He twisted her arm nearly out of its socket, and she screamed. His mouth opened in astonishment and dismay, and a tear started from his eye. "Mademoiselle, forgive me," he whispered.
Before she could reply, a red tongue licked out of the king"s chest, wagged at her, and was gone. He croaked, then jerked his arms wildly, releasing her. She shrieked and propelled herself onto the marble floor.
The king tried to reseize her, but Crecy, who stood behind him, sword in hand, ran him through again.
"G.o.d d.a.m.n your soul," she swore.
"Do not touch me!" He gasped, blood bubbling in his throat. "For the love of G.o.d keep back from me! I am the king! Guards!"
"Adrienne!" Crecy snarled. "Your device!"
But Adrienne was paralyzed. Blood was everywhere-in her hair, spattered on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
"Mademoiselle!" Louis implored, reaching for her again. "Tell them I am the king!"
Crecy slashed the back of Louis" neck, but her sword shattered.
"Adrienne!" Crecy shouted. A black angel appeared, wrapping the king in its wings. The window exploded, and through it blew a gale of smoke and dancing b.a.l.l.s of flame. In their midst stood Gustavus, a hideous expression on his alabaster face, a kraftpistole clenched in either fist.
Magus
Ben clawed at the floor with his fingers, hoping somehow to dig into the earth itself. He thought he heard more gunfire, but one whole side of his head thudded.
Trembling, he raised up his eyes. Robert was some ten feet away, back against a wall, his sword up. He seemed to be staring at him. One of the two men who had been with Bracewell lay on the floor, belly up, breath coming in choppy whistles, blowing bubbles of blood. The other man was still on his feet, a short, heavy sword in his hands. He held it shakily, pointed at a man Ben did not recognize.
He was perhaps twenty years old. His face was sardonic, with a cleft and thrusting chin. His lips were thin, compressed in pain, and he was frowning. But his eyes smoldered with a fierce, even manic intelligence. Ben had seen those eyes before, that frown. He wore a scarlet coat and waistcoat; blood visible on his white shirt and cravat. He clutched his shoulder where his wound seemed to be, but remained on his feet, glaring at Stirling.
"Don"t move, Ben," a ragged voice said. Ben turned.
Bracewell was on the floor, back propped against the wall. One hand was pressed against his sternum, blood streaming between his fingers. His metal hand held a pistol less than a foot from Ben"s nose, hammer c.o.c.ked. Bracewell"s eyelids fluttered in pain, but they never narrowed farther than to slits.
"What now?" Ben asked him quietly.
"Now? Now?" Bracewell panted. He frowned as if that were the most perplexing question in the world.
"Close that door," Stirling ordered.
"I"ll cut down the first man who comes near the door," Robert snapped.
Stirling looked confused. His pistol was trained on the red-clad newcomer, who, despite his wound and lack of weapons, somehow seemed capable of doing damage.
Ben realized that Bracewell"s familiar was nowhere to be seen. He also wondered what had happened to the wheezing man, whose wound was much too large to have been made by Robert"s pistol.
"Close the door, Guillaume," Stirling repeated. Guillaume, apparently Bracewell"s man, looked doubtfully at the tip of Robert"s sword.
"No," Guillaume said. "I don"t think I will. You have the pistol-you deal with him."
Suddenly, Stirling struck the red-clad man in the face with the b.u.t.t of his pistol. The fellow gasped, head slamming against the wall. Blood started from his nose.
"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" Stirling demanded, a tinge of hysteria in his voice. Ben suspected that some part of Stirling knew, just as he did, exactly who the man was.
"Close the door, or I"ll kill Ben," Bracewell gurgled, blood leaking out of his mouth.
"Ben," Robert said, "his pistol is empty."
