Tandem (31 page)

I couldn’t help but feel a burning sense of betrayal. Juliana was just as responsible for my presence in Aurora as anyone else. And not only that, but she’d turned her back on her country, abandoning her family and her responsibilities in pursuit of … what, exactly? What could Libertas possibly give her that was worth leaving behind the only life she’d ever known? I wished the tether allowed me to see into her private mind as well as her surroundings, but I couldn’t hear her thoughts, only what she said and what was said to her. It wasn’t enough. There was so much more I needed to know.

I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get away. The longer I stayed in Aurora, the more I saw how lonely and trapped she must have felt. And with the arranged marriage to Callum, the fate of two countries weighing on her shoulders, maybe it wasn’t so difficult to understand why she had done what she’d done. If it had been me, would I have done the same?

Thomas would be horrified when he found out. I could tell that he put a lot of faith in her, and even though I hated to admit it to myself, I was jealous of that faith. His loyalties, too, lay with Juliana, and he wanted her back as soon as possible.
Of course he does,
I told myself. It was childish for me to expect him to prefer me. But I didn’t like being a placeholder, a poor substitute for someone else. It made me feel cheap and used and extraneous. More than ever, I wished that I could return to my normal life. At least there, I could be who I was. At least at home, I had people who loved me instead of people who loved the person they thought that I was. I was trying not to think of Granddad, of Gina, because I knew that if I started I would never be able to stop, that I would be consumed with missing them. But it was so hard, and I was so tired. I just wanted this all to be over.

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Thomas about Juliana—not just yet. My heart swelled with tenderness for him, so strong that it was almost overwhelming, and I searched in vain for something to say to him.

“How’s your neck?” I settled on at last.

“What?” He glanced up in surprise. “Oh, fine. How’s your hand?”

I was cradling my right hand gingerly in my left. “A little sore,” I admitted.

He laughed. “Well, that’s normal. You’ve never punched anyone before, have you?”

I shook my head. “Not really my thing.”

“For a novice, you’ve got one hell of a right cross,” Thomas told me. His eyes wandered to the foot of the bed, and then he raised them to mine in a silent question. I nodded and he took a seat, careful not to rumple the covers. “Otherwise, you’re okay?”

“I guess.” At least I’d stopped shaking, which was a marked improvement.

“It was Dr. Moss’s idea,” he told me. “I didn’t want to do it. I was so afraid I’d lose my hold.”

“So was I,” I told him. “But you didn’t.”

“No,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “I didn’t. Thank God.”

“I don’t know that God had very much to do with it.”

“You don’t believe in God?” Thomas asked.

“Not really,” I said. “I was raised agnostic.”

He nodded. “Me too. But I’ve always thought that there had to be something out there. Something bigger than this.” He gave me a wry smile. “Maybe it’s just like Mossie said. There’s
apeiron
—that source of all perfection—and then there’s us. All our different versions, in every possible universe. And that’s it.”

“It’s as good a theory as any,” I mused. I didn’t know anything about what my parents may or may not have believed, but I’d always found it interesting how Granddad talked about the universe, like it was a living, breathing organism full of intention. Even Thomas had done that:
The universes want to be equal,
he’d said. It reminded me of that phrase Mr. Early had written on the board the first day of my Western philosophy class:
Kata to chreon
. But even if Thomas and Granddad and the ancient Greeks were right, it didn’t mean the universes cared at all about us as individuals. At the end of the day, one analog was just as good as another. And if that was true, then what did it matter who we actually were?

“The royals used to think they were chosen by God,” Thomas said. A private smile crept over his face. “Juli used to say that if that was true, they were being punished, not rewarded.”

“I’m going to go ahead and agree with her.” I stared at Thomas; when I told him that Juliana had left the Castle and gone with Libertas of her own free will, he’d be shocked and hurt—but would he be
surprised
? “You’re close, aren’t you? You and Juliana?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but I interrupted him. “I know, I know, you say that you’re not allowed to have relationships with your ‘assignment.’ But you’re not totally ambivalent to me, I don’t think.”

