One

“You know, Master Alterra, history itself has been changed by a simple act of kindness,” said Mrs. Taylor. “So would you please do me the simple kindness of listening?”

            “I would if you would teach me about that,” Ajax responded, “Instead of Palatian.”

            Mrs. Taylor sighed and went back to consulting her notes. The pages she turned sounded crisp against each other, as though they were cackling, crackling with all the conjugations that Ajax would be made to write out and recite in his lifetime. He slumped down in his chair, which was the only chair in his whole library that wasn’t a handsome lounger, stuffed with goose down. He had been caught sleeping in those a few times too many for his father to allow that to continue.

            Mrs. Taylor preferred to stand, facing him across their table. Ajax had decided years ago that he would despise being a governess for that reason alone. All the standing.

            “What is even the point of learning Palatian if I am never going to go to Glacia?” He pointed emphatically to the vellum map mounted upon the wall to his right. There, in fancy script, all the names of the countries were scrawled within their borders, with Glacia right at the top. Ardor was below it, down across the Frozen Sea, with the capital, Volcno, and within it Ajax’s home, indicated in red ink.

            Mrs. Taylor exhaled deliberately. “It is important to study the native tongue of the people with whom you will be someday be making treaties.”

            Ajax rolled his eyes. “Father has never been there.”

            “Well, your father is a busy man.”

            “But he is the governor,” Ajax said, picking in a bored way at the rich mahogany of the table. “You would think that the governor of this whole damn country would have found a use for his Palatian. But no.”

            Mrs. Taylor looked exasperated at this point. “Master Alterra, someday you will be governor, yourself, and your father insists that you must be educated on everything to prepare you-“

            “Oh come on I will never be governor,” Ajax said. “Just because father thinks that he can persuade everyone to keep the Alterras in command does not mean they will let him.”

            Her voice was a bit more high-pitched now. “If you are just going to be insolent, I will leave. And if you are really so concerned, I encourage you to take these issues up with your father, not me.” Then she determinately gathered her things and stormed off.

            Ajax felt a little foolish, as he watched her go and slam the heavy oak doors of the library behind her. This was the second time in two weeks that Mrs. Taylor had stormed off like that. And the last time, when his father found out, he had been confined entirely to the manor for a week.

            His father really had a knack for choosing the exact wrong punishment for him.

Ajax swiveled his head to look back at the map on the wall. All the nobles here thought that Volcno was the center of the world, and they enjoyed nothing more than taking turns ruling it. His mother hadn’t been like that, though. She had wanted to take him out to see the world, to the Ice Palace in the north of Glacia, the great Almonde Canyon in Tellus. She even talked about visiting Larvatus. She used to tell him and his little sister stories about the witch kings rumored to reside there.

He put his head in his hands, which were now folded on the table. Briefly in this motion, he caught a glimpse of himself in the glossy finish of the table, and he groaned just a little bit. The first conversation topic any of his father’s associates ever picked with him was to comment on just how much he looked like his father, with his well-groomed mop of blond hair and light blue eyes. Then they would say how strong he looked, how sturdy, since he was tall and broad-shouldered, how much he looked the part to follow exactly in Governor Alterra’s footsteps. The first repeated rule of a family in a generation, they would wager, a fitting fortune for a family so wrought with strife.

            That would be usually when Ajax would smile politely and walk away, when the people started skirting delicately around what had happened.

           

            Ajax stayed like that on the table with his head in his arms for a long time. The light began fading in the windows and what little was left cast an orange glow about the room. Soon, he expected, the dinner bell would ring, and he would have to sit at that large table, directly across from his father, surrounded by empty seats and slightly uncomfortable servants, and have to listen to the long lecture about the importance of Palatian and the severity of his punishment. He groaned again.

           

The noise he heard eventually, though, sounded much more like a scream.

            Ajax raised his head from his hands, which were beginning to sweat. No, he thought. He tried to calm himself down. Every once in a while he would think he would hear something and send himself into a tizzy. They had increased their security nearly twentyfold. It had been six long years. It’s not them.

            His father always denied that the attack had changed anything. “Alterras do not scare easily,” he said, “and we do not let personal matters affect our judgment.” But he had changed. Ajax saw it clear as day. There were more blind eyes being turned, more excuses being made. Not just with the rest of the nobles, but with the rest of the world.

            Once Ajax had been summoned to his father’s office, and in the few minutes that he was alone in the room, was able to read the letter at the top of his tall desk. It was from an influential Chrysos politician, someone even Ajax had heard of. He was asking for help, for protection. “They are coming for me,” it had said. It gave Ajax goose bumps, reading it. But the next day the letter was in the trash.

            There were more of these letters, Ajax was sure. Every once in a while, he thought he glimpsed one. But he was equally sure that they all met the same fate.

            So it made no sense, them coming back. And it was silent again just long enough for him to start to actually believe that.

            But then there were more screams.

            Ajax scrambled back from the doors, out of his chair. Those screams sounded much closer to him. He had to hide. Somewhere, anywhere. Maybe they didn’t know he was still alive. After all, he had been supposed to die, too, last time. He knew it was a feeble hope, but it was enough to hold on to. He half crawled, half ran between the book shelves, towards a desk that had been pushed into a dusty back corner of the admittedly spacious and airy room. He tucked himself up into a ball underneath the thick side paneling. He couldn’t be seen from the door now. Maybe they would just walk right by.

            He tried to calm himself down, but his heart was racing far too hard. He leaned his head back against the inside of the desk and focused on breathing. That was when a large divot in the wood on the other side caught his eye.

No way, he thought. He had been here, last time. Under this very desk. No wonder it’s in the corner. Last time there hadn’t been any screams, just the whooshing sound of three expertly shot arrows. One for each of them. His father had been out of the room. There were two thunks and a twang. And then there had been his screams.

Ajax was violently shaking now. It was happening again.

He closed his eyes and prayed to every god he knew that they thought he was already dead, and he squeezed them even more tightly shut when he heard the library doors creak open. Then there were the footsteps, swift and subdued on the carpet.

He peeked his eyes open, just as the footsteps stopped canvassing the room to settle right before his hiding spot. Down crouched their owner, one hand gripping the top of the desk as she did this.

            Ajax was rather ashamed to say that he didn’t just stare the assassin in the face. He downright ogled. Before him stood quite possibly the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She looked as though she were nearly a foot shorter than him, but she was poised as though his superior. Her eyes, much more vibrantly blue than his own, stood out against her copper-colored skin on her exquisite, elfin face, and her long, black hair was pulled back into a messy plait, which was tossed over her shoulder.

“I’m supposed to kill you,” she said. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet.