In her bed, which lay in such a position that through her open bedroom door she could see the living room and couch, Dr. Morgan lay awake, staring at Dusty's bare feet and asking the same question Henry was.
Who the hell was this boy?
The face was damn familiar, she just couldn't quite place it, but she had an organized, scientific mind, even after all these years, and knew how to sort out her own brain teasers.
He must be related to one of the people she'd known in California. He was probably from her same circles – royalty, courtiers, castlefolk. He'd run from an arranged marriage, he said. Arranged marriages were still practiced in the hinterlands, but they were much more common among nobles, and anyway, the kid had money. Tons of it. And he had bounty hunters chasing him, if he could be believed.
And Dr. Morgan did believe him. The poor boy had the most honest face she'd seen in years.
He was nineteen years old, which meant he would have been a baby at the time she was banished. Who, among her royal friends, had given birth to a baby boy around that time? Serena, Hermione, but no, neither of them looked like Dusty. Jessica? Her boy was too old, three or four.
The only other baby she remembered around the castle at the time was baby Imogen, a red-haired girl, so it couldn't be her, but…
Snap. Her brain made the connection. She knew who Dusty reminded her of.
The queen. Not the new queen Bianca. Dr. Morgan still thought of her as new, a usurper, though she'd ruled for twenty years now. No, Dusty looked like Cymbeline's first wife. Small, sharp features set symmetrically, bright brown eyes, strong jaw, large forehead. Tall.
The possible explanations for the resemblance narrowed themselves all but instantly.
Possibility one: This boy was an illegitimate child of the queen.
The queen had died shortly before Dr. Morgan's banishment, and her most recent pregnancy had been Princess Imogen. She couldn't have hidden a pregnancy from her own doctor.
The boy was a relative of the queen, not a son. A nephew?
But no. Queen Innogen had been an only child, and anyway, an arranged marriage wouldn't need to be forced on a good-looking young man who wasn't in the direct line of ascension.
Dr. Morgan groaned and rolled herself upright. Waddling side to side, and hating her inability to sneak around with more dignity, she made her way as quietly as she could to Dusty's side, carrying a small candle.
She examined the boy as well as she could in the darkness, through the covers.
Specifically, the flat chest.
And saw, because she was looking for them, telltale signs she had missed earlier: thin, long lumps under the boy's shirt fabric. The outline of ace bandages. "Dusty" was concealing breasts.
And there, on the pillow: stains from hair-black. The kind sold in her own son's store, because Henry used it himself. Little Princess Imogen had been ginger, and it seemed she still was.
The princess. Here, in her own house.
After all these years.
It was enough to make a scientist believe in god. Too, too much of a coincidence.
Should she tell Henry?
Henry, bless him. Dr. Morgan waddled to his doorway, which he had left cracked probably for the same reason she had – to keep an eye on Dusty – and watched him, asleep, his arm wrapped protectively around his pregnant wife.
He was a boy any mother could be proud of. Dr. Morgan only wished he was hers.
Twenty-four years earlier, Dr. Morgan had given birth to a son she named Henry. She was unmarried, and if anyone asked, she assured them the father was out of the picture, though that wasn't entirely true.
In the same month, she'd supervised the labor of the queen of California, who gave birth to the crown prince of California, a boy named Gideon.
The boys had grown up together – or grown until they were four years old, at least. Being the same age, raised in the same place, eating their meals together, they were as good as brothers. The staff called them "the twins," they almost looked like they could have been brothers, despite the fact that they were different races. Henry was a light-skinned black child and Gideon was, like his mother, a very tan white child. Both had regular, babyish features. The only real difference in their appearance was hair color. Henry had black hair, Gideon, reddish-brown.
Dr. Morgan supervised the birth of the queen's second child, as well, healthy little Imogen. It had been a completely typical birth – until the queen, an hour later, had died while nursing the baby for the first time. A ruptured arterial aneurysm, pregnancy related, was Dr. Morgan's best guess. But she was not allowed to do the autopsy, since she suddenly found herself under suspicion for murder.
No hard evidence of what caused the death was ever found, but shortly after the death of the queen, Dr. Morgan had met, in the hospital hallway, a beautiful, bouncy-haired blonde woman, who had laid a long-fingernailed hand sweetly on her shoulder, leaned over, and whispered in her ear:
"I know you did it."
Dr. Morgan, hard to scare, had whispered calmly back, "That's nice, blondie. Want to tell me what the fuck you're talking about?"
