“Hazel’s your aunt?” said Alden, selecting a few of his favorite things out of a bag of trail mix.

It was only the two of them in the apartment since Lexi was spending the night with his family and Haoyu was still hanging out with his mom. They’d had the driver drop them off at a grocery store near campus, and they’d bought snacks. Alden was just picking at his. He was too full of wevvi to really enjoy it.

“Yeah,” said Lute, prying the foil lid off a second cup of flan. “Genetically, she’s Aulia’s daughter. Which means she’s sort of Hugh’s aunt, too, even though Hugh is the guy she calls her dad. And she calls Corin her grandpa, but he’s technically her brother.”

“Immortal families are so…different.”

“I do know it’s weird to people from families that aren’t into deliberately breeding wonderkids, but it doesn’t actually feel like a huge deal when you grow up with it. Aulia calls Hazel her granddaughter, and that’s just how it is. I don’t even think about it much until I have to start explaining it to someone else. And Hazel’s really proud of who her genetic parents are…oh, but her mom, Cady? She freaks out if anyone brings it up.”

He licked the back of his spoon. “I think maybe she wanted Hazel’s real parentage to be a secret? She wanted to be the mother of a super super child, so she asked to do it this way. But she also wanted everyone to think she’d made an S-rank without assistance like Hugh’s first wife did with Orpheus. If that is what she hoped for, I don’t know who decided to make it common knowledge…probably Hugh trying to prove something to someone else in the family.”

Alden smiled and nodded politely.

He’d done that a lot during Lute’s explanation because what else was there to do?

“Anyway, people being appalled about the members of the family with unusual origins wouldn’t bother me, except for the things they say about my mom. They act like she’s not a person herself, just some kind of punishment Aulia got for pushing it too far. You’ll note the Grandwitch didn’t try for the Artonan look again after Jessica. Hazel’s so human-averaged that I wonder if they didn’t ask her designers to remove any features that might remind people of Aulia’s whiff.”

And that was yet another subject Alden had no idea how to comment on.

I thought your mom looked kind of pretty in an older, semi-alien way, was so not the right thing.

Aulia’s gene people undershot the height, though, didn’t they? was even worse.

Artonans tended to be petite by human standards, but a significant part of that was due to the fact that they were less sexually dimorphic than humans when it came to body size. When they’d last met, Stuart was around… 5’1”? An inch taller? It wasn’t like Alden had pulled out a measuring stick and asked the Primary’s son to hold still.

Alden didn’t know if Stuart was still growing or not, but he was a pretty normal height for an adult on the Triplanets whether they were male or female. Jessica could’ve been the same height and fit in well with both Artonans and humans, assuming that was what Aulia’s goal had been.

Maybe they couldn’t select for height that specifically so they erred on the side of extra short so that she’d match up with the Artonans for sure?

Still…why?

It seemed unnecessary no matter how Alden looked at it. The only thing that made even a little bit of sense was the possibility that Aulia had expected her daughter to be so in-demand as an Avowed that she would end up living on the Triplanets more than Earth.

Which would mean she’d had Jessica’s entire future job, home planet, and lifestyle planned out before she was born. Somehow that seemed even worse, when Alden really thought about it, than Aulia picking such uncommon physical features for her.

Nobody got to select their own natural starting appearance anyway. Everyone just made do with what they got, loving it or modifying as best they could.

But we’re supposed to get to choose the other stuff for ourselves, as much as the world will let us.

Avowed were already dealing with a lot of limitations. Having your mother plan your entire life out for you before you were even born on top of that?

“What did Aulia expect you to be?” Alden asked Lute. “Did they have some other job picked out for you before you found out you were an Avowed?”

“You mean like how they had all the other children in the family stacked with tutors, and they started taking Hazel to meet her future employers when she was eight?”

“I just assumed it went for you, too.”

“It was different,” said Lute. “With everyone else there was this struggle—to impress Grandma, to earn one of the Chainer class assignments, to beat Miyo and Roman.”

“Miyo and Roman?”

“There was no point in any of them trying to beat Hazel, so nobody ever bothered. She has a legit psychic something going on, and apparently that’s the level of exceptionality Aulia has been aiming to breed into the family for years. And not just Grandwitch…other key relatives seem involved with it, too.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I never wanted to ask for details, but I’m sure my mother was an early attempt. She said she’d tell me who my maternal grandfather was when I was older, but I stopped caring a while ago. I doubt it was Hazel’s donor, Sonde. He would’ve been kind of young, and they wouldn’t have reused him if he’d sired a normal human. But it was probably someone like him. Not just a Rank 1, but one known for unusual mental abilities.”

“I see,” said Alden. “That’s interesting.”

“You’re so polite, man.”

“I just assume half the kids our age around here were at least a little modified prior to becoming Avowed,” Alden admitted. “It’s really different from what I’m used to, but…”

“It’s not that many. Plenty of people are still romantic about making children the old-fashioned way. And the ones who do take it as far as my family are usually shyer about admitting to it than Aulia and company are.” Lute slurped down another spoonful of flan. “Some of them won’t even tell their kids. But you were asking about Miyo and Roman—cousins, obviously. They’re around our age, and they’re also…I don’t know how to say it. Of good stock?”

“You probably should say it some other way.”

Lute shrugged. “They’re both really smart, super dedicated to chaining, and family-oriented. Aulia adores them. They were the grandchildren for the others to beat, after Hazel. I haven’t ever been close to either of them, but they’ve been on my mind more lately. Roman seriously got screwed. He scored an S, instead of the A that was more likely for him, and Hazel was still waiting…”

“Ohhhh, he’s the one who got passed over,” said Alden. He experienced an unexpected sympathy pang for the Velra guy he’d never met. “He spent his entire childhood aiming for A-rank Chainer? Got an S? And got…”

“They actually gave him Rabbit,” said Lute. “He told them to go fuck themselves unless they got him Healer of Body, which—”

Alden winced.

