The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [82]
"But what about the sanctity of the place? What does the priest have to say about it all?"
Marlowe shrugged. "Perhaps the priest is being paid by both sides to keep his eyes shut when he prays. Clerics have never been averse to more money. Or perhaps he is tied up elsewhere. I neither know nor care, and neither should you. The Castellanis have refused to turn up, on the basis that they disown your actions, but we can't disappoint our Nicolotti hosts."
"Look," protested Steven, indicating the hologuise generator strapped to his hip, "can't we just turn off this device and pretend that Galileo has slipped out of Venice?"
Marlowe shook his head. "They'll have guards stationed at all the landing posts. They'll know that he couldn't have "slipped out", and they'll torture us until we tell them where he is. Not that they would believe the truth, of course, so we would probably die. No, there is only one way out of this. I will have to fight the duel for you."
For a moment, Steven thought that his ears had deceived him.
"You? But it's me they challenged."
"No, it's the Paduan Galileo Galilei that they challenged," Marlowe corrected gently. "You merely happened to be borrowing his form. I could just as easily fill it - he is corpulent enough." Marlowe reached out to ruffle Steven's hair. "And which one of us would last the longest against the head of the family, eh? Take it from me, Tomasso Nicolotti has done this sort of thing before. Fortunately, so have I, and I cannot - will not - see you skewered upon his sword." He held up the knife with which he had been cutting his fingernails. "And I have this small stiletto. If Tomasso gets too close, he'll feel my sting." Steven opened his mouth to protest, but shook his head instead. Marlowe was right - he would have no chance against any swordsman, expert or not. Marlowe at least might survive. Reluctantly he switched the device on his belt off and handed it across to Marlowe.
"If I believed in God I would call that the work of the Devil,"
Marlowe murmured as he slipped the device into his jerkin and switched it on. He shimmered, and suddenly Galileo Galilei was standing in his place, bearded and arrogant. "Does it work?" he said, his voice jarring with his new form.
Steven glanced up and down the image. Apart from the tips of Marlowe's grey mane sticking up from Galileo's hair, the camouflage was perfect. "You look wonderful," he said, his mouth dry.
Marlowe smiled. "You say the sweetest things."
Vicki awoke to find the pins-and-needles feeling was ebbing away.
She could move her limbs again. Albrellian's toxin seemed to be wearing off. Not that there was anywhere to go. On the viewscreen she could see the sterile lunar plains rising up towards the skiff.
They seemed to be heading towards one particular ship with an iridescent red hull that was all curves, like a venomous beetle.
Yellow insignia on its back looked almost like the outline of a huge pair of wings.
"Light-years away within a few minutes can be we," the arthropod muttered, its attention divided between Vicki and the controls. "And have to be will we. If the meta-cobalt device on schedule explodes, to be a long way away want do I. Braxiatel's people knowing that I had anything to do with it want do not I. Stories about what they do when they're angry have heard I." His claws fiddled with the controls of the skiff, and they drifted gently down towards a hatch that was opening like a flower in the hull of the Greld ship.
"What about the other Greld?" she said. Her voice was slurred, and speaking was an effort, but at least she could make herself understood easily.
Albrellian's eyestalks dipped. "The suspicions