The blonde had sweetly returned, "I know you did it…because I know who Henry's father is."
Dr. Morgan's blood had frozen.
"I strongly, strongly recommend, honey," the blonde continued, "that you disappear before anyone else gets hurt. Cymbeline may have a taste for strong women, but you're not going to be queen. And little Henry isn't going to be king. Californians don't like bastards, even royal ones. 'Kay?"
The woman patted her on the cheek and scampered down the hall, glittery heels clicking like the hooves of a gazelle.
How she had known, Dr. Morgan never found out. Perhaps the fact that the boys really were half-brothers showed, and no one else had seen it because they hadn't been looking for it.
The woman, whose name turned out to be Bianca Minola, had been more vigilant than most. She was on Cymbeline's arm every time Dr. Morgan saw her after that. The king had trouble meeting the doctor's eyes, and with good reason, though she'd never really wanted to marry the poor man. She was a doctor, not a queen.
Though Dr. Morgan hated Bianca, it hadn't occurred to her to suspect her of Innogen's murder until a month later. The day the boys got sick.
The boys had rarely left the castle. Cymbeline despised the paparazzi, who were desperate for pictures of the young prince, and he anyway didn't believe in wasting travel expenses on toddlers who weren't old enough to be making memories. At last, however, he was talked into allowing Gideon to accompany Henry on a trip to Disneyland. They would go with Dr. Morgan, who was not famous at the time.
Today, any Californian would recognize her – or her as she'd looked twenty years ago and a hundred and fifty pounds lighter – as easily as they'd recognize Adolph Hitler. At the time of the incident, she was only one of many castle staff who had power and access to the king, but not enough to make her interesting to photographers. Being mannish, middle-aged, and black in a white-centric world, she wasn't even a target of scandal speculation. It was decided that she could take the boys by herself, with only two plainclothes security guards, and give the king and Bianca a boy-free day.
Except before she left, she found herself, just briefly, face-to-face with Bianca Minola again. The woman was engaged to the king already. Cymbeline could be made to agree to anything if he were pushed hard enough, and Bianca could certainly push.
She weaseled her way up, handing Dr. Morgan a backpack full of supplies for the boys, and again whispered in her ear.
"I thought I made it clear that you weren't welcome here."
"You did," said Dr. Morgan, out loud.
Bianca giggled. "Not clear enough, apparently."
That was all. Bianca went her way, and Dr. Morgan took the children.
The doctor, who spent most of her waking hours observing the effects of fast-spreading, blood-eating viruses on laboratory dogs or captured spies, had very few good days. What she felt while taking notes on the shrieking animals and screaming men couldn't be called guilt, exactly. She'd been hired largely due to her total belief that, a) animal research, no matter how cruel, was morally acceptable as long as it was directed at human benefit, and b) California's enemies were her own.
Still, the fresh, young, smiling faces at Disneyland had been a relief. She hadn't realized how oppressed she'd become, down in the sterile labs, surrounded on all sides with triple-sealed tubes designed so that they could not be broken by human strength. Each contained variations on viruses that, if spilled, could potentially end humanity.
Dr. Morgan often thought that if the weak-minded king had understood exactly how dangerous her experiments were, he wouldn't let her conduct them.
The day at Disneyland was the single happiest of her life. Gideon and Henry had fast-passes to all the rides, and the king had paid for several special ins: Time alone with Mickey, a ride on Cinderella's float, a private breakfast with Aladdin and Hercules, at which the boys ate a mountain of Mickey-shaped waffles.
It was to be little Henry's last meal.
All day, he kept up with Gideon, racing him to rides, hanging off actors' arms, smiling hugely beside him in pictures. But at lunchtime, when they sat down with Ariel and Eric, Henry said he wasn't hungry. Gideon ate another pile of sweets, but Henry frowned at his food, claimed to not like French fries anymore, and only talked to the actors.
By evening, he was slowing down. Dr. Morgan thought he was only tired. He fell asleep in her arms while Gideon watched the Main Street Electrical Parade go by. The prince smiled up at his friend. "I'm tired too," he said. And he sat down suddenly, laid his head on the concrete, and passed out.
Still, Dr. Morgan hadn't known to worry.
A security guard carried the prince out to the monorail, and it was there, stroking Henry's neck, Dr. Morgan noticed the first lesion. A heart-shaped, violet soft spot above his third vertebrae.
Heart-shaped. The world rocked beneath her.
