by Vivian Wood
The train rolls from side to side just a little. I grab onto the luggage rack to keep my balance while I try to think of the simplest explanation for this very official-looking file with photos of the royal family and a surprising number of charts.
“I’m visiting Sveloria for the first time, so I was reading a brief on the country,” I say. “I like to be prepared.”
A couple people in the compartment glance at me then, and it’s dead obvious no one believes that.
The man starts gathering my documents back into the folder, and I kneel on the floor, trying to help, but he cuts me off.
“No,” he says, holding up one hand. “Put your laundry back in your bag.”
It’s not really laundry, it’s my clothes, I think, but that doesn’t seem like a good point to make right now. I stuff all my things back into my backpack and cinch it shut.
The customs officer is standing now, my briefing in his hand.
“Passport,” he says, and I finally hand it over.
He glances at it briefly, his eyes flicking from the photo to my face, and flips through the pages, looking at the stamps. Finally he closes it. I hold my hand out, but he doesn’t give it back.
“Come with me,” he says, and steps out of the train compartment.
I take a deep breath. Everyone else in here is still looking at me in total, stony silence as I hoist my backpack onto my back. For a moment I have the stupid urge to give them all a thumbs up as I leave, but instead I take a deep breath and follow the agent through the train.
Get a grip, I tell myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching my mom, it’s that cool, calm, and collected gets the best results.
We walk through four more cars, heading for the back. Through the windows to the left I can see the Black Sea, cliffs plunging down toward deep blue water, forested rolling hills to the right.
I definitely understand why the Svelorian royal family has their summer palace near here, because it’s gorgeous.
The officer keeps looking back at me, like he’s making sure I haven’t tried to escape or something. I want to point out that we are on a train, but I keep my mouth shut.
Once the initial panic wears off, I’m not actually all that worried. Not only am I an American citizen, my mom’s the American Ambassador to Sveloria.
So it’s not ideal that I’m about to be questioned by Svelorian customs, but I’m pretty sure it’s gonna turn out okay. As long as they don’t find the joint at the bottom of my bag.
I say one last prayer that Sveloria is cool about marijuana and follow the agent into the last compartment on the train. This one has a metal folding table in the middle, and two other customs officers are smoking and playing cards on it.
They both stub their cigarettes out when we come in, and the officer I’m with says something harsh-sounding to them in Russian. No one makes a facial expression, but they leave and he cracks the window, then slaps my folder onto the table.
We both sit, and he points to the folder.
“What is this?” he asks.
I take a deep breath, lick my lips, and make sure that I speak as clearly as possible.
“My mother is Ambassador Eileen Towers,” I start. “I’m visiting Sveloria because my parents invited me to spend the month with them at the royal family’s summer palace.”
No reaction, but he flips open my passport again.
“I have my father’s last name,” I explain.
“You’re Chinese?” he asks.
I’m tempted to sarcastically reply no, I’m American, just like my damn passport says, but I know better than to be a smartass to a foreign customs official. Especially when there’s a joint in my bag.
“My grandparents immigrated to the United States from South Korea,” I say, because I know the question he’s really asking.
He just grunts. I take that as an invitation to continue, so I explain that my mother might be the most thoroughly prepared person on earth, and she sent me this brief on Sveloria so I could learn something about the country before I came.
She also doesn’t believe in doing things halfway, so it’s complete with photos of the royal family, several members of the king’s small council, photos of the summer palace where I’ll be staying, and even a map of Velinsk, the nearest town. And of course it’s printed on high-quality paper, carefully organized with a table of contents, came in an official State Department folder, and was hand-delivered to my hostel in Kiev by a courier.
I finish, and he doesn’t say anything. Even though the silence makes me nervous, I force myself to sit there, poised, and wait for him to finish going through the papers. He flips past a couple of pages on proper manners, Svelorian traditions, cuisine, and traffic laws.
At the end, he gets to the photos and spreads them out on the table.
“Lots of Prince Konstantin Grigorovich,” he says.
I look down. There’s four of him, which is more than anyone else, but it’s not a lot.
Honestly, I think one of my mom’s assistants has a crush, and I do not blame her. Konstantin looks like the model for a prince in a Disney movie if Disney princes also dripped raw, rugged sex appeal. He’s got dirty blond hair and gray eyes, and in every photo he’s glaring at the camera with the hottest glare I’ve ever seen.
I don’t even like the serious, brooding type, but I didn’t mind the extra pictures of the prince. I didn’t mind them at all.
I look back at the customs officer and shrug.
“The documents were put together by a woman,” I say. I don’t know if it’s true, but the more he thinks I’m just some silly American girl, the better.
For the first time, he cracks a smile. Just barely, but he does.
“The prince is very popular with women,” he says, and I raise my eyebrows just a bit.
“I can see why,” I say, and smile back at him.
He just grunts and collects the photos back into the folder, then places my passport on top of the folder and pushes both toward me across the table. I take them, relieved.
