Someone tugs hard on my hand, and I spin around, ready to snap, but it’s Renya, her eyes fiery. “That taskmaster was more than happy to help me,” she says. “Your father was taken to the Citizens Hospital.” I swallow hard. The irony of this is so cruel, my eyesight momentarily blurs with tears, but I blink them away. “He was declared dead when he arrived. I’m so sorry, Astrid. He’s in the hospital morgue.”
My head jerks up and down in a frantic nod. “And Marlon? Did the taskmaster know anything—”
“He could only guess, but he thought they probably took him to the Outsider clinic at the gates of Camp Hope.”
“That was my guess, too.” I suck in a deep gulp of night air, close my eyes, and let it out, just to be sure the tears are no longer threatening. “We should go back.”
“Sure,” she says. Then she pulls something from behind her back and lifts it to my eyes. It’s a silver apple cut in half, top to bottom, with the middle scooped out and replaced with a spoonful of warm honey.
“A silver honeypot,” I say, taking it from her hand. “Where did you find it?”
Renya’s lips quirk into a small smile, but whatever her answer, it’s drowned out by a loud noise—not one sound, but a series of sounds—the rat-tat-tat of fireworks, but way too close. The blasts send everybody scattering, and Renya is carried away by a surge of the crowd that pushes her one way and me another.
The honeypot slips through my fingers, and someone in the anonymous crowd presses a piece of paper against my palm in its place. It’s a leaflet emblazoned with the words Outsider Liberation Army. Suddenly I realize that the explosions may not have been an accident.
Just as I begin to get my feet steady under me, another blast goes off overhead, and a brand-new wave of people comes running down the street, falling against me and pushing me back. I’m flung against a set of doors and swept through, along with two Enchanted women with tear-soaked faces. One of them drags a little boy by the hand. Flower garlands are strung around his neck. The doors close behind us.
After a long moment, the boy begins to wail. I leave these three and climb a set of stairs to the second floor, hoping to get a clear view of what’s happening outside, or even to catch a glimpse of the princess. But everything outside has gone dark. Electricity must’ve been cut to the strings of lights. I’m just heading back down the stairs, when someone calls through an open doorway behind me.
“Looking to put your name in for the race?”
I really don’t want to rejoin the two Enchanted women and the crying boy, so I peer into the dimly lit room and see a white-haired man standing behind a counter. “Then you’ve found the right place.” Above his head a wooden sign hangs from brass hooks: Race Administration. “You got here just in time. I was closing up when the explosions rang out.” He taps an open book in front of him with a pen. “Hooligans, that’s what they are. The OLA won’t get any respect from me.” I can’t help but step closer. The man is thin and bumpy, like he’s made of driftwood. I’m convinced I saw him earlier, outside. “The OLA wants to disrupt the Race of Oblivion, and do you know why? Because if they can’t have citizenship, nobody can have it.”
I recognize him now. “You’re the man in the robe. You held the book the racers signed.”
“Of course I did. I’m the senior registrar. It’s my duty and honor to welcome the brave Outsiders who enter the Race of Oblivion.” There’s an air of suspicion about him; he thinks I’m up to something. He waves me closer and holds out a pen. “A minute later, and I would have been gone. You are here to enter the race, are you not?”
I catch the scent of anise—the scent of a secret. He’s hiding something from me. Not that I’m surprised—most people have secrets—but when I sense a secret in a man who’s trying to cajole me into entering a race that starts with amnesia and usually ends with death, with nothing but a desperate sprint across the continent in between, my defenses understandably go up.
“Why would you think I’d enter that terrible race?”
“Why? To win! Why would anyone enter?”
I do my best to lay the heaviest stare I can conjure right on his face, letting him know I am not easily swindled. “You can save your sales pitch for someone so desperate they’re foolish,” I say. “If you think that’s me, you’re the one being foolish.” I want to add something more—there’s some truism my father always pulled out when he thought he was being set up—but the words escape me.
I wish he were here.
“Ah, all right then,” he says. He closes the heavy book with a thud—the book the racers signed—and slides it into a drawer beneath the countertop. “I had you wrong.” The enthusiastic lilt is gone from his voice. I must have been right about him trying to entice me into entering, because he’s dropped that act entirely. He pulls a key on a long chain from his pocket. “I just thought . . . after what happened before the parade . . .”
“Before the parade?” He gives me a sorrowful smile, and I know what secret he’s keeping. “You saw my father die, didn’t you?”
“I did. Right at the princess’s feet. When I saw you walk in here, I thought—”
“You thought I was signing up to spite the princess.”
His eyes widen. I flinch, hoping I haven’t made my Cientia too obvious. “You read people very well,” he says. “Something like that could give you an advantage in the race.”
Could that be true? I’ve never asked myself what my Cientia could do for me in the Race of Oblivion before.
“Oh well. Too loyal to the princess, I suppose. Or maybe you don’t believe you could win.”
He’s wrong. Loyalty wouldn’t stop me from entering. But he’s right that I’ve never considered the Race of Oblivion something I could win. Yet he thinks otherwise. My Cientia makes me sure of it.
But does it make me sure I could win the race?
I watch him slide the key into the drawer’s lock and turn it. “Wait!” I say.
There’s a rumble from the floor below. More carnival goers have found their way inside the building. My eyes go to the banner above the registrar’s head. It reads: All the Privileges of Citizenship, and beneath that For the Winner and Their Family.
“The winner and their family . . . including all their siblings?”
He finally meets my gaze. “Of course.”
The commotion downstairs becomes louder. A man’s voice shouts, “Astrid Jael!” My heart beats like a drum. “We are seeking the Outsider Astrid Jael on behalf of Princess Renya.”
“I’m here!” I call out. Then quietly, to the man in front of me, “Put that book back on the counter.”
I think of Marlon, the fear in his eyes as they wrestled him away from me. How I’d wanted to fight to keep him. The registrar unlocks the drawer and pulls out the book. Feet thunder up the steps behind me. I think of Jayden, so far away. I could find him and bring him home.
The registrar holds out the pen. I glance up at the banner once more. All the Privileges of Citizenship.
I’m scrawling my signature into the book when the Enchanted Authority guards come up behind me. Renya is with them, her face bright red with heat and fear.