Crown of Oblivion

by Julie Eshbaugh

  The echoes of his boots recede as he follows Lars along the corridor. Still on my knees, I cover my face with my hands.

  “Not if he’s fast enough,” Renya whispers.

  “Run, Jayden,” I say into my cupped palms. I know I should be quiet, but I can’t help but scream, “Run!”

  One

  It is decided I will wear red.

  What I wear is of little importance to me, but apparently it is of great importance to Princess Renya and Sir Millicent, because they have spent the better part of the morning pulling dresses from Renya’s closet and holding them up under my chin. It’s tedious and annoying, but I keep telling myself that I can endure all this and more, because eventually they will settle on a dress, and that dress is what I will be wearing tonight when Renya finally fulfills a long-overdue promise to help my father.

  But Renya and Millicent aren’t thinking about my father or how tonight will change his life. Their minds are on the fresh scabs on my back, wondering which dress would best conceal the blood if those scabs were to open up at the Apple Carnival.

  I’ve pulled on and tugged off at least a dozen of Renya’s dresses, my wounds stinging as they stick to the bandages meant to keep my blood from Renya’s clothes. My hair crackles with static as the fifth red dress in a row is whisked off over my head. I ran out of patience three dresses ago, and I don’t try to hide it when Renya hands me red-dress-number-six. I watch Sir Millicent and the princess through the silky fabric as I tug it on over my head. Both girls furrow their brows.

  But then I push my arms into the sleeves and the dress drops onto my shoulders and the skirt falls into place. Renya’s eyes warm. She is a girl with no hard edges, from her wavy hair to her flouncy skirts. So different from Sir Millicent, whose shoulders are always as straight as a curtain rod. She is so much like her father, Sir Arnaud. Her fake smile is not nearly as convincing as Renya’s.

  “What?” I say, tired of pretending I don’t notice.

  “Nothing,” Millicent says, her eyes hovering on my hair.

  I shrug, glance at Renya, and steel myself to try on red-dress-number-seven.

  But Renya wags her finger at me when I move to pull this dress off. “No, no . . . That’s it. I think that’s it.”

  I turn to Millicent. Not that I care about her opinion of me, but I know she has one. Her eyes have finally left my hair and found the dress, and she nods. “Once she’s been tidied up a bit, I think she’ll look . . . nice,” she says, running the palm of her left hand across her own perfectly smooth, dark brown hair. It’s pinned up, as usual, in a high tight bun. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Millicent’s hair down. For all I know, it’s long enough to reach the floor.

  “Millicent, love,” Renya says, in the way she does when she’s about to ask you to do something she thinks you won’t want to do. “Would you mind going and checking on the departure plans?”

  “We’re all leaving at six,” Millicent says. “It’s the same every year.”

  “Would you be a dear and check anyway? I just want to be sure. You understand, right?”

  Millicent’s face shows she understands she is being dismissed. For a moment, her gaze lingers on me, and I can sense her resentment the way a sheep can sense the coming rain. “Of course, Princess,” she says, as she pulls the door closed behind her.

  “Sit down in front of the mirror,” Renya says as soon as we’re alone. “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to make your hair look nice.”

  I drop into the chair and try not to feel insulted. Renya takes a couple of swipes at my jumble of hair and mists it with some sort of spray. Like the hair of all indentured Outsiders, it’s required to be kept short, to expose my two blinking embeds. In Renya’s mirror, under the silky fabric of the red dress, the one at the base of my throat is barely noticeable. But not the one in the back. I can see its blinking reflection in the window behind us.

  Watching Renya hover over me in the mirror, I can’t help but notice how much we resemble each other—we both have wavy hair, both have brown eyes. Except I look strained and exhausted, and she looks bright and alive. Plus I have embeds. But really, if not for those few things, we could be sisters.

  Renya sets down the brush—I think she’s satisfied, but it’s possible she’s given up—and opens the top drawer of her vanity. She lifts out a small scroll tied with a blue ribbon. “Would you like to see the royal order?” she asks.

