Crown of Oblivion

by Julie Eshbaugh

  But then she waves a hand at the door. “Let the others back in, won’t you?” she says, and she has already turned her eyes back to her comm.

  Lars bursts through the door as soon as I’ve pulled it open, which I expected, but I hadn’t expected Darius to follow right behind him. He’s bathed and he’s dressed in clean clothing, and he leans on a crutch. The prince storms straight across the room to his mother’s side, but Darius lingers near the doorway.

  “I wanted to win,” he says, in a voice so low only I can hear, “but I didn’t want to win like this.” He’s like a wintergreen candy—I notice the mint of guilt and the sweetness of honesty. For once, I trust he’s telling me the truth.

  Sir Arnaud and Sir Millicent stride in, with a casualness that tells me they expect no surprises. No one is holding out hope that I will be spared. Not even me.

  The queen stands, and though she is not tall, her presence is enormous. Her hair is a bit redder than Renya’s, her eyes a bit darker, and her lips scarlet. Everything about her reminds me of a fire flower . . . a flame that is self-contained.

  “Well?” Lars says.

  “My son,” the queen says. “You are so much like your father.” She runs a hand down the front of her navy blue gown, and I feel a flicker in the atmosphere. Something changes. And then she says, “Astrid has used some unorthodox methods to win the Crown of Oblivion,” she says. “But . . .” She hesitates. I heave a sigh. Lars takes a step back. “None of her actions warrants stripping her of the prize she has won.” Lars drops his fist onto the table. Not hard, but the sound fills the room. “However . . . ,” she adds.

  In the quiet of the queen’s pause, the rhythm of the wheels against the rails sounds like a heartbeat. Beyond the window, the moon casts a pale light over the darkened pastureland. Headlights stand out against the gloom. A truck is traveling on the ribbon of road beside the tracks. I think of Holly, the things he told me about the king. About his addiction, and how he secretly shared Oblivion with him.

  I realize all at once that I have lived most of my life with Renya and her family, and yet what do I really know of them? They are an enigma, a secret hidden from everyone around them. Maybe even from themselves.

  “To compensate the second-place racer,” the queen says, and her eyes sweep across the room to land on Darius for just a moment before they fall heavily on Lars’s face again, “the two of them will share the Crown of Oblivion.”

  Thirty-Four

  Share the crown?

  My eyes find Darius’s face. He’s already watching me. To share means to divide, doesn’t it? What part of the prize will I have to give up so that he may have it?

  “Share how?” the prince asks. The train banks into a turn and the room tilts. My palms press down on the top of the table to hold me steady as I wait for the queen’s reply. I feel as if I stand on a knife’s edge—on one side is citizenship and on the other arrest—and the queen’s answer to Lars’s question will determine which way I fall.

  “I mean that Darius will receive the full benefits of the victory, without any benefits being taken away from Astrid. They will share it—”

  “So they both win?” Lars looks from his mother to Darius and back again, and I see all at once that she has just called Lars’s bluff. By giving the crown to Darius without taking it from me, the queen has given Lars what he asked for while protecting me at the same time.

  I should be happy, but instead I feel like a charity case, which makes me angry since I earned the crown and shouldn’t need charity to keep it. But then again, here is one more chance for the royals to show me how powerless I am. For the queen to make a quick and casual decision as to whether Darius or I deserves the Crown of Oblivion, after all we went through to compete for it—after people died competing for it!—makes it feel like little more than a carnival prize. Something the queen can easily divide between her two squabbling children.

  Surrogates, indeed.

  But I don’t care. I can’t afford to care. Because at least for now, Lars can’t hurt me. I’ll be a citizen, and Marlon will be, too.

  My eyes meet Darius’s, and I read in him a churning mix of opposing emotions. He’s like a drowning man pulled from the sea by his sworn enemy. Surely Lars has rescued him, but we both know he did it less to help Darius and more to hurt me. And yet I feel in Darius a shock of relief, and despite the hurt in our history, I’m happy for it.

