Chapter Text
PROLOGUE: Autumn, 2021
Askazer-Shivadlakia, the "little country by the sea", was delightful year round -- sun-kissed, with a tang of salt in the air and cool breezes off the water. Like many beach towns, the summer months in the capital city of Fons-Askaz were the busiest; in autumn all the bustle settled down to local affairs, with the dairymen driving the cattle south into the warmer winter pastures and the olive harvest taking half the population out into the groves. After the harvest, and usually following the Days of Awe, the air turned crisp -- never too terribly cold, rarely snowy except in the highlands, but chilly enough that winter coats came out.
And, Caleb thought, tired musicians huddled around fires on the lakefront to stay warm as they enjoyed a break before heading home.
They'd spent the day in a recording booth of Reverb Studios, Askazer-Shivadlakia's first and only audio production company. It was located in the bunker basement of the royal fishing lodge on the public grounds of the palace; Reverb had converted the bunker into studios, mainly for podcasts, but lately local musicians had taken notice of their services. Word had gotten around that they did good work, and Caleb's best friend Ava had decided it was time to cut a studio album. Her folk duo, the Gay Twits, was aptly named, but Caleb liked Ava and Ben, and didn't mind sitting in as a third Twit to play Whatever Backup Instrument Required. Besides, he'd wanted a look at the old bunker, with its brutal cement construction and mysterious tunnels. There was a rumor of a hidden wine cellar that had almost killed someone when it was discovered a few months ago.
Now, however, he was feeling uneasy about overstaying their welcome. They were sitting around a fire pit on the grounds outside the lodge, and could hear the sounds of a dinner party from within. The retired king, Michaelis, lived above the studios in the lodge proper, and was obviously entertaining guests.
"Should we be out here?" Caleb asked, scooting closer to the fire pit and the leaping flame that had been kindled in it by Lachlan, one of Reverb's owners, an American who'd immigrated and who had been engineering Ava and Ben's recording all day. "We're not bothering anyone, right?"
"No, we're fine," Lachlan said, basking in the glow of the fire, head tilted back to study the night sky. "The conservation officers know people come and go from this part of the park all the time, and the lodge won't mind. I think His Grace likes that it stays busy these days."
"Is it a weird thought," Ben said, and Lachlan, Ava, and Caleb all chorused Yes before he could finish, because they knew Ben well enough to know it absolutely would be.
"Okay," Ben persisted, "but is it a weird thought that this would be the easiest possible way to take out like, most of the ruling class of the country? The old king's definitely up there and I saw the new king and his man going in, and Lady Alanna and the Duke of Shivadlakia, and other people too. Most of 'em work for the government. And they're all in one place right now, eating poisonable food, right by a convenient body dump."
He gestured to the lake. Lachlan, Ava, and Caleb considered this.
"It is a miracle you are not in prison for threatening the entire royal family," Caleb said at last.
"I'm not threatening them, I like them! I voted for King Gregory. But is that weird to think?" Ben pressed.
"Maybe," Lachlan said, his voice doing an octave-skip that indicated definitely. Then he glanced up and grinned. "Look sharp, Benny, you wouldn't even have to go indoors to take out one of them right now."
Caleb twisted in his chair. A man was making his way down from the lodge to the lake's dock, passing them with a brisk nod for Lachlan. His features weren't easy to see in the dark, but they were still recognizable, being on half the currency in the kingdom -- the face of the retired king, His Grace Michaelis, whose son currently ruled.
"What's he doing?" Ava asked in a hushed voice. "Going for a swim?"
The old king reached the end of the dock and cupped his hands around his mouth. The deep bass rumble of his voice boomed out, disturbing the serenity of the lake.
"TAVAT!" he bellowed, and far out in the lake something moved. "Come inside! Dinner's ready!"
"Coming!" a faint, higher-pitched voice echoed back. They watched, hushed and pretending not to be watching, as a small boat came skimming along the water, pulling up to the dock. A teenage boy disembarked carefully, carrying an electric lantern.
"Have you set the fireworks on the bank?" they heard the old king ask as he and the boy passed them again, back towards the lodge.
"Yeah, it's gonna be awesome!" the boy replied, and Caleb thought he recognized the voice, or at least the American accent. "I'm almost sure it'll work this time."
"Nice of them to put out fireworks for us," Ben joked.
"Was that Noah?" Caleb asked, watching the pair mount the steps to the lodge. "The one who was running around all day messing with the recording equipment? Ava's got him for classes, don't you?"
"Vocal lessons at the Academy, yeah," Ava said, nodding. "He just started at the school this year. I figured he had a part-time job at Reverb, but he's here awfully late."
"He's my godson," Lachlan said. "My co-founder's kid. They live up here at the lodge. By invitation of the King Emeritus," he added, amused. "They were having trouble getting housing in town over the summer."
"That's convenient, living above the studio," Ava said. "Kind of intense, though."
"I mean, I live where I work too," Ben said.
"You live in a van, Ben," Caleb told him.
"By choice! And where do I do most of my work?" Ben asked.
"He's got you there," Lachlan said.
