Read A Calculus of Angels Online
Authors: J. Gregory Keyes
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Science fiction; American, #Epic, #Biographical, #Historical, #Fantasy fiction, #Fantasy fiction; American, #Franklin; Benjamin
A Calculus of Angels
A CALCULUS
OF ANGELS
The Age of Unreason
J. Gregory Keyes
A Del Rey® Book
THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP • NEW YORK
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed”
and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 1999 by J. Gregory Reyes
Excerpt from
The Age of Unreason
© 2000 by J. Gregory Keyes All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/delrey/
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-30776
ISBN 0-345-40608-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Trade Paperback Edition: April 1999 First Mass Market Edition: March 2000
For my grandparents, Earl and Helen Ridout
CONTENTS
EVENING WOLVES
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
SECRET KNOTS
7. Wine, a Cup, and Two Drops of Wax
17. An Archduchess, a Sorcerer, and a Rain of Fire
THE DARK AER
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
By necessity, these acknowledgments are cumulative— everyone I noted in
Newton’s Cannon
deserves another mention here. In the interest of saving space, I’m limiting this list to those I didn’t mention last time.
My thanks to:
Terese Nielsen for great paintings, Jie Yang for the production work on the cover, and Jaana Mattson for the maps.
Robert Stauffer and Allison Lindon for proofreading, Erin Bekowies and Becker Strout for cold reading.
Jennifer Lattanzio and Adrian Wood for their work on
Newton’s Cannon.
Shelly Shapiro—who should have been mentioned long before now—
Christopher Schluep, Ann Hoang, and Tim Kochuba.
Eleanor Lang, for keeping me safe on the road.
William Ridout—my uncle—for his expert knowledge on the crafting, use, and history of black powder weapons. And for sneaking me black powder now and then when I was a kid…
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
The instructors and fencers at Salle Auriol Seattle, and especially my foil coach, Charles Sheffer. Thanks also to Marshall Hibnes and Allen Evans for their comments and opinions on eighteenth-century fencing, my cadre mates Bobby Cortez, Mel Gregory, Adam Herbst, and Zabette Macomber—and of course to our Maitre d’Arms, Leon Auriol.
The supportive enthusiastic members of Flanders Fantastic, and especially Didier Rypens. Helen Stack, for her very interesting and informative comments about her ancestor Charles Portales and his good friend, Fatio de Duillier…
Don McQuinn, Dave Gross, Ben Diebold, and Gavin Grow for general moral support. Add to them the whole Keyes clan, and especially Nell K. Wright and Mary K. Skelton.
Confession
Peter flinched at the single drop of blood that spattered onto his coat. Even thirty feet away, one ran that risk when the knout was being used. In experienced hands, the brutal short whip could cut to the bone and raise a fountain of blood; and the man wielding this knout was a master. Peter watched impassively as the last of the strokes fell. The victim was long past screaming. Instead he croaked pitifully, face more confused than anguished, as if his mind refused to accept what had been done to his body.
Peter approached the tortured man, who was suspended, arms tied behind his back. His weight had dislocated them, so that now he looked almost comical, as if his head had been put on reversed. Peter wondered if they had gone too far—if Alexis would even be capable of speech—but finally, breath rasping, the prisoner looked up. He was weeping, tears turning sanguine where they crossed the lips he had bitten through.
“I am sorry, my Emperor.” He groaned.
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
Peter’s throat tightened. It was only with difficulty that he said, “I have heard you wished me dead.”
Alexis convulsed, his face contorting almost beyond recognition, as if it, too, had been beaten. “I am a wretch,” he sobbed, “and now
I
will die. I hope I will.
I have wronged you, and do not deserve to live.”
“You mean you do not have the strength to live, Alexis,” Peter softly replied.
The prisoner coughed in what might have been a parody of laughter. “All men are not like you,” he managed. “If you are the measure of strength, what other man is strong?”
Peter trembled slightly.
If you only knew,
he thought. He again cleared his throat.
“It grieves me it has come to this, Alexis. It is my own failure, I know.”
“What you asked was impossible,” Alexis spat. Peter suddenly, almost gladly, understood that Alexis was angry, angry enough to overcome his shame and agony.
“It
—
was
—
impossible.”
The words were measured out, to ensure they were understood. To be certain that Peter comprehended that one thing, if nothing else, knew
he
was the cause, the murderer.
“You have never understood,” Peter responded. “Every day I work—every single day—to make Russia what it can be, what it
should
be. Every day! Each time I relax, each
instant
I relax, to sleep, to sail, to read a book—something goes wrong. This senator becomes a grafter, that boyar raises the Strelitzi against me. I have marched with my armies. I have with my own two hands built many of the ships that guard our shores and carry our goods abroad. The very shoes I wear on my feet I earned working as an iron founder! That is what it takes to rule Russia, to bring her into a new age, to make her strong enough to survive in this new world. Not your muttering superstitions and backward-looking ways. When I came to power we were barbarians, lost in the old ways, a joke throughout the world. Now look at us! It will not all be lost when I die.
