And in the Thorold Palace, some of the residents realized what was happening.
At midafternoon, the dowager duchess Patricia was holding court, sitting in formal session in the east wing of the palace to hear petitions on behalf of her daughter. A merchant, Freeman Riss of Somewhere-Bridge, was bringing a complaint about the lord of his nearest market town, who, either in a fit of pique or for some reason Freeman Riss was reticent about disclosing, had banned said merchant from selling his wares in the weekly market.
At another time, this complaint might well have interested Dame Patricia—also known for the majority of her life as Iris Beckstein—as much for its value as leverage against the earl in question as for its merit as a case. But it was a hot afternoon, and sitting in the stiff robes of state beneath a row of stained-glass windows which dammed the air and cast flickering multicolored shadows across the bench before her, she was prone to distraction.
Riss was reciting, in a scratchy voice as if from memory, "And I deponeth thus, that on the third feastday of Sister Corn, the laird did send his armsmen to stand before my drover and his oxen and say—"
Patricia raised a shaky hand. "Stop," she said. Freeman Riss paused, his mouth open. "Surcease, we pray you." She squinted up at the windows. They were flickering. "We declare a recess. Your indulgence is requested, for we are feeling unwell." She closed her eyes briefly.
I hope it isn't another attack,
she worried; the MS hadn't affected her vision so far, but her legs had been largely numb all week, and the prickling in her hands was worsening. "Sergeant-at-arms—"
There was a banging and clattering from outside the room. The courtiers and plaintiffs began to talk, just as the door burst open. It was Helmut yen Rindt, lord-lieutenant and commander of the second troop of the Clan's security force, accompanied by six soldiers. Their camouflage surcoats sat uneasy above machine-woven titanium mail. "Your grace? I regret the need to interrupt you, but you are urgently required elsewhere."
"Really?" Iris stared at Helmut.
Not you, too?
The clenching in her gut was bad.
"Yes, your grace. If I may approach"—she nodded; Helmut stepped towards her raised seat, then continued to speak, quietly, in English—"we lost radio nine minutes ago. There's nothing but static, and there are very bright lights on the northern horizon. Counting them and checking the decay curves, it's megaton-range and getting closer. With your permission, we're going to evacuate
right now."
"Yes, you go on." She nodded approvingly, then did a slow double take as one of Helmut's troops marched forward. "Hey—"
The soldier bent to lift her from her throne in a fireman's carry.
Instant uproar among the assembled courtiers, nobles, and tradesmasters assembled in the room. "Stop him!" cried one unfortunate, a young earl from somewhere out to the northwest. "He laid hands on her grace!"
That did it. As the soldier lifted Patricia, she saw a flurry of bodies moving towards the throne, past the open floor of the chamber, which by custom was not entered without the chair's consent. "Hey!" she repeated.
Helmut grimaced: "Earl-Major Riordan's orders, your grace, you and any other family we set eyes on. We are to leave none alive behind, and you'll not make a family-killer of me." Louder: "To the evac cellar, lads! Double time!"
The young earl, perhaps alarmed at the unfamiliar sound of Anglischprache, moved a hand to his hip. "For queen and country!" he shouted, and drew, lunging towards Helmut. Four more nobles were scarcely a step behind, all of them armed.
For palace guard duty, in the wake of the recent civil disorder, Earl-Major Riordan had begun to reequip his men with FN P90s. A stubby, oddly melted-looking device little larger than a flintlock pistol, the P90 was an ultracompact submachine gun, designed for special forces and armored vehicle crews. Helmut's men were so equipped, and as the misguided young blood ran at them they opened fire. Unlike a traditional submachine gun, the P90 fired low-caliber armor-piercing rounds at a prodigious rate, from a large magazine. In the stone-walled hall, the detonations merged into a continuous concussive rasp. They fired for three seconds: sufficient to spray nearly two hundred rounds into the crowd from less than thirty feet.
As the sudden silence rang in Patricia's numb and aching ears her abductor shuffled forward, carefully managing his footing as he slid across blood-slick flagstones. The wounded and dying were moaning and screaming distantly in her ears, behind the thick cotton-wool wadding that seemed to fill her head. The light began to flicker beyond the windows again, this time brightening the daylight perceptibly. Helmut led the way to the door, raising his own weapon as his guards discarded their empty magazines and reloaded; then he ducked through into the next reception room. Patricia looked down from the shoulder of her bearer, into the staring eyes of a dead master of stonemasons. He sprawled beside a lady-in-waiting, or the wife of a baron's younger son. My
people,
she thought distantly.
Mother dearest wanted me to look after them.
They stumbled out of the cloister around the palace into the sunlit afternoon of a summer's day, onto the tidily manicured lawn within the walled grounds. Something was wrong with the shadows, she noticed, watching Helmut's feet: There were too many suns in the sky. "Don't look up," he shouted, loudly enough that she couldn't help but hear him and raise her eyes briefly. Too
many suns.
The northern wall of the palace grounds was silhouetted with the deepest black, long shadows etched across the grass towards her, flickering and brightening and dimming. A moment of icy terror twisted at her guts as she saw that Helmut and his guard were hurrying towards one of the smaller outbuildings ahead. Its doorway gaped open on darkness. "What's that?" she asked.
"Gatehouse. There's a cellar, doppelgangered."
She saw other figures crawling antlike across the too-bright lawn.
Nukes,
she realized.
They must be using
all
the nukes.
For a moment she felt every second of her sixty-two years. "Put me down," she called.
"No." The response came from Helmut. Her bearer was panting hard, all but jogging. Her weight on his back was shoving him down: He had no more breath to reply than any other servant might.
They were nearly at the building. Helmut hung back, gestured at her rescuer.
"Now,"
he snarled. "Drop her and
go."
The man let Patricia slide to the ground, twisting to lay her down, then without pause rose and dashed forward to the entrance. Helmut knelt beside her. "Do you want to die?" he asked, politely enough.
Behind him the sky cracked open again. Getting closer. She licked dry lips. "No," she admitted. "But I deserve to."
"Lots of people do. It has nothing to do with their fate." He slid an arm beneath her and, grunting, levered her up off the ground and into his arms. "Arms round my neck." He stumbled forward, into the darkness, following his men—who hadn't bothered to wait.
"I failed them," she confessed as Helmut's boots thudded on the steps down into the cellar. "We drew this down on them."
"They're not our people. They never were." He grunted again, reaching the bottom. "We're not part of them, any more than we were part of the Anglischprache who're coming to kill us. And if you reached your age without learning that, you're a fool."
"But we had a duty—" She stopped, a stab of grim amusement penetrating the oppressive miasma of guilt. It was the same old argument, liberal versus conservative by any other name. "Let's finish this later."