King's Cage

by Victoria Aveyard

  Mare Barrow raises her chin and glares forward. Her eyes seem black with rage. “We, the newbloods, are not fit for their dawn.”

  Shouts and protests erupt through the room, hurling obscenities at Maven, at the Merandus whisper, even at the lightning girl for speaking the words.

  “—vile beast of a king—”

  “—would rather kill myself than say—”

  “—barely a puppet—”

  “—traitor, plain and simple—”

  “—not her first time singing their song—”

  Kilorn is the first to break, both hands curling into fists. “You think she wanted to do this?” he says, his voice loud enough to carry, but not harsh. His face reddens with frustration, and Cal puts a hand on his shoulder, standing with him. It silences more than a few, particularly the younger officers. They look embarrassed, apologetic, even, shamed by the reprimand of an eighteen-year-old boy.

  “Quiet, all of you!” the Colonel rumbles, shutting up the rest. He turns once to glare with his mismatched eyes. “The brat is still speaking.”

  “Colonel . . . ,” Cal growls. His tone is a threat plain as day.

  In reply, the Colonel points on-screen. At Maven, not Mare.

  “. . . offer refuge to any fleeing the terror of the Scarlet Guard. And to the newbloods among you, hiding from what seems to be little more than genocide, my own doors are open. I have instructed the royal palaces of Archeon, Harbor Bay, Delphie, and Summerton, as well as the military forts of Norta, to protect your kind from slaughter. You will have food, shelter, and, if you wish it, training for your abilities. You are my subjects to protect, and I will do it with every resource I have to give. Mare Barrow is not the first of you to join us, and she will not be the last.” He has the smug audacity to lay a hand on her arm.

  So this is how barely more than a boy becomes a king. He’s not only ruthless and remorseless, but just plain brilliant. If not for the rage curling in me, I would be impressed. His ploy will cause problems for the Guard, of course. Personally, I’m more concerned with the newbloods still out there. We were recruited to Mare and her rebellion with little choice in the matter. Now there’s even less. The Guard or the King. Both see us as weapons. Both will get us killed. But only one will keep us in chains.

  I glance over my shoulder, seeking out Ada. Her eyes are glued to the screen, effortlessly memorizing every tick and inflection to be scrutinized later. Like me, she frowns, thinking about the deeper worry no member of the Scarlet Guard has yet. What will happen to the people like us?

  “To the Scarlet Guard, I say only this,” Maven adds, standing up from his throne. “Your dawn is little more than darkness, and it will never take this country. We fight to the last. Strength and power.”

  On the dais, and across the rest of the throne room, the chant echoes from every mouth. Including Mare’s. “Strength and power.”

  The image holds for a second, burning the sight into every brain. Red and Silver, the lightning girl and King Maven, united against the great evil they’ve made us out to be. I know it isn’t Mare’s choice, but it is her fault. Didn’t she realize he would use her if he didn’t kill her?

  She didn’t think he would do it. Cal said that before, about her interrogation. They are both weak where Maven is concerned, and that weakness continues to plague us all.

  Back at the Notch, Mare did her best to school me in my ability. I practice here when I can, together with the other newbloods learning their limits. Cal and Julian Jacos attempt to help, but I and many others are loath to trust their tutelage. Besides, I’ve found someone else to help me.

  I know my ability has grown in strength, if not control. I feel it now, prodding beneath my skin, a blissful emptiness to still the chaos around me. It begs, and I clench a fist against it, keeping the silence back. I can’t turn my anger on the people in this room. They aren’t the enemy.

  When the screen cuts to black, signaling the end of the address, a dozen voices sound at once. Cal’s palm slams against the desk in front of him, and he turns, muttering to himself.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I think he says before he pushes his way out of the room. Stupid. He knows his own brother. He can dissect Maven’s words better than any of us.

  The Colonel knows it too. “Get him back here,” he says under his breath, leaning in to speak to Julian. The Silver nods, moving smoothly to retrieve his nephew. Many stop talking to watch him go.

  “Captain Farley, your thoughts?” the Colonel says, his sharp voice drawing attention back where it belongs. He crosses his arms and turns to face his daughter.

