Just as I begin to get my feet steady under me, another blast goes off overhead, and a brand-new wave of people comes running down the street, falling against me and pushing me back. I’m flung against a set of doors and swept through, along with two Enchanted women with tear-soaked faces. One of them drags a little boy by the hand. Flower garlands are strung around his neck. The doors close behind us.
After a long moment, the boy begins to wail. I leave these three and climb a set of stairs to the second floor, hoping to get a clear view of what’s happening outside, or even to catch a glimpse of the princess. But everything outside has gone dark. Electricity must’ve been cut to the strings of lights. I’m just heading back down the stairs, when someone calls through an open doorway behind me.
“Looking to put your name in for the race?”
I really don’t want to rejoin the two Enchanted women and the crying boy, so I peer into the dimly lit room and see a white-haired man standing behind a counter. “Then you’ve found the right place.” Above his head a wooden sign hangs from brass hooks: Race Administration. “You got here just in time. I was closing up when the explosions rang out.” He taps an open book in front of him with a pen. “Hooligans, that’s what they are. The OLA won’t get any respect from me.” I can’t help but step closer. The man is thin and bumpy, like he’s made of driftwood. I’m convinced I saw him earlier, outside. “The OLA wants to disrupt the Race of Oblivion, and do you know why? Because if they can’t have citizenship, nobody can have it.”
I recognize him now. “You’re the man in the robe. You held the book the racers signed.”
“Of course I did. I’m the senior registrar. It’s my duty and honor to welcome the brave Outsiders who enter the Race of Oblivion.” There’s an air of suspicion about him; he thinks I’m up to something. He waves me closer and holds out a pen. “A minute later, and I would have been gone. You are here to enter the race, are you not?”
I catch the scent of anise—the scent of a secret. He’s hiding something from me. Not that I’m surprised—most people have secrets—but when I sense a secret in a man who’s trying to cajole me into entering a race that starts with amnesia and usually ends with death, with nothing but a desperate sprint across the continent in between, my defenses understandably go up.
“Why would you think I’d enter that terrible race?”
“Why? To win! Why would anyone enter?”
I do my best to lay the heaviest stare I can conjure right on his face, letting him know I am not easily swindled. “You can save your sales pitch for someone so desperate they’re foolish,” I say. “If you think that’s me, you’re the one being foolish.” I want to add something more—there’s some truism my father always pulled out when he thought he was being set up—but the words escape me.
I wish he were here.
“Ah, all right then,” he says. He closes the heavy book with a thud—the book the racers signed—and slides it into a drawer beneath the countertop. “I had you wrong.” The enthusiastic lilt is gone from his voice. I must have been right about him trying to entice me into entering, because he’s dropped that act entirely. He pulls a key on a long chain from his pocket. “I just thought . . . after what happened before the parade . . .”
“Before the parade?” He gives me a sorrowful smile, and I know what secret he’s keeping. “You saw my father die, didn’t you?”
“I did. Right at the princess’s feet. When I saw you walk in here, I thought—”
“You thought I was signing up to spite the princess.”
His eyes widen. I flinch, hoping I haven’t made my Cientia too obvious. “You read people very well,” he says. “Something like that could give you an advantage in the race.”
Could that be true? I’ve never asked myself what my Cientia could do for me in the Race of Oblivion before.
“Oh well. Too loyal to the princess, I suppose. Or maybe you don’t believe you could win.”
He’s wrong. Loyalty wouldn’t stop me from entering. But he’s right that I’ve never considered the Race of Oblivion something I could win. Yet he thinks otherwise. My Cientia makes me sure of it.
But does it make me sure I could win the race?
I watch him slide the key into the drawer’s lock and turn it. “Wait!” I say.
There’s a rumble from the floor below. More carnival goers have found their way inside the building. My eyes go to the banner above the registrar’s head. It reads: All the Privileges of Citizenship, and beneath that For the Winner and Their Family.
“The winner and their family . . . including all their siblings?”
