Broken Crowns (5 page)

“Agreed,” he says.

Nim is gone after lunchtime, off to King Ingram's castle to play the good son to Jack Piper for once, in an attempt to stay in his graces.

Pen and Thomas are playing a board game. They're leaning toward each other on opposing sides of the coffee table, the crowns of their blond heads almost touching.

It's a beautiful day, and Alice has taken Amy and the youngest Pipers outside. Through an open window I can hear them laughing in the garden. This Havalais air has had a positive effect on Amy; she hasn't had one of her fits in months.

Basil is trying to engage me in a game of cards. The decks they use on the ground are similar to our own, and with a bit of compromise we can duplicate most of the games we played back home. But I am having the hardest time sitting still. My leg shakes anxiously. My mind is spinning out dozens of scenarios about Nim's efforts at the castle.

Should I tell Judas and Amy any of this?

The thought of Judas brings a rush of heat to my cheeks. We've barely spoken in weeks, and I don't see him anywhere now, but somehow I feel his presence hiding nearby, as always, just out of frame. We have scarcely spoken since our kiss, save for a few benign polite exchanges—
good morning; yes, please; thank you
—but time has done nothing to extinguish my curiosity about him. Time has not assuaged my guilt, and the sight of him still confuses me. I do not know what it will take to rid myself of that kiss, but I would pay any price to undo it. I would pay any price to stop wanting another.

Basil lays his stack of cards on the table and then gently takes the cards from my hands too. I blink dumbly at him.

“Would a walk help take your mind off it?” he says.

I shake my head. “I don't want to be gone when Nim gets back.”

“We won't go far,” he says. “Come on. The air will do you some good.”

He's right. As soon as we've stepped outside, I feel less anxious. There's some comfort in hearing the living things in the grass and in the sky. A blue bird shoots from one tree to the next, and I wish I could capture a perfect image of him to take back home. There are no birds on Internment, only speculation as to what they must be like.

Basil and I walk a lap around the hotel, past the charred altar where Nim burnt his beloved car in offering so that his sister might live. Whether or not it was an answered prayer, Birdie did pull through. It makes me wonder if their god is real. It makes me wonder if any god is real, or if it's only easier to believe in that than in the arbitrary series of events that make up all our lives.

“What do you think it's like back home?” I say, to break the silence.

Basil is not one to lie about the way of things. “Ugly. I wonder what King Furlow is doing to reassure everyone. If he's able to do anything at all.”

“I never realized how small Internment was until we came here,” I say. “From down here it just looks like a big clot of dirt in the sky. If I had lived down here all my life, I would never have suspected there was any life up there. I would think it a mistake of nature, something small enough to fit into my palm if only I could reach out and take it.”

How strange that I've lived so much of my life on a clump of dirt in an infinite sky. After all these months, I can feel myself starting to forget how alive it was up there, how bright and cheerful.

We've stopped walking, and as I shield my eyes and stare up at Internment, I can feel Basil watching me. My heart is fluttering in my chest, anxious and frightened and strangely thrilled. It is an act of bravery for me to look at him when he makes me feel this way.

“I was wrong, all those times I said your eyes might be the same color as the sea down here,” he says.

“No?”

“No,” he says. “They're still the brightest blue I've ever seen.”

I look at the ground, flustered, smiling. Without looking at him, I can feel his victorious smirk.

“You're being too kind,” I say.

“Ridiculous accusation. When have you ever known me to be kind?”

“It's true; you're a real beast most days. Flat-out tyrannical.”

He laughs. Somehow my arm ends up around his back, and his around my shoulders, squeezing me close. The sun burns the crown of my hair, and despite the warmth, my blood is running chills up and down my spine.

I want to tell him everything. About Judas kissing me in the grass, and the way he still haunts my thoughts even though he is surely using me to quell his loneliness. I want to tell Basil that I'm sorry, that I've made a mess of everything, that I'm scared.

But here beside him, insects hopping around our feet, all the worlds have gone still. This planet has stopped rotating around its sun. Everything is calm. We're safe here. We'll be okay.

After dinner,
I help Alice with the dishes. For security purposes, Jack Piper has dismissed most of the hotel's staff, and chores like these are supposed to fall to his children, but Alice always gets to them first. Years of being married to my brother have left her restless and with an endless desire to make things clean.

She hands me a clean white plate, and I go over it with the dishrag. “Do you want to go back home?” I say.

She shakes her head. “I couldn't leave your brother, and he's told me he won't return. Not after what the king did to your parents, and especially to you.”

“I didn't ask you what Lex wants. I asked what you want.”

She smiles. It is a kind, wistful smile. “Should there be any difference?”

