Maharg was standing like a fireplug in front of the door.
“You did a smart thing, putting your armor on,” Hansen said to him. He grimaced. “A lot smarter than anything I did tonight, Malcolm. I know that. Question is, where to we go from here?”
“Your only chance was getting the Thrasey armor,” Malcolm said, impressively calm and matter-of-fact. “It’s a royal suit, and with a good enough repair job, it might stand up to Taddeusz.”
Hansen had seen too many officers flustered when the news they had to report was very bad. That got in the way of solutions . . . and damage limitation, when there were no solutions. But as for what Malcolm was saying—
“I’ve got armor,” Hansen said. “And I wouldn’t take Shill’s suit if it were that or go naked.”
“Shill doesn’t need it—”
“I don’t need a suit!” Hansen snapped. “I’ve got Tooley’s suit. And what’s Shill’s is Shill’s!”
“Oh, it’s a good suit, is Tooley’s,” Malcolm said reasonably, as though unaware of the hard edge glinting from Hansen’s tone. “As I know to my cost, having been put down by it—and out, it would have been, without you, laddie—and Maharg here; and without Shill, to whom I owe my life as surely as Golsingh does, I think, but he’s still dead.”
“There isn’t time,” said Maharg. “To get to the mound and get back, mebbe. But not to get it fixed, no way. That’s a three-day job with the head off, you bet.”
“Look—” said Hansen, his anger past.
“No, laddie,” said Malcolm, patting his shoulder in the darkness. “You listen, because it’s as you said: you’re a warrior, but not with battlesuits.”
Malcolm sat on the bed, drawing Hansen down beside him. “You think Tooley’s armor is good,” he continued, “and so it is; but Taddeusz wears a royal suit, and that’s to yours as my armor was to Tooley that day that would’ve been my last without your help. And there will be no help in a duel.”
“He took Zieborn down wearing crap,” Maharg said. “Villiers’ suit, that was crap aginst my old one, even.”
“You tricked Zieborn,” Malcolm said reasonably, “and very clever it was, laddie; but you won’t trick Taddeusz. He watched you then, and for all that he’s a bastard, our Taddeusz is as fell and canny a warrior as we’ll any of us meet.”
“Musta killed more folks ‘n bunk in the hall, he must,” Maharg agreed sadly.
“So for you to face him . . . ,” Malcolm continued. “Remember what it was like for you when Krita matched herself against you—and you wound up wrestling—the first time? Now, think what that’ll be like with her father and the weapons at full bore.”
Maharg snorted with laughter. “Taddeusz’s gonna fuck you good!” he quipped.
Hansen found his face grinning even as his mind wondered sourly whether Maharg would think the joke as funny were it his neck on the chopping block.
It also occurred to him that he, and Taddeusz’ daughter, and one other woman, were the only people in Peace Rock who didn’t believe that Krita had been in Hansen’s bed this night.
There was no way Krita could have cut her way through the willow mesh soon enough to reenter the hall fully dressed at the time Hansen saw her. Which might mean his plans and his life were about to end because of half an hour with some slut from the scullery. . . . But he didn’t believe that either.
“All right,” he said coldly. “What do you see as the options?”
“Run,” said Malcolm flatly. “Or die, laddie. Because you’re too big to wear her suit—”
“If she’d let me borrow it,” Hansen said.
“As she might, women being as they are,” Malcolm continued. “And too big as well for Golsingh’s, or I think he’d have offered it from what I saw on his face. He’s a smart man, our king . . . and a hard one, which is much the same at times.”
“Thrasey ain’t far enough,” Maharg said, dropping the words into a silence. “Nowhere Taddeusz might hear. Nowhere in the kingdom.”
“And the kingdom will be the worse for it, laddie,” Malcolm said softly, “and we’ll all be the worse. But that’s not so much to bear when you’re alive, isn’t it?”