J.

by David Brining

  Who else could it have been?

  "How many people actually know who the King is?" asked Veda.

  "Everyone in JASOn," said Jumbuck Jorum.

  "Do I?"

  "You have met him, yes." He smiled and leaned back in his chair.

  "So who is he?"

  "Can't you work it out by now?"

  Veda stared at her boss. "You," she breathed. "It's you."

  "Have a bath, come downstairs and all shall be revealed," he said.

  Veda got out of bed and looked in the mirror at the lines of strain and weariness, the dirt and the sooty grime, the brown stains which could have been blood, and sighed. Submerging herself in a deep, hot, soapy, peach blossom-scented bubble bath, she soaked the salt and the sand from her hair, scrubbed the grime from beneath her nails, and sensed the terrors and traumas of the past few days beginning to ebb away.

  Outside, it was a bright summer's evening, the sunshine rose-pink. A group of local children were playing cricket on the village green. One of them, a little tyke of about seven, had clearly become disorientated and chased one of the white ducks from its bath in the pond instead of the ball. The duck waddled, quacking fiercely, and then, quite suddenly, turned round and snapped at the child's chubby leg, as though it had tired of the game. The child squawked and blubbered and the other kids had bawled at her that she'd got what she'd deserved. As the sun melted down into a glow of gold and apricot, one or two mothers, in starched white aprons, had appeared under the climbing roses and honeysuckle creepers to call their offspring in for bed where they might, or might not, sleep peacefully, safe in the knowledge that the realm was secure.