“You mean he’s the son of this Correus.” She relaxed.
“Yes. As far as anyone can tell, Goodlady Redcliff remained true to the prince until her death. But it’s not uncommon to cut down on the numbers of eligible claimants to a throne by not recognizing the issue of affairs.
“Where was I? Oh, yes, education. Took his doctorate in engineering in One Thirty-Eight M.X.R.” She looked apologetic. “That’s all I have for now. But it gives us a place to start.”
Gaby lay her pencil down. “It certainly does. I really appreciate it, uh, Goodlady Tathlumwright.”
“Essyllt.”
“Gaby. Thanks a lot. I’m kind of in the middle of things right now, but I’ll call back soon.”
The older woman smiled and faded from the screen.
Gaby turned and winced when she saw Alastair’s disapproving expression.
“Checking up on Doc?”
“Well . . . Yes. I’ve been trying to figure out this whole Doc-Duncan thing. I’d been wondering around if Doc were maybe Duncan’s son.” She saw Alastair’s guarded look and felt a little satisfaction. “You wondered about that, too, didn’t you?”
“Once or twice.”
“I mean, it would help explain why their paths seemed to keep crossing. Why Doc claims some sort of personal responsibility for Duncan. But if Doc’s father was the King of Cretanis—”
“Prince Consort. Yes, that probably rules your theory out. But not necessarily. We’d have to look into Goodlady Redcliff’s history.”
“Did you know any of what she was telling me?”
“No, Doc’s always been close-mouthed about this sort of thing. I knew that he didn’t get along with Maeve the Tenth, but not why. This would explain it, if she considered him a pretender to the throne, a threat to her children. His half-brothers and half-sisters, that is.” Alastair shut up as a green bulb lit on the console. He glanced at the handwritten tag beneath it. “Garage. King’s Road entrance.”
Gaby physically dialed her talk-box to the viewer that watched the garage. The screen remained full of static. “That’s odd.” She dialed it a notch further. A ceiling-corner view of the garage swam into focus.
A new panel truck was parked in the mechanic’s bay. Men poured out of it—fairworlders, plus a couple of men large enough to be grimworlders. Most carried grim world assault rifles and bags of gear; the fairworlders all wore gloves. Fergus Bootblack, not armed, was the last man out and immediately moved over to the elevator door.
Gaby dialed up to the hangar, where Doc had said he and Alastair would be for a chime or two. The rotorkite swam into view. “Doc.”
He wasn’t visible, but she heard his voice: “I’m here, Gaby.”
“They’ve arrived. In the garage. I count fourteen of them. Fergus is with them. They seem to have screwed up the old camera, I mean viewer, but they missed the new one you put in.”
“I’m coming down. Alert the others.”
She dialed the room up eighty-nine and informed Lieutenant Athelstane.
Then Harris, in the laboratory. She felt a stab of worry as she repeated her message to him, and added, “Don’t you dare get hurt.”
“I promise.”
“I mean it. I love you.”
“I love you.” He forced a smile for her.
She switched off and returned the view to the garage. The men were clustered around the elevator.
Alastair said, “If Fergus is as good as he always thought he was, getting around the blocks on the elevator should pose no—ah.” On a different board, another green light, near the top of a long column of them, blinked off; the one beneath it immediately blinked on. The glow descended, mirroring the progress of the elevator. “There it goes.”
“Alastair, why do you carry an autogun?” She switched to the view of the elevator interior. It showed nothing but empty car, floors gliding by outside the cage.
“To shoot people.”
“I mean, doesn’t that get in the way of the Hippocratic Oath? Or whatever you have on the fair world?” She began switching back and forth between garage and elevator views.
“You mean the Oath of Diancecht? Not technically.” He shrugged. “I can’t intentionally harm my patients. But the sort of men I point the gun at can’t even be my patients until I shoot them. Not so?”
“Alastair, you’re weird.”
The elevator glided to a stop in the garage. The men waited as Fergus entered. Gaby watched as Fergus reached up for the elevator viewer. After a moment, that view winked out. She returned to the garage view and saw the men board the elevator car.
Gaby switched the set over to the laboratory view and took another look at Harris. “I want to listen,” she told Alastair. “I have to go in.”
“Gods’ luck to you. I’m going to join Doc in the stairwell.” He rose.
She closed her eyes and opened them almost immediately. Gabrielle’s face stared solemnly back at her from the mirror.
She opened an eye beyond it and looked down on the hallway outside the laboratories. She saw the elevator rise into view of her camera and stop. The men inside drew open the cage and spilled out. Their faces were now covered in gear that gave them an insectile look.
Gaby hissed and opened another eye. The laboratory swam into view. Harris was there. “Harris, they’re here—”
“Right. Masks on, everybody. Thanks, Gaby—”
“Harris, they’ve got gas masks, too.”
“Shit!” He turned to look out of frame. “Welthy, forget the gas bomb. Everybody, get behind the barricades.” Gaby saw him pull the bulky tan-colored mask and breathing unit into place.
It wrenched her to do it, but Gaby left him and opened another eye. Lieutenant Athelstane was already looking at her. “They’re there,” she told him.
She didn’t wait for a reply. She knew his job as well as her own; he was to lead his men in a charge up the stairs to hit the laboratory intruders from behind while Doc led the other pincer above.
She reopened the laboratory eye. Or, rather, she tried to; but it wouldn’t open. And the eye felt strange—not absent, as a destroyed talk-box would feel, but as though it were resisting her.
The men with Fergus followed him out of the elevator.
“Main laboratory,” Fergus said. His voice wasn’t muffled by a grimworld gas mask; they hadn’t given him one. He nodded toward two of the doors. “At this hour, they’ll probably be there. That’s where I saw the new grimworlders and the devices Doc was building to shield them.” He gestured toward another door, farther down the hall. “Valence laboratory. Doc might be there instead.”
Costigan, the taller of the grimworlders, waved his men into place. They flanked the three doors, ready with the miraculous rifles that shot explosives like mortars and bullets like autoguns. Costigan pulled out one of the tracer devices and turned it on. “That’s a big signal,” he said. “They’re in there, all right.” He raised his hand, a ‘stand by’ signal for his men.
Fergus glanced at Dominguez, his guard. The dusky grimworlder’s eyes narrowed. Dominguez said, “Almost over, little boy. Behave yourself and I don’t get to kill you.”
Costigan shouted “Go go go!” His men kicked the doors open, threw in the special grenades.
Fergus heard noises like big cans crumpling and saw smoke spreading through the laboratory. Costigan’s men charged in, firing.
The resistance abruptly vanished and Gaby opened the eye into the laboratory.
She saw the smoke canisters fly into the lab and detonate. Harris and the others were already behind the reinforced barricades Doc had set up behind several of the tables. Smoke obscured Gaby’s vision as men poured into the room, shooting as they came. She saw return fire erupt from behind the barricades.