The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [111]
“Elizavet, there is nothing wrong with you.”
“I'm just stupid—is that it? Naturally, like a beast?”
“No. No, you are very bright. You've just never been interested in proving it. Why are you now?”
“Why?” Her eyes grew large. “Because of you, of course. You have shown me what a woman might be. I love you, Mademoiselle, as I have never loved another woman, not even my mother. I—I do not wish to disappoint you. But there is nothing to do! Everyone else has something to give to this fight, everyone but me!”
“That isn't true. Elizavet, your men love you. What we have of your old guard is utterly devoted to you. Look to them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you noticed them lately? They are in a strange place, they do not speak the language, they hardly understand anything of what goes on around them, and yet soon they must lay down their lives for a cause they scarcely understand.”
“My father—”
“Is not you. They did not leave Moscow for him—they left for you.”
“But what can I do?”
“Not ride into battle, of course. But be their tsarevna. Give them hope and heart.”
“Is that all?”
“It's a great gift, Elizavet. You exerted it in Saint Petersburg without even knowing it. Think how much you can accomplish if you put your mind to it.”
Elizavet smiled, but then her smile shrank away. “Is this merely some ploy to improve my mood and rid you of my complaints?”
“No. Partly. But what I say is true: the few Russians here are in the wilderness, and you can help to guide them. You are a tsarevna, a force to be reckoned with if you only choose to be.”
“As you chose to be.”
“I suppose.”
Elizavet laughed, wiped the tears beaded on her lashes. “Very well, then. And will you now tell me where you are going?”
“I'm going to battle.”
“Not like that!”
“This will be a different sort of battle, the sort that only I can wage.”
“Let me come with you, then!”
“There is no space for anyone else. None of my students is going. They are needed here, as you are.”
Elizavet stood, noticeably trembling, and then she came and knelt and laid her head in Adrienne's lap.
“Do not die,” she whispered. “Come back to us, and I promise to do my lessons, all to the end.”
“You must do that whether I return or not,” Adrienne said.
As they readied the Lightning, Franklin reflected that he would rather a bit more strategy was involved in the coming battle than a race by three generals to reach the ships. Still, they were generals, and presumably knew what they were doing.
“I notice you did not mention our real goal,” Euler said, testing one of the brass valves for tightness.
“What point in that? It would only have added a confusing element—and they might have even forbidden us. If we fail, the dark engines come alive, and most or all of us perish. To succeed, we need the army to capture the ships, or at least distract them from us. If we had time to build a real navy, things might be different, and we might be able to take them on better-than-even terms. After all, from what you and the others say, they were never able to build their own aeges, and that gives us an advantage.”
“But they have made weapons that seek them.”
“I've planned for that,” Franklin said, stepping back to survey his ship.
The Lightning was a barge thirty feet long and ten wide, enclosed by a square cabin. She was framed with adamantium, but most of her was plain steel and iron, set with alchemical glass panes in the deck and bulkheads. She had more hatches than a thief has pockets—two in the bottom, for dropping grenades, two in the bulkheads for getting in and out on the ground, one in the roof. The roof was the oddest thing about the whole structure. A box on a box, it was five feet deep, because the cargo holds were there. As they would be hovering over the enemy, Franklin wanted the cargo as far from upward-flying shells as possible. So there was one more