An Evil Guest

TAKANGA HA’I

“You don’t know whether the high king is here?” Cassie asked.

King Kanoa shook his head. “He nips in and out very quick, Your Majesty. With a private hopper and no need to watch expenses, one may do so. At times I wonder when he sleeps.”

“I’m wondering where. Does he have a house in this village?” She indicated the cluster of palm-leaf huts.

“That I shall show you, Your Majesty. Do I sound self-satisfied?”

“Just a little, maybe.”

“I feared it, though I come by it honestly. By His Majesty’s generosity, I am accorded my own apartment in the palace, a large and commodious one. I am the only lesser king in our nation who can make that boast.”

King Kanoa paused, looking thoughtful. “I offered to contrive a sedan chair for you in Kololahi. You graciously declined it. I offer it again here, and urge you most seriously to accept. The road up the mountain is long and steep.”

“But you’re going to walk?”

He nodded.

“Then I’ll walk, too.”

“You are a delicate woman, Your Majesty, as befits a queen. I am, as I’ve proven repeatedly, the strongest man in my village.”

Cassie decided to be charitable. “One who has no need to lose weight. I’ve been fattening on hotel food for ten days. If the high king were to see me now, he’d put me on bread and water, and hold the bread.”

King Kanoa smiled. “You are as beautiful as you are kind.”

“Thank you. I’m also fatter than I am beautiful and kind put together. I’ll walk. On the good stretches, I may joggle. That’s jogging when you jiggle.”

“The sun is warm, I warn you.”

“I see Okalani is still with us, with her parasol. Can she walk up? All the way?”

“You may make book upon it.”

Cassie set her jaw. “Then I can, too.”

“I propose a compromise. Let my folk lash up a sedan chair for you. You and I will go up there, have a seat on that log out of the sun, and watch ’em. They’ll carry it behind you. If you grow weary, you may ride. What’s the harm, eh?”

Cassie nodded, and King Kanoa gave orders.

“You didn’t have to threaten anybody,” she said when he was seated on the log beside her.

“I never do.” He smiled. “Now and then I may raise my voice, Your Majesty. That’s as far as it goes.”

“I’ve been watching to see if they resented me. They don’t seem to. Everybody smiles if they see me looking at them.”

“For the remainder of their lives — I trust I sound sincere, because I am very — they’ll boast of havin’ formed a part of your escort today.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” For a moment or two, Cassie collected her courage. “At least I hope we’re friends.”

“I’m your friend and your most loyal subject, Your Majesty.”

“And I’m the queen of — of paradise. I can’t get used to it. Maybe I will, eventually.”

“Here’s a coconut.” It had been half buried in the sand. King Kanoa pulled it out and displayed it. “There will be a little milk still, I judge, and the meat should be refreshing and delicious. If Your Majesty would consent to sample it?”

She nodded, and he gestured to a man standing just out of earshot. The man handed him a large knife, shorter and heavier than most machetes. King Kanoa’s powerful fingers stripped away the husk, leaving the hairy brown nut Cassie had seen in supermarkets. A single blow from the heavy knife decapitated the hapless nut. “Your Majesty will find the milk cool, I believe, though there’s but a swallow.” He presented it to her.

It was cool and delicious. She drank it and handed it back to him.

He split it with another deft blow and presented her with a bit of coconut meat on the point of his borrowed knife.

She thanked him. “I’ve been thinking about this place. People who aren’t smart, and I’m not, shouldn’t think too much. Only sometimes I do. Wally — the high king came here and made himself king.”

“He did.” King Kanoa nodded solemnly.

“He had to kill people to do that, I’ll bet.”

King Kanoa nodded again. “He did. Bad men and far too many bad women, perhaps a thousand altogether.”

“Not your people? What Hanga said was right?”

“It was. The Storm King gathers worshippers from every nation on Earth, Your Majesty. Too often they come here to be near him.” King Kanoa fell silent.

“He lives here?” Cassie shuddered.

“There’s a city under the sea.” King Kanoa’s voice had fallen, still deep but faint. “This is what I’ve been told. Haven’t seen it myself, and pr’aps no one has. It’s miles south, but ours is the nearest land.”

“He’s there? In that city?”

King Kanoa nodded. “So they say. He dens in the tower from which he ruled before the first man walked.”

“Wouldn’t archaeologists... ?”

