A Calculus of Angels

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “Nishkin Achafa,” Red Shoes said. “A kind of spirit. You can’t harm them with your weapons.”

  “Can they harm us?”

  “Not easily.”

  “Ignore them, then,” Nairne ordered.

  “But there are other things that can,” Red Shoes went on. “Things you can’t see.”

  The Englishman darted him a glance. “Can you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Mather’s head snapped around, eyes shining with a cold light, and he opened his mouth as if to speak; but about then, there was no more time for conversation. The second wild man fell as Charles’ musket barked, and then a third as Saint-Pierre fired. By that time, Renard had reloaded and loosed another round.

  Skirling like madmen, they came on, reminding Red Shoes now of Hacho, the berserk warriors of his own people. Death did not worry them, these men. That was bad.

  He cast his ghost sight about, searching for the more dangerous sorts of spirits, but he saw only the one-eyes, watching them. A few were picking at his guard, trying to reach his mind, but he kept them out, drawing the kraftpistole Bienville had given him. This seemed to be a battle of arms rather than sorcery—which, considering his weakened state, was a good thing.

  Charles and Wallace were both still reloading when the next berserker came within striking distance. But Nairne fired his kraftpistole over Wallace’s shoulder, and three of their attackers fell, engulfed in flame. Taking his cue, Red Shoes took up a position behind the Frenchmen.

  Still their attackers didn’t flinch, and some began scrambling around the lip, forcing the defenders to divide their fire. Fernando hacked at them with his cutlass, but it was like striking at the incoming tide. Red Shoes fired his kraftpistole for the third time, aiming at a brute twice the size of a normal man, hair spiked up with some sort of paste. The man caught fire well enough, but he did not stop, slamming into Saint-Pierre and Renard, both of whom lost their footing and fell over the side. With no time to reprime his weapon, Red Shoes whipped out his ax and buried it in the skull of the next man who bounded toward him. Unfortunately, the ax stayed in the head as it went by; and in the next heartbeat a blurred figure lifted him free of the earth and crushed him back against the hard slope. Skittering down together, rocks tearing at their flesh, Red Shoes managed to get hold of an ear—but there was suddenly a second man grappling him and then a third. Shortly he couldn’t move at all, and they bound him. As the roar of blood in his ears receded and awareness of his surroundings returned, he noticed that the sounds of battle seemed to have ceased, and now only the weird hooting remained, echoing triumphantly in the hollow which had once been London. He closed his eyes, wondering what sort of tortures the wild men of England might have prepared for him.

  Night came, but their captors lit no torches. The one-eyes remained the only light, and they illumined only themselves. Red Shoes could hear more spirit-whispering now, but even bound and beaten he still had the strength to resist them. The one-eyes were essentially weak, the weakest of all spirits. Dealing with them had been his first lesson as an isht ahollo, a lesson he had learned almost at the cost of his sanity. He was not likely to forget it. He did not sleep, and the sun awoke a gritty gray sky for his still-open eyes.

  From the rim, the valley had looked like a bowl; here it seemed a flat plain, ringed about with a palisade, a fort built by giants and now abandoned.

  And yet not abandoned, for after a few more hours they came to a camp—if such a tattered collection of tents could be called that. The fabric seemed rich enough—silks and brocades, linen, furs—all draped on poorly built frames of saplings. Red Shoes wondered how far away the saplings had come from, for since leaving the coast they had seen no trees.

  The largest tent was long and narrow relative to its length, as he had heard Iroquois houses were. His captors carried him toward it.

  During the night, the naked warriors had calmed and become quiet, but now they began hollering again, and answering calls went up from the tents. They brushed through the flap.

  Red Shoes was dumped unceremoniously onto the ground—or rather onto the rugs that served as a floor. They were so filthy that Red Shoes wondered why they bothered; after all, a dirt floor could be swept.

  The others were dropped near him. His heart sank as he saw that they were all there; he had hoped that someone had escaped to bring back rescue. At least all seemed alive, with the possible exceptions of Fernando and Mather, who he hoped were merely unconscious.

