by Jayne Faith
“Can you tell me who gave you the offending information?” I asked gently. “That shouldn’t bring more punishment.”
She nodded once, slowly, and then seemed to gather herself for a moment. “It was one of the other g—guides. I don’t know which one. I overheard them talk—talking, but I couldn’t see them.”
“Male or female?”
“Female.”
“Thank you, Iris. And please know how deeply sorry I am that the Monitors and the law see fit to do this to you when you were not the true traitor,” I said with an ache in the center of my chest. The poor woman was obviously in very bad shape, with nerve damage and possibly some injury to her brain. “I will send one of my personal medics to treat you. I will find a way to get immunity for you. And Maya sends her love.”
I turned to go, thinking I’d already exhausted her enough, but she raised a trembling hand. “How is M—Maya doing?”
“She’s recovering.” I nodded firmly. “With the Third Sign of the Return delaying the next challenge, she has ample time to rest. She’ll be strong enough to compete.”
I didn’t know if what I said was completely true, but I didn’t want Iris to worry. She sighed with obvious relief and her eyelids lowered.
My insides cinched tight as I left. Were some of the other guides scheming against Maya, or was it just gossip that Iris had overheard? I’d been so sure when I’d stormed into Jeric’s apartment, but the situation seemed clouded again.
Perhaps Akantha was involved in some sort of plot? She was in close contact with the guides.
I changed course, intending to go to the Temple and tell the Priestess what I’d learned, little as it was. In any case, High Priestess Lunaria was one of my only true allies, and I wanted to keep in close contact with her.
There was a soft beep in my earpiece, followed by the voice of Camira, my head administrator. “My Lord, you are expected at the Office of Royal Social Affairs for the first round of candidate reviews in ten minutes.”
My feet scuffed to a halt, and I tipped my head back and groaned. “We’re supposed to stop all but the most necessary work for a few more days yet. Surely this can be rescheduled?”
“I’m sorry, my Lord, but the process for selecting your wife is a rather lengthy one, and the marriage must take place—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupted. “I must get married the day before my birthday.”
“Your mother asked to be in attendance, too.”
My jaw clenched reflexively. “I’m on my way,” I said through gritted teeth.
I changed course, turning in the direction of the Councilors’ offices. There was actually an elected official in charge of these things—royal marriages, state funerals, and the like. The rotund woman who occupied the position—her name escaped me at the moment—was probably aflutter with two such significant events to attend to: Jeric’s wedding and mine.
I suddenly wondered when Jeric and Akantha would have their wedding. Would it be before or after my own? There was probably some official protocol for timing such events.
My thoughts flew to Maya. The thought of marrying a Calistan woman, actually standing before an audience and taking the vows that would bind me to a woman I had no interest in, turned my stomach. Even if the only real purpose of the union was to produce children, it still made me feel ill. How differently I would feel about my life if I could choose the woman I married. I would go to Maya in half a heartbeat.
My chest tightened when I remembered how I’d left her. She’d looked so lost, her eyes huge and her face pale. I’d intended the evening to go so differently . . . I would have to make it up to her somehow.
Facing the task of choosing a Calistan wife suddenly seemed all too real. It was no longer an unpleasant but distant prospect. The process was beginning. It was going to happen.
The pressure of urgency further crowded my chest, as if my heart hadn’t enough room to beat properly. The world had suddenly sped up, one event tumbling after another. There were so many things I couldn’t control, and somehow it made the truth in my own heart feel that much more urgent.
I needed to tell Maya how I felt. I needed her to know how deeply she affected me. How much I wished I could make her mine. I’d hinted at her impact on me when I’d told her of watching her come to Calisto and the nickname I’d given her.
I fixed my mind on that idea—confessing my love to her. Yes, love. In the face of everything else, all the danger and uncertainty, that one thing had become so clear. I loved her in a way I’d never expected to love anyone.
A bit of relief came at the thought of telling her.
But when I entered the Office of Royal Social Affairs, all the tension I’d felt returned in an instant.
Mother held out her hands to me, giving me a broad smile. “Isn’t this exciting?” Despite her cheerful demeanor, I thought I read something calculating behind her eyes.
I suppressed a grumble and gave her a tight stretch of my lips, the most I could manage in the way of an answering smile.
My guards stayed outside, and a round-faced woman with wisps of hair escaping her bun closed the door. She turned to me and curtsied. “My Lord, I’m so pleased to offer my services as Mistress of Royal Social Affairs in this most important decision. My name is Yauna, and I will be guiding you through the process of selection as well as the planning of the ceremony.”
I nodded but couldn’t bring myself to offer any response. I wasn’t up to faking enthusiasm over the prospect of choosing a wife.
She gestured to a rectangular table. “Let us sit down, and I will show you the initial candidates on the screen up there.”
She bustled over to her desk to pick up her tablet, and the lights dimmed.
I held a chair out for Mother, and she squeezed my forearm before she sat down. “Just think, there’s a woman out there waiting for you. I remember the anticipation as if it were yesterday.”
