One True King

by Soman Chainani

  Tedros’ blood flowed hot.

  The Woods thought he had no chance.

  Even though Excalibur had returned to the stone. Even though his father spoke from the grave and gave him a claim. These people still thought he would lose.

  Why?

  Because they’d seen Rhian pull the sword from the stone, while Tedros failed. Because they’d seen Rhian quell attacks on their kingdoms, while Tedros failed. Because Rhian’s pen told them what they wanted to hear, while the pen Tedros fought for told them the truth, even if it hurt. All of it was a Snake’s tricks, but the people didn’t know that. That’s why no one was betting on him. To the Woods, Tedros was a loser.

  Which is why he had to win this first test.

  Tedros peered harder through the trees.

  The Living Library, a colossal acropolis, stood tall on a hill over the pavilion, its blue pillars and domed roof glowing in afternoon sun. On the stairs, flanking the entrance, were Pifflepaff guards, who despite their comical blue hats, shaped like muffin-tops, came armed with loaded crossbows, Lion badges over their hearts, and small pocket-mirrors, which each guard flashed at anyone who entered or exited the Library.

  “Six guards,” said Tedros, turning to the others. “And they have Matchers.”

  “Matchers?” asked Agatha.

  “Living Library keeps ancestry files on every soul in the Woods,” Tedros explained. “Matchers track those going in and out, in case anyone tries to doctor or steal a file. Those mirrors tell the guards our names and what kingdom we’re from.”

  “So if they’ll know who we are, how are we supposed to get inside?” Nicola asked.

  Tedros glanced off. “Haven’t gotten that far.”

  “And there’s no other way to figure out what the Green Knight wanted?” Nicola pressured, eyeing the scroll peeking out of the prince’s pocket. “There isn’t something you aren’t remembering or something your dad told you—”

  “No, there isn’t,” Agatha defended, “otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

  “It’s his dad,” Hort snapped at Agatha, then pivoted to Guinevere. “And your husband. How can neither of you know a crucial part of King Arthur’s history? Even the village idiot knows the story of the Green Knight. Terrorized the Woods because he wanted something from King Arthur. Something secret. We know what happened to the Green Knight but no one ever found out what the secret was. Except Arthur, of course. And now you’re telling me you two don’t know what it was, either? How can King Arthur’s own family not know? Didn’t you talk to each other? Or have family dinners or holiday jaunts or the kinds of things Ever families are supposed to have that make them feel so superior to Never ones? If it was my dad, you bet your bottom he woulda told me what the Knight was after, even if it was a secret.”

  Guinevere grimaced. “I wasn’t at the castle when the Green Knight came.”

  “So much for you being a ‘resource’ on Arthur,” Hort scorned, then glared at Tedros. “And your excuse?”

  “He doesn’t have to excuse anything—” Agatha started.

  “Yes, I do,” said Tedros, cutting her off.

  He needed to say it out loud.

  The reason his dad chose this as the first test.

  “The Green Knight came in the weeks after my mother ran off with Lancelot,” the prince explained. “I’d stopped talking to Dad. At first, I held him as responsible as I’d held her. For letting her leave. For not keeping her happy. For breaking up our family.” He looked at Guinevere, who struggled to hold his gaze. “Eventually I started talking to him again. And only after he came back from defeating the Knight. But we never spoke about his victory. It was a great feat, of course. He tried to bring it up again and again, baiting me to ask the details. Eager to share what happened. And I wanted to know. I wanted him to tell me what the Green Knight came for. But I never did ask. It was my way of punishing him, reminding him that Mother was gone and it was his fault. I wouldn’t be the son he could confide in. Not anymore. That’s why he made this the first test. Because I failed it when he was alive. Because I chose anger and pride over forgiveness.”

  Even Hort went quiet.

  Tedros suddenly felt the chill of loneliness. Agatha and his friends could only take him so far. In the end, it was him that was on trial. His past. His present. His future.

  “We can’t change what’s already happened. What matters is finding the answer now. What matters is winning the first test,” Agatha said briskly. Tedros knew that tone: whenever his princess felt helpless or scared, she grasped for control even more than usual. Agatha pushed past her prince and squinted out at the Library. “If the Green Knight was unfinished business between you and your dad, he would have left you the answers. And you’ve said all along those answers would be here. You’re right, Tedros. It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous. We need to get past those guards.”

