Broken Crowns (17 page)

She closes my bedroom door behind her, and her eyes are bright. “So?” she says. “Did you meet with Nolan Atmus?”

“Yes,” I say. “He told me we're waiting to hear about King Ingram.”

Celeste sits on the edge of the bed beside me. “Oh good,” she says. “We can't discuss it here. You understand. For your own safety, it's best we don't talk about it in great detail.” She giggles giddily. “But it will all work out, won't it? And I was so happy to hear from Nim and know that he was willing to help. Our child is going to be an heir to two kingdoms one day. Just think of it.”

“Your plan for King Ingram seems . . . drastic,” I say. “But perhaps necessary.”

“There are two kingdoms at stake,” she says. “Desperate times.” She puts her hand on mine. “Listen, Morgan. You've seen how brutal things can get on the ground. All that land, all that greed. There are two kingdoms at war over a fuel source that we offer to people on Internment for free. Money talks down there. It's terrible. And I tried to reason with King Ingram; you know that I did. But the truth is that he has no regard for anyone's life, not even the people in his own kingdom. If we let him go on, he'll strip Internment of its resources and then do away with us all if it suits him.”

“I know,” I say. “I do know that. But—” I cut myself off and think better of what I was about to say.

But Celeste already knows. “You're going to say that my father is the same way.”

“What I was going to say is that I imagine every king is that way.”

She gives me a weak smile. “I don't blame you if you hate my father, and certainly you're smart not to trust him. I don't always trust him myself. It's hard knowing that my father would send Az off to one of those torturous attraction camps if he knew the truth. And he would have made me have a termination procedure if he'd known about this baby in time to stop it.” She takes a deep breath, composing herself. “But he means to do right by his kingdom. He loves Internment. He doesn't pose a threat to the city.”

Maybe not the whole city, but certainly to those he's killed.

“Morgan,” she says. All the joy and lightheartedness have left her tone. “I know what my father did to your family. I'm not asking you to forgive him. I'm not asking you to trust him. But you've got me on your side, and I promise that no harm will come to you or Basil. You trust me, don't you?”

“Yes,” I say, and it's the truth. I do trust her. But I don't believe she understands everything that her father is capable of, and I don't believe she can truly give me the protection she's promising.

“Good.” She pats my knee. “Now all we do is wait for chaos to break out.”

“How will we know?” I say. “Once it's happened. How will word get to us?”

“Before he left, Azure said he'd work with Nim.” She grins, and leans close to me, her voice barely a whisper. “They're going to kill the king, and before anyone can know what's happened, they'll have the pilot fly my brother back to the sky.”

“But what about the others?” I say, panic bubbling up in my stomach. “What about my brother and his wife? Pen? Judas and Amy?”

“I'm sure Az will try to bring them along.”

“Try?” I say. “Try? You can't very well kill King Ingram and then leave them behind. They could be killed in retaliation to prove some sort of point. Or arrested, and who knows what. You don't know what could become of them!”

“Lower your voice,” she hisses. “I know how my brother can come across sometimes, but he isn't completely without a heart. He will do all he can to protect them.”

“What if he can't?” I stand and pace to the window and back, my heart thudding.

“Morgan, if it does come to that, I think you need to be honest. Your brother was a jumper, and he and his wife ultimately took part in a plan to betray the government and escape the city. Judas is a fugitive. Pen—well, she'd do anything to keep Internment safe. I may not know a lot about her, but I do know that.”

She's right. “What's your point?” I say.

“Morgan, sit down. Be calm. Think about it. If they can't be saved, don't you think they would find a way to be at peace with it? Don't you think they would die for Internment?”

“That can't be part of your plan,” I say. My mind is going into such a panic that my vision is clouding. “You can't just sacrifice them like that.”

“I've already told you that my brother will do all he can to save them.”

“You don't sound too certain.”

“Nothing is ever certain.”

“You don't sound certain enough.”

She frowns. “It was the only way. I hope that you can see that. My brother is down there, too. And the father of my child. They're at risk as much as everyone you care about. I'm worried. Do you think I'm not worried? But worry doesn't help. We've got to think positively. Have some faith.”

“Faith,” I echo miserably. “What choice do I have now?”

“That's the spirit,” she says, undeterred by my glare. Pen once accused me of having a delusional sense of optimism, but the princess has certainly surpassed me there.

“I have to return to my mother,” she says. “It's almost time for her lunch, and if I'm not there when she wakes up, she'll worry.” She stands, and puts her hands on my shoulders. “King Ingram promised he would help her, you know. He promised me that he would fly her down to that big bright hospital in Havalais and the doctors there would make her better. He lied about that, and now she may not have much time left. So you see, we've all lost something in this mess, haven't we?”

I don't know what to say to that, but she doesn't seem to require a response. She drops her hands from my shoulders, and she leaves me with that.

And all I'm left to do is hope.

