Carried along by her own oratory, she leaped up onto the two-wheeled cart itself. The sudden shift of weight made the wagon abruptly tip. Roberta tumbled from her perch, her fall broken by a giant pile of mud behind the cart.
All three boys waved their hands before their faces in a fruitless attempt to ward off the sudden stink rushing toward them. That wasn't mud at all. Roberta had just discovered the location of the stable's muckheap the hard way.
'Whoof!' David managed, his eyes watering. 'It seems they feed the horses well in these parts.'
Roberta's former audience simply fell apart, roaring with laughter. The sudden movement and noise spooked David's mount, which broke into a nervous trot, moving through a lane appearing in the dispersing crowd.
'Whoa, horse,' David said nervously, sawing on the reins in an effort to slow his mount down. The horse paid no attention to his efforts, beginning to buck a little as it came closer to the mound of horse flop from which a bemired Roberta was emerging.
Apparently, her appearance was the last straw for David's mount. It began making serious efforts to get its rider off its back.
David gave up all pretense of being in charge of things. 'HELLLLLP!' he yelled.
Which would make for a softer landing? he wondered as he crouched low in the saddle, clinging as best he could. Should I aim for the mudf or for Mount Crapola over there?
He was barely aware of P. J. coming up from the side, swinging down from the saddle. The young Texan approached David's mount, who was showing a lot of white around the eyes. 'Hey, big feller,' P. J. said in a soft voice. 'Simmer down, simmer down.'
The horse shied, tossing its head, but before it could rear, P. J. got hold of the reins. 'Nobody's gonna hurt you.'
'I wouldn't mind getting off if that would make him happy,' David said in a strangled voice.
'Shhhhh,' P. J. said.
David wasn't sure if that comment was aimed at him or the horse P. J. was trying to gentle. At least the blasted animal wasn't trying to fling him off anymore.
P. J. finally indicated to David that it was safe to dismount. Luckily, he'd maneuvered them all into an area where the brown muck covering the ground really was mud, and not something worse.
'We'll have to try this again-real soon,' David said, rubbing his aching muscles as P. J. began to lead both his own horse and David's former mount away. 'I just can't remember when I've had this much fun.'
Leif Anderson sat in his saddle, watching Roberta Hendry storm off, heedlessly squelching through mud puddles. Knowing Roberta, she'd probably synched out as soon as she realized what she'd landed in. If her simulacrum was that angry, how furious was the real-life original?
Looks like Latvinia is downright hostile to good old Roberta, Leif thought as the simulacrum vanished through the stable gates. Is she going to keep fighting… or will she just make good on her threats to get this place shut down?
Chapter 8
Megan did her best to hide a yawn, and then fought the impulse to reach up and scratch her head vigorously. This has to be a sim, she told herself. In real life her hair would have escaped even these tight braids surrounding the gold and diamond diadem at her brow.
She supposed she should enjoy the unfamiliar experience of having an orderly hairstyle. Instead, she felt as though the braids were squashing her brain. That didn't improve her mood-nor did sitting through a deadly boring afternoon in the throne room. Megan made a mental note to avoid these lesser courts as much as possible and let her simulacrum handle them. She probably should have been saving her energy for the royal ball this evening.
Apparently, the townsfolk of Herzen had a long and glorious tradition of bringing their disputes to be settled by their monarch instead of going to the local magistrates. Megan found herself being asked to act like Solomon in cases she barely knew anything about. She did her best to listen carefully, to resolve things fairly-and to make things hot for anyone who looked to be abusing their royal privileges.
I hope I'm getting the hang of this, Megan thought.
Then the two large families came before the throne, each clan looking daggers at the other. The people bringing the suit were Herzen townspeople. As far as Megan could make out from their complaints in German, the problem seemed to revolve around a missing bridegroom and a failure to pay thirteen goats. The other family group was more rural-peasants painfully dressed in their Sunday best.
When it was the turn of these folks to put their case, they broke into torrents of what could only be native Latvinian. Megan couldn't say if this was some sort of Serbo-Croatian dialect or plain gibberish. It was odd that she was having trouble with translation-normally the Net provided instantaneous translation of every language and dialect imaginable.
A smug voice came from the crowd of courtiers. 'Surely the princess will understand the old speech of the country folk?'
Yeah, the princess would understand it-but not her American stand-in, Megan thought sourly, at least not without some help I'm not getting right now. Looks like word of my Great Imposture is going to leak out.
Megan held up her hand. The spokesman for the peasants, an older man with an enormous mustache, immediately stopped talking. 'I beg the great one's pardon,' he said more slowly. 'Our feelings run before the horses.'
Megan managed not to gawk when she realized that the man was still talking in Latvinian-and now she was understanding him perfectly! She wondered what had gone wrong to block the translation, and what was now going suddenly right?
Another of those pseudo-memories implanted by the simulation program whispered through her brain- something about being taught the language as a child by a distant relative of her mother's.
That didn't matter-so long as she could answer the peasant spokesman in his own dialect. 'You are pardoned, as long as your words do not fly like the birds,' she said. 'Continue, Oldfather-only slowly.'
The old peasant had quite a story to tell. It seemed the city slickers were making a good thing out of the betrothal visits. They'd enter into contracts with peasants in the surrounding districts, specifying a wedding within a certain amount of time or a bride-price in livestock. Then, one of the bride-to-be's uncles-a recruiting sergeant for the army-made sure the prospective bridegrooms were conscripted and taken off before the weddings could take place.
As the old man continued, a rather military-looking member of the city family tried to vanish among the ranks of his relatives.
Grim-faced, Megan had him hauled forth and put him to some searching questions-both in German and Latvinian.
The poor sergeant was in a sweat. 'Majesty, we would never have troubled you, except-'
One of the quicker-minded female members of the family kicked him in the ankle.
'We would never have brought this case, except those dirt-eaters insulted Your Majesty,' the leader of the city clan quickly said.
Megan continued her interrogation, finally digging out the information that the family ran a thriving butcher shop in the town, and was amassing money to expand the business. By the time she was finished, they'd still be in business, but in a much less prosperous fashion.
Just like those real-life courtroom entertainment ho- los, she thought, giving her judgment. Megan glanced again at the quivering sergeant, wondering who had put the city slickers up to bringing this case before her. Was it a trick by Gray Piotr?
She turned to where Alan Slaney stood, off to the side of the throne. His expression was a mixture of amusement and annoyance as he watched the case progress to judgement. Aware of her eyes on him, he looked up. 'Did they think I couldn't plan ahead a little better than that?'
Megan hid a smile. So, the courtroom drama was an attempt to embarrass her by jealous AHSO members.
