“Eventually, he began to tell himself stories about how unimportant he was.
“Eventually, he told his kidnappers the same stories, about how he had never felt like he was part of the royal family, about how he thought he was destined for other things.
“Eventually, the kidnappers believed him.
“And eventually, the kidnappers thought he was one of them.”
“One ofthem?”Dree breathed. “The little prince became apirate?”
Maxence nodded in the dark. “The little prince believed their revolutionary furor with all his heart. He believed so much that he was one of the pirates, a revolutionary, that he convinced himself, and he convinced them.
“By the end of the second week, they allowed him to leave the smelly storeroom for a few hours at a time.
“Within another day or two, he had a bunk with the other sailors and was eating their communal meals with them.
“He worked hard on the ship, mopping the deck and carrying anything that needed to be moved. He was sunburned. He was seasick.
“In another two weeks, he’d convinced them that he didn’t want to go home because he was truly one of them.”
Dree gasped. “But his family finally paid the ransom and got him back, right?”
Maxence breathed slowly, deep down into his stomach, keeping himself calm as he lay in a sleeping bag in the dark freezing tent in the highlands of Nepal near Mount Everest in December, which was about as far away from the summertime Mediterranean Sea as one could get, vertically and along the land. The Earth was even on the opposite side of the sun from that June day, which meant Maxence was vertically fifteen thousand feet, twenty-one and a half years of time, and a hundred eighty-six million miles of dead and empty space away from that rusting hulk of a tanker ship.
Breathe,he told himself.Breathe.
The scents of his leather motorcycle gear and his cologne, the feel of his hair around his face and his abdominals and shirt under his fingertips, the sound of Dree’s breathing in the night, and that faint smear of moonlight glowing through the top of the dark, dark tent.
He had practiced for many years to be able to control his breathing. While his friend Casimir had been learning to not trust girls because they toyed with him, while Arthur had been learning to become an Englishman because that was all he could hold onto in the world, Maxence had been learning to disguise the fact that in some way, he was still a little boy locked in a filthy, utterly dark steel storage room of the tanker ship, knowing that no one was coming to save him and he would have to rescue himself.
Maxence said, “Just over a month had passed when the little prince convinced his kidnappers—by believing it hard enough and telling them what he believed with all the love in his heart—that he would go and tell the world their story and recite their manifesto. He told them that he could convince the world they were right and that they should be welcomed back from the sea as heroes. They believed he could convince the world because he had convinced them that he could.”
“So, did he?” Dree asked breathlessly. “Did he become their spokesman and tell the world?”
Max stared into the darkness. The lightless obsidian of the cloud-covered Nepali countryside was not very different than the darkness of a windowless steel room with a sealed door. “He tried. The pirates set him adrift in a tiny tender, which is a small boat used to go from a bigger boat to the shore, like a rowboat. Even in just the few weeks that he had been helping on the ship, his muscles had grown stronger. He rowed the tiny vessel the few hundred yards to shore and walked out of the sea to freedom.”
“His family must’ve been so relieved to see him!” Dree exclaimed, and then she laughed. “I’m ridiculous. Getting all caught up in the stories. You’re a better storyteller than you give yourself credit for.”
Yes, Maxence could make anyone believe any story that he wanted to. He still wasn’t sure how. He’d been born with an uncanny charisma, but his ability to persuade people was a skill honed in fire.
“Some of them were,” Maxence said. “But whoever was and whoever wasn’t glad to see him was immaterial because the little prince was whisked away and returned to his boarding school as quickly as possible, to restore a sense of normality, they said. The odd thing was, whenever the little prince tried to tell his story, no one believed him. His family had not only been reluctant to negotiate a deal with the pirates, but they had also made sure that no one else knew he had been missing. If he told people, he was branded a liar.”
Her gasp echoed against the fabric walls of the tent in the darkness. “Why would they do such a thing? If my kid were ever kidnapped, I’d be all over the news, trying to find them and bring them home. Their face would be on every telephone pole, milk carton, and local news channel in the world.”
Ah, if only.
Maxence said, “The little prince’s family decided against publicity for a number of reasons. First, if it became common knowledge that they had negotiated with and paid off kidnappers, even though they hadn’t, no member of their family would ever be safe again. Every single one of them would have a dollar amount associated with their names.”
“Hire some security men. That’s what they’re for.” Dree’s voice sounded disgusted that she had to tell him that.
He chuckled, and his abs shuddered against his fingertips. “They have security. Not that it matters. The other reason was that if the little prince became notorious for having been kidnapped and abused, he would become even more of a target. A few years earlier, another little prince of another country, although not a relative, had been the subject of a tragedy when he was about the same age. His name was Wulfram.”
“Oh, sohisname hasn’t been lost to posterity.”
“Right. Wulfram had an older twin, so he was also the spare to his older brother’s heir. When Wulf was nine years old, just a few years before the main character of our story, his older brother was horrifically assassinated, shot with a high-caliber rifle in front of his twin and dozens of other kids from their school. Wulfram was wounded but survived. He became notorious, and he has lived with a target on his back ever since, even as an adult. It is better to be anonymous, our young prince’s family decided. It was better if no one knew the tragedy and the horror, and thus be tempted to repeat it.”
Dree said, “I hate people.”
Maxence laughed. “That is the best reaction to that story I’ve ever heard.”
