Age of X01 - Gameboard of the Gods (46 page)

The question sent chills down her spine, but she tried to put on a mask of indifference. “Of course,” she said politely. “But I appreciate your advice. You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.”

His expression told her she wasn’t fooling anyone. “I’ll be sticking around here for another hour or so if you’d like to talk more, then I have to head back to the Gustav. Early flight—otherwise I’d stay longer.”

“I understand.”

Someone called her away then, and she murmured a polite farewell. Her heart was racing, but she wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe it was the glory he’d described. Maybe it was the thought of simply not doing what she’d been raised to do here. Or maybe it was just someone speaking to her candidly for a change. She never bothered to find him, though.

The night wore on. More smiles, more compliments, more dancing, and more champagne. She felt a headache coming on and slipped away from the party to find a painkiller in the kitchen. Before she could reach it, however, someone caught hold of her arm. She flinched.

“Mae, come here.”

Kris Eriksson stood in the doorway to her father’s office, a conspiratorial grin on his face. “What are you doing here?” She was more surprised at someone intruding in the sanctuary of her father’s office than Kris’s soliciting her attention. The Eriksson family were longtime friends of the Koskinens, and Kris was one of her more persistent admirers. She liked him well enough but had never given him anything more than friendly thoughts.

Glancing around to make sure no one would see her sneaking off with a guy, she followed him into the office and shut the door behind her. “What’s going on?”

His blue eyes were alight with excitement. “It’s all settled,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this quickly. I thought we’d have to wait weeks after tonight. Maybe even months. I knew you’d be getting lots of other offers and didn’t think your mother would take ours so soon.”

Mae felt as though she were trying to understand a conversation in another language. “What’s all settled?”

“You and me.” Kris moved close and clasped her hands in his. “Getting married. Our families worked out the details. Your mom’s going to get a partner’s share in our stock, and we can get married within the year.” He put on a mischievous grin that didn’t quite manage to reach his cheeks. The Erikssons were heavily affected by Cain, and Kris had had a number of skin treatments. “I’d rather have it sooner, but I suppose we’ll have to take the time to do a wedding right.”

A cold lump settled in her stomach. “No one asked me. It can’t be settled. And I wouldn’t—” She hesitated, unable to say that he was no one she’d choose. Not that it really mattered who they’d “settled” on.

Kris didn’t seem deterred. “I can ask you now.”

And then, to her complete and total horror, he got down on one knee
in her father’s office
and produced a ring box from his coat pocket. He opened it up with a flourish, giving her a glimpse of some glittering mess.

“Maj Erja,” he said, still grinning like they were in on a joke together, “will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Mae stood there for several agonizing seconds, her mouth agape. Finally, she simply blurted out, “No. I can’t. This isn’t right. Something’s not right.”

Not waiting for his response, she nearly ripped open the door and tore down the hall to the kitchen. There, her mother was engaged in some kind of altercation with Claudia, Mae’s sister, while their brother Cyrus leaned against the wall and looked on with amusement.

“Mother,” exclaimed Mae. “What in the world is—”

Her mother held up a hand for silence. “Be quiet. Something important is going on.”

“More important than you selling me off?”

The angry expression reserved for Claudia shifted to confusion and then understanding. “Ah, that.”

Mae felt her eyes widen. “Yes, that! How can this be some kind of afterthought? We’re not in some kind of Regency novel where you trade me for a dowry!”

“So dramatic.” Her mother tsked. “You know these kinds of business transactions are made all the time.”

It was true. Although antiquated by plebeian standards, marital arrangements involving exchanges of goods weren’t uncommon among the castes, especially the upper classes.

“Yes, but usually the parties involved get asked!”

“Why? Is there someone else you wanted?”

“I didn’t want anyone!” Mae told her. “Not yet.”

“Maj.” Her mother put on what was apparently supposed to be a kindly look, but it came across as condescending to Mae. “You can’t really have thought you were going to flit your days away doing nothing of use, did you? Look at you. You are our last, best hope to turn this family around. You need to redeem us, save us from the ruin others would see us plummet to.”

She directed a glare in Claudia’s direction, and that was when Mae got her first solid look at her sister’s face. “Something important” might have been an understatement. Claudia was pale and looked as though she’d been crying. Mae glanced between them uneasily.

“What…what’s happening?” she asked.

“What’s happening,” their mother said, “is that your sister is a slut.”

Claudia’s white face turned red. “That’s not true! It’s not my fault!”

“Really? Someone else was whoring herself out?”

“It wouldn’t have happened if you’d let me keep my implant!” Claudia cried.

Their mother’s expression could have frozen the room. “Well-bred ladies don’t need contraceptive implants once they’re of age. It’s an insult to keep them…which reminds me, Maj. You can get yours removed now too. You’ll want to once you’re married anyway.”

“Really?” demanded Claudia. Her eyes shot daggers at Mae. “Even now, you manage to make this about her?”

Mae was still a few beats behind. “Are you…are you pregnant?”

“You win the prize,” said Cyrus with a chuckle. “You’re going to be an aunt. She beat Philippa and me to it.”

“But that’s good news,” said Mae slowly. “I mean, there’ll be talk since you and Marius aren’t married yet, but still…a baby so soon….”
Claudia was late getting engaged since she hadn’t had all that many boyfriends after her debut, but pregnancy at the beginning of a marriage was a dream come true for most Nordics.

“It’s not Marius’s,” said her mother flatly. “It’s not even Nordic.”

“Oh.” Mae didn’t need to hear any more to understand now why things were so grim. A plebeian had gotten Claudia pregnant. It was pretty much the most scandalous thing that could happen to a young patrician woman. They’d all had the importance of virtue driven into them from youth, with plebeians especially being regarded as the dirtiest of the dirty. Why would anyone risk sullying their genes? “What are you going to do?”

