Off Armageddon Reef (31 page)

“My God,” Gray Harbor half-whispered. “You've been planning this
that
long?”

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose. And when you appeared so unexpectedly in this sort of weather, I took a few additional precautions.” Tirian took a small bell from the mantelpiece. “I didn't truly expect to need them, but I believe in being prepared.”

He shook the bell once. Its voice was sweet, rising clear and sharp in an interval between thunderclaps, and the library door opened instantly.

Frahnk Zhahnsyn and fourteen other members of Tirian's personal guard filed in through it. The library was a huge room, but it was well populated with bookshelves and scroll racks, and the fifteen armed and armored men completely filled one end of it.

“I never planned for this actual moment,” Tirian continued, “and, whether you believe this or not, Father, I love you. I'll admit that I never planned on that in the beginning, either. Zhenyfyr, yes, but you were already First Councillor. I had to think of you in tactical terms, and, as I say, I believe in being prepared. Since I couldn't take a chance on how you might jump at a moment like this, I took precautions—wisely, it would appear.”

“It doesn't change anything,” Gray Harbor said. “Your entire so-called plan is insane, but even if it works, I won't support you. I can't.”

“We'll see about that. And I hope, for many people's sake, that you're wrong. In the meantime, however I'm afraid it's time to—”

Lightning flared, thunder crashed again, and on the heels of that deep, rumbling roar came another crash. The crash of breaking glass as the skylight above Gray Harbor shattered into a thousand glittering pieces and a rain-soaked, black-clad figure in the cuirass and mail of the Royal Guard came plunging through it.

The intruder landed with impossible grace, as if the twenty-five-foot plunge from the roof above had been a mere two feet. His knees straightened, and the drawn sword in his hands hissed.

Zhorzh Hauwyrd staggered back with a high-pitched sound of shocked agony, left hand clutching the stump of his blood-spouting right forearm as the hand which had been on Gray Harbor's shoulder thumped to the library's floor.

“Your pardon, Your Grace,” Merlin Athrawes said politely, “but I trust you'll understand if I take exception to your plans.”

Kahlvyn Ahrmahk stared in shock at the dripping apparition before him. Merlin's abrupt, totally unexpected arrival had stunned every person in that library, Gray Harbor not least, and Merlin smiled thinly.

He hadn't planned on this confrontation—hadn't wanted anything remotely like it, in fact. Nor had he anticipated any likely need for it. But at least he'd been worried enough over how his accusation of Tirian might work out that he'd kept an eye on Wave Thunder. He'd planted SNARC-deployed parasite bugs in several places in Tellesberg by now, and he'd monitored the one in Wave Thunder's office on a real-time basis. That was the only reason he'd known about Seafarmer's conclusions…or the fact that Wave Thunder would discuss those conclusions with Gray Harbor.

He'd maneuvered the office bug onto Wave Thunder's shoulder for the trip to Gray Harbor's townhouse, then dropped it off onto the earl, instead. But he'd been slow to realize what Gray Harbor intended to do. In fairness, the
earl
probably hadn't known what he was going to do before he started drinking so heavily, and he'd already summoned his carriage for the trip before Merlin realized where he was going.

The fact that Merlin had been dining with Cayleb at that moment had made things even more difficult. Fortunately, it had been a private dinner, and he'd managed to disengage himself from the prince rather more hastily than protocol would normally have permitted by claiming—accurately, as it happened—that he was even then receiving a “vision.” The crown prince had accepted his newest bodyguard's excuse that he needed to retreat to his chambers to meditate upon the vision, and Merlin had retired with a hasty bow.

He'd also instructed Owl to retrieve the recon skimmer even before he took leave of the prince, and given the quantity of thunder rumbling around the sky to disguise any sonic booms, the skimmer had made the trip at better than Mach four. The moment it arrived, the AI, at his command, had used its tractor to snatch Merlin from his chamber window and deposit him on the roof of Tirian's Tellesberg mansion instead. The trip through the wind-lashed rain and thunder, supported only by the tractor while lightning flared and hissed, had been an experience Merlin could have done without indefinitely. Unfortunately, he'd had no choice but to make it.

