Heir Apparent (3 page)

The part of the scene below that didn't fit was the man standing beside my mother. He had an ostrich-feather-plumed hat and was holding the reins of a fine horse that had obviously never pulled a plow. Between the two of them, man and horse, there was enough gold trim to keep the village of St. Jehan fed for a year. I could see he'd been talking with my mother, though he took great care to keep out of the way of chickens and children alike.

"Hello, Mother," I said when I finally reached them. "Hello, sir." It couldn't hurt to be polite, whoever he was.

The man wrinkled his nose. "Is this the lass?" He pulled out a lacy handkerchief and breathed through that. Did I smell
that
bad?

"Yes, sir," my mother said. "Stand straight, Janine, and don't fidget." When my mother in the real world deigns to visit, she has the same sort of advice for me, as does my grandmother. It must be a mother thing.

I stood straight and didn't fidget.

My mother shooed off the children and as many of the chickens as she could. "Janine," she said, "I have something to say to you, which I probably should have told you before. I wish I could delay it until your father gets home from the bog."

The well-dressed man waved his handkerchief at her. "Get on with it, woman."

Just because she was a computer-generated figment of my imagination was no reason for him to be rude. "Hey," I told him. "That's my mother you're talking to." If my real mother hung around more, I'd defend her, too.

But, "Wrong," the man said. "That's the whole point"

Quick on my feet as always, I said, "Huh?"

"This woman is not your mother. And the man you take to be your father is also no relation to you."

It made sense, considering the Heir Apparent scenario had indicated I was one of several in line for the throne. But if ever there was someone who obviously delighted in delivering bad news, this was the man. And meanwhile, "this woman," as he'd called her, looked ready to cry. She told him, "Sir Deming, you said I could break it to her."

"You took too long."

I shoved him away from her, even though I was a full head shorter. I was mad enough to tell him, "Look, as far as I can tell, you're just some well-dressed messenger boy. You say one more word to my mother, and I'll set the dogs on you."

Actually, we only had Dusty, and the chances were she was asleep by now. But "I'll set the dogs on you" sounds more impressive than "I'll call my dog, and if she hears me, and if she obeys, she'll make her way down here and maybe even bite you with whatever teeth she has left." And it certainly sounds more impressive than "I'll set the chickens on you."

Deming looked down his nose at me and sneered.

I told him, "I'm assuming you were paid to deliver a message?"

With his lip still curled, Deming said, "These people who have raised you are in truth your foster parents. You were delivered to them for your own safekeeping. Your true parents..." He rolled his eyes. "Well, your mother was a servant woman."

I could tell he enjoyed telling me that. "And my father?" I asked, suspecting, because of the nature of the game.

With a sigh, Deming admitted, "King Cynric, God rest his soul."

"'God rest his soul'?" my mother repeated. "The king has died?"

Deming removed his ostrich-feather-plumed hat and bowed his head for a moment of silence. I suspected his sincerity when the first thing he said after that was, "And he chose a very inconvenient time to do it."

My mother fanned herself with her hand.

"I have brothers?" I asked. As an inhabitant of this land, I had heard talk of princes; but as a lowly inhabitant, I wasn't familiar with their names.

"Yes," Deming said.

"For someone who was so eager to talk before," I told him, "you certainly seem tongue-tied now. What are their names, and what are they like?"

"There are three princes," Deming said. "All older than you. Which gives them priority over you for the crown. As does your..."—he gave a patronizing smile—"irregular birth."

He let the smile drop. "Wulfgar is the firstborn," Deming told me. "He was educated away from home and has ... certain..." He paused to consider. "Perhaps the word I'm thinking of is
exotic.
He has certain
exotic
ideas."

Something about the way he said it made me suspect that
exotic
wasn't the word he was thinking of at all. "Ideas about what?" I asked.

"Everything," Deming said. Which was no help at all. "The second son is Abas, a young man of incredible physical prowess in the classical sense."

"'Classical sense'? What does
classical sense
mean?"

Deming ignored me. "And lastly Kenric, who displays—as far as
I'm
concerned—altogether too much interest in the magical arts."

