Broken Crowns (29 page)

The coronation ceremony is to take place in the evening. The new king and Nimble have been in conference for days, with Celeste growing all the more anxious.

At last, with three hours before the ceremony, the door to the king's study opens and we're invited inside.

It's a bizarre council for a king. His advisers consist of Pen, Celeste, and myself. He's still determining whether Basil is trustworthy. The table could easily seat a dozen heads. Past kings might have chosen as few as three advisers, though all of them would have been men, and all of them much older and better versed in the old ways than we are.

But this king does not care for the old ways, and we are the only ones on this floating city whom he can truly trust.

“So kind of you to finally invite us in, Brother,” Celeste says, breezing past him and taking the seat beside Nimble, who looks at her with concern. Though there's color in her cheeks and she looks well, something has changed. She's aged years in just a few days.

Her hair falls straight before her rigid shoulders, with no braided crown. She's wearing a loose button-up dress that hides her figure, with a lace collar that just brushes her clenched jaw. She looks a decade older than the mischievous princess who stowed away on the metal bird. Nonetheless she still looks the part of the princess Internment loves—pretty and benign.

“Celeste,” the new king says, “I've invited you here so that we might get through this bloody ceremony as a team. But for that to work, I need you to trust me without having a tantrum about hierarchy.”

“Tantrum?” She looks at him innocently. “Of course not, Your Majesty. I'm only the spare. Here to serve.”

He rubs his temples and sighs. To the group of us he says, “None of us has ever been to a coronation ceremony, but throughout history they've been transcribed, and I can tell you from the pages I've just slogged through that they are long and insufferable. This won't be one of those.”

“Won't it have to be?” Pen says. “You're declaring so many changes to our law.”

“It hasn't been all fun and games behind this locked door,” he says. “I've written several new laws and arranged for copies to be delivered to every home. I believe it's better this way. More organized.”

The new king sits uneasily at the head of the table, still wearing one of his white ruffled shirts. He looks nothing at all like a king, and I worry over whether he'll be able to command this city.

“The feature of my coronation speech will be with regards to the ground,” he says. “Pen has done the math, and it's her prediction that it will take roughly five years for Internment to resurface to its coordinates before the jet began making passage. Knowing that, Nimble—being the king of Havalais now—will head a project to build aircrafts that will travel between the two kingdoms. If all goes well, there will be a larger jet that will carry citizens between the two kingdoms every five years.”

Celeste looks between her brother and Nim. “Five years?” she says. “Where will I be during that time?”

Here the new king pauses. No emotion registers on his face, but I can see that he's holding his breath and there's a slight twitching in his thumb. “You and your child will be on the ground,” he says. “Someone with royal blood from Internment must be there to oversee the project and to serve as a representative of our kingdom. There's no one better suited than you.”

Celeste stares, with wide, dazed eyes, at nothing in particular. She wanted an important role, but I doubt this was what she had in mind.

“Five years.” Her voice is a whisper. She looks at King Azure. “When will we leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“But what about Mother?”

He can't give her an answer she'll want to hear. No one speaks, and the silence rises up around us like waves. When I can bear it no longer, I say, “King Ingram had a radio that he used to communicate with your father, didn't he?”

“Yes,” the new king says, and clears his throat. “Pen has been tinkering with that.”

“It's a bit archaic, but functional,” Pen offers. “It operates on radio waves, and as long as there's something to pick up the frequency, it will work.” She glances at me for an instant and then away. “I've volunteered to return to Havalais and prepare weekly reports, and technology will be one of the things I observe.”

A stone-solid weight sinks in my stomach. And suddenly five years feels like a lifetime.

The new king must pick up on my worry, because he leans toward me and says, “Morgan, I'd very much prefer if you stayed here. You know more than I do about the day-to-day life in this city. You've grown up in the public, unlike my sister and me. Your family had a jumper and you've been subjected to specialists. You know more than anyone the importance of changing the way of things. And I dare to say I trust you.”

I can't draw a full breath. I hide my hands under the table to conceal their trembling. Though I don't look at her, I can feel Pen's eyes watching me.

“I'd have to think about it, Your Majesty,” I say.

“Yes, do,” he says.

He goes on talking about the changes he means to make in the city, but I can't retain a word of it. Five years away from my brother and Alice. Five years in this city, where my mother is dead and my father is nowhere to be found. Basil would prefer to stay—I know that. He would be with his family again.

But what do I want?

There's a chill under my skin that won't warm. After the meeting has ended, I am the first through the door. I stumble dazedly down the stairwell and out to the garden, where the poppies pool like blood against the cobbles.

If I focus on the center of all the flowers, I stop seeing the edges of the petals, and it becomes a red ocean. The people of Internment can never know the beauty and the terror of all that water below us, filled with fish and animals that could swallow us whole. And the mermaids, and the lights glittering from the harbor. All my life I wondered what lay below this city, and the truth is so much bigger and more fantastic than I could have imagined.

In five years I could see so much more of it. Without Jack Piper to dictate my every move and exploit me for his gain, I could even leave Havalais. I wouldn't have to report back to any king.

I don't know how long I sit there, mystified by all the possibilities, before Basil sits beside me.

I lean against him, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders. It's one thing to know I love him, but quite another to be reminded in this way of how easily my body fits against his, like coming home.

