Percy belonged to that noble breed of people for whom resentment aged like a fine wine. Neighbourly disagreements and simple misunderstandings could only become great family feuds if allowed to linger and grow. Some would say that they festered, but Percy’s family was too grand to allow anything to fester: it simply allowed them to mature.

Percy was only one year older than his family’s wealth, and what a sibling it had been. They had grown together and been displayed in the same rooms by the Freels. It had been a constant companion to him in his childhood and teenage years, more constant than any others, in whatever form it took, be it gold-trimmed tapestries or gold-framed mirrors or gold-plated gold. But in the quiet moments, when it stared down at him from the posthumous portrait of his grandfather or the carved animal heads on the marble fireplace, it became an overbearing playmate, and it made him glad he had no other siblings to smother his days.

The Freel’s estate was an amalgamation of towers, turrets, east wings and west drawing rooms, all added to what had once been the family’s drapery shop. They could have moved to one of the hills on the edge of town, where they would have been less crowded by everyone and their horses’ shit, and where everyone would have been less crowded by their constant aggrandisements to their home. But while the hills had a good view of the town, the town would not have a good view of the house had it moved there, and so the point of turning it into a grand estate would have been lost. There was no purpose to decorative friezes and arches if they had no spectators. And Percy’s father often said it was important to stay in what had once been the drapery shop, so that they may always remember their origins – as long as they never returned to them.

This was as far as his father’s humility would stretch. He was determined that the town should witness not only the rise of his house from one-storey shop to four-storey manor, but equally the rise of his family. It rid itself of its new money veneer through old, dusty deeds: the Freels were avid contributors to noble causes, hoping some of its nobility would rub off on them. They had so skilfully traded their way into wealth with imported brocades and silks that they fully knew the power of a satin sheen or a gilded finish.

But even before his fortune found him, Percy’s father believed a great destiny was owed to his family, and he laid the foundations for it to thrive. When his son was born, he named him Percival. Others in the town with smaller things ahead of them in life might be named Jim, Tom and Tim; but Percy would not merely be another in the town.

He woke now, half lost in sleep that lingered and silken sheets that engulfed him. He got up, resenting half the tasks of his day, and determined to resent the other half by the time he returned to his bed at night.

It was truly an art form to have an eye for the grandiose when one was so small. Percy stood at five feet two, with a slight frame and scrawny build that always denied him the dignity of having his age guessed correctly. His hair was a dark, tousled mass of waves, offset by a pale skin that bore the privilege of many a sunburning day spent indoors, subjected to the very best of educations. His delicate features did not help his efforts to achieve the imposing appearance of one with a great destiny ahead. For that, he could only count on his eyebrows, which sat thick and heavy over eyes of an unflattering murky colour. But his clothes were a precious asset, weighing down with furs and velvets the natural lightness of his graceful frame. And thus he began his day, cloaking himself in the heaviness his family had designed for him, his name, his future, his exquisite tunics and cloaks.

A knock came at the door.

“Master Percy?” he heard his housekeeper call. He had been quick to learn that possessive pronouns suited people to perfection. “The painter, Mr Perry, would like to see you in the morning drawing room.”

“But it’s time for my music lesson.”

“Yes, it is” she said simply, before carrying her light footsteps away.

‘Yes’ was a word Master Percy heard often; he suspected that was why it sounded so devoid of meaning to him. The servants breathed it to him without a second thought, but he rarely ever felt satisfied for having heard it.

He headed to the drawing room with a frustrated sigh. He did not like routines to be broken: if it was so easy to disrespect that which wove the very fabric of his days, it would soon become easy to disrespect him, too.

He did not, in truth, know what that felt like. Barely a year after he had been born, the seers and clairvoyants of the town had announced to his father that a great destiny awaited him: he was to be the chosen one.

What he had been chosen for, by whom, and with which methods exactly, mattered little: his father’s belief in the Freel’s greatness, which had been mocked by many with relentless delight, was vindicated. The seers’ claims were at first wrung through some doubting and questioning, but they stood firm in their predictions: they had with great clarity seen Percy in extraordinary events that would shape the land and be set in its history. Percy had been present in all their visions. Legendary episodes bejewelled his future path, just as mundane moments littered that of ordinary people.

