“I think we may be in luck,” Eric said.
His father had been perched atop a nearby boulder, keeping a watchful eye for any signs of pursuit, but quickly jumped down. “Oh?”
“I think I might be able to get us inside.”
The Emperor stared at him in disbelief. “Son, McLaren reported more times than I care to remember about how you breached the shielding and sneaked out of the grounds. But, without access to a terminal, how can we…”
Eric laughed and clambered down the hillside to stand next to him. “I have a confession,” he said. “I never breached the shielding.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “I’ve never kept a secret this long. The first time Master caught me outside was not long after the time I’d reprogrammed a number of the House systems. When he caught me, he assumed I’d somehow managed to program an opening, much the same way we do for arriving and departing shuttles.”
Javas hefted the nylon bag, transferring it from one shoulder to the other. “And you didn’t.”
“No, sir,” he replied, remembering. “Oh, I probably could have figured out how to do it, but the shield gate controls are part of House security, and I never dared touch that programming. No, I found a much simpler way. You know the caves on the east side of the garden? There’s a small opening near the end of one of them. I enlarged it and pushed the passageway until it made a connection to another cave that exists in a sinkhole well outside the grounds.” He pulled the water flask from his pocket and took a quick swallow, then passed it to his father and sat on a nearby log as he continued, smiling broadly.
“I came and went as I pleased, all the while Master McLaren pulled his hair and tried to figure out how I’d reworked the security. He had it reprogrammed several times, even going so far as to call the Security Chief down from Luna one time to—”
Eric halted abruptly, remembering Glenney’s face, his jaw and neck smashed as he lay on the floor of the wrecked shuttle. His smile vanished, the memory of a childhood joke on his elders suddenly not quite so funny to him anymore. His father said nothing, neither to chastise him nor to ease the painful thought, and handed the water back. “Anyway,” he went on humorlessly, stashing the flask in his pocket, “the connection passes far enough underground that we should be able to get in underneath the shielding; as long as the sinkhole is on the outside of it, that is.”
“It’s worth a try,” his father admitted. “I don’t see where we have much choice just now.”
They had to drop down from the ridge to make much headway on the rocky terrain and headed around the shielding in a northeasterly direction, being careful to maintain a discreet distance from the trail.
It was dusk when they neared the main access road to the estate. The road was entirely in the open, visible not only from the House but from the opposite direction as well. His father thought it best, and Eric agreed, that they should wait until it was completely dark before attempting to cross the road. They found a sheltered spot and divided the last of the sandwiches from the bag, speculating on what had happened and who might be responsible. Eric had learned a great deal from the files and reports to which Glenney had begrudgingly given him access during the transit from the Moon, and agreed with his father that House Valtane was probably behind this.
“It seems logical,” his father was saying. “She was always outside the grasp of even the Emperor, legally speaking. Glenney had suggested on more than one occasion that we go outside the law, but I always refused.” The sky had long since grown black, and he cocked his head at the cry of a night bird somewhere in the trees. “I should have listened to him.”
They continued talking into the night, but were abruptly interrupted at midnight by a brilliant flash that lit the sky to the east as a magnificent fireball burst into dozens of orange streamers that gradually faded as they fell. A delayed boom-BOOM-boom reached their ears, then again as it echoed off the far side of the river valley to the south. They watched the sky above the trees and saw it before it burst this time, as a thin trail of sparks arced upward and exploded at the zenith of its flight. This one exploded three times, each report evenly spaced, each one emitting streamers of different-colored sparks. The sounds, again delayed, drifted across the valley.
“Julyfest,” his father said. “I’d forgotten what day this was.”
“I was never permitted to attend the fireworks,” Eric said softly. “McLaren said it was too dangerous for a Prince to be among an ‘uncontrolled environment of ruffians,’ as he put it.”
His father snorted in the dark. “Yes, Montlaven never permitted me to go either,” he said, “and if memory serves, he used pretty much the same words. But it was a magnificent view from the balcony, wasn’t it?”
They watched the fireworks, speaking only occasionally. At one point a strong breeze from the east brought the scent of sulfur and black powder, and Eric remembered the odor and felt, just briefly, as if he were a small part of the celebration. Once, on a July night several years earlier, with the last of the fireworks long gone, he had refused to leave the balcony until the thin smoke of the explosions drifted over the estate. The wind had not been right that night, and after the Master had tucked him into bed and retired, he’d sneaked back onto the balcony to wait for the smoke that never came. He remembered that when the Moon rose that night he could see the smoke hanging over the river valley like a fog and wished, neither for the first nor the last time, that he wasn’t a prisoner of his family name.
Eric settled back, the odor of fireworks mingled with the backwoods scent of a Kentucky summer still lingering in his nostrils, and fell into a surprisingly restful sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
A hand shook him steadily, and he woke with a start.
“Shhhhh.” His father knelt over him, helping him to a sitting position as he shook his head to clear it. He felt damp from sleeping on the ground, and every joint and muscle was cramped and stiff from the cold. He kept silent, and listened carefully in the direction his father pointed, noting that he already had slung the bag over his shoulder. Although the sky was only now beginning to turn gray to the east, the backwoods were already alive with the sounds of morning birds and he had to pay close attention to whatever it was that had caught his father’s ear.
The main trail ran below them, far enough to remain hidden, yet close enough to hear a horse negotiating that part of the trail that wound around the ridge before ascending to the level of the access road some two hundred meters farther down. They still couldn’t see it, but it was plain that the animal had stopped, pawing the ground impatiently, and the beam of a powerful flashlight swept through the trees, followed by another a few meters behind the first—a second horse and rider. Eric crouched lower in the scrub next to his father, certain that the flashlight beams couldn’t penetrate their hiding place, and let out a barely audible sigh of relief.
“Listen,” his father whispered urgently, extending his arm again. “There; farther down the trail.”
He heard it then. “Dogs. Several of them.” He remembered the horse ridden by the traitor Brendan and wondered for a moment if the dogs of House Valtane had been as expertly bio-bred as the horses, then quickly concluded that they probably were. “Let’s get moving,” he said, indicating the wide, open area of the roadway above them. “I think we can make it to the other side before the two horsemen make it up here.”