by CJ Brightley
“Nah,” he said. “Normally, yes. But no one’s been down this Road in a whole week, so it’s bound to be full of things. And you’re a new heir, so taking you to Central is the priority. Whoever’s assigned tomorrow will have the unenviable task of dealing with those.”
A week, I thought. I swallowed. Somehow, I’d never thought about that aspect of the Ruler’s staying with us. There were people out there, all down the Rulership, who had reported crimes or requests to buy land, and nobody had answered any of the ones along this Road in a week. Usually a Ruler’s heir would come for those within a day. The thought was sobering.
“Just out of curiosity, do you know what to do if there’s a crime?” Caes asked.
Yaika hesitated. She looked like she really wanted to be able to tell him the answer. “No,” she said finally.
“Okay, then,” Caes said. “You’ll get training, but here are the basics. First: you listen to the accusation. Even if it sounds really horrible, you have to hear the details. You don’t get to skip that. Second: you listen to the evidence. Third: you decide whether they’re innocent or guilty. If they’re innocent, they go free.”
“And if they’re guilty?”
“Then you stay until the appropriate punishment is meted out, to make sure it does happen,” Caes said. “Unless it’s a death penalty — then you take the criminal back to Central. The Ruler has to review all death crimes personally. Murder, rape, embezzlement, thought manipulation, landowner use of mathematics or magic, that sort of thing.”
Whoa, I thought. I don’t even know what two of those mean.
“Does anybody actually do that?” Yaika asked skeptically. “Landowner use of magic, I mean. It’s not even possible to do magic without taking the oath.”
“You’d be surprised,” Caes said. “The Ruler had to execute somebody for that only a few years ago. When your sister was your age.” He jerked his head over at me.
I tensed. This was as bad as the ironed-flat feeling. I could hardly breathe.
“That doesn’t even make any sense!” Yaika said impatiently. “You can’t take the oath without renouncing status. And nobody gets magic without taking the oath. I don’t even get why that law exists. It’s forbidding something that’s not possible in the first place.”
Exactly! I thought indignantly. It’s so unfair! It’s like the law’s specifically targeting me!
Wait . . .
Was the law specifically targeting me?
My fingers clenched my armrests.
“So do you know what to do about a blue signal?” Caes asked teasingly. “That one should be easy.”
“Of course I do,” Yaika said, tossing her head. A tiny strand of hair bounced behind her ear. “You make sure the people wanting to purchase land are either the rightful heir and their spouse, or there are no heirs with first entitlement to buy it. Then you find a mathematician who’s unconnected with the purchasers to supervise the transfer, and you accept the payment.”
“Perfect,” Caes said, grinning. “Most people don’t think about the mathematician thing.”
“My friend Sutal’s brother bought land last year,” Yaika bragged. “I got to be there for it.”
“Okay, here’s a tricky one, then,” Caes said. “What do you do with the status you receive as payment?”
Yaika hesitated. “You . . . give it to a safety-keeper?”
“Nope,” Caes said.
“You . . . take it right back to Central immediately?”
“You’d never get anything done if you did that after every payment.”
“You . . . don’t spend any status until you’ve brought it back to Central?”
“Sort of,” Caes said. “The answer is . . . you can spend status, but you want to be careful not to spend more than you had when you left. For the most part, if you’re reasonably careful, you should be fine. But if you have a problem with spending everything you’ve got, the Ruler will start assigning a mathematician to go with you to approve everything you do, and you do not want that. They’re incredibly finicky.”
Caes sounded personally aggrieved.
“I’m so excited!” Yaika said, bouncing up and down in her seat. “I can hardly wait for . . . wait for . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked over at me. Suddenly her lower lip startled trembling.
“Raneh?” she asked in a quavering voice. “Did I make a horrible mistake?”
Yes, I thought.
“You made a choice,” I said carefully.
“But Mother and Father and Hurik and Grandfather and Grandmother are all back home, and . . .” Yaika’s face crumpled. “I’m so excited, but . . . if I think that I might never see them again, then . . .”
“I’m guessing it’s too late to choose differently,” I said.
“Yes,” Alyss said.
“So regrets aren’t really worth much,” I said. “You’re a Ruler’s heir now, Yaika. Might as well try to be good at it.”
Relief suffused my sister’s face. “And I’ll make everybody proud of me!” she burst out. “Mother and Father will be delighted I chose this! Just you wait and see!”
I sighed. And there she was, all guilt wiped away, while I was going with her to Central . . . the last place in the world I wanted to be.
22
Despite wanting to be anywhere else, Central was an exciting place.
The Ruler and her husband walked ahead of us, surrounded by a swarm of magicians. Alyss and Jinny drifted off to the sides. Only Caes stayed near us, pointing out things to Yaika, and I lagged behind them, listening in.
“There’s an entire building built for social events?” Yaika asked, gaping at the wide, open edifice we were passing. It was enormous, made out of polished white stone that gleamed in the bright midday sun, and along the enormous flat rooftop I could see hints of an enormous garden of ornamental flowers peeking above the long wall.
