THEY FORCED ME TO my knees. One soldier stripped me of my sword while another stood with the slit of his stunner pressed to the back of my head. Beside me, Valka was similarly relieved of her plasma repeater and made to kneel. Corvo sank to both knees without protest, hands on the back of her head.

“I thought this mission was taking us away from the combat, Marlowe,” she said dryly.

“So did I.” I could not imagine what the Lothrian government would want with me, but I felt certain it was me they wanted. I supposed they could have sent my corpse and footage of my execution back with a declaration of war, but like I’d told Argyris—realizing it all too late—if war had been their aim they’d have done as well to torch the embassy, and there’d have been no cause to go to all this trouble apprehending me.

“Order your men to stand down,” the man at my back said, and jostled me with his weapon. Through the doors ahead, I watched the Lothrians square up, standing at attention while their Imperial puppets attended to their prisoners. “I said order your men to stand down.”

Not turning my head, I said, “You’re making a mistake, soldier.”

“You killed the consul!” the man barked. “Traitor!”

“Traitor? Your consul betrayed the Empire. What I did was justice.” While I spoke, I stared at the disruptor-scarred corpse that had been Damon Argyris moments before. I was too angry to regret my actions. I spoke fast, all the while fearing a blow or a stunner blast. “You’re the one about to turn a Royal Victorian knight over to the Commonwealth. Look in a mirror, you damn fool!”

That seemed to catch the fellow’s tongue a moment, and in his hesitation, I saw a glimmer of hope. Ahead, the glass doors slid silently open, admitting the damp of early morning. A man entered flanked by two of the Conclave Guard. He wore the formal gray and red of the Lothrian military: high black boots, gray tunic and trousers with red piping and cords, and a long gray coat that trailed almost to the floor. He wore a ceramic helm in lieu of a hat, its brow painted with the Lothrian black star. Without having to be told, I knew the man was a Party Commissar, as like to our knights as anything in the Commonwealth.

He surveyed us coolly with those familiar black Lothrian eyes.

“The enemies of the People will be brought low by unity and resolve,” he pronounced in his native tongue.

By charade and subversion, more like, I thought.

“On behalf of the Conclave, the delegation from the Sollan Empire is under arrest.” He peered down at me, lifted my chin with one hand. Here, I guessed, was the man who had commanded the attempt to catch me that very night. He glanced down at the body of Damon Argyris. “Koya tranya,” he said. What a waste. The Lothrians had called off their pursuit as I drew too near the embassy, doubtless to maintain an air of deniability regarding my account, but when Argyris had called and made his offer—my head for his continued comfort, I could only assume—he had removed the need for such deniability.

And I had removed Argyris.

The Commissar barked an order to his own men to disarm mine and take us into custody. The Conclave Guardsmen advanced toward Valka and Corvo and myself while the embassy guards still tried to disarm our column.

“Take the delegate and the delegate’s companions to the car,” the Commissar said. “The Chair will want to speak with the delegate at once.” Guards moved forward with manacles for me and the two women.

In Galstani—hoping the Commissar would not understand—I addressed the legionnaire with the stunner to my head. “He’s going to have you all killed,” I said. The man’s stunner dug into the back of my neck, but he did not fire. “The only way you have off this planet is with me.”

Lothrian soldiers forced Captain Corvo to stand. Two patted her down, duplicating the efforts of the legionnaires who had disarmed her already. They moved to shackle her even as I was dragged to my feet.

Otavia Corvo was having none of it. Since she joined on Pharos, Corvo had been a bridge officer, captain of the Mistral when Bassander had run the Red Company, and captain of the Tamerlane after my ascension to knighthood. I had not seen her in a fight since the Pharos affair. The giantess slammed her forehead down into the Lothrian’s face with enough force to stagger him even through his helmet. I heard the fellow swear even as Corvo gripped his head in both hands and smashed her knee up into the officer’s face with enough force to crack the tempered glass. The man hit the ground before any of the others had the sense to train stunners on the captain.

But Corvo was only getting started. Whirling, she seized a second Lothrian by the throat and lifted him bodily into the air, hurled him squeaking across the tile floor. A stunner bolt struck her—fired by the Lothrian or legionnaire I couldn’t say—but Otavia did not stop. She struck another of the Lothrians with a precise elbow to the face. He went sprawling, his disruptor rifle skittering away. The Commissar reached for his own sidearm, but Corvo snapped a kick that caught the fellow’s hand as he raised it to fire on her. A second stunner bolt caught her between the shoulder blades, but Corvo only snarled. Turning, she keyed the switch to activate her shield.

I did the same.

I had long suspected that Otavia Corvo was not truly human, that somewhere in her family’s Norman past someone had bedded a homunculus, some giant bred for labor or for sport. Here was the proof. No ordinary human could take direct fire from a stunner like that at such close range. I had weathered glancing blows in my time, but not even a palatine could withstand such a shot. The myelin insulating Corvo’s nerve cells must have been truly something.

