The Royal Treatment (19 page)

“Get the hell out of here, you traitorous piece of shit,” he ordered coldly. “If you leave now, our security team
might
not blow your head off.”

“Us, sir?” Nicholas asked, slowly straightening. He was very white, and very polite.

“Your mother’s family.”

“Domonov,” Christina hissed.

“Yes,” Devon said, barely glancing at them. “Twice removed. On my mother’s side. The queen is dead, long live the rightful king.” And he looked at Nicholas—this was somehow more frightening than the shooting—with naked adoration.

So fast,
Christina thought. She was too shocked by the sudden violence to feel horrified. That would come later.
It’s all happening so fast—cripes, he only pulled his gun about thirty seconds ago! This is crazy, it was so easy for him, this is nuts, it’s—

“My father is the true king,” Nicholas said, too young to know it was useless to reason with a fanatic. “You’re—you’re wrong. Your plan won’t work. And if it wasn’t my father, if he wasn’t the king, it’d be—”

Chris tried to shove David aside. It was like trying to bully a redwood. “Devon!” Chris snapped, her voice cracking like a whip. The man actually jerked around at the sound. “You’ll never get out of here. You’ve fucked up, it’s done. You’re done. Make yourself useful, and tell us what’s in the darts.”
And God help you, GOD HELP YOU, if the king is dead.

“If Prince Nicholas will accompany me, I will show him to his true—”

Ka-click.

Christina, David, and Devon, equally surprised, looked. During their brief chat, Nicholas had crawled under the table, found Kurt’s gun, crawled back, stood, aimed, cocked.

“You shot my daddy,” he said, and although he looked like a boy who was having a bad day at school, he sounded infuriated. “You shot my king and my sovereign, and you hurt my friend. So I’m thinking, it’s only fair if I shoot you. Except these aren’t darts. Lieutenant Carlson carries a nine-millimeter Beretta and these bullets leave
big
holes. I know—he let me practice with it. It’s okay, though.” He grinned. He grinned like a king on a battlefield, one who sees victory in his grasp. He grinned like Alexander, like Edward I, like Henry VIII, like his forbear, Kaarl Baranov, who got pissed off one day and won himself a country. “You won’t feel it for long.”

“Your High—”

Then, the final puzzling sound, a muffled
whump-cra-thud!
Princess Alexandria had slipped out of her shoes and crept on cat feet behind her distant cousin, picking up a banquet chair on the way. While her brother distracted the traitor who’d shot their father, she swung the chair sidearm, putting every ounce of her one-fifty behind it.

Devon did not so much fall down as go flying. It wasn’t like in the movies. In fact, Alex’s arm took the shock of the blow and it would be days before she could raise her wrist above her shoulder. The chair didn’t shatter.

Devon’s skull, however, did.

Alexandria sprinted to the far door, yanked it open, and screamed, “Alaaaaaaaaaaarm!” into the fair spring air. Meanwhile, David had reached his father, had plucked out the darts and was examining them. Christina bent and rested her head on the king’s broad chest.

“These are animal tranqs,” David said, puzzled. “I’m not sure exactly what kind, but they should just be enough to knock him out, or—”

“He’s not—his heart—help me.” She positioned herself and, as she had learned as an employee of the Carnival Cruise Line, began a closed-chest massage. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and—“Breathe!”

David knelt by his father’s face, eased his mouth open, blew a quick breath.

One-and-two-and-three-and—four-and—“Breathe!”

Another breath.

Most of her concentration was on the king, but faintly, on the far edge of her conscious mind, she heard Alexandria say, “Give me the gun, Nicky, okay?”

One-and-two-and-three-and—four-and—Breathe! And somebody check on Kurt—that asshole clocked him pretty good.”

She heard the click as Nicky popped the clip, as he ejected the bullet. Heard him slap the gun into his sister’s hand. Heard Alex saying, “Oh, Nicky…Nick…”

Suddenly the room was crawling with security types—all the guys who’d been diverted to the plane. And why not? It was their honeymoon. Nobody had tried anything like this in four generations. And Kurt had been armed. And they had been a small group; they had thought they were safe.

