Chapter VII

Winslow had none of Miguel's crisp, compact muscularity, Kesley saw, as he hesitantly approached the throne. North America's Duke sprawled as massively across his gleaming white metal throne as the broad continent he ruled did across its hemisphere; he was an enormous, ponderous, obese man. Winslow's sobbing intake of breath was plainly audible even at the distance Kesley maintained.

"Your Highness," he said, and knelt.

"Rise," Winslow ordered. His voice, like Miguel's, was deep, but Winslow's voice had a soft, throaty liquidity to it that was most unlike Miguel's compelling boom.

Kesley rose and faced Winslow squarely. The Duke's features were blurred and indistinct, misshapen by the billowing puffs of fat that sagged from his cheeks. He wore a thin fringe of golden-red beard which screened a thick, many-chinned throat.

"Our audience was scheduled for this afternoon," Kesley said, since Winslow was evidently waiting for him to speak. "However, a change of schedule was made necessary by--"

"I have heard," the Duke murmured lazily. "News travels swiftly here, sir. The Archbishop lies dead in an inn, is that it?"

"Dead at the hand of his own servants, Duke Winslow. Betrayed."

"Indeed?" The sleepy eyes of the gross-bodied Duke stirred; Kesley observed that behind the outward facade of sloth lay the nervous reflexes of a cat-keen intellect. "Betrayed? And by whom, _señor_?"

Kesley glanced uneasily around the room. "May we be alone, Duke Winslow?"

Chuckling, the Duke said: "Certainly not. My life is much too important to me, young one. But you can speak freely here; the word of my court is sacred."

"Very well, then. I'll begin at the beginning." Drawing a deep breath, he said, "I was sent here to assassinate you."

Around Winslow, courtiers paled and reached for their weapons at Kesley's flat admission, but Winslow himself showed no reaction whatever. It was infuriating to see the slow smile finally spread over his face. "How unfriendly," he observed at last.

"I had no intentions of actually carrying it out, of course."

"Of course." With biting sarcasm.

"I accepted the order in an attempt to free myself of Don Miguel's power. I had every intention of swearing allegiance to you, and--"

It seemed to Kesley that some ugly thought had passed at that moment through Winslow's mind and, disconcerted, he halted. Then, recovering, he continued: "On the other hand, Archbishop Santana came here with the definite intent of doing away with you.

"However, this morning a courier arrived from Miguel, instructing our retinue to set upon us and kill us."

"A noteworthy aim," Winslow said. "One which, I take it, was only partially accomplished."

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I want to expose Miguel's treachery. I want to make everything clear to you, show you what's been going on." Kesley spoke with desperate sincerity now.

Winslow laughed suddenly, his entire body quivering. "This is very funny," he said, when he had subsided. "Miguel sending men here to assassinate me--and then having his own assassins assassinated!" He narrowed his eyes and peered curiously at Kesley. "Why do you suppose he would do a thing like that?" he asked.

Kesley moistened cracking lips. "It is not for me to understand the ways of Dukes, Sire."

"I hardly expect it of you."

"Then--"

"You wish to enter my service?" Winslow asked. "It is strange that a former assassin would beg me to gather him to my capacious bosom. It is an amusing idea."

Suddenly Kesley felt like an insect being toyed with before having its wings plucked. Dizzily he glanced at the long rows of halberdiers standing like carven images, at the wax-faced courtiers grouped about Winslow's throne, and for a bewildering instant he thought that this was all some kind of dream from which he would soon wake and find himself back behind the plough, awaiting Tina's call to lunch.

"I never intended to strike a blow against you, Sire," Kesley lied humbly. "You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Winslow said gently, and without any trace of sarcasm. "Perhaps that's why Don Miguel decided to blot you out. However," he said, sighing, "I'm afraid you represent as great a threat to the Twelve Empires as has ever been born, my young friend."

He gestured to a hawk-faced man in somber robes standing to his left. "Lovelette, take this man and convey him to the dungeons. Tomorrow, he's to be executed. Is that clear?"

"Certainly, Sire."

It had happened so quickly that Kesley did not fully understand it. One moment he had been on dangerously thin ice but managing to keep aloft; the next, he had plunged through into utter cold.

He felt thin fingers bite into his bicep, and a low voice say, "Come with me."

Two halberdiers advanced mechanically and took their posts at either side of him. Numb, he allowed himself to be marched away from Winslow's presence, with an infinite series of maddening _whys_ screaming at him all down the long hall.

Why this sudden reversal on Winslow's part? Why the execution order? This, not Kesley's switch of allegiance, was obviously the "_betrayal again_" Lomark Dawnspear had foretold.

As Kesley was led from the Ducal presence, he heard Winslow's sardonic chuckling coming from behind. Tomorrow, he thought bleakly, it would be the headsman who would chuckle.

He had changed his coat once too often. Going to Winslow had proved a fatal move.

Kesley resolved that if he ever escaped from Winslow he would stay as far as he could from all the Dukes. Life was hard enough without making one's self subject to the caprices of life-jaded Immortals.

But, as the dark corridor leading to the dungeon opened out before him, he saw clearly that there was little chance of an escape this time.

* * * * *

During the rest of the day and the long night that followed, Kesley, alone in the darkness, had plenty of time to think.

He was in complete isolation, somewhere in the depths of Winslow's palace. He had been thrust in; microrelays had clicked, and a heavy metal door had whirred creakingly closed. Air came filtering in from a dimly-visible grid in the ceiling, twelve feet above. There was no furniture in the cell, not even a cot. He could stand, or he could lie.