“Shields up!” I shouted to Valka and to all who’d hear me, and I snatched up the disruptor I’d used to kill the consul. Spinning, I rounded on the man who’d taken my sword. “Give it to me!” I said, pointing the weapon. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The soldier hesitated, head tracking between me and the Lothrian Commissar locked in a hand-to-hand contest with my amazon of a captain. “I do not have time to argue, soldier. Give me my sword.” When still the fellow did not move, I shouted, “They are going to kill all of you if you do not stand with me. Now!” I holstered Crim’s sidearm, extended an empty hand.

About us, chaos was circling in wider and wider spirals. Confusion tugged at the embassy guards as they were torn between their consul’s final orders and the obvious reality. Between the Empire and the Commonwealth.

“Strel! Strel!” the Commissar exclaimed, staggering back from Otavia’s onslaught.

In so doing, he made up the legionnaires’ minds for them.

Shoot!

The Conclave Guard trained weapons on the shielded legionnaires and fired. My captor and I stood for a nanosecond in the eye of a terrible storm beneath his cloud of indecision.

It broke.

He handed me my sword. Turning, I keyed the command that closed my helmet up over my face and kindled the highmatter blade.

“Pallino, Crim!” I shouted over the general line. “To the vans! They’re our only way out of here.”

A Lothrian soldier ran at me and fell dead with a knife in his throat. “Aye, boss,” came Crim’s reassuring tone, and glancing briefly back I saw the Norman standing fast by Pallino and a knot of our men. He’d drawn his sword.

Ahead, Corvo lifted the Commissar by the lapels of his long coat and tackled him to the ground. Her fists fell like hammer blows, and when she stood again, breast heaving, it was with blood on her hands.

“Captain!” I tossed her Crim’s disruptor. Sword in hand, I did not need it. Corvo caught the weapon and offered me a short salute.

“Forward, you dogs!” Pallino shouted, voice lifted above the din.

Side by side, Corvo and I pressed for the door. The Norman giant tugged her suit’s coif up over her hair as she went, ducking as shots streaked over her head. The Lothrians pushed forward, shattering the glass with handheld rams. One of the Conclave Guard rushed forward, eager to get inside my shield curtain, his rifle raised. Perhaps he had never seen highmatter before. I raised my sword. He fell.

“For Earth and Empire!” I cried out, seeking to stoke the same flames of patriotism Argyris had abused. “For the Emperor!”

But the Lothrians had made the embassy guards’ choice for them. They fired without discrimination, without care, and where before there had been two Imperial companies at one another’s throats, there was but one.

“To the right!” Crim said, slicing through the neck of a man who’d come too close. “Front of their convoy!”

“Valka, stay with me!” I reached out a hand for her, afraid the stress might trigger another of Urbaine’s seizures. She swatted my hand aside and shot a Lothrian peltast in the chest. She’d recovered her old Tavrosi service repeater, and the weapon chimed as it fired three plasma rounds into the man’s unshielded chest. Many of the Lothrians wore no ceramic, but ballistic jackets over anti-disruptor skins. Unshielded as most of them were—a cost-saving measure, I guessed—they were almost defenseless against plasma fire.

Teeth clenched, Valka shot another. “I’m fine!” she gasped, following after me.

“Watch those stunners!”

“Down! Down!”

Shouts in standard and in Lothrian filled the hall and the echoing carport beyond. Corvo, Valka, and I made it through the doors, shattered glass crunching beneath our heels. I took the arm of a Lothrian officer who came too near, stabbed another through the heart as he moved to tackle Valka.

The Lothrians had come in more than a dozen of the blocky, armored vans that had pursued me through the streets. Each was painted matte black and was large enough to field ten men, two in front and eight on benches. Their rear doors all stood open, and a line of soldiers with ceramic tower shields held the ground between.

“I’ll take them,” I said. Imposing as those shields were, they were no match for highmatter. All around, the Lothrian police were firing gas cannisters, and the air was filled with smoke where plasma had set the building afire.

Corvo grunted and stuck fast by my side. As we closed on the Lothrian line, she ducked her shoulder and struck one of the shield-bearers with such force the man flew ten feet and slammed into the nearest van, knocking the wind from him. My highmatter blade sheared through the nearest riot shield and the man behind it. Shock and terror welled in the men about, faceless though they were. They staggered back, realizing their heavy medieval shields were useless before Corvo and myself. One man dropped his and fired on me, disruptor bolts crackling in the air between us.

A shot caught him in the side, and looking back I saw Pallino with a knot of our Red Company men pushing out into the carport. “We need to radio the shuttles!” he said. “Tell them to be on their guard!”

“We can’t get a signal out of this dome! We need to evacuate the embassy!” I countered. “All these men are dead! Argyris may as well have shot them himself.”

“No time!” Pallino replied. “My job’s to get you to safety, Had!” The old soldier drew up beside me, and jerking his head in the direction of the foremost van, said, “We have to go.”

I lingered, torn as my captor had been between hard choices. “I don’t know the way to the shuttle port! Do you?”

“I do!” Valka said, and tapped her forehead. “ ’Tis all here.”

“Where’s Crim?” I asked.

