Adrienne leaned on her couch, so that she could see her son, far below. In her diagrammatic sight, he appeared as a sphere, with waves and rays emanating to connect him to the mala-kim and to stranger things yet.

He looked, in fact, very much like her hand.

“He is still there,” she said, “in the center ship.”

“Good,” Franklin said. He smiled, but she recognized the quality of it. He was worried.

“That were passin’ easy.” Robert grunted, lying on the floor with his nose pressed against the thick pane. “They still ain't made no motion.”

“Our aegis hides us,” Franklin said, “for a time.”

“We gonna drop grenados on ‘em?” the big man called Tug asked.

“Not yet,” Franklin replied a bit absently. “No use in letting them know we're here until they notice, or until our forces scare them off the ground. Then you can toss out all the grenados you want.”

“Good.” Tug grunted. “I'm goin’ t’ open a cask or two o’ ‘em.” He ambled toward the ladder leading up to the hold.

Crecy knelt by Adrienne. “How are you feeling?”

“Well, Veronique. Able.”

“Able to what?”

Adrienne looked back down, this time with her mortal eyes. There, half a league below the airships, were tiny dots. And yet it was no great distance really. And she could feel him. Her hand hummed in sympathy with him, as one chime will hum when a like-tuned one sounds. It must be one of Lomonosov's less-perfect affinities, the ones that faded with distance.

Like love, perhaps? What sort of attraction was less perfect than that? Or less useful?

She realized that Crecy was still awaiting an answer. “Nico has to be stopped,” she said.

“You tried once before.”

Adrienne took her friend's hand, touched it with her angel digits. “No,” she said softly, “I didn't.”

“Mademoiselle?”

Adrienne glanced up. “Mr. Euler.”

“Ah! You remember me.”

“Of course. I read one of your papers, though I do not recall the topic. One of Swedenborg's students, weren't you? Did you tell Franklin that?”

“Yes. He knows what I was.”

“And yet he trusts you?”

“No, not entirely.”

“Neither do I. I find it too strange that you are here— especially since I remember hearing that you died.”

He smiled grimly. “I had to vanish from Russia, Mademoiselle. Few seek the dead.”

“I quite understand.”

“I just wanted to tell you—I'm honored you are here. I—”

At that moment, Tug, who had been poking around in the storage area, began cursing violently, and then a gunshot boomed and another. Tug fell through the open hatch with a wet thud, but managed to scramble to his feet, though his white shirt was rapidly soaking red with blood.

“Hijack!” he shouted. “B'goddamn but they shot me!”

Crecy drew two pistols and aimed them at the hatchway, just as two men in red coats dropped down, wielding kraft-pistoles. Her and Robert's pistols barked like twin hounds, and both men fell, one shot in the head and the other in the belly.

The next instant a grenade bounced on the deck, fuse sputtering.

Robert was already running that way, his second pistol aimed up, seeking a target in the hatch above. Without breaking stride, he snatched the bomb up and flung it through the lower hatch, into open sky. Crecy, meanwhile, leapt to stand near him, firing up into the hold.

Two guns boomed above. Crecy stood unscathed, but Robert cursed and fell. A lithe form followed the bullets down, an Indian with a tomahawk in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Red Shoes raised his pistol reflexively when Flint Shouting hurled himself from the hold, but the Wichita's weapon spat first. The ball struck Red Shoes’ outstretched hand, scorched up his arm, cracked against a bone in his shoulder, then leapt weirdly to take off most of his right ear. He fell back, feeling almost like he was floating—it was very strange. Everything outside his body seemed preternaturally real—Franklin shouting Sterne!, the hatch slamming shut, Flint Shouting arcing over him like a panther.

I'm sorry, brother, he thought. And in that moment, he knew he could do nothing, would do nothing. It was over.

