“Most people do.” She knows that. A part of me is disappointed that she did, too. I wanted her to know me better, to see me better than that. She was so sure she knew what I wanted. When she described that dream of me, of Alexi flying into war and me there by his side, she was so sure she understood. And she was right, of course, but she just didn’t see it all.
“You have no idea what you’ve set in motion today,” says Amba. Her voice echoes in the cavernous cellar space, bouncing off stone walls and glass bottles. “There will be consequences, and those consequences will breed further consequences, and it will go on and on until whole cities crumble to dust.”
“All I did was shoot an arrow,” I protest. “A single arrow can’t do all that.”
“Your arrow was a spark,” she replies, “A spark of fire so hot and white that no one will be able to put it out. And even a spark of fire can consume an entire forest if it can jump from tree to tree. Watch, Esmae. Watch as one act leads to another and then to another after that. Watch the trees pass white flames on. Watch the forest burn.”
And then she’s gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Amba’s wrong if she thinks I don’t know there will be consequences. I’ve spent so long trying to anticipate every outcome of this competition that even when I wasn’t sure I could beat Alexi, I considered what would happen if I did. I know what’s going on across the stars.
I know there will be hasty scrambling for tech screens and the angry summoning of spies so that thirty-nine rulers and their advisers can find out as much as possible about the strange servant girl who beat Alexi Rey. I’m a wild card, an unknown, and they will all be terrified.
I know Queen Miyo of Tamini will join forces with Alexi, if she hasn’t already, and I know Prime Minister Gomez of Shloka will call a meeting of the Forty Territories on neutral ground so that they can discuss how to deal with me. I know armies will be readied, ships poised to fly, shields activated around palaces, all of it put into place just in case they have to face Titania.
The rumors will spread until eventually the truth will spill out. King Darshan may already have been forced to announce it. Princess Alexa, daughter of King Cassel and Queen Kyra of Kali. It doesn’t sound right, and yet it’s who I am. It’s what I’ve wanted all my life.
And my uncle, the usurper king of Kali, will be both furious and gleeful. He will hate me because I am yet another child of the brother who had everything, but he’ll want me on his side. He’ll want to use me against Alexi, the perfect foil to the golden warrior prince, the twin who can equal and crush his enemy. He’ll want Titania. I’m counting on that.
Rama and I slip out of the cellar exit. “Are you really planning to go back to the children’s home?” he asks as we walk away from the white palace walls. “You do know you’re not just another face on the streets anymore?”
“I can’t leave without a word to them. And there’s something there I need before I go.”
It’s an awkward trip back to the home; royal princes and winners of warships tend to cause a stir wherever they go. Rama may be used to it, but I find the dumbfounded stares and whispers as we pass profoundly unsettling.
As soon as I set foot in the familiar patchwork of pods and rooms, the children mob me. They tumble over one another in their excitement and I can hardly keep up with their questions. How did you do it, Esmae? I hear several times. I spent a long time learning isn’t a very exciting reply.
Rama eventually distracts them, and I escape to the room I share with three smaller girls. I pack what little I have into an old rucksack. It isn’t much beyond some clothes and a couple of books, but I didn’t come back for them. I shift the floorboard beneath my bed and draw out the bow Rickard gave me after I passed his first test.
The Black Bow. It feels warm, alive in my hands, a small but powerful bow carved from the black ashoka wood that grows on Amba’s planet. It’s not just a fine tool for archery; when an incantation transforms it into its celestial self, it becomes an explosion of radiance that can instantly destroy any and every weapon at which it’s directed. Titania is possibly the only exception. Other warships would crumble. Swords would turn to ash. Arrows would dissolve in the air. Lasers would vanish on the spot. Whole armies could be picked off and disarmed, and whole fleets of soldiers would die as their warships crumbled around them. Rickard taught me the incantation when he gave it to me, but warned me never to use it unless I had a desperate need. I haven’t needed it yet.
I might in battle. That’s the obvious place, isn’t it? Technology allows us to make weapons that can level cities with the press of a button, but the laws of righteous warfare limit soldiers to the use of swords, bows, and other pre-industrial weapons like spears, the gada mace, and hammers. Spaceships can be used in battle, but there are laws about distance and the type of laserfire and so on. There are many people who resent these limits, but the gods’ laws are strict and the Forty Territories agreed together not to violate their code.
There’s a sound at the doorway. I look up to see Madam Li.
“They’re saying you’re a Rey.” She jabs her thumb back toward the tech screens out on the streets. “Is it true?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “You never put on any airs, never fussed about all the jobs you took on around here, never acted like you were better than any of us. I never would have guessed there was a princess hiding behind all that.” Her long black eyes shift to the packed rucksack and she frowns. “You don’t have to leave because of this.”
“You know I do. Neither of us will ever get any peace if I stay here.”
She notices the Black Bow. She takes in the celestial symbols notched into its grain. Her eyes widen. “Is that one of their bows?”
“A god’s bow?” I can feel its energy, a faint thrum in my hands. “Yes. Amba forged it.”
