Neel frowned. “Nope. And believe me, Tarn and Treb would be a whole lot happier if I told the queen to stuff it. I’d be better off, too. Being king … it seems like an awful lot of work.”
“Have you discussed it with your mother?” asked Astrophil.
“You mean Damara? My ma who ain’t my ma? See, when I said I was hiding from everybody, I really meant I was hiding from her.” The scoot on Neel’s shoulder chittered and put a three-toed paw on the boy’s head. Neel leaned his elbows on the stone railing and looked out over the jungle, which made the scoot nervously clutch him with all four stubby legs. “Shh, there, little fuzz.” Neel backed away from the railing. “I get it. No jumping for you yet.” He turned and looked again at his friends, then more closely at Petra. “You seem happier.” His troubled face lit up. “You’ve got good news, don’t you? A cure for your da! I knew you’d find the secret here in the Vatra.”
“No.” Astrophil sighed.
“Then…” Neel paused. “Oh. I know that look on your face, Pet. You’ve got a plan.”
Tomik’s heart tightened. He wished that Neel weren’t so skilled at reading Petra’s emotions. “Help me talk her out of it, Neel. It’s too risky.”
“Risky?” Neel’s laugh had an edge. “What isn’t? You can play life’s game and think you’re being oh so smart, and then it’ll flip you on your head, and everything’s upside down, and you didn’t do anything, nothing at all.” He looked at Petra. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
“Neel—” Tomik protested, but Petra was already eagerly spilling forth her plan.
“Impossible,” Neel said when he’d heard everything.
“Thank you,” said Tomik.
“Well, it’s possible,” Neel amended, “but it ain’t gonna be easy. It’d take forever just to get back to Prague. The globes belong to the queen now, and traveling there without them … I’d say that’s a year’s worth of sailing and hoofing it, no less.”
A silence fell, and Petra’s eyes were suddenly too shiny. Her body went rigid, and Tomik could almost feel her holding her breath against the tears. “Petra—”
“If I were king,” Neel said thoughtfully, “I’d have gobs of power. Oodles.” He dropped his hunched shoulders and one hand twitched oddly in front of him, as if he were tapping his chin with his invisible fingers. Then he spread his arms wide. “I could do anything!” He gave Petra a smile. “I could help you.”
Petra exhaled, and looked as if she didn’t dare speak. Then one tear did fall, slipping down her cheek. She hugged Neel fiercely, scoot and all, and the Roma laughed as the scoot jumped from his head to hers.
“Excuse me.” Astrophil bristled, pointing one leg at the creature. “This is my mistress, and only I have the honor of sitting on Petra’s head, or ear, or shoulder, as the case may be.”
Tomik looked at them, at the tangle of boy and girl and scoot and spider, and told himself that the hug Petra had given Neel was no different from the countless times she had embraced him over the years.
This only made him feel worse.
Neel lifted his chin from Petra’s shoulder. “Good.” He nodded hesitantly, as if to encourage himself. “Good,” he said again, more firmly. “A king. Why not? I’ve always wanted to be the boss.”
8
The Coronation
“A BASTARD KING,” the people muttered when Neel announced his decision to the court. “A king of rags and tatters.”
“You’re on your own,” Treb told Neel before turning to walk out of the royal chamber with his brother.
Damara said nothing as she tried to catch her son’s eye, but Neel avoided her, glancing at Petra and Tomik as if for help. Finally, he looked at the queen.
Iona’s laugh was horrible, scraping: the sound of seashells breaking under someone’s boot. Thankfully, it did not last long, and when it stopped, she threw everyone but Neel out of the room. She grabbed his ghostly fingers with her own and tugged him close.
“You cannot trust them,” she said.
“I know,” he muttered. “The Maraki’re gonna get feisty over this.”
“Of course. However, I did not mean them. The gadje boy and girl. They don’t belong here. They will use you.”
Neel arched one black brow. “Guess you’re right,” he said coolly. He nodded as the queen listed the Kalderash goals for the future, and smirked in agreement as she hissed the flaws of the Lovari, Maraki, and Ursari tribes. Anyone who knew Neel well knew he was a smooth liar. But the queen did not know her son well. So she talked until her eyes grew feverish and her voice hoarse, and when she eventually slumped in her throne with exhaustion, she was satisfied with her heir. “Hold it.” She thrust the golden scepter at him, and for the first time since he’d made his choice clear, a crack showed in his proud façade. Ever so slightly, he shrank away. Then he took the scepter with his invisible fingers. He couldn’t quite bring himself to let it touch his skin.
“It’s a curse,” Iona whispered. “Yet it is a gift, too.”
“It’s still yours.” He gave it back to her.
“Not for long.” She chuckled and waved him away.
The tension drained from Neel’s body. He felt wobbly, as if the stress of the moment had been his skeleton, and now it was gone, leaving only soft, vulnerable flesh.
He left the royal chamber and found Damara waiting for him outside its doors.
The sight of her made his spine stiffen once more, and that was what gave him the strength to keep walking, to walk away, to walk down the hall without a word, without one backward glance at the woman who had raised him.
* * *
THE CHANGES WERE RAPID, and Neel hated them. The royal adviser, Arun, was to blame.
Arun had several guards ambush Neel, hold him down, and cut his hair.
He thrust a pile of richly dyed silks at Neel, saying he wasn’t leaving his room until the boy looked the part of the heir to the throne. Neel’s heart leaped with glee when he saw the clothes—he loved finery—but he hid his pleasure with a scowl that plainly said he wouldn’t be told what to do.
Arun told him anyway. He appointed a thin, eager man named Karim to give Neel manners lessons and advise him on courtly procedure. Another adviser, Gita, was an elderly woman who would instruct him in international politics. Both advisers were Kalderash, like Arun, who lectured Neel for hours on end about the very different skills and needs of each tribe—as if Neel didn’t know that the Roma were a fractured people. Even if they shared an “it’s us against the world” attitude, they didn’t always have a lot in common. This was obvious.