GRAY DARKNESS LAY ON the Great City, and the sky beyond the arcology dome was thick with cloud. Compared to a Norman or an Imperial City, it was remarkable how dark that darkness was. Few lights shone in windows, and fewer on street corners. Here and there a groundcar trundled past, or one of the military police vans. I took to the shadows, never stopping, never standing still. I felt certain it would be only a matter of time before city security noticed me, and I felt more certain still the zuks and pistrasnuks alike were the subjects of a curfew whose threshold was long past.

Carry’s stair had brought me to a kind of park on the edge of the dome. I hurried along the edge of the reservoir lake beneath the shadows of block monuments carved with relief images of the People at their work, farmers with hand scythes and builders with mallets, factory workers with wrenches and welding masks. The mouth of the spillway yawned behind, a literal gate to the underworld, to the old world whence the Commonwealth had sprung.

Two times patrolmen saw me. I lost the first one leaping down a stair between two hive buildings, and the second by hiding myself among bags of refuse that lay in a back alley awaiting the street sweepers. There I hunkered a long time, not wishing to kill the man who’d seen me. I knew I needed to move toward the palace ziggurat in the center of the dome where the greatest towers stood. But in the dark and at that distance I could not recognize the Sollan embassy.

It was going to be harder than I thought. I could not risk the use of my suit’s comms. Someone was bound to intercept and overhear, and to backtrace my signal to its origin. To me.

Hiding among the trash, I remembered another night in Borosevo. I remembered rain, and Cat calling out to me from the rooftop. Memories so remote, so ancient they felt almost to have happened to someone else, as though my own history were the life of some character on a page. At length I hurried on, jogging through the dark. My helmet sealed once more, my suit forced air into my lungs. I half-crouched as I moved from the shadow of one pillar to the next, one hand ever on the catch to activate my shield.

An unmarked car slowed on the road beyond the colonnade, and two men got out. They weren’t revolutionaries in red and white, but Conclave Guardsmen in matte black, armored and faceless.

They were hunting me, I knew. City security had got its bead on me at last. The cameras were everywhere. It was possible they did not know it was Hadrian Marlowe they hunted, possible they thought me some true insurgent in breach of curfew on some seditious errand.

Possible, but not likely.

Fear is a poison, I told myself, tamping down my quickening heart.

Adrenaline. Cortisol. All the toxins of fear and stress. Perhaps they could not see me, veiled as I was in the shadow of the square columns.

A shot flared, disruptor fire fizzling against the stone at my left ear.

Too much to hope for.

I thumbed my shield catch and ran. Shouts in Lothrian chased me, echoing down the colonnade, and shots crackled against the stone as the guardsmen pursued.

The streets ahead stood empty as I burst from the end of the colonnade, though barriers high as a man divided the two sides of the highway from each other. I skidded to a halt in the end of the colonnade, scanning frantically to either side, spied a step bridge at my right that crossed the highway and led deeper toward the heart of the central district. Booted feet pounded up the walkway behind me, and I took the stairs two and three at a time, stumbling in my exhaustion and ill-fed state. Making the top of the bridge, I slumped a moment against the rail, and looking back saw the black shapes of three Conclave Guardsmen approaching from the other end.

Not truly having a plan, I tugged Olorin’s sword free of its hasp and hurried across the narrow bridge, long shadow flapping on the empty highway below. The bridge comprised a single span of paved steel, without arch or pillar to support it. As I neared the far side, I kindled my Jaddian blade, highmatter throwing white-blue light in the lamplit gloom. The police had made the top of the bridge behind. A disruptor bolt caught on my shield and died. I raised the sword and slashed through the narrow span, carving through rail and paved top and the steel beams that supported it.

The Lothrian prefects yelled as the bridge bent and crashed to the highway below. I wasted no time. I leaped the stairs entire, fell thirty feet to the street on the far side of the highway. I unkindled my sword without flourish and padded on.

Dead ahead, the Palace rose like Bruegel’s Tower, level upon level until it touched the glassed-in sky, its marble heights ghostly pale in the cloud-bound night. Water dripped from gutters and collected on the naked masonry of buildings. Litter papered the streets. Here was part of the district we offworlders were never meant to see. Unlighted signs promised coffee and liquor rations. Above another somber door was writ the word Lothtarsemya, Right-Birth. A board beside the door promised obstetrics, state prostitutes—women and new men—and disposal.

