"Send in my clothier also. This idiot has ruined my robes."
Kesley allowed himself to be tied to a chair.
"You're a bold fool," the big man said, coming over to glower down at Kesley. He knotted his fingers in his thick, tangled dark beard, and smiled, baring stained yellow teeth. Kesley met the noble's gaze evenly.
The deep eyes were set in a network of fine wrinkles. They were not the eyes of an ordinary man. They were heavy with the shadow of a hundred thousand days gone by, and infinities of days to come. Kesley realized that the man before him was no mere noble. He could only be Don Miguel, Duke of South America.
An Immortal.
IV
Kesley watched Miguel pace uneasily back and forth. The room he had blundered into was evidently one of the Ducal offices; a broad desk at the back was littered with a great many official-looking papers, and on one wall hung a glossy shield bearing Miguel's coat of arms.
Suddenly Miguel turned. "Where are you from?" he asked. His voice was deep, resonant, commanding.
"Iowa Province. I was a farmer."
"Oh? Then what might you be doing in my lands?"
Kesley saw that he had blundered. Farmers, normally, did not take pleasure jaunts to South America. He tried to repair the damage. "I was on a buying tour. I was down here for cattle, and grain, and—"
Miguel chuckled. "Enough, please. One does not have to be an Immortal to see through your lies." He pulled out a chair and sprawled his big form down. Smiling strangely, he said, "You can speak the truth. Why are you here?"
"I—I—" Kesley's face reddened. He realized that he had no rational answer to give. He was here only because van Alen had led him here—and van Alen was dead or wounded now, far to the south.
Miguel sighed. "You assassins are all alike. At the moment of capture, you lose the sacred fire." Swiftly he leaned over and undid Kesley's bonds.
"There. You are free. Kill me, now. We're alone; this is your chance!"
Miguel slipped an ornamented stiletto from his sash and handed it to Kesley. Opening his cloak, the Duke fumbled with buttons and pulled the cloth aside, baring a broad, muscular chest covered with graying hair. "Here! Plunge the dagger in—now!"
Kesley weighed the stiletto in his hand, balancing the haft on his palm, fingering the weapon's keen point and well-honed blade. Miguel waited patiently. One corner of the Duke's wide mouth was drawn up in a cold smile; the other sagged almost uncontrollably into a drooping sneer.
"Well?"
Kesley feinted with the stiletto and flicked it through the air past Miguel's head and into the center of the arms-bearing shield on the wall. The Duke, who had not so much as blinked, laughed heartily.
"A good man with a knife! A good man indeed." Serious again, he said, "But you could have killed me. Why didn't you?"
"Kill an Immortal?" Kesley replied listlessly. "I'd sooner try to harness a whirlwind. How could I possibly kill you?"
"By plunging the knife into my heart," Miguel said. "You obviously fail to understand the true nature of our immortality."
"Which is?"
"Cell regeneration. Gradual rebuilding and replacement of decayed cells. We remain as we are because the decays of age are counteracted as rapidly as they occur. There are no organic defects to plague us. This process, however, does not guard against a knife in the heart, or a slit throat, or a bullet in the back."
"And yet you gave the knife to me. Why?"
"I knew you wouldn't use it," Miguel said. "You short-lived ones are so terribly easy to understand. Only...."
The Duke's voice trailed off. "Onlywhat?" Kesley prodded after a moment.
"Only nothing," Miguel said. He rose. "Come upstairs with me, young one, to my office. I am a slave to my duties ... more thoroughly enslaved than the basest serf on my lands."
Miguel touched a panel in the wall and it slid back, revealing what looked to Kesley like an adjoining room.
"My private elevator," Miguel explained. "Come."
The elevator rose silently. When it stopped, the door slid open and Kesley found himself in an even vaster room, almost completely lined with books on one wall from floor to ceiling. Another wall was bright with paintings; on a third, strange lights flickered on a wide board, and glowing above their multicolored glitter were eight rectangular gray screens.
Seeming to forget Kesley, Miguel strode across the room and seated himself in an imposing chair facing the screens. He covered the flashing red light with his palm. The upper-most of the screens became illuminated. Kesley gasped as the face of a man grew visible.
The man in the screen gesticulated humbly. "Your blessing, sire. Mendoza of Quito reporting, Don Miguel."
"Speak, Mendoza." Miguel's tone was regally impatient. "It has not rained here for sixteen days, sire," Mendoza said anxiously. "The people are discontented. Crops are dying, and—"
"Enough." Miguel flipped a switch and a second screen came to life. "Luis, take care of this fool from Quito, and explain to him that we have no control over the weather. Then transfer all these other calls to your own line. I'll be busy for the next fifteen minutes."
The screen went blank; the flickering lights died away.
"What is that thing?" Kesley asked.
"Closed-screen television. I use it to keep in contact with my governors in the various provinces."
Miguel took a seat behind a desk; this one, like the other downstairs, heaped high with papers. He lowered his great, bearlike head between his hands and stared at Kesley for what must have been more than a minute. Finally he said, "I offered you a chance to kill me. You declined it."
"Perhaps if I got the chance again, I'd act differently," Kesley said.
"Perhaps. But the chance comes but once. I am not yet tired of life ... I think." The Duke's eyes drooped wearily. They seemed to be staring backward into yesterday—and ahead at the burden of an endless tomorrow. "Four hundred years is many years, though. Are you married, young man?"
Startled, Kesley said: "Huh—no. No, not yet."
"I have been married thirty-six—no, forty-one times. The longest was the first: twenty-six years. We were both thirty when we met. When she died, she was fifty-six; I was still thirty. I was just finding out, then."
Miguel toyed with a sparkling, many-faceted gem on his desk. "Most of the other marriages were short ones.... I couldn't bear to watch them grow old. Now I do not marry at all."
"Do you have children?" Kesley asked.
Miguel flinched as if struck. His wide lips tightened in anger; then his face softened again. "The gene is recessive," he said quietly. "And lethal in early childhood, if not immediately after birth. My dynasties have been short-lived. I have had eight children; seven lived less than a year. The eighth reached the age of nine."
He laughed hollowly. "Out of eternal life, nothing but death. No, I have no children, young one."
"I—see," Kesley said. He peered closely at the Immortal, feeling a strange flow of pity for the timeless man. Immortality was a costly gift, he saw. Suddenly, Kesley wondered how many other Immortals there had been beside the Twelve—Immortals who, once they realized the terrible nature of their breed, had taken their own lives. More than one, he thought.
And how often did Miguel himself consider suicide? Had he had some hidden protection against Kesley's knife, moments ago downstairs, or had the Duke been half-hoping the blade would strike true?
Perhaps.
"Why do you keep me here?" Kesley asked.
Miguel looked up slowly. His eyes, deep and piercing, bored into Kesley's. "You amuse me," Miguel said. "When one is more than four centuries old, one is hard put to find amusement. I am amused by the possibility that you might strike me dead at any moment."
