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Nicholas stood in the foyer of his house, studying a note by the light of a single suspensor lamp. Dawn was yet a few hours away, and he felt his tiredness. A Szgany messenger had brought the note to the outer guard just now as the Duke arrived from his command post.
"The note read: "A column of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night."
There was no signature.
What does it mean? he wondered.
The messenger had gone without waiting for an answer and before he could be questioned. He'd slipped into the night like a puff of smoke.
Nicholas pushed the paper into a tunic pocket, thinking to show it to Botkin later. He brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, took a sighing breath. The antifatigue pills were starting to wear thin. It'd been a long two days since the dinner party and longer than that since he'd slept.
On top of all the military problems, there'd been the disquieting session with Botkin, the report on his meeting with Alexandra.
Should I wake up Alexandra? he wondered. There's no reason to play the secrecy game with her any longer. Or is there?
Blast and damn that Grady Ukrainia!
He shook his head. No, not Grady. I was wrong not to take Alexandra into my confidence from the first. I must do so now, before more damage is done.
The decision made him feel better, and he hurried from the foyer through the Great Hall and down the passages towards the family wing.
At the turn where the passages started to split to the service area, he paused. A weird mewling sound came from somewhere down the service passage. Nicholas put his left hand to the switch on his barrier belt, slipped his kindjal into his right hand. The knife conveyed a sense of security. That weird sound had sent a chill down his spine.
Softly, the Duke moved down the service passage, cursing the inadequate illumination. The smallest of suspensors had been spaced about eight meters apart along here and tuned to their dimmest level. The dark stone walls swallowed the light.
A dull blob stretching across the floor appeared out of the gloom ahead.
Nicholas hesitated, almost activated his barrier, but abstained because that would limit his movements, his hearing---and because the captured shipment of phasguns had put doubts in his mind.
Quietly, he moved towards the gray blob, saw that it was a human figure, a man face down on the stone. Nicholas turned him over with a foot, knife poised, bent close in the dim light to see the face. It was the smuggler, Dibra, a wet stain down his chest. The dead eyes stared with empty darkness. Nicholas touched the stain---it was warm.
How could this man be dead here? Nicholas asked himself. Who killed him?
The mewling sound was louder here. It came from ahead and down the side passage to the central room where they'd installed the main barrier generator for the house.
Hand on belt switch, kindjal raised, the Duke skirted the body, slipped down the passage and peered around the corner towards the shield generator room.
Another gray blob lay stretched on the floor a few paces away, and he saw at once this was the source of the noise. The shape crawled towards him with painful slowness, gasping, mumbling.
Nicholas stilled his sudden constriction of fear, darted down the passages, crouched beside the crawling figure. It was El-Gaff, the Szgany housekeeper, her hair tumbled around her face, her clothing disarrayed. A dull shininess of dark stain spread from her back along her side. He touched her shoulder and she lifted herself on her elbows, head tipped up to peer at him, the eyes black-shadowed emptiness.
"S'you," she gasped.
"What is the meaning of this?!" the Duke demanded.
"Killed...guard....sent....get.....Dibra...escape....milady...you...you...here....no...."
She flopped forward, her head thumping against the stone.
Nicholas felt for a pulse at the temples. There was none. He looked at the stain: she'd been stabbed in the back. By whom? His mind raced. Did she mean someone had killed a guard? And Dibra....had Alexandra sent for him? Why?'
He started to stand up. A sixth sense warned him. He flashed a hand towards the barrier switch---too late. A numbing shock slammed his arm aside. He felt pain there, saw a dart protruding from the sleeve, sensed paralysis spreading from it up his arm. It took an agonizing effort to lift his head and look down the passage.
And there was Rasputin, standing in the open door of the generator room. His face reflected yellow from the light of a single, brighter suspensor above the door. There was stillness from the room behind him---no sound of generators.
Rasputin! Nicholas thought. He's sabotaged the house generators! We're wide open!
Rasputin started walking toward him, pocketing a dartgun.