Then a black hole appeared in Flint Shouting's chest, as Grief shot him, and a much larger one in his belly, in consequence of Robert shooting him from behind. The Wichita looked surprised, and his knees wobbled drunkenly. He made it the next step, and fell heavily next to Red Shoes, the ax dropping from his hand.

The only weapons Flint Shouting had left were his eyes. His flat, accusing gaze fastened on Red Shoes; and Red Shoes could not shake it, could not avoid it.

The hatch slammed down even as Franklin recognized the face glaring down from it.

“Sterne!” he shouted, and fired his pistol. It sang off the metal and rapped a few times around the cabin.

Above, through the closed hatch, he thought he heard laughter.

“Be damned!” Franklin roared, lunging toward the ladder. Someone caught him by the scruff of the neck.

It was Tug. “Don’ go doin’ that. He'll blow y'r head off.”

Franklin struggled for a second, then nodded savagely.

“Somebody watch that hatch. Shoot the bastard if he opens it.”

“I'll do that,” Crecy said. She bent and took the weapons from the dead and not-quite dead redcoats, then stood with both aimed up.

“Robert? Tug?”

“Hit me in the ribs.” Robert grunted. “Just skinned me, maybe cracked a bone. I'll live.”

Tug was in more serious shape, bleeding heavily from between his heart and his shoulder. He had wandered over to stare at the Indian who was dying next to Red Shoes, who might be renamed Redhead at the moment, considering all the blood.

“Flint, m'lad.” Tug grunted. “Why'd y’ go an’ do that?”

The Indian wheezed. “You … saw … my village. Why … ask?”

“What's Sterne up to?”

Flint Shouting coughed up a huge bubble of blood, but then his next few words were clear. “I do not know. I do not care. I helped him escape because I heard he was your enemy. He said he could get me close to Red Shoes. That's all …” He coughed again. The whole conversation, he had never looked at Tug or Franklin, only at Red Shoes. He coughed a third time, and something broke in him. His eyes set. He did not breathe again.

Franklin stood and looked at the ceiling. “They must have smuggled themselves in the grenado crates.” Franklin groaned. “And now he's up there with our munitions.”

“That's not our only worry,” Adrienne said.

“What?”

“That grenado Mr. Nairne tossed from the ship —it got their attention. In a few seconds, we'll be under attack.”

“Tighten up, lads!” Oglethorpe shouted. Once again, he wished he had more disciplined troops. The constant harassment of the Mongols and Indians on their western flank was having its effect, drawing the Yamacraw and wilder rangers to separate themselves from the main body of the charge, where they most probably were picked to pieces. He couldn't tell; all he knew for sure was that things were getting mighty thin on that side, and that those who went whooping and hollering west never returned.

He felt he was pushing through a black fog, one gradually closing on them. In the heat of the charge, there was no way to get the aerial intelligence he needed, so he had no way of knowing how the enemy was gathering ahead—but they were surely gathering.

But they had certainly pressed more than a league. The ships couldn't be that much farther.

He was thinking this as they came over a rise and stared straight into a line of artillery that stretched as far as he could see in either direction.

“Sweet Jesus,” he breathed, taking in the black maws of cannon, firedrakes, kraftcannon, and weapons he in no wise recognized. He heard the sudden bellow of the Swedish battle cry to his right, and knew the line stretched even there. The damned taloi again, making artillery more mobile than it ought to be.

“This looks like fun,” Parmenter said. Oglethorpe heard the quiver in his voice.

“Let's give ‘em only one volley at us, lads!” Oglethorpe shouted. “Don't even think to let the Swedes beat us to our goal! For God and the Commonwealth!”

And once again he led the charge.

For a long moment, it seemed the cannon would stay silent, that they would repeat their feat of weeks past and blow through the line like a swift wind.

But the only wind came from the north, a fiery wind, tearing through them as if they were dry leaves. Parmenter, on Oglethorpe's right hand, was suddenly headless. Oglethorpe saw it out of the corner of his eye, and glanced in astonishment at the way the ranger's body remained upright, hands gripping the reins. Then Parmenter's horse caved in from the front, and Oglethorpe couldn't look anymore, because he had his own troubles.

