Broken Crowns (27 page)

“Most of those buildings are hundreds of years old,” I say. “We've outfitted them with electricity and plumbing, but the bones are the same. No reason to demolish them and make waste.”

“No weather to wear away at them,” he says.

I laugh. “I've gotten to know you so well, I almost forgot you're a foreigner here. Still, we aren't very different, are we?”

“No, we aren't,” he agrees.

After a long silence, he says, “It doesn't feel real yet that I'm king. All my life it's felt so far away.” He shakes his head. “I've always hated them—kings. Wasting away in their castles that could be better used a thousand other ways.”

“It's your castle now,” I say. “Who says it has to be a castle at all? It could be its own city.”

He smiles, and his stare is faraway, as though he's imagining it. “Havalais doesn't know yet that the old king is dead. There are advisers handling affairs for me while I'm gone, and in secret, Birdie is advising them on my behalf. She's the only one I trust. If news got out that there is no formal leader, or that a broad is running the show in my absence, Dastor would be at an advantage. It was irresponsible of me to go, but I felt I had to.”

“To see Celeste,” I say.

“You make me sound like a lovesick kid.”

“No shame in that.”

“Maybe it's true,” he says. “I did want to see her. I wanted to see her world. To see the city of Internment and the clock tower where she's lived as a princess, I can finally understand her optimism. Her faith in things.”

Havalais is quite the opposite of Internment. What it lacks in modesty it makes up for in aggression. Even its beauty is aggressive, with bold music and bright lights and glamorous girls with black lips on silver screens. If Celeste is a product of her world, Nim is a rare creature in his own. All modesty and softness.

“I admit that I have a hard time seeing things the way she does,” I say. “But I hope she's right. I hope our two kingdoms really can come together.”

“There aren't many things I'm sure of,” Nim says. “But I'm sure about that.”

The new king is high up in his clock tower, in the royal apartment. He requests to see me alone. Even the patrolman who escorted me waits outside the door.

He's standing at the open window when I reach him, staring into the garden of poppies far below.

“You wanted to see me?” My voice is uncertain; now that he's had time to reflect, I don't know what he makes of his father's murder at my hand. This is the first time we've spoken since the melee.

“There's to be a ceremony,” he says hollowly. “I'm king now, of course, living and breathing. But tradition dictates a ceremony. It's what my father did, and his father before him, and so on back to our first king.”

“You haven't called me here to advise you on that, have you?” I say. “I wouldn't know how. Parties are best left to someone like your sister.”

“Oh, believe me, she's got plenty of ideas about what I should wear.” He turns to face me, his hands still braced on the window ledge. “I've called you to share one of my key ideas. Come over here, would you?”

Cautiously I approach the window, not entirely certain whether he means to push me through it.

But as I follow his gesture to look through it, he leans on his forearms and nods to the poppies far beneath us. “That was my sister's favorite place in the world when we were growing up. She was betrothed to a truly dreadful boy who also happened to be deathly allergic to most flowers. She'd run out to the center of the poppies with her skirts gathered, and she'd stand there taunting him as he demanded her affections.”

“Sounds quite like her,” I say.

“I admired her petulance toward him, and her bravery,” he says. “But I also feared it. I thought that if she resisted, she'd be whisked off to one of those camps and that her brains would be scooped out with a spoon until she was nothing but a blubbering mass of compliance.”

I look at him. “The attraction camps, you mean.”

“Yes, right. I won't startle you with the gruesome details, but needless to say I hate it there—not only for what it is, but because it exists at all. So I'm going to do away with it. And that begins with getting rid of betrothals.”

“Completely?” I say.

“I've always hated that tradition,” he says. “Perhaps it works sometimes—you and your betrothed seem to get on rather well. But my sister chose that limping, haggard boy from Havalais. And what for? Because, as you've told me, he's kind. He's the opposite of what she was fated to as she fled to the poppies.”

“He is,” I agree.

“Would you still choose your betrothed if you had the option?”

“Yes,” I say.

He gives me a wan smile. “I'm not questioning your loyalty to Internment's laws, Stockhour. It's an honest question. No need to be frightened.”

Was I frightened? The quickness of my answer was a reflex, brought on by the interrogation my family endured after my brother jumped.

“It's not an easy question,” I confess. “I've known my whole life that Basil and I were meant to be together. I don't know how I'd feel if we met only now for the first time, or if he and I had always just been classmates in a crowd. I can tell you only that I love him now as it is.”

“I suspect many will feel the way you do, and that's fine,” he says, and raises his chin as though he's come to an important decision that he's quite proud of. “But that shall be my first act as king. Keep your betrotheds if you want, but I'm doing away with that archaic custom.”

