The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [135]
“Yours came from without, and now it is gone.”
Red Shoes shook his head slowly. “He is not gone. He is there, somewhere. He is not gone. None of them are—they are merely … different. And the things that made him welcome in me are not gone, and that is my real curse.”
“What of the things that made me welcome in you? Are they gone? Are they the same things?”
He looked at her, at her proud, defiant face. “No,” he said. “I love you still.”
“Then be my man. Pick up your burden, and let us go on.”
“You still want vengeance?”
“No. I want life.”
He regarded her for a few long moments, trying to forget what he had seen, felt, been. Wondering if he could explain that the real problem was that after being a god, it was hard to be just a man again, that a part of him longed for what he had lost, no matter how wrong it was.
He couldn't explain that. He wouldn't.
“There is a place I know,” he said, “near Kowi Chito. A place where someone who knew how to plant corn might raise a crop.”
She nodded at the fire. “I would like to see it,” she replied.
“Prince Golitsyn,” Adrienne said. “How nice to see you.”
Golitsyn glared at her above a three-day growth of beard. One hand was bound up, evidence of his duel with Don Pedro after the collision of Franklin's airship and the Ezekiel wheel. From all reports, it hadn't lasted long.
“Metropolitan.” She nodded at the cleric, who seemed to have lost considerable weight since she had last seen him.
She didn't bother to say anything to Swedenborg, whose eyes were permanently fastened somewhere beyond the world. What he saw there, Adrienne did not know, nor would she ever know, now. Her explorations of the physical world were now confined to the limitations of the five normal senses.
“Get on with it, bitch,” Golitsyn growled. “I expect no mercy from you.”
“I did not bring you here to speak of mercy,” Adrienne said simply, “but to speak of Russia.”
“What of it? My family and Dolgoruky's still hold it.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Many of the troops you tricked into fighting their own tsar—the troops you then turned the dark engines upon—have survived. They do not look with much favor on you, nor will they give glowing reports when we return to Russia.”
“How will you return to Russia, without airships, without—”
“There are still ships, and there are still seas,” a new voice intruded. All heads turned to see Elizavet enter. She was dressed simply in a dark green manteau. “We are building ships even now. Like my father, I will work on them with my own hands. We will return to Russia, Prince Golitsyn. I promise you that.”
“And what do you want from me?”
“A letter to your family, explaining your mistakes and endorsing the proper way of things.”
“Why shouldn't I speak to them myself, if we are to return?”
Adrienne settled back in her chair. Elizavet held the floor now. She seemed to belong there.
“Prince Golitsyn, you betrayed my father, tried to murder his chosen regent, waged an unprovoked and unsanctioned war—which, I might add, you lost—and made attempts on my life and the lives of my friends. You do not think that you will return to Russia, I am sure.”
Golitsyn lifted his chin. “Then why should I write your letter?”
“For your own sake. If you do not write it, I will have you knouted to death. Better yet, we can let some of your former Indian allies—who, I remind you, have been howling for your blood—try some of their inventive tortures on you. If you do write it—in sorrowful detail, making quite clear you are remorseful—we will give it out that you wrote it on your deathbed, a hero mortally wounded in defense of his true tsar. You will live here, in secret, in a rather comfortable prison. But you will live.”
“What of me?” the metropolitan cried. “I was tricked as surely as anyone. I never knew the tsar was still alive—the prince lied to me.”
“I have always assumed that to be the case,” Elizavet lied smoothly. “And so, of course, under certain conditions, you will return with me to help rebuild our country and our people. Our people,