“What are you getting in return for this, Alcott?” asked Gideon, sounding as if he were really interested. “What can Lord Alastair offer you to make you break the Guardians’ oath and betray the Lodge?”
“Well, I—” Alcott obligingly began to tell us, but Lord Alastair cut him short.
“A clear conscience! That’s what he gets in return. The certainty that the angels in heaven will praise his deeds is worth far more than gold. We must rid the earth of demonic monstrosities like you two, and God will thank us for shedding your blood.”
Sure, sure. Briefly I felt a spurt of hope that Lord Alastair just needed someone to listen to him. Maybe he only wanted an appreciative audience to hear him talk about his religious delusions. But then Darth Vader hissed, “Your lives are forfeit, demons’ brood!” and I abandoned that idea again.
“So you think God would approve of the murder of an innocent girl? Interesting.” Gideon’s hand went to the inside pocket of his coat, and then he imperceptibly jumped.
“Is this what you were looking for?” asked the First Secretary maliciously. He reached into the pocket of his own lemon-yellow coat and brought out a small black pistol, holding it up in his fingertips. “Undoubtedly some diabolical weapon from the future, am I right?” He looked at Lord Alastair for approval. “I asked our seductive friend Lady Lavinia to search you thoroughly for such weapons, time traveler.”
Lavinia cast Gideon a guilty smile, and for a moment, he looked as if he could have kicked himself. Understandably, because the pistol would have saved us. Men with swords stood no chance against a Smith & Wesson automatic. I wished the treacherous Alcott would accidentally pull the trigger and shoot himself in the foot. The noise of the shot might also be heard in the ballroom—or then again, it might not.
However, Alcott put the pistol back into his pocket, and my heart sank.
“Surprised, are you? I thought of everything. I knew that dear Lady Lavinia had gambling debts,” said Alcott in a conversational tone. Like most villains, he evidently longed to have his cunning admired. I thought his long face was rather ratlike. “Debts for large sums of money that she could no longer, as usual, pay off by showing … er, generosity to her creditors.” Here he laughed in a slimy way. “You must forgive me, my lady, for not being especially interested in those services of yours. But this wipes out your debts.”
Lavinia didn’t look particularly pleased. “I’m so sorry—I had no other choice,” she said to Gideon, but he didn’t appear to be listening to her at all. I thought it more likely that he was wondering how fast he could get to the fireplace and snatch one of the sabers off the wall above it before Lord Alastair ran him through with his sword. Following his eyes, I came to the conclusion that he didn’t have much chance of success, unless he’d forgotten to let me know that he was really Superman. The fireplace was too far away, and moreover, Lord Alastair, who never took his eyes off Gideon, was standing much closer to it.
“This is all very well,” I said slowly, playing for time, “but you’ve reckoned without the count.”
Alcott laughed. “I suppose you mean without Rakoczy?” He rubbed his hands. “Well, his special … let’s call them preferences will make him unable to do his duty tonight, don’t you agree?” He was all puffed up with pride. “His liking for intoxicating substances made him easy prey, if you know what I mean.”
“But Rakoczy isn’t alone,” I said. “His Kurucs are keeping watch on every move we make.”
Slightly unsettled, Alcott looked briefly at Lord Alastair and then laughed again. “Oh, yes, and where are those Kurucs of yours now?”
Down in the cellar, presumably.
“Waiting in the shadows,” I murmured in as menacing a tone as I could manage. “Ready to strike at any time. And they can do things with their swords and knives that verge on magic.”
But unfortunately Alcott wasn’t to be intimidated. He made a few nasty remarks about Rakoczy and his Kurucs, praising himself all over again for his brilliant planning and his even more brilliant change of plan. “I’m afraid our clever friend the count will wait for you and his Black Leopard in vain today,” he said, turning to Gideon. “Why not ask me what plans I have for him?”
But Gideon had obviously lost any interest in Alcott’s boasting. He said nothing. Lord Alastair seemed to have had enough of the First Secretary’s time-wasting babbling as well. He wanted to get down to business. “You had better go away,” he impatiently told Lady Lavinia, drawing his sword and pointing it at her.
So now came the crunch.
“And I always thought you were a man of honor and wouldn’t fight a duel with an unarmed opponent,” said Gideon.
“I am indeed a man of honor—but you are a demon. I am not going to fight a duel with you, I’m going to slaughter you,” said Lord Alastair coldly.
Lady Lavinia let out a stifled sound of horror. “I didn’t want this,” she whispered, looking in Gideon’s direction.
No, sure. Now she had scruples! You silly cow, fall down in another faint, why don’t you?
“Get her out of here, I said!” For once, Lord Alastair took the words out of my mouth. He let his sword whistle through the air, trying out the blade.
“Of course—this is no sight for a lady.” Alcott bundled Lavinia out into the corridor. “Close the door, and make sure no one tries to get in.”
“But—”
“I haven’t given you back your IOUs yet,” hissed Alcott. “If I say so, the bailiffs will come to your house tomorrow, and then it won’t be your house anymore for quite some time.”