She knew the virus well. It shouldn't have been possible for it to get out; safety procedures were very, very strictly followed.
There was only one person she could think of with a motive to kill the prince and Henry. The same person who had been in the hospital the day Queen Innogen mysteriously died. But there wasn't time to prove anything. All Dr. Morgan's energy for the next twenty-four hours was devoted to the hopeless search for a cure. A treatment. Anything to slow the spread.
The virus had still been in the developmental phase, which was something to be thankful for. If it had been made airborne, as was the eventual plan, California would be left as empty as Utah.
But at the moment, it could still only be spread by fluid contact.
The boys had both drunk from water bottles in the backpack Bianca provided them. Dr. Morgan planned, once the crisis was over, to have that pack thoroughly examined. To have that woman executed for what she'd done.
Henry, chirpy, smiling little Henry, never woke up, and that was something of a blessing.
The virus was horrific. A nasty, nasty thing, designed to be a terrifying specter to California's enemies. It killed, certainly, but hundreds of viruses did that. Dr. Morgan had a set of ten viruses to choose from that killed within an hour, and five that worked painlessly.
This particular virus – HBX1 – was designed to cause pain. Mental as well as physical. Its first effect, in adults, was to disfigure. The heart-shaped lesions grew and grew, then swelled. The swelling could double a victim's size in hours, and they ended up looking like they'd been attacked by particularly vicious hornets. The subcutaneous stratum thickened as well, preventing the bursting of the pustules until very near the time of death.
Fortunately, little Henry and Gideon weren't awake to see their bodies turn thick and shapeless as beanbag chairs. They were unconscious through the whole ordeal.
Dr. Morgan had no time to spend by her son's side. She was near him, certainly, and could see him when, from time to time, she stepped into view of his sickbed. But her place was at the computer, running simulations, ordering prototypes, monitoring graphed results of experiments taking place inside sealed cubes – various combinations of the virus in question and chemical suppressants.
Before her eyes, the prince and her son's bodies grew and twisted until they were unrecognizable. She kept injecting them with potential antibodies until she was physically stopped by hospital security.
Both boys, they said, were dead.
Dr. Morgan knew that. Henry's heart had stopped an hour earlier. Gideon's had stopped, they said, while she was in the next room, prepping an injection.
It was king Cymbeline himself who appeared before her. Took her to a back room of the hospital, behind a curtain.
He was a ghost of himself.
Dr. Morgan expected him to throw his arms around her. He'd lost his sons. They'd lost their son. And after the hug, she would tell him to have Bianca Minola arrested, her quarters searched.
But Cymbeline spoke first. "I don't know," he said, trembling, "how you could do it. Our child, Kalia, my children. How could you? First Innogen, now this? Will little Imogen be next? Will Bianca? How far did you think this could go?"
Absolutely thunderstruck, and still in shock from exhaustion and grief, Dr. Morgan only managed to spit, "What?!"
"Bianca told me everything. What she saw that day in the hospital with Innogen. Lab workers reported you stealing samples. Bianca has proof, videos, photographs."
Since this was impossible – Dr. Morgan had never taken a sample from her labs without filling out extensive paperwork, and only then on the orders of a Schema or the king himself – it occurred to her for a moment to argue the specific accusations.
But that was silly. It wasn't the accusations. It was the accuser.
"That woman," Dr. Morgan managed, "Has bewitched you, Cymbeline."
"You'll be executed."
"My child is dead, the man I love is standing here accusing me of murder, my life's work is done, and you think I give a flying fuck what you do to me next? Listen, because this is not about me, it's about the country. That woman is poison, Cymbeline, poison. She's done this. I don't know how. I can't prove it. But she's behind all of it. Innogen's death too."
"Enough," said Cymbeline, circles growing under his eyes.
"Baby Imogen will be next. That snake will strike again. Then it'll be you. Bianca doesn't love you, Cymbeline. She wants to rule alone."
The king didn't appear to hear her. His eyes had gone glassy. He, too, was ready to collapse from exhaustion. Dr. Morgan wondered how many hours Bianca had kept him awake, pouring her venom in his ears, to have gained so much control over him.
"I can't watch you die," Cymbeline said vacantly. "I'm as weak as they say I am. Can't execute my lover, and I did love you, Kalia. A guard will take you through a back exit. You are banished. And… that's all, I suppose. Please go. Before an investigation reveals…anything."
