I should just shut up, but I don’t. I feel anger as I understand what I say for the first time. “My mother told me the High Synod gave him the right to own Bone, but what right did they have to give it? Because they are fighters? A bully fights people who are weaker than him. And cowards do whatever stronger people tell them to. My father is both.”
I repeat words my mother has spoken aloud a hundred times, but I’ve never connected them like this before. My father stares hot daggers.
“And so are you, Grand Patriarch,” I add.
The crowd gasps. Alberich and his armored guards tighten their grips on their swords and pikes.
“A bully and a coward, Little Leontes?” Old Wusong’s voice is so calm I know there is deadly anger in it. The whole court is watching—my taunting sister, my imperious father, the boy with the red hair, the old man on the throne, and the silvery camglobes that hover around my face like buzzing insects. A lump wells in my throat so big I can barely swallow. Instead, I shrug with a casualness I do not feel.
“And what are you, young Leontes, that you can speak these words to me, the emperor of Tao?”
He is about to end me with a word.
“You’re right. I’m nobody,” I say quietly. “But what I’ve said is the truth.”
His eyes search me, looking for something deep inside. I don’t know what. He turns to my father after a long beat. “This is the one you want to discard?”
Discard?
“You think he’s too weak for the patricide?” Old Wusong croaks. “He’s impudent but undeniably brave. Though I know how fathers see only what they wish to see. I know that all too well.”
He turns back to me, and I hear his bones creak. “Little Leontes, you have been honest with me. I’ll be honest with you. It is sometimes necessary when you’re a leader and a man to hurt others. Other times it is necessary to not risk your own life, to stay alive. Especially when you are a Patriarch who must choose a man for his daughter. Your bravery has convinced me this day.”
He has a sly look in his eye. This is all some sort of game, I realize. Old Wusong snaps his fingers. A small figure, robed and veiled, is trotted out from behind his throne. She’s attended by two older women, faces painted, dressed in kimonos. Old Wusong reaches over and lifts the veil from the little figure. “My daughter, Miranda Wusong,” he pronounces.
The girl is excessively plain. Her eyes are passive. My initial feeling upon seeing her is discomfort.
“Do you like your betrothed, Little Leontes?” Old Wusong asks. He grins, black-toothed.
He said I’ll marry his daughter? The camglobes hover close to my face.
My father’s knuckles go white as he clenches his fists. The muscles in his jaw twitch. The emperor’s game is for my father, and I’m caught in the middle, I suddenly understand. This was not supposed to happen, but something I said changed things. Somehow, my words allowed the emperor to win and my father to lose.
I smile and try to respond politely. “I don’t even know her, Grand Patriarch.”
“True, Little Leontes. In our world, though, one does not always have that luxury.”
The hall breaks into a collective “ah,” acknowledging the wisdom of the old man. I think they’re just happy the danger seems to have dissipated.
“You see why it was necessary that you and I got to know each other?” he asks.
He made me stand here and answer his questions because I’m to marry his daughter? I feel humiliated, but I nod because an adult is telling me I should understand.
Old Wusong’s wispy eyebrows arc in suspicion. “Are you being honest now, Little Leontes?”
“No, I’m being like my sister,” I respond. “Clever.”
Old Wusong breaks into a crooked smile. “No, you’re being something quite different, Edmon.” The name sounds alien on his withered lips, but it’s the first acknowledgment that I’m not just my father’s son. I’m my own person. “You’re being unpredictable. Such a quality, if it doesn’t kill you, perhaps will save your life one day.”
Then he casually waves my mother and me away as if we are mere gnats. My turn has ended. Mother and I step back into line with the rest of the Leontes coterie. She grips my shoulder, and I feel her fear. The image of the fiery Pavaka cauldrons flashes in my mind.
I catch sight of the red-haired boy from across the room. He tilts his head at me and nods. It’s a gesture of respect, I think. Have I made a friend this day or an enemy? I wonder.
The old emperor raises his arms to address the crowd. “Today we will welcome a future Patriarch to the Balance. So, I can think of no more fitting occasion to make this announcement. Dr. Jou . . .”
He gestures to a man dressed in the green and gold colors of House Wusong. His hair is clipped short, and he wears spectacles on an aquiline nose over a pencil-thin mustache. “People of Tao!” Dr. Jou begins. “For the last nine years, the Scientific Institute of House Wusong has monitored the Fracture Point that repositioned itself and opened much closer to the planet . . .”
“Yes, yes.” The old man on the throne waves his hand impatiently. “Get on with it, Doctor.”
The scientist tries to regain his composure. “The institute has the pleasure to announce that this Fracture Point, well within our solar system’s gravity, will now provide a new, direct route to a planetary system known as Lyria.”
Lyria! A new planet? No, a whole planetary system.
“Lyria.” It sounds strange as I whisper the word.
Old Wusong stamps his cane, and the science doctor steps into the background. “As a gesture of good faith between our world and our new interstellar neighbor,” the emperor croaks, “House Wusong has officially invited emissaries from Lyria to this sacred ceremony. The first off-worlders to set foot on Tao in the almost seventy years since my predecessor expelled all outsiders.”
The crowd murmurs. Several men, strangely dressed, step from the throng. They look ragtag in their flight suits and worn leathers. An older man with dark skin like a Daysider and strange reddish hair bows before the Grand Patriarch. “Old Wusong, I’m Captain Ollie Rollinson, of the UFP ship James Bentley,” he says in a warm, gravelly voice.
He gestures to the men at his sides. “My first officer, Mr. Stephen Sanctun.” The captain indicates a lanky man with a scraggly beard, dressed in a hodgepodge of color. A tall black hat stands upon his head. He removes it, revealing a bald pate framed by a frazzled horseshoe of sandy hair.
I stare intently. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a true bald man before. Baldness was bred out of the Tao gene pool long ago.
“And his son.” The captain points to a lanky, pimply-faced teenager. His arms and legs look way too long for his body in the knee-length coat he wears.
“We bring news from Lyria and from Elia Lazarus of Lazarus Industries regarding a unique trading opportunity.” Rollinson smiles.
They look strange, unkempt and bedraggled, but also so free. I long for that feeling in this moment.
Old Wusong nods. “Welcome, and thank you for the gifts you’ve brought us. After today’s festivities, we’ll most gladly receive the news of our newest friend and business partner.”