Red Queen

House Rhambos speaks again. “Strongarm.”

Below us, little Rohr destroys the floor in a whirlwind, turning statues into pulverized piles of dust while she cracks the ground beneath her feet. She’s like an earthquake in tiny human form, breaking apart anything and everything in her way.

So this is a pageant.

A violent one, meant to showcase a girl’s beauty, splendor—and strength. The most talented daughter. This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the most powerful girl, so that their children might be the strongest of all. And this has been going on for hundreds of years.

I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger.

He claps politely as the Rhambos girl finishes her display of organized destruction and steps back onto the descending platform. House Rhambos cheers for her as she disappears.

Next comes Heron of House Welle, the daughter of my own governor. She’s tall, with a face like her bird namesake. The destroyed earth shifts around her as she puts the floor back together. “Greenwarden,” her family chants. A greeny. At her command, trees grow tall in the blink of an eye, their tops scraping against the lightning shield. It sparks where the boughs touch, setting fire to the fresh leaves. The next girl, a nymph of House Osanos, rises to the occasion. Using the waterfall fountains, she douses the contained forest fire in a hurricane of whitewater, leaving only charred trees and scorched earth.

This goes on for what feels like hours. Each girl rises up to show her worth, and each one finds a more destroyed arena, but they’re trained to deal with anything. They range in age and appearance, but they are all dazzling. One girl, barely twelve years old, explodes everything she touches like some kind of walking bomb. Oblivion, her family shouts, describing her power. As she obliterates the last of the white statues, the lightning shield holds firm. It hisses against her fire, and the noise shrieks in my ears.

The electricity, the Silvers, and the shouts blur in my head as I watch nymphs and greenys, swifts, strongarms, telkies, and what seems like a hundred other kinds of Silver show off beneath the shield. Things I never dreamed possible happen before my eyes, as girls turn their skin to stone or scream apart walls of glass. The Silvers are greater and stronger than I ever feared, with powers I never even knew existed. How can these people be real?

I’ve come all this way and suddenly I’m back in the arena, watching Silvers display everything we are not.

I want to marvel in awe as a creature-controlling animos calls down a thousand doves from the sky. When birds dive headfirst into the lightning shield, bursting in little clouds of blood, feathers, and deadly electricity, my awe turns to disgust. The shield sparks again, burning up what’s left of the birds until it shines like new. I almost retch at the sound of applause when the cold-blooded animos sinks back into the floor.

Another girl, hopefully the last, rises into an arena now reduced to dust.

“Evangeline, of House Samos,” yells the patriarch of the silver-haired family. He speaks alone, and his voice echoes across the Spiral Garden.

From my vantage point, I notice the king and queen sit up a bit straighter. Evangeline already has their attention. In stark contrast, Cal looks down at his hands.

While the other girls wore silk dresses and a few had strange, gilded armor, this Evangeline rises in an outfit of black leather. Jacket, pants, boots, all studded with hard silver. No, not silver. Iron. Silver is not so dull or hard. Her house cheers for her, all of them on their feet. She belongs to Ptolemus and the patriarch, but others cheer too, other families. They want her to be queen. She is the favorite. She salutes, two fingers to her brow, first to her family and then to the king’s box. They return the gesture, blatantly favoring this Evangeline.

Maybe this is more like the Feats than I realized. Except instead of showing the Reds where we stand, this is the king showing his subjects, powerful as they are, where they stand. A hierarchy within the hierarchy.

I’ve been so preoccupied with the trials that I almost don’t notice when it’s my turn to serve again. Before anyone can nudge me in the right direction, I set off to the right box, barely hearing the Samos patriarch speak alone. “Magnetron,” I think he says, but I have no idea what it means.

I move through the narrow corridors that were once open walkways, down to the Silvers requiring service. The box is at the bottom but I’m quick and take almost no time getting down to them. I find a particularly fat clan dressed in garish yellow silk and awful feathers, all enjoying a massive cake. Plates and empty cups litter the box and I get to work cleaning them up, my hands quick and practiced. A video screen blares inside the box, displaying Evangeline, who seems to be standing still down on the floor.

“What a farce this is,” one of the fat yellow birds grumbles as he stuffs his face. “The Samos girl has already won.”

Strange. She seems to be the weakest of all.

I pile the plates, but keep my eyes on the screen, watching her prowl across the wasted floor. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything for her to work with, to show what she can do, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Her smirk is terrible, like she’s totally convinced of her own magnificence. She doesn’t look magnificent to me.

Then the iron studs on her jacket move. They float in the air, each one a hard round bullet of metal. Then, like shots from a gun, they rocket away from Evangeline, digging into the dust and the walls and even the lightning shield.

She can control metal.

Several boxes applaud for her, but she’s far from finished. Groans and clanks echo up to us from somewhere deep down in the structure of the Spiral Garden. Even the fat family stops eating to look around, perplexed. They are confused and intrigued, but I can feel the vibrations deep beneath my feet. I know to be afraid.

With an earth-shattering noise, metal pipes splinter the floor of the arena, rising up from far below. They burst through the walls, surrounding Evangeline in a twisted crown of gray and silver metal. She looks like she’s laughing, but the deafening crunch of metal drowns her out. Sparks fall from the lightning shield and she protects herself with scrap, not even breaking a sweat. Finally she lets the metal drop with a horrible smash. She turns her eyes skyward, to the boxes above. Her mouth is open wide, showing sharp little teeth. She looks hungry.

It starts slowly, a slight change in balance, until the whole box lurches. Plates crash to the floor and glass cups roll forward, tumbling over the rail to shatter on the lightning shield. Evangeline is pulling our box out, bending it forward, making us tip. The Silvers around me squawk and scrabble, their applause turning to panic. They’re not the only ones—every box in our row moves with us. Far below, Evangeline directs with a hand, her brow furrowed in focus. Like Silver fighters in the ring, she wants to show the world what she’s made of.

That is the thought in my head as a yellow ball of skin and feathered clothing knocks into me, pitching me over the rail with the rest of the silverware.

All I see is purple as I fall, the lightning shield rising up to meet me. It hisses with electricity, singeing the air. I barely have time to understand, but I know the veined purple glass will cook me alive, electrocuting me in my red uniform. I bet the Silvers will only care about waiting for someone to clean me off.

My head bangs against the shield and I see stars. No, not stars. Sparks. The shield does its job, lighting me up with bolts of electricity. My uniform burns, scorched and smoking, and I expect to see my skin do the same. My corpse will smell wonderful. But, somehow, I don’t feel a thing. I must be in so much pain that I cannot feel it.