He stood for a while, pacing the length and breadth of the cell until that palled, and then he stretched out full length to wait for morning. There was no point wasting energy in fruitless escape tries; he had determined very quickly that his cell was proof to any attempts.

One dull gray thought flickered monotonously through his consciousness: tomorrow his life would end. That wasn't so bad, he thought; everyone dies--everyone but the Twelve. What hurt more was the rasping realization that he had never really lived at all.

What had he done, in the twenty-four years he'd had? Twenty of them were blank, cloaked by darkness more complete than the inkiness that surrounded him in the cell. He had lived and farmed in Kansas, he told people, but he knew it was false, and van Alen, whoever _he_ had been, had known it was false.

Van Alen had confronted him with the naked lie he had been living, and it had hurt. Probing the past caused pain. All right. Blot out twenty years, begin life four years ago, ignore the mystery that cried to be solved.

_What kind of world is this_, he asked himself, _where you never start to live?_

He had never known the rules. He never knew who made the moves, who played the game. Unseeingly, he had shunted from one pattern of action to another, without ever understanding the world he was in. It was ironic. A world carefully tailored for simplicity, a world scrupulously designed by its proprietors to avoid the complexity that had destroyed the previous civilization--and here he, after twenty-four years, was going to his death uncomprehendingly.

Something was terribly wrong with a world like that, Kesley thought. Perhaps its goals had been good, once. But as the Immortals had moved timelessly on through the years, they had grown remote from the charts and maps of society, and begun to play some inscrutable, unfathomable game of their own.

"It isn't fair!" he said out loud. His protesting voice echoed weirdly in the confines of the cell, bounced back grotesquely from the metal walls. He knew that if there were a light in the cell he would be able to see his own distorted image on their shining surfaces. It would be a mocking clown-face, laughing at him for his own ignorance.

But there was no light. There was only darkness, and the silence of solitude.

And then, after hours passed, there came the faint humming sound of relays clicking in the massive door.

_Morning already?_ Kesley wondered.

Time had passed; he knew that. But so much time? Was so little left?

The door was undeniably swinging open.

He had remained alone for almost a day and a night, and had returned no answers to his many questions. Shrugging, he waited for the Duke's men to take him away. _Maybe there aren't any answers_, he thought dismally.

He heard soft padding footsteps in his cell, and felt a cool hand grasp his.

"Stand up," a whispered voice said.

Wondering, Kesley pushed himself up from the floor. "You're not the headsman," he said.

"No. The headsman waits for morning."

"Isn't it morning yet?"

"The hour is four," the strangely familiar voice whispered. "The Palace lies asleep."

Dimly, Kesley realized that this was some sort of impossible rescue--unless, that is, it was another hoax. Frowning into the impenetrable darkness, he said: "Who are you?"

There was no answer. But gradually a faint glow enveloped the cell, flickered warmly for a bare instant and died away.

"Dawnspear!"

"Speak quietly, friend. It was not easy persuading the guards to sleep."

Kesley rubbed his eyes, tried to peer into the darkness. The momentary glow of light had revealed the bizarre, piebald mutant towering above him. Cautiously, Kesley extended his hand and felt the rough, cool skin of the mutant's bare chest as if to confirm his vision.

"What are you doing here, Dawnspear?"

"There are those who would not have you die," the mutant replied. "Winslow and Miguel know you. Two Dukes are in league to take your life, now. They can be dangerous enemies. Come."

Dawnspear grasped Kesley's hand firmly and guided him forward. As they passed through the open door of the cell, the metal began to swing shut again. Kesley heard a faint clang as the cell closed.

Outside, in the dim light of the dungeons, Kesley made out sleeping forms lying here and there, slumped over their weapons. Guards.

"Did you drug them?" he asked.

"They were very sleepy," Dawnspear said ambiguously. "We must hurry, now."

They glided through the dungeon together, the man and the mutant. Kesley walked on tiptoe, moving delicately as if he were walking on the fragile surface of a dream; at any moment he expected Dawnspear to vanish and the entire illusion to drift into nothingness.

But then he smelled fresh air instead of dungeon mustiness, and he knew he was free.

"The gate is open down there," Dawnspear said, pointing. "The guards are lost in slumber."

Together they crossed the palace grounds and passed through the gate. Kesley turned to the gaunt figure of the mutant to demand some explanation, but Dawnspear had released his hand and was pointing toward the distance.

"Within a minute they will all be awake. You will be missed. Flee now, while you have the chance."

"Wait a second! How did--why--?"

Kesley's whispers died away impotently. Dawnspear had slipped away silently into the night. "_Dawnspear!_" he called harshly. There was no reply.

_There never are any answers when you call_, Kesley thought sourly. He wheeled, looked back at the sleeping Palace. Lights were beginning to flicker on here and there; the mutant's influence had ended, and the sleepers were waking.

He was free to fly. Once again, he was his own master, bound to no one.

The guards stirred within the walls. He could imagine their dismay when they found him gone. Wrapping his cloak tightly around him, he edged off into the night.

A horse, first. Then, out the walls some way or other, and to freedom.

Both Winslow and Miguel would be hunting him, why, he could not say. But both his fealties stood revoked; his Dukes sought his life.

Well enough, Kesley thought. He had no debts to either Miguel or Winslow. Once again he stood alone. Where to, now?

He thought of Narella, in Buenos Aires. She would be waiting for him to come back--or was she, too, only part of Miguel's scheming. He didn't want to believe that.

Van Alen had told him he belonged in Antarctica. Suddenly the image of the mysterious continent rose in his mind. He saw a vast wall. Nothing more was visible.

It took only a moment to frame a resolution. Find Daveen. Find Narella.

_And then_, he thought, _to Antarctica. To Antarctica!_