But then, as I began to twist toward the window, I stopped. No, I would not make a spectacle of myself. I was Greta Gustafsen Stuart, Duchess of Halifax and Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy. I was a seventh-generation hostage, and the future ruler of a superpower. Even if I was about to die—and the dust meant I probably was—even if I was about to die, I would not freeze and tremble. I would not gawp.
So. I put my hands one on top of the other and pushed them flat. I breathed in through my nose and blew out through my mouth as if blowing out a candle, which is a good way to cope with any kind of distress or pain. In short, I pulled myself back into being royalty. All around me I could sense everyone else doing the same. Only Grego was left standing, as if caught in a spotlight. That was clearly out of bounds—he’d be punished in a moment—but in my heart I did not blame him.
Someone was coming here. And no one came here, except to kill one of us.
At the front of the room, our teacher whirred and clicked. “Is something troubling you, Gregori?”
“I— No.” Grego broke himself from the window. His hair was the color of a cirrus cloud, and the sun caught the wiry sweep of it. The implanted cybernetic irises made his eyes look alien. “World War One,” he said, his accent sharpening the Ws almost to Vs. He looked down at his upturned chair as if he didn’t know what it was for.
Da-Xia glided to her feet. She bowed to Grego, and then righted his chair. Grego sat down and pushed at his face with both hands.
“Are you all right?” asked Da-Xia, pushing—as she ever did—the edge of what we were allowed.
“Of course. ?inoma, yes, of course.” Grego’s eyes flicked past her to look at the dust. “It is only the usual impending doom.” Grego is the son of one of the grand dukes of the Baltic Alliance, and his country, like mine, was on the brink of war.
But mine was closer to that brink than his.
On her way back to her seat, Da-Xia laid her hand on top of my arm. It rested lightly, momentarily, like a hummingbird on a branch. The rider wasn’t coming for Xie—her nation was nowhere close to a war—so her touch was pure gift. And then it was gone.
Da-Xia sank back into her seat. “The assassination of the archduke is a great poignancy, is it not? That the death of one minor royal figure could lead to so much loss of life? Imagine, a world war.”
“Imagine,” I echoed. My lips felt numb and stiff. I did not look at the dust. No one did. Beside me I could hear Sidney’s breath shudder. I could almost feel it, as if our bodies were pressed together.
“It’s only a world war if you don’t count Africa,” said Thandi, who is heir to one of the great thrones of Africa, and touchy about it. “Or central Asia. Or the southern Americas.”
The seven of us had been together for so long that in times of great stress we could have whole conversations that were assembled from everyone’s most typical reactions. This was one of them. Sidney (his voice cracking a little) said that it could be penguins versus polar bears and Thandi would still call it Eurocentric. Thandi answered sharply, while Han, who is bad with irony, noted that penguins and polar bears did not live on the same continent, and therefore had no recorded wars.
In this prefabricated way, we discussed history like good students—and kept our seats like good hostages. Grego stayed silent, his white hand knotted in his whiter hair. Little Han watched Grego as if puzzled. Da-Xia tucked her feet up under herself in a posture of formal serenity. Atta, who has not spoken aloud in two years, was alone in looking overtly out the window. His eyes were like the eyes of a dead dog.
Talk in the classroom was drying up. Trickling away.
There was a tiny noise at the desk beside mine: Sidney, tapping his fingertips on his notebook. He lifted them a millimeter, dropped them, lifted and dropped. There were pinpricks of sweat on his cheekbones and lips.
I pulled my eyes from him, and saw that the dust was much closer. At the base of the plume was the bump-bumping dot of a rider on horseback. I could see the rider’s wings.
It was certain, then. The rider was a Swan Rider.
The Swan Riders are humans in the employ of the United Nations. They are sent out to present official declarations of war—to present the declarations, and to kill the official hostages.
We are the hostages.
And we knew which of our nations was likely to be at war. The Swan Rider was coming to kill Sidney, and to kill me.
Sidney Carlow, son of the governor of the Mississippi Delta Confederacy. He had no title, but still he had an ancient profile, a face you could have imagined on the sphinx, though his ears stuck out. His hands were big. And our two nations . . .
Sidney’s nation and mine were on the brink of war. It was complicated, but it was simple. His people were thirsty, and mine had water. They were desperate, and we were firm. And now, that dust. I was almost, almost sure—
“Children?” whirred Delta. “Must I remind you of our topic?”
“It’s war,” said Sidney.
I locked my eyes onto the map at the front of the room. I could feel my classmates try not to look at Sidney and me. I could feel them try not to pity.
None of us has ever wanted pity.