I did not linger to dwell on these questions. Ahead the buildings grew taller, square towers windowless or with flat slits no more than a handspan wide. A broad avenue arced round to either side, encircling the palace. The embassies were all on such a circular avenue, though I had no way of knowing if it were this street or any other. How I wished then that I might run my vision forward, following some other Hadrian from my place to the proper door. When I had stood upon the Quiet’s mountain, I had seen all of time, every moment possible and actual. Standing there, I must have seen the way I had to go through that gray city, but I had only memories left—broken and insufficient—and though various storefronts or street corners felt familiar, I did not know the way.

I was not on the Quiet’s mountain. I was in Vedatharad . . . and the clear path was lost. What visions of the future remained to me were buried in unconscious memory, fragments burned there by amygdala and prelimbic cortex—as my vision of the battle on the bridge had been—by memory of expected crisis.

I turned left, tore across the beltway at an angle. Before I’d gone a hundred yards I heard a siren wail in the distance, and the streetlamps flared brighter, shading from orange to vivid white. They were meant to blind me, but my suit’s entoptics cut the glare. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Every shadow was banished by that blinding light, as though I stood upon the margin of an atomic’s blast radius.

They’d found me.

Which meant one thing: I’d nothing to lose. “Marlowe to embassy, Marlowe to embassy. Valka, Argyris—anyone!” I kept running, fingers fumbling with the controls on my suit’s wrist-terminal. It was possible the Lothrians were jamming all signals, but I felt certain that so near the embassy, inside the same dome, I had to get through. “Marlowe to embassy. I am on Avenue . . .” I spied a passing sign, “J! Avenue J and 138th Street, moving clockwise. Pursued by the Conclave Guard. Is anybody there?”

The wail of the siren came closer. I kept running, waiting, straining for a friendly word on the comm. They’re all dead, a little voice whispered. Ahead, two of the prefect vans swerved into sight.

“Lord Marlowe?” a clipped tone sounded in my ear, the Legionary polish clear in his voice. “Turn right next chance you get, we’re at Avenue H and 137th. You’re close.”

“Close!” I almost laughed, and seizing the next lamppost used it to slingshot myself around a corner. I heard the grind of the police vans’ spherical wheels as they yawed round, overshooting my street. The empty fronts of what looked like cafes yawned at my side. Here, I imagined, were false shops and eateries propped up for foreign visitors, more fresh paint tossed over decay. But the buildings all were empty.

I reached Avenue I as one of the riot vans skidded to a halt before me and a half dozen Guards spilled out, grasping disruptor wands in armored fists.

I didn’t stop, only changed angles to run round behind the van. One of the lawmen moved to block my path. I leaped, pointed my knee to slam him in the chin. He toppled back, and I tumbled into a messy roll and regained my feet before the other Guards could close. The other vans barreled after me, sirens screaming in the night.

I wasn’t going to make it.

Images of being rammed from behind by the Guard’s van played in me, and I hurled my shoulder at the nearest door. The plate glass cracked, shattered on the third attempt, and I fell over the threshold into an empty cafe. Scrabbling to my feet, I staggered round the bar and into an empty kitchen. White floor, white walls, steel counters and benches. There had to be a back door.

There!

Shouting and the sound of feet filled the room behind, but I burst out through the door and turned left along the back alley toward Avenue H. Strange to see a back alley in such a city so clean, but there would be no trash, as there had been no people. Magda’s and Carry’s words about how many had vanished into the camps or into starships bound offworld played in my head, and I steadied myself against the wall of the far building as I limped on. I had only to turn right on the avenue and hurry back counterclockwise several blocks.

“Valka!” I rasped. “Is Valka . . . ?”

“I’ve sent a man to fetch her, lord,” the embassy man said over the comm. “Lord Damon’s on his way down to the lobby. You have to run.”

“Thank you, soldier,” I said, unable to keep the razor’s edge from my tone. The man went quiet.

I turned right. A solitary light shone at street level six blocks away along the bend of the avenue. I broke into a dead run. Not far! There were armored soldiers in the white and red of Sollan legionnaires in the door. I did not stop or turn back.

“Here!” I shouted, voice amplified by my suit’s chest speakers. “Here! Here!”

The men hurried forward, their lances tucked and ready as they moved to meet me. I thought I heard the sound of feet on the sidewalk behind, fancied I heard the squeal of wheels as the Guard’s vans swerved onto the avenue. I clapped one of our men on the shoulder as I hurried by, and I stumbled climbing the short stair to the doors of the Sollan embassy so that I fell across the threshold, chest heaving, burning from the effort. Rolling over, I looked back out through the open doors.