“Well, we can’t terminate it. It’s impossible to find a safe doctor to perform that off the grid. If we go to a qualified doctor, there’ll be a record of it. Even if it’s confidential, we can’t risk word of this getting out.” Her mother sighed and shook her head. “No, there’s only one choice. We’ll have to send her away and find some reason to delay the wedding. There are places that specialize in this. It doesn’t require much skill to have a baby—or to make one, apparently—and then after that, we’ll have it sent out of the country.”

Mae hadn’t really thought anything could shock her more than Kris’s proclamation. “Just like that?”

“It’s easy,” said Cyrus. “I mean, not as easy as Claudia is, but it can be done. It happens more than you think, and I know some people who can help.” Mae didn’t acknowledge that. She’d heard rumors that her brother was getting involved with the Brödern, but it wasn’t a topic she wanted to pursue right now.

“How can you just send away another person?” Mae turned to Claudia. “How can you send away your own child?”

Even irreverent Cyrus seemed surprised. “What else do you expect her to do? She’d lose Nordic citizenship.”

“That baby’s a plebeian.” Their mother practically spat the word out. “Generations of pure genes mixed with who knows what kind of background. What kind of child would that be? Certainly not one we can keep around here. I’m sure it’ll have a nice home wherever it ends up. Now stop looking so appalled. It’s not like this happened to you, thankfully.
Go back to your party. And you, go to your room. I don’t want you ruining Maj’s day.” That was to Claudia, who skulked away after leveling glares at everyone in the room.

“Hold on,” Mae told her mother. “We have to talk about the Erikssons.”

“Now isn’t the time or place.”

“It’s the perfect time and place.”

“Maj.” There it was, the patronizing voice again. “You have two hundred guests to entertain. Go back out there, and we’ll discuss this in the morning. Avoid Kris if it makes you happy, but after you sleep on it, I’m sure you’ll see what an ideal match this is. Like I said, you’re our last, best hope. I know you won’t disappoint us.”

Refusing to hear anything else, her mother glided out of the room. Cyrus followed, after first slapping Mae on the back. “Congratulations, little sister.”

Mae remembered very little of the party after that. She resumed her role but didn’t even know what she said half the time. Her thoughts kept flipping between her forced engagement and Claudia’s pregnancy. After a while, Mae began to feel her own identity merged into the baby’s: both of them tossed heedlessly around by people too entrenched in a shallow and antiquated culture. She’d gone through her upbringing with little questioning, not even when her mother had denied Mae the future she wanted. Now it was as though Mae was able to step back and see all the pettiness and empty tradition that had shackled her for her entire life. There was no reason for it that she could see.

There was no purpose.

Mae left the gallery without another word and went back to the kitchen, where servants had returned now that the family drama was over. None of them paid much attention to her as she cut through the room, straight to the back door that led out to the house’s side. All was quiet and dark here. Guests who had wandered to the expansive patio had done so at the other end of the house. Packing or changing didn’t even cross her mind. She had what was left of her dignity, as well as a clutch purse containing her ego. Those were all she needed.

She walked off into the night, which was heavy with summer’s humidity
and abuzz with the songs of insects. She found the dirt road that wound away from the estate and followed it to where it joined up with the main highway leading into New Stockholm. Two hours into the trip, she took off her high-heeled shoes and continued barefoot. Three hours into the trip, a storm rolled in and unleashed a torrential downpour. Six hours into the trip, she reached the edge of downtown.

Everyone knew where the Gustav was. It was one of the largest buildings on the west side and was the only hotel plebeians were allowed to stay at in the land grant. Through some serendipitous twist of fate, Mae walked up to it just as General Gan emerged and turned toward a waiting car. When he saw her, he came to a total standstill. Mae had the impression that the general had seen many, many things, but a bedraggled girl with bleeding feet and a soaked debutante’s dress probably wasn’t a sight he’d run into before.

“Hello, General,” she told him. “I’ve decided I’d like to have a purpose after all.”

When Mae finished her story, she thought Justin, who was stretched out on the couch, had fallen asleep. Silence fell, and he opened his eyes.

“If it makes you feel better, you win the dubious honor of completely surprising me. I never would have guessed any of that. My prevailing theory was that you ran off after some infatuation with a soldier.”

She smiled at that, pleasantly astonished at how good it really had felt to get this off her chest. She’d never told it to anyone. “Infatuation with my country, I guess.”

“Spoken like a true soldier.” He stifled a yawn. “That’s why you turned Porfirio down—too many scars from the thought of engagement.”

She supposed he was close to the mark, though Mae should’ve been used to that by now. “That, and he was pretty heavy-handed about it. I think he thought asking was kind of a formality. He couldn’t imagine I’d say no.” Startlingly close to the way Kris had behaved, she realized. “And I think being his wife…I don’t know. He didn’t have a lot of the sexist views patricians have, but there was still an overconfidence about him. He would’ve assumed I’d always go along with him. Kind of like the
proposal—he couldn’t imagine I’d refuse.” She swallowed as she recalled their last meeting.

“You were afraid he would’ve tried to control you,” Justin said, summing it up. “Like the others.”

“It’s what people do—they’re always trying to get power over each other. The fact that it all went down when Claudia was pregnant just made it worse. More callous control of other lives.”

“What ever happened to the baby?” asked Justin.

“I don’t know. Sent away.” He was too tired to pick up the lie in her voice, or she was just that good. She’d given him a lot, but Emil’s mysterious leads and her own obsessive inquiries over the years about Claudia’s daughter were staying inside Mae’s heart. “I was long gone by then.”

Justin’s eyelids were drooping again, and she got to her feet. The ree had long since worn off and rarely left a hangover. “Get some sleep. We can do psychoanalysis of my dysfunctional life another time.”