"I—don't know. I didn't trust myself. And I don't know how she could—she had been on your ship—"
"Don't worry about her. Let's talk about you. You know Lady Cecelia stood by you all along?"
"Yes—she came to my cabin and said she knew it wasn't my fault."
"She'd like you to stay with us, Brig, though no one will blame you if you don't. We all want you to."
"You're sure?"
"Of course. I can make stupid mistakes, but I can also admit them. It wasn't your fault; you did good work and someone else messed it up. You'll do good work again. It's more a matter of whether you trust us—if you're sure of us."
"I want to," Sirkin said. "I like you." That almost childlike admission struck Heris to the core. She could have cried. "You were all so . . . so good when Amalie died. Even Lord Thornbuckle's daughter . . ."
"Even? Brun's a remarkable young woman, if she did happen to be born rich. She liked you; I daresay if she'd been aboard she'd have chewed my ears about you, and made a dent in my suspicions."
"I really like her . . ." That was said so softly Heris barely heard it, and Sirkin flushed. Heris mentally rolled her eyes. Youngsters. Meharry had told her privately that Brigdis and Brun were likely to go overboard. Clearly Sirkin had. But they'd have to work that out; she never interfered in her crew members' romantic entanglements unless it endangered the ship. This wouldn't . . . in fact . . .
"Not surprising," she said dryly. "Considering—" Considering what, she didn't say. "One of us will be by every shift, until you're out of here. You're under guard, because we still don't know how much trouble we face, but you can call the ship any time you're concerned. I've got to go down and see how Lady Cecelia's coming along."
"Thank you," Sirkin said. Completely awake now, she had begun to regain that sparkle she'd had at first. Resilience, thought Heris, and wondered again if she would be able to afford rejuvenation someday. And what her employer would think about it.
Chapter Twenty-two
Cecelia had had reports sent up to Heris—encouraging reports, on the whole. Heris didn't entirely understand the medical terminology—she skipped whole paragraphs of multisyllabic gibberish and tried to figure out the "prognosis" sections. Here she hoped the percentages referred to functions recovered, and not permanently lost—87% this, and 79% that, and 93% the other thing. Livadhi's medical teams might have helped interpret, except that they were spending all their time in the station hospital. She would do better, she decided, to go down and find out in person.
The receptionist recognized her now, and gave her Cecelia's room number. When she came out of the lift on that floor, Meharry was stretched out in the visitors' lounge.
"How is she?"
"Better you should see her," Meharry said gruffly. "We're taking alternate shifts now; Arkady's in the visitors' hostel."
"Sirkin's doing well," Heris said, anticipating Meharry's question. "She's staying with us."
"She's a sweet kid," Meharry said. "Almost too sweet for her own good. I think that's what made me so mad—I liked her so much, and she was so good, and then—you know, if Skoterin had been anything but a bland nothing, I'd have figured it out."
"So we look out for bland nothings," Heris said. "See you after I talk to Lady Cecelia."
"You'll be surprised," Meharry said. It was an odd tone of voice, not at all encouraging, and Heris worried all the way down the corridor. The bright floral prints and soft carpet did nothing to reassure her.
She found the number and knocked lightly.
"Come in." It didn't sound like Cecelia; perhaps a nurse was with her. Even more worried, Heris pushed the door open.
The large room opened onto an atrium filled with flowering plants and ferns. Across an expanse of apricot carpet, a woman in a green silk robe stood by a table set for a meal.
The woman couldn't be Cecelia, Heris realized after a startled glance. She was only in her forties, and although she was tall and lean, she had not a single strand of gray in her red hair. It must be the wrong room. Heris turned to look at the room number, and the woman chuckled. Heris felt that chuckle as a blow to the heart.
"It is—but how—?"
"Do come in and shut the door. That's better." Cecelia gestured to the chairs by the table. "Here—sit down; you look as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I—I'm not sure—"
"Vanity has its uses, you know." Cecelia sat down herself, and grinned at Heris. "I decided to take advantage of it."
"But you—you said you'd never go through rejuv."
"If you'd asked me, I'd have said I'd never be poisoned by that wretched Lorenza. Here, have a cup of broth. They have quite good food here."
Heris opened her mouth to say she wasn't hungry, and realized she was. And her employer was looking at her with a wicked gleam in her eyes. She sipped the broth.
