After dinner was when the real show began. LaGard and Lynette began to tell wonderful stories of their families and country houses and trips to the Loire Valley and such. Or at least they thought they were wonderful. The rest of the group, not so much. Antonio and Barnes kept sending notes to each other which made each other snicker while Terrence, as I had predicted, fell asleep. Sergeant Kazakov looked utterly confused and the only person really paying attention was Beamount. It wasn’t until world politics got involved that I actually participated in the conversation.
“I mean, I just don’t understand it,” Lynette was saying. “People are always complaining about world hunger. I mean, it’s not that big of an issue, people! It’s maybe a blessing in disguise. I mean, I wish I could stick to a diet. So you could say we are helping out the poor by not feeding them, oui?” That’s what started it all.
Sergeant K looked up immediately, looking slightly angry. Terrence woke from his slumber abruptly and stared at Lynette as though she had gone off her rocker. Kevin coughed awkwardly next to us, while Barnes and Antonio gawked at her lack of common sense and compassion.
I couldn’t hold myself back. “Um, actually, Lynette, world hunger is one of the biggest problems facing the world right now. It is a huge issue.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed before responding, “Well, why can’t they just grow plants to eat? It is really not that difficult. They are just lazy.”
“Um, in some countries they can’t grow anything, because of soil erosion. There are no nutrients in the soil, so the plants can’t grow.”
“Well, that is just too bad for them. I mean it is their own problem. They should move to where they can grow plants. They can’t be making the whole world worry about them. We didn’t do anything.”
I was done. “Yeah, okay. Excuse me, I’m going to leave before I lose any more IQ points than I already have, listening to her talk.” I pushed my chair out and stormed out of the dining room. Just as I walked out the door I heard LaGard mumble something and then Kevin say, “Um, excuse me, everyone.”
I knew he was going to follow me so I began sprinting, which was not easy in the dress I chose for that evening. I passed all the other servants rooms as I headed for the library. I shut the door quickly, when I heard the footsteps catching up. Moments after I had shut the door, it opened again.
“What the hell was that?” Kevin yelled in a voice that echoed throughout the library.
I rolled my eyes before facing him. “Were you listening to what that idiot was saying? It was ridiculous! World hunger not an issue?”
“Yeah, I know what she said, but you can’t go insulting her like that! It’s rude!”
“She was being stupid. It’s not my fault that her brain is no bigger than a walnut!”
“See, there you go again!” Kevin was getting really frustrated now. “Look, you can’t be running your mouth like that. You are going to be dealing with a lot of idiotic rulers of different countries, and I will be the first to tell you that some of them make her look like a scholar.”
I sat down in one of the chairs. I could see his point, but I didn’t want to hear it. “Well, since when did you become my mentor?”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve just said?” he asked, clearly exasperated.
“No, I’ve perfected the art of zoning you out, so I didn’t,” I answered, now looking among the shelves for a book that would be more interesting than listening to Kevin. I grabbed the first volume of A Comprehensive Survey of Precambrian Geology in the Greater Aleutian Islands. Bingo.
“God!” he roared, and I looked up to see Kevin throwing his hands up in the air. “You know, I’m starting to get the sneaking feeling that you just might not want me around.” Sarcasm oozed in his tone.
I leaned forward in the chair, trying to look oh-so sweet and attentive to whatever he had to say. “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner here at today’s episode of The Pity Party! Good job. And there are even sometimes I wish that you were dead! Then I wouldn’t have to listen to you!”
The minute the words left my mouth I started to feel rotten. It came out a lot harsher than I wanted. You never want to wish someone dead, especially someone you know, and you especially never want to say it to their face. I should have known that better than anyone else. I was about to say something, anything--a stumbling apology, I suppose--and so was Kevin, probably a bitter rebuttal, when the floor suddenly shook. A loud noise came from outside and it sounded like there was screaming too.
“What the hell was that?” I shouted. The noises suddenly became louder. Again I felt another tremor under my feet as Kevin and I gingerly made our way to the door. The scene that awaited us outside the library was truly frightening.
In the hallway were about thirty people running away from the dining room. A few of them were servants coming out of their bedrooms to see what was going on, but most were the dinner guests running in our direction. But what were they running from? The doors of the dining hall were open and this daunting black smoke spilled out, as another tremor shook the floor. The guests were covering their mouths as they ran past us. Kevin looked down the hallway and then caught the arm of one of the men from dinner.
“What’s going on?” Kevin yelled, as loud noises came out of the dining hall. It had an ominous crunching sound that made me think parts of the ceiling were falling down.
“There…there was a…bomb. I think…first this noise and then the whole room shook and…there’s more, though. Watch yourselves.” Then he took off.
Both Kevin and I watched the little man run by, when another bomb suddenly went off. This one had to be closer than the other ones, because the tremors sent us falling to the floor. When I landed I felt something hit the top of my head, probably a big chunk of ceiling plaster, though it wasn’t as painful as I thought that would be. I felt it lift off my head and I saw that it wasn’t the ceiling at all; it was Kevin’s body protecting me from the bit of stone that had flown towards us. I noticed that his left hand was covered in blood, and there was a horrifying gash on the side of his face.
