Firstborn

  “When was that?” I say, stepping in after her past an entire box of wigs, and another filled with ostrich feathers, pink plumes, and ornate masks.

  “Nineteen months ago,” Claudia says softly. “Four days . . . eleven hours.”

  I stand there for a quiet moment, realizing that despite my claims, I have discounted her. For her youth, her love of beautiful things. Her moodiness. “A court of savants,” Nikola called us, the second-to-last time I saw him. Misunderstood genius in every form. How many deaths has she counted, and how many hours since those she knew expired? How many good-byes has she clung to, realizing each one was the last?

  Even genius is its own form of pain.

  Claudia shakes me out of my reverie with a flash of gold. Holding up an elaborate Asian dress, she says, “I claim this one.”

  “Whatever you want,” I say, as Piotrek comes in to rummage, and Rolan stands warily back, to stare. I have a different reason for wanting to get in here.

  I fish through an oversize hatbox of stockings, and then its twin, filled with gloves.

  “What about you, Audra?” Claudia says.

  “You’ll see.”

  Piotrek holds up one hanger and then another. “Firebird or gypsy queen?”

  He’s been around Claudia way too long.

  I find what I’ve been looking for, push back onto my heels, and stand. Look around for Luka. Find him changing into a clean shirt in the spare bedroom.

  “Luka . . .”

  I’ve been waiting for his flat refusal to let me go to court alone. To my surprise, he shakes his head when I start to explain.

  “You’re right,” he says. “You have to go. You’re Audra Ellison. Audra Szabo.” He lifts his gaze to me.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever heard that name—mine, my mother’s surname—used together.

  “Audra Novak,” I say.

  He gives me a small smile.

  “I promise this isn’t about protecting you. It’s about—”

  “I know what it’s about.” There are new circles beneath his eyes on top of the bruises.

  I nod, look down between us.

  “If I could do this for you, go as you, I would. And I know I can’t.” He closes his eyes, breath escaping in a whisper as he says, “I hate this entire thing.”

  I wrap my arms around him and kiss him, and I can feel how tired he is. But it’s the slump of his shoulders—the defeat in them—that actually scares me.

  He’s only twenty-three. No one should look so beaten down that young.

  “Do me a favor,” I say, stepping back.

  He looks at me.

  “Sleep tonight. I’ll be back by the time you wake up, lying right beside you.”

  I hope.

  He nods and takes one of my hands. “What’s this?” he says.

  “This ”—I hold up the purple lightbulb—“is in case you can’t sleep.”

  He lifts his brows.

  I unlock the door, pull him from the bedroom across the narrow hall into the flat’s only bathroom, and shut the door.

  “What does this remind you of?” I say.

  “The night we found the tattoo on your back in Graz?”

  “I think this was actually the inspiration for that,” I say, reaching up to unscrew the three bulbs across the top of the light fixture, taking the middle one out completely. The bathroom goes black.

  “What am I going to see lit up this time?” he says.

  I replace the middle bulb with the purple one, tighten it into place.

  The walls come to life in the dark light.

  They are the scribblings of a woman obsessed. A savant indeed, who needed to process. Who didn’t dare keep a journal.

  At least, not yet.

  Me.

  Names of new friends. Their relationships. The stories they told. They line the eastern wall. My mother’s name is there.

  On the western wall, the names of hunters, of Scions, by generation. Twelve original names near the top of the wall, just beneath the crease of the ceiling. Farther down: the three known Historians, in their family lines, circled. All taken from the envelope of notes from my mother.

  To the right of the mirror: the names of foundling hospitals and locations of baby boxes. Of monks from various monasteries.

  To the left: possible baby names. Amerie, my mother. Emily, for my high school best friend. Amy, for my adoptive mother. Eva, for Luka’s. Barbara, the alias my mother lived under.

  Luka turns in a slow circle, taking in the scribbles so much like the product of a manic episode. A wild garden of ruminations that exploded onto the walls over the course of months—during the day, before dressing for court at night, in the morning before collapsing into bed. As though worried I might forget some detail if I didn’t see it with my eyes.