He finally meets my gaze. “Of course.”
The commotion downstairs becomes louder. A man’s voice shouts, “Astrid Jael!” My heart beats like a drum. “We are seeking the Outsider Astrid Jael on behalf of Princess Renya.”
“I’m here!” I call out. Then quietly, to the man in front of me, “Put that book back on the counter.”
I think of Marlon, the fear in his eyes as they wrestled him away from me. How I’d wanted to fight to keep him. The registrar unlocks the drawer and pulls out the book. Feet thunder up the steps behind me. I think of Jayden, so far away. I could find him and bring him home.
The registrar holds out the pen. I glance up at the banner once more. All the Privileges of Citizenship.
I’m scrawling my signature into the book when the Enchanted Authority guards come up behind me. Renya is with them, her face bright red with heat and fear.
And with the swift flick of a blade, the driftwood man slices the skin over the embed at the base of my throat. “Congratulations!” he calls out, plucking it from my chest and holding it, bloody and blinking, in his open hand. “Welcome to the Race of Oblivion!”
Three
Since the day I signed up to race, everywhere I go, I feel the breath of Death on the back of my neck. But tonight is the first I hear its footsteps.
I notice them just as a thick cloud rolls across the sky, snuffing out the moonlight as abruptly as switching off a lamp. The night was dim before but now it’s truly dark, and not with the soft, velvety sort of darkness that fills a house when the doors are all locked. This is the sort of darkness that sends a shiver across your skin, even though the air is still warm.
I pause at the next corner, and I curse myself when I can’t help but glance over my shoulder. The streetlights throw meager halos of light. Whoever is following doesn’t mean to be seen.
Now I wish I’d never turned. What did I hope to see? A citizen of this quiet block, conscientiously sweeping her stoop after dark? It’s late, later than honest people walk the streets to do honest business. But if the footsteps belonged to a thief, wouldn’t he have made his move by now? Which leaves only one possibility. I feel Death’s breath once more against the skin of my neck, even if I know it’s just the warm breeze, and I realize it won’t matter if I hurry or if I drag.
If it’s them, there’s nothing I can do to escape.
I slide my hand between the silky folds of my skirt—the remnant of a once-fine tablecloth that caught too many spills—and close my fingers around the key in my pocket. As the moon slips out from behind its cover, the castle gate materializes in the distance, the black iron glowing silver. I’m almost there.
But then I hear my name behind me . . . Astrid. The voice is both soft and sharp, and it cuts right through me like a velvet knife.
I know the voice before I turn, and I can tell she is agitated and excited about all the wrong things.
“What are you doing here?” I glare at Princess Renya, intending to bore holes into her with my stare, but she doesn’t even flinch. “If you’re found outside the palace wall at this time of night, I may never recover from the lashing.” I spin back around to pour my full attention into opening the lock. “How did you end up behind me?”
“I came looking for you—”
“I said I’d be back by curfew, and there’s still an hour to go,” I say, trying to keep
the fury out of my voice.
“It couldn’t wait. I had to find you before somebody else did—”
“Shh!” I pause, listening for guards patrolling beyond the wall. There’s only the weak breeze and the flutter of a solitary bat. “Just wait until I get us both inside—”
“No. We can’t. You can’t.” I feel the tension rise from Renya’s skin like mist rising from a lake. She leans so close her lips brush my ear. “They came for you.”
I pull back. “All right then.”
“You’re scared.”
“I’m not,” I lie. Maybe to myself more than to her. “Even when I heard your footfalls on the pavement tonight, I thought it might be them. I’m ready.”
“You say that only because you haven’t seen them. I have.”
I turn my attention back to the gate—this conversation is futile, I won’t be turned from my path—but my hand shakes so much, Renya nudges me aside and takes the key. As she does I feel her fear, cold and dark as the ocean. Of course, this close, I know she feels the same in me, though I can’t help but hope that mine isn’t so deep and lush.