  “Feel free to go, if you’d like,” the queen says, flicking the back of her hand in my direction. I’m being dismissed, in no uncertain terms. But before I go, I have to ask about Marlon. “Your Highness,” I say, “my brother Marlon was also in the race.” I hesitate. I don’t dare tell her about the Pontium bridge Marlon made and reveal that he—like me—can use the magic of the Three Unities. “I know he was at the Festival of Fire Flowers,” I say, being careful to share only what I could have been told by others. “He made it that far. I’ve heard that he was seen being taken away by two King’s Knights.” The queen’s eyebrows rise. I think I’ve surprised her. “He’ll be a citizen now—along with me—so I hope, whatever has happened to him, he will be brought back home as quickly as possible.”

  “Of course,” says the queen. I hope she means it. I can’t read her, and she’s looking down at her comm.

  “Is the princess on the train?” I ask. “May I see her?”

  “The princess was sent ahead to the palace,” answers Sir Arnaud. “She traveled on an earlier train.”

  Back in Princess Renya’s compartment, I lie awake in the dark, too anxious and too lonely to sleep. Before my memories returned, I didn’t miss Renya at all. You can’t really miss a person you don’t remember. But now almost all my memories are back, I think, especially my memories of the princess. Since I saw her at the Festival of Fire Flowers, since she wrapped the scarf around my head and whispered a warning into my ear, I haven’t been able to forget her. I think of the orange she pressed into my hand, something so small but so precious to a racer, and I hold on to the thought of this gift as I imagine asking her to help me find Marlon.

  He bridged to me—he’s reachable by Pontium. I wish he’d bridge to me again, but I won’t let his silence scare me. It could simply mean he’s being watched. But once I have help from Renya—someone who doesn’t need to fear the King’s Knights—I know we will find him, and she will order them to bring him home.

  The sun is up by the time we reach the junction at Falling Leaf, and an Outsider brings a breakfast tray to my door. I stay in my room all morning, and another tray is delivered at lunchtime. By the time I’ve eaten half of it, the train is slowing to a stop at the outpost.

  I’m not sure if someone will come for me, but I don’t wait to find out. I take my coat and my bag—not that I’ll need them, but it would feel sad to leave my only two possessions behind—and I find my way out and climb down to the platform. The queen and the prince are at the center of a swarm of Outsider servants several cars away, but I don’t see Darius. Maybe he’s still on the train. I’m thinking about going back to look when an Authority guard calls out my name and tells me he’s assigned to drive me back to the palace. He leads me to a motorized carriage that gleams under the hot desert sun, its pristine appearance absurd against the dirt and sand of the outpost. “Who else will be riding with us?” I ask.

  “No one, miss. This carriage is reserved for the winner of the Crown of Oblivion.”

  “But there are two winners—”

  “And two carriages. Prince Lars’s order,” he says. “You are each to have your own private vehicle.”

  I try to smile, but all I feel is irritation. Lars is trying to make me feel isolated and alone, and I’m furious that it’s working.

  On the long drive back, we pass the place on the road where Darius and I nearly froze to death, and the place we found the racer who actually did. We pass the roadhouse, the Village of Hedge, the lighthouse, and then Camp Hope, where home used to be. I get only a glimpse of the maze of gray, low-slung bui
ldings before the carriage turns through an opening in the city wall.

  When we finally come to a stop inside the palace gate, someone pulls the door open from the outside. It’s Renya, and despite the fact that I’m still barefoot and filthy and so stiff and aching I can hardly move, the first words out of her mouth are “You look wonderful!” She pulls me to my feet and into a hug. My knee throbs and my head spins, but I don’t say a word. I just drink in the relief that pours out of Renya and envelops us both like mist.

  Once we’re inside, she leads me up the central staircase to her bedroom. The steps are difficult, but the princess lets me lean on her, and I don’t ask her to slow. I don’t know where Lars is or if he’s even back yet, and I want to get out of sight and into a place I feel safe before he gets the chance to confront me again.