And Devon was—was a member of—of the family.

“Your Highness, the ambulance is coming. Let me—”

“Leave.” One and two and three—“Me.”—four and—“Alone! Breathe!”

Nicholas and Alex were huddled above them, staring down, their Baranov blue eyes huge. “He shot Daddy,” Nicholas was saying, pressing his face into Alex’s stomach. “He shot him to grab me!”

“He paid for it, Nicky,” Alex said, and though she was white to the lips, her words were cold. Christina, working up a sweat doing her closed-chest massage, shivered. “Anybody ever comes near you, they can say hello to a skull fracture, too.”

“I
t’s like this, Mrs. Baranov—Your Highness. Um, both Your Highnesses…” The doctor, though at the top of his field, had never met a member of the royal family before. Now the private room was filled with them. Alexander and Kathryn had arrived just after the rest of the party.

Prince Alex was gray-faced, but not too rattled to come up with,

“Sleep late for one day

Kidnapping attempts ensue,

What the hell’s going on?”

“Not
now,
Alex,” David snapped.

“Just give us the straight shit, Doc,” Princess Christina said.

“Well, Prince David was correct—the kidnapper was using animal tranquilizers. A combination of chloral hydrate and ketamine. It seems he has a contact at the Juneau Zoo—”

“Yeah, another distant relative of our mother,” Alexandria said bitterly. “Some vet or something. And she was soooo helpful when it came to silly-ass schemes. Her ass is in jail now, right?”

Carol, the head of the security team, nodded absently while listening in on her headset. The security team was jittery and slit-eyed and pissed. Recriminations could come later; right now, nobody was messing with them.

“Er…yes.” The doctor coughed. “The tranquilizers themselves wouldn’t have hurt Prince Nicholas and would have made him very easy to—um—transport.”

“Not to mention, they weren’t supposed to hurt anyone—kill anyone,” Carol said, thinking aloud. “Because—”

“Because regicide is still punishable by beheading in this country—that law’s been on the books for almost two hundred years,” Prince David said pointedly. “Devon wouldn’t have wanted to risk that.”

“Fascinating,” Chris said impatiently, “but why is the king still unconscious?”

“His Majesty had a severe allergic reaction to the chloral hydrate. He’s in a coma.”

Dead silence, broken by David’s strangled, “For—for how long?”

Dr. Sarett shook his head. “He could come out of it tomorrow. Or a month from now. Or next year. Or…” He shrugged helplessly. “He’s on a respirator for now, but we’re hoping he’ll start breathing on his own in…I mean…sometime.”

Just when Christina thought she’d absorbed the sheer awfulness of the news, the magnitude of what had happened, Dr. Sarett hit her broadside all over again.

At first she thought he’d dropped his pen and was looking for it on the floor. But then he was—was he? He was! He was bowing to her, to David. And Nicky and Alexandria and Alex and Kathryn and the security gal were all bowing, too. To them. To
her.

“Long live the king and queen,” Dr. Sarett said.

“Oh, fuck,” the queen said.

Queen

“I
t’s my fault,” Jenny said quietly.

“My dear Jennifer, don’t be an idiot. It’s
my
fault,” Edmund said.

“Both of you, don’t be idiots,” Nicholas said gloomily. They were in the king’s office on the north side of the building. They had been drawn there, royals and servants alike, to take comfort in a room so strongly stamped with the king’s personality. There were dead animals covering nearly every square foot of wall. It was calming, yet morbid. “It’s my fault. He was after
me.
He hurt Daddy because of me.”

“It’s my fault,” Kurt said. “A pharmacist took me out with a serving platter, for fuck’s sake. Anybody mind if I shoot myself in the head?”

“Are you madder about the pharmacist, or the serving platter?” Princess Alexandria asked. She got a ghost of a smile for her efforts.

“It’s my fault,” King David said. “I should have knocked Dad out of the way.”

“You were guarding the queen,” Edmund pointed out. “Your hands were full.”

“It’s my fault,” Carol, head of security, said. “We were so easily diverted to the plane! I should have left more men behind.”

