Queen of Denial (25 page)

Instantly, the guards outside her door were in her room. Not far behind them was first Van Gar and then Stasha.

Drew laughed. "Quick, someone call the Royal exterminator and have the palace sprayed for slugs at once."

"Drew, do you know what that is?" Stasha asked, pale and shaken.

"The ugliest mother fucker I've ever seen," Drew answered.

"It's a brain slug."

Stasha turned to the guards."Don't just stand there, check the room."

They started searching.

"They come from the swamps of Dildot. If it was in here, someone put it here."

"Dildot's a long ways off, then?" Drew asked.

"Several hundred miles," Stasha said, gently chiding her sister's geographical ignorance.

"So, someone put an ugly slug in my bed. It's not the first time I've slept with a slug, and it probably won't be the last."

"It could have been," Stasha said, still shaken. "Brain slugs get their names because they crawl into the ear of their victims, eat part of their brains, and lay their eggs in the still-living body."

Drew made a face and then smiled. "I wouldn't have been a whole meal, then. I decree that from this day forward we call them Lockhede slugs . . ."

"It's not funny, Drew," Van Gar said hotly.

"Certainly not. I don't have enough brains left to spare."

"You could have been killed," Stasha warned.

"But I wasn't. So, why don't you two just lighten up?"

"The room is clean," one guard said.

"Then you'd better do something quick, because it wasn't a minute ago," Drew said with a laugh.

It was funny. Drew hadn't acted like Drew in weeks, and now that she was, all Van wanted to do was stuff a sock in her mouth.

"Go back to your post. In the future, you will check the room before my sister enters it. Including the bed," Stasha ordered.

"I've got a better idea. You boys just climb right in bed with me, and don't let any long skinny things crawl in me."

"You are the biggest asshole in the fucking galaxy," Van Gar screamed.

"Then you must be my son, because you're the biggest pile of shit I've ever seen."

Drew didn't even try to keep the smile off her face. She turned to the guards. "Go back to your posts."

"How can you make jokes?" Stasha wanted to know. "Someone is trying to kill you."

"You know, Stasha, you seem to have a real talent for stating the obvious," Drew shrugged. "Of course someone's trying to kill me, but they're going about it in really lame ways. So excuse me if I don't wet myself. I'm too damn tired to worry about someone trying to kill me. If I don't get some sleep soon I won't even know when they do it. So, go on and let me go to bed."

Van Gar started to follow Stasha out. "Not you, Van," she smiled appealingly at him. "I'm afraid to sleep by myself now."

He smiled in spite of himself, and shook his head. "You know, Drew, you really are a piece of work."

"Well I'm a piece anyway."

"I really can't believe you, Drew," Stasha screamed. "Zarco is who knows where, and you're carrying one with this alien right under the nose of everyone in the palace!"

"So, do you have a point Stasha?"

Stasha turned on her heel and stomped from the room.

"No, no. Like this," she stuck her thumb in the guy's ribs and twisted. He doubled up in pain and fell to the floor.

"Ooops, sorry," she smiled apologetically and helped him to his feet. Drew turned to the group of guards. "What is the first principle of Trigade?"

"Anything goes," they repeated.

"Very good. What is the second principle of Trigade?"

"Use your anger," they repeated.

She smiled and nodded. "What is the third and most important principle of Trigade?"

"Save yourself."

"Why?"

"Because you can't hold your post if you're dead."

"And?"

"Being dead sucks."

"Very good. Now, I'm going to show you a couple of more moves, and then we'll break."

She was half-way through the first exercise when someone screamed, "What are you doing now?"

Drew smiled and wiped her face on the towel that Margot attentively handed her. "Take over for me, would you, Van?"

She went over to Facto. "What are you doing down here? Slumming?" She asked.

"Please tell me that you were not teaching the King's Royal Guard Trigade," Facto intoned heavily.

"I was not teaching the King's Royal Guard Trigade," she said.

"Good," Facto sighed with relief. "Some urgent business needs your attention."

"What?" She obviously didn't really care.

Facto shrugged. "All I was told was that it was urgent."

"What is the fourth rule of Trigade?" Van Gar bellowed.

"There is no such thing as safety in numbers," the guards bellowed back. Facto gave Drew a hard look.

Drew shrugged and smiled. "You wrote the script."

"So, when did you start listening to me?" Facto shook his head and started following the Queen and her servant as they started back for the palace. "Do you really think it's proper to teach the King's Guard a fighting style which teaches self-preservation over all else?"

"Someone's trying to kill me, Facto," she said in a whisper. As if it were something only she, and now he, knew. The truth was that it had been splattered in the news all through the last week. "Trigade teaches you to be aware of every sound around you, a change in the breeze, a different scent. To run and get help if you sense danger, rather than to stand by your post, die, and leave a hole in the defense of what you are supposed to be guarding. To sound the alarm at the first sound instead of the first shot. Trigade is the fighting style of a country which has lived with war for twenty generations. The fighting style of a people under siege. I think the King's guard will benefit from the teachings of Trigade. And I, for one, will feel safer."

"It is, of course, your decision," Facto's tone was resigned.

"Excuse me," a voice called out. They both turned. A young page was running up behind them, obviously out of breath. "Councilor Facto, there is a problem in the household. The head butler has just had a terrible row with the cook, and they are both threatening to resign."