  The door is hardly closed behind us when Renya whirls on me. “You should sit,” she says. “I have a lot to tell you.” And I feel it in her . . . something she’s both excited and anxious about. So excited and so anxious, it makes me scared.

  “I have something important to talk to you about, too,” I say, thinking of Marlon, “but you go first.”

  The room is almost exactly as I remember it, with one exception. There is a second bed. Renya must notice my eyes on it, because she says, “They said you could return to the dormitory downstairs, but I insisted you stay with me. At least until you can find a more permanent place to live.” She bites her bottom lip. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had your things brought up.” She opens a drawer in one of the two carved-wood dressers, and inside I see all my personal clothing—socks, underclothes, a few dresses, tunics, and one skirt—all folded and put away neatly. “And here,” she says, gesturing. On her vanity, I find my most precious possession—a framed photograph of my parents on their wedding day. It’s been given a place of honor in front of the mirror, beside Renya’s hairbrush and my comb.

  I pick up the photograph and look at it closely. My parents were only a little older than I am now when this was taken, but they look so healthy and well compared to my haggard reflection in Renya’s mirror. My mother holds a chaotic bouquet of random flowers dominated by lilacs, their stems tied to a small green book. My father’s hair is cut short and a bit uneven, but the look on his face makes it clear he does not care.

  This would have been taken while my mother was indentured to Renya’s mother, the time when they were close and shared secrets . . . at least, according to the queen.

  “Sit down on your bed,” Renya says. Her face is serious. “I have a lot to share with you. I need to tell you quickly, because soon Gretchen will be coming in to help us dress for the ball.”

  The ball. Of course. Every year, the race ends with a celebratory ball, where the winner receives the Crown of Oblivion. Gretchen is the princess’s maid. The thought of a maid helping me dress is disconcerting enough. The thought of facing a crowd, smiling as if I’m happy while Marlon is still missing and the horrors of the race are so fresh in my mind, fills me with dread.

  But maybe Marlon can be found before the ball. Holding on to that hope, I do as Renya asks, and I sit.

  “First things first.” Renya keeps her voice so low she has to stand just a foot in front of me to be heard. “I assume you know that your brother Marlon was a contestant in the race.” I nod but my heart stutters out of rhythm, for fear of what she might say next. Fortunately, she doesn’t make me wait. “His name is not on any of the lists of the known dead,” she says, but we both know the official lists of the dead are incomplete. Some people are never found. They just fail to return from the race, and their loved ones are left to wonder if they ran away or died.

  “This is the very thing I wanted to talk about,” I say. “I saw Marlon.” I stop short of sharing with her that I saw him because he used Pontium. I only say, “At the Festival of Fire Flowers, two King’s Knights threw him into a truck, but I don’t know where they took him.”

  Renya looks stricken, as if she knows what her brother is capable of as well as I do. Maybe she does. “If you’d like, I’ll try to bridge to him.”

  There’s nothing in this world she could offer me that would be a greater gift than this. I nod and whisper, “If you could,” but she’s already holding her hands above her shoulders. The light in the room is already changing.

  Everything dims, and I wait, holding my breath, anxious to see Marlon’s face. I hear the familiar sound—the buzz of energy filling up the room. But then the light flickers and brightens again. The buzz dies down to a hum and goes out. Renya’s arms sag. Her hair floats in the air, full of static. She shakes her head.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “He’s out there,” she breathes, and I realize she’s winded. “I felt him, but I just couldn’t get to him.” She drops onto the bed beside me and she takes my hand. She’s freezing. “He’s out there. He’s alive. I felt his energy and I could almost see his face. But then he slipped out of my reach.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “He’s too far away. Or maybe underground. Somewhere that Pontium energy can’t reach.”

  “But he’s alive?”