“Yeah…we’re the people to see if you want a hard to get class, but Healers? Even if they’re not the rarest, people click yes the millisecond they find out they’ve hit that jackpot. They couldn’t swing it for him. Not at his rank. And I know they must have been trying like hell because Corin’s office handles class purchases and he’d feed Hazel his own liver if she said she was feeling peckish. He must’ve been sweating rivers, thinking Roman might get the big Chainer instead of her.”

“What the hell is so great about Chainer?” Alden asked. “No offense…it’s a cool class. Knowing what little I do, I’m thinking you have some amazing perks and job security. But for your Grandma to want Hazel slotted into it so badly…”

“I don’t know. I have a lot of suspicions now that I’ve actually seen how things work. I doubt this is the whole story, but I think the ultimate goal might be to monopolize Chainer.”

“I gathered that,” said Alden. “The whole world has gathered that.”

Lute laughed. “No, no…you don’t get it. When I say ‘monopolize Chainer’ I don’t just mean Aulia’s trying to make sure nobody else on Anesidora gets it. I mean I think we might really be trying to utterly monopolize Chainer. In the universal sense.”

Alden stared at him. “You mean including the other resource worlds?”

“Yeah,” said Lute. “It might be the only class it’s even possible to do it with. Chainer is already ultra rare on Earth, but it doesn’t even exist on most planets.”

He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers at Alden. “There are some unique anatomical requirements if you want to be good at the whole job instead of just parts of it.”

“You have to have Artonan-looking hands,” Alden said. “Of course. And it would be twisted and weird for them to attach arms to a ewtwee or something.”

“The ewtwee would not like that much,” Lute agreed. “Most species without at least eight fingers and something like thumbs don’t even bother to try wordchains. They can sometimes make it work, but it would be like us trying to dig a sleeping burrow with our toenails. Not completely impossible, but why would we put ourselves through that?”

“So of the large population species that leaves…tmithans and I guess the Fetuna…are lortchish hands too long?”

“They aren’t,” said Lute. “They’re quite good at wordchains. But they’ve also got some strong beliefs, protected by their Contract, that make it hard for the Palace to use them in all the ways they’d like. Same with the Fetuna. Their species practices wordchains widely and respectfully. Parethat-uur loves them, and apparently they’ve produced some amazing Chainers. But they refuse to be seen by aliens once they reach maturity, which makes them hard to handle. I think Parethat-uur would happily chatter away at them through blindfolds or walls, but most people find that kind of thing inconvenient.”

“So it’s the tmithans,” Alden said. “And us. And some rarer species.”

“That’s right. Until humans came along, the Avowed of Tmith more or less had Chainer jobs all to themselves. And then the Palace took a peek at Earth and thought, ‘Wow. Look at those aliens. Those are some gorgeous bastards. Let’s introduce them to our holy purpose.’”

Alden laughed.

Lute snorted. “Seriously. I’m surprised they didn’t send wordchain missionaries over to proselytize the whole planet. I bet the Grand Senate told them to chill out and stay away from us until we’d had time to settle in.” He coughed. “Uh…I have a tmithan coworker. He is so xenophobic against humans.”

“What? Why?”

“In his defense, the only humans he’s ever met are my family members. So it’s probably their fault. And if I’m right about the monopolization thing, Aulia’s on a long-term mission to make herself Queen of the only Chainer clan in the universe…” He drummed his fingers. “Anyway, that’s the thing about Chainer, or it’s my best guess right now. Maybe Hazel is like her proof of concept? Her way of saying humans are better at this than anyone else. Not just humans either. Our family.”

“You think she wants you to be the exclusive Chainers for all of the Triplanets. Is that even a possibility? They would have to take the class away from other planets, and even if they did, class assignments are supposed to be random here on Earth. You guys will eventually lose some of them to people who don’t want to join the family.”

“Yeah,” said Lute. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. But things can change. And the Palace of Unbreaking is a really unique institution. If Aulia could get more Hazels, if she could get the Palace onboard to manage the Artonan end of things and she can manage the Earth half…it’s long-term, like I said. But it doesn’t sound completely impossible considering what a thorough job she’s already doing.”

“So Roman the S-rank who’s spent his whole life learning wordchains got Rabbit,” Alden concluded. “Because Hazel has to get Chainer. Because she’s the one with the special ability that proves Velras are naturally suited for it, and Aulia needs her to be at the Palace all the time to keep that fact front and center.”

“That’s my theory. It makes sense doesn’t it?”

“I see,” said Alden with a straight face. “That’s interesting.”

Lute crumpled the foil lid up and tossed it at him.

“Miyo hasn’t been selected yet,” he said. “I really hope she doesn’t get S. The Artonans probably aren’t going to throw another top rank position at Earth anytime soon unless someone dies, so if she does…it’ll be Roman all over again. She’s just as Chainer-obsessed as he is. If she gets A, the adults have got a slot with her name on it ready and waiting. But if it’s S, she’s going to hate me forever.”

“After hearing all of this,” Alden said, “I’m kind of surprised they gave you the Chainer S.”

“You mean because I only knew six wordchains, hadn’t been trained, had a fractious relationship with Grandma and the entire rest of my family, would’ve preferred several other classes, and don’t speak Artonan?” Lute said dryly.

“Those would seem to disqualify you if you’ve got other cousins lined up.”

Especially if Hazel wasn't completely out of the running.

