Tandem (35 page)

I sighed and lay back on the bed, feeling very weary. As I shifted my back, I heard the familiar crumple of paper and, reaching behind, found that someone had laid a more traditional note on the pillows for me to find.

Was looking but couldn’t find you. I’m in the garden, would love some company if you’re not busy.

—Callum

I walked onto the terrace and scanned the gardens; Callum was sitting on a low bench, sketching in the black notebook he always carried. There was something comforting about seeing him there, hunched over and absorbed in his task. I liked that I didn’t have to perform for him the way I had to perform for the queen, and that I didn’t have to answer to him the way I did with Thomas and Gloria. For better or for worse, I could be myself with Callum, or what was passing for myself these days, even if he didn’t know who that was.

I called his name to get him to look up; I waved, and he waved back. I held up a handful of fingers and he nodded, then I went back inside, taking a brief moment to fix myself up before heading out to meet Callum among the roses.

“Hey,” I said as I approached. Callum glanced up at me and smiled.

“Hey yourself.”

I nodded at the agents who were hovering within earshot; they shuffled off to stand in the shadows and give us our privacy.

I joined Callum on his bench. “What are you drawing?” I asked, leaning over to take a look. “Oh,” I said in surprise. “It’s a window?”

To be fair, it wasn’t just any window. The drawing was a simple black-and-white charcoal sketch, but it was obvious from the elaborate design that the original was stained glass. Callum had done all sorts of intricate shading to register the subtle differences in color.

He pointed ahead with the tip of his pencil. “It’s that window.”

We were seated about ten feet away from one of the Castle’s interior brick walls and, indeed, the window Callum was putting on paper was directly opposite us. At first, I thought it was abstract, just a hundred or so different colored pieces in various shapes and sizes, but as I stared at it a more deliberate picture emerged.

“It’s the Seal of the Commonwealth,” I told him. I recognized it from the marble floor of the Castle’s grand entrance, in which a large bronze replica of the Seal was embedded. It showed an eagle, legs and wings outstretched, holding a rowan leaf in one talon and a bundle of arrows in the other. The shield over the great bird’s torso depicted a gold crown against an azure blue backing, crested by a golden sun with twenty-one rays. The sun itself was surrounded by an undulating pale green ribbon—I assumed it represented the aurora for which the planet was named. A rattlesnake wound its way around the seal’s edge, making it a perfect circle. The eagle clutched a scroll in its mouth upon which the motto of the Commonwealth was inscribed:
Sic tyranno liberi sumus
.

Thus we are free from the tyrant.

“Yup,” Callum said. “I’m not doing it much justice like this, but in black and white it’s easier to see the design.” He handed me the sketchbook. He wasn’t wrong. Though the stained glass was beautiful, the Seal popped so much better without the distraction of color and the glare of the setting sun. Still, it wasn’t quite right without those things. The starkness of the charcoal rendering gave the image a sinister quality, which was perhaps what Callum, until very recently an enemy of the Commonwealth, had intended.

“You’re a really good artist,” I told him. “Where did you learn to draw like that?”

“You can learn to do anything well with a lot of free time. I might not have any friends, but I do have a bunch of useless talents.”

“They’re not useless,” I argued. “They’re impressive.”

“Not really.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Do you want to know why I’m sketching this window?”

“Because it’s beautiful?”

“No. It’s because windows are all I draw.” He looked away, embarrassed by the admission, though I couldn’t quite see why. “Windows, and doors. See?” He flipped through the notebook, showing page after page of different kinds of windows and doors. Some of them were from the Castle, sketches he’d made in the short time since his arrival, and then further back, to renderings of portals and entryways I’d never seen before. They were intricate and flawless, masterfully shaded to reflect a certain time of day or amount of lighting in the room. I was enamored of his gift, even if his chosen subject was unorthodox.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just like the way they look.” His hand rested on the page, and I moved it to see what he was trying to hide. The drawing was very plain, just a steel doorframe. The strangest thing about it was that the space outside the frame was shaded, but the inside of the frame was blank, the cream color of the paper. The door was emitting a faint glow.

“Where did you see this one?”

He shrugged. “Nowhere. At least, I don’t think so. Sometimes I just make them up.”

“What is it, then?” Something about the door bothered me. It gave me the same creepy feeling as the dark, colorless Seal, like it was something I should be afraid of.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I try not to question it.”

“Well, I’m still impressed.” I smiled. “Even if you do only draw windows.”

“And doors—don’t forget doors.”

The crunch of gravel beneath a delicate stiletto heel attracted our attention. Gloria was approaching.

“The concert,” Callum muttered, staring at the ground. I was beginning to suspect he didn’t like crowds. This didn’t surprise me much; he’d been raised in near-solitude, always shielded from the noise and activity of the common people. Public places were bound to make him uncomfortable.

“Your Highnesses, I’m so sorry, but I have to interrupt. Juliana, you need to get ready for the concert, and your valet is waiting for you upstairs, Prince Callum.” Gloria eyed us both sternly, as if she was a teacher and we were pupils who had forgotten our homework. “I must insist that you head back inside.”

“We’re right behind you,” I told her. As I rose from the bench, Callum ripped the sketch of the mysterious doorway out of his notebook.

“Here,” he said, thrusting it into my hand. “That’s for you.”

“Oh, Callum, I—” It would have been rude to refuse it, but all the same, I didn’t want it. The longer I looked at it, the more unnerving it was.

“I was thinking of you when I drew it,” he confessed. “I was thinking about leaving home, and meeting you, and our future, and I … It’s an allegory. Don’t you see? A doorway into the unknown.”

Well, that explains it,
I thought. Of course I found the drawing unsettling—that door, with its unseen destination, was exactly what I saw when I pictured my own future.

