“You!” Franklin snarled.

He scarcely noticed that five muzzles were now trained on him, all borne by the men in blue military uniforms. He only noticed the woman, whose black tresses and dark eyes haunted his nightmares, rising in the air on the backs of demons, laughing as she killed his mentor, Sir Isaac Newton.

In dream, as in life, he could do nothing but stand rooted and watch, and curse himself, and most of all curse her.

And here she was—he would know her anywhere, through however many years. And this was no dream.

“Father!” another woman shouted.

“Elizavet!” That came from his left, from the tsar.

Franklin's hands were shaking.

“Monsieur, if you do not lower your weapon in the next five seconds, I shall kill you,” the witch's redheaded guard said. “Here, I shall count them for you. One—”

“Just hold still,” Robert said quietly. His own weapon was pointed at her. “Let's sort this out.”

“Don't you recognize her, Robin? She's the one from Venice. The one who killed Sir Isaac.”

“All of you, lower your guns,” Tsar Peter roared. “My daughter is in your line of fire, and I swear by God or the Devil that whoever brings her to harm will suffer for it!”

“Ben?” Robert said.

Franklin took a deep breath, shaking even more. “She killed him, Robin.”

About that time his gun got heavy, heavier than ten cannonballs, and tore itself out of his hand. With a curse he reached for his sword, but it was also heavy, dragging him to the ground. He toppled, noticing as he did so that almost everyone else had, too.

The only ones still standing, as a matter of fact, were Red Shoes, two young women—and her, the murderess, who still placidly sat her horse. He noticed for the first time that she was heavily bandaged.

“Your pardon, gentlemen and ladies,” Red Shoes said. “But I would rather you not all shoot each other. If you divest yourselves of steel and iron, you will find you can stand.”

Still cursing, Franklin fumbled at his sword belt—whose buckle, naturally, dragged at him like an anchor—and finally managed it. Free of it, he scrambled to his feet.

“Be calm, Mr. Franklin,” Red Shoes cautioned.

“Elizavet!” the tsar, divested of sword and pistol, heedless of the situation, bounded across the yards separating them; and a young, pretty girl with thick black hair flew to meet him. They embraced, and he whirled her around. “By God, I have my daughter!” Peter shouted. “It is better than a kingdom! My sweet Elizavet!”

The girl, weeping and laughing at the same time, buried her face in his shoulder.

Franklin, calmed somehow by that meeting, turned back to the woman. “Who are you?” he asked huskily.

“I am who you said, the slayer of Newton. Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil.”

“You admit it.”

“It was war,” she said, frowning as if at a child asking a question she did not feel he was old enough to understand the answer to. “He was killing me, you know, and my friends, and my son—” She broke off. “I regretted killing him— especially once I learned who he was—but how can I apologize? I know who you are, Monsieur Franklin. How many men did you kill at the battle of Venice, with your balloon bombs and your lightning kites?”

He heard her words, but this was the strangest thing—her voice was clipped, as if produced by a steel model of a human throat, as if she could never even imagine what remorse might be.

But she was weeping.

That produced an emotion in Ben, something weird. He didn't know what it was. Disgust? A new kind of anger?

He didn't know, so he turned away.

Red Shoes watched Tug approach, wondering what he was going to say. “I'm glad to see you well,” is what he settled on.

Red Shoes could see that the sailor was searching him, trying to read him the way white men read books.

“Red Shoes,” Tug said. Or was it, “Red Shoes?”

He stepped closer, and Tug flinched but stood his ground.

“It is me,” Red Shoes whispered. “It's me, not a spirit wearing my skin. I would never harm you, Tug.”

“Y'll f ‘rgive me, but after what I seen—”

“They tried to kill me, Tug. They thought I was something I'm not.”

“The little babies tried to kill y'? Th’ sweet young girls?”

“No. But I went mad, Tug. Not for long. I'm not exactly the same as I was, but I am me. Remember that night in Algiers, when you took me to find a woman?”

