WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(64)

Daniel snorted. This wasn't a time to show feelings, if there ever was one. "Did you think I was going to let this lot run me down?" he said with carefully modulated scorn. "You raised me better than that, Hogg. Now, let's get on about our business."

They started up the stairs. Hogg stopped dead; Daniel froze behind him. All the reflexes he'd learned in the Bantry woodlands had returned full force.

Someone was coming down the staircase toward them.



The light around the bend of the stairs was so faint that Adele was conscious of it only when it vanished. She stopped on the step above the landing. "Woetjans," she said, "this is Adele Mundy. I'm alone."

She folded her hands in front of her. Nobody had bothered to search her, but neither had she found herself tonight in a place that she thought the pistol in her left pocket could improve.

"Good God, it's Adele!" cried Daniel Leary. She couldn't have been more surprised to hear Markos, whom she'd left behind her in the Grand Salon. "Hogg, we've got to take her with us. They'll figure out sooner or later that she's really a Cinnabar citizen."

Daniel stepped onto the landing. "Show a light, man!" he demanded. He groped for Adele, caught her hand, and shook it enthusiastically.

The tiny glow returned. Hogg stood behind his master, looking as grimly displeased as could be implied by a complete lack of expression.

"I came to warn the sailors," Adele said. Warn them to do what? she wondered. She couldn't have gotten Woetjans and the others out of the palace, nor could she have hidden them in her tiny room if they did get clear. But she'd felt she had to do something after watching the executions in the Grand Salon.

"Sir, I think it might be best if the Ms. Mundy went her own way," Hogg said, looking off at an angle as if he were surveying the stairwell in preparation to bid on repainting it. "And I think we all—"

"Nonsense!" said Daniel, the good humor gone from his tone. This was an odd place to hold a discussion, but quite obviously the three of them weren't going to go anywhere until the discussion had been held. "We're not going to abandon a Cinnabar citizen in a bloody shambles like this! That wouldn't be honorable."

"Lieutenant," Adele said. Daniel's explicit confidence in her as a fellow citizen was a knife to her heart. "I think Hogg is correct. I'll be all right, but upstairs they just murdered the rest of your delegation. That may have been a one-time warning through terror, but you can't take the risk."

She turned and started up the stairs.

"Nonsense!" Daniel said and caught her right wrist. He didn't squeeze, but she could as well have pulled free from handcuffs as she could the lieutenant's grip. "We're all together now. Hogg, you're leading."

"Sir—" Hogg pleaded.

"I think what your servant means but doesn't care to say," Adele said with cool dispassion, "is that the Three Circles Conspiracy proved Cinnabar citizens, even members of the best families, were quite willing to turn their friends over to butchers to save their own necks. He has logic on his side. If you'll release me, Lieutenant Leary, I'll return to my own affairs."

"A moment please, Adele," Daniel said. He didn't loose her hand completely, but he reduced the contact to minimal pressure from his thumb and forefinger.

"Hogg," he said, "Ms. Mundy is a friend of mine; I won't stand for any suggestion that she might behave dishonorably. On the other hand I can appreciate your concern for your own safety in conditions so involved. I therefore release you to do as you please. Adele and I will find our own way without burdening you further."

"Don't be a fool!" Adele said. She snatched her hand away but she didn't take a step upward.

"And I might add, Hogg," Daniel added as though he hadn't heard her, "that it was the Alliance paymaster who provided the evidence on the Three Circles Conspiracy, not its citizen members!"

"What it pleases me to do, sir," Hogg said with gravel-voiced dignity, "is to go on serving the young master the best way I know how, just as I've been doing the past twenty-two years. For all that the little fellow acts the right stiff-necked prick now and again."

The ground shuddered violently; dust and fragments chipped from the brick walls danced in the stairwell. Several seconds later arrived the airborne shockwave, a sound as prolonged as distant thunder.

"For God's sake!" Adele said. "Let's get out of here before they blow the palace down around our ears!"

"After you, Hogg," Daniel said, bowing his servant forward. "After all, you know where we're going."

Hogg gave Adele a sheepish smile and tapped his forehead in salute as he squeezed past. Adele followed as Daniel waved her ahead on the narrow stairs. She heard him humming behind her, secure in his hopes for the future and his confidence in his friends.