Broken Crowns (2 page)

“Internment won't fall out of the sky,” I say. I am gentle with her, but firm. I have heard Amy wonder about Internment coming down. I wondered myself, as a child. But Pen is different. She gets ideas like these in her head and they become real to her. She forgets what's in front of her and sees only what's in her mind, and just like that she's lost.

A mechanical growling from somewhere high above us disturbs the tranquil gray sky, and I flinch. Not even the largest beast on Internment could make a sound like that. The sound comes from the king's jet, descending from Internment for its monthly fuel delivery.

At the start of each month, the king's jet returns to Havalais to deliver more phosane that it has mined from Internment's soil. A refinery was built in Havalais to process that soil into fuel. In the mornings when I step outside, I can see the plumes of black smoke billowing out into the air, and sometimes I can smell it, too—like compost and metal.

But in six months, King Ingram has yet to return with his men, and after the delivery is made, the jet flies back to Internment for more. It's a wonder there is any city left up there at all.

The warring kingdom of Dastor has seen the jet's comings and goings. Nimble tells us that the war has moved to the home front. Boys even younger than he is are being recruited to fight. If Dastor means to have Internment and its fuel source, it will have to take ownership of Havalais itself.

“It won't happen,” he's told us. “Havalais is bigger, more advanced.”

I'm not so certain. I see nothing of the war from the confines of this sheltered world where Jack Piper raised his children, but sometimes when the air is still, I think I hear gunfire.

Pen puts her hand over mine, and I realize that I've been holding my breath. I know she's trying to keep me calm. She has heard me tossing and turning in my bed at night as I worry what news this king will bring when he returns from Internment. Only, I don't feel worry now. I don't feel anything, not even the dread that King Ingram usually ignites in me.

“We should go back and tell the others,” I say.

Pen gnaws her lip, and even as she sits up, her face is still angled skyward. “It's probably just another delivery,” she says, and she is likely right. Five times before this, the jet has returned, and five times we have all waited in silence for word of the king's arrival, and it never comes.

I pull Pen to her feet, and we make our way back to the hotel, both of us looking over our shoulders as the jet moves at an angle. Like a bird. Like a city falling from the sky.

Basil and Thomas arrive at the front steps moments before Pen and I do. Back on Internment, Pen's and my friendship was the only bond between them, but since coming here they've forged something like an independent friendship of their own, perhaps because if nothing else they have home in common.

They wouldn't have been able to go very far. Jack Piper has forbidden us to leave the grounds, for our own protection, all on the king's orders that we are to be kept away from anyone who may have sinister intentions for us now that it's revealed that we come from the magical floating island above this world. Though, the people of Havalais have more cause to distrust their king than to harm us.

Truth be told, I don't mind the restriction half the time. It makes me feel safe. Reminds me of the train tracks that surrounded me back home.

Other times, my wanderer's spirit comes out for a visit and I wonder at when this will all be over.

“We were walking back from the theme park when we saw the jet,” Thomas says. “Did you see it?”

“Yes,” I say.

Princess Celeste became a pawn when King Ingram needed access to Internment. King Furlow up in his sky has only two weaknesses, and those weaknesses are his children. He would allow King Ingram to have anything he asked for in exchange for Celeste's safe return.

I have worried for her in silence. Pen would be angry if I so much as brought her name up. But I do hope that she's well, and that her decision making abilities have improved.

Basil's standing close. His eyes are on me, and whether or not he knows it, he still sets my stomach fluttering.

Another gust of wind comes, and even the fearless Pen hugs her arms across her stomach and shivers.

Thomas frowns at her. “I've been looking all over for you.”

“Not all over, clearly, or you'd have found me,” she says.

He stands at a pace's distance from her, and I can see the worry in his eyes. I can see that he is trying to get a whiff of tonic on her breath. When he can't find one, he looks to me, and while Pen isn't watching I give a slight shake of my head. She's sober.

The jet has quit rumbling in the sky; presumably it has landed.

“Come on,” I say to Pen, and hold the door open. “Let's see if we can find something in the kitchen you're willing to eat.”

She follows me into the house, past the smallest Piper children, who are playing a war game in the living room. Annie is a soldier whose legs were blown off in an explosion, and Marjorie is a nurse applying a tourniquet. I have seen them play this game a dozen times, and it is anyone's guess whether Annie will survive her wounds. Last time, an explosion hit their pretend medical tent and all the nurses and soldiers were killed.

I hate this game, but I think it makes them feel closer to Riles.

Up at the top of the stairs, Amy watches them from between the bars of the railing, not quite ready for human interaction. She has been quiet since her grandfather's death, and she's added another cloth around her wrist beside the one meant to symbolize her sister.

