My Enemy's Son (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 2) (25 page)

“Do what?  What exactly do you need to
do?”  I crossed my arms in front of my chest.

“Do you understand who I am?” he asked
morosely.

“No Senya, I don't understand who you
are!” I cried.  “I thought you were this strange kid who grew up and became a
brain surgeon who owned a big company that has hospitals and makes medical
stuff.  Now I see you are a drug addict and maybe even borderline insane.  On
top of that, I...I...I don't know.”  I didn't want to know.  I didn't want to
know why he was wearing this gorgeous better than Commodore's uniform and had
his picture on the side of a building.  I didn’t want to know why people kissed
his hands and sang his name and got down on their knees before him.  “I
thought…I thought you were just Senya.”  I swiped at a tear that forced itself
out of my eye.

He turned away from me, and pretended to
stare out the window which he obviously was not doing.

“I am the MaKennah ka Rehnor.”

“Pardon?” I coughed.

“I am the Crown Prince.”

“Crown Prince of what?”  I gasped and
collapsed in the seat.

“Rehnor.”

“I figured Rehnor,” I snapped.  “I’m not
that stupid.  But which part?  The blood sucking drunken cave dwellers or the
poofy silk wearing assholes who live in the big palace while the rest of the
population is standing outside wearing cardboard and eating rats?”

He smiled a little.

“You have a talent for stating things
quite succinctly.”

"That's irrelevant. What exactly are
you Crown Prince of?"

"Rehnor," he repeated quietly
and frowned.  "All Rehnor."

I started to laugh, the hysterical kind of
laughing you would do if your worst fears suddenly materialized in front of
you.  “That's ridiculous,” I said, cockily.  “I mean I can see you're all
dressed up like it but come on!  You?”  The silver light flashed in my face. 
He narrowed his eyes at me and his face became cold.

I was brazen though and recklessly
continued.  “You're weird Senya and you've got deformed feet and fangs for
teeth and you're blind and furthermore you're a doctor.  How can you be a Crown
Prince?  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of those Rehnorians dudes but
they aren't all weird like you.”

“That is enough,” he growled.

“And let me tell you something else,
Senya.”  I was definitely on a roll.  “You are no Prince Charming!”

“Charm is not one of your traits either,
Madame,” he replied.

“Madame?  What the hell is that, Doctor, I
mean Crown Prince, Sir?”

He tossed a cigarette in his mouth and lit
it, letting it flame up in my face.  I glared at him.

“Why just a cig?” I challenged.  “Don't do
me any favors.  Go take another toke from your bong or whatever it is you do. 
Tell me, does everybody on Rehnor know their Crown Prince is a stoner?”

He took a long drag and his eyes flashed.

“God,” I muttered and turned to look out
the window at nothing but blackness and an occasional dot of light from a dying
star somewhere across the galaxy.

He smoked his entire cigarette and then
tamped it out in his hand.  What was left of it then disappeared into thin air.

“Katie,” he said after a few more moments,
his voice straining to keep calm.  “Please, just let me explain.”

“Sure, go ahead,” I waved dismissively. 
“Explain away.  It's complicated I'm sure, but my small Human brain can handle
it.”

He rubbed his temples.

“Just explain this,” I burst out.  “Why
the hell couldn't you tell me about this earlier?”

“It never came up,” he shrugged.

“It never came up?” I repeated aghast. 
“It never came up?  Not only are you a dickhead, you are a total bonehead.  Not
once did you think to say,
oh by the way Katie, I'm a prince
?  Just
thought you ought to know.  We can go back to playing Starcraft XXII now.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.  “I am sorry I was
not more forthcoming with you from the beginning.  I am sorry I am not going to
tell you everything you want to know now.  This is what it is.  The two kings
are my grandfathers and I am their heir.  Both my father and my uncle were
passed over in favor of me.  My father chose to drown his sorrows in vodka.  My
uncle has chosen to attempt to kill me at every possible moment.”

I stared at him.  “And each time you got
almost killed you dropped in on me.  You just couldn't manage to share that
little tidbit about why you were getting almost killed?  Sheesh!”

