The Tyrant's Daughter (10 page)

I finally settle on the county library. I have only a vague idea of where it is, and it takes me nearly an hour and three wrong turns to get there. I might have tried taking a bus, but I have no money and I still find the cryptic schedules daunting. As I walk, I watch from the sidewalk as deserted buses zoom past me. They’re empty this early on a Sunday, but they still have no room for the likes of me.

Today, I don’t mind feeling lost. Today, for the first time in my lifetime of minders, maids, and protectors, I feel a sense of relief in being alone and adrift.

But even so, I’m sweaty and irritable when I finally make it to the library. The arctic blast of the air-conditioning feels almost painful as I walk into the building. Why must everything be kept at such temperature extremes here? Americans never seem to be at peace with their surroundings—they’re always heating or cooling or just constantly
changing
everything to meet their whims. Watching their industriousness exhausts
me, and sometimes I want to shout out, to tell them to just
be
. But I know I have no right to criticize. Everyone needs to feel some degree of control over their universe, and supercooling a room is a relatively benign way of achieving that, I suppose.

This library is cavernous, four times the size of the school’s, and the computer area is far more crowded. I feel like an intruder, and I skulk and eavesdrop pathetically until I understand how the system works. I wait until someone abandons a computer without logging off and then slide into the still-warm seat. Perhaps the woman in the parking lot was right to think me a thief.

My fingers hover over the keyboard—what dangers lurk in foolish searches? But today my quest is simple. I just want news from home. Facts and data, the less personal the better.

The news will have to be impersonal, since there’s no one for me to contact. My barren email in-box is a cruel reminder of how few connections I have in the world. Everyone I ever knew seems to have either died, vanished, or betrayed—in many cases I’m not even certain which. Not that anyone would ever feel safe sending an email anyway—not from my country, where the internet is a small and closely watched place.

Without anyone to contact, I have to rely on filtered, stingy news reports. Recent updates are few; the media is content to let my country’s past describe its present. It seems that not many people in the world care about a far-flung country with too many guns. Not as long as its citizens are only shooting each other, that is.

I scan and skip through pages I’ve seen before. Was it only weeks ago that I first read them in the school library? It feels like ancient history now. I take small comfort in the fact that
the few new articles I can find struggle with what to call my uncle. His title tap-dances from “prime minister” to “commander in chief,” and from “newly installed” to “disputed.” The last one gives me hope.

One title is noticeably lacking. There is no “king.”

There never was. It’s not a surprise, of course. I’ve known this now for weeks. But here in this overchilled library a world away, it seems cruelly obvious. My stupidity laid out in black and white. My family’s royalty was a myth I believed for far too long—a fabrication woven for a child’s ears.

A small part of me understands. How does a parent tell a child a truth like my father’s? And some of the lies were at least close to truths. Like royalty’s, my family’s status was passed down from father to son. Like a king’s, my father’s rule was absolute. The only real differences, I suppose, were that my father had no adoring empire and that his was an authority based more on bloodshed than birthright.

Did it start out as a joke? Did my parents concoct a silly bedtime story that went too far? When were they going to tell me the truth?

I push away from the computer. I’m too distracted to focus. My eyes feel jerky and untethered, and the skimpy information online isn’t enough to hold my attention.

As I stand up, I see a familiar face. Ian.

He’s leaning against a bookshelf, looking at me. He lifts his hand hesitantly, as if he hasn’t made up his mind whether he wants to talk. “Laila, hi.”

I smile at him. I’m glad he’s here—a reaction that surprises me. We’ve barely spoken, but there’s something about him that
makes me curious. He seems somehow more perceptive than the other American boys I’ve met here. Of course, it might just be those hazel lion’s eyes—I wonder how many personality traits people incorrectly assume from this simple biological quirk.

“Hi. What are you doing here on a Sunday?” It comes out sounding like an accusation—not what I intended. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Hiding out.” He grins and ducks his head a little. “My parents think I’m at a church youth group meeting. I’ve been coming here every Sunday for months now.”