  Farley snaps to focus, seemingly unaffected by the speech. She swallows a bite of potato. “The natural response would be a broadcast of our own. Refuting Maven’s claims, showing the country who we saved.”

  Using us as propaganda. Doing exactly what Maven is doing to Mare. My stomach tightens at the thought of being shoved in front of a camera, forced to sing the praises of the people I barely tolerate and cannot fully trust.

  Her father nods. “I agree—”

  “But I don’t think that’s the right course of action.”

  The Colonel raises the brow of his ruined eye.

  She takes it as an invitation to continue. “It’ll just be words. Nothing of use in the end, in the scheme of what’s going on.” Her fingers tap against her lips, and I can almost see the wheels turning in her head. “I think we keep Maven talking, while we keep on doing. Already our infiltration of Corvium is placing strain on the king. See how he singled out the city? Its military? He’s bolstering morale. Why do that if they don’t need it?”

  At the back of the room, Julian returns, one hand on Cal’s shoulder. They’re of the same height, though Cal looks about fifty pounds heavier than his uncle. Corros Prison certainly took as much of a toll on Julian as it did the rest of us.

  “We have a good deal of information regarding Corvium,” Farley adds. “And its importance to Nortan military, not to mention Silver morale, makes it the perfect place.”

  “For what?” I hear myself ask, surprising everyone in the room, myself included.

  Farley is good enough to address me directly. “The first assault. The Scarlet Guard’s official declaration of war against the king of Norta.”

  A strangled sort of yelp erupts from Cal, not the kind anyone would expect from a prince and soldier. His face pales, eyes wide with what can only be fear. “Corvium is a fortress. A city built with the sole purpose of surviving a war. There are a thousand Silver officers in there, soldiers trained to—”

  “To organize. To fight Lakelanders. To stand behind a trench and mark places on a map,” Farley fires back. “Tell me I’m wrong, Cal. Tell me your kind is prepared to fight inside its own walls.”

  The glare he levels at her would cut through anyone else, but Farley stands firm. If anything, she strengthens in her opposition.

  “It’s suicide, for you and for anyone in your way,” he tells her. She laughs at the blatant dodge, inciting him further. He controls himself well, a fire prince reluctant to burn. “I’m not part of this,” he snarls. “Good luck assaulting Corvium without whatever intelligence you counted on from me.”

  Farley’s emotions are not so hindered by a Silver ability. The room will not burn with her, no matter how red her face flushes. “Thanks to Shade Barrow, I already have everything I need!”

  The name usually has a sobering effect. To remember Shade is to remember how he died, and what it did to the people he loved. For Mare, it turned her cold, empty, into the person willing to trade herself to keep her friends and family from the same fate. For Farley, it left her alone, singular in her pursuits, focused only on the Scarlet Guard and nothing else. I didn’t know either of them for very long before Shade died, but even I lament who they were. The loss changed them both, and not for the better.

  She forces herself through the pain Shade’s memory brings, if only to shove Cal’s nose in it. “Before we faked his execution, Shade was o
ur key operative in Corvium. He used his ability to feed us as much information as he could give. Don’t think for one second you are our only card to play in this,” Farley says evenly. Then she turns back to the Colonel. “I advise a full assault, utilizing newbloods in conjunction with Red soldiers and our infiltrators already inside the city.”

  Utilizing newbloods. The words sting, stab, and burn, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

  I guess it’s my turn to storm from the room.

  Cal watches me go, mouth pressed into a grim, firm line.

  You’re not the only one who can be dramatic, I think as I leave him behind.

  EIGHT

  Mare

  I make it easy for the Arvens to remove me from the dais. Egg and Trio take my arms, leaving Kitten and Clover behind. My body goes numb as they escort me out of sight. What have I done? I wonder. What will this do?

  Somewhere the others watched. Cal, Kilorn, Farley, my family. They saw that. The shame almost makes me vomit all over my wretched, magnificent gown. I feel worse than when I read the Measures of Maven’s father, dooming so many to conscription in payment for the Scarlet Guard’s action. But then, everyone knew the Measures were not my doing. I was only the messenger.

