Empire of Unreason (30 page)

“Why do you hide?”

She spun on her heel, startled. A woman was watching her.

She was clad in skins and furs—not rudely thrown on, but cleverly
cut and sewn, embellished with bits of ivory and painted designs.

Her complexion was dark, her eyes narrow, almond-shaped.

Familiar.

“Karevna?”

“Not my name.”

Adrienne looked closer. The resemblance was strong, but at second
glance, it was certainly not Vasilisa Karevna. The nose was wider,
the eyes a shade browner than black—and Vasilisa’s skin was
almost as pale as Irena’s, where this woman was tanned leather.

And her Russian, though comprehensible, was very thickly
accented.

“Your pardon. I thought I knew you.”

“Perhaps we have met in the world of spirits. They are strong about
you, I see.”

A little chill ran up Adrienne’s spine. “You see them?”

“As mist.”

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“You have some scientific means?”

“I don’t know that word. If you mean is my hand like yours, no. I
have never seen the like of it. It drew me here.”

Suspicion bit Adrienne like an adder. She opened the eyes of her

manus oculatus,
no longer content to rely on the warnings of her
djinni.

There were things with the woman, three of them. They were unlike
any of the malakim she had ever known before, which usually
appeared as certain geometric shapes to her aetheric sight. The
seraphs and the death which had attacked her above Saint
Petersburg were the only exceptions. Here were more. They were
shadowed, unclear, with strong lines of force drawn between them
and the woman, who appeared much as they did.

“What are you?” she whispered.

“An ordinary shaman, not very different from a hundred others.

The real question is what are
you?”
With sudden astonishment,
Adrienne realized that the woman was on the verge of fleeing. Her
voice trembled, as did her limbs. She was terrified. “When I was
young, I was lured to deep water by the
kid
which lived there. He
spoke kindly to me, made as if to be my friend, but all the while he
was drowning me, taking my soul. My uncle saw what was
happening, and he called an old shaman, who cut the
kul
up and
fed it to me. I was very weak. Almost I died, but then I was strong
again. And I could still see
them,
as through a veil. I learned to
shamanize, to make their substance into my own. Spirits serve me,
as you see.”

Her voice dropped lower still. “But they are not like those that
serve you. They are not like your hand, which is no hand at all.”

“What do you see, when you look at my hand?”

The woman stepped forward, eyes rolling. She reached out to touch
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Adrienne’s false fingers, and the Frenchwoman let her.

“It is a tree.” She sighed. “It is
the
tree that holds up the world. It is
the pole of the house, the smoke hole, the North Star.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I have seen the other tree,” she murmured. “It flew high above—

like you were flying, carried by spirits of the air. But it did not fly so
high that I did not know it. When it passed over, it twisted
everything in me. Not much, for it did not intend to. If it had
tried

to
twist me, I would have been lost like a flicker of flame in a storm.

No, what I felt was just the long smoke of its fire, burning my eyes.

Just the surge of its sap, pulling at my blood…” She stopped. She
stopped trembling as well. “I came here to kill you,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you can shiver the tree, perhaps even break it. Because
you are a mad thing that should not be in the world. But now I see I
cannot kill you. My strength would be wasted for nothing, and my
people will need me when your time comes. And there is still the
other tree, the tree with a thousand birds in its branches, with its
roots beneath the waters where the
kul
dwell, with its topmost
limbs beyond the heavens. It is more dangerous than you—you may
be the best hope against it. You are most dangerous together,
however, which is why I meant to kill you.” She backed away a step.

“Let me go back to my people.”

“Wait. This other… tree. How long ago did it fly over?”

“I was a girl. Ten summers and more have passed. It drew spirits
after it like geese, a skyful of black stars. I am going now.”

“No. Wait. Talk to me more.”

“I won’t. There is something with you that wants my soul. It is
coming. If I remain, I will not be able to resist it. I will die; my life
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will have been as nothing.” She hesitated as if to say something
else, and then she turned and ran like a deer.

In the same instant, Uriel appeared, stretching himself out toward
the fleeing woman.

“No!” Adrienne shouted.

“This is not your concern,” the seraph replied. “She is an enemy, an
abomination.”

“I said
nor

“You remember our previous conversation, I think.”

“I remember it well. If you still want my help, leave her be.”

“I will chance your ire,” Uriel said, and was gone.

So was the woman. “Go after them,” Adrienne commanded her
servants. “Prevent him from harming her.”

“We cannot, lady. He is our lord, too.”

Adrienne dismissed them viciously. Where was the power the
Tartar woman had so feared? She had none! She had none. She
never had.

Despairing, she sank to earth, feeling mired in the scent of resin, an
insect in rarefied amber. Defeated.

She tired of defeat rather quickly. If her illusion of control over the
malakim was gone, she still controlled her own mind at least. Since
it was the best thing she had, she must force herself to use it.

What had the Tartar woman said, in sum? Her son was dangerous.

Adrienne
was dangerous. Together they were
very
dangerous.

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Why? How? What did it mean? Obviously her talk of trees was
metaphorical. When Adrienne looked into the aether, she saw
scientific diagrams—the result of her education, of her
predispositions. What did the Tartar woman see? And if
she
saw a
tree, what would Adrienne see, how would
she
understand it?