The fact that he’s also hiding out makes me want to confess my own fugitive status. “I’m hiding too. This is my first time. My first time here, I mean. But why are you avoiding your church? I thought you were religious.”

He shrugs. “My parents are. I don’t know what I am. But I do know that I’ve spent enough hours in churches all over the world to justify a free pass when I feel like skipping out.”

He says this with a lightness I envy. Here is someone who feels no guilt for his escape.

“What about you? Are you religious?” We simultaneously step out of the busy computer area as he asks this.

I shake my head. “No. My parents aren’t, so I suppose that I’m not either by extension.” I cringe as I catch myself using the present tense. I don’t have enough practice yet speaking of my father in the past tense. “Religion has always been a sensitive subject in my family. One of my uncles is very religious, very conservative, and he blamed a lot of problems on my father’s lack of faith.” I don’t know why I’m telling this to Ian—I’m sure he doesn’t care.

But he surprises me again. “Your uncle, he’s the one they call the General?”

“How did you know that?” My muscles tense at the mention of a name I thought I’d escaped.

His cheeks flush. “I read up a bit on your country after Emmy introduced us,” he admits. “I have plenty of time every Sunday to do research. It beats crossword puzzles.” We share a smile as he gestures toward a table occupied by four old men with a stack of newspapers and pencils in hand.

“I wanted to say—” Newly serious, he pauses. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry about your father. I can only imagine how hard it’s been for you.…” He’s watching for my reaction, treading lightly.

I react by turning into a puddle. My eyes swim with mortifying tears, and the spines of the books around us go wavy. I’m embarrassed by my reaction but powerless to stop it. It’s the first time anyone has spoken to me like a girl who has lost her father. Until now, everyone has treated his death like a headline. Unemotional. Institutional, even, as if a building or a bridge had been destroyed, instead of a man. Aside from a single anguished moment when she thought no one was looking, even my mother has remained stoic and silent on the topic.

Poor Ian looks so stricken by my reaction that I force my grief away. I’ve lost control over everything else in my life; I can’t lose control over myself.

“Do you want to get out of here? Maybe grab a cup of coffee or something?” His lion eyes hold mine.

I nod and follow.

Ian leads me to my second Starbucks. It’s the identical twin of the one I’ve gone to with Emmy, down to the upholstery on the chairs and the placement of the sugar packets. It’s creepy in its familiarity, like it followed me here. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to the aggressive sameness of chain stores.

At the counter I stare up at the menu, trying to remember what I ordered before. My eyes are still raw from tears, and the choices are blurry and overwhelming.

Ian rescues me. “The green tea lemonade is good.” It’s a gentle prompt. I nod, and he orders two.

There’s only one empty table, and we twist and contort our way through baby strollers and scattered shopping bags to get there. Ian starts to pull my chair out for me but then stops abruptly. He steps back too quickly and bumps into someone behind him. He’s sweetly uncertain as he sits down in his own chair. It’s nice. Here, now, he’s just a boy, and I’m just a girl.
We’re just a girl and a boy sitting at a table drinking lemonade, and nothing could be simpler.

But then he makes it complicated again.

“So, I’m curious. Who was that guy you were with at the dance last night?”

I recognize the forced indifference in his tone, and I focus on my straw wrapper, my drink, my napkin, before I answer. I assume he means Amir, but he could also mean my nameless dance partner. I don’t want to discuss either, but for very different reasons.

“I know it’s none of my business, but I was kind of worried about you. It looked like you were in the middle of a fight or something, and he was practically dragging you out of the gym.”

Amir, then. Part of me is relieved, or at least less embarrassed. “He’s just a family friend. He’s a bit … traditional, and he was concerned about me. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Traditional, huh? He seemed pretty upset when he saw you out there dancing. I thought maybe he was jealous.”

So, Ian spotted that, too. My face grows warm, and I shake my head and look away. I shouldn’t care that he saw me dancing, but for some reason I do. I start to explain, to defend myself, but then stop. I see no judgment in his expression, and I hear no shame on his tongue. Their absence unsettles me, and I change the subject. “Does your family have plans for any more grand journeys overseas?”

