Her certainty had gone, hollowed out by hunger, by the loss of LizAlec and by the apparently endless storms. That wind had stripped resolve from her as brutally as it had ripped tiles from the roof of the Hotel Sabatini. Like the city, she was drowning in mud, in debilitating indecision. But she would do what she had to: decide.
“We fight...”
It wasn’t a suggestion: the words were her statement of intent. She still outranked everyone in the study, even if she only outranked Lazlo now by length of service. The decision was hers to take, though open statements weren’t her usual style.
The room stilled.
“We fight,” Lady Clare said fiercely, “because we don’t have any alternative.” Staring round, Lady Clare could tell that the others weren’t convinced, and she wasn’t surprised. Fat, balding or weak, they were even less impressed by the thought of having to get out there and fight than they were by the idea of dying. And she didn’t blame them. In their place she’d have felt the same.
Lazlo would always be beyond reach, but not the others and in memetic terms five was a very small number of minds to colonize. As always, Lady Clare started in hard: forcing unpalatable facts down their throats. Sugar syrup could come later.
“Whatever we do, most people in this room will die.” That got their attention. “Listen,” said Lady Clare. “We’re ministers, sub-ministers, heads of sections. Why would the Reich let any of us live?”
“No, wait...” The woman flipped up her hand to still Lazlo. “You can talk later.” One of the junior ministers smiled and then another. And Lady Clare breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Some of them at least were obviously enjoying the tall minister’s discomfort. She could bring round the others yet, Lady Clare just knew it.
“I want to tell you one of the Prince Imperial’s favourite stories,” announced Lady Clare. “It happened in ancient Greece, or maybe it was Rome...”
“Terrific,” the young finance minister who’d smiled when she put down Lazlo groaned aloud, but his muttered aside was friendly, almost resigned. The Prince Imperial was known for his ability (if ability it was) to draw a classical allusion from any event. There were those, Lazlo among them, who believed the old man knew more about Gallia Lugdunensis, Germania Libra and the Belgae than he did about what went on within the borders of his own empire.
Lady Clare wasn’t fooled and hadn’t been for a long time. Not since the old man had pulled three disparate facts together and suddenly asked her a simple but unanswerable question about the religious situation in M’Dina. That was when she’d realized he hid the mind of a tactician behind the clumsiness of a buffoon. His role model wasn’t the original little Corsican corporal who’d risen from poverty to be the first Napoleon. It was the stuttering Roman emperor Clau-Clau-Claudius.
“A general wanted to storm a city,” said Lady Clare. She kept her words simple. One of the ministers in the room didn’t oven have French as his main language, having been born in France Outre-mer. And besides that, simplicity paid. “But the city walls were high and the gates were strong. For weeks the general besieged the city, without success, until a treacherous slave came to him in the night and offered to open the gates from within in return for gold.”
Lady Clare let her gaze drift slowly across the room to settle on Lazlo: let the others make of that what they would, and they would...
“The general accepted and that night the slave opened a side gate to let the enemy slip in and kill people where they slept. The last person to be murdered was the city’s ruler, his throat cut by the general in front of the king’s slave.”
Lady Clare stopped, just long enough to check that everyone was listening. She had their attention right enough, every scrap of it. Even Lazlo had stopped peering at his nails and pretending to be bored. But then Lazlo knew what happened next, even if the others didn’t. Lady Clare wasn’t the only one to have heard the tale told by the Prince Imperial.
Lazlo could interrupt her now, of course. But that would only make the others all the more anxious to hear what happened. She had him and Lady Clare knew it. Pushing herself way from the table, Lady Clare stood to face them. Her voice dropped an octave, as she tried to sound as much like the Prince Imperial as she could, but most of them never even noticed.
“When the city was taken and the inhabitants dead, the general ordered the slave to the top of the city walls to receive his bag of gold. And then, having given the slave his gold and made him a free man, the general ordered two of his own slaves to toss the traitor to the streets below. Because, as the general told the traitor before he was thrown to his death, if his old master couldn’t trust him, who could?”
“We’re not slaves,” Lazlo said contemptuously.
“Everyone’s a slave to something,” said Lady Clare.
The young finance minister nodded. “Marcus Aurelius.”
Lady Clare gave the man her best half-smile. “The point is, if we fight the Reich they’ll kill us. And if we surrender Paris and give up the Prince Imperial, then they’ll kill us anyway, eventually. They’ll have no choice, we’ll have shown we can’t be trusted...”
She was talking direct to Lazlo now. “...Of course, if you think you can cut a deal for yourself, then go ahead and try. But I imagine any deal depends on delivering not just the city but also His Highness. And I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”
He didn’t. She could see the doubt in his green eyes. And behind the doubt, something darker, more malicious, infinitely more personal. That was when Lady Clare finally understood what had happened to LizAlec and why.
Lazlo smiled.
“My daughter is dead.” Lady Clare stated it as a fact. If Lazlo had LizAlec still alive, he’d have let her see tapes, made Lady Clare listen to LizAlec plead. She knew Lazlo, he wouldn’t have been able to resist.
“Oh no,” said the tall minister, stepping in close. “She’s very much alive.” He hoped it was true, not that it mattered. Either way, the woman in front of him didn’t know if it was true or not. “But all it takes is one simple call. And my dashing friends do have one comStation still active, you know.”
It wasn’t true. From Winchester pulse/Rs to satellite dishes, everything had turned out to contain steel somewhere. Even the Reich’s metal-free non-detectable anti-personnel mines turned out to have a tiny hair-thin steel spike right at its heart. carbon-shielded against microwave detection and destruction, but made of metal and virus-vulnerable all the same.
“I don’t believe you,” said Lady Clare. Everyone else was forgotten. All the woman could see in her head, all she could think about was Lazlo and LizAlec. She refused to think about the thing she wanted to think about and then she did anyway. Wondering just how LizAlec had died.
“Don’t you want to know where she is?” Lazlo’s voice stopped Lady Clare as she swept towards the door, head held high, hands grasped tight to prevent them shaking. She turned back, contempt written across her thin, once beautiful face.
“My daughter is dead.”
Lazlo laughed. “Your daughter?” He stretched lazily like a cat and reached for a decanter, pouring cognac into a balloon glass. “Take your time before talking to the Prince. Think things over properly.” His voice was easy and confident — and Lady Clare had never hated someone so much in her life.
“LizAlec is alive?” Lady Clare forced herself to ask the question.
“At the moment.”
“And you know where she is?” Lady Clare met Lazlo’s cold grey eyes, cutting a rapid deal with herself. “Because if you do know where to find her, I think we should talk.”