“Xmary,” she corrected. “And stay where you are. So you’re the prince’s agent, are you?”
“One of them,” he said, making another shushing motion with his hands. “And if you’ll please keep your voice down I’ll tell you everything I know. I didn’t see your name on the injured list. On any list.”
“Neither did I. I couldn’t have been there when it fell, with cops everywhere. They’d’ve found me.”
“Oh, but you were. I was this close to you. You were sitting at the prince’s elbow, talking about a signet ring or something.”
“Again with the prince!” she said, throwing her hands up. “His name wasn’t on the lists either. I think I would have noticed that.”
“It’s been hushed up. A royal embarrassment. But I saw the cops arresting him. I think you must have gotten out the same way I did: by running your pretty ass off.”
“Yeah? Then where am I now?”
He tried a nervous grin. “Right here?”
She slugged him for that, not gently. But there was something in the way he said it that eased her fears.
“If you didn’t run,” he said, “then the Constabulary made you disappear, along with the others. There were only two ways out.”
“What others?” she asked, completely flummoxed by this bizarre story, whose key details had not been spoken yet. Had they?
“Runaways,” he said. “Royal runaways. We’d escaped from ... well, it doesn’t matter where. Wrongful captivity, let’s say.”
“Why did the building collapse?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Bascal was cooking up something illicit. Garbage Day, I heard him saying, but I was at the wrong end of the table.”
It seemed a weirdly candid thing for an agent on a secret mission to say. She looked him over, taking in his fretful stance, his nervous face. His not-quite-tasteful swimsuit that looked like something a public fax would print for free, no questions asked.
“You aren’t making this up,” she said.
He let out a breath, relaxing visibly. “No, I’m not. And if you’ve suffered this disappearance as you say, then it’s a mystery to me as well. You have a loose copy, a loose end somewhere. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Later, with charity-fax hamburgers in their bellies and loose wellcloth pants and shirts over their swimsuits, they sat together on one of the many covered bridges that connected the towers of the downtown district. Anyone could get inside the bridges, but Xmary had shown him how to get up onto the roof; now their legs hung out past the drip rail, dangling in the late-afternoon breeze. Their brains were buzzing lightly, too, from mood capsules they were technically not allowed to purchase until the age of thirty.
“We don’t have to stay here,” she told him tentatively. “The Queendom is our oyster.”
But Feck shook his head at that. “We do, actually. The moment I step in a fax, I’ll probably be diverted to Constabulary headquarters. No one knows I’m here—they can’t, or I’d’ve been arrested weeks ago. Somehow, they don’t even know to look for me. It’s part of the mystery.” He paused for a moment, looking up and down Stout Street, whose white gaslights were already coming on, although the sun hadn’t fully set. “Anyway, this is fine. Nice view. No traffic.”
“It’s a quiet corner,” she agreed. “One of my special places.”
Little chills of excitement were shooting up and down her spine. She’d never met anyone like Feck before: someone with a mission, a task, an actual job to do. A criminal, yes, but with an excellent pedigree. The prince’s own criminal. The fact that he was nervous and pensive about it only made it more real.
Feck glanced down at the bridge roof itself, and scratched at it with his fingernail in an experimental sort of way. “There could be listening devices anywhere—hypercomputers, scanning for tripwords. But somebody would have to put the right tripwords out to them, hmm? And would they bother?”
“You have to be careful what you say?”
He shrugged, a bit helplessly. “Things need to be said. I have to do it somewhere. There are no people around, so that’s a good start.”
Foolishly, she asked him, “Do you have a favorite girl?”
He frowned, still scratching at the roof. “It... I’ve met several here in Denver, and see them regularly. Beyond that, I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t approach you for ... ,” he trailed away nervously. “Of course I like you; I feel desire. I’d be crazy not to. But that’s not why we’re here.”
And this just made the situation that much more thrilling. “Why are we here?” she asked. “What is your secret mission?”
“My mission?” He smiled thinly beneath his boyish mustache. “I’m instructed to start a riot. I’ve been telling people it’s on Restoration Day, beginning exactly at nine P.M.”
Restoration Day: the fourteenth of August. Sixteen days from now.
“A riot? You mean, like, smashing streetlights and stuff?”
“Sure, whatever we can manage.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Tying up resources? Drawing attention? In the scheme of things, I believe it’s part of a larger disruption.”
“Revolution,” Xmary said, liking the idea right away. Secret missions for all; a chance to disturb this endless, stifling peace! It was not only the ultimate bid for parental recognition, but a sort of adult enterprise in its own right. Like any revolution: a chance to right wrongs and lay claim to neglected rights. There was no democracy—no republic, even—for the children of her generation. And when could there be, ever?
“Maybe,” Feck agreed. “It could come to that, although we’re scarily outnumbered and outequipped. I guess the thought is more to shake things up, for attention. So I have to ask: do you have any particular talents I can add to my team?”
“I’m good with my hands,” she said without hesitation. “I do stupid, useless handicrafts.”
“Ah, so you can make untraceable things,” Feck suggested.
She didn’t deny it. In fact, a Christmas garland she’d strung up between a pair of lamp poles one year had fallen into the street and damaged a bus. Chewed the hell out of its tires and finally broken its axle, because her folded impervium stars had one of those shapes that formed a stable tripod on the bottom and left the final point sticking straight up. When she’d checked later, her encyclopedia had called it a “caltrop,” and identified it not as a decoration, but as a defensive armament useful against personnel, ground vehicles, and especially horses. And no, the garland had never been traced to her in any way, even by Mummy and Da, although a detailed analysis would have revealed her DNA and fingerprints and electronic shadows or ghosts. But nobody had bothered, because it was just a damn cheap Christmas garland blown down by the wind.
“I can make untraceable things,” she confirmed.
“Beautiful and talented,” Feck said seriously. “That’s raw.”
Xmary felt a smile coming on. “Shaking things up is the duty of youth, Feck. And we’ve been neglecting it, haven’t we? This is an awakening. You’re my ray of morning sunshine.”
And then she couldn’t help herself any longer: she kissed him. He seemed almost to expect it. Or anyway, he knew what to do.
Unfortunately, when Xmary got home, Mimi and David Li Weng were waiting up for her in the living room with their lovely daughter Xiomara. And not one of them looked happy to see her.
“Good evening, young lady,” Mummy said pointedy.
“Hi,” she said back, because she figured she knew what was coming, and it wasn’t really Mummy’s fault. Just the way things were.
“You’ve been out without asking,” Mummy singsonged.