“Hey, the guy had a
serving platter,”
Kurt said, slumping on the end of the couch so that his shoulders made a C-shape. “You can’t do much against a serving platter.”

“The fault is all ours

We would have kicked Devon’s ass

But we chose to sleep.”

Kathryn, seated beside her haiku-spouting brother, nodded. “Alex is right. If we’d been there, you would have had more help. We would have kicked Devon’s ass up so high, people would have thought he had two heads. But we slept late.”

Everyone stared at Kathryn, startled by such a long speech, then looked at Princess Alexandria, who glared back. “What? It’s not
my
fault. I’m the one who took out the bad guy.”

“Speaking of,” King David said quietly, “how is Devon doing?”

“Deader than shit, Your Majesty,” Carol said, not looking up from her Palm Pilot, across which a constant stream of data was running. “Want to send flowers?”

David snorted.

“Forgive me, but where is Her Majesty the queen?” Edmund asked. “Shouldn’t she be here with us?”

“She’s baking,” David said absently. He squirmed in his father’s chair.

Alexandria laughed. “You’re like Goldilocks, Dave. ‘This one’s too small…this one’s too big!’ Sit still, you’re making me nervous.”

“This chair
is
too big,” David said, and nobody commented.

The silence was broken by Kathryn’s hopeful, “What’s Chris baking?”

“A pie, she said.”

“What kind of pie?”

“Jeez, Kath! You almost never talk, and when you do finally speak up, it’s so you can find out when you can eat. Can you give your appetite a rest for five seconds?” Princess Alex snapped, smacking her just above the elbow. The outburst was so startling, several of the siblings stared at her.

Kathryn looked around for something to toss, gave up, and said in a small voice, “It’s a national crisis. I have to keep my strength up.” At everyone’s stricken expression, she added, “That, uh, sounded a lot funnier in my head.”

The door was thrown open and Christina walked in, carrying a steaming pie with the aid of two potholders shaped like pink salmon.

“Oh, good, the new caterer’s here,” Alexandria said sarcastically.

Prince Alex cleared his throat.

“Somebody’s touchy

Today it’s acceptable

Still: take it easy.”

Christina set the pie down in the middle of the conference table and pulled a knife out of her back pocket, and a pile of napkins out of her other back pocket, which she set next to the pie.

Edmund and Jenny, of course, were on their feet the minute the queen entered. “Good afternoon, Your Majesty.”

“Howdy, Jenny. Eds. Welcome back. Sorry your vacation got cut short.”

“It’s our fault this happened,” Jenny began dolefully. Her lovely eyes were rimmed in red. Hers weren’t the only ones, either. “I’m sure I would have recognized him…at least run him through our database…I know most of the Domonovs on sight…at the least I would have thrown myself in front of the darts…”

“Yeah, your eighty pounds would have made all the difference, Jenn. Listen up, everyone. Blame is a pie.”

“Blame smells like blueberries?” Alexandria asked.

She ignored the interruption. “It’s a pie. Everybody gets a slice. So here we go. First slice to me…I might be new to the royal game, but I’ve been cooking since I was eight. I ought to be able to spot a fake caterer…or a pharmacist posing as one. He wasn’t just nervous because he was about to do a dirty deed. He was nervous because he didn’t know dick about food, and he was afraid we’d—I’d—ask him something. In retrospect, duh.” She cut herself a small slice; the room instantly filled with the smell of sugary crust and hot fruit. She set the wedge on a napkin and pushed it aside.

“Carol, front and center.” Carol put her Palm away and slowly came forward. “Needless to say, Security’s been asking themselves some hard questions since this happened.”

“Your Majesty, I can assure you, such a thing will
never
—”

“Yeah, yeah. Eat your pie. Alex.”

“Which one?”

“Both. One for you, for sleeping late…” She sliced, plopped, handed the napkin to the prince. “Like
that’s
a big crime, but we’re all determined to take some of the blame, right? And you, Ms. Smug, you couldn’t have taken the bad guy out forty seconds earlier?”

“I despise you,” the princess said, but took her pie.

“Edmund and Jenny…for having the nerve to follow orders and actually take a vacation for once in your sad, sad lives…”

“Kathryn…and don’t you
dare
toss this…and Nicky…”

“Because they think Daddy’s not my—you know.”