"Okay, but why did the old king call him Tabbat?" Caleb said, determined not to be distracted.
"Tavat," Lachlan corrected. "It's a term of endearment."
"What, like...kiddo or something?"
"Sort of," Lachlan said. "It's in the old Shivadh language. Michaelis explained it to me once. It's a word for a person who's kind of daring, someone who gets away with things because they're audacious. It translates to little prince. Princeling," he corrected. "That's how he translated it."
"That's sweet," Ava said.
Caleb nodded agreement absently. He let the conversation drift on around him, turning this anecdote over in his mind. He'd watched as the boy and the old king walked up to the lodge, and seen Michaelis ruffle Noah's hair, an affectionate paternal gesture, just before they went inside. Tavat. Interesting.
He got his phone out and opened the Askazer-Shivadlakia national resources app, a lifesaver when he'd finally moved permanently across the mountains from Galia and put down real roots. Most Shivadh kids got the language basics in school, but he'd only spent summers here before immigrating. He spoke English fluently enough and had a Shivadh accent when he did, but Italian, the native language of Galia, was his first, and he had very little Shivadh language itself.
The National Resources App had a Shivadh dictionary which had not only a definition of Tavat but a link to the library side of the app, which had a whole article on the term, with previous uses in literature. Most of them were from local folktales. Caleb skimmed through them, fascinated.
There was a song in all of this, somewhere. Something about legacy, about having to hold on and let go at the same time. It would be too much to explain what Tavat was in the song itself, but you could anchor a song around a Shivadh phrase that included the word and contextualized it. A song about watching a kid go off in the world, perhaps. Compelling, if he could come up with a good hook for it.
Every wave someday reaches a distant country's shore
But the tides follow on and the water here is pure --
"He's got the look," Ben said, and Caleb looked up.
"Sorry?"
"You got quiet, Caleb," Lachlan said, curious.
"He's got his songwriting face on," Ava told Lachlan, which was permission for Caleb to open the recording app on his phone, get up, and walk away, carrying his ukulele with him. Ava would explain it to Lachlan. Caleb needed a little more darkness and quiet to hear the song come together in his head.
He found a good spot down the trail that wound around the lake, dimmed his phone screen until he could just barely make it out. He settled down and began to compose, first mentally, then letting it flow out of his hands on the instrument while his phone recorded it, a good simple way to save it for later without having to start and stop to note down the tabulation. He didn't even notice the fireworks when they began going off across the lake, except to be irritated that it was occasionally hard to hear himself humming.
By the time he was done working out the bare bones of the song, his phone was on perilously low battery, and he could see the lights in the fishing lodge had dimmed. The others were just cleaning up and putting out the fire when he got back.
"Got everything out?" Ava asked.
"Yeah -- can I have your charger?"
She tossed him a spare battery, wrapped in a charging cord. "Lachlan said to say goodnight and he'd see us back bright and early tomorrow morning to finish the last track."
"Sounds good," Caleb said, plugging his phone in and slinging the ukulele into its case, pulling the strap over his shoulder. "If you drop me on the high street in town I can walk the rest of the way."
He really didn't hear much of what Ava said on the ride out of the grounds or into Fons-Askaz, but she wouldn't be offended. She knew he sometimes got contemplative, and if she really wanted to tell him something she knew to get his attention first. He only snapped back to reality when she said, "Sure you'll be all right?" as he climbed out of the car.
"Sure, it's Fons-Askaz, I'm perfectly safe."
"Well, don't get completely lost in daydream-land until you're home," she said.
"Promise," he agreed, and closed the door, watching her pull away. He got his phone out again, the cord disappearing into his pocket where the charger was, but in deference to her request not to be a dreamer, he didn't put headphones in.
Back when he'd lived in Galia, in the capital city of Levaldi, there were parts of the city where he wouldn't feel safe walking around with his phone out and his face stuck in it. He made an appealing target: a slightly-built young man with short, fine blond hair that made him look younger than his twenty-four years. One of the few Shivadh words he did know was ilef, a word his mother had called him; it was a little sprite creature, and she'd tap the tip of his nose as she said it, smiling at his broad face with its sharp chin and high brow. He hadn't grown out of it, which in some ways was an advantage, but he didn't come across as very imposing.
Still, Fons-Askaz was hardly Levaldi. It was a little smaller, but it was also simply too prosperous to be desperate, too fond of tourists to be dangerous.
Caleb strolled along down narrow streets full of white-walled buildings, through alleys clogged by scaffolding, and past chained-off construction sites, all in perfect confidence. Recently, someone had lit a fire under the new king to make sure the infrastructure of the city was up to snuff; there had been a building collapse, and one or two near-misses, and to his credit King Gregory had almost immediately instituted new funding for inspection and repair. Still, there was only so much to be done during tourist season. Now that most of the tourists had gone home, construction was springing up everywhere along the shoreline, and slowly creeping inwards across the town, a little further inland each day.
