I notice details. Things that make one person different from anyone else. Leo has a lot of things like that. More than anyone. There’s nobody who looks quite like him.
I push him off so he’s not so close to me.
“Alright,” I say. “Back to your own side.”
Leo brought a pack of cards. We play some ridiculous game that involves betting on a hidden card that your opponent can’t see. Leo’s good at trying to convince me of what he’s got, but I have a better poker face. It’s hard to keep from laughing too loud when the cabin lights dim and everyone else tries to get some sleep.
We have to switch planes again in Zagreb at some ungodly hour, and we both fall asleep on top of our duffel bags, barely waking up in time to sprint down the concourse to our last flight.
Sweaty and grumpy, we finally fly into Dubrovnik. It’s a port city on the edge of the Adriatic Sea, right at the very southernmost tip of Croatia.
The plan is to stay the night here, then take a boat to Visine Dvorca the following morning.
Dvorca is a tiny rocky island in the Adriatic Sea. There’s one small town on the island, with a few hundred locals scratching a living on the hillsides, raising sheep and goats, cultivating little farms and vineyards. Most of their produce is sold to the school.
My father told me that. He didn’t attend Kingmakers himself—he’s not from a legacy family. But his adoptive father Tymon Zajac was. My father visited Kingmakers twice with Zajac, to meet with the Chancellor. He said that he had never been to a place with such a sense of history. The school has stood on that spot for seven hundred years. The most brilliant and ruthless criminal minds of the last several centuries passed through those halls.
In fact, Kingmakers influenced my father to buy our house in Chicago. Both buildings are ancient, remote, and castle-like. And both are stuffed with secrets.
Because of the high rocky cliffs and the currents that dash against the island, you can only approach from one side. There’s only one place where a boat can make harbor. And that’s what makes Kingmakers so defensible. You can’t sneak up on the island unannounced. You can’t approach the school without warning. You have to take the single wide-open road up to the front gates, just as we’ll do tomorrow.
For now, Leo and I will be spending the night in a hotel in the Old Town part of Dubrovnik. The Grand Villa Argentina is perched on the cliffs above the blue ocean. The red roofs of the Old Town are spread out below, leading down to the medieval-looking Ploce Gate with its squat stone towers.
“I wonder if they’ll let us come into Dubrovnik often?” I ask Leo. “There’s not much on the island. What if we need new clothes or something . . .”
We were only permitted to bring one suitcase each.
“You won’t need clothes,” Leo says grimly. “We’re supposed to wear those stupid uniforms.”
“It’s to prevent us wearing gang colors or whatever the fuck, I guess,” I say.
“That wouldn’t matter for you,” Leo says, “since all you wear is black. How are you gonna adjust to having to wear green sometimes? And gray and silver?”
The school uniforms are mostly black, with a few pieces in shades of charcoal, silver, sage, and olive. It’s all fairly muted, but of course Leo can’t resist an opportunity to give me shit.
“I don’t only wear black,” I inform him.
“Midnight and onyx are also shades of black . . .” he says.
“Did you look those up ahead of time for that joke?” I say. “Admit it, you didn’t know the word ‘onyx’ . . .”
Leo snorts. He loves trying to wind me up, but what he really wants is for me to hit back at him. He wouldn’t respect me if I didn’t. Everything is a competition to him.
“There’s probably some other kids from the school here by now, don’t you think?” he says.
I wish we could have flown out with Miles. He would have been our guide the whole way. He could tell us where to eat dinner right now—he always knows the best place to get anything.
Of course Leo and I grilled him about what Kingmakers is like, but it’s hard to get a straight answer out of Miles. He’s sarcastic as fuck and not one to show emotion. He wouldn’t admit if something was seriously scary or difficult. He acts like nothing affects him.
“Probably,” I say. “We can’t be the only ones who got in today.”
After stowing our bags in our adjoining rooms, we head down to Old Town to look for someplace to eat.
Old Town sits within high stone walls, preserving the city in its original medieval state—or as close to it as you’re likely to find. It’s stuffed with Baroque churches and monasteries, and stone palaces with two-foot-thick walls. The streets are roughly cobbled, and the squares are paved with flat slabs of marble. The air smells of salt, thyme, wild orange trees, and the spray of dozens of fountains that keep the greenery lush.
We find a little restaurant with outdoor dining and sit down at the wobbly table shaded by a bay leaf tree. The waiter brings us hot tea and a warm basket of flatbread without us even asking.
Leo tears into the bread like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.
“What should I get?” I ask the waiter.
Enough tourists come here that he speaks English quite well.
“We’re famous for our seafood,” he says. “We have fresh-caught oysters, mussels, squid, and cuttlefish risotto. Fish stew—we call it brudet. Also beef stew—that’s pašticada.”
“I’ll have oysters, please,” I say.
“Anything that isn’t fish?” Leo says. He doesn’t like seafood.
“Peka is baked meat and vegetables,” the waiter says.
“Sounds great.” Leo nods.
“He said beef stew before that,” I tell Leo.
“I don’t like stew, either.”
“Can you bring us some sides as well?” I ask the waiter. “Whatever you think we’ll like.”
“Of course.” He nods, hurrying away to ring it all in.
“You’re picky,” I say to Leo. “What are you gonna do if they only have one option for dinner at Kingmakers?”
“Fucking starve, I guess.” Leo grins, without a hint of concern.
As we wait for our food, Leo leans back in his chair, long legs stretched out, arms crossed over his broad chest, surveying everything around us.
I like to look at the sky and the water, the orange trees and the stone facades of the buildings. Leo is primarily interested in people.
There’s a table of boys off to the left of us, laughing and joking. Some of them are speaking a language I’ve never heard in my life, while the others are Russian. I can understand a little of the latter—Russian is close enough to Polish to get the gist. Leo, I’m sure, is catching every word.
“They’re talking about the competition?” I ask Leo.
“Yeah.” He nods. “They want to be Captain of the Freshmen team, obviously.”
Every year Kingmakers runs a competition called the Quartum Bellum—the War of Four. All four years of students participate, even the Freshmen. Of course the Seniors usually win, but not always.
Kingmakers is divided by year and also by specialty. Leo and I are in the Heirs division. There’s also the Accountants, the Enforcers, and the Spies. The Accountants handle the finance and investment arms of the business, the Enforcers do most of the day-to-day operations and security, and the Spies are for subterfuge and subverting law-enforcement. The Heirs, of course, are meant to be the bosses. But there’s no guarantee that you can become boss or stay boss even within your own family. The primary purpose of our training will be leadership. Even after you’re appointed, you still have to convince your men to follow you.