Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (10 page)

Before leaving the armory, Berran insisted that I take a minimum complement of weapons for protection. My protests about not needing them were ignored. (It seemed that Indigo had insisted he arm me to some extent. Furthermore, she apparently outranked me, because her orders that he outfit me with weaponry seemed to take priority over my instructions to the contrary.) In the end, we compromised, with me agreeing to take a pulse pistol, along with a handful of articles that resembled bottle caps but were actually grenades. Satisfied, but not completely happy with my minimalist view on arms, Berran had then escorted me from the weapons depot.

A short time later he brought me back to my grandmother, who was now seated at a desk in what appeared to be some kind of home office. At the moment, she appeared to be engaged in conversation with the hologram of a middle-aged woman, which stood on the opposite side of the desk.

“My
sxibbo
returns,” Indigo said to the woman. “We’ll have to continue this later.”

“Please give careful consideration to our proposal,” the woman said. “I assure you, you’ll not find a better offer elsewhere.”

With that, the hologram vanished, and a moment later, my grandmother rose to meet us. She gave me a bright smile, but emotionally I could sense that she was highly irritated, suggesting that the conversation she had just ended had irked her in some way.

“What was that about?” I asked as we drew near, plainly asking about her curtailed conversation.

“In a minute,” she said, and then turned to Berran. “How did it go?”

“Very well, Highness,” he replied. “Prince J’h’dgo is now acquainted with several of the rudimentary secrets of the Castellum Cardinal.”

Rudimentary?
Memorizing how to access a dozen hidden rooms and corridors in just a few hours only counted as “rudimentary”? How much more was there to learn?

“Thank you,” Indigo said. “I know you did a far better job teaching him than I would have.”

“My pleasure, Princess,” the courier said. “Besides, you had other pressing matters.”

My grandmother’s brow wrinkled at the comment, bringing to mind my earlier question.

“You were going to tell me what that conversation was about?” I reminded her. “The one you were having when we came in.”

Indigo gave Berran a knowing look, and the courier immediately excused himself. A moment later, the door closed behind him and we were alone.

My grandmother let out an exasperated sigh. “The political sands are shifting again.”

“What’s happened?” I asked. “More demands about the Beobona?”

She shook her head and flicked her wrist at the comment, as if shooing away an annoying insect. “No, I can handle those. This is a new twist that I should have seen coming.”

“What?” I asked, intrigued.

“The woman you saw me speaking with is a royal of the Third Patrilineal. Hers is not a particularly powerful bloc, but they have strong influence in certain areas. We’re being offered their support in our effort to suspend the
prexetus
– an alliance.”

“Really? So what’s the catch?”

“An alliance with the House Nonpareil would boost their fortunes considerably – as it would most royals. The problem is that such pacts, when of sufficient magnitude, are usually cemented by an affiancing.”

“A what?”

Indigo gave me a solemn stare, as if weighing how best to answer, before responding.

“A betrothal,” she finally said.

I blinked (several times, in fact), shocked into silence for a moment as what she was saying sank in. I had to have misunderstood her.

“You mean a marriage?” I asked cautiously, already knowing the answer.

“Yes.”

“Forget it!” I bellowed explosively, shocking myself (and probably my grandmother as well) with the unexpected vehemence in my voice. “They can take their offer and shove it! You’re already married to Gramps!”

“True, but there’s no canon in Caelesian law that prevents one from taking a second spouse,” Indigo stated calmly.

“You can’t seriously be considering this,” I said firmly, practically gritting my teeth as I tried to maintain a grip on my temper. My grandfather had waited
decades
for this woman to come back to him. That my grandmother would even allow the idea of another spouse to percolate was way more than enough to set me off.

“To save our family – you, your mother, John – I’d contemplate that and more,” she stated plainly.

Fists curled into white-knuckled balls, I was seething at this point, and you didn’t need to be an empath to realize it. I felt myself on the verge of saying something harsh to my grandmother about being loyal to Gramps, but didn’t get a chance.

“However,” Indigo continued, “that’s all moot.”

“Oh, really? How so?” I asked sarcastically.

She gave me a stern gaze. “Because I’m not the one who would be affianced.”

My grandmother’s comments sucked the wind right out of my sails. One moment I was about to hurl some loud and abusive criticism at her, and the next I was speechless. She couldn’t possibly mean what she seemed to be implying, but there was no doubt that she did.

“But I…I…” I stammered, struggling for something to say. “I have a girlfriend.”

“Well,” my grandmother replied, “I hope she’s not the jealous type.”

I gave her a wide-eyed stare, not sure how to respond – or even if I could since my brain was now overflowing with a myriad of thoughts.

“That was a joke,
Sxibbo
,” my grandmother said with a smile, giving me a gentle pat on the cheek. “About the jealous girlfriend, that is – not about the proposed engagement.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to find another straw to grasp. “If a prospective bride came from the Third Patrilineal, wouldn’t that make her a relative?”

“All of the royal lines are our relatives.”