“Yeah. You acted wondrous strange that night, too.”

“Remember that you saved me in Venice?”

“I remember you savin’ us in— eh—what used to be London. But …” He paused. “Is it really you?”

“Yes.”

“I done what y’ said t'do.”

“I know. Thank you. Will you shake my hand?”

Tug hesitated another instant, then stuck his hand out, and they clasped. “Flint Shouting'll try t’ kill you, y'know, when he finds out y'r here.”

“I wouldn't blame him if he tried, but I would rather he didn't. I'll talk to him, later. And to you. You'll have to tell me about your adventures coming here.”

“Th’ same. Glad to see th’ miss made it, too,” he said, nodding toward Grief.

Grief noticed and flashed Tug one of her rare smiles, and the pirate grinned even wider.

Red Shoes glanced at Franklin, who seemed to have retreated to a world of his own. “Well, Mr. Franklin?” he said. “Shall we go into the city? We have important things to say and do, and not much time to do them in.”

Franklin looked at him, then briefly back at Adrienne, his expression still stunned. “Of course,” he said. “Let's go.”

They walked the horses the rest of the way, Grief at Red Shoes’ side as always.

“Tug didn't seem frightened of you anymore,” she said to him.

“He was. I could see it. He doesn't trust me, and maybe he shouldn't. I don't trust myself.”

“Your power is returning.”

“Yes, some of it.”

“And your heart?”

“I don't feel the same as I did—angry, bigger than myself. But I still believe the course I saw then is the right course.”

“But you no longer have the power to pursue it.”

“I never did. That was my mistake. I never did.”

“And now?”

“With these people, I think I can do it—though I may have to trick them.” He took her chin in his fingers and turned her face toward his. “Do you still fear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, and kissed his fingers.

Adrienne winced as the servants lowered her into the ornate, canopied bed. Her leg ached dully, and her breath came in shallow sips. She regretted, now, her insistence on riding the last mile—but she did not want to be in a litter when they reached the French town. She wanted to arrive with dignity.

Instead, she had arrived to be reminded of what she was, what she had become—the series of linked sins that comprised her life.

She remembered killing Newton, of course. Worse, she remembered the obscene joy of the moment, of finally having power—not the secret, conniving power women must wrest from the world but the might to do anything she pleased.

Of course, that power was gone now.

“Mademoiselle? Is it really you?”

She blinked at her visitor through what must surely be tears of pain.

“Orléans?”

He coughed up a little laugh. “No, Demoiselle, I fear I am king now, much to everyone's horror.”

“Your Majesty.” She made an effort to rise.

“Heavens, my dear, no. Stay in bed.” He clasped his hands behind his back and attempted a smile.

“If I may ask, Sire—is your wife—”

“Yes, I knew you would ask that first. She is dead, I'm afraid. The plague took Paris even before the Russians did, and it took her with it. I know I wasn't much of a husband— she always felt she deserved better, and she was right. She—” His face screwed up in pain. He fought for control, and found it. “She always loved you. She urged us to find you, after that madman Torcy kidnapped you.”

“That was kind of her.”

“So, you see, I will deny you nothing. In memory of her and of my uncle the king, who also loved you.”

She nodded carefully. Her memories of Louis XIV were less pleasant than her memories of the duchess of Orléans. “Thank you, Sire. I hope I can serve you.”

“I'm sure you can. And now I must go.”

But he turned and spoke once more before leaving. “Mademoiselle, it is good to see you. Few of that court you knew survive. It is good to be reminded of happier times.”

When he was gone, she reflected that she wouldn't have thought of those times as happy. But she understood what he meant, and doubtless, for him, they had been the best of days.

So this was what had become of France. It was fortunate that Philippe didn't know how large a part in creating his present state of affairs she had played, here and later in Russia.

But she knew it, of course, and now she could no longer escape what she had done.

* * *

She was almost asleep when her next visitor arrived, scratching lightly at the door, as they used to do in Versailles.

