A Spark of White Fire, Page 4

  General Saka glares at him but doesn’t respond. She turns instead to King Darshan. “Who is she?” she demands. It’s a bold tone to take with a king, but by all accounts, Leila Saka fears nothing and nobody. “You called her by a name in the hall. Do you know her? Is she one of your servants?”

  “She’s right here,” says Rama. “If you want to know who she is, why don’t you ask her yourself?”

  General Saka raises an eyebrow at me. “Well?”

  I consider my words, weighing how much to say. “My name is Esmae. I grew up in a children’s sanctuary here on Wychstar. I work as a servant in the palace sometimes.”

  “And she’s my friend,” says Rama firmly.

  “Your friend?” General Saka repeats. “And how did she come to be friends with a royal prince?”

  “The goddess Amba asked a favor of me when Esmae was a child,” says King Darshan. “She asked me to educate her in my royal schoolroom. She has shared lessons with Prince Rama since she was six years old.”

  Alexi’s gaze finally snaps to meet mine. I watch his fists, clenching and unclenching on top of the table. I’m not sure he knows he’s doing it. “Why you?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “Why you? You’re no one. I’m sorry, I know that’s rude, but it’s the truth. Why did a goddess want you educated alongside royals?”

  Max is incredulous. “You can’t just say someone is no one.”

  “Stay out of it, Max,” Bear growls at him. “Why are you even here? Is it not enough that you stole everything from us? You’re lucky I haven’t cut your throat!”

  “On a foreign king’s territory?” Max replies. “That would be foolish, even by your standards.”

  Bear lunges, but Alexi grabs hold of his brother’s arm and yanks him back into his seat. The bodyguards in the corners reach for their weapons.

  Max doesn’t even flinch.

  “That’s enough,” says King Darshan. His voice is sharper than before. “You can all behave yourselves or leave the room immediately.”

  Bear’s broad shoulders hunch like a chastised schoolboy, and I feel for him. I’d want to cut the throat of the person who stole everything from me, too.

  After a tense, silent moment, Bear recovers himself and says, “Royal schoolroom or not, I know you don’t have instructors here on Wychstar who can teach what she just accomplished. How can she possibly have such skill with a bow and arrow?”

  “She can’t,” says General Saka as though the answer has suddenly become obvious. She springs to her feet. “She must have cheated!”

  “That is a ridiculous accusation,” says Rama.

  “I did not cheat,” I tell the general coldly. I expected the accusation sooner or later. The truth—that I’ve spent years working and studying—is more implausible than the convenience of a trick. “How would I have even done so?”

  “You could have called on the gods to guide the arrow. You could have slipped a magnet onto the arrow’s tip while no one was looking. You could even be an illusion yourself, a con engineered by the thief prince, while the real orphan girl Esmae is dead or locked up in a cell.”

  All possible, I suppose. Max frowns but doesn’t defend himself or answer for me.

  I stand to face her, looking straight in her eye, my chin raised. “None of those things are true. I skewered that fish because I’m the finest archer in this room.”

  Alexi cocks his head at me curiously. “Better than me?” It would sound arrogant coming from anyone else, but we all know the stories. I’ve seen the videos. He has good reason to believe his skill is almost unmatched.

  “Better than you.”

  Leila Saka lets out a sharp burst of laughter. “She really thinks she’s a better archer than Alexi Rey!”

  “Why not?” Max asks. “You just saw her prove as much.”

  “I saw her fire one shot.” General Saka sneers at him. “One shot proves nothing. I’ve given you three different ways she could have pulled that shot off.”

  “That one shot is proof enough for me,” Max replies.

  “You would say that. You’d say anything if it meant that Alexi doesn’t win Titania.”

  “I’m sure he’s already won Titania,” Max snaps back. “It doesn’t seem likely Esmae is going to get her, does it? You’re all so bloody determined to disqualify her on the grounds that she’s a servant.”