And the seers were precious to the town. If their visions for great people could so easily be disbelieved, then so too could their homemade medicines and charms for little people, and no one wanted to deprive themselves of the comfort of trusting. What was more, it was well known that seers never lied. Soon all accepted that Percy was the chosen one. Very soon, it was all he knew.  

He made his way along the polished hallways of the second floor. They smelled as they always had, stately and rare, never worn down but merely aged to perfection. They were tinged with incense, to remind all visitors of the house – and there were many – that within those richly upholstered walls happened serious, solemn, sacred things.

When he stepped into the drawing room, he was met by three wearingly familiar faces: his tutor, his music master, and the portrait painter. His father claimed they came to serve him, by bettering his education and his standing in the world; and he was terrified of all three beyond reason. To teach the secrets of gentlemanly arts, they had forfeited any gentleness themselves. They were skilled in fatally wounding the spirit and sanity of their pupils, yet never so kind as to put them out of their misery: they sent them out into the world, bleeding out their last, to display the achievements of their education. 

Percy did not usually have to suffer all three at once: but his music master couldn’t abide a schedule change; the painter needed him to pose for at least another hour to finish his portrait; and the dinner – the dinner with the speech – the speech that his tutor had come to rehearse with him – the dinner was tonight. It all had to be done now, or not at all, he was told.

He sat on the stool facing the painter, right by the window, where the sunlight would best wash him of his faults: a villainous spot that had popped unannounced in his forehead; a curl or two that refused to be tamed. The music master handed him his lute, and Percy smiled as he took it, knowing it for the only thing in the room that would treat him with care. His tutor, Mr Henning, stood by a lectern with a draft of the speech. 

“Are you ready for tonight?” Mr Henning asked brightly, delighted with the knowledge that Percy could not say anything but “yes”. 

But he did feel ready. Such dinners were constant affairs; frequent enough, at least, to spare him the nervous bite of exceptional moments. And he did not mind giving speeches – in fact, he hardly dared admit to himself that he liked them. 

He liked this specific speech, too. It spoke of how he was ready to face whatever challenges and tricks of fate came his way, though he did not know what they may be. This display of innocent ignorance, he knew, was a necessary lie. His education had been expensive enough to prepare him for anything and anyone; only paupers truly suffered from unforeseen circumstances. But he understood now that speeches needed a little mystery to make them more enticing and palatable, especially over long dinners. It also spoke of how, no matter how far his travels took him, he had too deep a respect for his town and its people to ever forget where he came from. He swore to protect them and serve their best interests, and, if his quests ever took him to the king and queen and prince, he would do the townsfolk proud, for he knew just how royalty ought to be greeted. Wait for obligatory toast to their majesties. And when he returned to his town – for he would return one day – he would aid its enrichment and development, by driving out malevolent fae and attracting benign sorcerers to invest in the local community. Mrs Mondley, the local button maker, would applaud loudly more or less now, for it always pleased her to hear such things.

“And if a spiteful sorcerer were to curse the entire town while you were away, Percival, what would you do?” Mr Henning asked, staring at him from the lectern.

Percy glanced up from his lute strings and the minor chord he was about to pluck from them. This was not part of the speech at all. Thankfully, his education had also taught him how to glare mildly. He did it now at Mr Henning, who would fling snakes at a drowning man just to teach him how to perform under pressure.

“Naturally, I would return at once to save the town” Percy replied, dry as parchment paper.

“Master Percival, a little less rigid, if you please” his music master admonished, frowning in disapproval at the metallic twang of the strings. “A tad more swaying will benefit the music immensely.”

Percy relaxed his shoulders, and was surprised to find them stiff as stone. He loosened in his stool, allowed his body to melt a little into the soft cadence of the piece.

“And if the king and queen themselves requested your help?”

“Less swaying, Master Percival! Do try to be still” the painter chided him. “Would it please your father if I were to paint a blurry likeness of you? A straight back, if you please.”