“That’s because you’re missing another piece of it,” said Lute. “Or you just haven’t realized how much it matters. Maybe it’s one of those things Lexi and Haoyu are always teasing you about—an Anesidora social dynamic. We’ll get there.”

******

******

Narcissus House

Watergarden Road

Apex

January 9, 2034

******

******

Lute Velra was going to third grade. Real third grade. At a school.

His mother had delivered the news a couple of weeks before Christmas. Now it was the first day, and the knowledge of what was about to happen to him was so surreal he felt like he was dressing another person’s body in the new uniform.

The summer uniform for primary students at Nilama Paragon Academy. Which was a school. For children. Avowed children. Whole roomfuls of them.

He was scared and excited and more scared than excited but both feelings were definitely present and—

“Don’t forget the pocket square!” his mother’s voice called from just outside the bedroom door.

She was standing out there because Lute could dress himself, thank you. He was eight. In a couple of weeks, he’d be nine.

Being born in January was an advantage for him, according to his mother, because he would be one of the oldest in his grade. He would not have trouble with the lessons, she promised. His tutors up until now would have been sufficient.

“What if they all speak Mandarin better than me?” Lute had asked in Mandarin while they decorated one of the mansion’s Christmas trees together.

“They won’t,” Jessica had assured him.

“What if they speak German better than me?”

“They probably will if their parents were born in Germany. Don’t worry about it. Your teacher will be speaking English anyway.”

“What if they speak English better than me?”

“English is your first language, Lute.”

“That will make it even worse!” he’d said shrilly.

Now, he picked up the pocket square from where it sat on top of his duvet and tucked it into place. He walked over to the dressing mirror and examined himself carefully. In summer, primary students wore heather gray waistcoats, collared white shirts with short or long sleeves, clip-on sapphire blue ties, gray shorts or pants, and any closed-toe shoe of their preference. Third graders wore yellow pocket squares.

The square color would change every year. In winter, there were coats or sweaters. In middle school, there were blazers.

Lute was focusing on the clothes because so far they were the only real clue he had about what school would be like.

“Are you dressed yet?” Jessica called.

“Yes, Mom!”

The door opened. His mother smiled at the sight of him. “Aren’t you handsome?”

“What if the teacher won’t let me go to the bathroom?”

“They will.”

“What if one of the cousins decides to go to school, too?”

“You’ll be the only member of the family there. I promise.”

“What if—?”

She swooped down on him and lifted him in a hug.

“Mom! You’ll wrinkle me!”

She kissed him on the forehead. “Come on. Grandma has presents for you before you leave. Let’s go see her.”

Lute was surprised. He hadn’t even seen much of Aulia during Christmastime, since she’d been busy on Artona I. With Hazel again. And he’d already been told that she wouldn’t be available for his birthday this year.

It didn’t sting anymore. Much. He and his mother were a team.

But he wished they were the only team in the household sometimes. Grandma Aulia and his mom were also a team. When Aulia wasn’t on the Triplanets, Jessica was with her more often than not. Or running errands for her. Or trying to make the other relatives do whatever Lute’s grandmother wanted them to do.

A lot of family members were loafers. Lute had heard Aulia tell Jessica and Aunt Hikari so during a very rare “girls night in.” She’d said that she “despaired of the loafers ever becoming anything useful to anyone.”

Jessica was not a loafer. She was Aulia’s Principal Assistant. It was an important job, which was why Jessica had the second best suites in every house they lived in. And also why Lute would be getting a cabin of his own on Libra when he turned ten, even though they were in such short supply and other family members coveted them.

He thought it was Orpheus who was going to be kicked out. For being the loafiest loafer and for falling down the stairs a couple of months ago and landing on top of Chef Kabir.

“Grandma’s in the White Parlor,” Jessica told Lute, sending him out the door with a pat. “Go get your presents.”

Lute Velra was no stranger to presents.

He’d once heard an uncle mutter, “God, Jessica spoils him rotten, doesn’t she?”

And Orpheus, drinking something that smelled like mouthwash out of a crystal punch glass, had laughed and said, “Do you think you can actually spoil a squirt like him with things? On this island? In this family?”

Lute had thought about the two comments so much that he felt like he almost understood them.

He walked down the curving stairs into the White Parlor, a small hand trailing along the glossy railing, and he found his grandmother there alone. She was dressed in a tight black short-sleeved sweater and black cropped jeans. Her feet, in black ballet flats, were propped up on one of the downy white pillows. Her dark blonde hair was side parted, and her face, younger than Lute’s mother’s, wore that familiar, lovely smile.

“Lute, my dove!” said Aulia Velra, setting down the croissant she’d been having with her first coffee of the morning and standing to greet him. “Don’t you look like a fine young man, today? Off to school! Come here and let me give you a hug.”

Lute smiled back. He ran to hug her eagerly. Aulia gave wonderful hugs. Like Jessica’s, but taller.

“Grandma, I’m going to be in third—”

“Nope!” said Aulia, letting the word pop off her lips as she took a step back. “First, you have to impress me. I wore this outfit just for you! It’s time for our little fashion game.”

Oh! Lute loved this. They hadn’t done this in a while, but it was special. He was the only one who got to play this game with Grandma Aulia. He knew some of the others had their own personal games with his grandmother, but he thought his was the best.

He squinted at her clothes, thinking hard. It was such a simple outfit, compared to some he’d seen. Tight. Black on black. A big belt accentuating the pinch of her waist.

He knew he had seen the style before because if she was wearing one for the first time for their game, she would explain it instead of asking him to guess. But the name…

“A hint!” said Aulia, reaching over the back of a low chair and grabbing a black beret from the seat. She set it at a playful angle on top of her head. Then she stood leaning against the chair with her ankles crossed, waiting.

