Had they marooned the girls in a lake? No, all that rain had probably made the water rise. They were somewhere inside, dry and safe. He imagined nooks and crannies cushioned with colorful pillows and rugs, rock-walled chambers where naked nymphs bathed in clear subterranean pools or streams. In all likelihood there was a way that wasn’t very deep. With his goggles on, he should be able to find his way safely around—ankle-deep water wouldn’t bother him, not in his boots.
Now that the hunt was over, or mostly over, he saw no reason to crawl under the hanging mat of ferns; he was dirty enough already. He kicked at it until most of it fell, revealing a hole large enough to get through if he stooped. That let more light into the entrance; even without goggles he could now see the shape of the first chamber . . . and hear more clearly the distorted murmur of girls’ voices. The other hunters would be surprised, he thought, to discover he had found the place himself, ahead of whatever time they planned to start the party. He might even be the first; he could see, now, that the bootprints he’d noticed stopped there, and backed out again. Of course anyone coming after him would know someone had gone in, but he wasn’t hiding from anyone—certainly not unarmed criminals.
The light coming from behind him made it hard to see, even with the goggles. Some things were too bright, and others hazed into murky reflections. He had to feel his way along the edge of the cave, so he chose to move to his left, where his right arm was still free to hold his weapon. Not that he’d need it, he was sure. The girls might be startled, but he had the patch that identified him as a hunter, and afterwards . . . He stumbled over something and bit back a curse. It would be much more fun to sneak up on them. The smell of cooked food grew stronger.
The first flicker of light blazed into his vision, and he pulled the goggles off, blinking. Now he could see nothing. Standing still, silent, he heard murmuring voices that might have been nothing more than a trickling stream—but not that smell. After a few moments, his eyes adjusted, and he saw a faint sparkle ahead, where some light source reflected from moving water. He crept through the darkness, smugly certain of what he would find. The light strengthened; he felt his way around a corner of the rock, and saw them at last.
His first thought was disappointment; he wasn’t the first to find the girls after all. The dark-haired girl had her arm around the lucky first-comer; the prince wondered why he’d preferred her to the more curvaceous blonde. His second thought stumbled over the first in a wave of righteous rage. Ronnie!
“You unspeakable cad!” he said. “What are you . . .” His voice trailed away as he realized that the two black circles were the bores of hunting rifles like his own. Both girls, blonde and dark, held them steadily. “You’re hunters, too?” he asked, with a half-nervous laugh.
Ronnie’s head came around, and he saw the dark stain of a black eye and bruised face. “My sainted aunt,” Ronnie said, in a voice that didn’t sound much like his own. “It’s the prince.”
“Gerel?” the blonde girl asked. She peered at him, but the rifle did not waver. Her nod, too, came without a move in the weapon’s aim. “It is. And you know what? He’s not on the list either.”
The prince took a deep breath. Whatever was going on here, it had to be irregular. “I demand to know what you’re doing here,” he said firmly. “I am here at the invitation of—” But that, he suddenly realized, he couldn’t finish. Ronnie might mention it; it could be embarrassing. He interrupted himself with an alternate line of reasoning. “You might introduce me to your—uh—young women.”
Ronnie gave a harsh bark that might have been intended for laughter but sounded more like pain, and the dark young woman touched him with her shoulder, not removing her hand from her rifle. The blonde one laughed louder.
“Introduce me? Heavens, Gerel, you’ve been dancing with me since boarding school.” He couldn’t think of anyone like this at any dance he’d been to. She was blonde, yes, but hardly stylish in rumpled pants and shirt, with her hair yanked back behind her ears. She looked older by five or ten years than he was, someone serious and even dangerous. “Bubbles,” she said finally. “Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter—surely you remember now.”
Bubbles. Ronnie. None of it made sense. If this was Bubbles—and he supposed it was, though he did not recognize her in these clothes, with her hair pulled back—then she could not be one of the girls Lepescu meant. Those girls would be . . . another kind of girl, from another kind of family. Not Bubbles the wild sister of Buttons, and Ronnie the wild son of a cabinet minister, and . . . “Raffaele?” he asked uncertainly.
“Of course,” she said. It sounded like her voice. The prince swallowed, and wished very much to sit down.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You’re wearing an ID tag,” Bubbles said. “What is it?”
He had forgotten the bright-colored tag on his collar, which transmitted a signal to other hunters. “This? It identifies me to other hunters.”
“Other . . . hunters.” That was Raffaele again. She sounded grim, nothing like the witty girl with the silvery laugh he remembered from the parties last season. “You’d better put your rifle down,” she said, using neither name nor title. That made him nervous, and he couldn’t think why.
“But if you’re one of us . . .” That didn’t make sense either. He knew the others; they had all been at the lodge. No women, certainly not these girls, and no Ronnie. He turned to Ronnie. “I thought you’d been shipped off somewhere for punishment.”
“Put your rifle down,” Bubbles said. When he looked at her, he felt almost assaulted by the anger that radiated from her. “Now,” she said, and he felt his arm moving before he thought about it.
“But this is ridiculous,” he said, not quite obeying. “I’m the prince. You’re friends. Why should I—”
“Because I have the drop on you,” Raffaele said. “And so does Bubbles. And you’re standing there with the same ID patch as men who tried to kill us.”
“Kill you? Why?”
“Drop it!” Bubbles yelled suddenly. Her voice rang in the cave, echoing off odd corners and coming back as a confused rumble. Rocks clattered somewhere, as if her voice alone had riven the stone. His hand was empty; he could hear the afterimage of the rifle’s thud on the damp floor of the cave. “You idiot, Gerel,” she said more quietly. “And I’ll bet you’ve led the rest of them straight here, too.”
Chapter Nineteen
Heris seethed inwardly. Of course she had no right of command, but it should have been obvious that knowing where the young people might be was important enough. She led Cecelia outside the room. There had to be some way—perhaps she could get hold of a flitter—
“Excuse me, ma’am.” A young, earnest-faced militiaman had followed them out. Heris nodded at him.
“Yes?” she said through gritted teeth.
“You said you might know where the young miss is?”
It took her a moment to untangle that: young miss? Bubbles, of course. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Why?”
“I’d take you over there to tell the captain,” the man said. “If you wanted. . . .”
Of course that’s what she wanted, but why was he being so helpful? “What about your boss?” she asked. He reddened and grinned.
“Well, ma’am . . . that Bortu, he just got promoted, you know. Never been on anything like this before.”
That could indeed explain it. On the other hand . . . Heris looked at Cecelia. “What about it? This—what’s your name?”
“Dussahral, ma’am.”
“This man says he’ll fly us over to meet the captain—want to come along?”