“Wonderful!” she said. “Scarcely a missed step throughout.”
“It’s not as though we were unprepared,” I said. Servants brought champaigne; I took a glass for each of us and we sipped gently. “The University holds dances every Saturday night, and all.”
“You still couldn’t have planned it better. I’m sure you impressed everyone.”
I laughed. “Not the Grand Counsellors, surely. But you’re right, I couldn’t have planned it better. I knew you’d all dance as well as ever. In fact, you’re all quite predictable.”
“Oh, really?”
“Certainly. Rina is going to hang on Quent’s every word for the rest of the evening, like she always does. And in a minute Beramis will join us and start telling those funny stories of his, and after that—”
“Shh! He’s coming now!”
I grinned. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Beramis and the others joined us. “Have you heard the story about the archaeologist, the historian, and the paleontogist, Imperiality?” Beramis said, then he launched into the first of a series of deftly-told jokes. As always, I tried to keep a straight face; as always, I was soon grinning, then chuckling, then roaring. I laughed as much at the wildly improbable stories as Beramis’s own struggle to hold a straight face throughout them.
“Enough, enough!” I said, breathless. I wiped my eyes.
Still chuckling, I turned away, waving a hand behind me.
“Enough,” I said, following the familiar ritual of oh-so-many gathering, back at the little University on a rather out-of-the-way planet, back when I’d been just plain Jad to everyone. “Somebody stop him; he’s too far!”
“But you haven’t heard what happened next,” said Beramis, behind me now. “Then the Macedonian—Hey!”
A disruptor hissed close by. I whirled, instantly alert, as Rina’s scream broke a sudden deathly silence. I heard a roaring in my ears; the world seemed to be moving too slowly, unnaturally slowly. Beramis was crumpling to the floor.
“No!” I shouted. I leaped forward, but it was too late and I knew it. He was dead, his face grossly distorted, blotches of red and blue and yellow replacing the tan of his skin.
I closed his eyes—I knew I couldn’t do anything else for him now. Then, hearing sounds of a scuffle, I jerked my head up.
Jon and Quent were struggling with a man, one of the onlookers, while Ganion scrambled to help. The powerfully built stranger wore intricately embroidered clothing, a bright gold shirt and wine-red pants such as any high official might own. And he still held a disruptor pistol in his hand.
“Kill—” I started, then caught myself. “No! Wait! I said wait!” The struggle froze, disruptor pistol pointed up at the distant ceiling. “That’s better.”
Slowly I stood. My mind seemed to be whirling along at an astounding rate, and all sorts of mental alarms shrilled at me. Something was very, very wrong here. Why would an assassin kill Beramis rather than me? And how had he managed to smuggle a disruptor into the Coronation Ballroom? A thousand safety devices should have prevented it. It didn’t make sense… unless it were part of some larger plot.
I looked across the crowd that had gathered. Which one of you is playing Livia to my Augustus?
My first impulse had been to kill the murderer; my second, to question him. Either might be what was expected of me. I had to break out of the pattern, do something totally unexpected, if I was to get to the bottom of this.
I said: “Mara!”
“Jad?”
“Take his weapon. Hang on to it.” I pointed to the killer. “You there! Put your pistol on ‘safety’. Give it to her. Give her all your weapons. Understand?”
“Yes, Your Imperiality,” the stranger said.
Jon and Quent loosened their hold enough for him to hand Mara both his disruptor pistol and a nasty-looking thermo-dagger.
“But if Your Imperiality will let me—”
“Explain?” I barked. “No! You will wait until I’m ready.”
“But if Your Imperiality will let—”
“Shut up!”
He did so. I glanced around.
Ganion stood close, hands still full of purple satin.
“Vest me,” I said quietly, and waited until the robes were on my shoulder again. Then, cautiously, step by step, I moved toward the killer. He cringed a bit as I neared, then caught himself, squared his shoulders, and tried to look me in the eye.
“Let me explain, Your—” he started.
“No!” I said. Pausing, I took a deep breath. “It seems to me that—” I stopped again, glanced around.
Behind me, Rina crouched over Beramis’s body, sobbing quietly. Ganion stood at my elbow, Deak a few paces behind, and Quent and Jon still held the killer’s arms. Mara stood a few paces behind Quent, holding the disruptor.
All around us, the crowd was growing larger. I saw, at its front, Grand Counsellor Alderman, Grand Counsellor Axtant, Grand Counsellor—my eyes picked out members of the Grand Council faster than I could recall their names.
“Fascinating,” I muttered.
“What, Jad?” asked Ganion. “I mean, Your—”
I shushed him with a curt gesture, then said quietly, “Deak, Ganion, listen: Somebody’s about to try to kill our assassin. Be ready. Understand?”
“Kill him?” asked Deak. “But—ah!”
“That’s right,” I said, still keeping my voice low.
“Think!” I approached the killer again, and in a voice trained to cope with crowded lecture halls and bad acoustics, I declaimed, “This appears to be very eager to tell us something.”
“Yes,” said the killer. “Your Imperiality, I—”
“He is so eager,” I continued, drowning out his voice, “that I have three times—three times—specifically ordered him not to speak, and still he tries.”
“You slimy ert,” growled Jon, wrenching the killer’s arms behind his back. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“Later,” I said.
“But he killed—”
“Trust me. First, how would you describe this—the way he’s acting?”
“Huh?” asked Jon. “Are you crazy, Jad? I mean—”
“The Grand Council is in charge of deciding if I’m crazy,” I said. “Oddly enough, the entire Council appears to be gathered here. But we can rest assured there’s an explanation for that. Now, my question?”
“Imperiality,” said Mara, “he—that murderer—refuses to follow your commands, even your most direct and specific commands.” She gave me a shrewd glance, then demanded of the others, “Does anyone say otherwise? No? All agree, Imperiality.”
Ganion said, “You called him ‘assassin.’ This would suppose someone sent him to kill Beramis.”
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose it does. But can you tell me what’s supposed to happen when he has his say? Will he really tell us why? Or is something else planned?”
I raised my voice. “Quickly, assassin, tell us all you know!”
Rina’s shout alerted me, sent Deak and Ganion into a headlong dive at another bystander who had suddenly pulled out a disruptor pistol. Deak seized the man’s arm in a vicelike grip, forced it back until he dropped the pistol. It clattered noisily on the floor.
“You get the wrong signal?” Deak demanded. He scooped up the pistol and brandished it wildly. “Talk!”
“Give the disruptor to Susa to hold,” I said. “Put the safety on first.”
“I’ve got that much sense, Jad—uh, damn!—Your Imperiality.” He handed the weapon over. “Now what?”
I was at a loss. “What do you suggest, Quent?”
“Hmm. Well, in the first place, we’re starting to run out of assassin-holders.” More loudly, he said, “I should say, Imperiality, that the next time somebody pulls out a weapon, the bystanders had better grab him. If they don’t, Mara and Susa are going to start shooting, and with their aim, a lot of people, including the Grand Council, are going to get hit.”