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to gain his feet, as another of their attackers spied him and started forward.

    A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
    Near his ear, Frisk howled, leapt up, and hurled himself like a thunderbolt at the blue-eyed man. The fellow scarcely got his blade up before steel dissected the hand that held his weapon, and he clutched at the stump, eyes wide with disbelief.
    Frisk did not even pause but swept past him, launching the edge of his saber at the burly fellow approaching behind. The Muscovite cried out and swiped wildly with his sword; Frisk beat the blade away as if it were a toy wielded by a child and pressed on. The fellow fell back, grunting, cut viciously at the Swede’s head; but Frisk wasn’t there, was instead skipping to the side, bolt upright, sword flicking like a snake’s tongue despite his shirt and waistcoat being drenched in his own blood.
    And then the larger man was down, wrapped around his own belly and its deep new navel.
    In the ten or twelve seconds this took, Ben struggled to his feet. All but one of their foes had fallen, and the fifth vanished around the corner as Ben watched.
    Robert reappeared, rushing toward him.
    “Ben? Are you injured?” he shouted.
    That hadn’t even occurred to him yet, though his chest throbbed as if a horse had stepped on it. He looked down, fearing to see a hole gaping in his breast, but there was nothing save a dark scorch on his waistcoat, and the aegis key dangling loose, apparently jogged out of his pocket by the concussion.
    “It would appear not,” he gasped. “But Frisk…”
    Frisk was kneeling by the now-one-handed man, wrapping his gasping foe’s wrist with a cloth. “Here is one to make some explanations,” he said grimly.
    “You need a surgeon,” Ben grunted. “Your shoulder—”
    “Is not as bad as it looks,” Frisk asserted, turning back to them. “But if you have a surgeon handy—”

    A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
    “Get him to the castle,” Robert said. “I’ll watch these. Send back the guard.”
    Ben nodded. “Come along, then, Captain Frisk. You’ll get your recommendation sooner than you thought.”
    “I am in your debt, sir,” Frisk replied.
    Ben stared at him, unbelieving, and then laughed.
    Newton’s eyes flicked around the room nervously, refusing to actually settle on Ben, a sure sign that the great philosopher was agitated. “Were you injured, dear boy?” he asked.
    “No, sir. Bruised is all.”
    “Good. I am relieved to hear it. I would be— I would be unhappy if anything happened to you.”
    “I’m sorry to have worried you.”
    “Worried? What cause had I to worry?” Newton’s voice was suddenly a bit sharper, his eyes focusing on Ben.
    “Sir?”
    “What cause had I to worry? What baffles me is how a gang of assassins roamed so freely here in Hradcany, where the emperor’s guard patrols in such numbers.” His brow creased in a frown. “You were in Hradcany, weren’t you?”
    “Ah—no, sir.”
    “In Kleinseit, then? You were perhaps in Kleinseit, acquiring the books I asked you to borrow from the library at the Wallenstein Palace?”
    “Umm—no, not in Kleinseit.”
    Newton nodded grimly. His face was a young one, thin lipped, dimple chinned A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
    —he could have been twenty, if his eyes did not give it the lie. They seemed subtly polished— almost eroded—by some eighty years of vision, jewels handled by a million fingers, and yet still luminescent with passion. “Well, look here,” he grated, his earlier concern suddenly fled, “this is passing—
    passing odd, Mr. Franklin, for though you seem to have been set upon by ruffians, this does not seem to have happened in Hradcany or Kleinseit. Now in that part I am not surprised, for in these two sections of town the guard is most efficient and well staffed, and thieves and murderers keep well away.
    Now if you had been attacked in Old Town or New Town or Judenstadt, that would be no surprise, lawless as they are. And yet I am entirely certain that you