“Come in,” she said dully.

It was Vasilisa Karevna. “We didn't have time to speak before,” the Russian said.

“I'm glad to see you well, Vasilisa,” Adrienne replied, and found that she meant it. Even if she did not know where the other woman's loyalties lay, at least she was part of the present, and not the past.

“And it is good to see you, Adrienne.”

“Sit.”

Karevna settled herself on a tabouret, as Adrienne dismissed the servants.

“Chairete, Korai, Athenes therapainai,” Vasilisa intoned, once the girls were gone.

“No,” Adrienne said. “Stop it. No more of that pathetic Ko-rai nonsense. I cannot bear it.”

Vasilisa blanched, took a deep breath. “I understand your feelings, Adrienne, but this is the very moment our sisterhood was created for, the single most important thing we guard against. And of all who once belonged, you and I are the only ones of consequence who remain.”

“The Korai were created to keep us in ignorance,” Adrienne said, “like everything that owes itself to the malakim.”

“Surely, better ignorance than death,” the Russian replied.

Adrienne uttered a sharp laugh. “I could kill you for not having told me years ago. You knew all along, didn't you? That even the ‘friendly’ malakim have worked to keep us mired in superstition.”

“I couldn't tell you. You were their greatest fear— even I am not sure why. You were somehow their greatest fear and their greatest hope all at once. Even your son, I think, is secondary to you in their schemes. The malfaiteurs always wished to kill you. Only those who befriended Lilith saved your life.”

“Again we return to mythology,” Adrienne said, disgusted, though remembering the creature in the form of Nicolas and the name she claimed.

“Mythology is nothing more than a way of hiding knowledge, of encrypting it so that the malfaiteurs do not detect it. Don't you understand that, after all these years? They help us as they can.”

Adrienne waved her hand. “All this is moot, is it not? Whether there was a Lilith or an Athena, whether the friendly angels were ever really friendly. For, as I understand it, they are now long gone.”

“They aren't gone. They lead the army.”

“My point exactly.”

“No. Their original policies prevailed in the Old World. All that remains is this new one, and if they win here, they might appease those who wish merely to see us all destroyed.”

“So we either die or return to darkness.”

“One is better than the other,” Vasilisa said hotly. “You are a fool if you think otherwise. Ask any mother, any yeoman farmer, whether they would rather have life, and family, and love—or books on the gravitation of the spheres. Do not confound your particular obsessions with what is truly important.”

“And yet, as I understand, you labor here to stop the conquest of this New World.”

“No. I labor to stop the end of the world. The best hope of that is that their army succeed. If it fails, they will use the engines and all will die.”

“They have already used one. They sent it against us at New Moscow.”

“Bozhe moi,” Vasilisa whispered. “We have even less time than I thought, then.”

“Or less hope. I was communicating with one of your friendly angels, Vasilisa—he persuaded me to make this trek. He is dead, and none has come to replace him. Perhaps he was the only one.”

“No. There are others—the point is, the enemy does not know how many—”

Adrienne interrupted her with a laugh that sounded mad even to herself. “Even—angels don't know how—how— many angels dance— on the—head— of a pin?”

“What has happened to you?” Vasilisa asked, staring at her as one might stare at an unexpected boil on one's arm.

“I am learning a sense of humor, that is all. Go on.”

“The danger is near, that is all I meant to say. Franklin and I have assembled a device—it might work or it might not. At the very best, it will give us a little time to find our way to the final solution.”

“And what might that be?”

“Don't you know? They didn't tell you?”

“No. They seemed to think it best to keep me in ignorance. I suppose such habits are difficult to break, after a few thousands of years.”

Vasilisa closed her eyes for a moment. “I should not tell you this. Not if they did not.”

Adrienne uttered another weak laugh. “But you will, or you wouldn't have brought it up.”

“I— Do you know how I came into the tsar's service?”

“I never have known.”