She summoned a djinn. “Show me myself,” she demanded.

“I don’t understand,” the djinn replied.

“Myself. What do I look like in the aether?”

The djinn—a top-shaped creature—spun, flattened, became a
surface like a mirror.

In it, she saw herself, pretty much as she had last seen herself in
earthly reflection.

“You cannot see yourself,” a voice said. “You know yourself too
well.” It was Uriel, a cloud of eyes amongst the trees.

“Did you kill her?” Adrienne asked angrily.

“No. She was crafty. She planned her flight well, and her
abominable use of our kind—” He broke off.

“She tricks you somehow, doesn’t she? Uses your nature against
you?”

The seraph didn’t answer.

“Very well. But you will tell me this, or we will part company, I
swear to you—”

“An empty threat.”

“Do
not
test me. I wrenched apart one of your kind, one in the
shape of a death. I think I can do the same to you.” That
was
an
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empty threat. The knowledge of how she had destroyed the death
was gone, and none of her efforts could recover it. She could make
a device such as she had once given the tsar, but that would not kill
Uriel, only break her connection to him.

“Ask your question.” Uriel hummed through her hand. “If it pleases
me, I will answer.”

“That woman spoke of my hand as a tree. What did that mean?”

“I do not know.”

“She spoke of another, like me, but stronger. She meant my son,
didn’t she?”

“Probably.”

“What does she allude to when she says we are most dangerous
together?”

“I do not know.”

“You lie!”

“If I do, you will have to be content with it.”

And she wished then, wished more than anything, that she
could

tear this creature apart, reduce it to blind ferments bereft of glib
speech and insinuation. Perhaps sensing this— or perhaps not
wanting to be questioned any longer—the seraph receded.

Nearly shaking with rage, Adrienne turned back toward where the
ships ought to be, and suddenly realized that they were no longer
within sight. Still angry, she began trying to retrace her steps, but
she couldn’t see prints on the prickly needle mold. More annoyed,
she changed direction. If worse came to worst, she could call on
Crecy for aid, but she didn’t want to do that. She could use her
djinni, but at the moment she didn’t want to do that either.

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She was very near doing so anyway, when she spied a bright blue, a
color that could not be natural here. She turned toward that. A
little nearer, she made out a woman in riding costume, reclining.

A little nearer yet, and she stopped, recognizing Irena. And yet
there was something strange about her, something very strange.

She seemed to be staring at something, and she wore a ruby-bright
necklace…

It snapped into focus. Irena’s throat had been cut, ear to ear.

In the instant of realization, there came a rustle in the bush and
then an exclamation.

“Dear God.” She turned to see Crecy, regarding the corpse. Crecy
turned wide eyes upon her.

“Well, my dear,” Crecy whispered, a little incredulously. “It would
seem you took my advice to heart.”

8.

A Box of Snakes

To Franklin, the council chamber felt like a box full of rattlesnakes.

In a cloud of suffocating tobacco smoke, ebon-faced Maroons
glared at flint-eyed rangers, fingers toying with tomahawks and
dirks. The rangers scowled back, keeping it clear that they, too,
remembered the blood debts between them. Apalachee and
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Yamacraw and Cherokee sneered over hooked noses at one
another; Carolina regulars and margravate dragoons bayoneted
one another with angry stares.

How had he ever imagined these people would work together? The
various hatreds in this room could never be matched by theoretical
concerns like freedom or liberty.

He had imagined himself brave when he spoke in Charles Town,
defying James and his court. But in Charles Town he had been
assured of the support of the Junto—it had been prearranged.

Despite appearances, he had always known he had the upper hand.

Here, he felt decidedly outnumbered and deeply uncertain and…

surrounded. Even familiar faces, like Paris Nakaso’s, seemed
threatening. Despite that he had lived among the black men and
women of Charles Town for nearly ten years, he understood,
suddenly, that he did not
know
them.

Much less so the Maroons. They were Negroes who had taken their
freedom before Blackbeard granted it, tough men and women who
lived like Indians in the backwoods and isolated coves, often as not
raiding and thieving for their livelihood. Many of them were slaves
who had escaped in the first months of their captivity, and so they
were very African, often to the point of speaking little or no
English. They were an entirely unknown quantity; and by their wild
hair, motley clothing, and numerous weapons they were no easy
bunch. Nor would others be easy about trusting
them,
as
McPherson—and others—had made plain.

And Indians had never seemed particularly threatening when he
had seen them in Boston or Charles Town. Interesting, yes;
curious, of course. Plenty of the Junto’s members were Indians, but
pretty civilized ones, the ones who had adopted European ways.

Some could not even tell you what tribe they were from, being well
mixed from many tribes, with white and Negro blood as well.

Again, though he passed them on the streets daily, he knew little of
them. He counted none as close friends, save possibly Red Shoes
the Choctaw—who was not here. Those who were here looked wild—

like the old chief of the Yamacraw at Oglethorpe’s right hand, a
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fellow named Tomochichi. He wore no shirt, so as to show to best
advantage the tattooed wings that unfolded upon his chest. Add to
all of them the now-ominous Cherokee and the newly arrived
Apalachee, and he felt as uncomfortably at sea as he had when he
spoke at the Turkish Divan.