“Beatnik!” shouted Lute, finally capturing the word. “You’re a Beatnik!”

He had absolutely no idea what one was, but this was what one looked like.

“Hooray!” cried Aulia, throwing the hat into the air. “Perfect! I’ll have to try something harder next time.”

Lute felt like he was the only person in Aulia’s world. She was very good at doing that.

For the next half hour, they opened presents and talked about harps and the beat generation and schools…

“I am very experienced with schools,” said Aulia, poking a piece of croissant into Lute’s mouth as they cuddled together on the sofa. “I went to one from five to fifteen! Ten whole years. And let me tell you, it’s tough work. You’d better try hard.”

“I will,” Lute said seriously.

“Almost none of your aunts, uncles, or cousins have gone to school until they were adults on their way to college. Well…there was Keiko. But Keiko made such a lot of noise about the fact that she was going to high school for such a long time that we were all bored with it by the time she finally got around to it.” She winked at him. “Don’t tell her I said that, though.”

“Keiko’s never here.”

“That’s because Keiko is still making a lot of noise about running away from the family,” Aulia said. “It’s what she does. You’re different. You are going to one of the best schools in the whole entire country! And you’re only eight. I’m very proud of you, Lute.”

Lute wriggled closer to her. The praise was so warm.

“Now, I know your mother has had a few little talks with you about school, but let me give you some advice of my own. Do you know who you’ll be going to school with?”

“Other boys and girls who are eight.”

“Yes. And what else do you know about them?”

“A lot of them have important parents.”

Aulia nodded, but he could tell from her face that the answer wasn’t sufficient.

“They’ll all know each other already.”

A nod.

“They’ll know lots about us because you’re on the Council.”

Another nod.

Lute suspected he knew what she wanted him to say, but he mentioned every other thing about the children he’d be meeting today first, in hopes that he wouldn’t have to. Finally, there was nothing else left.

“None of them are going to be ordinary when they grow up,” he whispered. “Just me.”

“But you won’t be ordinary, my dove,” said Aulia, holding him close. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. You are, and always will be, a Velra. And I’m sure as you meet more of the world, you’ll come to see how very wonderful that is. Because I have built this family into something bigger than its individual members. Even if you are the weakest and the least of the Velras, you are still one of us, and we are more important than any of those children you are going to school with.”

Lute looked down at his shoes. Something about this reassurance didn’t feel quite as good as his grandmother seemed to think it should.

“Your family is your power, Lute. And it’s more power than you know. As long as you take care of the Velra name, it will take care of you.”

“How do I take care of our name?” he asked.

“Oh well…” said Aulia. “It’s nothing you have to work too hard at just yet. Study. Don’t get into trouble. Make some nice friends at your new school. It’s a good place for you to meet people who will be somebodies one day, and everyone needs to know a few somebodies. When you grow up, you can do the same sort of work for us as your mother. You’ll be my Cabin 3! How does that sound?”

“Good,” Lute said slowly. “Can I…if I live in Cabin 3, can I still visit Austria?”

Aulia tilted her head. “Austria. The country in Europe?”

“I might want to go there someday,” Lute said nervously. “To play my harp.”

Aulia smiled. “Dear, you can play your harp wherever you want!” Chuckling, she added to herself, “Austria. How random!”

Before his mother came to get him a few minutes later, Aulia helped him tuck his new presents into his new backpack. His first cell phone, a tablet, a smartwatch, an emergency locator medallion he was to wear under his shirt at all times—everything a young man needed before he went out into Anesidora on his own.

“And one more thing,” said Aulia, producing a shiny red card out of thin air.

Lute’s eyes fixed on it at once. The best presents always got teleported in that way for dramatic effect.

“I’ll be quite busy for the rest of this month, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to attend whatever exciting event you decide to put on for your birthday. But this should make up for it!”

She passed him the card.

“It’s a NesiCard,” Lute said.

He hadn’t had one before because he’d never gone anywhere without a grown-up. But he’d seen his mother’s and father’s. And his cousins’.

“It’s your very own NesiCard!” Aulia said enthusiastically as she handed it to him. “And guess how much money is on it?”

Lute gave the question due consideration. Hazel had gotten one with a thousand argold on it for Christmas. She had kept finding excuses to put things in and out of her wallet so that she could show it off.

He didn’t want to guess that much because it would be so embarrassing if he was wrong.

“Is it…a hundred argold?”

“Oh! You think I’m a cheap old lady, don’t you?” Aulia teased. Then she leaned over and whispered in his ear, “It’s a thousand. And you can spend every last bit of it every day if you want to, and it’ll be filled again by the time you wake up in the morning.”

He stared down at the piece of plastic with the enchanted chip in the center.

“How does that sound?” Aulia asked him.

He nodded.

“Give me another hug before you go. The helicopter is waiting for you.”

Lute hugged her goodbye. He flew to school beside his mother in the back of the family’s helicopter. It landed on the pad of a building near the school, and they walked the rest of the way together.

“Did Grandma give you the NesiCard?” Jessica asked.

“She did. I’ll be careful with it.”

“Don’t worry. They’re easy to replace if they get lost…you don’t seem excited.”

“Oh I am!” Lute said quickly. “She said it had a thousand argold on it, and it would be refilled every day. If I wanted.”

“That’s a lot of money,” said Jessica.

“Yes.”

“Don’t really spend a thousand argold in a day without talking to me first. If you buy more toys than will fit in your rooms, you’ll have to get rid of some of them.”

She held his hand most of the way, but when they reached the school she let him go in alone. He waved until the moment the doors shut between them.