“Or if a curse was placed on yourself? What would you do?”

Percy’s mouth gaped the slightest inch; his brow furrowed the slightest frown. He thought for a moment of all the wonderful places where he could tell them to shove their speeches and their swaying and their straight backs. But his upbringing, never far behind, soon caught up with him. He closed his mouth, placed his hands back on the lute strings, and stared right ahead at the painter. He knew all about straight laces; he imagined some now above him, drawn taut between him and the ceiling, holding him up in the finest art of puppetry, his arms arched in a perfect pose, his chin tipped at a perfect angle.

Soon enough – somewhere in the third repetition of the lute piece, the second read-through of the speech, and an atrociously stiff neck that radiated a warm pain to his left shoulder – the painter asked him if he wanted to see how the portrait was coming along.

When the canvas was turned to face him, Percy was struck by the likeness of that young man staring back at him, repaying his own haughty confidence twofold in the crispest of brushstrokes. Normally, whenever he held himself in the mirror, he remembered to soften his expression, so as to look a little more kindly on himself than he did on others. But he had forgotten to mention that to the painter – my good man; this distant frown that I wear so well when I’m in your company, and in the company of others who are paid for by my father’s money; do have the courtesy of toning it down a notch, for the portrait will be seen by people of means and titles and other qualities, and I would not scowl quite like this in their presence.

As it was, with one glance at the painting, he recognized himself immediately. He stood before a background of pleasantly generic hills and woods. They looked faded and muddled in comparison with the rich intricacy of details that had been granted to his figure instead. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword by his waist, ready for action. To his right, a beech tree soared tall: the symbol that his father had chosen for his family’s crest. Though he claimed it was laden with symbolism and hidden meanings, Percy suspected his father had picked it for no better or worse reason than he knew it to be the tallest of all trees in the surrounding forests.

The door opened with a low grumble. His father walked in: short, thin, each floorboard creaking under the weight of his self-importance and his velvet-lined garments. He had been the first in town to wear that particular cut of clothes, that particular style of beard, and that particular brand of arrogance: he set fashions brazenly and raucously, and he often looked behind his shoulder just for the pleasure of seeing who followed. He was rather loud for a short man, and rather short of patience for someone who, according to his own frequent claims, now led a life of leisure. His fortune had paid for nearly half the town, and the other half owed him on credit. In each room he entered, those who sat stood at once, and those who stood already tried to stand upright just a little more.

All three of Percy’s torturers sprung up now, the painter’s palette almost clattering to the carpeted floor. It was always a pleasure to see Mr Henning trying to stand on his tiptoes.

“Ah, Percival” his father said as he came in. Sometimes he called him Percy, in occasional moments of weakness where he forgot his son’s great destiny. But he never forgot in front of guests or help. “And Masters Perry, Riegel and Henning! How is work coming along?” 

Their work began and ended with preparing Percival for his role. The portrait was nearly done, but not quite, because Mr Perry knew that his employer could afford the added cost of an extra sheep or two in the background. The lute piece was nearly perfect, but Mr Riegel would never sabotage his own high salary by saying one of his students played perfectly. And the speech was nearly acceptable, which was exactly the kind of dry, demanding appraisal which made Mr Henning the best paid tutor in the province.

            The master of the house nodded along to their reports, savouring each promise of greatness. When they were done, he turned to Percy. 

“Are you ready, son?” 

His father loved to ask him that. On certain days, he could sustain himself with little more than a light broth, some toast, a fine cigar, and this question. He had come so far that he no longer concerned himself with the common dreariness of plain work, and was instead busy with the far more noble task of a life’s work. That work was his son. 

“It is not a question of readiness” Percy smiled up at him. “My destiny is mine to claim, no matter what.” 

His father smiled back. It was the same answer that Percy always gave. This time, however, there was a slight ripple in his father’s smooth, steady confidence. 

“Good. Good. Your readiness will serve you well now” his father lowered his voice. “We have been honoured with a visit from representatives of the royal palace. They want to speak with you in the reception room.”

