Red Queen

7

I return to the servants’ platform, a hollow feeling in my stomach. Whatever happiness I felt before is completely gone. I can’t bring myself to look back, to see him standing there in fine clothes, dripping with ribbons and medals and the royal airs I hate. Like Walsh, he bears the badge of the flaming crown, but his is made of dark jet, diamond, and ruby. It winks against the hard black of his uniform. Gone are the drab clothes he wore last night, used to blend in with peasants like me. Now he looks every inch a future king, Silver to the bone. To think I trusted him.

The other servants make way, letting me shuffle to the back of the line while my head spins. He got me this job, he saved me, saved my family—and he is one of them. Worse than one of them. A prince. The prince. The person everyone in this spiral stone monstrosity is here to see.

“All of you have come to honor my son and the kingdom, and so I honor you,” King Tiberias booms, breaking apart my thoughts as if they were glass. He raises his arms, gesturing to the many boxes of people. Though I try my hardest to keep my eyes on the king, I can’t help but glance at Cal. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I honor your right to rule. The future king, the son of my son, will be of your silverblood, as he will be of mine. Who will claim their right?”

The silver-haired patriarch barks out in response. “I claim Queenstrial!”

All over the spiral, the leaders of the different houses shout in unison. “I claim Queenstrial!” they echo, upholding some tradition I don’t understand.

Tiberias smiles and nods. “Then it has begun. Lord Provos, if you would.”

The king turns on the spot, looking toward what I assume is House Provos. The rest of the spiral follow his gaze, their eyes landing on a family dressed in gold striped with black. An older man, his gray hair shot with streaks of white, steps forward. In his strange clothes he looks like a wasp about to sting. When he twitches his hand, I don’t know what to expect.

Suddenly, the platform lurches, moving sideways. I can’t help but jump, almost knocking into the servant next to me, as we slide along an unseen track. My heart rises in my throat as I watch the rest of the Spiral Garden spin. Lord Provos is a telky, moving the structure along prebuilt tracks with nothing but the power of his mind.

The entire structure twists under his command, until the garden floor widens into a huge circle. The lower terraces pull back, aligning with the upper levels, and the spiral becomes a massive cylinder open to the sky. As the terraces move, the floor lowers, until it stops nearly twenty feet below the lowest box. The fountains turn into waterfalls, spilling from the top of the cylinder to the bottom, where they fill deep, narrow pools. Our platform glides to a stop above the king’s box, allowing us a perfect view of everything, including the floor far below. All this takes less than a minute, with Lord Provos transforming the Spiral Garden into something much more sinister.

But when Provos takes his seat again, the change is still not done. The hum of electricity rises until it crackles all around, making the hairs on my arms stand up. A purple-white light blazes near the floor of the garden, sparking with energy from tiny, unseen points in the stone. No Silver stands up to command it, like Provos did with an arena. I realize why. This is not some Silver’s doing but a wonder of technology, of electricity. Lightning without thunder. The beams of light crisscross and intersect, weaving themselves into a brilliant, blinding net. Just looking at it hurts my eyes, sending sharp daggers of pain through my head. How the others can stand it, I have no idea.

The Silvers look impressed, intrigued with something they can’t control. As for us Reds, we gape in complete awe.

The net crystallizes as the electricity expands and veins. And then, as suddenly as it came, the noise stops. The lightning freezes, solidifying in midair, creating a clear, purple shield between the floor and us. Between us and whatever might appear down there.

My mind runs wild, wondering what could require a shield made of lightning. Not a bear or a pack of wolves or any of the rare beasts of the forest. Even the creatures of myth, great cats or sea sharks or dragons, would pose no harm to the many Silvers above. And why would there be beasts at Queenstrial? This is supposed to be a ceremony to choose queens, not fight monsters.

As if answering me, the ground in the circle of statues, now the small center of the cylinder floor, opens wide. Without thinking, I push forward, hoping to get a better look with my own eyes. The rest of the servants crowd with me, trying to see what horrors this chamber can bring forth.

The smallest girl I’ve ever seen rises out of darkness.

Cheers rise as a house in brown silk and red gemstones applauds their daughter.