"It was vanity that saved me, actually," Cecelia said. "And now I'll have to confess it, and you'll laugh at me—"
"No, I won't. I'm too glad to have you alive—and by the way, thanks for saving us from that mess on the ship."
"I only wish I'd done a better job of it. But—let me tell you. You remember how smug I was about taking no medicines and refusing rejuv?"
"Yes," Heris said cautiously.
"Well, I was lying. To everyone and to myself. There was this . . . this preparation. Herbal stuff. Lots of women used it, and none of us considered it medicinal exactly. Or cosmetic, exactly. I thought of it as a kind of tonic . . . of course I knew my skin was smoother, and I felt better, but I didn't consider what it really was."
A pause followed; since a comment seemed to be required, Heris said "And it was . . . ?"
Cecelia laughed. "I was so arrogant about drugs, it never occurred to me that many of them come from herbs—plants. That I was taking quite a solid dose of bioactive chemicals that functioned in some ways like the rejuvenation chemicals." She shook her head. "So there I was, smugly certain that I wasn't like those others—the ones I despised—and in fact I was. I must have known—I didn't tell anyone I took it, not even my maid, and certainly not anyone medical. My doctor just thought I had naturally good genes. Which I do, but not that good." She paused and drank a few swallows of broth herself.
"So when Lorenza poisoned me, she used a dose based on my supposed drug-free biochemistry. It worked, but the damage was not as complete. It required more maintenance drug than expected, which meant that when I came off the maintenance drugs, I could recover with therapy . . . and it also meant that a complete rejuvenation treatment would reverse all the damage."
"And so you thought if vanity had saved you so far, you'd go the whole way?"
"That, and the fact that nothing but rejuv would give me natural eyesight again. That visual prosthesis is good enough for walking around without bumping into things, but it doesn't begin to substitute for real sight." Cecelia looked out at the atrium. "The colors . . . the textures . . . oh, Heris, I thought I would go mad, locked away in that darkness, motionless, helpless."
Heris reached to touch her hand. "Cecelia—milady—I don't know how you did it, but it took incredible courage."
Cecelia gave a harsh laugh, almost a croak. "No—not courage. Pigheaded stubbornness. I simply would not give up. And the advantage of being over eighty when something like that happens is that you have a lot of experience to remember. Not enough—it's never enough—but a lot."
"Do you think this person—Lorenza—intended to kill you?"
"Oh, no. She intended exactly what happened. She used to come visit, you know, and sit by my bed and whisper into my ear. 'I did it,' she would say. She never gave her name, and at that time I couldn't figure out who it was . . . but it told me that someone had done it, and that—that helped. It gave me a target. I didn't remember—the drug I was given was supposed to knock out short-term memory for the event—until one day after a long ride in therapy. I was suddenly there, where it happened, in Berenice's drawing room, with Lorenza handing me a glass o
f fruit juice." Cecelia stared at the ferns and flowers a long moment before going on. "She said that once, too: You'll never ride again, Cecelia. You'll never feel the wind in your face, never smell the flowers."
Heris shivered in spite of herself. "She must be a terrible woman."
"She's the main reason I refused rejuvenation so long. We knew each other as children . . . and she began to have rejuv early, and often. She was obsessed with her appearance—and I admit, she's a beauty, and always was. But the last time I saw her . . . that smooth young skin and glossy hair, and those ancient, evil eyes . . . I didn't want to become that sort of person."
"You couldn't," Heris said.
Cecelia smiled at her. "Heris, I love your loyalty, but one thing I have learned in my long eventful life is that anyone can change into anything. It takes only carelessness. My mistake was in confusing surface behaviors with the reasons behind them. It wasn't rejuv that made Lorenza what she is—what she is propelled her to that many rejuv procedures."
"Still, you would never—"
"I hope not. Certainly nothing that cruel. But if you put Lorenza and me in the same room? I could kill her. You know I can kill."
Remembering Cecelia as she had been on Sirialis, when she shot the man who would have killed them both, Heris nodded. "For cause, you could. Maybe even in vengeance. But you would not ever torment someone as she tormented you—that I'm sure of."
"Good. So far I feel no temptation that way, though I do have a strong urge to pull her blonde hair out by the roots."
