The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [42]
“You helped pick it out.”
She laughed, and it was the laugh he remembered, pure and musical. “In that case, let me be plain and businesslike, yes, Benjamin? I can help you against Sterne and his Pretender. But I need your help as well—help of a scientifical nature.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Our real enemies—you know who I mean, I think— gather themselves. Certain philosophers in the Russian empire have given them new muscles, which soon we shall see flexed. We must stop them, Benjamin, or all the world will burn.”
“You wish me to think you traitor to the tsar?”
“The tsar is probably dead, but I serve him yet,” she said heatedly, her voice actually quavering. “Did I ever tell you how I came to meet the tsar?”
“You never did. Why should I care?”
“He saved my life. More than that, he gave me a new one, a better one. No man—no person—has ever done such a thing for me. You must believe me when I say I loved the tsar and despise those who have taken his country. And the masters they serve—those creatures Sir Isaac once called the malakim—they will be done with all of us. We are on the same side, Benjamin. Do not let your bitterness toward me obscure that. It will not serve either of us well.”
“You've always been a great talker, Vasilisa, but you were never shy of turning the truth front to back, and for all I know have made practice perfect these twelve years gone. Can you offer any proof of what you say?”
“You called me Vasilisa again,” she said softly.
“Can you prove what you say?” he repeated insistently.
“I think so. We will speak again.”
“I would rather have it now.”
“All I have to offer you now is my word and myself,” she said simply. “If either will do, take them. If not, then you must wait a bit.”
“I cannot wait too long,” he cautioned. “But I will give you time to prove your case.”
“You will not regret it.”
He left, and the page showed him to a small, damp, drafty apartment. It made him almost yearn for their camps on the forest trails, which at least gave one a view of who might be coming.
He had scarcely seated himself on a hard stool when a rap came at the door.
“And how is the ambassador?”
“Evening, Robin. I'm afraid I can't really say. The afternoon has left me somewhat … bewildered.”
“Well, we ain't under arrest as I can tell, so things seem better here than at our Coweta congress.”
“Or perhaps just strung out longer. Sterne is here, as we suspected, pressing his case. The king says it does not please him, but I seem to make him no happier.” He wondered if he should tell Robert about Vasilisa, but he needed to know what he himself thought about that little matter before taking an-other's counsel.
“To tell you the honest truth, Robin, I think this was all a tragic mistake. This diplomacy is proving a dry well, and now I think it was water we never even needed. If we had won the Coweta and the French, what would we have? A thousand more soldiers—maybe. I've been preaching that our real foe are those in the aether, and yet what have I done to attack them? Not a thing.”
“Yet wasn't that what brought you here? The need for such supplies as the French might have?” Robert asked.
“Who knows what they have? Or whether I'll ever be able to use it?”
“Y'couldn't have known.”
“Couldn't I? Where was our intelligence? How could we have known so near nothing about this place?” Franklin asked, exasperation touching his voice.
“Well, there I may be able to help you. I've met up with one of our French brothers.”
“A secret Junto member?”
“Indeed.”
“He is about?”
“No, he's bein’ high cautious. Actually, Penigault introduced us. It's the Du Pratz fellow, who wrote the history of the Natchez. He paid a call whilst you were in chambers. According to him, the king here has plentiful scientific stuff.”
“He did claim to love things scientific,” Franklin mused. “Maybe there is something to bait the hook with. Maybe. And it may be I have some hope of a defense against the malakim as well, or at least some intelligence about these dark engines of