Queen of Denial (18 page)

He smiled broadly back at her and bowed. "It is always a pleasure to serve You, Your Majesty."

Drew nodded her head, and as he stepped back to stand at her left shoulder, she once again addressed the crowd.

"My people. In my long absence from you I have seen many things, and endured indignities you cannot even think of. Believe me when I say that I know and understand the hardships you are now going through. I'm going to talk to this bloated lot of bureaucrats, and see if we can't do something about the mess we're all in. But anything we decide is going to take time before it works.

"We're not in as bad a scrape as you may think. Yes, things are bad, but they can only get worse if you stand out there in the street and yell instead of doing something constructive to help fix the country. Your words are wasted when you all stand here and scream about the problems we face. We know all the problems. What we need are solutions. Why don't you all go home and write a letter to us, telling us what you think is wrong and how you think we might fix it. I promise to read those letters personally, and bring your ideas to the Council. My husband, your King, is anxious to hear your ideas."

"My Queen," one man screamed from the crowd, "is the King injured?"

"He's got a tiny bump on his head. More importantly, were any of you hurt?"

"Gratefully, no."

"Good. Well, that's all I have to say."

She held her hands above her head.

"Go now, and sin no more!" She bowed low and then hurried back inside.

The crowd was cheering. Chants of "Long Live the Queen" echoed through the open doors until the guards closed them and the sound was muffled.

Drew smiled broadly and raised both her hands triumphantly over her head. "I am indeed the Queen of Bullshit! I've never conned a mob before." She lowered her arms and looked skyward."It's a heady feeling . . . I think I like it." She looked thoughtful for a minute. "Yes, I like it!"

Zarco was on his feet now, and he used his height to look down on her. It didn't really give him the power he had hoped for. He needed to say something. She had just made an ass of him in front of the whole advisory council. He gave her a hard look.

She smiled broadly at him and shrugged. "It's a gift."

His heart melted.

"Well done, my love." He started to clap. He looked at the others expectantly and soon every person in the place was clapping. "Well done," he bent down and kissed her on the top of her head.

"Quit doing that!" she hissed.

"So, can we do the Salvaging thing?" she asked him.

Zarco smiled for the cameras, knowing that no one else in the room had heard her, and said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Not while I am King."

"Then I'm taking my ball," she holstered her gun, "and I'm going home."

With an elaborate wave to the crowd, she swept out of the room followed by Margot. It had been a full day, she thought she'd go down to the courtyard or perhaps she'd go and lounge in the spa. Or maybe . . ."Hey, Margot, where the hell is the bar in this dump?"

A lavish dinner was spread. A feast to celebrate the return of the Queen to her palace and her King. Her parents and her sister were there. They had even invited her alien friend so that she would feel more comfortable. They had been waiting several minutes.

Van Gar tapped with his knife on the table impatiently.

"So . . . where is she?" Lillith asked, lifting her nose a little as she glared across the table at the Chitzky.

"Erik in a dress," Van Gar mumbled to no one in particular. He felt about as welcome as a fart in church.

Zarco's face was a mask of calm. "Stasha, would you please see if you can find your sister the Queen so that we can eat this fine feast that the Royal chefs have worked all day to prepare for her?"

Stasha nodded. "At once, my King." As she was standing up, Drew swept into the room, a liquor bottle in her hand. Margot stumbled in the door behind her, obviously just as polluted as her mistress, but not carrying it as well.

"Van!"

Ignoring everyone else, Drew stumbled over to the table and plopped the bottle down in front of Van Gar.

"Wait till you taste this shit! Best shit I ever drunk, an there's a whole shit pot load of it. A whole cellar full."

Van Gar seemed to be having a hard time keeping from laughing. "What's so damn funny, ass hole?" she asked, slapping him upside the head in a playful manner which almost landed him on the floor. "Is my fly undone?" She looked down quickly to check it. "Not that I have to worry about anything flopping out, but you never know what might try to get in the door if you leave it open."

At the head of the table, Zarco clenched his fists. That she had showed up drunk was bad enough, but it was obvious that she would rather talk to her hair-covered friend than any of the rest of them. She'd rather talk to Van Gar than him.

"Please have a seat, Taralin, so that dinner may be served. We have been waiting for you." His patience was stretched as tight as his smile as he gestured to indicate her chair at the other end of the table.

"Wow!" She picked up the bottle in front of Van Gar and poured his glass full before she headed for the chair Zarco had indicated. She stopped half-way there and held up the bottle. "Where are my manners? Would anyone else like a drink?"

"We have servants for that, Taralin," Zarco hissed, his impatience pushing out his teeth like the air out of a tire.

She looked at the girl standing holding a tray, obviously wanting very badly to set it down.

"And you think they can do it better than I can. Let me show you something." She set down her bottle with care, and held her arms out to the serving girl. "Give me that tray!"

The girl laid it in her hands.

Drew took a half-step and set it down on the table.

"There! Now that wasn't so hard."

She heard Margot giggle as she picked up her bottle and proceeded to her seat.

"So, Margot, pull up a chair. There's plenty for everyone."

Margot gave her an appalled look.

"She's one of the servants, Taralin," Lillith rebuffed her.

"Well, then I guess she doesn't ever eat or nothin'. I have all these new things to learn. It really is mind-boggling."

She flopped into her chair and slammed her bottle down on the table.

"I've been wondering. Now that I'm Queen, do I have to shit anymore? Because I haven't yet today, and I was anxious to know whether that was just a Queen thing, or if I needed to take a laxative."