"If you'll excuse me, my Queen," Facto bowed low and at Drew's nod, he took off after the boy.

"I thought he'd never go," Drew said. Margot laughed.

"You really shouldn't go out of your way to anger him. He can be a rather pleasant man when things are going his way." Margot said. "Now that's odd."

"Yes, well that does seem to be the way it is with men. What's odd?"

"I thought I saw . . ." she laughed, "but that's not likely." She shrugged and they continued their trek to the palace. As they walked under one of the three archways leading to the castle from the guard house, Drew heard a sound from above them like the crack of a pistol, and she looked up just in time to see the keystone splinter and start to fall."Margot look out!" She pushed the girl one way, and jumped the other, rolling as she hit the ground. When she looked back at the spot where they had been standing a second before, she saw the huge keystone crash into the flagstones below, splintering both. The debris splattered all around her like a hard rain, and then the remains of the archway started to rock. She jumped up and ran, only aware of having done so when the stone arch crashed just behind her. She looked down at the rubble for a minute before she saw the body tangled in the wreckage.

"Margot—no!" Drew scrambled through the stones and pulled the stones off the woman. "Margot, can you hear me? Help! We need a doctor over here!"

"Margot, can you hear me?"

"My . . . Queen . . . are you all right?" Margot coughed out.

"I'm too fucking mean to die. Listen, kid, you're going to be all right. You're not going to be dancing in the near future, but you're going to be fine. Just lay very still."

The guards ran up, lead by Van Gar. "Turj, go for the Doctor. The rest of you, scour the grounds. Leave no stone unturned. I want to know how this happened, and who did it. Van, stay here and protect my butt."

"I came running as soon as I heard the explosion," he pulled his laser and scanned the whole area. Then looked back at her. "Your cheek is bleeding a little. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she brushed the dust off Margot's face. "Where the hell are they with the doctor? Margot, can you hear me?"

This time, she didn't even groan, and Drew quickly checked her pulse. "Hang on, kid."

She saw the doctor and his staff run out of the palace then. "Hurry, man," the doctor got there first and immediately started to check Drew out. She jerked her face out of his hands. "I'm fine, take care of Margot." The doctor knelt beside the fallen woman and was soon surrounded by his staff.

"Who would want to hurt Margot? They had to know she'd be with me . . . Hell she's always with me."

"I hate to say this, Drew, but . . . Whoever wants you dead doesn't seems to care who goes down with you."

"Then maybe you shouldn't stand so close," Drew said in a harsh whisper.

"There's a chance that Margot is the assassin. That having had her last attempt foiled she was willing to go down with you."

"You're fucking out of your tiny little mind!"

"Who else has access to your room?"

"You, my sister, and probably most of the cleaning staff. Margot is my friend!"

"Margot is Taralin Zarco's friend. She might well think of you as the person who murdered her."

"You are really grasping at straws. I tell you, Margot is no killer."

"How is she, Doctor?" Drew saw that Margot had been loaded on to a stretcher.

"I won't know till I can get her X-rayed. I think there is some internal bleeding. The thing that worries me most right now is the head trauma. OK, boys, get her to the infirmary. Now, about your injury, my Queen . . ."

"Fuck it. I can put on my own bandage. You just take care of Margot."

She looked hard at Van Gar and whispered. "I think Margot saw who did it."

They watched them carry her inside.

"Why do you think that?" Van asked curiously.

"She said something . . . she thought she saw something or someone just before the fucking arch blew up in our faces."

"Well, whoever it is, we know one thing. He or she is in here with us."

"How comforting. It could be anyone." She saw the look on his face. "Anyone but Margot. I've got to get up to the palace. There was some urgent shit I had to attend to there. Either that, or someone was just setting me up. Either way, I think I had better go check it out."

Van Gar followed her closely, his weapon in his hand. He didn't really think Margot was the assassin. But since she wasn't, that meant that the assassin was healthy and getting pretty frustrated. A desperate man was more likely to start taking risks, stop worrying about getting caught, and worry only about his objective-killing Drew.

The only person in Drew's office was Stasha. "So, what's so damned important?" Drew flopped into her desk chair as her sister vacated it.

"What's all the hubbub in the yard?" Stasha retorted.

"Oh, nothing. Just your normal, everyday assassination attempt," Drew drawled out. "By the way are you surprised to see me?"

"What are you saying . . . You think I would . . ."

"Nah, but I love that little hissing sound you get in your voice when you get pissed off."

"Your face is bleeding! Has the doctor looked you over yet?"

"I'm fine. Margot is hurt pretty badly, though."

"How badly?"

Drew shrugged, and Stasha shook her head.

"So, what's so damned urgent?"

It was Stasha's turn to shrug. "What do you mean?"

"Facto said there was urgent business here. He didn't say what. I just assumed you knew."

Stasha shrugged again. "There were a couple of calls from the Salvager centers, but nothing I couldn't handle."

Van Gar headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Drew asked.

"I thought I'd go check on Margot and bring you a report."

Drew nodded, and he was gone.

He stopped at the door and addressed the two guards on duty there. "No one is to go in this office unless I say. Do you understand?"