“Rohr, of House Rhambos,” the family shouts, announcing her to the world.

The girl, no more than fourteen, smiles up at her family. She’s tiny in comparison to the statues, but her hands are strangely large. The rest of her looks liable to blow away in a strong breeze. She takes a turn about the ring of statues, always smiling upward. Her gaze lands on Cal—I mean the prince—trying to entice him with her doe eyes or the occasional flip of honey-blond hair. In short, she looks foolish. Until she approaches a solid stone statue and sloughs its head off with a single, simple slap.

House Rhambos speaks again. “Strongarm.”

Below us, little Rohr destroys the floor in a whirlwind, turning statues into pulverized piles of dust while she cracks the ground beneath her feet. She’s like an earthquake in tiny human form, breaking apart anything and everything in her way.

So this is a pageant.

A violent one, meant to showcase a girl’s beauty, splendor—and strength. The most talented daughter. This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the most powerful girl, so that their children might be the strongest of all. And this has been going on for hundreds of years.

I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger.

He claps politely as the Rhambos girl finishes her display of organized destruction and steps back onto the descending platform. House Rhambos cheers for her as she disappears.

Next comes Heron of House Welle, the daughter of my own governor. She’s tall, with a face like her bird namesake. The destroyed earth shifts around her as she puts the floor back together. “Greenwarden,” her family chants. A greeny. At her command, trees grow tall in the blink of an eye, their tops scraping against the lightning shield. It sparks where the boughs touch, setting fire to the fresh leaves. The next girl, a nymph of House Osanos, rises to the occasion. Using the waterfall fountains, she douses the contained forest fire in a hurricane of whitewater, leaving only charred trees and scorched earth.

This goes on for what feels like hours. Each girl rises up to show her worth, and each one finds a more destroyed arena, but they’re trained to deal with anything. They range in age and appearance, but they are all dazzling. One girl, barely twelve years old, explodes everything she touches like some kind of walking bomb. “Oblivion,” her family shouts, describing her power. As she obliterates the last of the white statues, the lightning shield holds firm. It hisses against her fire, and the noise shrieks in my ears.

The electricity, the Silvers, and the shouts blur in my head as I watch nymphs and greenys, swifts, strongarms, telkies, and what seems like a hundred other kinds of Silver show off beneath the shield. Things I never dreamed possible happen before my eyes, as girls turn their skin to stone or scream apart walls of glass. The Silvers are greater and stronger than I ever feared, with powers I never even knew existed. How can these people be real?

I’ve come all this way and suddenly I’m back in the arena, watching Silvers display everything we are not.

I want to marvel in awe as a creature-controlling animos calls down a thousand doves from the sky. When birds dive headfirst into the lightning shield, bursting in little clouds of blood, feathers, and deadly electricity, my awe turns to disgust. The shield sparks again, burning up what’s left of the birds until it shines like new. I almost retch at the sound of applause when the cold-blooded animos sinks back into the floor.

Another girl, hopefully the last, rises into an arena now reduced to dust.

“Evangeline, of House Samos,” yells the patriarch of the silver-haired family. He speaks alone, and his voice echoes across the Spiral Garden.

From my vantage point, I notice the king and queen sit up a bit straighter. Evangeline already has their attention. In stark contrast, Cal looks down at his hands.

While the other girls wore silk dresses and a few had strange, gilded armor, Evangeline rises in an outfit of black leather. Jacket, pants, boots, all studded with hard silver. No, not silver. Iron. Silver is not so dull or hard. Her house cheers for her, all of them on their feet. She belongs to Ptolemus and the patriarch, but others cheer too, other families. They want her to be queen. She is the favorite. She salutes, two fingers to her brow, first to her family and then to the king’s box. They return the gesture, blatantly favoring this Evangeline.

Maybe this is more like the Feats than I realized. Except instead of showing the Reds where we stand, this is the king showing his subjects, powerful as they are, where they stand. A hierarchy within the hierarchy.

I’ve been so preoccupied with the trials that I almost don’t notice when it’s my turn to serve again. Before anyone can nudge me in the right direction, I set off to the right box, barely hearing the Samos patriarch speak. “Magnetron,” I think he says, but I have no idea what it means.

