Cecelia felt as if she could float out of her chair and up to the ceiling. Around her, rustles and scrapes and carefully muffled mutters indicated the legal actors reacting to the verdict. She pressed the keyboard and the synthesizer said, "Thank you, sir."
"Now," her lawyer said on the way back to the house, "Now you can start living again."
Cecelia let herself sink into the cushioned seat. Living again? This was far better than a few months ago, but she'd hardly call it living.
"Of course there's a lot of busywork stacked up," he went on. She knew what that was—medical and legal bills, that Bunny had guaranteed for her, but that she would now need to authorize. "It won't take too long," he said, in the tone that business people used when they meant less than a week. "As soon as the accounts are accessible again—tomorrow, probably, for the local lines, and within a week for the others. I don't expect the . . . other side . . . to make any trouble about it." From a firm with long experience in dealing with prominent families, he was not about to bad-mouth her relatives, even now. It had all been a matter of business, he had assured her. Nothing personal, just the need to keep the family assets from evaporating in a crisis.
Now, with her credit restored, with the ability to pay her own bills, and choose her own medical care, she was surprised to find herself as angry with her family as ever. She still didn't think it was only a matter of business; there had been some satisfaction at seeing the renegade brought low . . . and while Berenice and Gustav had not actually done the deed, they had consented to the humiliation she'd suffered far too easily. She longed to stride into Berenice's parlor and tell her sister exactly what she thought.
With that thought, she realized that in restoring her legal competence, the magistrate had unwittingly told her attacker she was alive, dangerous, and—worst of all—where she was. Panic stiffened her; she fought to reach the keyboard which, in the car, was out of her reach.
"What? What's wrong?" He was smart enough to hand it to her, and hit the power switch.
"L.o.r.e.n.z.a. w.i.l.l. k.n.o.w. I.D. w.i.l.l. g.o. a.c.t.i.v.e."
"Oh . . . dear." From the tone of his voice, he understood the problem. He should. "But—it's automatic when legal status is restored. At least she won't know where you are; that's not part of the system . . ." She waited impatiently for him to figure it out. "Except—she knows your sister. No doubt your family told everyone about this hearing." Yes, of course. And worse. She had respected the king's desire for secrecy; she had not told anyone at all what she knew about the prince. She was now sure, though she had no proof, that Lorenza had provided whatever it was that made the prince stupid. If Lorenza panicked, and started picking off Cecelia's relatives on the grounds she might have told them something, she might soon be the only person who knew about the prince.
It was going to be a working day, not a celebration, and she wasn't going to waste time on busywork after all.
Heris approached the Rotterdam Station cautiously. She still didn't think this was where Lady Cecelia had been taken, but just in case she didn't want to blunder into any R.S.S. or law enforcement scrutiny. Oblo insisted that Sweet Delight's latest identity would hold up to anyone's checking, but she preferred not to test it if possible.
The Station itself had a scuffed old clunker of a freighter nuzzled into one docking station, and two small chartered passenger vessels spaced around the ring from it. The Stationmaster, who ran Traffic Control herself during mainshift, told Heris to dock four slots down from the freighter.
"That charter's a bunch of high-powered lawyers," she told Heris, while explaining which coupling protocol they used—Rotterdam Station had no tugs. "Couldn't come on the same ship—not them. Ridiculous! Bet it comes out of our taxes, some way."
Two ships full of lawyers? Heris suspected they'd found Cecelia, and so had someone else. Several someones else.
"And now you. We haven't seen so much unexpected traffic in years. I don't suppose you want to declare your business?"
"Bloodstock," said Heris, inspired. After all, Cecelia was supposed to have had a training farm. "We hauled something for Lord Thornbuckle last year—" His children, when Cecelia was aboard, but the Stationmaster didn't need to know that.
"Ah. You're horse people?"
"Well . . . I'd hate to claim that; I've got no land of my own. I ride, of course."
"Over fences?"
"To hounds," Heris said, hoping this would work the miracle the doctor had mentioned.
"Mmm. Better come by my office, Captain."
Heris left everyone aboard when they'd docked, and made her way alone to the Stationmaster's office. There, she found a stout gray-haired woman with only one arm yelling into a vidcom.
"No, you may not preempt a scheduled shuttle flight, and I don't care who your employer is! We got people downside depend on that shuttle, people that live here, and you can just wait your turn like anyone else." She glanced at Heris, waved her out of pickup range, and continued the argument. "Or you can charter a plane, fly to the other shuttleport, and see if they've got room for you. Take your pick." She cut off the complainer, and grinned at Heris.
"You know Lady Cecelia. You know Bunny . . . right?"
"Uh . . . yes, Stationmaster."
"Forget that. M'name's Annie. Who told you she was here?"
"Nobody—a doctor over in the Guerni Republic said to start looking here because this was where she'd had the training stable. Frankly, I thought that was too obvious . . ."
"But someone would've heard? Good thinking. Situation now is she just got her legal status back . . . those snobs I was arguing with were her family's lawyers trying to keep her from it. Probably getting fat fees from managing her affairs."