"It's really very funny," Kesley said.
"I'm amused by the fact that you're not afraid of me. Awed, yes, but not servile. How many times a day do you think I hear that hateful word 'Sire'?Sire!Me, who has sired eight dead babes and nothing more."
Kesley looked away, embarrassed. "Sire also means ruler," he pointed out in a muffled voice.
"That, too," Miguel said. "I rule, and it is my life to rule. I have ruled four hundred years, and I will rule four thousand more—or four thousand thousand, or four million. But I can never stop ruling. It is a burden I can never put down. Who would fill the vacuum I would leave?"
"There were rulers before the Twelve Dukes."
"And they destroyed the world! Destroyed it—and in so doing, broughtusinto being. No, stranger, my Dukedom I can never put down. But it wearies me to make always the petty decisions, to govern the lives of petty—"
"Why are you telling me all this?" Kesley burst out.
"Mere amusement," Miguel said evenly. "I enjoy talking to you. What is your name?"
"Dale Kesley."
"Dale Kesley," Miguel repeated. "A fine North American name, square-cut and undistinguished. I like it."
The Duke gestured toward a communicator-tube on his desk. "Bring that to me."
Shrugging, Kesley handed him the tube. Miguel switched it on. "Send Archbishop Santana here at once," he barked, and cut the channel.
He glanced at Kesley. "The Archbishop will swear you to my service, Dale Kesley."
"But I'm a vassal of Duke Winslow," Kesley protested.
Miguel chuckled heartily. "A vassal of Duke Winslow," he mimicked. "Vassal, indeed. You turn down my offer? You throw Duke Winslow in my face?"
"An oath is an oath, Don Miguel."
"Oaths? Who are you to talk of oaths? You're nothing but a paid assassin—don't think I haven't overlooked that."
Kesley started to protest, but saw there was nothing to be gained by arguing. Miguel would never believe him.
"His Holiness Archbishop Santana," the wall-announcer said.
The door slid open and the Archbishop entered. As the plump figure waddled into the room, Kesley grinned in recognition. The Archbishop was the fat man in velvet robes whom he had bowled over in his mad flight downstairs.
Now the priest wore a simple black surplice and mitred hat and carried the crook symbolic of his office. He was a small, rotund man with dark olive skin and a thin, sharply-hooked nose that seemed highly misplaced in his otherwise plumply rounded countenance. He paused at the door, smiling benignly, and made the sign of the cross with two swift motions in the air.
"Come on in, Santana," Miguel ordered.
The priest approached Miguel and bowed deeply, then glanced at Kesley. Suspicion was evident on his smoothly-shaven face.
"This is Dale Kesley of North America," Miguel said.
"We have met," the priest said unctuously. "This young man knocked me down while fleeing from your guards, sire."
Kesley grinned imperceptibly, catching Miguel's faint, involuntary wince at thesire. "It was an accident, Father. I was fleeing hastily; I didn't see you."
"Time wastes," Miguel said. "Santana, swear this young man quickly into my service. I have work for him."
The priest began to raise his crook, but Kesley shook his head. "No, Don Miguel. I told you I'm a vassal of Duke Winslow."
Miguel smiled. "But Duke Winslow's oath is no longer binding upon his vassals, you know."
"I didn't know. When did this happen?"
"It hasn't, yet. But it will shortly—when Duke Winslow is assassinated."
"But—when—"
"Soon," Miguel said. His cold smile was painful to watch. "And your hand," the Immortal continued, "will be the one that strikes him down."
"You're crazy," Kesley said shortly.
Miguel paled, and Santana crossed himself rapidly several times.
"You don't talk like that to your Duke," the Archbishop said.
"MyDuke? But—"
Don Miguel regained his composure and put one hand on Kesley's shoulder. "I ask you to join me and perform this service. I am prepared to pay well for it."
"The price?"
"My daughter," Miguel said. "Kill Winslow, and she's yours."
"Yourdaughter? But I thought—"
"Adopteddaughter," Miguel said smoothly. "My ward. The girl is but twenty-two, and lovely. Kill Winslow, and she's yours."
Kesley felt perspiration dripping down his body. Kill Duke Winslow? Upset the balance of the Twelve Empires, break the fragile harmony on which the world depended? It was impossible!
But—
He realized suddenly that he was a totally free agent, detached and uninvolved. Van Alen had led him forth from Iowa Province, and van Alen was dead. He owed nothing to van Alen, nothing to Iowa.
He stood alone, unknown and unwanted in the world of the Twelve Empires, able to shape his own destinies. And Miguel was offering him a title, a home, an allegiance, at the cost of an assassination.
Well, why not?he asked himself.My hand is free. Why not strike down a Duke?
He moistened his lips. "I'll consider it," he said. "But first—let me see the girl."
Alone, waiting for Miguel to return, Kesley tried to think.
Kill Winslow?
Kill a Duke—an Immortal?
The idea seemed incredible, almost obscene. It was like saying, "Snuff out a star," or, "Destroy a world." The Dukes were centers of their universes, and one did not kill them.
Yet—
Kesley's self-searching in the past few minutes had revealed one jarring fact: he did not have the qualms he had supposed he would have. Assassinating Winslow would not be star-snuffing; he knew he could do it as casually as van Alen had blasted the blue wolf, back in Iowa Province.
He knew he should be quaking at the thought of murdering his own Duke, but the necessary quaking refused to come.
What's wrong with me?he asked himself desperately.Why am I different?
A man was supposed to feel loyalty to his Duke. Kesley did not.Why?
He had had a chance to kill Miguel. Perhaps that had all been illusion; perhaps he would have been struck down by an invisible guard the moment the knife's tip approached the Immortal's flesh. Perhaps not. He had drawn back, only because he had nothing to gain by killing the Duke.
And now he was asked to kill another.Dale Kesley, Hired Assassin. We Kill Dukes.He grinned mirthlessly.
The faint hum of the sliding panel sounded behind him. He turned.
"Have you reached any decision yet?" Miguel asked, stepping into the room.
"You know what I'm waiting to see," Kesley said.
"Of course."
Miguel beckoned to someone standing beyond the panel. "My daughter," he said to Kesley. "The Lady Narella."
No one appeared. Miguel scowled and reached through the open panel. He yanked—and The Lady Narella appeared.
"Oh," Kesley said.
Narella was quite a woman.
She stood with her hands on her hips, smoky, violet-hued eyes blazing in defiance of Kesley and even of Miguel. She was making it clear that she was no one's pawn, not to be bandied about.
Narella wore an ermine wrap, and a low-cut tunic that clung tightly to her high breasts and lean form. She was a tall girl with wide hips and shoulders. Dark hair fell loosely about her face; she wore the diamond-encrusted tiara of a Ducal Princess, and her full lips were bright with a fluorescing cosmetic of some sort. Here and there—on her forehead above the left eyebrow, on her right cheek, on the creamy flesh where the base of her throat swelled into rising breasts—she wore a scintillating dab of brightness, a dot of some chemical that glittered radiantly from its own inner light.
