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Chapter 25
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Marc stopped at the stair landing, down from the ballroom, and turned to face the sunrise. Of course, the only reason he knew it was dawn was because Meg Wrinn had told him. He hoped to feel the warmth of the sun, but knew better. It was grey outside, with the promise of snow, or worse.
He’d nearly lost Maralt, thinking he could chase after him. Marc couldn’t shift, and still expect to hold him. Dain had stopped him quickly enough, but neither of them realized that searching for anyone, not just Maralt, was so dangerous. Marc only meant to check on his friends, and Maralt had nearly taken over in the process. That was a thing he couldn’t let happen. The thing that existed within, he couldn’t call it human any more, the source of pure evil, sought to break the fragile barrier. The thought of it getting out, the constant fear of it, followed him every moment of every hour.
It took all his concentration to contain him, a process that was only slightly easier to manage a day later. He felt sick most of the time, though the drilling pain he’d been in yesterday had abated somewhat. He was more aware now how important it was to avoid mental contact with Dynan or Dain, or anyone else for that matter. The lure to do so wasn’t coming from him, but Maralt. The desire to reach them both was constant and nearly overwhelming. Marc shook his head, and turned from the window. As he did, a cold chill swept through him, but he couldn’t identify the source.
“Who’s there?” he asked his escort quietly.
“There are a number of servants, my Lord, and Lady Alvuen is coming down the stairs. I believe she wishes to speak with you.”
Marc internalized a groan. He didn’t want to talk to her, but when she called to him, speaking louder than was necessary, he turned. He’d already gotten into the habit of keeping his eyes lowered. The way he appeared seemed to frighten people, but he faced Alvuen, wanting to frighten her. He heard the slight intake of her breath. She didn’t lower her voice either after she had approached.
“Her Majesty, Queen Alexia wishes to see Prince Dynan before Princess Danetha arrives. She has a question about the Betro—”
“I’ll inform the Prince of Her Majesties request,” he said, cutting Alvuen off before she could mention the gems. Part of their agreement was a specific stipulation that rumor of the presentation of the gems be avoided. Dynan had been very clear about that. “Thank you for delivering the Queen’s message. I’ll be sure to have extra Palace messengers made available, so that you aren’t consigned to such menial tasks. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see to that now. Good day, my Lady.”
He turned and Garth Shoup, his newly appointed guard and escort, walked him down the stair to the main hall. Marc heard him stifling a laugh. “She didn’t appreciate that, my Lord.”
“I didn’t intend for her to appreciate it, just get the message.” He shook his head.
“She seems to bear you some ill will, at least it looked that way.”
“The feeling is mutual. Where are we?”
“The Hall of Tapestries, my Lord,” Garth said.
Marc felt a draft of cold air coming from the direction of the Throne Room. “Are the doors open?”
“No. They’ve been closed since the King’s funeral.”
And wouldn’t be opened again until the coronation. Marc wondered where all the cold was coming from, then shrugged. At least he could tell where he was. “Anyone lurking around I should know about?”
“Just servants and guards, my Lord. It’s still a bit early for visitors. Here’s the office.” The glass rattled as the door opened and closed. The echoes from the hall muted as the latch caught.
“Thanks for the lift.”
“My pleasure, my Lord.”
“I think I can manage from here.”
“I’ll be in the guard station if you need me.”
Marc nodded and while the guard moved off, he went in the office using the wall as a guide. He knew from memory that there weren’t any obstructions along the hallway that led back to his office. The com office was quiet, except for Allie, Trevan and Gaden, who were either very early to work, or more likely hadn’t ever left.
“Good morning,” he said, and got a lot of mumbled responses. “Not going so well?” Silence followed that statement. “Sorry I asked. When one of you feels like telling me what the prognosis is on your progress, I’ll be in my office.”
He heard the clatter of a comboard hitting a workstation and knew it was Allie. Marc wasn’t sure how much of a reaction Allie would have if he didn’t allow the com system back up. Marc didn’t think it would be a good one. He changed hands to the right side of hallway to make his way back, fingers gliding over smooth plastered walls. Ralion’s door was open, and the First Minister in. Marc guessed he’d been awake all night too. He crossed the room, reaching for one of the chairs he knew was in front of Ralion’s desk.
“Another step and you’ll have it. Where’s your escort?”
“I didn’t think it would be too smart to have another person involved with most of what’s going on here. I left him at the door. I’m getting around all right.”
