Sten frowned, as if trying to remember the face, couldn't, but to be polite nodded slightly: Perhaps we were introduced at a social function some time?
Sten almost felt sorry for the clot. Turncoats were never trusted—and everyone knew that, especially those who doubled them. True in espionage, true in politics. Milhouz had only one future—to be used by Iskra as long as needed and then dispensed with.
Iskra being Iskra, Sten thought, that dispensing would almost certainly involve a shallow grave rather than an obscure retirement.
No more than Milhouz deserved.
Sten, Kilgour beside him, worked his way to his assigned seat. A polite greeting to Douw, who was wearing a full dress uniform hung with decorations old and new. Nods to other dignitaries and pols.
He stopped beside Menynder.
"I am glad," he said, "to see you have recovered from your family's tragedy."
"Yes," Menynder said, his head moving a bare millimeter sideways, toward Iskra's emblem. "Nobody'll ever know how grateful I am to have some new friends who just cheered the drakh out of me, telling me how much the rest of my family means, and how my ancient estates should be worried about, and, in general, convinced me to dump the widow's weeds."
As Sten had thought. Menynder had been blackjacked into attendance.
A military band blared what might be considered music, and Dr. Iskra, aides at his heels, came down the steps from the palace's terrace and walked slowly across the vast open square to the reviewing stand.
"Any idea," Sten whispered to Kilgour, "why the doctor isn't reviewing his troops from the usual place?''
"Ah ask't," Kilgour hissed. "Ah wae told because th' terrace i' distant. An' the doctor wishes t' be closer t' his wee heroes."
"That's a real cheap lie."
"Aye. An' wha' worries me, is th' stand wae no built right."
Kilgour was correct-it was no more than a meter and a half off the ground. A basic part of preriot crowd control was to build the bandstand high enough to make it difficult for the madding throng to rush the stage successfully.
The dignitaries came to the salute as Dr. Iskra mounted the stand.
Cymbals crashed, and the military band crescendoed and broke off.
In the sudden silence, Sten heard, from a great distance, the twitter of a panpipe being played by some street minstrel working the crowd.
And then, as if cued, the clouds broke, a high wind rolling them up like they were dirty linen, and an impossibly blue sky shone above.
The band cacophonied into life again, and the review began.
The Square of the Khaqans was a crash of cleated bootheels, an eerily grating rumble of tracks, and the bash of marching music. Every now and then Sten could hear the cued cheers from the crowds watching.
He applauded with his forearm against his side, Altaic style, as yet another range of rankers bashed past the stand.
"Fifth Battalion, Sixth Regiment, The Iron Guards of Perm," the unseen commentator told them over the square's PA system.
"Didn't we just see them?"
"Nae, skip. Thae wae th' Sixth Battalion, Fifth Regiment. Y hae t' pay tighter heed."
"How much longer can he keep running troops past us?"
"Damfino," Alex whispered. "Till our eyes bleed an' we start burblin' ae th' wonders ae ol' Isky. It's mass hypnosis, lad."
"Time," Cind said. Obediently, her spotter rolled away from the scope, behind his own rifle. Cind slid into position and began her own shift, sweeping endlessly across the palace rooftops and windows that she had taken for her sector.
Her other sniper teams were doing much the same-one being watches, the other waits behind the gun. A spotter could only work effectively for a few minutes before starting to see motion that was a curtain blowing in the wind, menace that was the shadow from a chimney, or just simply things not there.
The architectural style of the Palace of the Khaqans didn't make their job any easier, having been built and then redecorated in a style that could be referred to as Early Unromantic Gargoyle.
Cind and her spotter had taken position on one of the palace's roofs, finding a fairly level area to keep their backup arms and ammunition in, then slithering very slowly to the roof's peak to observe. A dull scarlet hood, just the color of the metal roof they were lying on, hung over the scope, and both snipers had their faces camouflaged with a flat medium-brown wash.
Cind's eyes were watering from the strain in a few minutes. She swept the roofline, then swept it again, routinely. She stopped and moved the scope back.
"Earle," she said, unconsciously and needlessly whispering. "Three o'clock. That dormer window."
"Got it," the man behind the rifle said. "The window's open. Can't see inside. Too dark."
"Come left half a finger," Cind ordered.
"Oh-ho."
"I'll take the gun."
Earle started to protest, then took the spotting position. Cind moved up, hands automatically readying her own rifle.
Across the square, to the side of that dormer window, a hatch onto the roof had been lifted clear-a hatch that had been closed earlier. And very close to that hatch was a low parapet that would make excellent cover for someone to use to move the thirty meters or so to where a wall zigged out, that provided a hidden crevice that would make an ideal escape route.
The window was about six hundred meters away from the reviewing stand below, and about...
"Range?"
"Twelve... twelve twenty-five."
"I have the same..."
... twice that to Cind's post.
Cind slid her shooting jacket's fasteners shut, pulled the rifle sling tight around her upper arm until there was no circulation anymore, and was in the rigor mortis that was her firing position.
All that existed was that open window twelve hundred meters away.
She barely heard Earle reporting that they had a possible target and ordering another team to take over the routine scan.
Venloe was ready. He had his monstrous sporting rifle braced firmly on a tabletop, the table solidly sandbagged.
He was about three meters back of the open dormer window, in clever concealment. Neither the human eye nor a scope would be able to see him in the gloom, and if some extraordinarily paranoid security type was using an amplified-light scope the glare from the rooftops outside would blank that device.
He looked again through the rifle scope, then rubbed his eyes. He had forgotten how exhausting sniping was, and how short a time before the edge was lost.
Six hundred meters away was the reviewing stand.
Venloe had his targets chosen, and six cigar-sized solid projectiles resting in the rifle's box magazine.
If there was an error... first Iskra.
Then Sten.
Then...
The tiny com beside him, tuned to the review's public broadcast, spoke:
"Eighth Company, Guards Combat Support Wing. The Saviors of Gumrak.
"Afoot, Scout Company, Eighty-third Light Infantry Division."
This was it.
Now for the Crimson Ratpack.
The combat support wing's gravlighters swept forward, three abreast, at low speed. Just ahead of them trotted the lightly armed scouts.
Each gravlighter carried a full complement of troops, sitting at rigid attention. The gravlighter's pilot concentrated on his formation, and the lighter's commander saluted.
Six ranks back, in the center row, was the first of Venloe's assassins. The gravlighter's pilot was one of the young officer/conspirators, as were all of the other soldiers.
"Sixteen... seventeen... eighteen..."
At a count of twenty, the gravlighter was, as calculated, about fifty meters out and twenty meters short of the reviewing stand.