Part 6

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 assassinate _Miguel_?

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.

A _déjà vu_ emotion 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.

Kesley rose and faced Winslow squarely. The Duke's features were blurred and indistinct, misshapen by the billowing puffs of fat that sagged from his cheeks. He wore a thin fringe of golden-red beard which screened a thick, many-chinned throat.

"Our audience was scheduled for this afternoon," Kesley said, since Winslow was evidently waiting for him to speak. "However, a change of schedule was made necessary by--"

"I have heard," the Duke murmured lazily. "News travels swiftly here, sir. The Archbishop lies dead in an inn, is that it?"

"Dead at the hand of his own servants, Duke Winslow. Betrayed."

"Indeed?" The sleepy eyes of the gross-bodied Duke stirred; Kesley observed that behind the outward facade of sloth lay the nervous reflexes of a cat-keen intellect. "Betrayed? And by whom, _señor_?"

Kesley glanced uneasily around the room. "May we be alone, Duke Winslow?"

Chuckling, the Duke said: "Certainly not. My life is much too important to me, young one. But you can speak freely here; the word of my court is sacred."

"Very well, then. I'll begin at the beginning." Drawing a deep breath, he said, "I was sent here to assassinate you."

Around Winslow, courtiers paled and reached for their weapons at Kesley's flat admission, but Winslow himself showed no reaction whatever. It was infuriating to see the slow smile finally spread over his face. "How unfriendly," he observed at last.

"I had no intentions of actually carrying it out, of course."

"Of course." With biting sarcasm.

"I accepted the order in an attempt to free myself of Don Miguel's power. I had every intention of swearing allegiance to you, and--"

It seemed to Kesley that some ugly thought had passed at that moment through Winslow's mind and, disconcerted, he halted. Then, recovering, he continued: "On the other hand, Archbishop Santana came here with the definite intent of doing away with you.

"However, this morning a courier arrived from Miguel, instructing our retinue to set upon us and kill us."

"A noteworthy aim," Winslow said. "One which, I take it, was only partially accomplished."

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I want to expose Miguel's treachery. I want to make everything clear to you, show you what's been going on." Kesley spoke with desperate sincerity now.

Winslow laughed suddenly, his entire body quivering. "This is very funny," he said, when he had subsided. "Miguel sending men here to assassinate me--and then having his own assassins assassinated!" He narrowed his eyes and peered curiously at Kesley. "Why do you suppose he would do a thing like that?" he asked.

Kesley moistened cracking lips. "It is not for me to understand the ways of Dukes, Sire."

"I hardly expect it of you."

"Then--"

"You wish to enter my service?" Winslow asked. "It is strange that a former assassin would beg me to gather him to my capacious bosom. It is an amusing idea."

Suddenly Kesley felt like an insect being toyed with before having its wings plucked. Dizzily he glanced at the long rows of halberdiers standing like carven images, at the wax-faced courtiers grouped about Winslow's throne, and for a bewildering instant he thought that this was all some kind of dream from which he would soon wake and find himself back behind the plough, awaiting Tina's call to lunch.

"I never intended to strike a blow against you, Sire," Kesley lied humbly. "You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Winslow said gently, and without any trace of sarcasm. "Perhaps that's why Don Miguel decided to blot you out. However," he said, sighing, "I'm afraid you represent as great a threat to the Twelve Empires as has ever been born, my young friend."

He gestured to a hawk-faced man in somber robes standing to his left. "Lovelette, take this man and convey him to the dungeons. Tomorrow, he's to be executed. Is that clear?"

"Certainly, Sire."

It had happened so quickly that Kesley did not fully understand it. One moment he had been on dangerously thin ice but managing to keep aloft; the next, he had plunged through into utter cold.

He felt thin fingers bite into his bicep, and a low voice say, "Come with me."

Two halberdiers advanced mechanically and took their posts at either side of him. Numb, he allowed himself to be marched away from Winslow's presence, with an infinite series of maddening _whys_ screaming at him all down the long hall.

Why this sudden reversal on Winslow's part? Why the execution order? This, not Kesley's switch of allegiance, was obviously the "_betrayal again_" Lomark Dawnspear had foretold.