“I’m glad you’re scared. You should be,” she says, pocketing the key somewhere in the layers of pale blue gauze that make up her dress.
“What are you . . . ?” I huff out a sigh. We’re so close to safety, but she keeps pushing it away. “Keys work better when they’re not in pockets—”
“We’re not going inside until I’ve talked you out of this,” she says, before stalking off into the dark. I have no choice but to follow her, and she knows it.
I might appreciate the princess’s lack of respect for authority if it didn’t affect me so directly. If the stories of her many rebellions weren’t written in the scars on my back. But they are, and my resentment of her grows a little deeper every time she refuses to conform.
She takes a narrow path along the base of the palace wall, to a place where a wild stretch of land slopes downhill, overlooking the city. It would be a gorgeous view if I weren’t so sick to my stomach. I hear her feet as she shuffles off the flagstones and onto the grass. “Renya?” I breathe. “Please stop.” When I finally catch up to her, she’s seated under an olive tree, the moonlight glowing in her auburn waves, which tonight are wild and messy. She smiles up at me, a sly, apologetic smile. I don’t return it.
“Do you think this is helping me? I need to go back. You need to go back,” I say. “Do you want me whipped on the night they take me?”
“I don’t want you to go at all! I’ve seen them, Astrid. Their long cloaks. Their hooded faces. The syringes in their hands.”
She doesn’t have to name them. I know she’s talking about the Asps, the men and women who administer the drug to the contestants in the Race of Oblivion. The drug that will knock me out. The drug that will rob me of my identity by erasing all my personal memories. Since I signed up to race, too many people have made a point of telling me how terrifying the Asps are, but Renya’s description goes a bit too far. “Syringes in their hands? Really? I find it hard to believe they walk around carrying them—”
“Stop making light of this!”
I’m about to plead with Renya again to lower her voice, but she catches herself. Casting a glance at the palace wall, she drops her voice to a whisper. “Do you even know why their faces are hooded?”
“Renya—”
“To protect their identities! Because when you come back to yourself—when you finally remember who you are and realize what’s been done to you—they could be the first on your list of targets for revenge.”
If I live to seek revenge, I think to myself. Fortunately, Renya can read my moods but not my thoughts. “I won’t need revenge,” I say instead, “because I intend to win.”
Renya climbs to her feet. “I know you think you can win because you have Cientia—”
“Renya, please. Please be quiet!”
“I can feel your confidence. How sure you are of yourself,” she says, but I don’t like the way she says it. Like she doesn’t share my confidence.
“It’s not just the Cientia. You know I’m a strong fighter—”
“I know you’ve been my sparring partner at Hearts and Hands—”
“I’ve been your sparring partner who beats you at Hearts and Hands.” Enchanteds are mad about Hearts and Hands, because it’s an intense test of fighting skills and magic. Renya and I practice behind closed doors, of course, and she’s gotten good, but I’m better. “I don’t just have Cientia. I have Cientia honed for battle. I’ve had the best training, thanks to you.”
Renya’s hands roll in her pockets. I hear the key jangle at the end of its chain. “You know,” she says, “since you entered, everyone’s been begging me to talk you out of it.” I consider this. I want to ask who everyone is, but I let her talk. “I’ve heard stories. . . .”
“What kinds of stories?” I hate myself for asking, instead of grabbing her arm and dragging her back to the gate. But I can’t help myself.
“I heard that a few years ago, a racer died of heatstroke a mile from a remote desert checkpoint. The contestants who came after her read the solution to a riddle she’d written on her palm before stepping over her body and leaving her for the buzzards.” She pauses, checking my face for the appropriate level of horror. I’m trying to keep my expression neutral, but if she’s reading my feelings, she knows she’s rattling me. “The following year, a contestant froze to death one night in the Wilds. The next racer to come along broke his fingers to steal the solution to a puzzle scrawled on a scrap of paper crumpled in his fist.”
I roll my eyes, but the truth is, I’ve heard these stories, too. They keep me awake at night.
