Broken Crowns (28 page)

Once he has led me away from the patrolmen, he lights the lantern. We walk in silence for what feels like an hour before he says, “When we were children, my sister and I would compete for our father's attention. But we did so knowing that I would be the one to inherit the kingdom, and so when Papa confided in me alone, I reveled in it. I did enjoy torturing my sister with knowledge she couldn't have.”

“Now you sound like my brother,” I say, and brace myself against the pain that fills my chest with those words. I do miss him and Alice quite much.

“One day,” he goes on, “Papa led me through the woods. Celeste wasn't invited. At first I was rather smug about it. Important. But the farther on we went, the more I began to worry. I had never been so deep into the woods before, and this sort of . . . dread filled my stomach.”

I also never thought the woods ran this deep. It's as though we've stepped into a parallel world that's twice as large as our floating city. He looks at me as though to determine whether I'm afraid. But I've spent years trying to navigate the darkness of my brother's mind. A few trees and a starlit sky are of no concern to me.

“What's out here?” I ask.

“Something my father didn't want the city to see.” He raises the lantern, opens the door, and blows out the flame.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then I see slivers of light up ahead, peeking out from what appear to be buildings clustered together behind a fence.

And I understand.

“These are the attraction camps,” I say.

“Yes,” King Azure says. “It's the first thing I mean to destroy, as king. Normally there would be more patrolmen standing guard, but they're all preoccupied now, as you can imagine. We can get closer, but we must be quiet. I don't want anyone to know that you've seen this.”

He is as silent as a hunter, the way he moves, and I do my best to mimic this.

He crouches before the fence. “Here,” he whispers. “You can see into that window there.”

I kneel beside him, gathering the skirts of my borrowed dress. I follow his gaze and I see a woman with cloth wrapped around her mouth, spooning liquid to a body lying on a bed. It's hard to believe the body is alive, but I think I see it breathe.

“I've put a stop to the surgeries,” he says.

“Surgeries?” When I crane my neck, I'm just able to see the body on the bed. It looks like a child whose head has been shaved. My heart leaps up into my throat. “They do something to their brains,” I breathe.

The king's silence is his answer. I'm glad that he can't take me farther than this. I do not want to see what exists in those other buildings without any windows at all.

“It's gone on for more than a century,” King Azure says. “As I understand, it began as an experiment to correct the boys who were attracted to boys, the girls who were attracted to girls, and the ones who seemed to be attracted to both or neither.”

“Has it ever worked?” I ask, horrified.

“The records say yes, but I think not,” he says. “If I had to endure what goes on in that place, I'd be more inclined to lie and say I was healed, wouldn't you?”

I've begun to feel dizzy. I press my lips tightly together and try not to be sick.

“My father took a special interest in this place, even as a boy, before he was king. And its purpose has expanded since then to include criminals and traitors—anyone he means to change. When they recover, they're never quite the same. They have seizures, or memory loss, or they can scarcely walk. In some cases they become entirely dependent on their betrothed to take care of them.”

I think of the woman who used to live in my apartment building. Every day she would follow her betrothed to the doorway and then stand there to watch him go. I wonder if she was once here.

“It's awful,” I say.

“I mean to have this entire facility demolished,” he says. “Let it become a field for livestock. Let it reek of manure. That would suit me just fine.”

In the dim light of faraway buildings, I see the fear in his bright eyes. And I know that being a prince would not have spared him this fate, if only his father had known the truth about him.

“Your Majesty,” I say, “I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be.” He blinks and comes back to himself. “I've brought you here to show you that you've done me a favor. This place could never be destroyed while my father was alive. You did what I wish I could have done a long time ago.”

I'm stunned that he would see my killing his father as a favor, even if I'm starting to agree. We begin walking, and I look over my shoulder at that horrible shadow of a tiny city. I know what he was trying to tell me. After the king attempted to murder his own grandchild to save the royal reputation, I have no doubt.