“Be expected to go there, poor chaps. More would. Dive in suits or pr’aps little subs. A few have. Didn’t come back, eh? None did. Another brought a robot diver. Camera on it, lights and all that. Quite neat, you know. I saw it.”

“It didn’t come back either?”

He shrugged. “No one knows. Ship sunk. Lost at sea, eh? Never a distress call, so it was fast. Ever look at old pictures, Your Majesty? Woodcuts? Squid bigger than the ship it’s attacking?”

Cassie shook her head.

“Pity. Have a look sometime. They knew, back then. Not now. Been forgotten, and he likes it so, eh? Less trouble. No depth charges.”

She blinked. “Depth charges?”

“Like bombs, eh? For subs. Set your depth and push ’em off the ship. Might work — I’ve noodled it. Prob’ly get you killed, though. Couldn’t do it myself.”

“Only the high king could?”

“Bang on. Scads of pelf, eh? Filthy lucre. He could. He might. Storm King’s afraid he will, and that’s enough. If he — ” King Kanoa broke off to stare upward.

Far above them, a gray hopper had sprung into being, moving slowly south. Cassie, staring up as well, squinting through her sunglasses, could just make out the painted letters on its side: USN 1110. “What’s that doing here?”

King Kanoa chuckled. “Technically, violatin’ our airspace. We complain about it all the time. Doesn’t do a bit of good.”

“Are they doing it just to annoy you?”

“Failure, eh? I’m amused, not annoyed. You see, Your Majesty, I know what they’re lookin’ for, and I know they won’t find it. Don’t exist. If they’d ask, I’d tell ’em straight out. Not that they’d credit me.”

“What is it? Is it a secret?”

“Not at all.” King Kanoa chuckled again. “Gold. Our high king knows how to make it. I can see you knew.”

Cassie nodded slowly. “Somebody told me.”

“Told you right. He does. Radioactive, eh? Not much. Wouldn’t hurt you unless you had lots of it. But — ”

“Or wore it,” Cassie interrupted. “Massive jewelry would.”

“I suppose. I haven’t got it and I don’t, so I don’t care. But suppose there was a lot. Hundredweight or more hidden in a cave on one of these islands. I say suppose, ’cause that’s what they seem to think. Clever chaps could find it, eh? With instruments. Metal detectors, pr’aps, like shootin’ coins. Or pick up the radiation. Should work, eh? So they...” He pointed to the hopper. “Have ’em on board, and good ’uns. Goin’ to find our high king’s hoard, only there isn’t any.”

“There isn’t?”

“No indeedy. They should think a bit, eh? S’pose there was. Be dangerous to come too near. How’d he ship it out all at once? Lead boxes? Lead’s heavy as sin, and so’s gold.”

“I think I see.”

“So he don’t. He makes little bars. You could pick one up with one hand. Hides ’em in shallow water, all scattered ’round, so there’s not much radiation anywhere. Don’t have many anyhow, not at one time. When he wants ’em we dive down for him and bring ’em up. Off they go, one or maybe two. No more than that. Told me once he never keeps more than six on hand.”

Cassie thought. “Suppose somebody wants to buy a lot?”

“Oh, they get it, Your Majesty. But not all at once. One little bar at a time. What they do when they’ve got it’s up to them.”

LATER, when they had begun the climb, Cassie asked, “Why is the Squid God called the Storm King?”

King Kanoa smiled. “A legend, Your Majesty. Just a legend, though I happen to believe it myself. I’m a native at heart, you know, and blood will tell. He can fly, they say. Swim through the air, or whatever you want to call it. Hanga does it, too, and others. You don’t have to believe any of this.”

Cassie remembered wide leather wings and long-faced bats who rose like kites. “I believe everything so far. He can make it storm?”

“Bang on. He flies high and lets fly a cloud of ink.” King Kanoa paused, hiking up the steep slope manfully for all his two hundred kilos. “Had a class in astronomy once. Had to take it. Requirement. Clouds in space, eh? Dark clouds. Nobody’s sure what’s in ’em or how they got there. But I know, or think I do.”

Cassie shuddered, but said nothing.

“Ink blots out the sun, eh? Darkness over land and sea, cools the air under, and the winds come. Draws ’em, though I don’t know how. Winds bring rain, and the rain makes thunder and lightnin’.” He smiled. “Had a chap at Cambridge explain that once. Drops blownin’ up and down. Makes ’em charged. Static electricity. Ever stroke a cat in the dark?”