  “And their Match things,” Nicola reminded.

  “There’s no ‘we,’” Tedros corrected Agatha. “I’ll go alone.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Agatha insisted.

  “It’ll be impossible enough getting me past the guards. How can both of us get past them?” the prince argued.

  “Same way I broke into Camelot’s dungeons. Same way Dovey freed us from the execution,” said Agatha. “With a distraction.”

  “And my mother?” Tedros peppered. “Can’t just leave her in the middle of the Woods with the weasel and a first year—”

  But Guinevere wasn’t paying attention.

  She and Nicola were watching something else in the forest: a squirrel with a royal collar, carrying a round walnut in its mouth, huffing and puffing past trees, as if it had already come a long way.

  The old queen and first year gave each other narrow looks.

  “Actually, Nicola and I have other business to attend to,” Guinevere said.

  “Mm-hmm,” said Nic.

  The two of them went after the squirrel.

  Hort blinked dumbly. “Well, if you’re going into the Library and they’re going after a rodent, what am I supposed to do—”

  He turned to see the Tedros and Agatha staring right at him.

  “Oh no,” said Hort.

  AT THE LIBRARY entrance, there was a lull in the flow of patrons. A guard disguised a yawn, his crossbow limp at his side; a second picked his nose with one of his arrows; a third spied on pretty women with his Matcher—

  A blast of blue glow shot it out of his hands, dashing it on the Library steps.

  Another blast took out the next guard’s Matcher.

  The guards looked up.

  A blond-poufed boy with no shirt, no pants, and a cotton candy diaper leapt in front of them, wagging his bum—

  “Singing, hey! Laddie, ho!

  Laddie, laddie, ho, ho

  Same old shanty,

  Sing it front and back,

  Ho, ho, laddie, laddie, hey!”

  The boy waited for the guards to attack.

  They gaped at him dumbly.

  The boy cleared his throat.

  This time, he tap-danced too.

  “I’m a pirate captain

  Hoo ha, hoo ha

  My ship is named the PJ Frog

  Hoo ha, hoo ha

  With a lass named Nic and a friend named Soph,

  Ho, ho, laddie, laddie, hey!”

  The boy shimmied his hands. “Olé!”

  Guards still didn’t move.

  Hort frowned. “Fine.”

  He burst out of his diaper into a seven-foot-tall, hairy man-wolf.

  “Roar,” he said, half-heartedly.

  The guards charged.

  “Never fails,” Hort sighed, upending trees as he dragged the men on a chase.

  Meanwhile, a boy and girl hurried up the blue library steps, keeping their heads down. Tedros had smeared his shirt with cotton candy, giving it a splotchy blue tint, and hidden his blond locks under a mop of blue spun sugar, so he looked less like a prince and more a homeless elf. Agatha, for
her part, had beaded her black gown with pink cotton candy and capped her hair with a towering hive of pink fluff. Together, they motored through the library doors, only to see a large sign.

  BOYS ENTRANCE ONLY

  By Law of Pifflepaff Hills

  “Separate but Equal”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Agatha.

  But ahead, there was a line of blue-dressed men waiting to get past a librarian—an old goat name-tagged GOLEM—who was checking each entrant with a Matcher, affixing them with their own name tag and letting them through, before he turned his attention to the line of women coming from another entrance.

  “I need to use the girls’ door,” Agatha whispered, heading back outside—

  But now the Pifflepaff guards had returned to their posts, Hort’s werewolf nowhere in sight. Just as they were about to spot Agatha, Tedros yanked her into the boys’ line. He could see the men in line were glaring at her, cracking knuckles and curling fists.

  “I know, right?” Tedros chuckled. “Seems like a girl . . . but you’d be surprised.”

  Agatha frowned at him, but the men glared harder now, prowling towards her.

  “Go ahead. Look for yourself,” the prince shrugged, offering Agatha up.

  His princess gasped, about to clobber him, but the men had stopped in their tracks. They peered at Agatha, weighing Tedros’ offer. Then they shook their heads with a collective grunt and went back to their business.

