I pick out a dark blue dress. It’s made of light fabric, but I feel pretty in it, and it isn’t too hot. Somrusee says this particular cut is especially regal. Well, if I’m going out today, I’ll need to look regal.
I spend a little extra time working out my hair before I hurry downstairs to meet Somrusee. Karl should be asleep now, and Quint is training the guard. Our lessons have been boring lately, anyway. I’ve been working on writing up some laws and trying to remember what I learned about Congress in school, but I haven’t been very good at it. It can wait for another day.
Somrusee looks up when I come into the room. She smiles and stands with a small bow.
“You should have told me you were finished. I would have sent Tavi up to empty the water and help you get dressed.”
Right. Exactly why I didn’t say anything. I don’t need a maid to help me dress myself.
I stride away from the guards, who stop at the door, and touch Somrusee on the arm. She is irritated about something, but she smiles in return. I don’t think she’s irritated at me, but I’m not sure. I don’t always interpret people’s emotions correctly, at least not yet.
“Are you up for something different today?” I whisper so only she can hear me.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“I’d like to go out and visit some people in town.” I watch her face, trying to read it and wishing I was still touching her arm.
“Who?”
“Just people.”
Somrusee frowns and takes a step away from me as if she realizes how much I want to reach out and read her mind.
“I’m not sure it’s safe out there.”
“No one knows I’m coming. It will just be you and me. We won’t even take a guard with us.”
Somrusee laughs. “Quint and Karu would kill me.”
I finally can’t stand it, so I reach out and brush her arm. She’s not quite as annoyed as she was a minute ago, but she's not happy about the idea. She scowls as I let my arm fall back away from her. She knows exactly what I’m doing.
I sigh and look around the large castle room we spend our time studying in. “Most days it feels like I’m more of a scholar or a slave than a queen. What would it hurt if I went outside for once and talked to real live people? How can I rule if no one even knows who I am?”
Somrusee looks at me for a moment and then she sighs. “Fine, I’ll go with you. But I need to put on a lady-in-waiting style dress first.”
I smile. I’m excited about my day for the first time in a long time! “Don’t take too long,” I say. “Karl may wake up in a couple hours, and I want to be back before he’s awake.”
The look in Somrusee’s eyes surprises me. I wasn’t touching her, but the look on her face is unmistakable. Why would she feel sad when I said I wanted to be back before Karl woke up?
While Somrusee changes, I wander around the room. I see a few copper pieces on one of the desks, and I decide to take them with me on our adventure. I’m not Wynn, but I need data and I’m not sure when I’m getting out of the castle again. I infuse each copper piece with my consciousness, listening anxiously for Somrusee, but she doesn’t come until I’ve hidden all the copper pieces in my dress.
Somrusee’s dress is simple, but pretty. She is smiling now, but the look she gave me before she left to change is bothering me. What is she hiding from me? If I dropped a copper piece into the front pocket of her dress, would I find out?
I finger the copper in my pocket. It would be so easy to spy on my friends, but I won’t do it. I’m already using my Azurean powers for myself more and more each day, and it’s not lost to me that I’m becoming a little more like Wynn each day. Sometimes I’m sure I’m going to destroy myself. But, for today, I still have some morals. Spying on random people to find out what is going on in the city is one thing. Deliberately violating the privacy of my friends is another.
I put the copper piece back in my dress. Whatever is going on between Karl and Somrusee is their business.
I make small talk with Somrusee while we walk down the streets away from the castle. She doesn’t mention Karl, and neither do I. It’s morning and people are bustling about, many of them heading to work in the mines or the farms that surround Sattah. People stare at us. In my blue dress, I look nothing like these people. They walk with downcast eyes in drab clothing. Guards patrol streets and squares. The sewage system is terrible.
The sky is bright and there are birds singing. How can things in the city be so terrible on such a beautiful day? Do people really live like this? How can I ever fix all this?
After we walk for a while, I muster the courage to talk to someone. I approach an older woman who is pulling a cart of food towards the castle.
“Hello, ma’am,” I say.
She startles at the sound of my voice, and her eyes grow wide when she looks at me.
“Are you the great Queen Ria?” She falls to one knee with more speed than is appropriate for a woman of her age. I wince at the thought of the bruise she’s going to have on her knee.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Please don’t bow like that.”
“Please my Queen, don’t be angry with me,” the woman says. “I’m only a few minutes late with your delivery.”
“I’m not angry.”
She stands and hurries off before I can say anything else. Somrusee shrugs and keeps walking.
“Am I so feared by everyone?”
“Perhaps,” she says, but she doesn’t make eye contact.
As our walk progresses, I get more and more frustrated. Everyone I try to talk to runs away from me. Most of them run before I even get close. This walk is going to fail, and I’m not going to get any information. I’m not even sure how to drop my coins without Somrusee noticing. She would care if she noticed, and she wouldn’t approve.
“Just one more block,” I tell Somrusee, and we turn one more corner. The sun is hot, and the road clears around us like we have the plague. I see why Somrusee hasn’t brought me out here. It’s disconcerting to see so many people who hate me.