Pretty soon, he thought, the scaffolding would colonize his own building, an elderly stucco job that had once been some rich person's house and now belonged to Ms. Costa, who rented out rooms and was generally kind, if a little absentminded. The bones were sound, as Ms. Costa said -- but she also said, and Caleb agreed, that it could use some "sprucing up" and a new roof. She'd wrangled a grant from the infrastructure program for the roof, but she had yet to find a roofer with the time to do it. Caleb's ceiling had one small leak and it was over the bathtub anyway, so he never minded, but a roof only lasted so long.
It wasn't especially fancy, but he had friendly neighbors, a bedroom with a private bathroom, access to the kitchen whenever he wanted with a shelf in the fridge and the pantry just for his food, and a view of the harbor, with the sea beyond it. The first song he'd written when he moved in was about how he hadn't realized he'd been choking in landlocked Galia.
Water played a significant role in his music, he knew, but it was nice to have a motif, he supposed.
He spent the walk and even the climb to the third floor distracted, but when he let himself into his bedroom he became conscious he was footsore, cramped in various muscles, and exhausted. He shed his shirt and trousers, pulled off his binder with a long exhale, stretched, crawled into a t-shirt to sleep in, and just managed to put his phone down on the nightstand before he was unconscious.
The next morning, before they started their session, Caleb asked Ava, "Hey, can I have the first half-hour? I just need about three takes on something. Pay you back for it."
"Sure," Ava said. "We have it all morning and we probably won't need all of it. I can use the warmup time."
"What are you up to?" Lachlan asked Caleb, hands moving over the sound board, setting up for a single vocalist.
"The song I was working on last night, it's stuck in my head now," Caleb said. "I won't be of any use until I sing it a few times and know it's on record somewhere official. You don't need to make me sound fancy or anything."
"All part of the job. Just vocals -- oh, vocals and a ukulele, okay," Lachlan said, laughing, as Caleb produced the little uke from his bag. He'd get the vocals and basic melody out in the first take, maybe do a keyboard follow-up, and see if he even wanted a third one. "Ready when you are, king."
Every wave someday reaches a distant country's shore
But the tides follow on and the water here is pure
Your sails spread wider now than mine
But someday I'll still leave you behind
They did two takes, and Caleb sighed with relief at the end of them; the song had flown out of his head, and he could feel the rest of the music -- the stuff he was supposed to be playing today -- flowing in to fill the gap.
Lachlan sent him the sound file for the recording, and Caleb stashed it with the digital sheet music in his "sell to whoever wants it" folder. He licensed the song a few weeks later to some kid who wanted to be a pop idol, something he did all the time with his little ditties, and mostly forgot about it.
At least until the following spring, when it really came back to bite him in the ass.
CHAPTER ONE: Spring, 2022
Breakfast in the palace of Askazer-Shivadlakia was frequently chaotic, the product of a scattered family of busy people. It was served in the royal family's private dining room, but there was no formal seating time, and one could never be sure who would be there when. Jerry enjoyed the chaos, but he did recognize it as such.
Jerry's cousin, Gregory III, king and obnoxiously early riser, was usually the first in, and also the first out; sometimes he and his celebrity-chef fiance Eddie Rambler missed each other at breakfast even though they shared apartments in the palace and ate within half an hour of each other. Jerry thought sometimes he saw Gregory at breakfast more often than Eddie did, if only because Jerry and Gregory had a standing twice-weekly morning run together. Eddie, in his own words and with a very Californian sensibility, only ran from the cops.
Michaelis -- the king emeritus, Jerry's Uncle Mike -- might be at breakfast or might not, rarely with any warning. He might bring his partner Jes, or Jes's teenage son Noah, and the level of chaos Noah could cause was both a delight and a concern to much of the family. He never meant to, it just seemed to follow him around.
Alanna, Jerry's beloved and Gregory's head of Palace Operations, usually prepared Gregory's calendar, came in for breakfast, talked to Gregory without eating much, followed him out, and then came back in to eat and steal a few moments with Jerry. He wasn't sure why that particular administrative dance was so complicated, but it wasn't his place to question.
Jerry himself, the twelfth duke of Shivadlakia, vizier to Gregory III, and a grandson, nephew, and cousin of kings -- without rigid employment and with a deep interest in human nature -- often sat serenely through the entire breakfast shift. He worked on documents for the ducal estate, did Sudoku puzzles or scrolled his Photogram feed, and absorbed all the royal ambiance. Occasionally he even made himself useful as a human messageboard.
"Good morning, Gerald. Have I missed all of them already?" Michaelis asked as he arrived that morning, taking some eggs from the chafing dish and some toast from the rack.
"Gregory hasn't been in yet, and Alanna hasn't either; she said if he didn't come in by eight she probably had to talk to him about something urgent, so I assume they'll show up sooner or later," Jerry said. "Eddie's on his way, I think. And you are here," he added with a flourish.
"More or less," Michaelis replied, settling in to eat. "I thought Gregory might be late. He's trying to get his minister of culture to sign off on a venue contract and it's a bit time-sensitive."
"The Eurovision thing?"
Michaelis nodded. "If I were the minister of culture I'd say Eurovision isn't my area, but that is why I am retired."
