But the village slept. The chief architect whom Lestat loved so much slept. The team of designers who worked for him slept, their street-level offices shuttered for the night, their tables strewn with ambitious plans for better stables, better electrical systems, better underground utility lines, and new and fine manor houses to be built in the little valley. What a strange tribe they were, these quiet men and women gathered from all over the globe who had been laboring in well-paid obscurity here for over twenty years, creating masterpieces of reproductive genius and technological innovation that the world beyond the electrical fences never saw.

Was it really enough, all that gold paid out to them, all those benefits, all those vacations on charter planes and yachts which the Prince lavished on them, enough for all they’d done and all they would do? Were they happy?

The answer was obviously yes, though when the ale and wine had been flowing in the great room of the inn tonight, there had been the usual raucous complaints that no one would ever know the real extent of their unique achievements. But no one wanted to leave. No one was ready to give up.

Alain Abelard, the chief architect who had grown up on this mountain as his late father oversaw the very first restoration of the old castle, was convinced that someday justice would come to them. Someday their reclusive Count de Lioncourt, called the Prince by his ever-increasing “family” of associates, would open the property to the hungering eyes of those who loved nothing more than to see great palaces sprung from hopeless ruins. Someday the tourist buses would roll through the many sets of gates that stood between them and the highway to Clermont-Ferrand, bringing eager men and women to marvel at all those painted rooms, all those vintage marble fireplaces gathered from near and far, all that exquisite fruitwood furniture so carefully chosen for the smallest rooms as well as the largest. Someday students of agriculture and hydroponics, of solar power and recycled waste, of electrical or fiber-optic systems, would come to study this little self-sustained world.

It was all right, thought Alain Abelard. At any rate he had thought so tonight over his wine. So what if his wife had left him, and his father was dead, and his sons had gone to work in Paris or Berlin or São Paulo? He was happy enough, with the Prince’s weekly walks through the snow in the dark, with the Prince praising him for all his work, and offering new suggestions and new challenges. Alain would stay here forever. And he had no need, it seemed, to confide his suspicions that the Prince was no ordinary person, that some devastating secret was concealed by his placid and never-changing youthful face.