Free The Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover Page A

speak of your petty wars as if they matter.’
    ‘They matter to me.’
    ‘There are other wars, sir, greater wars than you know, the consequences of which you cannot begin to imagine.’
    ‘Then I will leave such imaginings to you.’
    ‘If only you would. Yet in your ignorance, you and your masters thrust yourselves into matters that are beyond you in every way. In doing so, you will bring ruin upon the very posterity whose safety you seek to ensure.’
    ‘I am touched by your concern.’
    Now it was the woman’s turn to chuckle. ‘If that were all, I would leave you to your fate, and gladly. But like curious children bearing lit candles into a cellar where gunpowder is stored, thinking to find toys and sweetmeats hidden amid the barrels, your greedy stupidity threatens more than your own lives. This clock will not yield up its secrets to such as you – no, nor to your masters, not even the greatest of them. Believe me, rather than answer your questions, it will punish you for asking them – and it will be a punishment that strikes the guilty and the innocent alike.’
    ‘What sort—’ He stopped himself in time. ‘That is to say, even if this clock were stuffed with gunpowder and primed to explode like a grenado, it would scarcely pose a danger to anyone beyond its immediate vicinity.’
    ‘Were I to explain, you would think me madder than you do already,’ she answered. ‘“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”’
    ‘I am no Horatio, madam; nor, I think, are you Prince Hamlet – though I begin to wonder if you are but mad north-northwest. You speak in riddles and hint at powers beyond mortal ken, yet whether you truly believe these things or say them to play upon my fancy, as if I were some superstitious rustic or smooth-cheeked schoolboy, I cannot tell. But it matters not. I am a man of science. I place my faith in reason. Thus will we unlock the secrets of this clock. Thus will we make use of them in defence of our hard-won liberties. And now’ – he struggled to his feet, keeping his pistol trained upon her and ignoring the sharp, stabbing pain in his thigh, as if his movements had started his wound to bleeding again – ‘as much as I have enjoyed matching wits with you, the hour grows late. I—’
    ‘But you are wounded!’ she interrupted, her pale face turning paler still. ‘Blood has been spilled!’
    ‘Indeed, we have spilled each other’s blood this night.’
    ‘Then it is already too late,’ she said, and, to his astonishment, lowered her pistols. Even more astonishing, a tear rolled down her ivory cheek. Most astonishing of all, at the sight of that glistening track, silvered in moonlight, he felt an answering shiver pass across his heart, and an impulse to comfort her so strong that it took all his will to resist it. ‘But perhaps not,’ she said, wiping the tear away and looking up at him with pleading eyes. ‘There may yet be time to undo what you have unwittingly set in motion, or at least to avert the worst of it. Give me the clock, I beg you. I will take my leave, and no one need be the wiser. You will never see me again, I swear it.’
    And those words, too, flew straight to his heart, echoing in that chamber with a hollow pang. Why should the thought of never seeing her again seem like such a terrible thing? ‘Madam, I cannot. My duty is clear.’
    ‘Then you have doomed us all.’ She put her pistols away – where they went, Quare didn’t see; one second they were in her hands; the next, her hands were empty. She stood with graceful dignity, her eyes fixed on him all the while, full of reproach and disappointment. ‘Would that I had slain you,’ she said with quiet bitterness. ‘Or that you had killed me. Better still if we had never been born. But I see now that there could be no escaping this moment for either of us. From the very beginning, we two were fated to mingle our blood upon this rooftop.’
    As she spoke,