Red Queen

by Victoria Aveyard

  Halfway to Lessons, I begin to feel calm again. I addressed everyone properly and only spoke as much as I had to, as instructed. Evangeline talked enough for both of us, regaling the women with her “undying love” for Cal and the honor she felt at being chosen. I thought the Queenstrial girls would band together and kill her, but they didn’t, to my annoyance. Only the Iral grandmother and Sonya seemed to even care that I was there, though they didn’t push their interrogation any further. But they certainly will.

  When Maven appears around the corner, I’m so proud of my survival at lunch that I’m not even annoyed by his presence. In fact, I feel strangely relieved, and let a bit of my cold act drop. He grins, coming closer with a few long strides.

  “Still alive?” he asks. Compared to the Irals, he’s like a friendly puppy.

  I can’t help but smile. “You should send Lady Iral back to the Lakelanders. She’ll make them surrender in a week.”

  He forces a hollow laugh. “She’s a battle-ax that one. Can’t seem to understand she’s not in the war any longer. Did she question you at all?”

  “More like interrogate. I think she’s angry I beat out her granddaughter.”

  Fear flickers in his eyes and I understand it. If the Panther is sniffing around my trail . . . “She shouldn’t bother you like that,” he mutters. “I’ll let my mother know, and she’ll take care of it.”

  As much as I don’t want his help, I don’t see any other way around it. A woman like Ara could easily find the cracks in my story, and then I’ll be truly finished. “Thanks, that would—that would be very helpful.”

  I can see that Maven’s dress uniform is gone, replaced by casual clothes built for form and function. It calms me a little, to see at least someone looking so informal. But I can’t let anything about him soothe me. He’s one of them. I can’t forget that.

  “Are you done for the day?” he says, his face clearing to reveal an eager smile. “I could show you around if you want?”

  “No.” The word comes out quickly and his smile fades. His frown unsettles me as much as his smile. “I have Lessons next,” I add, hoping to soften the blow. Why I care about his feelings, I don’t exactly know. “Your mother loves her schedules.”

  He nods, looking a little better. “She does indeed. Well, I won’t keep you.”

  He takes my hand gently. The cold I felt on his skin before is gone, replaced with a delightful heat. Before I get a chance to pull away, he leaves me standing there alone.

  Lucas gives me a moment to collect myself before noting, “You know, we’d get there much faster if you actually moved.”

  “Shut up, Lucas.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTEEN

  My next instructor waits for me in a room cluttered from floor to ceiling with more books than I’ve ever seen, more books than I ever thought existed. They look old and completely priceless. Despite my aversion to school and books of any kind, I feel a pull to them. But the titles and pages are written in a language I don’t understand, a jumble of symbols I could never hope to decipher.

  Just as intriguing as the books are the maps along the wall, of the kingdom and other lands, old and new. Framed against the far wall, behind a pane of glass, is a vast, colorful map pieced together from separate sheets of paper. It’s at least twice as tall as me and dominates the room. Faded and ripped, it’s a tangled knot of red lines and blue coasts, green forests and yellow cities. This is the old world, the before world, with old names and old borders we no longer have any use for.

  “It’s strange to look at the world as it once was,” the instructor says, appearing out of the book stacks. His yellow robes, stained and faded by age, make him look like a human piece of paper. “Can you find where we are?”

  The sheer size of the map makes me gulp but, like everything else, I’m sure this is a test. “I can try.”

  Norta is the northeast. The Stilts is on the Capital River, and the river goes to the sea. After a minute of pained searching, I finally find the river and the inlet near my village. “There,” I say, pointing just north, where I suppose Summerton might be.

  He nods, happy to know I’m not a total fool. “Do you recognize anything else?”

  But like the books, the map is written in the unknown language. “I can’t read it.”

  “I didn’t ask if you could read it,” he replies, still pleasant. “Besides, words can lie. See beyond them.”

