Broken Crowns (23 page)

“I truly believe she's going to kill herself with stress,” Pen says. “What's the king's plan? He can hide Nim from her for only so long. She's going to want to know where he is when she's giving birth.”

“I think he's hoping she'll forget about him.”

“He must not know much about love, then,” Pen says. “Or his daughter.”

“I would believe that.”

Pen moves to sit beside me, rests her head on my shoulder, and weaves her arm around mine. “Whatever happens now, I'm just so glad you're okay. I didn't know what would become of you after you left.”

“I spoke with your father,” I say. I feel her body tense. “I didn't tell him what I knew. But, Pen, he's valuable to King Furlow. And to Nim. He knew about the plans to assassinate King Ingram.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” Pen says, and it's as though she's speaking about a stain on her skirt. “He is head engineer and all that. The king has always favored him.”

“You won't have to go back to him. Not ever again. Things are different now.”

She pulls away from me and sits upright. “I'm not afraid of my father. I told you.” She's focused on a crease in her skirt, and she works to smooth it.

“Pen—”

She looks at me. “The royals don't drink tonic, did you know? Internment's king must be ready to make a decision at a moment's notice. The queen and their children must also be ready, in case there's a death that leaves them in charge. So there's not a drop of tonic to be found in this apartment, and this isn't a conversation I wish to have unless I am very drunk.”

I put my hand over hers. “All right. I'm sorry.”

“Besides,” she says with more verve, “we have enough problems to contend with, don't we? For starters, I nearly missed your wedding.” She laughs at the absurdity of it and I do too.

I tell her about the fight Basil and I had after I told him about Judas, and the clumsy reconciliation. It's nice, really, to have normal problems and to pretend a fight with my betrothed is the most harrowing thing in my world.

“I'm relieved that the jet landed when it did,” I blurt. “It isn't that I want to be with anyone other than Basil; it's just, after all of this, I want it to be my choice. And I know him; I know that he didn't want it to happen that way, either.” I look uncertainly at the floor and then back to her. “Does that make me sound awfully selfish?”

She gives a wan smile. “No,” she says. “Internment is frozen in time. Down on the ground, girls have already broken free. That's why we saw all those brilliant night clubs, and why the harbor was so alive at night. Marriage is fine and safe and nice, but there's so much else to do with our youth.”

“I never thought I'd hear you say that Internment is frozen in time,” I say. “Whenever I would talk about the ground before all of this, you'd try to shut me up.”

“I was frightened,” she confesses. “I love this city and I always will. It's my home. But I thought that if I understood its laws and I believed hard enough, no matter what I endured in life, things would always settle right side up in the end. I see now how small this place is. I was treating it like a god, but it's only a city.”

“A magical floating city,” I say, and we both laugh.

“I thought that being away from Internment would kill us. I thought it would make me question the god in the sky and everything we've been taught—and it has. I do question everything. But I want to have my questions. I want to have more thoughts than my mind can hold, so many that I have to write them in fragments like a madman.”

“How much madder do you want to get?” I say.

She only smiles.

It takes nearly two weeks for the trains to resume running. The fence is repaired, and patrolmen are stationed all along it at every section to deter trespassers. Basil, Pen, Thomas, and I are free to roam the kingdom again, and though we're frequently bombarded with questions about the ground, no one seems to wish us harm.

Basil and Thomas are reunited with their families. I tell Basil that he should return home to them, but while he spends much of his days with his family, still he chooses to spend his nights with me in the clock tower. I want to look after Celeste, who is homebound and desperately lonely.

Pen doesn't return home at all, not even to see her mother, despite all her worrying. She doesn't say as much, but I know that she's afraid of being pulled back into that place again, and that this time she won't be able to leave. Pen's mother should have been the one protecting her, but it was always the other way around.

When I'm not being asked about Havalais, people ask me about the princess. They want to know if the rumors that she's dying are true. I smile and say that she's on the mend.

This is my only lie. Even Celeste's spirits have begun to drop, and she looks worse than ever. She has not been allowed to so much as step outside, not even within the confines of the royal gardens, since the jet returned, because the king is so terrified that someone will spot her. Her own mother's rapid decline and the months of isolation have begun to break her spirit, a spirit I once thought impenetrable.

One afternoon, when she's too exhausted to be up and about, I sit at her bedside and read to her. There must be a storm below us, because the clouds are especially thick and gray. Her still-bright eyes focus on the window and I know that she's missing the rain; it's one of her favorite wonders. She's tethered to that world below us forever now.

“Morgan.” She interrupts me, and the words I was reading fade away. “Nim is in trouble. Isn't he?”

“No,” I say. “I saw him just last night. Your father won't allow him to see you, and he is quite angry you both went over his head, but that's what you expected, isn't it?”

“I'm not that blind,” she says, and pushes herself upright, her hands smoothing over her stomach like it's a globe filled with all the places she wishes to see. “My father has a cruel side. My brother and I have known since we were children. But we thought, ‘Papa loves us, so he must be a good man. We'll understand one day.' ”

“Don't you still believe that?” I say.

She shakes her head. “I'm not a child anymore,” she says. “I don't believe things simply because I want them to be so.”