  “Cut their bonds,” an oddly muffled voice commanded, “all but those on their hands.”

  Red Shoes looked up to see who was speaking. It was a white man of middle height, his skin pricked blue with tattoos. He wore a sort of kilt made from what appeared to be silk, and a cloak of similar material. Most notable was the bone-white mask that covered his face, a blank oval with no eye holes, fringed with raven feathers. Behind him stood a number of men similarly clad and masked.

  Their bonds were cut, and they were dragged roughly to their feet. Mather’s eyes opened, and he looked confused. Fernando they could not rouse.

  “Well. Who have we here?” The man’s voice was muffled by his mask. Red Shoes noticed two one-eyes hovering behind him.

  “O God, the God of hosts, shield me in thy hand—” Mather began.

  “Shut that one up,” the masked man snapped.

  “Deliver me from mine—” Mather coughed off suddenly as an open hand cracked across his face.

  “Leave him be!” Charles snarled, starting forward despite the three men with weapons pointed at him. “That there is a reverend!”

  “Yes, I recognize his costume,” the masked man remarked silkily, confirming Red Shoes’ suspicion that the fellow was seeing through the one-eyes—a foolish thing to do. “But I shall not tolerate his pitiful whining. Not here, in this sacred place. Not today, on this sacred day.”

  Mather looked up, blood streaming from his mouth. “Sacred to whom? Satan?”

  The masked man laughed, a sick, grating sound. “Where are you from that you are such fools?” he asked.

  “What happened in this place?” Nairne asked.

  The man turned his eyeless face to Nairne. “What happened? Can you really not know?”

  “We’re just come from America. How could we know?”

  A general gasp went up, but the masked man silenced them with a wave of his hands. “Very good. Very good. I knew you would come. And I knew you would tell these lies. So here we came, and here we waited, and here you are.”

  Nairne ignored that. “What happened to London?” he asked again.

  “The apocalypse, you imbecile. The end of the world. Your God and your devil fought until both were dead.”

  “Blasphemy. Utter madness,” Mather spat. “God is eternal.”

  “Oh so? Did you see it, Reverend? Did you see the flaming sword of God? Did you see his blood falling from the heavens? I did. It was the last thing I ever saw with fleshly eyes. Now I can see more. Now I know the Truth.”

  The Europeans merely stared at the man, apparently stricken.

  “You say this place is sacred,” Red Shoes heard himself say. “Sacred to what god, if yours is dead?”

  “Sacred to the old gods. To the ones here before that upstart Hebrew god, Jehovah. Sacred to me, Qwenus. Sacred to the Anointed, who saw the battle, who testify to it.”

  “Pardieu,” du Rue said. “Madmen. Blind madmen.”

  “What do you want with us?” Nairne asked quietly. “We only came to learn what happened here.”

  “Now you know,” Qwenus said matter-of-factly.

  “I’m not certain I do,” Nairne replied.

  “Then you are a heretic. Fortunately, heretics are just as palatable to the old gods as believers are, their screams sweeter to them than honey.”

  “Palatable?” Tug grunted.

  But the audience seemed to be over. The masked fellow waved his hand, and they were hauled roughly to their feet.

  “Come on,�
� one of the warriors holding him said, the first intelligible noise Red Shoes had heard from any of them other than Qwenus.

  “Palatable?” Tug repeated, as he was dragged from the tent.

  “Apparently,” Nairne said.

  “No, sair, I mean what in hell does ‘palatable’ mean?”

  “It means, I think, that they intend to eat us.”

  6.

  The Duke of Lorraine

  The battle was over in a few instants, with all but a few of Le Loup’s brigands stiffening in the field. Adrienne sat next to Crecy, Nicolas clutching her arm, watching the bluecoats go about their business. A young man watched them nervously from ten paces.

  Crecy was still alive, blood bubbling from her nostrils, mouth sucking air in brief hiccups. She had two wounds—one just above the heart and a second through her ribs. Adrienne had seen enough injuries in the last two years to understand that they were fatal in most men.