“Yes, but aren’t there laws against that sort of thing here – marriage between family members?”

Indigo laughed, taking me by surprise as I didn’t see the humor.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still giggling, “but that just seemed like such an absurd comment coming from you, when people on Earth marry their relatives all the time.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Think about it. How many people are on Earth right now?”

“About six billion or so,” I estimated.

“And if you go back ten generations, how many ancestors would each of those six billion people have?”

I did some quick math in my head: each person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents…

“Going ten generations back,” I said after completing my calculations, “would give each person roughly a thousand ancestors.”

“So,” Indigo said, “ten generations ago, all six billion on Earth had one thousand ancestors. What kind of population does that suggest the world had ten generations ago?”

“That would be six billion times a thousand…” I said, trailing off as I came up with the sum. “Six trillion.”

I lowered my eyes. The number I’d come up with was completely preposterous. Even accounting for certain facts that might bring the total down – such as some individuals (e.g., siblings) having the same ancestors – it was still a ludicrous figure. Now I knew where my grandmother was heading with this.

“So, were there six trillion people on Earth back then?” she asked.

I estimated “back then” to be a couple of hundred years, but that wasn’t a particularly salient fact.

“No,” I answered softly. “There probably weren’t even a billion people alive ten generations ago.”

“So, it doesn’t seem like there are enough ancestors to account for the current number of people on your planet. What does that tell you about the current population on Earth?”

I sighed. “Most of the people are related – probably within ten generations of each other if they belong to the same ethnic group. And the further back you go, the more likely it is that two people have a common ancestor.”

“And from a matrimonial standpoint, what can you conclude?”

“That, on Earth, it’s practically impossible to avoid marrying a relative.”

“Now perhaps you know why I found your remark so humorous – that you would disparage Caelesian culture regarding a practice that is probably more prevalent on Earth.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m a hypocrite. But people on Earth generally don’t
knowingly
marry their relations.”

“The math is easy enough to do. It seems more likely that they simply ignore the facts.”

I had to admit that she had a point, but we were getting way off-base.

“Anyway,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track, “you turned her down, didn’t you? You told her there was no way I was getting married, right?”

“No, I didn’t. I actually told her we’d talk about it later, as you undoubtedly heard.”

“But I’m only sixteen!” I screeched. “I’m not ready to get married – and definitely not to some distant, backwoods, inbred cousin!”

I accentuated my diatribe by telepathically sending my grandmother an image of a wart-faced teenage girl in a torn and filthy dress with a balding head of unwashed hair, a hunched back, a clubbed foot, and a wandering eye. (Pretty much every congenital defect I could think of at the moment.) Caught off-guard by the imagery, my grandmother snorted so hard that I thought something was going to fly out of her nose. She put a hand up to her mouth to stifle her laughter, while using the other to lean on the desk for support.

Her merriment was both soothing and infectious. After a few seconds, my mood had not only mellowed, but I was also chuckling along with her.

“Calm yourself,
Sxibbo
,” Indigo said, after finally regaining her composure. “First of all, it would be a betrothal, not a wedding. As you note, your age is a prohibitive factor, so actual marriage would not take place for a long time to come – possibly decades.”

“Good to know,” I muttered, slightly relieved.

“Second, we are well-aware of the genetic abnormalities that can result from inbreeding, but our medical science eliminated those risks long ago. Still, unions between exceptionally close relatives are frowned upon. Thus, I can assure you that any prospective bride would be no more closely related to you than the average female on Earth.”

That last statement was less comforting than it might have been just a few minutes earlier – before our discussion of how close Terran familial ties are. Still, it gave rise to a new question.

“
Sxahnin
,” I began, “you said we are descended from the Third Matrilineal.”

My grandmother nodded. “That’s correct.”

“Well, if intermarriage is common, shouldn’t we have ancestors in at least one of the other royal lines?”

“Yes. We actually have ancestors in all ten of them. In fact, at this juncture in our history, I don’t know a single royal who doesn’t.”

“Then how is it determined which line a royal claims descent from?”

“Lineage is usually asserted based on paternal affiliation – through the male parent. So, if your father was from the First Patrilineal, you would ordinarily claim descent from that line, even though your mother may be descended from, say, the Third. However, that is not set in stone.”

“So basically, almost any royal can claim descent from any of the ten lines.”

“Technically yes, but in practice, no. For instance, I could claim descent from the Second Patrilineal, but the established members of that line may not accept or treat me as one of their own. In fact, that’s probably what would happen.”

“Seems like kind of a severe reaction.”

“You have to remember that the ten lines have different levels of power and prestige. If someone tries to claim royal descent in the unconventional manner I suggested, it probably means they are trying to affiliate themselves with a more influential branch of the family.”

“And that branch is probably unwilling to allow their clout to be used by an outsider to get ahead.”

“Correct.”

I grunted in annoyance. “This is way more complicated than I ever imagined family structure could be.”

“Welcome to the ruling class,” Indigo said with a smile. “But forget about this stuff for now. Why don’t you take the afternoon off and go visit with your friend?”