I move through the narrow corridors that were once open walkways, down to the Silvers requiring service. The box is at the bottom, but I’m quick and take almost no time getting down to them. I find a particularly fat clan dressed in garish yellow silk and awful feathers, all enjoying a massive cake. Plates and empty cups litter the box, and I get to work cleaning them up, my hands quick and practiced. A video screen blares inside the box, displaying Evangeline, who seems to be standing still down on the floor.

“What a farce this is,” one of the fat yellow birds grumbles as he stuffs his face. “The Samos girl has already won.”

Strange. She seems to be the weakest of all.

I pile the plates but keep my eyes on the screen, watching her prowl across the wasted floor. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything for her to work with, to show what she can do, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Her smirk is terrible, like she’s totally convinced of her own magnificence. She doesn’t look magnificent to me.

Then the iron studs on her jacket move. They float in the air, each one a hard round bullet of metal. Then, like shots from a gun, they rocket away from Evangeline, digging into the dust and the walls and even the lightning shield.

She can control metal.

Several boxes applaud for her, but she’s far from finished. Groans and clanks echo up to us from somewhere deep down in the structure of the Spiral Garden. Even the fat family stops eating to look around, perplexed. They are confused and intrigued, but I can feel the vibrations deep beneath my feet. I know to be afraid.

With an earth-shattering noise, metal pipes splinter the floor of the arena, rising up from far below. They burst through the walls, surrounding Evangeline in a twisted crown of gray and silver metal. She looks like she’s laughing, but the deafening crunch of metal drowns her out. Sparks fall from the lightning shield, and she protects herself with scrap, not even breaking a sweat. Finally she lets the metal drop with a horrible smash. She turns her eyes skyward, to the boxes above. Her mouth is open wide, showing sharp little teeth. She looks hungry.

It starts slowly, a slight change in balance, until the whole box lurches. Plates crash to the floor and glass cups roll forward, tumbling over the rail to shatter on the lightning shield. Evangeline is pulling our box out, bending it forward, making us tip. The Silvers around me squawk and scrabble, their applause turning to panic. They’re not the only ones—every box in our row moves with us. Far below, Evangeline directs with a hand, her brow furrowed in focus. Like Silver fighters in the ring, she wants to show the world what she’s made of.

That is the thought in my head as a yellow ball of skin and feathered clothing knocks into me, pitching me over the rail with the rest of the silverware.

All I see is purple as I fall, the lightning shield rising up to meet me. It hisses with electricity, singeing the air. I barely have time to understand, but I know the veined purple glass will cook me alive, electrocuting me in my red uniform. I bet the Silvers will only care about waiting for someone to clean me off.

My head bangs against the shield, and I see stars. No, not stars. Sparks. The shield does its job, lighting me up with bolts of electricity. My uniform burns, scorched and smoking, and I expect to see my skin do the same. My corpse will smell wonderful. But, somehow, I don’t feel a thing. I must be in so much pain that I cannot feel it.

But—I can feel it. I feel the heat of the sparks, running up and down my body, setting every nerve on fire. It isn’t a bad feeling though. In fact I feel, well, alive. Like I’ve been living my whole life blind and now I’ve opened my eyes. Something moves beneath my skin, but it’s not the sparks. I look at my hands, my arms, marveling at the lightning as it glides over me. Cloth burns away, charred black by the heat, but my skin doesn’t change. The shield keeps trying to kill me, but it can’t.

Everything is wrong.

I am alive.

The shield gives off a black smoke, starting to splinter and crack. The sparks are brighter, angrier, but weakening. I try to push myself up, to get to my feet, but the shield shatters beneath me and I fall again, tumbling over myself.

Somehow I manage to land in a pile of dust not covered by jagged metal. Definitely bruised and weak in the muscles, but still in one piece. My uniform is not so lucky, barely holding together in a charred mess.

I struggle to my feet, feeling more of my uniform flake off. Above us, murmurs and gasps echo through the Spiral Garden. I can feel all eyes on me, the burned Red girl. The human lightning rod.