  “Told you to trust me,” Tedros whispered to his princess.

  “Thanks for that,” Agatha snapped as they neared the goat, scanning and name-tagging more entrants, “but how we gonna get past him?”

  Behind the goat’s desk, more Pifflepaff guards with Lion badges were stationed on staircases to the library stacks. Tedros’ chest clamped. Guards in here, guards out there. The moment the goat matched their names, he and Agatha were dead.

  “It’s too risky,” he said, grabbing Agatha’s wrist, pulling her towards the door. “We need to sneak out—”

  “Wait. Not yet,” Agatha resisted, studying the old goat as he stamped more names.

  “He’s going to catch us!” Tedros hissed.

  But Agatha’s focus stayed on the freckle-faced man in front of them, who was having an argument with the goat. “Trust me,” she said to her prince.

  Those magic words, Tedros thought.

  “I’m called Patrick,” the freckled man protested, pointing at the stamp on his chest. “This says . . . ‘Poot.’”

  “As it should,” said Golem, swiveling to the girls’ line. “Welcome, Hatshepsut!”

  “It’s Hanna,” said a lady.

  But the goat was already back to Tedros and Agatha, next in the boys’ line.

  Tedros held his breath as he and Agatha approached, the patchy-furred goat eyeing them through thick glasses.

  “Good to see strapping boys in a library instead of making mischief,” said Golem, his voice hoary and high, honing in on Agatha. “Though at first glance, one might mistake you for a girl, which isn’t allowed. Boys must be boys and girls must be girls, through and through. So I really should report you, dear boy. The guards behind me are no doubt itching for my verdict on the matter . . .”

  Tedros felt Agatha’s palm go clammy.

  “But that’s to presume we should call you a ‘boy’ at all,” the goat mused. “Because if a boy likes to dress as a girl, one might say he’s still a boy, in which case he should use the boys’ entrance. But if the boy feels like a girl, well, he should use the girls’ door, shouldn’t he? Because what you feel often contradicts what ‘is’ and you can’t change what ‘is’ until you know what you feel. It’s rather complicated, isn’t it? If only we had a reputable princess to consult. The best princesses can find answers in a way we ordinary goats cannot.” He looked at Agatha, as if hoping she could resolve the matter.

  “I think the question of which door to use should be left to the one using it,” said Agatha, eyeing the Matcher on the desk.

  Tedros could see the back of her neck rashing red, anticipating the mirror’s scan.

  “Must be school aged, you two,” the goat rambled, the line of men restless behind them. “My younger brother works as a librarian at the School for Good and Evil. Is that where you went to school?”

  “No,” said Tedros and Agatha, too forcefully.

  The goat gave them a long stare. “No?” He raised his Matcher to reflect them, his whiskers twitching. “Let’s see who you are, then . . .”

  Tedros’ stomach surged into his throat. Why hadn’t they run for it? Surely there were other ways to find the answer to his dad’s first test . . . to what the Green Knight wanted . . . There was no way of tricking a Matcher! Agatha had put them in a death trap—

  “Arise, young Teedum of Coomat!” the goat boomed, stamping him with a tag, before plastering one on Agatha. “And welcome, young Agoff!”

  Tedros and his princess gaped at Agatha’s name tag.

  AGOFF OF WOODLEY BRINK

  “May I suggest the exhibit on Floor 5, about Notable Chaplains,” the goat prattled. “The one at Camelot happens to be a good friend. Pospisil, his name is. Not that you two would know the slightest thing about Camelot, since Teedum is from Coomat and Agoff from Woodley Brink. Then again, I’m a doddering old bag who’s been mixing up my names lately, or at least that’s what everyone in Pifflepaff says . . . Imagine if condemned criminals entered my library. I’d hardly notice them.”

  He gave them a smile.

  Tedros saw Agatha grin too, she and the goat locking eyes.

  “If only we had a reputable princess to consult on the matter . . .”

  Tedros’ heart beat faster.

  “Dearest Golem,” the princess said, keeping her voice low, “might you tell Teedum and I where to find answers about King Arthur’s reign?”