“Right. And because you’re determined to share some blame. But Nick, I’m only giving this to you because you’d be mad if I didn’t. It’s really not—”

“Never mind,” he said, and sighed, and ate his pie, a boy not old enough to shave, or even stay up past ten.

“Kurt…”

“I hate blueberries,” he grumbled, but came forward.

“I don’t think he should have a slice,” Alexandria volunteered, her teeth blue.

“Bet your ass I should. That guy was twitching all over the place and I didn’t see it until the king was down. Stupid. I know better.”

“Where’s my slice?” David asked quietly.

“Oh, you’re being punished enough,” Christina said humorously, looking at him over her shoulder.
“King
David. Or prince regent, or whatever we’re supposed to call you. Don’t you think? Besides, you couldn’t be in two places at once. You decided to stay in front of me, and your dad paid for it.”

“Hmph.”

“There,” she said, setting the knife into the near-empty plate. “Now we’ve all got our blame. Eat up, every bite. Yum-yum. Then maybe we can put this bullshit behind us and get focused, you know? I mean, what the fuck difference does it make who was here and who got hit and who grabbed a chair and who jumped in front of someone and who was scared and who got shot? We’re dealing with the
now.
So that’s quite enough breast-beating. It’s boring, and we don’t have time.”

Silence, broken only by chewing.

“Blueberry blame pie,” Alexander said at last,

“Would be yummy with ice cream.

Such a tender crust.”

“Yeah, yeah. Next time,” muttered Chris.

There was a crash as Kathryn set her empty plate down, hard. “He’s right. Blame has an incredibly flaky crust,” she commented, her tongue flicking out to catch a blueberry perched on her lip.

“Thanks. Now—what’s next?”

Edmund set his napkin down and clasped his hands behind his back. He addressed his remarks to the queen. This was a pattern, established the first full day of her reign, that would continue for decades. “The king is in serious, but stable, condition. No change in his comatose state. Parliament is meeting in a few hours to confirm that David is regent, but it’s just a formality.”

“How about the bad guy? Devon Domonov?”

“His last name is actually Stephenson,” Jenny said. “He’s a distant cousin, so his last name is different.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s how he fooled us—what a criminal mastermind,” Christina snapped. “I don’t care what his last name is. Is he in jail or the hospital or what?”

“He died at 10:48
A.M.
Massive skull trauma.”

Everyone looked at Princess Alex, who nibbled her crust and stared back.

“This does present a…a minor problem,” Edmund began delicately.

“What problem?” David said sharply. “She defended her king and her prince. I was planning on giving her about a thousand medals.”

“Forget it,” she said with her mouth full. “They’ll set off the metal detectors when I go shopping.”

“Yes, but…Her Highness’s motive must be called into question.”

“Motive?” Christina asked. “I don’t—what? What’s going on? What’s everybody else know that I don’t?”

“I’ve got a master’s in physics,” Alex explained. “I knew the chair wouldn’t break.” At Christina’s and Nicky’s clueless expression, she elaborated. “Chairs never shatter spectacularly like on television. Most of them—particularly the ones around here—are made of hard wood. Very tough. It’s like hitting someone with an anchor. You know the anchor won’t break, but you damn sure know damage is going to be done. I did. I knew.”

“At any rate,” Edmund continued, “charges might be—”

“Absolutely not,” David said, and looked, for the first time, like his father’s chair might fit him. “My sister acted in defense of the royal family and, by extension, her country. The fact that the handiest weapon happened to be lethal, and she knew it, is irrelevant to this king and, I imagine, this family. Furthermore, I’m glad that treacherous fuck is dead, and if she hadn’t taken care of it, I would have.
No
charges.”

Edmund bowed his head. “As you wish, Majesty.”

Whoa,
Christina thought.

“Thanks,” Princess Alex said quietly.

“No—thank
you.
Hand me that last slice of pie, will you, Chris?”

Wordlessly, she gave the last piece to her husband.

“What’s next?” he asked with his mouth full.

“Parliament,” Edmund said, and Chris suppressed a shiver.