  “He’s alive,” she says. “So we’ll get him back. I don’t know what orders those King’s Knights are following, but he’s alive, and we’ll get him back.”

  The air in the room chills. Renya sounds so sure, but she can’t hide her fear from my Cientia. Fear enough to send a shiver down my own spine.

  But then Renya is back on her feet, pacing. “There’s more,” she says. “I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but there’s something else I learned while you were gone. Something I can’t keep from you a moment longer.”

  She crosses to her dresser, digs down to the bottom of one of the drawers, and lifts out something small and green. She holds it out to me. It’s a small book with a worn cover, the same small green book my mother holds in the photograph taken on her wedding day.

  “How did you get this?” But before she can answer I snatch it from her hands and open it. It’s filled with pages of looping handwriting. My mother’s name is written on the inside cover, beneath the words Diary of. There’s also an inscription in my father’s handwriting. To my beautiful wife on our wedding day. May you fill this book with many happy memories of our lives together. “How did you get this?” I say again, and as happy as I am to have it, I’m furious that Renya had it first. That she might have read it, might know my mother’s secrets. I remember the queen’s words from the train . . . We shared secrets. Some of those secrets have to do with you. It feels like everyone’s been given access to my mother’s secrets except me.

  “When my father died, I found this among his things,” Renya says, and I can tell by the way she says it, she knows how terrible that sounds.

  “Your father?” I say. “That makes no sense—”

  “It does, though. . . .” Renya keeps her eyes on her hands. She’s rubbing at her palm with her thumb, as if she has an itch that’s driving her mad. “Because there is quite a bit in there about him.” I feel as if the air has been knocked from my lungs. The little book had fallen open in my hands, but I clap it shut. “Wait,” she says. “It’s not what you think . . . not exactly. It was all one-sided. Completely one-sided. You can read it yourself. Your mother writes how my father claimed to be in love with her, but she felt nothing like that for him.”

  Now it’s my turn to pace. I let the book fall open again, find a page marked with a red ribbon.

  “The page that’s marked . . . I thought you should read that page. It explains a mystery you’ve long wondered about.”

  The page Renya has marked bears a date just a few days after I was born. My eyes skim the page, catching on the words he sent the queen’s own midwife and no inoculation against magic. “He asked what he could do to show his love for me,” I read aloud, “so I asked him not to deny magic to my child.”

  I close the book again and stare down at it in my hands. It feels like a living artifact, a ghost sent to tell my mothe
r’s story.

  To tell my story.

  “But I’m . . . I’m my father’s daughter?”

  “I didn’t read all of it, of course,” Renya says, “but I read enough to know that my father’s feelings for your mother were unrequited. So yes, most certainly you are your father’s daughter.”

  I walk to the window. Renya’s room overlooks the boxwood maze and the rose gardens. “I always assumed it would turn out that I wasn’t inoculated, but I could never have guessed that this would be the reason why,” I say. And then, before I can really work through the impulse, I find myself blurting out things I promised myself I wouldn’t mention, because they relate to the one incident in our past we never discuss. But Renya told me a difficult truth, and I feel like I owe her the truth, too.

  “I met the boy—your boy—the one from the OLA,” I say. “The one you were seen with in town. The one who wrote you those letters.”

  “The one who . . . ?” She stops, and her eyes widen with realization, and she says, “You thought they were the same boy? That the boy I was seen with—”

  “Yes, the boy from the OLA—”

  “The boy I was seen with,” she says, measuring her words, “and the boy who wrote me the letters . . . You’re correct that they both had connections to the OLA, but they were not the same boy.”

  “So the boy I met in the race . . . ?”

  “The boy I met with in town was a headstrong boy with red hair. A boy with something to prove—”

  “That’s him,” I say.

  “I remember his name was Aengus. I didn’t know he had entered the race.”

  “But he’s not the boy . . . the boy who wrote you . . .” The words love letters are on my lips, but I leave them there.

  “Not the same boy,” she says.