“Apologies for the inconvenience,” he says, stone-faced again.
“It was no inconvenience,” I say, nodding my head at him.
We both stand, and he gestures at the door of the compartment.
“We will arrive in Velinsk in thirty minutes,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say.
I walk back through the train, taking deep breaths. I can’t wait to get off this thing. I’ve been riding it for thirteen hours, and I’m pretty tired of being in a metal tube.
Before I go back to my seat, I go to the tiny bathroom. I splash my face off, brush my hair, and pull it into a bun since it’s obvious I haven’t washed it in two days.
I wonder if I should change my clothes, since I’m wearing leggings, an oversize tunic, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, but everything else I have is dirty. Besides, I’m not formally meeting the royal family until my welcome dinner tonight, so I’ll have time to change, bathe, and feel human again before that.
Then I go back to my seat and study the briefing like mad. I probably look insane, muttering names and phrases over and over to myself, but the people in this compartment have already seen me at my worst, so I don’t really care.
Finally, the train pulls up to a small train station. I shoulder my enormous pack, straighten my spine, and get off the train at last.
The air is summery but slightly cool, and it smells salty and fresh. I take a deep breath, glad to be off the train full of human smells.
I start walking, and as I do, my phone goes off in my pocket.
Texts from my mom start pouring in, all time-stamped at least an hour ago. We must have been out of range, or something. I stop in my tracks and read them all quickly, my heart sinking. I start chewing on one thumbnail, something I always do when I’m stressed.
The gist of the texts is: the royal family will be meeting you at the train station, so you should look presentable.
I look around for a bathr
oom, where I can frantically change into dirty clothes that at least aren’t these dirty clothes. Instead, I see my parents waving their arms. I stare for a moment and then hesitantly wave back, then walk over to them.
“Welcome to Sveloria, sweetie!” my mom gushes as I hug her, then my dad.
Then she smiles her polite-but-slightly-worried smile.
“Did you get my texts?” she asks.
“They came through about twenty seconds ago,” I say. “I guess I was out of range, but I’ve got some other clothes with me. They’re kinda dirty, but I can go change right now if that’s better?”
A black limousine pulls up to the sidewalk outside the station. Two men in black suits step out, and the other travelers step out of the way. A few point and whisper.
My mom puts one hand on my arm. She doesn’t look thrilled.
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” she says.
Chapter Two
Kostya
Earlier That Day
I exhale and squeeze the trigger three times in quick succession. Three neat holes.
I inhale, exhale again, and squeeze the trigger three more times. Three more neat holes, this time in the chest. Between gun shots it’s dead quiet and almost perfectly still out here, the dewy calm of the early morning on the coast.
Inhale. Exhale. Right shoulder, left shoulder, right shoulder. At the royal residence in Tobov, the capital city, the shooting range has the full setup. The targets move back and forth, up and down. They can duck in and out of cover, and while it’s not exactly thrilling, it’s a little more interesting than the setup here.
At the summer palace, I’ve got a paper outline on a hay bale in a disused horse paddock. I breathe in and out again and shoot the paper outline through the liver and then once through each lung.
It’s not as soothing as the range at home, because there’s less to concentrate on. Shooting a hay bale isn’t hard, but as I keep punching holes through paper, I can finally feel the knot inside me start to loosen.
I exhale again. Steady my hands. I shoot the paper’s right shoulder so perfectly through a hole that’s already there that I can’t even tell, then I do the same thing to the left shoulder. Now I feel in control, finally, after waking up at four in the morning again, the sheets soaked in sweat.
There are some problems that the shooting range solves better than a four-mile run or a brutal hour-long workout, and this is one of them.
I lower the gun and step back a few paces, but before I raise it again, I see someone standing far to the side, respectfully waiting. The other palace residents only had to learn once what a bad idea it was to tap me on the shoulder while I was at the range, particularly when I’ve got hearing protection on.
I nod at him, shoot my last two bullets into the paper target, then put the safety on and put the gun down, taking the earmuffs off. He finally walks over.
“Your father requests your presence in his study,” Niko says.
I look at my watch. It’s eight in the morning, and I’m wearing a sweat-soaked t-shirt and track pants.
“I’ll see him at the small council meeting in an hour,” I say. “He needs me before that?”
Niko shrugs.
“He sent me to request your presence,” he says. “You know he’d never give me more information than strictly necessary.”
I almost snort. My father isn’t in the habit of giving anyone more information than strictly necessary, and that includes me. The Crown Prince. The next in line for the throne.
The kind of person who should have some damned information sometimes.
“Thanks,” I say. I eject the magazine from the handgun and pull back the action, checking that there isn’t a bullet in the chamber.
“Has he said anything about the reports from the north?” I ask, still looking at the gun. I speak quietly, even though I’m certain it’s just the two of us.
“Kostya, if you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t know there were reports from the north,” Niko says, his quiet tone matching mine. “Your father hasn’t even mentioned them in my presence.”
“Of course he hasn’t,” I mutter.