  I dig my fingernails into my palms, unclench them, tighten them again. Why is he, of all the people, the one treating me with respect and courtesy? I can’t trust it. I know what he’s capable of. I can’t trust a word out of his mouth.

  Max’s expression shifts. He’s looking at my hands. At my fists—clenching and unclenching. He glances at Alexi and I know what he’s seeing. That fist on the table. Clenching, unclenching.

  Behind me, I hear General Saka arguing with Rama and King Darshan about the competition. Rama is uncharacteristically energetic, refusing to back down from defending my victory. King Darshan wants desperately to agree with General Saka’s opposition—he’s set this whole thing up so that Alexi can have Titania, after all—but he also wants to be seen as fair.

  As they argue, Max stands. I tense, but don’t move, allowing him to approach. I let him not just because I want him to see the truth, but because I’ve never, ever been seen as clearly as I know he’s seeing me now. He’s cutting past it all, the servant’s dress and lemony tang of cheap soap and the messy, tousled hair. I watch his eyes flicker from my hair to my nose to my eyes. Putting together all the little things he hadn’t noticed before.

  “Oh,” he says quietly.

  “So you see,” I reply.

  “I think I do.”

  I turn back to the table. “General Saka, you keep saying I don’t have any right to Titania because I’m a nobody. King Darshan, you have always been courteous to me, and I will always be grateful to you for everything you’ve done for me, but I’m sure you agree with the general. Would you let me have the prize I won if I wasn’t just nobody? If I was someone who mattered in your eyes?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean, Esmae,” says the king.

  Here it is. The beginning of the end of this Warlords game. One last play. The moment I’ve waited so many years for.

  “I can lay to rest any question of my skill. I could, of course, spend a week showing you every sword trick I know, every battle strategy, every skill I have with a bow, but there’s a quicker way. I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who doesn’t trust the word of Sebastian Rickard. Ask him what kind of warrior I am.”

  A fragment of a moment, their faces frozen in shock. Even Rama, who knows me better than anyone, is caught off guard. Even he didn’t look at Alexi and me in the same room and see the obvious.

  “Rickard?” Bear repeats in bewilderment. “What does Rickard have to do with it? He can’t be your teacher. He swore a long time ago that he would only teach my father’s heirs.”

  “Yes, he did,” I say.

  Alexi and I have been in the same room for several minutes now, but no one has seen what should have been obvious. They see a prince and a servant. They don’t see that both have copper in their brown hair. Or that they have the same eyes. From the moment they walked in here, they saw only what they expected and missed the truth.

  They saw the pawn.

  And missed the queen.

  “I am one of your father’s heirs,” I say at last. “My name is Esmae, but I was born Alexa Rey. I’m your sister.” I look at Alexi, into his ashen face and wide eyes. “Your twin.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You can’t be,” Alexi says, his voice little more than a croak. “We don’t have a sister.”

  I’ve wanted this moment for eleven years, to finally look my family in the eye and have them see me for who I really am. My mother isn’t here, but my brothers are. Alexi is. Alexi, who has been the bright half of my dark ghost for so long.

  But I didn’t want this moment to be like this. I wanted joy. I wanted l
ove. I wanted the pieces to click together perfectly.

  Elvar took that from me four years ago. He turned our home into a battleground and snatched away the joy we could have had.

  And now we’re here because of him. I’m doing this because of him. I exchanged joy for this.

  “Rickard was my teacher,” I say. “If he agreed to teach me and I’m not your sister, he must have broken the vow he made your father.”

  Bear doesn’t even hesitate. “He would never have done that!”

  “Then it must be true, mustn’t it?”

  “B-but,” he stammers, “but our mother, she’d have told us if we had a sister! Why would she hide it from us?”

  General Saka’s expression has transformed to horror; now that she knows I didn’t cheat, she has to face the unthinkable possibility that Alexi Rey might have an equal. “You have the same eyes, Alex,” she says.

