“And then you became friends?” Her thick eyebrows arched high, and I tried not to squirm under her scrutiny.
My mouth suddenly felt dry, and I swallowed hard before cautiously admitting, “Yeah. We’re friends.”
After the longest ten seconds of my life, Bekk said, “Good. Any friend of Bryn’s is a friend of mine.”
“Great!” I said, probably too forcefully, but the relief hit me like a wake. “I mean, yeah. Bryn’s great.”
Bekk set aside her pad of paper and settled deep into the chair, her left hand absently rubbing her round belly, and she propped her feet up on the coffee table.
“Bryn’s the only reason the Queen Regent Bodil is still alive,” she said, then quickly added, “Officially, everyone will deny it. You won’t be able to find any documents here about the secret meeting Bryn had with the Queen, before the war, warning her of the dangers of a compromised ally.” Bekk pointed toward the file cabinets and bookshelves. “But I know, and Bryn knows, and most importantly, the Queen knows.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked uncertainly.
“The name you gave me…” She paused to glance over at the notes she’d taken while I’d been telling her my life story. “Orra Fågel. She’s a cousin to the Queen Regent. I can give you the records we have here, but I can also tell you that all the information available to the public about anyone connected to the royal family will be highly sanitized and censored.”
I frowned, but I tried to remain optimistic. “Any information at all, no matter how minute, would really be so helpful. I need something to go on.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said with a sly smile. “I don’t have much to offer you here, but the Queen definitely does. And she owes Bryn—and me, honestly—a lot, but she’s done very little to repay us so far. Talking to a friend and helping her find her family, well, that sounds like a small step in the right direction.”
4
Friends
I spent the rest of the morning going through the scant records that the Omte had on Orra Fågel, but it was just as Bekk had warned me—there wasn’t a lot there. Birthday 1 September 1969, full name Orra Fågel, her high school diploma, and a long list of relatives, both parents and four older brothers, all dead. They didn’t even have her death certificate here. Bekk explained that most royal certificates were kept at the palace, although even she had to admit that the cousin of the Queen Regent barely counted as royalty.
“Plus, it usually goes the other way,” Bekk said. She closed the drawer of a long filing cabinet, after a fruitless search through death certificates.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Usually it’s a non-royal bragging about alleged distant relations to the crown,” she elaborated. “A third cousin telling everyone how their dad’s death certificate should be kept at the palace with other royalty, but it’s not included, and the crown doesn’t acknowledge them.
“But this is someone who should be overlooked—no offense.” Bekk glanced at me, and I shrugged. “And she’s all locked up in the palace.”
“That is weird,” I realized.
“Kinda.” She grimaced and put her hand on the small of her back. “But Bodil is rather paranoid, even by Omte standards. In her defense, having your most trusted adviser betray you and commit treason will have that effect on you. She really cleaned house after the war, changed up a lot of the staff, relocated records, and reduced public access to information.”
Even with the concerns about the Queen’s anxiety/paranoia, Bekk was able to deliver on her promise to get me a meeting with her. Before I left for the day, she managed to get through to the Queen Regent’s secretary and set up a meeting for the next day at ten A.M.
I had taken up enough of Bekk’s time—and I’d already exhausted all resources in the records office—by noon, so I called Pan, and he and Rikky zoomed over on the airboat to pick me up. On the way to her house, Rikky stood at the back of the boat, steering with a lever as we whipped through the trees. I didn’t feel stable standing up, so I sat on the wooden bench seat next to Pan.
“How were your adventures today?” I asked Pan, nearly shouting to be heard over the large caged propeller—or fan, as Rikky called it—that powered the boat through the swamp.
“I don’t know if they were adventures, but I think we had a productive day,” he said.
“Yeah? Did you find anything about the First City or Eliana yet?”
He let out a short, tired laugh and ran a hand through his windblown hair. “Not quite yet, no. But I did spend the day knee-deep in musty books reading up on strange superstitions and ancient obsessions.”
“That sounds intense,” I said.
“You have no idea.” He leaned closer to me, so he wouldn’t have to shout so much over the fan. To steady himself, he put his right arm behind my back, his hand on the bench on the other side of me so his fingertips grazed my thigh. “They were doing all these weird old rituals you’d associate with the Dark Ages, like seriously demented things. And it’s not even that long ago. Some of it took place in the 1800s, but most of the worst stuff was in the 1960s and ’70s.”
As he spoke, he moved in closer. My blouse had ridden up some, exposing the skin of the small of my back, and his forearm gently pressed against my bare skin. I tried to focus on what he was saying—it was important and very interesting to me—but when his warm skin touched mine (not an exciting place, sure, but a private one that rarely had skin-to-skin contact with anyone else), it made my skin shiver all down my spine, and my stomach filled with delighted heat. Even though I so badly wanted to listen to him, all I could think about was how his arm felt strong and warm, and how he smelled like summer sun and cedar and something sweet but earthly, like fresh herbs and lemonade. Suddenly the boat lurched to the side. Pan’s arm slid around my waist, catching me just in time to keep me from flying out into the murky swamp. Water splashed up over us, soaking my “nice” clothes.
“Sorry about that!” Rikky shouted from where she stood behind us. “Animals can jump out of nowhere out here, so it’s best to hang on.”
I dutifully sat up straighter and hung on to the bench. As much as I enjoyed flirting (or even attempted flirting) with Pan, I valued not flopping around in dirty water or being eaten by alligators even more.
When we got back to Rikky’s I called dibs on the shower, which would have been enjoyable if not for the major moral dilemma that arose when I came face-to-face with a spider.
Behind the showerhead, in the corner underneath the rusting eaves, was a fat garden spider in a huge web. My stance on most living things was one of “live and let live.” And I was determined to abide by that despite my very real fear that the spider would leap into my face and bite me.
This led to a terrifying, lukewarm, seven-minute shower. The one good thing was that I was so focused on the spider that I didn’t have any time to worry about whether or not anyone could see me naked through the shower curtain.
When I finished, I found Pan and Rikky sitting in the main room. A ceiling fan made from old car parts languidly cooled the room, and Fleetwood Mac played on the record player. Both of them were lounging on the couch and drinking dark liquid out of green mason jars.