Renya’s hands roll in her pockets. I hear the key jangle at the end of its chain. “You know,” she says, “since you entered, everyone’s been begging me to talk you out of it.” I consider this. I want to ask who everyone is, but I let her talk. “I’ve heard stories. . . .”
“What kinds of stories?” I hate myself for asking, instead of grabbing her arm and dragging her back to the gate. But I can’t help myself.
“I heard that a few years ago, a racer died of heatstroke a mile from a remote desert checkpoint. The contestants who came after her read the solution to a riddle she’d written on her palm before stepping over her body and leaving her for the buzzards.” She pauses, checking my face for the appropriate level of horror. I’m trying to keep my expression neutral, but if she’s reading my feelings, she knows she’s rattling me. “The following year, a contestant froze to death one night in the Wilds. The next racer to come along broke his fingers to steal the solution to a puzzle scrawled on a scrap of paper crumpled in his fist.”
I roll my eyes, but the truth is, I’ve heard these stories, too. They keep me awake at night.
“Then last year,” she continues, “only two racers survived to cross the finish line. The first received full satisfaction of his indenture and citizenship for his whole family. The second, only an hour behind, went home with three additional years of indenture—the penalty for losing. Of course, he still had his life, which is more than the other contestants had at the end.”
“You can’t know those stories are true,” I say, though I’m feeling a lot less confident than I was before she started talking.
“Look,” Renya says, her voice low. “What if . . .” She hesitates, and my heart flutters, anticipating what she might propose. “What if I could convince them to change your indenture? Make it so you’re no longer my surrogate.”
She bites her lip, waiting for my reply. This is something she’s never offered. Something I doubt she can give. But she’s desperate. And I’m tempted.
It’s true that I have not had an easy life as her surrogate. We’ve been together a long time—I came to live here in the palace when I was only seven years old, when my mother died and her indenture to the royal family was left unpaid. Renya and I were the same age, and she needed a surrogate, and my family had a debt to pay. Since then, I’ve seldom been far from Renya’s side, and what might look like forced companionship from the outside feels like real friendship from the inside. Which is both good and bad. As her surrogate, I am valued only to the extent my pain causes Renya pain. The more she cares for me, the more she can be manipulated through my pain. So in a way, her affection for me is a curse.
But as hard as my indenture has been, I’m not entering the race to escape it.
“You know this isn’t about you,” I say. “You know it’s all for Marlon. If I win—when I win—we’ll both become citizens. Even Jayden will become a citizen! He could come home. He and I could find jobs and a little place where the three of us could live.” My father’s too-small apartment with its too-small windows comes to mind, and I wish I could just go back there—just go home—but someone else lives there now. After Papa died, the Authority sent Marlon to a dirty hovel they pass off as an orphanage. The palace stables are cleaner. He’s stuck there until he’s assigned an indenture. I visit him almost every day, and every day is bleaker than the day before. When he first got there, I thought he’d start mimicking more and more. But something worse happened.
He stopped mimicking. He stopped talking at all.
I never thought I’d look forward to the race starting, and I guess I still don’t, but I look forward to it ending.
“I know I can win, Renya. I’m sure that I can. For Marlon and Jayden, for me—for you, too. We could truly be friends if I were a citizen.” I mention our friendship because it’s the only thing I can think of that could make my entering the race somehow about her. Since her fear is more for herself than for me, maybe the anticipation of our reunion will convince her that letting me go is a better bet for her than trying to force me to stay.
Not that she could force me. Every Outsider is entitled to enter. She knows that as well as anyone. I’m going.
“If you really want to be a friend to me,” I say, “then look after Marlon if . . .”
“If you die a horrible death?”
“Renya, please. Just promise me, if something happens, you’ll see to it he gets a decent indenture. Maybe something here at the palace, tending to the horses, or even the dogs. He’d like that. But please,” I say. “For my sake, come inside with me now.”
Renya takes a step back and almost tumbles. I reach out my hand and catch the gauzy fabric of her sleeve just in time. At first I think she’s upset at what I said, but then her eyes widen, locked on something beyond my shoulder.
“Are you—”
My words cut off as a wave of fear so thick, so cold, and so dark crashes over me, I feel like I could drown in it. Like I’m a tiny raft and Renya’s fear is a tidal wave.
Then I feel the prickle of something else. A flood of despair, as if darkness itself were an emotion.
I don’t want to turn. It’s almost solid—I feel my back pressing against a wall of pain—but I know I can’t just stand here like this either. I’m ready. I’m ready. I told Renya I was prepared to face them and I am.
I turn and see what Renya sees, what frightened her so much it drove her through the palace gates in search of me. Three figures stand slightly uphill from us, draped in long black robes, their faces concealed by hoods. They seem to hover rather than stand, like personifications of Death itself. I can’t even tell if they are men or women—it doesn’t matter. They are just what they are.
Asps.
My stomach rises and falls like the sea in a storm, but I won’t acknowledge it. Not my roiling stomach or my careering heart. I wouldn’t let Renya see fear in me, and I won’t let the Asps see it either.
It’s then that I realize how greatly I misjudged Renya. How could I have assumed that her fears were only for herself and not for me? But it’s too late to let her help me now. Too late to do anything to save myself.
So instead, I bite my lips between my teeth to hold them still, and remind myself what courage really is. Not the lack of fear, but action in the face of fear. And not selfish action, either, but action taken in love. Like sneaking outside the palace wall in order to warn a friend. Or willingly entering the Race of Oblivion to save your brothers from lives of misery.
The Asps each take a step toward me, and I realize another way I misjudged Renya. I had been wrong to assume she was exaggerating.
Just as she’d said, in their gloved hands, each of them holds a syringe.
Four
My eyes catch on the hand of the Asp closest to me, and I notice the liquid in the vial, a cool blue color. I think of that blue mixing with the red of my blood, as a figure emerges from behind the tallest Asp.
It’s Sir Arnaud, with a pleasant smile on his lips and a hard warning in his eyes. His uniform as commander of the King’s Knights makes him appear just as intimidating, yet far more elegant, than the Asps. Who would dare argue with a man in a bloodred cape with a sword at his hip? Just behind him his daughter, Sir Millicent, appears.