I cough and barely manage to keep down the contents of my stomach before asking, “Is it done?”
“Yes, and if you can manage, I’d like help arranging her dress so it looks right. Maybe even take one shoe off?”
I turn and see my mother again, now with a thick puddle of blood beneath the gaping split in her head. Still holding my fingers over my mouth, I say, “It’s actually in the King’s best interest to assume this is an accident. He knows I could easily point a finger at him for a motive for murder.”
“Really?” Saber looks a little skeptical, but I nod quickly, not entirely trusting myself to speak. “Then let’s hope we can get him to take a personal interest in this. Does she look ready?”
I look down at my mother—at the dragon in my life. The villain, sometimes. I adjust her skirts to make it look like she stumbled on the crumpled corner of the rug.
The tableau looks surprisingly innocent, and I hate myself for the relief I feel.
“Right now, your M.A.R.I.E. is our best friend and worst enemy,” Saber says, and I remember telling him something similar about Lenses not very long ago.
Lenses. “Her Lens!” I cry. “She always wears it.”
Saber curses, and I drop to my knees beside her. “Can you take it out without it recording you?”
“I have to at least check,” I whisper. I lift the corner of her left eyelid and find…nothing.
Emotions war within me. My mother always wore her Lens—ever ready to snatch up a few seconds of blackmail. Why wouldn’t she…? And then I understand. “She knew she was going to find something bad,” I say softly. “She didn’t want it to incriminate me.”
“Well, that makes our cover story significantly less complicated,” Saber says, all business, but he doesn’t grasp the significance. Maybe he can’t, having not grown up with her. Even in her convoluted way, she was protecting me. She didn’t want anyone to be able to discover whatever she was sure she would find in my father’s desk. A very childlike part of me wants to tear up at the fact that she had some sort of motherly consideration for me.
“Your security people will see that your mother came in alive,” Saber continues in his calm tone. “M.A.R.I.E. will have seen her crossing the atrium less than an hour ago, which will match the time of death. Your father will be seen sleeping in his room—no chance of foul play there. All surveillance will point to an accident. Which it was, technically.”
“Will that be good enough?” I ask. I don’t feel anything anymore. I’m empty and numb.
“Hopefully. Any investigator worth his salt will realize something isn’t right, and a competent autopsy—much less decent blood work—will raise even worse questions. But if we can get this all written up as a clear accident, none of those things will even come into play. With luck, the authorities will scratch their heads for a while and you’ll be long gone before they solve too much of the puzzle. But if, at any point, someone tries to take you into custody,” Saber says softly, “get to your dance man in Paris, take your money, and run.”
I don’t remind him that there’s nowhere for me to run—that this has been the problem all along. Instead I nod, reaching out to grasp his hand in a gesture that’s far more desperation than affection.
“Okay, when you’re ready, we’re going to burst out of the office and you’re going to com your security people, or whatever it is you do to report problems around here. We keep our stories simple and identical.” He puts both hands on my shoulders. “Good?”
“Good. I’m ready.”
It’s a performance worthy of the Parisian stage. I shout at M.A.R.I.E. for emergency response, and within two minutes security is there and I’m letting my pent-up emotions flow freely. Saber fawns over me like I’m a helpless female, and I let him—all the better for our new audience. He responds to nearly all of the questions on my behalf; hard to have differing answers when only one person speaks.
I expect things to be far more difficult, but within about ten minutes, medical aides in white scrubs have arrived with a stretcher. Less than an hour later, the security man who ran a quick digital scan of the room is handing me a tablet with a dictated statement. There’s a place at the bottom for each of us to sign.
Clean, fast, efficient. Easy. It’s baffling to watch the death of a human being swept to the side with so little fuss. Not even an elderly person who’s reached her time—a woman in her early fifties. I have to wonder if the simplicity of it all is down to the fact that I’m soon to be Queen. Everyone in Sonoman-Versailles knows how much we as a country benefit from avoiding political scandal, and, well, I’m nearly the most famous person at court now. If I’m connected to a suspicious death, the entire country could well be shrouded in suspicion.
One of the aides turns to me with sad-looking eyes and asks if I’d like to accompany my mother’s body down to the morgue. “It sometimes helps people achieve closure,” she says.