Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

This way, the numbers of disaffected young men on the streets of their city were slashed, and the population and the crime level were kept down. Although with so many early marriages, and the men of the Court keeping strings of mistresses in town, the population never went down too much.

All because of you, dear , Roz’s nurse had murmured to her while she was gently warning Roz against taking risks when she was playing, against the hideous possibility that she might one day be hurt and disfigured. All because of your face.

Even Miri and Dareus always, always remembered not to touch her face.

One could wish Dareus was as careful about her ribs, Roz thought as Dareus got a staff under them and sent her flying through the air and sliding across the marble floor, until she landed with a smack against the wall.

She gasped for breath and fought down the urge to be sick.

“My captain,” she wheezed, in a most ladylike fashion. “That is no way to treat your queen.”

“My queen,” said Dareus, turning his staff over and over in his hands. “That is no way to guard your left side.”

Roz concentrated on the ceiling, and on the suddenly difficult task of breathing in and out. She heard the soft sound of Miri’s footsteps, and the light tap and tumble of a staff against marble.

“I always get smashed to bits, and you always win,” Roz said, closing her eyes. “Because you’re a sneak, and Dareus plays favorites.”

“I don’t,” said Dareus, his voice a little sharp.

“I always watch for an opening and you always dash right in,” said Miri. “Which helps create my opening, mark you.”

Miri was Roz’s favorite lady-in-waiting. The Court sent its daughters to keep her company for a time—never long enough to form a real friendship. But Miri’s parents had died in an accident, and the Court had let her stay in the palace, murmuring that she was bound to be a good influence. Since she was so quiet and well-behaved.

Little did the Court know that it was Miri who had persuaded Dareus to let them learn to fight. Roz was the one who had wanted to, but Miri was the one who had made it happen. She had made it sound so reasonable, that if anyone were to break into the palace, the queen and her lady should know how to defend themselves.

It was not reasonable; Dareus should never have allowed it, and all three of them knew it.

Roz put a hand under her head and opened her eyes. Miri sat down beside her with Dareus’s staff in one hand, Miri’s crisp dark curls blurring at the edges in Roz’s vision. She looked over Miri’s shoulder at Dareus. He looked at them both with soldier’s eyes, proud of Miri’s prowess, assessing Roz’s injuries and coolly finding them negligible.

“Come on, back on your feet,” he said. “Your guard has all been killed, my queen, and a man is in the palace. A real man.”

He said it absolutely emotionlessly. Dareus’s uncle had taken him in, brought him up, trained him to be part of the guard, trained him so that when his uncle died, Dareus would become the youngest captain a Rosamond had ever had.

But no man was allowed to approach Rosamond except the champion of the Trials. Rosamond’s guards were all cut so they could not dishonor the queen even if they wanted to.

Roz was surprised that Dareus didn’t hate her, sometimes.

But he didn’t. He was her friend, before being her guard. He’d agreed to teach her and Miri how to train. He’d even agreed to keep it a secret from the Court.

Roz climbed to her feet. “All right,” she said, and took another deep breath, ignoring her ribs. “Come at me again.”

Roz was beaten down twice more, but she beat down Dareus once to make up for it. Neither of them ever got near Miri. She was sly. Besides which, Dareus totally played favorites.

Roz left the Hall of Mirrors, went to her own bathroom, and washed up, with Miri in attendance. She had nice bruises coming in on her ribs, but when she washed her face, she saw it was still clear and clean, pale and untouched as a pearl.

The perfect face, they claimed—not the flatterers, but books written a hundred years ago. Designed perfect, all in symmetry, with tumbling dark hair—bright hair made you look too flashy, pretty rather than beautiful—but of course, porcelain skin, and clear blue eyes.

Dareus’s eyes had flecks of black in the gray color, and his nose was too long. Miri’s teeth stuck out slightly, and she was much too short to be the ideal. Roz had always found looking at them so interesting, rather than looking at her own image, so familiar it almost seemed worn, passed down and down and down again as it was. Never changing.

The world had called them clones before it called them queens.

Other people might have thought it was vanity that made Roz train in the Hall of Mirrors, but the truth was she fought better there. She was angry there.

Roz looked at her wet, shining pearl-face in the real mirror and thought about those who had to go through the maze, endure the monster and the mystery of the Trials, had to walk in blood to Rosamond’s side.

The Court had created the monster—a fierce hybrid beast that all the men who made their way through the maze had to fight—by using the same science they’d used to create their perfect queen. Sometimes Rosamond felt like she was the monster.

“Let me put cream on that,” said Miri.

“When I give my speech,” Roz said, “I could tell them all not to fight.”

Miri gave her a patient look. “Would they listen, Roz?”

“They should,” Roz muttered.

“And you should win our fights,” Miri murmured. “You’re better than I am. But you don’t. Try to be a little sneaky, Rosamond. You have to work within the rules of the Trials.”

But the rules of the Trials said men would kill each other, and she would belong to the survivor. Handed over like a bloodstained trophy.

She felt it press down on her sometimes, so heavy it was like stones being piled on her chest, making it impossible for her to move or breathe. She was meant to be worth so many lives.

Tor should have been the favorite to win Rosamond’s hand. He knew that much. He was the best at every exercise. He had taken great pains to be the best, worked long hours to make himself worthy.

He could never be worthy enough. That was not the point, or the code of the courts of love. The aim was to have all you could to offer on your lady’s altar.

But he wasn’t the favorite. He didn’t make friends easily, or rather, he made the wrong sort of friends. There were groups of the strongest boys, the quickest and the cleverest, and then there were the boys who fell in the maze, who were burned or scarred or torn at by monsters, who never solved a riddle. Tor could not help it. He always went back for them. Most of Tor’s friends died. The training was meant to weed out the weak.

Tor took the judgment of his peers and bowed his head, and was ashamed. He knew it was time-wasting, that it was an insult to Rosamond, like choosing someone else before her. It was his duty and his only desire to put her above all others. It worried him, the way his head always turned at a cry. It worried him that he could not seem to crush this weakness.

It also worried him that they only did training exercises. Surely there was some way to use his training to serve the queen now, to protect her city.

He’d always been sure that if there was something real happening, he would do the right thing.

And now it was only a few weeks until the Trials, something real was finally happening, and he wasn’t fast enough.