Bracewell"s eyebrows went up as he and Ben simultaneously glanced at the empty powder pan. Bracewell cursed and swung the barrel at Ben"s face. The pain was brilliant, like fireworks exploding. Ben hit Bracewell hard in the face. He swung again and again, as Bracewell squirmed, arms up to fend off the blows. Ben fell against him, and now they were hammering their forearms and elbows together in an attempt to hit each other. Bracewell was wounded, d.a.m.n him. The pain in Ben"s hands was severe, but he didn"t care if he smashed all of his fingers-this was Bracewell, his nightmare, his brother"s murderer. Suddenly, he found that he had hold of an ear, and he yanked and yanked.
And then a blow from nowhere, driving into his belly. His body no longer obeyed him, trying to curl up into a ball, and a steel claw was fastened on his neck, starting to cut through. All he could see was Bracewell"s face, nose bleeding, eyepatch ripped away to reveal an empty, whitened socket, his other eye a h.e.l.lish flame of malice. Then half Bracewell"s head was gone, and Ben was falling, the claw still around his throat.
He tore it away frantically, and kicked across the floor. Wiping blood and brains from his face, sobbing and gasping for air, Ben tasted the gore on his lips and was violently sick.
When next he lifted his head, it was to meet Vasilisa"s concerned gaze.
"G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Stirling," Heath said, holding a rag to the oozing wound on his forehead. "Why?"
Heath and Voltaire had both been found bound and gagged in the orrery room. The Frenchman had some cuts and sc.r.a.pes, but Heath had received a nasty blow to the head.
Stirling didn"t answer but glared defiantly at them. His hands were tied behind his chair, and two of Vasilisa"s guards stood nearby armed with pistols. Vasilisa was playing surgeon to the man in the red coat who lay on the table of the meeting room.
She had just dug the ball out of his shoulder and was now bandaging the cauterized wound.
Robert and Voltaire clumped back into the room. "Maclaurin is dead," Voltaire said in
the most subdued tone Ben had ever heard him use.
"Stirling and his comrades were going to kill us all." Vasilisa said icily, "I think you owe us an explanation, James."
"I answer to no one, least of all some Russian b.i.t.c.h," James replied.
The Russian guard struck Stirling so hard with the back of his hand that the chair nearly rocked over.
"Misha!" Vasilisa snapped.
"There are four more of them," the man on the table groaned.
"At your house?" Vasilisa asked, and Ben felt a glow of pride.
"Yes."
Vasilisa snapped a few words to her two guards. They left the room. "They will do what
they can, quietly," Vasilisa a.s.sured them.
"Just the two of them?" Voltaire asked.
"No. I left ten more outside."
"Vasilisa, I had no idea."
She frowned. "My dear Voltaire, you know I was Tsar Peter"s envoy to the Royal
Society. Did you think he would give me no access to my emba.s.sy"s resources?""I want to know what was going on here," Heath interrupted. "Who were those men, James, and what do you have to do with them? And who is he?"
He thrust his finger toward the red-coated man, who had managed to drag himself to sit on the edge of the table. Beads of sweat stood out on his face, and pain still twisted his features, but he managed to grin briefly when he looked at Heath. "Mr. Heath," he said quietly, "I am insulted, for we have met on several occasions. I am Sir Isaac Newton, of course."
The dumbfounded silence that followed made it clear that only Ben and Vasilisa had guessed.
"Sir Isaac? But how can that be? You-" But Heath believed; Ben could see that much."I am an old man? Quite right. But I told your young friend here, Benjamin, I had not been idle."
"An elixir of life?" Vasilisa said. "Or is this some illusory seeming?"
"No, it"s real enough. The cost was my sanity for a time. Or perhaps-" He wrinkled his brow. "-perhaps I had already gone mad when I invented it."Ben found that he could not contain his impatience. "The comet," he blurted out."I"m sorry to have been so cryptic," Newton said, "but I trusted none of you. I wanted to see how each of you reacted when my model was placed in the orrery.""You were there?" Heath gasped."Wearing the aegis," Newton confirmed. "It can be adjusted to render one nearly invisible."