The second volley followed without respite. Oglethorpe could see the gunners now, crouched behind their weapons. Closer, closer, and he could almost reach them with the point of his sword—

Brass cymbals crashed around him, and he was on his back. But not still, no —his foot was caught in the stirrup, his horse dragging him along.

For a second or two. Then the poor beast vanished in a cloud of blood.

His body was numb, and for all he knew he was dying already, but he was damn sure taking one or two of these bastards with him. He couldn't see a god-rotted thing, either, for the cloud of gunsmoke in the still, hot air. But that could work for him as much as against him.

His pistols had been on his horse, and they were spent anyway. Whisking out his saber, he crept along the ground until he saw booted feet.

He stood and swung, and a young man's surprised face leapt, along with the rest of his head, from its neck. If he made a sound, it didn't carry over the battlefield clamor. A yard away, another fellow in a green coat, plug bayonet fixed and staring someplace behind Oglethorpe, seemed oblivious of his presence. Oglethorpe cut him down like a sapling, and it was only then, as the guns spoke again, that he understood his horse had dragged him right into the line itself, and he had gotten turned around. To his left was a cannon, and to the right a kraftcannon.

The first of the carabiners guarding the kraftcannon died without noticing him, but the second managed to fire his weapon. Oglethorpe felt the powder sting his face, but that was all, and then he hacked the fellow's hand off.

Something bumped into his back. He whirled—and found Tomochichi there, a bloody tomahawk in his hand, a fierce grin on his seamed face. Satisfied, Oglethorpe put his back to the Indian, unworried about that quarter for the nonce.

The kraftcannon was mostly a bar of iron six feet long, ground to a point on the business end and light enough to be mounted on a swivel, like a murder gun on a ship. Grimly, he swung it east, so it faced straight up the line of artillery. The carabiners at the next gun noticed him at about that time, but all but one of them was reloading. That one fired.

So did Oglethorpe. The lightninglike bolt jagged into the next cannon and then straight on to the next, and the men manning them danced the Saint Vitus dance and died.

Someone kicked him in the back, and for an instant he was angry with Tomochichi—why had his friend struck him so? But then the two of them fell, and when he rolled over, he saw that a bullet had gone all the way through the Yamacraw chief ‘s belly to hit him in the back. The old man reached out and gripped his arm and moved his lips, but Oglethorpe could not, of course, hear anything. He noted absently that they were surrounded by men now, and also that three fingers from his own left hand were missing.

Shielding Tomochichi's body with his own, he turned to face his doom with eyes open.

“We have to get him out of there,” Franklin said. “Most of what we need is in the hold.”

“It's too late,” Adrienne murmured, looking down at the vortices rising toward them. “They've released the mines.”

“Mines?”

“The Russians took a page from your book, Mr. Franklin,” she answered. “The mines are spheres, such as those which lift the airships. They rise under their own power, bearing explosives with them. These have probably been taught to seek the emanations of your aegis.”

“I have a countermeasure for that,” Franklin grunted, “but it's up there with Sterne.”

“We have less than a minute, I would guess.”

“Why not just use the exorcister?”

Adrienne shook her head again. “If they start to fall, they detonate. As I understand your device, its range is too short, for the explosive is hydrogen.”

Vasilisa cut in. “Can't you stop them, Adrienne? You know the art of unmaking those spheres.”

“Certainly. But I need malakim servants, of which I have none.” She continued to watch death rise toward them.

“Red Shoes?” Franklin shouted. “Red Shoes?”

The Indian sat, rather stupidly, as his woman, Grief, wrapped bandages around his head.

“I—” he said, looking confused. Then his eyes focused. “I can help. Mademoiselle, do you think you might control my shadowchildren, as you did the malakim?”