“Well if you ever need a set of eyes, you can use mine, and you don’t have to ask first.”
“Thanks, Ralion,” he said. “So what are we telling the general populace about my latest infirmity?”
“Your sudden blindness was caused by an undetected side-effect of your recent exposure to marinodrox poison. Some drug interaction thing that just happened. Geneal couldn’t think of anything else that was remotely feasible. It’ll do for most.”
“All right. Can we go over security for the Governor’s Ball?”
Ralion laughed when Marc didn’t think there was anything funny about the request. “What security? The Governors are resisting any input from the Palace.”
“What are they objecting to?”
“The guards, and our screening process. A moot point on that last, since we don’t have a com system. They don’t want Palace guards in the hall except for the Royal escort. Now we’re arguing about whether or not to allow those guards, all twenty of them—”
“Twenty!”
“Yes. Now get this, they don’t want them armed. Can you believe that? I still can’t. In a way, it’s lucky we can’t communicate so easily right now. I’m sure I’ve managed to anger more than a few of our Governors.”
“Have we made any kind of announcement about the com system?”
“Just that the system is being re-sequenced and will be up and down until that’s complete. We haven’t and won’t explain what happened to cause the problem. Nothing about Maralt. Allie is about to pull his hair out. We’ve been up all night trying to fix it.”
“Why? As long as Logue is out there, I don’t want the com system up. He’ll only find another way in.”
Ralion hesitated. “Allie is close to figuring this out, Marc. If he says we can bring it back up safely, then I’m confident that we can.”
“We thought routing our receivers through the XR-9 would keep the system up if the rest of it went down. Didn’t turn out that way, since Maralt had access to those systems too.”
“We know that now. If Allie can come up with a solution, we can trust it. He doesn’t want to have this happen again either.”
“He’ll have to convince me that it’ll work then.”
“Maralt wasn’t ever able to get into our secured files,” Ralion said.
“What difference does that make when the information that’s unsecured can be used to locate Dynan or Dain or Shalis?”
“Again, we know that now. Everything, guard assignments, servant information, even meal schedules, are going into secured files.”
“I don’t want the com system back up until I say so. I want Allie to understand that. I’ll deal with the Governors about security.”
The leather chair Ralion sat in creaked as he leaned back. “All right.”
By his tone, Marc guessed he wasn’t too sure about agreeing. “Isn’t there a planning committee for the ball?”
“Yes. Governors Couland, Cumoref, and Valsand.”
“Valsand. That’s great. I need everything you’ve got on this, and you get to read it to me.”
“You know, that’s another thing a com system would help you with. You could get it to read to you. Never mind. Just forget I said that.”
For the next hour, Marc listened to Ralion going over arrangements for the ball. He found most of it lacking in any kind of common sense. He could tell the problems wouldn’t be solved so easily, judging by the cryptic and brief messages Ralion had received from the committee Governors. The last one arrived that morning from Valsand, and all but stated that the committee wouldn’t tolerate Palace interference in what was a Regional Governors function.
“If that’s the way they feel, maybe the Palace just shouldn’t go,” Marc said. “Write this down. To the planning Committee, Governors Valsand, Cumoref, and Couland ... Honorable Governors, the measures you’ve taken to ensure the safety of His Royal Highness Prince Dynan and members of the Royal family are inadequate.”
“Yeah, you’re going to need to slow down there a little.”
Marc waited until Ralion said he was ready, listening to the scratch of pen against paper. “The guards will be armed and the original number stands. Having survived numerous attacks, we are not prepared to put the Royal family at risk because you, the Committee, feel it inappropriate for Palace guardsmen to attend a ball.”
“We?” Ralion interrupted.
“All right, I’m not prepared.”
“Just wanted to clarify that.”
“Furthermore, the Palace reserves the right to restrict entry to any persons who may pose a risk to the security of the Royal family. I thank you for your cooperation in this matter. I’ll sign it when you get it copied out.”
Ralion didn’t say anything, finished writing and moved to the door where he called for a scribe. Gaden came back. “They have you on copy duty?”
“Sure. Beats sitting there watching my brother mutter to himself. He and Trevan are about to drive me crazy, but I think they’re getting closer to a solution.”
“Right. Well, you sit down and get this written, and I’ll go talk to them about that.”
“Welcome back,” Marc said after Ralion had gone.
“Thanks. Some excitement to walk into. Sorry about your eyes.” Marc shrugged and heard fresh paper slide across the desk. “Does it hurt any?”
“No.”
