Namesake

by Kate Stradling

  Namesake

  Kate Stradling

  Copyright © 2017 by Kate Stradling

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Rachel and Jill,

  who wouldn’t let me have my

  mediocre way

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kate Stradling

  Chapter One

  I was a mistake.

  My mother always says this as a joke. “Oh, Jen was our little mistake, but she’s turned out well enough so far.” And then she squeezes my arm and shares a laugh with my dad, and I force a smile at whichever dignitary they’re schmoozing. They were once young and in love and faced with a difficult choice that threatened careers and ambitions alike. Owning up to it outright demonstrates their integrity and self-sacrifice.

  Except, from what I can tell, the only reason they didn’t terminate me was because they dithered over the decision until it was no longer legal to make.

  I arrived a month early, squalling and puny, probably over-eager to escape what was almost the stage of my execution. My parents decided to keep me after all, but that didn’t change my origins: I was a mistake.

  My sister, only fifteen months younger than me, was not a mistake. Mom always wanted a sibling, so once they were saddled with me, they decided to have another child right away. She came happy and perfect and they coddled her to a degree that I never remembered receiving, probably because I was too young to remember it when they transferred the behavior to her.

  They named us Anjeni and Aitana, from our country’s most famous legend, only I am called Jen and she is Tana, and I am common and she is extraordinary.

  Tana excels in everything: school, sports, music, and magic. I struggle with all of these, as though my body slogs through molasses while hers cuts like a knife through the air.

  “You could do it too if you’d try harder, Jen.”

  How many times have I heard those words? I have tried, but things always fizzle in a cloud of wasted effort. Magic in particular has never come to me. I can’t even light a spark on a candlewick, while Tana dances around the room with fireworks shooting from her fingertips and a thousand tapers lit in an instant.

  But really, who needs magic to light a candle when you live in an age of electricity? I can flip the switch on the wall with the best of them.

  My magic tutors hate when I mention this. They sigh and shake their heads, and then they utter that second dreaded phrase:

  “Why can’t you be more like your sister?”

  Believe me, I wish I could. Tana is confident and popular and loved. And I am simply the mistake.

  Pitiful, uncoordinated, untalented, ungraceful.

  I hate myself for it.

  Over time, that self-hatred has seeded bitterness and cynicism. At some point I stopped trying. I go through the motions, attend all my classes, and pull in average grades for everything except magic. Magic is supplementary, but my parents require me to take it, and I fail, year after year after year. I can recite the theories off by heart, but I have not even the slightest budding of abilities, and every class conducts the exams in the same order: practical first, followed by theory.

  Every year, I fail the practical. So every year, I scrawl pictures all over my theory exam. I carry a lighter in my pocket so I can flip it open when my tutors present their dreaded candle test. I sleep through magic classes, or stare out the window. I check out of life.

  My tutors have asked my parents—begged my parents—not to enroll me anymore.

  My dad always has the same response. “She tested positive. She’s just being stubborn.”

  I did test positive for magic, right after Tana started setting fire to her crib sheets by accident. In this day and age, they don’t test by making the suspected magician produce sparks. No, they scan the part of the brain that governs magic use. Tana’s tests were off the charts for a one-year-old. Mine were just below average, but I’m pretty sure it was a fluke that I registered at all. False positives have occurred.

  Really, if anyone is stubborn, it’s my parents. They aren’t worried about me so much as their own reputations. Magic skipped over both of them, so it would look better to have two daughters as magicians instead of only one—even if that one is the wondrous Tana.

  “Jen, I know you can do this.” My latest tutor, Miss Corlan, regards me with steady eyes. I can practically read her thoughts: she’s going to crack this tough nut. She’s going to get through to the recalcitrant elder daughter of Rayvi and Jerika Sigourna. She has the patience, the knowledge, the compassion to coax me from my shell.

  Amateur.

  “I can’t. Some people can’t, you know.”

  “You just don’t want to.”

  The accusation strikes a nerve. “I’m not my sister. What will it take to get that through everyone’s stupid head? I’m not Tana.”

  Her mouth twists into a practiced smile. “But you’re so like her. You have the same black eyes, the same profile, the same long, dark hair. You two are more alike than you want to admit. If you would only recognize your similarities, maybe you could finally overcome this mental block of yours. You may pretend you don’t care, but I can see as plain as day how much you want to be like her.”

  Five years ago she may have been right. Five years ago, I still held out hope. I don’t have any left, though, and being told—again—that my failures are somehow my own fault rankles me in a way that only Tana has ever accomplished. I can’t change my profile or the color of my eyes, so instead, I go home and hack my hair off to the nape of my neck. Then I bleach it blond just because I can.