He frowns. “My parents talk about it. A lot. But I think they realize that they like the adventure more than they like the religious part. They’re having a hard time justifying another mission to themselves, but they’re trying.”

“And you?” I ask him. “Do you want to go again?”

“No,” he says with the finality of someone whose mind will not be changed. “But I don’t exactly get a vote. I’m trying to stay out of it for now. No sense using up all my fight if they never even decide to go. Only a couple more years until I’m in college, anyway. Then they’ll
have
to go without me.” He starts to tie his straw into a knot. “How about you?”

I’m distracted by his straw origami—he’s making a stick figure, or maybe an airplane. “What about me?”

“Are you going to stay in the U.S.? Do you
want
to stay here?”

It’s a heavy sack of a question that he drops into my lap, and I wish he hadn’t asked it. I have no answer to give him, but I speak so as not to be rude. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know what I want. It doesn’t matter anyway—going back isn’t an option right now. It may never be.” I blink fast—I don’t want Ian to see me cry twice in an hour.

He notices. Of course he notices. Those pale eyes of his are like flashlights. “Emmy was right,” he says. “We
do
have something in common.”

“Do we?”

“Neither one of us has control over our future. Neither of us has a vote in where we may end up.” He cringes at his own words. “Sorry about that. This conversation isn’t going quite the way I’d hoped.… I mean, it’s not that I’m not enjoying talking to you. I am. It’s just—”

“It’s okay. I know what you mean. But perhaps next time we should go see a movie together. That way we can’t talk.” I smile to let him know I’m teasing.

He laughs. We stay another twenty minutes, but now we’re mindfully unmindful—our conversation all banter, controversy-free. Beneath the lightness, though, lies something newly solid. A connection. And then it’s time to leave. We stand up together, again as if our steps were choreographed. He puts his hand on the small of my back as we wind our way through the crowded maze of tables and chairs. It’s the lightest of touches—he probably doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it—but I feel it like an electrical current. I’m too aware of him, too distracted by his physical presence.

When he takes his hand away, I’m even more bothered by its absence.

“Can I walk you home?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No. Thank you, but no.” I don’t want to refuse, but old lessons remain strong in my mind.

“Then maybe I’ll see you at our hideout next Sunday.” His voice drops to a near whisper as he leans in, his lips grazing my ear. “I like being your accomplice.” And then he walks off, his words still hanging in the air and his touch still buzzing on my skin.

Mother is sitting in the same spot as when I left, but something has changed. Her ever-present teacup has turned into a glass.

I recognize the amber liquid inside. Liquor is technically forbidden in our country, but the law is ignored by people who have enough money. This is the first time I’ve seen Mother drinking since we came here, though, and I wonder if the open bottle I spot on the counter is yet another double-edged gift from Mr. Gansler.

“Where have you been, Laila?” Her tolerance for alcohol is low, and her words sound soft around the edges.

“The library.” I keep my voice neutral and she nods absently. She has greater concerns than my whereabouts.

I go to my room and sink down onto the unmade bed—all three of us struggle to remember that we are now responsible
for our own menial tasks, and the apartment is perpetually cluttered.

Bastien is sitting on the floor reading an American comic book. What does
he
want? After all, he is the best adapted here—in fact, he has the most to lose, whichever direction our fate takes us.

“Bastien, do you miss home?”

He wrinkles his nose at me. “Sure.” His gaze drifts back down to his reading, but he must sense that the disruption isn’t over because he sighs and puts it down.

“But it seems like you’re happy here.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.” For him there is no discrepancy between his answers. In his six-year-old mind, it’s still possible to be equally happy in two worlds.

I’m envious. And irritated. A wicked part of me, the bullying-older-sister part, wants him to have to choose. “But where would you
rather
live?”

Finally, he gives this question some thought. “I guess back home.” He grins. “I want to be King.”