Heris had to laugh then. "So—when do we do just that?"
"I have one more round of neurological testing, and we want to be sure Sirkin's fully recovered . . ."
"She's younger than both of us, and recovers faster even without rejuv—"
"Good, then. Let's go back and . . . er . . . clean house, shall we?"
Heris said, "There is the problem of the prince and his clone, or the clones and no prince. I accepted a mission from the king, as I explained to you—"
Cecelia scowled. "The medical reports haven't straightened anything out?"
"Not really. All the tissue samples are identical. The clones believe—they told me—that they carry markers somewhere. But if these doctors can't find them, who can? As for the mental limitations, both these clones perform at normal levels on tests. Not as high as you'd expect from a Registered Embryo, but not as low as you'd expect from the prince, judging by what we saw on the way back from Sirialis."
"What do the clones say now? Have you talked to them since you got back?"
"No—have you?"
"Once, yes. Heris, I believe in my heart that the young man with us—Gerald A., as you called him—was the real prince. Their prime. I can't give you any reason that would make sense except an old woman's intuition. But remember how he and Ronnie both fell on that gas grenade?"
"If that was the prince."
"It was. Everything that's happened since proves it. Neither the king—nor Lorenza, I believe—would go so far to protect a mere clone; if a clone fails, you get rid of it. My point is that along with Gerel's undeniable witlessness he had great and generous gallantry. A meaner boy, stupid or bright, would not have done what he did. And when Skoterin threatened Sirkin—the moment the weapon swung toward her and away from me—Gerald A. did the same thing. In the same style. Generous, brave, and incredibly stupid. It provoked her to shoot; she might not have fired, and your Petris might have killed her before anyone else got hurt. I think that was no clone; I think that was the prince himself."
"But he had seemed more sensible at times . . . on the voyage with the others."
"Think, Heris. If they were protecting him, if they knew his problem, they would shift about, so that you could not be sure which one you spoke to—you'd have to ask. Couldn't that be it? Or perhaps all that time without the drug began to reverse the dullness."
"But if that's true, then I've failed in the mission the king gave me. And what do we do with the clones?"
"I'll tell you what we don't do. We don't take them back to be discarded or killed by someone who would let his own son be ruined. Go talk to them. I told them what I thought; they didn't say much. They may to you. If they are the clones, and Gerel is dead, I will not let you take them on my ship. I don't want their ruin on my conscience."
Brun had no intention of staying safely at home on the family's estates. They knew who had poisoned Lady Cecelia; they had figured out that the prince had also been slowly poisoned, and that the same method had been used on George for a short time. She and Ronnie and George were ready, the moment Buttons and Sarah arrived, to do battle with the minions of evil.
"Whoa," Buttons said. "You haven't thought it all out."
"What's to think?" George said. "The woman's a menace: she poisoned me, and then the prince, and then Lady Cecelia, and maybe a dozen others—"
"Why?"
"Why? I suppose . . . I guess . . . she likes poisoning people."
"George, you're sounding about as intelligent as you did in your bad term. I have some missing links you'd better add to your chain of evidence. You mentioned Gerel being excited after visits from his brothers . . . do you remember any more?"
"No." George sounded grumpy. He hated being interrupted.
"I do." Buttons stood and paced around the big library. "It annoys all of you when I remind you I'm older . . . but it matters. You were in school with each other and Gerel; I was in school with Gerel's older brother, Nadrel."
"Who was killed in a duel; we know that."
"Shut up, Ronnie. That's only part of it. Because I was his friend, I got to know the oldest, and don't bother to tell me you know Jared had been accepted as Successor by the Grand Council. That happened our last year in school; it was terribly exciting, and I got to attend, with Nadrel. But what I didn't know—because Jared had said I was too stuffy and priggish and would spill the beans—was that Jared had been groomed by some of the Familias to head a rebellion. Nadrel knew, of course . . . and they dragged in poor young Gerel, who worshipped his oldest brother. And it was Gerel who spilled the beans . . . to you, George."
"I—I don't remember." George looked stunned, as if a rock had landed on his head.
"No—you wouldn't, if they drugged you. I don't suppose you told anyone intentionally—you had a certain innate cunning even then—but your father got wind of it, and he told the king. That assassination—"
"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 Lo
renza; 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?"
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