"Why, because Eurovision's not culture?" Jerry asked, laughing. "So sour! It's only a pop music contest, not a crime against nature. I bet that's why we've never entered Eurovision before now. You blocked it."
"Mm, not me," Michaelis shook his head. "Nobody wanted to pay the entry fee, but for my money it's always been pure old-fashioned Shivadh arrogance keeping us out."
"Keeping us out?" Jerry asked. Michaelis sat back, spreading his hands, preparing to expound.
"Well, obviously, so the reasoning goes, Shivadh musicians are simply better at what they do than other countries. The assumption is that we would win so handily it would be laughable," he said.
"I can feel my ancestors listening through me," Jerry said.
"I should hope so, that's generations of Shivadh ego lined up behind you," Michaelis replied. "The problem is, when you win Eurovision, you're supposed to host it the following year. You don't have to, but we'd never shirk, would we? And it sounds like an awful lot of work nobody really wants to do, not to mention the expense. So we never entered. Didn't want to put up with winning. Wasn't my decision, but I can't say I minded. One less thing to worry about."
"So why are we entering now? What changed?" Jerry asked.
"Gregory's been slowly and gently murdering people," Michaelis said, as Gregory himself came into the room.
"I have not, I could only wish for that kind of power," Gregory said, helping himself to breakfast. "What are we talking about?"
"You've been very gradually kicking out the oldest and most tediously conservative of the old guard," Michaelis said. "Filling parliament with younger people with more progressive ideas."
"Is this about Eurovision?" Gregory sighed.
"I'm explaining to Gerald why we're entering this year."
"Eurovision is older than you are, Father," Gregory said. "It just so happens that people who are liberal in other ways think Eurovision would be fun. It'll bring in tourist revenue during the spring shoulder season, which is fast approaching, and it gives everyone something to talk about."
"And also," Jerry said, "because Eddie really, really wanted us to enter."
"You make it sound so frivolous," Michaelis drawled.
"Eddie suggested it because he thinks it'd be good for publicity," Gregory said. Michaelis fixed him with a look. "And yes, he loves Eurovision and asked me nicely."
"It's good to be the king," Michaelis told Jerry.
"Anyway, the contract is signed, so my part is over, it's all up to the event planners and the national broadcaster now," Gregory continued.
"You had better not have pushed Alanna into planning it," Jerry threatened.
"What do I look like, Jerry? I had to tell her specifically several times that she was to keep the name of Eurovision out of her mind, her mouth, and her to-do list," Gregory said. "I made her make someone else do it."
"Well, I appreciate that," Jerry allowed.
"Turns out the people she's making do it include Lachlan and Jes," Michaelis added. Jerry raised his eyebrows at Gregory and mouthed ballsy.
"Anyway, the musical acts have all been notified," Gregory said, ignoring him, "so they just have to do all the rehearsing and lighting and things. The fellow from the Royal Shivadh Broadcast Agency knows how to coordinate it all, or at least he's faking it well."
"I suppose we'll need to attend?" Michaelis asked.
"They're going to set up a box for the king and his guests, yes," Gregory said. "I hope you can attend. I'm supposed to select the winner, and I think the idea is that you and Eddie will be asked to advise me."
"How many seats?"
"Dad, I am the king. You of all people should know I can have as many seats as I want. I assume you'd like to have Noah and Jes there, even if they'll probably be backstage half the time."
"Jes doesn't care for the red carpet in any case," Michaelis said. "But yes, I would like two seats for them and Noah."
"Jerry, you're on Alanna's arm?"
"Actually, if Jes isn't doing the red carpet, you might ask Al if she'd go with you," Jerry said to Michaelis, who nodded agreeably. "I have some very important drag queen friends to squire into the reception. They'll need audience seats."
"You say that as though I'm going to put a quota on drag queens," Gregory said. "At a Eurovision National Final, of all places. There's an invitation coming to your calendars, I'm sure it'll have all that information about who to talk to for tickets and such. Do not ask Alanna, you'll only encourage her," he said, pointing back and forth between them.
"Why don't you enter as a vocalist, Uncle Mike?" Jerry asked. "If you enter Greg's got to pick you, eh? That'd be fun, sending a king to Eurovision."
"You are so good at sowing discord," Michaelis told him, and Jerry preened a little. "It really is a natural talent, I can't think where it came from."
"Just lucky, I guess," Jerry said modestly. "Well, I'm going to need an outfit and a little flag to wave, must get cracking. Think about it, though. You'd sound great over a hot dance beat."
He tango'd out, just to make Gregory and Michaelis laugh, and got a bonus chance to twirl and dip Alanna when he caught her just inside the dining room doorway. She laughed and kissed him and then shoved him off gently.
ASKAZER-SHIVADLAKIA NATIONAL FINAL
COMPETITION PERFORMERS
Bes and Naomi - "River Water"
David Lansky - "Fait Accompli"
Carne Mista - "Capital Chaos"
Kairao - "Young Prince"
Solo Olo - "We Drink Davzda"
Alia - "According To Plan"
Doozy Points - "Aim To Please"
The Maritime Academy Seniors' Quartet - "Chanty"
Caleb got the invitation to the Askazer-Shivadlakia Eurovision National Final concert on his lunch break, sitting on a picnic bench with Ava on the beach promenade, just outside the Maritime Academy.
