Krysty caught the last words, registering the venom that lay beneath them.
“What was that about, lover?”
“Guiteau shooting his mouth about how Michael could’ve made a bad move for us.”
“He didn’t have to chill the jailer.”
Ryan sniffed. “Mebbe. I’d have done it in his place.”
THE ONLY SURPRISE in the archery came when one of the young bedroom servants beat a bearded sec man in the shoot-off, scoring two golds, three inners and an outer with her last six shafts.
The man stalked angrily off, the mocking shouts of his fellows and the watching crowd ringing in his ears.
Twice Ryan had glanced along the row of seats to where Marie Mandeville had insisted on Michael Brother being next to her. For the first time since they’d encountered the woman, she was showing animation, talking in a low urgent voice to the teenager, constantly laying her hand on his arm.
Or on his thigh.
Baron Mandeville ignored his daughter, but Harry Guiteau was also keeping an eye on what was happening.
J.B. TOOK THE STEYR RIFLE from Ryan, who hung on to the Uzi while he competed in the long-gun target shooting.
“Like taking candy from a baby,” he said, his eyes glinting behind his glasses.
When it came to anything linked to weapons, the Armorer wasn’t often wrong.
It was like taking candy from a baby.
The three sec men who reached the last round to go against J.B. were the best of the mediocre bunch. All of them handled the targets at fifty and one hundred paces without any trouble, slamming bullet after bullet from their immaculate Armalites into or very near to the bull.
“Want to come in, outlander?” Mandeville shouted, much of his good humor restored.
“I’ll wait until it gets harder, thanks, Baron. I could spit at the target at this range.”
The Father Christmas smile disappeared like September frost off a meadow.
Once the range went up to two hundred and fifty yards, the cracks started to appear.
At the announcement of the progression to five hundred paces, J.B. stood and slowly made his way to lie down alongside the maroon-uniformed sec men, wrapping the sling on the rifle around his forearm for extra stability.
Guiteau nudged Ryan. “You got some of the best blasters I ever saw, Cawdor. That a legacy from your days with the Trader?”
“Some are, some aren’t. It’s been awhile since Trader took his last walk, you know, Guiteau.”
“Sure. What was it the Indians called him? Oh, yeah. ‘The Man Who Walks without Friends.’ You and Dix think of him like that, Cawdor?”
“That was a name given Trader by those who weren’t his friends. He had some good friends.” He paused. “And he didn’t have many enemies.”
“Not many enemies?” A disbelieving grin split the grizzled sec sergeant’s face.
“Alive.”
J.B. never allowed the shooting to be anything approaching a contest.
The Steyr SSG-70, firing the uncommon 7.62 mm full-metal-jacket round, had the powerful Starlite night scope and a brutally efficient laser image enhancer.
Working the bolt action with fluid ease, the skinny Armorer pumped all ten rounds into a group less than a hand’s span across, each hit being greeted by a wave of the green flag by the servants acting as markers at the far end of the butts.
None of the sec men got more than half their shots on the target.
They all stood, but J.B. lay still, looking up at them. “What’s happening?”
“You won, outlander,” one of them grunted ungraciously. “Beat us out of sight.”
“We not going on to the half mile?”
“No fucking point, is there?”
Mandeville gave the signal to Guiteau, who clapped his hands together. “Let’s hear it for John Dix, winner of the long-gun shooting.”
The applause was scattered and hesitant.
None of the workers from the ville wanted to seem too enthusiastic in supporting the victory of any outlander. Not with the baron watching them so closely.
Marie Mandeville hardly seemed to be noticing what was happening.
Nor did Michael, whose left hand was clasped firmly in her long-nailed fingers.
NATHAN MANDEVILLE WAS becoming distinctly unhappy and decided that the knife fighting would have no preliminaries. He ordered Guiteau to pick his best man to go against Ryan Cawdor.