I scratched at my head. ‘.drawkcab ecnetnes a epyt ot dluow ti sa esnes hcum sa tuoba sekam taht, ellitsaB’
She scowled at me, lowering her hand. ‘If you don’t understand, I’m not going to explain it to you.’
Boys, welcome to the wonderful world of talking to women about their feelings. As a handy primer, here are a few things you should know:
Women have feelings.
You will spend the next seventy years or so trying to guess what they’re feeling and why.
You will be wrong most of the time.
I like French fries.
That’s about all the help I can give you, I’m afraid. If it’s any consolation, at least the women in your life don’t have anger-management issues and a tendency to carry around five-foot-long magical swords.
‘Look,’ Bastille said. ‘It’s not important. What’s important is saving Mokia. If you didn’t notice, that was my sister who just got towed away unconscious. I’m not going to let the kingdom fall while she’s out.’
‘But shouldn’t a Mokian be king?’
‘You are Mokian,’ Bastille said. ‘And Nalhallan, and Fracois, and Unkulu. You’re a Smedry – you’re considered a citizen of all kingdoms. Besides, you do have Mokian blood in you. The Smedry line and the Mokian royal line has often intermixed. It wasn’t odd for your uncle Millhaven to marry a Mokian. His wife is a third cousin of Mallo’s, and your great-great-grandfather was the son of a Mokian prince.’
I blinked. Bastille, it should be noted, rarely shows her princessly nature. She has a tendency to rip up anything pink, her singing sounds remarkably like the sound produced when you drop a rock on the tail of a wildebeest, and the last time a sweet flock of forest animals showed up and tried to help her clean, she chased them for the better part of an hour, swinging her sword and cursing like a sailor.
But she does think like a king’s daughter sometimes. And she was force-fed all kinds of princessly information as a child, including long, boring lists of royal family trees. She knows which prince married which hypercountess and which superduke is cousins with which earl.
Yes. In the Free Kingdoms, we have royal titles like superdukes and hypercountesses. It’s complicated.
‘So . . . I really am in the royal line,’ I said, shocked.
‘Of course you are. You’re a Smedry – you’re related to three quarters of the kings and queens out there.’
‘But not you, right?’
‘What? No. Not in any important way. We might be fourteenth, upside-down übercousins or something.’
I eyed her, trying to figure out what the gak an ‘upside-down übercousin’ was. Sounded like the kind of drink a kid my age wasn’t allowed to order.
It should be stressed that Bastille and I are certainly not directly related. At least, we weren’t at that point.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know anything about running a war.’
‘Fortunately, I do. Troop morale and logistics were part of my training as a princess, and I have practice with battlefield tactics as part of my Crystin training.’
‘Great! You can take over for me, then!’
She shook her head, eyes going wide, face getting a little white. ‘Don’t be stoopid.’
‘Er, why not?’
As I think about it, that was kind of a stoopid answer, which was fitting, if you think about it. Me, I try not to think about anything. Oooh . . . shiny . . .
Bastille grimaced. ‘You need to ask? I’m not what this people need. I’m not inspiring. You are. You’re a king. I’m a general. They’re different, different sets of skills.’ She nodded toward the Mokian soldiers standing atop the walls. A lot of them didn’t look much like warriors. Oh, they had war paint and spears. But not many of them were muscular.
‘Mokia is a kingdom of scholars and craftspeople, Alcatraz,’ Bastille said softly. ‘Why do you think the Librarians attacked here first? They’ve been besieged for months now, their country at war for years. Many of the trained soldiers have already been knocked unconscious or killed. Do you have any idea what the loss of both the king and queen could mean? They’re demoralized, wounded, and beaten down.’
She lifted her finger, tapping me in the chest again. ‘They need someone to lead them. They need someone spectacular, someone miraculous. Someone who can keep them fighting for just a little longer, until your grandfather arrives with help.’
‘And, uh, that someone is me?’