Chapter IV

Kesley watched Miguel pace uneasily back and forth. The room he had blundered into was evidently one of the Ducal offices; a broad desk at the back was littered with a great many official-looking papers, and on one wall hung a glossy shield bearing Miguel's coat of arms.

Suddenly Miguel turned. "Where are you from?" he asked. His voice was deep, resonant, commanding.

"Iowa Province. I was a farmer."

"Oh? Then what might you be doing in my lands?"

Kesley saw that he had blundered. Farmers, normally, did not take pleasure jaunts to South America. He tried to repair the damage. "I was on a buying tour. I was down here for cattle, and grain, and--"

Miguel chuckled. "Enough, please. One does not have to be an Immortal to see through your lies." He pulled out a chair and sprawled his big form down. Smiling strangely, he said, "You can speak the truth. Why are you here?"

"I--I--" Kesley's face reddened. He realized that he had no rational answer to give. He was here only because van Alen had led him here--and van Alen was dead or wounded now, far to the south.

Miguel sighed. "You assassins are all alike. At the moment of capture, you lose the sacred fire." Swiftly he leaned over and undid Kesley's bonds.

"There. You are free. Kill me, now. We're alone; this is your chance!"

Miguel slipped an ornamented stiletto from his sash and handed it to Kesley. Opening his cloak, the Duke fumbled with buttons and pulled the cloth aside, baring a broad, muscular chest covered with graying hair. "Here! Plunge the dagger in--_now_!"

Kesley weighed the stiletto in his hand, balancing the haft on his palm, fingering the weapon's keen point and well-honed blade. Miguel waited patiently. One corner of the Duke's wide mouth was drawn up in a cold smile; the other sagged almost uncontrollably into a drooping sneer.

"Well?"

Kesley feinted with the stiletto and flicked it through the air past Miguel's head and into the center of the arms-bearing shield on the wall. The Duke, who had not so much as blinked, laughed heartily.

"A good man with a knife! A good man indeed." Serious again, he said, "But you could have killed me. Why didn't you?"

"Kill an Immortal?" Kesley replied listlessly. "I'd sooner try to harness a whirlwind. How could I possibly kill you?"

"By plunging the knife into my heart," Miguel said. "You obviously fail to understand the true nature of our immortality."

"Which is?"

"Cell regeneration. Gradual rebuilding and replacement of decayed cells. We remain as we are because the decays of age are counteracted as rapidly as they occur. There are no organic defects to plague us. This process, however, does not guard against a knife in the heart, or a slit throat, or a bullet in the back."

"And yet you gave the knife to me. Why?"

"I knew you wouldn't use it," Miguel said. "You short-lived ones are so terribly easy to understand. Only...."

The Duke's voice trailed off. "Only _what_?" Kesley prodded after a moment.

"Only nothing," Miguel said. He rose. "Come upstairs with me, young one, to my office. I am a slave to my duties ... more thoroughly enslaved than the basest serf on my lands."

Miguel touched a panel in the wall and it slid back, revealing what looked to Kesley like an adjoining room.

"My private elevator," Miguel explained. "Come."

The elevator rose silently. When it stopped, the door slid open and Kesley found himself in an even vaster room, almost completely lined with books on one wall from floor to ceiling. Another wall was bright with paintings; on a third, strange lights flickered on a wide board, and glowing above their multicolored glitter were eight rectangular gray screens.

Seeming to forget Kesley, Miguel strode across the room and seated himself in an imposing chair facing the screens. He covered the flashing red light with his palm. The upper-most of the screens became illuminated. Kesley gasped as the face of a man grew visible.

The man in the screen gesticulated humbly. "Your blessing, sire. Mendoza of Quito reporting, Don Miguel."

"Speak, Mendoza." Miguel's tone was regally impatient. "It has not rained here for sixteen days, sire," Mendoza said anxiously. "The people are discontented. Crops are dying, and--"

"Enough." Miguel flipped a switch and a second screen came to life. "Luis, take care of this fool from Quito, and explain to him that we have no control over the weather. Then transfer all these other calls to your own line. I'll be busy for the next fifteen minutes."

The screen went blank; the flickering lights died away.

"What is that thing?" Kesley asked.

"Closed-screen television. I use it to keep in contact with my governors in the various provinces."

Miguel took a seat behind a desk; this one, like the other downstairs, heaped high with papers. He lowered his great, bearlike head between his hands and stared at Kesley for what must have been more than a minute. Finally he said, "I offered you a chance to kill me. You declined it."