  Only I fail at that, too. When the water rinses away all the peroxide and the steam on the mirror clears up, I am left staring at a fiery orange mess.

  Chapter Two

  Mom struggles to breathe, her throat tight, her eyes huge and fixed on my head. I hold it high despite the butcher-job I’ve accomplished.

  “What... have... you... done?” She forces the words through gritted teeth, making a valiant endeavor to keep her temper under control. She determined long ago not to let my antics or failures get to her, but this one really pushes the limit.

  Next to her, Perfect Tana struggles over whether to gawk or jeer. “Jen, what were you thinking?”

  “Did I have to be thinking something?” I round on the stair post, headed for the front door.

  Mom lunges. “No!” Her hand clamps around my arm and she drags me back. She holds me fast as she punches
in a number on her phone—her stylist, Renado, whom she keeps on speed dial. He answers, and she gibbers into the receiver. “I’m so sorry to call you on such short notice, but it’s an emergency. Yes, come to the house, as soon as you possibly can.

  “Thank the stars!” she cries as she hangs up, and she finally releases her hold. “He’ll be here in half an hour. Go to your room until then, Jen, and if you sneak out, you’ll be grounded until you’re thirty-five. Tana, make sure she goes.”

  “I don’t need her help getting back up the stairs,” I sneer. Tana, the insufferable brat, follows me anyway.

  When we’re out of earshot, she hisses, “Kind of a drastic cry for attention, don’t you think, Anjeni?”

  “Shut it, golden child,” I say. Then I close my bedroom door in her face.

  The truth is, Tana is good and kind and perfect to everyone but me. When we are alone, she can be downright nasty, and I’m nasty back to her. For as long as I can remember, she has shoved her accomplishments in my face and taken every opportunity to needle me on my failures. In front of our parents she affects loving concern, but her words always twist the knife deeper.

  “I wish that Jen could work a spark. It would be so much fun if we were both magicians, instead of me being the only one.” It sounds like sisterly love, but the way she speaks and the sly glances she slides my direction testify of how much she relishes her advantage over me.

  Even if I do spark something someday, I will never be her equal, and that will only give her more cause to gloat.

  I stew in my room, my fingers toying with my newly shortened hair. The garish orange is growing on me. I mean, I could always run away and join a troupe of clowns. I’d fit right in. By the time my mother’s knock taps on the door, I’ve nearly convinced myself to climb out the window and have a go at it.

  “Oh, dear,” Renado says from behind her. His shrewd eyes survey the mess. “Come to the bathroom. I’ll set it to rights in no time at all.”

  “Back to its original color,” my mother says. “There’s nothing to be done about the length, but that orange has got to go. You can use Tana’s hair as a reference.”

  My sister is in the hall, a triumphant smirk on her lips. Renado must see the mutinous expression that flashes across my face—or maybe it’s professional pride that prompts him to say, “I think I can manage the color well enough. Come on, Little Anjeni.”

  Sullenly I follow him. He shuts the bathroom door tight and pulls the necessary supplies from his well-stocked bag. “Caught in the throes of teen angst?”

  “I just got tired of long hair,” I say.

  “Sure you did. Why bleach it, then?”

  I speak not a word to this, my nose high in the air.

  He ignores my attitude and begins mixing dyes. His voice turns pensive. “You know, I have an older brother. People used to compare us all the time, until I finally snapped and dyed my hair blue. I thought it would help, but it didn’t. It was only a cosmetic change, and comparisons tend to run a lot deeper.”

  He’s trying to relate to me. How cute.

  “Is your brother better than you in every little thing?” I ask, sarcasm thick on my voice. “Did you fall short in every single comparison?”

  Renado chuckles. “No. But I did eventually learn that the comparisons bothered him as much as they bothered me.”

  “Tana likes it,” I say, my words clipped. “She always comes out smelling like roses.”

  Silence settles between us. He works the solution through my hair with expert fingers, only the slight rustling of his gloves to interrupt my surly thoughts. It’s hard to stay surly with someone massaging my scalp, but I do my very best. At long last he sculpts the hair together and sits back to let the dye process.

  “You know, it can’t be easy for your sister either,” he tells me. I glare, but he remains undeterred. “The goddess Anjeni and the mere mortal Aitana? Not much comparison between those two.”

  “That’s only a legend,” I say. “It has nothing to do with real life.”

  “It’s the founding of our country. The goddess Anjeni walked through the Eternity Gate and defeated a shadow-army. She restored magic to our people. She’s a hero: everyone loves her.”