  It’s not just the eyes. Alexi, Bear, and I are a patchwork of the generations that came before us. Bear has more brown in his skin like our mother, while Alexi and I are a light bronze that’s closer to the paler skin tone our father once had. We all have copper in our brown hair, but Alexi and I have our mother’s gray eyes and Bear has our father’s blue. And then there’s Bear’s eyebrows and Alexi’s nose and my small, sturdy frame and all of the other little details I’ve traced back across years of our family.

  “How long have you known?” Rama asks. He’s using that lazy drawl again, but I know him too well. I’ve hurt him.

  “A long time. Amba told me when I was six.”

  “So that’s why she sent you to the schoolroom,” King Darshan says, a puzzle at last solved. “She wanted you educated like a royal because you are one. Extraordinary.”

  Alexi shakes his head. “It makes no sense. No one’s ever heard of Alexa Rey. There are countless records of my birth and not one of them mentions a second baby.”

  “No, but the records also make it clear that our mother refused all medical treatment while she was pregnant and only our father was with her when she gave birth. Didn’t you ever think that odd behavior for a queen? She did it because she knew she was pregnant with twins and she didn’t want anyone else to find out.”

  Alexi is silent. Bear stutters a protest, but then gives in and says, “But why? Why keep you a secret? Why would Mother send you away?”

  “There was a curse. I don’t know who cursed us or why, but I know it said that my birth would destroy us all. Amba says that our mother cried bitterly, but she gave me up in the hope that the curse would never come to pass. She begged Amba to take away her memories of me, and our father’s memories of me, so that they would never be tempted to seek me out.”

  “She cried bitterly?” Max says slowly. It’s the first time he’s spoken in several minutes. “She asked for her memory of you to be removed so that she would never be tempted to seek you out? None of that sounds like Kyra.”

  Bear scowls but doesn’t contradict him. No one seems to know what else to say. I watch Alexi. He’s so pale and quiet. This isn’t how I planned this; I wanted to speak to him before the competition, prepare my brothers so that we could act this scene out together, but I failed and now I’m performing this part alone. The show must go on.

  “So what now?” Alexi asks me quietly. “You’re my sister, but you competed against me. I can only assume that means you’re not on my side.”

  This is the hardest part, the final move in the game. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Don’t take it personally. I just want to go home.”

  Alexi’s smile is slightly grim. “You want to take Titania to Kali. You want the kingdom they took from me. You’ve chosen their side.”

  My heart aches. I hate that he thinks this of me. I wanted him to leave Wychstar after all this knowing he had a sister who would fight for him, even if she had to do it in secret, but it’s too late for that now. I have to let him believe the worst. I have to let them all believe it.

  It was like they said in the dock. Titania is an unbeatable warship, but she is ultimately a ship. She can’t be beaten, but she can’t be everywhere at once either. With or without her, Alexi needs help from inside Kali. He needs help cutting our uncle down from the inside.

  And there was only one way I was ever going to convince my uncle that I was on his side: I had to compete against Alexi. I had to show them all just how valuable I am. I had to make Elvar and Max and every other traitor on Kali want me.

  And now that they do, I have my way home. I have my teeth firmly in their throats. And when it’s time, I’ll rip them out.

  And win this war.

  “I want to go home,” I say again, “And I’ll do what it takes to get there, even if that means joining our uncle. I’ve been a ghost for seventeen years. I want my home back.”

  There’s a ringing silence when I finish. I let it hang in the air, then turn on my heels and walk quietly out of the room before I burst into tears.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rama catches up to me halfway down one of the servants’ stairways. There’s no sign of his bodyguards.

  “Esmae.” He sighs. “You know I loathe running at the best of times. Don’t think for one second that I appreciate all the activity that’s been demanded of me today.”

  “You didn’t have to come after me.”

  “You may have failed to notice this, but I don’t often do things because I have to.” He pauses. “Am I allowed to call you Esmae or do you prefer Princess Alexa? Should I bow? Do you outrank me now? I think you might. You are, after all, heir to the throne of Kali, while I am only third in line to Wychstar’s.”