"Perhaps if I got the chance again, I'd act differently," Kesley said.

"Perhaps. But the chance comes but once. I am not yet tired of life ... I think." The Duke's eyes drooped wearily. They seemed to be staring backward into yesterday--and ahead at the burden of an endless tomorrow. "Four hundred years is many years, though. Are you married, young man?"

Startled, Kesley said: "Huh--no. No, not yet."

"I have been married thirty-six--no, forty-one times. The longest was the first: twenty-six years. We were both thirty when we met. When she died, she was fifty-six; I was still thirty. I was just finding out, then."

Miguel toyed with a sparkling, many-faceted gem on his desk. "Most of the other marriages were short ones.... I couldn't bear to watch them grow old. Now I do not marry at all."

"Do you have children?" Kesley asked.

Miguel flinched as if struck. His wide lips tightened in anger; then his face softened again. "The gene is recessive," he said quietly. "And lethal in early childhood, if not immediately after birth. My dynasties have been short-lived. I have had eight children; seven lived less than a year. The eighth reached the age of nine."

He laughed hollowly. "Out of eternal life, nothing but death. No, I have no children, young one."

"I--see," Kesley said. He peered closely at the Immortal, feeling a strange flow of pity for the timeless man. Immortality was a costly gift, he saw. Suddenly, Kesley wondered how many other Immortals there had been beside the Twelve--Immortals who, once they realized the terrible nature of their breed, had taken their own lives. More than one, he thought.

And how often did Miguel himself consider suicide? Had he had some hidden protection against Kesley's knife, moments ago downstairs, or had the Duke been half-hoping the blade would strike true?

Perhaps.

"Why do you keep me here?" Kesley asked.

Miguel looked up slowly. His eyes, deep and piercing, bored into Kesley's. "You amuse me," Miguel said. "When one is more than four centuries old, one is hard put to find amusement. I am amused by the possibility that you might strike me dead at any moment."

"It's really very funny," Kesley said.

"I'm amused by the fact that you're not afraid of me. Awed, yes, but not servile. How many times a day do you think I hear that hateful word 'Sire'? _Sire!_ Me, who has sired eight dead babes and nothing more."

Kesley looked away, embarrassed. "Sire also means ruler," he pointed out in a muffled voice.

"That, too," Miguel said. "I rule, and it is my life to rule. I have ruled four hundred years, and I will rule four thousand more--or four thousand thousand, or four million. But I can never stop ruling. It is a burden I can never put down. Who would fill the vacuum I would leave?"

"There were rulers before the Twelve Dukes."

"And they destroyed the world! Destroyed it--and in so doing, brought _us_ into being. No, stranger, my Dukedom I can never put down. But it wearies me to make always the petty decisions, to govern the lives of petty--"

"Why are you telling me all this?" Kesley burst out.

"Mere amusement," Miguel said evenly. "I enjoy talking to you. What is your name?"

"Dale Kesley."

"Dale Kesley," Miguel repeated. "A fine North American name, square-cut and undistinguished. I like it."

The Duke gestured toward a communicator-tube on his desk. "Bring that to me."

Shrugging, Kesley handed him the tube. Miguel switched it on. "Send Archbishop Santana here at once," he barked, and cut the channel.

He glanced at Kesley. "The Archbishop will swear you to my service, Dale Kesley."

"But I'm a vassal of Duke Winslow," Kesley protested.

Miguel chuckled heartily. "A vassal of Duke Winslow," he mimicked. "Vassal, indeed. You turn down my offer? You throw Duke Winslow in my face?"

"An oath is an oath, Don Miguel."

"Oaths? Who are you to talk of oaths? You're nothing but a paid assassin--don't think I haven't overlooked that."

Kesley started to protest, but saw there was nothing to be gained by arguing. Miguel would never believe him.

"His Holiness Archbishop Santana," the wall-announcer said.

The door slid open and the Archbishop entered. As the plump figure waddled into the room, Kesley grinned in recognition. The Archbishop was the fat man in velvet robes whom he had bowled over in his mad flight downstairs.

Now the priest wore a simple black surplice and mitred hat and carried the crook symbolic of his office. He was a small, rotund man with dark olive skin and a thin, sharply-hooked nose that seemed highly misplaced in his otherwise plumply rounded countenance. He paused at the door, smiling benignly, and made the sign of the cross with two swift motions in the air.

"Come on in, Santana," Miguel ordered.

