Chapter 5 The Price Of Being Second

Seatopia smelled of salt, tar and oranges, and the whole city seemed to be holding its breath.

The royal party had arrived at dawn after a rough crossing, and by midday the white terraces above the harbour were jammed with banners, carriages and nervous merchants. The capital sprawled down the hillside in tiers of sun bleached stone, every roof blue tiled, every balcony draped in the green and silver of the dead king’s house. Bells rang continuously from a dozen towers. It was, Athalia thought, like being inside a very expensive seashell.

She hated it.

She stood in the crowded cathedral with Adrian on one side and a Seatopian countess on the other, clutching a prayer book she did not intend to open, and watched the ceremony begin. The young king Corin was nineteen, stiff with nerves, absurdly heavy under a crown that had been made for a head twice his size. He took his vows in a clear, shaking voice. The archbishop poured oil over his hair. The crowd applauded.

And then the crowd turned, almost as one body, and looked at Fredric.

It was not planned. It was not even deliberate. Fredric had simply been standing in the front rank of the visiting nobles, in a plain blue coat, trying to look serious and failing, when one of the Seatopian bannermen shouted something good natured. A ripple of laughter went through the cathedral. A girl in the gallery threw a flower. It landed on Fredric’s shoulder, and he caught it and bowed to her with a flourish, and the whole nave erupted.

Athalia watched. Beside her, Adrian watched too, and she felt him stiffen like a drawn bowstring.

The feast was worse.

It was held in the harbour palace, in a hall with a ceiling painted to look like a stormy sky, and the Seatopian nobles seemed to have decided, with remarkable unanimity, that the Arrandelle delegation had one interesting member. They crowded around Fredric and Arianna at the high table. They toasted the betrothed pair. A lady in sea green silk told Arianna she had the sweetest face she had ever seen, and an old admiral, loud with wine, announced that the second prince had the makings of a great king.

“Second prince,” Rowan murmured, from across the table, with a wince. “Poor choice of words.”

The admiral did not hear. Or did not care. “Mark me,” he roared, “the realm that has him will never want for love!”

Fredric laughed and waved the compliment off. Arianna, bright with embarrassment, ducked her head. A dozen goblets rose.

Adrian lifted his own, slowly, and drank.

Athalia had been taught that a lady keeps her face still. She kept it still. But she counted: eleven toasts to Fredric and Arianna. Two to the king. None, so far, to the elder prince, who sat at the end of the table cutting his meat into smaller and smaller pieces, with a smile so polite it hurt to look at.

By the fourth hour, she had had enough.

She found him on a private terrace overlooking the harbour, long after the dancing began. The night was warm. Out on the black water, a hundred ships rode at anchor, their masthead lamps rocking like a drowned constellation. Adrian stood at the balustrade with his coat open and his cravat loosened, a glass hanging from his fingers.

“You are hiding,” she said.

“I am getting air.”

“You are hiding.” She came to stand beside him. The wind stirred the loose hair at her temples. “Adrian, they are fools. All of them. The admiral was drunk.”

“Was he wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Is he, though?” He said it quietly. “I watched the cathedral, Athalia. They looked at my brother the way people look at the sun. And then they looked at me, and I could see them thinking: oh. The other one.”

“That is not what they thought.”

“It is what I would have thought.”

She turned to face him fully. “Do you want to know what I thought?”

“No.”

“That a man who stands in the shadow without complaining, who reads ledgers while his brother dances, is more of a king than anyone in that hall.” She paused. “But it does not matter what I think. You are about to be crowned in your own country, and you will be the one people have to answer to. You need to stop letting them compare you.”

“I do not let them. It simply happens.”

“Then make it stop happening.”

“How?” His voice cracked, just slightly. “Tell me how, Athalia. I have tried being diligent. I have tried being fair. I have tried being there. You saw what happened tonight. It is not about effort. It is just who they like.”

“Then we change what they see.”

“By doing what?”

“By making sure there is nothing to compare.” She had spoken before she had fully thought it, and she felt the sentence hang there between them, heavy with possibility. She did not take it back.

Adrian looked at her. Something moved behind his eyes, a hunger he had not known he possessed, and he did not look away.

“That sounds dangerous,” he said.

“Most worthwhile things do.”

He turned back to the harbour and was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was so low she almost missed it. “My father said something to Mother once. I was not supposed to hear it. He said that if anything happened to me, Fredric would be king and the kingdom would be run into the ground in a decade.”

“If anything happened to you.”

“It was only a manner of speaking.”

“Was it?” She watched his profile. “Your father thinks you are a wall that will never fall. But a wall can be walked around, Adrian. Walked around by people who want to go somewhere else.”

He did not answer. But he had gone very still, and she understood that he was not offended. He was listening.

The terrace doors opened behind them.

“There you are.” It was Lord Rowan, flushed with wine, a little unsteady, bearing down on them with an air of confidential urgency. “Your Highness, forgive me. A word, if you please. Alone.”

Adrian glanced at Athalia. She withdrew a polite two paces, to the edge of the light.

Rowan lowered his voice, but not enough. The sea breeze carried every syllable.

“I have been speaking with the other lords,” he said. “Quite informally, you understand. This evening has been... instructive.”

“In what way?”

“The mood of the realm, Highness. The Seatopians adore your brother, and so, I fear, does half of Arrandelle. There have been murmurs. Only murmurs. But in some quarters it is said that, should the king’s health fail...” He cleared his throat. “That a prince who is beloved may be preferable to a prince who is merely, ah, correct.”

Adrian said nothing.

“I tell you only so you are not surprised. And so that you understand your position. There are men who would find it convenient to see the heir replaced.”

“By whom?” Adrian said. The words were very calm.

Rowan spread his hands. “I could not say. I am only reporting what is whispered.”

“I see.” A pause. “Thank you, Lord Rowan. You may go.”

The old man bowed and hurried off, visibly relieved, leaving the terrace quiet again but for the slow music of the harbour.

Athalia stepped back to Adrian’s side. His hand was gripping the balustrade hard enough to whiten his knuckles. She laid her fingers over his, and he did not look at her.

“A noble,” he said, in a flat voice. “Floating the idea of replacing me. At a coronation. At my brother’s engagement feast.”

“Yes.”

“And everyone laughed.”

“Not everyone.”

“Enough.” He drew a breath that shook. “I have spent my whole life being dutiful, Athalia. I did everything I was supposed to. And a man I have known since boyhood just told me, to my face, that dutiful is not enough.”

She turned his hand over and held it, palm up, in both of hers.

“Then we stop being dutiful,” she said. “We start being clever.”

Out on the dark water, a bell clanged. A ship’s lantern swung. And at the far end of the terrace, in the doorway to the ballroom, a bright laugh floated out, Arianna’s, light and unthinking, the laugh of a girl who had never in her life been told she was second.

Adrian closed his fingers over Athalia’s.

“Show me how,” he said.