Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
The people at the bottom—the ones on the floor in the center of the room, the ones clapping and cheering—they throw them scraps. Because you can’t have all-powerful gods if you don’t have obedient kings to do your bidding. And you can’t have obedient kings without serfs to do the work.
It’s disappointing, really.
It’s like that moment when I was talking to Grant in Granite Springs, that night of my disastrous date with Russ Roth, when he offered me the secret of money and success.
But it was really a bribe. Nothing but a payoff. Join our ranks, Pie. Be one of us and you will get rich.
And it’s so gross to me.
But it doesn’t explain what they’re doing.
I don’t get it.
Pell’s voice is suddenly in my head and the words ‘moves and countermoves’ bounce around in my brain.
Is that all this is? A never-ending climb to the top?
The gods control the royals. The royals control the chimera. The chimera control… well. Society, actually.
Without the chimera, there would be no workers. Without workers, there would be no royal beasts. And without royal beasts, there would be no gods.
Surely they must know this.
The cheering stops and the gods take their seats. I study the faces of the common people on the floor. How excited they are to be here. To see this. To be a part of a world that must only exist in their wild imaginations.
And they are satisfied.
It’s Vinca. Not literally. But it’s the same way there. They let the mixed chimera work their menial jobs. And I’m not disparaging the work they do. The Vincans I met were all pretty important people. And yet every Fireday they would subjugate themselves to the queen. Every Fireday they would bow down in order to lift her up.
The queen.
The teenage girl who is holding my hand, in this very moment, squeezing it tight to let me know she cares.
But that is almost twenty years in the future using the time I’m accustomed to. Right now, the chimera on the floor seem pretty satisfied. And they are not subjugating themselves. They are clothed, and smiling, and cheering. There is no hint of revolution.
Maybe something happened between this day I’m in right now and the future when I was learning to spell in Vinca?
Maybe the chimera learned something about the gods or the royals that changed their minds about their role in society?
And maybe the gods decided that would not do.
Moves and countermoves.
8
“Welcome to the Caretaker Ceremony for the House of Fire!” Mistress Ryella is back in control after all the relentless cheering and applause for the stupid gods. “So that the ceremony can move along as efficiently as possible, we ask that you please hold your applause until each girl’s caretaker has been finalized. Then, and only then, can we properly celebrate her bright future.”
There’s muttering in the floor crowd. But it’s not the discontented kind. It’s tacit agreement. Yes, yes, yes. We must all hold our applause until each little lion-girl’s sale is final.
Don’t they understand that this is wrong?
It’s a rhetorical question, obviously. They don’t. This is just… normal.
“First up,” the mistress continues, “is House of Fire number one.”
Number one? She doesn’t even get a name?
“Engineered by the alchemist Brinn”—there is gasping, ooohing and ahhhing—“from the bloodlines of the oldest kings—”
I stop listening and just pay attention to the little lion-girl who is being led to the wooden bridge by her big sister. When she gets to the bridge her sister leans down to hug and kiss her. Then she is given a little shove and begins to cross the bridge where the small circular platform awaits her in the center of the room, about a foot above the heads of the chimera on the floor.
When she reaches the platform, she pauses, then carefully steps on to it and immediately she is slowly spinning so everyone in the room can get a proper look at her.
Including me. I study Number One, who is breathing heavy and looking around with wide eyes. We are all wearing the same get-up. And we all basically look alike, as well. She looks like me—I mean, not twins or anything, but same hair, same eyes, same skin, same uniform.
But I do notice something a little bit different. She’s got the sash on, which covers her golden-yellow leather bustier, which is really more of a corset since she’s six. But her sash has different medals and ribbons.
Just as I’m thinking about this the mistress starts calling out her talents and I realize that the medals correspond to these talents. “Proficient in spelling and well on her way to excelling in potions, she has been gifted the power of sight by the goddess Venus.”
There’s clapping here. A few people forgot the rules. And Mistress Ryella shoots the crowd on the floor a warning look, so it dies down quickly.