The Diminished. Kaitlyn Sage Patterson
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hunted for sport all my life. I knew the sound of a rifle, but it was so out of place here, so unexpected in this beautiful park in the middle of the city. There was no game to hunt, no reason for a person to come armed. I was as baffled as I was frightened; it simply didn’t make any sense.
Realization dawned on me suddenly. Someone was shooting. At me. There’d been attempts made on my life before, but they’d been flashy, easy to identify and avoid. Poisonings, cut stirrups, clumsily hidden explosives. It was tradition more than anything—a show of strength and power. The singleborn threatened each other with assassination all the time, but never with firearms, and people rarely actually died unless in some kind of horrible accident.
The horse jigged beneath me, and I knew he was on the verge of taking off. It took nearly all my focus to stay in the saddle, but even still, I saw the Shriven streaming up the hill toward the copse of trees at the edge of the bluff. They moved like silverfish streaking up a stream, silent and focused. Something about their coordinated movements, and the way they’d been waiting—it left a bad taste in my mouth. An overwhelming wrongness, like biting down on a copper tvilling.
Another shot rang out, and this time my horse wheeled and started to bolt off down the hill. I sat deep in the saddle and tightened my grip on the reins, murmuring soothing nonsense and slowing his pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Penelope and Claes catch up to me as people dashed out of the park, leaving hampers and blankets behind in their rush to get away.
“We have to get back to the palace!” Claes yelled over the din of the crowd.
“Follow me,” Penelope called. “Side streets will be faster.”
We rode at breakneck speed through the city, dodging street vendors and pedestrians. Our terrified horses needed no encouragement, and they only gathered speed as we rounded the last corner and finally caught sight of the palace.
Startled guards threw open the gate, and we thundered across the courtyard, finally slowing as we neared the stables. Claes leapt off his horse, snarling, and stalked off toward the palace without a second look for Penelope or me. I dismounted more slowly. As the rush of danger faded, my hands shook, and my knees felt like jellied eels.
“Are you all right, Bo?” Penelope handed her horse’s reins off to a groom and looked me up and down.
Dry-mouthed and weak, I ignored Penelope, pressing my forehead against the curly hair on the horse’s thick neck, petting him automatically. He was shivering, too. Without thinking, I started to run my hands over his body, looking for injury. When I reached his left flank, my hand came away damp with blood. The poor beast had been skimmed by a bullet.
“Bo?” Penelope put a hand tentatively on my shoulder.
“He’s been wounded. Call for the stable master. He might need stiches.”
A groom gently took the reins out of my hands and led the horse away.
“Bo?” Penelope asked again, peering into my eyes. “Do you need to sit down?”
“I don’t know, honestly. I’m not injured. That poor horse, though...”
Penelope sighed in exasperation. “Honestly, Bo. Worried about a horse. The beast will be fine. It was only a scratch.”
“Do you think the Shriven will make a report to the Queen?”
“Why would they? They deal with the diminished all the time.” Penelope drew my arm through her crooked elbow and led me back toward the palace. “They must’ve gotten a tip that one of the dimmys was on the verge of breaking. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I stopped and drew back. “Why would you assume that it was one of the diminished? Those bullets were aimed at me. They hit my horse. It was an assassination attempt.”
“The Shriven were there. What more proof do you need that a dimmy was holding that rifle? It was, in all likelihood, simply an unfortunate coincidence, and one of the diminished lost control while we were in the park.”
“Why would Claes run off like that, then?”
Penelope’s eyes flicked down the path, and though Claes was inside the palace and well out of earshot at this point, she lowered her voice. “You know that coming into contact with the diminished has always upset Claes, but ever since our father...”
Her voice trailed off. There was no need for her to finish the sentence as we continued down the cobblestone path that led to the palace. The twins’ father was my mother’s eldest brother. When his twin died, the family had gathered to say their goodbyes, but their father didn’t do as was expected of him. He didn’t die. In fact, he seemed healthier and more full of life than ever. After several weeks passed, the family was caught between relief that they wouldn’t lose him as well, and fear of what would happen to their standing in society. Unfortunately, their fear was well-founded. They stopped receiving invitations and visitors, and before long, their social stock had fallen so appallingly low that the only place they were welcome was the palace—and there were whispers that even the Queen, with her liberal views on all social rules, would refuse to allow them to court, if only as a way of keeping herself safe should he lose his grip on the grief.
Not long after, Penelope and Claes had come to live with my family, and their parents immigrated to Ilor, where their social status would no longer threaten their children’s prospects. Claes lived in constant fear of learning that his father had finally succumbed to the grief and done something horrible.
I ducked my head. “We still don’t know if it was one of the diminished that fired that rifle. Surely the Shriven will tell Runa that much at least.”
A guard held open the side door, and Penelope paused, waiting for me to go first. The dimness of the inner hallway after the bright day was temporarily blinding. I stopped, blinking the starbursts of darkness out of my eyes.
“We shouldn’t mention this at the dinner tonight,” Penelope said. “Just in case.”
“In case I’m right, and it wasn’t one of the diminished?”
“In case it panics your already overwhelmed mother.”
I scoffed. “Mother is absolutely fine. A meteorite could demolish our house on the same day a tempest strikes Penby, and the only thing that would make her bat an eye is the potential impact on our profitable interests.”
“It isn’t a bad thing to be concerned about, Bo. Her careful business strategizing is the reason you’re kept in books and horses.”
I sighed in defeat. “I know. I ought to go study before dinner. Queen Runa is sure to quiz me about the kind of metal used to make the pipes on the sunships or something equally obscure, and I’d rather not be embarrassed in front of the rest of the singleborn. Check on Claes for me?”
Penelope nodded, a knowing smile playing around her eyes. “Of course. See you at dinner.”
* * *
State dinners were held in the same cavernous great room where all of the important royal ceremonies and celebrations had taken place since the cataclysm and Penby’s founding. That evening, with most of the Alskad singleborn and nobility in attendance and fires burning in the wide hearths, the room was warm and bright and full of jewels glittering in the light of the solar lamps. I peered through a crack between the doors and watched as Claes moved through the crowd, all dark, perfectly mussed hair and bright blue silk. His jacket was embroidered with silver thread and crystals in a pattern that made it look as though there were raindrops clinging to his shoulders. He was, by far, the most handsome young man in the room.
The whisper of footsteps snapped me out of my reverie, and I stepped away from the door just as the Queen said, “We can’t be spending the whole night in the doorway, mooning over some pretty young thing, Bo.”
“Apologies, Your Majesty.” I bowed.
The Queen adjusted the golden cuff bracelet on her wrist and made a face.
“You’d