"I'll be back later," Kesley said in the morning. His eyes stung as if
they had been sandpapered during the long, sleepless night; his lips
were dry and cracking, and the oppressive city heat hung around him
like the caress of a giant velvet glove, smothering without actually
touching.
"Where are you going?" Santana asked, not looking up. It was a
mechanical question asked out of mere courtesy, and Kesley ignored it.
"Saddle my horse," he told one of the men. "I won't need any of you to
go with me."
The morning air was already steaming as he rode out into the city.
The market was crowded with sleepy-eyed Chicagoans haggling for the
fruit and vegetables that had been brought in while they slept. Kesley
traversed the marketplace in a wide circuit and struck out along the
broad cobbled road that led to Duke Winslow's palace.
About halfway there, he cut sharply and veered to the right, guiding
his horse down a steep hill and off onto a narrow, red-brown unpaved
road. Looking ahead, he could see his destination: the impossibly
untidy bramble of shanties that was the ghetto of the mutants.
Even at this distance, he could see bizarre creatures moving idly back
and forth down below, wandering from porch to porch in the isolated
colony. He whitened at the sight of some of them.
There was one round, orange, doughy mass of a man that looked like some
sort of giant fruit, except for the enlarged features and the tiny,
stick-like legs and arms that projected from it; nearby, walking in
confused circles, was a mutant with a pair of dissimilar writhing heads
and an uncountable number of busy legs.
Lazy curlicues of smoke hung wavering in the air above the shacks.
Kesley looked around.
_Great God_, he thought suddenly. _They're people!_
He rode down into the ghetto, feeling ashamed of his own bodily
symmetry and genetic heritage, which seemed abnormal here. He, alone,
of all the human beings within a half-mile radius, was untainted, and
the thought made him feel strangely humble.
"Who is it you want?" a man asked. _The toll-keeper_, Kesley thought
with sudden weird irony.
The "man" facing him was more nearly human than most; only a blob of
flesh dangling from his forehead and a wattled reddish dewlap swinging
pendulously below his chin qualified him for the ghetto. Kesley forced
himself to stare rigidly over the man's shoulder while he replied.
"I'm looking for ... I don't know his name. He's tall, very tall,
and--" He broke off, overwhelmed by self-conscious guilt, unable to
recite the catalogue of one mutant's alienness to another.
"Go ahead," the mutant said with surprising warmth. "Tell me what he
looks like and I'll see if I can find him. I'm not offended."
Kesley licked his lips and proceeded to describe the man he sought as
vividly as possible. When he was through, the mutant nodded.
"You look for Lomark Dawnspear, friend. Has he wronged you?"
"No," Kesley said hastily, beginning to wish he had never come. "I just
want to talk to him."
"Wait here. I'll try to bring him to you."
Kesley waited. The mutant vanished in the confusing tangle of
closely-packed shacks.
In the midst of this poverty and genetic horror, Kesley held himself
perfectly still, hoping not to call to himself the attention of some
unfortunate who might be jealous of his fine clothes or unscrambled
chromosomes. But no one approached him. The mutants held their
distance, eyeing him with unashamed curiosity from the cramped porches
of their huts.
It was a panorama of total ghastliness. Kesley could see now where the
horror with which men regarded the Old Days had arisen: the people
here were living reminders of the crime of the Old World--a crime,
Kesley thought, whose consequences were visited upon the tenth and the
twentieth generations.
"You seek me?" a harsh voice said.
Kesley snapped to attention and saw the hoarse-voiced Jeremiah of the
streets approaching him, escorted by the dewlapped one. Kesley nodded;
this was the man. In such profusion of mutation, there would hardly be
two so marked.
"Do you remember who I am?" Kesley asked.
The mutant chuckled. "Could I forget? You're the young killer from the
southlands, up here to do away with--but hush! I must not give it away!"
Kesley gripped the mutant by the baggy folds of flesh that hung loosely
on one spidery arm. "How do you know anything of who I am?"
The mutant shrugged. "How could I keep from knowing?" His voice was
mild and apologetic now, with little of its earlier raucous quality. "I
can no more keep from knowing, than you--than you can keep from needing
food, or seeing when your eyes are open. I ... _know_."
"How much do you know?"
"Why you are here, and where you are from ... and where you will go,
and what you will become." Lomark Dawnspear's voice had modulated into
a dull, almost ritualistic drone. "I see these things, and I do not
speak. I speak, but you do not see. Blind, I know you. Eyes open, you
march into treachery."
Kesley released the mutant and stepped back. He was shaking with inward
horror; his empty stomach seemed to be squirming. "What are you talking
about?"
The mutant smiled feebly. "Counter-question: who is your father,
handsome blond man?"
"My father? I--"
"You do not know?"
"All right--I don't know. Do you?"