On this last block, we run into a pack of boys, probably about twelve or thirteen years old. They yell as they chase a cloth ball. There are a lot of them, and their game fills the alleyway. They’re so distracted by the game that they don’t see us, and they don’t run. I stop. Somrusee turns around, but I don’t follow her. There has to be some semblance to this game, but before I can figure out any patterns, one of the boys sees us and everything stops. They all stare at me, and I walk up to them.
Somrusee makes a soft noise behind me and touches my dress, but I ignore her and walk up to the boys, who are starting to look nervous.
“Can you teach me how to play?” I ask. They eye me warily, but they don’t recognize who I am. People wouldn’t expect to see me out of the castle, and so they probably haven’t taught their children to watch for me. The boys don’t know who I am.
“Sure,” one of the boys finally says. Several of the other boys laugh.
“As long as you aren’t on my team,” another boy yells.
I smile. “You’re going to regret saying that,” I tell him. “I may have never played before, but I can hold my own.”
He just laughs and shakes his head.
These boys don’t know who I am. This is good.
Game on.
The game itself is simple. The boys drop kick the ball to each other but aren’t allowed to run with it. If they catch the ball past their opponents' end of the street then they get a point, and whoever gets to ten points first wins. Kind of like ultimate Frisbee, but with a cloth ball and getting tackled. If you get tackled with the ball, you have to give it up.
After a great deal of arguing, four boys reluctantly agree to be on my team. I slip off my shoes, we line up, and the game begins. It isn’t long before I’ve intercepted a kick and sent the ball flying the other direction.
“Wow!”
“That’s amazing!”
“Did you see how far she kicked that?
”
The glum looks on my teammates' faces brighten, and the boys on the other team look at each other.
That’s right. I bet none of them can kick a ball like that.
They sprint off after the ball and I run after them, my dress flying behind me as I run past boys in my bare feet.
“Don’t you want to play?” I call back to Somrusee, but she looks around nervously and shakes her head.
And it’s game on after that. I play with the boys, tackling them, getting tackled, and kicking the ball farther than any one of them. Still, my unfamiliarity with the game is a disadvantage and the score stays close.
The game is tied at nine and it’s do or die time. I tackle a boy from behind and he gives me the ball, which I promptly send flying to one of my teammates on the other side of the alley. I juke past another boy guarding me and race for the goal.
I’m so focused on the game that I don’t notice a woman stepping into the alleyway. I manage to stop just before I barrel into her. She takes one look at me and lets out a blood-curdling scream.
I wince and take a step back. The shouting of the boys stops, and we all look at the woman.
Her mouth tries to form words and her face turns red.
“Joyu! What are you doing?” she finally gets out.
The boy next to me looks around nervously. “I’m playing ball with my friends, mama,” he says, confused. “You said I could play for a couple hours before I had to go back to work.”
Child labor. That needs to be one of our priorities. I make a mental note to talk to Quint about it soon. Of course, we’ll need a school system in place to keep the children busy when they aren’t at work. Everything is so complicated!
“Friends is one thing,” the woman says. “But the queen?”
The boys all look at me. Their mouths form little o’s and then they all drop to one knee.
And that’s the end of our game.
The woman turns and runs down the street, and her little boy Joyu follows right behind her.
I turn around to see most of the other boys sprinting away in the other directions, scattering like a bunch of geese from a gunshot.
The ball is gone. The game is over.
“You seemed really nice,” one boy says.
“I’m nice,” I say. At least I want to think I am. Though I’m not sure living in my kingdom is very pleasant. It’s definitely not as pleasant out here as it is for me in my castle.
“You can say you’re nice,” another boy says, “but that’s not what my mama says. She says you eat boys for breakfast, especially boys who don’t work. She leaves for the mines in the mornings, but my brother is hurt, so I have to stay home and watch him. Is that why you came out here, will you eat me?”
I shake my head. “I eat regular food, just like you.” Though I’m sure my food is of a much higher quality, not to mention taste tested by servants.
“You look way too beautiful to be a queen,” the first boy says.
I laugh. “Thank you. Why do you say that?”
“I always thought monsters had sharp teeth and were ugly.”
I stop laughing. “Is that what you think I am, a monster?”
“No, but I don’t believe you’re really Queen Ria. There’s no way she would ever play like that.”
“And what if I insisted that I really am Queen Ria?”
“Then I would hope that my daddy’s wrong and you survive longer than the month.”
Ouch.
“Maybe after the queen is dead, you can be the queen,” the other boy says.
I fight back the tears and try to think of something to say to these two boys. They look at me with wide eyes, scared eyes. Confused eyes.
“Did you say your brother was hurt?” I ask the first boy.
He nods.
“Would you mind if I visited him?”
“One must never say no to an Azurean,” the boy repeats.