"You mean reveals Henry shares DNA with you?" she said. "By all means, I'll hide it. Give me my son's body. I want to bury him myself."
The body had been wrapped and placed in her arms. She was put in a hood and driven to the California border quietly. Released quietly. The car had driven away, leaving her alone in the desert along with a single compressor pack of food, water, and a protective body tarp.
When she'd unwrapped the boy's body, intending to redress it properly for burial, she found it was not her son.
It was Gideon.
The boys had had their heads shaved before their skulls were opened to relieve the pressure on their swelling brains. Without their hair, they were almost identical. The mistake was understandable.
But the swelling had gone down – that was strange – and a starshaped birthmark on Gideon's collar was visible. It was him, not Henry.
And Gideon was alive.
The last set of antibodies had worked. Within a day, the swelling had entirely vanished.
At the time, Dr. Morgan was lean and fit. She carried Gideon for hours, straight into the wilderness. Underneath the tarp, during a sandstorm, he woke up at last – or rather, drifted into a confused, dreamy half-consciousness.
"Quiet, Henry," Dr. Morgan said when he cried out. He didn't object to the name, not then, not ever. In the terrible months of his convalescence, they wandered the desert together, thirsty, starving, desperate, eating poorly cooked cactus, burned jackrabbit carcass, drinking stale condensed water. Gideon was suffering far too much to concern his overtaxed four-year-old brain with the question of identity.
By the time he was five, he believed himself to be Henry, and Dr. Morgan to be his mother. He'd never questioned it since, despite the differences in their appearance. It wasn't like he really understood how genetics worked. There weren't opportunities for Mendelian genetics lessons in the wastes.
His recovery from the virus was astounding. Almost total. There was that leg, though, that crooked leg. The virus had penetrated his marrow and twisted the bone into a gentle bow shape, giving him a limp and deformity he would have for the rest of his life.
Dr. Morgan had, all those years ago, thought of him as a poor cripple. An object to be pitied and helped. She anticipated spending the rest of her life caring for him.
But the leg, once healed, didn't cause him any pain, and Gideon, now Henry, had grown into a sturdy boy, hard and otherwise healthy. From the time he was twelve he'd been the heavy lifter in their two-person family. He could do everything a straight-limbed boy could do and more, except sprint. And perhaps his walk was slightly slow.
Dr. Morgan attributed his recovery to his bloodline, which had showed itself admirably in every aspect of the growing boy's personality. He would have been king, and would have been magnificent. This was no weak, vacillating Cymbeline. This boy, in everything but height, was all his mother.
She never considered returning the prince to his homeland. That was her own total selfishness, she knew. It certainly wasn't to the boy's benefit to live with her in the wild. He couldn't help but be safer, better educated, freer, in California. And there, he would become king.
But Dr. Morgan remembered how much Cymbeline had owed her, and how he had treated her. Accused her of the unthinkable. And she couldn't do it.
Keeping Gideon was her revenge.
She told him the whole truth except for his own identity.
They saved some money after three years as farmhands. Saving had seemed impossible at first, with the pittance they were offered for their very, very hard labor, but it turned out that on the wastes one dollar went further than ten in California. There wasn't anything to buy, of course. No medical care, no entertainment, no selection of shoes, no electricity bills, iPods, air conditioning. Money bought food, water, the barest excuse for shelter, and enough clothes to keep you covered. All of that was cheap.
It was Henry who decided to invest the money in a shop. He'd had some help, a deal with the Arizona draft commission, but Dr. Morgan preferred not to remember that.
At first the shop had been four stucco walls and three items for sale: Canned soup, bottled water, and bars of soap Dr. Morgan made from pear cactus extracts.
Henry had run that little lemonade stand of an establishment so well that it had grown year by year into what it was: the only oasis of functioning humanity, the only traveler's safe haven, the only reliable gas station, the only honest place of business in a radius of a hundred miles.
A kingly task, in her opinion. Henry had proved himself, by his ability to rule this small kingdom with wisdom, a cool head, and a practical amount of cruelty, to be more worthy of his royal title than his father had ever been.
He'd married Elena, and now they were pregnant, and life was good. Boy, Dr. Morgan would love to see Bianca's face, though, if Henry ever came marching back to California to claim his bloodright with his family in tow. His family.
Dusty. Dusty was his family, his sister, Imogen.
They all knew it. They'd sensed it in their hearts, the connection, and now, damned if they didn't feel as if they'd plugged a leak they'd never known about before.