Crown of Oblivion

by Julie Eshbaugh

  Surfaces, not faces. This is my mantra as my gaze works its way through the crowd, but I can’t help myself when I see someone I recognize as a racer. Near a stage where dancers are performing a folk dance done with razor-sharp swords, I think I spot the woman with the pretty face and the build of a man, but she’s slump-shouldered and she has a black eye, so I can’t even be sure it’s her. And at the entrance to a ride called the Finish Line, I catch sight of a stumpy man who was with Knox when he jumped me and Jane at the lighthouse. He looks well, like maybe someone’s given him help along the way.

  Somehow, despite the crushing crowds, I manage to make my way around the entire loop—from the front of the Ephemeral City to the back and then around to the front again. There are a million things to see: stilt walkers and kite flyers and jugglers flipping flaming pins through the air. The brass band passes in front of me again, and then in another corner of the city they come up behind me, making me even more confused, until I realize there are probably more than one. I’ve spotted lots of blinking one-word signs in flashing lights: truth and want and wild and mine. But none of those words, even when they’re all put together, amounts to a clue.

  Frustrated, I lean against a fence post and peel the orange the princess put in my hand. I don’t even take the time to separate the sections, but lift the fruit to my lips and bite into it like an apple. Juice runs down my chin and over my hand, and I don’t know if anything ever tasted this good before. I feel something strange, like a memory of the princess, like the feeling I have toward her for having given me this orange is a feeling that I’ve had before—the feeling of being in her debt—and the memory tells me that this is not a feeling I enjoy. Thoughts of her stir up a discordant mix of affection and resentment, which is troubling as well as distracting. So I shove her face from my mind’s eye.

  But it doesn’t help, because it’s immediately replaced by the face of my brother Marlon. I’m looking down at him, and he’s standing behind a barricade, holding a man under his elbow.

  My breath catches. I see the two of them standing there waiting for the princess, and I know that the parts of me that have been missing since the race began are coming back. That the Oblivion I was given is wearing off, and my buried memories are surfacing faster and stronger.

  I know I am remembering Marlon and my father. I am remembering the moment right before my father died.

  I look out at the masses of Enchanteds, laughing and smiling and laughing even louder. I know it’s not real, but I imagine I hear the groans of the Outsiders moving the gear at the foot of the Wheel of Fire. I lift my head and stare up at that monstrous wheel, and I wish with a sudden flare of rage that fire flowers would all at once lose the magic that contains their flame, and I could watch that towering wheel burn until it crashed to the ground.

  This is what I’m thinking when a face weaving through the crowd catches my attention. It’s the ginger-haired racer, and he is walking alongside the journalists—Mr. and Mrs. Arrogance—who are clearly enraptured by him. The woman is still carrying her camera and the boy is still carrying his notebook, and they’re cajoling and smiling and the camera is clicking away. For a terrifying moment, I fear that maybe he has already found the clue and they are documenting it, but I forget my nemesis as fast as I noticed him when I see, just behind his shoulder, the face of a female member of the King’s Knights, a young woman who is staring directly at me. I don’t know who she is, but I recognize her face. And I know if she recognizes me she will arrest me, and my race will come to an end.

  My heart starts running even before I do, so I let it lead me straight into the crowd, toward the only people who might be able to stop a woman with the look of determination I saw on that King’s Knight’s face. I run right up to Mr. and Mrs. Arrogance, and I’m both horrified and delighted when they recognize me, even beneath the scarf.

  “Astrid!” Mrs. Arrogance squeals, and before I can register the blinding whiteness of her oversize smile, she takes my picture. But just as quickly she lowers the camera, leans toward me, and speaks to me in a conspiratorial tone.