My father, King Grigory II of Sveloria, is also suppressing them from the state-run media, which is the only media in our tiny country. After a year and a half, the guerillas are emerging from the mountains again. There’s going to be fighting, maybe bad fighting, and we haven’t warned our people.
Niko says nothing, but we share a long look. I know perfectly well that I’m one of the few people who can criticize my father, and even in private, it’s a good idea for others to keep their mouths shut. But Niko and I go all the way back to boot camp, then to Five Hundred Squad, and then to the Svelorian Royal Guard.
The Royal Guard is an old, old name. They don’t guard the royal family any more. Now they’re an elite military force. More like the Green Berets than actual guards.
After Niko got hurt, I convinced my father to hire him as an aide. Partly because Niko is sharp, experienced, and lowborn — the kind of voice the palace desperately needs. Partly because I wanted to have a friend around.
“He’s expecting you,” Niko says, and inclines his head, just barely.
“Thank you,” I say.
Niko walks away, shoulders straight, his limp very slight these days.
I don’t even change before I go to my father’s study. He wanted to see me now, he can see me before I’m presentable.
In the antechamber to his study, his secretary sits, straight-backed. Anna has worked for my father since his coronation nearly twenty-one years ago. She wears her gray hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, has cat-eye glasses, and if she’s ever smiled, I wasn’t around to see it.
All the same, I think there’s a speck of fondness for me in there, somewhere.
“Good morning, Anna,” I say, nodding at her.
“Good morning, Konstantin Grigorovich,” she says, using the most formal version of my name.
I’ve told her a thousand times to call me Kostya, like most people do. She’s known me since I was a child, after all, but Anna is old fashioned and I know she never will.
“Is my father in?” I ask.
She inclines her head slightly, the line of her mouth perfectly straight.
“You’re to go right in,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say.
I step through the door to my father’s study, and he looks up. I close the door behind me as he sits behind his massive, ornate wooden desk. It’s one of a handful of furniture pieces that survived the nearly seventy years of Soviet rule.
I clasp my hands in front of me, the sweat on my shirt cooling against my skin. He gives me a long look, his face nearly unreadable, but I think there’s a hint of disapproval there.
“You asked for me, father?” I say.
He finally looks up at my face.
“Yes,” he says. “The Queen and I are receiving Ambassador Towers’s daughter at the train station, and you’ll be joining us.”
For just a moment, I stare at him. It’s not that he calls my mother, his wife, the Queen. That’s what he always calls her. It’s probably what he calls her in private.
But why are they going to a train station to greet the ambassador’s daughter? And why the hell do I have to go with them?
“Father, I have a fairly busy schedule today,” I say. I try my best to sound respectful.
He just looks at me, then looks back at the papers on his desk.
“After the small council meeting, I’m being briefed on the situation in the north by several of the outpost leaders there, and then I’ve set up a meeting with General Vladov to talk about the most appropriate response—”
“The United Svelorian Front likely has Russian backing,” he says, cutting me off. He’s still looking at the papers on the desk. “If we want to stand a chance against that kind of threat, we need the Americans on our side. We have extended every courtesy to Ambassador Towers, and we will do the same for her daughter.”
“Father, I’ll be meeting her at the formal dinner tonight,” I say. I try to keep my voice flat and neutral, but I can hear the irritation creeping into it. “Surely it’s more important that I understand the threat that the USF poses than meet some American girl on her arrival.”
I want to say, we’re not still doing things the old way. We don’t broker treaties and trade agreements over vodka shots in back rooms any more.
“I’ll have Anna reschedule all that,” he says, barely glancing up at me.
I can tell from his tone that this isn’t up for discussion, but I can’t stand the way he’s treating me like a child. I’m not whining that I’ll miss my birthday party.
I’m trying to protect my country.
“The American government isn’t going to care that I met this girl at the train station when they’re deciding how many guns to send,” I say.
“Yes, but they’ll care about what Ambassador Towers has to say about you,” he says. He’s writing something, his voice going vague. “You’re coming with us, Kostya.”
He still doesn’t look at me, and the black anger inside simmers to a boil. Lately, more than ever, he’s seemed obtuse and old-fashioned, like he’s ignoring reality in favor of the way he wishes things were.
But he’s the king. I’m not. And if I want to be, I do what he says.
“Yes, father,” I say, and turn for the door.
“Kostya,” he says.
I turn, my hand on the knob.
“I’ve taken the liberty of asking Yelena Pavlovna to accompany you to the dinner tonight,” he says. He looks up at me again.
I don’t say anything. It’s not as if protesting will change his mind.
“It’s more than time, Kostya,” he says. “A prince needs an heir, and for an heir, you need a good Svelorian wife.”
Lately, he’s been going on more and more that I need to get married and have a son, though my love life is the last thing I want to discuss with my father. When I find someone I think I can spend my life with, I’ll get married. It’s that simple.
Yelena Pavlovna, even though she’s a sweet, pretty, well-bred girl, isn’t that person.