CHAPTER TWO
I rush to the Reception Hall, kicking myself the whole way. I can’t believe my own cowardice. I’ve planned that moment with Alexi for months but faltered when it was time to act.
And if I faltered here, what’s to say I won’t falter again? What’s to say I won’t fail when it matters most?
The route to the hall feels endless. Windows flash by as I race down corridors and up stairways, but I’ve seen the view a thousand times and don’t stop to look. Sun lamps, rooftops, tiny starships patrolling just inside the barely perceptible inner and outer shields. And beyond, in the distance, the planet Sting, which is where Wychstar was first built before it rose into the stars.
Spaceship kingdoms first came to be in the 1200s, when a number of men and women took flight from their planets and built new kingdoms among the stars, but eventually the practicalities of keeping a base ship fueled and stocked grew too cumbersome for most. Six hundred years on, only two of these realms have stayed afloat: Wychstar and Kali.
Kali. It feels universes away, a realm of warriors and myths and usurpers, crooked and beautiful. That’s where I belong.
Home.
Madam Li’s sanctuary has been a safe, comfortable place for me, but it’s never been home. I was a foundling taken in and raised with an endless parade of small children who came for a little while and left when they were adopted or restored to their birth families. I stayed, waiting for the day I would return to Kali. Amba told me that was where I came from and that I would go back there one day.
Then four years ago, Elvar, the usurper king, stole the crown from his dead brother’s rightful heirs and sent Alexi, his brother Bear, and their mother Queen Kyra into exile. But everyone knew Alexi would fight for his throne. A civil war was inevitable. It was then that Amba ceased all talk of my going home.
I’ve never stopped wanting it, though. I swore to myself that I would make my way back to my family one way or another. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be a foundling left out in the cold forever. I had prayed and trained and worked for it for years by then, and I wasn’t about to give up that dream. Late at night, in the room I shared with girls who would be gone again in a few days or weeks, I held that wish close.
Now it’s finally time to make it come true.
I reach the Reception Hall and slip inside just as the doors close behind me. The hall is enormous, with a domed ceiling and big windows, and a space has been cordoned off for the competition in the very heart of the room. It’s packed with guests; excited voices, the clink of wine glasses, and the sickly sweet smell of perfume fill the air.
I search the hall until I find Rama and slip past the crowds to reach him. He’s thrown across a bench with his eyes closed. How he gets away with behavior like this in public, I’ll never know.
“So you really don’t know what the competition will involve?” I ask him.
Rama deigns to open one eye. “I told you, Ez, Father’s been so determined not to let any information leak out that he wouldn’t tell any of us the specifics of the competition. He didn’t want to give any of the competitors a chance to prepare.”
“You’re a prince! Third in line to the throne! How can you not know?”
Rama chuckles. “Rodi is first in line, and even he doesn’t know. My proximity to the throne makes not one jot of difference to Father. He knows I’m a blabbermouth who can’t be trusted.”
“That,” I concede, “is a valid point.”
“I know as much as you or anyone else in this room. The competition will involve a single task—one that will require a great deal of skill in swordsmanship, archery, or some other battle-ish nonsense.” Rama shrugs. “Alexi will win because he’s better than almost everyone in the world at the aforementioned battle-ish nonsense. The only person who might possibly beat him is Sebastian Rickard himself, and he isn’t competing.”
Rickard, another powerful piece in this game of Warlords. Rickard, the old warrior, one of the greatest to have ever lived.
My teacher.
And the closest thing I ever had to a father.
Until the day he left and never came back.
“Wait.” Rama opens both eyes and sits up abruptly. “Rickard.”
I school my face into polite curiosity, hiding away how much the sound of that name hurts. As far as Rama knows, Rickard is no more than a legend to me. “What about him?”
“I do know one other teeny tiny detail about the competition. Father specifically wanted to rig the contest in Alexi’s favor, to guarantee his victory even if by some mischance his superior skills aren’t enough, so he made sure the task is one that only a student of Rickard’s is likely able to complete.”
This is a much smaller number of people than you would think. Years ago, Rickard was a close friend and adviser to Queen Vanya of Kali, and then to her son and heir Cassel upon her death. Back then, people came from all over the star system for advice and lessons in the arts of war, but King Cassel eventually grew unhappy and begged Rickard to stop giving away his secrets.
“What if we go to war again with other realms?” Cassel had asked. “What if these students of yours use your lessons against us?”
So Rickard made the king a promise. “I will teach your heirs everything I know, and your heirs alone. I will teach no one else.”
That was twenty years ago. Rickard kept his vow. He stopped teaching, but when Cassel’s heirs were born a short while later, he trained them as promised. Alexi is one of them. And Bear, his brother, is another.
I’ve seen the list of competitors. None of Rickard’s former students are on the list, apart from Alexi.
“How does King Darshan know what Rickard might have taught his students?” I ask Rama. “How did he know which task to set?”
“They once knew each other,” Rama explains. “A long, long time ago. I think Father wanted to be one of his students, back when he was still taking new students, but I don’t think Father made the cut.”
“Why?” I wonder. “Why Alexi? What does he want so badly that he’s willing to give Alexi an unbeatable warship just to get it?”
“I wish I knew. My unsatisfied curiosity is unbearable, I assure you.”
I look across the hall to where King Darshan sits on his throne. His face is turned toward the enormous arched windows that look out onto the endless black skies broken only by floating rocks, stars, gas clouds, moons—
—and Titania.
She’s suspended outside now, the prize waiting for her winner. I’m sure some people think King Darshan must be mad to give away the unbeatable god-graced ship, but they probably don’t know the other part of her story.
It’s said that when Darshan asked the gods to help him build his warship, he asked for one more thing: “I want a ship that can never be used against me. Let it turn to dust before it can harm my realm or myself.”
That part of the story has always made me sad on Titania’s behalf, condemned by the one who made her because he would rather she were destroyed than risk her hurting him in some way.
“I wonder if he’ll miss her,” I say out loud.
Rama stares at his father’s face. “He didn’t speak for ten years just so he could have her. He built her with his own hands and the gods’ help. Of course he’ll miss her.” Rama cracks a smile. “And he won’t give her up easily. That’s why he isn’t just gifting her to Alexi. He wants him to earn her.”
“What about the others? There’s a champion from each kingdom here today, and technically two from Kali. That’s forty competitors. That’s a lot of people who are destined to be disappointed.”
“I think they all know they’re unlikely to win. I reckon most are just glad they’ve even been offered a chance to compete. Everyone will have a shot at the prize. That’s all they want. A chance. And, in any case,” he adds, “Alexi is so loved and admired that they won’t be too put out when he wins. They’ve trusted Father not to use Titania to bully and ruin them since she was built. They’ll trust Alexi, too.”
So loved. So admired. The golden boy. He’s achieved so much in such a short life.
And lost so much.
The second bell chimes.
It’s time.