“More or less.”

“Damn it, Senya!”  I pounded my fist
against the window.  “You lied to me!”

“I didn’t.  I just didn’t tell you
everything.”

Damn it, that tear was stuck in my eye
again.  I swiped at it, nearly poking out my own eyeball.  “Well it sure
explains why you feel you're entitled to everything,” I snapped.  “So what
exactly does a Crown Prince have to do besides kill people who annoy him?”

He sort of blindly stared at me for a
moment.  “I will become King,” he replied as if it were entirely obvious.

“Which is what?  Like being a pop star or
something?  Or do you actually make kingly decisions and will you do that
before or after your scheduled brain surgeries every day?”

“I will rule the planet,” he said, still
staring at me as if I was stupid.  “I will not be a pop star and unfortunately,
I will not be a doctor then either.”

I digested this for a moment, and then swallowed
it all in one big lump.  “The whole planet?”

“The whole planet, yes and...”

“And exactly how many people live on that
planet?” I interrupted.

“One billion, more or less.”

“And you're going to be king of all of
them, more or less?”

“Yes,” he inclined his head slightly and
looked annoyed.  I glanced up quickly to see if I happened to be sitting under
a chandelier.

“Ok.”  My own head started throbbing. 
Maybe this was all a weird psycho dream.  Maybe I never woke up from my head
injury last year and I was still in the hospital having hallucinations about my
surgeon.  Maybe my head was stuck under the Engineering console.  That would
sure explain the pain coursing through it right now.

“No such luck,” he mumbled.

“Wow.”  I jumped up and started pacing the
length of the passenger cabin for lack of something better to do.  “Sheesh. 
Geez.”

He sat where I had left him, eyes shining
at nothing, flipping a gold tipped cigarette between his fingers and rubbing
his forehead.

“I just can't wrap my head around this,” I
laughed, sort of.  “I mean, I don't know which is worse, you being a Crown
Prince of a whole planet or you being a stoner psychopathic killer.”

“I am not a psychopathic killer!”

“Try telling that to the girl with the
piece of glass in her head!”

“Katie,” he said sharply and now he
sounded really pissed.  “Sit down.  I have not finished discussing this with
you.”

 “I don't want to sit down,” I replied,
pacing and pacing.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  I glanced at my watch. 
Six hours twenty-two more minutes of hell in a spaceplane assuming I survived
that long.  If I continued to piss him off, I might not.

“I did not wish to kill them,” he said,
the silver light flickering at me.  “I would not have done so if I could have
avoided it.  I am not a drug addict anymore.  I was but not now.”

“Oh, so what was that you were shooting up
your arm?  Insulin?”

“No.  It was Horkin but I am not
addicted.  Just...just being back on Rehnor is so difficult for me.”

“That's the same Rehnor that you're the
Crown Prince of?”  I whipped around and headed back the other direction. 
“You've got to blow out your brains every time you go there?  Sounds like
you’re going to make a hell of king.  Too bad I'm not going to hang around to
watch it.  It could be very entertaining.”

“Please,” he begged and then looked at me
imploringly with his blind eyes.  “I need you Katie.  I need you to help me.”

“Help you?  Help you do what?” I
shrieked.  “Break things and kill people?  It's not exactly my area of
expertise.  I'm more into fixing things and rescuing people.  I'm not exactly
into ruling things either.  In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly a
princess and I'm certainly not Rehnorian.  I'm Human.  Gosh, I thought you knew
that.”

“There will be more than just Rehnor.”

“More what than just Rehnor?  You're going
to kill people and break things on other planets too?”  I was practically
jogging up and down the aisle now I had so much nervous energy.

“Please,” he cried.  “Stop this.  I need
you.”

“You need me to do what?”

He rolled his head back and the silver
light bounced off the ceiling.

“Do you really not understand or are you
just pretending to be ignorant?”

He was definitely pissed off.  I glanced
quickly at the windows which seemed to be fastened securely in place.  Of
course, there was no wind out there in space either.

