Lord Darcy’s resolve to keep his hands off the Zwinge case, to allow — or rather force — his cousin the Marquis of London to use his own resources to solve it, was a firm one. He had no intention of getting himself involved, even if that required that he bottle up his own intrinsic curiosity, seal the bottle, and sit on the cork. It was fortunate that he was not forced to do that, for Lord Darcy’s curiosity was capable of generating a great deal of pressure. Any resolve, no matter how firm, can be dissipated, abolished, negated, removed, by changing circumstances, and the circumstances were to change drastically on the following morning.

On that morning, Thursday, Lord Darcy lay in his bed, drowsing, his mind still in a semi-dreamy state, his thoughts wandering. There was a quiet knock on the door of his bedroom.

“Yes?” he said without opening his eyes.

“Your caffe, my lord, as you ordered,” said a low voice.

“Just leave it in the sitting room,” Lord Darcy said drowsily. “I shall be out in a few minutes.”

But he wasn’t. He drifted off to sleep again. He did not hear the bedroom door open; he did not hear the nearly silent footsteps that crossed the thick carpet from the door to his bed.

Suddenly, someone touched his shoulder. His eyes came open instantly, and he was wide awake.

“Mary!”

The Dowager Duchess curtsied. “Your servant, my lord. Shall I bring your caffe in, my lord?”

Lord Darcy sat up. “Ah! Capital! A Duchess for a serving wench! Indeed, yes! Bring the caffe in immediately! Hop to it, Your Grace!” He chuckled softly as the Duchess went out again, a soft smile on her lips. “And by the by!” he called after her, “Will you have My Lord Marquis polish my boots?”

She came back in, pushing a wheeled serving cart upon which sat a silver caffe pot, a spoon, and a single caffe cup with saucer.

“Your boots are already polished, my lord,” she said, still keeping her voice in the proper deferential tone. “I took the liberty, my lord, of having your lordship’s clothing brushed and pressed, and hung in the clothes cupboard in the sitting room.” She poured his caffe.

“Oh, indeed?” Lord Darcy said, reaching for his cup. “All done by a Bishop, I presume?”

“My Lord Bishop,” said the Duchess, “had other, more pressing, business. However, His Imperial Majesty the King is prepared to take you for your morning drive.”

Lord Darcy paused suddenly, the cup not yet touching his lips.

Bantering is all well enough, but one must draw the line somewhere.

One does not jest about His Most Sovereign Majesty the King.

And then Lord Darcy realized that his brain was not as completely awake as he had thought. He took a sip of the caffe and then returned the cup to its saucer before he spoke again.

“Who is His Majesty’s agent?” he asked quietly.

“He’s waiting in the hall. Shall I bring him in?”

“Yes. Wait! What o’clock is it, anyway?”

“Just on seven.”

“Ask him to wait a minute or so. I’ll dress. Fetch my clothes.”

Seven minutes and some odd seconds later, Lord Darcy, fully dressed in proper morning costume, opened the door to his sitting room. Mary, Dowager Duchess of Cumberland, was nowhere in sight. A short, spare, melancholy-looking man, wearing the usual blue-gray drab of a cabman, was sitting on one of the chairs. When he saw Lord Darcy, he came politely to his feet, his square cabman’s hat in his hand.

“Lord Darcy?”

“The same. And you?”

From his cap, the smallish man took a silver badge engraved with the Royal Arms. Near the top a stone, polished but not faceted and looking like a quarter-inch bit of translucent gray glass, was inset in the metal.

“King’s Messenger, my lord,” said the man. He slid his right thumb forward and touched the stone. Immediately, it ceased to be a small lump of dull gray glass.

In the light, it gleamed with the reddish glow of a ruby!

There was no mistaking it. The stone was magically attuned to one man and one man only — the man whose touch would cause that red color to shine within it. A Royal Badge could be stolen, of course, but no thief could give that gray, drab stone its ruby glow.

The brilliant Sir Edward Elmer, Th.D., had designed that spell more than thirty years before, and no one had solved it yet; it was a perfect identification for Personal Agents of His Most Dread and Sovereign Majesty, John IV. The late Sir Edward had been Grand Master of the Sorcerers Guild, and it was accepted that he had outranked even Sir Lyon Gandolphus Grey as a sorcerer.

“Very well,” said Lord Darcy. He did not ask the man’s name; a King’s Messenger remains anonymous. “The message?”

The Messenger bowed his head. “You are to accompany me, my lord. By His Majesty’s request”

Lord Darcy frowned. “That’s all?”

Again the Messenger bowed. “I have delivered His Majesty’s message, my lord. I can say no more, my lord.”

“I see. Will there be any objections if I come armed?”

A wide smile broke over the face of the King’s Messenger. “If I may say so, my lord, it would be most expedient. His Majesty gave me a further message to your lordship, to be delivered only in case your lordship should ask that question. A message to be delivered in His Majesty’s own words, my lord. If I may?”

“Proceed,” said Lord Darcy.

Closing his eyes, the Messenger concentrated for a moment. When he spoke, the voice was cultured and clear; it had none of the patois of the Londoner of the lower middle class. The timbre and intonation had changed, too.

The voice was that of the King.

“My dear Darcy. The last time we met, you came armed. I should not expect a man of your caliber to break a precedent. The matter is most urgent. Come with all haste.”

Lord Darcy suppressed a desire to bow low to the Messenger and say: “Immediately, Sire.” The Messenger was, after all, only an instrument. He was completely trustworthy, else he would not carry a Silver Badge; even his ordinary messages were to be honored. But when he delivered a message in His Majesty’s Own Voice, even he, the Messenger, did not know what he said. When he murmured the key spell to himself, the message in the Royal Voice was delivered. The Messenger had no memory of it either before or after the delivery. He had submitted willingly to the recording of that message, and he had submitted willingly to its delivery and erasure. No sorcerer on Earth could pry that information out of him once it had been delivered, since, in his mind, it no longer existed.

Before it had been delivered, of course, it could be pried out, but not from a King’s Messenger. Any attempt to get such a message from the mind of a King’s Messenger without authority would result in the immediate death of the Messenger — a fact which the Messenger realized and accepted as a part of his duty to Sovereign and Empire.

After a moment, the King’s Messenger opened his eyes. “All right, your lordship?”

“Perfectly, my good fellow. Are you a good cabman?”

“The best in London, my lord — though I say it who shouldn’t.”

“Excellent! We must go without delay!”

During the ride, Lord Darcy mused upon the King’s words. When he had asked the Messenger whether or not he should go armed, it had been a simple question that any Officer of His Majesty’s Peace might have asked. Lord Darcy had had no notion that the Messenger was actually taking him to the Royal Presence; he had asked about arming himself purely in the interests of his official duties. And now, as a result of a perfectly ordinary question, he found himself among the small handful of men who were permitted to be armed in the Royal Presence.

Traditionally, only the Great Lords of State were permitted to remain armed in the King’s presence — and they only with swords.