Of course my mother empathized with the candidates. She’d been in their shoes many years ago. I suddenly wondered why she’d been chosen. Not that she wasn’t suited to the position, but from my father’s perspective—what had he seen in her? Did he find my mother beautiful? Did he fall in love with her? Or was the entire process just a duty to be fulfilled, as it was for me? Perhaps my mother hadn’t even been his first choice. The wife of the Lord had to be approved by the Council, the Temple, and the other members of the royal family.
Perhaps when he’d married my mother, his heart had belonged to another woman . . .
“Today we will be going through a hundred candidates, my Lord,” Yauna said. “You will need to eliminate half of them. At this stage, you are not obligated to give a reason for striking any from the list, and these decisions you make today are entirely up to you.”
I forced my attention to the wall, where the picture of a Calistan woman with raven hair and pale gray skin was displayed next to a bullet list of basic information including her age, parents’ names, education, and training. Her hair reminded me of Maya. The Calistan woman was pretty, beautiful even, but her eyes seemed vacant to me.
“There’s a tablet for you to make notes, if you’d like, my Lord,” Yuana was saying. I looked down at the tablet on the table. “You can tick your favorites as well as any you want eliminated from the candidacy.”
My stomach soured at the task in front of me. The last thing I wanted to do right now was judge a hundred Calistan women based on headshots and a few lines of text.
“Are you okay?” Mother leaned over, peering up into my face. “You look a bit ill.”
I waved a hand. “I feel fine, never better.” But couldn’t help pursing my lips in what was probably a less-than-pleased expression.
I suffered through the next two and a half hours, growing numb to the pictures of attractive Calistan women that flashed by. Mother eagerly watched my reactions to each one. I planned to eliminate fifty of the women purely at random. I realized while I was sitting there that I truly did not care which one o
f them eventually bore my children, a thought I could never voice aloud in my mother’s presence.
Finally I made my escape and instructed Camira to clear my schedule for the next two hours. If the Priestess was not available, I would spend the time in prayer and making arrangements to see Maya again as soon as possible. My heart would remain squeezed in my chest until I could tell her how I felt.
13
Maya
WHEN I AWOKE the morning after my sunset rendezvous with Lord Toric, I sat up in bed and my eyes went straight to the base of the door. I’d stayed up half the night hoping to get a message from him, and before I fell asleep I’d sent up a prayer that there would be a little message tablet waiting for me when I woke up. I slumped when I saw no message had arrived.
I passed much of the morning pacing and distracting myself by trying to remember all the songs Lana used to sing in the orchard.
After lunch, there was a knock on the door. I raced to the peephole to find an unfamiliar Earthen woman waiting outside.
“Your new guide is here to see you,” came the voice of the guard on duty outside my room—a younger one named North, it sounded like.
My heart sank. Not because I was afraid of who waited on the other side of the door, but because I couldn’t stand the thought of someone replacing Iris.
I unlocked the bolt and opened the door.
The blonde woman was much younger than Iris. Her cool blue eyes darted up and down me and then around my room.
“I’m Clarisse,” she said. After a long beat, she finally looked in my eyes and gave me a wide-eyed tilt of her head. “Are you going to let me in?”
I blinked several times and opened the door wider. “Of course, please come in. I’m Maya.”
“I know.” She went to the one chair in the room and sat down, crossed her long slender legs, and regarded me.
“You look familiar,” I said, wracking my memory for faces and names from home and trying to estimate Clarisse’s age.
“I lived one neighborhood over from yours.” She gave me a hard, unblinking look. “I remember you. One of the twins. You were probably still in grade school when I left Earthenfell.”
She spoke of her old neighborhood as if it were a something completely inconsequential instead of the home of her birth, and her detachment made me uneasy.
I half-turned to go to my bed and sit down, keeping my eyes on Clarisse. I couldn’t tell if she resented being here, or if she was just completely uninterested in the prospect of advising me in the Tournament.
“You’re not old enough to be retired from the harem, are you?” I asked. “I thought the guides were all retired.”
She flicked the fingers of one thin hand dismissively. “Guides are retirees by convention, not by law. You lost your guide, and so here I am.” She said it with no enthusiasm or interest.
I swallowed as dread curled around in my stomach like a restless serpent. Clarisse didn’t seem to care a whit about the Tournament or being a guide. I longed for Iris’s warmth and her reassuring words.
“Do you know anything about the next challenge that might help me? It’s called the game of survival.” I ventured a small, encouraging smile.
She pursed her lips and shrugged one shoulder. “Not really. There’s very little I can do to influence how you perform in the Tournament anyway.”
My scalp prickled at that. Iris had all but said outright that the guides had something riding on the performance of their assigned Obligates. Had Clarisse not been informed? Was she somehow exempt from whatever incentive might be driving the other guides, if there was one?
“You’re all going to be let out of your pens soon, so you might want to run a brush through your hair.” She stood.
I self-consciously touched the loose bun at the crown of my head. “Are you leaving already?”
Clarisse stood. “Akantha is going to let you into one of the gardens for a while.” She reached into the bosom of her dress and pulled something out. “I was instructed to deliver this to you.”
She unceremoniously dropped a small tablet into my hands and then let herself out.