“Ach, fuck it Katie!  If I'm going to be
the King then you are going to be the bloody Queen!”

I stopped my pacing and stared at him.  I
thought I was going to lose my lunch except I already did.  “I can't do that,”
I managed to choke out.

“Kari-fa!  Why the hell not?”

“I'm an Allied Spaceforce Commander!”

He slumped in his chair and held his head,
muttering something in some other language.

“Did you know all this back when you popped
into my bedroom twenty years ago?”

“Of course I did,” he snapped.  “Fuck
it.”  He tossed a fresh cig into his mouth and lit it with a flick of his
finger.  “Get out of here.”  He waved his hand dismissing me.  This is what
someone who is a future king could do.  They could order people out of their
presence when they got annoyed and if they didn’t go, they could slice your
brain with a piece of glass if they wanted to.

“Ok.”  I walked to the rear of the
spaceplane, retaining all of my brain.  I would have liked to go outside and
scream even though we were flying through deep space.  Instead, I went into the
back stateroom and shut the door.  I screamed there and when I was done
screaming, I lay down on the bed in a fetal position. 

What was this planet Rehnor?  I stared out
the window from my prone position.  It was an Earth compatible planet.  It was
not part of the Alliance.  It was also not part of anything else.  Rehnor was
just a dinky little planet of a billion or so people wracked with poverty and a
bunch of Neanderthals running the place.  They had light swords because they
were too backward to outlaw them but they didn’t have starships.  SdK had
better spaceplanes than the government.  At least this one was.  Hell, the
Karupatanis looked like they only had horses.

“A thousand years ago they were more
advanced than the Mishnese.  More advanced than the Human race.”

I didn't hear the door open.  He was
leaning against the doorway, a cigarette on his lip.

“Do you recall how I told you this?  They
nuked Rozari and left in their starships to the nearest inhabitable planet
which was Rehnor.” He exhaled the grey smoke.  “They have spent the last
thousand years de-evolving.”

“What about the Mishnese?”

“They are the descendants of the Sainted
People of Rozari.  They are called Mishnese after Mishka Kalila who brought
them to Rehnor and became their first king.”

“If you are the grandson of both kings,
does that mean you are descended from both the Infidel and the Saint?”

“Ay yah.  My mother was the Princess Royal,
Lydia Kalila.”

“But the people on Rozari don't know
this?  Otherwise why would they be making such a fuss about you being the
Infidel?”

“Only Kenak, Donak and Shelly know this.”

 “And they know you are this Crown Prince
dude?”

“Ay yah.”

“Shelly knows this,” I repeated.

“Ay yah.”

“And Thad?”

“Ay yah, Thad too.  Thad has been to
Mishnah several times.”

“What about Admiral Mattson?”

“He knows nothing.”

“I see.”  I pulled myself off the bed and
walked past him back into the passenger cabin just in case he thought that my
lying there was an invitation which it most definitely was not.  I found a new
seat.  At this point, I had tried just about every seat on this plane.  He
walked toward the front of the cabin and sat down across from me, stretching
his long legs out in front of him.

“I suppose it should have been pretty
obvious even to someone as dense as me,” I said.

“You did not wish to see that which was in
front of you.”  He took a long drag on his cig and blew grey smoke into the
clean cabin air.

“Look,” I said, wringing my hands. 
“Senya. I thought I loved you.  I really did, but I didn’t know you.  Besides,
I’m totally the wrong girl for this.  This is all way, way over my head.  If
you really were just Dr. Ron then yeah, this is something I could do.  I could
live on Rozari, I could help you manage SdK but that's not how it is. 
You're...you're this.  I'm not a princess.  I can't be a queen.  I don't know
anything about that kind of stuff.  I don't do bowing and scraping and besides
that I hate pearls.  You obviously think it’s okay for you to go out and kill
anyone that pisses you off because you're Mr. Future King of the planet but
that just doesn't work for a law and order type like me.  Besides, shouldn't
you be with some Rehnorian or Rozarian princess instead?  Isn't the whole point
of a queen to make the king an heir and a spare?”