Rolls looked down at the half android. They’d chosen slouch hats and capes of bright orange velvet for the retainers on this operation, a costume which hid the wearers’ form and features. Penny’s human servants wouldn’t recognize Fortin, but she herself would if she saw him clearly. Even now that they’d reached the critical stage, Rolls remained sure that there was little chance of that happening.
Trumpeters on the lower balconies of the palace blew a greeting in sequential notes while flags of gold on pink—matching their livery—fluttered from their instruments.
The gate was also golden. The doorleaves, molded with cavorting cherubs, opened with glassy precision as Rolls and his entourage approached them. Hundreds of Penny’s servants were drawn up in the entrance hall.
Rolls dismounted. Like his retainers, he wore orange—but briefs that were little more than a jockstrap and matching sandals. He’d been proud of his body before—before North, before godhead. If he was past his first youth and carrying ten kilos more than ideal, then it still was a body that justified pride.
For the moment, the important thing was that all eyes be on him and not on his servants—as was proper in any case.
The trumpet calls ended when Rolls and his entourage entered the hall. String instruments played by hidden servitors took up a melody so saccharine that Fortin murmured to Rolls, “Now the little cupids fly down from the ceiling, don’t they?”
The entrance hall had coffered walls with tall sconces on the verticals and mirrors on the sunken central panels. Another set of great doors stood at the top of a pink marble staircase at the far end of the hall.
The music built to a crescendo. The pulses of light rising through the transparent sconces dimmed.
Rolls continued to walk forward. His servants fell off to either side and milled behind the lines of Penny’s pink-clad folk. “Good luck,” he murmured as the caped-and-hatted figure to his immediate left broke away.
“Good luck to you, my friend,” Fortin whispered back. “Our Penny expects her standards to be met. . . .”
When Rolls passed the center of the room, the gold doors above the staircase swung open in silent majesty. The vague, mirrored glows of the sconces exaggerated the vast size of the hall.
Penny stood at the head of the stairs, a statuesque vision of beauty and passion. Her hair was black, her complexion as white as bleached flour. Penny’s dress and elbow-length gloves were the same brilliant scarlet as her lips, and a single bright jewel gleamed at her throat.
“Greetings, Lord Rolls,” Penny called in a throaty contralto. “It has been long since you visited us.”
She pouted. In the same voice, but with utterly different intonation she added, “I thought you didn’t like me any more.”
“You know how jealous I am, my darling,” Rolls said as he advanced to the foot of the stairs.
In this outfit, with his hairy, muscular body, he looked like an apeman approaching the mistress of the plantation. Penny would probably find the contrast piquant.
“But I found I couldn’t keep myself away from you.”
Of course, Penny found most things piquant when they touched on her areas of interest.
She extended a gloved hand to him. “You know the others mean nothing to me, darling,” she said—and giggled, spoiling the effect.
Rolls took the first of the six steps normally, swung his long leg up the next two together, and mounted to the landing in a rush as Penny threw open her arms and allowed him to sweep her off her feet in a passionate embrace.
“Oh, Rolls,” she murmured with her eyes closed. “You know I’ve missed you, honey.”
It bothered Rolls that sometimes he had the feeling that Penny was much more intelligent than she seemed. Than she played, forming herself into a one-dimensional caricature. . . .
But then, that was what they all did, since godhead, unless they fought the tendency the way Rolls did.
And perhaps even if they did fight.
Rolls nodded upward and lifted his eyebrows. “Ah, can we . . . ?” he asked. The strings had resumed playing, but in whispered undertones of sweetness.