  “The Authority is all over this place, searching for you.” She looks over both shoulders, as if she is the first person to let me know the danger I’m in. “They want to arrest you for using the Three Unities. If they find you—”

  “I’m well aware,” I say, and her face somehow deflates at not being the one to give me the news. But I know I will turn that around with the tip I have for her. I point back over her shoulder at the female King’s Knight. “She is clearly leading the hunt for me. She could give you a good story, don’t you think? The inside scoop on their plans for me after my arrest, maybe?” And just like that Mr. Arrogance, who had a moment ago been intently taking notes while listening to the ginger-haired racer, flips his notebook to a fresh page and steps between me and the advancing Knight, who at this moment is lifting a comm to her lips. I need to move, need to get out of sight, so I take advantage of this brief window when the photographer is between me and the Knight, raising her camera. I hear it click click click over my shoulder as I push my way deep into the crowd.

  I’m almost to the huge white tent at the base of the Wheel of Fire when someone hooks me by my elbow. I’m dragged into the line of people waiting to ride the wheel, and someone whispers into my ear, “Keep your head down.” He leans over me, as everyone else in line turns to watch the female Knight stomping by with purpose, leading a tight cluster of Enchanted Authority guards in the direction she thinks I went.

  I should feel relief, knowing that for now I’ve lost her. I should feel a heavy weight of gratitude toward the person who just helped me give her the slip.

  He’s looking through the crowd, making sure they are truly gone, and then he says, of all things, “You’re safe.” And at the sound of that voice—the voice I heard so clearly in my memory—every muscle in my body tightens.

  Something hot races through my veins, like my blood’s all been drained and replaced with fire, when I finally lift my head and glare into Darius’s hazel eyes.

  Twenty-Nine

  Darius. The boy I hated to leave behind in the Heart of the Desert. But that’s where the person I called Darius will always stay.

  Because now I’ve remembered who he really is. Now I know he’s actually called Kit. Now I’ve heard his voice and seen his face in my memories. Now I’ve felt the whip across my back.

  The whip I saw in his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks. His gaze slides from my eyes to my mouth and back to my eyes again, and he doesn’t need Cientia to know I’d like to spit in his face. Questions flare in his eyes and he blinks rapidly, as if he’s trying to clear them away. But then something changes. The confusion is swept away and understanding takes its place. His expression hardens. “You had a memory return,” he says.

  I manage a shallow nod.

  “A memory about me?”

  “Yes.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, tucking his hands against his body, as if he’s cold. I can’t stand the wounded look in his eyes. He’s wounded?

  Heat runs down my arm into my hand, and I slap him hard across the face.

  His hand flies up to his cheek and he hunches over, turning away. When he straightens and looks at me again, I can already see the outline of my fingers on his skin. Behind him, the Wheel of Fire is turning—we’re next in line to board—and I know that it’s in my best interest to get on this ride with him, which only makes me more furious. If I could, I think I’d slap every person currently looking at me, and that’s a lot of people.

  I never should have slapped him. I shouldn’t have called attention to us. But I did, and now I need to get out of here before one of the people staring at us realizes who I am and alerts the Authority.

  Right behind Darius’s back, the wheel comes to a stop and an Outsider attendant pulls open the gate that separates us from the first gondola. It’s just a few feet away. Riders spill out, and the attendant calls to us. “Now bo
arding! Take your seats!”

  I don’t want to get into that gondola with Darius, but I need to look for the clue, and nothing will give me a better chance to do that while keeping me away from the King’s Knights. Darius motions for me to lead the way, so I do.

  The gondola is completely enclosed, like we’re inside a windowed globe, and once the door is shut and latched behind us, the wheel moves a fraction of a turn so passengers can climb into the next one. The movement makes the floor rock, and I drop onto one of the seats. And then Darius says exactly what I would expect, and the last thing I want to hear: “I can explain.”

  “Don’t bother,” I say. “I really don’t want to hear any of it. I know all about you, everything you could tell me, so save your breath.”

  “Oh, you know all about me, do you?” he snaps back. I feel rage rise in him, but then he tamps it back down.

