Sma bowed towards it; the machine slipped the chain over her head like a necklace. She stood up and they went back into the castle.
The very top of the keep was out of bounds to the public; it bristled with aerials and masts and a couple of slowly revolving radar units. Two floors below, once the tour party had disappeared round the curve of the gallery, Sma and the machine stopped at a thick metal door. The drone used its electromagnetic effector to disable the door’s alarm and open the electronic locks, then inserted a field into a mechanical lock, jiggled the tumblers and swung the door wide. Sma slipped through, immediately followed by the machine, which relocked the door. They ascended to the broad, cluttered roof, beneath the vault of turquoise sky; a tiny scout missile the drone had sent ahead sidled up to the machine and was taken back inside.
‘When’s it get here?’ Sma said, listening to the warm wind hum through the jagged spaces of the aerials around her.
‘It’s over there,’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, jabbing forward. She looked in the direction it had indicated, and could just make out the spare, curved outline of a four-person module, sitting nearby; it was giving a very good impression of being transparent.
Sma looked around the forest of masts and stays for a moment, the wind ruffling her hair, then shook her head. She walked to the module-shape, momentarily dizzied by the sensation that there wasn’t anything there, then that there was. A door swung up from the module’s side, revealing the interior as though opening a passageway into another world, which was – in a sense, she supposed – exactly what it was doing.
She and the drone entered. ‘Welcome aboard, Ms Sma,’ said the module.
‘Hello.’
The door closed. The module tipped back on its rear end, like a predator preparing to pounce. It waited a moment for a flock of birds to clear the airspace a hundred metres above, then it was gone, powering into the air. Watching from the ground – if they hadn’t blinked at the wrong moment – a very keen-eyed observer might just have seen a column of trembling air flick skyward from the summit of the keep, but would have heard nothing; even in high supersonic the module could move more quietly than any bird, displacing tissue-thin layers of air immediately ahead of it, moving into the vacuum so created, and replacing the gases in the skin-thin space it had left behind; a falling feather produced more turbulence.
Standing in the module, gazing at the main screen, Sma watched the view beneath the module shrink rapidly, as the concentric layers of the castle’s defences came crashing in like time-reversed waves from the edges of the screen; the castle became a dot between the city and the straits, and then the city itself disappeared and the view began to tip as the module angled out for its rendezvous with the very fast picket Xenophobe.
Sma sat down, still watching the screen, eyes searching in vain for the valley on the outskirts of the city where the dam and the old power station lay.
The drone watched too, while it signalled to the waiting ship and received confirmation the vessel had displaced Sma’s luggage out of the trunk of the car and into the woman’s quarters on board.
Skaffen-Amtiskaw studied Sma, as she stared – a little glumly, it thought – at the hazing-over view on the module screen, and wondered when the best time would be to give her the rest of the bad news.
Because, despite all this wonderful technology, somehow (incredibly; uniquely, as far as the drone knew… how in the name of chaos did a lump of meat outwit and destroy a knife missile?), the man called Cheradenine Zakalwe had shaken off the tail they’d put on him after he’d resigned the last time.
So, before they did anything else, Sma and it had to find the damn human first. If they could.
The figure slipped from behind a radar housing and crossed the keep’s roof, beneath the wind-moaning aerials. It went down the spiral of steps, checked all was clear beyond the thick metal door, then opened it.
A minute later, something that looked exactly like Diziet Sma joined the tour party, while the guide was explaining how developments in artillery, heavier-than-air flight and rocketry had made the ancient fortress obsolete.
* * *
XII
They shared their eyrie with the state coach of the Mythoclast, a cluttered army of statues, and a jumble of assorted chests, cases and cupboards packed with treasure from a dozen great houses.
Astil Tremerst Keiver selected a roquelaure from a tall chiffonier, closed the cabinet’s door and admired himself in the mirror. Yes, the cloak looked very fine on him, very fine indeed. He flourished it, pirouetting, drew his ceremonial rifle from its scabbard, and then made a circuit of the room, around the grand state coach, making a ‘ki-shauw, ki-shauw!’ noise, and pointing the gun at each black-curtained window in turn as he swept by them (his shadow dancing gloriously across the walls and the cold grey outlines of the statues), before arriving back at the fireplace, sheathing the rifle, and sitting suddenly and imperiously down on a highly-wrought little chair of finest bloodwood.
The chair collapsed. He thumped into the flagstones and the bolstered gun at the side fired, sending a round into the angle between the floor and the curve of wall behind him.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ he cried, inspecting his breeks and cloak, respectively grazed and holed.
The door of the state coach burst open and someone flew out, crashing into an escritoire and demolishing it. The man was still and steady in an instant, presenting – in that infuriatingly efficient martial way of his – the smallest possible target, and pointing the appallingly large and ugly plasma cannon straight at the face of deputy vice-regent-in-waiting Astil Tremerst Keiver the Eighth.
‘Eek! Zakalwe!’ Keiver heard himself say, and threw the cloak over his head. (Damn!)
When Keiver brought the cloak down again – with, he felt, all the not inconsiderable dignity he could muster – the mercenary was already rising from the debris of the little desk, taking a quick look round the room, and switching off the plasma weapon.
Keiver was, naturally, immediately aware of the hateful similarity of their positions, and so stood up quickly.
‘Ah. Zakalwe. I beg your pardon. Did I wake you?’
The man scowled, glanced down at the remains of the escritoire, slammed shut the door of the state coach, and said, ‘No; just a bad dream.’
‘Ah. Good.’ Keiver fiddled with the ornamental pommel of his gun, wishing that Zakalwe didn’t make him feel – so unjustifiably, dammit – inferior, and crossed in front of the fireplace to sit (carefully, this time) on a preposterous porcelain throne stationed to one side of the hearth.
He watched the mercenary sit down on the hearth-stone, leaving the plasma cannon on the floor in front of him and stretching. ‘Well, a half watch’s sleep will have to suffice.’
‘Hmm,’ Keiver said, feeling awkward. He glanced at the ceremonial coach the other man had been sleeping in, and so recently vacated. ‘Ah.’ Keiver drew the roquelaure about him, and smiled. ‘I don’t suppose you know the story behind that old carriage, do you?’
The mercenary – the so-called (Ha!) War Minister – shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘The version I heard was that in the Interregnum, the Archpresbyter told the Mythoclast he could have the tribute, income and souls of all the monasteries he could raise his state coach above, using one horse. The Mythoclast accepted, founded this castle and erected this tower with foreign loans, and using a highly efficient pulley system powered by his prize stallion, winched the coach up here during the Thirty Golden Days to claim every monastery in the land. He won the bet and the resulting war, disestablished the Final Priesthood, paid off his debts, and only perished because the groom in charge of the prize stallion objected to the fact that the beast died of its exertions, and strangled him with its blood and foam-flecked bridle… which, according to legend, is immured within the base of the porcelain throne you’re sitting on. So we’re told.’ He looked at the other man and shrugged again.
Keiver was aware that his mouth was hanging open. He closed it. ‘Ah, you know the story.’
‘No; just a wild guess.’
Keiver hesitated, then laughed loudly. ‘By hell! You’re a rum chap, Zakalwe!’
The mercenary stirred the remains of the bloodwood chair with one heavily-booted foot, and said nothing.
Keiver was aware that he ought to do something, and so stood. He wandered to the nearest window, drew back the drape and unlocked the interior shutters, levered the external shutters aside and stood, arm against the stones, gazing out at the view beyond.
The Winter Palace, besieged.