I pressed my thumb to the screen, my heart tripping in anticipation of a message from Lord Toric.
But it wasn’t from the alien Lord.
I’ll be waiting for you in the garden. There’s a service door behind the willow tree. I’ll leave it unlocked. It’s extremely urgent that I see you. Be careful and don’t under any circumstances let Akantha know you’re meeting me.
--Jeric
My mouth went dry as I read the note again. Could I trust Lord Toric’s brother? If there was someone in the royal family who intended to harm me, well, it could be Sir Jeric.
There was something about Jeric that made me vaguely uneasy—not to mention the still-unknown demand he would make in exchange for letting me speak to Lana through the portal—but I didn’t really believe he wanted to hurt me. Quite the opposite, really, if I judged by the intense attention he’d shown me at the party following the first challenge.
I frowned at the door, a belated reaction to Clarisse’s brusque manner. She’d been more than brusque, she hadn’t even attempted to be nice. Had someone forced her to take Iris’s place? I couldn’t imagine she’d volunteered.
I left the message tablet on my bed and went to the bathroom to fix my hair into a braid, leaving a few tendrils curling around my face. After I was done, I looked down at the small dish of hairpins that sat on a ledge over the sink. I didn’t have much in the way of supplies or luxuries here—soap, some hand cream, the hairpins, linens, a few dresses, a change of underclothes, and shoes.
I picked up several hairpins and bent a few of them straight. Kneeling, I sharpened the ends of them to points using the tiled floor as a whetstone.
I scanned myself for a place to conceal them. Remembering where Clarisse had kept the message tablet, I placed the hairpins in the snug bosom of my dress.
It was probably silly to think the hairpins would be any use if I got into a fix or someone tried to attack me, but I felt the need to carry something—anything—that might help me protect myself.
When my door banged open, I jumped and my heart leapt up my throat. I’d forgotten to slide the deadbolt into place after Clarisse’s departure.
Akantha loomed in the doorway. “Line up with the others in the corridor,” she said, and then she was on to the next room.
I heard movements beyond my room, but no voices except Akantha’s commanding the rest of the Obligates to emerge. Apparently she hadn’t given the Obligates permission to speak with each other.
When I went out to join the others, I stopped short at the sight of two guards. Tullock nodded at me. I suppressed an exasperated sigh. I’d forgotten that Lord Toric still had me under his guards’ protection at all times. It looked as though the two guards intended to accompany me to the garden. How would I slip away to meet Jeric?
I spotted Orion and moved to his side. He slanted a half-smile at me and gave me a little wink.
I looked around for Samir, the boy who’d screamed and raved outside our dressing rooms after the Oracle had saved us from entering the Tournament challenge, but he was nowhere in sight. I turned to peer down the line of doors to try to see if his name was still on one, but Akantha was bearing down on me.
“Face front,” she snapped, her eyes flashing darkly as she brandished the short silver wand that she could use to singe my skin if she decided I deserved punishment.
Despite Akantha’s obvious disdain, I couldn’t help a little bounce in my step as she marched us through the corridors. The simple prospect of getting outside made me feel lighter. It seemed almost a dream that once I’d spent the entirety of nearly every work day outdoors, picking fruit in the orchards or attending to some other agricultural job. My body missed the movement, the satisfaction of physical labor, and my skin missed the touch of the sun and wind.
When we emerged into a courtyard, the light of the dying semi-sun glared unnaturally, slantin
g at us over the courtyard wall. This “garden” was nothing like the one Lord Toric had brought me to. Here there were just a few trees, some scruffy-looking grass turf, and a dry fountain in the center of a stone patio. The plants were all fake, of course, and not as nice as the replicas in Lord Toric’s terrace garden.
I squinted and then closed my eyes, enjoying the sunlight even if it didn’t exactly feel like a day in the orchards—or anywhere on Earthenfell, for that matter. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the strange Calistan sky with its multiple suns.
“I will be inside, there.” I opened my eyes at Akantha’s voice and looked to where she was pointing. The side of a building made up one wall of the courtyard. It looked like there were offices inside. The entire face of the structure was made of glass. “I can see your every move, so don’t try anything. As soon as I’m inside, you may speak.”
When she turned to leave, I peered at the two guards out of the corners of my eyes, hoping they’d go with her. They didn’t. While they didn’t exactly hover near me or stare directly at me, their attention was obviously attuned to my movements, even from a distance of several yards away.
Orion let out a long breath. “Finally! I feel like I’ve been in silent seclusion for a year.” He turned to me. “How are you doing? I was worried after the throne room. You could barely keep yourself upright. Have you been sick?”
“Oh! You don’t even know what happened. I can’t believe it’s been so long since we were able to speak to each other.” I quickly recounted for him how I’d been kidnapped, drugged, and stashed in a storage room. I left out the part about Lord Toric nursing me as I rested in his bed.
Orion’s face paled. “If you’d been forced into the Tournament . . .”
I gave him a grim, humorless smile. “I doubt I’d be standing here right now.”
His eyes flicked to the guards. “And they’re here for you?” he whispered.
I nodded. “Lord Toric ordered them.”