Kesley had never seen a royal woman before. Strangely, or not so strangely, he felt all the reverence for her that he had failed to feel in the presence of the Immortal alone. Had Miguel not been there, he probably would have knelt despite himself and begged to kiss the tip of her cloak.
"Is this the man, sire?" she asked. Her voice was a fit complement to her body, deep and warm, throbbing and throaty.
"It is," Miguel said. "Dale Kesley—the Lady Narella."
"Hello," she said coldly.
A muscle quivered in Kesley's cheek. He nodded curtly to the girl. "Hello."
She ignored him and turned to Miguel. "Is this the man to whom you're selling me, sire?"
Miguel grimaced. "You wound me, girl. I'll leave the two of you together to talk."
"No!" she said imperiously, but it was too late. Miguel, with an enigmatic smile, had bowed and stepped backward into the waiting elevator. The panel slid shut. The wall was once again unbroken.
Slowly, she turned to face Kesley. "I won't have any part of this! I don't belong to Miguel! He can't give me away like this—to acommoner!"
Kesley smiled. "Your nostrils flare very nicely when you're angry, milady."
She whirled and stalked across the room, where she stood, her back to him. Kesley grinned amiably. This display of temper was enjoyable. The girl had spirit. Kesley liked that.
"Miguel called you hisdaughter," he said loudly. "How come? That's impossible, of course."
"How do you know?" she snapped, turning to face him. Her dark eyes glittered angrily. "I'm Miguel's daughter. Who says I'm not?"
"Miguel. He told me you were adopted. He told me Immortals were sterile, that their children didn't survive. Whose daughter are you?"
"What is it to you?"
Kesley shrugged. "Curiosity, I guess. You're quite lovely, you know."
She said nothing.
"You're supposed to thank people when they compliment you, milady. It's hardly polite to—"
"Quiet!" She crossed the room and faced him across a desk. At close range her faint perfume reached Kesley's nostrils; it was a delightful odor. The violet of her eyes, he saw, was flecked lightly with gold. "Why has Miguel promised me to you?"
"He wants me to carry out a job—an assassination. You're the price."
"Blunt, aren't you?"
"Would you rather have me lie?"
"No," she said, after a moment's thought. She threw back her shoulders and glared defiantly at him. "Well, do I pass your inspection? Am I fit for you?"
Kesley made no answer. Instead, he circled deftly around the desk, drew her close, pulled her mouth up to his. He kissed her warmly without eliciting any response. She remained passive in his arms, as if she were a particularly lovely statue rather than a living woman.
He released her. "Are you through?" she asked acidly.
"You pass the test," he said. Then he shook his head tiredly. "No. This is insane. Narella, who are you?"
Apparently his sudden sincerity, after the romantic pretense of the minutes before, told upon her. "My father was a court singer in Chicago, court poet to Duke Winslow. I was raised at the court. Four years ago, my father disappeared. Then Duke Winslow gave me to Miguel as a wife, but Miguel didn't want any wives. He adopted me instead. I've lived here ever since, as his daughter. As for my father, I suppose he's dead. He was blind, and—"
"Blind?" Kesley snapped instantly out of his mood of weariness as if a bolt of electricity had seared through him. "Did you say your father was a blind court singer?"
"Yes," she said.
Words came from nowhere and rumbled in Kesley's mind, words spoken on an Iowa farm in the deep, booming voice of van Alen the Antarctican:
"We have the treasure, now; we lack only the key to the box. Daveen the Singer, the blind man. The search for him continues."
Slowly Kesley raised his head. He blinked a little as his eyes encountered the flashing glitter of the girl's jewelry; then he looked at her eyes and at the lips whose cosmetic fluorescence remained in neat array despite his kiss. "Your father's name—was it Daveen?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes! But how do you know?"
"I don't. It's a name I've heard mentioned, a name that has something to do with me. Only ... have you ever seen me before?"
"I think so," she said slowly. "But I don't remember it. Were you ever at the court of Duke Winslow?"
"Never. But I recall you from somewhere. I—"
Dizzily, he looked away as a burst of sudden pain flooded his mind. He shuddered and felt sick.
"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.
"I—don't know."
"You look ill. You've gone completely pale." She put her arms around him as if to steady him, and her warmth sustained him through the moment of terror that had overtaken him. It was as if he had struck some particularly sensitive nerve, and the resonances were carrying agony through his body.
When it was over, he mopped the beads of cold sweat from his forehead. He looked up at her and saw that her glacial remoteness had been replaced by a sort of feminine warmth, almost a maternal solicitude.
"Would you like to find your father again?" he asked in a low voice.
She nodded.
"So would I. I don't know why, but I feel Daveen holds the key to the hidden areas of my life, the inconsistencies. I'd like to find him for myself. And for you."
"Would you?"
"First ask,could you? Your father may be dead, for all I know." He took her hand. "Narella—you don't want to stay here with Miguel?"
"No," she said.
"Good. Listen carefully. Does Miguel have big ears?"
She frowned. "I don't understand."
"Never mind. Come here."
She came close and he pulled her up against him. This time her lips rose willingly for the kiss, but he brushed her pale cheek instead and let his mouth graze lightly along her face until it reached the tip of her earlobe. "Does Miguel have this room wired for sound?" he whispered. "Can he hear what we say?"
She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Probably," she whispered back.
"That's what I thought. Stay close to me, then, and hear what I have to say. If he's watching he'll think we're making love."
"Go ahead," she said.
"I'm going to accept Miguel's commission and leave here to assassinate Duke Winslow, as ordered."
She gasped. "Assassinate—"
"That's the terms of our agreement," he said. "One Duke more or less doesn't matter to me. I'll go to Winslow's court and try to find out what happened to your father. Somehow I'll give Winslow what's due him. Then I'll return here and claim you as Miguel's agreed, and we'll go looking for your father together. If you're willing, give me a kiss."
She hesitated for just a moment, then lifted his face from her ear. Their eyes met. She was pale, he saw, and frightened; the aloof haughtiness of the court lady had been almost completely replaced by an appealing little-girl terror.
He looked past her to the brooding eyes of Don Miguel glowering down at him from the row of paintings on the wall.After Winslow—Miguel, he thought with sudden savagery. The unprovoked thought surprised him.
"Very well," she murmured. She touched her lips lightly to his, and then gave herself to him with a sort of desperate abandon that astonished Kesley.
After a moment or two, he slipped from her grasp and looked around the room, wondering if he'd find a concealed television camera or something similar. There was nothing. The battery of screens and lights on the far wall seemed dead, as they had been since Miguel had shut them off.
Finally he cupped his hands. "Miguel!"
The Duke reappeared almost instantly, followed closely by the chubby form of Archbishop Santana. The Archbishop once again performed the sign of the cross piously as he entered.
"Well?" Miguel asked.
