Old Kingdom 04: Across the Wall Read Free

gates swung back. Two slate-gray Heddon-Hare roadsters were parked, one on either side of the gate, with several mackintosh-clad, weapon-toting men standing around them. One of the men waved a yellow flag in a series of complicated movements that Edward clearly understood and Nicholas presumed meant all was well.
    ‘Proceed!’ snapped the Chief Minister. Their car slowed more, the driver shifting down through the gears with practiced double-declutching. The mackintosh-clad men saluted as the car swung off the road and through the gate, dropping their salute as the rest of the motorcade followed. Six motorcycle policemen were immediately behind, then another two cars identical to the one that carried Nicholas and his uncle, then another half-dozen police motorcyclists, and finally four trucks that were carrying a company of fully armed soldiery. Corolini’s attempted putsch had failed, and there had surprisingly been no further trouble from the Our Country Party since, but the government continued to be nervous about the safety of the nation’s Chief Minister.
    ‘So, what is going on?’ asked Nicholas. ‘Why are you here? And why am I here? Is there something you want me to do?’
    ‘At last, a glimmer of thought. Have you ever wondered what Alastor Dorrance actually does, other than come to Corvere three or four times a year and exercise his eccentricities in public?’
    ‘Isn’t that enough?’ asked Nick with a shudder. He remembered the newspaper stories from the last time Dorrance had been in the city, only a few weeks before. He’d hosted a picnic on Holyoak Hill for every apprentice in Corvere and supplied them with fatty roast beef, copious amounts of beer, and a particularly cheap and nasty red wine, with predictable results.
    ‘Dorrance’s eccentricities are all show,’ said Edward. ‘Misdirection. He is in fact the head of Department Thirteen. Dorrance Hall is the Department’s main research facility.’
    ‘But Department Thirteen is just a made-up thing, for the moving pictures. It doesn’t really exist … um … does it?’
    ‘Officially, no. In actuality, yes. Every state has need of spies. Department Thirteen trains and manages ours, and carries out various tasks ill-suited to the more regular branches of government. It is watched over quite carefully, I assure you.’
    ‘But what has that got to do with me?’
    ‘Department Thirteen observes all our neighbours very successfully, and has detailed files on everyone and everything important within those countries. With one notable exception. The Old Kingdom.’
    ‘I’m not going to spy on my friends!’
    Edward sighed and looked out the window. The drive beyond the gatehouse curved through freshly mown fields, the hay already gathered into hillocks ready to be pitchforked into carts and taken to the stacks. Past the fields, the chimneys of a large country house peered above the fringe of old oaks that lined the drive.
    ‘I’m not going to be a spy, Uncle,’ repeated Nicholas.
    ‘I haven’t asked you to be one,’ said Edward as he looked back at his nephew. Nicholas’s face had paled, and he was clutching his chest. Whatever had happened to him in the Old Kingdom had left him in a very run-down state, and he was still recovering. Though the Ancelstierran doctors had found no external signs of significant injury, his X-rays had come out strangely fogged and all the medical reports said Nick was in the same sort of shape as a man who had suffered serious wounds in battle.
    ‘All I want you to do is to spend the weekend here with some of the Department’s technical people,’ continued Edward. ‘Answer their questions about your experiences in the Old Kingdom, that sort of thing. I doubt anything will come of it, and as you know, I strictly adhere to the wisdom of my predecessors, which is to leave the place alone. But that said, they haven’t exactly left us alone over the past twenty years. Dorrance has always had a bit of a bee in