Pimpernel_Royal Ball

by Sheralyn Pratt

  “Yes,” he replied. “Think of us as a meritocracy, sorted by aptitudes. You can change titles throughout your life, but you will not change banners because we’re wired how we’re wired. Jack can’t do what you do any more than you can do what he does. You two have different strengths, no matter how hard you work on your weaknesses. Does that make sense?”

  Yes. It made a whole lot of sense. It also answered most of the questions she’d been planning on asking next.

  “I’m with you so far,” she said, urging him to keep going. Ren may not trust Malachi, but Claire did. At least in this moment.

  “Excellent,” he said, gesturing to Margot. “Now, rewinding a bit, there are four banners, total—all of which have their strengths and their blind spots.”

  “Why four?” Claire asked.

  “Mostly because that’s what diverse cultures converged on over the years,” Malachi replied. “When you survey independently developed cultures and look for common ground, most of them find alignment in fours. North, east, west, south; earth, wind, fire, air; heart, might, mind, strength; Regulus, Aldebaran, Fomalhaut, Antares—”

  “Hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs,” Margot added pointedly, to which Malachi nodded.

  “Yes. Like a deck of cards. A medicine wheel. A compass. The twelve points on a clock, divided by the three dimensions of our world becomes the four points of a plane that pretty much every culture orients itself to somehow. These symbolic points became our banners.”

  “Oh,” was all Claire could think to say. She had been wondering if the banners could somehow be related to the Hogwart’s houses, but she was going to take Malachi’s answer as a solid no.

  If she was hearing him right, the banners were more like the Jungian types, or a Myers-Briggs test that sorted like with like. That made sense.

  It also explained how he’d been able to keep her at ease throughout the night.

  Looking back, she could see how many things Malachi had proactively done to side-step her specific anxieties. The only thing she had caught onto real-time was the aroma in the jet. But he’d done more than that, including speaking in an expansive way that got her mind thinking bigger, rather than obsessing smaller.

  None of that was an accident. She was sure of it. Especially since Jack had made a point of saying that Malachi was even more obsessive than she was, and Margot had said that most of what he did could only be understood in retrospect.

  Well, Claire was starting to get some 20/20 vision on the past several hours, and the picture coming into view was something she could definitely work with.

  Claire glanced down at his ring. “That tic you have. Real, or part of tonight’s game?”

  A slow smile curved his lips up. “You’re catching on.”

  She couldn’t help herself. She smiled back.

  “Wait,” Margot said on Claire’s other side. “What tic?”

  Malachi ignored her, keeping his focus on Claire. “Can you tell me why I did it?”

  Claire thought back to when she first noticed him rubbing his thumb up against the ring in the jet. “To humanize yourself?” she guessed. “To give me something productive to obsess over?”

  He nodded. “And?”

  Claire glanced at Margot, who looked wholly confused. “To point me to a connection.”

  When Ren’s jaw flexed behind Margot, Claire knew she was on the right track.

  “And what is that connection?” Malachi said.

  Claire replayed the events of the night in her mind, piecing together bits of conversation until realization had her blinking back shock. She looked at Malachi, then back to Margot, and saw confirmation of her guess in her boss’s eyes.

  “You’re a second son,” she said. “A younger twin.”

  “Yes,” Malachi prompted.

  “And Margot is married to your brother.”

  Margot’s downcast eyes and Ren’s flared nostrils confirmed her guess before Malachi did.

  “Excellent,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing an oracle should piece together before anyone says it out loud.”

  Maybe. But that didn’t mean she didn’t need a moment to make a mental adjustment at the revelation.

  Margot was married … that still blew her mind, along with the fact that she would be pregnant in three months, as a planned event. But the fact that Malachi was her backup husband?

  How weird did that have to be for them? Especially Margot. She had a husband who avoided her like she didn’t exist and a backup husband who could only be counted on to be unpredictable.

  How messed up was that?