I fought off a mental image of someone in a black cape and top hat, pulling coins out of people's ears and sawing lovely assistants in half, for I seriously doubted that was what Deming meant. "What—" I started.

"Perhaps it would be best if you waited to form your own impressions." Deming gave a toothy smile.

My mother asked, "You're bringing her back to court?"

Deming nodded.

"But I thought she was in danger there?"

Deming pursed his lips to indicate it wasn't his idea. "The king commanded it."

I said, "I thought the king was dead."

Deming sighed to let me know what an idiot he found me. "
Before
he died. It was his deathbed wish. Of course, he was quite feverish by then." Deming clearly thought the king hadn't been in his right mind. "When you were born, you were a royal embarrassment. Your servant mother had died during the long and difficult labor, and there were those among King Cynric's advisers who pointed out that there was nothing unusual about a young mother and her firstborn
both
dying under such a circumstance. But the king was a kindhearted man." Deming sniffed—or snorted—into his handkerchief.

I'll bet.
It was hard not to picture my
real
father as the king. "So, when he knew he was dying, he had a twinge of conscience?" I finished for Deming. "He decided to see if I was alive after all?"

"Oh, he knew you were alive," Deming assured me. "He sent for you to have you named his heir."

"Oh my!" my mother gasped.

I had assumed that the succession had been left unclear—that I'd have to fight it out with the other three. The other three, who were all older than me and who, presumably, had
two
royal parents. "Why me?" I asked.

Deming stuffed the handkerchief back into his sleeve. "Heaven knows," he said. He wiggled his fingers at me. "Go on," he said, "get on the horse. Time to pull yourself away from the sheep."

I didn't tell him that so far I liked the sheep more than I liked him. I kissed my mother and my brothers and my sisters good-bye.

"You're leaving now?" my mother cried in dismay. "Without saying good-bye to your father? I sent word to him that Sir Deming was here, and he should be coming home from the bog soon."

I was eager to get the game moving. Rasmussem builds in a little extra time, for soaking up the local atmosphere and because they assume people playing a game for the first time will make a fatal mistake or two and have to rely on additional lives—how many depends on how soon they mess up badly enough to get killed. I don't know how many players actually make it through a game in the first sitting, but my grandmother couldn't afford to send me here on a regular basis. That—and remembering the last time I'd said good-bye to a father—had me frantic not to wait around.

"I'll send for you when things get settled," I promised. Even if the game ended before I could, saying it was worth the look on Deming's face.

When Deming and I arrived at the castle, there were pages to blow a trumpet fanfare, and guards who saluted and called me "Highness" without the superior mockery of Deming's tone. In the courtyard, two squires rushed forward to help me dismount. Having never, in the real world, ridden anything livelier than a carousel horse, I'd been pleasantly surprised that my character had memories of riding a horse. Of course, that had been bareback on the plow horse the community of St. Jehan shared, but if I didn't try to analyze and I just let my character's instincts take over, it wasn't too hard to stay on.

A good thing, because I suspected that if I'd fallen, Deming would just have left me, king's wishes or not.

But now servants lifted me off his horse as though I were a delicate lady, and both I and my character enjoyed that.

Deming disappeared into the crowd—probably to take a bath, if I was to take all his sniffing and whining seriously.

A gray-haired man in a crushed-velvet suit was waiting by the entrance to the castle proper. "Welcome, Princess Janine," he said, bowing. "I am Counselor Rawdon, one of King Cynric's advisers. Allow me to escort you to the Great Hall, where the royal family awaits."

Though his smile looked sincere, I kept in mind what Deming had said about the king's advisers' suggestions at my birth.

I was half expecting that the people at Rasmussem would give me a castle that was a wreck—run-down and rat infested—but it was the one I had seen in the promo. It was like a magnificent old cathedral, except without the incense: polished stone walls and floors, high vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows.

Rawdon led me down a wide gallery; one wall was made of mirrors, the other was a series of marble arches opening onto a formal garden with fountains and crushed-stone walks. I tried not to gawk like a tourist.