  “Welcome to my brain,” I say with a small laugh. “But this is what I wanted you to see.” I point next to the mirror, to the first thing ever written on these walls:

  Luka and Audra . . . (Luka’s name, with a heart around it) . . . Audra Novak . . . Mr. and Mrs. Luka Novak . . . Mrs. Luka Gerard Novak . . .

  Eva Amerie Szabo Novak.

  “How middle school can you get, right?” I say. “But look.” Beside each line is a date.

  The date we met.

  The date we became lovers.

  The date I first wondered what it would be like to marry Luka . . .

  The date he asked me.

  The date, on the last line, that we married.

  The date Eva was due, if not born.

  She came two weeks early.

  “I just wanted you to see—to know—that I had already thought about marrying you before you ever asked.” I turn and take his hands. “That I loved you. I loved you first.” I smile in the purple light.

  “No way,” he says, shaking his head, something pained about his expression.

  “Way. And when you asked me to marry you, after I came back, and I said no . . .” I whisper with a smile. “What I really meant, was yes.”

  I pull a marker from my pocket and add two lines with two new dates:

  The date I met him again in Maine . . .

  And two days ago, when I woke up, remembering everything.

  I cap the marker, set it on the sink, and then slide my arms around his shoulders.

  “And I did fall in love with you again. Exactly like I thought I would. Well, not exactly like I thought it would happen,” I concede. “None of this really went as planned.”

  “But,” he says, kissing me, “I loved you before I told you. And wanted to marry you before I asked you. You should see my bathroom wall.” He laughs softly, but it ends in a broken sound. He pulls me tighter against him, and then lifts me up onto the edge of the sink. I wrap my legs around him as he buries his head in my neck.

  “I love you,” he says roughly, hands sliding up my sides. “Never forget that. Get back safely. Come back alive.” But there’s sadness in his voice.

  32

  * * *

  It’s nearly midnight, quiet except for the bark of an occasional dog, conversations of late-night couples out for a walk two blocks over. The distant sounds of the river walk. But the bright lights of this city are reserved for the Pest side of the capital, where ruin pubs and raucous hostels are just shifting into full swing—at least for those above ground level.

  Jester walks ahead of us in a blue peacoat, the blunt cut of her blond wig bouncing over her shoulders. I’m not sure how she got all her dreads under there.

  We steal up the back path between two residential buildings. Double back beneath a tree-lined walk to the house on Csónak Street. I pause, point soundlessly to the camera above the gate’s stone arch. Piotrek bends down and lifts Claudia onto his shoulders just out of sight of the camera. She pulls a creamy tube of purple lip gloss from her pocket, squeezes a glob onto her finger. Reaches up, smears it across the lens.

  Jester consults her phone, taps out a brief message. A moment later, the gate unlo
cks with an audible click. She pushes it open, gestures us inside like a butler, which makes me shudder; the last time I was here, there was indeed a masked butler who answered the door.

  A large plum tree obscures most of the small, overgrown courtyard, including the front stoop badly in need of paint.

  Piotrek moves up the step to the door, glances back, shakes his head no, and looks at me.

  But I don’t sense any Progeny within, either.

  Rolan moves up beside him, clicks the safety off his gun. Piotrek pries open the door. The frame gives way with a crack that sounds far too loud in the darkness.

  Phones become flashlights inside the decrepit interior. And it’s as I thought: empty, the house’s innocuousness its best security feature.

  I point to the back of the house, and Rolan pushes me behind him. We follow him down two flights of stairs to the small chamber I remember. The tunnel is boarded shut. Once again, Piotrek and Rolan set to work with crowbar and hammer.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m leading them through the broadening tunnel into a series of corridors.

  Claudia glances at me, and I can tell she’s nervous. There are stories of Progeny wandering beyond the boundaries of this court and never being seen or heard from again—even as recently as five years ago. It would be all too easy to make a single wrong turn, get lost in these underground passages forever.