It wasn't a particularly lucrative job, being a music teacher, but as Ava said it paid the bills and balmed the soul. Caleb handled the under-twelves at the Academy, which he'd felt was a little brave of the administration, but so far nobody had complained. When he'd ventured to ask about this, in his first performance review, he'd gotten a blank look from the headmaster.
"I wouldn't be allowed to teach little kids in Galia, probably, is all," he'd added with a squirm.
The headmaster had considered him, brows drawn together for a moment, and then nodded, addressing the issue frankly.
"Well, we do things differently in Askazer-Shivadlakia," he'd said finally. "You're entirely qualified and you passed the background check easily, which is what concerns the school's administration. You seem to do excellently with the children, particularly children we're most concerned about, behaviorally speaking. Besides, odds are pretty good at least one of the kids you teach will be trans. Good to give them some role models, don't you think?"
Caleb had tried to internalize the idea of role model for a while before he managed it. He wondered what the headmaster was going to call this.
The invitation to the National Final came by email, but it was an exceptionally fancy one. There were animations and everything. When all the bells and whistles were done and it was just the text remaining, he stared down at his phone, perplexed.
"You look like someone smacked your ass," Ava said around a mouthful of sandwich. "Bad news?"
"The palace just sent me four tickets to the Eurovision National Final concert, with a backstage VIP pass," Caleb said. "Or maybe a scammer posing as the palace did."
"Really?" Ava asked, leaning in to study the email over his shoulder. "Why?"
"According to this, it's the standard complimentary package for all performers and songwriters participating in the Shivadh Eurovision National Final," Caleb said, scrolling through it. "I think they think I wrote a -- "
He stopped, eyes widening.
"Oh, no," he said.
"This is going to be good," Ava sighed.
"Remember I sold a song to that irritating man who thinks he's going to be the next big thing in Eurotrash pop?" he said.
"I remember telling you that he didn't deserve a song that good," Ava said, nodding.
"He's in the National Final. Singing that song."
"Oh whoa! That's great for you though, isn't it? If he does well, your song'll be everywhere."
"I guess," Caleb said. "I'm sure he trashed my arrangement."
"Still. Bet you get some pretty good opportunities out of it. Are you gonna go?"
"Don't know. If I do I'll stay backstage. Want my tickets?"
"Sure," Ava said. "I'll scalp the ones I don't use and split the take with you."
"See if Derek wants to come, he might have fun," Caleb said.
Ava nodded, folding up the wax wrap she'd had her sandwich in and accepting the second half of the apple he no longer had any interest in eating. "Come on, let's go tell everyone! This is exciting -- "
"Oh, do we have to?" Caleb asked, getting up to follow her back up to the school. "I can't imagine it'll win. Anyway, I'm just the songwriter. You know I don't like attention."
"A little more attention and you could be running the music scene in Askazer-Shviadlakia," Ava said.
"Who wants that kind of responsibility? I just -- I don't like being looked at. You know what I mean," he added, because he and Ava had been in this debate before.
You like teaching, though, they look at you all day long.
That's different, I'm in charge and there's a script to these things.
"Think we might be too late," Ava added, pointing at the window of the music room in the big old industrial building the Maritime Academy had taken over and converted. A slew of children, ages six through sixteen, all in faintly nautical uniforms, were leaning out the windows and waving. One of them was blowing a trumpet (poorly).
"Caleb's going to Eurovision!" someone yelled.
The headmaster met them on the front steps.
"The Royal Shivadh Broadcasting Agency released the National Final competitor list," he said with a grin, tilting his head at the cheering children. "Someone spotted your name in the songwriters' section."
"I'm not going to Eurovision," Caleb said, a little cross at all the noise. "It's just some ass who bought a song from me. And he's probably not going to Eurovision either, it's only the National Final."
"Ah, they're still proud of you," the headmaster replied. "Go let them congratulate you."
"Well, I'll go teach class, in any case," Caleb said.
The children were understandably rowdy, which made his ears buzz unpleasantly, but once he shooed the older ones out and got the nine-year-olds settled down in their usual places, the buzzing faded. Caleb knew he was more of a creature of habit than most and that some of the children were impatient with the rote ritual at the start of every class, but it tended to settle both him and them, and especially today it was comforting. Nothing different from any other ordinary day.
They did their practice drumbeat and sang a little song to start class like they always did. He was just getting up off the floor, where he sat with the kids who didn't like chairs, when one of them blurted, "Are you going to be on television?"
Caleb took a second to weigh his options. On one hand, if they were given an inch, the children would derail for a mile. On the other, until he addressed the Eurovision issue, he wouldn't have any peace anyway. And as a teacher he preferred to let children guide their own learning, at least to an extent. He'd rarely had that kind of freedom himself, as a child, and while he leaned into the title of The Weird Kid, he'd rather nobody feel they had to call themselves that in his classes.
"All right," he said, taking his watch off and handing it to the nearest child. "You keep time. You get five minutes to ask yes or no questions. Then we have to do scales."
