Is your wife mad?” Catherine asked me as Astiza fed a ring of fire around the periphery of the tower.
“Eccentric,” I said, wondering myself. “Smarter than you or me.” Astiza had built a ring of fire on the stone rose, and now smoke and sparks rolled skyward, leaving us slow-roasted on one side and chilled on the other. It was a signal seen for miles, a beacon to anyone approaching.
My wife wiped her brow and addressed our dubious looks. “Heat causes metal to expand. Hot water can be used to crack stones in quarries. Rosenkreutz would recognize fire as one of the elements. Earth, fire, water, and air, all working together.”
“If it doesn’t open, the Invisible College will besiege us up here,” Pasques said.
“We’ll drop you on the baron like a boulder,” I suggested.
“Only after we’ve thrown you like a lance.”
The smoke began to whiten.
“Steam,” Astiza said.
Creaks and groans began to issue from the floor. It seemed to settle slightly and sigh. The incised became more defined, marking the rose from the surrounding stone of the tower. Then there was a whistle that made us jump.
A jet of steam issued from the far side of the tower base like a little geyser, followed by another, and another. Our fire had turned our tower into a teakettle. As the pressure climbed, there was a great clanking and creaking and one end of the rose dipped while the other climbed into the air, a circular section of the tower floor rotating vertically to reveal a shaft. Hot coals cascaded into the pit. The lid stopped to leave a narrow, half-moon entrance on each side of the opening, with just enough room for a human to squeeze and descend.
“The Mansions of the Moon,” Astiza murmured. “They mark time, and this door invites us to the future.”
“You think Rosenkreutz built this door?” Catherine asked.
“It certainly shows the kind of mechanical ingenuity required to maintain an automaton.”
Catherine shouted down orders to her French henchmen to deploy around the castle walls to hold off Richter’s deadly monks. She had a pistol tucked in a sash. Pasques had a powerful blunderbuss, a monstrous shotgun that reminded me of Lady Nahir.
I drew Astiza aside. Our earlier conversation had been interrupted, but I wanted answers before we went below. “Richter is risking a battle with French agents over an object that might not even exist,” I whispered. “He intercepted me in Venice, kidnapped you, and pursues us in winter. His fervor is out of proportion to the stakes. Why is he still after us?”
“We injured his face, Ethan.”
I glanced toward my son, looking down the hole with game curiosity. It made me proud and terrified that he was taking after his father, but it was an occupational necessity. Secret things tend to be in dark places. “Was it an accident?”
“Harry was trying to save me.”
“Save you from what? I thought you were working with Richter—or Fulcanelli—or whoever the hell you thought he was.”
She looked away from me. “When we were in the Golden Lane, they wouldn’t let us go.”
“And Harry threw acid in a man’s face?”
She closed her eyes. “He attacked me.”
“Who attacked you? Auric?”
“Primus—I mean Richter—tried to rape me.”
“What?”
“Ethan, it was a nightmare.” She sighed. “He claimed I’d led him on.”
“Did you?”
“No. No! Of course not. We did nothing. But I was alone, and I thought he was a bishop, and we’d become friends. I needed help. He misinterpreted. It was very confusing.”
My emotions boiled, and not just because this impostor and kidnapper had assaulted my wife. Oh, I was angry, but there was more to it than that. I felt guilty. Hadn’t I been flirtatious with Lady Nahir and, before that, with Catherine Marceau? Didn’t I enjoy sending salacious signals to pretty women during long absences from my wife? Richter hadn’t just attempted rape—he’d unwittingly mocked my own bad behavior.
And it had been left to my son, not yet five, to avenge and protect.
I struggled for words. “I’m so sorry.”
“You weren’t there.”
“Exactly.”
“Ethan, it all happened in a moment. Harry didn’t even know what he was doing. Richter got what he deserved. That should have ended it, but of course it didn’t. And here he comes again.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s find the android. Maybe we can bargain with it to be left alone.”
I looked over the broken tower wall. The riders had disappeared into the trees and were climbing the hill. “No. He wants revenge for his humiliation. He wants to possess you, to regain his pride, and then kill you and Harry so the world will never know the embarrassment of how he lost his face.”
“Then we ally with Catherine and Pasques. Numbers are our only hope.”
It had grown so dark that our faces were masked. “Yes,” I said. “Our only hope. You go first.” She scooped up Harry and started. “Unless there’s another ending,” I whispered, too quiet for her to hear.
The others started down iron rungs in the shaft that led into the earth, first Catherine, then Astiza, with Harry in one arm, and Pasques last, Gideon’s rope looped over his vast shoulder. He called impatiently. “Hurry, American.”
“Start without me, Pasques.”
“What?”
“I have something to settle with Baron Richter.”
“Pasques, come!” I heard Catherine call from somewhere below.
“Take care of them, policeman.” And with the sword of Roland slung across my back, I leaped across the broken wall and clambered back down the outside of the basalt pinnacle to kill Wolf Richter.
And by so doing, expunge some of my worst guilt for too often choosing adventure and pride before my own family, leaving them alone.