"How could I not know? Can the maggot restrain its hunger? Can the
Earth forget its orbit?"
"You know, but you're not talking. Is that it?"
Dawnspear shrugged again. "You would not want me to tell you," he said
softly. "I see that, too."
"All right," Kesley said, irritated. "Forget all about that. Give me
some other answers."
"If I can."
"The man named van Alen--is he dead?"
"No."
"Where is he?"
"In his home. Antarctica."
"It was true, then," Kesley said. He stared into the mutant's dead
eyes. "Who is he?"
"A noble of the Antarctican land," Lomark Dawnspear said. "Forget van
Alen. Watch Miguel ... and Winslow. Watch everyone, youngster. Watch
Santana, the greasy prelate. Watch me. Watch the fool stealing up
behind you this very minute."
"The oldest trick in the world," Kesley said skeptically. But he felt
a sudden cold sensation between his shoulder-blades, and whirled
quickly. Another mutant stood there, a wide, slablike thing with four
arms pivoting off jointed shoulders. One of its thick-fingered hands
clutched a rock, jagged and heavy.
Moving instinctively Kesley grasped the arm holding the rock and
yanked it down, smashing a fist into the broad creature's stomach at
the same time. The rock thudded to the ground; the four arms windmilled
aimlessly for a moment or two, and then the mutant backed off mumbling
stertorous, incomprehensible curses.
"You'd better leave," Lomark Dawnspear said. "Some of the slower ones
are beginning to realize you're here. They're likely to make things
dangerous for you."
"But you haven't told me a thing," Kesley said.
"The answers lie ahead of you ... the answers and the questions. Now
go."
Scowling, Kesley drew his robe tighter around his sweating body and
remounted his horse. The mutant ghetto seemed like a nightmare world,
shifting in and out of reality almost at random, blurring into dream
and then focusing sharply on hideous actuality. Without looking back,
he spurred his animal and rode hastily out of the valley.
* * * * *
Somehow, the long week passed, and somehow Kesley endured it. Each
day brought him closer to the audience with Winslow, when he would be
called upon to act as assassin.
And he still had not a shred of plan.
Kesley's imagination had throbbed in constant feverish play all week,
picturing and re-picturing the scene. Winslow--what did he look like?
Suave and bearded, with dark tired eyes like Miguel's? Thin, pallid?
Bloated?
It didn't matter. There was _a_ Winslow on the throne, faceless and
personalityless, and surrounding him were blurred shadows of courtiers:
a priest perhaps, a few generals in formal armor, men like that. Kesley
saw himself kneeling in the Duke's long hall, rising to advance on
nerveless legs to the throne--
Plunging a knife into the Ducal bosom.
Firing an echoing pistol shot as he rose from obeisance.
Leaping forward and throttling Winslow on the throne.
Actually, he knew, it would not be that way. A Duke had an eternity to
lose at an assassin's hands, and would be expected to surround himself
with protection. No one, not even Miguel, would place himself at the
mercy of anyone begging audience simply for the sake of "amusement."
There were too many years to be lost.
Yet Kesley's active mind continued to develop a multitude of
alternative methods for the killing, and always the picture ended with
the moment of death. He found himself unable to project the action past
the actual assassination; the sequel escaped his mind completely.
Seven days passed and, on the eighth, Kesley and Duke Winslow were to
come face to face.
On the morning of the final day, Kesley rose early. Sleep had been
intermittent during the just-ended night, and he left his quarters
wearily shortly after dawn. On foot, he wandered through the awakening
city, in full regalia.
By now it was generally known that ambassadors from Miguel's court
had been in Chicago for the past week, and he drew uneasy stares from
the curious early risers. He walked on, down one cobbled street after
another, smelling the early morning smells of fresh air and the fresh
food offered in the stalls.
The bright sunlight was glinting off Winslow's palace, sending down
showers of scattered light. _Winslow is awakening now_, Kesley thought.
_For his last morning. After four centuries he's come to his final day._
Suddenly hungry, Kesley turned into a food shop that appeared a few
feet away.
"Good morning," the proprietor said unctuously.
Kesley swung himself down into a booth without replying. After a
moment, he looked up. "Coffee," he said.
"Certainly, _señor_."
The white-uniformed counterman seemed delighted to be serving one of
the South Americans. He bustled out officiously from behind the counter
and put the cup before Kesley.
He tasted the coffee. The synthetic beverage was tepid, slightly oily.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to finish it, then sat broodingly in
the booth staring at the gray film of dinginess that overlay the empty
cup.
"Something else maybe, _señor_?"
"No--nothing," Kesley said. "I'm not very hungry."
"Too bad, _señor_. Has the trip north disturbed your appetite? The food
you're accustomed to--"
_Damned chatterbox_, Kesley thought, irritated.
