“Sure you don’t want us to unhook our balls in there, so we can all be the same?” the Armorer replied, never one to be faced down, even when he was at least a foot and a half shorter than the sergeant.
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The sec man stared, stone-eyed for a moment, then nodded and laughed. “Mebbe that old coot back in Shersville had something, little man. Mebbe you’re more than… Mebbe we’ll talk after the baron and the lady’ve spoken to you. I hope so. That jest of yours could turn sour.” He looked at the others. “Now who goes first?”
“Me,” Ryan said.
He pushed the door shut behind him, not bothering to slide the heavy iron bolt. If the sec men wanted to get in at him, a single bolt wasn’t going to hold them off, and the far door had no lock, anyway. But to make up for that the farther doorway was encircled by what he recognized as a sophisticated metal detector in top condition. The only better one he’d ever seen had been in a double-class gaudy house down in Norleans, years ago.
The sets of clothes that lined the wall, which looked like sucked-out corpses, were in the familiar dark color that was worn by most of the interior servants of Front Royal ville. They had a strip of black on the lapels, with a neat red star that showed they were guests.
His mind raced with what was happening. The last time he’d seen his brother, Harvey, it had been through a wel-ter of streaming blood. The air had been filled with mur-der. Now, after so many years, he was about to meet up with Harvey Cawdor once more.
If he recognized Ryan as his missing brother, then death would follow as surely as night followed day. But would he?
That was the question that occupied Ryan as he pulled off his steel toe-capped boots and replaced them with the soft leather ankle boots. He placed all of his clothes in a large canvas bag, putting his weapons on top of it-the long panga and the slim-bladed flensing knife, with the 9 mm SIG-Sauer on the very top.
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He tried to recall what this part of the ville had been used for when he’d been there, but time had blurred the edges of his memory. Some kind of storeroom, he thought.
“Rutabagas,” he exclaimed out loud, remembering now that there had been a great dump of yellow turnips in the room. They’d been piled high in the corner where the boots were stacked near the farther door. He’d used it when playing hide-and-seek with Morgan when he’d been about nine years old. He’d carved his name with a bat-tered horn-hafted knife on the side of the door. Ryan went and peered to examine the frame, but it had been rebuilt and painted several times and there was no sign of his ini-tials.
Dressed and ready, he now had to go and face the next room in the ville, and hazard the chance of being recog-nized by his brother. Ryan took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The chamber beyond was dimly lit, and he blinked into the darkness.
A voice bubbled out from above and behind him. “Welcome to Front Royal, brother.”
Chapter Twenty-One
brother!
He knew. Harvey Cawdor knew, had known all along! Someone had recognized Ryan, had spotted the blind eye and the torn face and put two and two together. It had all been a setup to take him off-balance, to get his weapons away without a fuss. The gentle approach.
Ryan winced, waiting for the crushing impact of a .45-caliber bullet between his shoulder blades. Or would it be slower?
“For any man that comes to our home is surely our brother, is he not? Or our sister. If he is a woman she is… then she is not our brother but our sister. Then our sister and our brother are all men and women who visit us.” The muddled sentences dribbled away into a gur-gling, chortling laugh, which sounded like thick gruel boiling on an open fire.
Ryan turned around slowly, fighting for control as he realized he was not down and doomed. Not yet.