He pulled me to my feet and grabbed both of my shoulders. He looked me straight in the eyes and yelled over all the noise, “You need to get out of here now! Follow these people and try to find Barnes or Antonio. Once you do, tell them to bring you to the Quarantine Room.” He let go of my shoulders and tore off in the other direction.
Panic swept over me as I realized the danger I was in. “Wait!” I shouted, grabbing his bloody dinner jacket sleeve, “Where’re you going?!”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him so I could hear over the din of screaming and blasts. “I have to go and find where the source is. It’s part of my job. Now go!” He let go of me and turned again, but before he did I was able to hear him yell back at me, “Hell, you might actually get your wish tonight!” And then he was gone in the swarm of fleeing people.
I stood there for several moments before running away from the chaos. I found it much easier to run now that the hem of my dress was ripped from my fall. Still, I couldn’t help but look back several times. Almost immediately I ran into Antonio.
“Anya! There you are! Come on, you have to come with me!” he caught hold of my arm and started to pull me towards safety. “Hurry, you have to get out of here!”
Suddenly another blast erupted within the halls. I suddenly turned to the direction that it had come from. Kevin was there. He was right there!
The next thing I knew, I ripped my arm away from Antonio and was running towards the dining hall. He called my name, imploring me to come back, but I ignored him and ran. All I could hear were the thoughts in my head. Kevin was exactly where the explosion had been. He thought that I wanted him dead, and now I couldn’t believe I’d said that to him.
I broke through the crowd of the palace staff, many of them covered in soot and rubble, and many of them bleeding. I kept looking for Kevin. He had to be here, he had to!
I was still running when I heard someo
ne yell, “Everyone clear out! There might be another one! Everyone clear!”
It was his voice. People pushed past me but I fought through, heading in the direction of the voice. I kept looking for the blonde bob that I had grown to known.
I suddenly found him, helping a fallen man up from the floor. “Kevin,” I said, and he looked up at me.
“Anya! What are you…”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean what I said! I don’t want you dead!” Tears were running down my face, either from emotion or the fumes from the explosives, or both.
“Okay,” he said, “I know that, but you didn’t have to put yourself in danger to--”
Suddenly my feet gave out and I felt myself fall. Kevin swooped in and grabbed me before I hit the ground. Then we started moving as I began to slip in and out of reality. When I looked up, I saw the hall flying past us as Kevin sprinting down it with me in his arms. Then the last bomb went off and I blacked out.
* * *
I could hear voices around me as I came out of my daze. I opened my eyes and, after they adjusted to the light, I saw that I was in my bedroom. I sat up slowly, my head throbbing at the slightest movement, and looked around. Terrence was pacing back forth, shaking his head in disagreement and Mari and Avery were scurrying, with a look of terror on their face.
Kevin was asleep in a chair in the corner of my room. It looked as though he hadn’t left it in days. There was a rather large cut on the side of his face and his arm was bandaged. I felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that he had been hurt while protecting me.
A sudden shout came from the living room. I quickly got out of bed, realizing about a second later what a mistake that had been. My legs ached and I almost fell. I looked over and Kevin was up too, running to my side in case I happened to stumble.
We made our way to the living room, where Antonio and Barnes were getting a severe dressing-down from LaGard.
“But what if something had happened?” bellowed LaGard, turning red-faced in anger.
Antonio and Barnes just stood there, taking every blow that LaGard threw at them.
“Well, then, you two are fired!” he said ever so bluntly, and turned for the door.
I heard a gasp behind me. I didn’t even need to turn around to know that Mari and Avery were there, probably already on the verge of tears. I decided to step in at this point. I didn’t want any new bodyguards. I took a very painful step down and approached the situation.
“What’s going on here?” I asked--or rather, croaked. I must have lost my voice while yelling over the bombing.
“Ce qui?” LaGard said, turning around. “Princess, I didn’t see you there. I was just--”
“Firing my bodyguards?” I finished.
LaGard seemed a little taken aback, but he recovered and stammered out, “My dear, you see, they didn’t protect you like they are supposed to.” He threw a glare at the two in front of him. “They let you go back towards the bombing.”
“You’re mistaken,” I said. “Antonio and Barnes tried to stop me, but I ordered them to save themselves. I had to go back.”
I kept my eyes on LaGard, but I glimpsed Antonio looking at me in confusion. No doubt he was wondering why I would lie to save his job.
LaGard, too, was surprised by my response. “And why exactly did you run back into the danger, may I ask?”
I was stumped for the answer. I didn’t want to tell him that I was running back to save Kevin. “I…I was going back because…I felt as though it was my duty as a princess to make sure all of my subjects were safe.”
LaGard looked at me for what seemed like forever and an awkward silence took over the room. Finally he gave up. “Fine! You two can stay, but you’d better not screw up again.” He turned and stormed out of the room. Terrence followed looking a little more relieved than before.
