CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It’s the post-dinner lull, when we usually all sit in the warm, snug, book-filled family parlor and read or talk or walk outside in the terrace gardens. I have a spot by the window and I look out at the star-stained sky, the red and gold of the Scarlet Nebula, the orb of the planet Winter. My mother and brothers are in a city somewhere on that planet preparing for a war.
The mother who wanted me gone. The brother at least two gods believe will kill me.
I rub my arms to keep warm.
I sense Rickard behind me before he speaks, his voice deep and gentle. “What is it, Esmae? What’s happened?”
How can I tell him? Here is where the broken trust between us shines brightest, like light so sharp it’s unbearable to look at. How can I tell him that my choices and his curse could soon have me spitting blood onto grass as I die?
And so I don’t.
“Esmae,” Elvar says from behind us, “would you like to join an old man for a walk in the gardens?”
I help him to the doors, my hand on his arm to guide him across the room. Rickard goes to play dice with Guinne and Sybilla. Beyond them, the old queen dozes ungracefully by the artificial fire and Max is mostly hidden behind a copy of The Three Stolen Queens. It’s a peaceful time of day, so peaceful that I can’t quite believe there are so many thorns and such bitterness buried just under the surface.
The gardens outside the parlor are built on an enormous terrace, a maze of wild hedges with beautiful flowers strewn across the paths. Above and around us, the skies seem endless, a harsh black-blue dotted with stars and stained to the east with the crimson of the nebula. Starships zip across the skies.
“Have I told you about the time your father and I stole a starship and tried to fly to Tamini?”
I smile. “How far did you get?”
“Our mother found us before we left the dock.”
We laugh. After a few minutes of walking, we stop to rest on a bench. Elvar turns his face toward the stars. “We were so brave as boys, Cassel and I. I sometimes wonder if everyone grows afraid as they grow older. Kali is not a place for the old and the tired and the fearful.”
“You are none of those things, Uncle Elvar,” I say, but we both know that’s a lie.
“May I ask you a question, Esmae?”
I nod out of habit, then remember he can’t see me. “Of course.”
“You lived on Wychstar almost all of your life. You knew the royal family well. Do you think King Darshan will join Alexi’s army? Do you think he’ll come here with him just to render Titania useless?”
So that’s the new terror plaguing his mind. I wonder what Lord Selwyn hopes to gain by putting it there.
“King Darshan is too clever and too fair to do that, Uncle. He may offer Alexi silver or troops if he thinks it’s worth his while, but he won’t involve himself directly. He won’t come with him, just to make Titania useless. He won’t try to destroy the ship he built just because he can.”
“And yet he does favor Alexi, doesn’t he? Some believe Darshan deliberately rigged the competition.”
I hesitate. I have to be careful about how much I lie. “I don’t think there was any specific plan for Alexi to win. Darshan constructed the competition as he did because he was inspired by a display of Rickard’s he’d once seen.”
“Yes, they knew each other years ago,” Elvar agrees. “I remember when they fell out.”
I’m puzzled. “Fell out?”
“I was only a boy then, which means Darshan must have been twenty or so, long before Rickard had made his vow to Cassel. Darshan was one of Rickard’s students, you know.”
“Was he? His son seemed to think he never made the cut.”
“He might have let him believe that to avoid explaining what really happened. He had only been training with Rickard for a few months. Then they argued. Darshan had promised Rickard half of Wychstar’s wealth in return for his lessons, you see. Rickard had no interest in Wychstar’s wealth, but he wanted to see if the boy would keep his word. He asked him to deliver on his promise. Darshan panicked and threw a fit.”
I wince. “I’m sure Rickard wasn’t impressed.”
“No. I would die for Rickard, but even I have to admit he can be very harsh.” Elvar sighs. “In front of everyone present, Rickard turned his back on the boy. He told him that he could give up his lessons or give up half of Wychstar’s silver, but he couldn’t keep both. Darshan was humiliated. He left. Word has it he’s never gotten over the incident.”
“Do you think that’s why—” I remember who I’m speaking to and abruptly bite my tongue. I was about to speculate about Titania, and the god who told Darshan that the ship would get him what he wanted, but Elvar is not the right person for that.
“Esmae?”
“Sorry.” I shift the conversation back to a safer topic. “You have no need to be afraid of Darshan, Uncle. I truly don’t believe he would try to destroy Titania.”
“You are kind to try to reassure an old man,” he says fondly. “I’m so happy you came to Kali. Your presence has made a world of difference to me.”
It’s difficult to cling to my hatred of him. It’s just as difficult to understand how a man who can be so gentle with me can be so cruel to his nephews and so dismissive of his son.
I guide my uncle back into the parlor. Grandmother is still asleep in her chair and Max is still hidden behind his book, but Sybilla, Guinne, and Rickard have all left the room. Elvar stops to talk to Max for a few minutes before retiring, trailed by his usual escort of royal guards.
I return to my seat by the window. The sight of Winter below takes my mind immediately back to Amba and her terrible certainty about my fate.
A movement makes me turn. Max has abandoned his book and crossed the room. He leans against the window beside me.
I look away. I’ve started to see him differently since I joined the war council. He supports his uncle on a lot of issues, yet simultaneously avoids escalating the war wherever possible. He speaks of Alexi and Bear dismissively, bitterly, but argues against attacking them prematurely. He’s the jealous prince I expected but also so much more than that. Max is the reason Elvar has kept hold of the throne. Max is the reason Kali hasn’t fallen to pieces.
The realization should make me happy, the discovery of a chink in Elvar’s armor. The usurpers’ hold on Kali would crumble if Max were removed from the equation. And I could easily remove him from the equation if I wanted to.
And yet I haven’t. I don’t want to.
“Father told me what you said to him in the garden just now. You’ve made him feel better about Wychstar’s possible role in the war. Thank you for that.”
“Your father should never have become king,” I say bluntly. “It’s making him sick with worry.”
There’s a heartbeat of silence, then Max says, “I know.”
It’s more honesty than I expected, and it clearly wasn’t easy for him to say. I want to push the issue, but I don’t have the heart to. “You and Rickard are very close,” I say instead.
Max nods. “He was never able to teach his grandson or me, but he treated us just the same as he did Alex and Bear. The four of us were excitable and reckless and sometimes very badly behaved, but Rickard would only laugh at our angry parents and say ‘Can’t you see into their hearts? They’ll grow up well, I promise you that.’” A faraway smile lights Max’s eyes. “He loved us.”
That, I understand. In a world where they were raised to be warriors and meticulously disciplined by ambitious, ruthless parents like Elvar, Guinne, and Kyra, who loved them but probably offered them very little in the way of affection, they must have been starved for the warmth and merriment that Rickard brought to their lives.
“He let us cry when we fell down,” Max says. “He hid cakes in our rooms when we were punished. He let us travel across the galaxy with him.”
Touched, and more than a little envious, I look at Max and look past the cousin who helped destroy us. I notice the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and the way he pushes his sleeves up past his elbows whenever they slip down, and the way his dark hair sticks up at the back. Small parts of him that I can look at without prejudices or preconceptions, parts of him that aren’t tainted with history.
His eyes crinkle in a smile now, and there’s something about the way he looks at me that flusters me. I turn away again. “I sometimes tell myself to trust you because Rickard does,” I hear myself admit.
“That’s not a good reason.”
“I know. I tell myself that, too.”
“He means the world to you,” Max says.
I nod, my eyes fixed on Winter once more.
“Then why doesn’t he teach you anymore?” he asks quietly.
To my own surprise, I tell him.