A loud explosion sounded in the near distance. The palace shook. The Alliance officers in the central group all spoke into their communicators, while the Kostromans with them froze and looked apprehensive. One of the naval officers lowered her communicator and said something nonchalant to those around her. General conversation resumed.
Markos saw his aide approaching. They must have exchanged signals that not even Adele saw. The aide returned to Adele and said, “He’ll see you now, mistress.”
She looked at the Zojiras who’d come from the library with her and added, “You’re dismissed. Report to whoever’s in charge in the garden.”
The Kostromans whirled and left the salon. They were moving so fast that the submachine gun one carried clanged into the doorpost.
Adele followed the aide to the center of the room. The crowd grew thicker as she went inward, but it wasn’t a solid mass.
The assembly was formed of elements ranging from two people to a dozen, talking and gesturing among themselves. Individuals would break off and join other groups in an air of nervous dynamism.
It was like watching the interactions within a rookery of seabirds. The chaos was of overwhelming importance to the people making it, but from Adele’s detached viewpoint it was merely empty noise.
Of course, it was noise that had ended her librarianship and might cost her life besides. Walter Hajas stood with a drawn face in a group of prisoners. The others kept their backs to him as though meeting the former Elector’s eyes might contaminate them.
Markos moved a few steps away from the central group. The only potential eavesdroppers were a covey of second-rank Kostromans; Markos’s aide moved them on with curt whispers and a tap from the muzzle of her submachine gun.
“Ms. Mundy,” Markos said. “I wanted to thank you immediately in person. You’ll be taken care of, don’t worry.”
“What does that mean?” Adele said.
“Well, we don’t know yet, do we?” Markos said with vague humor. “Something commensurate with your deserts, however.”
Despite his placid demeanor, the Alliance agent was as keyed up as anyone else in the room. It struck Adele that she and Markos’s aide were perhaps the only calm people present—and the aide was a sociopath.
Markos looked around him and sniffed in scorn. “Listen to them,” he said. “Every one of them claiming that what he did was crucial, that the coup couldn’t have succeeded without him. I was the only one who was really necessary.”
Adele wondered if the spy recognized the humor in what he’d just said.
He fixed Adele with his eyes. It was like looking into obsidian that has just cooled to black but still throbs with heat. “And after me, mistress,” Markos said, “you are the one who mattered. Success couldn’t have been so complete without you.”
“No,” Adele said, but she wasn’t sure the word pulsing in her mind actually reached her tongue. Her mouth was dry, and for the first time this night she felt real fear.
There was commotion at the hallway door. A squad of Alliance troops entered the salon with three members of the Cinnabar embassy. The prisoners’ wrists were tied behind their backs. Wire leashes around their necks connected them in single file.
Admiral Lasowski was in the lead. She limped, and blood from a bandaged shoulder wound soaked to the elbow of her pajamas. Her lip curled as she surveyed the crowd.
Adele waited, her eyes on the doorway. After nearly a minute she let her breath out again. There wasn’t a fourth Cinnabar prisoner being dragged in with his seniors. Daniel Leary was still free.
If he was alive.
The troops brought their Cinnabar captives directly to the command group in the center. Anyone who pressed close for a look or simply didn’t clear their path in time was prodded back with a gun butt or gun muzzle. Markos and his aide left Adele as abruptly as a page turns.
Adele thought about what she’d done, and why. Any one of a hundred people could have found the information she’d gathered for Markos. All she’d added to the process was speed and reliability. But because she couldn’t lie to herself, she had to admit that speed and reliability might have been enormously important factors in a plan so complex and suddenly executed.