“What a thing to say. Of course there's a difference.”

She hands me another dish. “After your brother jumped, one afternoon while he was still in the hospital, I came home to tend to the plants, and there was a letter waiting for me at the door, from my parents. I was welcome to return home if I estranged myself from Lex. But if not, they felt it best for me not to associate with them anymore.”

I suspected as much. Alice's parents stopped coming around, and jumpers carry a stigma. With the exception of Pen and Basil, I lost virtually all my friends. Still, to hear it said out loud disgusts me. There is no one kinder than Alice, and no one who deserves kindness more.

“That's the thing about marriage, love. You hope you won't ever have to choose, but if there's a choice to be made, it's the one whose blood is in your ring. It doesn't matter how many worlds there are; our place is with each other.”

“Lex doesn't deserve you,” I say. “Truly.”

She smiles. “But there is nothing left for me up there,” she adds. “Since you asked. Everything I need is here.”

I don't know that there's much left on Internment for me either. I tell myself that my father is still alive up there, and that I'll be reunited with him. But when that happens, will he want to leave Internment behind? He risked his life trying to do just that.

After Alice and I have finished with the dishes, I slip outside unnoticed, and I walk to the ocean's edge, where the boats bob along lengths of rope. This place is asleep, like all of Havalais, lying in wait for a solution to this war. I lie in the sand for what feels like hours, fixated on that dark shadow of earth in the sky.

Long after the sun has set, Nim still hasn't returned. The smallest Pipers are asleep.

I lie in bed while Pen reads one of Birdie's catalogs by candlelight. She's got a drawing pad resting on her knee, and she keeps returning to a sketch she started earlier this evening of Ehco, a divinity that lives in the sea and contains all the world's sadness. It's Birdie's favorite story from
The Text
, and I suppose the drawing will be a gift for Birdie when she returns home.

“Pen?”

I can hear the rapid strokes of the pencil on the page. “Mm? Sorry, am I keeping you awake?”

“No.” I turn onto my side so I'm facing her. “It's just that you've been so guarded with your secrets lately. Why did you tell me your theory about Internment sinking?”

She goes on sketching. “It wasn't the right time before now. No sense making you panic until King Ingram was back and we could do something about it.”

“It's just . . . After I told Celeste about the phosane, and she went to the king, I thought you hadn't forgiven me. I thought I'd been locked out of your head.”

The pencil stills in her hand. She stares down at the page as she speaks, with difficulty. “I thought about everything,” she says in a soft voice. “I thought about what it would have done to me to pull you out of the water, with you the one not breathing. I . . .” She draws a line on the page, feebly. “I saw it all very clearly, and I understood why you did it. I can't say I'd have done something different if the tables had been turned.”

She clears her throat. “And besides, you could strike a match and set Internment on fire. You could lose your wits and destroy it all. I'd still be here. There's nothing in the worlds that I couldn't forgive you for.”

The words are so sincere and candid that I'd like to get up and embrace her. But I don't move for fear of breaking this fragile moment between us. I have known Pen since before we were old enough to speak, and perhaps that is why so much of our friendship is built on what goes unsaid. But it feels so good to hear her say those words.

“I could never turn my back on you, either,” I tell her.

“I know what I'm like, Morgan. I know it's not easy.”

“So it's not easy,” I say. “What is?”

She smiles briefly, and then allows herself to be distracted anew by her drawing.

I close my eyes, and eventually I feel myself fading into sleep, soothed by the sound of pencil on paper and catalog pages turning.

But it isn't a very sound sleep, because when there's a knock on the door, I'm startled awake.

“You girls awake?” Nim whispers through the door.

Pen is still sitting up by the candle. “Come in,” she says.

I comb my fingers through my hair and wipe away the drool in the corner of my mouth, hastily trying to make myself presentable.

Nim opens the door and peeks his head in. “I didn't see the king. Or my father. I wasn't permitted into any of the meetings. My father isn't exactly happy with me these days.”

“But you were gone all day,” Pen says. “What were you doing?”

Nim smirks. “I was speaking with a few of the king's men. You remember how I said they were unhappy with things since the harbor? One of the men is assigned to guard King Ingram's special guest, come down from Internment. My contact is escorting the guest to a meeting spot for us, but we have to go right now.”

“Him?” I say, trying to keep myself from hoping that the guest from home could possibly be my father. The disappointment would be unbearable if I were wrong.

“I think you'll love this,” Nim says. “Hurry on and get dressed. I'll meet you outside.”

I'm on my feet as soon as he's closed the door. I'm finished changing before Pen. “I have to get Basil,” I say. “He'll want to come.”