The older folk stuck to dresses and the bib overalls that were gentleman’s garb here, or even to the archaic suit and tie, though the greenish formal uniforms of the Iowa National Guard were common as well.
Servants in bow ties and white jackets swept away the last of the food and set out delicate desserts of pastries and ice cream, and the priceless rarity of coffee only slightly stretched with chicory. Artos sighed within; now would come the speeches. Iowans loved after-dinner speakers even more than Associates or the Faculty Senate down in Corvallis, if that were possible. You could tell none of them made offerings to Ogma the Honey-Tongued or Brigid, who was the patroness of eloquence and rhetoric, either. Mackenzies loved argument and debate, but at least they mostly did it well.
“Get used to this, Rudi,” Mathilda said. “A King’s life has a lot of ceremony.”
He sighed openly. “You know, acushla, there’s many a thing I want to do as High King, starting with winning this war but not ending there. Things that need doing, and I think I can do them well-more of them with you to back me, and our friends. But it bewilders and amazes me that so many wish to have such a job as a job. I’d rather work in a sawmill. I’d sleep better and my digestion wouldn’t suffer, so it wouldn’t.”
Mathilda chuckled and began to reply. Then she stiffened, staring at the side of a towering silver basket full of colorful fruits. Her hand darted out and seized a porcelain coffeepot and whipped it over her shoulder.
“Assassins!” she screamed, in the same instant-not in fear, but at maximum volume to cut through the buzz of white noise.
A real scream sounded. .
Artos rose and turned before the first syllables were out of Matti’s mouth, pushing off with one foot against a table leg and swaying his torso aside. A nine-inch curved blade flashed by, brushing his ear with cold fire; he wasn’t sure whether it had been aimed at him or Mathilda, but he was sure that the bow tie and white tuxedo coat weren’t the man’s real uniform. Not that it mattered, and half the killer’s face was covered in scalding-hot coffee. The bladed palm of his own left hand whipped down into the shoulder of the assassin’s knife arm, striking with a dull axlike sound as bone and cartilage snapped. In the same instant his knee pistoned up into the man’s crotch. He was wearing a cup beneath his trousers, but that still brought a shrill shriek.
Artos turned instantly, leaving the first assailant. Mathilda was handicapped by the cotehardie, but in seconds she had the man efficiently facedown on the table with his functional arm in a paralysis hold and his own kill-dagger pricking behind one ear. He heaved and screamed in rage despite the agony until she reversed the weapon and rapped him behind one ear with scientific precision.
Artos had his own problems. The whole head table was dissolving into a chaos of screams and flashing knives.
Mary and Ingolf were back to back in front of Abel Heuisink, who was clutching at a spreading red stain on his side and stamping at something out of sight on the floor as if on a scorpion. Ingolf had another of the false waiters by the wrist and had disarmed him by the straightforward method of squeezing and twisting until the bones broke with a tooth-grating crackle, while he used the captive arm to whip the man forward into a crunching head butt. He could see Virginia Thurston, nee Kane, taking down another with a spectacular leaping kick with one hand braced on the table; she’d insisted on wearing the gold-riveted blue jeans that were formal wear in her native Wyoming.
Fred was nearly as fast, but he’d been delayed by snatching at a saber hilt that wasn’t there. Iowa was a civilized realm, where men didn’t carry swords or fighting-knives to a state dinner. Father Ignatius was on his feet, one hand wrenching the rope belt of his black robe free; from the way it whipped through the air as he sidled in front of Mathilda the knot at the end had a lead core. Artos snatched a cover off a plate and dove to his right towards the Regent of Iowa with desperate speed, thrusting it out like a buckler between her and the Cutter. The dagger there clanged against the antique silver, but that left him draped across the table and off balance.
Kate Heasleroad was as helpless as he, sprawled backward and pinned by the royal clothing, but she scrabbled and kicked furiously, and the heavy skirt took the first stab of the dagger. Artos scissored his legs and came erect in time to catch the man under the jaw with the heel of his palm. He wasn’t set for the full bone-shattering power the blow could deliver, but it jarred through his arm and shoved the smaller man back on his heels. He was vaguely conscious that Bjarni had closed with the only other assassin, taking a stab in the belly that the mail vest under his shirt turned, then grabbing him in a bear hug and squeezing, squeezing. .
The last man was back on the balls of his feet, knife held out and point down with his thumb on the pommel, an expert’s grip that could stab or back-slash with rattlesnake speed. Artos stripped the little sgian dubh out of his knee-sock. Perhaps thirty seconds had passed since Mathilda saw the first man’s reflection in the silver before her and saved them all, and the guards were closing in at last-there weren’t as many of them in the throne room as there had been in mad Anthony Heasleroad’s day.
There was the briefest pause as the knife-man’s eyes locked on his.
“Don’t do it, man,” Artos said. “Surrender and I’ll pledge your life.”
The blue gaze narrowed, and the knife-point began to move. Artos looked into the face of desperate courage, and killed it.
Then he stepped back, and the mail-clad guards rushed in. Ignatius straightened and spoke, steady and controlled but loud:
“Everyone, please remain calm. Don’t try to leave, everyone must be questioned.”
The cool good sense cut through the room; most of the guests weren’t sure what had happened anyway, except that it was bad. Kate Heasleroad stepped forward with her eyes flashing:
“Captain Dietrich!” she snapped.
The commander of the State Patrol stepped forward in his turn; he was a young man with a clipped blond mustache. Turnover in the security corps had been rapid after last year’s change of regime, not to mention that the head of his service had died in the turmoil.
“Ma’am?” he said, standing ramrod straight and obviously wishing his vital functions would cease.
“Chancellor Heuisink is wounded. Get a physician. And take control of the surviving assassins. I want a full debriefing by no later than tomorrow. Interrogate them. Break them, do you understand me?”
And last year she was a gentle, shy, retiring girl, Artos thought, as his breathing slowed. He exchanged a glance with Mathilda, his wry smile saying, Well, you helped her hatch as plain as words, then spoke:
“I think the Sword could help with that, Lady Regent, and make the process swifter and less bloody all ’round.”
Many hours later he buried his head in the curve of Mathilda’s neck; they were alone at last. She stroked his hair, careful of the bandage over his ear.
“I’m tired of this, Matti,” he said. “It’s been years now; fighting and running, now them running and still more fighting. I’m tired of seeing brave men die; tired of killing them. I want to make us a home, and wake up beside you every day, and take our children on visits to their grandmothers. I want it to stop.”
“My poor darling-”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER
(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)
JUNE 2, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“I feel like a bug on a plate,” Ritva Havelmuttered. She pushed steadily at the pedals and looked out the windows at the landscape of the big-sky country, with the rush of the wind thuttering under the rattle and whine of the wheels and gears. This railcar held three rows of three operators pumping away with their feet, but apart from the motive power it didn’t have much in common with the makeshifts the questers had cobbled together back in Norrheim. The streamlined sheath was made mostly of salvaged aluminum with some modern laminated ash in the frame, and the operators all lay back to pedal in recliner seats padded with sheepskins. Windows all around were from pre-Change automobiles, complete with the cranks for raising and lowering.