Coronets and Steel

  I lay there, wrapped like a giant worm in the embroidered and fringed cover, and passively listened to distant birds scolding from high atop the sky-brushing firs, and to the pinging of the cooling jeep engine near my head. The footsteps crunched and clunked around me like a herd of wildebeest.

  A man said in Dobreni, “Reithermann’s dead.” And another, “Holy Mother of God! A knife through his throat—”

  Fingers touched my cheek and Alec said sharply, “Kim?”

  “Tony did that. I think,” I croaked. “So he’s handy with a knife, eh? I’m glad I didn’t know that earlier.”

  Alec knelt down beside me. I couldn’t see him but I could hear his breathing, hard and fast. “Here, can you sit up?”

  “Nope,” I said, as his fingers ran lightly along the sides of my exotic wrap and encountered the lumps my hands and wrists made.

  “What’s this?” he demanded, and then the scrupulous and gentlemanly Alec snapped out such a breathtakingly foul curse against Reithermann that I began to laugh helplessly. He stopped cursing and tried to check out my wound, but yanked his hand back when I let out a groan.

  “Kilber!” Alec rapped out. “A knife—now.”

  Someone said, “Is the Lady Aurelia hurt?”

  “There’s a bullet hole in her shoulder,” Alec snapped. “We’d better get her off this damned mountain fast. Kim, how long ago did this happen?”

  “Seems a couple of years.” I sighed. “Oh no,” I added as my hands were suddenly free, and Alec started to lift me. “I would rather not move for a minute. I feel much better if I lie still—”

  Alec cursed again, under his breath.

  “Russian.” I tried to grin. “Tony cusses in Russian, too. Do they have better cusswords?”

  He gave me a brief smile in answer, but continued, slowly and tenderly, to lift me up.

  I wished at this point I could have gracefully slid out of action: I couldn’t help grunting “Ow, ow, ow, ugh, argh, ow!” as I was shifted about, and wincing when Alec issued orders in the sharp voice that made my headache twinge in protest.

  He spoke in Dobreni, and the crashing in my skull sundered the connections between those words and their English or French equivalents. Running feet, answering shouts, several racing engines indicated a burst of activity, as I was sinking into irreversible passivity.

  When I opened my eyes again, the pearl colored morning light glared. I squinted against it into Alec’s face. We were in the back of a jeep, with me lying propped against him, my left shoulder free.

  Alec’s face was tired but alert; he too had the speckled shadow of a day’s growth of beard, but on him the sight was disarmingly dear. I smiled.

  He smiled back. “You need a shave,” I said.

  “Judging from the amount of mold you are wearing, you need a wash,” he replied, then ducked his head down. And for the first time he brushed his lips against mine in the lightest of kisses.

  Every nerve in my body flared diamond bright. I roused myself enough to say helpfully, “Tony ran that way.” I rolled my eyes in the direction he’d taken.

  “We saw him. Save your strength.”

  The jeep fired up, the engine so loud I grimaced and clenched my teeth. Once the driver peeled out of the castle courtyard and onto the pothole-dotted Dobreni mountain road I knew I was in for a rough ride.

  Cold morning air tore over us, the roaring engine at first drowning all sound. The bright sun shafted between the shadows of ancient trees and speared my eyes. Alec held me against him, trying to absorb the shocks with his own body. I began to shiver, longing for oblivion until I became aware of a voice penetrating the increasing haze over my mind.

  Alec bent over me, the wind whipping his fine dark hair into his eyes as he quoted poetry by the yard—Donne, Klopstock, Milton, in an effort to keep me awake.

  I listened closely, but the sense of the words began to fade. Alec wanted me to listen, to stay awake, and I wanted to, but I could not remember what the poem was about . . . it was his voice that I liked listening to . . . it stitched together the cascade of images, from bright golden hair hanging in curls on a robe a l’Anglaise to the sad-eyed ghost drifting out of the dueling weapons room below the sky suite at the Eyrie. Meaning—I sensed meaning beyond my reach, but if I could only—

  The jeep lurched, and I jerked awake.

