“The king killed his own son?”
“No. Nor ordered it . . . but one of the other Familias felt it had to be done. No one knew how far the plot had gone; the military was on alert for months. Nadrel . . . Nadrel was a problem, bitter and violent; I couldn’t swear his duel was spontaneous.”
“And Gerel—?”
Buttons shrugged. “I would guess—I knew nothing about it, until you told me this—I would guess the king wanted to be sure Gerel could not be the same kind of threat. Perhaps you, George, were the experimental subject, to prove the effects reversible. Then Gerel—I would like to believe the king meant no harm by it.”
“No harm!” Brun was so angry she felt her hair must be bristling. “Poor Gerel, everyone thinking him a fool—and then Lady Cecelia being poisoned—and Sarah shot—”
“I didn’t say there was no harm, only that he may not have intended it. If Lorenza was the king’s arm in this, she may have done more than he knew.”
“Then it’s Lorenza we have to stop. Now.” Ronnie was on his feet now. “What if she attacks my mother, thinking I might have said something to her? Or George’s parents?”
“Ronnie, we can’t simply walk in and seize her. She’s a Crown Minister’s sister—another complication, because I for one have no idea how much influence she has with him—or he with the king, for that matter. She’s got a vote in the Grand Council in her own right. We have no legal standing—”
“Tell my father,” George said. “I’ll call him—”
“George, will you listen! Your father’s already involved—so is ours. They’ve filed a Question. But none of us can grab Lorenza; we have no evidence. We need Lady Cecelia alive and well, her competency completely restored so that she can testify; we need the prince alive and well—and both of them are a long way away with a lot of things that can go wrong. Less will go wrong if we all act discreetly.”
“Then you didn’t need my warning at all—you already knew about Lorenza, and I could have stayed with Lady Cecelia—” Brun felt tired and grumpy.
“No—we didn’t know about Lorenza. We knew it had to be someone, but we didn’t know who—and that’s important. But we can’t afford to lose anyone, so I want you all to agree to stay calm and follow orders.”
“Whose?” Ronnie asked bluntly.
“Mine, for now, and Dad’s when he gets here. George’s father will tell him the same. Now will you use sense and act like the adults you are?”
Cecelia looked around the main lounge of her yacht with distaste. “I thought the lavender plush was bad, but I have to admit this is worse.” Then she grinned. “Though I must say I’m glad to see it—really see it. Show me everything.” Heris glanced at Petris, now their new environmental section head and assistant. “Everything, milady?”
“Every bit of it. I’ll be thinking how lovely it will look when Spacenhance has finished with it.” She looked from one to the other of them. “Come on! What are you waiting for?”
“Well, we have this little problem,” Heris said, leading her down the streaked grayish walls, wondering how Cecelia was going to react when she saw them. She opened the door to the ’ponics section: stacks of mesh cages held an ever-increasing number of cockroaches, filling the air in that compartment with an odd, heavy smell. “This.”
“What on—they’re alive.”
“Yes . . . and I don’t want you mentioning this to the medical teams, either.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Spacenhance,” Heris said.
“The decorators? They put cockroaches on my ship? On my ship?” Outrage made her voice spike up; Heris grinned.
“We think they put cockroaches on everyone’s ship, to eat the old wallcovering and carpeting, and the adhesives. Illegal, of course. A trade secret, no doubt. We thought we might need to deal in trade secrets, so we trapped the ones we found and let them breed.”
“But what did they do with the cockroaches after they ate the stuff?” Cecelia leaned forward to look at the nearest cage.
“We think . . . mind, this is only our speculation . . . that they converted the cockroaches into a sort of organic slurry, which could then be extruded into fiber or other shapes . . . to make carpets or wallcoverings—”
“You mean they put ground-up cockroaches on people’s floors? Walls? You mean that horrible lavender plush was really nothing but ground-up cockroaches?”
“Quite possibly,” Heris said, enjoying Cecelia’s reaction. “Of course, they would have dyed them—that’s why they’re white, I’m sure—and they may have added other materials.”
Cecelia stepped back. “I have never even imagined anything so . . . so disgusting.”
Heris grinned at Petris. “There is something worse . . .”
“What?”
“When they’re loose and you haven’t noticed them in the sheets.” She and Petris both started laughing, and Cecelia glared at them.
“It’s not funny. Or—I suppose it is, but—oh, my, have we got a whip hand here.”
“That’s what I thought,” Heris said. “Of course, we’re now in violation of half a dozen regulations ourselves, but we’ve been careful. I would prefer, however, that Commander Livadhi’s people not know about the live ones.”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Cecelia, beginning to smile. “But I suspect that restocking my solarium with miniatures will be well within my budget.”
From that beginning, the trip back to Rockhouse Major went smoothly. Heris made the rendezvous with Livadhi’s Martine Scolare, and his pinnace picked up the medical teams. Heris had braced herself for questions about the clones, but the medical teams were so excited about the new technologies they’d discovered in those few days on the Station that they could talk of nothing else. Livadhi asked, of course, and Heris gave the answer she and Cecelia had worked out. It was not exactly a lie.
“I left the clones behind; neither of them was the prince. As you know, one was killed in the shooting, and tissue analysis at autopsy could neither prove nor disprove that that one was the prince. Perhaps postmortem degradation . . .”
“Or perhaps he’s off in a bar somewhere making an idiot of himself,” Livadhi said. “I wonder if the king knows how many doubles he had?”
“We may never know,” Heris said cautiously. “What’s the latest on the uproar?”
“Not quite civil war,” Livadhi said. “Fleet’s on standby, all the Family Delegates are gathering for an emergency session, and rumor has it the king is considering abdication. The Benignity has filed complaints, and threatens to take action if we don’t pay reparations for their two cruisers, which have somehow grown to dreadnoughts; Aethar’s World decided this was a great time to try a little piracy . . . oh, yes, and the Stationmaster at Rotterdam says to tell Lady Cecelia that the black mare has foaled. Anything else?”
“No—thank you. What about the Fleet and us?”
“You personally, or you in Lady Cecelia’s yacht?”
“Either or both.”
“Well, I’ve had strong representations from senior Familias that my neck is in the noose if Lady Cecelia doesn’t get back safely—how is she, by the way?”
“Quite able to take up her duties,” Heris said.
“Good. And I’ve had strong pressure from some . . . er . . . elements in the Fleet that your permanent disappearance would just about guarantee my first star. While others say the opposite. I would suggest the fastest possible course, and I suggest you allow me to escort you in.”
“I accept both suggestions.” She was not entirely sure of him in all respects, but if he wanted her dead, it would have been easy enough to leave her in Compassionate Hand space without help.
The Familias Grand Council met in a domed hall. High above, painted stars on pale blue echoed the carpet of deep blue patterned with gold stars. Each Family had its Table; each voting member had his or her Chair. On the north wall, opposite the entrance doors, the Speaker’s Bench had become the king’s throne, and the king, wearing his usual black suit, sat there behind a desk with its crystal pitcher of water, its goblets, its display screens, and the gold-rimmed gavel.