"State your terms once again," said Kesley.
Miguel frowned. "The room is crowded."
"I know, sire. Witnesses may be in order."
"Very well," Miguel said wearily. "In return for services to be rendered, I do promise the hand of my ward, the Lady Narella, to Dale Kesley of my vassalage."
"When?"
"Upon his return from the successful completion of his endeavors in my behalf."
"Said endeavors being?" Kesley prodded mercilessly.
"The elimination of Duke Winslow of North America," Miguel said. "His death by any means whatsoever."
"All right," Kesley said. He glanced from Miguel to the Archbishop—who seemed somewhat pale beneath his olive skin—to Narella. "Now that terms have been stated, we can talk business. Miguel, what assurance do I have that I'll get the girl when I come back?"
"An Immortal is good to his word," the Duke said gruffly. "You have a witness in the person of the Archbishop."
"Surely you will not require the Duke to swear an oath?" Santana exclaimed in a shocked voice. "My presence will certify—as if certification were necessary—that—"
"Enough, padre," Kesley said. There was nothing to be won by forcing Miguel into an oath; he had already given his word as an Immortal, and if he would break that, it was reasonable to suspect that no other oath would bind him.
He looked at the girl again.Daveen's daughter, he thought. He wondered what tangled relationship of cause and effect had brought him to this place at this time, and where van Alen, who had set the whole chain of events in motion, was now.
In a month's time Kesley had been transformed from an ignorant Iowa farmer into a killer of Dukes and a wooer of noble ladies. It was a strange progress, but it was hopeless, Kesley thought, to try to account for the vagaries of fate.
"Will you accept and enter my vassalage?" Miguel asked.
Kesley met the Immortal's gaze squarely and this time, it seemed to him, it was those dark, four-hundred-year-old eyes that gave ground instead of his own.
"I accept," he said.
He forced himself to kneel and kiss the golden hem of Don Miguel's jeweled cloak.
V
The ducal capital of Chicago sprawled in a lazy ring on the banks of Lake Michigan, in Illinois Province. As Dale Kesley and his small retinue waited outside the city's walls before requesting admission, the thought occurred to him once again that the world's cities were similar. As he looked at Chicago, it seemed to him that he might never really have left Buenos Aires.
Duke Winslow's palace, visible high in the background overlooking the calm lake, might have been an exact replica of Don Miguel's, except that its flat walls were hewn from broad slabs of flesh-red feldspar instead of spun, as Miguel's were, from shimmering polyethylene. In the stagnant, late-August air, the sun's rays hit the palace walls weakly, giving them an oily glare that Kesley found displeasing. But still he preferred the natural blockiness of the stone to the consistent slickness of the plastic that formed the walls of Miguel's palace. Polyethylene walls were the products of controlled hard radiation and, controlled or no, Kesley, like all men, found the concept of radiation repugnant. It jarred against ingrained taboos.
His eye, becoming city-familiar now, began to detect other differences between Winslow's capital and Miguel's. The guards posted in Chicago's outer walls lacked the tense urgency of the small brown men who protected Buenos Aires; they stared outward with a sleepy complacency that seemed to characterize the entire city and possibly, Kesley admitted, the entire North American Empire. Here in the north, there was none of the crackling atmosphere of tension that seemed to prevail in Buenos Aires.
Kesley's horse, a firm-fleshed black thoroughbred of the Old Kind, furnished by Miguel and transported with finicking care from South America, pawed impatiently at the layer of fine ash that covered the ground outside the city, and snorted. Kesley steadied the animal with soothing pressures of his calves and thighs; the horse detected the signals and subsided.
"Shall we go in?" Kesley asked.
"Why not?" came the reply from his left. Kesley glanced over at the rider, Archbishop Santana. "We are here, and the time is proper," the priest said.
Kesley turned in the saddle to gesture at his six men. They rode behind at a respectful distance, six well-muscled members of Miguel's guard, resplendent in their imperial blue shorts and flashing yellow jackets. Kesley urged his horse forward; Santana, a surprisingly good horseman despite his unathletic physique, did the same, and the six guards followed. They advanced to the wall.
A toll-keeper waited there, a dried old man in Ducal uniform seated beside an immense tollbox ornamented with Duke Winslow's arms. Kesley reined in before him and drew out a jangling leather pouch.
The toll-keeper's lips moved silently as he counted the party. "Eight dollars," he said.
"Por cierto." Kesley leaned far to the right and handed the man the pouch. "Eight dollars of that is for toll,amigo."
Frowning, the old man undid the drawstrings, emptying the contents of the pouch into his wrinkled palm. Eight tiny golden dollars rolled out, followed by a massive imperial doubloon of Miguel's coinage. A faint blink was the only acknowledgement the toll-keeper showed; nodding curtly, he dropped the eight dollars in the till, pocketed the doubloon as if by divine right, and gestured casually within with a quick toss of his head.
As Kesley and his party proceeded through the heavy gate, Kesley grinned quietly to himself. He wished van Alen could have seen the strange metamorphosis of his one-time protege: here he was, clad in the lustrous velvet robes of a Knight of the Empire of South America, riding a full-blooded, spirited, Old-Kind horse instead of a swaybacked, scaly old mutant, and distributing largesse with the natural air of the high-born.
He entered the city proper at a slow canter, the Archbishop at his side, his men behind. The streets were crowded. Chicago, built on the very ashes of the Old City of that name, was the largest city of Duke Winslow's territories, home to some three hundred thousand souls. Kesley saw eyes brighten at the sight of his magnificent horse; men in the streets cleared back, giving way, as the South American party entered.
"We should find an inn first of all," the Archbishop advised. "Tomorrow, you and I will try to seek audience with the Duke."
Kesley shook his head. "We announce ourselves to the Duke at once; we tell him we'll have an audience tomorrow. None of this begging for an appointment."
Santana shrugged. "As you wish,Señor Ramon." The sudden, hard, sardonic inflection in the Archbishop's purring voice mocked the false title Miguel had bestowed on Kesley for the purpose of the journey.
Kesley rode silently on, brooding over his mission. He had agreed lightly enough, back in Buenos Aires, to the assassination of Winslow, but now that he actually was in Winslow's own capital, with the rosy bulk of the Ducal Palace towering ahead, he wondered how he could have acceded so casually to so dangerous and so terrible a mission.
The looming palace ahead was the nerve-center of a continent, and one man—one man—controlled the multitude of ganglia. The entire vast spread of North America, from the dismal radiation-roasted Eastern seaboard to the broad plains of the Middle-West farming country to the open, relatively unscathed lands of the far West, depended for its organization on Chicago and on Chicago's Duke.
For the first time, Kesley realized the immensity of the confusion that would result when he struck down Winslow. He had no motive for the crime, either; it would be a sheerly gratuitous act, performed as a gesture of disengagement and nothing more.
