To Kill a Kingdom

by Alexandra Christo

  I walk toward the throne and hold out a piece of parchment.

  This time, I’m too anxious to play pretend. Galina’s reluctance to remarry tells me all I need to know and, in a fortuitous turn of fate, presents a rather interesting solution to one of my many problems. So rarely does karma grant me such favors.

  Galina takes the parchment from me and her eyes scan over the paper, first with a confused frown and then with an intrigued smirk. It’s exactly the sort of reaction I was hoping for.

  “Prince Elian,” she says. “How did you get your hands on something like this?”

  I take a step forward, as close as I can get without risking my sanity. “From the same place you can get everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  THINGS WERE GOING SMOOTHLY. Or rather, they had screwed themselves into a great mess, and I was getting closer to pressing out the wrinkles. Galina played coy, but there was undeniable thirst in her eyes that gave me hope. Mutually beneficial, she mused, quoting my words back to me.

  Her support would mean one less thing to think about on this impossible mission. And with Lira finally off my ship, I’ve also got one less person to worry about trusting. All in a day’s work.

  I struggle to get Lira’s face out of my mind as I walk through the sparse Eidýllion streets. When I returned the seashell, there had been an odd look in her eyes. Like I was idiotic and wonderful at the same time. Like I was a fool and she was glad for it.

  I take in a long breath and press my palms to my eyes, trying to blot out the sleep. When she told me that the Sea Queen had taken revenge on her family, it seemed sincere enough, and the compass, though unsteady, had pointed north just the same. Still, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that something isn’t right. That no matter what truths she may give, there are lies hidden within.

  I stroll across the abandoned market street, which is thick with pastry crumbs. The night is warm and sweet, even with the moon blanketing the sky. The stars here are clearer than in most kingdoms, and it’s a struggle for me to keep walking. Not to stand and marvel at them. Lie on the cobblestone and think about their stories, the way I do aboard the Saad.

  I head toward the Serendipity. We stay there each time we dock in Eidýllio, because it’s an inn and a tavern, and there are few things that can’t be solved with both sleep and rum. As I make my way there, a symphony of footsteps trails behind my own. I slow my pace and slip into a nearby alley marked by abandoned trader stools. It’s thin, and a line of stars hangs overhead like streetlamps.

  I push myself against the wall, feeling warm brick against my back. The footsteps become uncertain, searching. There’s a small moment of trepidation, when the world goes quiet and all I hear is a low gasp of wind. Then the footsteps follow me into the alley.

  I don’t wait for my attacker to strike. I step out of the darkness, hand poised over my knife. Ready to gut whoever would be stupid enough to try to jump the captain of the Saad.

  A girl stands, half in the shadows, dark red hair clinging to her cheeks. When she sees me, she hooks her hands over her hips, exasperated. Her eyes flood through me like poison.

  “Why are you hiding?” Lira asks. “I was trying to follow you.”

  I let out a long breath and sheathe my knife. “I’m pretty sure I got rid of you already.”

  Lira shrugs, unoffended, and I consider what it would take to get under her skin. She waves off each and every comment like they’re barely an annoyance. As though she has far better things to do than worry about what me or any of my crew thinks.

  Lira studies me. “Why do you look like a prince all of a sudden?” she asks.

  “I am a prince,” I say, and move to pass her.

  Lira walks in stride with me. “Not usually.”

  “What would you know about being usual?”

  Lira’s face remains blank, and once again I fail to have any sort of impact. Then she rolls her eyes, as if in compromise. Here, I’ll act irritated. Just to please you, Your Highness.

  “You’re right,” Lira tells me.

  She pulls on the fabric of her dress. It’s an old raggedy thing that Madrid found shoved into a trunk belowdecks. A stowaway from a ransack of a pirate ship. I’m almost sure it was pretty once, just as I’m almost sure we’ve been using it to clean Madrid’s speargun for the past year. It was the best that I could do on short notice, unless Lira wanted to be clothed like a pirate, which I doubted.

  Still, looking at her now, the decent man in me feels a little ashamed.