"My appetite is fine." He dropped a coin ringingly on the counter and
walked out, into the warm, stale morning air.
Glancing around tensely, he let his hand slip to the hilt of his
dagger. He caressed it absently for a moment, scowling. The minutes
were crawling by like snails; the audience with Winslow would _never_
come.
Dispiritedly, he turned his steps back toward the hotel. The desk-clerk
looked up idly as he entered.
"_Señor?_"
"What is it?" Kesley snapped.
"The man from Duke Miguel--have you seen him?"
"What man?" Kesley asked, puzzled.
"He arrived while you were out--a small man with a heavy mustache. His
horse was nearly dead; he must have come in a great hurry."
Kesley frowned. He was expecting no one from Miguel. Hope flashed
brightly: perhaps it was a last-minute reprieve for Winslow, and
thus for Kesley. Perhaps, he thought, it was a cancellation of the
assassination order!
"Where is he?" Kesley asked hurriedly.
The desk-clerk jerked his head upward. "He went upstairs. Oh, about ten
minutes ago. I guess he's still there."
"_Gracias_," Kesley said. With sudden excitement he dashed up the
stairs, threw open the door, and looked around.
No one was in the outer room of the suite. From within came no
sound--not even the usual boisterous horseplay of his men. Cautiously,
Kesley opened the inner door. Within, he saw Santana huddling over his
breviary in his usual chair.
"Santana?"
There was no reply.
"Padre?"
The priest appeared to be totally absorbed in his reading. Annoyed,
Kesley crossed the room and grabbed Santana roughly by the shoulder.
The plump Archbishop spun limply, sagging backward as Kesley touched
him, and dropped heavily from the chair.
Kesley paled. The red velvet of the Archbishop's robes was stained
with a deeper red, already turning a crumbling brown. A knife had been
thrust through the folds of fat that covered the priest's heart, and
had found its mark. Santana had attained the martyrdom he coveted.
"Feliz! Domingo!" Kesley shouted. His voice sounded harsh, dry. "Luis!
Where are you?"
He strode to the adjoining door and threw it open--and his men, as if
they had been held back by a spillway, came pouring forth.
All six rushed out and, Kesley saw, there was a seventh with them, a
small dark man who was apparently the courier from Miguel's court.
Kesley leaped back and had his pistol and knife out almost before his
mind was aware that he was under attack.
The gun barked. One man fell. The courier leaped forward, knife-blade
high; Kesley sidestepped and ripped through the flesh of the man's back
with a fierce downstroke. Turning quickly, he kicked a third man in the
stomach, and backed toward the door.
They had no guns, but they outnumbered him six to one. Tossing his
mantle to one side for greater freedom, Kesley chopped downward with
the knife and drew blood again, while one of the grooms sidled toward
him and slit his arm shallowly with a rapid lick of his blade. Kesley
fired again, and the man fell.
Then he managed to bull out the door and down the stairs, with the five
remaining South Americans thundering after him. At the first landing
he paused to fire; a body tumbled toward him, and he caught the small
man and wedged him crossways in the stairwell just as the other four
approached. Kesley ducked as a thrown knife whizzed past his ear, and
kept running.
He dashed out past the astounded clerk and into the courtyard. The
hotel's ostler, a tall, bony old man with walrus mustaches, was
puttering around Kesley's horse, rubbing it down with the tenderness a
skilled groom would devote to a choice animal.
"Get out of the way, you idiot!" Kesley yelled as he entered the court.
Bewildered, the old man looked up, smiling mildly.
"Your horse is not yet curried, sir, and--"
"Out of the _way_!"
Kesley shoved the oldster to one side just as the four swarthy
assassins swept into the courtyard and swarmed toward him. The old man
tottered and took a couple of staggering steps that led him straight
into the path of the South Americans; Kesley, mounting the horse,
winced sympathetically as they collided with him and threw him roughly
to the ground.
But the delay allowed Kesley to mount his animal and, even without
spurs, he was able to bring the horse under quick control. He wheeled
it toward the onrushing assassins. The magnificent beast whinnied and
plunged forward.
Surprised, the South Americans yielded before this frontal attack;
one aimed a knife blow at the horse's flank, but Kesley's boot caught
the man's face and sent him reeling away. Kesley charged through the
straggling, disarrayed South Americans and out of the courtyard into
the main thoroughfare.
He rode three or four blocks, then pulled up, gasping for breath, and
guided the horse into a side-street for a moment. For the first time in
the last six minutes, he had a chance to evaluate the situation:
Point: Santana was dead.
Point: his six men had turned against him, and only their stupidity and
his agility had kept Kesley from sharing the Archbishop's fate.
Point: someone had arrived from Miguel's court shortly before.
Therefore, Miguel had changed his mind and had ordered the
assassinations of Santana and Kesley. Or _had_ Miguel changed his mind?