Then his smile fell. He was glad he had his own money now. He didn’t have that many things he wanted, since Christmas had just happened and his birthday was coming. It was still a big present though, wasn’t it?

But…

She called me the least of the Velras.

He hadn’t been able to think of anything else on his whole way to school. Not even his nerves.

Grandma said that. But she loves me. We played our game.

Maybe…she didn’t mean it. Maybe she meant the least in one specific way. Not the least least.

Probably, she meant it like that.

******

School was WONDERFUL.

Third grade was the best thing that had ever happened to Lute Velra. After his fear of the other children faded, after his worries about whether or not bathroom breaks would be allowed were assuaged, he settled into life as a primary school student as if he’d been made for it.

His teacher liked him! She complimented him on his art projects, his school work, and his manners. When you followed the rules, she liked you even more, so he followed the rules very carefully. It was so easy.

Much more importantly, the other children liked him. He had friends! Almost as soon as he arrived and just that easily. They weren’t like the cousins. They were all his own age, and they didn’t care about who would get Chainer one day. They weren’t always trying to beat each other at everything. And they didn’t care that Lute wouldn’t ever be an Avowed…mostly.

A few people said things, but only a few.

They played superheroes together at recess, and nobody told him he couldn’t do it. He played, too. They asked if he wanted to play a Chainer superhero, and he said, “No. Water Shaper.” And since almost nobody else wanted to do that, Lute got to be the Water Shaper lots and lots. And he got to be a Meister and an Adjuster and a Wright and even, once, a Brute. But the Brute was supposed to run really fast or pick someone else up to make the game work, and he wasn’t good enough at that to volunteer for a second round.

It didn’t matter. People liked him. Some of them even thought he was cool.

His helicopter was cool. His stories about living on a boat were cool. His passion for the harp…well, the teacher seemed to think it was cool. And everyone else thought it was interesting that he got pulled out of class three afternoons a week for special instruction with it.

“Is it going to be your job?” a girl asked. “Like an instrument Meister?”

“Yes,” said Lute. “I’m going to play all over the world.”

His plans for his future were developing every day, now that he was encountering so many questions about it. Almost nobody at home had ever mentioned Lute having a job, except for Aulia’s comment about how he could be second assistant. But in school, people talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up all the time.

Encouraged by the overwhelming amount of acceptance, curiosity, and friendliness he’d encountered from his fellow third graders, Lute Velra declared that he would be a famous musician. Like an instrument Meister. And even if he traveled the world, he would come back home every night to have supper with his mother.

The dream wasn’t so different from most of the other students’ goals. And when he finally revealed the secret truth Mrs. Yu had shared with him—the one he’d been careful never to let slip around his cousins so that they couldn’t find anything mean to say—it only made the dream sound even brighter.

“There’s a list!” he blurted out after a show-and-tell featuring his harp. He was standing in front of the classroom and fidgeting with the edge of his waistcoat. “Every nine years—not Earth years—the Artonan ranking board for large musical ensembles attends performances all over the Triplanets and the resource worlds. And they make a list of all the best ones.”

The Artonans loved to rank things. Everyone said so. Lute appreciated it in this case at least.

“To get them to visit your group, your planet has to nominate you. And then they come with Artonan experts and they meet with experts from your own species, and they study all kinds of things about the musicians. They even use magic to tell how much the audiences are enjoying the performances. After that, they make a list to let everyone know who the best musicians in the universe are. There were only four Earth groups in the top 27 last time…” He paused for effect. “None of them had an Avowed musician in them. Not even one.

“And two of the groups have beaten the Anesidoran Philharmonic every single time they’ve all been ranked. The All-Earth Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic.”

Lute paused again, not intentionally this time. It was just so important to him…this one little fact.

“That means that the best musicians on Earth are ordinary humans. Like my parents and me. And I can be the best harpist in the world if I try hard enough. Even if I don’t have magic.”

He looked hopefully around the classroom. Most of the faces were a little uncertain. One boy, who Lute would later discover had a mother in the Anesidoran Philharmonic, seemed appalled.

“Hey! That’s neat!” said Haoyu Zhang-Demir from his desk at the front of the room. “If you become the best harpist in the world, I bet the Artonans might want to hear you play. You could get invited to other planets like we will.”

A few people were nodding.

“Yeah! He could do that.”

“If you’re the best on Earth, I bet they would summon you.”

“I don’t think it’s a summons if you’re not Avowed…?” someone said uncertainly. “Isn’t it just a visit, then?”

“It’s almost the same!”

“I want to buy a ryeh-b’t the first time I get summoned.”

“If Lute buys a ryeh-b’t, it could fly beside his helicopter.”

“He can go like us.”

“Just like us!”

Lute stood before them, feeling as though he might burst from pride and relief.

Third grade was wonderful.

It was such a shame they all had to grow up.

******

There were warning signs, but he didn’t want to see them.

Toward the end of fourth grade, games of superhero got more realistic. People wanted to talk about how classes actually worked. No more Brutes turning people into goldfish. No more Meisters who were also Adjusters in secret.

Then one day, Vandy Carisson said, “Let’s all pretend to be what we really want to be when we’re Avowed.”

Everyone agreed.

And then several pairs of eyes turned to Lute Velra and looked at him differently than they had mere moments before.

“It’s fine, Lute,” said a boy named Declan who he was particularly close to. “You can just be whatever.”

“Maybe you can be the person we’re saving today,” a girl added. “If we’re all going to pretend it’s really real.”

“Oh!” said Lute. “Okay. I don’t mind.”

He did. But minding wouldn’t change anything.

And they’re my friends.

Another pair of signs came that same year, in the form of new divisions in the grade.