"Why yes or no?" a kid asked. Another immediately piped up, "That's not a yes-or-no-question!"
They blew a minute on this debate, which was less than Caleb expected, and then got back to peppering him with questions about whether he'd be on television, his budding music career, if he'd get to meet the king at the National Final, and how he wrote music. The last one was interrupted by his timekeeper telling him time was up, but it was a good segue back into the lesson, at least.
That afternoon, walking home after two more classes where he also had to give a five-minute yes-or-no question session with his older students, he decided he would go to the concert. There were plenty of places backstage he could hide out and watch, and it would be interesting. After all, it wasn't the first song he'd sold -- he sent all kinds of songs out into the world and almost never got to see what happened to them. None of the others had ever been hits, or anything more prestigious than a jingle on a local radio station.
Looking back, deciding to attend was either his first mistake or an extremely fortunate choice. Difficult to say which.
When the new king decided to enter Askazer-Shivadlakia in Eurovision, he did the thing with the appropriate flair for a country that loved pageantry. The concert was an evening extravaganza, to be hosted by a charismatic local news anchor, Isaiah Wynn, and shown live on the Royal Shivadh Broadcast Agency's Channel One, as well as streamed on the RSBA's website. They had non-competing acts performing between the official ones and a couple of funny sketches planned. There was an extensive red carpet, intercut with footage of the pre-show reception once the attendees were inside.
Caleb arrived at the concert hall early to secure an out-of-the-way perch in the dark empty seating off to one side; he sat in his little niche and watched people preparing for the show while at the same time streaming the red carpet on his phone, propped on the neck of his ukulele in his lap. Lachlan, running various errands nearby, waved at him as he helped with the setup, and pointed him out to Noah Deimos and his parent Jes, who also gave him friendly nods. Meanwhile, outside, the old king arrived with Lady Alanna on his arm, followed by the Duke of Shivadlakia with a pair of gorgeous drag queens, raising him several notches in Caleb's estimation.
Like most of the country, he was fond of the new king, and he liked what he'd seen of his American fiance. Gregory III was a stickler for the uniform at public events, sober black touched with gold, but Caleb had read in an interview that it was because he subscribed to the old Shivadh belief that a king should dress plainly in order to make his partner his brightest ornament. The American fiance, Eddie Rambler -- newly titled as the Duke of the Orange -- seemed to take delight in being ornamentation. There had been a lot of speculation about what an American influencer with a loud aesthetic might wear to Eurovision, and Caleb watched with most of the rest of the country as their car arrived. He saw Rambler get out of the car wearing a black suit as well, with the same gold trim and braid as the king's uniform -- and then he saw that the jacket was sequined.
He could literally hear people outside the venue go nuts when, on the little screen, Rambler stopped for the cameras, did a turn, and then ran his hands up his own arms, turning the sequins backwards and transforming his black jacket into vivid gold. The king, clearly adoring, helped him with the back and shoulders.
Caleb turned off the stream when it switched over to footage inside the reception, where various nobles, dignitaries, and minor celebrities were mingling to make small talk. They couldn't have paid Caleb to go to that, but he recognized a few of the night's performers enjoying the open bar. He looked for Kairao, but didn't see him in the reception.
About thirty seconds later, he found out why Kairao wasn't there. Lachlan skidded up to him, a panicked look on his face.
"Hey, do you actually, uh, do you know Kairao?" he asked, without preamble. Caleb blinked at him. "You wrote his song, right? Do you know him?"
"Only to speak to," Caleb said. "I mean, we have a legal contract for him to use the song but we're not friends."
"Do you know where he might be?"
"Is he not here?" Caleb asked.
"He is not, and the stage manager is going to start beheading people soon if he doesn't show, and I am crying mascara down my cheeks on the inside in panic. Is there any way you can think of to get in touch with him?"
"I can text him," Caleb said, scrolling his contracts. He found him under first name Kairao, last name Dickwhoboughttavat. Lachlan let out a nervous laugh.
Lachlan Hines wants to know where you are, you're supposed to be at the National Final, he texted, and then looked up at Lachlan. "I'll let you know if he replies."
"Don't bother, go straight to the stage manager," Lachlan said, and Caleb gave him a thumbs up. "Come backstage, they're about to open the house."
Things got significantly more frantic after that, not just because of Kairao but because they were fast approaching curtain. Caleb stayed tucked back against one backstage wall, away from the madness, and said hi whenever anyone stopped for a breather in the last-minute production preparation, or to update him on the mad search for their missing competitor.
Eventually he skulked his way to the wings just off the stage, peering out from the shadows. He was opposite the king's box, which sat to one side above the audience, and he had a clear view of its occupants as they settled in. There was Rambler in person, lion's mane of gold hair neatly combed back, gleaming like a comet next to King Gregory III, solemn as his uniform. The Duke of Shivadlakia, bluff and annoyingly attractive, was next to Lady Alanna, arm slung around her shoulders but eyes on his phone. The old king was behind them, speaking with a worried-looking stagehand.