Cassie was still trying to think of a reply that would keep him talking when they rounded a point of rock and she caught sight of the palace.

Terrace after terrace rose up the topmost third of the mountain, garden terraces flaming with flowers and accented with palms, each with a white stone balustrade. There were white stone buildings scattered among them, buildings that did not quite look Greek or Roman, low and solid-looking buildings dotted with arches and striped with wide pillars.

“Oh, my gosh!” She spoke without intending to, and knew the inadequacy of any words of hers in the following instant. “Oh, golly!”

Close behind her, King Kanoa said, “Welcome home, Your Majesty.”

“I — I...”

“It makes me feel like that each time I see it. My people built it, you see. It was our high king’s money, that’s true. He furnished the materials and paid for their labor. But it was our hard work and our skill. And he’s our king, after all. We chose him, we lesser kings. The tourists... Well, he won’t let ’em gawk at it. I hope he’ll change his mind someday.”

The wind, and the sound of the surf far below, mingled with Cassie’s sobs.

“Don’t cry, Your Majesty. I can’t put my arms ’round you, ’eh? Mustn’t dare. But Okalani can.”

He spoke in his own tongue. Cassie’s shade vanished, then reappeared. Okalani’s arms, larger and more muscular than the arms of most men, embraced her; and she gasped and sobbed against Okalani’s soft breasts, breasts that smelled of sweat and the sea.

“I feel the same,” King Kanoa told Cassie when at last she had dried her tears. “Pr’aps I said that. It’s not my house, but I feel it even so. It’s the palace of our high king. Ever so many of us live in there to serve him, and I come ’round whenever I wish. When I do, my quarters are ready and waitin’, and there’s always somebody to welcome me.”

“The taxes...” Cassie gulped. “Not from you, I hope. From the shops and things in Kololahi? It must have taken a lot.”

King Kanoa’s booming laughter echoed from the rocks. “Not a dollar, I assure you, Your Majesty. No bl — No ruddy taxes here. I’m s’prised no one told you. Our king pays us, twig? Better ’rangement all ’round. Hires a good many of us, and slips a shillin’ or two to us lesser kings. To be used for the public good, as ’twere.”

Cassie could only stare.

“Good for us, eh? Steel knives, steel heads for our spears, cloth for the ladies when they’re goin’ to Kololahi and don’t want their bubbies showin’. Hospital for those who need it. Good for him, too. High king. Loved by his people. Got his ambassador at the U.N. All that.”

“I — well, maybe I do see.”

“King Wiliama ’Aukailani. That’s how the U.N. knows him, when it does — what I call him in public, too. Bill in private. No side, eh? William, the Sailor of Heaven. As decent a chap as ever I’ve met.”

“I — please, King Kanoa. Would it be all right if I rode in the chair?”

“What it’s for, eh? The chaps who made it would be hurt if you didn’t. They want to carry you and have been waitin’ ever so. Who carried Her Majesty to the palace? Why, I did. Me an’ three mates. All that, eh?”

The very painted chair had been unshipped from the catamaran. Bamboo poles lashed to its legs on either side (inside those legs, so that the seat rested on them) neatly fitted the broad bronze shoulders of two men before and two behind. These men, each of whom might readily have been a lineman for the Seahawks, carried Cassie and her chair with transparent pride, seemingly without effort. Okalani’s parasol, woven of green palm fronds, waved above her head like a banner; and she felt, felt truly and for the first time, that she was in fact a queen, chosen by fate to judge her people and to stand proudly before their gods as their representative.

“King Kanoa’s Tiny Penniman,” she told herself. “And I’m Mariah Brownlea. I only hope I never meet Vince.” But when at last she was able to tear her eyes from the palace, its beauty and its splendor, she glimpsed another mountain beyond it — a mountain from which rose a plume of smoke, soon whipped away by the wind.

“YOU are not to sit up,” a dark voice told her. “I am here and I will continue to talk until you wake and talk to me, but you are not to sit up. I have a silenced pistol, and I have these glasses so I can see in the dark. There will be a sound like the striking of a kitchen match, and a flash rather smaller than the flash of a cigarette lighter. A flash that will be gone at once. Before it is gone, the bullet will strike you. You may not feel it for a moment or so. Shock does that. Though you may not feel it, it’ll be in your lungs if it’s not in your heart. If you don’t want to be shot, don’t sit up and don’t scream. You’re awake now. How much of this did you hear?”