“Let's say I lost my arm too,” Annie says.

“Which one?” Marjorie asks.

“The left.”

“Would you girls like to help me in the garden?” Alice calls down from the top of the stairs. She cannot bear this game of theirs.

Annie sits up from her deathbed on the hearth. “Why do you tend to the garden? We have a gardener.”

“It just makes me happy, I suppose,” Alice says. She reaches the bottom step and holds her hands out to them, and they forget their game and happily follow her outside.

In the kitchen, Pen and I sit at the small table reserved for the maids, and Pen bites into a raw carrot from the cold box.

“I wish you'd stop looking so worried,” she says.

“I can't play it as cool as you, I suppose.”

She stares at me for a long moment, and then she says, “You're not the only one who has nightmares about what's happening back home. Just because I don't talk about it doesn't mean I don't care.”

“I know that you care. That's what's so frustrating,” I say. “We've hardly spoken in months.”

“What are you going on about ‘we've hardly spoken'? We share a room. We speak every day. We're speaking right now.”

“You know what I mean.”

She takes another bite of the carrot, with a crunch I swear is meant to be pointed. “You'll forgive me if I don't entirely trust you with my secrets these days.”

I know just what she means. It has been a source of contention that's never fully gone away these past several months. She discovered that Internment's soil contains the very fuel source King Ingram wants for his kingdom, and she confided this secret to me. But after she nearly drowned, I told the princess everything, hoping an alliance could be forged between Internment and Havalais, giving us all a chance to return home.

Instead, King Ingram used the princess as a hostage and has been depleting Internment of its soil as he pleases.

I don't know the enormity of what's already happened and what's to come, but even so I wouldn't take back what I did. I'm still holding out hope that I'll be able to return Pen home to her family, to the city that she loves so much that she's been going to pieces without it.

So I say nothing, and Pen can see that she's wounded me. “Nim says Birdie has had her last surgery, and can come home soon,” she says to change the subject. “She'll still be confined to her wheelchair, but I doubt that will last for long.”

I push my chair away from the table. “I'm going to make some tea for Lex.”

“Oh, Morgan, don't be cross. I didn't mean it. I'm just on edge because of that bloody jet.”

“I know,” I say softly.

I hope that this time the king has returned, and the princess as well, alive and safe. Whatever news they bring will surely be better than all this wondering and fear.

I don't know what sort of mood Lex will be in when I reach the top of the stairs, but he's been especially sour lately. He's running low on paper for his transcriber, and soon he will no longer be able to spend his days hiding in his fictional worlds.

I knock when I reach his door.

“Alice?” he says.

“No, it's me.” Back home he always knew when I was the one approaching him, but something about this house and its noises disorients him. “I've brought some tea.”

“Oh,” he says, rather unenthusiastically. “Come in.”

He's sitting in a wing chair near the open window, and the worry on his face mirrors my own from earlier. He doesn't care for the wind; perhaps it reminds him too much of the edge. “The weather down here takes some getting used to,” I say. I press the teacup into his hand, not letting go until I'm sure he's got a grip on it.

“I have a bad feeling,” he says.

“Me too.”

I hesitate, standing before him, debating with myself whether to tell him what I saw in the sky.

But in the end I'm not given a choice. Even without his sight, Lex is clever at sensing when anything is wrong. “What is it, Little Sister? What's happened?”

I wring my skirt in my hands. “We saw the jet about an hour ago. Pen, Basil, Thomas, and I. We've been waiting for someone to come home and tell us what it means.”

Lex is silent for a long moment. “I heard.” He takes a sip of his tea and then with minimal fumbling he sets it on the window ledge. “So it begins,” he says.

“There's no need to be so theatrical,” I say. “It may be good news.”

“A greedy king in a wasteland of wealth holds a princess hostage so that he may invade a tiny floating city, and you still think he may return with good news. My sister the optimist.”

I am tired of being called an optimist as though it were a bad thing. Pen has used this word against me as well. “I'm merely trying not to panic, Lex.” I hold myself back from saying anything too combative. I don't want to fight, and it has taken me so long to stop hating my brother for lying to me about our father being dead. I would like for us to be reasonable with each other.

“Where is Alice?” he asks. Maybe he wants to avoid an argument too.

“She's in the garden.”

“And she knows about the jet?”

“I told her when we came back inside. We're all waiting now. Drink your tea, all right? Alice will be up to check on you in a bit.”

As I cross the threshold, he says, “Morgan?”

I turn.

“Be careful.”

“I'm only going downstairs.”

“I never know what mad and wild adventures you'll get off to on a whim.”

I can't help but smile at the thought. Mad and wild adventures. It's not something he ever would have accused me of back home, when I was tucked safely in our little floating world.