Percy’s heart picked up. A new fear pooled sickly warm in the pit of his stomach. Even his own unshakeable self in the portrait twitched slightly, he thought. But he held himself silent and impassive. This was excitement, he repeated in his mind; not fear. And he would not show it: not to Mr Perry, who saw everything; nor to Mr Riegel, who heard everything; and especially not to Mr Henning, who knew how to unpick the seams of souls. 

He followed his father back into the hallway. It tumbled under his feet in a mess of expensive carpets and polished mirrors and unravelling thoughts. The dinner would have to be cancelled. He would read his speech when he returned victorious, with two or three added paragraphs. He would have to pack, though he did not know where to, exactly. He was headed to his destiny, this much he knew; but as far as destinations went, it was rather imprecise, geographically speaking, and gave no clues as to whether he should wrap up warm or favour linen. Layers, his mother would say. And there were his other public engagements to consider – two next week, one with the mayor, another with a squire, both of whom had vowed undying support for their local hero in his quests, and both of whom would be mortally offended if the local hero stood them up to go off questing. He would have to reschedule – but for when? How long would he be gone for? And where on earth had he left his satchel – the good one, the one he was meant to save for his travels, but which he had used just yesterday to go feed some ham to the cat outside?

When they reached the reception room, he was met by the blinding sunlight that burst through the bay windows, shattering his sight into shards of mirrors and gilded frames. He saw his mother by the window, fair-haired and poised, with a skilful smile that hid years of careful practice. His father joined her at once. They stood, as they always did, under his grandfather’s portrait, hoping to impress their lineage upon their guests, as though there was something particularly awe-inspiring and fashionable about having ancestors.

It was only later that he saw, standing by the fireplace, a man and a woman clad in silver-trimmed blue robes. The representatives from the palace, no doubt. He wondered what he ought to say, but instead he simply nodded, to indicate he was ready. A display of self-assured silence would look dignified, and hopefully muffle the cacophony of his anxious thoughts.

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He waited for his parents to leave and give them the room, but instead, the pair of blue robes gestured for him to follow before stepping wordlessly out of the room. He glanced at his parents, who smiled an encouraging, eager smile. He thought perhaps his father had granted the use of his office for them to speak in private. But he followed the pair along the manor’s hallways, down the carved oak staircase, through the heavy front door, and it was only when they were past the shoemaker and the butcher’s shop that he realised, with astonishment, that they had left the house entirely.

People were staring; that he realised quick enough. They were uncommonly gifted at it. They knew how to stop stupefied in their tracks, gawk and gasp, widen their eyes like saucers, and make a whole display out of watching him. It quickly became embarrassing, and he tried to hide by meeting no one’s eyes. The splendid blue robes stood out with calculated showmanship in the greyish dull street. Percy hoped it all looked very noble and worthy of featuring in that evening’s dinner-table tales. But some mortification still squirmed in him: he felt he was being led by a well-dressed leash to a well-publicised fate.

When they reached the edge of town, he grew impatient, and discarded the quiet dignity he had hoped to maintain for longer.

“Excuse me, where are we going?”

They barely acknowledged he had spoken, and merely repeated their earlier gesture for him to follow. His brow weighed down in a disapproving frown. He had not imagined he would be treated thus, when they came to collect him so that he may fulfil his destiny as chosen one. He was beginning to suspect he might have little choice himself.

They crossed the wide-open town gates and left the fortified walls behind them as they walked down the road. The town was perched on a plateau with an unencumbered view of the surrounding valley. Just a few steps along the road, the plain that bordered the town slid into their field of vision, and Percy saw three colourful tents pitched by the edge of the woods. At least now he knew where they were headed.

When they approached the tents, he saw a surprisingly thin gathering: a few respectable figures in the same dark blue robes, and a scattering of men who might conceivably be knights. It was far from the pomp and pageantry he had expected, although he supposed there was always something dignified in a quiet, understated affair. These dignitaries and knights were not nearly as talented at staring as the townspeople were: their attention barely grazed him before fleeting to something else, an ongoing conversation, a sword being polished, an unseemly spot on their shoe. He appreciated their efforts in making him feel at ease, though he almost hoped they wouldn’t try quite so hard. He would not mind an awe-struck expression here and there.