Finally we came to a massive set of carved doors. Two guards in ceremonial dress saluted, then opened the doors, while a third man blew yet another fanfare.

"Her Royal Highness," Rawdon proclaimed, "Princess Janine."

My first impression was that I had just been announced to an empty room, but then I saw that everybody—and everybody was only four people—was clustered around two thrones way down at the other end.

Rawdon whispered, "Good luck," my first hint that he was about to abandon me.

I whipped around to see him bowing his way backward out between the doors. Once he cleared the opening, those two guards swung the doors shut with a massive
thud.

Leaving me with my back exposed to...? My three half brothers would have been the obvious guess. And the woman I'd glimpsed? One of their wives, perhaps. Or she could be the queen, my dead father's wife, and mother to his sons. I hadn't thought to ask Deming if she was still alive or what her name was, putting me at a definite social disadvantage.

Obviously, I wasn't going to find out anything by standing with my back to them, the closed doors five inches from my nose. Someone tittered, and I had the impression it wasn't the woman.

"Hello," I said, turning to face them. There was a huge leaded-glass window behind them, so that they were little more than dark silhouettes. My footsteps echoed hollowly as I crossed that vast distance all alone, aware of the four sets of eyes watching me, evaluating. Should I have waited to be invited to approach?
No,
I thought.
I'm a princess.

Or at least half princess.

Princesses do not wait to be summoned.

Do they?

Close up I determined the woman was definitely the queen. For one thing, she was sitting on one of the thrones, and she had a crown. She was also forty or fifty years old, a bit old for any of these guys—even for an arranged marriage. The princes ranged from one who was only a couple years older than me to the other two, who were probably in their early to mid twenties. They were the good-looking guys I'd noticed in the coming attractions.

"Hello," I said again, remembering to stand straight, and trying not to fidget, which was tough, considering I didn't know if I was supposed to bow, seeing as how we were all royalty. "It's a great honor to—"

The queen turned to the prince who stood at her right. That one was Abas, I thought. I suddenly understood what Deming had meant when he'd said Abas was strong in the classical sense. He looked like he'd stepped out of one of those old Hercules movies: huge muscles bulging out of an outfit consisting mostly of leather straps with metal studs. His skin was tan and slick—I wouldn't have looked that healthy with a whole tube of skin bronzer.

"This
girl,
" the queen said to Abas, "smells like a goat."

The prince wrinkled his nose. "Yes," he said in a strained voice that sounded as though he was trying not to inhale.

"Ahm," I said, "a sheep, actually."

The queen gave me a look like oh-I-didn't-know-turds-could-talk.

"I've been working tending sheep."
Don't get started,
I warned myself. She didn't want explanations or clarifications—she just wanted to put me in my place. But the silence sat there and sat there, so I babbled on, "I probably smell more like sheep than goats."

One of the other princes snickered.
Wulfgar?
I speculated,
the foreign-educated one?
since he wore a goatee—not a wispy end-of-the-chin-Colonel Sanders look, but a sexy one—while all the other men I'd seen so far were clean shaven. He was looking at me with undisguised contempt.

The third prince—the youngest, who would be Kenric—fidgeted, using his hand to cover a smile. He was sitting sideways on the arm of the empty throne, which might indicate he was trying to insinuate himself into the kingship. When he saw me looking at him, he flashed his smile openly, which could have meant that he was friendly or that he was amused or that he realized I was too dumb to be serious trouble.

"I think," the queen said, "we should kill her now and be done with her."

"All right," Abas said agreeably. One of those straps crisscrossing his chest must have been a harness to hold his sword on his back, for he reached over his shoulder and whipped out a blade almost as long as I was tall.

"Wait a minute." I scrambled backward. Lucky for me, I had outgrown my stinky and patched gown, so that the edge of the dress came only halfway down past my knees. Although this clearly showed my bare and dirty feet, at least I didn't trip as I took a couple hasty steps backward. "Wait a minute," I repeated, as a grinning Abas stepped toward me. I had a skinning knife on my belt, all of about four inches long. Abas's sword was
broader
than that. All things considered, it was probably best not even to go for it.