As Kesley was led from the Ducal presence, he heard Winslow's sardonic chuckling coming from behind. Tomorrow, he thought bleakly, it would be the headsman who would chuckle.

He had changed his coat once too often. Going to Winslow had proved a fatal move.

Kesley resolved that if he ever escaped from Winslow he would stay as far as he could from all the Dukes. Life was hard enough without making one's self subject to the caprices of life-jaded Immortals.

But, as the dark corridor leading to the dungeon opened out before him, he saw clearly that there was little chance of an escape this time.

* * * * *

During the rest of the day and the long night that followed, Kesley, alone in the darkness, had plenty of time to think.

He was in complete isolation, somewhere in the depths of Winslow's palace. He had been thrust in; microrelays had clicked, and a heavy metal door had whirred creakingly closed. Air came filtering in from a dimly-visible grid in the ceiling, twelve feet above. There was no furniture in the cell, not even a cot. He could stand, or he could lie.

He stood for a while, pacing the length and breadth of the cell until that palled, and then he stretched out full length to wait for morning. There was no point wasting energy in fruitless escape tries; he had determined very quickly that his cell was proof to any attempts.

One dull gray thought flickered monotonously through his consciousness: tomorrow his life would end. That wasn't so bad, he thought; everyone dies--everyone but the Twelve. What hurt more was the rasping realization that he had never really lived at all.

What had he done, in the twenty-four years he'd had? Twenty of them were blank, cloaked by darkness more complete than the inkiness that surrounded him in the cell. He had lived and farmed in Kansas, he told people, but he knew it was false, and van Alen, whoever _he_ had been, had known it was false.

Van Alen had confronted him with the naked lie he had been living, and it had hurt. Probing the past caused pain. All right. Blot out twenty years, begin life four years ago, ignore the mystery that cried to be solved.

_What kind of world is this_, he asked himself, _where you never start to live?_

He had never known the rules. He never knew who made the moves, who played the game. Unseeingly, he had shunted from one pattern of action to another, without ever understanding the world he was in. It was ironic. A world carefully tailored for simplicity, a world scrupulously designed by its proprietors to avoid the complexity that had destroyed the previous civilization--and here he, after twenty-four years, was going to his death uncomprehendingly.

Something was terribly wrong with a world like that, Kesley thought. Perhaps its goals had been good, once. But as the Immortals had moved timelessly on through the years, they had grown remote from the charts and maps of society, and begun to play some inscrutable, unfathomable game of their own.

"It isn't fair!" he said out loud. His protesting voice echoed weirdly in the confines of the cell, bounced back grotesquely from the metal walls. He knew that if there were a light in the cell he would be able to see his own distorted image on their shining surfaces. It would be a mocking clown-face, laughing at him for his own ignorance.

But there was no light. There was only darkness, and the silence of solitude.

And then, after hours passed, there came the faint humming sound of relays clicking in the massive door.

_Morning already?_ Kesley wondered.

Time had passed; he knew that. But so much time? Was so little left?

The door was undeniably swinging open.

He had remained alone for almost a day and a night, and had returned no answers to his many questions. Shrugging, he waited for the Duke's men to take him away. _Maybe there aren't any answers_, he thought dismally.

He heard soft padding footsteps in his cell, and felt a cool hand grasp his.

"Stand up," a whispered voice said.

Wondering, Kesley pushed himself up from the floor. "You're not the headsman," he said.

"No. The headsman waits for morning."

"Isn't it morning yet?"

"The hour is four," the strangely familiar voice whispered. "The Palace lies asleep."

Dimly, Kesley realized that this was some sort of impossible rescue--unless, that is, it was another hoax. Frowning into the impenetrable darkness, he said: "Who are you?"

There was no answer. But gradually a faint glow enveloped the cell, flickered warmly for a bare instant and died away.

"Dawnspear!"

"Speak quietly, friend. It was not easy persuading the guards to sleep."

Kesley rubbed his eyes, tried to peer into the darkness. The momentary glow of light had revealed the bizarre, piebald mutant towering above him. Cautiously, Kesley extended his hand and felt the rough, cool skin of the mutant's bare chest as if to confirm his vision.