One was unique to Lute. He noticed it because shifts in his relationships with any of his friends caused him terrible anxiety. If someone was angry with him, he would flip and flop in his bed all night, wondering what he’d done wrong and how to fix it.

But he couldn’t fix this one.

There had always been a few people who were not allowed to sleep over at any of Lute’s houses or come for visits.

It had never been a problem in third grade. When someone told Lute their parents didn’t want them visiting because of his family, he immediately thought, I understand completely. The cousins will talk in Artonan so we can’t understand them. Orpheus is always wandering around falling on top of people. Cady made me sit in the corner at the New Year party for no reason. And you never know when Hazel might be coming over.

Now that he’d met teachers, made friends, and been a guest at other peoples’ houses, he was more sure than ever that half of his relatives were completely horrible. And he had a lot of relatives, so half was a large number.

Lute didn’t consider someone disliking the other Velras to be a dealbreaker, so he’d gotten along with the children who weren’t allowed to attend sleepovers just fine. And they’d gotten along with him, too.

Everyone knew that grown-ups sometimes made inconvenient rules you had to follow, and there were no hard feelings on either side. Someone would say, Mom won’t let me visit you on your boat even though I told her everyone else was going and you were my fifth best friend!

And all the children would shake their heads, because, Parents, right?

What could you even do about people who didn’t acknowledge the importance of the bond between fifth best friends?

Slowly, that changed. The classmates who weren’t allowed to visit him at home also started drawing away from him in school. They whispered things to each other that they’d overheard their parents say about his grandmother. Or one of his other relatives. And instead of fifth best friends, they became…

“My mum says your grandmother bribed the Brute councilor to vote with her.”

“My dad says your Uncle Corin slept with his ex-wife.”

“My grandma says your grandma bought the rejuvenation slot out from under her, and that’s why she can’t have another baby until after 2039! So our families are enemies now.”

The Velra name isn’t taking care of me, Lute thought every time one of these accusations was leveled at him as if he were somehow personally responsible. It’s just stealing my friends.

The second division that happened, happened to everyone. All of a sudden, your parents’ rank seemed to matter a lot more than it ever had before.

Carlotta’s parents were a B-rank Brute and a C-rank Rabbit. She’d always been friends with Vandy Carrison. Then she wasn’t anymore.

Instead, she was hanging around Lute a lot. He was happy for himself but sorry for her.

“I said I’d go to high school with her when we both got selected! And we would share our room! And she said we couldn’t do that!”

Because you’re not going to be powerful enough to go to the same high school as Vandy, thought Lute.

This kind of thing was much less confusing to him than the sudden dislike because of his name. But it was far more worrying.

Because this…this was how the cousins were.

Everyone talking about rank all the time. And thinking about it. And knowing that at the very bottom of them all…

It won’t be like that. It won’t.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Declan Gao, leaning over to take one of the bonbons from the box on Lute’s desk. He’d bought them with his NesiCard. He’d been buying snacks to share with everyone more often lately. “Some people are acting like they’re going to get chosen tomorrow. Vandy might not even be an S-rank. She might not get to go to school in Apex. Anything can happen.”

Declan said not to worry about it, but he was getting really sensitive about rank, too. His mom was an A. And his Dad was a D. That made it very hard to guess what he might be.

Their class was starting to cluster up. High. Low. A couple like Declan who didn’t know where they belonged.

As the year ended and Lute cleaned out his desk to head home for the winter break, he was afraid he was on the verge of losing something.

******

In fifth grade, they got several new students. Nilama Paragon Academy was expensive; parents who couldn’t really afford to send their children there sometimes chose to save up and wait until they were older so that they could take advantage of the middle school. Next year, when they moved out of the primary building, their class would more than double in size.

For now, it was just a few additions.

One of them was perky. He scurried around their new classroom, introducing himself to every single person, like he was on a mission to make sure he fit in as many handshakes as he could before morning announcements and meditation started. Lute saw him coming and had just enough time to hope this went well before they were face to face.

“Hi! I’m Kon. I live just a few blocks away from here. You can see this school from the roof of my building!”

“Which building does your family own?” Lute asked politely.

Kon’s eyes widened. “No. We don’t own a whole building. Just an apartment inside the building. My parents are ballet dancers and my brother’s in sixth grade. We moved schools together this year!”

Lute’s interest was piqued. “Ballet dancers?”

“I dance, too,” said Kon. “In the youth ballet.”

“Youth ballet! A youth orchestra plays for you when you do Nutcracker.”

Kon blinked.

“It’s not fair that the dancers can be so young but they won’t let you join youth orchestra until you’re twelve,” Lute said. “I wanted to audition.”

He was ready for his first audition but there weren’t a lot of opportunities. Getting to twelve was taking ages. And to make matters worse, The Nutcracker was always in December. Which meant Lute would be nearly thirteen before he could play in a proper orchestra at a proper ballet. He was sure there were other harpists getting ahead of him out there in the bigger world.

“Do you play an instrument?” Kon asked.

“All he can do is play harp,” the girl whose grandma was waiting on a baby because of Aulia called from across the room. “So he never shuts up about it.”

“Don’t be mean!” Tuyet said. “Let’s not be mean to each other.”

A boy snickered a little.

Carlotta and Declan were nearby. They…didn’t say anything.

Kon doesn’t know yet, thought Lute. For just a minute longer, he won’t know about me.

The matter suddenly felt urgent.

“It’s really nice to meet you!” Lute said quickly, holding out his hand. “I hope we can be friends. I brought snacks to share.”

Kon’s bright smile brightened further. “Yeah! Let’s be friends!”

By the end of the day, Konstantin was friends with everyone in the class, but Lute still considered it a success.