Nicholas found he could still speak, gasped: "Rasputin! How?" Then the paralysis reached his legs and he slid to the floor with his back propped against the stone wall.
Rasputin's face carried a look of sadness as he bent over to touch Nicholas's forehead. The Duke found he could feel the touch, but it was remoted and dull.
"The drug on the dart is a sedative," Rasputin said. "You can speak, but I wouldn't advise it." He glanced down the hall, and again bent over Nicholas, pulled out the dart, tossed it aside. The sound of the dart clattering on the stones was faint and distant to the Duke's ears.
It can't be Rasputin, Nicholas thought. He's conditioned.
"How?" Nicholas whispered.
"I'm sorry, my dear Duke, but there are things that will make greater demands than this." He touched the diamond tattoo on his forehead. "I find it very strange, myself---an override on my pyretic conscience---but I wish to kill a man. Yes, I truly wish it. I will stop at nothing to do so."
He looked down at the Duke. "Oh, not you, my dear Duke. The Baron Seppanen. I wish to kill the Baron."
"Bar...on....Sep..."
"Be silent, please, my poor Duke. You haven't much time. That peg tooth I put in your mouth after the tumble at 51 Olegiya---that tooth needs replacing. In a moment, I'll put you to sleep and do the deed." He opened his head, stared at something in it. "This is an exact copy, its core shaped most exquisitely like a nerve. It'll escape the usual detectors, even a fast scanning. But if you bite down hard on it, the cover crushes. Then, when you expel your breath sharply, you fill the air around you with a poison gas---most deadly."
Nicholas stared up at Rasputin, seeing insanity in the man's eyes, the perspiration along brown and chin.
"You were dead anyway, my poor Duke," Rasputin said. "But you will get close to the Baron before you die. He'll think you're stupified by the drugs beyond any dying effort to attack him. And you will be drugged---and tied. But attack can take odd forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth, Duke Nicholas Romanov. You will remember the tooth."
The old doctor leaned closer and closer until his face and drooping mustache dominated Nicholas's narrowing vision.
"The tooth," Rasputin muttered.
"Why?" Nicholas whispered.
Rasputin lowered himself to one knee beside the Duke. "I made a devil's pact with the Baron. And I must be sure he's fulfilled his half of it. When I see him, I'll know. When I look at the Baron, then I will know. But I'll never enter his presence without the price. And I'll know when I see him. My poor Ashura taught me many things, and one is to see certainty of truth when the stress is great. I cannot always do it, but when I see the Baron, then I will know."
Rasputin's purple lips turned up in a grimace. "I'll not get close enough to the Baron, or I'd do this myself. No. I'll be detained at a safe distance. But you---ah, now! You, my lovely little weapon! He'll want you close to him---to gloat over you, to boast a little."
Nicholas found himself almost hypnotized by a muscle on the left side of Rasputin's jaw. The muscle twitched when the man spoke.
Rasputin leaned closer. "And you, my good Duke, my precious Duke, you must remember this tooth." He held it up between thumb and forefinger. "It will be all that remains to you."
Nicholas's mouth moved without sound. "Refuse!"
"Ah-h, no! You cannot refuse. Because, in return for this little service, I'm doing a thing for you. I will save your son and your wife. No other can do it. They can be removed to a place where no Seppanen can touch them."
"How...save...them?" Nicholas whispered.
"By making it appear they're dead, by secreting them among people who draw a knife at hearing the Seppanen name, who hate the Seppanens so much they'll burn a chair in which a Seppanen has sat, salt the ground over which a Seppanen has walked." He touched Nicholas's jaw. "Can you feel anything in your jaw?"
The Duke found that he could not answer. He sensed distant tugging, saw Rasputin's hand come up with the ducal signet ring.
"For Alexei," Rasputin said. "You'll be unconscious presently. Goodbye, my poor Duke. When next we meet, we'll have no time for conversation."
Cool remoteness spread up from Nicholas's jaw, across his cheeks. The shadowy hall narrowed to a pinpont with Rasputin's purple lips centered in it.
"Remember the tooth!" Rasputin hissed. "The tooth!"
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