WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(59)

The fugitive didn't have the least idea where he ought to go. His apartment, he supposed. In the unlikely event there weren't Alliance soldiers there by now, he could grab some civilian clothes.

The door thumped shut behind him. Instantly, as though there'd been a switch in the doorjamb, light fanned across the street from a third-story window. In the present darkness it had the glare of a searchlight.

Daniel looked up. One of the shutter leaves had been thrown back. From this angle, nearly vertical, he saw only a wedge of pale pink ceiling.

Margrethe leaned over the windowsill with a bundle in her arms. The light from behind flowed through her russet hair. She pitched the bundle outward. She'd snatched the shutter closed again before Daniel caught her gift.

He'd braced himself but the bundle turned out to be cloth, bulk without weight. He carried it into the narrow gap between Candace's house and its neighbor to the right. He immediately understood what he was holding.

The jacket was dark, dark blue if the light had been better. The trousers were of the same material with a stripe down the seam that would be red. They were rolled around a peaked blue cap with a frontal of embossed brass.

He sighed. With this, there was just a chance that he could brazen his way into the palace where he hoped Woetjans's crew was hiding. So far as Daniel knew, their billet wasn't listed in any records.

Daniel Leary stripped off his Cinnabar uniform. Trousers first, he donned the service uniform of a naval lieutenant of the Commonwealth of Kostroma.



Well over a hundred people milled in the Grand Salon, which was being used as both coup headquarters and a holding cell for the dozen or so top prisoners taken thus far. Walter III—properly Walter Hajas again, Adele presumed—was present but his mistress wasn't. The Chancellor, barefoot in her fur-trimmed nightdress, babbled to a Zojira who ignored her as he spoke into his hand-held communicator.

Adele smiled faintly at the Chancellor's discomfort. She tried not to dislike people, merely their actions. The Chancellor's combination of graft, pompousness, and bullying came close to making her an exception.

The guards included both troops of the Zojira clan and Alliance soldiers whose battle dress looked as though drab paint had been dripped over the fabric. The Zojiras were possibly a cut above the armed thugs who'd burst into the library; these would be the personal bodyguard of the clan chief and new Elector, Leonidas Zojira.

She wondered whether there'd been a previous Elector of the name or if Zojira was Leonidas I. Given the direct involvement of Alliance forces in the coup, the question was probably meaningless. The real ruler of Kostroma would be the Alliance advisor, if not a planetary administrator appointed from Pleasaunce.

Adele was no expert on the military, but the Alliance troops looked very tough and competent. They wore body armor with bandoliers of weapons and munitions besides the submachine guns that were their primary armament. The Alliance planners had naturally chosen shock troops for the initial assault.

Markos's aide paused just inside the doorway, scanning the room for the figure she wanted. "Wait here, please, mistress," she said, as unfailingly polite as she was colorless. She left Adele with the two Zojiras and moved through the crowd with her usual swift grace.

One of the Zojiras let out his breath in a sigh of relief. Adele smiled again, still faintly.

Leonidas stood in the center of the great room, surrounded by aides who like him wore court dress in black and yellow. They looked like so many hornets, a Terran insect tough enough to stow away and become an unpleasant feature of almost as many worlds as had cockroaches.

In the group with the Zojira grandees were several Alliance officers. One of them wore battle dress like the troops on guard, but the khaki uniforms of the other two looked like a simpler version of what the naval members of the Alliance delegation wore to the Elector's dinner a few nights before.

None of those negotiators was in the Grand Salon tonight. Markos was here, however, standing like the axis around which the world moved. He smiled in black triumph.

A loud explosion sounded in the near distance. The palace shook. The Alliance officers in the central group all spoke into their communicators, while the Kostromans with them froze and looked apprehensive. One of the naval officers lowered her communicator and said something nonchalant to those around her. General conversation resumed.

Markos saw his aide approaching. They must have exchanged signals that not even Adele saw. The aide returned to Adele and said, "He'll see you now, mistress."

She looked at the Zojiras who'd come from the library with her and added, "You're dismissed. Report to whoever's in charge in the garden."

The Kostromans whirled and left the salon. They were moving so fast that the submachine gun one carried clanged into the doorpost.