Tandem: The Many-Worlds Trilogy

by Anna Jarzab

  The Shepherd smiled. “So you’ll cooperate?”

  She took a deep breath and reached into her bra, where she was keeping her bargaining chip. It was the last thing her father had ever given her. The night before he was shot, he summoned her to his office, quite unexpectedly near dawn. He’d been frantic, and he’d given her this sheet of paper without explaining, only telling her to keep it close and show nobody. What is it? she’d asked, yawning. Gloria had woken her from a deep, heavy sleep. Maybe nothing, he’d said, although she could see from the expression on his face, the dark circles under his eyes, that “nothing” was the last thing it was. But for God’s sake, don’t ever let the General know you have it, he’d warned her. Don’t ever let him know you’ve seen it, Juli. Promise me.

  I promise, she’d said. And now here she was, handing it over to Libertas. She asked herself for the thousandth time why she was doing this. Because the General tried to have my father murdered, she thought. She was certain of this, as she had never been certain of anything in her entire life. And if this is a secret he wants to protect, then it’s something that can be used against him. She didn’t know how, for she didn’t understand what it was she held in her hand, but she wanted the General taken down, and she was glad to let Libertas do it. They wanted the end of the monarchy? That was fine with her. Because if the monarchy crumbled, so would the General’s hold on the country—and then, maybe, peace would have an actual chance. And she would have an actual life.

  The Shepherd tried to snatch the paper from her hand, but she held it back. He narrowed his eyes at her, no longer smiling. “What are you playing at?” he snarled.

  “I have one more condition,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “You cannot hurt my family,” she insisted. “You will not hurt them. My brother, my sister, my father—if he lives long enough—even my stepmother. You won’t harm a hair on their heads, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, yes, all right,” he said, impatient. “Now give that to me!” He lunged for it, but she kept it out of his reach.

  “I’m not finished,” she said. “My secretary, Gloria Beach. You’ll keep her safe, too. And my bodyguard. Thomas Mayhew.”

  “Mayhew?” The Shepherd let loose a bitter bark of a laugh. “The General’s son? The toy soldier.”

  “Don’t call him that,” she snapped. She knew how much Thomas hated it.

  “All right. Yes. You have my word. They’ll all be safe when—when the time comes.” The Shepherd held out his hand and she placed the piece of paper in his palm. He stared at it for a long time, his mouth curling in an unattractive frown.

  “He was right,” the Shepherd whispered. “It won’t be long now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said, standing and putting the chair back in its place. “You’ll stay here for a few more days. We need time to arrange things. When we’re ready, you’ll know it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He paused at the door, his head tilted, as if he was listening for music she couldn’t hear. “It won’t be long now,” he repeated. And then he was gone.

  Thomas hoisted me up by my arms, gathering me close and placing me gently on the concrete. My heart was beating so fast I thought it might burst out of my chest and my head was full of so many foreign images I could hardly tell where I was or what was happening. One minute I’d been hanging off the roof of the Tower, and the next I was in the attic room of the farmhouse, everything so sharp it was as if I was actually there. I was shaking so hard it was as if my bones were rattling around loose in my body.

  Thomas crouched in front of me. “Are you okay?”

  I punched him squarely in the throat. He toppled backward, his hands flying to his neck, his mouth forming a tiny O of surprise.

  “What the hell?” he managed to choke out.

  “You bastard!” I cried. “How could you do that to me? I could have died.”

  Thomas shook his head. “I—had—you.”

  “Oh yeah? And what if you let go? How were you planning to explain the fact that the princess fell from the roof?” A sob rose in my chest and I fought to suppress it, knowing that I would crumble to pieces if I didn’t.

  Dr. Moss’s cragged face hovered mere inches from mine. “We needed to push you to the very breaking point,” he told me. “There is no other way. You needed to be truly afraid.”

  “Shut up!” I screamed. “You’re crazy, you know that? You’re both completely insane.”

  “You saw something, didn’t you?” Dr. Moss gripped me by the shoulders, shaking me slightly. “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know!” I tried to fight him off, but I didn’t have the strength.

  “But you made contact,” Dr. Moss insisted. “You saw through Juliana’s eyes—you were able to force your way through to the other end of the tether. Where is she? What did you see?”

  “Nothing!” Dr. Moss’s eyes were wild, and his desperation was terrifying me. How could I have been so foolish as to think that I could use my connection with Juliana to my advantage? It was only one more way in which they had me trapped.

  “That’s not true,” Dr. Moss said.

  “Mossie!” Thomas shoved him away. “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s scared?”

  “I need to get out of here,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes and rubbing hard, as if by doing so I could erase everything I’d seen.

  “You can’t,” Dr. Moss cried. “You have to process what you saw!”

  Thomas slipped his arms under mine, lifting me off the ground. I leaned against him, too tired to resist his help. “We’re leaving. You and I will talk later,” he said to Dr. Moss. “I’ve got to get her back to the Castle before someone starts wondering where she is.”

  I tried not to think about the people waiting for me back at the Castle. I would deal with them later; right then, my priority was getting the hell off that roof.

