The dungeon was his goal. A gaol f'r a goal, he thought merrily, and was suddenly surprised at his cheer. The feeling of doom was just as powerful. More so, really. And he was in greater and greater jeopardy, yet felt strong. Strong and even cheery. N‘ wonder, he thought with a bit of disgust, we Scots hae taken it i' th‘ kilt frae th' Brits. We hae songs an‘ merr'ment, an' they soljer on, grim-arsed, an‘ tread us hit' th‘ dirt.
Och well. Roll on, death.
The guardhouse. Guard... halt. Order... harms. Carry... harms. Column of files from the left... for'rd, harch. The watch went inside, followed by the officer of the guard and the watch commander. Shortly thereafter, Kilgour slunk into the guardhouse as well.
Clatter, shouts, the fresher flushing, rifles clattered into racks, mattresses being unrolled, noisy chatter of young men and women after two hours of walking froo and toe in a military manner.
Nobody even noticed the coverall-clad man who flashed past the open door and down the hall. The hall dead-ended at a thick door, dripping with elaborate locks. Elaborate and old-fashioned. It took less than a minute to pick the three that were locked, another minute to jimmy them so they looked to be still secure, and Alex was inside, at the head of the stairs leading down into the slammer.
He shut the door behind him, wedging it closed. He put his boots on and started down. The stone steps were worn—as if generations of prisoners and guards had trudged the via dolo-rosa.
Kilgour's flash illuminated the chamber at the base of the steps. Just as he remembered it, although memory was a traitor. But Marr and Senn had sworn Arundel had been rebuilt exactly as before. The door to the huge holding cell h/ng open—a lock he wouldn't have to pick.
Now, Ah rec'lect wee Sten came through th‘ wall aboot here... and he pressed.
Soundlessly, the wall slid away.
Alex moved inside.
This was the "secret" of Arundel, although not that much of a secret. Sten had discovered it years earlier, when he had been commander of the Guard. Arundel was honeycombed with secret passages. They ran from the Imperial chambers to bedrooms to the dungeon to seemingly pointless openings in main hallways. The tunnels had charmed both of them, in another time, with another Emperor. A proper castle had to have secret passageways, and they were impressed with an Emperor who so indulged his romantic impulses.
Now, the passages would be—if Marr and Senn had been right and they had been built exactly as in the old Arundel—one more step toward the Emperor's destruction.
Alex moved up the winding step and the bending low-ceiling passages, always keeping his carefully memorized picture of the castle's outside interior in mind. He wanted the passageway that led to the row of bedrooms.
Kilgour's mood had changed again. Now, and it might have been claustrophobia from the kilotons of stone and the darkness and the close air around him, he felt as if someone was waiting for him.
Up there. Up above.
Three times he discovered sensors and disarmed them. But this was easy going, moving invisibly, like a rat in the walls, past whatever security was patrolling the interior of Arundel. A rat that stuck close to the walls, as any experienced snoop did when climbing stairs and walking down corridors. Not just for cover, but because boards creak, and...
Stale air?
No. Suddenly fresh.
Alex looked for a ventilating duct. Nothing but gray stone, or some synthetic cast to look like it. Although Alex suspected the wallmarks, suggesting the passage had been hand-hewn by an ax, might well be genuine.
Definitely fresh air. Alex knelt, holding his palm flat. There. Around this one great flagstone. The stone was a trapdoor. Pressure-activated, most likely. He dug a millcredit coin from his pocket, and slipped it through a crack, and let go. Ting... tiny... ting...
A long way down.
An oubliette?
Alex thought of tripping the door, but decided against it. It might be hooked to an alarm. Or...
... it might be occupied.
Kilgour moved on, hastily, reading his mind the riot act. Ah'm i‘ th' catacombs, y‘ clot, an' y're comin‘ oop wi' dungeons wi‘ rats an' blind prisoners whae been cast doon i‘ the dark frae decades. It's nae but a garbage pit. Or a 'spection hatch. Or th‘ Emp put i' in frae authenticity.
Oh aye. The lad's such a stickler he puts holes i‘ th' cave no one'll e'er see, except ft him, whae he hae't‘ fish one ae his fancy lassies or lads oot of.
Oh aye. Y‘ lyin' clot.
The long ramp came to an end, and a corridor, wider than the others he'd mazed through, opened.
This, Ah's‘spect, i' th‘ floor Ah wan'. But Alex wanted to make sure. And, again, something was niggling at him. One floor above would be the Emperor's private chambers. And the Emperor would be in them.
Unless he was now hiding like th‘ ferret he's become, doon i' th‘ bunker, i' th‘ catacombs thae ran doon't' th‘ gates ae hell below.
P'raps a wee check, his mind suggested innocently.
Somewhere around here, his mental chart said, should be a braw arch, an‘ marble steps leadin' oop't‘ th' mon himself.
There was no arch.
Just solid wall.
Alex touched it in several places, making sure it wasn't another secret doorway. It wasn't.
Aye, he thought. So th‘ lad dinnae built ever'thing ae i' was. Mad, paranoid bastard, he thought, but with relief. It kept him from indulging that wild urge to solve all, with one mad charge into the heart of the enemy.
So he went for the target he'd intended from the beginning.
Alex found one of the panels—intended for obsejrvation, perhaps—that swung out into the main outer passageway. He swung it open a trifle... and looked. /
Ah. Two Internal Security sorts, standing in front of/a double set of doors. Marr and Senn told him the entire floor had been ripped apart and rebuilt. Only Poyndex occupied the floor. Only Poyndex was entitled to be this close to the chamber.
Alex smiled.
A very different smile than before, when he hung above the castle's entrance.
Now, the smile was truly on the face of the tiger.
Poyndex swore, but to himself. His frustration didn't show on his face, any more than any other emotion would be allowed to. He kicked out of the program he was running and cut back to the top of the fiche.
He had a dull headache. His eyes felt as if they had been sandblasted.
By rights he should have shut down and gone to bed. It wasn't that late, but he had been putting in twenty-hour days, between normal tasks of Internal Security, the Emperor's constant calls, and then this new mission of planetbusting all of the rebel worlds' capitals.
He had considered and reconsidered the Eternal Emperor's terror program.
At first, it seemed absurd. Not absurd, his mind corrected. Wagnerian, in the sense of Gotterdamerung. Like that Earth-tyrant, whatever was his name? Oh yes. Adolph the Paretic. But that was impossible. The Eternal Emperor couldn't be insane. Of course not.
He vaguely remembered one of his instructors in his youth telling him about some dictator of the past, who had overthrown the old boss and was having his flunkies write a new constitution, legitimizing his powergrab. The dictator had rejected one draft, telling his subordinates the new constitution must not, in any way, interfere with the state's use of terror as a legitimate ruling tool. Terror from above, it had been termed. So there was precedent to the policy.
The problem was, he could not remember either the dictator's name, nor whether his reign had been long and lethal, or brief and bloody... and he certainly did not have time to do any idle research.