  “Thought that’s what you might be here for,” the goat replied keenly. “Floor 3, East Wing. But I’m afraid the Pifflepaff King has closed Arthur’s archive for renovation. There’s no way inside, unless a trespasser just happened to use the broken door in the south stairwell. But can’t imagine anyone would be foolish enough to do that . . .”

  “Can’t imagine,” said Agatha.

  Golem winked and waved them away before swiveling to the girls’ line: “Next!”

  Agatha pulled Tedros towards the stairs ahead.

  “How’d you know to trust him?” Tedros whispered.

  “Always trust librarians,” his princess whispered back.

  They heard the goat stamp his book and slap another name—

  “Hail, Methuselah!”

  THE DOOR TO the south stairwell was indeed broken, letting Tedros and his princess steal up to the third floor without the slightest sign of a guard.

  As they pushed through the door, Tedros had his first view of the Living Library’s halls, he and Agatha stopping short to marvel.

  The floor, the walls, the high ceilings were all made of alternating squares of blue and pink mosaic, each tile the size of a biscuit. At first, Tedros thought the mosaic an extension of Pifflepaff’s obsession with sex, the alternating pastel colors so relentless that it felt like they’d been stuffed inside a birthday cake. But then Tedros noticed the legions of white mice, wheeling carts loaded with cubes of paper, across the floors, up the walls, along the ceiling, while a large bat supervised from a corner. Each mouse checked the numbers on their cubes, then found a corresponding tile, before popping open the blue or pink square like a safe box and slipping the scroll inside.

  Following their lead, Tedros pressed a random pink tile, feeling it pop under his fingers. He pulled out the small cube of paper, labeled “1851,” then gently pried open the thin sheet of parchment, crammed with elaborate calligraphy.

  Prince Kaveen of Shazabah

  Age:

  23

  Parents:

  Sultan Adeen of Shazabah, Mumtaz Adeen of Shazabah

  Current Address:

  Shazabah Pris
on

  Schooling:

  School for Good (Leader)

  A long ancestry description followed, marking Kaveen as the great-grandson of Aladdin. Another familiar name caught Tedros’ eye: “Prince Kaveen was briefly married to Princess Uma, now a teacher of Animal Communication at the School for Good—”

  A mouse ran over Tedros’ foot with a cart, before it noticed him and Agatha and peered up with pearly, black eyes.

  “Moop moop mop mip mip,” it meeped.

  Tedros and Agatha exchanged baffled looks.

  The mouse held up a sign.

  WHOSE FILE ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

  Agatha began: “Actually, we’re looking for King Arthur’s archiv—”

  “Japeth of Foxwood. We need his file,” Tedros cut in sharply. He glanced at Agatha. “Since we’re here, I mean.”

  The mouse whipped out a notebook, scanning through it.

  “Good thinking,” Agatha whispered to Tedros, with a smile. The kind of smile princesses gave dashing, quick-thinking princes in the storybooks that Tedros loved growing up. The kind of smile his princess almost never gave him. Maybe this kingdom was rubbing off on her, Tedros thought . . . He wasn’t sure if he liked it.

  “Japethee,” the mouse piped, pointing at its ledger: “Matoo cuatro matoo matoo.” Humming a tune, the mouse wheeled its cart up the wall, feet knobbing onto the edges of the tiles, as it scaled columns and slid across rows, until it landed high on a blue tile near the upside-down bat. “Matoo cuatro matoo matoo,” the mouse double-checked.

  Tedros glanced at Agatha hopefully, then back at the mouse, who popped the tile open, pulled out a file, and dropped it, down, down, down, into the prince’s waiting palm. “2422,” the cube face read. Tedros spread it open, nearly tearing the thin paper—

  Sir Kay

  Parents:

  Sir Ector of Foxwood, Lady Alessandra of Camelot

  Deceased

  (Buried in Vault 41, Bank of Putsi)

  Sir “Kay,” as named by his father, was Arthur’s foster brother at the home of Sir Ector, where Arthur grew up before becoming King of Camelot. Kay was later made King Arthur’s first knight, only to leave the Round Table after a few weeks. According to the Camelot registry, Kay was Sir Ector’s only child, his full name registered as—