He hesitated. “No,” he said finally, if abstractly. “I’m not.”

“And you’ve only known me a little while,” I pointed out. “You were her bodyguard for a year before she … disappeared. You can’t tell me you don’t care about her.”

“Of course I care about her,” he confessed. “I can’t help it. We’re all alone together, she and I. I mean, we’re never actually alone, at least not very often. But we’re so young compared to everyone else. And we’re both, you know …”

“Lonely,” I supplied. It was something that I’d recognized in them—Thomas just from spending time with him, and Juliana in my visions. I recognized it because I felt it, too, sometimes. I figured it was the residual effect of being parentless. Granddad had never neglected me, but as long as I did well in school and didn’t have any tattoos, he pretty much stayed out of my business. Now that I was older, I appreciated the independence, but when I was growing up I wanted so badly for someone to take more than a passing interest in the day to day of my life, to prove that they loved me by asking questions and keeping track of where I was. Maybe that was why I felt the way I did about Thomas; his mere presence, his investment in what was happening to me, made me feel less alone.

He shrugged. “Something like that. It’s complicated.”

“Are you in love with her?” It was an inappropriate, much too personal question, but I had to know.

“I—” The door chime stopped him, and he looked sheepishly grateful for it. His KES mask descended and I couldn’t even divine from his expression what he had been about to say. “That’s probably Gloria. I wouldn’t tell her about …” His eyes wandered up to the ceiling. “If I were you.”

“Oh believe me, I don’t want her to know any more than you do,” I said. I arranged my hands in a more normal way, so as not to draw Gloria’s hawk-eyed attention.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she bustled in, with Louisa and Rochelle at her heels. “My mobie’s been ringing off the hook with interview requests from reporters, the florist lost their permit to import tropical plants, and—” She paused, her eyes darting back and forth between Thomas and me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, suspicious. “You two seem very serious.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I told her, climbing off the bed.

“No,” she corrected herself. “Not serious.
Guilty
.”

“Don’t we have a schedule to keep?” I asked pointedly, inclining my head in the direction of Juliana’s aestheticians. Even if I was going to tell her what had happened on the roof of the Tower, I wouldn’t have done so in front of them. She caught the hint and backed down.

“Yes, always.” She sighed. “Thomas, get out.”

“I was just leaving,” he said.

“Okay,” Gloria said when he was gone, examining the state of me. I wasn’t as disheveled as I had been when Thomas and I first arrived at Juliana’s bedroom; I’d tidied myself up as much as possible, mostly so that I didn’t tip Gloria off. I hadn’t done as good of a job as I thought, because she seemed exasperated by my appearance. “Where do I even begin?”

Dinner was a strange, tense affair. The queen was outwardly polite, to both Callum and me, but there was something dark and bitter lurking behind every word she spoke. I was used to the queen’s barbed comments by this point; what bothered me was her undisguised resentment of Callum’s presence. He’d done nothing to deserve her scorn except be born in a country she despised; even his presence in the Castle was outside of his control. I felt sorry for Callum, and strangely embarrassed. This wasn’t the way to welcome a guest, even a foreign one from an enemy country. After all, they’d invited him in; they’d even handed over their princess for him to marry. The least the queen could do was be civil over a meal.

Callum looked miserable and homesick, but he made a valiant attempt to win the queen’s approval nonetheless. I was glad when dinner was over and we could escape—so glad, in fact, that it wasn’t until Callum and I were alone in the White Parlor with mugs of warm tea in our hands that I realized I had no idea what to say to him.

Luckily, I wasn’t the only one. Callum seemed similarly tongue-tied. We were sitting about three miles apart from each other on different sofas, sipping at our tea, the silence punctuated by a ridiculous round robin of polite, throat-clearing coughs and nervous laughter. Callum smiled at me shyly, and I smiled back. I was starting to understand how deep the animosity between Farnham and the UCC went, because there was no other reason why anyone could dislike Callum. Even Thomas, who was usually so even tempered about other people, had warned me to be wary of the Farnham prince, but by all appearances he was just a teenage boy like any other, albeit a little bashful and self-conscious. Admittedly, he didn’t seem like the sort of guy Juliana would’ve chosen for herself. I could see why, outside of the fact that she was being forced to marry him for political reasons, she wouldn’t have particularly appreciated the match.

