The Diminished

Startled guards threw open the gate, and we thundered across the courtyard, finally slowing as we neared the stables. Claes leapt off his horse, snarling, and stalked off toward the palace without a second look for Penelope or me. I dismounted more slowly. As the rush of danger faded, my hands shook, and my knees felt like jellied eels.

“Are you all right, Bo?” Penelope handed her horse’s reins off to a groom and looked me up and down.

Dry-mouthed and weak, I ignored Penelope, pressing my forehead against the curly hair on the horse’s thick neck, petting him automatically. He was shivering, too. Without thinking, I started to run my hands over his body, looking for injury. When I reached his left flank, my hand came away damp with blood. The poor beast had been skimmed by a bullet.

“Bo?” Penelope put a hand tentatively on my shoulder.

“He’s been wounded. Call for the stable master. He might need stiches.”

A groom gently took the reins out of my hands and led the horse away.

“Bo?” Penelope asked again, peering into my eyes. “Do you need to sit down?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I’m not injured. That poor horse, though...”

Penelope sighed in exasperation. “Honestly, Bo. Worried about a horse. The beast will be fine. It was only a scratch.”

“Do you think the Shriven will make a report to the Queen?”

“Why would they? They deal with the diminished all the time.” Penelope drew my arm through her crooked elbow and led me back toward the palace. “They must’ve gotten a tip that one of the dimmys was on the verge of breaking. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I stopped and drew back. “Why would you assume that it was one of the diminished? Those bullets were aimed at me. They hit my horse. It was an assassination attempt.”

“The Shriven were there. What more proof do you need that a dimmy was holding that rifle? It was, in all likelihood, simply an unfortunate coincidence, and one of the diminished lost control while we were in the park.”

“Why would Claes run off like that, then?”

Penelope’s eyes flicked down the path, and though Claes was inside the palace and well out of earshot at this point, she lowered her voice. “You know that coming into contact with the diminished has always upset Claes, but ever since our father...”

Her voice trailed off. There was no need for her to finish the sentence as we continued down the cobblestone path that led to the palace. The twins’ father was my mother’s eldest brother. When his twin died, the family had gathered to say their goodbyes, but their father didn’t do as was expected of him. He didn’t die. In fact, he seemed healthier and more full of life than ever. After several weeks passed, the family was caught between relief that they wouldn’t lose him as well, and fear of what would happen to their standing in society. Unfortunately, their fear was well-founded. They stopped receiving invitations and visitors, and before long, their social stock had fallen so appallingly low that the only place they were welcome was the palace—and there were whispers that even the Queen, with her liberal views on all social rules, would refuse to allow them to court, if only as a way of keeping herself safe should he lose his grip on the grief.

Not long after, Penelope and Claes had come to live with my family, and their parents immigrated to Ilor, where their social status would no longer threaten their children’s prospects. Claes lived in constant fear of learning that his father had finally succumbed to the grief and done something horrible.

I ducked my head. “We still don’t know if it was one of the diminished that fired that rifle. Surely the Shriven will tell Runa that much at least.”

A guard held open the side door, and Penelope paused, waiting for me to go first. The dimness of the inner hallway after the bright day was temporarily blinding. I stopped, blinking the starbursts of darkness out of my eyes.

“We shouldn’t mention this at the dinner tonight,” Penelope said. “Just in case.”

“In case I’m right, and it wasn’t one of the diminished?”

“In case it panics your already overwhelmed mother.”

I scoffed. “Mother is absolutely fine. A meteorite could demolish our house on the same day a tempest strikes Penby, and the only thing that would make her bat an eye is the potential impact on our profitable interests.”

“It isn’t a bad thing to be concerned about, Bo. Her careful business strategizing is the reason you’re kept in books and horses.”

I sighed in defeat. “I know. I ought to go study before dinner. Queen Runa is sure to quiz me about the kind of metal used to make the pipes on the sunships or something equally obscure, and I’d rather not be embarrassed in front of the rest of the singleborn. Check on Claes for me?”

Penelope nodded, a knowing smile playing around her eyes. “Of course. See you at dinner.”

* * *

State dinners were held in the same cavernous great room where all of the important royal ceremonies and celebrations had taken place since the cataclysm and Penby’s founding. That evening, with most of the Alskad singleborn and nobility in attendance and fires burning in the wide hearths, the room was warm and bright and full of jewels glittering in the light of the solar lamps. I peered through a crack between the doors and watched as Claes moved through the crowd, all dark, perfectly mussed hair and bright blue silk. His jacket was embroidered with silver thread and crystals in a pattern that made it look as though there were raindrops clinging to his shoulders. He was, by far, the most handsome young man in the room.

The whisper of footsteps snapped me out of my reverie, and I stepped away from the door just as the Queen said, “We can’t be spending the whole night in the doorway, mooning over some pretty young thing, Bo.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty.” I bowed.

The Queen adjusted the golden cuff bracelet on her wrist and made a face.