I found her question perplexing. “What friend? Outside of you and Berran, I’d be hard-pressed to name a single person I know on this entire planet.”

“I’m glad you asked,” my grandmother said. Turning towards the desk, she reached over and lifted something from the tabletop. It appeared to be a piece of clear glass, about two-by-three inches in size, which I recognized as a messaging device.

“This is from Prince Vicra,” she said, handing the piece of glass to me.

Vicra…Vicra…
I quickly flipped through my mental rolodex, trying to put a face to the name.

“Oh – the guy who sat next to me at my coming-out banquet yesterday,” I said, suddenly remembering. The whole thing felt as though it had happened ages ago.

I looked over the little glass pane, flipping it over and trying to figure out how to make it work.

“Hmmm,” I grumbled. “It’s probably a bill for a new pair of shoes.”

“Nonsense,” Indigo replied, reaching over and touching a finger to a corner of the little glass rectangle. Almost immediately, the glass became infused with colorful Caelesian words and symbols. “It’s an invitation to lunch.”

The place where I was to meet Vicra for lunch was some kind of private reserve. It was only a few minutes away via transport, but about thirty minutes away by foot, which was the mode of travel I preferred at the moment. However, my grandmother and Berran were vehemently opposed to the idea of me hoofing it anywhere, and they both ganged up on me about it in my grandmother’s study.

“It’s out of the question,” Indigo declared. “You’ll take the transport.”

“But I’m a teleporter,” I said, insistently – and then popped to the other side of the room and back for effect. “I have to eyeball places in order to teleport to them, and I’ve seen almost zero parts of the city. It’s one of my most powerful abilities, but it’ll be almost useless to me if I can’t teleport anywhere in the Acropolis other than our residence here and the inside of a shuttle.”

“I understand, but not all parts of the city are safe, and you could easily walk into danger.”

“There’s danger everywhere! I’ve been on Caeles for roughly a day and already come close to dying twice!”

A sheepish look crept onto my grandmother’s face, and I realized that I had punched a little below the belt. She’d never stop blaming herself for the Yolathan wine incident.

Berran gently cleared his throat, getting my and Indigo’s attention. My grandmother had called him back into her study (presumably to talk some sense into me) after I had expressed my intent to walk to the venue for lunch.

“Perhaps a compromise is in order,” the courier said. “If you prefer to walk, Prince, we can easily provide you with an escort.”

I looked at him quizzically. “Escort?”

“Yes – a contingent of servants to accompany you for protection.”

“In other words, an armed war party.”

“Well, not
armed
,” Berran corrected.

“Huh?” I said, baffled.

“With the exception of personal residences, like ours, weapons are generally not allowed in the Acropolis,” my grandmother chimed in. “Only Queen Dornoccia’s personal guard, who also serve as law enforcement, are allowed to bear arms in the city.”

“So then what’s the point of an escort?” I asked.

“Your escorts would be sworn to protect you with their lives,” Berran answered.

“In other words, they’re supposed to jump in the path of a bullet for me,” I summarized. “Me – a guy who can phase so that he can’t be physically hurt. That makes no sense.”

“
Sxibbo
,” my grandmother said, “the Royal Crypts are bursting at the seams with the bodies of those who were assassinated in this very city, where weapons in general are banned. And a great number of them thought they were untouchable.”

“Yes, but were they
literally
untouchable?” I asked, swiping my phased hand through the back of a nearby chair.

“You’re not listening,” Indigo said crisply. “The political machinations aren’t even the tip of the iceberg. The people we are up against are ruthless and unprincipled, the products of a political and economic system that has everyone clawing for as much power as they can grasp. They operate with a level of craft, cunning, and guile that you’ve never experienced, and will do whatever – whenever and to whomever – it takes to win. Don’t underestimate their tenacity in resolving the problem you represent, or overestimate your own readiness because of the powers you possess.”

She was fraught with worry, and I would have picked up on that fact even without my powers. I frowned in concentration, trying to think up a way to put her at ease.

“
Sxahnin
, do you remember what you said about having me drink the Yolathan wine?” I asked. “That you did it because we needed to make a statement about my character?”

“Yes,” Indigo said, and then looked away, embarrassed. “Oddly enough, that’s worked out in our favor. Surviving Yolathan poisoning has created a far stronger impression of you than if the wine had been benign. That said, I wouldn’t want to repeat the experience, even if the same outcome were guaranteed.”

“That makes two of us,” I added. “But my point is that we need to continue making it clear that we are not intimidated. That we aren’t frightened. That everyone else may need an armored personnel carrier just to go outside and pick up the morning paper, but we don’t. That we aren’t si–”

“Enough,
Sxibbo
,” my grandmother said, raising a hand as she cut me off. “You’ve made your point. And while I’m not completely convinced that this is the proper course of action, we’ll try things your way.”

“Thanks,
Sxahnin
,” I said, smiling slightly.

“No thanks necessary,” she said. “Just try not to get killed.”