On the way to the helipad that afternoon, he ended up standing behind Kon and a taller boy who looked a lot like him while they waited to cross the street. It must have been the older brother. He was wearing one of the middle school blazers.

Lute was about to say hello, when Kon suddenly piped up. “Guess what!There’s a boy in my class who’s not Avowed!”

“You’re ten,” said the brother. “Nobody in your class is Avowed.”

Kon groaned. “You know what I mean! He’s not going to be Avowed. His parents aren’t.”

“Seriously?” the brother asked in a surprised voice. “Well…I guess it doesn’t matter in fifth grade. I’m sure his family will send him to another school next year.”

“Why?”

“The same reason we’re going to school here now, Kon. Paragon’s got so many high ranks in one spot. My classes are really different from last year. S and A kids are everywhere, instead of there being just a few of us in a mix of everyone else. We’re starting selection prep lessons earlier than they would in our old school. It’s nice for us, but it would make class really weird for him, wouldn’t it?”

“He’ll just hang out with the lows, right?”

The brother shrugged. “I’m not sure it works like that. The probable low-ranks in my grade seem kind of different than last year, too. Anyway, if he goes to a big school instead, there are bound to be a few other kids like him.”

Lute let them go ahead of him without ever speaking up.

There’s a boy in my class who’s not Avowed, he thought. Kon could’ve said anything. But he said that.

It wasn’t a shock. When Lute compared himself to other people, that was the first thing he always thought, too.

This afternoon it just hurt more than it had in a while. That was all.

There are other things about me. There are so many other things to say.

Fifth grade was the year he went silent.

It was natural, a reflex born of a thousand Velra holidays and parties. There was a family event nearly every week, sometimes more than one, and when Lute was forced to attend them because they were happening in his current residence—they almost always were—he was quiet.

If you were loud, people commented on you. If you protested when the cousins said something mean, then they realized they’d hurt you. They knew what to say next time.

He was getting too old to run and tell his mother or his grandmother. They would put a stop to it, but then he was a tattletale and even the cousins who hadn’t been bothering him would get mad. Strangely, over the holidays, he’d been accused more than once of thinking he was better than the rest of them…because he lived with Aulia.

Being quiet, he’d learned, would get you through three-quarters of all family events without incident. And being quiet was what he started doing at school, too.

He didn’t talk about his music. He didn’t talk about his things. He ignored thoughtless comments about what he wasn’t…so many of those.

At the same time, he couldn’t ignore the fact, anymore, that a few of his friends were only staying friendly because they liked his houses. In a school full of rich kids, he was the richest, and it was just a little too obvious that when he invited them over, they only wanted to spend time with his stuff, not with him. One of them even admitted that his parents had told him to be nice to Lute because of his family.

And then there was Declan Gao, who alternated between being Lute’s best friend on the weekends and being a jerk who didn’t want the high ranks to see him hanging out with Lute at school…

It wasn’t all terrible, though.

Fifth grade was the most exciting year for students at Paragon. They all looked forward to it for the same reason, and as the year end approached, even Lute had to start making noise, because you couldn’t bottle up so much pure eagerness without exploding.

At the end of fifth grade, when they were still young enough that most countries were happy to treat them like non-threats and just old enough that the adults didn’t think they’d be completely impossible to manage, the school arranged the trips.

Three weeks. Three whole weeks worth of days spent away from the island, in the rest of the world. They would travel to the TC every morning. And from there they would teleport, many of them for the first time ever, away to a new place on Earth. They would see rivers! Mountains! More than one barren desert which everyone agreed was really boring and unfortunate!

They were repeatedly reminded not to brag about this to any friends they might have in other schools, since this sort of thing was Very Impossible to implement on a nationwide scale.

Lute heard the teachers calling it “the annual madness.” And in the weeks leading up to it, their travel schedule changed almost daily, sending the class into cries of joy or dismay as they learned what the efforts of their parents, their school, and their government had wrought.

People got strange as the date of the trip approached.

Not Lute, though. He was totally sane about it.

“Do not betray me, Vienna,” he whispered, bowing his head over his desk each morning and holding his palms skyward in supplication. “Ich liebe dich, Österreich.”

“He’s praying to Austria again.”

“I think it’s more like he’s trying to cast a spell on it.”

“Oh, beautiful Zambezi, I have always wanted to see Victoria Falls! I promise not to jump in.”

“Now Everly’s talking to a river.”

“Maybe we should do it, too?”

“You think?”

“Istanbul did cancel our day there because the hero team said they were worried about protests. Haoyu’s really disappointed.”

“…Hello, Machu Pichu! Some of my ancestors were born in Peru.”

******

He got to go to Austria.

The night before he left, hiding under his blankets at his father’s place, Lute stared at pictures on a realtor’s website on his phone. He picked out an apartment for himself there—a little loft with lots of sunshine near the metro.

He knew it probably wasn’t going to be for sale when he was finally old enough to emigrate, but it was still fun to imagine it. And to spot it from the street the next day when they were on a walking tour, surrounded by a fleet of guides and protectors impersonating guides.

He hid his passport band under his sleeve and pretended he was a local who’d just wandered into the middle of this group of future Avowed by accident. He did it anytime their trips took them to a city.

Here, he wasn’t the odd one out. Every person on the street, every soul in every building—they were like him.

For me, this is the real world, he decided. I’m not alone. I’m just waiting to get here.

He would convince his mom to come with him. There was no reason she couldn’t.

******

Lute started sixth grade quiet. Safe. Ignorable.

He didn’t really have friends anymore. The last of them—the ones who he’d annoyed by trying a little too hard to keep…oh my god, you guys, Lute Velra is so clingy—had evaporated over the holidays. They were all joining clubs and doing extracurriculars now. Not the kind of clubs Lute could just insert himself into.

