Elizabeth Moon - Hunting Party

George lay propped up in bed, looking like an advertisement for a hospital company: dark hair perfectly in place, fading bruises on his face suggesting courage without diminishing his good looks. Ronnie knew that on anyone else the yellow and green and dull purple would have looked hideous, but George’s luck seemed to hold.

“Ronnie!” His voice sounded the same, if not quite as loud as usual. “I wondered when you’d make it up here. You missed all the excitement.”

Ronnie stared at him. Missed all the excitement? Had no one told George about the admiral and the gas grenade, or the prince, or—

“My father’s on the way,” George said. He looked exactly as he had always looked, smug. Odious. Ronnie wanted to hit him, but you couldn’t hit someone in bed with a gunshot wound. He went in, nonetheless, holding a vague grudge but not sure how to let it go. Should he tell George about the prince? He thought he remembered it was supposed to be a secret.

George’s face changed, and his voice softened. “I—was really scared. You passed out on me, then they caught me, and those two—”

“Who?”

“The guards back on Bandon. I never saw the hunters at all, just these two men.”

“They’re the ones who shot you?”

“Oh, no. One of Bunny’s militia shot me, and it wasn’t an accident, either. I tried to tell Captain Serrano, but couldn’t get it across. . . . He was standing there, eyeing your aunt as if he’d like to kill her right then.”

“Did you tell Bunny? When you got back here?” Ronnie had an urge to leap up himself, right then, and go find his aunt.

“It’s all right. That’s part of what you missed. That’s the same man who tried to kill your aunt and Captain Serrano when they went to find you in the cave.”

“Oh.” Ronnie tried to remember if he’d heard about that man before. He remembered some things vividly: finding George unconscious, trying to build a litter, the storm, Raffa’s warmth against him in the cold, dark cave, that moment of sheer terror when he jumped for the gas grenade. But he had no clear mental map of the time . . . how long they’d been on the island, or whether they’d stayed on Bandon overnight or flown straight back.

“Your aunt plugged him,” George said, with relish. “He had the captain covered.”

“She would,” Ronnie said vaguely. He hated not remembering; it was like being very old, he thought. He had probably said things, and done things, without really knowing it. What if he had said something stupid? What if he had said something stupid to Raffa? Was that why he couldn’t remember seeing her in the hospital?

George sobered again. “It’s not that easy, being a hero. At least, it wasn’t for me. You—”

“Not for me, either. There’s a lot I can’t remember.”

“There’s a lot I wish I couldn’t remember.” George scowled. “I have never been so scared, so humiliated, in my life—not even that first term at school.” He sounded far more human than usual. “At least you didn’t have to scrub any toilets.”

“Not that again!” Raffa’s voice; Ronnie turned to look. She might never have been off the mainland; she looked like all the other polished young women who had come for the hunting party, and she looked like no one else in the universe. Bubbles, beside her, leaned against the door and grinned broadly.

“Now I can quit holding Raffa’s hand every night. You had us all scared, Ronnie.”

“Me? George is the one who got shot.”

“All George needed was a good surgeon, a day in the regen tank, and a personality transplant; my father could supply the first two, but not the last.”

“You’ll regret that, Bubbles—” George said, but it had no bite. “My reputation depends on being odious. And wrinkle-free.”

“Your reputation depends on your father,” Bubbles said. “Or someone would have beaten the odiousness out of you long before.”

“Unfair,” George said. Then he grinned. “Well—partly unfair. And I do resent the damage to my good trousers.”

“I assure you,” Bubbles said, in the same dry tone, “that you’ll be wrinkle-free and out of here in time for the Hunt Ball. If you promise to keep your mouth shut and cause no trouble about Mr. Smith.”

George made an innocent face that would not have fooled anyone. It certainly did not fool Ronnie or the girls.

“If you don’t promise—and keep that promise,” Bubbles went on, “I’ll make sure that someone slips the wrong stuff in the regen tank for your next treatment, and you’ll have wrinkles in places you don’t think wrinkles can form. Permanent wrinkles. Then you can stay in this room until you die of genuine old age.”

“And I,” Raffa said, coming over to take Ronnie’s hand, “will personally ruin every garment you own and send your tailor a certified letter giving your new measurements. Interesting new measurements.” She mimed the anguish of someone in trousers with a short rise, the problems of skimpy sleeves and a baggy, short jacket.

George rolled his eyes dramatically. “You might have trusted me. Lawyers’ sons learn some discretion.” The others snorted. He went on. “All right. I promise. No leading questions, no suggestive remarks, nothing about Mr. Smith or his . . . mmm . . . other identity. But how am I supposed to explain my disappearance from the noble sport of fox hunting?”

“We took the flitter to go picnicking, and we crashed, and you and Ronnie were hurt saving us. Very simple, very—”

“What about Lady Cecelia and Captain Serrano?”

“Unrelated, except that Lady Cecelia is the one who let Bunny know we were missing—just as it happened. We’re hoping to get past the Hunt Ball without the whole story coming out.”

Neil had pronounced Petris’s seat “untidy but effective,” and passed him into the blue hunt at once. Heris had little interest in riding to hounds any more, but also little choice; if she stayed home, it would be noticed, and tongues were already wagging. Cecelia, pleading age, could go out only twice a week; Heris had to ride five days out of seven. She knew Cecelia was up to something again—or still—because the Crown Minister stayed in the same days as Cecelia.

“I might just as well go back to the ship,” she argued with Cecelia one afternoon. Her horse had stumbled on landing from a wall, fallen heavily, and come up lame; Heris herself had bruised her shoulder. The fox—if there was a fox—had got clean away. She wanted to be back on a decent ship, where large heavy animals didn’t dump her off and then roll on her. Her leg wasn’t broken, but it felt reshaped.

“You should go by the hospital and spend a few hours in the tank,” Cecelia said. “You’ve had a hard fall, and you’re sore. It’ll heal.”

“We’ll have crew changes—”

“You can’t go until after the Hunt Dinner and Ball. We have to finish out this much of the season, or it will be suspicious. You notice that no one comments on what happened?”

“But—”

“But Mr. Smith is safely contained; I’ve offered to take him home since we already officially know. We’ll stay until the Hunt Dinner, and leave the next day. I always stay for the first Hunt Dinner.” Heris found this confusing, since in the books she’d read there was only one official Hunt Dinner per hunt club, but presumably Bunny did things his own way. And with such a long season, perhaps most people didn’t stay for the whole thing. Cecelia patted her shoulder; Heris tried not to wince. “Now go spend a few hours in the tank, and ask Sari to give you a good rubdown. Petris will be in the green hunt, Neil says, by the day after tomorrow, and you’ll feel much better by then.”