"Glad to see me home, cousin?" Megan asked coolly.
Alan gave her another bow, clearly hiding a delighted grin. He placed a kiss about an inch above her extended hand. "Let us rather say that I'm relieved. Traveling in foreign lands is always an adventure-not to mention the risks of riding the royal railroad."
"Yes, I've heard my share of odd tales," Meg replied.
His eyes were ironic as his gaze met hers. "I only regret the reason that brings you back from your studies in Wurttemburg. Let us hope for a result that will spare you the rigors of rulership."
A low murmur broke from the onlookers at Gray Piotr's words. Megan pitched her voice to carry over it as she replied. "I am not eager to seize up the crown- but if the time comes, I can only hope to fulfill my royal duties as well as Gregor the king!"
Megan smiled at Alan as the nobles all around them broke into applause. His bow said that she'd won this round-but there was more fighting yet to come.
Court etiquette demanded that she graciously nod and accept greetings from the local aristocrats, so she stood on the dais with the prime minister at one elbow and Gray Piotr at the other. Von Esbach cleverly arranged things so that the bigwigs were first introduced to Megan's traveling companions. That way she had a chance to catch their names. Between those exchanges and the briefing she'd received, she got through the reception line without any obvious problems.
"You must be fatigued after all this unfamiliar effort," Alan Slaney purred as the last noble couple moved away. "Surely you would prefer to go to your own apartments and rest?"
"Only after my friends have been seen to," Megan said firmly. She wasn't about to demonstrate that her unfamiliarity with her new role began with the floor plan of the palace. She turned to von Esbach. "I trust suitable arrangements have been made?"
"I shall show you immediately, my princess," the prime minister replied.
"Then I'll leave you to your… domestic affairs," Gray Piotr said. One more bow, and he moved to join his hard-looking henchmen.
"Off to plot more mischief, no doubt," von Esbach muttered, watching them go.
"We'll be better able to counter it if we all get some rest," Megan replied in a low voice. "Lead on."
The prime minister led Megan and her friends through yet another set of corridors. "I took the liberty of lodging these gentlemen in the Princess's Tower," von Esbach said. In a lower voice, he added, "Anyone attempting to reach the royal apartments will have to come through here."
Leif nodded. "So then they'll have to get through us."
Open doors showed several pleasant-looking bedrooms. "I also took the liberty of having your luggage brought up," von Esbach said.
"And I'd say that arriving in our rooms makes a perfect place to break the action for this session," Megan added in a softer voice. "We'll meet in my virtual workspace for a quick postmortem. What do you say?"
The boys nodded and headed for their rooms. Megan turned to the prime minister. "Perhaps you would accompany me to my own apartments?"
As soon as Leif was through the door, he gave a silent command to cut out of the Latvinia sim. Rather than awakening in his computer-link couch, however, he blinked and found himself in the new address he'd given his computer-Megan O'Malley's personal Net space.
No accounting for taste, Leif thought as he looked around. Maybe it was a reaction to living in a crowded house with a good-sized family, but Megan's workspace was huge-an amphitheater large enough to accommodate a football game and a good twenty thousand fans.
The setup didn't just give her space-it was out in space. Megan's stone amphitheater was set on the surface of Rhea, one of Saturn's numerous satellites. When Leif looked up, the ringed planet loomed overhead, like a grossly swollen, orange-striped moon.
Leif turned his attention from the sky show as David synched in. The other boy simply shook his head. "Well, being a foreign prince certainly beats playing a train porter. But when I chopped that guy's hand off-"
"Real swords-and real consequences," Leif said. "I sure hope that robber was a nonrole-playing character."
David turned appalled eyes towards him. "Don't even start going there!" he begged. "I have to believe I was just slicing electrons."
"Hey, if you're not sure of the safety interfaces…," Leif teased.
P. J. popped into existence beside him. "Boy, we sure dusted those bad guys!" He blew over the top of his outstretched index finger, as if he were cooling down the muzzle of a gun. "A real action-filled start, before things started getting boring with all the politics."
"Nice review, coming from a politician's son."
P. J. gave Leif a haughty look. "My father is a senator, not a politician."
Leif rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Right."
Before he could say anything more, Megan appeared. She was positively fizzing with joy. "What a great sim!"
"Of course, you're not saying that because you got one of the starring roles," Leif said.
"Just because somebody whacked you before you could show off your prize toadsticker doesn't mean you have to dump all over everybody else's good time," Megan replied tartly. "The question now is-when can we all go back in?"
Everybody's eyes got a slight faraway look as they checked with calendar programs back in their computers. "I've got a lunch tomorrow that will run pretty long," Leif said. "It's a family thing-friends of Dad's from Europe. Maybe in the evening-"
Megan shook her head. "Fencing class."
Leif's lips quirked downward, although he managed to keep the scowl from his face. Megan had played heroes and villains with Alan Slaney in sim today, and she'd be working with him in a real-world class tomorrow…
I'd probably like the guy in other circumstances, Leif thought. He's clever, creative, and has a sense of humor in creating sims.
Too bad, then, that the existing circumstances involved Megan O'Malley.
I've got no right to be jealous, Leif told himself.
So why was the situation driving him crazy?
Chapter 5
Leif walked into his room and was just about ready to cut his link when he heard a familiar sound-the clash of steel. He ran to the open window, stopping only to grab his own sheathed sword. His room had a good vantage of the inner courtyard of the palace, much of which was cultivated as a garden.
Two stories below, on a graveled path, two young officers were dueling-at least, they were trying to. The pair looked like clowns, staggering around with no trace of footwork or any idea of the proper distance from which to launch an attack, swinging their heavy cavalry sabers as if they were trying to chop wood.
Looking down, Leif didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified. Latvinia had only been open for bare hours, and these two idiots had to fool with swordplay in the worst way.
And it was the worst way, Leif realized as he continued to watch. The two continued to hack and swat at each other with no rhyme or reason. Somewhere in the Latvinia program, there had to be some basic knowledge of swordsmanship stored for the role-players to tap into. But there was a big difference between knowledge whispered in the back of the brain and knowledge in the muscle and nerve tissue.
These guys could barely handle the weight of the heavy military sabers. Their attempted slashes wobbled in midair. One guy was huffing and puffing, looking as if his arm was going to fall off. The amateur duelists would attack at the same time, their blades clanging together, then rebounding. Or they'd manage to miss, which really scared them as razor-sharp blades whipped far to close to various pieces of their anatomy. Then both of them would fall back, or clumsily lock their blades together, they way they'd seen it done in old flatfilms or historical holodramas.