The Shadows of God (23 page)

“You!” Hercule shouted to someone. “You, by God, fetch me some brandy.”

For an answer, he got a bullet. She heard the gunshot, the strange, meaty sound it made. She forced her eyes open, but they were swimming with tears of pain, and she had to blink several times to see. Meanwhile, two more shots roared nearby.

When her eyes did clear, she first saw Crecy, a smoking pistol in one hand.

Hercule was sprawled in the mud, quivering, his hands wrapped around his chest.

Crecy dropped the weapon and drew her sword. “Oliver,” she snarled.

Adrienne let her head loll around. There, leaning against a mass of smashed timbers and planks, stood the man who had attacked them in Saint Petersburg. He wore the uniform of Hercule’s light horse and a large grin.

“Come, Crecy. Join me,” he said.

“How in God’s name did you come here, Oliver? How?”

He chuckled. “It was quite simple, really. Poor dear Irena. She was as close as I could get to Adrienne without your seeing me. It seems that was close enough.

How do you think I knew about your plan to flee the city? I arranged beforehand to get on board. It was sticky going, after our fight, but I managed to kill one of Hercule’s horsemen and don his uniform. After that, Irena hid me. Father Dimitrov, another dear friend, helped.”

“You were Irena’s lover. You killed her.”

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He shrugged. “She was going to tell Hercule about us. He would have had to confront me then, and that was bringing me far too close to the two of you, who would recognize me.”

“Why, Oliver? Before I kill you, tell me why.”

He laughed. “Because
they
say so, Veronique. You remember how that is. It’s annoying, really. The crash almost did my work for me.”

“Kill me, then,” Adrienne rasped. “Leave Hercule and Veronique be.”

“It is too late for Hercule, I fear, but I am perfectly willing to let Nikki live. I am fond of her.”

“Why did you shoot Hercule?” Adrienne managed.

“Actually, I was trying to shoot you. Damn pistols are as untrustworthy as women.”

Crecy stepped forward. Adrienne noticed she was limping. “You have no more guns,” she said. “Prepare to die, Oliver.”

“You make me sad, Nikki, but I will do what I must.”

A wave of pain second only to the first coursed through Adrienne as Crecy snarled and hurled herself across the muddy, uneven ground. Crecy’s weapon was not the little dress sword she sometimes wore, but a basket-hilted broadsword. Oliver was armed with a horseman’s saber. Their steel moved so fast in the darkness Adrienne could see little more than the sparks they struck, for the ship had crashed in a thicket of trees and wild grapevines that throttled what little light the sky still held.

She tried to summon her servants again, but silence greeted her commands.

She could see into the aether with her hand, make out malakim in the far distance, but none was tied to her, none at all.

Gritting her teeth, she crawled toward Hercule.

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He was still alive, his eyes puzzled. “A moment,” he managed. “A moment, and I will kill him for you. I’m just—” He looked at his hand, covered in blood.

“Damn,” he said. “Damn. He’s killed me.”

“No,” Adrienne said. “No, he hasn’t. You’ll live.”

“Because you tell me to?”

“Because I love you.”

He laughed bitterly, which brought blood to his lips. “That will save me, then,”

he murmured. “Surely I will live. But in the meantime, you might take my gun, which is beneath me, and put it in my hand, that I might defend you.”

“Hercule —” The blades rang louder behind her. Do it.

She pushed under him. It was very difficult, with her whole body shivering so violently. Her fingers felt the grip of the pistol, but she could not make them close. Something else seemed to snap in her, and she fell across him.

His eyes had a mild look. “It doesn’t hurt,” he said wonderingly. “You remember when we first met? I remember when I first saw you. You don’t, I know. It was when you first came to Versailles, as the queen’s secretary. You were so beautiful and, I remember thinking,
alive.
A secret sort of life, a hidden life, that I fancied only I could see.” His eyes went wide.
“That
hurt,” he murmured. She couldn’t tell if he meant the memory or the heart she felt slowing in his breast.

“Have you got the gun?” he asked.

“Yes,” she lied.

“Shoot the bastard, then, for he’ll beat Crecy.”