“Sure looks strange.”
“So I’ve been told,” Marc said. Gaden started writing.
“What’s it like?”
“Dark.”
The scratching of the pen stopped a moment. “Must be pretty tough to get used to. If you ever need any help, you know you can ask me, or any of us really. We don’t mind.”
“I know you don’t. I’m all right. Thanks. Can you explain what your brother is doing in terms I can understand?”
“Sure. He’s isolated a node inside the chip he found. Good call there. None of ours have it. If he can disable that node with a signal from our comterm then we should be able to keep Logue, uh ... Maralt out of the system.”
“Unless he has another chip with a different node.” Marc rolled his eyes at the term, remembering a time when the only node he was familiar with was the kind on a wave.
“There aren’t that many places he could put another one. You’re talking about reconstructing an entire chip if you tried, and that sort of work can’t be done just anywhere either, or quickly. If he’s got other chips, they’ll have the same node. If Allie can find a way to disable it, and he hasn’t been able to yet, we’ll have a secure system again.”
Marc found that difficult to believe. “Without a re-sequence?”
“Right. Without the chip, Maralt won’t have the blind access any more.”
“What if he programmed the access codes into the system?”
“He could have, I suppose. Would have taken some time though. Okay, we still need to do the re-sequence. I started working on a program to speed that process up, so we aren’t doing it manually.”
The chair creaked as Marc leaned forward. “By how much?”
“Days. Some of it we have to do by keystroke, like the main program group, but all the subroutines and basement programs can be re-seced with a single command key, and that can be programmed to enable automatically. We’ll be through with it in two days once we lock out that chip.”
“You figured all this out on your own?”
“About the re-sequencing, yes, but I’ve had a couple days where there wasn’t much else to do except think.”
“Maybe I should make you the communications chief instead of Gray. I like him, but he doesn’t seem to have a tremendous grasp of how we operate around here. I’ll talk to Allie about that.”
“Uh, well—”
“Are you finished with that message? I need you to do another to Dynan.”
“Sure. I’ll get your seal and we’ll get this sent off.”
Marc nodded, and while Gaden went next door, Marc got a clean sheet of paper, found the pen and wrote out a message to Dynan, using his fingers to track where he was, carefully tracing along the top of the page to keep the lines straight. Mostly, he wanted to see if he could.
“Can you read this?” he asked Gaden when he returned.
“Yes. How are you doing that?”
Marc leaned back over the page, starting to write again where he’d set his finger. “Really, I’m just pretending to be blind so everyone will feel sorry for me, so you’ll all do what I want.”
Gaden laughed. “You have a twisted sense of humor, Marc, and you’re starting to go a little slanted there. That’s better. Here, can you stop a second and sign this? Here’s the bottom. Start about right here, and be careful about it. I don’t want to have to copy it over again.
Marc smirked at him, and Gaden laughed. He signed his name, and listened while his seal was affixed, making it official. “Read it.”
“To the Planning Committee of the Governor’s Ball, the Honorable Governors Valsand, Cumoref and Couland. The measures you’ve taken—”
“All right, that’s fine. Really I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t signing some order to put you on extended leave.”
“If I was going to do that it’d be for an increase in pay, which, by the way, hasn’t happened in about seven years.”
“You and everyone else. Get in line.”
“Right. Initial the original here, and here’s where you left off on this message to Dynan. I’ll be right back.” He stopped in the doorway. “I think I have a better idea of what I should be doing.”
“Really? What’s that?” Marc smiled because he thought he knew.
“I can get Gray up to speed fast enough. All he needs is someone to spend a little time with him. Seems to me, what you need is a special assistant.”
“Special? I already have an assistant. Ralion.”
“That’s true. I just have a hard time imagining Ralion standing by while you write up a message, or run your comterm for you once they’re back up, or make sure you don’t sign someone’s wage increase without knowing it.” He paused, waiting a moment. “Man the office while you’re out saving the universe. Come on, Marc. Allie doesn’t need me in the com office, except to be an extra body.”
“You figured you how to re-sequence the system in two days.”
“That was nothing. Allie would have thought of it if he weren’t so freaked out about all this business with you and Maralt. He’s getting old, you know. Give him a break. I can still help with the rest.”
Marc laughed. “All right, Gaden. I’ll think about it. Go get that message sent, then I want you to take this up to Dynan.”
“Right away, my Lord Chancellor.”
Gaden’s footsteps retreated down the hall, and Marc laughed after him.