But what could Miguel's motive in upsetting the balance of the world possibly be? Surely, Kesley thought, the South American Duke knew what would happen once Winslow was removed. The taut framework of North American life would collapse inward on itself like a puffball that had discharged its dusty cloud of spores.
Who would profit? Miguel? Were assassins now drawing near the Ducal Palaces of Stockholm, of Johannesburg, of Canberra, readying themselves to rid the world of all Dukes but Miguel at one bold stroke? If so, why? Did Miguel want the crushing responsibility of the entire globe's governance strapped to his shoulders for all eternity?
It seemed unlikely. Kesley thought of the Immortal's deep, weary eyes, and of the moment of weakness when Miguel had let his heavy head sink between his hands. No, Miguel had some other motive.
Amusement, perhaps.
Kesley nodded. That was it: amusement. Having long since exhausted the pleasures of his power, having tasted everything human life had to offer, the timeless man was searching desperately for a relief from boredom.
For that reason he had bared his chest to Kesley's knife and, perhaps, he had not cared whether Kesley struck or not. For the same reason, he had chosen Kesley at random to remove Winslow, to upset the balance, tochange things.
Kesley shuddered. What a nightmare an Immortal's life must be, he thought, once the first few centuries had passed.
Later, Kesley rode back from the palace with a little less lordliness than he had had going forth.
"That major-domo had nerve," he remarked mournfully, as the little band of South Americans trotted through the broad palace approaches toward the gate leading back into the city. "An appointment next week! Who does Winslow think he is? And what does he think of Miguel, if he treats his ambassadors this way?"
"Peace, son," the Archbishop said. "Be philosophical. Duke Winslow is a busy man and a proud one. I warned you this would happen."
"But we'reambassadors!"
"Exactly so. Had we been ragamuffins we would have had a better chance of an immediate audience." Santana shook his head. "You fail to see that Winslow is deliberately humbling us to stress his own superiority over Miguel."
"I hadn't thought of it that way," Kesley admitted. "Of course. He was just telling us to stand outside and wait around until he was ready to let us kiss the Ducal robe."
"Precisely. And our course now is simple. We find lodging, and we allow a week to pass. Then, Winslow will see us. And then, my friend, the time will come for you to carry out our Duke's command."
"I know."
Kesley felt himself perspiring heavily beneath his ambassadorial robes, and not entirely because of the humid air. He knew—and Santana as well, evidently—that he had no plan for slaying Winslow. He was counting on some random twitch of the Immortal's psychology to put the Duke in his power. But would Winslow, as had Miguel, bare his chest willingly to the blade?
Probably not, Kesley thought balefully. From what he had already deduced of the workings of the Immortal mind, it was hardly likely that any two Dukes would share a behavioral pattern. And that left Kesley in an awkward position.
"A week is a long time," Kesley said, as they rode through the gates. The double doors clanged shut behind them, sealing off Winslow's palace from the city. "I'll be ready when the time comes, padre."
"I hope so. I will pray for your soul," the priest intoned.
"Fine," Kesley said savagely. "Pray for me sincerely, father.Pater noster—"
"Don't mock what you don't understand," Santana said. He crossed himself fervently. "Your soul is in danger,SeñorRamon."
"Mysoul? What about yours, you old windbag?"
Santana squirmed in the saddle, faced Kesley. The plump priest's sad eyes gazed mournfully into Kesley's. "My soul?" Santana repeated. "My soul is long since forfeit, but I pray constantly for my salvation."
Kesley reddened. "What do you mean by—"
He cut himself off in mid-sentence and pointed to the left. "What'sthat?" he asked hoarsely. "Mutant?"
"Yes," the Archbishop said. "There are many of them in Chicago. I think he plans to make trouble; be ready to defend yourself."
The creature was coming toward them out of a jumble of clumsily-thatched huts strung in a wobbly circle around a gullied heap of slag at the extreme left side of the road. It was tall—nearly seven feet, Kesley estimated—with elongated spidery limbs and a bloated, almost hydrocephaloid skull, devoid of hair. The mutant wore only a rag twisted carelessly about its middle; the body thus revealed was grotesquely piebald in color, blotched and spotted, the purpling skin lying loosely and peeling away in great leprous flakes.
Kesley had seen mutants before: mutant horses, mutant wolves, other products of ravaged genes, but he had never before been this close to ahumansport, other than Miguel. Miguel was human in all physical aspects save his life span; the creature shambling toward them now could be called "human" only by the loosest of definitions.
As the mutant approached, a musty odor of decay drifted before him. Kesley shuddered involuntarily.
Once, he knew, the cities of the world had been populated by almost as many mutants as normals. That had been in the days immediately after the great blast, before the Dukes had taken command of the world.
But most of these mutants had been sterile, carrying, like the Dukes, lethal genes. Others carried recessive characteristics only. Gradually, through the centuries, the mutant population had died out and dwindled away into scattered groups here and there in the biggest cities—and, word was, there was one city somewhere in Illinois populated only by mutants.
This one was blind, Kesley saw now, but it moved with unerring accuracy.
"Archbishop Santana!" the creature called, in a hoarse croak of a voice. "Wait for me, Archbishop!"
"How does he know you?" Kesley asked.
"Some of them have strange powers," Santana whispered. He nervously undid the crucifix that hung from the breast of his surplice and held it before him, as if to ward off the Devil.
The mutant merely chuckled. "Put away your toy, Archbishop. I don't frighten so easily."
"Stay back," Kesley snapped. "Keep away from us." To Santana he said, "Let's get out of here. Spur your horse and let's go.
"No. Let's hear him out."
The mutant stationed himself directly in their path and pointed a twisted, lumpy forefinger at Santana. "Behold the man of God," he croaked hoarsely. "Ecce homo!"
"What do you want?" the Archbishop demanded. Kesley saw that Santana was sheet-white beneath his outward duskiness.
"I want nothing. I merely came out here to laugh at the Archbishop of God who has come to Chicago on a mission ofmurder!"
Kesley stiffened in the saddle, but Santana caught his arm just as he was about to go for his gun. "What is this talk of murder?" Santana demanded.
Late afternoon clouds were dropping over the city now, and a cool wind came sweeping in from the lake. Kesley shivered as the mutant grinned, baring scraggly stumps of yellow teeth.
"Murder? Did I say murder? But there will be no murder, milord. Merely betrayal—and betrayal again."
That night, in the rooms they had taken near the city's central marketplace, the image of the mutant haunted Kesley, imposing itself before his eyes with demonic insistence.
Betrayal? No murder? The paradoxes and cloaked ambiguities the grotesque creature had uttered ground into Kesley's already sensitive consciousness, bringing with them the sharp image of the piebald spider of a man that was the mutant.
Kesley looked across the room to Santana. The plump Archbishop, having divested himself of his traveling costume, wore a loose cassock without surplice. He was thumbing the pages of his breviary, flicking rapidly over matter long since committed to memory.
"Padre?"
"Eh?"
