Empire of Unreason (4 page)

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

If the tsar did not return, Russia would be bankrupt in a few years.

If Menshikov meant to impress Adrienne, his efforts were wasted. She did not taste the food or thrill at the gown he provided her. Instead, she went over the attack and her vision again and again, trying to recall more of what she lost.

What had she “pulled” to make the death dissolve?

“Won’t you dance, Mademoiselle?” a voice said near her ear.

She looked up and smiled into a pretty young face. “Hello, Elizavet. Your French is improving.”

“Thank you,” the young woman said, flopping unceremoniously onto the chaise. “I’m quite exhausted from dancing. Aren’t you going to take a turn?”

She signaled for a servant.

“I’m a bit tired.”

“Oh, but there are so many handsome men here tonight!” she replied. “I hardly see how you can resist. They ask questions about you, you know. I don’t know what to tell them. You aren’t my father’s mistress, are you?”

Adrienne’s smile broadened. “The tsar and I are friends and confidants, nothing more,” she replied.

“So it’s only that d’Argenson fellow? Really, I don’t see how anyone can make do with only one, unless she is so ugly that she has no choice. And you, Mademoiselle, are far from ugly.”

Adrienne held a ringer to Elizavet’s lips. “Hush,” she said, “or I’ll be forced to double your studies tomorrow.”

Elizavet’s eyes widened. “Surely Mademoiselle does not expect me to come to tutorial the day after a ball?”

“On the contrary. If your father finds I have neglected your education while he is away, he will have me beaten.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

The servant arrived, bearing a tray of wineglasses.

“What is this stuff?” Elizavet asked, sniffing at the wine. “Bring me some vodka.”

“Yes, Tsarevna.”

Elizavet lay back, smiled, and closed her eyes. She was a fetching young creature, a tall, dark beauty. Though less than a decade younger than Adrienne

—the tsarevna was twenty-three—somehow the gap seemed centuries. Had Adrienne ever been so carefree?

No, she reflected, of course she hadn’t.

“I do hope Father returns soon. I’m sure he will bring something very special from China.” She looked seriously at Adrienne. “I hope you will ask God to bring him home safe.”

“I have little influence with God, I fear,” Adrienne replied.

“How can that be? It is clear that God loves you. Even the patriarch says so.

Everyone believes it. Some say you are a saint.” Her vodka came, and she took a satisfied gulp.

“You don’t believe that,” Adrienne accused.

“Well, to only have one lover you must suffer from
some
religious affliction.”

Elizavet grinned. She finished the vodka. “Well, there.” She sighed. “If you will not dance with these poor fellows, my own duty is clear, despite my fatigue.”

She got up and adjusted her bodice so as to dip it lower, showing her snowy bosom to better advantage.

“But I will see you at your lesson tomorrow,” Adrienne warned.

“Yes, of course.” She bent to place a kiss on each of Adrienne’s cheeks, and then returned to the festivities.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

* * *

Under the moon, it was a fairy city, ice and luminescence, slender towers with peaks like swollen but still-closed tulips, awaiting the kiss of spring to bloom, the Neva River a lambent walkway for snow sprites to caper upon. It was beautiful, cold, and distant. It had been her home for ten years.

The glass was thick and scientific, and yet still the chill worked through, pricked gentle goose bumps on her naked skin. Her human hand, flush against the pane, felt the cold keenly; her angel hand felt it not at all. She wondered if she stood there long enough, letting her blood slowly chill, if she might herself became a thing of snow: a crystal in woman’s form, ageless, forever watching, doing nothing, thinking nothing. She would like that.

Bedclothes rustled behind her, but she did not turn, even when Hercule spoke, in sleep-torpid tones.

“Adrienne?” he asked.

“Go back to sleep, Hercule.”

“I would that you would join me.”

“There is more to the world than what you would have, Hercule.”

There was a significant pause, during which the covers rustled a bit more. She did not need to turn to see him, with his thoughtful eyes and broken nose, his thick brown hair in disarray. She did not need to see, for the thousandth time, him trying to puzzle her, to understand what he had done to upset her.

“How beautiful you look, standing there,” he said quietly, real admiration in his voice. “You are the most beautiful woman I know.”