They led him to a red tent and stopped at the entrance, gesturing for him to enter. It was modestly but comfortably furnished, and remarkably empty. He turned to look at the pair that had escorted him this far, but they were gone. He stood, waiting in the centre of the tent, unsure of how to position himself. To feel unsure even after a lifetime of preparation for that moment was not a pleasant feeling – but then again, he thought with some bitterness, they were not giving him a generous amount of direction. He ran his hands through his hair before joining them at his front, but worried it would look too meek; he joined them behind his back instead, but thought it would look too imperious; and so he determined that the best recourse would be to forget he had hands entirely. He had been extensively tutored in history, geography, astronomy, swordsmanship, horse riding, chess, courtly etiquette and dance; but he was now deeply resentful of Mr Henning for having neglected to teach him anything on the subject of hands.

“Have you really not noticed I’m here yet?”

He turned, startled, to the woman who had just spoken. She was leaning against one of the tent poles by the entrance, crossed arms and crossed legs and crossed expression. How he had failed to notice her was beyond him. She had broad shoulders, thick arms and sturdy legs, and the kind of physique he would have liked to have himself. She was in her late forties or early fifties, and wore a dark blue tabard with silver edges. Her light blond hair was loosely tied in a braid, and the arched eyebrows and strong jawline of her features had an aristocratic quality to them. She looked like a matronly knight; it was incomprehensible.

“My apologies – ” he started, though his tone made it clear he was not apologizing for anything at all. Remembering something he had once rehearsed, though feeling lost for the lack of cues, he added, “I’m ready.”

She drew one of her eyebrows higher still, and held him in a fierce stare for a never-ending second, before relaxing her body in a clear sign of relief.

“Oh, good – they’ve told you, then, have they?”

He had meant for his words to steer him back to a script he knew by heart; not to disorient him further.

“Told me – what?”

They exchanged a squinted stare. She spoke first.

“Alright, darling. What do you think you’re ready for exactly?”

He looked at her as though she were simple minded.

“For my... dest...”

The word trailed off with a deflated sound. It reminded him of a little timid breeze letting itself out through the backdoor. Worse still, he was sure it reminded her of the same. He was mortified. He reached in his mind for the things that usually comforted him, but found nothing.

“Are you him?” she asked. “You are him, aren’t you?”

At last, he was back on familiar ground. Here was a question he knew the answer to.

“Yes, I am.”

She nodded, a brief, effective nod.

“Then I suppose you must be eager to go and meet him.”

“Him?”

“The chosen one.”

Something within him tripped.

“The – chosen one?”

She was already halfway out of the tent, lifting its red fabric over her blond head. She turned to Percy just enough for him to see her eyebrow arching again in frustration.

“Boy, what else do you think they brought you here for?”

Somehow, he was left gaping at her for a long while even after she slipped out of his field of vision. He followed her out of the tent eventually, no longer concerning himself with how he looked, but merely trying to chase after her long strides.

“They – the ones who came to get me, they didn’t tell me anything at all – ” he tumbled and stumbled after her.

She sighed, but kept her brow furrowed and her eyes focused on the purple tent she was headed for.

“Right. Didn’t think they would. They think they’re too important to tire themselves with explanations.”

“They’re important?”

The words she had spoken just before leaving the tent hadn’t quite reached him yet. He kept swatting them away like flies.

“Well, yes, they are. In terms of palace hierarchy, they’re above me. Lots of other ways in which they’re below me, though. Keeps me warm at night to remember that.”

They were almost at the purple tent. Percy now realized there had not yet been any introductions, and no names given. He had assumed it was because only his name mattered, and everyone there already knew it; but he was slowly becoming petrified with the feeling that there was little mattering for him to do at all.

Just as that feeling caught up to him and his legs turned to stone, he entered the purple tent. He had been facing the sun as he walked towards it, and the darkened interior caught him unawares. Inside smelled of warm summer evenings. The purple fabric of the tent soothed his blinded sight like velvet, until a faint glimmer started to carve itself in his vision as his eyes grew used to the dim interior.