  He’s enraged? I would find that funny if it weren’t so maddening. “I remember all of it,” I say. “I know you’re the boy I always called Kit, the prince’s surrogate. And I know you’re conspiring with him to kill me, to eliminate me from the race—”

  “Wait—”

  “And,” I say, ignoring him, “I know that you once took the whip from his hands so you could be the one to use it on me. And I know that the beating you gave me was the worst beating of my life.” My mouth goes dry, and I force myself to draw a deep breath. “So don’t tell me I’m confused or I’ve got it wrong. I know who you are.”

  He’s sitting on the bench seat opposite me, but he’s looking out at the ground, so I look out through my own window. We’re only halfway up, but from here I can see two different brass bands cutting through the crowd, a parade of stilt walkers trailing streamers, and a frightening number of Authority guards.

  And scattered throughout the Ephemeral City, flashing words in script and in print. On the ground and on the sides of tents. A few blink above open doorways. Truth, mine, wild, want. I’ve seen those already. To them I add travel and through. It could be part of the clue, but those six words together can’t be all of it.

  “Look,” Darius starts. He’s turned back to face me—I can tell by the sound of his voice—but I refuse to look at him. I have a clue to search for. “It’s true that I asked Lars to give me the whip,” he says. I keep my eyes glued to the ground below. “But I had a reason. Maybe it’s not good enough. Maybe I should have done something different. But I did what I thought was right at the time.”

  “That’s garbage!” I shout, and now I do look at him. And what I see is a boy filled with conflict, and I can’t deny that’s what I feel in him, too—conflict and regret, as he perches on the edge of his seat, looking at me through narrowed eyes, bracing himself for another slap. “That’s garbage,” I repeat, but quieter this time, “because you volunteered. You asked if you could be the one—”

  “I did,” he says, “because I knew I had to do anything to get the whip out of Lars’s hand. I knew he would kill you if I didn’t.” Darius pauses, as if he’s trying to measure my reaction. But I don’t react. So he keeps going. “The prince is a sadistic demon, Astrid. If you remember anything, you must remember that. He enjoyed causing you pain. And that day—that day I believed he knew he would kill you.” He sits so still, I would think he’d hardened to stone if it weren’t for the way he keeps clenching and unclenching his jaw. “The day this all happened . . . Do you remember the condition you were in?”

  I want to say, I remember I could barely walk or speak. I want to say, I remember the taste of vomit in my mouth. But all I say is, “Yes, I remember.”

  “The day before, the princess had been seen meeting a boy in town. An Outsider boy who was suspected to be a member of the OLA. Do you know what that is?”

  This question startles me at first, but then I remember Darius has no way of knowing where I’ve been since I left the Heart of the Desert. He couldn’t know who Jayden really is, or about what I did for him in return for the ride to Falling Leaf. I simply nod.

  “Her parents were furious and called on the prince to give you lashes in front of the princess—enough to make sure she never saw this boy again. They insisted Lars hold the whip instead of Sir Arnaud because they wanted it to be personal. They wanted the punishment to be as much about family as they felt the princess’s betrayal had been.

  “Lars brought me along. I think he knew it would hurt me to see you suffer so badly. And it was bad. It was terrible. When it was over, Sir Arnaud and I cut you down and brought you upstairs to the infirmary.

  “But the following day, the queen learned that the princess’s connection to the OLA extended beyond this single meeting. Sir Millicent found a stack of . . . I can’t think of anything to call them but love letters . . . in the princess’s room. The king and queen were outraged. Their daughter had saved correspondence that called them tyrants. Letters that advocated resistance.”

  Darius rubs his palms along the front of his pants. This is the first he’s moved since he started talking. Then he turns his face back to the window. The gondola crests the top of the wheel’s arc and then dips toward the ground again.