“I’m sorry about dinner,” I said, after the awkwardness had gone on so long I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m afraid my stepmother and I don’t really get along.”

“I’ve heard that,” Callum said. He seemed grateful for my attempt at conversation and latched on to it with enthusiasm. “She doesn’t seem to like me much, either.”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

Callum laughed and I relaxed. He seemed determined to like me, which was going to make my job a lot easier. “You don’t have to be diplomatic with me, Juliana. I get it. My mother would hate you, too. The feud is in our blood.”

Well, it wasn’t in
my
blood, and I thought it was awful. “It really doesn’t bother you?”

“Of course it bothers me,” Callum admitted. “I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. That’s what this is all about, right? Bridging the gap? Bringing people together? Making amends for history?”

“I suppose.” I couldn’t help thinking of Thomas’s parents, and their deaths at the hands of the Farnham military during the last big Farnham-UCC conflict. If Juliana’s marriage to Callum could prevent future bloodshed, then who was I to say it was wrong?

“This whole thing is pretty strange, isn’t it? Us getting married, I mean.” He ducked his head, incapable of looking me in the eye.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good, I’m glad you think so, too.”

He nodded. “I never thought that I would be married off. I didn’t think things like that happened anymore. Although my mother loves to remind me that my grandparents had an arranged marriage.”

“It’s barbaric,” I said, recalling my conversation with the queen earlier.

“Is it?” He raised his eyebrows in a questioning challenge.

“What do you mean?”

“War is barbaric,” Callum said, with a seriousness that made him seem less boyish. “Letting your country get torn apart by revolutionaries—that’s barbaric. This is … this is a civilized solution to an uncivilized problem.” He sounded like Thomas, though I wasn’t so sure Thomas would agree about that.

“Civilized? It’s like they’re offering us up as collateral!”

Callum looked me in the eyes. “That’s exactly what we are,” he said darkly.

I grimaced. “Well, I don’t like it. No offense.”

“None taken,” he said. “I have to say, though—if I had to be married off to anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Really?” I would’ve thought he’d hate the idea of having to live in a foreign country, to marry the enemy. Not to mention that Juliana had a reputation for being difficult and demanding and stubborn. Other than the rather unique situation they’d both been born in to, it didn’t seem to me that Juliana and Callum had much in common at all; while Juliana had run, Callum was here to do what was being asked of him. He would probably be disgusted if he knew what she’d done.

He nodded. “And I’m glad to be here. I don’t know how much they’ve told you about me, but my life until now has been … restricted.”

“Well, don’t get any ideas about this place,” I said. “It’s quite the gilded cage.”

“You don’t understand,” Callum said. “This is the first time I’ve ever left Farnham. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever left Adastra.” Adastra City was the capital of Farnham; I’d seen it on the map in the Tower room. Thomas had mentioned that the name came from the Farnham national motto:
Per Ardua Ad Astra—Through Struggle to the Stars
. “I wasn’t allowed to travel anywhere or do anything. Mother wouldn’t even send my brothers and me to school. She said it wasn’t safe. I almost never leave our palace, I don’t have any friends besides Rick and Sonny. So to me, this”—he gestured vaguely at the surroundings—“this
is
freedom.”

“I didn’t realize.” I was starting to see why Thomas had such a low opinion of the queen of Farnham. She sounded like a real piece of work.

Callum waved my pity aside, clearly discomfited by the discussion of his confined—and, I’d gathered—unhappy childhood. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

He wandered over to the grand piano in the far corner of the room. Though it was meticulously dusted, it didn’t appear to have gotten any use in years. He sat down at the bench and started randomly pressing keys. After listening for a few minutes, I realized that he was picking out a real melody, though I didn’t recognize it.

“It’s a little out of tune,” he observed.

“What’s that song?”

“Oh, nothing you would’ve heard.” He paused, his fingers hovering over the keys. “Actually, I wrote it.”