“What about ensuring everyone gets a match?” I say. “What about the population?”

“Not everyone
wants
a match, and even if they do, they should be free to make that decision. Isn't that what they do on the ground?”

I shrug. “They have more space to roam. They do plenty of things down there that I find maddening.” Like a mother abandoning her children so that she might see the world without them.

“Yes, yes,” he says. “I do think Internment could borrow a bit of their madness. I want to talk to your friend Margaret about the risks of opening a regular flight path to the ground.”

“If you call her Margaret, she won't help you at all. It's Pen.”

“Fine then. Pen. I asked to see her as well. Where is she?”

“She couldn't leave the hospital just yet. She's too ill.”

“That won't do.” He frowns out at his kingdom. “I'm going to need someone with a head for math and physics giving me counsel.”

“Her father is the head engineer at the glasslands,” I remind him, and though the idea of Pen's father being put in a position of power frightens me, he does know quite much about how the city is fueled.

“Never cared for him—too pleasant, like he's hiding bodies under the bed,” he says. “Never cared for Pen much, either, but I do admire the way she thinks.”

“Have you forgiven her for nearly killing you, then?” I say.

“I admire it, really. She's not the sort to hide bodies or make pleasantries; with her one always knows where one stands. If I'm to choose anyone for my council, it's a girl who has no regard for hierarchy.” He gives me a sharp look. “But I order you never to tell her that.”

“Oh, but of course, Your Majesty.”

He turns his back to the window and squints at me. “What do you know of her family? Pen's.”

My knees go weak, and I disguise it by leaning beside him against the window ledge. “She's an only child. Her mother is reclusive. Her father works longer hours than most—but you know that already. It's on the record.”

“You must know more than that,” he presses. “The two of you are as close to each other as I am to my sister. I can tell. It's this nearly psychic connection.”

“Like a double birth,” I say, echoing something Pen has used to describe us before.

“So you surely must know more than that.”

I look at him. “Would you give Celeste's secrets up so easily?”

His smile is fond and sad. “You'd have to cut them from my veins.”

“So then you understand.”

“Can't blame a king for trying.”

“Pen is an only child,” I say again. “Her parents didn't reenter the queue. That's about all there is to tell.”

“I've been going through my father's records these last few days. You know there's a sheet written about everyone in the city. Medical records, mostly. Allergies. Behavioral mishaps. Pen's mother has quite a few notes.”

Yes, I'd imagine she does.

“Her father's sheet, however . . .” He trails off. I think he's waiting to see if I'll interject. When I don't, he says, “There are certain marks in public records to denote repeat offenses and vices—tonic addiction, disturbing the peace, people who have been to the attraction camps, jumpers, what have you. But Pen's father's record is utterly flawless, excepting a black dot by his name.”

A black dot. That's all there is to hold him accountable for what he's done. Pen was strong enough to survive it, but there is far more than a dot of ink marking her.

“I don't know what it means,” the new king says. “But my father had a way of forgiving crimes if they were committed by someone he deemed useful. And Nolan Atmus is indeed useful, but in a way that I'd like to keep at arm's length. What is your thought on that?”

I take a deep breath. “My thought is that, if you don't refer to her as Margaret, and you don't bring up the black dot, Pen will be happy to help you.”

“Splendid!” His sudden cheer is a relief. “Let's go pay her a visit, then.”

Pen is weak but entirely lucid when the new king and I enter her hospital room. She gives him a wry smile. “To whatever do I owe the honor, Your Majesty?”

He ignores the jab, and she brightens considerably when she sees the drawing paper he's brought her. “We're to design a flight path between Internment and Havalais, and calculate the impact it will have on our city's new tendency to sink.”

She reaches for the paper greedily. “I've already done all the measurements.”

As she explains the impact the jet has on Internment's altitude, the new king says nothing of his plans. He asks questions that Pen is all too happy to answer. On a separate sheet, she draws the sunstone itself, explaining how the flecks within the soil are compressed and refined in a way not dissimilar from coal. And when he's had enough, he rolls her drawings up neatly and tucks them under his arm.

“Where are you going?” Pen says as he heads for the door.

“To mull and brood,” he says, quite decisively. “It takes a great deal of that to run a kingdom.”

Hours later, King Azure summons me outside of the tower. The sun has just set, and he carries a lantern but doesn't light it. Wherever we're going, he doesn't want us to be seen even by the patrolmen meant to protect him.

There's a chill in the air, but it's a relief in contrast to the stuffiness of the clock tower. I don't know how the royal family can stand to live so high up in all that stale air, especially during the long season, when the air is like bath steam.