  But, in the same vein, it went a long way in explaining a lot of Margot’s behavior. In fact, it explained almost all of it, filling in gaps that had seemed inhuman only a minute before.

  “Questions?” he asked.

  Claire shook her head. “Give me a sec. My brain is figuring a few things out right now.”

  Malachi smiled as if that pleased him while Ren took an impatient look at the wall of clocks.

  Because talking is a waste of time to his type, Claire realized. He processes information through action, not conversation.

  Jack was the same way, she realized. Once he had a vision, he didn’t talk about it. He built it.

  Claire was the opposite. She mentally dissected everything into its smallest parts and made predictions, just like Margot always knew exactly what to say to a person to get the reaction she wanted. Well, when she wasn’t drinking, at least. Alcohol seemed to be the key to getting her to act like a normal, flawed human being.

  Claire felt like she was watching a picture come into view one pixel at a time—some of them just shadows of future clarity taking shape in her mind. She didn’t see clear outlines yet, but she would in time.

  She could feel it.

  “Okay. Continue,” she said, seeing him smile at her more efficient language. Their brains worked enough alike that they both spoke the same level of weird. Malachi had been doing it all night to keep her mind focused on what he wanted, but now that she knew what he was doing, she could do it right back.

  What a relief.

  “To be an oracle, it’s important to know how the banners work together, and why they work together.” He faced his palms together so they mirrored each other. “For example, we are the opposite of Ren’s banner. If we use the elements metaphors, think of us as the sky to his ocean. Men like Ren can overpower you and toss you around, but we will always outsmart them. Yet competition is not what we seek. The ideal is to use our skills in symphony. That means within a team dynamic—where Ren is a centurion and you are an oracle—you must trust Ren with your physical safety, and he must trust your foresight. You plan, he executes. You both need each other. Does that make sense?”

  It did, and not just hypothetically. Jack always remained so relaxed when Ren was with him on a job. Claire could see Jack’s vital signs real-time during ops and had always marveled at how Jack and Ren kept their calm, even in stressful situations. It seemed impossible that trust could go that deep between two people, but when she looked at Margot and Ren, she saw how the same dynamic was ever-present between them. Margot trusted Ren. With everything. Just like Jack did.

  So, yes. Trust could go that deep.

  “Now, if you and Ren are air and water, Jack’s banner is earth,” Malachi continued. “We are their muses, you might say. We stir and move them like wind moves the earth. Our observations become their new applications. They turn our mental maze of possibilities into a pathway they walk on. We’re the navigators, and they’re the captains. Without us, they’ll end up on random voyages to wherever the tide takes them; without them, we end up living in our minds—imagining possibilities without ever really exploring them.”

  Wow. That was truer than she wanted it to be. Because, honestly, if she hadn’t met Jack, she’d probably be scrubbing the grout in her bathroom with a toothbrush and calling it a productive Friday night.

  It went without saying that Jack had made her life
a better place, but she’d never understood what he got out of the deal.

  Could she possibly be his muse? It had such a nicer ring to it than OCD. She liked it, and it made her even more interested in whatever he planned to say as he gestured to Margot, who looked ready to correct him if anything he said was even remotely off about her banner.

  But if the look in Malachi’s eye said anything, he held Margot’s banner in highest regard. Or, at least, that’s what his eyes said for half a second before returning to his textbook tone.

  “Last, we have the fire that tests the fortitude of everything it touches,” he said, gesturing to Margot. “That’s Margot’s strength. Intuition. Heat. Heart. People like Margot feel the undercurrents of a world in motion, sensing and predicting things people like us still want more measurements to prove before we put stock in them.” Malachi glanced Margot’s way. “Theirs is a sixth sense. A gut feeling. You can see how something was done, while Margot knows why. The two of you will have a very symbiotic dynamic when it’s properly cultivated.”

  Claire’s brain literally felt like a firework show as he spoke, everything coming into clear focus.