  Crecy, however, was not like other people.

  Adrienne was dressing the wounds as best she could when a second soldier approached. His face might have once been pleasant, before his nose had been broken and healed into a sort of parrot’s beak, before the warmth had drained from his deep brown eyes. Like the man Crecy had decapitated, he wore the colors of the Hundred Swiss. She glanced angrily up at him, but found him studying her with a quizzical expression. He looked first at her, then at Crecy, then back at her, and she saw the puzzle solved behind his eyes.

  “Sweet Mary,” he swore. “Mademoiselle de Mornay de Montchevreuil.” He doffed his hat.

  It had been so long since Adrienne had heard her family name, she nearly didn’t recognize it. A name from another lifetime.

  “You have the advantage of me, sir.”

  “My apologies, Mademoiselle. My name is Hercule d’Argenson. I—” He knelt next to Crecy. “—I regret that we meet under such circumstances. How is she?”

  Adrienne raised her eyebrows. “You know her.”

  He nodded. “She was a member of the Hundred Swiss, once. Posing as a man, of course, but a few of us knew. I was a friend of Nicolas d’Artagnan, Mademoiselle. We all envied him, that he was your guard.”

  “He was ill served by it, as Crecy has been. I do not think she will live.”

  “We will do what we can, I assure you. My doctor is nearby.” D’Argenson smiled faintly. “I know that you may doubt it, but your company has improved. We are not cutthroats, like these fellows.” He gestured at one of Le Loup’s men who lay dead not far away.

  “I am relieved to hear that.”

  “I thought you might be.” He regarded her for a moment. “I will tell you of it in a more comfortable place. Here, we are in danger. Indeed, you are fortunate that we found you. Soon, this may well be a true battlefield.”

  Adrienne shrugged. “I do not even know where I am,” she replied.

  “Presently, it is a part of Lorraine,” he said. “But in a few days, time, I fear it shall be Muscovite soil.”

  They reached the main road from Nancy near nightfall and found it flooded with a stream of men, women, children, beasts, and creaking wagons.

  “Where do they think they are going,” Adrienne wondered, “that will be better than whence they came?”

  “They would rather take their chances in the countryside. Evil tales are told of the Muscovites,” d’Argenson replied. “Some say they are sustained by the blood of their victims, that they have made pacts with the prince of hell.”

  Adrienne absently stroked the mane of the horse d’Argenson had given her to ride.

  “They will find nothing in the countryside,” she told him.

  “How well I know, Demoiselle.”

  They moved upstream through the stream of refugees for a few hours but parted from it before reaching the town, following instead a smaller track which quickly gained in elevation, until the horizon stretched out behind them as a blue smoke. Above, a few blurred stars shone down, and Adrienne remembered a night, long ago, when she had lain with Nicolas d’Artagnan and beheld a sky of jewels, and known that she was in love. She had been twenty-one, then. Now she was twenty-four, and could only just barely recall the feeling, and could visualize the splendor of a clear night not at all. She absently stroked the head of her child, the namesake of that lost love, wondering if he would ever see the stars that clearly.

  The road tunneled through a dark wood, but after a time, the light of many campfires appeared. Sentries questioned them and they entered a city of camp sites. They passed near some men who were singing a bawdy but not unpleasant song. Her nose twitched at the scent of meat, a rare thing these days.

  They rode between stone gateposts grown over with ivy, across ill-tended gardens to a manse in the style of two centuries before. There, liveried servants hurried out to meet them, and Crecy was borne off by a pair of soldiers to where d’Argenson assured her a doctor waited.

  D’Argenson dismounted and then offered to help her down, but she had already taken her son beneath one arm and thrown a leg over the saddle. She grinned ruefully at his extended hand.

  “I have not been in the company of gentlemen in a long time,” she apologized.

  “That is the loss of gentlemen everywhere.”

  “You are gallant. I know what my appearance must be.” Her hair was a rat’s nest, her stolen dress in tatters.

