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"Sherwood!" Rudi called, clear enough to carry to all his own party.
He stood as he did so, turning and reaching for the sword belt looped over the partition between this booth and the next. His teeth bared in the darkness, and he forced his breath to come slow and deep. You took a risk, and sometimes it paid off Lights speared into the common room; the troopers had mirror-backed Coleman lanterns with them, and the incandescent mantles glared into his eyes. He moved his hand away from the hilt of his sword-slowly-and raised both palms shoulder-high as the edged metal of the billhooks rammed close, a circle of them poised to thrust if he moved. The men holding the polearms were shadows, outlines backlit by the second rank carrying the lights, but he could see a gleam of flame on chain mail. A third rank of State Police were behind those, facing back with their crossbows leveled.
Rudi put up a hand, as if blinded. That let him look around; Ingolf was still across the table from him, and Odard and Mathilda were in the same frozen reaching-for-the-sword motion as himself. He let out a silent sigh of relief when he saw that Mary and Ritva were gone, and Fred and Victoria and Edain with them. Edain's quiver had been snatched free of the hatrack in such haste that a gray-fletched arrow had spilled out, and it still spun on the littered brick of the floor.
"No need for trouble," Rudi said mildly to Denson. "It's your lord we came to see, after all."
"Yeah, no trouble," Ingolf said mildly. "Just a word to the wise, Captain, these folks"-he indicated Odard and Mathilda-"are VIPs back home. Whatever the Bossman has against me, he won't be happy in the end if they get roughed up."
"We'll see," Denson said; his shete was drawn, and he used it to reach over and flick their sword belts to his waiting subordinates. "Secure the men. The woman can come along peacefully if she feels like it."
The Bossman's palace was certainly magnificent; the grim massiveness of the citadel built around it since the Change didn't obscure the high dome gilded with genuine twenty-four-karat gold leaf. Neither did the evening's darkness; a golden lamp atop it and four more at the corners made it gleam above the marble and pillars of the great building. The gate passed them through with password and countersign and displays of ID cards, despite Denson and his men being known to the detail there. Under his anxiety, Rudi rather approved-procedures were like habits, and good ones tended to keep you alive, and keep the enemy from putting one over on you.
Inside the walls, lawns and gardens filled the giant rectangle; he suspected that the stables and barracks and so forth were on the eastern side, behind the showpiece.
Though perhaps right now I should be worrying about the location of the dungeons, he thought.
Square in the center was the palace. The middle block had four smaller domes at its corners besides the great gilded piece in the middle, and two smaller but still large buildings to either side had copper-covered domes of their own. The entrance was up a long stone staircase, under a portico of six eighty-foot marble columns with a triangular sculptured portico above. Guards snapped to attention, grounding their billhooks with a stamp of metal on stone. Inside a broad corridor led to the rotunda, with the inside of the dome soaring nearly three hundred feet above; two more hallways gave off to north and south as they approached it. There were polished red-marble columns with gilded finials, floors of shimmering stone in geometric patterns, murals showing ancients breaking the prairie sod, meeting in stiff archaic costumes and hats like stovepipes, fighting with strange, powerful weapons. And it was not a ruin, but the heart of a living realm; guards stood at corridor entrances, gaslights shone brightly, and clerks and officials and courtiers in archaic suits and ties or the more modern bib overalls stood in clumps or bustled officiously by with files even past di
Sure, and I'd appreciate it more if I weren't tied up, Rudi thought.
The State Police had cuffed their hands before them; they'd also thrust batons between their elbows across their backs, which was painful and allowed two men to steer them by gripping the ends.
Ground and center, ground and center, Rudi thought, breathing deeply again and imagining his anger flowing out with the air.
It didn't, but it did recede; he couldn't afford to be angry right now. Mathilda was striding along with her head up, as if she were in Castle Todenangst; Odard had his lips pursed, as if at some social solecism, and Ingolf just looked blankly watchful. He blinked when they stepped into a great rotunda, the oculus of the dome above them and a great staircase leading up to a second story; above the stair was a huge and well-done if surreal painting of goddesses floating around a covered wagon, holding books, seed and various objects he supposed denoted their sacred functions.
Not what I'd have expected of a Christian land, he thought.
Mosaics of iridescent glass glittered above it. The carved and jeweled throne itself was at the foot of the stairs; he saw Mathilda's mouth quirk. That was precisely the location her father had picked for his throne in the great hall of the Portland city palace-what had once been the Central Library on Tenth Street.
The men who would be King tend to have similar tastes, Rudi thought.
" That's new," Ingolf murmured. "His old man used to meet people in the Governor's office."
The State Police troopers gave the pole between his elbows a warning shake, making his boots skid on the marble tiles. Rudi's breath hissed as he saw who awaited; beside the usual crowd of toadies and flunkies and officials and guards and general reptilia you'd expect around any monarch, a man in the dried-blood-colored robe of a CUT High Seeker stood below the dais to the left; and the Cutter officer who'd pursued Rudi and his friends into the Sioux country was beside him.
Peter Graber, that was the name, Rudi thought. And I'm less glad to see him here than I was riding a mad buffalo, sure and I am.
The Heuisink father and son were on the other side; not under arrest, but looking very unhappy, in a stone-faced way.
The State Police detachment and their prisoners came to a halt; the bodyguards around the throne were in the same gear, but two of them slanted their bills across each other in an X to bar the way to the ruler's chair. Captain Denson came to a halt, saluted smartly, and bowed:
"Your Excellency, we are reporting with Ingolf Vogeler and his associates, as ordered."
It was then that Rudi gave the occupant of the throne a careful look. Anthony Heasleroad was in his mid-twenties, and a hair under six feet. There was muscle on his frame, under a budding plumpness that had just begun to obscure the line of his jaw and thicken his middle under the blue-silk bib overalls. His short hair was sandy blond, and his eyes pale blue, in a short-nosed face with a cleft chin; a strong face, the Mackenzie thought, but not a good one. He leaned one elbow on an arm of his throne and reached out with the other hand into a bowl of chocolate truffles and ate one while the silence stretched.
And that's a boast, too, Rudi thought. Mrs. Heuisink said that only a ship or two a year reached here from the Caribbean.
When he spoke, the Bossman had a smooth well-modulated voice. "I gave you a hundred thousand dollars' worth of equipment and cash, Vogeler. Where is it?"
Ingolf's guards forced him down on his knees. "My people and I got to Boston, and we collected most of the stuff on the list you gave me, Your Excellency," he said. "But you also sent Kuttner with me, and I trusted him as your man. He was working for the Church Universal and Triumphant; they ambushed my Villains in Illinois, and as far as I know the goods are still there. Of course, that was years ago now. They dragged me all the way to Corwin, tortured me, held me prisoner, and if I hadn't escaped, I'd be dead now-and that's not for lack of their trying since."