“That’s right,” Caes said, grinning. “Round here, it makes no sense to enlarge buildings temporarily. Waste of magic. It makes much more sense to have a permanent space. It’s used pretty much every day.”
“But who owns it?” Yaika squeaked.
“The Ruler,” Caes said. “Or, well, technically the Ruler’s husband. The Ruler’s spouse is always in charge of Central.”
“So people just hold parties there whenever they want?” Yaika asked, clasping her hands. “We could go in there right now, and there’d be something?”
“Pretty likely,” Caes said, looking amused. “But most of them are private events that are invitation-only. Families have to reserve it months in advance, so it’s often used for things like birthdays or oath ceremonies.”
Yaika still looked enthralled as the edifice receded behind us.
“Really, we should have two of them,” Jinny said from off to the side, glancing over at Alyss and Caes. “A smaller one for private events, a larger one for public parties. Then we’d get more of the larger social events.”
“But we only have one,” Caes said. “We can’t build another, so there’s no use complaining.”
“Why can’t you build another one?” I asked, confused. Nobody turned back to glance at me. “I’m sure the Ruler has the status to pay people to build something.”
“It’s not the status,” Caes said. “It’s the space.”
Huh? “What about the space?”
“Everything in Central is exactly laid out,” Caes said, waving his hand at the line of identical tall grey buildings off to the side. Some had designs painted across the front, or flower planters, or curtains, and the styles of the wooden doors varied enormously. But the basic grey stone of each shared-wall building was exactly the same. “We can’t build anything new. There’s no space.”
“But that’s silly,” I protested. “Why don’t you just wait until one of these clumps of buildings is falling down, and then, instead of rebuilding it —”
Caes stopped and turned around to look at me. Alyss and Jinny glanced over their
shoulders with looks that said they thought I was an idiot.
“What?” I asked.
“Is anything falling down?” Caes asked. “Have you seen anything in Central that looks like it’s crumbling?”
Misgivings rose in me. I looked around again at the long lines of buildings. Any parts that looked in poor repair were wooden, not stone. Some walls looked dirty, or had paint so old that it was flaking, or deteriorating metal decorations that left rust stains. But even in the most neglected houses, there was not a crack to be seen. And the beautifully cared-for homes were immaculate.
Then I glanced down at the stone underneath my feet. Panic rose in my throat. There were no flaws in it, either, not a single groove or blemish or seam. It had not been made with cobblestones or tiles or bricks. It was like it had been poured out in one long sheet, and never marred since.
“How?” I squeaked. “How is that even possible?”
“Magic,” Caes shrugged, as if that explained everything. It most emphatically did not.
“But that’s not how magic works,” I protested. “Nothing like this exists in nature. Magic can only enhance or diminish what’s already there — it can’t create new things.”
“Maybe magic used to be more powerful,” Jinny suggested.
“You mean, because magic is dying?” I demanded.
The three heirs exchanged looks, like they were very uncomfortable with this line of discussion.
“That’s not something people really talk about,” Alyss said.
I gaped at them. “My grandfather says magic’s going to die completely in a few years. Don’t you think that’s worth discussing?”
“No,” the three heirs chorused.
“Ooh, what’s that, what’s that, what’s that?!” Yaika squealed, tugging at Caes’s sleeve and pointing at a grand, tiered, round building rising above us in the distance.
“That would be the Heart of Central,” Caes said, looking amused. “Where you’re going to live.”
Yaika looked rapturous. I could practically see her face glowing. Small streams of status leaked off her and into everybody she passed, including me. I sent mine back and waited for the heirs to mention that she needed to control her emotions better, but nobody did.
Too much status to care if they lose a little bit to irresponsible handling? I thought incredulously.
Well, whatever. Yaika’s inexperience with status was their problem now, not mine. After all, we were no longer linked.
As we neared the Heart of Central, rows of buildings suddenly gave way to an enormous expanse of wedge-shaped raised bed gardens, each one pointing straight towards the grey tiered building. Numerous roads continued through them, converging into one long ring of road that surrounded the circular building.
There was an open entryway to the Heart across from every road. I wondered why in the world that was. Surely the Ruler didn’t need so many.
Each waist-high wedge of raised bed garden contained a long line of filias running down the edges, with various other ornamental flowers and small bushes filling in the centers. I kept my fingers away from the filias, but when we passed a gap where a different flower peeked through, I couldn’t resist. I reached out to stroke its unfamiliar white fluffiness.
The puffball poofed into a huge cloud of airborne seeds.
“Oh, don’t touch the powderballs,” Caes said. “They do that.”
I doubled over, coughing. Thanks for the warning.
By the time we reached the nearest entryway, I was still coughing. The Ruler and her husband stopped on either side and waited for us. Once we were all lined up in front of them, with Yaika jostled to the center, the Ruler spoke.
“Yaika, formerly of the Freshgrown family,” she intoned. “You have completed your journey down this road, the one which led directly from your old home. Here at the Heart of Central, the very center of all, you shall pick a new path. Proceed.”
“Go inside and choose another doorway,” the Ruler’s husband explained. “Come out through it and meet us back here.”