She winces at a stab of pain. They've been happening now for days. She should be in a hospital; even Prince Azure has told his father as much, but the king refuses. Whether it's for fear of his daughter's safety or fear of losing control of his own kingdom if anyone finds out about this child of two worlds, I don't know. But I suspect the latter. I fear he would let her die in childbirth from lack of care if it meant keeping the child a secret.

“Is there anything I can get you?” I say. “Have you had anything to drink today, at least?”

She closes her eyes for a long moment, and I can see that she's still in pain. “Find my brother,” she says. “Make sure he's alone.” As I stand, she grips my arm. “Don't let my father know.”

“I won't. I'll be right back, I promise.” She tightens her grip before she releases it. “I promise,” I say again, to convince myself as well.

She doesn't ask me to find Nimble. She knows it would be no use. He would already be by her side if he were free.

I hurry down the steps, through the lobby that is only sparsely populated by people collecting their wages, and make my way down the set of halls that leads to the basement. The prince has been busy these past two weeks, playing his father's politics and overseeing the prisoners. He interviews the men from the ground every day, testing their potential loyalty. I can see all the while that his heart isn't in it. He and his sister have lost whatever respect they held for their father, and have even come to fear him.

While Celeste has begun evading her father, Prince Azure has grown disdainful of him. He doesn't say as much, but I can see it in the way he speaks to the prisoners, as though he sympathized with their anger at being trapped here, as though he knew of a less barbaric way to handle this if only he were king.

But I see it especially in the way he cares for Nimble Piper, spooning water into his mouth when his jaw is clamped shut, whispering that he must get better for the sake of his own kingdom.

When I open the basement door, I find the prince sitting on the top step, pale, exasperated, staring down into the darkness. He barely offers me a glance.

“They never tire of orders,” he says. “Our patrolmen. They can't live without someone telling them what to do. It's all so exhausting, having to think for them.”

I would love to argue against this. My father, at least, was one who did not accept orders without question. But there's no time. “You have to get to Celeste,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “She's in pain again. I think—” I look around to be sure we're alone, and then I whisper, “I think it's time.”

He's on his feet in an instant, his self-pitying fatigue gone. He rushes past me, and I follow him up the stairs and into the apartment.

Celeste has tumbled out of bed and she's standing with her hands pressed against the window ledge, head down, struggling to draw even breaths. Her bedsheets are dampened through.

“Leste.” The prince is gasping for air, but he's gentle when he wraps his arm around her shoulders and brings her back to the bed. “I'm right here. What do you need?”

She shakes her head. “I don't know! I thought Nim would be here for this. I thought I would be prepared.” She shudders with pain.

“Leste, listen to me. I'm going to send for our doctor. It's going to be fine. The doctor will know exactly what to do.”

“You can't,” she sobs. “Papa will try to take the baby away. He'll put it wherever he's put Nim.”

“I won't let him. I won't.” He's speaking so calmly, like he's reading a bedtime story to a child. “I'll be right back.”

“No!” She's clinging to his arm as he stands. “Please!”

“Don't be stupid,” he says. “I've gone along with this plan of yours—not that I've had any choice in the matter—but I won't let you do this without a doctor.”

Her fingers are digging into his skin, and he has to wrench himself free. “Az!” She doubles over with pain, and I see the anguish on his face as he rushes past me. I could swear there were tears in his eyes.

I have never seen Celeste so hysterical. It's the fear, not the pain, that's doing it. I sit beside her at the edge of the bed, and I don't speak in dulcet tones, I don't try to console her. I know that she won't believe me.

It's an eternity before the prince returns, a doctor in tow. He's a small man with hair that's severely slicked back, and he's much older than any doctor who would be allowed to practice. The prince surely pulled him out of dodder housing.

“Strip the bed,” he tells me, and his tone is so icy and authoritative, I oblige quickly and with shaking hands. He opens his medical bag and produces a flame generator used for cooking in apartments without electricity. He sends me away to fill a pot with water.

My mind is spinning. After I've brought the water, I'm not allowed back into the room. I sit on the floor in the hallway, staring at an oil coloring of the prince and princess as children, arm in arm in their finest white dress.

“Doctor O. has been with our family for years,” Prince Azure says as he comes out of his sister's room. Exiled as well, no doubt. “He's the doctor who saw to our genders before we were in the womb. He's the one who delivered us.”

The prince is known for his poise, but now he drops to the floor across from me, his arm draped over his angled knee, and he looks as though he could melt into the floorboards. “A curious thing, isn't it? Our genders being determined even before we're born. The king and queen wanted an heir and a spare, and they knew just how we should be assembled. They ordered us as though we were items on a menu.”

He nods to his sister's closed door. “Sometimes I think we were born all wrong, my sister and I. Sure, we know how to dress the part, but we have our own wild ideas about what we would do if the kingdom were left to us.

“I'm better at playing along. I pretend I'll be the king my father wants me to be. I say yes and I go along, knowing I can rule my own way once it's my turn. My sister has no patience for that. No sense of strategy. She's always been stupidly impulsive. But I never thought she would take it this far.”

I say nothing. He isn't seeking words of comfort. There's a pained cry from the other side of the door, and he bows his head.

“This baby will merge two worlds, won't it?” he says, with a humorless laugh. “But it has to get here the same grotesque way the rest of us did.”

Celeste shouldn't be alone on that soiled mattress. She should be in a hospital, surrounded by electricity and nurses. Nim should be beside her. She was so small and frightened when I left her.