A déjà vu emotion filtered through him at the sight of the interior of Winslow's Palace grounds. There was the same broad courtyard as at Miguel's, the same distant entrance. This time, though, a cold-faced man in Imperial uniform was waiting for him.
"I'm here to see the Duke," Kesley said.
The guard nodded. "Certainly. Duke Winslow will see you at once, señor. Please follow me."
Kesley followed. The great inner doors swung open, revealing a brightly-lit throne room on the ground floor. A row of unblinking retainers with halberds lined the room; there must have been twenty-five on each side, Kesley thought. His throat parched at the thought of the task he would have faced trying to escape from this room after assassinating Winslow.
On a raised dais at the far end, beneath an immense figured shield and between two dark columns of glossy, grained onyx, sat a man who could only have been Duke Winslow. For the first time in his life, Kesley approached the man who ruled all of North America—the man whose life he had, not so long ago, pledged to take.
VII
Winslow had none of Miguel's crisp, compact muscularity, Kesley saw, as he hesitantly approached the throne. North America's Duke sprawled as massively across his gleaming white metal throne as the broad continent he ruled did across its hemisphere; he was an enormous, ponderous, obese man. Winslow's sobbing intake of breath was plainly audible even at the distance Kesley maintained.
"Your Highness," he said, and knelt.
"Rise," Winslow ordered. His voice, like Miguel's, was deep, but Winslow's voice had a soft, throaty liquidity to it that was most unlike Miguel's compelling boom.