  Lira stops walking to clutch the ends of her dress in both hands and then lower to the ground in a sardonic curtsy. I, too, stop, shooting her a scathing look, and she scoffs, which is the closest thing to a laugh I’ve heard from her.

  “Queen Galina isn’t big on pirates,” I tell her, as I turn away and begin walking again. Lira follows. “It’s not like I enjoy dressing this way.”

  I tug at my collar, which suddenly feels tight around my neck. There’s silence and Lira promptly stops walking. I turn to face her, a question in my eyes, but she just stares.

  “Here,” she says, and makes a grab for my knife.

  I flinch back and grab her wrist before she has the chance. Lira shoots me a disparaging look, like I’m even more of an idiot than she thought. I can feel her pulse strumming under my thumb before she slowly pulls out of my grasp.

  She reaches for my knife again, tentatively, and this time I let her. I can tell she’s enjoying the fact that I’m wary, as though it’s the greatest compliment I could give. When her hand touches the knife, there’s a spark in my chest, like a cog being pulled loose from a machine. I’ve always been connected to it in a way that I struggle to explain. When Lira touches it, I feel a sudden coldness passing from the blade through to my bones. I watch her with steady eyes, not risking a blink. She hesitates with the blade in her hands, as though considering all the possibilities it could bring. And then she takes a breath and swiftly cuts a line down my shirtsleeve.

  The blade grazes my skin but, miraculously, doesn’t draw blood.

  I snatch the knife back from her. “What do you think you’re doing?” I ask, surveying the tear below my shoulder.

  “Now you look like a pirate,” she says, and continues walking.

  Incredulous, I jog to catch up with her. I’m about to tell her that she’s going to have to pay for that, either with coin – which I doubt she has – or her life, but she turns to me and says, “I saw the Reoma Putoder.”

  “Did you make a wish?”

  “Maybe I stole one instead.”

  She says this with a biting smile, but as the sentence fades, she reaches up to toy with the seashell I returned. It looks unnaturally bright against her neck. She touches it contemplatively, and I recognize the gesture. It’s something I’ve done a thousand times over with my family crest ring. Whenever I think of the people I’ve left behind, or the burdens of a kingdom I’ll never feel ready to rule. If Lira’s story is true, then the necklace probably belonged to the siren who killed her family. A talisman to remind her of the revenge she must carry out.

  “I still want to come with you,” Lira says.

  I fight to keep walking with long, even strides. The Serendipity appears ahead, another building in a row of chess-piece houses. It’s stacked three stories higher than the others, with orange brick and a sign that hangs from a silhouette of the Love God. Outside, a group of women smoke cigars on thick oak benches, large jugs of mulled wine by their feet.

  We stop by the doorway and I raise an eyebrow. “To avenge your family?”

  “To stop this war once and for all.”

  “We’re at war?” I make a grab for the door. “How dramatic.”

  Lira snatches my torn shirtsleeve. “This needs to end,” she says.

  I flinch at the contact, resisting the urge to go for my knife. There’s never a time when I don’t have to be on guard.

  I roll my shoulder out of Lira’s grip and keep my voice low. “Don’t keep making the mistak
e of thinking you can touch me,” I tell her. “I’m the crown prince of Midas and captain of the world’s most deadly ship. If you do that again, a few nights in a cage will seem like a godsend.”

  “The Sea Queen took everything from me,” Lira spits, ignoring the threat. There’s a deep crease in the center of her brow, and when she shakes her head, it’s as though she is trying to shake the wrinkle out. “You can’t imagine the pain she’s caused. The Crystal of Keto is the only way to fix that.”

  She hisses the last part. The raw and scratchy way her voice pounces on the Midasan, like the words aren’t enough to convey what she’s feeling, makes my head swim. So much inside of her that she can’t get out. Thoughts and feelings there are never enough ways to show.

  I swallow and try to pull myself together. “You said you know things that nobody else does. Like what?”

  “Like the ritual you must perform if you want to free the Crystal of Keto from where it’s hidden,” she says. “I’d bet my life you don’t have the first clue about that.”

