The Watchtower

thoughtfully. “The man I knew in 1602 went by the name Charles Roget—more commonly known as Lightning Hands for his ability to wield lightning.”
    “Wait, Roger Elden told me about a man named Cosimo Ruggieri who conducted experiments with lightning. He took me to the tower that Catherine de Médicis had built for him.”
    “Really?” Will asked, one eyebrow raised. “I didn’t know you had that much time for sightseeing when you were in Paris.”
    I let out an exasperated sigh. “I was waiting for you for over a week! And is that really the point you want to bring up right now? That I spent a night up on a sixteenth-century tower with a man, or that the man might have actually been a four-hundred-year-old evil sorcerer?”
    “The whole night…?” Will began, but then seeing my expression, changed tack. “Okay, I agree. The important thing is whether the man with Dee and Marduk now is Cosimo Ruggieri. Tell me everything this Roger person told you.”
    Ignoring the disdain he had interjected into Roger’s name, I recounted the stories Roger Elden had told me about Cosimo Ruggieri. How Ruggieri had been banished and then forgiven by Catherine de Médicis and then assigned the revenues of an abbey in Brittany.
    “So he could have been the abbot there,” Will said. “I remember thinking at the time that he didn’t look like your average friar.”
    “No, I suppose not. Especially considering that he refused the last rites on his deathbed.” I told him the story of how Ruggieri was dragged through the streets of Paris. Then I told him the rumors that Roger had relayed, about him dragging himself into the catacombs and finding an eternal life that condemned him to aging and suffering over and over again.
    “That sounds worse even than the immortality I chose,” Will replied, yawning. It was almost dawn. He’d need to sleep soon. His eyes snapped open though when he spied a coach on the north road approaching the intersection. “That’s them,” he said. “Whoever the third party is, we need to follow Marduk and find out where he hides. We must destroy him before he grows any stronger.”
    Before I could ask how we would do that, Will passed out. Unable to endure another day closed in the coffinlike interior of the coach, I climbed up next to the driver and told him to follow the other coach. When it was clear I was going to stay outside with him, he sniffed his disapproval and whipped the horses into a jerky trot that nearly sent me toppling from my seat. I caught my companion smirking as I righted myself. He smirked, too, when it started to rain and asked in mock politeness if “Mademoiselle” wouldn’t rather go inside and seek shelter with “Monsieur.” I supposed I could have risked opening the coach door in the murky gray light, but I didn’t trust the driver to stay on the other coach’s trail. Twice when we lost sight of it, he assured me that there was nowhere for it to go. There was only one major road and it led to Rennes.
    Despite his assurances I urged him to go faster, but the horses were clearly tiring and we had to stop in Josselin to let them rest. I paced up and down the cobblestoned street in the rain, impatient to go, and unwilling to let the carriage out of sight. I considered rousing Will and making him switch carriages, but I was afraid that in his weakened state even minutes in this gray daylight would harm him. The driver, dry and cozy in the window seat of a pub with a pint of ale and a pipe, observed my anxiety with amusement. I could see him pointing me out to his new pubmates, who laughed heartily at whatever story he was telling about me.
    Although there was no reason to continue riding on the outside, a perverse urge made me stick to my perch beside the driver all the way to Rennes. We reached the coach inn there a little after dark.
    “Voilà,” my tormenter pronounced, pointing at the black coach bearing Dee’s coat of arms. “What did I tell Mademoiselle? Your quarry has gone to ground here.”
    As soon as Will was awake, we made inquiries at the inn, but we discovered that the three gentlemen who had arrived in the previous coach had hired another one immediately and had left.
    “Did they say where they were going?” Will asked.
    The innkeeper squinted at Will. “One of the men looked much like you, monsieur. A profligate brother, perhaps?”
    Will flinched, but then he nodded stiffly and through gritted teeth told the innkeeper a story about a