MARISSA MEYER
THE QUEEN’S ARMY
GOÑI MONTES
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They came at the end of the long night, when the manufacturing dome had not seen sunlight for almost two weeks. Z had crossed his twelfth birthday some months ago, and just enough time had passed that he’d stopped imagining glimpses of gold embroidery on black coats. He’d just stopped questioning every thought that flickered through his brain. He had just begun to hope that he would not be chosen.
But he was not surprised when he was awoken by a tap at the front door. It was so early that his father hadn’t left for the plant where he assembled engines for podships and tractors. Z stared at the dark ceiling and listened to his parents’ whisperings through the wall, then to his father’s footsteps padding past his door.
Muffled voices in the front room.
Z balled up his blanket between his fists and tried to pour all his fears into it, and then release them all at once. He had to do it three times to keep from hyperventilating. He didn’t want his brother, still asleep on the other side of the room, to be afraid for him.
He had known this was inevitable.
He was at the top of his class. He was stronger than some of the men his father worked with in the plant. Still, he’d thought that maybe his instructors would overlook him. Maybe he would be skipped.
But those thoughts were always flitting. Since he was a little boy, he had been raised to expect a visit from the queen’s thaumaturges during his twelfth year, and knew if he was deemed worthy, he would be conscripted into the new army she was building. It was a great honor to serve his crown. It would bring pride to his family and his sector.
“You should get dressed.”
He lifted his head to find his brother’s eyes shining in the darkness. So he wasn’t asleep after all.
“They’ll ask for you soon. You don’t want to make them wait.”
Not wanting his brother to think he was scared, he swung his legs out of the bed.
He met his mother in the hallway. Her cropped hair was sticking up on one side and she had pulled on a cotton dress, though the static of her slip had it clinging around her left thigh. She paused from adjusting the material, and, for one crushing second, he saw the despair that she’d always hidden when they talked about the soldier conscription. Then it was gone and she was licking her fingers and desperately trying to soothe down Z’s unkempt hair. He flinched, but didn’t fidget or complain, until his father appeared beside them.
“Ze’ev.” His voice was thick with an emotion that Z didn’t recognize. “Don’t be afraid.”
His father took his hand and guided him into the front of the house where not one but two thaumaturges were waiting for him. They both wore the traditional uniform of the queen’s court—high-collared coats that swept down to their thighs, with wide, elaborately embroidered sleeves. However, the woman wore black, denoting a third-level thaumaturge, while the man wore red. Second level. Z didn’t think there were more than a dozen second-level thaumaturges on all of Luna, and now one was standing in his house.
He couldn’t help picturing his home as it must look through the eyes of such high officials. The front room was large enough only for a worn sofa and a rocking chair, and his mom kept a vase of dusty faux flowers on the side table. If they’d bothered to look through the second doorway, they would have seen a sink piled with dishes where flies were buzzing, because his mother had been too tired to clean last night and Ran and Z had decided to play kicks with the other sector kids rather than do their chores. He regretted that now.
“Ze’ev Kesley?” said the man, the second level.
He nodded, clutching his father’s hand and using all his will not to duck behind him.