"What are you doing here, Dawnspear?"

"There are those who would not have you die," the mutant replied. "Winslow and Miguel know you. Two Dukes are in league to take your life, now. They can be dangerous enemies. Come."

Dawnspear grasped Kesley's hand firmly and guided him forward. As they passed through the open door of the cell, the metal began to swing shut again. Kesley heard a faint clang as the cell closed.

Outside, in the dim light of the dungeons, Kesley made out sleeping forms lying here and there, slumped over their weapons. Guards.

"Did you drug them?" he asked.

"They were very sleepy," Dawnspear said ambiguously. "We must hurry, now."

They glided through the dungeon together, the man and the mutant. Kesley walked on tiptoe, moving delicately as if he were walking on the fragile surface of a dream; at any moment he expected Dawnspear to vanish and the entire illusion to drift into nothingness.

But then he smelled fresh air instead of dungeon mustiness, and he knew he was free.

"The gate is open down there," Dawnspear said, pointing. "The guards are lost in slumber."

Together they crossed the palace grounds and passed through the gate. Kesley turned to the gaunt figure of the mutant to demand some explanation, but Dawnspear had released his hand and was pointing toward the distance.

"Within a minute they will all be awake. You will be missed. Flee now, while you have the chance."

"Wait a second! How did--why--?"

Kesley's whispers died away impotently. Dawnspear had slipped away silently into the night. "_Dawnspear!_" he called harshly. There was no reply.

_There never are any answers when you call_, Kesley thought sourly. He wheeled, looked back at the sleeping Palace. Lights were beginning to flicker on here and there; the mutant's influence had ended, and the sleepers were waking.

He was free to fly. Once again, he was his own master, bound to no one.

The guards stirred within the walls. He could imagine their dismay when they found him gone. Wrapping his cloak tightly around him, he edged off into the night.

A horse, first. Then, out the walls some way or other, and to freedom.

Both Winslow and Miguel would be hunting him, why, he could not say. But both his fealties stood revoked; his Dukes sought his life.

Well enough, Kesley thought. He had no debts to either Miguel or Winslow. Once again he stood alone. Where to, now?

He thought of Narella, in Buenos Aires. She would be waiting for him to come back--or was she, too, only part of Miguel's scheming. He didn't want to believe that.

Van Alen had told him he belonged in Antarctica. Suddenly the image of the mysterious continent rose in his mind. He saw a vast wall. Nothing more was visible.

It took only a moment to frame a resolution. Find Daveen. Find Narella.

_And then_, he thought, _to Antarctica. To Antarctica!_

VIII

The sleep-wrapped city was dark and silent. Kesley raced down the quiet streets, cutting laterally once to avoid the yellow glare of a wandering patrolman's swinging sodium lamp.

He knew he had to move quickly. The city's gates would, of course, be barred, and he had no desire to try the lakefront way of leaving Chicago. He was no swimmer, and the lake, unguarded though it was, seemed endless. There was only one way out.

Pulling his richly-brocaded cloak around him, he looked ahead for some sign of the night patrolman who had just passed. Finally he found him, far down the opposite street, swinging his lamp as he made his routine rounds.

Cautiously, Kesley began to advance.

The watchman's broad back was turned; a heavy truncheon hung at his side, and the butt of a pistol gleamed in a holster. His lamp cast long shadows down the empty street.

Kesley sidled up behind him and clubbed downward efficiently with the side of his hand just as the watchman noticed the advancing shadow behind him. The man had half-turned when Kesley's hand cracked sharply into the column of his neck below his left ear and jawbone, and the watchman emitted a feeble gagging cry and fell. Kesley caught him neatly, grabbing the all-important lamp.

Moving quickly and smoothly, he stripped the patrolman, donned his clothes, and bound the unconscious man with his ambassadorial robes. The guard stirred; Kesley stunned him with a blow of the truncheon and dragged him into the courtyard of a small, private dwelling. Stuffing him into a garbage bin that stood outside the door, he straightened his clothing and stepped back into the street, swinging the lantern nonchalantly.