"That mutant this afternoon—"
"Don't speak of him," Santana said.
"But he bothers me, Santana. I can't get him out of my mind, him or that crazy nonsense he was muttering."
"That was not nonsense," the Archbishop said in a hollow voice. "He struck at the heart, that man."
"I don't understand."
"You yourself made the same comment earlier, when you remarked that I, a man of God, am with you to participate in this unholy mission. Why, you ask. You asked me if I were not risking my immortal soul by accompanying you."
"And you said—"
"I said that I had little to risk. Strange words, coming from an Archbishop, but my soul is long since forfeit. God works in strange ways, and so his servants follow."
"You're still talking in riddles," Kesley complained. "Why did you come along, then, if you knew it would damn you?"
"I amalreadydamned for serving Miguel!" Santana cried. His doughy face was taut with sudden animation. "Don't you see that Miguel and his Dukes have overthrown Rome, have supplanted Christ with themselves? And we continue to serve them, not because we desire it, but because we must!"
Kesley frowned. A light of torment, almost of martyrdom, gleamed in the Archbishop's eyes now.
"What difference does it make," Santana asked, "if I help you kill Winslow? I cannot be any more damned than I am already—and possibly, possibly the consequences of your act will—will—do you see?"
"Killing Winslow will topple the whole apple cart," Kesley said softly. "You're gambling an already assured damnation against the chance that knocking off one Duke will crush all the rest and restore your religion to supremacy." He chuckled quietly. "I sometimes wonder justwhosecatspaw I am," he said.
"Everyone's," the priest remarked. "Poor pawn, you've fallen fair of everyone's scheming."
The priest continued to read for a while, then uttered a brief prayer in rapid Spanish—perhaps it was even Latin, Kesley thought—and blew out his candle. Kesley closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Sleep would not come. Brooding, he rolled and fidgeted, seeing over and over again the loose-jointed, hideous figure of the mutant.
VI
"I'll be back later," Kesley said in the morning. His eyes stung as if they had been sandpapered during the long, sleepless night; his lips were dry and cracking, and the oppressive city heat hung around him like the caress of a giant velvet glove, smothering without actually touching.
"Where are you going?" Santana asked, not looking up. It was a mechanical question asked out of mere courtesy, and Kesley ignored it.
"Saddle my horse," he told one of the men. "I won't need any of you to go with me."
The morning air was already steaming as he rode out into the city. The market was crowded with sleepy-eyed Chicagoans haggling for the fruit and vegetables that had been brought in while they slept. Kesley traversed the marketplace in a wide circuit and struck out along the broad cobbled road that led to Duke Winslow's palace.
About halfway there, he cut sharply and veered to the right, guiding his horse down a steep hill and off onto a narrow, red-brown unpaved road. Looking ahead, he could see his destination: the impossibly untidy bramble of shanties that was the ghetto of the mutants.
Even at this distance, he could see bizarre creatures moving idly back and forth down below, wandering from porch to porch in the isolated colony. He whitened at the sight of some of them.
There was one round, orange, doughy mass of a man that looked like some sort of giant fruit, except for the enlarged features and the tiny, stick-like legs and arms that projected from it; nearby, walking in confused circles, was a mutant with a pair of dissimilar writhing heads and an uncountable number of busy legs.
Lazy curlicues of smoke hung wavering in the air above the shacks. Kesley looked around.
Great God, he thought suddenly.They're people!
He rode down into the ghetto, feeling ashamed of his own bodily symmetry and genetic heritage, which seemed abnormal here. He, alone, of all the human beings within a half-mile radius, was untainted, and the thought made him feel strangely humble.
"Who is it you want?" a man asked.The toll-keeper, Kesley thought with sudden weird irony.
The "man" facing him was more nearly human than most; only a blob of flesh dangling from his forehead and a wattled reddish dewlap swinging pendulously below his chin qualified him for the ghetto. Kesley forced himself to stare rigidly over the man's shoulder while he replied.
"I'm looking for ... I don't know his name. He's tall, very tall, and—" He broke off, overwhelmed by self-conscious guilt, unable to recite the catalogue of one mutant's alienness to another.
"Go ahead," the mutant said with surprising warmth. "Tell me what he looks like and I'll see if I can find him. I'm not offended."
Kesley licked his lips and proceeded to describe the man he sought as vividly as possible. When he was through, the mutant nodded.
"You look for Lomark Dawnspear, friend. Has he wronged you?"
"No," Kesley said hastily, beginning to wish he had never come. "I just want to talk to him."
"Wait here. I'll try to bring him to you."
Kesley waited. The mutant vanished in the confusing tangle of closely-packed shacks.
In the midst of this poverty and genetic horror, Kesley held himself perfectly still, hoping not to call to himself the attention of some unfortunate who might be jealous of his fine clothes or unscrambled chromosomes. But no one approached him. The mutants held their distance, eyeing him with unashamed curiosity from the cramped porches of their huts.
It was a panorama of total ghastliness. Kesley could see now where the horror with which men regarded the Old Days had arisen: the people here were living reminders of the crime of the Old World—a crime, Kesley thought, whose consequences were visited upon the tenth and the twentieth generations.
"You seek me?" a harsh voice said.
Kesley snapped to attention and saw the hoarse-voiced Jeremiah of the streets approaching him, escorted by the dewlapped one. Kesley nodded; this was the man. In such profusion of mutation, there would hardly be two so marked.
"Do you remember who I am?" Kesley asked.
The mutant chuckled. "Could I forget? You're the young killer from the southlands, up here to do away with—but hush! I must not give it away!"
Kesley gripped the mutant by the baggy folds of flesh that hung loosely on one spidery arm. "How do you know anything of who I am?"
The mutant shrugged. "How could I keep from knowing?" His voice was mild and apologetic now, with little of its earlier raucous quality. "I can no more keep from knowing, than you—than you can keep from needing food, or seeing when your eyes are open. I ...know."
"How much do you know?"
"Why you are here, and where you are from ... and where you will go, and what you will become." Lomark Dawnspear's voice had modulated into a dull, almost ritualistic drone. "I see these things, and I do not speak. I speak, but you do not see. Blind, I know you. Eyes open, you march into treachery."
Kesley released the mutant and stepped back. He was shaking with inward horror; his empty stomach seemed to be squirming. "What are you talking about?"
The mutant smiled feebly. "Counter-question: who is your father, handsome blond man?"
"My father? I—"
"You do not know?"
"All right—I don't know. Do you?"
"How could I not know? Can the maggot restrain its hunger? Can the Earth forget its orbit?"
"You know, but you're not talking. Is that it?"
Dawnspear shrugged again. "You would not want me to tell you," he said softly. "I see that, too."
"All right," Kesley said, irritated. "Forget all about that. Give me some other answers."
"If I can."
"The man named van Alen—is he dead?"
"No."
"Where is he?"
"In his home. Antarctica."
"It was true, then," Kesley said. He stared into the mutant's dead eyes. "Who is he?"