  The Arvens push me forward. Not back the way I came, but behind the throne, through a doorway, to rooms I’ve never seen.

  The first is clearly another council chamber, with a long table topped in marble, surrounded by more than a dozen plush chairs. One seat is stonework, a cold construction of gray. For Maven. The room is brightly lit, flooded by the setting sun on one side. The windows face west, away from the river, looking over the palace walls and the gently sloping hills covered in snowy forest.

  Last year Kilorn and I cut river ice for spare coins, risking frostbite in favor of honest work. That lasted about a week, until I realized coppers for breaking up ice that would only refreeze was a poor use of our time. How strange, to know that was only a year ago, and a lifetime away.

  “Your pardon,” a soft voice says, sounding from the only seat in shadow. I turn to it and watch Jon unfold himself from his chair, a book in one hand.

  The seer. His red eyes glow with some inner light I can’t name. I thought he was an ally, a newblood with an ability as strange as mine. He is more powerful than an eye, able to see farther into the future than any Silver can. Now he stands before me as an enemy, having betrayed us to Maven. His stare feels like hot needles pricking skin.

  He is the reason I led my friends to Corros Prison, and the reason my brother is dead. The sight of him chases the icy numbness away, replacing all that emptiness with livid, electric heat. I want nothing more than to beat him across the face with whatever I can. I settle for snarling at him.

  “Good to see Maven doesn’t keep all his pets on a leash.”

  Jon just blinks at me. “Good to see you are not so blind as you once were,” he replies as I pass him.

  When we first met him, Cal warned us that people go mad puzzling out riddles of the future. He was absolutely right, and I won’t fall into that trap again. I turn away, resisting the urge to dissect his carefully chosen words.

  “Ignore me all you want, Miss Barrow. I’m not your concern,” he adds. “Only one person here is.”

  I glance over my shoulder, my muscles moving before my brain can react. Of course Jon speaks before I do, stealing the words from my throat.

  “No, Mare, I don’t mean yourself.”

  We leave him behind, continuing on to wherever I am being led. The silence is a torture as much as Jon, giving me nothing to focus on except his words. He means Maven, I realize. And it’s not difficult to guess the implication. And the warning.

  There are pieces of me, small pieces, still in love with a fiction. A ghost inside a living boy I cannot begin to fathom. The ghost who sat by my bed while I dreamed in pain. The ghost who kept Samson from my mind as long as he could, I know, delaying an inevitable torture.

  The ghost who loves me, in what poisoned way he can.

  And I feel that poison working in me.

  As I suspect, the Arvens don’t take me back to my prison of a bedroom. I try to memorize our path, noting doors and passages branching off the many council chambers and salons in this wing of the palace. The royal apartments, every inch more decorated than the last. But I’m more interested in the colors dominating the rooms rather than the furniture itself. Red, black, and royal silver—that’s easy to understand. The colors of reigning House Calore. There’s navy as well. The shade gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. It stands for Elara. Dead, but still here.

  We finally stop in a small but well-stocked library. Sunset angles through the heavy curtains, drawn against the light. Dust motes dance in the red beams, ash above a dying fire. I feel like I am inside a heart, surrounded by bloody red. This is Maven’s study, I realize. I fight the urge to take the leather seat behind a lacquered desk. To claim something of his as my own. It might make me feel better, but only for a moment.

  Instead, I observe what I can, looking around with wide, absorbing eyes. Scarlet tapestries worked with black and glinting silver thread hang between portraits and photographs of Calore ancestors. House Merandus is not so evident here, represented only by a flag of blue and white hanging from the vaulted ceiling. The colors of other queens are there too, some bright, some faded, some forgotten. Except for the golden yellow of House Jacos. It isn’t there at all.

  Coriane, Cal’s mother, has been erased from this place.

  I search the pictures quickly, though I don’t really know what I’m searching for. None of the faces look familiar, except for Maven’s father. His painting, larger than the rest, glowering over the empty fireplace, is difficult to ignore. Still draped in black, a sign of mourning. He’s been dead only a few months.

