At dusk, we gathered. I was standing in the middle of the crowd with Mottey, in the center of the city, and we were both watching the platform ahead with anticipation. Poe couldn't make it, said he was helping clean up the schoolhouse and had other things to do. He wasn't one for big events.
Murmuring bounced around the square while we all waited for our new king to arrive with his entourage, towing a guilty Aldaian behind him. The torches were already lit, bordering the crowd and casting a bold glow over us. The flames whipped in the wind, as if exhilarated by the growing suspense.
Everyone had been waiting for this moment since the news yesterday. They'd closed the mines for this and the bars. They'd swept the square and they'd set up a platform, right below the Volthonian flag. Flapping with triumph, three triangles enveloped in a black circle sat between two, thick black stripes, staring back at the audience. For Volthona, it meant victory. For anywhere else, it meant death. If they could help it, many of the other kingdoms avoided us. Our army was one of the largest in the land and Aldaia's destruction last night proved that. We'd taken hundreds of Aldaians prisoner and some were still being transported here.
"Get on with it already!" Mottey yelled, glaring at the empty platform. "I haven't got all day!" Some people around us shouted in agreement.
This new king of ours needed to show up soon before someone decided to overthrow him tonight. Mottey looked about ready to challenge a day-old king to a duel and I would gladly stick around to see that. I'd bet my mother on Mottey winning. Prince Noch, King Noch, whatever he was, was the kind of man that hid behind the walls of the castle, much like his father had done when he'd reigned. Noch was young, I knew that much. He was around my age, though I couldn't say what he looked like. He and his entire family stayed safely locked up in that castle all day and all night, forever pampered by their servants and cooks.
Mottey Dindle on the other hand did everything himself. He'd learned how to sail, how to roast a duck, how to tame a horse. He hadn't learned how to wield a sword properly or really any kind of weapon, but I could see him confidently flailing one around and somehow winning a duel. Mottey always seemed to be blessed with luck.
The first time we "met" was on a spring day, when we were thirteen, and this luck showed up to save him. I'd gone up to him and tried pummeling him to the ground, outside the schoolhouse. Egren, my ten-year-old sister at the time, had been crying, saying someone had thrown a rock at her. I'd asked who and she pointed at Mottey. So I had retaliated. Mottey's luck arrived in the form of Mrs. Bat's flock of chickens escaping from her yard. They came out of nowhere, running around and clucking while their feathers flew everywhere, drifting to the ground. One jumped up on my back when I was punching Mottey and its claws dug a little bit into my skin. That made me yelp and stumble away from Mottey. My fight was no longer with a boy, but a chicken.
I remembered my mother cleaning the wound later that day in our narrow, wooden house. I'd been sitting at the table near our stove while she used a sponge with soap and water, pressing it to my scratched skin. The stinging had been awful. What made it all worth it though was my father's approval of what I'd done. He'd come home and I'd told him what happened—how Mottey hurled a rock at my sister and his daughter in the schoolyard. He was proud that I'd stood up for Egren and he even made a joke about how I had earned my first battle scars.
It wasn't until the next day that Egren confessed. She told me Mottey did not throw the rock at her. When I'd demanded to know who'd done it the day before and she'd pointed, she'd been pointing past Mottey, at another boy.
"Why didn't you tell me I got the wrong guy?" I had asked her.
"I—I don't know," she stuttered. "You just marched off before I could say anything. I didn't want to embarrass you and I—I was scared to interfere. I didn't want you to be mad at me." She'd started to cry and me being me, I just kind of stared at her, wondering how to handle the dilemma. "And now you're hurt because of me," she added with a sob.