  “A diamond is always a diamond.”

  Suddenly embarrassed, she looked away from eyes not as cold as she had thought on first glance, and waved at the manse. “Are you the master of this place?” she asked.

  “Not I,” d’Argenson answered. “I suppose I am something of the prime minister. No, yonder comes the master.”

  Adrienne blinked. In the light of a single fitful alchemical lanthorn, she saw approaching a fair-haired boy, perhaps some thirteen years old, outfitted in riding clothes.

  D’Argenson stepped up and bowed. “Sir, may I present to you Mademoiselle de Mornay de Montchevreuil.”

  The boy smiled broadly and bowed, then approached to take her hand. “It is an honor,” he said softly, “to meet the betrothed of the late king of France.” He kissed her hand lightly. “I am Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, and if there is aught I can do for you, please name it.”

  “I …” She suddenly felt very tired. “A bath?”

  “The servants shall see to it,” the boy replied.

  Reclining in the bullhide tub, it came to her that there could be no civilization without hot water. For two years she had lived like some wild beast—living in filth, washing only in cold, dirty pools. It had made her brain like an animal’s, uncaring, thinking only of survival.

  One taste of hot, soapy water on her skin changed all, changing her nature from beast to human. She reminded herself how illusory it was, how a week on the road would prove to her again that the society and works of man were silly ephemera, and yet, for the moment, it did not matter.

  And the room was warm, too. There was a toilette with perfumes and powders, and laid out on the bed were three dresses such as she had not even seen since fleeing Versailles. She chose a dark green manteau, the least ostentatious but the most comfortable of the three.

  As she was dressing, a girl of perhaps twelve came in, a pretty thing save for a few pockmarks on her face.

  “Perhaps I could comb Mademoiselle’s hair?” she asked.

  It took a painful hour to get the tangles out, but with each stroke of the brush, Adrienne came more alive, felt her skin going from stone to flesh. She would regret that, when she needed stone again, but in her last days at Versailles she had learned that the world would harm you whether you were prepared or not. Pleasure was a rare fruit that should be tasted when it came one’s way.

  “Where is my son?” she asked the girl, suddenly, as it came to her that he was not in the room.

  “He is with a nurse,” the girl replied.

  “A nurse.” She had never been apart from little Nico, save for an hour here or there, and then Crecy had b
een his guardian. And yet, for the space of half an hour, she had not even missed him.

  But of course, her child was a part of that cold, dirty life in the fields. He did not fit here. But with some luck, he would. As she woke from the dream of cold roads to one of hot baths, she would bring him with her, the way she had brought herself a new hand from the land of dream and ghosts.

  She studied the hand absently as the girl combed her hair. It looked like a hand, until you peered closely and saw that it had no pores, no trace of hair. Until you realized, over the months, that its nails never grew, that briars never scratched it. But it could feel, and grasp and sometimes—sometimes it seemed capable of doing other things, as well, vague and frightening things.

  Her hand had been burned off by an angel, and somehow had been replaced. How? She had thought about this before, but she had never really puzzled at it. She hadn’t cared. Now she cared, and the remains of a formula danced in her brain, the fragments of a great proof that, in a dream, she had once known entire.

  The girl answered a knock on the door, and a moment later returned to Adrienne.

  “The duke requests your presence, milady,” she said.

  “First I will see my friend,” Adrienne replied. “Do you know where she has been taken?”

  “Yes, milady, but—”

  “Then please take me there.”

  The girl bowed.

  “And have my son brought to me, please.”

  The physician attending Crecy was a slim young man with little in the way of a chin.

  “She must rest,” he insisted, when she entered.

  “Will she live?” Adrienne murmured, nestling a sleeping Nico against one shoulder.

  “She should not, but she may,” he replied. “Her constitution is very strong.”

  “She is my dear friend, sir. I will be very much in your debt if she lives.”

  He shook his head. “Not in my debt, but in God’s. I have done little here, for there was little to do save remove the balls and sew shut the holes.”

  “Nevertheless,” she replied. “May I look at her?”