  “So the prince dragged you from your bed in the infirmary and brought you to the post again. You were so weak.” Darius pauses. Near the ground, a brass band drowns out his words. We swing toward the sky again and the music fades. “He knew that another beating like the first one might take your life. The princess knew it, too. She screamed, and in the midst of the chaos on the way to the whipping post, she begged him to strike her instead. He just laughed.

  “Your punishment is to see her suffer. And if you lose her, then maybe that’s the punishment you deserve. That’s what he told her. That’s when I knew he expected you to die.” Darius gets to his feet. I flinch. He dips his head toward the space on the bench beside me. “Would it be all right if I sat there?” When I don’t respond, he adds, “I’d like to look out the window from that side. To see that side of the city.”

  I don’t say anything, but I slide over to make room for him. When he sits, I turn and look out the other way. I notice a ring where people are jousting, with a huge crowd watching from grandstands, and beyond that ring a gate in the wall.

  And beyond that gate, a gravel lot full of trucks.

  I remember the princess’s words: I know there’s a fleet of trucks parked just beyond the west gate, and I know that at least one has the keys inside.

  “In desperation, I offered to be the one to strike you,” Darius says, interrupting my thoughts. “Maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe, like the princess, I should have offered to take your place. But I was desperate to get the whip out of his hand. I was searching for something he might agree to. In the end, I think the only reason he agreed to it was because he couldn’t pass up the chance to watch me—another Outsider, another surrogate—cause you pain. The prince is all about power and control. Watching me strike you, he knew he had control over both of us.” He stops looking out the window. For a moment he glances at me, and I’m so uncomfortable, I cross to the other seat. The gondola crests the wheel’s arc again, and it feels as if my heart goes up into my mouth. “I hated it, but it gave me the chance to protect you.”

  I flinch at these words. “How could you protect me by hurting me?” My tone is so angry, but I have a right to be angry, and I won’t back down. “How could you claim to be protecting me—”

  “You only lasted five lashes—I stopped as soon as you slumped and I knew you were out. Renya tried to untie you, so Sir Millicent dragged her from the room. But the prince shouted for more. Five lashes weren’t enough to quench his bloodlust. He reached for the whip in my hand, but before he could take it, I raised it above my head, as if I would strike him if he tried.

  “Sir Arnaud cut you down and I was tied in your place. I don’t know how many lashes Lars gave me that day. He exhausted his anger on me—I know that. I woke the next morning on the floor of my room.” He glances up for a brief moment and our eyes meet, but then he drops
his gaze back to the floor. “He sent me to work in the palace fields as soon as I could stand.”

  I don’t want to pity Darius. How can I pity him when my burden was the same? But I know more of the story now.

  If I believe him. At this point, I’m not sure if I do.

  “Why don’t I remember the name Darius?” I ask.

  “Everyone calls me Kit. My last name is Kittering. Kit for short.”

  That much seems like the truth, but like everything else he has said, my Cientia picks up neither truth nor lies. What I do feel is fear, but I guess we both have good reasons to be afraid right now.

  The gondola sweeps up and over the top again. From this seat—the seat where Darius had been sitting before he moved to sit by me—I can see more of the same words, truth, mine, wild, want, travel, and through, but then, as the wheel is slowing, I notice a new one, land, blinking in gold letters on top of a large tent that’s as blue and as pale as the sky. Then I notice another, edge, in red letters between burning flowers in a garden of flame.

  I hadn’t expected that some words would be only on one side of the city. It seems obvious now, but I guess because I had seen the same words over and over, three or four times each, I just assumed I’d seen them all.

  The wheel slows to a stop. We’re just at the tops of the trees, and I see one more additional word—you. So now I have truth, mine, wild, want, travel, and through, plus land, edge, and you.

  Is that all of it? Is that the whole clue? I glance at Darius as the wheel ratchets down a bit farther toward the ground. It’s almost our turn to get off. “You have the clue, don’t you?” I ask. “You’ve figured it out?”

  I know the answer before he nods. I can see it on his face. I can feel the heat of his anticipation.