“I can try.”

“Take them, then. I give them to you.”

She turned the sight of her manus oculatus toward the Indian, saw his shadowchildren around him. They were simpler than the malakim. They had a certain furious quality to them, like distilled anger. She reached for them, prodding them with the aetherial reach of her fingers, learning them.

“I can see ‘em.” Robert grunted. “Little red dots, gettin’ bigger.”

Teach them, she heard Red Shoes say, through his children. Or help me teach them.

When the malakim spoke, it was always in her own voice. Now, as Red Shoes spoke through his shadowchildren, it was still in her voice, which was somehow even stranger.

Adrienne read the patterns of affinities in the rising spheres, then made the corrections to dissolve them, and laid it all out. Her own malakim would have understood—but the Indian did not know much mathematics. Would it appear to him in some form he could understand?

It did, and it came back to her. For him it was like taste or smell—a sensation with many layers of complexity. And he would teach this to his shadowchildren—

“Real close now,” Robert said.

And then they had it. The shadowchildren dropped like little hawks, dragging talons of force through the spheres, unmaking them. The malakim inside sighed free, and the bombs, no longer held aloft, fell. But not far, and then the sky was white-hot flame, and the Lightning bucked like a skiff on rough seas.

And just behind the bombs came a swarm of malakim, eagles tearing into those little hawks, and she and Red Shoes were suddenly caught in an otherworld war of a very different sort. And behind it all, she could feel the strength of her son growing, the line between them tightening, a Jacob's ladder for his servants to climb.

And there were more bombs on the way now.

“Best find your countermeasures,” she managed. “Red Shoes and I will be busy for a time.”

Franklin could already see that, in the way they both stared off into space, watching things he could not—probably did not want to —see.

That meant, too, that Red Shoes would not be able to perform one of his little miracles and kill Sterne through the steel hull.

So be it. Despite Tug's warning, someone had to go up through the hatch.

Tug himself was slumped on the floor, as Grief moved on to doctor him. Robert was wounded, and Don Pedro—

Don Pedro was going up the ladder.

Franklin's warning caught in his throat—if he shouted it would only warn Sterne.

Instead he drew his sword and leapt up the ladder after the Apalachee. Now that his mind was slightly clearer, he knew it wouldn't do to go firing into a hold full of munitions.

Don Pedro banged the hatch, but it only gave an inch or so.

“He must have piled things upon it,” Franklin said.

“Very well,” Don Pedro said. “But there is another hatch on top of the ship, yes?”

“What a blockhead I am! Of course there is!”

“And we get to it how?”

“Go out the front of the cabin and climb, I suppose.”

“I go, then,” he said. He hurried to the front, past the dead form of Flint Shouting. The glass there was on hinges, and it swung inward. He looked around, positioned himself on the prow, and leapt up.

Franklin followed. By the time he got there, the Apa-lachee's moccasins were vanishing over the top. Swearing, Franklin went up the rungs.

Outside was strange. The aegis bent light and matter, but not perfectly. Being within its protection was like being in a prism, everything tinted rainbow—the sky, the clouds, the distant, maplike earth. He was actually grateful, for it disguised, in some measure, the reality of the fall awaiting him if he slipped.

In some small measure, he reflected, looking down again.

He came over onto the top of the ship just in time to see Don Pedro lift the upper hatch and a funnel of flame leap out. The Don had been careful, but not careful enough. Though he wasn't caught in the flame itself, the superheated air scorched him, and he fell, clutching his eyes.

“Don't roll!” Ben shouted. “You'll fall over!” He ran to help the Apalachee.

At which point Sterne emerged, grinning like death, a glowing red orb floating above his head.

“Well, Mr. Franklin,” he said. “It looks like just the two of us, doesn't it?”

“My friends will be here in a second.”

“Maybe they will. But you shall be dead.” And he raised a gun with his left hand.