"They still haven't found Kairao," a voice said, and Caleb looked over his shoulder to see Noah standing behind him, peering up at the king's box. "Jes is supposed to be up in the box, but they're still helping look."
"I can't imagine where he got to," Caleb said. "But I don't know much about him."
"I heard he's kind of a jerk."
"That tracks." Caleb moved aside so Noah could have a better view. "Shouldn't you go get your seat?"
"I'm fine, I'm not expected up there for a bit. I like backstage, like you," Noah said. Caleb frowned. "I mean, you're back here instead of out there, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I guess so. What happens if we don't find him?"
"They're moving him to last in the lineup. At least it won't spoil the rest of the show. Worst case, I guess someone could get up and vamp for three minutes. Jerry's probably got a tight five," he added thoughtfully.
"A what?"
"You know, a five minute set of jokes. He's pretty funny. And they'd like that, the viewers I mean. Duke of Shivadlakia doing a little entertainment routine. National Broadcaster'll find some sucker to fill the time, anyway," Noah finished. The old king Michaelis, up in the box, turned to face the stage; he tilted his head, clearly spotting Noah in the wings, and made a brief summoning gesture. "Agh. Guess I gotta go up. You gonna stay back here, Mr. Canto?"
"Yeah, I'm waiting to hear from Kairao. I hope he hasn't died."
"He better have, honestly. If he hasn't, Lachlan'll kill him. Seeya later!" Noah added, and ran off. Caleb watched until he saw Noah slip into the king's box and settle in behind Rambler, leaving a seat open between himself and the old king.
Eventually, determining that he wouldn't be in the way, Caleb dragged a wobbly stool over and perched himself with a decent view of the stage and the king's box, if not most of the audience.
Jes slipped into their seat next to Michaelis just as the lights went down to signal the start of the concert, and he had a moment of relief until he saw the worried look on their face.
"Still no sign of your missing artist?" he asked in a low voice.
"No, but Lachlan told me to let it be his problem," they answered. "Trying to relax about it."
"Good. I know how hard both of you worked setting this up, you should enjoy it," he said, and Noah shushed them both. "Yes, all right."
Michaelis was willing to concede that it wasn't an unpleasant evening. If some of the music wasn't to his taste, at least it was brief, and it was good to see what kinds of art the current culture was producing. He could tell from Gregory's posture, and the occasional fidget, that he was taking the same kind of mental notes, which was only sensible. Michaelis, having retired, could play politics for sport. Gregory took it seriously as his job.
In any case, he could tell Jes was happy he was in attendance, even as they kept having to get up to go help out with backstage business. And it was good for Noah to be exposed to Shivadh culture, traditional or modern, after growing up in New York. He took his duty to educate the boy seriously, and also enjoyed the comedy of it.
"I think I liked that one best," Noah said to him, leaning across Jes's empty seat as Solo Olo, who'd been singing an admittedly catchy drinking song, left the stage.
"I think Theophile did as well," Michaelis agreed, nodding at Eddie, who had laughed his way through the song. "Haven't you got to support your Academy friends, though?"
"They know they won't get to go. They just think it'll be fun to be on TV," Noah replied, and then shushed Michaelis again with a gesture as the applause died away. Jes reappeared as he was leaning back into his own seat.
"No sign of him," they said in his ear. He squeezed their shoulder reassuringly. Kings had fallen and countries been laid waste, but not Askazer-Shivadlakia, at least not recently, and certainly not because of an absentee Eurovision performer. "Lachlan's working on a backup plan now."
"If it's the worst thing that goes wrong, everything will be fine," he murmured back.
It had been an excellent plan to situate himself where he was, Caleb decided. Not only was he out of the way, with a view of the performances, pretty good acoustics, and sights on the king's box, but he was central enough to have become a hub of the Search For Kairao, which once you got past the initial panic was a little funny. People would simply run past his perch and toss out a word or two of update, and when Lachlan came by he'd inform him, and Lachlan would flail some more and run off. He felt bad being amused, but only a little. It didn't matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things.
By the time they were headed for the second-to-last performers, the Maritime Academy kids, he'd decided on his vote, not that he really got a say in who would win. The king was meant to pick, taking into account the audience and local televote favorites. For Caleb's money he was going to pick either the drinking song (which Rambler clearly liked) or the almost-as-catchy but much more somber song called River Water, which represented the Shivadh love of drama poignantly. It was the kind of song to appeal to a man who had actively sought out a leadership role in a country that mostly called him king because it seemed more interesting than president or prime minister.
Shame Kairao clearly wasn't going to get to perform Caleb's song; he might have won. Almost fun to consider that, given that it wasn't going to happen and was therefore safe to laugh about.
Then, just as the Maritime Academy students were taking the stage, Lachlan arrived one last time, jerked his head in the direction of the dressing rooms, and said, "We have to talk, away from the stage."
Caleb followed him, curious, listening with half an ear to see if Ava had managed to school the quartet's tenor away from dominating, as he liked to do.
"We've given up Kairao as a lost cause," Lachlan said. "Can't find him anywhere."
"Well, it's a shame, but it wasn't that great a song," Caleb said.
