The Heir

People who don’t know me very well are always impressed by me. A

I don’t know what kind of guy would turn her head. While I’ve gone through a dozen girlfriends, she never seems to fall for anybody.

A whistle blows and one of the deckhands motions for the students to start boarding.

“Here we go,” Matteo says nervously.

I spot Ares joining the queue, carrying one small and battered backpack in place of a suitcase.

“Morning,” I say, looking him over for signs of a hangover.

Like A

“You made it.” He grins.

“Just barely.”

“Come on,” he says. “We better get on board if we want a good spot up at the bow.”

A

Those with bigger suitcases left them in a pile on the dock for the deckhands to load below. I see a French girl arguing furiously with one of the crew, because she brought at least three matching Tumi suitcases, while our acceptance letters stated we were only allowed one bag each.

“How am I supposed to fit everything I need in one suitcase?” she demands, as if the idea is obscene.

“I’m only puttin’ one on the ship, so you better tell me which one, or I ain’t taking any of ‘em,” the deckhand says sourly.

I don’t see how that drama plays out, because I’m stepping up onto the deck of the ship already swarming with uniformed students. Plenty of them have already ditched their vests or jackets, since the sun is blazing. At least there’s a sea breeze.

“Why do we have to wear wool?” I complain to A

“It’ll be cooler on the island,” Ares says. “Out in the ocean, it gets chilly in the winter. Not freezing, but close to it.”

Ares spots a piece of netting strung between two masts like a giant hammock.

“Come on,” he says, chucking his backpack up into the net. “Let’s sit up here.”

A

Once all the students are on board, the sailors cast off the ropes tethering us to the dock and start unfurling the sails. The huge white sails immediately fill with wind, and the booms swing around to form the right angle to carry us out onto the open water.

We all look back at the dock, but there’s nobody waiting to wave us off. Parents are instructed to say their farewells from their home country. We’re already on our own. Leaving Dubrovnik is only symbolic.

The city looks foreign to my eyes, and the place we’re going is only more so. There’s nowhere on earth like Kingmakers. A secret school only known to a few dozen families. I won’t get any degree or diploma from this place. Just the accumulation of knowledge passed down through generations of criminals. How to operate in shadow. How to find loopholes in the law. How to outwit and outplay governments and police forces. And how to barter, negotiate, and battle with each other.

The wind fills the sails with surprising force. The wooden planks groan as the ship is shoved hard across the water. Despite its size, the ship picks up speed rapidly. The planks aren’t groaning anymore—they’ve adjusted to the pressure and the temperature change. Now the boat seems to transform, to become as light as a bird skimming over the water.

Soon we’re passing out of the port, out into open ocean. The red-roofed medieval buildings of Old Town are disappearing behind us. We’re cutting through the fishing boats, moving out where there’s no one else around. Seagulls rise up from the fishing nets, circling round our ship briefly in case we have something better to offer. When they see how quickly we’re moving, they abandon our masts and head back where they came from.

“Look!” A

Swift gray bullets race alongside the ship, leaping in and out of the frothy wake.

“That’s good luck,” Ares says.

“Do you know how to sail?” A

“Yeah,” he says. “I had a little skiff in Syros.”

At first I’m loving the cool breeze and the waves and the view of the dolphins. But soon A

What was exciting and stimulating becomes repetitive and boring. I’m tired of the view. I want to see what everyone is doing down on the deck.

I swing down from our makeshift hammock. Matteo was right—the water only gets rougher the further out we get, and I have to use all my balance to cross the rolling deck.

Some of the other students are seasick, with several kids lined up to puke over the railing. I can’t say my stomach is totally steady, especially not with the lingering effects of my hangover, but at least I’m not that far gone.

Up at the front of the bow, I spot a group of boys playing some kind of dice game. I wander over for a closer look.

Bram Van Der Berg is there, along with two of his friends from the night before. Also a couple of boys who look Armenian and one Asian girl.

After watching for a minute, I can tell the game is just a variation of Street Craps. I can’t be sure, but I think one of the Armenians is using a loaded die. He certainly seems to be rolling an eleven more often than would be statistically probable.

Bram and I eye each other warily across the circle. He hasn’t shaved and his face is rough with stubble. I probably look scruffy too, but hopefully in less of a just-got-off-a-ten-year-stretch-in-solitary kind of way. I can tell he’s watching to see if I plan to resume the hostilities from the night before.

I assume there’s going to be a whole lot of jockeying for position in the first few weeks at Kingmakers. Every kid here thinks they’re the alpha—and they probably were, wherever they came from. But we can’t all be alphas at the school. There’s going to be a new hierarchy. I intend to be at the top, like always.

Bram probably thinks the same thing. He narrows his eyes at me, tossing back his longish hair and muttering something to his friends. The other Penose give me venomous looks.

Bram’s the next shooter. He rolls the point number three times before hitting a seven, ending the round. He scoops up his wi

“Hey, Dmitry,” he calls. “Why don’t you come join?”

He’s calling to a tall blond boy who’s standing at the railing looking down at the water. The boy took his shirt off because of the heat. A Siberian tiger is tattooed to the right of his spine, done in the classic style as if it were crawling up his back. Because the boy is so pale, the tiger looks snow white with black stripes.

Dmitry turns around slowly, facing our group.

He looks right at me and seems to recognize me immediately.

I get a similar jolt.

He’s strangely familiar, even though I know we’ve never met.

His eyes narrow, his jaw tightens, and his lip curls up in a sneer.

“No thanks,” he says coldly. “I don’t like the company.”

“What?” Bram says, glancing back and forth between us. “The Amerikanets?”