The Queendom’s royalty were technically figureheads, without any official political or legal powers. But they were also beloved, and brilliant, and so absurdly wealthy that they could buy the planets outright if they chose to. So in the end it hardly mattered: in the spiritual hunger of the Restoration and the perils and tragedies of the Fall, these two had been chosen as humanity’s penultimate leaders, second only to God. Whether or not Conrad liked or understood it, they could dictate his fate, and no one—not even his own mother and father—would challenge it.
Still, this mortal fear didn’t keep him from noticing that the “boy” to his left in the row behind him was actually Xiomara Li Weng, from the café, and that the fifteen assembled children did not include Feck. In a way, this made sense: Feck had been in the ’soir when the building came down, and if he’d had the sense to get rid of his Camp Friendly shirt, then at first glance there’d be no reason for the Constabulary to connect him with the events on the balcony, or to distinguish him from the café’s regular customers. Whereas a quantum reconstruction of the collapse would show Xmary standing right next to Bascal, on the balcony with the other Friendly campers.
But despite her short, dark hair and rail-thin figure, Xmary did not resemble Feck in the slightest. Conrad didn’t even see how she could be mistaken for a boy, although she’d rubbed the makeup off and lost the low-toe shoes, and even somehow taken off the nail polish. And she’d turned her party dress into a pair of beige trousers and a white shirt—though not a Camp Friendly shirt or even a tee shirt. But then again Ho Ng was out of uniform too, having somehow traded his tee for a shiny gray pullover and quilted vest, although he still had the pants: beige culottes that completely destroyed his efforts to look raw.
Even so, the error was alarmingly stupid. Had no one checked the biometrics or the DNA, or even peeked under her shirt? Had the ire of king and queen so disrupted police routines that even the Constabulary could somehow arrest the wrong person? Hand her over in a moment of confusion? It was a chilling thought, and a reminder of why the Old Moderns had murdered off their royal families in the first place, leaving only the Princess of Tonga and the swashbuckling Declarant-Philander of Spanish Girona to lead them into the future.
One of the Tongan ladies, gliding back and forth along the front row like a dolled-up drill sergeant, paused suddenly in front of Bascal. Placed a finger under his chin and lifted slightly, commanding his attention. Conrad couldn’t make out what she murmured to him, but he did hear the prince’s incongruous reply: “Lemonade. Please.”
Then a chill settled over the room. To the right of the dais, a figure had appeared in the doorway. She had the same walnut skin and raven hair as her courtiers, but her wrap and drapes and hair fans were of purple, streaked and patterned with Polynesian tapa-styled highlights of glowing white. She was flanked on either side by ornate Palace Guards of gold and platinum, and news cameras buzzed and flickered in the air behind her like fireflies. She wore a diamond crown and was using the Scepter of Earth as a walking stick, and somehow she brought the whole thing off as casually as any jogging suit or camp uniform. No friend or relative ever had a face so familiar, so instantly readable.
The queen was furious.
She was also controlling it tightly, which made it even scarier somehow, and it was all Conrad could do to keep from flinching or even cowering as her gaze swept across him. In theory, she could order his head chopped off and his backups erased, and it would probably happen.
But Tamra-Tamatra Lutui, the Queen of Sol, had eyes only for Bascal as she ascended the dais and settled comfortably into her gilded wicker throne. Her robot guards, armed with tall, ornate, flimsy-looking axes, assumed positions on either side of the dais. The news cameras drifted out into the room, documenting the scene from all the most dramatic angles. Conrad wondered if he was on television, or would be later, in some carefully edited scene. Maybe these were simply the palace’s own archival cameras, storing holie video into a library somewhere.
“All right,” the queen said. “Let’s hear it.” There was no question whom she was addressing.
“Malo e lelei, Mother,” Bascal replied amiably. “I’ve missed you.”
“Tali fiefia. And I you,” she said, with apparent sincerity. “But you’re back a little early. And in trouble again. And this time, you’ve brought friends.”
“Yes, Mother.”
It was hard not to side with her. People always sided with her, in any dispute. She was just too beautiful and too funny and too ... Correct? The cynics might accuse her of manipulating public opinion, but the truth was she didn’t need to, and had nothing to gain by trying. She simply had a knack for taking the right side of every issue. Not the simplistic quick-fix side, but the actual best answer. And she then explained it so well, so quickly, with such effortless and devastating wit!
But not today, apparently. Today, she raised her eyebrows, tapped a foot, and finally spoke in tight, parental tones. “Bascal, don’t try my patience. Please. You know I love you, but what you don’t seem to understand is that I will make an example of you.”
“On the contrary,” the prince said. “I’m counting on that.” His voice was still friendly, but his at-attention pose struck Conrad as both a rebuke and a mockery of his mother’s authority.
Tamra shook her head a little, and sighed. “You think you’re so clever, Bas. This isn’t a chess game, where it helps to look three or four moves ahead. It’s more like the tide, which comes in when the moon drags it in, regardless of what anyone thinks or says. Or wants.”
“Then I’ll plant a neuble on the beach,” Bascal answered smoothly.
This was metaphor, Conrad realized at once. A neuble was a billion tons of liquid neutronium in a two-centimeter diamond shell, and would drop through beach sand or even solid rock like a cannonball through wet tissue paper. But it would affect the tide, you bet.
“Enough,” Tamra said coldly. “This isn’t a debate. You’ve injured nearly a hundred people, and destroyed a building. Someone could easily have been killed, in which case you’d be going to prison.”
“I have been in prison,” Bascal answered, finally betraying his anger.
“No,” she said. “You haven’t. You’ve been at summer camp.”
“It’s winter here, Mother.”
“And summer in Europe, yes. When I was a girl, most of the world lived in conditions much worse than your Camp Friendly, and never thought twice. If you can’t see the difference, then perhaps you should spend some community service time in the actual punitary system.”
“Fine,” Bascal snapped. “None of my tutors have been criminals yet. It’s a real gap in my education.”
The queen slammed the metal butt of her scepter down on the tiles of the dais with a sound like a heavy door slamming shut. “For pity’s sake, young man. Must you battle us on every front? At every step? Do you despise us because we’re your parents? Because we’re the First Family? Because we’re older? You’ve made your little statement, all right, but you know very well it turns people away from your cause, not toward it. I miss your poetry, Bascal, I really do. But I suspect that’s the very reason you stopped writing it.”
Bascal’s stance never changed. “The rainy seasons here used to inspire me. I truly loved them. But then you sent me alone to Girona. Tending sheep. And then it was coconuts on Niuafo’ou, and finally peach pies and onions in the outer solar system. And you wonder why I’m angry?”