“I heard you say I wasn’t to sit up,” Cassie said.

“And why? Why are you not to sit up?”

“Because you’ll shoot.”

“Right on. I will. Do I sound like an American?”

Cassie nodded, wondering whether the figure at her bedside could indeed see her.

“Good. I am. I was chosen, in part, for that. I’m a fellow American, and I was chosen in order that you might know that we’re everywhere. Suppose I say to you — I wish to confirm that you are truly awake — number one eighty-one East Arbor Boulevard, apartment three-oh-one. What does it mean to you? Anything?”

“It’s my address. I live there.”

“You live there, but you may die here. Or there. To us they are the same. Who was Brian Pickens?”

“Brian Pickens?” She searched her memory. “Why do you want to kill me?”

“We do not. I’ll explain in a moment. We do not, but we will unless you do precisely as I instruct you. I will or somebody else will. You’ll be just as dead either way, Queen Cassiopeia. Can I call you Cassie? I’d like that.”

“No. Who’s Brian Pickens?”

“Who was, not who is.” The dark voice giggled. “He’s no longer with us. What a shame!”

“Are you a man or a woman?”

“I never saw you onstage. I regret it. One of us did. You danced a hornpipe in a grass skirt, with flowers on your tits. The very exemplar of royal dignity. As for me, I saw you in Kololahi. Your beachwear was amusing, I concede. It ought to have had a little skirt to hide your thighs.”

“I thought you were a man,” Cassie said, “until you laughed.”

“Would a man frighten you less? Then I’ll be a woman for you. The Sisters of the Secret Sea. How cozy! Have you recalled poor Brian?”

If I can just keep her talking, Cassie told herself, someone may come. Aloud she said, “I’m afraid not.”

“He was a paralegal, tall and gangly, with a big nose. I killed him.” The dark voice giggled again. “He had the apartment over yours, and — ”

“Oh, Lord! Yes, I remember.”

“Well you should, Cassie dear, since he died for you. His apartment is ours now. Should you return to your old home, you’ll find us above you. It won’t be pleasant.”

Cassie sighed. “It’s bound to be more pleasant than this. Who are you?”

“A member of a fighting faith. Can’t you guess our god?”

“You said something about a secret sea. So yes, I think I can.” Her thoughts whirling, Cassie tried a ploy that might, she hoped, release a flood of words. “It’s Hanga. It’s the Shark God.”

“Hardly, and you know better. An actress, with no more vocal control than that? Perhaps I may tread the boards myself someday. I couldn’t be worse. You know our god. Are you going to follow my instructions? To the letter?”

“It depends on what they are.”

“Not really. It depends on what will happen if you disobey. I thought I had made that clear. It also depends on the reward you shall have for obedience. First, your life will be spared. Second, you shall rule your little kingdom as its sole monarch, with no pernicious interfering husband. If you like men, you may have a hundred. Or a thousand. If you prefer women, the same. You will be subject, of course, to divinity. As we all are. You’ll find him a kindly master, though one whose precepts must be obeyed to the letter.”

“It’s that dirty Squid God.”

Something hard struck Cassie’s head, leaving her dizzy, in pain, and half stunned.

“You didn’t cry out.” The dark voice was approving and amused. “That’s very well. I would have had to shoot.”

“Early training.” Cassie felt her own warm blood running from between her finger. “My stepfather punished me again if I yelled.”

“A man after my own heart.”

“Yeah. He was. What did you swat me with?”

“The barrel of my gun. The barrel from which the bullet that will take your life shall come, unless you obey. Listen!”

“All right. I am.”

“High King Willy will return tomorrow. You’ll explain that you wish to swim in the sea, something your people do every day. He’ll agree, and have you carried down this mountain. You’ll return to the sea daily, or almost daily. In the sea, you’ll be instructed further, and tested.”

“Hot dog,” Cassie muttered.

“When your instruction is complete, you’ll speak to your husband of the bestial lust you and he hold so dear. You wish to couple with him in the sea, to couple alone amid the waves. By ‘couple’ I intend the satisfaction of his most dearly held desire, regardless of the form it may take. You’ll do it — there — however filthy it may be.”

“Let him suck my toes?” Cassie tried to sound serious.

It was ignored. “You’ll hint, oh, most enticingly, of the many delights you offer. He’ll come with you, and at the moment of climax he’ll be taken. Leaving you, glorious High Queen Cassiopeia, the black throne. Do you understand what I said?”