  I glare at him, which only makes him grin all the more brightly back. “I am not the heir!” I snap. “My uncle is on the throne.”

  “And if your brother were to take back that throne, who do you think would be his heir?”

  “It wouldn’t be me after what I just did.”

  “I concede he might not want you to be after that display,” Rama says, “and yet by right of birth, it’s you.”

  I stop on the stairs and turn to face him. “Are you angry?”

  “Anger is exhausting,” he replies, “and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s an enterprise that’s exhausting. Truth be told, Ez, it’s your right to keep your secrets. I’m not upset you kept them from me, but I am a little cross you spent years letting me share my family’s secrets with you and never bothered to mention you were keeping your own.”

  “I should have told you,” I say. “I lied to you for years. And I’m sorry. It’s not that I didn’t trust you. I wanted to tell you. I almost did so many times. I guess I missed my chance.”

  He scowls at me. “You missed your chance? Really? You haven’t stumbled across a single opportunity since you were six? How long would it have taken? Rama, I am King Cassel and Queen Kyra’s lost daughter. There! What was that, two seconds? Three? You couldn’t find three seconds in over a decade?”

  “It didn’t feel that easy,” I say and start walking again.

  “No,” he says, gentler now, “I suppose it didn’t.”

  We get to the bottom of the stairs and start down the corridor, past the palace laundry rooms, toward one of the servants’ exits. Several people stop to gape at us. Not because of Rama; they’re used to him wandering in and out of places royals don’t usually go. They’re staring because of me. Because they all watched the competition.

  “You were very good, by the way,” Rama goes on, lazy and admiring. “All that in there about doing whatever it takes to get what you want. Even I believed it for a moment. Then the moment passed. I know you too well. I know you’re not the sort of person who joins the usurping uncle and jealous cousin who have made your brothers’ lives a misery. So what are you up to?”

  “I want nothing more than to be with my mother and brothers,” I say softly, “but I can’t protect them if I’m with them. No war I’ve ever read about was won on the backs of just ships and soldiers and weapons. We need more. We need someone on the insid
e to find out exactly where the traps will the sprung. To spring traps of our own.”

  “And do your brothers know of this plan?”

  “Not yet. I was hoping to tell them before the competition, but it didn’t quite work out that way.” I swallow. “It’s probably better this way anyway. If the rift between us looks real, Elvar is that much more likely to trust me.”

  Rama’s face is more worried than I’ve ever seen it. “What happens if your uncle realizes what you’re up to? It’ll be your head on a spike.”

  “No one uses spikes anymore.”

  “A figurative spike doesn’t change the fact that executions are real.”

  I manage a smile. “Then I’d better not get caught.”

  We duck into the cellars; the most discreet exit out of the palace is tucked away at the back. The cellars are dim and chilly, a labyrinth of rooms where the palace wines and preserved stores of emergency food are kept.

  “You beat every single person in that competition,” Rama says after a moment. “Just to trick your uncle into letting you get close.”

  It’s not a question, but he’s not convinced. I won’t lie to him again. “No,” I admit. “I wanted to win. Not just because it was Titania, not just because of the war. For me. I wanted to be in the sun just once.” I smile ruefully. “Not that it matters. I’ll be disqualified and Alexi will get Titania. Our mother chose him. The world will choose him.”

  I love my brother, but I’ve always wished that someone, just once, would choose me.

  We turn a corner, and Amba materializes in front of us.

  Rama lets out an undignified yelp and takes a hasty step back. I don’t think he’s ever met a god before. He’s one of the few people I know who doesn’t hold any devotion to them whatsoever. He’s no more disrespectful to them than he is to anyone else, which is to say he’s fairly disrespectful but somehow gets away with it, but he doesn’t pray or make offerings at altars or care much about them one way or another. Still, it’s hard to be irreverent when you’re looking into the eyes of a god.

  Amba raises her eyebrows at me. “I underestimated you.”