by S. K Munt
The boy laughed. ‘Sounds very plausible indeed. You’ll be banished for card theft- me for truancy.’
‘And breaking and entering.’
‘Breaking and exiting is more like it…’ he muttered under his breath, but then smiled at me. ‘Can I play with you?’
Now I looked up all the way, staring at him. ‘Are you affected?’
‘Maybe,’ he sat down across from me and smiled. ‘But who knows when I’ll ever have the chance again to have a private tutorial with a card shaft before I’m heaved out into the Wildwoods?’
‘Card shark…’ I corrected him distractedly, wiping my hand across my nose to brush away the last evidence of my crying jag. The Wildwoods was the overgrown forest, which lay between Arcadia’s border and the desolate north that had always been there but had grown impassably thick since the flooding and blizzards had washed over the land. In the state we were in, I didn’t think either the boy or myself would last one mopey moment in there. Even the most cunning of the banished chose to head south through the desert than cross the Wildwoods! ‘And no, you can’t play Solitaire with me.’
‘Why not?’
I gave him an incredulous look. ‘Well, for starters it’s called Solitaire- and that means that it’s a one-person game. And secondly because you need to get out of here before you get us both in trouble!’
‘But what if I want to know more about this stream to paradise?’
‘Then you can go talk to the drunken guy in the tavern in my village with no toes! For regardless of how beautiful the land was, it was below freezing.’ I put the cards down and shook my head at him when he threw back his head and laughed. ‘Look, this isn’t funny, okay? I’m glad you’re at your leisure to break and enter and dodge the Corps draft or whatever it is that you’re doing, but I’m a Given girl!’
‘So?’
‘So, I’m supposed to be on my best behaviour so this spoiled brat of a prince takes me in- and if the guard come in here and see me just playing with you like everything’s fine with mud streaking from the roof to the floor, they’re going to think that I’m either stupid or a troublemaker!’
‘And you’re not stupid or a trouble-maker?’ he asked, appraising me.
‘No!’ I said hotly.
‘Then what are you?’
I stared at him, at a loss. This morning could not get any stranger. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m Given!’
He waved his hand, rolling his eyes. ‘Besides that. What caste are you from? What do you do for fun? Who are your friends, and how did you learn how to play cards?’
‘I’m nobody!’ I erupted, and the tears came back to my eyes. ‘Just a third-child, and an ugly one to boot!’ He blinked, shocked, but I hurried on. ‘I’m from the Blue Collar caste and I have no friends so my dad taught me how to play card games alone so I’d have SOMETHING to do! I spend all of my time with my books or hiding in gardens so no one sees how alone I am, and laughs at me!’ my voice cracked. ‘I grow vegetables so that my parents can afford to feed me. I read badly but a lot, and I don’t want to be here…’ my voice cracked on more tears. ‘Actually, come to think of it that’s true; I don’t want to be here. And I DON’T want to be sucking up to some prince who probably isn’t even toilet trained yet, so you know what? Stay!’ I began to pile the cards I’d spread out back together. ‘And do you know what else? I’ll even teach you how to play Poker! At least then when the Prince catches us together, he’ll get so mad that I’ll be banished to the Wildwoods where at least there are trees, or put to work in some garden somewhere that I could MAYBE be happy.’ I began to flick cards onto a pile in front of him, facedown. ‘You get five, and I get five. The object of the game is to-’
‘My brother is Given too,’ the boy said, putting his hand on the deck in my hands and looking at me with mournful blue eyes. His voice was almost shockingly quiet in the aftermath of my outburst. ‘This morning. They shipped him over to Pacifica, and I probably won’t see him again for years.’
My mouth fell open. ‘Your brother- not you?’
‘Yes. Why?’
I shrugged. ‘You look like the one dodging the draft.
The boy smirked in response, but his lip trembled quickly after. ‘No- they took him and shipped him off to the islands this morning to help salvage what little is left of it. He’s on a boat, and he hates boats. I feel so…’ another tear slipped down his cheek and when he ducked his head, it splattered on a card. ‘I like boats,’ he whispered. ‘It should be me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I croaked, understanding nothing about the Pacifican islands, but the fact that they were very far away and that God had all but destroyed two of them when he’d detonated the volcanic mass beneath them. ‘I wish I could say something to make you feel better, but I already miss my brother Finch so much that I could…’ I sighed and shook my head, fanning out my cards in my hands so that I could hold them between our eyes. What a strange boy this was! ‘You must have been very close in age,’ I whispered to the Jack before my eyes.
‘Very close. It could have been me if not for…’ he sighed and sat back. ‘So I’m sorry… I don’t understand how you feel, but I can tell you that it feels awful to be the one who gets to stay too.’ He cleared his throat and whispered: ‘I’ll bet your brother is crying as well.’
My sinuses burned with the need to weep, just as the skin on my wrist crackled with static electricity at his touch. I lowered my card and stared hard at him, suspicious over this strange child all of a sudden. ‘How do you know your way around the roof?’