Barnes and Antonio looked at me with a sigh of relief, while Mari and Avery ran past me and gave them huge hugs, tears streaming down their faces. I looked over at Kevin to say something, but he had gone. Then I found him making his way out the door, so I silently slipped past the love reunion in front of me and made my way out into the hallway. I knew there would be no way for me to catch up to him when my body hurt this much, so I decided to sacrifice my voice.
“Kevin!” I tried to yell. It worked. He turned around and threw me a little look before walking towards me.
I decided it would be nicer if I met him halfway, so I began to stumble my way over. I had taken about twenty steps before I tripped and fell right into Kevin’s arms.
I looked up at his face and he flashed me a smile. At first I was mortified that he might think I had deliberately fallen into his arms. But that idea alone struck me as so preposterous and funny--that I’d chase after him and stagger down the hallway just to fall into his arms, like some lovesick damsel in distress. I couldn’t help it; I started laughing. All along the poor guy had been trying to do his job and I sure didn’t make it any easier for him. But it was all behind us now. I knew things were going to be easier being his friend than his enemy.
Chapter 14
La Salle en Verre
Over the next couple of days I was very grateful of the new friendship that Kevin and I had created out of chaos. No longer were we fighting over the smallest of things, but laughing at them instead. Another benefit was that Kevin, being my personal advisor, could get me out of almost anything.
One day I was in the middle of a meeting with LaGard, who hadn’t been pleasant towards me since I had stuck up for Barnes and Antonio. Kevin came into the room and said that he needed me immediately. I had no idea what I had done, but after a few minutes of arguing, I was out of the room.
I followed Kevin down the hall, asking the whole way what was going on, but he wouldn’t respond. We kept walking until we came to my room. Kevin opened the door and I followed him in. “Kevin, why are you--”
“Sshh,” he said, and walked right up to one of the paintings hanging in my room. He turned around and said, “You’ll never believe what I just found.”
“That painting you’re standing in front of? It’s huge, so could you have missed seeing it before?”
He laughed and said, ”Watch this. Back up a bit.”
He grabbed one side of the painting and pulled it forward, like it was on a hinge. And there it was behind the painting--a door set into the wall, one foot above the floor. I made a low whistling sound as Kevin opened the door to reveal what looked to be a dark tunnel. In his hand he had a flashlight and motioned for me to follow him inside. Reluctantly, I followed him.
The tunnel was narrow and airless, but I sucked it up. I tried not to think too much about claustrophobia or the fact that this palace was old enough to have a dungeon. Was that where we were headed?
Kevin stopped and said in a low voice, “Watch your step. We’re going down.” I nodded mutely and followed him down a narrow winding stairway, my hands brushing lightly against the cold stone walls to feel my way down into--what, exactly? I was already beginning to regret this little adventure.
We continued down the staircase until Kevin stopped, his flashlight beam showing that we had reached another door. With a moment’s hesitation, he took the door handle in his hand and opened it, revealing the last thing I expected to see.
We were in the kitchen.
Kevin had found a way for me to get to the kitchen undetected in less than thirty seconds. I couldn’t help but smile. The two of us sat down and had a bowl of ice cream while I marveled about the new discovery.
“When you were in your coma,” he said with slight exaggeration, “I was sitting looking at that painting and it occurred to me it’s exactly the size and shape of a door. And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if…’”
“And you were right,” I said. “It’s not just the fact that you found a shortcut for me to get a midnight snack, but I can do it without facing the wrath of Ms. Rontes.” I took a large bite of ice cream and pointed my spoon at him “Maybe I’m paranoid, but
I’m convinced she has that kitchen door trip-wired. The one time I tried to sneak in here, she caught me fifteen seconds later with a chicken leg in my hand.” Now that I thought about it, I knew it was probably the truth.
Then a not-illogical idea hit me.
“Kevin, what if this isn’t the only secret passage in the palace? What if there are more? There could be hallways and rooms we don’t even know about.”
He pondered that for a moment before responding, “Sure, why not?” he said, and it was over that huge bowl of ice cream that we vowed to find every passage within the palace.
So we kept our promise and whenever we had an idle moment, went looking in the likeliest places. We found another secret passage that led from the hallway to the Scarlet Room to the hallway outside of Cherub Hall. Another was one from the dining room to the landscape painting outside of Lynette’s bedroom. Not that I was planning to use that passageway anytime soon.
I found yet another one a few days later in the library, when I noticed that the hands on the mantelpiece clock were perpetually at twelve o’clock. With a little experimenting, I found that if you turned the second hand to quarter past the hour, the bookcase in the back left corner of the room made a loud click, then jut inward and slightly slide over. Kevin and I both looked down the descending staircase within and neither of us felt like investigating. It smelled damp down there, and you could hear a dripping sound in the abyss that made us think of abandoned sewers or something equally unhealthy.
A few days after finding the dungeon (which is what Kevin and I were finally convinced the room below was), I was struggling through French irregular verbs while Beamount cursed under his breath. We both snapped our heads up when we heard a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Beaumont said in the most desperate voice I’d heard him use, obviously hoping this interruption would end his misery.
God Save the Queen Page 8
