The Desert Prince Read online

  A quiver of arrows is secured at her back, along with her unstrung bow. I’ve seen how fast she can string it if she senses trouble, and she takes the archery ribbon every Solstice Festival. There’s a long knife on her thigh, and a spear harnessed crosswise with the bow on her back. Not some elegant fencing spear for festival games, this is a short, brutal thing, designed for one purpose. Folk still whisper about Wonda’s exploits in the demon war.

  She looks around, then reaches into her pocket, producing two small twists of paper. “Snuck you two some sugar candy, but don’t tell your mum you got it from me.”

  The gift says everything a person needs to know about Captain Wonda. She loves us, would give her life for us, but we’ll always be children to her.

  “Sunny!” Selen snatches her candy and has it out of the wrapper and into her mouth in one smooth move.

  “Thanks, Won.” I take my candy, slipping it into a pocket of my dress. I feel bad seeing her look of disappointment when I don’t eat it right away like Selen. I love Captain Wonda and want her to be happy, but I’m not a child anymore.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. It’s rare for Wonda to leave my mother’s side.

  “Oh, ay.” Captain Wonda rubs the back of her neck, no longer meeting my eyes. “Just passing through and saw the carriage. Figured I’d see you off.”

  She’s a terrible liar, but I don’t press. Captain Wonda may be clumsy at keeping Mother’s secrets, but she keeps them, for the most part.

  Wonda turns to go, then pauses, as if remembering something. “By the way, yur mum is stopping by the university, later.” She doesn’t wait for a reply, turning back and marching swiftly up the stairs. “See you in the practice yard.”

  “What was that about?” Selen asks.

  “A warning,” I say.

  The new stableboy, Perin, sets the steps so we can climb into the carriage. Perin is very tall, with a jaw I’ve caught myself staring at more than once. Grandmum called him a young colt, leering when she said it.

  Selen throws him a wink as he closes the door.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “What was what?” Selen’s mouth twitches, barely containing her smile.

  I nod slightly at Micha, raising a questioning brow. My sister will happily gossip about everyone, but we all know she reports everything Selen or I do to Mother.

  Selen shrugs, the smile breaking out across her face. “We kissed for three hours yesterday!”

  I gape. “You did not.”

  “Tsst!” Micha wrinkles her nose. “The boy shovels your stables. He would not make a worthy husband.”

  “Ent looking for a husband,” Selen laughs. “Just a warm pair of lips.”

  I turn to Micha. “Please don’t tell Mother.”

  “Phagh.” Micha waves a hand. “If I told your mother every time Selen kissed a boy, I would have time for nothing else.”

  Selen barks at that. I frown, jealous of her freedom. It’s easier to think of Micha as our nanny, since she’s cared for both of us since we were in nappies, but Micha is here for me, not Selen. She would never keep a secret like that for me, or let a boy close enough to kiss in the first place. I think I’m the only girl in class who’s never done it. Selen…well, I’ve lost count.

  I hug my Herb Lore book to my chest, staring out the carriage window.

  Selen gives my shoulder a shove. “Ay, what’s itching you?”

  “Nothing,” I say, but Selen crosses her arms. She knows me too well.

  “Demonshit.”

  She’d talk to me about it. It’s nothing we haven’t discussed a thousand times, but Micha is listening. “I’m just worried about the exam.”

  Selen blinks. “What exam?”

  “Headmistress Darsy never goes more than ten days without a surprise test,” I say. “Today’s the tenth.”

  The corner of Selen’s mouth curls. “So there might be an exam.”

  The morning’s anxiety comes rushing back. Wonda said Mother would visit today, and it makes me all the more sure a test is coming. Mother always makes time after a test to “discuss” my errors.

  “I’m not ready,” I say. “I want to compare notes, not kissing stories.”

  Selen sighs. “Ten minutes of cramming ent going to make much difference for either of us. You’re better at this than you think. You’ll be all right.”

  “All right isn’t good enough.”

  Selen rolls her eyes. “The duchess will be disappointed no matter what you do. That’s how mums are.” Selen’s voice becomes higher, haughtier, in perfect imitation of Elona. “Best study hard, girl, because you ent much to look at!”

  “That’s nonsense,” I say. Selen takes after her father with a heavy jaw and broad shoulders. I’m taller than most boys our age, but Selen has inches on even me, and her arms and back ripple with muscle. She actively resists the powder kit, and even when Grandmum manages to wrestle her into the vanity chair, she’s apt as not to scrub her face clean at the next opportunity.

  Selen is more handsome than pretty, but only Grandmum is vain enough to think her a disappointment to look at.

  “Know it is,” Selen says. “You’ve always been the pretty one, but I like the way I look, and there ent a shortage of boys happy to kiss me, so who cares what Mum thinks? You’d be happier if you stopped caring, too.”

  I look down my nose at her. “You still care what the general thinks.”

  Selen snorts. “Ay, but it doesn’t keep me from doing what I want. Yesterday while I was kissing Perin in the stable, Da walked in to give Rockslide an apple.”

  I look up, and Selen’s expression is triumphant. She has my full attention now. “General Cutter caught you?” I wonder why Perin isn’t lying on a hospit bed.

