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It seemed like an initiation into a secret society whose ritual he must guess at step by step. "Right, Goodman Mikhyl." They lifted their glasses to each other and drank; Goodman Mikhyl offered cigars, and Goodman Lucas held a light for him. "I hear a few hard things about your trade, Goodman Lucas." "All true, and mostly understated.
So they were courteous through the meal, and tried to get as close as possible to him in the procession to the throne room. King Mikhyl wore a golden crown topped by the planetary emblem, which must have weighed twice as much as a combat helmet, and fur-edged robes that would weigh more than a suit of space armor. They weren't nearly as ornate, though, as the regalia of King Angus I of Gram.
Mikhyl VIII, Planetary King of Marduk, lay on a pallet of filthy bedding on the floor of a narrow room behind a mass-energy converter which disposed of the rubbish and sewage and generated power for some of the fixed equipment on one of the middle floors of the east wing of the palace. There was a bucket of water, and on a rough wooden bench lay a cloth-wrapped bundle of food.
Prince Bentrik insisted that Crown Princess Myrna would have to be taken along; King Mikhyl would be either dead or brainwashed into imbecility by now, and they would have to have somebody to take the throne. Lady Valerie Alvarath, Sir Thomas Kobbly, the tutor, and the nurse Margot refused to be separated from her.
Maybe he'd been looking around and doing some thinking, since he got back. He might have been talking to Goodman Mikhyl, too. There was a screen in the room. He nodded toward it. "He's speaking at a rally of the People's Welfare Party at Drepplin, now," he said. "May I put it on, to show you what I mean?" When the Crown Prince assented, he snapped on the screen and twiddled at the selector.
Before they had talked more than a few minutes, however, Baron Cragdale abruptly became Crown Prince Edvard. "Prince Trask, Admiral Shefter tells me that you and he are having informal discussions about co-operation against this mutual enemy of ours, Dunnan. This is fine; it has my approval, and the approval of Prince Vandarvant, the Prime Minister, and, I might add, that of Goodman Mikhyl.
It hasn't quite gotten that far on the Sword-Worlds yet." "It hasn't here, either. Yet." Goodman Mikhyl slipped away; King Mikhyl VIII looked across the low table at his guest. "Prince Trask, have you heard of a man named Zaspar Makann?" "Occasionally. Nothing good about him." "He is the most dangerous man on this planet," the King said. "And I can make nobody believe it. Not even my son."
The Republic's a dictatorship, now, and just between Goodman Mikhyl and Goodman Lucas it's a nasty one and our Majesty's Government doesn't like it at all. It will be smashed sooner or later, but they'll never go back to divided sovereignty and nationalism again. The Space Vikings frightened them out of that when the dangers inherent in it couldn't.
I suppose there were physical symptoms they couldn't allow to be seen." Bentrik was cursing horribly under his breath; the officer at Moonbase nodded. "I hope for his sake that he is dead." Poor Goodman Mikhyl. Bentrik was saying, "So do I." Trask agreed, mentally. The commodore at Moonbase was still talking: "We got two more renegade RMN ships, within a hundred hours after you left."
"Indeed you may, Simon. I owe the gentleman my deepest thanks." "His Majesty, Mikhyl the Eighth, Planetary King of Marduk," Prince Bentrik said. "His Highness, Lucas, Prince Trask, Planetary Viceroy of Tanith for his Majesty Angus the First of Gram." The elderly monarch bowed his head slightly; Trask bowed a little more deeply, from the waist.
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