To Best the Boys

by Mary Weber

  Lute grits his teeth as if it’s taking all his strength to hold on to his clarity and then tips his head toward Vincent. “Go.”

  “I didn’t finish the experiment.”

  “How do you know this wasn’t the experiment? Go.”

  I yank his arm. “If I go, you go with me.”

  Lute’s hands slide up and cup my face, his skin hot against mine. I can feel his heartpulse in his palms, pressing against my cheeks. “I’ve already won,” he whispers.

  He pushes me away. “Now run.” And then his hands slip away and my sight is diminishing even as I hear him in my mind, in my ears, in my mouth, and his words are so strong that I shove the fear away and stumble forward.

  The room morphs beneath each shaky step. I sprint and fall across space toward the door that Vincent is already tearing open. I lunge for his shirt and scrape my fingers across his back right before a blast of afternoon air throws him against me.

  He turns in surprise, then chuckles and grabs my waist to steady me. “This is why I like you, Rhen.” He slips his hand to my chin and leans over my face until his lips are an inch away. “You’re a fighter. Take me up on my offer, and I’ll still give you the world.” His hand pinches harder, and with every ounce of rage I have, I jerk back and shove a hand beneath his ribs and into his diaphragm while my shaky knee jerks up to connect with his family jewels.

  “Sorry,” I gasp. “Your world is too small.” I thrust against him, ramming him to the side, and plunge for the doorway where I am suddenly spit out onto the balcony overlooking the Labyrinth entrance and festival grounds in broad daylight as the sea of partiers wavers in and out of my vision.

  The light is so bright I shield my eyes. The noise is deafening—but mixed in with it, I can hear the cry of seagulls and smell the port’s salty air. Until the rising tide of voices grows clear enough for me to pick out words and phrases.

  They’re arguing about the fishing regulations.

  I squint. Not just arguing—the festival looks half destroyed. The Upper tents have been torn down, and the Lowers have taken over the terraces.

  I peer back through the doorway, but Vincent is nowhere to be seen. Only Holm, the king, and his attendees are standing back in the shadows. I want to sink back in there with them. Back to the Labyrinth and Seleni and Beryll and Lute. Especially Lute.

  “Gentlepersons and friends,” the announcer’s voice bellows from somewhere. “Your attention, please.”

  “Who is that?” one of the spectators yells.

  My airway shrinks and I begin heaving. The antidote’s not working fast enough.

  “What’s going on here?” Vincent’s father demands. “Where’s my son?”

  “Friends and community.” The announcer’s words ricochet off the garden walls and echo out over the lawns with the same intensity that is ringing through my head. “I give you the winner of this year’s scholarship contest—Miss Rhen Tellur.”

  The thunder in the crowd rivals the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears as I stumble forward and drop to my knees. My arms and stomach seize.

  Even so, I vaguely note their shock turns to laughter. “Is this a joke? Bring out the real winner!”

  “Is that Rhen? What happened to her hair?”

  Until they apparently realize he’s serious, and their words become:

  “What’s going on?”

  “This is a boys’ sport!”

  “How was she even allowed in there? How did this happen?”

  “She’s from the Lower Port, that’s how!” a voice bursts out.

  “One of our own Lowers won!”

  “Poor girl’s still not even wearing stockings.” Mrs. Mench’s voice rings louder than the rest. “I knew it.”

  I look down at the crowds of people and parasol-covered lawns. Then over to see the dean and board members of Stemwick University standing beside the announcer, whom they probably think to be Mr. Holm.

  They are not cheering. They’re not doing anything at all other than frowning down their long noses.

  And everything goes black.

  22

  At some point my body decides to settle on the fact that I am not dead. It begins to fight against the poison-fueled nightmares and ongoing sensation of falling, despite my mind saying that something’s still very wrong. As if my limbs lunged through the winner’s exit but my brain knows I haven’t really won. That there’s something more. That the key to the bigger maze is still missing and I’m walking in circles trying to decipher what that means. “Like rats in a maze.” Isn’t that what Vincent had said back in Holm’s parlor?