There was no one on the street behind save our door guards. The vans were nowhere to be seen, nor any man of the Conclave Guard. Avenue H stood empty, as if there’d been no pursuit at all.

“My Lord!” came the unctuous tones of the consul, Argyris, his words an address and an imprecation both. “What in Earth’s Holy Name is going on?”

“Ask the Conclave!” I gasped, finding my knees again. “We were attacked returning from the ice mines.”

Argyris put his hands in the pockets of his velvet robe. “We know. Your man Pallino told us all.”

“Pallino’s alive?” I asked, “and Crim? And the others?”

“Six dead in your guard, but the two officers are here. More came from your ship when you went missing. We’ve been trying to coordinate with the Conclave Guard to search the city, but they’ve been stonewalling us.”

“They would,” I said, triggering my helmet to unseal. “They’re behind it.” I peeled my coif back from my hair and glowered up at the man, ragged in my fury.

Argyris stuttered. “Lord Marlowe! That is . . . that is a dangerous accusation.”

“You’re damn right it is, Argyris. Now be silent!” I bellowed, and such was the force of my voice and my conviction that the hairy giant of a man stepped back as if I’d struck him. Even gasping on the tile, my reputation could freeze the blood. In much quieter tones—a trick I’d learned from my lord father—I said, “I know what this means. But I know I’m right. They were trained men on the bridge.”

The consul waved this away. “The liberalists.”

“There are no liberalists!” I sneered. “You know that as well as any on this planet, and don’t play the fool!”

“Hadrian!”

I looked up at the familiar voice in time to see a black streak speed across the checkerboard floor. Valka went to her knees beside me, arms about my neck. I embraced her in return. “You’re alive!” she said, and kissed me full on the mouth. “We thought . . .”

“I know.” She did not have to say it. I returned her kiss, more gently, on the cheek. Squeezing her hand, I said again, “I know.”

Looking over her shoulder, I saw more figures standing in the arch that led to the lift lobby. Pallino stood there in Red Company fatigues, looking tired and more like the old myrmidon I’d met on Emesh than the patrician soldier he’d become. Crim stood beside him in matching undress reds, his black boots half-fastened. The swordsman had evidently just woken up. Between them in red and black, her tunic jacket over one shoulder, her floating yellow hair its customary cloud above her chiseled face, was Captain Corvo.

“Brought in the cavalry, I see,” I said to the room at large.

Valka nodded and sat back on her heels. “When you . . . when we thought . . . I called Otavia down. We’ve been trying to work with the Lothrians to find you, but like Argyris said, they wouldn’t let us out to search.”

I chewed on my tongue a moment, deciding how best to carry matters forward. I realized I’d bent so much of my efforts on returning to my people that I’d left little thought for what I’d do if I made it there. I had no proof the Conclave was behind my attack. Except . . .

“The Guard followed me all across town. Shot at me . . .” It was all I could do to find my feet then. Valka helped me rise. “And they drew back before I got in sight of the embassy.” It was evidence of a kind, if not a kind satisfying to men like Damon Argyris. Yet it was a tacit admission of guilt. If the Guard had thought they were pursuing an ordinary breach of curfew, they would have pursued me to the gates of the embassy. And would they have sent such force? Would an ordinary jaywalker or young lover out for a tryst merit so many men? “They knew it was me they were chasing.”

“You can’t be serious!” Argyris said, taking a few steps nearer. “What earthly reason could they have for such a thing? Attacking an Imperial apostol . . . it’s an act of war!”

I fixed Argyris with my flintiest glare. I’d had time to ruminate on this and more on my boat ride through the waterways beneath Vedatharad, and I’d reached no true answer, only more troubling questions. “War . . .” I said, patting Valka on the arm to extricate myself from her embrace. “If they wanted war, Lord Consul, they’d simply firebomb this building and send a fleet across the Rasan Belt.” I turned away. “They may still do that.”

“There’d be no cause for this ruse with the terrorists if their object was war,” said Otavia Corvo, pushing into the lobby. “Why bother?”

I shook my head. “I was meant to disappear. This is about me.”

Valka and the others were silent. Argyris held my attention with wide eyes, as if waiting for me to say more. When I only stood there, letting the silence stretch, the consul—ever the sort of man uncomfortable with quietude—cleared his throat. “About you? What possible reason could the Grand Conclave have for kidnapping you?”

