Rock of Ages by Walter Jon Williams

Author:Walter Jon Williams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

The first person Maijstral saw, as his submarine was towed back into dock, was in fact Colonel-General Vandergilt. The second was Prince Hunac, still in his feathered costume, and the third was Mangula Arish, who seemed pale and unsteady but whose media globes gleamed bright and ferocious.

Nichole was not to be seen. Probably Diadem security had her under lock and key.

The sub nudged up to the dock, and the canopy hissed open. Maijstral stepped onto the dock, and Prince Hunac ran up and hit him on the chest. The clenched hand bounced off without making much of an impression.

“Yes?” Maijstral said, puzzled.

Hunac thumped him again. He kept bounding up and down on the balls of his feet, and his bright-pupils looked bigger than his fists. “You abused my hospitality, you thief!” he screamed. “I challenge you!” He had lost his grip on High Khosali and spoke in Human Standard.

Maijstral realized that Hunac was only hitting him in the chest because he couldn’t reach his face. “Thief?” Maijstral said. He turned vaguely and pointed at the submarine. “But you got your sub back,” he pointed out.

Hunac kept bouncing up and down. Somewhere in his mind Maijstral registered the fact that he had never before seen anyone who was literally hopping mad.

“I’ll cut you to pieces!” Hunac said, and punched Maijstral’s chest again.

Everyone, Maijstral was reminded, was trying to kill him. Or marry him. Or maybe both. There didn’t need to be a reason, it was just this thing everyone had agreed to do at some secret meeting to which Maijstral had not been invited.

“You’ll have to stand in line,” Maijstral said. He picked Prince Hunac up bodily arid moved him out of the way, and then began his weary trek to Nichole’s quarters.

It was safer than anywhere else he could think of.

*

Nichole’s household, of which Maijstral’s soon became a subset, moved within the hour to an exclusive resort hotel outside Havana. Diadem security, appalled at their precious human commodity becoming involved in a firefight in a presumably secure place like the Underwater Palace, had called in the reserves, and soon squads of large, grim humans and even larger, grimmer Khosali were patrolling the corridors, the roof, and the public areas doing the things that security people normally do—talking into their sleeves, patting the hidden pockets that concealed their weaponry, and scrutinizing hapless tourists who were left to conclude, from their somber and ominous appearance, that there was some kind of international crime convention in town.

Maijstral, once he’d showered off the foam and changed into a dressing gown, merely lay on the bed in the darkness of his room and stared at the ceiling. He’d slammed down three brandies, but never felt less drunk in his life. Adrenaline had burned off the alcohol the second it reached his system.

He was, he realized, doomed. Three challenges in three days, and all for things he hadn’t done, and there was no earthly reason why the challenges should stop now.

The stranger, of course, had got clean away.

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