“After you, Hogg,” Daniel said, bowing his servant forward. “After all, you know where we’re going.”
Hogg gave Adele a sheepish smile and tapped his forehead in salute as he squeezed past. Adele followed as Daniel waved her ahead on the narrow stairs. She heard him humming behind her, secure in his hopes for the future and his confidence in his friends.
Adele thought of the information she had provided to Markos. She’d rather anything than that she’d given in to the Alliance spy.
And she’d rather that she lay dead in the Grand Salon beside Admiral Lasowski than that she be here and alive beside a man who trusted her implicitly.
The woman screaming as they passed the door to the basement made it easier for Daniel to recompose his face in appropriately stern lines. He supposed the sound came from a woman. If he’d heard it on Bantry he’d have assumed an animal was being slaughtered, but in Kostroma City tonight the smart money would bet that the victim was human.
Hogg paused at the stairhead to don a black and gold beret. He opened the door with a flourish and swaggered into the corridor ahead of Adele and Daniel.
The regular palace lighting seemed bright after Daniel’s plunge into the vaults below. Adele Mundy was as coldly aloof as she’d seemed when Daniel first met her in the library. She gave no sign of being perturbed by this disruption of her normal scholarly routine.
Corder Leary, ever the aristocrat, would have said, “Blood will tell.” Watching the librarian made his son feel proud to be a citizen of Cinnabar; the same thing, perhaps, but in a more generalized form.
The corridor was much as Daniel had seen it before, but three Zojira officials were trying to halt the destruction. One of them, a man in full court dress, was arguing with the drunk who’d been shooting out window panes one at a time.
The official kept patting at the flap-covered pistol holster he wore for show. His companions, who wore only shoulder cockades to proclaim their Zojira affiliations, watched their fellow’s gestures with obvious apprehension.
Daniel thought they were right to be worried. The drunk was perfectly capable of blowing the first man’s head off and killing the other two as well if he had any ammunition left.
The woman of the trio stared at Daniel, who’d just appeared from a doorway she didn’t know existed. “What are you doing?” she demanded. Daniel suspected her real purpose was to distance herself from the colleague who appeared to be provoking a gunfight.
Daniel stared at her coldly. If he spoke—
“We’re carrying out our orders,” Adele said in a cold voice. She made the statement in Universal with an upper-class Alliance accent, obvious to anybody who noticed dialectical differences. “I suggest you do the same, or you’ll have reason to regret it.”
Hogg spat a few inches from the questioner’s foot and sauntered on. The three Zojiras grouped a little closer together, saying nothing. The drunk started shooting at the ceiling decorations.
The new rulers were trying to bring order to the crowd in the big anteroom. Two Alliance civilians bellowed into bullhorns. Neither would have been much good alone; in combination they merely raised the volume of cacophony. Commandoes in battle dress watched the scene with expressions like those of visitors to the zoo.
The commandoes were on guard at the ramped exit to the gardens, but they weren’t attempting to control traffic in either direction. Their helmets contained full communications suites; in open air they could even use the planetary comsats directly. If the Alliance planners wanted them to stop a Hajas counterattack they’d be ready, but they watched Daniel and his companions pass without concern or even interest.
If their superiors wanted every Kostroman in the anteroom killed, the commandoes might be ready for that as well. Daniel thought about what Adele had said: Admiral Lasowski murdered with the other two members of the delegation. Even with half the Zojira force made up of thugs, that seemed incredible.
Somebody would pay for it. With a little luck, Daniel Leary would collect the first installment.
Half the garden’s considerable expanse was partitioned off by woven-wire fencing on temporary poles. Hundreds of Kostromans inside sat or stood disconsolately among the plantings. A few were crying.