No matter what, Russia will not tread backward!”
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
Alexis was silent for a time. “I know,” he said at last. “But you must understand, I think you wrong. You strangle the old church, cut us off from the religion of our fathers. You consort with demons—”
“They are not demons,” Peter said, feeling his own temper rise. “They are things of science. You would have us go back to the old ways? Would you have us give back our ice-free ports? Would you have us sit in Moscow, as the winters grow longer and colder, until the glaciers grind over our country?
Would you give us back to the darkness from which we came, and worse?“
Alexis raised bruised eyes, already the dark hollows of a skull. “Yes. If it means we perish as Christians and not worshippers of things like that.” He spat blood in the direction of the ifrit that floated behind Peter. Peter barely glanced at it.
It was always there, his guardian, more faithful than any man, a whirling nimbus around a single, burning eye.
“It is a thing of science,” Peter repeated. “My philosophers discovered it.”
“They summoned it from hell.”
Peter bit back a retort, took a few breaths to calm himself. His face had begun to twitch, and he did not wish to bring on a seizure. “So you are unrepentant?”
“I suppose that I am, knowing I am to die.”
“You need not die.”
“I want to. There is nothing for me. You have taken everything, even my Afrosinia…”
“Your little Finnish wench betrayed you, Alexis. She told all and perhaps even invented some things to save her own pitiful neck.”
Alexis bowed his head, so that his hair hung to cover his face. “Tell me she will live, even if it is a lie,” he whispered.
“She will live,” Peter said, and turned to leave. But found that he could not, yet.
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
“They were using you, you know,” he told Alexis, “the old boyars, the Church.
Using you to strike at me.”
Alexis looked up again. “I’m sorry only that I wished your death,” he said. “I was afraid when I wished that. I have always been afraid, most especially of you and what you wanted. I could never have been enough for you, Father. I could never have
been
you—and that is what you need, not an heir. But I am not afraid anymore. God will take me in soon, and so I ask you to forgive me, and I will forgive you, and perhaps we shall meet again—” He choked off into a new bout of tears, and Peter’s own eyes grew moist.
“I forgive you, Alexis, my son. I’m sorry I failed you.”
And then he turned and walked away, unable to bear any more, his ifrit following like a faithful dog. He went back to his palace in Saint Petersburg and sat staring at the order for his son’s execution, pen gripped in a trembling hand. He sat for many hours, and he still had not signed it when they came to tell him that Alexis had died.
He went to his balcony and looked out across his sea at the ships coming into his port, and he wept.
1722
The Council Meeting
“Halt there V bide, stranger,” a hoarse voice shouted over the groan of the wind and hiss of sleet. Red Shoes squinted toward the light and made out four figures, obscured by night and frozen rain, silhouetted before the dim lanthorn. At least two were armed with muskets, so he stopped as commanded, knowing they could see him far better than he them. He hoped that they would quickly get to whatever business they had with him, for the wet cold had long since worked its way into his bones, and his feet were as numb as stones. The city lights were visible ahead, where warmth and food awaited for the first time in many days.
“State your business,” the same voice demanded. A tingle of alarm crept up his spine as he made out a faint creak and click—the hammer being drawn back A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
on a flintlock.
Red Shoes cleared his throat. “I have come for the council meeting,” he said.
“Council meeting? You mean the town council?”
“The council meeting,” Red Shoes repeated.
“God, John,” another voice sputtered. “‘s an Ind’yun.”
“Hold still,” the first voice—John’s—snarled. “I can see that. Are you armed, fellow?”
“Yes.” He did not elaborate. The musket slung on his back was easy enough to see, but there was no reason to tell these men that he had no powder or shot.
His pistol was hidden beneath his calf-length coat, every brass button of which was fastened against the murderous cold. His war ax was there, too, equally inaccessible. He had not expected to have to fight his way into Philadelphia.
“John, you know there’s more out there,” a third man said. “If there’s one, there’s more. And that’s a French coat he’s wearing. Damn you, I didn’t bargain for this.”
“You a Delaware? Mohawk?” John demanded. “Are you alone?”
Red Shoes could tell that they were craning their necks, looking for his imaginary red army. He had heard rumors that the unseasonable cold had provoked warfare between some of the northern tribes and white towns like Philadelphia—but surely no one would mistake
him
for a Six Nations man or a Delaware. He was Choctaw, and
looked Choctaw.
“I’m alone,” Red Shoes assured them. “I have a paper.”
“A paper?”
“An invitation. To the council meeting.”
“The council meeting,” John repeated again.
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
Something was wrong here, something more than their worry about Indian attack. These men did not know what he was talking about, though if they were Philadelphia warriors, they certainly should. The trip had been long and hard, but not so hard that he had lost track of the days. The meeting was tonight, and he would not be the only one attending from outside the town.