  For anyone else but me.

  We emerge in a cavern shored up with ancient brick. Rolan tilts his head, and I know he has heard the faint drum of that industrial pulse amplified by the series of grottoes farther on. And even Claudia takes a half step back at the sheer presence of the Progeny mass in this underground hive.

  I nod toward a smaller tunnel as dark as the one we just came from.

  They emerge like strange butterflies from chrysalises: Piotrek, the gold and crimson matador, sharp in his “suit of lights,” his full face mask featuring a patch over one eye. I teased him earlier about apparently not being a very good bullfighter—or having a run-in with a pirate.

  Rolan, the duke who could not be persuaded even by Claudia to get into the pirate getup. Who actually looks very stately in his powdered wig, midnight blue velvet coat, and buckled shoes.

  Claudia, the Chinese empress, a rainfall of gold cascading from her black, upswept wig. She turns toward me, the crimson lips of her full face mask a near-perfect imitation of the way her lips look when she purses them in real life.

  Jester removes her peacoat and blond wig, pulls the skullcap of her bodysuit over her dreads. Transforms into a black bird woman with gold-tipped feathers and gilded claws, glittering beak on her mask.

  “Hurry up,” she says, reaching to help me with my cloak, pulling it carefully from the ruff standing out from my neck.

  I adjust the beaded headpiece holding the long, black wig securely on my head. The red velvet dress is heavy; its sleeves fall to my knees. Claudia has loaded my neck with jewels, but there is one feature of this costume that stands out beyond them or the chandeliers hanging from my ears . . .

  The giant embroidered gold dragon with its three talons snaking down my shoulder.

  I’ve come as Bathory herself.

  “Are . . . are you sure you want to wear that?” Claudia said at first, chewing her lip. “There will be other Countess Bathorys there, right?”

  “Of course,” Jester said. “And Nikola would never expect it of a fugitive Firstborn. A bit too on the mark, no?”

  But that’s exactly what I’m hoping he’ll expect.

  A part of me wishes I had my gold pendant, left behind in Zagreb, though it might be too much of a dead giveaway.

  Literally.

  I reach toward my left arm, for the single accessory chosen not by me but by Rolan: a knife, the sheath of which is strapped, upside down, to the inside of my upper arm.

  My breath feels hot behind the full face mask as we skirt into the first grotto. I pause to gaze down a dimly lit corridor.

  “What’s down there?” Piotrek whispers.

  From here I can just make out the pillars, the roughly hewn carved heads that top each one of them, vacant eyes staring at everything and nothing at once.

  “That’s where we were,” I say.

  Jester grabs her mask by the beak, holds it out from her face. “Let’s see the court itself.”

  I know the direction from my nightmares. Would know it anyway, from the sound.

  I lead them through the bright eye of the next grotto and down a tunnel increasingly filled with glittering others.

  Kings, princesses, barons. Egyptian gods and gypsies. Indian maharajas, Siamese princes, and czars. Swans, phoenixes, and firebirds. Color and gold everywhere. Driven by a relentless electronic beat tinged with Bulgarian rhythms. Drowning out words. I feel, more than hear, Claudia suck in a breath. Even Jester stops cold.

  There have to be four hundred Progeny here.

  The ceiling rains gold light like coins. But it’s not the light or the music fueling the frenzy . . . rather the sheer density of the others like us.

  The strobe shutters, goes black. The cavern erupts in a roar. Daggers and dragons and serpents appear where jewels and velvet once were. Twined around wrists and throats. Streaking down bare backs. Tearing at shoulders. Skeletal teeth glowing on red-rouged lips. The dark story behind the glittering gold. On the far cavern wall: the Glagolitic number three, at least a story tall.

  The strobe flashes. Shocks the cavern to erratic black-and-white life. A film jerked out in frames.