  Except this rat keeps scratching at my skin, trying to get in. With its disease that just keeps morphing, and the vials of blood and tubes filled with live viruses that won’t stop floating through my head. Along with memories of Vincent in his better days, running tests beside me.

  My blood pounds as the antidote works to clear the poison from my blood and the ghouls from my sleep. But still the rats keep scratching.

  Until the day following my exit from the Labyrinth—when I peel my lids up to see the sun and Da’s face.

  “Ah. Was suspecting you’d wake soon.” He smiles.

  I offer a weak smile back. “What’s the verdict?”

  “You’ll live.”

  “I assumed. I meant the other verdict?”

  “Your mum and I still love you, and we might even be rather proud of you.”

  “Funny.”

  He winks. “There are a few verdicts, if you want to know. The first is that you did indeed win the contest. The official statement is that while there was a final test, Holm never said exactly what it was a testing of—and there’s a whole thing about it having to do with character and all that.”

  “What of the other contestants?” My mind flicks to Lute. Then Sam and Beryll and Will and Seleni.

  He fetches me a cup of tea then comes to help me sit up. “Aside from the boy who ate a bloodberry, the rest are alive and have been returned home. Some a bit more beat up than when they entered. Same as every year. And Lute’s mum sent word that he woke this morning.”

  I stop midsip from my cup and breathe out relief. Then frown. But how? How are they alive? How did they escape from the sirens and basilisks and ghouls? How did Holm rescue them so fast?

  I don’t ask because Da won’t have an answer. Nobody ever does but Mr. Holm. What had Da said? “Same as every year.”

  Maybe that’s the real magic, or horror, of the strange little man.

  I’m sorry for the boy who died, though.

  Da clears his throat and taps his own cup. “The second verdict is that the whole Port is waiting to see if the university will agree to let you take their exams—just like we’re waiting to hear back on the fishing industry representation. Some of them have”—he sucks his cheek in as if trying to choose the right words—“made no secret of what their reaction will be if either is denied.”

  I raise a brow. I can imagine some of the names behind such a threat. We both stare at each other. And then he pulls out his notes on a new crippling disease serum he’s been developing.

  23

  It takes another full day for any official news to arrive. According to Mrs. Mench’s loud commentary outside to anyone walking by, Stemwick’s board has not only been busy arguing policies and a long history of being the highest standard in male-focused education—they’ve also been weighing the implications of honoring a female as Mr. Holm’s scholarship recipient. Particularly when it appears their funding relies far more heavily on Holm’s yearly contributions than anyone thought.

  And like the Port, the Holm estate has also made its position perfectly clear—either allow me to take the entrance exam or lose the financial support.

  Da’s agitation grows while he waits. Every five minutes between starting work on a new trial medicine and checking on Mum, he steals a peek out the window when he thinks I’m not looking.

  His tension becomes Mum’s excuse for why she’s begun sle
eping so much. “I’m just trying to tune out the stress of his nerves.” To which I swallow and pat her hand because I know full well it’s not true.

  This is the next stage of the disease, and it’s not something we can run from.

  Although everything in me still wants to—just for a while. To go find Sam and Will as if everything is fine. Or maybe ask Seleni to find Lute and see what’s on his mind.

  But I don’t. Da’s set Sam and Will to healing. And Lute has his family to care for, and I have mine. And that is where things lie as I sit with my fading Mum, as the slow fear for what is about to happen creeps upon the horizon. I can feel it twitching and shuddering and . . . waiting.

  I don’t bake or make deliveries. I don’t see Seleni or the sea. I just wait with Da and Mum as I try not to look like I might throw up from the realization that’s been sinking in. That even if I did get accepted to the uni, anything I learn won’t be soon enough to save Mum. She will die anyway—of that I am sure. Unless Da’s new treatment is a miracle.

