Sebastian of Mars (17 page)

And then it was time to say good-bye to
Radion. I put out my paw but he took me in the roughest of hugs and
said into my ear with emotion, “We gypsies have a saying: ‘there
are no good-byes.’ So I will not give you one now.” He gave me an
impassioned kiss on my cheek, presented me with his spyglass as a
present, and let me go.

“Ride,” he said to Miklos, and we mounted our
horses and turned to the north.

A
fter a two day
ride, during which Miklos said barely a word, we saw Robinson City
rise on the horizon.

“It doesn’t look like much,” I said, studying
the skyline with the spyglass that Radion had presented me
with.

Miklos humphed. “It isn’t. It is little more
than a pigsty, packed with pigs. The river men come here to gamble
and comport with women, and the women come here to get rich by
taking their money from the gambling tables or in bed. There is
little in the way of law here, and now that is in F’rar hands.” He
made a sour face. “I was here years ago, and didn’t like it. Thin
pickings.”

“I take it your own pickpocketing and fortune
telling didn’t do well, then?” I teased.

He looked at me, and snorted again.

We rode another hour, and the town’s
silhouette grew: a few tall buildings, dark colored and mean
looking, and clusters of squatter structures.

When we reached a copse of junto trees,
within hailing distance of the front gate, Miklos said, “This is
far enough for me, my King.”

He removed a bundle from his pack and tossed
it to me. Inside was a red tunic, along with a belt, scabbard and
sword.

“From the unlucky fellow who told his F’rar
commander that we were near the river. If you need the sword, I
have taught you enough to get by. You are not as bad as you think.
There is also food enough for two days in there.”

I studied the now-clean sword, and the large
hole in the chest of the tunic which had been sewed.

“It will get you inside the gates. Pretend
the little fish is your prisoner, or your little brother. Whatever
you wish.” For the first time since we had discovered his brother
Jamos, he showed a smile. “I would prefer prisoner.”

Darwin narrowed his eyes at the giant.

“And now,” Miklos said, reigning his horse
around, “I will take my leave. But not before wishing you the luck
of the gypsies. It is powerful luck, my King.” Again he smiled. “It
may even rub off on the little fish!”

He kicked his horse, and was gone, the way we
had come.

Through the trees ahead of us I eyed the gate
of the city of Robinson, just visible. There was a guardhouse and a
barrier.

I climbed down from my horse and donned the
crimson F’rar tunic, which fit well enough. When the scabbard and
blade were in place, I remounted my horse.

“Are you ready?” I asked Darwin, who
nodded.

I took a deep breath
and said, “Then let’s go.”

T
o my surprise, the
guard barely looked at us as I rode by his mean hut, and the
barrier, which was a vertical post worked by way of a rope pull,
was raised without a word.

And then we were in Robinson, which was
dirtier and viler looking than it had looked from the horizon. The
main street, for there was only one with a network of alleys, was a
muddy mess, red and viscous looking. Abandoned wagons were stuck in
it up to their wheel hubs. Our boots were immediately covered in
the muck, and we quickly learned that there were safe places to
walk, as well as the other kind. Boards were laid over this
quagmire in front of establishments, and for the most part the
interesting citizenry of Robinson kept to these walkways.

The tallest building, which I had seen from a
distance as a mud-colored spire, proved to be a saloon and boarding
house. It had been appropriated by the F’rar, so we avoided it. I
instead entered a building across the street, which itself looked
to be hiding in the shadows. There was sawdust on the floor, and a
bar the length of the small room. Behind it was a bored looking
fellow wearing a filthy apron that might once have been white. He
was smoking a long-stemmed briar pipe and nodding over a newspaper
which lay open on the bar before him. A lone customer at the far
end looked asleep, head resting on his folding arms, eyes
closed.

“A room?” I asked, trying to sound gruff.

The barkeep didn’t even look up from his
paper.

“Hour, day or week?” he asked, puffing his
pipe.

“Day.”