  “Is that it?” When I see it in her hands, my stomach flutters like it’s full of hummingbirds. Renya slides off the ribbon and unrolls the paper. Like all royal orders, it’s written by hand in a flourish of black calligraphy on faintly rose-colored paper. My eyes devour the words:

  Be it known to all citizens of Lanoria that the holder of this order, the indentured Outsider Oscar Jael, is granted the right and privilege to seek and receive treatment for any and all of his personal medical needs, present and future, at the Citizens Hospital of the King’s City.

  Below this one sentence, in curling black ink, Renya’s father, King Marchant, has placed his signature and seal.

  Renya has finally come through for me. Just a few hours more. Then my father will be on his way to the Citizens Hospital with this order in his hands, and I won’t have to be fearful anymore.

  “My mother’s been dead since I was seven years old,” I say to the princess as I slide across the smooth rear seat of her motorized carriage right at six o’clock. “But this evening, you’ve said no more to me than she has.” It’s true, and it’s odd, because Renya is almost never sullen. On the night of the carnival, of all nights, I’d expect her to be buzzing with anticipation and gossip, but she’s as quiet as the dead.

  She gathers her skirt up and pulls in her feet, and the porter shuts the carriage door behind her. “Sorry,” Renya says. “It’s just something my father said to me at tea.”

  Whatever was said, it’s filled her head and sealed her lips. Thoughts light in her eyes, but she doesn’t share a single one.

  The carriage lurches forward. We are just passing through the palace gate, and I can see all the way down the hill to the shoreline. With the sun setting and the rooftops glowing gold, the city reminds me of a living heart, the roadways reaching into the countryside like arteries.

  I fidget in my seat, smoothing the skirt of the borrowed red dress and checking and rechecking the small purse I carry, which holds nothing but the royal order. Beyond the city, the edge of the bay is marked by twinkling lights, except for the smudgy shadow of the wall that surrounds Camp Hope. I visited Marlon and Papa there just this morning, to make sure they fully understood where they needed to be at the Apple Carnival, so that the princess could hand Papa the order while drawing as little attention to it as possible. I don’t need fancy citizen doctors, my father had grunted. If royal orders are so easy to come by, get one for yourself, or one you can use to help Marlon.

  Don’t worry about me, Marlon had said, repeating words he’d heard Papa say a million times. But I’d seen the anxious look in my brother’s eyes. So often he seems blissfully unaware, but Marlon knows what it means to be an indentured Outsider. He knows what lies ahead of him.

  At the door, I’d tried to cheer Marlon up with a riddle. He’s a master at puzzles of all sorts. What feeds bees, people, worms, and fires, in that order?

  An apple tree, he’d said. Too easy.

  I’d stood there shaking my head. See you both tonight.

  See you both tonight, he’d repeated, and closed the door behind me.

  The carriage is already halfway down the hill, and still Renya hasn’t spoken. “So what is it, then?” I say when I can’t stand it anymore.

  “He warned me to be on my best behavior tonight.” For a moment I don’t understand. The king always warns Renya to behave. But then she adds, “They’re expecting members of the OLA to be at the carnival. The Enchanted Authority is on high alert.”

  OLA stands for Outsider Liberation Army, and their name tells you everything you need to
know about them. They provoke complex feelings in me. Of course I want liberation, but their violent methods sometimes cause Outsiders more harm than good. “If the OLA disrupts the carnival,” I say, “you may not get the chance to give my father the order tonight. He’d have to wait—”

  “I suppose.”

  But that’s not what’s churning up Renya’s mood. The princess has a history with the OLA that is personal and dark, and now, I understand why she’s so sullen and withdrawn.

  If it had ended differently, it would have been as romantic as a fairy tale. A fairy tale about a princess, a boy from the OLA, and a secret romance. But the romance was discovered, and instead of happily ever after, it ended with the worst beating of my surrogacy. I could have died—would have died—if it hadn’t stopped right when it did.

  It took a week in the infirmary before they were sure I’d survive. It’s something we never talk about, and we’re not going to start tonight.

  Before the silence between us can become any more uncomfortable, the carriage comes to a stop, and the door beside Renya is pulled open. We are in the center of the city in Queen Rosamond Square, at the edge of the Apple Carnival.

