could demonstrate we were in the game. And if one group of foreigners didn’t like us, we could go find another.”
“But she proved to be made of strong stuff,” said Hamilton.
“After she’d tried to shock herself into either death or deadlock, we kept her on ice,” said Castor. “We sent her with the staff on the main carriage, in the hope they could find a way to breach her along the way, or maybe offer her to the foreigners as sealed goods.” Hamilton was certain the twin was enjoying trying Lustre’s modesty with his words. “But their response this time was, if anything, more aggressive. Our people left a number of orbiting automatics, and a number of houses ready for occupation, but barely escaped with their lives.”
“It seems they don’t like you any more than we do,” said Hamilton. “I can understand why you’d want her back. But why am I still alive?”
The twins looked at each other like they’d come to an unpleasant duty sooner than they would have liked. Castor nodded to the air, the doors opened by themselves, and a number of the pantomime guards strode into the room.
Hamilton controlled his breathing.
“Chain him to the fireplace,” said Pollux.
They pulled the shackles from the same folds where Hamilton had been certain they’d kept weapons trained on him. His kind retired, if they did, to simple places, and didn’t take kindly to parties in great houses. A room was never a room when you’d worked out of uniform.
They fixed his wrists and ankles to the top of the fireplace, and stripped him. Hamilton wanted to tell Lustre to look away, but he was also determined to not ask for anything he couldn’t have. He was going to have to die now, and take a long time about it. “You know your duty,” he said.
She looked horribly uncertain back at him.
Pollux nodded again, and a control pedal appeared out of the floor, light flooding with it. He placed his foot on it. “Let’s get the formalities out of the way,” he said. “We’d give you a staggering amount of money, in carbon, for your cooperation.”
Hamilton swore lightly at him.
“And
Lustre stood straight and didn’t answer.
“Say what you have to say to cut yourself off,” said Hamilton. “Say it now.”
But, to his fury and horror she maintained the same expression, and just looked quickly between them.
“For God’s sake—!” he cried out.
Pollux pressed gently with his foot, and Hamilton tensed at the feel of the fold grabbing his body. It made him recall, horribly, moments with Lustre, and, even worse, moments with Annie. He didn’t want that association, so he killed it in his mind. There could be no thoughts of her as he died. It would be like dragging a part of her through this with him. There was no pain, not yet. He reserved his shouts for when there would be. He would use his training, go cursing them, as loud as he could, thus controlling the only thing he could. He was proud to have the chance to manage his death and die for king, country and balance.
Pollux looked again at Lustre, then pressed slightly more. Now there was pain. Hamilton drew in a breath to begin telling this classless bastard what he thought of him—
—when suddenly there came a sound.
Something had crunched against something, far away.
The twins both looked suddenly in the same direction, startled.
Hamilton let out a choked laugh. Whatever this was—
And that had been an explosion!
A projection of a uniformed man flew up onto the wall. “Somehow there are three carriages—!”
“The church bells!” said Hamilton, realising.
Castor ran for the door, joining a great outflowing of guards as they grabbed arms from the walls, but Pollux stayed where he was, a dangerous expression on his face, his foot poised on the pedal. One guard had stayed beside Lustre also, his rifle covering her. “What?!”
“The bells of Saint Mary’s in Copenhagen. Ten o’clock.” He was panting at the pain and the pressure. “You said the city became a British possession at 9:59. While we were falling.” He swore at the man who was about to maim him, triumphant. “They must have put a fold in me with a tracker inside, as we fell! Didn’t harm the balance if we landed in Britain!”
Pollux snarled and slammed his foot down on the pedal.
Hamilton didn’t see what happened in the next few seconds. His vision distorted with the pain, which reached up into his jaw and to the roots of his teeth.
But the next thing he knew, Lustre had slammed a palm against the wall, and his shackles had disappeared. There was a shout of astonishment. The pressure cut off and the pain receded. He was aware of a guard somewhere over there in a pool of blood. Reflexively, he grabbed the rifle Lustre held. She tried to hold onto it, as if uncertain he could use it better than she could. They each scrabbled at it, they only had seconds—!
He was aware of regimental cries converging on the room, bursting through the doors.
He saw, as if down a tunnel, that Pollux was desperately stamping at the pedal, and light had suddenly blazed across his foot again.
Pollux raised his foot, about to slam it down, to use the fold in the centre of the room, opened to its fullest extent, to rip apart Hamilton and everyone else!
Hamilton shoved Lustre aside and in one motion fired.
The top of Pollux’s head vanished. His foot spasmed downwards.
It seemed to be moving slowly, to Hamilton’s pain dulled eyes.
The sole of the man’s shoe connected with the control.
For a moment it looked like it had done so with enough force that Pollux Ransom would not die alone.
But it must have landed too softly. By some miniscule amount.
The corpse fell aside. Its tormented soul had, a moment before, vanished from the universe.
“That’ll be a weight off his mind,” said Hamilton.
And then he passed out.
Six weeks later, following some forced healing and forced leave, Hamilton stood once again in front of Turpin. He had been called straight in, rather than return to his regiment. He hadn’t seen Lustre since the assault on the mansion. He’d been told that she had been interviewed at length and then returned to the bosom of the diplomatic corps. He assumed that she’d told Turpin’s people everything, and that, thus, at the very least, he was out of a job. At the worst, he could find himself at the end of the traitor’s noose, struggling in the air above Parliament Square.
He found he couldn’t square himself to that. He was full of concerns and impertinent queries. The lack of official reaction so far had been trying his nerves.
But as Turpin had run down what had happened to the various individuals in the mansion, how Castor was now in the cells far beneath this building, and what the origins and fates of the toy soldiers had been, how various out-of-uniform officers were busy unravelling the threads of the twins’ conceits, all over the world, Hamilton gradually began to hope. Surely the blow would have landed before now? King Frederik had been found, hiding or pretending to hide, and had been delighted, once the situation had been starkly explained to him, to have the British return him to his throne. Denmark remained a British protectorate while His Majesty’s forces rooted out the last of the conspirators in the pay of the Ransoms. And, since a faction in that court had been found and encouraged that sought to intermarry and unify the kingdoms, perhaps this would remain the case for some considerable while.
“Of course,” said Turpin, “they weren’t really twins.”