The priest approached Miguel and bowed deeply, then glanced at Kesley. Suspicion was evident on his smoothly-shaven face.

"This is Dale Kesley of North America," Miguel said.

"We have met," the priest said unctuously. "This young man knocked me down while fleeing from your guards, sire."

Kesley grinned imperceptibly, catching Miguel's faint, involuntary wince at the _sire_. "It was an accident, Father. I was fleeing hastily; I didn't see you."

"Time wastes," Miguel said. "Santana, swear this young man quickly into my service. I have work for him."

The priest began to raise his crook, but Kesley shook his head. "No, Don Miguel. I told you I'm a vassal of Duke Winslow."

Miguel smiled. "But Duke Winslow's oath is no longer binding upon his vassals, you know."

"I didn't know. When did this happen?"

"It hasn't, yet. But it will shortly--when Duke Winslow is assassinated."

"But--when--"

"Soon," Miguel said. His cold smile was painful to watch. "And your hand," the Immortal continued, "will be the one that strikes him down."

"You're crazy," Kesley said shortly.

Miguel paled, and Santana crossed himself rapidly several times.

"You don't talk like that to your Duke," the Archbishop said.

"_My_ Duke? But--"

Don Miguel regained his composure and put one hand on Kesley's shoulder. "I ask you to join me and perform this service. I am prepared to pay well for it."

"The price?"

"My daughter," Miguel said. "Kill Winslow, and she's yours."

"Your _daughter_? But I thought--"

"_Adopted_ daughter," Miguel said smoothly. "My ward. The girl is but twenty-two, and lovely. Kill Winslow, and she's yours."

Kesley felt perspiration dripping down his body. Kill Duke Winslow? Upset the balance of the Twelve Empires, break the fragile harmony on which the world depended? It was impossible!

But--

He realized suddenly that he was a totally free agent, detached and uninvolved. Van Alen had led him forth from Iowa Province, and van Alen was dead. He owed nothing to van Alen, nothing to Iowa.

He stood alone, unknown and unwanted in the world of the Twelve Empires, able to shape his own destinies. And Miguel was offering him a title, a home, an allegiance, at the cost of an assassination.

_Well, why not?_ he asked himself. _My hand is free. Why not strike down a Duke?_

He moistened his lips. "I'll consider it," he said. "But first--let me see the girl."

* * * * *

Alone, waiting for Miguel to return, Kesley tried to think.

Kill Winslow?

Kill a Duke--an Immortal?

The idea seemed incredible, almost obscene. It was like saying, "Snuff out a star," or, "Destroy a world." The Dukes were centers of their universes, and one did not kill them.

Yet--

Kesley's self-searching in the past few minutes had revealed one jarring fact: he did not have the qualms he had supposed he would have. Assassinating Winslow would not be star-snuffing; he knew he could do it as casually as van Alen had blasted the blue wolf, back in Iowa Province.

He knew he should be quaking at the thought of murdering his own Duke, but the necessary quaking refused to come.

_What's wrong with me?_ he asked himself desperately. _Why am I different?_

A man was supposed to feel loyalty to his Duke. Kesley did not. _Why?_

He had had a chance to kill Miguel. Perhaps that had all been illusion; perhaps he would have been struck down by an invisible guard the moment the knife's tip approached the Immortal's flesh. Perhaps not. He had drawn back, only because he had nothing to gain by killing the Duke.

And now he was asked to kill another. _Dale Kesley, Hired Assassin. We Kill Dukes._ He grinned mirthlessly.

The faint hum of the sliding panel sounded behind him. He turned.

"Have you reached any decision yet?" Miguel asked, stepping into the room.

"You know what I'm waiting to see," Kesley said.

"Of course."

Miguel beckoned to someone standing beyond the panel. "My daughter," he said to Kesley. "The Lady Narella."

No one appeared. Miguel scowled and reached through the open panel. He yanked--and The Lady Narella appeared.

"Oh," Kesley said.

Narella was quite a woman.

She stood with her hands on her hips, smoky, violet-hued eyes blazing in defiance of Kesley and even of Miguel. She was making it clear that she was no one's pawn, not to be bandied about.

Narella wore an ermine wrap, and a low-cut tunic that clung tightly to her high breasts and lean form. She was a tall girl with wide hips and shoulders. Dark hair fell loosely about her face; she wore the diamond-encrusted tiara of a Ducal Princess, and her full lips were bright with a fluorescing cosmetic of some sort. Here and there--on her forehead above the left eyebrow, on her right cheek, on the creamy flesh where the base of her throat swelled into rising breasts--she wore a scintillating dab of brightness, a dot of some chemical that glittered radiantly from its own inner light.