"Well, you smoked the snake from his hole," Voltaire declared, with a poisonous glance at Stirling.
"How did you know?" Stirling asked.
"About the plot? My first hint of it was Mr. Franklin"s letter, but I was deep in my...
depression...at that time. Still, I recalled it a short while ago, when I received a most unusual aetherschreiber message." He set his feet gingerly on the floor, managed the few steps to one of the chairs, and slid into it. "It came on a machine I have not used in many years, the mate to which I didn"t even know still existed. A gift to a friend and student of mine, long ago. But the message was signed Minerva."
Ben started. "Minerva," he repeated, under his breath.
"This message was part equation and part warning. It seems that this former student of mine-" Here he paused, as if the wound in his shoulder had begun to throb with sharper, unexpected pain. "It seems," he began again, "that the French king had managed to attract some philosophers of real talent. As Mr. Franklin guessed, it is they who have summoned this stone from heaven-this cannonball, as Minerva called it-to fall upon London. Minerva suggested that the French philosophers had English accomplices. I saw immediately that it had to be one or all of you. The orrery and the affinascope were both necessary to make the initial calculations. What I didn"t know- still don"t know-is how James could so betray his country."
"Perhaps," Vasilisa murmured, "we can question him more thoroughly later."
"When I asked about the comet," Ben clarified, "I meant how can we stop it? What can we do?"
"I have a few ideas," Newton said cautiously. "To tell you the truth, I have litde faith in them, but they must be tried." He cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and settled deeper into the chair. "Yes, in truth, I think we will fail, though I am fully prepared to stay here with the orrery and the observatory-"
"Sir," Voltaire said gently, "Stirling and his cronies have destroyed both."
Newton blinked, and for a moment his face slackened into utter defeat. "Well, that is even worse, but I must try. I still wish your help, of course."
"London must be evacuated," Heath said, voicing what all of them knew.
"Of course," Newton agreed. "In an hour or two I will seek an audience with the king-"
"And what?" Vasilisa interrupted. "Tell him you are Sir Isaac Newton? He will not believe you! He may even have you arrested. Certainly when the ma.s.sacre here becomes known, some of us will be taken into custody. Do any of you wish to be locked in a prison cell, vainly trying to explain to your idiot captors that a celestial body is soon to settle your case? And what if you manage to convince the king to order an evacuation? Do you suppose that it will be peaceful? Looters will sack the city, mobs will riot, philosophers will be burned like witches."
"Vasilisa, what are you suggesting?" Ben asked.
"That we all leave, right now. Take Maclaurin"s notes, and this murderer here. Don"t you understand? If this weapon can be used once, it can be used again. London in a few days-then Saint Petersburg, Amsterdam, Vienna. We have to develop a countermeasure. Sir Isaac and Benjamin must escape London- preferably with the rest of us."
"And you can provide this escape?" Voltaire asked.
"I know of a locomotive ship that can leave within the hour."
"Young lady," Newton began, "I understand your concern, but when the time comes, I, and whoever remains with me, will escape the devastation."
Vasilisa chewed her lip for an instant, and then her regard met Ben"s. He almost gasped, for he saw only bleakness and determination there.
"In that case," she replied softly, "I must insist. I have your best interests-and the interests of the world-at heart, and I also have the men and guns with me to implement my will. Sir Isaac, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Heath, Voltaire, and you..."
"Robert Nairne," Robert clarified.
"All of you are invited to be my guests. I will insist only on Sir Isaac and Benjamin. The rest of you will be free to go once we are on board the ship. Heath, if you wish, you may begin warning Londoners about their fate."
Heath didn"t say anything. He just stared at Vasilisa.
"Don"t do this, Vasilisa," Ben said, "please."
"Dear boy, it is for the best. You will see. A philosopher with your potential will be denied nothing in Saint Petersburg."
"Unless, perhaps freedom counts as something," Voltaire said.
"What is freedom to such men as Sir Isaac?" Vasilisa snapped.