I looked at Yaika. Her eyes were wide and she was trembling; from nerves or excitement, I couldn’t tell which. She took a hesitant step forward, then another one. She kept on going until she disappeared through the doorway.
We all stood waiting for what seemed like an eternity. Then Yaika reappeared from behind the building, running breathlessly around the wall to get back to us.
“I see you chose a long way,” the Ruler noted.
Yaika nodded as she reached us, still breathing heavily. “I didn’t want to just go for the nearest exit. It seemed like cheating.”
The Ruler smiled. “Welcome to Central, Yaika. You are now officially my eighty-sixth heir.”
Next we had to go through a ridiculous number of empty bedrooms, each decorated and laid out in different ways, until Yaika found one she liked. I was very uncomfortable when I realized that the male and female heirs lived right next to each other along the enormous circular corridor of the bottom floor.
“There are no locks,” the Ruler said. “And your door must remain open if another heir is visiting you. That is enforced strictly.”
“What are locks?” Yaika asked.
It didn’t take long for the other heirs and Ruler’s husband to drift away, leaving me with only Yaika and the Ruler as they trailed from bedroom to bedroom and bedroom. I was relieved when my sister finally settled on something — even if it was the ugliest room I’d ever seen.
Until the Ruler sent for somebody to fetch a mattress for me, because apparently I would be living with my sister for the duration of my stay. This thrilled neither Yaika nor me.
“But Raneh has the worst taste in aesthetics ever!” Yaika protested.
I could say the same thing about you! I thought indignantly.
“She is a guest,” the Ruler said. “You’re an heir. Unless you want her to, she will have no say.”
“Oh, good,” Yaika said, looking relieved.
Not good, I thought, cringing. The turquoise-and-blue wall panels glittered at me. What had been wrong with the triangular room with the fluffy yellow cloud theme? I felt like I was surrounded by stripes of beetles.
“Now, keep in mind that, being a guest,” the Ruler said, turning to me, “you are not to get in the way. You are not to draw any attention. You are not to display any rudeness. Do you understand?”
That’s rich, given the way you acted in our home, I thought.
“I understand,” I said.
“She’ll behave,” Yaika chirped in for me.
“There is also a limit to how long you’ll be welcome here. If you wish to stay longer than a few weeks, I will arrange to have a Central family adopt you, so that you can live with them,” the Ruler went on.
My eyes widened in horror. “No!” I choked out. “I want to go back to my family eventually!”
“But what if I want her to stay much longer than that?” Yaika wailed.
“Then either she gets married, she finds new parents, or her parents come here,” the Ruler said, with voice like iron. “She is not a Ruler’s heir. She can’t stay in the Heart forever.”
I swallowed. I hadn’t thought far enough to consider how long I’d be staying, but I was relieved to think it wasn’t forever. On the other hand, I didn’t want to leave Yaika alone, either.
“Now, any other questions?” the Ruler asked, voice back to being pleasant again.
Yaika swallowed visibly. “Um . . . what about clothing? I didn’t get to bring anything with me . . .”
“You’ll find clothing in the dressing room. There are four entrances, each across from one of the staircases, all leading to the same central room. There are booths for dressing, mirrors, and closets and shelves with every style and size imaginable. You can find whatever you wish to wear there. Your sister may also help herself, as long as she’s here.”
“But . . . but . . .” Yaika stared at her with wide eyes. “What about my own clothes?”
“All my
heirs share clothing,” the Ruler said flatly. “It’s the best way to ensure there’s always enough selection for everybody.”
For the first time since we’d arrived, Yaika looked crestfallen.
“Well, she can keep what she brought with her, right?” I asked, hoping to say something to cheer her up.
“Not if she wishes to have them laundered,” the Ruler said.
Yaika clutched her pale blue, gathered sleeves, looking like she was about to burst into tears.
Well, that didn’t work.
“When . . . when is it . . . my turn to do laundry?” Yaika asked tremulously.
I could practically see what she was thinking. When it’s my turn, I’ll just make sure my own private clothing goes back to me!
“Heirs don’t do laundry,” the Ruler said. “Your time is too valuable.”
Yaika stared at her, uncomprehending. “Then . . . who does?”
“Citizens,” the Ruler said. “They also cook the food and do the gardening.”
“Do we have to wash dishes, or sew things, or dig latrines?” Yaika asked cautiously.
“No,” the Ruler said.
Yaika squeaked, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.
I watched her jubilation, my eyes narrowed. I wasn’t sure this was so good for Yaika. But given how few heirs there were to cover the entire Rulership, I supposed that made sense. Every day spent on duties inside Central was a day that couldn’t be spent on duties outside. And one needed to have time for relaxing and social activities, too.
As if reading my mind, the Ruler brought my sister’s excitement crashing back to reality.
“Today, you may spend playing and exploring,” the Ruler said. “Tomorrow, you will be assigned to a Road. You’ll be assigned a different Road with a different heir every day, until five heirs in a row have reported that they think you could do it on your own. Then you will enter the rotation, meaning you’ll be assigned to a new Road every other day. Do you understand?”
Yaika gulped and nodded.
“When can she go back to see our parents?” I asked.