Heris blinked. Cecelia well enough to get a competency hearing and reverse the earlier ruling? Perhaps she didn't need any more medical treatment . . . but surely she'd need her own transportation.
"By the way," the Stationmaster said, "you might want to avoid those lawyers. First thing they did when they arrived is show a holo of you all over this Station asking if anyone had seen you." She grinned. "Of course we hadn't, and we haven't now. You didn't tell me your name was Heris Serrano, and that ship out there isn't the Sweet Delight, or even that other name—what was it?—Better Luck. Where'd you get the new beacon, Miskrei Refitters over at Golan?"
Heris had to laugh. "Annie, you'd make a good match for one of my crew. Any way I can get transport down without running into those lawyers coming up?"
"Why do you think I told them they couldn't charter a special run of the shuttle? Down shuttle leaves in half an hour; they've found out its return run is fully booked, and with any luck they'll all be on their way over to Suuinen to catch the other one."
"Is there a young woman named Brun with Lady Cecelia?" She hoped so; maybe Brun could figure out what was going wrong with Sirkin.
"That blonde girl? Bunny's daughter, isn't she? No, she took off for Rockhouse a while back with Cory—well, you don't know him."
Heris wondered what that was about, but she had a shuttle to catch. "My second-in-command's Kennvinard Petris, and the other seniors . . ." She gave the Stationmaster the names. She almost named Oblo instead of Sirkin, but that would insult the girl, and besides she had an awful vision of what Oblo and the Stationmaster could do in the way of mischief if they put their heads together. She would not be responsible for that—not until she needed it. "None of my people should come onto the Station except Skoterin; the others were known to be part of my crew back at Rockhouse Major. I'll tell them, too." She called the ship, and explained quickly. Skoterin, and only Skoterin, could leave the ship for anything the others wanted or needed.
The down shuttle had only two other passengers, both obviously Station personnel on regular business. Heris tried to relax—the shuttle's battered interior did nothing to promote its passengers' confidence—and endured the rough ride silently. Sure enough, the shuttle station onplanet was almost empty; the clerk ignored her request fo
r a communications console, and simply led her out the door. A big green truck huffed clouds of smelly exhaust at her, and a thin dark-haired girl leaned out the window. "You for the stable? The . . . uh . . . captain?"
"Right." If the girl didn't say her name, she wouldn't, though she could see no watchers. The girl pushed open the other door, and Heris climbed up. Amazing. She had seen no sign of customs checks. Did they let anyone on and off the planet without even checking identification?
"Lady Cecelia's really glad you're here," the girl said, as the truck lurched off in a series of slightly controlled leaps. "Sorry about that—Cory was supposed to have fixed the transmission. It's the road, really. It shakes everything loose." She was already driving at a speed that made Heris nervous, ignoring the warning signs as she approached the road beyond the shuttleport. The truck leaped forward, into a gap between another truck loaded with square bales of hay, and one hauling livestock. Heris didn't recognize the animals: dark, large, and hairy.
"I'm Driw," the girl continued, as if she hadn't heard the squeal of brakes and tires, the bellows of rage from the other drivers. "I'm one of the grooms, and I always get stuck with the driving." The truck swayed as she put on speed, and overtook the hay truck ahead. Heris found herself staring fixedly out the side window; she didn't want to know about oncoming traffic. "Because I'm safe," Driw said, taking a sharp curve on fewer wheels than the vehicle possessed. Heris could hear its frame protesting. "Everyone else has wrecked the truck at least twice, and Merry—that's Meredith Lunn, Lady Cecelia's partner—said I was to do all the driving." She laughed, the easy laugh of someone who finds it natural, and Heris tried to unclench her own hands from the seat.
"Don't worry," Driw said. "We've got a load of feed back there; it'll keep us on the road."
Heris had a vision of the feedsacks reaching down grainy fingers to grip the road—or perhaps it was molasses in sweet feed—and felt herself relaxing. If she died in a feed truck driven by a crazed groom, it would at least be unique. No Serrano she'd ever heard of had done that. She began to notice the countryside—the gently rolling terrain, the trees edging fields fenced for horses, the horses themselves.
"How is she?" she asked.
"Lady Cecelia? Better . . . when she got here, she couldn't do more than lie in the bed and twitch. Now . . . she can walk a little, with supports. She can spell things out on a keyboard, and there's a voice synthesizer. She's ridden again—"
"Ridden?"
"Well . . . riding therapy, not real riding. On a horse, though. They tried to fit her with some kind of artificial vision things—looked like something out of a monster-adventure entertainment cube, metal contact lenses. She can feed herself, and things like that . . . 'course, I haven't seen all this, it's what I hear. You taking her away?"
"Whatever she wants," Heris said. "If she still needs medical care—"
"She needs to kill the bitch who did it to her," Driw said coldly. Heris was startled. Aside from her driving, she had seemed like such a nice girl, not at all violent. "There we are—see the gates?" Heris didn't pick out the gates, surrounded by a thicker clump of trees, until Driw swerved through them. Heris barely grabbed hold in time, but Driw seemed to think the turn routine.