Moments later, horses' hooves thundered down from the Palace, breaking the quiet. Acting the part of a good watchman, Kesley ran out into the darkened street, holding his lamp up so its brightness would blur his face.

"What's going on? Where are you coming from?"

Two or three riders passed, ignoring him.

"I say, stop!"

A fourth rider leaned down from his horse. "Duke's guard, watchman. We're chasing an assassin!"

"Assassin? The Duke dead?"

"Heaven forbid. No; it's one of those South Americans. The Duke ordered him executed, but he escaped!"

"Dreadful," Kesley exclaimed, and released the bridle. The horse sped away into the night as another wave of riders followed down. Winslow, aroused, was probably sending his whole guard corps out to search for the fugitive.

Lights were going on all over the city now. Sudden bright, yellow eyes winked down from unshuttered windows. Kesley stepped back into the shadows and let five more horsemen go by.

A sixth came down the road. Kesley flagged him down with his lantern.

"What's going on, friend?"

"Haven't you heard? We're chasing an escaped assassin."

"What's that?" Kesley assumed an expression of horror. "What did he look like?"

"Big man in royal robes. One of those South Americans."

"No! I just saw one go into that house over there." He indicated a home which had not yet awakened to the clamor of the streets. "I'm sure it was the South American," Kesley continued. "I was going to ask him where he was going, but then I saw he was an ambassador and--"

There was no need to chatter further. The horseman, his mind set on medals, was dismounting.

"Which house?" he asked tensely. "That one?"

Kesley nodded. "Want me to help you?"

"That's all right," the guard said. "Stay out here and tend my horse. I'll go in and look around."

"Good luck," Kesley said. He let the man take six steps toward the silent house, then whipped out his truncheon and brought it down with skull-crumpling force. Hastily he dragged the man behind a low, bunchy shrub, ran back to the street, and clambered aboard the waiting horse.

As the animal began to move, yet another wave of guards swept down from the Palace. Kesley fell in with them, peering grimly forward into the night as they rode. They dashed on, clattering up the main street and splitting off there to explore any byway where the fugitive might be hidden. Atop his horse--a scale-covered, dusky mutant with many-jointed legs--Kesley choked off a chuckle and forced his face into the solemn mask of the dedicated pursuer.

In the morning, the elaborate, half-mythical tracking devices would be brought into play: the needle-snouted, mechanized bloodhounds of legendary dread, the whirling radar parabolas, the ingenious screens and devices inherited from a culture long dead. It wasn't much of a secret that the Dukes maintained many of the taboo devices of the Old World, and used them for their private ends. Miguel's closed-circuit TV, Kesley thought, was an example.

But the bloodhounds wouldn't be called out till later. Right now the reaction was one of simple hysteria; heads would be rolling at the Palace if Kesley were not found at once. And, he thought, riding atop a Ducal horse, clad in Ducal uniform, it wasn't too likely that they were going to find him.

He glanced ahead. The guards were riding together, forming an anxious little circle. Evidently someone had called a halt and was about to organize a systematic search.

Further ahead, the towers set in the wall ringing the city were lit; the guards there had been roused as well, it seemed. Kesley surreptitiously cantered out of line and cut off down a dark side-alley, taking care that none of the guards were following him.

A few minutes later he reached the West Gate--smaller than the other three, and lightly guarded. Drawing his horse up before the guard-tower, he shouted: "Open the gate, you idiots! The assassin's escaped, and he's heading west."

"What are you saying?"

"I said _open the gate_. I'm Duke's guard. You're holding things up. The assassin's out there at large someplace!"

The door swung back.

"Thanks," Kesley yelled. He kicked the mutant's scaly hide to make the beast spurt ahead. He raced through the open gate and out of Chicago. The confused shouts of the guards echoed faintly in the distance as he urged the horse on.

Breaking out into the flat country that ran westward, he rode hard without any direction or destination in mind. Once he looked around and saw three riders about two and a half miles back, pelting steadily after him.

They were on to him then. He hadn't fooled them completely. But it had worked well enough to get him clear of the city and, if he could put more space between himself and Chicago before they turned the hounds on him, he'd be all right.