She had been buried, Pel realized. That was why it had taken the Imperial task force so long to find her. They had found her and dug her up and brought her back to Base One after someone, probably her killer, had buried her.
Buried her without a coffin, obviously-just wrapped in an improvised shroud.
Had whoever it was been trying to do the right thing? Or had the killer just been disposing of the evidence?
It didn’t matter; all that mattered was that Pel had her back.
He reached down and touched her.
Her skin was cold and dead-very cold. Like Nancy, she had apparently been frozen, or at least refrigerated.
Pel shuddered and withdrew his hand, and the motion jarred the corpse; Rachel’s head rolled slightly to one side, and Pel saw the purple finger marks on her neck and knew how she had died.
But that was past. She was here now, in a world where magic worked, and her father, who had done nothing to save her when she was alive, would bring her back to life.
He closed the lid and screwed down the latches, then did the same for the other cylinder. A moment later he was airborne, the cylinders following him northward through the sky, toward Shadowmarsh and Shadow’s fortress, where Shadow’s magic would restore them all.
* * * *
John Bascombe leaned back and smiled. The news had spread like wildfire, like the shock wave of a supernova-the Empire had yielded to the Brown Magician’s demands. The war was over, and the Empire had come out second-best. Sheffield had been recalled to Earth. A new government would be formed.
And John Bascombe, Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs, was pretty sure that Sheffield would take the others down with him-Markham and Albright and Hart and all the rest of them.
But not him. Not John Bascombe. Because he’d been cut out of everything, shunted off to the side; none of what had happened was his fault.
Or at least, none of it could be pinned on him, and that was what counted.
And with Markham and the rest surely doomed, that would mean opportunities for advancement. He might not be the new Secretary of Science, but he thought he ought to be able to move up a notch or two. Perhaps General Under-Secretary of Science? Imperial Advisor on Science?
He was musing pleasantly on the various possibilities when the door of his office burst open and two men stepped in, blasters drawn.
They wore the purple and gold of the Imperial Guard. Bascombe sat up suddenly and stared.
“John Bascombe?” one of them asked.
“Uh,” Bascombe said.
“John Bascombe, you are under arrest, by order of His Imperial Majesty, George VIII.”
“Uh,” Bascombe said again, staring.
How could he be under arrest? And it wasn’t just Sheffield or the others taking a last-minute revenge-the Imperial Guard didn’t take orders from anyone but the Emperor and their own officers.
They didn’t ordinarily leave Terra at all-the Emperor must have sent them here especially. It must be a full-scale purge, Bascombe realized.
But he hadn’t done anything wrong! Oh, he had intrigued a little, hidden a few little mishaps, but he hadn’t done anything wrong, he hadn’t been one of Sheffield’s people…
“What…” he said, mouth dry. “What charge?”
“Treason,” the guardsman said.
And Bascombe knew that whatever happened, whether he lived or died, was acquitted or convicted, that with a treason charge on his record, even if it was dismissed as a mistake, he was never, ever going to be Secretary of Science.
* * * *
Pel brought the cylinders through the front gate, up the great staircase to the throne room, where some of the inhabitants of the fortress were awaiting his return.
He didn’t pay much attention.
He knew, in a vague, detached sort of way, that he had been awake and active for far too long. He had spent most of the day that was ending in the air, riding the winds hither and yon; he had spent the night before carving wooden message-boards and sending them through portals into the Empire. And that had followed the day in which he located and destroyed the Empire’s second attempted invasion.
And he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours or more.
He hadn’t eaten anything but a bite or two of corned beef in weeks.
He was letting the matrix support him-and it was doing so, so that he still wasn’t physically tired, but he knew he ought to sleep, he knew that he wasn’t thinking clearly any shy;more. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t safe.
But he had the bodies, at last. He had the bodies. He had his family back.
He looked up and saw Susan Nguyen standing in the doorway, and he smiled. There she was, the proof that he could restore the dead.
But of course, he would have to repair the bodies first, Nancy’s especially.
And there was the false Nancy now, standing at Susan’s side, and she could serve him as a model.
“Come here,” he called, “both of you!”
* * * *
“Did you, or did you not, order an officer of the Imperial Intelligence Service to arrest one Pellinore Brown, also known as Pelbrun the Brown Magician?” the presiding officer of the court-Bascombe wasn’t sure just what the correct title was, or for that matter what the exact nature of this hearing was-demanded.
No one worried about telling the accused such unnecessary details in an affair like this.
“I don’t know,” Bascombe said. “Did I? Why does it matter?”
The judge, if that was what he was, sat back in his chair. “Pellinore Brown,” he said, “is a reigning head of state. To order his arrest is an act of war. To commit an act of war against a friendly nation in the Empire’s name is an act of treason. Now, do you deny issuing that order?”
Bascombe glanced at the silent young woman sitting in the corner of the room. “What difference does it make? You’ve got a telepath there; you know whether I did it better than I know myself.”
“We would prefer to have your own words on the record.”
“I don’t remember whether I issued such an order,” Bascombe said, truthfully. “I may have. I wasn’t aware that the Empire had recognized Pellinore Brown as a head of state, or that his nation was a friendly one. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a friendly nation.”
The judge glanced at the woman, who nodded.
Bascombe watched the judge’s face, and thought he saw something there, something that might have been a trace of disappointment.
And John Bascombe suppressed a sigh of relief; he was fairly sure that that disappointment meant that at least so far, his answers had not condemned him to death.
* * * *
At last, when he had been unable to organize the matrix currents properly to repair Nancy’s intestines despite three attempts, Pel gave up and found a bed.
He awoke with no idea how long he had slept, and no interest in finding out; he returned immediately to the throne room, to resume work on the bodies.
It took hours; the damage to Nancy’s body was extensive, severe, and often subtle. Tissues had been burned, frozen, dehydrated, attacked in dozens of ways, and everything had to be perfect.
He took a break every so often; he didn’t want to risk screwing anything up through fatigue.
At last, though, he had them both ready, the bodies repaired but lifeless.
They weren’t going to stay lifeless, though; at long last, he was about to raise them both from the dead.
And Nancy would be first.
* * * *
“They’re in chaos,” Miletti said. “The Emperor’s royally pissed off by the whole affair. He’s convinced the whole thing should have been turned over to the spies right from the start, that the military and the scientists had no business keeping it to themselves and that his Prime Minister or General Secretary or whatever he’s called should have known better.”
“And how’s this affect us?” Johnston asked.