  All this time she’d been working with them, Claire had felt less-than. Like she couldn’t compete. They’d try to tell her it wasn’t a competition. They were a team, but until this moment, she just thought they were trying to be nice.

  No. They hadn’t been nice. She’d been insecure and unable to hear what they were trying to tell her. But it was all making sense now.

  “Counterbalance, inspiration, and anchor,” Malachi said, ticking the words off on his fingers. “Each of us plays all of those roles to others, just by being who we are. In your case, Ren is your counterbalance; Margot is your inspiration; Jack is your anchor.”

  Yep. Yep. And yep. This was making so much sense to her that Claire was actually starting to feel confident.

  “Is all that clear?” Malachi asked.

  Claire nodded without hesitation.

  “Good,” he said, visibly relaxing as if they’d just passed some hurdle. “Remember all this as we move forward.” He gestured to Margot and Ren. “Remember your role to your team. Because tonight Prince Abed will test on your wheelhouse. Not theirs. He won’t test your physical strength, your intuition, or your ability to make something disappear. Whatever test Prince Abed gives you will be a test of mental gymnastics, and likely a request to make a prediction.”

  “Got it,” she said with a nod.

  “Let’s practice with some riddles then,” Malachi said, leaning forward.

  Riddles? Claire was good at those. “Okay.”

  “When I say a name, I want you to assume I’m talking about a fairy tale character.”

  Claire nodded.

  “Very good. Puss in Boots, Goldilocks, and Jack from the Beanstalk are all at a festival where a troll is selling a magic button. Puss wants it for his master, Goldie wants it for herself, and Jack wants it to save his farm. Who ends up with the button?”

  Claire stayed silent, waiting for more details. None came. “And?” she prompted.

  He repeated the question. “Who gets the button?”

  “It depends,” Claire hedged, questions stacking up in her mind.

  Malachi shook his head. “No. You can accurately deduce with the given information. Add nothing, subtract nothing, and tell me who walks away with the prize.”

  Claire replayed the riddle in her mind, looking at it from all different angles, and came to the same conclusion. “It depends.”

  Chapter 20

  Kali

  Someone was definitely trying to cut through the door—the shrill sounds getting louder and louder. Dr. Yalin had yet to comment on it. He was too busy rummaging through his desk.

  Kali felt strong enough to stand, holding onto the table she’d been laying on before as she stretched her muscles out a bit. Every once in a while, her body shuddered with what she could only assume was a phantom charge from getting tased. So that made stretching a little more fun.

  “Here they are!” he declared, holding up a box of cards.

  She’d asked him about The Fours and his response was to dig a deck of cards out of his desk while saws clamored at his door.

  This was definitely turning out to be one of the weirder days in Kali’s life—real or imagined. On the bright side, the serum dripping into her was Grade-A. Also, she hadn’t had to run for her life once since waking up. She’d probably pay for those silver linings later, but for now, she’d take what she could get.

  Dr. Yalin walked over to her, holding the box of cards like a prize. They seemed so out of place in the lab environment.

  “You have a deck of cards in your office?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said as if labs came standard with them. “Every initiate has a deck on hand.”

  “Of course,” she repeated, trying to go with the flow as he slid the cards out of the box and into his right hand.

  He tapped the table she’d just been laying on. “You done with this?”

  “Pretty sure,” Kali replied, watching him single out all the aces and put the four cards in a row. He then started singling out all the diamond suits and lining them up under the aces, from two to king.

  “I’m a diamond, so we’ll use that suit to explain,” he muttered, maybe to himself, maybe to her.

  Not sure if they were still on the same page, Kali asked. “Explain what?”

  “The Royals. The Fours. The system.”

  In a deck of cards?

  Kali felt like she’d fallen down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole on YouTube as he laid out his visual aids. Soon she was looking at a top row of all four aces with all the diamond cards—from two to king—in ascending order in a second row beneath.

  Careful to keep the skepticism out of her voice, Kali asked, “Okay. What should I be seeing here?”