“That’d be two, both in advance,” he said,
still not meeting my eye. But I felt eyes on me, and looked down
the bar to see the asleep customer eyeing me, though his head still
rested on the bar.

I put down the money and waited for a key,
but the barkeep, still without looking up from his paper, jerked
the thumb of his paw upward.

“Twelve,” he said, smoke rising in a perfect
circle from his pipe bowl.

I looked down the bar
and saw that the resting customer looked to be asleep again.

I
n room number
twelve upstairs, which proved to have only an inside lock, which I
enabled, I quickly stripped off the F’rar tunic. Darwin was trying
to look out of the room’s window, which was coated in dust on the
inside and grime on the outside, and proved to be immovable.
Finally he found a merely occluded patch, and stood eyeing this way
and that.

“Nothing unusual on the street,” he reported.
“But I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a visit from that paying
customer downstairs.”

“You noticed him looking at us?”

“It’s a common saloon trick,” Darwin said
breezily. “The reason the barkeep can act so nonchalant is that the
customer, who also works in the bar, is his eyes and ears. Anything
bad starts to happen and the customer gives the word. Then the
barkeep, still acting nonchalant, reached casually under the bar
and takes out his length of pipe or firearm. It happened in River
Town all the time.”

I must have been regarding him with interest,
because he beamed. “I told you I would come in handy.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

He continued to squint through the cloudy
opening in the window. “This place is nothing but a larger version
of River Town. And I noticed some good hiding places on the way in,
if we need them.”

“Good.”

He turned from the window. “What will we do
now?”

“We’ll try to hire ourselves on to the rear
of the F’rar army, which is spread between here and halfway to
Olympus Mons. That group we hid from the other night was only part
of the F’rar rear guard. I’m sure they’re always in need of a good
cook or two.”

“Ah, hence the lessons.” He went back to the
window.

“See anything now?” I asked.

“That fellow who was asleep at the bar is now
talking to two F’rar officers outside in the street.”

“Good,” I said.

Leaving the tunic and sword behind, and
bringing only our backpacks, we unlocked the door, slipped out of
the room, and made our way down the hall in the opposite direction
from the stairway we had used to get up here.

The hallway turned, and then ended in another
short passage and a door, which opened into an empty room identical
to the one we had just left.

“No back staircase,” I said in alarm.

“Then we’ll make our own,” Darwin replied
calmly.

Quick as a rabbit, Darwin tried the smudged
window in the room. It opened a crack, and then stuck. I helped,
with my own meager strength, and we were able to nudge it open
halfway before it stuck for good.

“We’ll just have to get through,” Darwin
said, peering out into a side alley. He moved to the single bed in
the room, and tore off the sheets, knotting two of them together
while I moved the bed itself next to the window. Darwin tied one
end of the makeshift rope to the bedstead and dangled the other out
the window.

We heard steps coming down the hall toward
us.

“You first,” Darwin said, and, gripping the
sheets, I squeezed myself with some effort through the narrow
opening and then found myself dangling in midair.

Darwin’s face appeared above me. “Climb
down!”

I edged my way down, as the little fellow
clambered out of the window like a monkey above me. Suddenly I felt
the sheet begin to rip in my hands, and my downward progress was
accelerated.

I hit the ground with a thump, a torn sheet
in my hands.

Above me Darwin was dangling, a good fifteen
feet up.

I braced myself, and he jumped, landing in my
arms and then knocking me down.

Someone shouted, “Hey! You!” above us as we
struggled to our feet and ran off.

At the mouth of the alley I started to halt,
but Darwin said, “This way!” and I followed him to the right, away
from the rooming house. The few citizens on the street stopped to
stare at us, until Darwin growled at them. Three buildings down we
slowed our pace, and I looked back to see the barkeep just emerging
from the rooming house.

“In here,” I said, pulling Darwin into a dry
goods store which we were passing.

