"Sir Isaac, have you not been prisoned all of your life, hemmed in by fools? Have you ever been a free man, able to do anything whatsoever?"
"You play at semantics," Voltaire accused.
"My sweet Voltaire," Vasilisa said, "you have pleased me often and dearly these past
months. Do not make it necessary to have you killed. I would not enjoy it, but I always
do what is necessary."As you did with me, Ben thought, with sinking heart. I was in love with you. Was she so coldhearted as to have made love to him only in the hopes that she might later gain some advantage from it? Looking at her now, he knew she was.
"Mr. Franklin?" Sir Isaac said. "What do you say?""I say that if we resist Vasilisa, we will lose. Over and above that, she makes sense.""Good boy, Benjamin," Vasilisa said.You wait, Ben thought. Keep thinking I love you, that you have me at your beck and call. One day-when it will do some good-this dog will turn on you."Very well," Sir Isaac said. "But there are some things I will need from my house.""Sit still, please," Vasilisa said. "Where is this aegis you spoke of?""It was destroyed when Bracewell"s malakus attacked me.""Where are its remains?""It was built into my coat.""Make a list of your needs. I cannot risk you alone with your things. You might have another of these invisibility cloaks about. Ben and my men will pack what you need.
And now, if all of you gentlemen will accompany me to the docks-"
"I wish to remain," Voltaire said. "I will not let an entire city perish without warning it."
"I also," Heath added.
"As you wish," Vasilisa said, "but you still must board my boat. We will put you out in the Thames in a rowboat once we are under way."
Bridges
Crecy reacted instantly, hurling the hilt of her sword at Gustavus. It struck him between the eyes, and his right-hand pistol roared. The tall redhead bounded toward him with catlike speed. From somewhere she had produced a dagger, and Gustavus barely got his arm in front of his face fast enough for it to receive the point instead of his eye.
Adrienne was still blinking at the sudden appearance of the angel, a creature of wings and shadow but no discernible human features. With a sudden grim determination, she crawled across the blood-soaked bed toward the crystal cube that lay on the end table. Behind her, gla.s.s and porcelain shattered as Crecy and Gustavus exchanged blows. Where in heaven or h.e.l.l was Nicolas?
She pressed a tiny stud on the cube, and it clucked softly, producing a low, melodious note that began to rise in pitch. When the pitch stopped climbing, it would be time to place the sphere in its socket.
Crecy and Gustavus slammed into a floor-length mirror, limbs writhing together, eyes flashing like red flames. Then they parted, Crecy"s head snapping back as Gustavus caught the point of her chin with his fist. She sprawled roughly to the floor, and the Livonian paused to wrench her knife from his belly before rising, breath rasping horribly in his throat. His eyes, as red as Satan"s, met Adrienne"s, and she wondered if she weren"t already in h.e.l.l.
"b.i.t.c.h," Gustavus coldly swore. "Do you think to ruin our plans so easily?"
"Whose plans?" Adrienne managed, suddenly hearing the frantic pounding on the outer door.
Gustavus laughed and, brandishing the knife, limped toward Crecy.
The door burst open, and four of the Hundred Swiss rushed in, pistols and blades drawn.
Thunder cracked as pistols fired, and then a cone of flame engulfed two of the guards. They fell, howling. Adrienne spun, confused. She could not hear the rising tone from her cube: The gunfire had nearly deafened her.
Gustavus faced the remaining guards, a broadsword in hand.
"They mean to kill the king!" he snarled at the guards. "You fools, can"t you see? They are a.s.sa.s.sinating the king!"
The guards hesitated only for a moment, for to them the situation must have seemed obvious.
They charged Gustavus, and they died. He cut one"s leg from below him and gutted the second man with the return stroke.
Then Nicolas stepped in through the shattered window, face as merciless as death, a pistol in each hand, and shot Gustavus in the back. The Livonian screamed, turned, and raised his sword. Nicolas shot him in the face with his second weapon, and the blond man crumpled to the marble.
For an instant they all stood looking at one another; Crecy rising shakily to her feet, Nicolas with his two smoking weapons, Adrienne panting, huddled against a wall, the cube and crystal clutched in her hands. Then Nicolas crossed the room in two bounds and wrapped his arms around her. "I"m sorry. I"m sorry," he gasped, hugging her, kissing her hair. "I saw him coming toward the window-" He seemed suddenly to understand that she was naked, and cast about as if to find her something to wear.
"Oh, my sweet G.o.d," he said, as he noticed the blood, then the angel.
The angel had said nothing, done nothing except to enfold the king and contemplate them with luminescent eyes. Its eyes were the king"s-the king"s new eyes had been angel eyes all along. In a day of horrors, that was somehow the most horrible.
As if it were a world away, Adrienne suddenly noticed the sound of a single note from the cube: Her hearing had returned. Her device at last matched the king"s harmonic.
"Farewell, my lord," she said, socketing the sphere. It incandesced as the catalyst triggered aetheric vibrations matched to the king. The angel thinned like lifting fog, so that Louis" naked form was visible again. He groaned, hands cupped uselessly over his wounds.
Faster than a bee"s wing, the sublimating angel flew at her, and she had an impression of something mothlike. A black sickle or talon or something cut through the air toward her. Nicolas leapt between them, but the inky blade pa.s.sed through his body as if he weren"t there and bit painlessly through her own head.