“Better than you do, maybe. Did you give that poor paralegal a fighting chance? I’ll bet you didn’t.”

“Nor will we give you a fighting chance,” the dark voice told her. “You’ll die like the stupid cow you are. A cow in a slaughterhouse.”

“Got it. Have you yourself, personally, ever had normal sex? I think you’re a woman. Not a woman like me, but a woman. So have you ever done it with somebody you loved? Somebody who loved you?”

“Pah! Fah!” The dark voice might have been that of an angry cat. “Juvenile posturing! Breeding! Do you think I want to learn what billions already know? My steel dildo is in your face. One moment more, and its ejaculation will blind an eye if it does not pulp your brain.”

Cassie glimpsed a faint gleam on the oiled barrel and grabbed for it.

The pistol fired at once, its weakened flash burning her left cheek. The sound of the shot was lost amid the crash and rattle of broken glass.

The pistol fired again as they wrestled for it. Then its owner had it and fired a third time, not at Cassie but toward a door that had flown open. A woman so large she filled the doorway screamed.

The terrace door, which ought to have been closed and bolted, was neither. For an instant, a slender figure was silhouetted there against tropical stars.

There was another shot, not muffled in the least and followed by three more in quick succession. Then silence. Cassie found her robe on a chair not far from the king-size bed.

The lights came on. “You are hurt! O dearest queen, where do you bleed?”

“I don’t think I do.” Cassie paused, waiting for some indication of a wound. “My face is burned, maybe.”

The maid spun like a bull in the ring and was gone before her flying hair had fallen to her back.

Cassie tied her belt and walked out onto the terrace. There was no one there, but an angry voice sounded from the terrace below. From the balustrade she saw an enormous man bent above a much smaller figure sprawled on the flagstone.

“Hiapo?” Blood trickled into her left eye. She wiped it away.

He looked up. “I here, O Queen.”

There was a faint groan, not Hiapo’s.

“Stay there until I get there.”

A wide stairway, far from steep, led from her terrace to the one below. Afterward, she could not recall taking those steps, only speaking to Hiapo across the sprawled figure. “You shot her.”

“I must, O Queen. She shoot at me.”

“Did she hit you? You’d be hard to miss. Move your left hand.”

He did, and she touched the place where it had been. Much more blood, warm and sticky.

“Give me your gun.” She held out her hand.

He hesitated, then obeyed.

She pushed down the safety, dropping the hammer. “I don’t sleep with mine. I guess that’s a mistake. Go find the doctor, Hiapo. Dr. Schoonveld. Send him to me when he’s through with you.”

Hiapo pointed toward the sprawled figure. “This one, O Queen, may overpower you.”

“While I’m standing here with a gun in my hand? I doubt it. Where’s her gun, by the way?”

Hiapo found it and presented it to Cassie, who dropped it into a pocket of her robe.

After that she was alone with the sprawled figure, which moaned from time to time, though not in a dark voice, and once struggled to rise. Cassie tried to craft an adequate remark now that they were alone again, with roles reversed. I need a writer, she thought, and remembered one named Moe Zuckerman. Moe could have given her the perfect line, but he was not there.

“Your Majesty?” Dr. Schoonveld was leaning over the balustrade.

“Here!” she called, and recalled saying the same thing in school.

He hurried down. “Where were you hit?”

“On the head, but my cheek hurts worse.”

For a moment his small chromed flashlight played on it.

“It’s a powder burn, I think.”

He nodded absently, already rummaging in his bag.

His nurse arrived, a tiny Japanese. After her, like elephants following a hare, came five hulking warriors with pistols and short black assault rifles.

Cassie dropped Hiapo’s pistol into her robe’s other pocket. “Look after her first.”

“There are times,” Dr. Schoonveld murmured, “when even royalty is not obeyed. This is one of them.” He swabbed her cheek with a soft something that he dipped into a fluid that was neither water nor alcohol.

“She’s dying!”

“That is so. It may be also that I kick her so that faster she dies.”

“She may be able to tell us something.”

“Lies, Your Majesty. Only lies she tells.” Dr. Schoonveld motioned to his nurse.

“I feel sick,” Cassie said, and as she spoke realized that it was so.

