Kesley glanced around uneasily. "Can you justify that policy?"
"I see no need to."
"All right," Kesley said. "Let me suggest an alternate policy: you step down from the throne and appoint me Duke. I'm an Immortal too, I've discovered lately; I'll take your job. And I'll break down all the barriers that keep the people of the world penned away from each other."
"Just how will you persuade me to allow this?" van Alen asked, with icy calmness.
This is the moment, Kesley thought. He stepped toward van Alen, seized the momentarily relaxed arm quickly, twisted it up behind the Immortal's back. At the same moment he drew his knife, touched it to van Alen's throat just below the beard.
"Miguel taught me that Immortals can be killed. He sent me off to kill one. I don't want to drive this knife home, van Alen, but I will if I have to. Get your robots in here and dictate a message of abdication."
"If I don't—"
Kesley twitched the knife slightly. Van Alen winced.
"I can break your hold, you know," the Duke pointed out.
"Probably." Kesley remembered the time van Alen had broken Kesley's grip in the Iowa farmhouse, had removed Kesley's hands from his throat as if he were a child. "But while you're doing that, I push the knife in. You don't have a chance. Will you dictate the abdication?"