“Your mother has always had a soft spot for Sikander. The three of them will become inseparable. And Sikander will adore your father, because everyone does. They’ll be roommates, best friends, till it’s clear to Sikander that he’s in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back. A woman he’s been in love with his whole life,” Thala added, “who is in love with his best friend.”
“That’s how it all starts?” I could hardly believe that the source of the world’s problems was a love triangle.
“That’s how it all starts,” Thala confirmed. “I suppose it’s how all human drama starts. It’s not overnight. It takes years and years. It takes . . . a recognition that you’ll never be the hero of the story.”
“So you choose to be the monster.”
We were close to the edge of the stadium now, and I turned to look back at my father and Thea, animatedly gesticulating as they spoke to one another. Thea was laughing, and my father looked delighted at her laugh. I had to smile.
“Let’s split up,” Thala said. “We’ll find him. He’s close by. I can sense it,” she said before she approached a tall boy who seemed pleased when she began speaking to him.
I sighed in frustration, sitting down on one of the benches at the edge of the stadium. Even though I knew what I had to do, my nerves were rattling me. A boy with shaggy hair and a rumpled tunic sat down beside me, lighting up a cillo.
“Want one?”
I turned and looked at him. “No thanks,” I said, but I continued to stare at him.
He brushed his hair out of his eyes and grinned at me. “Yeah, I don’t much want to be here either,” he said as though I had asked him a question. “I can’t wait till I graduate from this holding pen,” he said.
His voice was all I could think.
I turned to him, watching him carefully. I reached for the dagger in my satchel, wrapping my fingers around it.
“What did you say your name was?” I asked.
“I didn’t.” He grinned. “But you seem eager to find out.”
My eyes narrowed. All I needed was confirmation. The moment he affirmed that he was, indeed, who I suspected he was, I would do what I came here to do.
My heart was racing, but I was resolute.
“What do you say we get out of here? I know a place by the water where we could get a glass of wine, maybe talk. Away from these . . . kids.” He sneered at the crowd as though they all were beneath him.
“I asked you your name,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.
He inched closer to me. “I’ll tell it to you,” he murmured, leaning in, “as soon as you tell me yours.”
I was so deeply thrown off, I couldn’t respond. All I could do was stare into the eyes of sixteen-year-old Sikander. It was him; there was no mistaking it. His teeth were intact, and his hair was long and dark, but I could tell from the way he moved, from his eyes, the entitled way that he spoke, that it was him.
I collected myself. “My name is Amrita,” I said to him through gritted teeth. “Now tell me yours.” The satchel was in my lap, my hand tucked into it, my palm sweaty from gripping the dagger so tightly.
He grinned, but before he could respond, I heard another voice.
“Sik! Stop antagonizing her. Ugh, he can be so annoying.” Thea sat down beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. “I see you’ve met my new friend,” she said to him. “And this is him, the man we’ve all been waiting for: Sikander.”
Thirty-Three
“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE.” He directed this at Thea, but she answered as though he had addressed all of us.
Thea rolled her eyes. “The induction assembly is in an hour. We can’t just skip it, Sikander!”
“What’s going to happen? Are they going to kick us out?” He raised an eyebrow at Thea, who simply rolled her eyes again.
“It’s the first day of school.”
“Since when has that ever stopped you?”
As they went back and forth like that, I realized that Thea and Sikander had a familiar and intimate rapport. They were friends, and I could see from the look on my father’s face that he felt excluded.
Thea must have noticed too, because she stepped back. “Sikander,” she said, gesturing to my father. “Meet your roommate, Chandradev. Chandradev, Sikander.”
“Good to meet you.” Sikander turned to him. “I’ll let you decide. Stay here for the induction assembly, or go explore the city. With me as your guide. What do you say?” He grinned and looked at my father expectantly.
I was startled by his friendliness, and his closeness with Thea made me question what I had to do. I had known that they had all once been friends, but seeing it before my eyes was startling. I had come here to kill Sikander, but when I saw the way he joked with Thea, his eagerness to befriend my father, I wondered for the first time whether I had it in me to kill another human being, much less someone my parents were once friends with. I wondered about how my actions—if I killed Sikander—would affect Thea and Chandradev.
But it was more than that. I reached to feel for my dagger in my satchel and imagined stabbing Sikander with it, as I had once considered stabbing Nico that day on the hilltop. Except that was survival—a moment of desperation—and besides, I hadn’t actually gone through with it. For some reason, in this environment, with a friendly Sikander joking with my parents, I couldn’t find in myself the urgency to kill another human being, even if it was him.
Chandradev shrugged nervously. “Yeah, let’s get away from here,” he said, and Sikander got up, slapping him on the back.
Thala pulled me aside. “He was right next to you, and you did . . . nothing?”
“I . . . wanted to make sure it was him.”
“Look at him!” she exclaimed. “How could you not know?”
“I can’t just go around stabbing people,” I hissed.
Thala grew serious. “You have to act fast,” she said, her voice low.