“Perhaps they’ve heard the stories about me,” I said, thinking of the footage of my miracle at Berenike. “Perhaps they believe they are true.”

I felt certain that recording had found its way across the light-years to Padmurak. In the Empire, it was said that Lothrian scientists were ever prying into the secrets of the human mind, chasing sensory mechanisms whereby the ancient dreams of telepathy and psychokinesis might be realized. The scholiasts were quick to deride their efforts as pseudoscience, but all the same, it was no stretch to imagine the Lothrian Navkaburo, their science ministry, might be all too happy to dissect my body and brain in an effort to learn my secrets. Had not the Emperor himself told me—after Thermon—that much of his reason for sending me to Nessus in semi-exile was to prevent me meeting a similar fate under the knives of the Chantry’s Choir and its cathars? For a moment, I wondered if the Chantry itself might be behind this latest attempt as well. It was said they had some influence even in the Commonwealth—though how that might be I could only guess. Perhaps they traded secrets with the Conclave, acting in their role as scientists and researchers, not as priests and judges.

Or perhaps I’d become paranoid in my old age—if it was paranoia to suspect the hand of an institution that had conspired to kill me on no fewer than four occasions of abetting a fifth.

But no, suspecting the Chantry’s hand in this so far from Earth and Forum did not pass Occam’s Razor. I recalled Ninth Chair’s question from our first meeting with the Grand Conclave. Why does the Sollan Emperor send this man? he’d asked, his voice given the unanimous consent of the Chairs. Why does the Red Emperor send a warrior to Padmurak? How could I have been so blind?

Damon Argyris dabbed at sweat beading on his forehead with a silk kerchief produced from one sleeve. “What are we to do?”

“My mission is a failure,” I said simply, turning my gaze on Otavia. “We will make sail for Nessus immediately.”

“You mustn’t!” the consul exclaimed.

I only glared at him. “I will telegraph the Emperor myself. The Commonwealth will not help us. They are not to be trusted. Pallino!” I turned my attention to my old companion, who stood straighter, his training taking over. “Have your men pack our effects. We return to the Tamerlane at once.”

“At once!” Argyris said, taking a step nearer. “My lord, it is the middle of the night! At least wait ’til morning!”

“My lord,” I said, repeating the style not out of politeness, but with an edge to emphasize our difference in rank, “I will not wait on this world a moment longer than necessary. You would be wise to do the same.”

Argyris threw out a hand to stall Pallino’s departure. Ever obedient, the old soldier lingered in the marble arch that led back to the lifts. “But this is madness! We must speak with the Conclave. Surely there is some explanation for all this.”

“Go, Pallino,” I said, overriding the consul’s objections. The one-time myrmidon saluted and vanished through the arch to the lifts. Turning to Otavia, I said, “How many men did you bring with you?”

She did not hesitate. “Twenty.”

“The remnant of my guard makes thirty-four, plus Crim and Pallino. Then you, Valka, myself . . . where’s Tor Varro?”

“Returned to the Tamerlane,” Corvo answered. “With two guards.”

I did the arithmetic. “Lord Consul, you will arrange vehicles for thirty-seven. Now.”

“But my lord! This is so irregular. It’s the middle of the night! You’ve only just returned! You’re still rattled from your experience on the bridge. Shell shock . . .”

“Shell shock?” I repeated, and might have spit acid on the tile there and then. “Shell shock? Hear this now: you will find me those transports, Argyris, and you will find them now.” I stopped just short of threatening the man; Argyris was already shaking and sweating furiously. Had I put so great a terror on the man?

The Lord Consul began nodding, but changed to start shaking his head as he started to speak. “But my lord . . . we have no vehicles. The Commonwealth does not permit offworlders free travel within the city! You know this!”

Rage is blindness, I told myself, and checked my breathing. “You mean to tell me . . . that you’ve no vehicles? No groundcars. No fliers. No chariots at all?”

“Commonwealth law does not permit it!” he said. “I told you! No one travels in Vedatharad without an escort.”

I had to shut my eyes, hooked my thumbs through my shield-belt. “Then it seems you get your wish after all, Lord Consul. Contact the Lothrians. Tell them we need transport.” I drummed my fingers against the belt and the hasp that held my sword in place. I did not hear feet. “Now!”

From the shuffle of slippers on tile, I knew Lord Damon Argyris had gone.

“You’re sure it was the Lothrians behind the attack?” Valka asked.

