Dunnan, and I never told you so. I never
hated you, either, but you are making it very hard for me not to.
Now go, and never let me see you again."

With that, she turned and started back through the crowd, which
parted in front of her. Her mother and her aunt and the other ladies
followed.

"You lied to me!" Dunnan shrieked after her. "You lied all the time.
You're as bad as the rest of them, all scheming and plotting against
me, betraying me. I know what it's about; you all want to cheat me
of my rights, and keep my usurping uncle on the ducal throne. And
you, you false-hearted harlot, you're the worst of them all!"

Sir Nevil Ormm caught his shoulder and spun him around, propelling
him toward the escalators. Dunnan struggled, screaming inarticulately
like a wounded wolf. Ormm was cursing furiously.

"You two!" he shouted. "Help me, here. Get hold of him."

Dunnan was still howling as they forced him onto the escalator, the
backs of the two retainers' cloaks, badged with the Dunnan crescent,
light blue on black, hiding him. After a little, an aircar with the
blue crescent blazonry lifted and sped away.

"Lucas, he's crazy," Sesar Karvall was insisting. "Elaine hasn't
spoken fifty words to him since he came back from his last voyage--"

He laughed and put a hand on Karvall's shoulder. "I know that,
Sesar. You don't think, do you, that I need assurance of it?"

"Crazy, I'll say he's crazy," Rovard Grauffis put in. "Did you
hear what he said about his rights? Wait till his Grace hears
about that."

"Does he lay claim to the ducal throne, Sir Rovard?" Otto Harkaman
asked, sharply and seriously.

"Oh, he claims that his mother was born a year and a half before
Duke Angus and the true date of her birth falsified to give Angus
the succession. Why, his present Grace was three years old when she
was born. I was old Duke Fergus' esquire; I carried Angus on my
shoulder when Andray Dunnan's mother was presented to the lords
and barons the day after she was born."

"Of course he's crazy," Alex Gorram agreed. "I don't know why
the Duke doesn't have him put under psychiatric treatment."

"I'd put him under treatment," Harkaman said, drawing a finger
across under his beard. "Crazy men who pretend to thrones are bombs
that ought to be deactivated, before they blow things up."

"We couldn't do that," Grauffis said. "After all, he's Duke Angus'
nephew--"

"I could do it," Harkaman said. "He only has three hundred men