On the gravelled road, or drive, beyond the gates, Driw slowed down a little and grinned at Heris. "You didn't squeak once—most outsiders do. That girl Brun, for instance."
"Were you testing me, or just being efficient?" Heris asked.
"A little of both," Driw said. "We're very fond of Lady Cecelia. Wanted to know if her friends were tough enough to do her any good. There's the place." The place: brick house and brick-and-stone stable yard. Heris recognized it from the holo in Cecelia's study aboard the yacht. Here, the horses were real, black and bay and chestnut and gray . . . here the stable cat lounged on a pile of saddle pads waiting to be washed; a dog sprawled in the sun. Someone waved to the truck and pointed. Driw swung away from the stable gate to follow a track around one side. "They want the feed in the old barn," she explained. "Won't take but a few minutes. You can walk through to the house."
Heris felt scared, and angry with herself for that. She did not want to see the ruin of the woman she had come to respect and even love. She reminded herself that Cecelia, locked in the dark in a helpless body, must have been more terrified, with more reason.
She felt her hands cramping and tried to unclench them. Cecelia was better; she'd been told Cecelia was better. But that single image she'd seen, of the motionless body, the expressionless face, stayed in her mind's eye. She could imagine nothing between that and Cecelia well . . . and Cecelia was a long way from well.
She walked through the stable yard, the forecourt, up to the graceful little porch on the big house. She felt she knew it; Cecelia had talked about it enough. But inside, it looked more like a medical center. Parallel bars and weight machines surrounded by colored mats to the right. Massive gray cabinets that might house anything at all to the left. Ahead were the stairs—and coming down, step by careful step, the tall, lean figure she had been afraid to see lying flat, helpless.
Over and under her loose shirt and slacks, Heris could see tubes and wires, the structure and electronic connections that let her walk. One hand clamped to the rail, and the other lay atop a boxlike machine attached to the wide belt around her waist. Her eyes looked odd . . . some kind of contact lenses, Heris decided, though they looked opaque. A headband flickered, red and green. What was that? Beside her, but not touching her, was a competent-looking woman with dark hair in a thick braid. She looked up and smiled at Heris.
"You must be Captain Serrano—we heard Driw's truck go by."
"Yes—I am." For an instant, she didn't know whether to speak to Cecelia or not; manners won out. "I'm glad to see you up again, milady," Heris said. Cecelia smiled. Clearly it was a struggle to smile; the movement of her face was deliberate. Her left hand moved over the top of the box at her waist.
"I'm glad to see you." A synthesized voice, only vaguely like Cecelia's, came from the box. "I heard you driving in."
Heris couldn't think what to say. She wanted to stare, to figure out what each blinking light, tube, and cable was for, but she didn't want to embarrass Cecelia.
"How . . . is . . . my . . . ship?" asked Cecelia. The voice still didn't sound like her, but Heris accepted it as her speech.
"She's . . . a mess, frankly." Heris shook herself. She could certainly talk about the ship. "I don't know how much you've heard . . . we had to yank her out of the decorators, bare naked, and make a run for it." How much to explain? "The king—asked a favor of me. It was hinted that my taking it would ensure your safety."
"And . . . you . . . did . . . it?"
"I'm working on it. Perhaps you'd like to sit down?" That ungainly figure poised on the stairs made her nervous.
"I . . . want . . . to . . . go." Go? Heris scowled, uncertain what Cecelia meant and unwilling to ask. The other woman on the stairs touched Cecelia's arm lightly.
"May I explain? You said it was urgent."
"Yes." Cecelia continued her slow, difficult progress on down the stairs. The other woman moved with her, but spoke to Heris.
"Lady Cecelia's competency hearing ended yesterday. She has recovered her memory of the incident that started all this some weeks ago, including who administered the drug, but she hasn't told the court yet. She didn't want that person to know she had the memory, because it imperiled her family."
"Back on Rockhouse," said Heris. "Where's Brun?"
"She sent Brun, as soon as she recovered the memory, to warn her family—discreetly—against the individual. Anyway, because of the competency hearing, the person who injured her now knows where she is, and because the magistrates ruled in her favor, her ID is now flagged active on the universal datanets. She has to presume the individual knows that, and will take action. None of us feel that Rotterdam is safe for her anymore. Passenger service is infrequent, and in her condition she still needs medical attendants. We h
ad thought of sending her off on the same ship that carried her lawyers, but that ship is known—"
"That's easy," Heris said. "The yacht looks terrible right now, but it's roomy and safe—and we're not using its original ID beacon. How many people will she need along?"
"But if they've seen you—at the spaceport—"
"The Stationmaster saw to it that no one did. The only one of my crew who has permission to leave the ship is a woman who joined us the day we left Rockhouse—they won't associate her with me or Lady Cecelia. Let's get things packed and on the way."
"Lady Cecelia," the other woman said. Cecelia had made it to the bottom stair, and the chair beside it. "How soon could you be ready to leave?"
"Now." The synthesized voice had no tone for humor, but Heris was sure Cecelia intended it. "Go . . . pack. Let . . . me . . . talk . . . to . . . Heris."
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