Chapter One
Alexander
HIGH KING ALEXANDER flexed his fingers on the canoe paddle and stared at the rushing river ahead. The Gaulee River roared with the late spring runoff, the rising sun glinting pink and gold in the white, thrashing crests of the water churning over and around boulders. “I can’t do this.”
In the prow of the canoe, Daemyn Rand, Alex’s manservant, bodyguard, advisor, and friend, glanced over his shoulder, the fringe on his buckskin shirt swaying with his movement. “You’ve improved a lot since last year. Don’t worry. I’ll step in if we start floundering.”
“And we’ll be here to fish you out if you capsize.” In the canoe next to them, Princess Rosanna, the girl Daemyn was courting, and her bodyguard Isi Degotaga were both wielding paddles and appeared far more relaxed in their canoe than Alex was in his.
Princess Rosanna swayed in time with the current, the fringe on her buckskin shirt swishing in the light breeze. Blue beadwork created patterns on her shirt while a long, black braid swung down the center of her back. Isi’s curls were tied back with a bright red ribbon, matching the red beadwork on her pale yellow linen shirt.
Beyond Rosanna and Isi, Captain Degotaga, the head of Princess Rosanna’s bodyguards, and Zeke, Daemyn’s nephew, were also keeping pace in their canoe. Other canoes filled with guards, both Alex’s and Rosanna’s, spread out along the river, keeping watch.
Alex swallowed, his heart throbbing in his throat. He wasn’t ready for this yet. He’d been going down the Gaulee with Daemyn, Rosanna, Isi, Zeke, and the guards ever since they had returned from that disastrous visit to Pohatomie the previous fall. Shooting the rapids first thing in the morning wasn’t Alex’s favorite thing to do. But, he tolerated it since it was what everyone else loved to do.
As he was learning, that was how friendship worked sometimes. Daemyn would have preferred to live a quiet cabin in Buckhannock, but he stayed at Castle Eyota out of loyalty to Alex. Rosanna, Isi, and Zeke had all moved to Castle Eyota out of loyalty to Daemyn.
Compared to that, Alex could manage to brave this river a couple of times a week.
And, more than that, the trip to Pohatomie had shown him that he was pathetically unskillful when it came to survival. Alex was not a capable person. He had been raised to be the high prince a hundred years ago, in a time when the Seven Kingdoms of Tallahatchia had been prosperous and—mostly—at peace. He’d had to do nothing besides sit in Castle Eyota and be regal.
But after the curse that had caused Alex to sleep for a hundred years, he had woken to a Tallahatchia splintered by war.
In this Tallahatchia, being skillful was more prized than being regal. To be the high king this Tallahatchia needed, Alex had to be stronger. More skillful. More capable.
That meant he needed to steer this canoe and shoot those rapids. It would prove he could be just as capable as Daemyn and Zeke and all the rest of Daemyn’s many, many, many relatives.
He had to do this. He couldn’t keep putting this off. He’d gone down this river many times, first in the center of a canoe, then in the prow. Daemyn and Rosanna had talked him through exactly what he had to do.
Daemyn flicked his paddle, sending a shower of droplets at Alex. “You’ll be fine. I wouldn’t be sitting in this canoe if I didn’t reckon you could handle this.”
Alex let out a long, slow breath. Daemyn thought he could do this. It would be fine. The Gaulee wasn’t running dangerously high as it had earlier in the spring. Now, the higher water smoothed out some of the most dangerous sections of rapids. This was about the safest time of year to tackle this river.
“All right.” Alex dug his paddle into the river. Now or never.
Two canoes of guards swept down the river ahead of them, then it was Alex’s turn to guide the canoe into the current. In the prow, Daemyn kept the canoe straight, paddling to keep their speed faster than the current to maintain maneuverability.
Beside them, Rosanna gave a whoop as she and Isi dug in their paddles, swooping their birch bark canoe into the rush of the river.
Alex wanted to squeeze his eyes shut. Maybe even grip the side of the canoe and hold his breath as he used to when he started riding the river each morning.
Focus. Alex forced his grip on the paddle to loosen. His heart pounding in his ears nearly drowned out the river’s gushing roar.
A rock loomed ahead of them. Alex leaned into his paddle, fighting against the strength of the river to turn the canoe. But he had to be careful not to turn the canoe too much, otherwise they would turn broadside and capsize.
He cleared the rock and hurried to dig his paddle in on the other side to straighten the canoe out. They were doing a strange s-pattern across the current as Alex kept overcorrecting.
As they approached the next stretch, where they had to thread their way between two boulders, Daemyn leaned back and dug his paddle in, straightening the canoe out.
Alex winced. He’d already messed up.
No time for worrying about it. The canoe shot between the boulders with both Alex and Daemyn fending off. Immediately, the canoe dropped over a mini waterfall.
More rocks. More white, foaming water. By the time they shot from the last stretch of rapids onto the calm, broad stretch of water where the Gaulee River met the Kanawhee, Alex’s hands were shaking. He let out a long breath and rested his elbows on his knees. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to throw up or just curl up in the bottom of the canoe.
Rosanna and Isi’s canoe flew onto the calm water. Both grinned at Alex. Rosanna slapped her paddle on the river, showering both her and Isi with droplets. “Well done, Your Majesty.”
Isi grimaced and flicked water from her face. “Really? Couldn’t you have celebrated in a way that was less wet?”
Rosanna smirked and splashed her paddle again.
Zeke and Captain Degotaga’s canoe rushed onto the Kanawhee and drifted next to Daemyn and Alex’s on its momentum.
“We ain’t dead. You done good, Your Highness.” Daemyn rested his paddle across his knees, swiveling as much as he could in the canoe.
Alex clenched his hands tighter around the paddle. He tried out his best impression of the mountain accent Daemyn occasionally let slip through. “I ain’t never doing that again.”
Still, the praise felt rather good. For far too long, Alex had been the arrogant, helpless high king that Daemyn had to constantly rescue out of scrapes. He didn’t want to be that person anymore, but instead become a person Daemyn respected.
Zeke shook his head. “You don’t sound a’tall like one of the mountain folk. Your accent wouldn’t fool a deaf hound dog.”
Alex just shook his head at Zeke as they steered their canoes out of the rush of the converging rivers, making the turn to travel upstream on the Kanawhee River. At least Zeke was joking with him. That was an improvement from the glares Zeke had been giving him last year.
On the mountain above them, Castle Eyota’s reddish stones glinted in the sunrise, its many turrets rising against the clear sky and the forested peaks of the mountains around them.
Next to them, the town of Eyota crowded the riverbank, slowly rebuilding after a century of neglect and ruin during Alex’s curse. While the Kanawhee River wasn’t filled with a multitude of canoes and keelboats the way it had been a hundred years ago, several long canoes were plying the river with the first shipments of fabric from Guyangahela, pottery from Neskahana, corn from Pohatomie, furs from Mongadotte, and iron items from Buckhannock to sell at the newly rebuilt markets of Eyota.