‘I live here- my parents work here and so my brother and I get up into the roof all the time,’ the boy said, and I nodded, understanding. ‘I saw him off down at the dock, but I was so mad at my mother and father for letting him go that I spit on her gown before I left, and called father mean, evil names after the ship sailed, and though that wasn’t enough to make me feel better- it was more than enough to get me locked in my room for the rest of the week. But I don’t care how they punish me- he and I were best friends, you know? I was with him every second, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do. You can’t play tennis or kick ball alone!’
‘You can,’ I said softly. ‘I have.’
The boy’s eyes flashed with sympathy. ‘You haven’t even got a best friend?’
‘Can something be the best if you have no second best or third to compare them to?’ I joked.
‘I suppose not…’ he cleared his throat. ‘Can you really play kickball?’
‘I can play any sport,’ I said, teaching him how to fan out his own cards. ‘I had a big sister who ignored me, and a big brother who I wouldn’t allow to shake me off when the weather was warm- one day he was going to try and qualify for an Athletic scholarship, and if I’d stayed with him, I think I might have trained with him.’
‘That’s a weird caste for a girl to want to join.’
I jogged my eyebrows. ‘Not for a girl who plays cards, it’s not.’ I moved his thumb. ‘Okay for now, we’ll stick with colour-matching suits, okay? Try and get your red and black together, and whoever has the most wins this hand. Then we’ll try it by suit, then by number. There are all sorts of ways to end up with a better hand than the other person, but we’ll start slow… I still get a bit confused sometimes too.’
‘Okay…’ the boy frowned at his cards, then moved them around clumsily enough for me to see that he had three red and two black. He cleared his throat again. ‘So this Prince Kohén… you think he’s a spoiled brat, huh?’
I sighed, moving my cards. I had three black and two red. ‘Oh I don’t know- I’ve never met him or his twin brother before because they’re so protected or whatever. I mean, I’ve heard that Karol comes into the village regularly, but the twin princes never seem to leave Eden, do they?’
‘They’re not even allowed to go to the common yet,’ the boy agreed, staring down at the cards. ‘In case some pirate tries to steal them or whatever, which is ridiculous. But you must have heard something,
right? For you to hate him so much without meeting him first?’
‘I don’t hate them,’ I said, plucking out my red cards and laying them down. ‘I’m just angry and lashing out. In fact, I heard that Kohén’s angry and lashing out too today, so who knows? Maybe we’d have a lot in common.’
‘But only if he can play cards and read?’
‘And can play Soccer,’ I agreed, and the boy laughed. ‘But I doubt it. Rich kid like that with Nephilim blood has got to have more friends than money, don’t you think?’
‘Depends on how many friends he’s allowed to have,’ the boy said. ‘I mean, there are kids our age living in the palace who belong to the maids and stuff, but he’s not allowed near them in case a bit of common rubs off or whatever, and the noble kids he gets to hang out with sometimes are boring little suck-ups.’
‘Yes well, I’m so common that he’ll be forbidden from even shaking my hand- I’m sure of it.’
The boy looked at me, tilting his head to the side. ‘You’re not very confident, are you?’
‘Ask me on a day when I wasn’t just thrown out like trash to be recycled,’ I said dryly.
‘The other Given girls have been…’ he paused. ‘Well, dressed in ribbons and lace, spouting their strengths, vowing to be the funnest-’
‘Yeah I know- I’ve heard that this whole fifth birthday clause is an honour to some,’ I said, looking down and shaking my head. ‘And this girl in my class Milla swears that the crown keeps a few girls in the castle and raises them like princesses because the Barachiel family have not yet had any daughters of their own but… I don’t want to be a princess.’ I looked up at the boy and smiled sadly. ‘I don’t look the part and I don’t act the part and I really don’t feel the part. My sister Jaiya would love it here, but not me.’
‘But living in the castle can be really cool,’ he argued, ‘they have nice food and clothes and-’
‘All I want are books and flowers and the chance to run around,’ I said. ‘I probably won’t get any of that out at some factory, but at least I won’t be expected to pretend to be some lady.’ I sighed and tapped his cards, sick of thinking about it all. ‘Please boy, if you must say and get me sent off to one of the factories for the rest of my life- play with me first, okay? I’d like the distraction.’
‘Okay then… okay, so I have three red cards, what does that mean?’
I smiled at him. ‘It means I now know what cards you have, and what I require to beat you.’ He frowned down at his cards and I laughed. ‘You need to get the most powerful cards and as many of them as possible. I have three black, and if I had four, I would be closer to winning. For now, put down your two black- face down- and I’ll put down my two red, and then I deal us two more cards each. Whoever ends up with the most of the same wins, and if we end up equal- we draw and start again.’
The boy looked up at me. ‘That’s rather simple.’
‘Only because we’re playing with colours only,’ I said. ‘With the next hand, we’ll try the suits then, the numbers- and once you know what’s of the most value, we can play with all three.’
‘What’s the most valuable?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to get straight to the real game.’
‘The aces,’ I said, impressed by how eager he was to try his hardest at a game he was bound to lose until he’d caught up with me. Finch was still too scared to play my father and I with pretend money, two years into learning. ‘Then the kings.’