She turned her head and saw it was the truth. Crecy was still going, but she bled from assorted cuts, and the point of her weapon kept dropping. Oliver, on the other hand, looked warily confident. She tried for the gun again.

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“My children will need taking care of,” Hercule said.

“Live and care for them, then.”

“Of course,” he said. “Of course, that is the perfect solution. But if I do not, will you?”

“Yes. But you will not abandon me, Hercule d’Argenson. I forbid it.”

“I remain yours, of course,” he said. Then his eyes went dull, and he quivered, and was dead.

She may have shrieked or cried. Afterward, she could never remember—she would remember only the feel of his heart’s last feeble thump, of knowing that once again, nothing would ever be the same.

And then she remembered the cold, like a breath of Siberian air.

Hercule was dead, and she would follow him soon, for the little strength she had was leaking away. She remembered them saying she had lost much blood.

Veronique was going to die for nothing. Hercule had died for nothing.

Crecy cursed as her feet sucked from the mud too slowly. Oliver’s saber hammered down, and though she parried, the force of his vicious moulinet drove her own sword into her forehead. She ducked and cut viciously at his legs, but he leapt back.

Crecy straightened, and they circled each other warily, Crecy wiping blood away from her eyes. In the near darkness, her forehead looked black with it.

“Yes, you’ve gotten slower, and weaker,” Oliver remarked. “Time was you might have beaten me.”

Crecy didn’t answer, but lurched forward. Oliver parried the attack easily, feinted a cut at her head, followed with a slash at her sword wrist. The basket hilt caught it, but she grunted and retreated, her weapon arm hanging at her side.

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Then Oliver did something strange. His eyes flashed red, and a malakus appeared over his shoulder; with a snarl he turned his back on Crecy and leapt at Adrienne.

It caught Crecy by surprise. With a choked curse of dismay she sprang to interpose herself. It was clear she would never make it.

Adrienne watched the blade descend as if in a dream.

A musket roared from a few yards away, and Oliver gasped and spun, then recovered. With what momentum he had left, he lunged into the woods, followed by three more bullets, and an instant later by the dark figures of men.

She had an impression of painted faces, of hard, dark bodies. Then they were gone, too.

Crecy pointed her sword at something behind Adrienne. “Stay away from her.”

“Lay down your sword or die,” someone said in oddly accented but comprehensible French.

5.

Another Old Acquaintance

“I have to sit down.” Franklin grunted. “I really do.”

Lenka drew a pistol from her belt with her free hand. Aiming it carefully at the Russian, she then sheathed her sword.

“Won’t you introduce me to your wife, Benjamin?” Vasilisa asked, her voice THE SHADOWS OF GOD

perfectly composed.

“It appears to me,” Franklin said, aware that Ivis voice was rather strained,

“that you have already met.”

“I met a Roberto de Tomole,” Vasilisa noted. “

“Ah, Vasilisa Karevna, meet Lenka Franklin — ” He rubbed his forehead, wondering when it would explode. “Lenka, what are you —I mean, I told you to stay—”

“Yes, and now I see why. Though I didn’t know you tended toward doddering hags. Really, she could be your mother.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure I taught him more than his mother ever did,” Vasilisa remarked sweetly.

“I don’t doubt that,” Lenka said, “no, I don’t.”

Franklin’s brain was a sea of confusion, but something did manage to swim to the surface finally. “You were going to kill me, Vasilisa?”

The Russian sighed. “Don’t be stupid, Benjamin./I was going to kidnap you.”

“By stabbing me?”

“If you take note, the pin has a subtle poison on it. It brings deep sleep, not death.”

Franklin frowned and picked up the fallen needle. There
was
something whitish smeared on it.

“I can test this on you, then? A scratch will do?”

“If you want.”

“I don’t. I’d rather have you awake, to answer a few questions. Exactly what were you after by kidnapping me —again?”

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“To work on the countermeasure. But not here. Somewhere safe.”

“Why don’t you think New Paris is safe?”

She smiled faintly. “Because several thousand men and several tens of airships are on their way here, along with the dark engines themselves. I doubt very much that we can devise our countermeasure before they arrive. I also doubted that I could persuade you, though you must admit I did try.”

“To my eye you were doing a fine job,” Lenka said. “You were a fool to use your pin so early. Another moment would have persuaded him.”

