The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(18)

Thud, thump, smack. Thud, thump, smack.

He should be in his family’s summerhouse in the south, near Pearl Beach, having parties with his friends, swimming in the cool waters of the Adronic Ocean, and convincing the local girls to show him what was under their skirts. Not stuck in the brownstone on Creekwater Row, dying of heat and bored to tears. When his father announced that they would not be vacationing this summer, he had hoped it was because at long last, Xavier McLellan was going to bestow upon his only son the one thing Leo had wanted since he was a child—a place in the family business. But the days had stretched into weeks. August was nearly over, and Xavier showed no signs of including Leo in anything, business decisions or otherwise. Perhaps Leo should have expressed a desire to go to college, like Robert and his other friends. But he’d always thought—or maybe assumed—that Xavier was simply waiting until he was old enough, and now that Leo was eighteen, shouldn’t he be learning the ins and outs of the McLellan empire?

The ball ricocheted off a piece of molding and bounced out of Leo’s reach. It rolled under the couch, and he was too hot to get up and look for it. There was an open book on the table beside him—A Complete History of the Wars of the Islands, by Edward G. Bates. Leo skimmed a few pages. It was all politics, the trade deals that fell through and prices on imported goods from Pelago being jacked up as demand spiked—there had been droughts in Kaolin back then too, like there were now, and famine in the south, where overfishing had depleted the food supply from the Gulf of Windsor. Pelago had never suffered from the weather like Kaolin did; their waters were always plentiful, their soil always fruitful. Threats had been tossed back and forth between the president of Kaolin and the Triumvirate of Pelago until the inevitable breaking point, when Kaolin sent its fleet to attack the Pelagan armada. But it was the Pelagans who had won in the end.

Agnes had probably left the book out. It seemed like the boring sort of thing his sister would enjoy reading. And she was far more interested in the Pelagan side of their family than he was—too interested, if you asked him. It was almost as if she didn’t notice that their father, in addition to his famous freak shows, ran a chain of the most successful anti-Talman theaters in the country, producing plays that railed against the goddesses of Pelago. Xavier McLellan had only married their Pelagan mother for her money, and since she had died in childbirth, Leo felt that he was barely Pelagan at all. Even though, according to their Pelagan chauffeur, Eneas, he was her “spitting image,” with his fair skin and turquoise eyes. Well, Leo didn’t want to be her spitting image. The only comfort he got out of it was how much it clearly rankled Agnes, who looked like a female version of their father—brown skin, chestnut hair, eyes the color of cinnamon. For twins, they didn’t seem to have anything in common, from appearance to sensibility.

“Studying in the summer, are we?”

Leo jumped at the sound of his sister’s voice. She leaned in the doorway, a half-eaten apple in hand, her hair pulled up in a messy knot on the crown of her head. Leo closed the book with a dull thud.

“The Wars of the Islands, huh?” he said. “Better not let Father catch you reading about a Pelagan victory over Kaolin.”

Agnes shrugged and tried to look nonchalant, but Leo knew better. If there was one thing he and his sister had in common, it was a healthy fear of their father.

“It’s his book,” she said. “It’s not like I bought it.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” Leo grumbled. “Don’t you have a frog to dissect or something?”

“It was a rat,” Agnes said, taking a bite of apple. “And I’ve already finished.”

“Ugh.”

Agnes loved science. Although upper-class women weren’t allowed professions in Kaolin, their father indulged her privately, something Leo envied and also never quite understood. It was so out of character for him. He’d even built her a little lab out of the walk-in closet in her bedroom. Leo found it macabre—who would want to sleep with frog corpses and snakes suspended in formaldehyde next door?

“For a big strong man, you’re awfully squeamish.”

“For a delicate lady, you’re awfully disgusting.” He gave her a cursory once-over. “I assume Father isn’t home yet.” Leo could imagine the fallout from Xavier seeing Agnes walking about the house in her lab attire.

She was wearing an old shirt of Eneas’s—he was always spoiling her, giving her whatever she wanted—and a pair of pants that had once belonged to Leo. By the time he realized she’d stolen them, they were covered in all sorts of disgusting stains.

“No, so I don’t have to wear a stupid dress until dinner,” she said. “Which reminds me—Eneas said it’s to be quite the affair tonight. That Pelagan man Father has been working with all year has finally arrived in Old Port. He’s coming to dinner, and I think Father has invited some single Kaolin society women to entice him.”

Leo smirked. His father was such a clever man. After living in Pelago his whole life, this man was sure to be pleased with the way proper Kaolin women behaved around men.

A thought occurred to him. This was his chance! He would impress the Pelagan and show Father that he was capable of handling international affairs. He knew nothing about this new project (his father was incredibly secretive), but he would do some light research on his other shows—the one with the two-headed man and the bearded ladies in Pearl Beach was doing quite well, he seemed to remember, and The Great Picando had just closed at his father’s renowned theater, the Maribelle, in Central Square. Leo had seen it several times—he liked that it had women actors in it, unlike some of the plays in Old Port that cast young men to play women. But it was quite stuffy as far as the writing went. Your basic save-the-Kaolin-woman-from-the-evil-sins-of-polytheism. The Great Picando had been played by James Roth, a rising star in the theater scene. Leo had asked his father to introduce him, but he must have forgotten. Which was understandable—his father was a very busy man.