  “Come on,” Thomas said, guiding me back to the elevator. “Lean on me. We’re almost there.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  By the time we’d gotten back to Juliana’s bedroom, I was feeling much better. My heart rate was back to normal and I could draw full breaths again; I was calm enough to hold the glass of water Thomas had brought me, taking small sips to soothe my parched throat. I reclined on the bed, propped up by a couple of pillows; Thomas paced like a jungle cat a few feet away.

  “I can’t believe I did that,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration.

  Now that I’d recovered a little, I was less frantic and more forgiving. After all, I’d gone up on that roof voluntarily; I’d agreed to do whatever it took. I didn’t think they’d go so far as to nearly throw me off the building, but now that the experience was over and done with that was not what was bothering me. I’d achieved my goal—I’d opened the connection with Juliana, and any time I wanted to now I could dip back in, find the tether again, and travel through it to the other side, if only in my mind. But after what I had seen I wasn’t sure I wanted to anymore. Because what I’d discovered was the answer to a question I’d never even thought to ask.

  Juliana had been complicit in her own kidnapping. She had walked willingly into the hands of Libertas in exchange for her own freedom. And she and I were the only ones who knew. She, and I, and the mysterious Janus, the person with whom she’d arranged her escape. But who was he? Why in the world had she done it? And, the biggest question of all—how was I going to tell Thomas? Because clearly he had no idea. He believed that Juliana had been kidnapped, and when Thomas believed in things, he did so wholly and without question.

  I couldn’t help but feel a burning sense of betrayal. Juliana was just as responsible for my presence in Aurora as anyone else. And not only that, but she’d turned her back on her country, abandoning her family and her responsibilities in pursuit of … what, exactly? What could Libertas possibly give her that was worth leaving behind the on
ly life she’d ever known? I wished the tether allowed me to see into her private mind as well as her surroundings, but I couldn’t hear her thoughts, only what she said and what was said to her. It wasn’t enough. There was so much more I needed to know.

  I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get away. The longer I stayed in Aurora, the more I saw how lonely and trapped she must have felt. And with the arranged marriage to Callum, the fate of two countries weighing on her shoulders, maybe it wasn’t so difficult to understand why she had done what she’d done. If it had been me, would I have done the same?

  Thomas would be horrified when he found out. I could tell that he put a lot of faith in her, and even though I hated to admit it to myself, I was jealous of that faith. His loyalties, too, lay with Juliana, and he wanted her back as soon as possible. Of course he does, I told myself. It was childish for me to expect him to prefer me. But I didn’t like being a placeholder, a poor substitute for someone else. It made me feel cheap and used and extraneous. More than ever, I wished that I could return to my normal life. At least there, I could be who I was. At least at home, I had people who loved me instead of people who loved the person they thought that I was. I was trying not to think of Granddad, of Gina, because I knew that if I started I would never be able to stop, that I would be consumed with missing them. But it was so hard, and I was so tired. I just wanted this all to be over.

  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Thomas about Juliana—not just yet. My heart swelled with tenderness for him, so strong that it was almost overwhelming, and I searched in vain for something to say to him.

  “How’s your neck?” I settled on at last.

  “What?” He glanced up in surprise. “Oh, fine. How’s your hand?”

  I was cradling my right hand gingerly in my left. “A little sore,” I admitted.

  He laughed. “Well, that’s normal. You’ve never punched anyone before, have you?”

  I shook my head. “Not really my thing.”

  “For a novice, you’ve got one hell of a right cross,” Thomas told me. His eyes wandered to the foot of the bed, and then he raised them to mine in a silent question. I nodded and he took a seat, careful not to rumple the covers. “Otherwise, you’re okay?”

  “I guess.” At least I’d stopped shaking, which was a marked improvement.

  “It was Dr. Moss’s idea,” he told me. “I didn’t want to do it. I was so afraid I’d lose my hold.”

  “So was I,” I told him. “But you didn’t.”

  “No,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “I didn’t. Thank God.”

  “I don’t know that God had very much to do with it.”

  “You don’t believe in God?” Thomas asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “I was raised agnostic.”

  He nodded. “Me too. But I’ve always thought that there had to be something out there. Something bigger than this.” He gave me a wry smile. “Maybe it’s just like Mossie said. There’s apeiron—that source of all perfection—and then there’s us. All our different versions, in every possible universe. And that’s it.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any,” I mused. I didn’t know anything about what my parents may or may not have believed, but I’d always found it interesting how Granddad talked about the universe, like it was a living, breathing organism full of intention. Even Thomas had done that: The universes want to be equal, he’d said. It reminded me of that phrase Mr. Early had written on the board the first day of my Western philosophy class: Kata to chreon. But even if Thomas and Granddad and the ancient Greeks were right, it didn’t mean the universes cared at all about us as individuals. At the end of the day, one analog was just as good as another. And if that was true, then what did it matter who we actually were?

  “The royals used to think they were chosen by God,” Thomas said. A private smile crept over his face. “Juli used to say that if that was true, they were being punished, not rewarded.”

