Heir Apparent, Page 2

  Just my luck to get an explanation from someone who didn't know when to give up a bad metaphor. "Not just one set of right decisions?" I interpreted. "Okay, I'll go for it."

  Just then her desk dragon pooped on the desk.

  I should have taken it as an omen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Off to a Fantastic Start (Not!)

  Rasmussem Enterprises must have a vice president in charge of bad smells.

  It makes you wonder—or at least it makes me wonder. What kind of person takes a job where, when you go home every night and your family asks, "How did the day go, dear?" you answer, "Oh, very nice, thank you. Some kid I don't know paid a couple weeks' allowance money to get hooked up to the computer to enjoy a nice fantasy game, and I got to plunk her into a pile of sheep dung"?

  I woke up thinking I'd been set down in a barn, which is sort of a Rasmussem specialty, I guess. But I could hear birds chirping, and I could feel grass prickling me through my clothes, and when I opened my eyes, there was blue sky and a warm sun above me. I could hear sheep bleating not too far off.

  I sat up and was amazed to find nothing under me except the grass.

  Which was when I realized that the stink was coming from me.

  My shapeless, scratchy, rough-spun, and many-patched dress of unbleached wool was a far cry from the rainbow-hued gown of the Rasmussem receptionist. The people who work for Rasmussem have a pretty weird sense of humor.

  Why do I put myself through this? I wondered. When my dad, who rarely calls except for the week before my birthday and the week before Christmas, had asked—through his secretary—what kind of gift certificate he should send for my birthday present, I could have named a clothes store or an electronics store or a bookstore. But no, I asked for Rasmussem, and I'd crossed a CPOC picket line to get here.

  On the other hand, as soon as I stopped sending mental hate messages to Rasmussem, the computer conditioning kicked in. My mind filled with details of memories I'd never had. The effect is like holding two pieces of tracing paper up to the light, one on top of the other: At first all you can see is a jumble, but as you concentrate on one drawing—or on one life, as the case may be—then suddenly you can make it out by ignoring the pieces that don't fit.

  So I ignored those parts that were Giannine Bellisario, eighth grader at St. John the Evangelist School. I ignored Rasmussem Enterprises and its overpriced computer that lets you see, hear, feel, taste, and—yes, thank you very much—smell a fantasy adventure in quarter-hour segments that seem to last for days.

  I let myself become Janine de St. Jehan, sheepherder. Along with the identity came all sorts of snippets of information that I'd have known if I'd been born and raised in the village of St. Jehan.

  Most of that information had to do with sheep.

  If one of those woolly critters came over here, I could milk it, shear it, cure it of ringworm by an infusion of ringwort, castrate it, or help it in case of a breech birth. Not all at once to the same animal, of course.

  "Janine!" a voice called. "Janine, come back to the house."

  A dog came bounding up to me, black and white, with floppy ears. Did animals in this world talk? No, my implanted memory told me—well, mostly not. And definitely not in this case. This was merely Dusty, who helped me with the sheepherding. Dusty was old and her energy came in bursts, but you wouldn't guess that from the way she put her front paws on my shoulders and licked my face to greet me after my midmorning nap.

  "Hiya, Dusty," I said at the same time I tried to fend her off.

  The voice called again: "Janine!" And this time I recognized it as my mother's voice.

  That distant, half-buried part of me that was my true self surfaced long enough to bark, Ha! Fat chance.

  I tried to bury me even deeper. Play the game, I told myself. Did you pay big bucks just to find fault with everything? My real mother lives in New York because that's where her employer wants her to be, so I only see her one weekend a month during the school year, when she comes and stays with my grandmother and me. That, and for two weeks during the summer, which—apparently—is all she can take of me in her New York apartment, which is, as she says, "cozy for one." I told myself not to be bitter about my mother's attitude toward me. It is, after all, better than my father's: My father demanded a paternity test before the divorce settlement, when I was five. And—excuse me very much—but while five might be too young to catch all the nuances, I didn't need nuances to understand that my father wasn't willing to love me, much less pay child support, unless my mother could prove I was his.

  But none of this, I told myself, was true in this lifetime, so none of it was important. In this lifetime I lived with my mother, named Solita, and my father, Dexter, who was a peat cutter, and my three younger sisters and two younger brothers. And we all loved each other unconditionally.

  I stood, despite Dusty's attempts to knock me over. Instinctively my eyes found the right hut out of a cluster of eight—the entirety of the village of St. Jehan in all its glory. All the huts were made of straw and held together with sheep you-can-probably-guess-what. There was my mother, nearly as broad as she was tall, waving to me from the front yard, a swirl of chickens and small children stirring up the dirt around her skirts. "Stay, Dusty," I ordered the dog. "Guard the sheep."

  Dusty lay down on the spot I'd vacated, resting her head on her paws. I assumed that if a wolf or thieves came, she would know what to do.

  I waved my woolen cap at my mother and started down the hill.

  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 what
ever 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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Fun and Games with the Family

  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 do
ors 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."