Tuesday, November 24
5:15 P.M.
Royal Genovian Gardens

When I got home I found Rocky outside by the pool. He gets out of school a half hour earlier than I do because he’s in the lower form, and Genovians believe younger children need less time in school than older children.

(Which makes no sense. Younger children have more to learn than older children, but whatever.)

He was sitting on one of the silver serving trays from the sets they use for high tea. He’d poured crushed ice from the kitchens all over the grass, put the tray on the ice, and was holding the end of Snowball’s leash while yelling “Mush!” at her.

But Snowball was only sitting there in front of him and the tray, not moving, wagging her tail and yawning in the hot afternoon sun.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“I’m trying to train your dog to be a sled dog,” Rocky replied. “But as you can see, she’s useless.”

“Snowball is not useless,” I informed him, snatching the leash from him. “She’s just not a sled dog. She is not a service dog of any kind. Snowball, are you all right?”

Snowball jumped around and licked me in the face while I inspected her for injuries.

“She’s fine,” Rocky said. “She liked it. And poodles are too service dogs. In olden times they used to help during hunts and stuff. They dove into the water and fetched dead ducks.”

“Well, that isn’t quite the same as pulling sleds, is it?”

“I guess not. But I need to enter into some kind of sport at the Royal School Winter Games if I’m going to get out of school this week,” Rocky said. “I don’t want to sit around and write some dumb essay. And sled dog racing seems like the most exciting.”

“Well, you’re not using MY dog for it.” I hugged Snowball, who continued to wag her tail and lick me, seemingly unharmed. “She’s never even seen snow! How is she going to know how to pull a sled?”

“That,” Rocky said tiredly, “is what I was trying to teach her when you came along—”

“Shhh!” Grandmère rose up from one of the chaise longues, where she’d apparently been sitting in a caftan and a large sun hat, enjoying a cocktail. “What are you two fussing about? Don’t you know there are babies in the palace?”

“Oh, sorry, Grandmère,” I said, instantly feeling guilty. “We were just, uh—”

“I need a sport if I’m going to the Royal School Winter Games tomorrow,” Rocky announced, in what was, for him, a whisper, but for anyone else would have been a normal speaking voice. “Olivia won’t let me use Snowball as a sled dog. Can I borrow Rommel?”

“Not only CAN you not, you MAY not,” Grandmère said. “Rommel was not bred to pull sleds. He is a companion animal of much empathy and refinement.”

I didn’t want to point out to Grandmère that even as she said this, Rommel was sitting behind her in the grass, licking his own butt.

“And what do you mean, the Royal School Winter Games are tomorrow?” Grandmère asked. “They can’t possibly be. They don’t hold the Royal School Winter Games until November—” Her voice trailed off and she got a faraway look in her eye. “Good heavens.”

“Yes,” I said. “But don’t worry, Grandmère. The Royal Genovian Academy isn’t going.”

“What?” Grandmère and Rocky both cried at the same time.

“They’re not,” I said. “Because of La Grippe, we don’t have enough chaperones. So Madame Alain is canceling our participation in the Games.”

“That is an outrage!” cried Grandmère, gesturing so dramatically that she spilled half her cocktail. Snowball and Rommel hurried to lick it up, but it got absorbed too quickly into the hot terrazzo. “The Royal Genovian Academy always participates in the Winter Games!”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose so, but Rocky and I couldn’t go anyway. We have the babies to think of.”

“The babies?” Grandmère sipped what was left of her cocktail. “The babies? The babies will be able to get along quite well without you. The babies won’t even be able to recognize you for months—years if they’ve inherited their grandfather’s vision. But what possible point is there in holding the Royal School Winter Games without a representative of the Royal House of Renaldo present, much less the Royal Genovian Academy? Why, this is an outrage! Do you know that I won the cross-country ski competition every year I attended?”

I was surprised. “No, Grandmère, I didn’t.”

“Yes! Eight years in a row! Not only did I win, but I broke what was then a local record—in the women’s biathlon, no less.”

I realized maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Grandmère, doesn’t the biathlon involve skiing cross country and then shooting rifles at a target?”

“It most certainly does.”

This explained a lot. Grandmère loves shooting at things, most particularly the iguanas that took over her beloved rose garden last spring. This was why Prince Khalil had had to come over and remove them—the iguanas, not the roses—in a safe and humane manner. Fortunately (or not so fortunately, for the footmen) Grandmère’s aim had gotten pretty bad over the years.

“I have never heard of anything as preposterous as not attending the Games. And for such an absurd reason … not enough chaperones—and all because they are suffering from something as trifling as a little cold. Why, we attended the Games during the war!”

Whenever Grandmère mentions “the war,” she means World War II, when Nazis invaded Genovia and took over not only its government and seaport (advantageously tucked between France and Italy) but its lucrative fruit and olive oil industry, and even the palace.

“Not, of course, that we allowed this to bother us,” Grandmère went on. “Genovia was the jewel in the crown of the Führer’s empire, but we carried on working against him beneath his very nose. When the Royal School Winter Games came along, we used them as an opportunity to deliver messages over the Austrian border to the Allies. We beat them. By sheer determination alone—yes, we beat them all, by God!”

“Did you shoot any Nazis?” Rocky asked, looking excited.

“Did I shoot any Nazis,” Grandmère murmured. “I did far worse to them than shoot them, young man.”

Rocky began to jump up and down excitedly. “Like what? Tell me, tell me!”

Above us, a pair of French doors opened, and a second later, Mia stepped out onto one of the balconies overlooking the palace pool.

“Excuse me,” she said politely. “But could the three of you possibly take your conversation—whatever it’s about—somewhere else?”

Rocky shaded his eyes with his hand and blinked up at Mia. “But Mia, Grandmère was about to tell us about the Nazis!”

Mia did not look very approving. “Oh, was she? Well, Michael and I finally got both babies to sleep at the same time, and now we’d like to try to get some sleep ourselves, so perhaps you’d like to talk about the Nazis somewhere else? The billiard room, perhaps? Or the library?”

I gasped. “Oh, Mia! I’m sorry we were being too loud.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Rocky said. “Those little babies really need their sleep if their heads are ever going to look normal.”

“What?” Mia asked, looking confused.

“Nothing,” Grandmère said, taking Rocky by the shoulder and steering him away from the balcony. “Never mind. The babies are beautiful. So sorry to have woken them, Amelia. Get back to your nap.”

Mia smiled, then thanked us and went back inside. Rocky immediately tugged on the draping sleeve of Grandmère’s caftan. “You’re going to tell us more about the Nazis, aren’t you, Grandmère?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Grandmère said. “I’ll call your school right now and personally give them a piece of my mind. I never heard of anything more disgraceful than Genovia not taking part in the Royal School Winter Games!”

So … great.

I’m the only one who doesn’t want to go to Stockerdörfl tomorrow, but my grandmother is the person fighting hardest to make sure my school goes.

Fantastic.