Burning Kingdoms (23 page)

I begin to think of Prince Azure, up in his sky, ailing from the wound Pen inflicted upon him. I’ve hoped for him to survive, out of common decency and regard for human life, but for the first time I truly hope Celeste can return home and find him safe and well. Even the prince and princess, dressed in their white furs as they squander their days as they please, are not immune to the horrors of Internment’s king.

As a medical student, my brother was needed more than once at the attraction camps. They’re set far from the residential sections, near the remote fields where food animals are bred. Even the trains don’t stop near them. He never spoke of what he saw there—I’m certain he was sworn to silence. Any time I asked about his work, he called me a pest and sent me away. Now I wonder if he was trying to protect me, or if he was trying to forget.

I used to think attraction camps were meant to help. I thought those declared irrational had done something wrong or were broken somehow. I felt so much love for my city, grew up feeling lucky to have been spared by the god of the sky. I don’t know what to believe anymore, and against all reason I am starting to hope that whatever the princess has planned will fix things.

Pen returns from her bath, and I pretend to be asleep. I feel her shadow covering my eyelids. “Morgan?” She pushes on my shoulder. “Are you asleep? Really? It’s only seven thirty.”

When I don’t respond, she leaves me. I hear the brittle pages of
The Text
turning as she picks up where she left off.

“The bit about the ark was interesting,” she says. “Their god flooded the world to start over again. So when their god doesn’t like someone, he tries to drown them.”

I think she’s talking to me, but then I hear Thomas say, “That wasn’t an act of god last night, Pen. That was gin.”

“Well, maybe gin is an act of god, then.”

“Not likely.” The mattress creaking. Soft laughter. “Morgan’s asleep already?”

“Yes,” Pen says. “She’s no fun.”

“You could do with less fun,” Thomas says.

“How unfortunate for you,” she teases. A kiss. “I—” Pen begins, hesitates. “I really am sorry, Thomas.”

Murmurs too soft to hear; a side of her I’m not permitted to know. Every couple on Internment seems to achieve this degree of intimacy but Basil and me. I try to love him the way he loves me, and rather than passion, all I can feel is myself trying.

Pen has spurned Thomas’s advances since they were toddlers, and she never runs out of insults. He looks like composted broccoli or she’d sooner marry a toad.

But now that she thinks no one else can hear, she tells him, as clear as anything, “I love you.”

Why would I say a thing like that?
she told me.

So we’re both liars, then.

15

Thomas leaves,
and Pen reads for what seems like hours. I don’t sleep, not even when the princess comes in and turns out the lights.

Back home, Lex pacing the floorboards above my bedroom used to comfort me, and whatever was troubling me would seem much smaller. But here there’s the chirping of hopping songstresses that go by some other name, and the breathing of my roommates, who only stop arguing when they’re asleep, and the kind of silence that’s a net for too many thoughts.

After my tossing and turning has made enough noise, Pen whispers, “Do you need an anchor?”

“I just can’t get comfortable,” I say. “I think the mattress needs to be flipped.”

“Switch beds with me, then,” she says.

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re angry with me, just come out and say it,” she says.

“I’m not angry with anyone,” I say. “I’m just uncomfortable.”

“You’re full of it, is what you are,” she says.

I turn away and pull the blankets tighter around me. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the lobby adds itself to the silence.

“Whatever I did, I’m sorry,” Pen says. “Is it what I said earlier about you dragging me to this place?”

“It isn’t you.”

“Well, it isn’t the mattress.”

In an act of great mercy, we’re interrupted by a soft knock at the door. The door creaks open. “There’s a Tony Valencia double feature at the cinema,” Birdie whispers. “Anyone interested?”

“Who’s Tony Valencia?” I ask.

“Haven’t I shown you his picture in the magazines?” Birdie says. “He’s the berries.” I don’t know what this means, but her dreamy sigh gives me a good guess.

“Just what I need.” Pen throws back the blankets. “Another man in my life. At least this one doesn’t speak.”

“Part of his charm,” Birdie says. After we’ve changed, Birdie throws beads and pearls around our necks and hustles us for the window.

The air is brilliant and cool. Before I came here, I’d never been outside of a city and its tiny parks and gardens. I didn’t know grass and flowers could go on and on farther than the eye can see.

We walk to the dock and board the ferry, and Pen kneels at the railing and reaches her hand into the water, letting her fingers slice through it as we move.

I keep her in my line of vision as I ask Birdie, “Does your father tell you much about the war?”

“Oh, no,” she says, and glances over her shoulder at the water. “He doesn’t think girls should be bothered. He’d rather confide in my brother, even though Nim would sooner end a war than be a part of one. They can’t see eye to eye, but Father keeps forcing it. He’s already polishing Riles to follow suit. He’s twelve; he isn’t meant to care about politics, but he wants so badly to make Father proud of him.”

“Is that why your mother left?” Pen asks. “All the pressure of living up to his standards?”

“Pen,” I snap.

“What?” She turns to Birdie. “You’re the one who brought her up at dinner. You don’t mind if we talk about her, do you?”

Birdie shakes her head. Her hair bounces around her shoulders. “It’s true.” She leans back on her elbows against the railing. “She wanted to see the world, and Father didn’t understand. She was starting to dress differently. He said she’d changed, but she was the same as she’d always been, if you ask me. She was just getting bolder about what she said aloud. She’s the one who gave Nim his nickname; I suppose she thought being named after our father would make Nim turn out like him. But he would never be like him; she told him he was all soul inside, no fight.”