  Everything is decorated with flowers—vendors’ stalls and carnival games and clusters of tables under bright red awnings where food will be served. Garlands of poppies and apple blossoms are wound around every pole. Chains of daisies crisscross overhead, back and forth above the footpaths. And intermixed with it all are a thousand twinkle lights, flickering to life in every corner of the square.

  Not far away, someone is playing a lilting tune on a tin whistle, and I can’t help but relax. The threat of the Outsider Liberation Army upsetting my plan to get this order into my father’s hands seems more remote now than it did in the carriage with sulky Renya.

  But then I notice Prince Lars stepping from his carriage just ahead of us, and of course Kit, his surrogate, is with him, and I doubt there are enough twinkle lights and tin whistles in all of the King’s City to keep me in a good mood if they are going to be around all evening. To be honest, I hate the sight of them. They are both brutal and cruel, and have done enough to hurt me over the years for me to never forgive them. I turn my head quickly so as not to let them catch my eye.

  A breeze drifts over us, carrying the warm scent of apples baking. Renya grabs me by the hand and tugs me toward the carnival gate.

  “Princess!” It’s the voice of Sir Arnaud, climbing out of the king’s carriage behind us. In front of us, a line of Enchanted Authority guards move together to block the princess’s way. “You know better. Please adhere to protocol!”

  Enchanted Authority guards are always around to protect the royal family, and on a night like this one, with rumors circulating about the OLA, I’m not surprised to see so many. But Renya’s not happy. In her eyes, the guards are here to enforce Sir Arnaud’s restrictions on her, or maybe to protect her from her own inclinations. Renya spins on her heels, and I can see the angry child inside her—the angry child who has never really gone away even as she’s grown up. I can tell by the sour expression on Sir Arnaud’s face that he can see it too. But then his daughter, Sir Millicent, steps forward and sets a hand on Renya’s arm, and she calms a bit.

  We’ve grown up together—Renya, Millicent, and I. Tonight is the first time since she joined the King’s Knights that I’ve seen Millicent in her black-and-red dress uniform. It has a strange effect. She looks like she’s aged years since I saw her this morning.

  “Well, Princess,” calls Arnaud from behind us, “we have thirty minutes until the opening of race registration. You seem to be leading the way, so where to?”

  It’s funny how a person’s words can seem so accommodating while their tone is anything but. Good thing Renya doesn’t care. She presses forward, her eyes bright and hot under the flashing lights. The air smells of cider as we linger to watch two flute dancers skipping in circles. I’m trying to figure how they keep from falling down, and then one does. I offer a hand but then we’re moving on, and I lose the dancer’s grip as I’m jostled by a few of the biggest Authority guards. The cider smell fades, but I pick up the scent of apple cake again. At a poppy-strewn booth, Renya takes up a handful of darts, but throws only one at the spinning target before passing the rest to Prince Lars. She’s restless. “May I?” she asks the attendant at the darts game, scooping up a few loose poppies.

  “Of course!” The attendant is an old man—a citizen Outsider—with white hair that sticks to the sweat of his neck. I notice the scar where his embed was removed when he satisfied his indenture. I shouldn’t be surprised—an indenture is supposed to be only twenty-one years, so in theory, many people should satisfy them. But taskmasters are allowed to add time to indentures for so many reasons, it seems like they get longer instead of shorter. He smiles with slightly gray teeth, and I feel his pride bubble over.

  Renya tugs two hairpins from her head. With one she pins a poppy into her own hair, and with the other she pins one into mine. She grins, and I scold myself for my nerves. Nothing will go wrong.

  “Do you see the pendant around this old citizen’s neck?” Renya whispers into my ear as she leans close, pretending to check the pinned flower in my hair. “See the entwined circles? That’s the secret symbol of the Third Way. It’s subtle enough to escape the Authority’s notice, but another underground member would recognize it.”

  “Are you sure?” I say, following her as she drifts down the aisle. The Third Way was an experimental settlement, where Enchanteds and Outsiders lived as equals. “I thought that was outlawed years ago.”

