A team of secondborns scurries around the beach. Stone-Fated workers set up tents and awnings and direct a hovering easel into place. A half-executed oil painting adorns the canvas in a palette of bright hues. Paintbrushes of various sizes levitate next to the easel. Secondborns with the white roiling wave monikers of the Fate of Seas amble around, digging up clams and throwing out nets and woven traps.
Before I can circumvent the party, the young woman in the white dress drops her hem, allowing water and sand to soak it as she hurries to me. The death drones follow her. “Roselle St. Sismode!” she gushes. “I’d heard rumors that you’d come to Virtues!”
Recognition dawns abruptly. It’s Balmora, a younger version of her mother, Adora. “Hello, Secondborn Commander,” I reply with a deep nod of my head.
Balmora Virtue, formerly Wenn-Bowie before her Transition, is hardly ever photographed or shown on the visual screen. As the spare heir to the title of The Virtue, she’s kept from the public eye so as not to be a distraction to the true heir. Her secondborn Virtue-Fated attendants move away from us to a discrete distance, but their eyes and ears are all tuned to our conversation. Based on their upscale attire and silver halo monikers, I’d guess they’re secondborns of other prominent families in Virtues—all but one of them, a secondborn Stone-Fated girl around the age of twelve. She hovers near Balmora.
“How long has it been since I last saw you at the Sword Palace?” Balmora asks.
“I was ten, so nine years ago?” I ask.
“That sounds about right. I was eleven, I believe.”
“I’m surprised you remember me.”
Her eyes grow wide. “I remember you quite vividly, Roselle! How could I forget? You smashed a clock over Grisholm’s head! I also see you almost every day on the visual screen, running through a barrage of explosions or shooting at your enemies.” She holds up her hand with her thumb up and two fingers out in the shape of a fusionmag, popping off rounds. Her pouty mouth curls into a snarl. She isn’t mocking me, it’s more like admiration.
“That isn’t real. Those are just Salloway Munitions ads.”
“Yeah, but you got to meet Firstborn Derek Burgeon!”
My brow wrinkles. “I’m sorry, who?”
“The soldier . . . the one who lifts you up at the end of that one ad and carries you to the waiting airship.” She wraps her arms around herself in an embrace.
I remember the ad. It depicted a scenario very much like Hawthorne’s rescue of me from the battlefield in Stars. “I didn’t catch that Diamond’s name,” I reply.
“If I were that close to Diamond Derek, I would definitely remember his name.” She holds her hand to her heart with a dreamy expression.
I frown. “He . . . he’s okay. It’s just . . . it wasn’t real.” The real Derek, if put into a situation with megaton bombs exploding in actual combat, would probably wet himself and never leave the airship. He’d be cringing in the corner beneath his artificial helmet of hair products, crying and sucking his thumb. It’s men like Hawthorne and Reykin—who repeatedly dive into danger despite the threat to their own lives—that I find attractive. More than attractive. Irresistible.
“Do you think he’ll visit you here?”
“Who?”
She rolls her eyes. “Derek!”
“No.”
“That’s a shame. I was hoping you’d introduce me to him.” She pushes out her lower lip.
“Sorry, Secondborn Commander.”
She waves her hand. “Please, call me Balmora! ‘Secondborn Commander’ is so formal.” Her grin stretches wide, showing her perfect teeth. “When did you arrive?” Her fingers catch her windswept hair from her cheek, tucking the long blond strands behind her ear.
“A little over a week ago.”
“Why are you here?” she blurts out. “No one knows. It’s the most delicious question on everyone’s lips.” She moves forward and links her arm in mine with a familiarity that I cannot fathom. We’ve only met that one other time. Back then, Balmora had been more interested in Gabriel than me.
One of the death drones breaks formation and veers closer to me. Turning its harrowing gun barrels in my direction, its initiating whine sends my hand to the hilt of my fusionblade. “Step away from the Secondborn Commander,” it warns in a rumbling robotic tone. I can see my reflection and Balmora’s on the drone’s veneer. My fingertips slowly ease the hilt from the leather sheath secured to my thigh.
“Stand down!” Balmora orders her security drone with a wave of her arm, as if swatting away a nagging insect. “This is my friend, Roselle St. Sismode.” The drone takes a moment to process her words before it powers down and shifts away to join the others in formation. “Now then, let’s go for a walk,” Balmora continues, holding on tighter to my arm.
I relax my grip on my fusionblade, replacing it in its sheath. We stroll the shore together. The young girl trails behind us. Balmora seems not to notice. “Don’t mind my sentinels,” she says. “I rarely have visitors. The drones are unaccustomed to new faces.”
I glance again at her “sentinels.” They aren’t Sword stingers, like the ones that guard Grisholm. Stingers are meant to defend. Death drones are meant to kill. It’s their only job. I wonder if they’re protecting Balmora, or if they’re her prison guards, ready to kill her if she tries to slip away.
“Do you live there?” I nod my head in the direction of the stone fortress amid the waves.
Balmora’s smile fades as her gaze goes to the enormous structure surrounded by water. “The Sea Fortress? It’s the Secondborn Commander’s residence,” she counters with a sharp note of bitterness. “Where else would I live?”
“It’s lovely.” It’s something from a fairy tale. The water is clear enough to see the coral reefs. Diamond patterns dance on the weathered stone. The spires are topped with silver tiles that sparkle in the sunlight.
“It is, but it’s also very lonely.” She sighs with the kind of melancholy I remember from my days living at the Sword Palace. But I had no companions. She has several. The gaggle of females follows us, whispering behind their hands. Balmora tightens her grip on my arm. “They’re not good company,” she hisses. “They’re no better than spies. One must watch everything one says around them. And anyway, they’re boring. The only one I can trust is Quincy.” Balmora indicates the freckle-faced twelve-year-old behind us. “You’ll have to visit me while you’re a resident of my father’s home. Which reminds me, you haven’t yet told me why you’re here.”
She holds her breath while she waits for me to answer. It gives me pause.
“I . . . I’m to assume Firstborn Malcolm Burton’s position as Grisholm’s mentor.”
Her expression turns incredulous. “You are going to instruct Grisholm in the art of warfare?” She giggles and tries to smother it with her hand.
“Yes.”
“And how is he taking that?” she asks, wiping a stray mirthful tear from the corner of her eye.
“Not well,” I reply, straight-faced.
“I should think not! His overinflated ego won’t stand for a secondborn telling him anything, let alone a young woman half his size.”
“His ego is in for a beating, then.”
She snorts. “And my father knows about this?”
“He’s the one who gave me the job.”
“If only I could be around to see that,” she says wistfully.
“Come to Grisholm’s sparring facility tomorrow and see for yourself. I could teach you both at the same time—if he ever shows up for training.”
She gives me a side-eyed look. “You’re not serious?”
“Why not?”
Her cheeks puff out as she exhales. “I can think of a few reasons. First, I’m not allowed inside The Virtue’s Palace, or even beyond this beach, without his invitation. Second, I’m not allowed anywhere near Grisholm. And third, I’m forbidden by law to train in the art of war unless I become Firstborn Commander.”
“You’re confined there?” I cast my eyes out to the Sea Fortress once more.
“You see that stone formation ahead?” she asks me, gesturing to jagged rocks on the beach. “That’s the farthest I can go without creating chaos among the Exo and Iono guards on the estate.”