Besides, they were busy plotting Sebastian’s death, and they wanted to give the problem every consideration they could. When the time came, it must be one long entertainment. He must not die quickly.
If they were to plot, it was necessary that they be away from the idiot. Though they had little respect for his mental capacities, they did not kid themselves that he could not understand them. Too, he was a formidable physical antagonist, even if he might not be quick. Each day, they broke the ten hours of driving into two-hour shifts, and each of them took turns riding in the cab as a guard against the idiot’s whirrs and plans. The bottle of spiders was given to the guard and remained in the cab with Sebastian at all times. That left most of them free to put together some enjoyable sort of murder scheme.
“But when?” the prince asked, his small voice rather shrill as he raised it to compete with the shuttle system under them.
“When the time comes, we’ll know,” Bitty Belina said. For some reason her whispered sensuality seemed to carry better than their shouts.
“That’s easy enough to say,” the prince said. “But we’ve been planning now for three days. We have all sorts of good ideas. Why not take him out tonight? If we wait, hard to tell what might happen.”
“Nothing will happen,” Belina said.
“The spiders might die,” the prince said.
“We feed them well enough.”
“But who knows about the needs of wild creatures like that?”
“They aren’t wild creatures, just spiders,” Wissa said.
“You’re agreeing with her, then?”
“Yes,” Wissa told him.
“Look,” the first suitor said, running small fingers through his bright red hair, “we need him to drive. So why fight about it? We can’t get rid of him until we get someplace.”
“Your answer to that?” Belina asked the prince.
“I’ll drive!” the prince said.
The others broke into cackling laughter, like a batch of chicks, pleased with the hatchery.
“I mean it!” the prince said. His handsome face was furiously strained, red and lined and angry. “I can handle
the wheel myself. I know I can! I’m strong enough. Someone else could sit on the floor and push the brake and the accelerator whenever I told them to.”
“It might work,” the third suitor said. He was the fair, shy, chubby one who in the play was stricken deaf and dumb by Wissa..
Belina cast a harsh look at the chubby one. “And it might not. And if it doesn’t and we’ve already killed the idiot, where are we?”
“I agree with Belina,” the winged puppet said.
“Me too,” said Wissa.
“Yeah,” agreed the first suitor.
“She knows what she’s doing, I guess,” added the third suitor.
That left only the prince and the second suitor who was presently on guard duty in the cab of the truck. Even if he chose to disagree with the blond star of their play, it would be five to two in her favor. And there was little likelihood that he would disagree with Bitty Belina.
“Who ever made you the boss?” the prince wanted to know. He had his chin thrust out and his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Fate,” she said.
Wissa giggled.
The prince blushed, turned to confront Belina more directly. “That’s not a good enough answer for me. You’re a woman. You’re weak. I’m the strongest one here, with the most muscles. I was built that way, meant to be the leader.”
“You’re getting reality confused with the script,” Bitty Belina told him. She smiled sweetly, the very same smile she always gave him in the last act of their story, the smile from the script.
“Besides,” he said, ignoring her sarcasm, “I have the sword, the only weapon here.”
“Was that directed at me . . . or Sebastian?” she asked.
“You figure it out,” he said, looking to the others to see if they were, perhaps, having doubts about their original vows of allegiance to Bitty Belina.
That was a mistake. He should have kept his eyes on the blond, his lover from the stage. The moment his gaze was elsewhere, she danced forward on her small toes, kicked upward, and delivered a solid blow between the prince’s legs. He gagged, fell over, his sword useless now that he needed all his strength to get breath into his lungs.