  I see Cal in his face, and Maven too. The same straight nose, high cheekbones, and thick, glossy black hair. Family traits, judging by the other pictures of Calore kings. The one labeled Tiberias the Fifth is particularly good-looking, almost startlingly so. But then, painters are not paid to make their subjects look ugly.

  I’m not surprised to see Cal isn’t represented. Like his mother, he has been removed. A few spaces are conspicuously empty, and I suppose he used to occupy them. Why wouldn’t he? Cal was his father’s firstborn, his favorite son. It’s no wonder Maven took down his brother’s pictures. No doubt he burned them.

  “How’s the head?” I ask Egg, offering a sly, empty smile.

  He responds with a glare, and my smile spreads. I’ll treasure the memory of him flat on his back, electrocuted into unconsciousness.

  “No more shakes?” I press on, fluttering a hand the way his body flopped. Again no response, but his neck colors blue-gray in an angry flush. That’s entertainment enough for me. “Damn, those skin healers are good.”

  “Having fun?”

  Maven enters alone, his presence oddly small in comparison to the figure he cuts on the throne. His Sentinels must be close, though, just outside the study. He’s not foolish enough to go anywhere without them. With one hand he gestures, sweeping the Arvens from the room. They go swiftly, quiet as mice.

  “I don’t have much else for amusement,” I say when they disappear. For the thousandth time today, I curse the presence of the manacles. Without them, Maven would be as dead as his mother. Instead, they force me to tolerate him in all his disgusting glory.

  He grins at me, enjoying the dark joke. “Good to see not even I can change you.”

  To that I have no response at all. I can’t count the ways Maven has changed me, and destroyed the girl I used to be.

  As I suspected, he flounces to the desk and sits with a cool, practiced grace. “I must apologize for my rudeness, Mare.” I think my eyes bug out of my head, because he laughs. “Your birthday was more than a month ago, and I didn’t get you anything.” As with the Arvens, he gestures, motioning for me to take a seat in front of him.

  Surprised, shaken, still numb from my little p
erformance, I do as he commands. “Trust me,” I mutter, “I’m fine without whatever new horror you plan to gift to me.”

  His smile widens. “You’ll like this, I promise.”

  “Somehow I don’t believe that.”

  Grinning, he reaches into a drawer of his desk. Without ceremony, he tosses me a scrap of silk. Black, one half of it embroidered with red and gold flowers. I snatch it up greedily. Gisa’s handiwork. I run it between my fingers. It still feels smooth and cool, though I expect something slimy, corrupted, poisoned by Maven’s possession. But every twist of thread is a piece of her. Perfect in its fierce beauty, flawless, a reminder of my sister and our family.

  He watches me turn the silk over and over. “We took it off you when we first apprehended you. While you were unconscious.”

  Unconscious. Imprisoned in my own body, tortured by the weight of the sounder.

  “Thank you,” I force out stiffly. As if I have any reason to thank him for anything.

  “And—”

  “And?”

  “I offer you one question.”

  I blink at him, confused.

  “You may ask one question, and I will answer it truthfully.”

  For a second, I don’t believe him.

  I’m a man of my word, when I want to be. He said that once, and stands by it. It really is a gift, if he holds to his promise.

  The first question rises without thought. Are they alive? Did you really leave them there, and let them get away? It almost slips past my lips before I think better of wasting my question. Of course they got away. If Cal were dead, I would know it. Maven would still be gloating, or someone would have said something. And he is far too concerned with the Scarlet Guard. If the others had been captured after me, he would know more and fear less.

  Maven tips his head, watching me think as a cat watches a mouse. He’s enjoying this. It makes my skin crawl.

  Why give me this? Why even let me ask? Another question almost wasted. Because I know the answer to this too. Maven is not who I thought he was, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know parts of him. I can guess what this is, as much as I want to be wrong. It’s his version of an explanation. A way to make me understand what he’s done and why he continues to do it. He knows what question I will eventually summon the courage to ask. He is a king, but a boy too, alone in a world of his own making.