At last, he says, “Pen told me about your meeting with the king.”

I breathe out the weight that's been crushing my chest. “So you know about his offer, then.” I look from the poppies to the sky, with its thin wisps of clouds. The sky is always blue here, always calm, even when it's storming below us. “I don't think I can do it, Basil. I don't think I can stay here for five years. Not if I have the chance to leave.”

“Then you shouldn't.” He says it with such ease, as though he's always known it would come to this. “It's five years, not an eternity. You could always come back if you wanted.”

His body is warm and familiar against mine, and I know that for all the wonders the ground holds, there is nothing like this feeling that I belong. I will always want to come back to him.

Though I dread the answer, I ask, “What will you do if I go?”

He's quiet for a long while, and then he says, “I love you for your adventurous spirit, Morgan, as much as I have always feared it. All my life, I've thought that a day would come when you'd hitch a ride on the wind and soar off into the sky.”

I sit up and turn to face him. “That isn't what I'm doing. You know that, don't you?”

He smiles. “Yes, I know. But if this opportunity had arisen when we were children, I would have tried to make you stay. I would have thought that it was up to me to protect you. The idea of letting go would have terrified me.”

“Basil . . .”

“But I'd rather watch you sail off into the sky than try to keep you here for my sake.”

“You think I should go, then.”

“You didn't need me to tell you that.”

I stare down at my betrothal band, perhaps never to be filled with his blood now that the new king will be doing away with assigned betrothals. These little glass rings have seen thousands upon thousands of marriages. But none has ever been worn by a girl who went off to explore the world alone.

It's only five years, I remind myself. It isn't forever.

I don't have a chance
to give the king an answer before the coronation ceremony.

I borrow one of Celeste's dresses—a soft yellow that reminds me of falling leaves—and follow everyone down the stairs. Along the way, Pen takes my hand and holds tight. She doesn't know yet what my decision will be. I wonder if Thomas will follow her to the ground, but I know that it won't change her mind one way or the other. She's going, with or without him. With or without me.

We've both grown so much in less than a year's time. We're less afraid to face life on our own. I know that she won't try to convince me one way or the other, nor will I for her. We will not always be in the same city. We will float off in opposite directions to explore the worlds, and find each other again and again through the years, reveling in the changes we've made while we were apart.

King Azure stands upon a makeshift stage that is centuries old. Its boards creak with his steps. Internment can never compare to the grandeur of the ground. This is no glittering palace the size of a city. But up here, we don't lose ourselves in the illusion of fineries. This king does not mean to dazzle, merely to reign.

Hundreds of people have come to witness the dawning of a new king. It happens only once in a lifetime, and I suspect the entire city would be here if only it were possible to fit them all in front of the clock tower.

A patrolman is managing the camera that will broadcast the event. King Azure is surrounded by a wall of patrolmen as he begins his coronation speech. As always, Celeste stands in her usual place beside him. But unlike in the other broadcasts, the pair of them don't look bored. There is something fierce in their eyes.

When he speaks, he doesn't get deep into the politics. He focuses mainly on the ground, and that his sister will oversee the development of new aircrafts. In five years, he promises aircrafts large enough to transport as many as fifty passengers at a time. And in the future, perhaps a hundred. Perhaps more. The future is all about expansion.

Celeste is regal and as still as a statue, and I wonder if the prospect of returning to Havalais has left her in a daze. All day I've had a horrible feeling that she will announce the birth of her child or something equally damning. But she doesn't, and once the ceremony is through, I'm relieved. I think she is too. She flees from the stage the moment the speech is over. Her brother turns to her for reassurance, and he's met with only the crowd closing in to speak to him.

Someone asks him about the princess's health. She was rumored to be at death's door just a few days ago, after all.

“The king talks to his citizens?” Nim says.

“Of course,” I say. “But then, he doesn't have a castle to retreat to. Not like you will once you return.”

“Oh, that old thing,” Nim says. “Celeste thinks I ought to use it for something public. A shelter of sorts. I think she's onto something.” He cranes his neck and searches the crowd. “Where is she?”

“Hiding away somewhere, I'm sure.” I nudge him. “You should go inside and look for her.”

Once he's gone, I slip through the crowd and begin making my way to the woods. I don't want King Azure to find me. Not yet. Not until I'm ready to answer his proposal.

Just when I've broken free of the ceremony, someone grabs my arm and reels me back. I expect Pen, here to scold me about leaving her to fend for herself in that commotion, but instead I find myself staring into the face of a boy I don't recognize.

He's almost too flawless to be real. A well-colored drawing in one of Birdie's fashion magazines, not a blond hair on his head out of place. “Don't run off so soon,” he says, his voice as gentle as it is menacing. “I have so wanted to meet the girl who's been to the ground and back. Morgan, isn't it? I'm Virgil.”

In our history book, Virgil was the name of a scribe who fell in love with an uncorrupted who became a star in the sky after she died. Her name was Celeste.

I pull my arm free of his grip. It's all so very on-the-nose. So this is the boy the princess was fated to marry, the one who was conceived just to be her match.

The historical Virgil did not end up with the historical Celeste, and I wonder if this boy has realized yet that history will repeat itself.

“Yes,” I say. “Is there something I can help you with?”