Free A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess by Ron Miller Page B

like goggle-eyed fish warily regarding a cruising, hopefully indifferent, barracuda.
    Reentering the outside corridor, the baron looks for the most direct way into the upper reaches of the palace. He knows that the building, or agglomeration of structures, is labyrinthine and he is probably as familiar with its organization, such as it is, as anyone else; probably far more so than his immediate enemies, he is moderately certain. However, accustomed as he may be to the ins and outs of the wandering, haphazard maze of corridors and interconnecting rooms, to him, like everyone else of his particular class, the existence of the world downstairs is something seldom acknowledged, if ever considered at all. He can only assume that any passage or stairway that takes him up is desirable, and would have to trust that he would be eventually deposited into familiar territory. As he meanders with increasing impatience and frustration, more and more often passing servants who surreptitiously and silently gaze with mingled curiosity and fear, he feels like some forgotten little constipated nodule passing through the endlessly coiled gut of a vast and somnolent creature for whom he is not even yet an uncomfortable bloated feeling.
    He would have given a lot to have stumbled across a kitchen, or even a servant with some food whom he can talk out of, but there is nothing. The weakness he feels is becoming burdensome, he has to stop at the head of every staircase, winded, and his poor legs seem to be made of rubber.
    Finally, after what seems like hours of wandering, and is, in fact, the baron enters a passage that is vaguely familiar: a long, broad, vaulted corridor lined with oleaginous portraits of members of the Tedeschiiy family and its various and varied offspring and branches. More to the baron’s pleasure than an appreciation of Princess Bronwyn’s unbelievably good fortune in apparently not having inherited a single physical characteristic from her forebears (which is not altogether true; every one of her not remotely unpleasant features can be found somewhere, in some degree, among the grim and dour portraits, a nose here, an eyebrow there; Bronwyn’s good luck came in that eventually, by sheer force of probability, someone is bound to eventually inherit more of the outstanding physical attributes and fewer of the less appealing ones; it is as though Musrum in creating the princess, had taken a handful of genes, tossed them into the air and watched them all come up heads) is the display of arms that are artfully arranged around the portraits of the more militarily-inclined ancestors. Browsing hastily but thinksfully, he selects a fine-looking epeé that still bears a glinting razor’s edge.
    At the far end of the passage, the baron knows, lay the apartments of the king.
    Just imagine the surprise on the faces of the king, Payne Roelt and General Praxx when the big double doors burst open, revealing the spectral figure of Baron Milnikov upon the threshold. Ferenc leaps convulsively, like a frog in a voltaic demonstration, while Payne manages, after only the briefest lapse, to maintain his habitual sneer, though this is by a face that is suddenly bleached to an unpleasantly corpse-like blue-white, an effect that makes the expression appear more seasick than supercilious.
    The general’s jaw drops with an audibly metallic click.
    The baron realizes that he doesn’t know what to say. Having had even less time to anticipate this meeting, the trio of villains are equally speechless. For quite a long moment all four men just stare at one another.
    Payne is the first to regain his composure, or at least he makes a plausible show of doing so. “Well, well, the good baron of all people. What in the world are you doing here?”
    “Nothing that you’ll enjoy hearing about.”
    “You sound more than a little put out, my dear baron.”
    “ Payne !” squeaks the king, from behind the chair where he has taken refuge. “Payne! What does he