We pretended to shop for thirty minutes,
looking over skeins of yarn, garden rakes, mulling over tins of
flour and salt, taking turns to wander unobtrusively to the front
of the shop and study the street outside. Finally, when the
proprietor, a short fellow with huge white whiskers and a lisp,
began to pester me about buying something, I knew it was time to
leave.

As we strolled toward the open door someone
entered who froze me in place.

“Charlotte!”

There was no place to hide, and I stared at
the face I had grown up with, now not on the body of a kit anymore
but a mature feline form. It was as if another life had suddenly
crashed into me from above. The many weeks that had passed since I
was spirited away to Olympus Mons were just a blink of time, and
once again I was back in the palace, a skinny, weak, misfit
youngster watching someone from afar, someone who I had always
loved and who had finally, after the years of pestering and
kit-like pranks, told me she loved me too.

“Charlotte,” I said again, in a whisper, and
she was as dumbstruck and frozen as I.

“W
e can’t stay
here,” she whispered frantically, turning to look behind her. “My
father is right behind me, talking to two soldiers in the
street.”

The short proprietor was waddling over to us,
his whiskers twitching with a life of their own. When he saw
Charlotte he brightened with recognition.

“Why, it’s so nice to see you–!”

Charlotte manufactured a smile for him and
said brightly, “Please tell my father I’ve gone to Smalley’s with
friends!”

He continued to beam, and bowed. “Very well,
Lady Misst –”

“Thank you, Willis!” she said.

She brushed past him before he could react,
pulling me after and eyeing Darwin, who followed. Quickly, she
dashed through the aisles, into the back room and out a side door,
which left us in yet another alley.

“Move quickly,” she ordered, and we followed
to the back street. We moved over and around and through piles of
rubbish. I hesitated as we crossed the rear of the rooming house,
but Charlotte turned and admonished, “Hurry!”

Finally, Charlotte disappeared into the mouth
of a yawning opening of what looked like a dilapidated barn. I
followed, but Darwin held back.

“What is it?”

He disappeared, and I called after him but
then Charlotte was back, pulling me into the gloom.

It had been a barn, but now was some sort of
storage area. Rusting machinery, old tractors and moldering bales
of hay lay about in haphazard fashion. The front of the barn, I
saw, was closed and barred from the inside.

Charlotte had stopped behind a hollowed out
area walled in on all sides. She turned to face me.

“We’re safe here,” she said. “This is where
my friends and I come to smoke cigarettes and be alone.” She stared
at me until I became uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?”

She continued to stare at me, and then she
almost fell into my arms. I felt hot tears on my shoulder, and she
was trembling.

“This must be a dream,” she said. “And I
can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”

“So have you. And it isn’t a dream.”

“They told us you were dead.”

“Who?”

She slowly broke the embrace. “Don’t you know
what’s been happening? That my fool clan is in control of almost
all of Mars?”

“What are you doing here, Charlotte?”

“My father is governor of this province.
Frane herself gave him the appointment. And when . . .”

I waited for her to continue.

She looked at me, and burst into tears
again.

“No, no, this can’t be happening. When they
find you they’ll execute you, and then I’ll be alone again, really
alone . . .”

I reached for her but she shook her head,
sobbing. Suddenly she looked into my eyes. “What are you going to
do?”

“I’m going to stop Frane.”

“Are you
mad
? She’ll be at Olympus
Mons in a week, at the head of the biggest army ever seen on Mars.
Everything left of the Second Republic is in Olympus Mons, and when
it’s gone . . .”

Still sobbing, she let me embrace her, and I
tried to soothe her. “It’s simple, Charlotte,” I said. “I’m not
going to let it happen.”

In a moment she broke free of me, as if she
had had a sudden thought.

“I must go,” she said, composing herself. “My
father will check on me at Smalley’s. Stay here until tonight. I’ll
bring food.”

I nodded. “All right.”

She rushed to me, and pressed her lips to
mine.

“I’ll never let you go again,” she said
fiercely.

And then she was gone.

I heard a noise in the rafters above me.

“Yech,” Darwin said, shimmying down a rope
from a rafter nearly directly above.