“He was on a tour of his Siberian provinces. He found me buried up to my neck in the ground. I had been married, you see, when I was thirteen, to a man who took a great deal of pleasure in my pain. One day, when he approached me, I threw a pan of boiling grease in his face. It stopped his heart. So lawkeepers and the priest of our village took me and they buried me in the ground.”

“And the tsar saved you.”

“Yes, at the urging of his wife, Catherine. She was a daughter of Athena. They washed me of my nightmare, Adrienne. They made me clean and they taught me what is good, and they gave me power, something I never had before. You know how that feels.”

“I do,” Adrienne said softly. “And I'm sorry for what you went through.”

Karevna's gaze danced from point to point, as if afraid to settle. “I don't tell you this to get your pity. I just want you to understand—the Korai are everything to me, and I do not disclose our greatest secret lightly. I also care for you, whether you believe it or not, and I fear this will cause you pain.”

“Tell me. Please. I am inured to pain.”

Karevna finally looked her full in the face. “The Korai created you, Adrienne. We created you to bear your son. You are not altogether … human.”

“Created me? Out of what—snow?”

“Out of a hundred marriages. Out of a thousand subtle manipulations—alchemical treatments administered in secret throughout your life— especially at Saint Cyr.”

“Saint Cyr?”

“Yes, of course. Madame de Maintenon was no Korai, but she was manipulated by them, from the day she met Ninon de Lenclos, decades ago. It was a place designed to reveal—you. And to perfect you.”

“Father Castillion taught at Saint Cyr.”

“Father Castillion?”

“The priest, the one who joined me in New Moscow.”

“I didn't—” She spun on her heel as the door creaked open, and Castillion stood there, regarding them.

“You told her,” he said.

“I had to,” Vasilisa replied.

“God have mercy on you, then. She was not to know.” Vasilisa raised her chin. “Who are you?”

“As she said, I am Pierre Castillion. I taught at Saint Cyr, many years ago. I was one of those men—adjunct to the Korai, let us say.”

“A Rosicrucian? A Freemason?”

“No, but it doesn't matter. I am the last of my order. The rest of us perished in China.”

“So you knew—this all along, and did not tell me.”

Castillion knelt next to her. “The time was not right. I knew it would only anger and confuse you.”

“What else have you lied about?”

“Most of what I have told you is true. There are some details I left out.”

“It was no accident we met in New Moscow.”

“No. I had been following your son. In fact, my order sent me to kill him.”

“The Jesuits?”

He shrugged. “Yes and no. Again, it does not matter. I knew I could not. Should not. Instead, I found you.”

Adrienne closed her eyes, wishing them both away.

“Too many questions, too many lies. Take four steps back. I was created, you say. Am I like Crecy, then? But I don't have her strength, her speed.”

“You have some of her toughness,” Castillion said. “What you've been through in the past few months should have killed you, though I helped when I could. But, no. You are of a very different sort and order than Crecy. Her sort were the beginning, and they spring ultimately from the same blood. But Nicolas, your son, is the omega. Joining you with the Bourbon line was the masterstroke. It was the prospect of that marriage which began all this, set everything in motion. And it is that child who will bring victory to one side or another.”

Words of denial came into Adrienne's mouth and stayed there. Denying it all seemed even more absurd than hearing it, somehow.

“Damn you,” she said instead. “Damn every last one of you to the lowest pit of hell. Damn— Did Crecy know?” The last she shouted, furious at the mere possibility.

“No,” Karevna said. “Only seven living ever know—in France it was Madame Castries. Crecy was their pawn in this as much as you.” Her eyes narrowed. “But you know, Castillion. How?”

“I am not a woman. There were also seven of us.”

Karevna opened her mouth to reply, then apparently thought better of it.

Half an hour passed, and no one spoke. Adrienne thought of her mother and father. What had brought them together? The marriage had been arranged, as most marriages were in noble families. She tried to remember if Castries or Orléans had had a hand in it, and could not.