Madame Li touches her heart, then touches the bow for luck. She smiles at me. “Good luck, Esmae. Bend the world to your will.”
I smile back. “I’ll do my best.”
I thank her for all she’s done for me and then I leave.
Rama’s outside. He looks like he’s talking to himself, but I assume he’s speaking to whoever’s on the other end of the earpiece he’s put in his left ear. When I approach him, he jerks his head at the tech screen at the other end of the street. “You’re going to want to see this, Ez.”
King Darshan is on the screen. “This was an impossible decision. Princess Alexa won the competition, but she was not on the list of competitors. Her entry should not count, and yet it would be unjust to pretend she does not have the kind of talent that is worthy of a prize like Titania. I decided it was not up to me to have the final say.”
A murmur rolls through the crowd around us. I’m just as confused. Rama’s eyes are twinkling.
“I put the question to someone who has more right to this decision than I,” the king continues. “I asked Titania herself. And—”
He pauses. I hold my breath.
“—and she has chosen Princess Alexa.”
I’m hardly aware of the noise and the heads in the crowd turning my way. Something expands inside me, painful and sharp. Titania chose me. She chose me.
I look past the tech screen, past the sun lamps, into the deep black of space. At my path home, lit by stars.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When we return to the palace, a servant tells Rama that Prince Max has sent word asking to see me. I agree to meet him in the royal family’s library, where I wait surrounded by Rama’s maps and Radha’s books. It’s a room I know very well, because it’s also the schoolroom we studied in growing up, but it feels odd to be here as a princess and not as the orphan that the royal tutors didn’t really want to teach.
Once again, Max Rey comes alone without any of his attendants or advisers. This time, there isn’t even a guard in the room for protection. He probably thinks he doesn’t need one; Kali is a realm of warriors and almost every person over twelve and under
seventy can fight better than they can bake a loaf of bread. There’s a reason Kali imports its bread from Winter.
“Do you prefer Esmae or Alexa?” he asks.
“Esmae’s fine.”
He takes one of the other chairs and leans forward, elbows on his knees, but hesitates as though he’s not sure what to say. I consider my options. I certainly can’t let him see the depth of my hatred for him, but I can’t come across as eager to please either. No one trusts an overly friendly stranger. I have to make him believe my lie by offering up a little of the truth.
“You came alone,” I say. “Brave.”
“Why is it brave?”
“Because this would be the ideal opportunity for me to kill you if I were so inclined. I’m sure you’d put up a good fight, but I would win.”
“You don’t seem like a murderer.”
“How can you know that?”
“You were taught by Rickard,” he says. “Honor defines everything he does.”
“Rickard isn’t my teacher anymore.”
Max frowns slightly. “Why not?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Rickard’s face flashes in and out of my mind, with that sudden smile that would transform him. I’m surprised by how much it hurts to think of him. By how much I still miss him.
The very last memory I have of him is the way he stepped onto the wing of his ship and then looked back one more time. I was trying not to cry—he could see that, and his face softened. You will always have a place in my heart. Those were the very last words he ever spoke to me. They’re the words I try to remember, the ones I cling to, because the ones that came before fill me with shame and despair every time I think of them.
Max is considering the stack of games on a shelf. “Do you play Warlords?”
I shape my mouth into a sheepish smile. “Not very well.”
“I’m not very good, either,” he says. “Shall we?”
He sets up the board. I fidget with my queen until it’s time to put her down in her starting position.
“You’re not a killer,” Max says, his eyes on the pieces. His fingers move quickly, deftly. “You’re someone who has spent her life overlooked and dismissed, treated like she’s nobody. You’re someone who just wants to belong somewhere.”
I hate that he sees that. I hate that he, of all people, understands that about me. I don’t reply. I make the first move, nudging a pawn up two spaces. Standard, safe.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he goes on, “but I know what it is to feel like you’re never going to be enough.”
I let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “Do you really? Crown Prince of Kali, ruling alongside your father? The thief prince with an entire kingdom in the palm of your hands?”
His eyes are on the line of king, queen, elephants, chariots, and horses behind his pawns. He moves a horse forward. “I’m a crown prince with no blood right to the throne my father holds,” he says.
He’s really Queen Guinne’s nephew, the only child of her sister Maeve, orphaned as a baby and adopted and raised by Elvar and Guinne as their own. It’s true that he isn’t related by blood to Alexi or Bear or me, but what difference does that make? The world says many things about Max Rey—thief and treacherous snake feature most prominently—but I have never heard not even a real Rey used against him.
“You’re adopted,” I say and place one of my pawns where he can take it. A mistake a novice might make. “What difference does that make to anything?”
“So that’s not the reason you don’t like me?”
“I used to hate you,” I say. Reel him in with a little of the truth. “My father died and for seven years my mother ruled as Alexi’s regent. And that was when your father’s patience ran out. They were children and you betrayed them. Your father took the throne. And then you didn’t even stop there. You could have let them live in their home in peace, princes but never kings, but you didn’t. You exiled them instead. You did that. Everyone knows it was your idea. You insisted they had to go. You took everything from them.”