"Can't you do something with her?" Lillith pleaded with Zarco.

Zarco shrugged and was silent. He looked at Fitz, who sat on his right-hand side, as if pleading with him to do or say something to make the Queen instantly act more like the woman they had all known.

"My Queen," Fitz started, "with all due respect . . ."

"Why does everyone start their sentences that way around here?" Drew asked.

"My Queen, your behavior is inappropriate for this sort of affair," Fitz finished in spite of the interruption.

"Say what?"

"You're making an ass of yourself, Drew," Van Gar informed her. He took a slow sip of the wine and smiled. "It is rather good," he said, making his most pompous face. "I'm starved, do you think you could shut up long enough for us to eat?"

Zarco looked at the herald and nodded.

The herald cleared his throat and announced. "The first course is boiled salvoids with buttered carrots."

The course was carried first to the King. Zarco nodded approvingly, and then they carried the dish over for the Queen to view.

Drew looked at the thing that must have once been some sort of bird and made a face.

"Is it dead?"

"Yes, my Queen."

"Then why don't you cut off its head?"

By this point she was turning green. A combination of too much wine on an empty stomach, and the sight of the boiled bird thing with its head still attached was making her feel ill.

"Now I know why I have always preferred eating out of ration packets. You don't have to look at your food."

"Are the salvoids not acceptable, my Queen?"

For answer, Drew threw up on the floor and on the head waiter's shoes.

The waiter's features did not change.

"A simple 'no thank you' would have been sufficient, my Queen." He turned on his heal and headed for the kitchen.

"I'm . . ." Drew threw up her hands, and got shakily to her feet. "I hope my hurlin' all over the waiter's shoes won't ruin your dinner. I ain't feelin' too hot. Think I'll just go find a toilet and crawl in now."

She got up and stumbled to the door, Margot stumbling after her attentively.

The maids had already cleaned up the mess.

"Please serve the meal, Baxto," Zarco said.

"Oh! What has happened to my poor daughter!" Lillith cried. "What have those Lockhede animals done to my little girl?"

"They took out part of her brain." Stasha got to her feet. "For five years she's been living by the skin of her teeth. She's not used to all of this." She swung her arm in an elaborate arc over the table. "You all just keep pushing her, trying to turn her back into Taralin. Well, that isn't going to happen. The best we can hope for is that she'll learn to like us again. Yes, you heard me right. She like us, because we're the ones in the wrong. There isn't anything wrong with her that needs changing. We just need to get used to her the way she is. In some ways, she needs some refining, yes. But five years ago Taralin wouldn't have been able to save us from the desert, or bring in a damaged ship, or have freed us from the Lockhedes. Five years ago she wouldn't have been able to turn away that mob in the street. So, whatever bad things may come with the skills she has developed over the last five years, you can't let them blind you to the fact that Drew is twice the leader that Taralin was."

"How can you say that? She just vomited at the dinner table," Lillith said. "Call me old fashioned, but I think that goes beyond bad manners."

"She just wants you to hate her because she doesn't want to stay here. She figures the only way you'll let her go is if she makes it impossible for you to tolerate her."

Van Gar's head spun around to look at Stasha.

"Yes, I followed her and Margot when she went to talk to you this afternoon, and I overheard what she said to you," she explained.

Van Gar smiled at her, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. Why didn't she tell everything? That, she imagined, was just what the Chitzky wanted her to do. Make them kick Drew out now so that he and she could go off together. But that wasn't at all what Stasha wanted. She wanted her sister to stay here and be happy with her husband, the King. Zarco deserved to be happy after all he had been through, and Drew deserved more than life as a Salvager.

"She really said that?" Zarco asked.

"Yes, and the only way we're going to make her feel differently is to accept her as she is. For instance, the only name she knows herself by is Drewcila. Now I understand that in public we'll have to call her by her name or her title, but in private I see no reason why we can't do her the courtesy of addressing her with a name she's familiar with."

"How can you expect me to call my own daughter by anything other than the name your father and I gave her at her birth, some thirty years ago?"

"Thirty!" Van Gar started laughing out loud. "Thirty! Oh, she's really going to shit!"

Three days later, Zarco was no closer to a solution to the problems with his wife than he was to finding a cure for the woes of his country. He tried to cater to his wife's whims, but since the only goal she seemed to have in mind (besides driving them all insane) included turning Gildart into the Salvaging hub of the galaxy, she wasn't so easily accommodated. As for dealing with her as his wife, he didn't have the foggiest idea how to approach her.

Five years ago the fact that she had her own room had been a joke. Until four days ago, the bed had never been slept in as far as he could remember. But she didn't remember him, and he was no closer to having his wife back than he had been before he had left the planet to retrieve her. He was trying to be patient. Stasha kept insisting that all Taralin needed was time. But he had waited for what seemed like a lifetime, and pacing back and forth in his room every night was not helping him solve any of his problems, personal or political.

A few minutes ago he had been so sure that he was going to have her. They had been strolling around the grounds, he explaining what everything was, and she cracking jokes in her usual devil-may-care fashion. Then, without warning, her hand had reached out and grabbed his. Then she was in his arms, and they were kissing and caressing. He started leading her back to the palace and their room, and she was following without a struggle. Then she asked if her alien friend might have his own car. Zarco said no, and before he knew what was happening, they were having a row loud enough to wake everyone in the palace. Drew had stomped off to her room, and he had stomped off to his, and that had been the end of that. Now he looked up at the twin moons from his balcony and wished he had just said yes.