“How can I . . . I can’t kill him in front of his friends,” I whispered to her.
She looked me in the eye, her voice almost a growl. “Remember what he did.”
Her words stunned me. As though I could ever forget. But before I could respond, the others turned to look at us.
“So . . .” Sikander glanced from me to Thala. “Are you two coming?”
¤
It wasn’t that difficult to sneak past the campus guards, because Sikander appeared to actually know all of them. He joked around with them before handing them some coins, and when he asked if they could get us a taxi chariot, one of them ran out into the street to hail us one.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“The Shipmakers District,” Sikander told him as we all stood behind him on the street.
I looked around at the massive thoroughfare before us, so opulent and awe-inspiring that it took my breath away.
“The Avenue of the Gods,” Chandradev said as he glanced up and down the street. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
It was a grand boulevard with elaborate marble statues of Macedonian gods every fifty paces or so. Golden chariots pulled by magnificent stallions carried the country’s elite to and fro, while the less privileged begged for change by the side of the road.
On either side of the avenue, vertical structures made of stone and glass shot into the sky. I was awestruck, till I was hit by a handful of coins flying out the window of a chariot passing us by.
Thala averted her eyes as people emerged from squalid tents and huts in rags to palm the coins, but I couldn’t help but look.
“I’ve never seen a place like this before,” I said to her. “So much wealth, and yet, these people are starving. It makes no sense.”
“Welcome to Macedon,” Thala said to me. “The entire world wants to remake itself in this kingdom’s image.”
“It’s actually
more like Macedon wants the world to remake itself in its own image,” I said.
Sikander was still speaking with the driver of the chariot. The driver hesitated. “You’re sure that’s where you want to go?” He turned to us, a worried expression on his face. “You won’t get there till dusk.”
Sikander reached into his pocket and pulled out a small golden coin, pressing it into the driver’s hand. “Just drop us off on Santori Street. We’ll take it from there.”
The driver looked at the coin, biting it between his teeth before he nodded and we all hopped inside, Thala and Chandradev on either side of me, Thea and Sikander facing us.
We made our way down the Avenue of the Gods and then farther, past the stately marble government buildings, past the Grand Palace made of stone, the armory and the capitol, to the Royal Temple, a round structure surrounded by stone pillars with an open roof that drew in the light. We drove past the botanical gardens and the financial district, filled with men running up and down the streets. Markets stretched so long down the street that I realized that Macedon lacked for nothing.
But it was those tall buildings that I couldn’t take my eyes off. My father was taken in by the sights too, his eyes fixed on the window of the chariot anytime he wasn’t looking at Thea.
“It’s nothing like home, is it?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “But there are wonderful things about Shalingar too.” As I said it, I realized how strange it was, to be talking to my father about our home.
“I don’t know. Home is . . . humble compared to this. Macedon is so grand, so impressive,” he said. “I’ve never seen such wealth, such opulence.”
“Don’t be so fooled by it,” Thea said, pointing out a group of squatters under a bridge. There must have been hundreds of them, a village of people living in desperation, hunting for food in the streets. “Macedon is a place for the wealthy. If you’re wealthy, life is good, but if you’re poor, or disabled, if you’re a foreigner, or even a woman, Macedon isn’t so kind. This country is built on the backs of the disenfranchised.”
“But you’re a woman, and you managed to get into the Macedonian Military Academy,” I pointed out.
“I come from wealth.” Thea shrugged. “My family is well-connected, and we’ve been attending the academy for ten generations. They couldn’t turn me down. But I plan on using my training here to do something different. To institute change.” She turned to Thala. “You’re from here. You understand.”
Thala nodded. “I do.” She hesitated before she said, “I come from a family of seers. They live in poverty too. I’d like to do something for my people.”
I was sitting next to Thala, and I had to turn to look at her face. She had never expressed anything of the sort to me, but I realized that just being here, not perceived as a slave for the first time, had empowered her. And she was right. She could change Macedon from within.
“Seers, eh?” Sikander grinned. “So you can see the future?”
“And the past.”
He watched her for a moment before his face broke into a smile. “Can you see my future?” he asked.
Thala held his gaze for a long time before she closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were yellow.
Thea and Sikander appeared taken aback for a moment.
“There are many futures,” Thala thoughtfully replied, sitting up taller. It was as though she was no longer Thala, a slave who had been taken from her family. She was powerful—she always had been—only now she knew it. “Your future is changing,” she said. “I can see . . . a few possible outcomes.”
“Let me guess: I become emperor of Macedon, and my father’s words come true, that I’m a profligate and useless ruler and ultimately drive my empire into decline.”
“Or you might be dead by tomorrow morning,” Thala casually said.
We were all silent for a moment before Sikander burst out laughing. The rest of us followed suit, but I could feel beads of sweat forming on my upper lip.
Sikander grinned. “Looks like we’re going to have to get a few glasses of wine in you before you make any more predictions.”
We were on the road for a couple of hours, and I wondered the entire time whether I could kill Sikander. With every minute that went by, I was losing my resolve to carry out my plan, but not my determination to right a horrific wrong. I just didn’t know how to reconcile the two impulses warring within me.
By now, we had left the lofty avenues and lush gardens of the capital. The sun was setting over the seedy part of town we had ventured into. In the distance, I could see the clear blue of the ocean, and docks with wooden ships bobbing on the surface of the water, like toys left behind by a careless child.
Before us were crumbling buildings made of stone and streets that looked as though they had been deserted for centuries. The buildings here were low and squat, made of stone that had been overtaken by moss. They looked dark and imposing.
We followed Sikander through a maze of cobblestone streets that smelled like salt and fish. It occurred to me during this walk that I was trusting Sikander, of all people, as he navigated us through the empty lanes. Broken bottles and bits of scrap metal and wood littered the cobblestone, and the town was so quiet, our footsteps echoed in the alleys.
Finally, the empty streets gave way to a line of shops selling metal scraps and parts for boats.
“This is where you’ve taken us?” Thea asked.
“Patience is a virtue,” Sikander called back at us, and I hoped he was right.
We turned down a dark alleyway and then another, arriving at a building with a conspicuously red door. The door was flanked by two windows that were muzzled by metal grills. Sikander knocked on the door three times.
Finally a gruff voice. “Who is it?”
“Emperor Amyntas is a fool,” Sikander said loudly, and the door was opened by a short, balding man who smiled at us with broken teeth.
“Right this way, sir,” he said to Sikander.
Sikander tipped the man a coin, and we walked through the drawing room of someone’s home, the walls a pale pink, a settee in one corner and a forlorn-looking table with no chairs in another. Dusty, stained lace curtains hung from the windows.
“Come this way.” Sikander gestured to us to keep moving, and we walked through the small house. At the back, behind a filthy kitchen, was another door.
Sikander opened it, leading us to a courtyard enclosed by four stone walls.
Across from us was the stone exterior of another building. The entrance to it was a yellow door. Sikander opened it, and we emerged in some sort of abandoned factory. The bones of a large ship sat squarely in the middle of a high-ceilinged room, and we walked past it as though this was an everyday occurrence.
“What is this place anyway?” Thala asked.
“It’s the old ship factory. Or at least it used to be. Now they make few ships. But it’s the center of Macedon’s nightlife.”
“That’s so obvious,” Thea quipped, and we all laughed nervously. “Sikander, my parents had better be able to find me tomorrow if they need to,” she called out.
“Is it true your parents are revolutionaries?” I blurted out, and Thea smiled.
“I wish they were. They’re part of the country’s aristocracy. They have a . . . complicated relationship with Sikander’s father . . . a friendly rivalry.” She smiled at him.
“So they tell us . . . as they bicker with one another at state dinners. But my family has been entangled with Thea’s for generations.” Sikander shrugged. “Just one big, warring, feuding, loving family.” He smiled.
Thea nodded her head and turned back to me. “My parents . . . they’ve spent years questioning the leadership of our country. They believe in equality and justice for all. They don’t like the rigid hierarchy of Sikander’s father’s government, and after all, a governing body can’t be run b
y a single man . . . or at least, that’s what they tell him. They want a more democratic Macedon.”
“But unfortunately, my father is a megalomaniac.” Sikander shrugged. “Still, he can’t get rid of them, because they’re old aristocracy, and they’re the only thing between him and a revolution.”
“A revolution would be good for this country,” Thea went on. “I fear my family is all talk, all concessions. They haven’t really made a dent in the way things are run here. Maybe it’s on me to carry on their legacy, to actually do something for Macedon’s people.”
“Now, she should be the leader of Macedon,” Sikander said, pointing to Thea, a smile on his face so wide that I was embarrassed by how obviously he loved her.
I tried, in my mind, to make sense of what exactly went wrong, when or how things went awry for Chandradev, Thea, and Sikander. They all appeared to get along so well—could it really have been Chandradev and Thea’s relationship that broke them apart?
By now, we had approached another large metal door with a massive handle. This time, I could hear loud drumbeats coming from behind it.
Chandradev stepped forward, pulling at the large handle with both hands. The door finally opened, and we were standing in the middle of a raucous party. Purple, green, and blue lanterns were suspended from string that hung far above us, and beyond those, just the sky. Women spun around wildly, wearing brightly colored bandeaux and skirts. Bodies writhed on the dance floor as music echoed off the walls, making my heart race faster.
Sikander led us through the mass of bodies to the other side of the packed courtyard to yet another door guarded by a large man. He whispered something to the man, who nodded at us. Sikander gestured for us to follow him.
We followed the large man up a circular flight of stairs for at least five stories. I was practically out of breath when we arrived at a place where I could see the sky again.
Thala reached for my hand in fear, but the others simply laughed in delight.
I looked around. We were standing on an empty, flat rooftop. A string of white lights hung just above us. On the edge of the roof was a modest wood table.
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