“Then last year,” she continues, “only two racers survived to cross the finish line. The first received full satisfaction of his indenture and citizenship for his whole family. The second, only an hour behind, went home with three additional years of indenture—the penalty for losing. Of course, he still had his life, which is more than the other contestants had at the end.”
“You can’t know those stories are true,” I say, though I’m feeling a lot less confident than I was before she started talking.
“Look,” Renya says, her voice low. “What if . . .” She hesitates, and my heart flutters, anticipating what she might propose. “What if I could convince them to change your indenture? Make it so you’re no longer my surrogate.”
She bites her lip, waiting for my reply. This is something she’s never offered. Something I doubt she can give. But she’s desperate. And I’m tempted.
It’s true that I have not had an easy life as her surrogate. We’ve been together a long time—I came to live here in the palace when I was only seven years old, when my mother died and her indenture to the royal family was left unpaid. Renya and I were the same age, and she needed a surrogate, and my family had a debt to pay. Since then, I’ve seldom been far from Renya’s side, and what might look like forced companionship from the outside feels like real friendship from the inside. Which is both good and bad. As her surrogate, I am valued only to the extent my pain causes Renya pain. The more she cares for me, the more she can be manipulated through my pain. So in a way, her affection for me is a curse.
But as hard as my indenture has been, I’m not entering the race to escape it.
“You know this isn’t about you,” I say. “You know it’s all for Marlon. If I win—when I win—we’ll both become citizens. Even Jayden will become a citizen! He could come home. He and I could find jobs and a little place where the three of us could live.” My father’s too-small apartment with its too-small windows comes to mind, and I wish I could just go back there—just go home—but someone else lives there now. After Papa died, the Authority sent Marlon to a dirty hovel they pass off as an orphanage. The palace stables are cleaner. He’s stuck there until he’s assigned an indenture. I visit him almost every day, and every day is bleaker than the day before. When he first got there, I thought he’d start mimicking more an
d more. But something worse happened.
He stopped mimicking. He stopped talking at all.
I never thought I’d look forward to the race starting, and I guess I still don’t, but I look forward to it ending.
“I know I can win, Renya. I’m sure that I can. For Marlon and Jayden, for me—for you, too. We could truly be friends if I were a citizen.” I mention our friendship because it’s the only thing I can think of that could make my entering the race somehow about her. Since her fear is more for herself than for me, maybe the anticipation of our reunion will convince her that letting me go is a better bet for her than trying to force me to stay.
Not that she could force me. Every Outsider is entitled to enter. She knows that as well as anyone. I’m going.
“If you really want to be a friend to me,” I say, “then look after Marlon if . . .”
“If you die a horrible death?”
“Renya, please. Just promise me, if something happens, you’ll see to it he gets a decent indenture. Maybe something here at the palace, tending to the horses, or even the dogs. He’d like that. But please,” I say. “For my sake, come inside with me now.”
Renya takes a step back and almost tumbles. I reach out my hand and catch the gauzy fabric of her sleeve just in time. At first I think she’s upset at what I said, but then her eyes widen, locked on something beyond my shoulder.
“Are you—”
My words cut off as a wave of fear so thick, so cold, and so dark crashes over me, I feel like I could drown in it. Like I’m a tiny raft and Renya’s fear is a tidal wave.
Then I feel the prickle of something else. A flood of despair, as if darkness itself were an emotion.
I don’t want to turn. It’s almost solid—I feel my back pressing against a wall of pain—but I know I can’t just stand here like this either. I’m ready. I’m ready. I told Renya I was prepared to face them and I am.
I turn and see what Renya sees, what frightened her so much it drove her through the palace gates in search of me. Three figures stand slightly uphill from us, draped in long black robes, their faces concealed by hoods. They seem to hover rather than stand, like personifications of Death itself. I can’t even tell if they are men or women—it doesn’t matter. They are just what they are.
Crown of Oblivion Page 4