As if in answer, a knife felled another of the Conclave Guard not twenty feet away, and looking back I saw a huge wave of Imperial soldiery force its way out of the embassy basement. The last line of Lothrian resistance started to break and run for their vans. A hail of plasma and disruptor fire chased them across the carport.

Corvo seized me by the shoulder. “We have to go! Into the first car, now!” No sir, no my lord. All business. I unkindled my blade and followed, taking Valka by the wrist. Corvo leaped into the open rear doors of the police van and shouldered her way into the front compartment. I heard a muffled cry and the faint cough of disruptor discharge. Then the body of the driver was booted without ceremony through the hatch to the pavement.

Corvo’s coifed head re-emerged from the front compartment as I leaped into the rear of the van. “I’ll drive.”

“I’ll help!” Valka answered, and squirmed through to take the passenger seat beside the captain. I turned to give Pallino a hand up as Crim piled in beside with half a dozen men in tow. “I’ll try to raise the ship and the shuttles once we clear the dome. The tunnels may be insulated, but ’tis worth a try.”

“Very good!” I said, and lingered a moment at the hatch. Our men were fighting their way aboard several other of the vans, but just as many were in Lothrian hands, and no help was coming for the rest of the embassy. “They’re going to die.”

“We have to go, boss!” Crim said, reaching out to close the door. “We have to go now!”

I raised a hand to stop him slamming the door, but Pallino put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do with a hundred men, lad.”

I swore and turned away even as the van surged to life beneath us. “Up and right,” came Valka’s voice from the front, “then left onto the avenue.”

Crim and Pallino slammed the doors on madness and dead men. I had to take hold of one of the straps hanging from the ceiling to steady myself as Corvo took us screaming round the ramp. The van yawed wildly, skewing on its spherical wheels, and slammed into the wall of the ramp as we cornered.

“We’re fine!” Corvo insisted, taking us onto the street.

The rear compartment had no windows, though there were firing slits in the back doors: narrow horizontal hatches just wide enough for an officer to poke the muzzle of a rifle or phase disruptor through. I slid one of these back and watched a second police van lumber out of the ramp tunnel and onto Avenue H.

“Take this to 87th street and turn right!” Valka shouted. “That’ll take us out to the edge of the ringed district, then left toward the bridge!” I pushed through the press of bodies to peer into the driver’s compartment. Corvo sat to the right, both hands on the wheel, Valka half-crouched in the seat beside her, pointing out through the windscreen.

“The others won’t know how to get out without us!” I said, meaning the other vans.

“Tell them it’s a right on 87th until we hit the reservoir!” Valka shouted.

“On it!” Crim said.

Pallino put a hand on my shoulder and turned me. “What the hell is going on?”

I sagged against the bulkhead that separated the driver’s compartment from the rear and removed my helmet. Shaking my head, I said, “The Lothrians want me. I can only imagine it’s . . . something to do with . . . with what I can do.”

“They know about all that?”

The other man put a hand on my shoulder, steadied me as the van swerved through traffic. I looked from Pallino to Crim to the half-dozen faceless soldiers watching through their helmets. “They asked why I was sent of all the Emperor’s men. They must know something, or suspect.”

“They might just want to hold you hostage,” Crim put in. “Keep you on the table for some counter-offer. Keep negotiating.”

“Maybe,” I said, bracing myself against the wall as the van shook. “I think their ambitions run deeper than that.” I held Pallino’s gaze a long moment. The myrmidon had been one of a precious few who had seen me die. Valka and Bassander Lin had been present by that lakeside on Kharn Sagara’s ship when Prince Aranata Otiolo had cut off my head. “I think they know what I can do . . . and I think they want it for themselves.”

I had no way knowing if the changes the Quiet had wrought in me were something a surgeon could glean from my bones, much less replicate. I had not been willing to submit to medical examination since the mountain on Annica precisely for fear they might discover something too tempting for the Empire or the Chantry to resist. If the Emperor had marginalized me for my own good, exiled me to Nessus, the Lothrians had no cause for similar forbearance.

“Well, we can’t let them get you, then.” Pallino clapped me on the shoulder.

Bang.

Something struck the van with enough force to hurl us men against the far side. Pallino pushed me off him, swearing as only Pallino could.

“The hell was that?” Crim asked, adjusting his bandoleer.

I pushed my way past the others and slid one of the firing slits open. I could only see directly behind us, but there was the crouching black shape of another police van closing in.

“What hit us?” Crim asked, coming up beside me.

Not the van. I strained to look sideways, caught sight of the rear of a smaller black vehicle keeping pace with ours. It must have rammed us from the side. “Trying to drive us off the road . . .” I muttered.

“What?” Crim asked, straining to see himself.

Before I could answer, a high-pitched whine filled the air outside, and despite the roof above our heads I felt the instinct to duck. Bright light—white and cold—shone through the open slit. I threw an arm across my face and squinted. I could just barely make out the pinpoint diodes of running lights as the small aircraft hove into pursuit. Men stood on flying platforms, hands gripping the control bar, feet bracketed into stirrups.

“Chariots!” I hissed.

The chariots kept spotlights trained on us as they opened fire. The armored van shook.

“We’re not going to last long like this,” I said. “Half the city’s after us.”