Kesley had never seen a royal woman before. Strangely, or not so strangely, he felt all the reverence for her that he had failed to feel in the presence of the Immortal alone. Had Miguel not been there, he probably would have knelt despite himself and begged to kiss the tip of her cloak.

"Is this the man, sire?" she asked. Her voice was a fit complement to her body, deep and warm, throbbing and throaty.

"It is," Miguel said. "Dale Kesley--the Lady Narella."

"Hello," she said coldly.

A muscle quivered in Kesley's cheek. He nodded curtly to the girl. "Hello."

She ignored him and turned to Miguel. "Is this the man to whom you're selling me, sire?"

Miguel grimaced. "You wound me, girl. I'll leave the two of you together to talk."

"No!" she said imperiously, but it was too late. Miguel, with an enigmatic smile, had bowed and stepped backward into the waiting elevator. The panel slid shut. The wall was once again unbroken.

Slowly, she turned to face Kesley. "I won't have any part of this! I don't belong to Miguel! He can't give me away like this--to a _commoner_!"

Kesley smiled. "Your nostrils flare very nicely when you're angry, milady."

She whirled and stalked across the room, where she stood, her back to him. Kesley grinned amiably. This display of temper was enjoyable. The girl had spirit. Kesley liked that.

"Miguel called you his _daughter_," he said loudly. "How come? That's impossible, of course."

"How do you know?" she snapped, turning to face him. Her dark eyes glittered angrily. "I'm Miguel's daughter. Who says I'm not?"

"Miguel. He told me you were adopted. He told me Immortals were sterile, that their children didn't survive. Whose daughter are you?"

"What is it to you?"

Kesley shrugged. "Curiosity, I guess. You're quite lovely, you know."

She said nothing.

"You're supposed to thank people when they compliment you, milady. It's hardly polite to--"

"Quiet!" She crossed the room and faced him across a desk. At close range her faint perfume reached Kesley's nostrils; it was a delightful odor. The violet of her eyes, he saw, was flecked lightly with gold. "Why has Miguel promised me to you?"

"He wants me to carry out a job--an assassination. You're the price."

"Blunt, aren't you?"

"Would you rather have me lie?"

"No," she said, after a moment's thought. She threw back her shoulders and glared defiantly at him. "Well, do I pass your inspection? Am I fit for you?"

Kesley made no answer. Instead, he circled deftly around the desk, drew her close, pulled her mouth up to his. He kissed her warmly without eliciting any response. She remained passive in his arms, as if she were a particularly lovely statue rather than a living woman.

He released her. "Are you through?" she asked acidly.

"You pass the test," he said. Then he shook his head tiredly. "No. This is insane. Narella, who are you?"

Apparently his sudden sincerity, after the romantic pretense of the minutes before, told upon her. "My father was a court singer in Chicago, court poet to Duke Winslow. I was raised at the court. Four years ago, my father disappeared. Then Duke Winslow gave me to Miguel as a wife, but Miguel didn't want any wives. He adopted me instead. I've lived here ever since, as his daughter. As for my father, I suppose he's dead. He was blind, and--"

"_Blind?_" Kesley snapped instantly out of his mood of weariness as if a bolt of electricity had seared through him. "Did you say your father was a blind court singer?"

"Yes," she said.

Words came from nowhere and rumbled in Kesley's mind, words spoken on an Iowa farm in the deep, booming voice of van Alen the Antarctican:

"_We have the treasure, now; we lack only the key to the box. Daveen the Singer, the blind man. The search for him continues._"

Slowly Kesley raised his head. He blinked a little as his eyes encountered the flashing glitter of the girl's jewelry; then he looked at her eyes and at the lips whose cosmetic fluorescence remained in neat array despite his kiss. "Your father's name--was it Daveen?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes! But how do you know?"

"I don't. It's a name I've heard mentioned, a name that has something to do with me. Only ... have you ever seen me before?"

"I think so," she said slowly. "But I don't remember it. Were you ever at the court of Duke Winslow?"

"Never. But I recall you from somewhere. I--"

Dizzily, he looked away as a burst of sudden pain flooded his mind. He shuddered and felt sick.

"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.

"I--don't know."

"You look ill. You've gone completely pale." She put her arms around him as if to steady him, and her warmth sustained him through the moment of terror that had overtaken him. It was as if he had struck some particularly sensitive nerve, and the resonances were carrying agony through his body.