  “The game of the world, behind the scenes,” Dr. Yalin said. “The elements, the creatures, and all the people. A deck of cards is designed to give them all weight in the game.”

  When in doubt, hear them out, she told herself. People often liked to bury the lead when it came to describing how they ended up neck-deep in crazy. But if you kept them talking, they got to it eventually. “How, exactly?”

  “Decks of cards have changed over time, but we’ve had this one for a while,” he said, fidgeting with the ones left in his hand. “The motive for making the deck of cards is similar to chess and other games of strategy. They’re used to gamify battles of will and allow people in positions of power to resolve issues without loss of life or resources.”

  That … didn’t sound too crazy.

  “If you want power and influence, but can’t win a night of poker, everyone at the table is going to tell you to go get a little more life experience and come back when you’re less naïve.”

  Sure. Okay. If she was locked in a program designed around a deck of cards, she could roll with that.

  “I’m listening,” Kali said, ignoring the sparks that shot from the door as a blade pushed through. Or maybe it was a blow torch. Either way, time was short. So if this was a speech the doctor needed to give, best to get on with it.

  “The ancient stories of mankind are built into the symbolism,” he said. “If you know the stories, the cards are easily decoded.”

  “Such as?” she prompted.

  “Creation stories,” he said. “Genesis. Ancient myths. Epic battles.”

  Kali looked at the cards, still not finding clarity. “Mind giving me a hint?”

  He nodded, pointing up at the aces. “Up here, we have the four suits, symbolic of the four elements that also double for four types of humans. Earth, air, fire, water, or what the Bible calls heart, might, mind, and strength. This is how humans are sorted into the system.” He pointed back at the bottom row. “My suit is the diamonds. Earth. Strength.”

  If this was crazy, at least it was coherent. Kali nodded for him to continue.

  “You know Genesis, right
?” he asked.

  Kali nodded.

  “Do you remember the day it says man was created?”

  Her days in Sunday School paid off when she said, “The sixth.”

  “Yes,” he said, dropping his finger down on the six of diamonds. “Each day of creation tells you what cards the two-through-six represent in the game—the tiers of life, so to speak. One built on top of the other and humans requiring the largest support structure of all life on earth.”

  “So a five in this game would be animal life?” Kali asked, making sure she was picking things up right.

  He nodded. “It can be.”

  Hmm. He’d hedged a little on that, but she’d come back to that if he didn’t. “And sixes are humans?”

  “Yes. Always”

  She touched her finger to the seven. “So what this?”

  He smiled as if she’d just pointed out a secret. “Okay. That’s a little next level. Because, yes, on one level, the cards symbolize the structure of all life. But we’re humans, so the cards have to be all about us on some level. Otherwise, people will start dismissing certain cards as irrelevant.”

  Sad, but probably true. “So … what does that have to do with seven?”

  “There are fifty-four cards in a deck—”

  “Fifty-two,” she corrected.

  He pulled the two Jokers out of the deck and put them on the table with the others. “In a true deck, there are fifty-four. And all fifty-four cards describe a type of person. And every person on the planet is one of these fifty-four types. Me. You. Everyone you’ve ever known. We’re all sorted and known in the system. Especially in this digital age.”

  Memories—real memories—of Kali’s first interactions with The Fours tickled in the back of her mind. “How do they know? Is there a test?”

  He nodded. “Lots of them, some more accurate than others. And a person’s free will plays a large role in their designation. People can always opt out of potential.” He pointed back to the six. “That’s why probably 98% of the people on the earth right now are sixes. You’ll notice that sixes are in the middle, framed with four cards on either side if you exclude the Royals. It’s the center of the metaphorical herd and the space of highest insulation. Most people are very happy with that position in life.” He touched one hand to the two and the other to the ten. “The other 2% of people who opt out of the safety of the herd have a different number, resulting in more resistance and more exposure. It’s a more dangerous way to live, but it also a life of much greater influence.”