin, I—” The Italians were Catholic, after all. What if they were on James’

side?

“Eh. It is! Come over,
signori
!”

There was a pause, and then a board banged down in front of them, like a drawbridge. Robert went without hesitation. Franklin followed with slightly more reserve.

Closer, he made out their benefactor, a man of middle years with a long, dark face and wearing a nightshirt.

“You know me, eh, Mr. Franklin? Paolo Forseti? We fight together at d‘ battle of Venice.”

Franklin peered more closely. “I don’t—”

“You don‘ remember. Is okay—you were busy man. Someone chasing you?”

“Something like that. Robert, give me your
kraftpistole
. Your aegis, too.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to put them in one of those boats and shove it off.”

“Why? Then we’ll be defenseless.”

“Yes, but it’s our scientific stuff it’s scenting. Being armed will do us no good if we’re dead.”

They hastily stashed all their scientific gear in the boat, and with Paolo’s help, cut it loose. It drifted slowly away as they ducked into a small, tidy room.

“Can we shutter that light, sir?” he asked Forseti. “Please?”

“Of course.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

The house went dark, and now the small canal and the street beyond were only dimly lit. For a few moments they saw nothing, then Franklin pointed. “Look,”

he said.

Something like a giant glass lens moved down the road toward them. Paolo mumbled some sort of prayer or curse in his native language.

At the canal it wavered, then went on, following the boat.

After a while Ben realized that he was holding his breath. He let it out, and the other two did as well.

“
Grazie
, Mr. Forseti,” he said.

“ Wha‘ was that, Mr. Franklin?” Forseti didn’t sound frightened, he sounded angry. “Some ifrit or deevil? That sort of thing I think I leave behind in Europe. Witch and warlock walk free there—’s why I come here. Eight years in America, never see nothing like that. Now what?”

“Our new king brought it with him, I’m afraid, and many more besides.”

Paolo’s frown deepened. “Wha‘ we going to do about this?”

Franklin smiled. He liked that “we.” It was a fine way of thinking, and it reminded him why he really cared whether there was a king or not. The Italians had come to Charles Town with the Venetian trade. They had settled in the marshes south of town and built a prospering community. In Little Venice, you could forget where you were—you could go a day without hearing English spoken. It was, indeed, like a piece of Italy.