"A noble of the Antarctican land," Lomark Dawnspear said. "Forget van Alen. Watch Miguel ... and Winslow. Watch everyone, youngster. Watch Santana, the greasy prelate. Watch me. Watch the fool stealing up behind you this very minute."
"The oldest trick in the world," Kesley said skeptically. But he felt a sudden cold sensation between his shoulder-blades, and whirled quickly. Another mutant stood there, a wide, slablike thing with four arms pivoting off jointed shoulders. One of its thick-fingered hands clutched a rock, jagged and heavy.
Moving instinctively Kesley grasped the arm holding the rock and yanked it down, smashing a fist into the broad creature's stomach at the same time. The rock thudded to the ground; the four arms windmilled aimlessly for a moment or two, and then the mutant backed off mumbling stertorous, incomprehensible curses.
"You'd better leave," Lomark Dawnspear said. "Some of the slower ones are beginning to realize you're here. They're likely to make things dangerous for you."
"But you haven't told me a thing," Kesley said.
"The answers lie ahead of you ... the answers and the questions. Now go."
Scowling, Kesley drew his robe tighter around his sweating body and remounted his horse. The mutant ghetto seemed like a nightmare world, shifting in and out of reality almost at random, blurring into dream and then focusing sharply on hideous actuality. Without looking back, he spurred his animal and rode hastily out of the valley.
Somehow, the long week passed, and somehow Kesley endured it. Each day brought him closer to the audience with Winslow, when he would be called upon to act as assassin.
And he still had not a shred of plan.
Kesley's imagination had throbbed in constant feverish play all week, picturing and re-picturing the scene. Winslow—what did he look like? Suave and bearded, with dark tired eyes like Miguel's? Thin, pallid? Bloated?
It didn't matter. There wasaWinslow on the throne, faceless and personalityless, and surrounding him were blurred shadows of courtiers: a priest perhaps, a few generals in formal armor, men like that. Kesley saw himself kneeling in the Duke's long hall, rising to advance on nerveless legs to the throne—
Plunging a knife into the Ducal bosom.
Firing an echoing pistol shot as he rose from obeisance.
Leaping forward and throttling Winslow on the throne.
Actually, he knew, it would not be that way. A Duke had an eternity to lose at an assassin's hands, and would be expected to surround himself with protection. No one, not even Miguel, would place himself at the mercy of anyone begging audience simply for the sake of "amusement." There were too many years to be lost.
Yet Kesley's active mind continued to develop a multitude of alternative methods for the killing, and always the picture ended with the moment of death. He found himself unable to project the action past the actual assassination; the sequel escaped his mind completely.
Seven days passed and, on the eighth, Kesley and Duke Winslow were to come face to face.
On the morning of the final day, Kesley rose early. Sleep had been intermittent during the just-ended night, and he left his quarters wearily shortly after dawn. On foot, he wandered through the awakening city, in full regalia.
By now it was generally known that ambassadors from Miguel's court had been in Chicago for the past week, and he drew uneasy stares from the curious early risers. He walked on, down one cobbled street after another, smelling the early morning smells of fresh air and the fresh food offered in the stalls.
The bright sunlight was glinting off Winslow's palace, sending down showers of scattered light.Winslow is awakening now, Kesley thought.For his last morning. After four centuries he's come to his final day.
Suddenly hungry, Kesley turned into a food shop that appeared a few feet away.
"Good morning," the proprietor said unctuously.
Kesley swung himself down into a booth without replying. After a moment, he looked up. "Coffee," he said.
"Certainly,señor."
The white-uniformed counterman seemed delighted to be serving one of the South Americans. He bustled out officiously from behind the counter and put the cup before Kesley.
He tasted the coffee. The synthetic beverage was tepid, slightly oily. Nevertheless, he forced himself to finish it, then sat broodingly in the booth staring at the gray film of dinginess that overlay the empty cup.
"Something else maybe,señor?"
"No—nothing," Kesley said. "I'm not very hungry."
"Too bad,señor. Has the trip north disturbed your appetite? The food you're accustomed to—"
Damned chatterbox, Kesley thought, irritated.
"My appetite is fine." He dropped a coin ringingly on the counter and walked out, into the warm, stale morning air.
Glancing around tensely, he let his hand slip to the hilt of his dagger. He caressed it absently for a moment, scowling. The minutes were crawling by like snails; the audience with Winslow wouldnevercome.
Dispiritedly, he turned his steps back toward the hotel. The desk-clerk looked up idly as he entered.
"Señor?"
"What is it?" Kesley snapped.
"The man from Duke Miguel—have you seen him?"
"What man?" Kesley asked, puzzled.
"He arrived while you were out—a small man with a heavy mustache. His horse was nearly dead; he must have come in a great hurry."
Kesley frowned. He was expecting no one from Miguel. Hope flashed brightly: perhaps it was a last-minute reprieve for Winslow, and thus for Kesley. Perhaps, he thought, it was a cancellation of the assassination order!
"Where is he?" Kesley asked hurriedly.
The desk-clerk jerked his head upward. "He went upstairs. Oh, about ten minutes ago. I guess he's still there."
"Gracias," Kesley said. With sudden excitement he dashed up the stairs, threw open the door, and looked around.
No one was in the outer room of the suite. From within came no sound—not even the usual boisterous horseplay of his men. Cautiously, Kesley opened the inner door. Within, he saw Santana huddling over his breviary in his usual chair.
"Santana?"
There was no reply.
"Padre?"
The priest appeared to be totally absorbed in his reading. Annoyed, Kesley crossed the room and grabbed Santana roughly by the shoulder. The plump Archbishop spun limply, sagging backward as Kesley touched him, and dropped heavily from the chair.
Kesley paled. The red velvet of the Archbishop's robes was stained with a deeper red, already turning a crumbling brown. A knife had been thrust through the folds of fat that covered the priest's heart, and had found its mark. Santana had attained the martyrdom he coveted.
"Feliz! Domingo!" Kesley shouted. His voice sounded harsh, dry. "Luis! Where are you?"
He strode to the adjoining door and threw it open—and his men, as if they had been held back by a spillway, came pouring forth.
All six rushed out and, Kesley saw, there was a seventh with them, a small dark man who was apparently the courier from Miguel's court. Kesley leaped back and had his pistol and knife out almost before his mind was aware that he was under attack.
The gun barked. One man fell. The courier leaped forward, knife-blade high; Kesley sidestepped and ripped through the flesh of the man's back with a fierce downstroke. Turning quickly, he kicked a third man in the stomach, and backed toward the door.
They had no guns, but they outnumbered him six to one. Tossing his mantle to one side for greater freedom, Kesley chopped downward with the knife and drew blood again, while one of the grooms sidled toward him and slit his arm shallowly with a rapid lick of his blade. Kesley fired again, and the man fell.