When it was over, he mopped the beads of cold sweat from his forehead. He looked up at her and saw that her glacial remoteness had been replaced by a sort of feminine warmth, almost a maternal solicitude.

"Would you like to find your father again?" he asked in a low voice.

She nodded.

"So would I. I don't know why, but I feel Daveen holds the key to the hidden areas of my life, the inconsistencies. I'd like to find him for myself. And for you."

"Would you?"

"First ask, _could you_? Your father may be dead, for all I know." He took her hand. "Narella--you don't want to stay here with Miguel?"

"No," she said.

"Good. Listen carefully. Does Miguel have big ears?"

She frowned. "I don't understand."

"Never mind. Come here."

She came close and he pulled her up against him. This time her lips rose willingly for the kiss, but he brushed her pale cheek instead and let his mouth graze lightly along her face until it reached the tip of her earlobe. "Does Miguel have this room wired for sound?" he whispered. "Can he hear what we say?"

She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Probably," she whispered back.

"That's what I thought. Stay close to me, then, and hear what I have to say. If he's watching he'll think we're making love."

"Go ahead," she said.

"I'm going to accept Miguel's commission and leave here to assassinate Duke Winslow, as ordered."

She gasped. "Assassinate--"

"That's the terms of our agreement," he said. "One Duke more or less doesn't matter to me. I'll go to Winslow's court and try to find out what happened to your father. Somehow I'll give Winslow what's due him. Then I'll return here and claim you as Miguel's agreed, and we'll go looking for your father together. If you're willing, give me a kiss."

She hesitated for just a moment, then lifted his face from her ear. Their eyes met. She was pale, he saw, and frightened; the aloof haughtiness of the court lady had been almost completely replaced by an appealing little-girl terror.

He looked past her to the brooding eyes of Don Miguel glowering down at him from the row of paintings on the wall. _After Winslow--Miguel_, he thought with sudden savagery. The unprovoked thought surprised him.

"Very well," she murmured. She touched her lips lightly to his, and then gave herself to him with a sort of desperate abandon that astonished Kesley.

After a moment or two, he slipped from her grasp and looked around the room, wondering if he'd find a concealed television camera or something similar. There was nothing. The battery of screens and lights on the far wall seemed dead, as they had been since Miguel had shut them off.

Finally he cupped his hands. "Miguel!"

The Duke reappeared almost instantly, followed closely by the chubby form of Archbishop Santana. The Archbishop once again performed the sign of the cross piously as he entered.

"Well?" Miguel asked.

"State your terms once again," said Kesley.

Miguel frowned. "The room is crowded."

"I know, sire. Witnesses may be in order."

"Very well," Miguel said wearily. "In return for services to be rendered, I do promise the hand of my ward, the Lady Narella, to Dale Kesley of my vassalage."

"When?"

"Upon his return from the successful completion of his endeavors in my behalf."

"Said endeavors being?" Kesley prodded mercilessly.

"The elimination of Duke Winslow of North America," Miguel said. "His death by any means whatsoever."

"All right," Kesley said. He glanced from Miguel to the Archbishop--who seemed somewhat pale beneath his olive skin--to Narella. "Now that terms have been stated, we can talk business. Miguel, what assurance do I have that I'll get the girl when I come back?"

"An Immortal is good to his word," the Duke said gruffly. "You have a witness in the person of the Archbishop."

"Surely you will not require the Duke to swear an oath?" Santana exclaimed in a shocked voice. "My presence will certify--as if certification were necessary--that--"

"Enough, padre," Kesley said. There was nothing to be won by forcing Miguel into an oath; he had already given his word as an Immortal, and if he would break that, it was reasonable to suspect that no other oath would bind him.

He looked at the girl again. _Daveen's daughter_, he thought. He wondered what tangled relationship of cause and effect had brought him to this place at this time, and where van Alen, who had set the whole chain of events in motion, was now.

In a month's time Kesley had been transformed from an ignorant Iowa farmer into a killer of Dukes and a wooer of noble ladies. It was a strange progress, but it was hopeless, Kesley thought, to try to account for the vagaries of fate.

"Will you accept and enter my vassalage?" Miguel asked.

Kesley met the Immortal's gaze squarely and this time, it seemed to him, it was those dark, four-hundred-year-old eyes that gave ground instead of his own.

"I accept," he said.

He forced himself to kneel and kiss the golden hem of Don Miguel's jeweled cloak.