Adrienne wondered privately what that had to do with anything. Why did men EMPIRE OF UNREASON

say such things?

“Go back to sleep, Hercule,” she repeated, trying to be gentle.

“I cannot, when you cannot. I know that something happened on your sky ship. And yet you say nothing.”

“I have nothing to say, Hercule.”

She heard his feet hit the floor then and held up her hand, still staring out at the city. “Please, stay there,” she said.

“What have I done to you?” he asked. “Are you angry with me?”.

“Hercule, this has nothing to do with you.”

“I
love
you. If it has to do with you, it has to do with me.”

She did turn, then, leaving the curtains open behind her, and brushing her thick dark hair from her face.

“Is it because of Irena?” he continued.

“Your wife has even less to do with this than you, Hercule.”

“I would have married
you
, Adrienne. A hundred times I asked you—”

“Hercule,” she said, softly, “I do not care to repeat myself. My thoughts do not concern you, your wife, your children, or some marriage to you that I never wanted.”

“I do not understand you at all.”

“Perhaps you should go, then.”

“You were happy enough to have me here earlier.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“I wanted you then, or thought I did.” Her voice softened. “I needed a friend, Hercule, a true friend, and I do not have many—only you and Crecy.”

“Small wonder, when you treat us so. Why is this friendship only on your terms? Why is it that when you want me in your bed, I am always there, but when I want you in mine—”

“I think Irena is not so broadminded,” Adrienne said, attempting a smile.

“You know what I mean.”

She gazed at him for a moment. “Have I done so badly by you, Hercule? What did you want when we met? A powerful prince to serve, one suited to the new order of things. A secure position. Have I not provided those? Isn’t the tsar the sort of patron you were searching for?”

“I cannot deny it. But—”

“But what? Love was never part of our bargain. You only love me still because you cannot possess me. If we had married, you would now be with some other woman, and it would be me—not Irena—lonely in her bed tonight.”

“That is untrue. I never loved Irena. But I needed connections here, and she is the daughter of a boyar. And what man does not want sons?”

“Yes,” Adrienne said bitterly. “What
man
does not.”

He reacted as if he had been slapped. “I’m sorry, love. I know you miss Nico. I forget sometimes—”

She almost told him, then, about her vision. She wanted to, but some indefinable fear stopped her.

“You see, Hercule? I can never forget. I work in my laboratory, I make weapons and toys for the tsar, I tutor my students, I try to avoid the intrigues of my enemies—and yet, I never forget. I never cease wondering where he is, where he was taken. Whether he is even alive. And yet now—” She stopped, realizing that Hercule had somehow coaxed her farther than she meant to go.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Now what? Have you had some news?”

“It is nothing. Listen to me, Hercule. This is what is important for you to know.

Someone tried to kill me. I suspect that this person has something to do with Nico and his disappearance.”

“Someone here or abroad?” »

“I am best known here. The question is whether the attack was instigated by a human enemy or one less tangible.”

“You suspect the
malfaiteurs!
The evil angels? Surely none here serves them.”

“Crecy once did.”

“You don’t suspect Crecy.”

“No. My point is that they are devious and well practiced at keeping their servants secret.”

“It’s good that you tell me this. I will inform our spies.”

“Only those you trust the most. Whoever this sorcerer is, he has at his command something very dangerous, very ugly. It might change everything.”

“But you won’t tell me what.”

“Not yet.”

“Because you do not trust me.”

“I trust you, Hercule, as much as I trust any living creature.”

“Which means you do not trust me very far.”

She walked near where he sat on the edge of the bed, and she bent to kiss his forehead. “I cannot help that, Hercule. I have been betrayed too often.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Hercule puffed out a breath. “You carry too much, and love too little. It makes you hard. I love you, but you are not the woman I met, there in the fields of Lorraine.”

“No,” she quietly replied. “No, I am better than she. Stronger. Now go back to sleep.”

“I think, rather, that I should leave.”

She shrugged. “As you wish.”

He set about gathering up his clothes. When he was dressed, he turned back to her, and she saw a tear glisten in his eye. “I do not think I shall be back here,”

he said.