  Selen’s nose wrinkles. “Dodged it by a horse’s tail. Hid in the one place he wouldn’t look.”

  I cover my eyes. “Creator, no.”

  “Dung stall!” Selen’s smile is infectious. “Perin wasn’t so interested in kissing when I came out smelling like a fertilizer cart.”

  Micha howls, and laughter bursts from my lips. For a moment, I forget classwork, forget my mother, and remember why I love Selen. She must have been fit to burst, holding in that story while I whined about a test that might not even happen.

  “Will you sneak down to see him again?” I hate the excitement I feel, living vicariously through Selen’s stories. I wish I could have stories of my own.

  “Feh.” Selen flicks a finger. “Only so many times you can explain to the washerwoman why your Seventhday dress reeks of horse shit.”

  “Ay?” I can’t hide the disappointment in my voice. “Perin isn’t the brightest ward, but he’s sunny to look upon.”

  Selen shrugs. “Kissed him already. First kiss is always the best. Second time they start talking, and it’s all headaches from there.”

  I suppress a twinge of envy, shaking my head. “So worldly at fifteen summers.”

  “Says the girl who’s never kissed anyone.” Selen means the words wryly, but she sees the look on my face and her mocking expression softens.

  “I can’t just go around kissing boys like you,” I say.

  “Ent always boys,” Selen reminds me. “Remember when I gave Sandy Pasture a kissing lesson and she followed us around for two weeks?”

  “Maybe it was because you kept giving her lessons,” I say.

  Selen smirks. “Ay, might have something there. Point is, that’s the duchess talking. Teenagers are supposed to sneak around their parents and kiss. I do. Why can’t you?”

  My eyes flick to Micha, who at least has the courtesy to stare out the window. I can’t remember the last time a boy my own age got within ten feet of me without her appearing to interpose herself.

  But it’s more than just Micha and Mother being overprotective. More e
ven than worry over the gossip that would run through the palace if the duchess’ daughter was caught kissing the stableboy.

  It’s because kissing leads to more.

  2

  BOTH

  “I want to spar.”

  It was a perfectly reasonable request. I was tired of endlessly practicing sharukin against empty air without understanding how the gentle movements applied to fighting.

  I was five.

  “Absolutely not,” Mother said.

  “The general said Selen can do it.” I said the words with triumph, certain I had Mother in an inescapable logic trap.

  She dismissed it with a swish of her hand. “I don’t care what Gared Cutter says. He’s not your father.”

  “Selen’s brother Steave spars.” I tried to keep the pleading from my voice, but I knew I was failing. “He’s only three.”

  Mother began rubbing at her temple—never a good sign. “I don’t approve of that, either, but it’s different with boys.”

  “Why?” I demanded. “Because he has a pecker? I’ve got one, too. Why aren’t I a boy?”

  Even now, I remember how the duchess’ normally serene face suddenly tensed. “Oh, poppet. Do you want to be?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. At least, not one I thought would get me what I wanted. But I sensed Mother wavering. I crossed my arms and kept my eye on the target. “I want to spar.”

  But Mother’s mind was elsewhere. She knelt to put herself at my level, crown of warded electrum glittering in her hair. She touched my face, her eyes serious and a little sad.

  “Whether you spar has nothing to do with being a girl, or a boy,” Mother said. “These days those things mean less than they used to, and for you, least of all.”

  I didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you are my daughter,” the duchess said, “but you are also my son.”

  “Huh?”

  I look back and wish I’d been more articulate, but the words made no sense. I’d known I was different from Selen since we were infants in the bath, but I never gave the fact we peed differently any more thought than the different colors of our hair, eyes, or skin. What did any of it matter? The ways we were alike outweighed the differences.

  “You were to be twins,” Mother went on. “Two eggs fertilized at the same time—a boy and a girl.”

  The words were almost too much to close my head around, but I didn’t question the claim. Back then it never occurred to me that Mother could be wrong about anything. “What happened?”

  “Shortly after you were conceived, a demon prince tried to kill your father, and nearly succeeded. His First Wife Inevera and I had no choice but to use hora magic to save him.”

  That story, I knew already. It was a legend in Mother’s keep. Everyone knows the duchess and the Damajah hate each other, but it is said they hold peace because of that night.

  “I don’t understand.” The words felt feeble even to my young self—insufficient to convey the breadth of the feeling. I had only the vaguest notion of what conception meant, and Mother was hinting at something beyond.

  “When you work magic to your will, some of it flows through you,” Mother said. “The energy can make you stronger for a time. Faster. It heightens senses and speeds healing.”

  I tilted my head, still confused.

  Mother’s throat constricted, as if forced to swallow an unpleasant cure. “In that moment, one egg absorbed the other.”

  I remember staring at her for a long time before responding. “I…ate my brother?” It was too big a concept to fully grasp—huge and terrifying, but less so than the one that followed. “Or…did I eat my sister?”

  “No one ‘ate’ anyone!” I don’t know what response Mother had been preparing for, but this didn’t seem to be it. “What does it matter, who absorbed who?”

  The answer seemed obvious. “How else can I know who I am?”

