The Library of Fates(68)

It was a grand boulevard with elaborate marble statues of Macedonian gods every fifty paces or so. Golden chariots pulled by magnificent stallions carried the country’s elite to and fro, while the less privileged begged for change by the side of the road.

On either side of the avenue, vertical structures made of stone and glass shot into the sky. I was awestruck, till I was hit by a handful of coins flying out the window of a chariot passing us by.

Thala averted her eyes as people emerged from squalid tents and huts in rags to palm the coins, but I couldn’t help but look.

“I’ve never seen a place like this before,” I said to her. “So much wealth, and yet, these people are starving. It makes no sense.”

“Welcome to Macedon,” Thala said to me. “The entire world wants to remake itself in this kingdom’s image.”

“It’s actually more like Macedon wants the world to remake itself in its own image,” I said.

Sikander was still speaking with the driver of the chariot. The driver hesitated. “You’re sure that’s where you want to go?” He turned to us, a worried expression on his face. “You won’t get there till dusk.”

Sikander reached into his pocket and pulled out a small golden coin, pressing it into the driver’s hand. “Just drop us off on Santori Street. We’ll take it from there.”

The driver looked at the coin, biting it between his teeth before he nodded and we all hopped inside, Thala and Chandradev on either side of me, Thea and Sikander facing us.

We made our way down the Avenue of the Gods and then farther, past the stately marble government buildings, past the Grand Palace made of stone, the armory and the capitol, to the Royal Temple, a round structure surrounded by stone pillars with an open roof that drew in the light. We drove past the botanical gardens and the financial district, filled with men running up and down the streets. Markets stretched so long down the street that I realized that Macedon lacked for nothing.

But it was those tall buildings that I couldn’t take my eyes off. My father was taken in by the sights too, his eyes fixed on the window of the chariot anytime he wasn’t looking at Thea.

“It’s nothing like home, is it?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “But there are wonderful things about Shalingar too.” As I said it, I realized how strange it was, to be talking to my father about our home.

“I don’t know. Home is . . . humble compared to this. Macedon is so grand, so impressive,” he said. “I’ve never seen such wealth, such opulence.”

“Don’t be so fooled by it,” Thea said, pointing out a group of squatters under a bridge. There must have been hundreds of them, a village of people living in desperation, hunting for food in the streets. “Macedon is a place for the wealthy. If you’re wealthy, life is good, but if you’re poor, or disabled, if you’re a foreigner, or even a woman, Macedon isn’t so kind. This country is built on the backs of the disenfranchised.”

“But you’re a woman, and you managed to get into the Macedonian Military Academy,” I pointed out.

“I come from wealth.” Thea shrugged. “My family is well-connected, and we’ve been attending the academy for ten generations. They couldn’t turn me down. But I plan on using my training here to do something different. To institute change.” She turned to Thala. “You’re from here. You understand.”

Thala nodded. “I do.” She hesitated before she said, “I come from a family of seers. They live in poverty too. I’d like to do something for my people.”

I was sitting next to Thala, and I had to turn to look at her face. She had never expressed anything of the sort to me, but I realized that just being here, not perceived as a slave for the first time, had empowered her. And she was right. She could change Macedon from within.

“Seers, eh?” Sikander grinned. “So you can see the future?”

“And the past.”

He watched her for a moment before his face broke into a smile. “Can you see my future?” he asked.

Thala held his gaze for a long time before she closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were yellow.

Thea and Sikander appeared taken aback for a moment.

“There are many futures,” Thala thoughtfully replied, sitting up taller. It was as though she was no longer Thala, a slave who had been taken from her family. She was powerful—she always had been—only now she knew it. “Your future is changing,” she said. “I can see . . . a few possible outcomes.”

“Let me guess: I become emperor of Macedon, and my father’s words come true, that I’m a profligate and useless ruler and ultimately drive my empire into decline.”

“Or you might be dead by tomorrow morning,” Thala casually said.

We were all silent for a moment before Sikander burst out laughing. The rest of us followed suit, but I could feel beads of sweat forming on my upper lip.

Sikander grinned. “Looks like we’re going to have to get a few glasses of wine in you before you make any more predictions.”

We were on the road for a couple of hours, and I wondered the entire time whether I could kill Sikander. With every minute that went by, I was losing my resolve to carry out my plan, but not my determination to right a horrific wrong. I just didn’t know how to reconcile the two impulses warring within me.