‘Why not the queen?’
I smiled with slightly bared teeth. ‘Let’s track down King Elijah and ask him when they will be, shall we?’ It was common knowledge that Arcadia had never had a queen. Miguel Barachiel had been declared king of Arcadia before his death, and because he’d been so loved by his people, it had been decreed that his descendants would continue to rule after him. Not only did they trust that his heirs would be as pure of spirit and as brave and fair as he, but because keeping a Nephilim as king ensured Arcadia’s safety to a certain degree. And also, because he’d had God’s complete faith tattooed into his DNA.
For that reason, the Barachiel wives had never been granted the title or power of a queen. Perhaps a daughter of the Barachiel family would inherit the crown if she was born first, but that had never happened. I knew that a lot of the women in the kingdom prayed for the day when an Barachiel heir would be born female, because they hoped that the marital/joining laws would be relaxed under a female’s leadership- but the men had done as promised and had guided our new civilisation perfectly for hundreds of years and so, there was little debate on the subject. Children were needed to keep our population on par with the other kingdoms, and work had to be done to keep the world turning. Mothers were needed to raise those children, and men were needed to do the hardest work. That changed halfway through life and therefore, equality was ours, everyone did their bit and no one could accuse the kingdom of repressing women by making them stay at home until their children left, because their time to work would come when their husbands retired.
It still seemed unfair to me though- because being a mother constituted a lot of hard work on the woman’s part, so instead of being rewarded with a career after her children left, it seemed more like they were being punished while their husbands got to put their feet up with no brats running around to be cared for.
But I knew that men deserved equality too and in the old world, had often been worked until their death so I supposed it was sort of balanced that all men were granted an early retirement now and expected to take on household duties after. But only sort of.
I did wish that the duchess had more power though. Even if she couldn’t rule alone, I wished she had a say in how the government ran but she was not a Barachiel by blood and therefore, not entitled to make important decisions. So, like every other spouse in the kingdom, she was not permitted to work outside of her maternal duties until her husband had served his time as breadwinner. Then, by the time that had happened, her son Karol would step up to the throne anyway. Instead of having more power than other wives- she had far less.
‘In fact,’ I went on, ‘let’s ask him when the three of clubs will be as valuable as the ten of diamonds- and then maybe when they’re all equal, you’ll have your brother back and I can go back to playing soccer with my mine and his mean friends.’
The boy gave me a queer smile as he put two of his cards face down on the carpet, and I added my red ones to the pile. The cards were so faded that one of the red ones was practically brown. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Larkin Whittaker.’ I dealt him two more cards. ‘What’s yours?’
The door to the room burst open and so many guards- armed with actual guns- filed in that I gasped and immediately began to pack up the cards. I really didn’t mind going to some factory, but it would have been nice to play one full game before I was marched to my punishment!
‘What’s going on in here?’ one of the armed men demanded, pointing his rifle at me and I dropped the cards and shrank back.
‘I’m sorry!’ I exclaimed. ‘This poor boy got lost and was just-’
‘Kohén Barachiel!’ The duchess strode through the crowd, pushing them out of her way and lurched down to take hold of the boy across from me, ripping him to his feet and shaking him violently. I sucked in a breath. Had she just called him…?
I stopped crying all together, and fought the urge to throw up when I realised with a cheeky, affirmative wink from Kohén, that I’d just called the crown prince of Arcadia a spoiled brat right to his face!
5.
‘What are you doing in here?’ the duchess demanded, still shaking Kohén who was now scowling. ‘You look like you’ve been swimming in filth!’
‘I was making my decision!’ Kohén struggled out of his mother’s grip and began to march away. ‘Isn’t that what we’re SUPPOSED to be doing today, mother? Living up to these ridiculous obligations at whatever cost?’
‘You’re supposed to be sticking near to me!’ the duchess snapped back tearfully, pre
ssing her hand to her heart. ‘Is it not bad enough that I should lose one son today without you scaring me into believing that I’d lost two?’
‘You didn’t lose him,’ Kohén growled. ‘You gave him away so you’d have the right to give others away!’ He thumped his chest and little sparks exploded at the movement, making the duchess shriek and scramble back. ‘I’M the one who lost him!’
I was still blinking away spots of white dancing in my vision after having witnessed Nephilim power leaking at such a close range, and I also felt sick for Kohén- his twin had been taken because of our law? But they were royalty! Nephilim! Couldn’t the ones with influence have made an exception for them?
‘I did what was fair!’ the duchess exploded, and the guards lowered their rifles and exchanged loaded looks. ‘What the people demanded!’
‘Yes, but not what was right.’ Kohén turned in the doorway to regard his mother, and the guards stepped aside, warily looking down at his hands which were still sparking electric blue, not the dull, warm glow that I’d seen in portraits. He brushed himself off, which was a laugh because it caused a few leaves and some cobwebs to fall to the floor but left him as filthy beneath. ‘One of these days, you and father will learn the difference- that people aren’t as cardboard as that deck of cards to be traded according to value!’