  “I’m going to go ahead and agree with her.” I stared at Thomas; when I told him that Juliana had left the Castle and gone with Libertas of her own free will, he’d be shocked and hurt—but would he be surprised? “You’re close, aren’t you? You and Juliana?”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but I interrupted him. “I know, I know, you say that you’re not allowed to have relationships with your ‘assignment.’ But you’re not totally ambivalent to me, I don’t think.”

  He hesitated. “No,” he said finally, if abstractly. “I’m not.”

  “And you’ve only known me a little while,” I pointed out. “You were her bodyguard for a year before she … disappeared. You can’t tell me you don’t care about her.”

  “Of course I care about her,” he confessed. “I can’t help it. We’re all alone together, she and I. I mean, we’re never actually alone, at least not very often. But we’re so young compared to everyone else. And we’re both, you know …”

  “Lonely,” I supplied. It was something that I’d recognized in them—Thomas just from spending time with him, and Juliana in my visions. I recognized it because I felt it, too, sometimes. I figured it was the residual effect of being parentless. Granddad had never neglected me, but as long as I did well in school and didn’t have any tattoos, he pretty much stayed out of my business. Now that I was older, I appreciated the independence, but when I was growing up I wanted so badly for someone to take more than a passing interest in the day to day of my life, to prove that they loved me by asking questions and keeping track of where I was. Maybe that was why I felt the way I did about Thomas; his mere presence, his investment in what was happening to me, made me feel less alone.

  He shrugged. “Something like that. It’s complicated.”

  “Are you in love with her?” It was an inappropriate, much too personal question, but I had to know.

  “I—” The door chime stopped him, and he looked sheepishly grateful for it. His KES mask descended and I couldn’t even divine from his expression what he had been about to say. “That’s probably Gloria. I wouldn’t tell her about …” His eyes wandered up to the ceiling. “If I were you.”

  “Oh believe me, I don’t want her to know any more than you do,” I said. I arranged my hands in a more normal way, so as not to draw Gloria’s hawk-eyed attention.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said as she bustled in, with Louisa and Rochelle at her heels. “My mobie’s been ringing off the hook with interview requests from reporters, the florist lost their permit to import tropical plants, and—” She paused, her eyes darting back and forth between Thomas and me.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, suspicious. “You two seem very serious.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I told her, climbing off the bed.

  “No,” she corrected herself. “Not serious. Guilty.”

  “Don’t we have a schedule to keep?” I asked pointedly, inclining my head in the direction of Juliana’s aestheticians. Even if I was going to tell her what had happened on the roof of the Tower, I wouldn’t have done so in front of them. She caught the hint and backed down.

  “Yes, always.” She sighed. “Thomas, get out.”

  “I was just leaving,” he said.

  “Okay,” Gloria said when he was gone, examining the state of me. I wasn’t as disheveled as I had been when Thomas and I first arrived at Juliana’s bedroom; I’d tidied myself up as much as possible, mostly so that I didn’t tip Gloria off. I hadn’t done as good of a job as I thought, because she seemed exasperated by my appearance. “Where do I even begin?”

  Dinner was a strange, tense affair. The queen was outwardly polite, to both Callum and me, but there was something dark and bitter lurking behind every word she spoke. I was used to the queen’s barbed comments by this point; what bothered me was her undisguised resentment of Callum’s presence. He’d done nothing to deserve her scorn except be born in a country she despised; even his presence in the Castle was outside of his control. I felt sorry for Callum, and strangely embarrassed. This wasn’t the way to wel
come a guest, even a foreign one from an enemy country. After all, they’d invited him in; they’d even handed over their princess for him to marry. The least the queen could do was be civil over a meal.

  Callum looked miserable and homesick, but he made a valiant attempt to win the queen’s approval nonetheless. I was glad when dinner was over and we could escape—so glad, in fact, that it wasn’t until Callum and I were alone in the White Parlor with mugs of warm tea in our hands that I realized I had no idea what to say to him.

  Luckily, I wasn’t the only one. Callum seemed similarly tongue-tied. We were sitting about three miles apart from each other on different sofas, sipping at our tea, the silence punctuated by a ridiculous round robin of polite, throat-clearing coughs and nervous laughter. Callum smiled at me shyly, and I smiled back. I was starting to understand how deep the animosity between Farnham and the UCC went, because there was no other reason why anyone could dislike Callum. Even Thomas, who was usually so even tempered about other people, had warned me to be wary of the Farnham prince, but by all appearances he was just a teenage boy like any other, albeit a little bashful and self-conscious. Admittedly, he didn’t seem like the sort of guy Juliana would’ve chosen for herself. I could see why, outside of the fact that she was being forced to marry him for political reasons, she wouldn’t have particularly appreciated the match.

  “I’m sorry about dinner,” I said, after the awkwardness had gone on so long I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m afraid my stepmother and I don’t really get along.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Callum said. He seemed grateful for my attempt at conversation and latched on to it with enthusiasm. “She doesn’t seem to like me much, either.”

  “Oh? What makes you say that?”

  Callum laughed and I relaxed. He seemed determined to like me, which was going to make my job a lot easier. “You don’t have to be diplomatic with me, Juliana. I get it. My mother would hate you, too. The feud is in our blood.”