And agony blinded her as the cube became molten in her fist.
She came back to consciousness borne between Crecy and Nicolas, hurtling through a nightmare of gaping courtiers, painted ceilings, marble floors, and flashes of red that were probably sparks of pain somehow running up from her hand to her brain. She gaped down at her body. The hand that hurt looked not much like a hand at all but like some sort of twisted, blackened- No. Save that for later.
"Where are we going?" she panted.
"A carriage. The marquis promised me a carriage," Nicolas said.
"No! No, we can"t leave!"
"She"s out of her head," Crecy said. "Look at her hand."
"No. Listen to me." She had to make them understand. "I can stop it-the comet. I know how to stop it."
They had pa.s.sed out of Versailles now, into night air that was yet torpid. Stars blazed above, and a dry breeze was blowing with a taste upon it like hot iron.
"Adrienne," Crecy said, "if we go back, we will be arrested and killed. Do you understand? We tried to kill the king and failed. We can"t go back."
"I will then," she said, trying to pull away from them, but they easily overpowered her.
"They may already be after us," Nicolas said. "More guards had already arrived, but with all of the bodies it was confusing. The courtiers will remember us and report where we went."
Adrienne realized that she wore a dressing gown that was thoroughly spattered with blood.
Her head was clearing, and agony was sharpening her mind. The pain was all in her wrist. The hand itself was without feeling of any sort.
The three of them approached the carriage. Adrienne relaxed, as if submitting to their judgment, but when she felt their grips loosen, she shoved them away and ran.
She made it perhaps three yards and then sprawled.
"Stupid girl!" Crecy shouted. "Come on! There is nothing you can do here! If you truly know how to stop the comet, then do it elsewhere!"
"I need Fatio"s laboratory!"
"Then it cannot be done. Adrienne, it cannot be done! But if you live to work elsewhere, you can-""What? What can I do? Reverse the course of time?"Then Nicolas clasped her tightly from behind, and they forced her into the carriage.She found herself crushed against Torcy."For G.o.d"s sake, get in and stop screaming," he snapped."We failed," Nicolas told him."Yes," Torcy responded dryly, "I rather thought it went badly by the looks of you. Did you at least wound him?"
Nicolas slammed the door of the carriage, and it lurched to a start. "He was wounded."
"Didn"t your device work?" Torcy asked. "It worked on Martin."
"I-I didn"t use it," Adrienne admitted.
"Yes, she did," Crecy contradicted.
"I didn"t use it in time. Torcy, I know how to stop the comet! I was trying to tell the
king, trying to convince him.""Oh, G.o.d," Torcy murmured tiredly. "For nothing. All for nothing.""She did use it," Crecy repeated. "Belatedly, but she used it.""It was that thing, that specter," Nicolas explained. "It struck her hand.""It struck you, too," Adrienne said. "No, it struck the cube. I never considered that what I could attack through the aether might attack back. Stupid."
"Which means it couldn"t have worked," Crecy pressed. "Perhaps," Adrienne agreed wearily.Near daylight, the carriage creaked to a stop. Torcy got out, brushed at his breeches, and straightened his wig and hat"I bid you adieu" he said. "The coach will take you to a small village in the Midi. There you will be given horses, provisions, and false doc.u.ments so that you can cross into Switzerland. I have provided a map, that you may seek out an old friend of mine."
"Mademoiselle needs a surgeon," Crecy said.
"There will be one in the village. Beware of large towns and guardposts-Bontemps will
have sent word ahead by aetherschreiber. The whole of France will be watching for
you."
Adrienne tried to answer, but she felt feverish, lightheaded. The pain in her wrist was nearly intolerable.
"Won"t you be accompanying us, sir?" Crecy asked for her.
Torcy smiled grimly. "I have betrayed my king and thus the Colberts. I have tried to save France and failed her, too. But I shall not leave her."
"You are a true gentleman, sir," Crecy said, and she rose and kissed him on the cheek.
"Thank you, Mademoiselle," he replied. "And good fortune to you both. A small distance behind us is a bridge. My men and I will destroy it, which should break the trail of pursuit long enough for you to lose yourselves in the countryside. It is the last favor I can grant you." With that he nodded and was gone.
Adrienne counted ten men accompanying him, all in the uniform of the Black Musketeers. Then she noticed the expression of resolve on Nicolas" face.
"No," she said, with as much force as she could manage.
"I"ll come back if I can," he said. "I do love you."
She reached for him, but it was with the wrong hand, and when she caught the smell of her ruined appendage, she nearly fainted again.
"Crecy, stop him," she pleaded.
"Torcy will need every man at the bridge. I should go, too."
"She needs you, Crecy," Nicolas said. "And of the two of us, you are better suited to
protect her in the days to come."
"Sadly, I agree," Crecy said, her voice quavering slightly. "Take care, my friend."
"Nicolas," Adrienne said as he began stepping from the carriage.
He stopped and closed his eyes. "Yes," he said, with visible effort.
"I love you. Please..."
He shook his head again, eyes still closed. "I will return," he said.
And with that he ran from the carriage. A few moments later, it rocked into motion