In answer, I gestured Crim close and said, “I want your men ready. We may have to seize their vehicles.”

“If they don’t attack us first,” the assassin replied.

“Siege the embassy?” I said. “How many men are on station here?”

“In the embassy?” Crim frowned. “Five hundred legionnaires on staff, another fifty in Argyris’s personal guard.”

I felt myself shaking my head. “They’d not try anything so flagrant. Certainly not with the Tamerlane in high orbit.” Though saying that aloud, I felt certain the Lothrian home fleet would be more than sufficient to overmatch one Imperial battleship, even one so formidable as the Tamerlane.

Something of that thought was written in Captain Corvo’s face.

Crim rummaged a moment in a pocket of his fatigues and handed me a slim, black phase disruptor, its firing slit dark and quiescent.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You lost your sidearm, boss.” He cocked one canted brow and glanced at the empty gun holster on my right leg behind the sword hasp. I hadn’t even noticed.

“Must have lost it in the fall.” I took the offered weapon. “Don’t you need it?”

Crim tapped the side of his nose. “Oh, I’ve spares.” Before I could holster the weapon, the former mercenary proffered a dark red something wrapped in wax paper. It was one of his gel candies. “Cherry, boss,” he whispered conspiratorially. “For your breath.”

I’d of course not been in any condition to care for my teeth, not in several days. Suddenly self-conscious, I took the candy. “Argyris will be back before long,” I said. “Crim, roust the men, and help Pallino get everything in order. I want the whole party ready to move in twenty minutes.”

When he, too, was gone, I sank into a high-backed chair at the base of a fluted column.

“Are you all right?” Valka stood over me. She was dressed plainly: loose trousers and an old pullover shirt blazoned with the marks of some Tavrosi musical act in faded phosphorescent color. She’d not been sleeping.

“You should get ready to move,” I said, and spread the injunction over her and Corvo alike. “You’ll need your suits if we’re to make the shuttles.”

“I’ll go,” Corvo said, laying a hand on Valka’s shoulder for a moment.

Valka gripped it with a strained smile. “Thank you, Tavi.” The captain vanished after Crim and Pallino. Alone a moment, Valka said, “I thought I’d lost you this time.”

Reaching up, I tugged on the chain that held Valka’s phylactery about her neck, the one that contained a sample of my own crystallized blood. “Never.”

Pallino returned first with our luggage and five of our men. No longer alone, Valka returned up the lift to ready herself. More of the soldiers reported in, with Crim and Corvo bringing up the rear. “Typical civil service,” Pallino grumbled, “always bringing up the rear. Figures we’d have the whole unit ready to roll before the consul flounced back down here.”

“It won’t be long,” I said.

“You’re sure it were the Conclave on that bridge?” Pallino asked.

Rather than answer him, I said, “Something’s not right here. Can’t you feel it?”

“There’s a lot not right here,” the old myrmidon replied.

With a sigh that betrayed every one of my three hundred and forty years, I found my feet. “Where is Argyris? He’s been gone long enough.”

We hadn’t long to wait for the answer to that question. The consul emerged from the lifts still sweating and puffing like a man three times his weight, a trio of aides in tow. He seemed surprised to find my people together and outfitted for the journey so quickly, but took it in stride, pausing only to dab at his beaded forehead. “The Lothrians are sending a convoy. They’ll be at the back gate in twenty minutes.”

I checked the time. It was nearing the fifth hour past midnight. The sun would be rising before long.

“The back gate?” I asked.

“City curfew ends in about ten minutes. Traffic is about to pick up. They don’t want us blocking the road while we load up so many.” Damon Argyris cast his eye over the assembled Red Company legionnaires.

Otavia Corvo spoke up. “We’d best get down there, then.”

Crim and Pallino took charge of organizing our retreat through the lobby of the embassy, past the reception desk—empty at that hour—and the blast doors to the guard station behind. The men were grumbling and making jokes the while, carting the luggage or shouldering packs of their own.

“Ain’t nothing to see on this rock, Otho!” said one.

“Would have liked some fresh air is all,” said Otho.

The first answered him, “Ain’t you heard? No fresh air, neither. That’s recycled Lothrian wind you’re huffing.”

“Shut up, Galba! Not in front of his lordship and the lady.”

Valka hid a smile behind her hand.

