Page 54 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

I thought they would. I thought, people fighting the palace, they’d want the prince on their side. They don’t want the prince at all.

“Comfortable” is the word that comes up most. He’s a “tool of the regime.”

Every one of those pre-recorded statements gets pulled apart on here line by line: what he said, what he didn’t, who wrote it.

A guy with a mountain for an avatar keeps a running count of how many times the prince has said the word “traditions” on camera. It’s a big number.

There’s a thread from the week of the rescue that I’ve read more times than I should. It’s called WELL THAT’S THAT THEN.

The first post thinks it was a pity he got rescued because if the prince had died in that container the royal line would have ended with him, and the whole rotten monarchy would be done for.

He said that a dead prince was worth more to Monteverra than a live one.

Then the arguments started. Horrifyingly, at least to me, most people agreed with him.

Then I read the next post down, and it’s somebody saying that the prince has never had a choice about anything in his life and they should be ashamed, and I calm down some.

Then somebody says of course he’s had choices, he’s the crown prince, and it goes around again.

I’m careful. I read. I don’t reach out to anyone. I don’t know which of them would help him and which of them would sell him for the constitutional crisis they’d get. Until I can tell the difference I’m a college kid in Michigan who likes maps.

Then there’s the stuff about me.

There’s a lot of threads about the kidnapping, and I’m most of it.

Did they pay? That’s the big one. Hardly anyone believes it was just money. A handful think that it simply went bad before the ransom demands went in. Or that there was a ransom demand but it just wasn’t made public, but the people who believe that get talked over every time.

Because the rest of them have questions I’ve been asking myself a lot for the last month.

Why were the cameras there? The news vans were on the lot before the prince was up the ladder. The board has timestamps. Somebody has put the FBI’s statement next to the first live shot and the gap is just over eleven minutes. That’s not enough time for a news van to hear about a raid and get across the city to a scrapyard on a road with no name.

Who leaked the location? The FBI says a tip. The board says, tip from who?

Why did the Monteverrans go up the gangway first? There’s a shaky phone video from behind the tape. It’s mostly dark and shouting. But you can see gray suits, going up before the yellow jackets. On somebody else’s soil. On an FBI operation.

And why, the board wants to know, did nobody get arrested?

One guard. That’s all they’ve ever named. Not a crew. Not a driver. Not the man who welded a shipping container into a barge. One guy, and he’s dead.

I’ve asked myself that one too.

They’ve got names for who it might be. The Chinese. The Russians. The CIA. Prime Minister Reinhardt. That one got a lot of pages.

And then there’s me.

Most of them think Roan Kessler was a patsy. They’re right about that. I’m the one person who knows exactly how right they are.

And Roan Kessler is dead. Most of them think that, although there are a few nutcases who have taken the conspiracy theories to new and exciting heights.

In one, I’m a Monteverran spy in league with the King and the Prime Minister to—

Well, I’m not sure what I was supposed to be doing. Others think that the Monteverrans got to me first and I’m busy being tortured in a dungeon under the palace.

Some of the rest is nuts.

I’m not real, in one thread. Apparently, I don’t exist. Because the two pictures that they have of me are years apart some people think they’re of different people entirely. Two posters got into an argument about my ears. One thinks they’re a completely different shape in the first photo. The second guy said there were shadows.

I’m with the second guy. My ears haven’t changed.