Evangeline stares at me, her eyes wide. She looks angry, confused—and scared.

Of me. Somehow, she is scared of me.

“Hi,” I say stupidly.

Evangeline answers with a flurry of metal shards, all of them sharp and deadly, pointed at my heart as they rip through the air.

Without thinking, I throw up my hands, hoping to save myself from the worst of it. Instead of catching a dozen jagged blades in my palms, I feel something quite different. Like with the sparks before, my nerves sing, alive with some inner fire. It moves in me, behind my eyes, beneath my skin, until I feel more than myself. Then it bursts from me, pure power and energy.

A jet of light—no, lightning—erupts from my hands, blazing through the metal. The pieces shriek and smoke, bursting apart in the heat. They fall harmlessly to the ground as the lightning blasts into the far wall. It leaves a smoking hole four feet wide, barely missing Evangeline.

Her mouth falls open in shock. I’m sure I look the same as I stare at my hands, wondering what on earth just happened to me. High above, a hundred of the most powerful Silvers wonder the same thing. I look up to see them all peering at me.

Even the king leans over the edge of his box, his flaming crown silhouetted against the sky. Cal is right next to him, staring down at me with wide eyes.

“Sentinels.”

The king’s voice is sharp as a razor, full of menace. Suddenly, the red-orange uniforms of Sentinels blaze from almost every box. The elite guards wait for another word, another order.

I’m a good thief because I know when to run. Now is one of those times.

Before the king can speak, I bolt, pushing past the stunned Evangeline to slide feetfirst into the still-open hatch in the floor.

“Seize her!” echoes behind me as I drop into the semidarkness of the chamber below. Evangeline’s flying metal show punched holes in the ceiling, and I can still see up into the Spiral Garden. To my dismay, it looks like the structure is bleeding, as uniformed Sentinels drop down from their boxes, all of them racing after me.

With no time to think, all I can do is run.

The antechamber below the arena connects to a dark and empty hallway. Boxy black cameras watch me as I run at full speed, turning down another corridor and another. I can feel them, hunting like the Sentinels not so far behind me. Run, repeats in my head. Run, run, run.

I have to find a door, a window, something to help me get my bearings. If I can get outside, into the market maybe, I might have a chance. I might.

The first set of stairs I find leads up to a long mirrored hall. But the cameras are there as well, sitting in the corners of the ceiling like great black bugs.

A blast of gunfire explodes over my head, forcing me to drop to the floor. Two Sentinels, their uniforms the color of fire, crash through a mirror and charge at me. They’re just like Security, I tell myself. Just bumbling officers who don’t know you. They don’t know what you can do.

I don’t know what I can do.

They expect me to run so I do the opposite, storming the pair of them. Their guns are big and powerful, but bulky. Before they can get them up to shoot, stab, or both, I drop to my knees on the smooth marble floor, sliding between the two giants. One of them shouts after me, his voice exploding another mirror in a storm of glass. By the time they manage to change directions, I’m already off and running again.

When I finally find a window, it’s a blessing and a curse. I skid to a stop in front of a giant pane of diamondglass, looking out to the vast forest. It’s right there, just on the other side, just beyond an impenetrable wall.

All right, hands, now might be a good time to do your thing. Nothing happens, of course. Nothing happens when I need it to.

A blaze of heat takes me by surprise. I turn to see an approaching wall of red and orange and I know—the Sentinels have found me. But the wall is hot, flickering, almost solid. Fire. And coming right at me.

My voice is faint, weak, defeated, as I laugh at my predicament. “Oh, great.”

I turn to run but instead collide with a broad wall of black fabric. Strong arms wrap around me, holding me still when I try to squirm away. Shock him, light him up, I scream in my head. But nothing happens. The miracle isn’t going to save me again.

The heat grows, threatening to crush the air from my lungs. I survived lightning today; I don’t want to press my luck with fire.

But it’s the smoke that’s going to kill me. Thick and black and much too strong, choking me. My vision swirls, and my eyelids grow heavy. I hear footsteps, shouting, the roar of fire as the world darkens.

“I’m sorry,” Cal’s voice says. I think I’m dreaming.