"I'll have the Trophy Room readied," Marilee said. She took a deep breath in reaction to the past minutes. Even on this end of the Hall, the air was bitter with ozone and sweetened by death. "The House doors have probably been locked," she added wryly. "I don't doubt you can get in, but . . ."
Slade let the remote unit fall, as if his right arm no longer had strength for its burden. He clicked off the speaker control pinned to his left shoulder as well. "Yeah," he said. "I'll—be along. Have to take care . . ." His voice trailed off as he glanced back at Dyson.
"That's all right," said Edward unexpectedly. The youth had a long pressure-cut on his forehead. Both sleeves of his morning coat had ripped loose at the armpits. "You two—" He pointed at the pair of Dyson liverymen trying to creep off the podium. "Yes, you—Baucom, isn't it? Get back here and restrain the Councilor. We'll take him to the House medicomp. He needs treatment."
Edward turned to his mother and uncle. Marilee nodded very briskly. She scrambled off the podium and over the silent gun drone as quickly as she could. She wanted to prevent the fact that she was crying from being obvious to her son, no longer a boy.
The Houseman who had joined her on the podium now looked around. "I'm coming, Mistress," he called loudly as he bolted after the woman.
You never know, thought Slade as he walked slowly up the long aisle. You never know about other people, and you never know about yourself. Don Slade was anything on Tethys now that he wanted to be . . .
Many of the spectators in the Hall were only now beginning to leave. Shock and fright had kept them hunched behind partitions that would have been of no more account than farts in whirlwind, had the fighting really rolled their way. Now these folk ducked back out of the aisle or scudded ahead of Slade's progress with fearful looks behind them.
Home? Blood and Martyrs! But that would pass, and Don Slade was home indeed.
"I was getting ready to come look for you," said Danny Pritchard. The ex-mercenary lounged again beside the gun of his fighting vehicle. This time it was parked beside the shattered doors to the Hall, as still as it had been when day broke. "Marilee said you'd be along, though, so I figured I could wait."
He slid off the drone. "Here," he said, holding out one of the submachine guns gathered from Dyson's thugs. "You might want this."
Slade took the weapon, checking the load and safety by instinct. He gazed around the courtyard. The pool of orange flames and bubbling smoke took a moment to connect with Dyson's van. There didn't appear to have been the carnage he had feared and expected, though.
There was a crowd of what had surely been Dyson's guards in a corner between the House and the enclosure wall. Most of them had lost their livery as well as their weapons for some reason. Fishermen were pointing guns at their captives from the ground and from the roofs of the supply trucks. There would probably be accidents, but Slade was not disposed to worry about the despondent liverymen at this moment.
Chesson, atop one of the trucks, waved and shouted when Slade appeared from the building. "We got 'em, Soldier," he called gleefully.
"Just a little longer," the tanker shouted back. "By the Lord, it won't be forgotten."
"You know, Danny," Slade said to his companion, "I don't think I want this after all. Not right now." He handed back the gun he was holding. A stream of people was passing across the courtyard from the Hall, but only Council members seemed to be entering the House. Marilee had matters under control there already.
"Let's go talk to some people about the Slade Estate," said the big man mildly. "And about Tethys, I do suppose."
Together, the ex-mercenaries began walking toward the House. Danny Pritchard still cradled the automatic weapon.
"Everyone's gone upstairs, D-don," said Marilee from the bottom of the staircase. The name had come so smoothly from her memory that she stumbled when she paused to consider what she was saying.
Slade smiled. "I thought at least a few of the Councilors'd figure the going was good," he said. "Marilee."
"They may be afraid of what you've got to say," noted Danny Pritchard from the political background which had absorbed him since Hammer took Friesland. "But they're going to be a lot more afraid of not being there when you say it."
He chuckled. In a different persona he added, "Want some company while you talk?" Pritchard did not have to gesture with the gun to make his meaning clear.
Slade punched him gently on the arm. "Hey," the big man said, "that's my line. I think—" He paused, then went on. "Upstairs I've got to handle myself. I'm the guy who's going to live here, right?"
Pritchard grinned. "Via, you're learning," he said approvingly. "Come back to Friesland and I'll find you a job in Admin. Hang in there, snake. I'm going to organize some of those people—" he gestured in the general direction of the hidden prisoners— "into a clean-up crew. Crispy critters are likely to offend the tender sensibilities of your peers."
Whistling, Hammer's heir strolled back toward the courtyard. Slade watched him for a moment. Then the big man cleared his throat and offered his crooked elbow to Marilee. "Shall we?" he said.
The woman's mouth quirked in a fashion that could have broadened into a smile. "The stairs are a little tight, aren't they?"
"Via, has it been so long?" Slade said with a chuckle that loosened his muscles and his taut, turbid mind. "Come on, my dear." His arm looped out to circle Marilee's waist. It was, he thought as they climbed in step made awkward by the wedgeshaped treads, a very long time. And it felt as good now as ever it had.