The sergeant paused, clenching his left fist and reaching for me with his right because I happened to be closest to him. I poised to run—survive this first, then worry about what Lady Miriam would say—but the tank lord caught himself, raised his shield, and called to his superior in a tone on the safe side of the insolent, “All right, all right. I’ll stay right here where Cermak can see me from the tank.”
Apparently Grant had remembered Lady Miriam also, for he spoke in our language so that I—and the principal for whom I acted—would understand the situation.
Lieutenant Kiley banged his shutters closed.
Grant stared for a moment at Cermak until the guard understood and dropped back into the interior of his vehicle. We could still be observed through the marvelous vision blocks, but we had the minimal privacy needed for me to deliver my message.
“Lady Miriam,” I said softly, “says oh-four hundred.”
I waited for the tank lord to ask me for directions. His breath and sweat exuded sour echoes of the strong estate ale.
“Won’t go,” the tank lord replied unexpectedly. “I’ll be clear at oh-three to oh-four.” He paused before adding, “You tell her, kid, she better not be playin’ games. Nobody plays prick-tease with this boy and likes what they get for it.”
“Yes, My Lord,” I said, skipping backward because I had the feeling that this man would grab me and shake me to emphasize his point.
I would not deliver his threat. My best small hope for safety at the end of this affair required that Lady Miriam believe I was ignorant of what was going on, and a small hope it was.
That was a slim hope anyway.
“Well, go on, then,” the tank lord said.
He strode back within the gatehouse, catlike in his grace and lethality, while I ran to tell my mistress of the revised time.
An hour’s pleasure seemed a little thing against the risk of two lives—and my own.
* * *
My “room” was what had been the back staircase before it was blocked to convert the second floor of the West Wing into the women’s apartment. The dark cylinder was furnished only with the original stone stair treads and whatever my mistress and her maids had chosen to store there over the years. I normally slept on a chair in the common room, creeping back to my designated space before dawn.
Tonight I slept beneath one of the large chairs in a corner; not hidden, exactly, but not visible without a search.
The two women were quiet enough to have slipped past someone who was not poised to hear them as I was, and the tiny flashlight the leader carried threw a beam so tight that it could scarcely have helped them see their way. But the perfume they wore, imported, expensive, and overpowering—was more startling than a shout.
They paused at the door. The latch rattled like a tocsin though the hinges did not squeal.
The soldier on guard, warned and perhaps awakened by the latch, stopped them before they could leave the apartment. The glowlamp in the sconce beside the door emphasized the ruddy anger on his face.
Sarah’s voice, low but cutting, said, “Keep silent, my man, or it will be the worse for you.” She thrust a gleam of gold toward the guard, not payment but a richly-chased signet ring, and went on, “Lady Miriam knows and approves. Keep still and you’ll have no cause to regret this night. Otherwise . . .”
The guard’s face was not blank, but emotions chased themselves across it too quickly for his mood to be read. Suddenly he reached out and harshly squeezed the Chief Maid’s breast. Sarah gasped, and the man snarled, “What’ve they got that I don’t, tell me, huh? You’re all whores, that’s all you are!”
The second woman was almost hidden from the soldier by the Chief Maid and the panel on the half-opened door. I could see a shimmer of light as her hand rose, though I could not tell whether it was a blade or a gun barrel.
The guard flung his hand down from Sarah and turned away. “Go on, then,” he grumbled. “What do I care? Go on, sluts.”