Chapter 60

I run toward her, my arms outstretched. She envelops me in a reassuring bear hug.

“Marselle!”

“Little dove.”

My mom’s old endearment from her Field Lieutenant for her spy network brings a tear to my eye. I wipe it away quickly.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but why are you here?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

Our chef back home, Angel, has run my mom’s spy network for hundreds of years, but Marselle is my mom’s second. She implements whatever Angel commands in the United States, anyway.

“Is everything okay with Melina?” Marselle’s stationed in Austin where my other full sister lives. I’ve never met Melina, presumably because she caused so much trouble before I was born. She hasn’t been welcome in Ni’ihau since. Marselle was tasked to Austin full time a few years ago because Melina had attracted so many exiled evians from other families. Mom thought a stronger Alamecha presence was prudent.

Marselle shakes her head. “All is quiet on that front thankfully, but there’s something else. Your mother called me the day she died. She told me she wasn’t sure how things would play out, but that she might need to pass her network.”

Monarchs don’t usually pass their network along. Typically an Heir develops her own network over a period of years from a core group of people she can trust. I should have vetted and placed each of my spies myself, allowing me to determine the reliability of each person as events transpire.

But I didn’t think I needed one. Which Mom knew, and that’s probably why Marselle is here. She’s my mom’s last gift, which means I need to make sense of Mom’s final words. She said I need her keycode, and the clue she provided was ‘The one I love more than any other.’ Does she mean the one person Mom loves more than any other? Or who I love more than any other? Or does she mean a thing, like control of the family? Or something more esoteric, like security?

I’m a little conceited, I suppose, because if it’s who my Mom loves, I assume it’s me. It wouldn’t be Chancery, though; that’s too obvious. Perhaps Chancy? Or maybe Little Dove? But Marselle just called me that. She wouldn’t have used the key code so casually, would she? Or maybe she was helping me, putting the thought in my head. My brain throbs and I don’t know how all this works. I wish things could be simple for once.

A sick thought occurs to me. Could my mom have meant Sotiris? Did she love her unborn child more than me already?

“Can you pardon us for a moment?” I ask Edam and Alora. “Marselle and I need to talk.”

Marselle follows me to my room, and I don’t waste any time. “You need the keycode.”

She nods. “I didn’t think we should do this over the phone. Also, I fear that—”

“Angel may be compromised,” I say.

Marselle’s shoulders droop. “I’ve reported to and worked with her for more than four hundred years. We were in the field together on our first assignment. I don’t want to believe it, but she’s the best chef I’ve ever known, which helped her get a lot of positions over the years, and she watches everything that leaves her kitchen like a hawk. I can’t see how any of her food could have been poisoned without her knowledge.”

“Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think.”

“I loved her,” Marselle says, “like a sister.”

My jaw tightens. “Unfortunately, I’ve learned that trust doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with affection.”

“You’re still so young,” Marselle says, “but you’re not wrong.”

“What do you need from me?” I ask.

“Just the keycode. If your mother intended to pass you her network, she’d have given it to you.”

“How many chances do I have?” Because I have a few ideas.

“Two,” she says. “Otherwise people could just guess and guess forever. Two gives you one mistake.”

I almost can’t bring myself to say the word, but I have to know. Please, Mom, please let this be wrong. “Sotiris.”

Marselle shakes her head.

I sigh in relief. Mom couldn’t have expected me to guess something bizarre, like security or world peace. She must have meant a person, and it must be me. Now I need to figure out whether it’s Chancy, Chancery, or Divinity. I don’t think Marselle would have called me little dove if that was the code, so I rule that out, and both Chancy and Chancery are too obvious. “Divinity,” I say.

Marselle smiles. “Correct, and we have a lot to talk about.”

“First and foremost, what’s Judica been up to while I’ve been gone?”

“She sent the members of each of the Five Families home about two seconds after you left.”

I expected that. “Go on.”

“There’s a lot of movement from them. I imagine several of them would support you, including the second family, Malessa. As you know, the last ruler of Malessa, Senah, didn’t have many sons just like your mother didn’t have many daughters, and now that she’s dead and her daughter Analessa is ruling, she hasn’t had many sons either. When she heard Edam followed you—”

Suddenly it clicks. Analessa, Edam’s sister, hasn’t had many sons, and neither did Edam and Analessa’s mother, Senah. I didn’t know that. My mom struggled with the guilt of selling her sons and she had a lot, but if you only had a few, selling them off would be even more difficult. You might even keep one. If that son was only three when you died and your daughter came to power, she might sell him so that other families would sell their sons to her when she had an Heir to raise, but if that daughter didn’t have any sons either, she might gain a new understanding. She might even regret doing it. She might try to bring him back to her side. And if that brother thought the sale of children was barbaric, if he raged inside over the betrayal. . . who knew whether he’d agree.

The phone call had to be from his sister Analessa or someone else from the Second Family. I would bet on it. The question is whether he’s loyal to Alamecha and by extension to me, or to them. There’s a reason sons are sold at birth. With our evian memories, even three years can result in shifted alliances and skewed loyalties. When I finally start to listen again, Marselle is talking about the other families and what our agents say about who they support.

“I want to hear all of this, but not right now. You’re putting off something big, and I don’t have time for delays. What is it?”

Marselle looks surprised. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to put it off, but it frightens me. Judica may officially be ruling in your place, but she’s not acting like it. She wants to set the tone for her rule. She means to unite the Six, according to prophecy she says. She wants to rename Alamecha the Seventh Family once it’s done. She says the uniting of all evians under one ruler would explain the obscure references in various texts to the Seventh Family. If she’s going to show the other families she’s strong, she needs to make a statement.”

Once she has chosen a way to proceed as the new leader, she’ll need to tie up loose ends. Hence the hit team on me. If she can’t be completely positive she can defeat me in the ring, because I might choose Edam, she’d send her people for me. What I know of Judica, and what I’ve seen of her current actions, tells me her next step.

Queens through the millennia have usually started off their rule in the way they mean to move ahead. Judica discussed her plan with my mom a million times.

Before Marselle can say it, I guess. “She’s launching a nuclear bomb against China.”

Marselle’s mouth opens and then closes. She nods.

I can’t wait until the end of my ten days. I need to go back now, or millions of innocent people will die.