“You’d think that after all these years, I would have grown used to the ceaseless gossip and small talk these kinds of functions require. Yet every time I come to stand outside this room and wait to be announced, I find myself desperately wishing for a quiet night in the peace and comfort of my rooms.”

I nodded, grateful that I wasn’t alone in that feeling. Before I could respond, she went on.

“It’s the meaningless, petty gossip that I find intolerable. Most of the people in that room have no idea that the seemingly scandalous behavior of a wealthy member of the nobility will have mind-bogglingly little effect on the struggles and triumphs of the greater population. Sometimes I wish that the first queens of the empire had quashed the ambitions of the noble class in the very beginning. It’s those most innocuous and seemingly necessary things that will do the most damage in the long run.” She paused and looked at me wearily. “There’s a lesson in there somewhere, Bo.”

Queen Runa took a deep breath, and before I could reply, she asked that I be announced. The butler called out my name and titles, and as I entered, I realized this was the last time I would hear the titles I’d been given at birth spoken into a room in just that way. In a couple of days, I would turn sixteen, the Queen would declare me her true and rightful heir, and all of my titles would change. When the room quieted, the butler blew a triplicate call on the long, twisting horn, a relic of some long-extinct animal, and announced the Queen.

Runa swept into the room, all smiles and cheerful greetings for the courtiers who approached her, the irritation of moments before washed from her face. It didn’t seem to matter at all that she loathed these kinds of events—she played along beautifully. Waiters swept through the crowd, offering the guests flutes of sparkling wine, snifters of ouzel and appetizers as complex and intricate as they were small. The long table was laid with gilt-edged dishes and gold-plated flatware. Exotic hothouse flowers overflowed from tall vases, and each place setting had no less than five matching crystal glasses.

I snagged a glass of sparkling wine from a passing waiter and searched the room for the brilliant blue of Claes’s jacket. Before I spotted him, Patrise and Lisette descended on me. They wore matching looks of predatory delight, and with them came a cloud of rich perfume. Patrise’s dark brown eyes were crinkled in amusement, his sepia skin bore almost no wrinkles and his black hair was perfectly arranged, as usual—I’d never seen a single lock out of place on his head. But where he was all languid grace, lithe muscle and smoldering looks through suggestively lowered lashes, even I could appreciate that Lisette’s beauty was sumptuous: all elegance and not a hint of the deceptive and brilliant political maneuvering that came so easily to her. Her tawny skin and auburn hair glowed like amber in the soft light of the sunlamps. Claes had often made a great point of reminding me that there wasn’t a man or woman at court who wasn’t entirely under Lisette’s sway.

“Darling Ambrose,” Lisette trilled. “How are you? We heard about the unfortunate incident at the park this afternoon. You must be terribly unsettled.”

Patrise laced an arm through mine and leaned in conspiratorially. “You don’t believe it was a coincidence, do you?”

“Isn’t it odd that Rylain hasn’t yet arrived for your party?” Lisette asked, sending me a look full of meaning. “We’ve always suspected that she was up to no good, haven’t we, Patrise?”

Spotting Claes, I squirmed out of their grasp, only barely managing to keep a civil tongue in the process. Of all the singleborn, Rylain was far and away my favorite, the one with whom I felt comfortable enough to be myself. She was a historian who’d devoted her life to researching the cataclysm and its fallout. She had visited our estates often when my father was still alive, and always brought with her huge numbers of books for my father and me. After my father’s death, Rylain had been a great comfort, always ready to lend a sympathetic ear.

I refused to give weight to Patrise and Lisette’s ridiculous accusations against her.

Well-meaning members of the gentry stopped me over and over as I tried to make my way across the crowded room. The questions on all of their lips were about the incident in the park that afternoon, and I had no answers for them. None at all. By the time I reached Claes, the butler had just announced that dinner was to be served. I laced a hand through his and leaned in close to whisper in his ear, my false smile beginning to make my cheeks and jaw ache.

“How is it that every soul in this room has heard about what happened this afternoon?”

Claes squeezed my hand. “It did take place in Esser Park, darling.”

“Do you know anything else? Was it an assassination attempt?”

“Bo, honestly. How often is there an incident with the diminished in Penby? Once a month? Twice? The Shriven wouldn’t have taken action had the violence been committed by anyone not diminished. It had to be a coincidence.”

The assumption didn’t sit right with me, but I wasn’t about to argue with Claes in the middle of a dinner in my honor. The guests were beginning to find their ways to their seats. I glanced over at the Queen, flanked by the singleborn of her generation—Zurienne, Olivar and Turshaw, all wearing matching expressions of mild annoyance. Runa eyed the seat to her right, the place of honor I was meant to occupy. I took a step in that direction, but Claes kept hold of my hand and leaned in once more.

“An attempt on the heir apparent’s life, so close to the ceremony? Think of the scandal such a thing might cause. It would look as though one of the other singleborn was so desperate to usurp your place that they would try anything. No one is that stupid.”

Claes dropped my hand, and I sat down to my last state dinner before I became the heir. But his words sat like lead in my belly, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t quite sure if I trusted him or not.