Perhaps this entire expedition had been a complicated way of wiping out
a troublesome Archbishop?
Kesley's fingers quivered. Anything was possible--_anything_--when
dealing with immortals.
"_Betrayal and betrayal again_," the mutant Lomark Dawnspear had
prophesied. And the mutant had been right.
For one reason or another--or perhaps none at all, Kesley thought
coldly--Miguel had betrayed him.
And the counter-betrayal? Kesley smiled. Fifteen minutes ago he had
been steeling himself for the work of assassinating Duke Winslow.
Now he would, rather, swear allegiance to him. The decision was made
quickly, for Kesley saw it was the only path open to him.
He rode out of the shadows and onto the main stem again, moving
cautiously as if expecting to see the four small Argentinians charging
madly out of nowhere toward him. But they were not to be seen; the
street was crowded with Chicagoans going about their morning business,
and a sickly aura of heat was starting to descend as the August day
edged toward noon.
Clamping together his tattered sleeve over his flesh-wound, Kesley
rode out and toward a mounted policeman who sat stiff and proud in his
green-and-gold uniform, looking down on the pedestrians.
"Officer?"
"Yes, _señor_?"
The title pleased Kesley; that meant he had been recognized. "There's
been a disturbance down at my inn. My men were drinking, apparently.
They've assassinated His Holiness, and attempted to kill me when I
returned from my morning walk."
"How many are there?"
"I killed three in escaping. There are four left still at large down
there."
The policeman drew a whistle and uttered a brief, sub-sonic blast.
Almost instantly, a second mounted man rode up, and at his request
Kesley repeated the story word for word.
"I'll go down there," the first officer said.
Kesley turned to the other. "Would you conduct me to the Palace? I
feel I should seek sanctuary with the Duke until affairs are more
stable."
"Of course."
Together they rode down the winding road that led to Winslow's Palace.
The policeman was a man of few words; once, he asked if Kesley had any
idea why he had been attacked. Kesley shrugged without replying.
For the first time, Winslow's rosy palace seemed to Kesley a place of
refuge rather than the place where he undoubtedly would meet his death.
He smiled grimly. Assassins had become assassins' victims; the wheels
had turned, and the positions on the board had altered. For Santana,
it had been check and mate; Kesley had escaped, through no fault of
Miguel's.
But what if Miguel's messenger had come too late? Suppose Kesley had
already seen and killed Winslow? Kesley frowned; it was impossible to
divine just what Miguel's real motive was. But now there would be no
more dealings with Don Miguel.
A phantom thought struck him, and his lips curled upward. What if
Winslow were to engage him in similar service and send him back to
assassinate _Miguel_?
It was possible. Anything was possible, Kesley thought dismally.
Anything was possible at all, in this chess game with all moves masked.
They drew near the palace. As usual, the guard at the gate inquired
what business Kesley had within.
"I have an audience with the Duke," Kesley told him.
With great punctiliousness, the gateman disappeared into his tower and
returned clutching a lengthy appointment sheet.
"The audience is at two," Kesley said impatiently, as the gateman's
eyes wandered all over the sheet.
"Indeed so," the guard replied after a moment. "And I believe it's no
more than ten now. Duke Winslow will see you in four hours, no sooner,
_señor_."
Kesley wiped away sweat and fought down an impulse to cut the guardsman
down with an impatient blow of his dagger. "It's an emergency. Tell the
Duke that. Tell him that the Archbishop's been assassinated, and that
I must see the Duke now!"
A flicker of interest crossed the guard's eyes. "I'll tell him that.
Wait here."
Ten minutes later the guard returned. "Go in," he said laconically.
"You need me any more?" asked the policeman at Kesley's side.
"No--thanks, you've been very helpful." He handed the man a coin; as an
afterthought, he gave one to the gatekeeper as well, and entered.
A _déjà vu_ emotion filtered through him at the sight of the interior
of Winslow's Palace grounds. There was the same broad courtyard as at
Miguel's, the same distant entrance. This time, though, a cold-faced
man in Imperial uniform was waiting for him.
"I'm here to see the Duke," Kesley said.
The guard nodded. "Certainly. Duke Winslow will see you at once,
_señor_. Please follow me."
Kesley followed. The great inner doors swung open, revealing a
brightly-lit throne room on the ground floor. A row of unblinking
retainers with halberds lined the room; there must have been
twenty-five on each side, Kesley thought. His throat parched at the
thought of the task he would have faced trying to escape from this room
after assassinating Winslow.
On a raised dais at the far end, beneath an immense figured shield and
between two dark columns of glossy, grained onyx, sat a man who could
only have been Duke Winslow. For the first time in his life, Kesley
approached the man who ruled all of North America--the man whose life
he had, not so long ago, pledged to take.