It came from well-polished armour. The armour wore a tall young man. There was nothing else to be seen to him until he stepped closer, out of the shadows, and it was a while before he did; though the way he moved hinted that he took his time not out of any arrogant wish of making others wait, but merely out of deep-rooted calm.

When he finally came closer, the shadows yielded a handsome face. It owed some of its beauty to a few predictable traits, but others were more perplexing: a square jaw and high cheekbones with the lightest of stubbles that made them stand out more; but a wide nose and a pair of thin, hooded eyes that would have been unflattering on any other face, yet made his striking, alluring, addictive. He had short and wavy light-brown hair with a copper tint to it. His armour fit him with disorienting grace: on him and him alone, it had nothing of bulky steel and iron, and was nothing more than well-pressed, creaseless linen. Percy knew at once that he was one of those persons whom everything would suit: his armour, his tunic, his wedding robe, his nakedness and his coffin. To be so effortlessly good-looking had something of an indecent ease to it, and Percy thought it entirely criminal.

“I apologize for the mess. I meant to tidy up, but I wasn’t sure what went where; it’s not my tent, you see.”

Even though Percy had seen the young man move his lips, he had some trouble believing it was him who had spoken. Not that the voice didn’t match the handsome features: it was mellow, soothing and silk. But it angered Percy. To apologize for a mess that was not of his own making – and even admit to having attempted to clean it – was not how a hero of the age ought to speak. It did, however, reassure Percy: that man standing before him could not be the chosen one.

“The mess is the least of my concerns. Who are you and what’s going on?”

He realized, albeit too late, that by asking “who are you” he might very well get an unwelcome answer to the question “who am I”. But, for now, he was grounded in his determination to look as frustrated as he felt.

“The ones who went to get him told him bugger all” the woman contributed as an explanation. She stood by the man’s side, arms crossed as ever.

“Yes, I doubted they would” he sighed. “Then first of all, names. Mine is Evans. And this is Valeria.”

Percy nodded, caught, despite his best efforts, in the man’s gentle expression.

“I’m Percy – val.”

His father would have quaked at that pause.

“Percy Vole?”

“No!” he blushed, pinched by anger. “Do you not know my name?”

Evans raised his eyebrows.

“Did you know his?” Valeria intervened, staring at Percy.

“And why should I know his?” Percy snapped.

Each exchange was making him feel shorter, and shorter, and shorter, until he was about the height of a five-year-old child. He did not like the view from down there, and how tall it made others look.

“Because he’s the king’s son” she replied.

Percy widened his eyes, but they soon narrowed again.

“That’s not the name of the king’s son.”

“Not of his legitimate one, no.”

It was Evans who spoke now, sounding as placid as he had so far, safe for a slight tautness of strained patience in his voice. It was barely noticeable, audible only to Percy because he had been so eager to hear it.

“You’re a bastard?”

“In that sense only; I assure you I’m not an altogether unpleasant man otherwise” Evans smiled.

“No, he isn’t. He wouldn’t know where to start” Valeria sighed.

Silence nestled between them for a moment.

“She said you’re the chosen one?” Percy forced himself to ask.

Evans exchanged a glance with Valeria.

“So they’ve told me for a long time, yes.”

“But – I’m the chosen one!”

“That may well be; I suppose there is no fixed limit on how many of us there can be at a given time. Chosen for what?”

Percy stared in stunned silence. Such things were not asked; thinking about them was not done, and no one had to be told not to do it. No one had to be told not to look at the sun until they were blinded, or not to hold their breath underwater until they drowned. Human nature had its uses.

His mind twisted itself into a question that he was barely capable of asking.

“If I’m not the chosen one, why did you come and get me from the town?”

Evans seemed reluctant to reply, so Valeria begrudgingly took up the task.

“Years ago, the royal seers in the palace had visions of a chosen hero. They saw him in events that will shape this land, and his deeds save many. It was Evans. And, by his side, they saw you. So, we came to get you because you seem to have a part to play in his destiny.”

“They’re just not sure which part, exactly. Which is a bit embarrassing for everyone, we must admit” Evans added, running his hand through his hair with a sheepish smile.