Wrightshop apprenticeships. Martial arts for future Meisters. BruteScouts. Heroes of the Future.

It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be allowed to participate. They couldn’t officially discriminate against him, and he was sure the adults would mostly force everyone to behave around him. But there was nothing quite like being the person in the room everyone was forced to be considerate of.

It just made them go from being a little mean to you to really hating you.

This is better, he thought from his spot at the back of the room. I just keep my head down. Be polite to everyone. Ask Mom if I can have a top-of-the-line concert harp for my birthday next week.

I can have it professionally painted. Purple would be fun.

Also, purple didn’t belong to anyone else.

Avowed classes didn’t officially have associated colors and symbology, but people liked to team up, so it was a thing in some settings. If you went into a Swayborhood, you’d see the gray flag with the Artonan symbol for the mind on it here and there. Brutes were red with the symbol for the body. Green for Meisters. Brown or light blue or both done in stripes for Shapers…they couldn’t seem to settle the matter.

It wasn’t something he’d ever thought much about, but the colors were all the rage now that they were in sixth grade. If someone wore a red bracelet or a green hairband, all of his classmates had decided it had to mean things. They were getting superstitious about it in ways that even Grandma Aulia would have found ridiculous, and she’d recently invited a cab driver to dinner with them because when she’d cast her last giant luck wordchain, before Lute was even born, the cabbie had picked her up twice in one night.

She was still checking in on him every year or so to see if she could figure out what the universe was trying to tell her about him.

“Mom, that’s weird, isn’t it?” Lute had whispered after she came to check on him and tuck him in that night.

“Most people think so,” Jessica said with a smile. “But Grandma doesn’t believe in letting things go once they’ve caught her eye.”

Anyway, sixth grade had hit Lute’s classmates with what he could only describe as System fever, and they were making the cab driver thing seem completely normal.

He looked up from his desk at the sound of a squeal from the opposite corner, and sure enough…

“Tuyet! Your earrings are green! Does that mean you want to be a Meister now?”

Soon all the Meister-hopefuls were welcoming her to the fold, like it was all set in stone, even though people were still changing their minds every day and nothing was guaranteed.

Lute had had to change the case on his cellphone from red to black so that people would stop asking if he wanted to be a Brute. It was “just a joke,” but none of them seemed to care that he didn’t think it was funny.

Dark purple. That would be a cool color for a harp.

And for his party this year…

He looked around the room. There were people who would come. Most people would probably come, if he made it an epic Velra bash. They didn’t all hate him, they just didn’t have anything in common with him now that they were getting older and starting to care about things he couldn’t be involved in.

No. I’ll do it like I used to. On the yacht, as long as Hazel wasn’t there. Her family liked to take it over these days. No kids. Just me, mom, Aimi if she’s free, the crew, and a cake.

He wouldn’t invite Aulia. It was her boat. She’d be there or she wouldn’t.

Lute couldn’t even remember the last time they’d played their fashion game.

When he asked his mother about the party, she promised to set it up. If not on the yacht, then at the midtown apartment. Then she added, “You’ll have to go to Hazel’s birthday party next month, remember.”

“I do?” Lute asked, not bothering to keep the horror out of his voice. “Why?”

They were sitting together in the White Parlor, eating burgers from a place they both liked but almost never visited. Lute pretended not to know why, but he did.

It was a crowded fast food restaurant in Apex. Full of high ranks. His mom didn’t like to go places like that with Lute, because the presence of the S-rank bodyguards didn’t make crowds of high ranks just a little nervous, the way it did down in F. If they weren’t a little nervous, they made comments sometimes.

Lute thought it would be all right. There was nothing so terrible they could say that he couldn’t ignore it. But she didn’t like it, so he never complained about reheated burgers and fries not being quite as good.

“Hazel wants me at her party?”

Hazel’s birthday parties had often swept him up when he was little. Now that they were older, he was delighted not to be invited. This year she had a set of teenage friend-ish people she had somehow obtained despite the fact that when she wasn’t off doing verrrry important things on the Triplanets with whoever it was the Chainer family members worked for, she was virtually always being tutored by their grandmother or someone else.

The wound left in Hazel’s pride from being forced to apologize to Lute after the whiff jokes had festered rather than healing. And he wasn’t really interested in forgiveness either.

Avoidance was the only thing that kept peace in the household whenever she was around, and she was around so often that avoiding her meant Lute sometimes went days without showing his face to the people he lived with except at mealtimes.

“It’s her fourteenth birthday, Lute,” said Jessica.

“Does that mean something?”

Jessica smoothed the front of her skirt over her legs. “She’s having her Coming of Age party this year.”

Lute narrowed his eyes. “Ewwww.”

“Lute…”

“It’s a whole year early! This is just a plot so that she can have a second giant ball when she turns fifteen! I’m not wearing a tuxedo and learning a dance for her until she’s actually the right age!”

Jessica cleared her throat. “The theme she’s chosen is Royal Ascot. So you’ll wear a full morning suit and top hat. And there won’t be a dance.”

“What’s Royal Ascot?”

“It’s a horse race. In England.”

Lute considered that. “Horses…might make it okay.”

He hadn’t had many opportunities to interact with horses.

“Can I feed them?”

“It will be a series of Brute races. At the big track in F. Racehorses won’t last long enough to provide entertainment for the whole length of the party.” She paused. “You can offer the Brutes snacks if you like.”

“Mooom!”

Jessica grinned. “You can hold out carrots and sugar lumps for them—”

“Hazel will probably really do something like that,” Lute grumbled.

He was wrong.

What she did on the day of her party was so much worse.