“Nicknames are a rebirth, where I come from,” Pen says. “A lot of people have them on Internment. They’re a way to cheat the system.”

“All of our given names have to be from an approved list,” I say.

Birdie crinkles her nose. “Sounds like something my father would enjoy. He does love his lists.”

“So—what? Your father made her leave?” Pen asks.

“No,” Birdie says. “I don’t know what happened exactly. One morning she was gone.”

“Gone?” Pen and I say.

“Yep. She sends telegrams and postcards, though. The last time I heard from her, she was studying to learn twelve languages and had become a nude model for some painter halfway across the world. That was a year or so ago.”

I can’t decide whether this is romantic or insane. This must be why betrothals are mandatory back home, to prevent such flighty behavior. Not that a woman who left her family would be able to go very far on Internment.

“But you don’t have arranged betrothals here,” I say. “If your parents were so incompatible, why did they marry at all?”

Birdie smirks. “Nim is the reason they got married. He was completely accidental, and there isn’t a day that goes by that our father lets him forget it. Though, Father isn’t really one to talk, if you know what I mean.”

Alice and Lex come immediately to mind, the injustice of having to lose their own child simply because it wasn’t planned. I force myself to push the thought away.

“You couldn’t make that up if you tried,” Pen says.

“Father tells people that Mother’s in the country caring for her ailing mother. When he’s all tied up in knots about something, he’ll say I look just like her, like he’s accusing me. He’s paranoid that I’ll turn out the same way.”

“Will you?” Pen asks.

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to see the world. And I have no interest in typewriters or childbearing, which is all that’s expected of me here.”

“Typewriters and childbearing are miserable options,” Pen says.

“I don’t see anything wrong with them,” I say.

“Morgan’s a good girl,” Pen says, by way of explanation.

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” I say. I lean around her to look at Birdie. “I think you should be able to do whatever you want. All I meant is that you don’t have to be like one parent or the other.”

“I’ve never had friends like the two of you,” Birdie says. Her smile is an indication of a slow awakening. She is a woman slowly being realized. Her father is afraid of that, and I’d like to tell her so, but I don’t know how to say the words in a way that would make sense. I don’t know how to explain that we have more power than we know. We are young and bright and waiting to see what we are capable of.

The ocean’s mist has caused our hair to frizz around our faces, and I wish that I could hold this moment still, because it is perfect.

The ferry reaches the city. I’m finding that the vertigo I experienced in the transition from the water to the ground has lessened. I’m becoming used to this place.

Birdie walks ahead of us, and she begins to say something, but she hears someone call her name and she spins around. “Nim?” she says, unbelieving. “Riles?” Her brothers are stepping off the ferry. “Were you both there the whole time?”

“Of course we were,” Riles says. “We didn’t swim.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Birdie says. She groans. “Don’t tell me Father sent you after me.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nim says. “We didn’t see you until a second ago. There’s a brass concert in the center that Riles wants to see.” He regards Pen and me. “Our father doesn’t allow brass in the house.”

“Devil’s music,” Riles adds cheerfully. “He thinks it’ll hypnotize me.”

“We don’t have brass on Internment, but I can’t see why it would be banned,” I say.

“We only ban talk of the ground,” Pen says. “Music should be fine as long as it entices people to stay.”

“Internment is weird,” Riles says, and tugs on Nimble’s sleeve. “We’re going to be late.”

Birdie nudges Riles’s backside with her shoe. “Get outta here, kid. You bug me.”

“That’s because you’re bug-eyed,” he says.

“Come over here and say that.” She stoops to his height and they wave their fists at each other in a mock fight until she pulls him into a headlock and he tries in vain to free himself, but he’s laughing.

I tell myself it does no good to be envious, that my brother and I still communicate in our own peculiar way, but I find myself missing the years before he jumped, when he was full of life like this.

“You’re crushing my larynx,” he croaks.

“Fine, you big baby.” She lets him go. “Enjoy your concert.”

Nimble tips his hat to us. “See you at breakfast, ladies.”

Birdie waves. We watch them disappear into the crowd.

“A lot of people tonight,” Pen says.

“This week is the spring festival,” Birdie says. “Everyone in Havalais flocks to the city, it seems. Most of it will begin tomorrow, but a few concerts and carts will be set up tonight.”

“I don’t know anything about war,” Pen says. “But isn’t it a bit of a mockery to have a festival?”

“In a way, that’s what King Ingram wants,” Birdie says. “We have to seem unaffected. From what I understand, Havalais is doing much better than Dastor right now.”

She hasn’t even finished with the words when I hear it. That faraway whistling in the air. My body understands before my mind can catch up. My blood is cold and I’m grabbing Birdie and Pen by the arms, pulling them against me. If they know what I know, they don’t get a chance to say it. We can only stand frozen as the whistling turns into a crash, and the ground shakes under us, and the city turns to smoke and flame.

Screams are everywhere. How they have the energy to scream, I don’t understand. Sound is caught in my throat. My feet are stuck here. My breaths are shallow and loud.

Birdie, wound around my arm, begins to shake. It’s slight at first, and then it overtakes her, and she screams too.