Finally she pushed the thought as far back in her head as it would go. “It doesn't matter if this is true.”

“Of course it does,” Karevna said. “It means you and Nicolas are the key. Not a key, but the key. One of you is with them, but one of you is still with us.”

“As you say. But what lock am I supposed to turn, Vasilisa? Your story does not say. Castillion?”

“I don't know either,” the priest admitted.

“I can answer that question, I think,” another voice said, from the still-open door.

Adrienne turned to see the Indian.

“Hello, Red Shoes,” Adrienne said. “Who else is in line out there? Usher them all in, please, and I will serve the chocolate and cakes.”

“You know my name.”

“Indeed.”

Red Shoes shrugged. “We are beyond that now. Your friends are right— our time is short. Even now I can sense the Sun Boy giving birth, creating the giants of old that will wipe all of our races from the world.”

Red Shoes hummed with power. In her angel sight, he was a chord of plucked strings. But he wasn't like she had been, or as Vasilisa had been. He was like the woman in the Siberian forest, a thing unto himself but unraveling into many strands. Like Nicolas, who split pieces of himself to make new angels. Had he hidden this from her before, or had she been too weary to notice?

She was still weary. She had lost Hercule and her son. Father Castillion, who had once been a reminder of a time when her life had seemed at least genuine, now showed himself to be a liar and, worse, revealed that her entire existence was a lie.

What did she care if the petty race of humanity vanished from the world? All of the good examples of mankind she had ever known were dead.

“Leave me alone,” she murmured.

“I would if I could,” Red Shoes said, “but we cannot do this without you.”

“Do what?”

“Crack the roof of the world. Return it to the way it was in the beginning.”

“You do know.” Vasilisa gasped.

“Explain it, then,” Adrienne said, “for it makes no sense to me.”

“Remember the Korai legend?” Vasilisa said excitedly. “That God, unable to enter the world, sent his servants into it. But after creation was done, most of them went renegade, and God changed the law from without, subtly, to deprive them of power.”

“Ah. I see. You are all mad. You think we can undo what God did.”

“Yes!” Castillion interjected with uncharacteristic fierceness. “It will free them—they have been trapped here for millennia. Once free, rejoined with God, they will bother us no more.”

Adrienne folded the bedclothes back, smoothing them flat with her palms. “Let us follow this insane little discourse a bit further, shall we? Supposing what you say is true, and it is in our power to defy God Almighty and give the malakim back the power they had at creation. Why do most—indeed, now it would seem all—of them resist us in this? Why hasn't this been their unified aim from the beginning? Come—any of you.”

All three were silent.

“As I thought. You are mouths for their lies, as unaware as a pen of what it writes on the page. Leave, all of you, and trouble me no more with this.”

“Adrienne,” Vasilisa said, “I beg you to reconsider. You are the key.”

“Find another.”

“There is another,” Red Shoes said. “He will serve less well, but he will serve.”

“You mean my son?”

“I mean me. Your son is the lock, and I was not meant to turn him. But I might be able to. Against his will—he might not survive it.”

“I have seen his power, and I have seen yours. I have little question as to who will succeed,” Adrienne said.

“I would have beaten him but for you.”

“You took him by stealth, from within. That won't happen again.”

“You really don't care?” Vasilisa said. “You really don't care if we all live or die?”

“No,” Adrienne said, “I don't think I do. And even if I did, as I told you, I am powerless now. Would that I had always been.”

“You don't mean that.”

“I mean it precisely, Vasilisa Karevna. You may have bred my family like racehorses for a thousand years, for all I care, and Father Castillion may have put the juice of the philoso-pher's stone in my table wine every day for ten years—the power that came from that is all spent, wasted. I am done with it, and it is done with me. Now, leave me before I call my guard to throw you out.”

“Yes,” Red Shoes remarked, voice heavy with sarcasm. “Quite powerless, you are.”

But they left, no doubt to plot another try later.

She settled back into the bed and closed her eyes—in search, finally, of rest.