IT was almost dawn when she returned to bed. That bed had been made in her absence, with clean sheets and clean pillowcases. The drapes were closed over the window that the first shot had broken, though its broken pane remained. Outside it, a massive warrior with a black rifle scanned the terrace. She had expected not to sleep at all, but fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

In the corridor outside two men sprang to attention, their bare feet silent on the thick carpet, their rifles rattling as they presented arms. The door — hadn’t she locked it? — opened and closed again, softly.

She heard the snick of the bolt, and knew the embrace of large, strong arms and the spicy scent of some cologne. A rough voice, kind and almost familiar, said, “Go back to sleep, Cassie baby. You’ve had a tough night.”

And she did, feeling warm and safe.

HE was gone in the morning, but there was a note on the pillow next to hers.

Bill Reis held up his hand. “I’m giving you my word, Kandy. I will not attack the Storm King, or his city, with depth charges. Or attack them at all without telling you what I plan.”

King Kanoa nodded and thanked him.

They were gathered around a circular table in a room she had not seen before, King Kanoa, Hiapo, Reis, and Cassie herself. She had said not long ago that she could not be certain she had locked her bedroom door, but thought she had.

Now Reis returned to it. “What about the bolt? Did you use it, too?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then that settles that. She was carrying lock picks, though to pick that lock she’d have to be good with them. What about the outside door, Cassie?”

“I locked it. I know I did.”

Hiapo rumbled, “It was opened before the woman I shot came out, O High King. I see that it is opened. I was not watching when it open. I think our high queen does it.”

Reis nodded. “An escape route. She’d try to get to the beach and into the water, I think. Kandy?”

“I concur.” Looking thoughtful, King Kanoa cleared his throat. “I talked to Iulani. She was the maid who was shot at.”

“She wasn’t hit,” Cassie put in.

“She was grazed, Your Majesty. Nothing serious, just tore the skin. Had it been a bit to the right...”

Reis asked, “What did she have to say?”

“She hadn’t known the door was locked, and said it wasn’t locked when she opened it. She had no key, she says.”

“That fits. This woman — we need something to call her.”

“The assassin? Good as anythin’.”

“Right. The assassin picked the lock, came in, and shut the door behind her leaving it unlocked. Another escape route in case Hiapo came in from the terrace.”

“Devilish good locks those are, Bill. Warren and Hardcastle? Best in the business.”

Cassie said, “She’s a woman, then. I thought so.”

Reis flushed, his big face — already sunburned — redder still. “We’ll call the doctor in before we’re through.”

“Fine. Then I want to know why King Kanoa doesn’t think she picked my lock.”

He adjusted his huge frame in his oversized chair. “Don’t seem likely, that’s all. Little bit of a thing, eh? Tallish for a Yank, but thin. Saw an expert try to pick a Warren and Hardcastle once. Rare book room. Librarian chap had locked himself in and shot himself. Body in there putrefyin’. He gave it up, eh? The expert chap. Ten minutes or so. Said it could be done but might take all afternoon. Drilled it out instead. Had a diamond-coated bit for the job, and needed it.”

Cassie nodded.

“Assassin would be on her knees out in the hall, with people goin’ up and down. Silly twit to try pickin’.”

Reis said, “Then how’d she get in, Kandy?”

“Walked in, I’d say. I talked to Iulani. I say that? Well, I did, and she aired out the room before Her Majesty retired. Open windows, open terrace door, eh? Let in the fresh air. Let in the assassin, too. Easy as pie, ’cause Hiapo here was watchin’ our queen and not her room. Little bit of a thing, dark clothes, hid in the shrubbery sneakin’ from terrace to terrace soon as the sun was down. Peeped into the room, saw Iulani was gone, and popped in through the door. Not just a bedroom, is it?”

Cassie shook her head. “There’s a bathroom and a — I don’t know what you call it. A little private sitting room with big windows. A room for getting dressed and having my hair done with lots of closets, and a kitchenette.”

“There you have it.” King Kanoa raised his hands as if presenting a tray. “Dozen places to hide. She hid in one and waited ’til you’d gone to sleep and things quieted down. Then out she popped, unlocked both doors, and had a talk.”

“I want to talk to her, this spy the Storm King sent here to threaten me.” Cassie turned toward Reis. “Can I, Wally? Please?”

He nodded. “Before dinner, if you want. But I want all four of us to talk to Dr. Schoonveld first.”

Cassie took a deep breath. “That’s great, but I want to talk to you, too — to talk to you for a long, long time when the two of us are alone.”