DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 28

Two days of drug-induced sleep left Ridley refreshed, if a little dazed. After Devane summoned her for a short meeting, she was allowed to leave unimpeded. He gave her orders, a list of things he wished her to discover from the King, expecting her to go back to Mannaz. She boarded a train across the border, checked her new belongings through customs, and called Reb to pick her up there.

Reb made her discard her bag in case it contained some tracking device Mannazian scanners couldn't read, and handed her new jewelry off to a colleague to be analyzed, in case Devane had had some isotope applied that could be used to track Ridley's whereabouts. He sent the cashmere to be cleaned for the same reason. He took Ridley to his home office in the capitol to have her person and the clothing she was wearing scanned. After that, Reb flew her back to their little airstrip, and, close to midnight, they trudged through crackling leaves toward the King's cabin hideaway.

The stars turned diamond in a velvet sky, glittering as if the icy night had frozen them solid. Bare tree branches fractured the moon when Ridley looked at it. Puffs of her own breath drifted across it in the cold.

"I'll get your jewelry and the sweater back to you as soon as we know everything's clean, Ridley," Reb told her as they walked. "I know you want to keep those, and I don't blame you. You earned them."

Reb carried the pouch in an airtight plastic bag in his pocket. He would fly the pouch to Boston and hand-deliver it to Popish first thing in the morning. "Thanks," Ridley said. "I don't care about the stuff. It's just that it's valuable. I could sell that if we ever needed money. And I wanted my mom to have the gift."

"Maybe in a week or so," said Reb. "Next time I'm at the home office, I'll pick those up and bring them to you."

Ridley yawned as they rounded the final bend. The cabin looked dark at this distance; blackout curtains prevented its interior lighting from being seen from the sky at night. A heat shield in the roof protected it from thermal scanning. But she knew the lights would be ablaze inside, and her mother would be in the kitchen making some wonderful welcome-home drink—hot chocolate, probably.

And Sannah would be there. Ridley's arms itched to pick her up, to breathe in the sweet scent of her baby ringlets.

They climbed the three wooden steps and Reb used his codepicker on the door. Rather than look for her mother, Ridley went to her room and Sannah right away. An odd scent trailed her through the living room, a chemical smell—like paint.

The baby wasn't in her crib. Ridley took off her coat, scarf, and gloves, put them on a chair, and headed back out into the living room. Her mother probably had the baby in the kitchen with her. Ridley turned in that direction, wrinkling her nose, about to call out and ask what that smell was—but then she heard the King's voice from the corridor to the bathroom, raised in a childlike coo.

When she heard the words, "That sure is some stinky poop!" she could hardly believe her ears. Was the King of the Confederation, former gold medalist, mathematician, and computer expert ... changing her baby's diaper?

Ridley crept down the hall. The bathroom door hung ajar and she peeked in. Sure enough, a familiar odor wafted into the corridor at her, and she eased the door open just in time to see a soiled diaper hit the trash can next to the changing table. Sannah babbled to herself on a towel on the table, and the King stepped to the sink and wet a washcloth.

Ridley stepped in, feeling herself blush. "Your Highness! I'm home, you don't need to do that!"

The King glanced over and peered down at her. He was so tall, she always felt like a child approaching her father whenever she had to talk to him. He broke into a smile and wrung the cloth out into the sink.