That shut Lavinia up. Alcott bolted the door, turned to us, and took a dagger out of his coat pocket, rather a delicate model. I ought to have been feeling terrified, but somehow the fear wouldn’t really set in. Probably because the whole thing seemed to me downright absurd. Unreal. Like a clip from a film.
And surely we’d be traveling back any moment now?
“How much time is there still to go?” I whispered to Gideon.
“Too much,” he said, through gritted teeth.
Alcott’s rat face wore a look of cheerful excitement. “I’ll deal with the girl,” he said, positively bubbling over with his thirst for action. “You deal with the boy. But be careful—he’s cunning, and he’s quick.”
Lord Alastair just snorted scornfully.
Since Gideon still seemed to be eyeing up the sabers so tantalizingly out of reach and his whole body was tense with concentration, I looked around for an alternative weapon. On the spur of the moment, I picked up one of the upholstered chairs and pointed its fragile legs at Alcott.
For some reason, he thought that amusing. He just grinned even more murderously than before and slowly advanced on me. Well, one thing was for sure: whatever his motives, he wasn’t about to have a clear conscience ever again in this life.
Lord Alastair was also coming closer.
And then everything happened at once.
“Stay right there,” Gideon called to me, as he overturned the delicate little desk and, with a kick, sent it slithering over the polished wooden floorboards toward Lord Alastair. At almost the same time, he tore one of the heavy candleholder brackets off the wall and flung it with all his might at the First Secretary. It hit Sir Alfred on the head with a nasty sound, and he dropped to the floor like a stone. Gideon didn’t wait to see if his throw had been on target. While the bracket was still in the air, he had dived for the collection of sabers on the wall. In his own turn, Lord Alastair had stepped aside to avoid the desk skidding his way, but instead of preventing Gideon from snatching a saber off the wall, he took a few quick steps toward me. All this had happened in the time it takes to blink an eye, and I hardly had time to raise the chair I was holding, with the firm intention of smashing it down over Lord Alastair’s head, before he was lunging at me with his sword.
The blade passed through my dress and ran far into me under the left side of my rib cage. Before I could really grasp what had happened, Lord Alastair withdrew his sword again, uttered a cry of triumph, and spun around to meet Gideon, pointing the sword at him. The end of the blade was red with my blood.
The pain got to me a second later. Like a puppet with its strings cut, I fell forward on my knees and instinctively put my hand to my breast. I heard Gideon shout my name; I saw him wrench two sabers at once off the wall, swinging them above his head like a samurai warrior. Meanwhile I finally dropped to the ground, and the back of my head didn’t even hit the floorboards too hard (a wig like the one I was wearing came in useful). Then, as if by magic, the pain went away. For a moment, I stared at nothing, astonished. Then I was hovering in the air, weightless, bodiless, rising higher and higher in space, up to the stucco decoration on the ceiling. Little golden m0tes of dust danced around me in the candlelight. It was almost as if I had turned into one of them.
I saw myself lying far below, eyes wide open, struggling for air. A bloodstain was slowly spreading over the dark blue silk of my dress. The color quickly drained out of my face until my skin was as white as my wig. I watched in surprise as my eyelids quivered and then closed.
But the part of me hovering in the air could still see everything that was going on:
I saw the First Secretary lying motionless beside the candleholder bracket. He was bleeding from a large wound in his temple.
I saw Gideon, white with anger, rushing toward Alastair. His lordship retreated to the doorway, parrying Gideon’s saber thrusts with his own sword, but after only a few seconds, Gideon had driven him into a corner of the room.
I saw the two of them fighting a fierce duel, although from up where I was floating, the clash of their blades was muted.
His lordship feinted and then tried to lunge under Gideon’s left arm, but Gideon saw through his intention, and at almost the same moment, his blade pierced Lord Alastair’s unguarded right upper arm. Alastair looked at his adversary incredulously and then his expression distorted into a silent scream. His fingers opened, and his sword fell to the floor with a clatter: Gideon had pinned his arm to the wall. Stuck like that, he began hissing furious curses, in spite of the pain he must have been feeling.
Gideon turned away without giving him another glance and flung himself down on the floor beside me. That’s to say, beside my body—I myself was still hovering around in the air, feeling useless.
“Gwyneth! Oh, my God! Gwenny! Please don’t!” He pressed his hand to the spot below my breast where the sword had made a tiny hole in my dress.
“Too late!” cried Darth Vader in ringing tones. “Do you not see the lifeblood draining out of her?”
“She’ll die—there’s nothing you can do to change that!” said Lord Alastair, from where he was pinned to the wall, taking care not to move his immobilized arm. Blood was dripping from it, forming a little puddle beside his feet. “I ran her right through her demonic heart!”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Gideon snapped furiously. He had both hands on my wound now and was pressing down on it with his full weight. “I’m not letting her bleed to death. If we can only get back in time.…” He sobbed desperately. “You mustn’t die, Gwenny, do you hear me?”