  With a shrug, I force myself to look again. I was never a good student in school, and this man is going to find that out soon enough. But to my surprise, I like this game. Searching the map, looking for features I recognize. “That might be Harbor Bay,” I finally murmur, circling the area around a hooked cape.

  “Correct,” he says, his face folding into a smile. The wrinkles around his eyes deepen with the action, showing his age. “This is Delphie now,” he adds, pointing to a city farther south. “And Archeon is here.”

  He puts his finger over the Capital River, a few miles north of what looks like the largest city on the map, in the entire country of the before world. The Ruins. I’ve heard the name, in whispers between the older kids, and from my brother Shade. The Ash City, the Wreckage, he called it. A tremor runs down my spine at the thought of such a place, still covered in smoke and shadow from a war more than a thousand years ago. Will this world ever be like that, if our war doesn’t end?

  The instructor stands back to let me think. He has a very strange idea of teaching; it’ll probably end with a four-hour game of me staring at a wall.

  But suddenly, I’m very aware of the buzz in this room. Or lack thereof. This entire day I’ve felt the electrical weight of cameras, so much that I’ve stopped noticing. Until now, when I don’t feel it at all. It’s gone. I can feel the lights still pulsing with electricity, but no cameras. No eyes. Elara cannot see me here.

  “Why isn’t anyone watching us?”

  He only blinks at me. “So there is a difference,” he mutters. What that means I don’t know, and it infuriates me.

  “Why?”

  “Mare, I’m here to teach you your histories, to teach you how to be Silver and how to be, ah, useful,” he says, his expression souring.

  I stare at him, confused. Cold fear bleeds through me. “My name is Mareena.”

  But he only waves a hand, brushing aside my feeble declaration. “I’m also going to try to understand exactly how you came to be and how your abilities work.”

  “My abilities came to be because—because I’m a Silver. My parents’ abilities mixed—my father was an oblivion and my mother a storm.” I stutter through the explanation Elara fed me, trying to make him understand. “I’m a Silver, sir.”

  To my horror, he shakes his head. “No you are not, Mare Barrow, and you must never forget it.”

  He knows. I’m finished. It’s all over. I should beg, plead for him to keep my secret, but the words stick in my throat. The end is coming and I can’t even open my mouth to stop it.

  “There’s no need for that,” he continues, noting my fear. “I have no plans of alerting anyone to your heritage.”

  The relief I feel is short-lived, shifting into another kind of fear. “Why? What do you want from me?”

  “I am, above all things, a curious man. And when you entered Queenstrial a Red servant and ran out some long-lost Silver lady, I have to say I was quite curious.”

  “Is that why there aren’t any cameras in here?” I bristle, backing away from him. My fists clench and I wish the lightning would come to protect me from this man. “So there’s no record of you examining me?”

  “There are no cameras in here because I have the power to turn them off.”

  Hope sparks in me, like light in absolute darkness. “What is your power?” I ask shakily. Maybe he’s like me.

  “Mare, when a Silver says ‘power,’ they mean might
, strength. ‘Ability,’ on the other hand, refers to all the silly little things we can do.” Silly little things. Like break a man in two or drown him in the town square. “I mean that my sister was queen once, and that still counts for something around here.”

  “Lady Blonos didn’t teach me that.”

  He chuckles to himself. “That’s because Lady Blonos is teaching you nonsense. I will never do that.”

  “So, if the queen was your sister, then you’re—”

  “Julian Jacos, at your service.” He sweeps into a comically low bow. “Head of House Jacos, heir to nothing more than a few old books. My sister was the late queen Coriane, and Prince Tiberias the Seventh, Cal as we all call him, is my nephew.”

  Now that he says it, I can see the resemblance. Cal’s coloring is his father’s, but the easy expression, the warmth behind his eyes—those must come from his mother.

  “So, you’re not going to turn me into some science experiment for the queen?” I ask, still wary.

  Instead of looking offended, Julian laughs aloud. “My dear, the queen would like nothing more than for you to disappear. Discovering what you are, helping you understand it, is the last thing she wants.”