  “You are not your brother, or your sister,” Mother said. “You are both—the sum of everything either might be.”

  Questions began to accumulate in my head, but I sensed the most important one, even then. “If I didn’t eat anyone, why do we keep it secret?”

  Mother sighed, straightening my hair and smoothing my dress as she spoke. “Because there isn’t anyone quite like you, Olive. Magic made something nature could not. You can bear children or father them, and that will mean different things to different folk. If your father’s heirs fear you have a claim to the Skull Throne of New Krasia, there’s no telling what they might do.”

  None of this meant much to me. Mother’s worry was distant, like a cloud on the far horizon. I looked at my hands, my arms, my body. Everything was familiar, and yet somehow new. “I’m not a girl?”

  “You are what you want to be,” Mother said. “And no matter what, I love you and will always be there for you. If you want to stay a girl, I will support you. If you choose to be a boy, I will support you. If you want to announce to the world you are both, I will support you.”

  Mother took my arms, squeezing gently. “But some of those choices are more difficult paths to walk, and you need to understand that. If you are a girl, your father’s people will seek to marry you. If you are a boy, they may seek to harm you, or take you away from me.”

  That struck home where the other warnings had not. I didn’t understand everything, but I knew I didn’t want to be taken away from Mother.

  “What do you want to be?” Mother asked.

  I thought of Selen’s younger brothers, always running after us—sticky, lumbering, and loud. I thought of our friend Darin Bales, his hair a tangle, clothes ill-fitting, dirt under his nails. Uncle Gared—thick and hairy, smelling of sweat and ale.

  Then I remembered playing dress-up with Grandmum, learning her paints and powders, trying on dresses and jewels. I thought of Mother, the most powerful person in Hollow, looking fabulous in her elaborate dresses, with a crown of warded electrum glittering in her hair.

  “I want to be a girl.”

  Mother took my hand. “Then that is what you are, all anyone need know, unless you decide otherwise. The world will try to fit you into one of two boxes, but one day I hope you will outgrow them both.”

  I pulled my hand back. “Then you’ll let me spar.”

  This time, I had her.

  * * *

  —

  Grandmum took me back to my room afterward. I was still humming with excitement at having changed Mother’s mind, but beneath the rush of victory, a pool of questions about myself was quietly growing.

  “About time she gave you that talk,” Elona said. “Been on her about it for years.”

  “Really?” I can’t hide my surprise. Grandmum knows I have a boy’s parts, as well as a girl’s. Changed my nappies when I was a baby. But we never talk about it.

  “That thing between your legs is the key to a kingdom,” Grandmum said.

  “I don’t want a kingdom,” I told her, and I meant it. “They say Mother could have been queen of Thesa, but she chose not to.”

  “If she’d had a pair of stones, she would have,” Elona said. Even at five I was used to this kind of talk from Grandmum. She never spoke down to us the way Mother and the other adults did. “I’ve got higher hopes for you.”

  The words made no sense. “My stones will make me brave?” I certainly didn’t feel brave.

  “Ent the stones, themselves. It’s…” she rolled a hand in the air, “…male energy. Men take what they want. Anyone gets in their way, they swat them aside. My daughter has the biggest stick in Thesa, but she refuses to swing it.”

  “What if she just didn’t want to be queen?” I asked.

  Elona scoffed. “Your mum is a priss, but she likes telling folk what to do too much to turn down a crown. Just couldn’t bring herself to bully the other duke
s and duchesses into giving her one.”

  “She must have had a reason,” I insisted. It never occurred to me then that Mother could be wrong about anything.

  Grandmum looked me over. “Ay, maybe. You’d be more dangerous if you were the eldest child of a queen.”

  I laughed, more in surprise than humor. “Dangerous? I’m just a kid.”

  “For now,” Elona says. “But it won’t always be that way. Some secrets you can carry around forever, like a knife in your pocket. Others are like a blade in your hand. Longer you hold, the deeper they cut. Better to let folk know who you are now, so they have time to get used to the idea before you’re old enough to be dangerous.”

  “Mother said people might try to hurt me if we did,” I said. “Or take me away.”

  “You’re a ripping princess, Olive.” Grandmum shrugged. “Going to be a target no matter what.”

  The words sent a shock of fear through me. The danger hadn’t quite felt real, but now, with Elona confirming it, I had an urge to run and hide.

  Grandmum must have seen it on my face, because she laid a hand on my arm, squeezing gently. “Ent no one getting at you here, Olive Paper. But if this scares you, we can double the watch.”

  The suggestion offered little comfort. “There’s already guards everywhere. Will they put them in my room, next?”

  Grandmum cackled. “They can put a few in mine!”

  Her laughter made me feel a little less afraid. Grandmum Elona was like that. She’d slap you with the truth, then rub away the sting. I wanted her approval as much as anyone’s, and I knew she wanted me to agree, but it didn’t feel right. “Mum says if I want to be a girl, then I am.”

  Elona looked at me a long time, then nodded. “Ay, if that’s how you want it.” She tugged at a lock of hair that had come loose from my braid. “Come along to the vanity, then. Time I started teaching you a woman’s weapons.”