Another silence crept in, but this time, Percy allowed it to stretch and linger. It gave him a much needed measure of control, to display such largesse in how he spent his time and wasted that of others.

“There must have been a mistake” he said at last. “My father was told I was the chosen one shortly after I was born.”

“Yes, there was a mistake, and it was unfortunate” Valeria said with ruthless simplicity.

“I meant on your end” he clarified, frowning.

As she stared him down, something within her changed, though Percy was incapable of saying what exactly: her expression, her posture, and her voice remained the same.

“Darling. The royal seers are highly trained clairvoyants, handpicked practitioners who devote their lives to their skill. The seers in your village are local tricksters who go around with little jars and big claims because they need to earn their living somehow, and there are worse ways to do it. If they’re lucky enough to find a wealthy man who will reward them handsomely for spinning grandiose prophecies about his son, even if they’re blatant bullshit – I can’t blame them for taking that opportunity.”

Percy felt his anger scratch and tear at him from all sides.

“How dare you. My father would never pay anyone to make such claims. And seers never dare to lie.”

“I suppose not. But a little cunning goes a long way. What did they tell him exactly? I’ll hazard a guess. That they saw you in great moments of history, that you were there right in the centre of it all. Quite right. But you weren’t the centre. The centre was Evans. They failed to mention him, or failed to see him at all. You have the choice of doubting either their honesty, or their skill. But you do not have the choice of doubting the royal seers.”

“This is unnecessary” Evans spoke up.

He looked truly uneasy. And yet, there was a quality to him that Percy had always wished for. The young man standing there looked uneasy, yes; but Percy, having met him for no more than a few minutes, knew already that he would never look out of place, because everywhere would belong to him, and suit him like the armour he wore now.

It all took up too much space in that tent. The pair facing him, their exchange, their lies. It crowded Percy further and further away, edging him ever closer to the exit, until his back simply pushed against the fabric covering, and he left.

He walked away from the tents and headed to the woods, eager for the company of trees. When he was eight, he’d had a taste for naming things; a fantasy of power to entertain him while he waited for his promised privilege. He remembered he’d named this elm, this one by a bizarrely shaped rock, and this oak, and this birch; he just didn’t remember what he’d named them. But it was good to meet something familiar in his path.

He had been trained his whole life to face the unfamiliar, to be ready and hungry for it. That he had scrambled so desperately now for something familiar, and headed for those trees with no second thought, filled him with disgust.

He heard steps behind him. Valeria had followed him there.

“Storming out is a useless tantrum” she huffed after him. “And frankly it pisses me off to no end.”

“Make me care.”

“Make you? My nanny days are behind me” she snapped.

As Percy turned to face her, he realized with astonishment she had spoken literally.

“You’ll get your arse back in that tent, or if the thought really repulses you so very much, you’ll go back to your house, you’ll pack your things, and you’ll come back here to leave with us.”

“Whatever for? If I’m not the chosen one, what good will it do me to go?”

He was aware that he sounded like a stroppy child. He was also aware of how much pleasure that gave him, and he was not about to deny himself what comfort he could find.

“I’ve explained it already. The royal seers saw you have a part to play in Evans’ quests. Don’t ask me what, or why; I only carry out orders. And orders were to come and collect you, for you to join us on our journey. Gods know I would rather disobey and fuck off without you. I knew I should have thought twice before changing careers. Do you have any idea how hard it is to go from giving orders to obeying them, and yet still be surrounded by children?”

It was a welcome change for Percy to stare at her in something other than intimidation. She stared back at him, holding the silver belt of her tabard with both hands. He half expected her to excuse her tirade, or to shake her head and say “silly me, going on like that”. But she didn’t seem in the least fazed by having just unravelled her train of thought in front of him.

“What would be my role in this journey, then? Am I to be his squire?”

His father would disinherit him for even contemplating the possibility of serving another. But he needed to know.

“His squire? No, that’s me.”

He widened his eyes, but quickly cleared his throat, guessing that any show of surprise at that revelation would not end well for him.

“Then... if not his squire, then what?”

