The instructor stands back to let me think. He has a very strange idea of teaching; it’ll probably end with a four-hour game of me staring at a wall.
But suddenly, I’m very aware of the buzz in this room. Or lack thereof. This entire day I’ve felt the electrical weight of cameras, so much that I’ve stopped noticing. Until now, when I don’t feel it at all. It’s gone. I can feel the lights still pulsing with electricity, but no cameras. No eyes. Elara cannot see me here.
“Why isn’t anyone watching us?”
He only blinks at me. “So there is a difference,” he mutters. What that means I don’t know, and it infuriates me.
“Why?”
“Mare, I’m here to teach you your histories, to teach you how to be Silver and how to be, ah, useful,” he says, his expression souring.
I stare at him, confused. Cold fear bleeds through me. “My name is Mareena.”
But he only waves a hand, brushing aside my feeble declaration. “I’m also going to try to understand exactly how you came to be and how your abilities work.”
“My abilities came to be because—because I’m a Silver. My parents’ abilities mixed—my father was an oblivion and my mother a storm.” I stutter through the explanation Elara fed me, trying to make him understand. “I’m a Silver, sir.”
To my horror, he shakes his head. “No you are not, Mare Barrow, and you must never forget it.”
He knows. I’m finished. It’s all over. I should beg, plead for him to keep my secret, but the words stick in my throat. The end is coming and I can’t even open my mouth to stop it.
“There’s no need for that,” he continues, noting my fear. “I have no plans of alerting anyone to your heritage.”
The relief I feel is short-lived, shifting into another kind of fear. “Why? What do you want from me?”
“I am, above all things, a curious man. And when you entered Queenstrial a Red servant and ran out some long-lost Silver lady, I have to say I was quite curious.”
“Is that why there aren’t any cameras in here?” I bristle, backing away from him. My fists clench and I wish the lightning would come to protect me from this man. “So there’s no record of you examining me?”
“There are no cameras in here because I have the power to turn them off.”
Hope sparks in me, like light in absolute darkness. “What is your power?” I ask shakily. Maybe he’s like me.
“Mare, when a Silver says ‘power,’ they mean might, strength. ‘Ability,’ on the other hand, refers to all the silly little things we can do.” Silly little things. Like break a man in two or drown him in the town square. “I mean that my sister was queen once, and that still counts for something around here.”
“Lady Blonos didn’t teach me that.”
He chuckles to himself. “That’s because Lady Blonos is teaching you nonsense. I will never do that.”
“So, if the queen was your sister, then you’re—”
“Julian Jacos, at your service.” He sweeps into a comically low bow. “Head of House Jacos, heir to nothing more than a few old books. My sister was the late queen Coriane, and Prince Tiberias the Seventh, Cal as we all call him, is my nephew.”
Now that he says it, I can see the resemblance. Cal’s coloring is his father’s, but the easy expression, the warmth behind his eyes—those must come from his mother.
“So, you’re not going to turn me into some science experiment for the queen?” I ask, still wary.
Instead of looking offended, Julian laughs aloud. “My dear, the queen would like nothing more than for you to disappear. Discovering what you are, helping you understand it, is the last thing she wants.”
“But you’re going to do it anyway?”
Something flashes in his eyes, something like anger. “The queen’s reach is not so long as she wants you to think. I want to know what you are, and I’m sure you do too.”
As afraid as I was a moment ago, that’s how intrigued I am now. “I do.”
“That’s what I thought,” he says, smiling at me over a stack of books. “I’m sorry to say I must also do what was asked, to prepare you for the day you step forward.”
My face falls, remembering what Cal explained in the throne room. You are their champion. A Silver raised Red. “They want to use me to stop a rebellion. Somehow.”
“Yes, my dear brother-in-law and his queen believe you can do so, if used appropriately.” Bitterness drips from his every word.
“It’s a stupid idea and impossible. I won’t be able to do anything and then . . .” My voice trails away. Then they’ll kill me.
Julian follows my train of thought. “You’re wrong, Mare. You don’t understand the power you have now, how much you could control.” He clasps his hands behind his back, oddly tight. “The Scarlet Guard are too drastic for most, too much too fast. But you are the controlled change, the kind people can trust. You are the slow burn that will quench a revolution with a few speeches and smiles. You can speak to the Reds, tell them how noble, how benevolent, how right the king and his Silvers are. You can talk your people back into their chains. Even the Silvers who question the king, the ones who have doubts, can be convinced by you. And the world will stay the same.”
To my surprise, Julian seems disheartened by this. Without the buzzing cameras, I forget myself and my face curls into a sneer. “And you don’t want that? You’re a Silver, you should hate the Scarlet Guard—and me.”
“Thinking all Silvers are evil is just as wrong as thinking all Reds are inferior,” he says, his voice grave. “What my people are doing to you and yours is wrong to the deepest levels of humanity. Oppressing you, trapping you in an endless cycle of poverty and death, just because we think you are different from us? That is not right. And as any student of history can tell you, it will end poorly.”
“But we are different.” One day in this world taught me that. “We’re not equal.”
Julian stoops, his eyes boring into mine. “I’m looking at proof you are wrong.”
You’re looking at a freak, Julian.
“Will you let me prove you wrong, Mare?”
“What good will it do? Nothing will change.”
Julian sighs, exasperated. He runs a hand through his thinning chestnut hair. “For hundreds of years the Silvers have walked the earth as living gods and the Reds have been insects at their feet, until you. If that isn’t change, I don’t know what is.”
He can help me survive. Better yet, he might even help me live.
“So what do we do?”
My days take on a rhythm, always the same schedule. Protocol in the morning, Lessons in the afternoon, while Elara parades me at lunches and dinners in between. The Panther and Sonya still seem wary of me, but haven’t said anything since the luncheon. Maven’s help seems to have worked, as much as I hate to admit it.
At the next large gathering, this time in the Queen’s personal dining hall, the Irals ignore me completely. Despite my Protocol lessons, luncheon is still overwhelming as I try to remember what I’ve been taught. Osanos, nymphs, blue and green. Welle, greenwardens, green and gold. Lerolan, oblivions, orange and red. Rhambos and Tyros and Nornus and Iral and many more. How anyone keeps track of this, I’ll never know.