  “It was outlawed,” Renya says. “But people break laws every day.”

  At every stall, shouting to be heard over the music and the voices of the crowd, Renya asks where she might find a silver honeypot. Each vendor points her in a different direction, and each gives her a sample of their own wares, which she accepts cheerfully and passes off to me, so that my arms are soon awkwardly overfull. I’m in danger of dropping something by accident, or maybe even on purpose. We still haven’t found a silver honeypot when Sir Millicent presses up behind us. “They’re about to open registration for the Race of Oblivion. It’s time to head to the stage,” she shouts.

  One of the guards steers us between two stalls and shines a light on a set of wooden steps. When we get to the top, I discover we’ve climbed to a platform that overlooks the central hub of the carnival on two sides. One faces the parade route, the other an ancient stone building known as the Queen’s Temple. It’s said to be the oldest temple in Lanoria, dating back to the days when the first Enchanteds arrived, pioneers from a dying homeland, searching for a new world. They found Lanoria, and claimed it. By the time the rest of their people came—refugees from that very same homeland—they were calling themselves the Enchanted, and dubbed the newcomers Outsiders.

  Looking at that ancient temple, accessible only to Enchanteds, I think of the story my father told me, of how the Outsiders had no choice but to submit to the system of indenture, since the homeland they’d all come from could no longer support life, and the Enchanteds declared that resources were too scarce to share without restriction. The only scarce resource in Lanoria is power, he’d said.

  “The parade will come straight down that avenue,” Renya says, pulling me from my thoughts. She points to the street that passes directly beneath us. “We’ll have the best view from up here.” Somewhere along the way, she scooped up more hairpins. One by one, she pins at least half a dozen poppies across the crown of my head.

  I can’t keep my eyes from the crowd. Authority guards are holding the masses back from the parade route behind metal barriers, but people still jostle for the best view along the railing. Soon the royal family will come down from the stage to briefly greet a short line of carefully vetted Enchanteds and even a few Outsiders in a controlled demonstration of how accessible they are to their subjects. Normally I wouldn’t pay any attention at all, but today my brother and father will be in that line. Renya will
meet them and shake their hands, and she will discreetly hand my father the royal order giving him access to the Citizens Hospital.

  I’m panicking until I spot them in the crowd, right along the barricade where they belong. They’re both dressed up, so much I didn’t know them. My father is coughing into his elbow, but Marlon waves at me. “There they are,” I say under my breath. I know better than to make a big scene. Renya does not look down, but gently turns my head back to face her and fastens a final poppy in my hair.

  Beside us, a microphone squeals to life. Prince Lars clears his throat. He is introducing the annual Race of Oblivion, but I can’t hear him. I’m too distracted by the thought of my father walking into a real hospital and receiving treatment from a real doctor. Getting treatment that he’s needed for so long—treatment that will rid him of that cough and make him strong again.

  Someone in the crowd lets out a whoop, and I jump back, startled. “People are stepping up to volunteer for the race,” Renya whispers. “Their bravery—or foolishness—is being acknowledged.” I nod. Far out in the crowd a circle has been roped off, and a knobby old man in a judge’s robe stands holding an open book. As volunteers step into the circle, each adds their name to a page in the back, and I wonder how many people who’ve signed their names on the preceding pages are dead.

  For the winner, the Race of Oblivion means citizenship, but there’s only one winner each year. For many of the other contestants, the race means death. It’s cruel, really. Stripped of all their personal memories, racers wake with amnesia somewhere outside the city walls, with nothing more than a short list of instructions and a map to the first clue. If I think my life as a surrogate is a life without mercy, I know it’s nothing compared to what happens in the race.

  I watch a woman enter the circle and sign her name. She’s a big, sturdy woman with a pretty face. A man waits for her outside the rope, holding the hand of a toddler. When she lifts the pen after signing, the man in the robe raises a small knife to the base of her throat. With a motion so quick I barely notice it, he slices the skin over the woman’s embed and pulls it out. Blood coats his fingertips. I groan, and Renya bends toward my ear again. “It’s gory, isn’t it? And pointless. They still keep their second embed until the race starts.”