CHAPTER SEVEN
Amba’s wrong if she thinks I don’t know there will be consequences. I’ve spent so long trying to anticipate every outcome of this competition that even when I wasn’t sure I could beat Alexi, I considered what would happen if I did. I know what’s going on across the stars.
I know there will be hasty scrambling for tech screens and the angry summoning of spies so that thirty-nine rulers and their advisers can find out as much as possible about the strange servant girl who beat Alexi Rey. I’m a wild card, an unknown, and they will all be terrified.
I know Queen Miyo of Tamini will join forces with Alexi, if she hasn’t already, and I know Prime Minister Gomez of Shloka will call a meeting of the Forty Territories on neutral ground so that they can discuss how to deal with me. I know armies will be readied, ships poised to fly, shields activated around palaces, all of it put into place just in case they have to face Titania.
The rumors will spread until eventually the truth will spill out. King Darshan may already have been forced to announce it. Princess Alexa, daughter of King Cassel and Queen Kyra of Kali. It doesn’t sound right, and yet it’s who I am. It’s what I’ve wanted all my life.
And my uncle, the usurper king of Kali, will be both furious and gleeful. He will hate me because I am yet another child of the brother who had everything, but he’ll want me on his side. He’ll want to use me against Alexi, the perfect foil to the golden warrior prince, the twin who can equal and crush his enemy. He’ll want Titania. I’m counting on that.
Rama and I slip out of the cellar exit. “Are you really planning to go back to the children’s home?” he asks as we walk away from the white palace walls. “You do know you’re not just another face on the streets anymore?”
“I can’t leave without a word to them. And there’s something there I need before I go.”
It’s an awkward trip back to the home; royal princes and winners of warships tend to cause a stir wherever they go. Rama may be used to it, but I find the dumbfounded stares and whispers as we pass profoundly unsettling.
As soon as I set foot in the familiar patchwork of pods and rooms, the children mob me. They tumble over one another in their excitement and I can hardly keep up with their questions. How did you do it, Esmae? I hear several times. I spent a long time learning isn’t a very exciting reply.
Rama eventually distracts them, and I escape to the room I share with three smaller girls. I pack what little I have into an old rucksack. It isn’t much beyond some clothes and a couple of books, but I didn’t come back for them. I shift the floorboard beneath my bed and draw out the bow Rickard gave me after I passed his first test.
The Black Bow. It feels warm, alive in my hands, a small but powerful bow carved from the black ashoka wood that grows on Amba’s planet. It’s not just a fine tool for archery; when an incantation transforms it into its celestial self, it becomes an explosion of radiance that can instantly destroy any and every weapon at which it’s directed. Titania is possibly the only exception. Other warships would crumble. Swords would turn to ash. Arrows would dissolve in the air. Lasers would vanish on the spot. Whole armies could be picked off and disarmed, and whole fleets of soldiers would die as their warships crumbled around them. Rickard taught me the incantation when he gave it to me, but warned me never to use it unless I had a desperate need. I haven’t needed it yet.
I might in battle. That’s the obvious place, isn’t it? Technology allows us to make weapons that can level cities with the press of a button, but the laws of righteous warfare limit soldiers to the use of swords, bows, and other pre-industrial weapons like spears, the gada mace, and hammers. Spaceships can be used in battle, but there are laws about distance and the type of laserfire and so on. There are many people who resent these limits, but the gods’ laws are strict and the Forty Territories agreed together not to violate their code.
There’s a sound at the doorway. I look up to see Madam Li.
“They’re saying you’re a Rey.” She jabs her thumb back toward the tech screens out on the streets. “Is it true?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “You never put on any airs, never fussed about all the jobs you took on around here, never acted like you were better than any of us. I never would have guessed there was a princess hiding behind all that.” Her long black eyes shift to the packed rucksack and she frowns. “You don’t have to leave because of this.”
“You know I do. Neither of us will ever get any peace if I stay here.”
She notices the Black Bow. She takes in the celestial symbols notched into its grain. Her eyes widen. “Is that one of their bows?”
“A god’s bow?” I can feel its energy, a faint thrum in my hands. “Yes. Amba forged it.”
Madame Li touches her heart, then touches the bow for luck. She smiles at me. “Good luck, Esmae. Bend the world to your will.”
I smile back. “I’ll do my best.”
I thank her for all she’s done for me and then I leave.
Rama’s outside. He looks like he’s talking to himself, but I assume he’s speaking to whoever’s on the other end of the earpiece he’s put in his left ear. When I approach him, he jerks his head at the tech screen at the other end of the street. “You’re going to want to see this, Ez.”
King Darshan is on the screen. “This was an impossible decision. Princess Alexa won the competition, but she was not on the list of competitors. Her entry should not count, and yet it would be unjust to pretend she does not have the kind of talent that is worthy of a prize like Titania. I decided it was not up to me to have the final say.”
A murmur rolls through the crowd around us. I’m just as confused. Rama’s eyes are twinkling.
“I put the question to someone who has more right to this decision than I,” the king continues. “I asked Titania herself. And—”
He pauses. I hold my breath.
“—and she has chosen Princess Alexa.”
I’m hardly aware of the noise and the heads in the crowd turning my way. Something expands inside me, painful and sharp. Titania chose me. She chose me.
I look past the tech screen, past the sun lamps, into the deep black of space. At my path home, lit by stars.