  My voice turns sarcastically sweet. “Everyone except Demetrios. He ran away with Aitana, remember?”

  “And everyone hates Aitana for it, remember?” Renado replies, answering my sass in kind. “Face it, Little Jen. Your parents gave Tana the short shrift where names are concerned.”

  “They didn’t do me much of a favor either. With a namesake like mine, I was bound to fail. Besides, Anjeni’s pathetic enough in her own right. For everything she accomplished, to fall in love with a philanderer? And then, after he leaves, she just disappears back through the Eternity Gate, broken-hearted? What a legacy.”

  He smiles, though. “It’s romantic and poetic. She’s supposed to come back someday in a flash of glory, once her heart mends. No, it’s definitely better to be named after her. Your sister probably thinks so too. The Aitana of legends was selfish and self-serving.”

  “Well, the Aitana of today is perfect in every possible way as far as everyone’s concerned.”

  He pats my knee and winks. “Except for her namesake. You win that comparison any day of the week.”

  Chapter Three

  The short hair surprisingly suits me. Renado has smoothed out my jagged cut and given it a sharp angle to frame my face. He’s cut me some bangs, too. The dark color matches Tana’s to a shade, but it seems less offensive in its new, sleek style.

  Mom still grounds me, of course. “Our family has a reputation to uphold, Jen. What would the media say about your father if you had appeared in public with that mangled head of hair?”

  “They probably would have pitied him having to deal with a moody teenaged daughter. I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of girls experiment with their looks.”

  The vein just above her right eyebrow pulses. “Lots of girls are not the president’s daughter, Anjeni.”

  And there lies the crux of the matter. Everything in our family life revolves around my father’s political career. He is not the youngest president our country has ever had, but in its seven-hundred-year history, precious few leaders have been younger. The very youngest was also the very first: Etricos, the older brother of the inconstant Demetrios who broke the goddess Anjeni’s heart. We have relics of his life preserved in the National Archives, some of the scant proof that the legends are more than just mere stories. Etricos shouldered the unenviable task of leading the fragile nation, first through its fight for freedom from the armies of darkness that sought to destroy it, and then afterward as it established its foothold upon the world.

  Dad, twenty or more generations removed, still claims the same purpose as that first leader: to protect and to serve the nation of Helenia. He rose to the position when I was fourteen and Tana twelve, and from then on, our whole family has lived life under a magnifying glass. I hate politics. I hate the façade required to keep the people happy. Someone judging my father based on me cutting and bleaching my hair is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

  But that is simply the way of the world. Good thing the garish orange is gone, right?

  I’m still in my room when my dad comes home. The front door opens and shuts downstairs. I’m guessing Mom intercepts him in the entryway, because two minutes later he taps on my door.

  “Jen, I want curry tonight. Want to come with me?”

  I open the door and spear him with a skeptical glare. Everyone in my family, myself excepted, hates spicy food. Mom and Tana avoid it like poison. Dad eats it only in its mildest forms, and only because curry is a national, ancestral dish. When he wants curry, it means that he wants to garner favor with either the media or with me.

  I can eat spicy foods like a true champion. The spicier, the better. It’s my one strength.

  “Cute hair,” he says with a half-cocked smile. “It looks good on you.”

 
“I’m grounded for three weeks,” I reply.

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to eat. Come on.”

  I follow him, curious about what lecture he’ll pitch my way, more curious about how much effort he intends to expend on my behalf. He pauses at the bottom of the stairs to poke his head into the living room, where Mom and Tana both are.

  “I’m taking Jen out for dinner. Do you want us to bring you anything back?”

  Mom declines. Tana looks as though someone has shoved a spoonful of fish oil into her mouth. I can’t exactly blame her: my act of rebellion has earned me special treatment. Even I expected at best a disappointed shake of the head, a fatherly pat on the shoulder, and an admonition not to drive my mother crazy.

  Instead, here Dad is, phoning a restaurant for reservations and sending part of his security attachment ahead. He glances my way, assessing my clothes to make sure they’re suitable for a public outing. Casual as they are, they pass inspection. He discards his tie and unbuttons his collar, and off we go into the city.

  “Shouldn’t we just order takeout?” I ask, suddenly nervous. Eating at the restaurant means onlookers and photographs and possibly a blurb in the news.

  “Can’t let the new haircut go to waste,” he says.

  Realization dawns. “Oh. I’m being punished.” He knows I hate public attention. He knows I had to be in a foul mood to have hacked off my hair. He knows I’ll have to put on a happy face for his sake.