“Lenka, that isn’t true,” Franklin said.

“How would you know, Benjamin? Women always bring every bit of the fool in you to the surface, like sap rising in a tree.”

“If you don’t mind my opinion,” Vasilisa said, “he was not foolish at all when he chose you.”

“No, but he’s damn foolish in how he treats me,” Lenka snapped.

“Lenka, how did you ever persuade Don Pedro to let you travel as one of his men?”

“I told him that it was either that or I would follow on my own. Don Pedro is too gallant to allow something like that—besides which he has that Indian respect for women, something you might learn.”

“And Voltaire knew about this, I suppose. All of you conspired against me?”

“Benjamin Franklin, you will not remonstrate with me —not after I find you in the arms of another woman and still bother to save your life.” Her face was bright red beneath the mustache and beard.

“Lenka—”

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“Hush,” she snapped. “I don’t see why I bothered.”

With that she stalked off. Franklin rose to follow her but then saw Vasilisa rising to make her escape. He dithered for an instant. “Wait, Vasilisa. Stop there.”

“Will you have me arrested, Benjamin?”

“Arrested? I ought to kill you.”

“But you won’t.”

“No. How did you plan to escape with me?”

“I have an airship.”

“A winged one or the other sort?”

“Winged. I no longer trust ships that rely entirely on malakim. They are…

unreliable. Have me arrested, Benjamin, and I will be no help to you. We can still escape. Take your little firebrand, there, if you wish, but if you want to truly win this battle, we must leave.”

Franklin stared at her for a long moment. “I won’t, not after all I’ve done to bring this alliance together. I won’t, and you aren’t going either. We will work out our countermeasures here, or we will die. Both of us. All of us. Do you understand?”

“This is foolish. Even if the countermeasures work, there is still an army that dwarfs any you might raise.”

“Tell me where your airship is.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“Then I
will
have you arrested, and you can be sitting in a cell when the barbarians reach the gates. Or you can be free, helping me do the best I can.

Your choice, milady.”

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Vasilisa studied him for a moment more, then shrugged her shoulders. ”As you wish. My life is borrowed as it is, I suppose. Perhaps it’s time to give it back.“

She raised her chin. ”However, when the army does reach this place,
do
remember I tried, won’t you? I don’t want your last thoughts of me to be uncharitable.“

“Good. Let’s go find some of my rangers to watch you, shall we? I have other things to do right now.”

He handed Vasilisa over to McPherson with some stern cautions, then went in search of Lenka. He bumped into Voltaire in the hallway.

“You, damn you!” Franklin snapped. “I ought to straighten my fist in your face.”

“Will you give me a cause, first?”

“You didn’t tell me about Lenka.”

“Ah. But surely you understand she made me take an oath —and that I never break an oath to a lady.”

“How could you have— Good God, she was there when the Coweta were trying to makes riddles of us! How could you have let her ride into such danger?“

“Benjamin, Fort Moore fell and lost half of its troop complement, as did Fort Montgomery. Where do you suppose she would have been safe?”

Franklin had no answer to that, but he tried furiously to find one. Voltaire didn’t give him much time, though. “Was it really her safety that was uppermost in your mind, Ben? You talked little enough about her on the journey. Maybe a few years of marriage have begun to feel constraining?

Maybe you half hoped you might have some rendezvous with a comely Indian lass or a Frenchwoman? Be honest.”

Ben’s jaw dropped. “By God, Voltaire. You don’t have designs on my wife, do you?”

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“Someone ought to. You don’t seem to have any. And she’s a most remarkable woman.” He cocked his head. “Caught you doing something foolish with Vasilisa, didn’t she?”

“None of your damn business. What did the two of you do on the ride? Now that I think of it, you had a way of disappearing at night.”

“Talked. About you, mostly, you great idiot. She tried to paint you in a good light, but the truth is, I wonder how she puts up with you. And I’ll tell you this

—you don’t deserve her. Maybe she won’t put up with you much longer.”

“And then she’ll be yours, I suppose?”

“A man could do worse. But no, Benjamin, I have more honor than that. And if you wish to question the status of my honor, we shall provide more entertainment like tonight’s for the court, you and me.”