  I wrinkle my nose against the astringent scent of cleaning alcohol and stand in the lab—and stare at the rat cages and experiments and blood samples and try all the harder to unravel what those scratching nudges in my head keep saying. Because I know I’m missing something. Something right in front of me. I just can’t figure out what it is.

  And then the letter comes.

  I am adjusting Mum’s pillows and watching the seagulls through the sunlit pane when Da rushes in with the packet—sealed in a thick, yellow envelope, much like Mum is wrapped up in layers of yellowed blankets.

  He holds his breath and watches me weigh it in hand. The thick paper in my fingers is heavier than I’d expect for a simple yes or no answer. I frown. Maybe they’ve skipped the exams and just sent some sort of disciplinary action. Or maybe it’s an application. My chest leaps before logic sets in. I saw their expressions after the contest. To say half of them were furious would be an understatement.

  I offer the letter back to Da. “You open it.” But he bats it away.

  I look at him. Then Mum. Then break the wax seal and lift the contents out, and without peeking at what is written there, I hold the papers six inches in front of Mum’s face. “You read it first.”

  Her eyes turn moist and she nods before she weakly lifts her hand to grab it and scans the first page. We wait. She looks up at me and has me shuffle to the next, then the next, so she can peer over each one. “It’s a ten-page packet of qualifiers and caveats,” she eventually whispers. “But . . .” She pauses and blinks and directs her gaze back to the first, as if to ensure she won’t misspeak.

  “Helen, what’d they decide?” Da stands over her with a face so anxious I think he might pass out.

  Her lips curve up into a smile, and she starts to cry in thin, barely-there teardrops that drip down her cheeks as she looks up at me. “I’m proud of you.” Then she glances at Da.

  “The board has agreed to let Rhen take the university entrance examination.”

  The moment the letter illuminates her face and makes her cry—is the moment the theory hits me. I stand in the sunlight beside the bed in my nightdress, even though it is six o’clock in the evening, and watch Mum’s joy spill out in her emaciated voice and smile and loving gaze. I frame that look in my mind, my emotions, because it is exactly who I know my mum to be and also the person she hasn’t been for a very long time. And because I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to see it.

  And it occurs to me that no person whose every cell is this full of life could produce such a wretched disease.

  What if Da and I were wrong this whole time, and the disease didn’t start in humans?

  What if it came from a plant or animal? What if it came from . . .?

  The rats.

  Da is still focused on the letter and his elation. He drops on the bed and clasps Mum’s hands in his as the two of them lock eyes and share parental pride, while the sensation of unease stirs my gut and spreads within me.

  I want to tell him. To tell them I have a theory. But to do so would alert Da immediately to what it might mean. That the origination of the rat disease might’ve been Da and me.

  I don’t speak. I refuse to ruin this moment for either.

  I simply swallow and move the letter so the two of them can be closer. Except Mum grasps my hand and pulls me in. She grips my chin and lifts herself enough to lean forward until our noses are near touching—then whispers, “You take this world and make it what it should be. And don’t let the beliefs of a backward system define you. You are the one who has to live with the future, baby girl. So you live it. You understand?”

  She stares hard in my eyes for a moment longer, until I nod and inhale the feeling of her fingers cupping my skin as firmly as I wish I could hold on to her. I kiss her forehead. “I love you, Mum.”

  When I get up, Da squeezes my shoulder, and then he’s got one hand on Mum’s cheek and the other in her hair, and he’s smiling down at her. And suddenly he looks frailer than I’ve ever seen. Sitting there holding her face to his. This woman who isn’t just his wife, but also his closest friend.

  Whoever said the female is the weaker of a species never tested that theory against the draw of a woman’s love.

  I give up whatever I was going to say and place a kiss on Mum’s arm, then turn to go downstairs to the lab.

  As I leave I hear Da singing a soft song just between the two of them.

  It’s their wedding song.