  “I got it,” I said, struggling to sit up, to make him understand. “I didn’t tell them. The treasure. You showed me—didn’t you?” I peered up but I could not find his face in the fast-gathering darkness . . . wasn’t it dawn? “I’m not bonkers. . . You showed me the treasure. . . Didn’t you?”

  “I did.” I heard that before the darkness settled over me like a blanket.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ALEC’S VOICE. Urgent. “. . . fever.”

  A woman replied, in good old, peanut-butter plain Americanese, “Fever’s to be expected. What worries me more is how much blood she’s lost and if any bones were hit.”

  “Noooo.” I gazed blearily at a vaguely familiar, cream-colored ceiling. It swam nastily, so I shut my eyes again.

  Alec’s voice again. “Shall I assist?”

  The woman replied, “It’ll go faster with some help—if you can do exactly as you’re told. No fainting.”

  “I’ve had enough experience with field triage,” Alex said, with a hint of a laugh. “Patching one another up when I ran with Tony’s mates on the mountain, back in the bad old days.”

  “Then scrub. Fingernails, too. Get that gory shirt off first, and when you’re ready there’s an apron in that drawer.”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned, chicken at the last.

  The female voice was now beside my head, warm and humorous and tender. “Hey. You relax and mellow out. Before we lay a finger on you I’m going to knock you on your can with my handy hypo. You wouldn’t feel a tackle from the entire Green Bay Packers.”

  And she was right.

  From time to time someone woke me and coaxed me to drink something, after which I slid gratefully into dreamland again. I slept and slept, and finally woke feeling less like cashing in my chips and more like figuring out where I was.

  And I needed to tell Alec something. That thought had persisted, with greater or lesser urgency, through the semi-waking and through my jumbled dreams.

  When I woke for real, I recognized the small, crowded apartment belonging to Alec’s M.D. friend Natalie. I was lying in her bed, my left arm straight at my side. My shoulder had quieted to a dull ache—though when I tried an experimental movement it twinged sharply.

  “Ow,” I said.

  I heard a deep breath. I turned my head. What I had thought was a quilt plumped over a chair was a person, curled up, asleep.

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” a sleep-husky voice said in that familiar American accent.

  “Nat?”

  “Yo.” She stood up, stretched, then yanked aside the curtain, letting morning light stream in. She was wearing sweats and a flannel pajama top. Her curly brown hair framed her face in a flyaway cap.

  She flung off the pajama top and pulled on a ski sweater. She was short, and though in anorexia-land she would be considered chubby she had a magnificent figure. A round face, generous mouth, brown eyes darker than my own; I took her to be my age but later, when I saw her closer, I noticed the laugh lines, cheekbones, and blurred chin of a woman in her mid to late thirties.

  “Almost seven,” she went on. “Are you always such an early bird?”

  “Nuh-uh.” I hesitated, then said tentatively, “Alec was here. Wasn’t he?”

  She was folding up her quilt, and paused to shoot me a wry smile. “He was here. Last night, yesterday, and the night before. I kicked him out at midnight last night. I hope he’s asleep now, but I suspect he’s probably over at the palace playing Stadthalter. You’ve created quite a stir, dude.”

  I eased over onto my right side and started to push myself up. “I’ve got to know what’s happened—”

  “Where d??
?you think you’re going?” She laughed, a rusty, pleasant sound. “Lie down. How ’bout breakfast in bed?”

  “I’m not hungry, thanks. But I have to know what’s—”

  “I’ve got all the facts.” She shook her head, grinning. “In some ways more than anyone. If you ever want the real dish, you get to know the local midwives, and I’ve got that wired. Tell you what. You lie down and let me play doctor, and I’ll answer all your questions. And if anything stumps me, I’ll send a messenger. How’s that?”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to sound obedient and polite.

  She stepped close, touched fingertips to my cheek, neck, forehead, then she slid a pillow behind me so I was sitting up comfortably. “Fever’s gone,” she said. “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Okay. Well, it hurts, but not nearly like it did. Thanks for fixing me up.”

  “You were damn lucky.” Her mouth was wry, but the expression around her eyes was warm and kind. “Close range like that, anything larger than that pocket popgun could’ve taken your arm off. Or you could’ve had a bone shatter. But I can see my exciting medical news isn’t what you want to hear. Hang on a sec.”

