The Policeman of Secrets

Chapter 12 Part 2

However, the sergeant said not a word, merely continuing to lead the way. He showed no outward sign of resistance, or even of concern, but simply remained silent, watching his captors with dull eyes. There was no way of pressing him to answer unless they moved into a room and stayed out of sight, and Balthazar judged that the better plan would be to find the colonel instead. However, he was determined to achieve some sort of reply, and was considering another question when the sergeant stopped before a wide anteroom, at the end of which were two enormous doors.

“Colonel’s quarters,” he said simply, the first words he had spoken since his capture.

The count and his friends gave the area a brief survey—the anteroom was simple and plain, with only an empty desk, presumably for some absent retainer, beside a single chair for anybody seeking a meeting with the commander. Decoration was minimal, the walls bare in order to focus the eye on a single portrait of Wolf in vivid oils. The picture showed him astride a horse as black as pitch, cantering ahead of a line of troops.

Every face bore an expression of serious intent, the colonel’s the most intense of all.

Balthazar pushed the reluctant sergeant towards the doors. “Be so good as to knock, there’s a good man,” whispered the count. “Hate to intrude, but needs must, you know.”

There was no reaction to the hard, fast tap, and as Parnell kept a lookout the others entered the colonel’s quarters.

Balthazar was a well-travelled man who considered himself something of an aesthete, but he felt inadequate as soon as his eyes fell on the contents of the crowded room. The colonel, it was clear, was a collector of the highest order. Statues of the finest Chinese jade flanked Persian carpets of inestimable value. Golden urns were dotted around each wall, many of them atop dressers of the richest mahogany. Weapons were everywhere: medieval pikes stood to attention in one corner, longswords were arrayed in a circle on a wall otherwise filled with pistols, muskets, and daggers of every stripe. There was even, Balthazar saw with surprise, a longbow and quiver of arrows darkened with age. Every item was arranged with precision, many placed in such a way to pull the viewer’s gaze towards the room’s center.

That was dominated by a desk larger than any Balthazar had seen. Paperwork littered the top, along with two pistols and a dagger with a hilt of silver and gold. Light to the touch when he picked it up, it was carefully balanced and the count judged it an excellent throwing knife for a skilled fighter.

“No colonel,” said Ferdinando, pushing the sergeant into the empty chair behind the desk. “Where is he?”

Faced with the mute prisoner’s continued blank look, Ferdinando turned to the count. “Odd fellow, ain’ ’e? Don’ try to escape, or call out, or nothin’.” He turned to the sergeant. “Don’ wanna get going, chief, eh? Join yer mates?” Sitting on the edge of the desk as his friends rummaged around the room, Ferdinando added, “Queer ’ow nobody else tried t’stop us, too. I ’ate to admit it, but we don’ look much like soldiers, an’ ’ere we are, in the guvnor’s rooms without a by-yer-leave, an’ nobody said boo.

“Feels wrong, I reckon.”  

Balthazar paused, laying the Oxygen apparatus on the desk as he weighed his friend’s opinion. He had preferred to believe that their ramshackle disguise had actually worked. Instead, he realized, Ferdinando was correct. Surely one officer should have questioned them? His sense of direction told him they were now deep within the barracks, perhaps at the heart of the east wing, and still there was no alarm. Only this mute prisoner who had led them all this way like an obedient dog. Victims of the Subjugation Assembly that he had encountered obeyed orders easily but they still spoke, still thought.