the hold of the ship. “It’s unbelievable,” he said, his head slowly turning to take them all in. His eyes met Charlie’s and his head stopped turning. They stared at one another for a long moment; the churchman frowned and stared more intently.
Charlie spoke to Roacka, his voice barely above a whisper. “Even a hallucination should guard his back better than that.”
Roacka’s head snapped around as if he’d been struck. His eyes narrowed, then slowly the large, bushy mustache under his nose rose upward as his lips broadened into a wide grin. He stood, his eyes still locked to Charlie’s, crossed the space between them and squatted down in front of him. The churchman followed, glancing back and forth uncertainly between the two of them.
The pain ratcheted up another notch; Charlie couldn’t suppress a tremor as a wave of nausea washed through him. Roacka looked down at Charlie’s pus-saturated pant leg and shook his head. “Look at you, boy. Let you out on your own and you can’t take care of yerself.”
The churchman looked at Roacka as if he were mad. Charlie had trouble focusing, but he decided to break the churchman’s suspense. “Sorry, Your Eminence. I haven’t been very good at keeping up my lessons.”
The churchman’s eyes widened, then he grinned a grin to match Roacka’s. “Oh, Charlie.”
Old Rierma leaned over them and spoke without a moment’s hesitation. “Charles, my boy. Don’t be such a stranger. You should visit more often.”
The woman squatted down next to Paul, looking at all of them uncertainly, and with the steadily rising background of pain, any doubt that she was a hallucination disappeared. She was far too beautiful to be real. Charlie could feel his words beginning to slur as he spoke. “You brought me an angel, a bona fide, for-real angel.”
She reached out and touched his cheek. “You’re burning up.”
Roger reached out and grabbed her arm. “He’s dying.”
“Ya,” the Roacka hallucination said. “Gangrene.”
In that instant, far behind them, still near the open cargo hatch, Charlie spotted another silhouette and his heart leapt, for this was truly the cruelest of hallucinations. He could never mistake the way the old duke moved, the way he bent and carefully looked into the face of each man he passed.
Paul stood, turned, and called out to the old man. “Your Grace, we’ve found him.”
The old duke turned their way, looked at Paul and frowned. “Please, Your Grace. I think you should come here quickly.”
Old Cesare frowned and crossed the intervening distance carefully. He stopped in front of Charlie, looked down at him; their eyes met and he nodded. Charlie’s eyes started to weep again—because of the glare, he was certain. The Cesare hallucination looked at Roacka and asked, “How bad?”
“Bad,” Roacka said. “Might lose the leg at the hip, if he lives.”
“Rest easy,” the churchman said. “You’re home now, part of a prisoner exchange. You’re the last group. It’s taken us five years to set it up, but you’re home now.”
Charlie could no longer focus. “Go away,” he growled. “Leave me in peace.”
The angel frowned and her beautiful face began to twist and distort.
“I knew it,” Charlie said at her transformation. “You can’t fool me anymore.”
Roger’s chains clinked as he put a hand on Charlie’s arm. “Did you hear that, Charlie? We’re home. We’re free.” Roger lowered his head, buried his face in his hands and wept openly.
Charlie shook his head. “You can’t fool me, Roger. You’re not real either.”
A wave of nausea washed up Charlie’s stomach and he vomited bile into his lap, the fever coming on quickly. He tried to focus on that thought, had trouble concentrating. Then he saw the familiar image of his dead brother, Arthur, walking across the deck, the color of life gone from his cheeks, death hanging about his shoulders like a shroud, his body twisted and broken. “Please, Arthur,” he cried. “I’m sorry. Please . . . forgive me. Please.”
“Charlie,” the churchman said, reaching toward him, but as he did so his face slowly dissolved and became Arthur’s face. “You failed me,” Arthur said. “You failed our father. You failed us all.”
Charlie screamed—
During the eight-hundred-year reign of the Plenroix, the Harlburg, and the Stephanov Kings, only twelve men had ever occupied the de Lunis ducal seat, the tenth Duke of the Realm, and without exception each had come to a very tragic, most unpleasant, and certainly untimely end. Some had even brought down their entire family and clan with them. But for the past three hundred years the de