I take one of Max’s pawns. He takes my chariot back in turn. “Alexi was thirteen, not three,” he says. “He was never going to live in peace on Kali. He had too many allies in the palace. The moment he had a chance, he would have struck. I was not about to let your brothers stay on our kingdom when I knew they were waiting for an opportunity to skewer my father in the heart.”
“You could have talked to them!”
“They didn’t want to talk. I was seventeen when they were exiled. Your age. I was their childhood companion, their friend and cousin, and I betrayed them. Why would they talk to me? And my father had no interest in negotiating terms that would put Alexi back on the throne anyway.” Max takes another pawn. “So they had to go.”
He says it quietly but firmly. And I understand the logic, I do. Still, logic doesn’t make it any less cruel.
“Don’t pretend you weren’t waiting for an opportunity to get rid of them,” I say. “Everyone knows the stories. You were jealous of them. You hated them.”
Max makes a sound that might be a laugh. “We’re not so different, Esmae. I think you of all people know how it feels to spend your life watching someone else get everything while you get nothing.”
I don’t reply. How can I? What can I possibly say to refute that?
“The coup wasn’t as simple as everyone likes to think it was,” Max goes on after a moment. “My father doesn’t believe he stole the throne, you know. The world is angry that my father took it from Alexi, but no one seemed to care when your father took the throne from mine.”
“That’s not fair. That wasn’t my father’s fault. That was the line of succession, not a coup.”
“The point still stands. My father was the eldest, but our grandmother and her war council decided my father’s lack of sight made him less capable of ruling and named Cassel the heir instead. No one cared that my father lost what should have rightfully been his.”
“It’s not the decision I would have made if I’d been queen and I don’t think it’s fair that Elvar was punished for his disability, but it doesn’t excuse what he’s done. At the end of the day, it was Queen Vanya’s right as ruler to name whoever she wished as her heir. Once she made her decision, my father was her heir, and Alexi his heir in turn. What Elvar did doesn’t put right the injustice that was done to him. All he’s done is create a brand new injustice.”
“Maybe, but Father doesn’t see it that way.”
“Why couldn’t he contest Alexi’s claim to the throne the proper way, then? He obviously respected Queen Vanya’s choice while she and my father were alive. He didn’t try to take the throne until after my father died. He could have spoken to the war council first. He could have asked them to choose between him and Alexi. Why did he have to take the crown?”
“I suppose he was still afraid,” says Max.
“Of what?”
“Maybe he was afraid he’d be rejected all over again. Maybe he felt he had to take back some degree of control over his own fate.”
The pieces flash across the board. Pawn, chariot, elephant, horse, queen. Protect the king, get rid of the others. I lose several pieces and take a few of Max’s, moving in precisely the right places to engineer his win.
“If you’re so angry with my father and me for what we did to your family,” he says after a few minutes of silence, “why did you compete against your brother? Why did you agree to meet with me here?”
“I was angry with you,” I say. “I was angry until I realized that I have no stake in either side. My mother didn’t want me, my uncle didn’t know about me. I just want to go home. If Alexi was on the throne, I’d join him. He’s not. It’s your father, and you. I don’t agree with what you’ve done, and I don’t trust you, but this isn’t my war. I agreed to talk to you because you’re the one who gets to decide whether to let me set foot on Kali or not.”
He maneuvers his queen into place. I could escape the trap, but I don’t. I shift my hors
e elsewhere instead. Max moves his chariot closer, ready to lock my king down and win the game.
“Kali is your home, Esmae,” he says. “My father agrees. You are welcome to come back with me. Not to fight in our army. Not to be useful to us. You’re not required to be useful to anyone. Live whatever life you wish when you get there. It’s your home.”
I stare at him, shocked. Not by the invitation, because I expected it, but by the terms of it. You’re not required to be useful to anyone.
“Does your father agree with all of that?” I ask. “Are you sure he doesn’t want me there just so I don’t fight against him?”
“You’re far too good to lose to the other side, it’s true, but I don’t believe that’s my parents’ only reason for inviting you to Kali.”
“Far too good to lose to the other side? Flattery won’t help.”
“Telling you how skilled you are is hardly flattery. You just announced it to the entire world.” He smiles suddenly, lopsided. “Flattery would be me telling you we don’t need your knowledge or skill because your smile alone would turn attacking armies to dust.”
I feel the smallest twitch at the corner of my mouth and squash it. I refuse to let him make me laugh.
Max moves his queen. “Warlord lock,” he says.
The final move.
He’s won.
“I’ll come back with you,” I say. Finally. Home, and the means to crush them all. I glance at the board. “And well played.”
He stands up. “Maybe next time you might try to win.”
I tense. “What?”
“You planned every single move of that game.” His eyes are too shrewd, and a little amused. “It’s not easy to manipulate the game so that the other person thinks they’re winning all by themselves. I almost didn’t notice. You’re a brilliant Warlords player, but you want me to think you’re not. You want me to underestimate you. I wonder why that is.”
My heart beats faster. How does he see so much of what I am?
And how can I get past his defenses if he knows I’m coming?