  I head to the shelves in the basement and take down the last sixteen months’ worth of blood and disease experiments. And begin to examine them.

  24

  The celebration party for the Holm scholarship recipient is, traditionally, hosted by the recipient’s parents exactly ten days after winning the Labyrinth contest. The entire Port knows it’s usually attended by the winner’s social circle and is as elaborate as the family can afford. Which means it’s normally an extravagant affair bordering on a circus that neither Da nor I is interested in hosting.

  In fact, neither one of us brings it up—him, because I doubt he remembered, and me, because my mind is on Da and Mum, and my experiments, and Stemwick’s entrance exam that’s in four days. Which is what I tell Seleni when she asks.

  “That’s why Mum and I have decided to do it for you,” she chirps.

  “Sel, please.” I keep my gaze on the test tube I’m working with and shake my head. “This isn’t the time.”

  She tips her head and waits for me to look at her. “You’ve been down here for days, Rhen. I know you’re trying to study for the exam and eager with a new idea for your mum. But you’ve got to breathe sometime.”

  I stare at her and don’t tell her that I haven’t done any studying for the exam. That I’ve spent every waking minute the last three days re–breaking down the compositions of the lung-fluid illness, the cure I’d come closest to creating for it, and the cow disease Vincent had been studying. And identifying key markers. And starting the beginnings of a new type of cure, just in case I’m right.

  I simply say, “Good luck convincing Da.”

  “Oh, my father will do that. And what of Lute? I assume you’d like me to invite him.”

  When my only response is to nod and clear my throat, she eyes me with understanding. “Still haven’t heard from him, then.”

  I shake my head and turn back to my petri dish, ignoring the fears that that admission brings.

  She disappears up the stairs, and I get back to running my tests.

  The next day Aunt Sara appears with a full basket of rich-smelling meats and vegetables—and broaches the celebration suggestion to Mum and Da. When Da politely refuses, Uncle Nicholae himself strides down to personally insist—and to say that Da is permanently welcome in their home from now on.

  “It should’ve happened a long time ago.” Uncle Nicholae sticks out his hand and nods toward Seleni and me. “I hope we can leave the past in the past and move forward as a family.”

 
Da decks Uncle Nicholae a solid punch right in the jaw and sends him backward onto the wood kitchen floor.

  I lift a brow and bite back a smile as Seleni gasps. “He deserved that,” she murmurs.

  “Fair enough.” Uncle Nicholae stands and wipes his cheek with the back of his sleeve, then reoffers his hand.

  And that is how the party that neither Da nor I really wants to attend—but Mum does—gets planned for the evening of the university’s entrance exams.

  The exams arrive like sea foam rushing in—too fast—and too soon Da and I find ourselves the morning of sitting over a bazillion notes on the floor of their room with our cups of hot tea, as the sun rises and my leg is jittering something fierce.

  “You’ll do wonderful,” Mum says softly. “Don’t forget the smart women stock you come from. Your poor da never could keep up.”

  Da swerves his gaze to her and laughs, and it takes me a second before the sound sinks in. It’s the first honest humor I’ve heard from him all week, and I swear it’s like a ray of light slanted through the window and splayed itself out across his and Mum’s bed. I smile and they both grin, and in that moment we are okay. We are all okay. Which, I think, is enough of a promise for today.

  I get up to pour them more tea as Da gives Mum a second dose of the treatment he’s been developing—and I notice Da’s still got on the same clothes from two days ago. So has Mum. I wrinkle my brow and study them both. Is that what it will mean if I pass this exam? He’ll be here alone to care for Mum—or worse—left without either of us?

  The reality of that about drowns me.

  I wince and finish pouring their tea just as the clock chimes that it’s time. I stoop to collect my scribbled notes that Da is tapping on. “I have to check on something real fast.”

  I kiss them both before hurrying down to check in on my lab tests again, only to discover that the results of the original crippling disease cells work have revealed what I already had begun to suspect. My stomach turns.