She ran a hand over her face, distorting it as she dragged it down in exasperation. He hated her for it.

“Do you want a title, is that it? Trust me, no one cares. You can be his personal attendant or something. Will that do?”

It was not enough to be told he was not the chosen one. It was not enough to be supplanted in that role by a bastard son, even if he was the son of a king. It was not enough to feel that a bastard son would have more nobility and legitimacy than he ever would, even though he had been raised with the certainty that being a draper’s son did not matter. No, all that was not enough: he also had to be told his new role was that of a servant boy with a lengthier name.

He had servants; this was how he knew he did not want to be one himself.

“And what if I refuse to go? What if I prove your seers wrong by staying here?”

“Please do. They’re arrogant pricks. You’d get along like a house on fire.”

At that, Valeria turned her back to him and started walking back to the camp. He stood dumbfounded between the elm and the oak tree. He had at least expected some insistence on her part. Craved it.

There was no easy way back into the town, no roundabout path or hidden backdoor that would grant him the mercy of slipping home unnoticed. Instead, he had to walk past the tents, along the sunlit road, through the open gates, up the crowded streets. A few rare friends came to him with eager questions, but they might cease to be friends at all if he recounted what had happened. So he shrouded the past half hour in mystery, answering with cryptic words and nebulous expressions as he made his way back to his house. The swarm that buzzed around him didn’t doubt him for a moment: mystery and secrecy were of course part of their expectations, and they would have been sorely disappointed had they returned to their families with anything more than vague excitement to relay.

It only required a little extra effort to use the same strategy with his parents. It would be hard to convince them they had been mistaken about his destiny, just as it had been hard to convince him: so he simply did not try. They blamed his hunched shoulders and dour expression on his exhaustion after such a momentous morning, and on his disquiet at the prospect of embarking on his great journey the very next day. Exhaustion and disquiet were still unadvisable in their eyes, but at least they were more acceptable than the real explanation for their son’s sullen behaviour. He was all skin and bone, his mother said as she patted along his arms. He would need to be strong to fight whatever dangers lay ahead, and she practically salivated at their mention; at the thought of greatness, true greatness, finally settling on her house like a layer of venerable old dust. So she ordered a few more slices of her son’s favourite cured meats to be added to his rations.

By the end of the day, he was packed. And he was packed, too, unable to shake the feeling that he had spent his entire life being wrapped up neatly to be sent off as a parcel. He sat on the edge of the bed, his arms stretched to either side as he grabbed onto the pillars of the wooden canopy. He let his feet dangle from the mattress until they barely grazed the floor and tickled his toes; he liked to do that. He glared at the bags waiting nearby. A sudden burst of rage sent his bare foot smashing on the floor, and he was glad for it.

Percy hadn’t been brave enough to tell his parents he wouldn’t go, and he wasn’t brave enough not to go. He did not know how to go about not doing something he had been raised to do. First the hands, and now this – his tutors had left out so much. He smiled, though it was a tepid, watered-down smile, but it was the first of the day.

He slid off the bed and stepped to the window, trying to peer through the waning light at the small encampment below the town. He couldn’t spot it from there, but he saw instead a group of townspeople who had gathered under his window, and who waved at him with beaming smiles to wish him well on his journey. Among them were the young men in yellow cloaks who had faithfully followed his days as a promised hero. The golden clasp they wore to fasten their cloaks – like the one he owned himself – bore the image of a beech tree, the emblem that Percy’s father had chosen for his son. A symbol of resilience, wisdom and prosperity, his father had said. Sometimes Percy forgot all that, and saw just a tree.

Others came to join the well-wishers. There would be more tomorrow.

Tomorrow, those tents would move on without him.

Something within him jolted painfully at that thought. Either way, it seemed everything familiar had been robbed from him: he merely had to choose one of two unfamiliar paths. If he stayed, he would no longer be who he was. If he went, he would no longer be who he was, but he would at least fool those he left behind into thinking he was still who they believed him to be.

Percy fell on the bed, ready to greet a sleepless night, and hoping that a decision would be waiting for him in the morning, packed alongside his bags.