Basil returns shortly after the arrival of our lunch cart. He seems troubled, but he won't tell me what happened during his meeting with the king. Instead, he wants to know what happened at the glasslands. In whispers, I tell him everything. The plan to let Havalais murder King Ingram, Prince Azure's intention of returning on the jet, the potential danger to everyone from Internment. “She had the audacity to tell me that Pen and my brother would be willing to die for the cause.”

“Pen would be,” Basil admits. “You know she'd do anything to protect Internment.”

“You're not helping.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I agree with you. It's terrible. But, in a way, it's the only plan that's got a shot at working. If King Ingram is dead, maybe Internment will be safe.”

“Safe may be asking for too much,” I say. “We're never going to be safe. We probably never were safe, not even before all this. We only thought we were.”

He stares distractedly at his plate.

“Are you going to tell me what you and King Furlow talked about?”

He shakes his head. “It was nothing important. More rambling about what's expected of us in the coming days. That's all.”

“Basil, I don't think I can survive all of this if we're going to be mad at each other. I can't stand the thought of fighting with you.”

“I don't want to fight, either,” he says. “I just can't get the image out of my head. And don't tell me it didn't mean anything; clearly it did, or you would have told me sooner. But it happened. It's done.”

“It's done,” I agree. “He came by to say good-bye to me before I left, and I told him that you were a part of me. I told him that I couldn't betray you again. I suppose that may not be worth much to you now, but—”

“It's worth a lot,” Basil says.

“I meant it.”

“I know.”

He stares at his plate, forces himself to eat one of the grapes. When he looks up again, he offers me a smile, and I know that he wants to let this be the end of it. But I also know that something has changed between us. I don't know what it means, but I know it can't be undone.

The rest of the afternoon is a blur. The king sends us out to the field where our jet first landed. A patrolman tells us about the sunstone mining process, but his words are very rehearsed. The guards in gray are listening to everything we say.

It isn't until after dinner, when the sun has just set, that Basil and I are granted a few moments of reprieve. We walk a narrow dirt path in the garden behind the clock tower. There are guards and patrolmen along the way, but if I ignore them, it feels a bit like Basil and I are alone.

“You've been wearing that worried expression all day,” I tell him. “Is it because of what we talked about?”

“No,” he says, and in a show of devotion he takes my hand. “No, it has nothing to do with that.”

“Well, are you going to tell me? I was never good at guessing games.”

He hesitates. “If I don't, you'll find out soon enough. May as well hear it from me.”

“Hear what?”

He stops our walking, and as I face him, he takes my other hand. “I've loved you my whole life,” he says. “Even when we were children, before ‘love' was the word I'd use to describe it. And you were always running over the boundary lines, wherever we were. If there was a line to the shuttle, you had to move ahead. If there was a butterfly, you had to run after it and see where it was flying. And as we got older, your boundaries broadened. I've always sensed your need to wander.”

I don't know that this is appropriate talk with patrolmen in such proximity, but I don't try to stop him. Somehow I know that what he's trying to say is big, and I want to hear it.

“You loved to explore,” he says. “So I wanted that for you. It doesn't surprise me at all that you found a way to the ground.” He squeezes my hands. “I love that about you; you have to know that. I've never wanted to be the thing that held you in place.”

“Of course you haven't. Basil, what are you trying to say?”

“This morning, when I spoke to King Furlow, he told me that our return to Internment may or may not be permanent, but he emphasized how important it is for us to give our people hope. And the way he means to do that is to make examples of us. Show everyone that even though we went to the ground and came back, and even though all of this mining is going on, things can be normal. They can turn out happily.”

I search his face. I can see sweat forming at his temples. “Turn out happily?” I say.

“In marriage,” he says. “King Furlow wants us to get married.”

My mouth is dry and I can't feel my heart beating. I am hollow. “When?” My voice feels far away.

“In another week, on the first of September. He wants to hold a big ceremony.”

“But there's never a big ceremony for weddings,” I say, though none of this feels real. When Alice and Lex were married, I think he gave her a bouquet of flowers, and we had a small party for them in our apartment, but weddings happen often enough, and it would be impractical to turn them into a big affair.

“He says I'll get to see my parents and Leland there,” he says lamely.

I nod. “Good. That's—that's good.”

He frowns. “Morgan, if you don't want to, maybe we can reason with him.”

“No,” I say, because we both know there is no reasoning with King Furlow, and I don't want Basil getting killed because of me. “No, I think we should do it.”

“Really?”

“It isn't as though we weren't going to get married eventually anyway,” I say practically. “It'll be a little sooner than we expected, is all.”

He tries to smile, and I can see how frightened he is. Of the king. Of this new plan. Of everything.

“I'm only sorry Pen can't be there,” I say. “When she finds out I got married without her, she's going to throw a fit of epic proportions.” When I laugh, Basil laughs too, both of us trying to make light of this bizarre situation.

All around us, the stars are bright and still in their sky.

I don't allow myself to wonder what's happening on the ground below our floating city. I can't afford the pain.