He'd arrived, still listening to the bug on Gray Harbor, about the time Tirian handed his father-in-law the brandy glass, and he'd been almost as dumbfounded as Gray Harbor himself by Tirian's calm admission of guilt…and by how long the duke had been an active traitor. As Merlin himself had told Haarahld and Cayleb, he couldn't see the past, and he'd had no idea Tirian had been plotting against his cousins for so long.

Which brought him to the present rather ticklish moment, confronting the King of Charis' first cousin and fifteen of his handpicked guardsmen in the Duke of Tirian's library.

“—take exception to your plans.”

The Earl of Gray Harbor sat paralyzed in his chair, looking at the back of the man who'd exploded out of the night. The man he'd distrusted and resented…who stood now between him and fifteen armed men in the service of a traitor and would-be regicide.

“It would seem,” his son-in-law said after what seemed a small eternity, “that I've underestimated you,
Seijin
Merlin.”

Gray Harbor could scarcely believe how calm Kahlvyn sounded. The duke couldn't possibly really be that collected, that poised. Or possibly he could. Whatever else, the earl knew now that the man he'd thought he knew was in fact a total stranger to him.

“I could say the same, Your Grace,” Merlin replied with another of those thin smiles.

The
seijin
stood quite still, his body language almost relaxed, ignoring the man whose hand and wrist he'd amputated as Hauwyrd went to his knees and his blood spread in a coppery-smelling pool. The
seijin
's own sword remained ready in his hands, in a stance Gray Harbor—no mean swordsman himself—had never before seen, and danger radiated from him like smoke as thunder rumbled and rolled overhead yet again.

“Certainly,” Tirian said, “you're not foolish enough to believe you can somehow rescue my father-in-law and get out of this house alive?”

“I'm not?” Merlin sounded almost
amused
, Gray Harbor realized with a fresh sense of disbelief.

“Come now!” Tirian actually chuckled as his guardsmen moved slowly and carefully, placing themselves between him and Merlin. “There's no point pretending, I suppose. The way I see it, the only two choices you have are to join me, or to die. I'll admit, in light of my previous underestimation of your capabilities, that you'd make a formidable ally. On the other hand, I'd already planned on killing you, so”—he shrugged—“it won't break my heart to stay with that solution if you choose to prove stubborn. Before you make that decision, though, I'd suggest you consider it carefully. After all, what do you think the odds are of your managing to defeat fifteen of my best?”

“Better than average,” Merlin replied, and attacked.

Frahnk Zhahnsyn was a veteran of the Royal Charisian Marines. He'd served for over eight years before he'd been recruited by a much younger Kahlvyn Ahrmahk to become a sergeant in the Duke of Tirian's personal guard. He was as hard-bitten, capable, and dangerous as he was loyal to his patron, and the men he'd assembled in response to Tirian's hasty note—armored in the same cuirasses and mail hauberks as the Royal Guard—were his best. Every one of them was a veteran, as well, and there were fifteen of them.

They'd heard the wild rumors about Merlin's rescue of Crown Prince Cayleb. They'd listened to all the tales, all the gossip, but they'd dismissed them as the sorts of absurdity to be expected when ignorant farmers or soft city merchants got together to discuss the shivery-shuddery details of such gory goings-on. They'd seen too much, done too much themselves, to be taken in by that sort of heroic fantasy.

That was unfortunate, because it meant that despite all the potential warnings, they had not the least idea what they faced in that moment. And because they didn't, the last thing they'd expected was for a single, outnumbered madman to
attack
.

Gray Harbor lunged up out of his chair in disbelief as the lunatic sprang forward.

The earl, too, was a veteran of far more combat than most, and the man who'd captained his own cruiser had summed up the odds against Merlin as quickly as Tirian or Zhahnsyn. Which meant the
seijin
's sudden attack surprised him just as badly.

But however insane it might be, the earl couldn't let Merlin face such odds alone. Not when he knew it was his own unforgivable stupidity which had led the
seijin
here to his death. And not when Gray Harbor's own survival might prove one more weapon against the king whose trust he'd betrayed by coming here in the first place.

His hand fell to the hilt of the gem-encrusted dress dagger at his hip. It was a pretty toy, but no less lethal for its decoration. The finely tempered steel scraped from its sheath, and then he froze, jaw dropping.