  She went to the window, peeked out, grinned, then she strode out of the apartment. Expert Dobreni echoed down the hall, followed by quick steps in the other direction. A minute later she was back. “Breakfast is ordered, and I’m fixing some of my Bunsen burner tea. With milk.” She sat on a stool and slapped her hands on her thighs. “What do you want to know first?”

  “Did they get Tony?”

  “Nope. Alec didn’t expect to, not after a couple of Tony’s guys covered his exit from the castle courtyard. Alec says Tony’s as at home in the mountains as he is in his castle and he was pretty much lost for good after that first chaotic ten minutes. But Alec’s letting a few of the Vigilzhi content themselves with a search.”

  “What happened there, at the end? One minute we were walking out, and that creep Reithermann was pressing a gun right here.” I touched my temple. “Then Tony dropped me and had a knife.” I winced, remembering. “I think it was in his shoulder. He was bleeding.”

  “Brrr.” She shivered. “That must’ve been a hell of a night, eh? Well, this is what Alec told me. Reithermann was going to off you unless he and Tony and you, as hostage, were allowed to leave the grounds in that jeep. At that point Alec’s men had used the keys they took off the duchess and had gone up some hellhole secret passage that Ruli pointed out, to a secure part of the house. Everything wrapped up, more or less, but the two head snakes and you. The two wanted to bug out while it was dark, and Alec knew once they got half a mile down the road they could dump the jeep, melt into the forest, and be gone for good. So they had a single chance. Reithermann had you covered with the gun, but he had to get into the jeep and so did Tony. At the moment they split, Alec’s lieutenant, this beefy old geezer—”

  “Kilber.”

  She grinned. “So that’s Kilber! I’ve heard about him. Been around here once or twice, last couple days. Anyway, he pulled off a piece of Bruce Lee knife-tossing, nailing Tony in the arm. Then Tony did a Bruce Willis by pulling the blade out and using it to nail Reithermann.”

  “I am so glad I did not see any of that.”

  “They gambled on Reithermann’s sense of self-preservation being stronger than his urge to shoot you if they got Tony down. And they were right. Too bad Reithermann was too stupid to figure out that Tony was more dangerous than any of them.” She chuckled. “Speaking of whom. They were counting on Tony not harming you, though Alec himself had a gun trained on him the whole time.”

  “What about my cousin and aunt? Aunt Sisi went to get help, is that what happened?” I sighed. “I couldn’t figure it out.”

  She went to the door. “Hang on. My water must be boiling. I just got back from England. How’s Fortnum & Mason crown blend sound? It’s the breakfast tea for the servants over at your Aunt Sisi’s, I found out last night. You’ll naturally be horrified, I realize—”

  “Oh, well, I’m totally used to first class all the way.”

  She laughed. “Back in a flash.”

  Back in a flash. It jolted me to hear home slang. As if I’m being pulled away.

  There was no time to examine this idea further; she was back, carrying a heavy ceramic teapot, the milk, and the honey in unmatching containers. “You’ll notice the Miller tea service. Eclectic. I call it neo-retro-fusion.” She kept up a running stream of jokes as she fixed us each a cup, then sat back and held hers in both hands, her eyes half-shut as she sipped. She had avoided my gaze during all this.

  Finally I said, “We left off at Aunt Sisi.”

  Nat made a face. “I was hoping you’d figured that out.”

  “Maybe I could if my brain hadn’t shifted into neutral. Tell me.”

  “Here it comes, then. She set you up, Kim. That’s the biggest pisser of all. I hate to be the one to slip you the good news.”

  “Set me up? You mean she shut me in the passage on purpose?”

  “More’n that. She set you up from the beginning—I mean, soon’s she laid eyes on you. Not only you but her daughter as well, but it was only you she deliberately put into danger. Maybe it’s best you didn’t figure out the scam the other night.” Nat shook her head, then sipped again. “If you hadn’t driven off with her she was going to have her butler tie you up so she could dump you on Reithermann’s doorstep in trade for Ruli. Since Tony’d lost control of the castle—and the situation.”

