“What, then? Hormones?”
“No—at least not your native hormones . . . George, this is very secret.”
“Right. I nearly flunk all my courses and it’s on my permanent records, and it’s now a great secret. Nobody knows except you and every other boy I was at school with, all the masters, my family—” George’s talent for being odious had not, Ronnie realized, vanished; it had merely been in hiding.
“Shut up, George,” he said cheerfully. He actually felt better knowing George was not abandoning a lifelong habit. “I think someone made you stupid for a while. On purpose.”
“Made me stupid! Why?” Then that handsome face changed, became more like his father’s. “Oh . . . and you said something about the prince . . . and he changed schools . . .”
“And got a reputation for silly-ass idiocy. Like that quarrel with me—” Ronnie reflected that his own end of that quarrel didn’t argue for any great intelligence either, and flushed, but George didn’t take that up.
“The prince is stupid. The prince is—he can’t be, Ron, someone would’ve noticed. Someone would have told the king.”
“Aunt Cecelia did just that, after we got back. On her usual high horse about it, too.”
“And then she has that stroke you say wasn’t a real stroke. Like my term of being stupid wasn’t real stupidity. Like the prince—” George stopped and looked at Ronnie with dawning comprehension.
“Isn’t really stupid. Not on his own.”
“But mine went away. Why didn’t the prince’s?” Then he answered his own question. “Because someone wanted him to stay that way. And it had to be—” They stared at each other and said in unison, “The king.”
“Oh . . . dear.” Ronnie remembered that he had planned to change and began pulling the studs from his dress shirt. “Oh . . . my. We are in trouble.”
George, with nothing to occupy his mind but the problem at hand, leaned back in his seat. “If your aunt claims Lorenza poisoned her, and if that’s why Lorenza poisoned her, then Lorenza may have done it to the prince.”
Ronnie paused, his shirt half-undone. “Remember that scandal a few years ago about the Graham-Scolaris?”
“Of course. Dad defended the old man.”
“What if . . . what if Lorenza supplies all sorts of useful poisons—chemicals—not just to the Crown but to others?”
“What, a medieval poisoner in our midst? That’s awfully dramatic, Ronnie.”
“So is a stupid prince kept that way for years. So was my aunt’s collapse.”
“Point taken.” George frowned at him, and Ronnie remembered he hadn’t finished changing. He tore off the dress shirt and shrugged into George’s casual one. A bit tight across the shoulders, but not enough to matter. He buttoned it slowly, still thinking.
“Something else I just thought of . . . remember when Gerel’s older brothers died? That assassination, and then the duel?”
“Yes—do you think they were stupid, too?”
“No—I remember, though, that was when we were what? Twelve, thirteen, along in there. Before your bad term, anyway. And Jared was almost thirty; there was talk of having the Grand Council Familias agree to his succession in advance.”
Now George frowned. “I don’t—yes, just a minute. I think they actually did, and then rescinded it after he died, so it wouldn’t interfere with Nadrel’s or Gerel’s succession later.”
“I remember Gerel getting lots of visits from his brothers right before that. Picnics and so on. Remember? He’d wanted to ask us along, and his brothers said no, and he was annoyed with them. Then afterwards, he was all excited about something he wouldn’t tell us . . .”
“I don’t remember any of that.” George tossed Ronnie a tie. “Here—put on this anachronism. That shirt needs a reason to look tight across the shoulders.”
“But—” Ronnie stretched his neck, and worked the tie into position. “But I remember—and you and he were thick as anything for a week or so—you were grinning all over your face, and wouldn’t tell me—”
“Was that the time you tried to get it out of me by twisting my arm?”
“No—we already knew that wouldn’t work. No, we tried bribery—an entire box of chocolate. You scarfed the lot and refused to divulge. You don’t remember?”
“No . . . only it was next term I had trouble. You don’t suppose someone really did drug me, and it took the memory, too?”
“I know Gerel avoided you that term—you’d gotten involved with those Hampton Reef boys.”
George shuddered. “I do remember them. Nasty beasts, and then the next year I couldn’t scrape them away. Thank heavens they transferred at midterm.”
The shuttle intercom chimed, and the pilot spoke. “We’re in the Rockhouse Major approach now, gentlemen. If you’d take your seats, please, and prepare for docking . . .”
Brun wanted a shower, food, and sleep, in that order, but ahead of everything else in her personal queue was safety. She changed levels and sectors again, finally choosing a spacers’ hostel down the row from the one Heris had used before she left. She didn’t dare use that one, in case someone was watching it, or the clerk recognized her—unlikely as that seemed. Cleanliness felt wonderful—better than food, and she’d just as soon sleep, she decided, stretching out on the comfortable bunk. Ronnie couldn’t possibly get here for several hours, probably six or seven. She could sleep safely at least two of them.
The buzzing timer woke her from the kind of vaguely unpleasant dream that isn’t a nightmare but leaves a dull, foreboding feeling behind the eyes. Another shower cleared most of it from her head. Now she was really hungry. She checked the time. If he really had left home right away, if he had gone straight to the family’s shuttle, and if they’d gotten priority clearance, Ronnie might be arriving within the hour. She would head for the shuttle deck and get something to eat there.
The timer informed her it was partway into second shift—aftermain, some called it. Both names were on the timer’s dial. That meant the Station equivalent of nightlife, including the nightcrawlers. Brun dug through her duffle for possible outfits that wouldn’t be too visible and wouldn’t say the wrong things. She didn’t want to be transient crew anymore, and she certainly didn’t want to stick out as Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter out being adventurous. She just hadn’t brought the right clothes . . . but she had brought enough makeup.
Down the way, she found a clothing store for people with no imagination. Not the pastels she’d seen before, but good old boring classic beiges and browns and grays and dull blues. Clerks’ clothes, maybe. Brun found that even so she was drawn to the most striking outfits in the shop; she kept picking up accessories that screamed “Look at me!” No. Buy what she automatically disdained. The blue slacks, the beige top, the brown belt—not the braided one, not the one with sequins, just plain brown. Sensible brown shoes. In the mirror she looked like a low-income copy of her mother . . . if you were born with those bones, plain looked classic. What could look just plain . . . plain? A different blouse, blue and rose flowers scattered loosely on beige, and a bit too tight. Beige shoes with little gold doodads on them. That helped; they made her feet hurt, so she walked differently. She could do the rest with makeup.
When she reached the shuttle deck, the status boards showed three private shuttles on approach, identified only by registration number. Great. She had never known the registration number of Ronnie’s family’s shuttle. Then one of the other numbers sank in. That was her family’s shuttle, the same one she’d taken Cecelia up in. Had Ronnie been crazy enough to borrow that one? The watchers would be looking for it.
Brun ducked quickly into one of the fast-food outlets that opened onto the concourse. She ordered the first thing she saw, and took it to a windowseat. Between bites of something greasy and meaty coated with something doughy, she scanned the area for the man who had spoken to her before. Of course he wouldn’t have been alone—and she had no idea what other watchers might look like. The food helped; her stomach gurgled its contentment, and she felt her courage returning. She was clean, and fed, and didn’t look anything like her earlier self—either of them.