Warlord

your decisions, he told himself. Now don't waste it. 'My lord, we've very little time. I presume the armored car is still in readiness?'

Barholm drew a deep breath, nodded. 'In the level above the subbasement,' he said. 'There are, there are jewels and. . it's fueled for 100 kilometers, the gate there gives directly onto the corniche road.' The Old Tower had originally been the heart of East Residence's defenses, and it was still on the seaward edge of the city proper. 'We can, we can get away to the Settler, he'd, ah, there's. . ah, he'd protect us, I've done him favors in the past and-'

'My lord, the Settler is dead,' Raj said tightly. 'You may recall, I sent you his head packed in alcohol about a month ago? But we can-'

'Stay exactly where we are!'

Anne, Lady Clerett, knew the value of an entrance. She had taken the time to dress in the full regalia of a Governor's Lady, down to the high tiara and the skirt split at the front and trailing behind half a dozen paces; she blazed with the jewels of her state. . and Raj could see no fear in her face, no fear at all. An anger as huge as any he had ever seen, yes.

'Barholm Clerett,' she continued. 'I didn't claw my way out of the gutter-or marry you-to wear a veil and live in a villa on the Colonial Gulf. Or to run away! That's always your answer, isn't it, Barholm; whenever something goes wrong suddenly, you run. My protector found us in bed, and you jumped out the window and ran naked into the street, for all the city to see and laugh! The mob tried to throw you out and put one of those Poplanich worms on the Chair, and you wanted to run then; you'd be running still, if I hadn't locked you in your room until you gave the order to send in the troops. And now you want to run again, you worm, well I'll show you how a Governor should die, you coward, because I'll die here in the Palace, I'll set it on fire to be my funeral pyre before I'll lose everything again!'

Bravo, curtain call, Raj thought; but there was a quality in Anne's face that was as daunting as a Colonist charge, in its way. The pistol she waved was a toy, a gold and nielo orchid in steel, but there was almost certainly a round up the spout. . and she might just decide to kill Barholm and herself; this was the sort of trembling intensity of spirit capable of anything.

'And you!' she said, wheeling on Raj. 'I-' The frenzy drained out of her expression, replaced by a smile. 'Well, of course you don't mean to run away, General Whitehall. You know we can win, the Army can't be all in on it. . these walls are impregnable, we can hold out for a week or more, they'd have to blast the Old Tower off its foundations to harm it.' Which was true enough. 'The heliograph on the roof, we can summon loyal battalions from, oh, the coast provinces, from Descott if we have to.'

And there will be civil war anyway, Raj thought sickly. If the plotters were given time to consolidate their hold on the Palace. Wait a minute, though, he thought suddenly. They must have thought of that, they know Anne, too-

observe.

* * *

— and Raj recognized the Tower, glowing in solitary perfection. The viewpoint swooped in, down to the basement; all the walls were glowing, now, and a dozen mysterious transparent tubes pierced the floor. Time blurred forward; the light faded from all except the ceiling, and the transparent pipes stood empty and dusty. Men came and sledged them out; they laid brick over the opalescent material of the floor, over the conduits. . that stretched down into the main sewers. Much later, and other men came, spanning the high chamber with beams to divide it into two stories; they laid stone tile over the beams, and built a trapdoor through it. He was suddenly in the sewer itself; men crouched there, in the uniforms of the 2nd Gendarmerie. There were pry bars and sledges in their hands, carbide lamps to show the circles of brick above their heads. One was setting up a stepladder. .

* * *

'There's a way in from below,' Raj said. Anne wheeled to stare at him narrow-eyed. 'From the sewers into the level below the main floor, into the storage area.' Where the armored car was kept, ready to drive up its ramp and through the gates. 'They will. . that is, they're probably planning to break up through the. . bricked-in areas, into the chamber with the armored car. There'll be no stopping them after that, the floor over that is rafters and they can break through that, too, and we can't close the staircases in the main section of the Tower.'

'Are you a coward, too?' Anne asked, half-raising the gun. 'Use the cannon in the car, shoot them, kill them.'

'Lady Anne,' Raj said desperately: how to explain to someone with no experience of actual combat? Although her instincts can't be faulted, certainly. 'My lady, that cannon, it won't depress. . bend down, enough to hit the floor at all. And once we've blocked the main entrances to the Tower, when they come through the floor they'll do it a hundred strong or more we couldn't. .' He held up a hand. 'Wait. Wait. There is a way.' He looked over at the arc lights that could flood the larger rooms with the extra light needed for spectacle.

Hope blossomed on Barholm's face as he explained, and an avidness on Anne's. Raj kept his own as impersonal as a machine; his mind also, focusing on the means and not what they would do.

'Come on, Gerrin,' he said after Barholm nodded furiously. 'We've got work to do and not much time to do it in. M'lewis, hold the fort.'

* * *

The end of the pry bar struck through the bricks almost without resistance. They must have scratched out the mortar days ago, then supported it with a circle of planks, Raj realized, and drew his pistol.

'Gerrin!' he shouted. 'Time, Gerrin, time!'

The bricks fell downward, a circle of darkness lit by the flicker of lamps. He rested his hands on the riveted hull of the armored car and fired, the flash orange in the dim light of the subbasement. A scream from below, and the lights retreated.

'Thirty seconds more, Raj.' Gerrin's voice, in the uninflected tone of a man concentrating on a task that requires mind and hands both.

'Whitehall, it's over!' Stanson's voice, and there was a thumping all around the floor, as iron beat on unweakened brick. A crack and clatter, and the bricks over another conduit gave, trembling and then falling back as the mortar went to powder.

'Raj!' Des Poplanich's voice, desperately earnest. 'I don't want you hurt; nobody will be hurt, but you mustn't be, you belong with us, not that murdering usurper Clerett.'

'Whitehall, don't worry, we need you,' Stanson continued. 'Everyone's agreed you get the Field Force command on the western border, for as long as you want it.' More hammering, and the grinding sound of brick shifting. 'Nobody can say you didn't go the second kilometer for your oath, Whitehall, but it's over.'

Raj thought he heard a reluctant admiration in the other man's voice, impossible to tell whether it was for Raj's courage or the skill he had used to deceive.

'Raj, it's done,' Gerrin said.

He fired again, and both men broke for the ladder; the trapdoor tumbled back, and so did a servant who dropped the marble statuette in his hands with a shriek at the sight of Raj's face, streaked with oil and sweat.

'Just what I need, to be brained by a fucking butler,' he snarled, as Gerrin rolled out of the entrance. The clatter of bricks below gave way to the stamp of men's feet, the sound of the steel butt-plate of a rifle ringing off the armored car's hull.

Have to get them into position, Raj thought. He fired through the trapdoor, and a huge volley answered it; there must be a hundred men or more below, all the troops Stanson and the other conspirators could trust to actually do the deed and not just accept the results. They would be the core of the plot; he could hear Stanson's voice, Des Poplanich's, others with Messerclass accents. Boots kicked aside brass shell casings.

'Messer,' somebody said below. 'There's something funny here. . I think this is a siphon-'

'Ser?' M'lewis asked from across the room. His hand was on the knife-switch of the arc lights, the one that lit the subbasement below. Supernal light from the glowing ceiling shone on his gold teeth, on the feral tension in his