  Claudia’s eyes are wild. Piotrek’s chest rises and falls, too rapidly, in his glittering suit. Like addicts confronting a drug they cannot overcome or quit, and don’t know when—if—it will ever be available again. And I feel it, too, crawling along the base of my skull, dictating the rhythm of my heart, tugging at my skin.

  In a flash, they are gone.

  Jester gives me a quick last look and melts into the fray.

  And it’s all I can do not to run after them.

  Rolan stays close, but he’s staring.

  “Your mask!”

  I don’t understand what he’s saying, reach up to touch it, make sure it’s in place.

  “It’s a skull! A crowned skull,” he says, as the cavern explodes in crimson light.

  How bizarre this all must seem to him! Meanwhile, this is the closest I’ll ever come to one of those awkward extended family reunions.

  A golden-haired king crowned with a headpiece like a stag sweeps in front of me, grabs my hand. Rolan starts but holds back as the stag bends over my fingers, barely brushing them before melting into the melee.

  I watch Rolan’s eyes flick this way and that over the crowd. Wonder if he’s trying to find the others . . .

  And realize he’s looking for Nikola.

  He has to be here. If not in the cavern itself, then somewhere else, watching. He called this celebration. There’s no way he’d miss the opportunity to watch his kingdom swell.

  I glance around but can’t see past the riot of silk and gold, more regal than the Zagreb court and more feral. A hooded cobra to Zagreb’s frenetic rattlesnake.

  I move into the cavern, looking for Piotrek, Claudia, and Jester. When I don’t see them, a new surge of adrenaline floods my veins like fear.

  I begin to push my way into the glittering throng.

  The mob melts away.

  Just ahead, a Baroque baron does a double take, removes his hat, steps back, bows low. Farther on, a gilded courtesan with a deadly-looking fan of knives drops into a curtsy.

  Heads swivel, their masks animated only by eyes.

  I glance at Rolan, thinking this is hilarious, Progeny bowing to the duke who isn’t even one of them!

  Until I realize he’s standing on my other side.

  They aren’t bowing to him . . . they’re bowing to me.

  Panic seizes my heart.

  Rolan grabs my hand. Leads me forward on an invisible carpet. The music forgotten, the throng parts like a sea.


  Colors blur around me into a gilded mass. I try to remind myself that the prince bowing his feathered turban low is probably just some kid. That the chick in the gold star crown is a college girl from the States for all I know.

  Maybe her name is Emily.

  Like that, the golden costumes are lost on me. I see, instead, a glittering company of souls that deserve to live. With royal blood—gifts and legacy—in their veins. I want to touch them, and I do, fingertips drifting over foreheads and cheeks, clasping hands with those farther back, who reach for me.

  I know they don’t see me. Not Audra from Sioux City, Iowa. But her. The devoted mother history made a monster, from which a multitude of orphans and misfits were born. Savants and geniuses. Derelicts and outcasts. Too strange to call anyone but others like them family, too hunted to be allowed to live. Too fragile and strong at once to survive the embers of jealousy that should have burned out centuries ago.

  Rolan falls away, and when I look back at him, he is staring at the strange enactment taking place. I want to tell him that this isn’t how it is. That they don’t know who I am—that I am Firstborn and nobody. The most hunted and least among us all. That it’s just the costume . . .

  Claudia was right; she taught me what I am. That love is not earned but bestowed—even as I watched her struggle to learn to give it.

  I can’t remember if I told her I loved her. If I’ve ever told Jester, or Piotrek, or Katia, or Andre . . .

  So I tell these others instead.

  I love you. I love you.

  I see you.

  Tears run from beneath a courtesan’s mask. I kiss her hair.

  The strobe flutters, flashes to the music, goes black. Breaks the spell, as the serpents and dragons emerge again.

  And then the music dies.

  The giant Glagolitic three—the same symbol I carved on the doorframe of my flat in Zagreb—disappears as another image takes its place. A giant projection, as tall, nearly, as the cavern itself.

  Me.

  Rolan stands protectively behind me as celebrants glance at one another. What’s happening? Who is that?