  “But you’re going to do it anyway?”

  Something flashes in his eyes, something like anger. “The queen’s reach is not so long as she wants you to think. I want to know what you are, and I’m sure you do too.”

  As afraid as I was a moment ago, that’s how intrigued I am now. “I do.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he says, smiling at me over a stack of books. “I’m sorry to say I must also do what was asked, to prepare you for the day you step forward.”

  My face falls, remembering what Cal explained in the throne room. You are their champion. A Silver raised Red. “They want to use me to stop a rebellion. Somehow.”

  “Yes, my dear brother-in-law and his queen believe you can do so, if used appropriately.” Bitterness drips from his every word.

  “It’s a stupid idea and impossible. I won’t be able to do anything and then . . .” My voice trails away. Then they’ll kill me.

  Julian follows my train of thought. “You’re wrong, Mare. You don’t understand the power you have now, how much you could control.” He clasps his hands behind his back, oddly tight. “The Scarlet Guard are too drastic for most, too much too fast. But you are the controlled change, the kind people can trust. You are the slow burn that will quench a revolution with a few speeches and smiles. You can speak to the Reds, tell them how noble, how benevolent, how right the king and his Silvers are. You can talk your people back into their chains. Even the Silvers who question the king, the ones who have doubts, can be convinced by you. And the world will stay the same.”

  To my surprise, Julian seems disheartened by this. Without the buzzing cameras, I forget myself and my face curls into a sneer. “And you don’t want that? You’re a Silver, you should hate the Scarlet Guard—and me.”

  “Thinking all Silvers are evil is just as wrong as thinking all Reds are inferior,” he says, his voice grave. “What my people are doing to you and yours is wrong to the deepest levels of humanity. Oppressing you, trapping you in an endless cycle of poverty and death, just because we think you are different from us? That is not right. And as any student of history can tell you, it will end poorly.”

  “But we are different.” One day in this world taught me that. “We’re not equal.”

  Julian stoops, his eyes boring into mine. “I’m looking at proof you are wrong.”

  You’re looking at a freak, Julian.

  “Will you let me prove you wrong, Mare?”

  “What good will it do? Nothing will change.”

  Julian sighs, exasperated. He runs a hand through his thinning chestnut hair. “For hundreds of years the Silvers have walked the earth as living gods and the Reds have been insects at their feet, until you. If that isn’t change, I don’t know what is.”

  He can help me survive. Better yet, he might even help me live.

  “So what do we do?”

  My days take on a rhythm, always the same schedule. Protocol in the morning, Lessons in the afternoon, while Elara parades me at lunches and dinners in between. The Panther and Sonya still seem wary of me, but haven’t said anything since the luncheon. Maven’s help seems to have worked, as much as I hate to admit it.

  At the next large gathering, this time in the Queen’s personal dining hall, the Irals ignore me completely. Despite my Protocol lessons, luncheon is still overwhelming as I try to remember what I’ve been taught. Osanos, nymphs, blue and green. Welle, greenwardens, green and gold. Lerolan, oblivions, orange and red. Rhambos and Tyros and Nornus and Iral and many more. How anyone keeps track of this, I’ll never know.

  As usual, I’m seated next to Evangeline. I’m painfully aware of the many metal utensils on the table, all lethal weapons in Evangeline’s cruel hand. Every time she lifts her knife to cut her food, my body tenses, waiting for the blow. Elara knows what I’m thinking, as usual, but carries on through her meal with a smile. That might be worse than Evangeline’s torture, to know she takes pleasure in watching our silent war.

  “And how do you like the Hall of the Sun, Lady Titanos?” the girl across from me asks—Atara, House Viper, green and black. The animos who killed the doves. “I assume it’s no comparison to the—the village you lived in before.” She says the word village like a curse and I don’t miss her smirk.

  The other women laugh with her, a few whispering in scandalized voices.

  It takes me a minute to respond as I try to keep my blood from boiling. “The Hall and Summerton are very different from what I’m used to,” I force out.