“Hercule—”

“I am loyal to you. I will die to protect you, and I will root out your enemies and crush them. But I cannot bear to be your lover anymore. It wounds too deep.”

Adrienne felt only the faintest of catches in her throat when she replied, “As you wish.”

When he was gone, she turned back to the window, and the scene outside seemed inexplicably blurred, as if she, too, were weeping. She knew that could not be true, for in all her years in Saint Petersburg she had never wept. She had used every last tear she had when her son was stolen.

And so she banished thoughts of Hercule d’Argenson; and in the fog of light and shadow, she saw instead the image of Nicolas. She wondered how she dared hope again. It seemed a dangerous thing to do—to feel, to hope. To love.

Tomorrow she would learn what she could of China.

An hour or so later her eyelids finally drooped shut, but she could not have been long asleep when her djinni servants awoke her. She sat up in bed, the EMPIRE OF UNREASON

alarm still buzzing in her skull.

In the distance she heard the faint reports of gunfire. And there was someone in her room.

3.

Flint Shouting

“Tell me again about all of the bee-yoo-tee-ful women we’re goin‘’t‘ see out here in Witchy-taw country,” Tug demanded, shading his eyes with one massive hand, staring off mournfully at the distant horizon. It
was
distant, too, the gently undulating terrain and scattered, dwarfish trees doing little to shorten the vastness of the world.

Behind him, one of the horses snorted, and Tug’s mount tossed its head. Red Shoes ran his gaze over the lot. Of their original ten beasts, eight remained, but they didn’t look well. They needed a long rest.

“We need fresh mounts,” Red Shoes observed.

“Id’n that what I just said?” Tug grunted. “How far to the Witchity-taw villages?”

“I’m not sure,” Red Shoes told him. “I’m not certain this is Wichita country.”

“Y‘ mean y’r lost?” Tug asked incredulously. “How can an In’yun get lost?”

“How can a sailor get lost at sea, Tug? Water is the same, yes?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Tug screwed his face into a scowl. “It han’t comparable.”

“Of course it is. I have never been west of the Great Water Road before. Why should I know my way around?”

“You seem awful certain about where we’re goin‘, seein’ you’ve never been here.”

“Going, yes. I have a sort of arrow pointing in my head. It’s where we
are
that I’m not so certain of.”

“We han’t nowhere, is where,” Tug grumbled. Then he shrugged. “Kind o‘

fetchin’, though. Does remind me o‘ the sea, after all.”

“You miss sailing?”

“Not a damn bit. Miserable life, the sea. Half the men I’ve known died o‘

scurvy,”t’ other half o‘ brawlin’ f ‘r rum,“t’ other half from the pox. I’ve gone and lived twice as long as any pirate ever, I think. Nah, I complain, but I’d rather be out here in the In’yun country. Or wherever we are.” He slapped Red Shoes on the back so hard the Choctaw felt as if he might cough up a rib. “ ‘S

long as you find me a woman somewhere.”

They continued on, through land that looked much the same.

The next day, about midday, they heard someone singing. Curious, they cautiously followed the sound, finally cresting the edge of a small gorge to see a man lying at the bottom of it, naked, staked out spread-eagle. He stopped singing when he saw them.

“
Nakidiwa! Nakidiwa
!” he shouted.

Red Shoes didn’t know the language, so he didn’t answer. Instead, he gazed carefully around. “Watch out, Tug,” he whispered. “Whoever did this to him might still be near.”

“Igetcha, Cap’n.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Eespanolee? ”
the fellow shouted.
“Fa-lenchee? Enka-lisha? Artompa o? ”

Red Shoes raised his brows in surprise. That last was in Choctaw, or maybe Mobilian, the trade language based on Choctaw. He guessed Mobilian, and spoke in that tongue. “You speak this?” he asked.

“As if born speaking it,” the fellow answered, with an accent so thick it was nearly incomprehensible.

“What about English?”

“A few words.”

“French?”

“I speak French good,” he replied, in French. It was better than his Mobilian.

“Hey!” Tug said. “That In’yun is speakin‘ French!”

“You speak French, yes, Tug?”