“The high collar helps,” I conceded. “But I’m afraid the eye-patch spoils the effect.”
“Wrong; it enhances the impression of an elegant corsair.”
“Well, if the old Tree could see you now, it would have to admit you’re the fanciest nut that ever dropped off it,” I said.
It was twilight in the parklike city. We still had an hour to kill, and decided to use it in a stroll around the Old Town—the ancient marketplace that was the original center of the city. It was a picturesque place, and we were just in time to see the merchants folding up their stalls, and streaming away to the drinking terraces under the strung lights among the trees. The sun set in a glory of painted clouds; the brilliant spread of stars that covered the sky like luminous clotted cream was obscured by the overcast. The empty streets dimmed into deep shadow, as we turned our steps toward the gates of the estate Ancinet-Chanore.
4
My sense-booster was set at 1.3 normal; any higher setting made ordinary sound and light levels painful. For the last hundred feet I had been listening to the gluey wheeze that was the sound of human lungs, coming from somewhere up ahead. I touched Fsha-fsha’s arm. “In the alley,” I said softly. “Just one man.”
He stepped ahead of me, and in the same instant a small, lean figure sprang into view twenty feet ahead, stopped in a half-crouch facing us, with his feet planted wide and his gun hand up and aimed. I saw a lightning-wink and heard the soft whap! of a filament pistol. Fsha-fsha oof!ed as he took the bolt square in the chest; a corona outlined his figure in vivid blue as the harness bled the energy off to the ground. Then he was on the assassin; his arm rose and fell with the sound of a hammer hitting a grapefruit, and the would-be killer tumbled backward and slid down the wall to sprawl on the pavement. I went flat against the wall, flipped the booster up to max, heard nothing but the normal night sounds of a city.
“Clear,” I said. Fsha-fsha leaned over the little man.
“I hit him too hard,” he said. “He’s dead.”
“Maybe the old lady was right,” I said.
“Or maybe Sir Tanis wasn’t as foolish as he sounded,” Fsha-fsha grunted. “Or Milord Pastaine as senile as they claimed.”
“A lot of maybes,” I said. “Let’s dump him out of sight and get out of here, in case a cleanup squad is following him up.”
We lifted him and tossed him in the narrow passage he had picked as a hiding place.
“Which way?” Fsha-fsha asked.
“Straight ahead, to the main gates,” I said.
“You’re still going there—after this?”
“More than ever. Somebody made a mistake, sending a hit man out. They made a second not making it stick. We’ll give them a chance to go for three.”
5
The Lady Bezaille had given instructions to the gate-keeper; he bowed us through like visiting royalty into an atmosphere of lights and sounds and movement. The grand celebration known as the Gathering of the House seemed to be going on all over the grounds and throughout the house. We made our way through the throngs of beautiful people, looking for a familiar face. Sir Tanis popped up and gave a lifted-eyebrow look, but there wasn’t enough surprise there to make him the man behind the assassination attempt.
“Captain Danger; Sir Fsha-fsha; I confess I didn’t expect to see you here . . .” He was aching to ask by whose order we were included in the select gathering, but apparently his instinct for the oblique approach kept him from asking.
“It seemed the least I could do,” I said in what I hoped was a cryptic tone. “By the way, has Milady Raire arrived yet?”
“Ha! She and Lord Revenat will make a dramatic entrance after the rest of us have been allowed to consume ourselves in restless patience for a time, you can be sure.”
He led us to the nearest refreshment server, which dispensed foamy concoctions in big tulip glasses; we stood on the lawn and fenced with him verbally for a few minutes, parted with an implied understanding that whatever happened, our weight would go to the side of justice—whatever that meant.
Milady Bezaille appeared, looked us over and gave a sniff that seemed to mean approval of our new finery. I had a feeling she’d regretted her earlier rash impulse of inviting two space tramps to the grand soiree of the year.
“Look sharp, now,” she cautioned me. “When Milord Revenat deigns to appear he’ll be swamped at once with the attentions of certain unwholesome elements of the House; that will be your chance to catch a glimpse of Milady Raire. See if you read in her face other than pain and terror!”
A slender, dandified lad sauntered over after the beldame had whisked away.
“I see the noble lady is attempting to influence you,” he said. “Beware of her, sirs. She is not of sound mind.”
“She was just tipping us off that the punch in number three bowl is spiked with hand-blaster pellets,” I assured him. He gave me a quick, sideways look.
“What, ah, did she say to you about Sir Fane?”
“Ah-hah!” I nodded.
“Don’t believe it!” he snapped. “Lies! Damnable lies!”
I edged closer to him. “What about Sir Tanis?” I muttered.
He shifted his eyes. “Watch him. All his talk about unilateral revisionism and ancillary line vigor—pure superstition.”
“And Lord Revenat?”
He looked startled. “You don’t mean—” he turned and scuttled away without finishing the sentence.
“Danger—are you sure this is the right place we’re in?” Fsha-fsha whispered. “If the Lady Raire is anything like the rest of this menagerie. . . .”
“She isn’t,” I said. “She—”
I stopped talking as a stir ran through the little conversational groups around us. Across the lawn a servant in crimson livery was towing a floating floodlight along above the heads of a couple just descending a wide, shallow flight of steps from a landing terrace above. I hadn’t seen the heli arrive. The man was tall, wide-shouldered, trim, like all Zeridajhans, dressed in a form-fitting wine-colored outfit with an elaborate pectoral ornament suspended around his neck on a chain. The woman beside him was slim, elegantly gowned in silvery gauze, with her black hair piled high, intricately entwined in a jeweled coronet. I’d never seen her in jewels before but that perfect face, set in an expression that was the absence of all expression, was that of Milady Raire.
6
The crowd had moved in their direction as if by a common impulse to rush up and greet the newcomers; but the movement halted and the restless murmur of chatter resumed, but with a new, nervous note that was evident in the shrill cackle of laughter and the overhearty waving of arms. I made my way across through the crowd, watching the circle of impressively clad males collecting around the newcomers. They moved off in a body, with a great deal of exuberant joking that sounded about as sincere as a losing politician’s congratulatory telegram to the winner.
I trailed along at a distance of ten yards, while the group swirled around a drink dispenser and broke up into a central group and half a dozen squeezed-out satellites. The lucky winners steered their prize on an evasion course, dropping a few members along the way when clumsy footwork involved them in exchanges of amenities with other, less favored groups. In five minutes, the tall man in the burgundy tights was fenced into a corner by half a dozen hardy victors, while the lady in silver stood for the moment alone at a few yards distance.
I looked at her pale, aloof face, still as youthful and unlined as it had been seven years ago, when we last talked together under the white sun of Gar 28. I took a deep breath and started across the lawn toward her.
She didn’t notice me until I was ten feet from her; then she turned slowly and her eyes went across me as coolly as the first breath of winter. They came back again, and this time flickered—and held on me. Suddenly I was conscious of the scar, two-thirds concealed by the high collar of my jacket, that marked the corner of my jaw—and of the black patch over my right eye. Her eyes moved over me, back to my face. They widened; her lips parted, then I was standing before her.
“Milady Raire,” I said, and heard the hoarse note in my voice.
“Can . . . can it be . . . you?” Her voice was the faintest of whispers.
A hard hand took my arm, spun me around.
“I do not believe, sir,” a furious voice snarled, “that you have the privilege of approach to Her Ladyship—” He got that far before his eyes took in what they were looking at; his voice trailed off. His mouth hung open. He dropped my arm and took a step back. It was the man named Huvile.