  “Obviously,” another woman says, leaning forward to join the conversation. A Welle, judging by her green-and-gold tunic. “I took a tour of the Capital Valley once and I must say, the Red villages are simply deplorable. They don’t even have proper roads.”

  We can barely feed ourselves, let alone pave streets. My jaw tightens until I think my teeth might shatter. I try to smile, but instead end up grimacing as the other women voice their agreement.

  “And the Reds, well, I suppose it’s the best they can do with what they have,” the Welle continues, wrinkling her nose at the thought. “They’re suited to such lives.”

  “It’s not our fault they were born serve,” a brown-robed Rhambos says airily, as if she’s talking about the weather or the food. “It’s simply nature.”

  Anger curls through me, but one glance from the queen tells me I cannot act on it. Instead, I must do my duty. I must lie. “It is indeed,” I hear myself say. Under the table, my hands clench, and I think my heart might be breaking.

  All over the table, the women listen attentively. Many smile, more nod as I reassert their terrible beliefs about my people. Their faces make me want to scream.

  “Of course,” I continue, unable to stop myself. “Being forced to live such lives, with no respite, no reprieve, and no escape, would make servants of anyone.”

  The few smiles fade, twitching into bewilderment.

  “Lady Titanos is to have the best tutors and best help to make sure she adjusts properly,” Elara says quickly, cutting me off. “She’s already begun with Lady Blonos.”

  The women mutter appreciatively while the girls exchange eye rolls. It’s enough time to recover, to reclaim the self-control I need to survive the meal.

  “What does His Royal Highness intend to do about the rebels?” a woman asks, her gruff voice sending a shock of silence over lunch, drawing focus away from me.

  Every eye at the table turns to the speaker, a woman in military uniform. A few other ladies wear uniforms as well, but hers shines with the most medals and ribbons. The ugly scar down her freckled face says she may actually have earned them. Here in a palace, it’s easy to forget there’s a war going on, but the haunted look in her eye says she will not, she cannot, forget.

  Queen Elara puts down her spoon with practiced grace and an
equally practiced smile. “Colonel Macanthos, I would hardly call them rebels—”

  “And that’s only the attack they’ve claimed,” the colonel fires back, cutting off the queen. “What about the explosion in Harbor Bay, or the airfield in Delphie for that matter? Three airjets destroyed, and two more stolen from one of our own bases!”

  My eyes widen, and I can’t help but gasp with a few ladies. More attacks? But while the others look frightened, hands pressed to their mouths, I have to fight the urge to smile. Farley has been busy.

  “Are you an engineer, Colonel?” Elara’s voice is sharp, cold, and final. She doesn’t give Macanthos a chance to shake her head. “Then you wouldn’t understand how a gas leak in the Bay was at fault for the explosion. And remind me, do you command aerial troops? Oh no, I’m so sorry, your specialty lies with ground forces. The airfield incident was a training exercise overseen by Lord General Laris himself. He has personally assured His Highness of the utmost safety of the Delphie base.”

  In a fair fight, Macanthos could probably tear Elara apart with her bare hands. But instead, Elara tore the colonel apart with nothing but words. And she’s not even finished. Julian’s words echo in my head—words can lie.

  “Their goal is to harm innocent civilians, Silver and Red, to incite fear and hysteria. They are small, contained, and cowardly, hiding from my husband’s justice. To call every mishap and misunderstanding in this kingdom the work of such evil only furthers their efforts to terrorize the rest of us. Do not give these monsters the satisfaction of that.”

  A few women at the table clap and nod, agreeing with the queen’s sweeping lie. Evangeline joins in and the action quickly spreads, until only the colonel and I remain silent. I can tell she doesn’t believe anything the queen says, but there’s no way to call the queen a liar. Not here, not in her arena.

  As much as I want to stay still, I know I can’t. I’m Mareena, not Mare, and I have to support my queen and her wretched words. My hands come together, clapping for Elara’s lie, as the scolded colonel bows her head.