  I don’t let the surprise register on my face. Even Sakura didn’t know the first thing about the ritual we need to conduct, and it’s hidden in her kingdom. What are the chances a stowaway on my ship would be the one to have the last piece of my puzzle? There’s no way I’m that lucky.

  “You have a habit of using your life as collateral,” I say.

  “Does that mean you will take the deal?” Lira asks.

  I’d be a fool to take it and trust a stranger who claims to know the one secret I don’t. I haven’t survived this long by putting my life in the hands of my ex-prisoners. But to not take it would make me even more of a fool. Lira can speak Psáriin. She has experience hunting sirens. What if I leave her behind and then can’t even free the crystal once I have it? If I make it all that way only to drown in the final wave. The ritual is the only part of my quest where I don’t have an idea past winging it, and now Lira is offering up a plan of her own on a gold platter.

  If Kye were here, he’d tell me not to even think about considering it. Good riddance, he said when we left Lira to the streets of Eidýllio, sure neither of us would see her again. I’ve got enough to protect you from without adding deadly damsels to the list. And he wasn’t wrong. Kye had sworn to protect me – not just to my father, whose money he’d taken more for the heck of it than to seal any deal – but to me. To himself. And Kye has never taken that job lightly. But I have a job too, a mission, and without Lira’s help, I could leave the world open to the evils of the Sea Queen and her race forever.

  “Well?” Lira presses. “Are you going to take the deal?”

  “I told you I don’t take deals,” I say. “But maybe I’ll take your word instead.”

  I pull open the door to the Serendipity, and Lira pushes through ahead of me. I’m hit with the familiar smell of metal and ginger root, and there are a thousand memories that shift through my mind, each as dastardly as the next. For all the ideas a name can give, the Serendipity’s tells nothing of its true nature. It’s a den for gamblers and the kinds of men and women who never see the light of day. They stick to moonlight, far from the ornate colors of the town. They are shadows, with fingers made sticky by debt and wine strong enough to knock a person dead from a single jug.

  Some of my crew takes the large round table at the back and I smile. When I left to visit Queen Galina and strike a deal for my future, an odd wave of nausea crept up into my stomach. Like ocean sickness, if I could ever feel such a thing. Land sickness, maybe. Being separated from them, especially for such an important task, left me drained. Seeing them now, I’m revitalized.

  “Just so you know,” I say to Lira, “if you’re lying, I might kill you.”

  Lira tips her chin up, eyes defiant and too blue for me to look at her straight. At first I’m not sure if she’s going to say anything back, but then she licks her lips and I know it’s because she can taste the sweetness of whatever insult she’s about to throw.

  “Maybe,” she says as the light whimpers against her skin, “I might just kill you first.”

  21

  Elian

  FOG POOLS BY THE open window, like the whirls of cigar smoke. With it comes the smell of dawn as the pink-lipped sky barely stays tucked behind the line of ocean. Time is lost here, in a way that can’t be said for anywhere else in the kingdom, or the world. The Serendipity exists in its own realm, with the people who could never truly belong anywhere else. It deals in deals, and caters only to traders who could never set up stalls for their goods.

  Torik breaks into a low whistle as he deals another hand. His fingers glide over the cards, slick as butter, swiping them across the table in perfect piles by the stacks of red coins. When he’s done, Madrid fingers her deck blankly, like the cards themselves don’t matter, only what she does with them. Madrid is very good at adapting and never satisfied with playing the hand she’s dealt. I’d like to say I taught her that, but there are so many things Madrid was forced to learn before she chose the Saad. When you’re taken by a Kléftesis slave ship, you quickly learn that to survive, you can’t bend to the world; you have to make it bend to you.

  Unfortunately for Madrid, her tell is the fact that she has no tell. She’s never willing to end how she begins, and though that means I can’t guess her hand like I can most people’s, knowing that she won’t settle makes it easy to guess what she’s going to do next.