I smiled down at him, knowing what he needed to hear. “I’m looking forward to finding out what’s behind that door.”

“Me too,” he said, with a sincerity that broke my heart. “Me too.”

THOMAS IN THE RAMBLES

“This whole thing is a goddamn security nightmare,” Agent Bedford griped, coming up to join Thomas on the stage, behind the backdrop. “I hate open-air events.” He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “What’s up with you, Mayhew? What’re you looking at?”

“Just confirming a position on the Sparrow,” he said. He could see Sasha on the enormous North Terrace, surrounded by the guests who’d come for the concert, with Callum at her side. He watched the Farnham prince put a hand on her shoulder and whisper in her ear. She nodded and turned to smile at Callum, her lips coming close to brushing against his cheek. Thomas couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. She wore an elaborate headpiece of delicate chains studded with silver thorns that wound their way over the crown of her head, into her plaited hair, and around her neck. It reminded him of her captivity, but she still looked resplendent in it. Sasha and Callum had made their first public appearance together on the Grand Balcony an hour earlier, to the wild cheers of thousands of onlookers and well-wishers. Not everyone in the UCC was enamored of the royal family, but there were plenty who still believed in the power and dignity of the monarchy, and they were overjoyed to see the beautiful couple. And they did look perfect together; even Thomas couldn’t deny that.

Thomas closed his eyes and tried to dispel the pangs of guilt and longing that sprung up in him every time he saw Sasha, but he was only moderately successful.
You’re a KES agent,
he scolded himself.
Act like it
. All this emotional turmoil was unbecoming of his position, but he couldn’t quite banish it. He wasn’t just a name and rank; he was a person, too, and it was no longer possible for him to behave like he wasn’t.

Since his argument with Sasha a few hours before, all he could think about was her and Juliana and Lucas. He was consumed by confusion and questions and anger, which he’d unfairly taken out on Sasha. She was only trying to help, even if she was wrong. There was no way that what she’d said to him could be true. It was impossible. He knew his brother, and while Lucas had certainly been acting strangely the past few months, Thomas was sure it was because he was attempting to regain their father’s favor, to rise up in the KES the way Thomas had. Otherwise, why would the General have consented to allow Lucas to take the KES Trials this fall? Such a thing almost never happened. There was one way into active KES service and that was through the KES Academy, from which Lucas had been rejected three times—the maximum amount—before giving up. According to KES rules he was ineligible to apply again. That was why he was being so diffident and mysterious; he thought Thomas would resent him for trying to better his situation.

And Juliana—well, it wasn’t even worth considering Sasha’s claims about her. Perhaps it had been hasty of him to imply that Sasha had developed a romantic attachment to him, that she was jealous, but it was the only conclusion he could reasonably come to. Sasha didn’t know Juliana; he did. He knew her better than probably anyone else alive. She’d confided in him. She trusted him with her life. If she’d wanted out, she would’ve come to him. At least, he thought she would. But even if she had, what would he have said to her? What would he have done?

Still, he felt terrible about how he’d treated Sasha. She hadn’t asked for her visions, and she definitely hadn’t asked to be brought to Aurora to fill in for Juliana.
He
had done that to her. And it had been clear from the tentative way she’d broken her news to him this evening that she was trying to shield him from the awful truths she thought she possessed. In return he’d accused her, insulted her, hurt her deeply. He’d seen it all on her face, but he’d kept going, because he was afraid. He wasn’t used to feeling that way. He’d been surprised by it and hadn’t had time to recalibrate, to push it down and deny its hold over him. Sasha would never trust him again. He’d ruined everything that was forming between them, and it was too late to do anything about it.

After leaving Sasha close to tears in the library, Thomas had returned to KES command central, where Captain Fawley, his superior when he was on Protective Service detail, was asking for volunteers to beef up security at the concert.

“I’ll do it,” Thomas had said, so eager he practically tripped over the words.

“You sure?” Fawley had asked. “Thought you might want to stick close to the Sparrow.”

He’d shrugged. “Social event. She’s not going to want the hired help standing over her the whole night.” He felt guilty abandoning Sasha, fully aware that he was doing it only to get away from her and everything she made him feel, but it wasn’t as if she would be unprotected. There was an army of KES agents patrolling the North Terrace, where the cocktail hour was being held, and when the concert began she would be sitting in the front row, easily within range of his stage assignment.

He’d spent all late afternoon watching as Gloria’s team set up the chairs and prepared the terrace for the pre-concert event. He’d also gotten a front row seat as a pair of sweaty movers in jeans and T-shirts unloaded the van the Columbia City Orchestra had sent over containing all the instruments and music stands for the night’s performance. Bedford had been with him. At some point they were standing near the van as one of the movers struggled to unload a tuba case with a violin case already in hand.

“Can I get a little help here?” the mover asked.

Bedford had shot Thomas a look of disbelief. “He can’t seriously be talking to us, right?” He turned back to the guy. “We’re KES, man. We’ve got our own jobs to do.”

“Come on!” the guy grunted. “There’s only two of us and we’re running late.”

“Not our problem,” Bedford scoffed.

“I’ll help you,” Thomas offered, picking up the tuba case. “Where do you want it?”

“Mayhew, what the hell are you doing?” Bedford demanded.

“Just trying to be useful,” he said, grateful for the opportunity to do something active. Physical activity helped keep his roaming mind in check. With his help, the movers got everything unloaded in under an hour.

But now that the event was about to start, Thomas’s entire being was supposed to be focused on watching out for possible Libertas activity. Thomas glanced around the backdrop and saw that Sasha and Callum were making their way to the front row, which meant everyone else would start filing in soon. He thought he saw Sasha notice him, but he pulled his head back in so quickly he couldn’t be sure.