  My insides cramped. “She said she had no one else to drive her.”

  “I take it you didn’t find out that Danilov guy races the Le Mans in France every year, and one of those von Mecklundburg women has a Maserati.”

  “I don’t know anything about any of them.” I’d assumed they were all worthless because I didn’t like them. Heat worked its way up into my face.

  “Well, your Aunt Sisi didn’t want you to. I’m told she worked hard to make sure none of you got to know the others. Anyway Alec said he’d been suspicious all along that she knew where Ruli was, but there wasn’t any proof that would let him investigate. You can imagine the political hassles if he was wrong.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “His suspicions spiked when you showed up at her royal dump with your big news a week or so back. He said that was a real close call. He also said that her first thought was not of rushing up to get her daughter, it was of cooperation.”

  “Yes—I noticed that, too—but I thought it was her superpowered polite training. That and her willingness to cooperate to get Ruli back faster. Yuck.”

  “That’s mighty restrained of you.” Nat wiggled her brows. “I’da been ready to snatch her bald. But since he couldn’t prove it, Alec couldn’t tell you.”

  “He did drop hints . . . I think I see it now. He played social games with her. He also made sure I never went anywhere with her alone. Was she in league with Tony?”

  “Yeah, but Alec thinks she was running her own plot as well. She sneaked Tony into the ball, you know.”

  “He didn’t steal Percy’s costume?”

  “Those von M poops are all pretty tightlipped about it, but Alec says they were all in on it that night, which is why, though he had Sisi’s house watched, they smuggled Tony past. He was in the house during that dinner, wearing his own pirate suit. As soon as you were gone he got into the limo with them, in Percy’s place.”

  “So that’s why they wouldn’t take us. And I thought it was a snobbish objection to me sitting with the chauffeur, since my skirts were too wide for me to fit in with them in back.”

  “The duchess pulled a snow job on everybody. When the Vigilzhi ordered to keep an eye on them followed the limo to the palace, Percy walked over, mixing in with a bunch of party guests also walking, and came in the back way through the kitchens. The servants were too busy to pay any attention to a wandering party guest, except to shoo him in the right direction.”

  “So what was Tony doing?”

  “He hid o
ut somewhere in the palace while Percy danced with you, so everyone could see him at it. And when Tony’s guys were in place, they did the switcheroo. Percy confessed last night—he’d hated the plan from the get-go, and he was upset about you getting shot.”

  “So that’s why he got so drunk at the dinner. Nerving himself up. I don’t think cloak-and-dagger stuff is Percy’s style.”

  “Nope. Empress Sisi strong-armed him into it. Him and the rest—her brother-in-law Robert hates her as much as she hates him, I’m told, but she roped him in by promising he could have the dukedom if she won. He’s been encouraging Tony in his wilder exploits for years,” Nat added, giving me a wry salute with her tea mug.

  “Hoping he’d break his neck?”

  “Or that he’d walk into someone’s weapons fire,” she said. “Anyway, the plan was, while Alec and all the government biggies were prancing around in one room with their masks and ruffs, Tony’s gang would move in and pinch the lot of ’em. But none of ’em knew Alec had nosed it out and was ready. So all through the city that night, and in certain key points here and there, as Tony’s boys drifted in they walked into the Vigilzhi’s waiting arms.”

  I remembered those groups of men Alec waved to when driving me around—that had been a covert tour of inspection to make sure everyone was in place. But to anyone else, he was tooling about with his betrothed, showing her the sights.

  “Waiting arms indeed,” I said, appreciating how deftly Alec had played his double game.

  No, triple. For he had showed me—not Ruli, but me—the treasure.

  “Best thing was, they were so surprised there was no bloodshed. Not until the end. Thing is, Alec didn’t know where Tony himself was—assumed he’d be out leading one of the assault units.”

  “Not Tony.”

  Nat laughed. “I told Alec he should’ve known Tony’d have to be in the main action, and as for everyone knowing him, what more obvious than a disguise? Anyway, while the empress deflected Alec and tried to round up the council for Tony’s guys to grab, the other von M’s kept everyone else away from you so Tony could waltz you right off the dance floor and into his tentacles.”