"I like it," Lachlan protested, "but that's not the point."
"What are you going to fill the time with? It's only three minutes, do you even need to?"
Lachlan blinked at him. "Well...I mean. You can perform it, can't you?"
"I wrote it, of course I -- " Caleb began, before he saw where the conversation was going. "Oh, no."
"He's got a backing track," Lachlan said. "You could go on. You know the lyrics -- "
"I can't just go on for someone. I haven't even heard the backing track, though I think it's safe to assume it's dreadful," Caleb said. Lachlan's face did some complicated acrobatics Caleb wasn't even going to bother trying to interpret.
"It's not good," Lachlan said. "But you could make it work. Come on, you know you could."
"This is a nationally televised concert," Caleb hissed. "Streamed to all of Europe!"
"We need to fill three minutes and it's supposed to be with your song! Get on the program!" Lachlan insisted. "It's the song that's important, not really who sings it."
"What Eurovision have you been watching?" Caleb asked incredulously.
"They don't have Eurovision in Massachusetts! Look, there's going to be dead air or at the very least a weird gap in timing if someone doesn't play the song, and you wrote it. Don't you want to perform it?"
"No!" Caleb said emphatically. "I don't perform live! It's due to a health issue known as social anxiety."
"There's less than nothing social about a professional music career," Lachlan said, which was kind of a point, but Caleb just gave him a stubborn look. "You don't have to talk to anyone or anything. You just get your guitar, or someone's guitar, and play the song."
Caleb rubbed his eyes. "Ukulele."
"Gesundheit."
"I have my ukulele. I can play it on that, I don't have the guitar part in my head. Lachlan, are you going to make me play a song I wrote, on a ukulele, cold, in front of the king?"
"Would a hype-man backup dancer help? Kairao had three lined up," Lachlan offered desperately.
"Absolutely not. It's just -- I hate being stared at when I'm not in control of things," Caleb said, trying to breathe deep. "It's fine if I can't tell, but in front of a crowd I can see all their faces, I can see them reacting, or what I think is them reacting, it gets me in my head..."
"Look, I get it, but it's just for three minutes. The lights will be low, you'll barely -- oh, hang on," Lachlan said, moving past Caleb to rummage in a nearby box. "Do you need to see, like do you need to have good vision, in order to play the song?"
"What?" Caleb asked.
"In order to sing. Do you have to be able to see?"
"Well, no. Just to get onstage, but otherwise..."
"Okay. Perfect. Here." Lachlan produced a pair of sunglasses, the rainbow-mirrored kind douchebags on the beach generally wore. "Put these on. Once the lights go down you won't be able to see a thing. Or just close your eyes, nobody'll be able to tell. No faces, no audience, you won't hear anything over whatever's coming in your earpieces."
Caleb took the sunglasses and stared down at them. "This won't look weird onstage?"
"It's Eurovision," Lachlan said.
"Point taken." He looked up at Lachlan. "Is this really that important?"
"It's...it's show business," Lachlan said. "It's simultaneously the most important thing in the world and the lowest stakes possible. Nobody dies if you don't go play the ukulele for the king."
Caleb looked back at the sunglasses and then at the stage, where the Maritime Academy quartet was beginning its performance.
"You owe me something I can't even describe right now," he said, gesturing at Lachlan with the sunglasses.
"If I didn't have boundaries I would kiss you," Lachlan told him. "Stay there, don't move," he added, and bolted away.
Thirty seconds later, a swarm of people without boundaries descended -- a tech to mic him up, another to fix monitors in his ears, two more to do hair and makeup on the fly, and a fifth to hook a pickup into his ukulele -- incompetently, as it turned out, and Caleb ducked away from the hairstylist to do it himself. He let the hairstylist back at his hair ("Please don't -- please don't touch my ears!") while he ran mentally through the chord progression.
The upside was, with no backing track or backup singers, nobody was going to be able to tell if he screwed it up and had to improvise.
Then Lachlan was hustling him towards the stage, and the host, Wynn, was doing a little verbal soft-shoe to introduce him, something about a minor incident and Kairao being unable to perform -- but it was all about the song, after all, not the performer. (Again, Caleb thought, what Eurovision were these people watching?) And the songwriter had graciously agreed to perform the song himself, in a special arrangement just for the National Final.
Super special, Caleb thought, heart about to pound out of his chest. Just the most special ever.
He was glad he'd worn a suit; normally his only two outfits were the suits he wore to events and class, and the hoodie-and-cargos combo he wore everywhere else. It would have been nice to be wearing new Chucks, but the scuffs probably wouldn't show up on camera. And if he was going to go onstage, on national television even if it was a very small nation, in front of a live audience that included the entire royal family...at least he looked like a short, overly cool Tenth Doctor cosplayer.
Lachlan aimed him at the stage, where someone had thankfully put a single chair for him to sit in. And then, with applause, CALEB CANTO - YOUNG PRINCE was walking into Shivadh National Final history.
Things went black for a second, which he had sort of expected given the way his pulse was pounding and the darkness of the sunglasses. Then the music filled the world like it always did when he sat down to play --
And then something very unexpected happened.