I don’t say anything, but the boy does take me to his house. Somrusee follows me and my two companions through the city. People still scatter when they see me, but the boys press forward, looking determined sometimes and scared other times. In the end, it’s about two miles to the young man’s house. We find a house in worse shape than Vinnie’s home, probably shared by at least twenty families. Somrusee stays outside to stand guard while I go inside with the boys. Everyone is gone for the day aside from a small boy of seven or eight who is lying on a mat upstairs. His bones were recently broken, but neither of them have set correctly.
I’ll have to talk to Quint about getting medical care going in this society. How in the world are we going to do that?
I heal the boy’s arm quickly, much to the surprise and delight of my new friends. “Now we can all go back to work again,” the one boy declares.
“Maybe she really is the queen,” the other says.
“Can you help me with something?” I ask.
They both nod but look a little apprehensive.
“Can you hide these copper pieces around the city?” I ask.
They both nod.
“Thank you,” I smile and give them each a hug.
Then I rejoin Somrusee and start back to the castle.
“Are you glad you went out?” Somrusee asks me as we get back to the castle.
Unexpected tears find their way into my eyes as I consider the question. Am I glad? Am I glad to learn that people are living in terrible conditions while I live in luxury? Am I glad that I have no idea where to even start? Am I glad to know that thousands or millions of these people hate me?
“Things are terrible,” I manage to say.
“They’ll get better,” she says.
“When? And how?”
She doesn’t answer.
* * *
The tears outside the castle aren’t my first tears of the day. I spend the rest of the day listening to the copper pieces. Weary parents return home from working all day with too little food. Children go to bed hungry. People curse the queen. Tired parents beat their children when they don’t obey.
And there is a lot of talk about revolt. No wonder why Quint is training his guard so hard. Order in the city is hardly a certainty at this point. I hear more than one plot to kill me.
When I lie down to sleep, I find that I jump at every noise. I’m not helping these people. It’s just a matter of time before I get myself and a lot of people killed. And I have no idea how to change it.
I played a game in the street today and I healed a little boy’s arm. And it didn’t make a difference.
16 Address
Bob
Pearl thinks we should just waltz up to the address on the paper. First, she makes us abandon Cassi’s house like Cassi was the one who set the trap there, and then she turns around and thinks we’re just going to go to this address and survive.
She won’t even let me call Cassi again. I just stood Cassi up. Again. How am I going to explain this to her?
I’ve tried to sneak away from Pearl a few times, but every time she’s caught me during my get-away.
Pearl might be annoying, but she’s good. And I mean good as in talented, though she is way good-looking. Even in a sweatshirt and with her hair pulled back.
“I’ve been tracking Sapphiri for a while now,” she told me. “I think they leave a few common-sense pieces out of your training on purpose so you’re easier to track.”
I wouldn’t put it past them. They don’t trust us, whoever “they” is. No one really knows who leads the Sapphiri. I suppose there is a leader somewhere, but he isn’t out there with the people. No general leads the troops to battle. Just careful tracking, intense technology, and uncertainty on what the goal of the organization is.
Aside from returning to the Forgotten World and taking it over, of course. That goal is pretty obvious. For everyone who still believes in the Forgotten World, anyway.
Which didn’t used to include me but does now.
“I don’t get it,” I tell Pearl. “You won’t let me
call Cassi, but you talk about invading a building that’s obviously connected to the Sapphiri. Not to mention that we’re sitting in a tent, outside, and it’s starting to snow. And I’m freezing, and Brit’s hurt.”
As for Ler, the cold doesn’t seem to bother him at all. I don’t mention that, since it doesn’t help my case.
“I’m sure someone is there,” Pearl says. She’s been there every day this past week. “I talked with the utility company this morning, and someone is paying for the electricity and water.”
“It’s not headquarters.”
“I don’t think so, either. I still believe that headquarters will be disguised as a business. But, this could lead us to headquarters.”
“Or death,” I add.
Pearl gives me that look she has—the one that makes me feel like I’m acting selfish and stupid. “Bob,” she says quietly. “If the Sapphiri develop and release this virus, millions and millions of people will die. Maybe us included. This is the lead that we have. I’m going in, today—with or without you.”
She doesn’t break her stare.
I shrug. “Look, we both know you had me at the lake. I’m in.”
Pearl laughs, and then she walks away to check on Ler and Brit before we go. She doesn’t laugh as much as she used to. I miss that. And I miss going down to the gym and running next to her.
She’s thought about death, too. It’s taken a toll on her.
She wants to save her brother. I don’t know a thing about my siblings. Where they are, or what it would be like to love one enough to try and find them. Pearl might have shot one of them the other night, and I don’t even know enough to grieve about it.
And we left him there on the ground for Cassi to find. Hopefully she remembers what I look like enough to know that it wasn’t me that was dead on her floor.
Pearl already has the car started, and I don’t even get my door closed before she’s backed out of the parking stall and is racing down the narrow forest road.
This girl doesn’t mess around. She bosses me around and it feels like we disagree about everything, yet I can’t help but feel like I trust her. It’s a strange feeling, to like someone you fight with. Maybe that’s a part of human communication that we Sapphiri don’t experience. Disagreeing with others and yet still enjoying them and their company.
The Sapphiri Page 15