The Drone Who Claimed the Marshal novel · Chapter 24 of 32
Chapter 24: The Duke Cornered
The booth door burst in, and the first man through it was not a guard.
It was Cormac Lorne, in a white coat, with a brass case in his hand.
Forty Palace Guard crowded in behind him.
"Cut the wire," he said.
The operator did not move.
"I said cut it!"
"I run the wire," the old signaller said. "She can send a different man."
The Duke smiled.
It was the smile Linus had first seen across the stage of the Claiming Hall, soft and kind and entirely empty.
"Dear boy," Cormac said. "That was a fine speech. Very moving. I wept."
"Take your guards and leave."
"I think not. The Empress has asked me to collect something from you. She was clear that I should not wait for the fourth morning."
He opened the brass case.
Inside, on velvet, lay a thin glass cylinder with a long needle, bound in silver wire.
Linus knew it by its smell.
Gold, the same dry sweet gold as the medicine.
"That is how you took it from him," he said. "Every month."
"The boy never noticed. He was very peaceful." Cormac lifted the needle to the light. "I will not take all of yours. Just enough for the Empress's priests to weigh."
"Guards," Ambrose said from the corridor.
His voice was not loud.
The forty men in white armour looked at him, and at the Duke.
Then they looked at the screens, where the whole empire was watching the booth through the lens above the door.
They had been told to arrest a traitor.
They had not been told that the traitor's face was on every wall in the city.
"Take him," Cormac said. "Hold his arms."
Nobody moved.
"The Marshal is a condemned man! I have the Empress's word."
Two guards stepped forward, slowly.
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