“A little help here,” Gar called. He was standing by the discard pile, catching soldiers as they scrambled up, and throwing them back. Miles and Dirk came running, and as the next two soldiers stumbled to their feet, they found themselves staring at the tips of two blades. They froze, and Gar knocked their heads together. They slumped, unconscious. Two more of their fellows were also out, their heads having struck the floor instead of a fellow soldier’s stomach. The others, seeing the odds against them, hesitated.
“Surrender,” Gar said quietly. “You haven’t a chance, anyway.”
Slowly, the men held up empty hands.
“Lie down on your bellies with your hands behind your back,” Dirk directed. “Miles, tie them up.”
Miles pulled the men’s belts off and began to tie them, wrist and ankle. Dirk joined him, then looked up at a sudden thought. “Where’s the Protector?”
Gar looked around at an empty room. “Dirk, finish the job,” he snapped. “Come on, Miles.”
Miles looked up, startled, then ran after Gar. Distantly, he knew he’d been wounded, but also knew he couldn’t let that stop him.
Through the corridors they charged, bowling aside footmen and butlers who squawked with surprise and fear. Down the stairway they galloped, two at a time, out the huge doorway and into—
A melee of soldiers fighting soldiers.
“Through them!” Gar shouted. “Don’t stop to fight!”
They twisted and turned their way between battling men, barely managing to escape edged weapons, and thrust their way into the crowd, where they were surrounded by Robes.
They stared around them, appalled. Then Miles cried out. “How are we to find him? Everyone’s wearing official’s robes!”
“His are richer, and his chain is more massive,” Gar called back, “and his robes are purple instead of red or blue!”
Miles called, “How can we find purple among all these blue and red?”
“The other rebels will recognize him as one they don’t know!”
“Recognize him?” Miles protested. “There are so many of them from so many different towns that they don’t even recognize each other!”
It was true; Miles had done his work too well. Unless some rebel stopped to think what the purple robes meant, the Protector was hidden in a sea of his enemies—and with the fight against the soldiers foremost in their minds, the rebels weren’t likely to pay much attention to the color of their neighbors’ robes!
“One side! One side!” Gar thrust his way through the crowd, seeking, searching—but in the turmoil of the fight, he couldn’t see anything but red and blue. To the center of the crowd he waded, crying, “The Protector! The Protector! Look for purple robes!”
Soldiers looked up and froze in alarm, staring at the giant looming over them. They recovered quickly and turned to fight again—but Gar was already past them, still calling, “The Protector!” Rebels who had never seen Gar, saw and drew back, recognizing him from what they’d heard about the mythical beginner of their revolution. But nowhere did he find the purple robe.
Then a thin cry went up—thin, but echoed and amplified by a dozen voices, then fifty. Gar turned and plowed straight for it. A lane opened for him, rebels pulling back, thrusting soldiers away with their own pikes, straight to the Protector, struggling in the arms of a grizzled sergeant.
Gar plucked him up and held him high, crying, “We have your Protector! Put down your weapons, or he dies!”
All over the square, soldiers looked up in astonishment to see their Protector writhing high above their heads—and the rebels they were fighting struck them down. Then the rebels, too, realized what was happening, and drew back, giving the soldiers a chance to surrender. The soldiers saw the Protector and moaned. Pikes clattered on the paving stones, and soldiers cried, “I surrender! I surrender!”
Gar lowered the Protector to the ground. “You shall be our honored guest for a few days, Protector.”
“Yes, until you can work up the courage to hang me!” the Protector snarled, and turned on the man who had caught him. “You, Sergeant Alesworth! You, who were one of my personal guard for fourteen years! Why have you turned against me now?”
The sergeant stared back at him, stone-faced. “Do you remember that I loved my wife, Protector? And that she died?” The Protector went pale. “Yes. I remember.”
“And remember that three months later, you made me marry again?”
“It was for the best! Best for you, and for the realm!” Alesworth shook his head. “We made each other miserable, Protector, and she turned her misery against my children—but you didn’t know about that, did you? No, nor care.”
“For that?” the Protector whispered. “Only for that, you have brought down the realm?”
“No, Protector,” the sergeant said, “only healed it.”
The ceremony took place in that same square, two days later—time enough to clean up the evidence of the fight. As they waited at the door for the Protector and his “honor guard,” Dirk surveyed the clean pavement, slightly stained here and there. “Only sixty-three dead and a hundred twenty-seven wounded badly enough for hospital. That’s certainly the least bloody revolution you’ve ever managed, Gar.”
“Yes, but sixty-three people are dead,” Gar said grimly. “If this is the best I can do, maybe I should get out of the business.”
Dirk shrugged. “Sixty-three because you did lead a revolution, a thousand dead from the secret police and suicide due to misery if you hadn’t. More than a thousand, many more, if you count the rest of the years this dictatorship would have stayed in power.”
“Maybe,” Gar said grimly. “Maybe.”
“At least these were clean deaths,” Dirk pointed out. “Only one died from torture. Of course, Miles had a little torture, too, but you gave him express healing.”
“Yes.” Gar frowned. “He never did ask how his feet managed to heal so quickly, just started worrying about all his rebels. That shows either an excellent character, or a revolting degree of faith in me.”
“Well, people with faith in you do tend to revolt… No, no, sorry! Hey, here he comes.”
They both bowed slightly as the Protector came up flanked by guards, none loyal to himself. He acknowledged their bows with one of his own, mouth tight with irony. “Are you taking me to sign my own death warrant?”
“No, Protector,” Gar said, “only the documents transferring power to the provisional government.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Oh, yes. At the moment, we’re not intending to kill you at all.” Gar said it so casually that even Dirk shuddered.
“At the moment,” the Protector said dryly. “And if I refuse to sign?”
“Then we shall escort you to your permanent guest quarters…”
“Which you shall do in any case.”
“Ah, then,” Gar said brightly, “you do realize that we don’t plan to execute you.”
“Then you are fools,” the Protector said simply. “There’s no greater threat to a government than a deposed head of state. I might escape, gather men who would rally to me—and there are many, I assure you!—and lead a counterrevolt.”
“You might,” Gar agreed, “if you could escape. We have great faith in our jailers.”
“Then you are doubly fools, for there’s no prison human hands can build, that another human brain can’t find a way to escape.”
“Then we must be content to be fools,” Gar returned, “for if we violate your right to life, then we betray our own ideals, and build a mortal weakness into our New Order before it’s even begun.”
“Then fools you are indeed,” the Protector retorted, “but I would be a worse fool not to take advantage of your folly. Come, show me your document and I’ll sign it! Then cart me away to your prison, so I can set to working out my escape.”