Then he managed to bull out the door and down the stairs, with the five remaining South Americans thundering after him. At the first landing he paused to fire; a body tumbled toward him, and he caught the small man and wedged him crossways in the stairwell just as the other four approached. Kesley ducked as a thrown knife whizzed past his ear, and kept running.
He dashed out past the astounded clerk and into the courtyard. The hotel's ostler, a tall, bony old man with walrus mustaches, was puttering around Kesley's horse, rubbing it down with the tenderness a skilled groom would devote to a choice animal.
"Get out of the way, you idiot!" Kesley yelled as he entered the court. Bewildered, the old man looked up, smiling mildly.
"Your horse is not yet curried, sir, and—"
"Out of theway!"
Kesley shoved the oldster to one side just as the four swarthy assassins swept into the courtyard and swarmed toward him. The old man tottered and took a couple of staggering steps that led him straight into the path of the South Americans; Kesley, mounting the horse, winced sympathetically as they collided with him and threw him roughly to the ground.
But the delay allowed Kesley to mount his animal and, even without spurs, he was able to bring the horse under quick control. He wheeled it toward the onrushing assassins. The magnificent beast whinnied and plunged forward.
Surprised, the South Americans yielded before this frontal attack; one aimed a knife blow at the horse's flank, but Kesley's boot caught the man's face and sent him reeling away. Kesley charged through the straggling, disarrayed South Americans and out of the courtyard into the main thoroughfare.
He rode three or four blocks, then pulled up, gasping for breath, and guided the horse into a side-street for a moment. For the first time in the last six minutes, he had a chance to evaluate the situation:
Point: Santana was dead.
Point: his six men had turned against him, and only their stupidity and his agility had kept Kesley from sharing the Archbishop's fate.
Point: someone had arrived from Miguel's court shortly before.
Therefore, Miguel had changed his mind and had ordered the assassinations of Santana and Kesley. OrhadMiguel changed his mind? Perhaps this entire expedition had been a complicated way of wiping out a troublesome Archbishop?
Kesley's fingers quivered. Anything was possible—anything—when dealing with immortals.
"Betrayal and betrayal again," the mutant Lomark Dawnspear had prophesied. And the mutant had been right.
For one reason or another—or perhaps none at all, Kesley thought coldly—Miguel had betrayed him.
And the counter-betrayal? Kesley smiled. Fifteen minutes ago he had been steeling himself for the work of assassinating Duke Winslow. Now he would, rather, swear allegiance to him. The decision was made quickly, for Kesley saw it was the only path open to him.
He rode out of the shadows and onto the main stem again, moving cautiously as if expecting to see the four small Argentinians charging madly out of nowhere toward him. But they were not to be seen; the street was crowded with Chicagoans going about their morning business, and a sickly aura of heat was starting to descend as the August day edged toward noon.
Clamping together his tattered sleeve over his flesh-wound, Kesley rode out and toward a mounted policeman who sat stiff and proud in his green-and-gold uniform, looking down on the pedestrians.
"Officer?"
"Yes,señor?"
The title pleased Kesley; that meant he had been recognized. "There's been a disturbance down at my inn. My men were drinking, apparently. They've assassinated His Holiness, and attempted to kill me when I returned from my morning walk."
"How many are there?"
"I killed three in escaping. There are four left still at large down there."
The policeman drew a whistle and uttered a brief, sub-sonic blast. Almost instantly, a second mounted man rode up, and at his request Kesley repeated the story word for word.
"I'll go down there," the first officer said.
Kesley turned to the other. "Would you conduct me to the Palace? I feel I should seek sanctuary with the Duke until affairs are more stable."
"Of course."
Together they rode down the winding road that led to Winslow's Palace. The policeman was a man of few words; once, he asked if Kesley had any idea why he had been attacked. Kesley shrugged without replying.
For the first time, Winslow's rosy palace seemed to Kesley a place of refuge rather than the place where he undoubtedly would meet his death. He smiled grimly. Assassins had become assassins' victims; the wheels had turned, and the positions on the board had altered. For Santana, it had been check and mate; Kesley had escaped, through no fault of Miguel's.
But what if Miguel's messenger had come too late? Suppose Kesley had already seen and killed Winslow? Kesley frowned; it was impossible to divine just what Miguel's real motive was. But now there would be no more dealings with Don Miguel.
A phantom thought struck him, and his lips curled upward. What if Winslow were to engage him in similar service and send him back to assassinateMiguel?
It was possible. Anything was possible, Kesley thought dismally. Anything was possible at all, in this chess game with all moves masked.
They drew near the palace. As usual, the guard at the gate inquired what business Kesley had within.
"I have an audience with the Duke," Kesley told him.
With great punctiliousness, the gateman disappeared into his tower and returned clutching a lengthy appointment sheet.
"The audience is at two," Kesley said impatiently, as the gateman's eyes wandered all over the sheet.
"Indeed so," the guard replied after a moment. "And I believe it's no more than ten now. Duke Winslow will see you in four hours, no sooner,señor."
Kesley wiped away sweat and fought down an impulse to cut the guardsman down with an impatient blow of his dagger. "It's an emergency. Tell the Duke that. Tell him that the Archbishop's been assassinated, and that I must see the Duke now!"
A flicker of interest crossed the guard's eyes. "I'll tell him that. Wait here."
Ten minutes later the guard returned. "Go in," he said laconically.
"You need me any more?" asked the policeman at Kesley's side.
"No—thanks, you've been very helpful." He handed the man a coin; as an afterthought, he gave one to the gatekeeper as well, and entered.
Adéjà vuemotion filtered through him at the sight of the interior of Winslow's Palace grounds. There was the same broad courtyard as at Miguel's, the same distant entrance. This time, though, a cold-faced man in Imperial uniform was waiting for him.
"I'm here to see the Duke," Kesley said.
The guard nodded. "Certainly. Duke Winslow will see you at once,señor. Please follow me."
Kesley followed. The great inner doors swung open, revealing a brightly-lit throne room on the ground floor. A row of unblinking retainers with halberds lined the room; there must have been twenty-five on each side, Kesley thought. His throat parched at the thought of the task he would have faced trying to escape from this room after assassinating Winslow.
On a raised dais at the far end, beneath an immense figured shield and between two dark columns of glossy, grained onyx, sat a man who could only have been Duke Winslow. For the first time in his life, Kesley approached the man who ruled all of North America—the man whose life he had, not so long ago, pledged to take.
VII
Winslow had none of Miguel's crisp, compact muscularity, Kesley saw, as he hesitantly approached the throne. North America's Duke sprawled as massively across his gleaming white metal throne as the broad continent he ruled did across its hemisphere; he was an enormous, ponderous, obese man. Winslow's sobbing intake of breath was plainly audible even at the distance Kesley maintained.
"Your Highness," he said, and knelt.
"Rise," Winslow ordered. His voice, like Miguel's, was deep, but Winslow's voice had a soft, throaty liquidity to it that was most unlike Miguel's compelling boom.