  Lira watches us predatorily, her eyes darting each time a hand moves or a coin falls from the top of a pile. I can tell that she sees the same things I do; whenever someone scratches their cheek or swallows a little too forcefully. Minute beads of sweat and twitching lips. The intonation when they ask for another jug of wine. She notices it all. Not only that, but she’s making notes of it. Filing their tells and ticks away, for whatever reason. Keeping them safe, maybe, to use again.

  When Kye shifts a row of red coins into the center table, I watch Lira. She quirks her lips a little to the right, and even though she can’t see his cards – there’s no possible way she could – she knows his hand. And she knows he’s bluffing.

  Lira catches my eye and when she sees me staring, her smile fades. I’m angry at myself for that. I never seem quick enough when it comes to watching these moments for long enough to pick them apart and see how she works. Why she works. What angle she’s working.

  I push my coins into the center of the table.

  “It’s too quiet in here,” Madrid says.

  She grabs the wine decanter from the table and fills her glass a little higher, until red sloshes over the brim. If Madrid is a good shooter, she’s an even better drinker. In all our years together, I’ve never so much as seen her lose balance after a night of heavy liquor.

  Madrid sips the wine carefully, savoring the vintage in a way none of us have ever thought to. It reminds me of the wine-tasting lessons my father forced me to attend as part of my royal training. Because nothing says King of Midas like knowing a fine wine from something distilled in a back-alley tavern.

  “Sing ‘Shore of Tides,’ ” Torik suggests dryly. “Maybe it’ll drown out the sunlight.”

  “If we’re voting,‘Little Rum Ditty’ will do. Really, anything with rum.”

  “You don’t get a vote,” Madrid tells Kye, then quirks an eyebrow at me. “Cap?”

  I shrug. “Sing whatever you want. Nothing will drown out the sound of me winning.”

  Madrid pokes her tongue out. “Lira?” she asks. “What do they sing where you’re from?”

  For some reason, Lira finds this amusing. “Nothing you would appreciate.”

  Madrid nods, as though it’s more a fact than an insult. “ ‘Siren Down Below,’ ” she says, looking at Kye with a reluctant smile. “It’s got rum in it.”

  “Suits me then.”

  Madrid throws herself back onto her chair. Her voice comes out in a loud refrain, words twisting and falling in her native Kléftesis. There’s something whimsical to the way she sings, and whether it’s the tu
ne or the endearing grin drawn on Kye’s face as she bellows the melody, I can’t help but tap my fingers against my knee in rhythm to her voice.

  Around the table, the crew follows on. They hum and murmur the parts they can’t remember, roaring out each mention of rum. Their voices dance into one another, colliding clumsily through verses. Each of them sings in the language of their kingdom. It brings a piece of their home to this misshapen crew, reminding me of a time, so long ago, when we weren’t together. When we were more strangers than family, belonging nowhere we traveled and never having the means to go somewhere we might.

  When they’ve sung through three choruses, I almost expect Lira to join in with a rendition from Polemistés, but she remains tight-lipped and curious. She eyes them with a tiny knot in her brow, as though she can’t quite understand the ritual.

  I lean toward her and keep my voice to a whisper. “When are you going to sing something?”

  She pushes me away. “Don’t get too close,” she says. “You absolutely stink.”

  “Of what?”

  “Anglers,” she says. “That oil they put on their hands and those stupid sweets they chew.”

  “Licorice,” I tell her with a smirk. “And you didn’t answer my question. Are you ever going to grace us with your voice?”

  “Believe me, I’d like nothing more.”

  I settle back in my chair and open my arms. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready for you to tell me everything you know about the Crystal of Keto.”

  It always comes back to that. We’ve been in Eidýllio for two days, and Lira has been relentless in her questions. Always wanting answers without ever revealing any herself. Someone, of course, has to go first. And I’ll admit that I’ve grown bored waiting for it to be her.

  “All I know is that it’s in Págos,” I tell her, wary of the glares Kye is sending my way. If it were up to him, the only way Lira would come aboard the Saad is if she were back in the cage.

  “It’s at the top of the Cloud Mountain,” I explain. “In a sacred ice palace.”