“Can it! The lot of you!” Pallino barked when we’d descended an escalator and passed through the broad main hall of the conference center. We’d arrived at the embassy following our first visit to the People’s Palace and the Conclave’s arena by the same route. Ahead stood a series of glass doors that opened on an underground carport accessed by a winding ramp that allowed vehicles on and off the avenue above. Past the last conference rooms to either side, the hall split left and right and ran the length of the great building, leading to lavatories and side stairs that fed back to the lobby above and to the higher floors.

“I’ve radioed your shuttle pilots and alerted them,” Argyris was saying, shuffling along just ahead of me in his slippers. “They’ll be ready for you when you arrive.” He paused a moment, turned back, nearly causing me to slam into him. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to stay, Lord Marlowe? You’ve hardly been here a month. Progress is slow on Padmurak. I’m sure the Chairs can be brought round.”

I did not stop, but brushed past the consul toward the glass doors. “I will not stay on Padmurak a minute longer than I need,” I said. The Conclave had tried to capture me—had tried to kill my men. I hoped by hurrying to leave quickly, I could clear the City before my enemies had time to act. I was being reactionary, I knew that, but whoever had ordered the attack on the bridge and my arrest as I crossed Vedatharad that night had not counted on me reaching the embassy. They would be reacting, too.

“But there must be some explanation for all this!” Argyris exclaimed. “My lord, I have lived here for decades!”

At the head of the column then, I was nearly to the door, Valka and Corvo at my sides, Pallino just behind. I rushed past the last set of conference room doors and reached the carport lobby. That was when I heard it.

The unmistakable whine of stunners being primed.

I felt iron fingers tighten about my heart and squeeze adrenaline into my system. Thus heightened, I looked to either side in disbelief. Thirty Sollan legionnaires stood in either branch of the hall, disruptors set to stun. They were fully shielded.

Knowing I was trapped in the crossfire, and worse, knowing Valka was, too, I did the only thing I could.

I raised my hands.

“I am sorry,” said Lord Damon Argyris, Imperial Consul on Padmurak. “I have my own people to think of. They said if I didn’t turn you over, they’d torch the building.”

Without turning, I said, “They’re still going to torch the building, Argyris, you damn fool.”

“They won’t,” Argyris said. “Tell your men to put their guns down.”

Very slowly, I rotated on the spot, found the bulk of my men armed and shielded and drawn into defensive triases in the hall behind. Not in the direct line of fire as I was, they’d had more time to react. But even as I turned I saw more legionnaires in embassy livery hurrying down the hall from the front lobby. We were well and truly surrounded.

“You’re dead, traitor,” I said to the consul. “The Emperor will not stand for this.”

“The Emperor need never know,” Argyris said, strangely less nervous now his deception was in the open air. “I will write Forum and say that you were killed in a terrorist attack. Nasty bunch, those liberalists.”

Through the doors behind, I heard the rumble of groundcars, knew the sound well enough by then to know it was not the quiet purr of diplomatic vehicles. It was the heavy grind of Lothrian armored vans.

“They’re early,” Argyris said, almost brightly. He clapped his hands once and advanced for the doors.

“What did they offer you, Argyris?” I asked, turning to follow the sybarite’s path, dropping my hands. “All this for your harem? Your slaves? Your comfortable little life?”

Argyris spread his hands. “Not so little. I told you, I’ve lived here for decades.”

I understood. This was no spur-of-the-moment betrayal, no mad scramble of the desperate civil servant to safeguard his position and his life. “How long since they bought you?” I asked, looking round at the consul’s men. “Do they know? What did you tell them?”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, my dear lord,” he said, but gave neither answer nor excuse. Beyond the glass doors, Conclave Guardsmen came pouring out. There must have been a hundred of them—at least so many as there were soldiers in Argyris’s retinue. “You are a dangerous man, Lord Marlowe. Is it true you wish to seize the throne for yourself?”

So that was it, that was how Argyris had convinced his men to turn on the Emperor’s own apostol. He’d convinced them I was the traitor, not himself.

Always accuse the enemy of what you’re doing.

I snarled, and moving with palatine agility faster than the consul’s plebeian guards could track, I drew Crim’s pistol and fired. The disruptor crackled, its red bolt striking Argyris full in the face. The energy burned his nerves to carbon, tore skin and scorched it. The treasonous consul fell dead without ceremony or another word.

“Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon now!” a dozen of the embassy guards cried at once.

Sure that the stunner bolts would start flying at any moment, I did just that, and placed my hands on my head as a knot of the soldiers hurried forward to secure me. Near enough to the traitor’s corpse, I spat on it.