I fear speaking, but I know that I have to.

“Was my father in there?”

He looks at me, the candlelight casting long shadows on his face. “I can't say for certain. After you left for the ground, many patrolmen were killed for their insubordination. Others professed their loyalty. And others, yes, did end up in the attraction camps. The primary purpose is to change—or attempt to change—one's sexual attraction. But that's really only the start of it. My father believed any facets of the mind could be changed with surgery.”

I veer around and start pacing toward the camp. King Azure grabs my arm. “Morgan, don't.”

I try to break free, but his grip only tightens.

“Let me go!”

“Would you lower your voice?” he says through gritted teeth. “I didn't show you this place so that you could go charging in there causing a scene. I may be in charge of the kingdom now, but I'm still determining which members of my father's council can be trusted, and I can't have you putting yourself at risk.”

“He's my father,” I bite back. “He's one of the few people I have left. You would go back if you thought Celeste were in there!”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I would burn the bloody place to the ground if I had to. But Celeste isn't in there, and neither is your father. I checked.”

I stop struggling, and cautiously he lets go of my arm, watching and ready to apprehend me if I run again. But I don't. My legs feel rubbery and numb. “You checked? What does that mean?”

“After my father's death, while you were recovering, there was much for me to do. It isn't as easy as just becoming king, you know. I had to assess the damage, so to speak. That included going through the attraction camps and learning the status of each patient—”

“Victim, you mean.”

“If you'd rather. And I put a stop to the surgeries and instructed the nurses to return the victims to health. I saw every face in every bed, and there were no grown men left at all.”

My breath hitches. “Left?”

He hesitates. “There's an incinerator for the patients who don't make it.”

“The ones your father didn't want to make it,” I say. I'm struggling to draw each breath, and I can't bear the look of pity in the king's eyes. I lost my parents once already, and I did not think that sharp pain of the initial realization could repeat itself, but now I see that it can. There is no limit to how much pain can be felt in a life.

Lex is the only person in either world who could understand. I wish that he were here. I would even take his cynicism, his “That's the way it is, Little Sister. What did you expect?” if he had no comfort to offer.

But I can't have even that much. All that's left of my family is gone from this floating city. There is no one waiting for me at our apartment. It's only me.

Celeste is not
the fool her brother makes her out to be. She has heard the full report of everything that happened the night her father was slain. She has heard that a maddened patrolman killed her father, and that I was the one to fight the patrolman off.

I can tell, however, that she doesn't believe a word of it. We don't speak in the days before her brother's coronation, and the truth lingers in the air between us, something between what she has heard and what she fears.

Hours before her brother is to become king, I find her sitting on the top step before my chamber door, dragging her fingertip across her daughter's face.

“What do they know?”

I stop ascending the stairs and hold fast to the banister. She's just close enough that she could extend her foot and kick me to my death to avenge her father if she wanted.

When I don't answer, she raises her head. It's the first time she's truly looked at me since the ordeal that night, and I'm surprised at the lack of malice in her eyes. She looks only curious.

“What does who know?” I ask.

“The kingdom,” she says. “Have they heard about my daughter?”

Strange, I think, that a child with such an important role to play remains nameless.

“There have been rumors about a child,” I say. “The night we ran for the jet, some people heard her crying. But they suspect she's the child of a mistress your brother has been keeping. Or that he rescued a fugitive from the ground and the child is hers. It's hard to tell what they think—it changes by the hour.”

Her sharp laugh hits the walls of the stairwell like a dozen slaps. “That figures he'd get the credit, even for this. Do you know my brother has been in conference with Nim all morning? ‘One king to another' he says. I'm not even invited. Fancy that.”

“It's safer for you if the citizens believe the rumor,” I say. I mean to console her, and it's also the truth. “There's too much danger if the kingdom finds out you've had a child outside of the queue. It's forbidden.”

She shakes her head. “Dead kings dictated our history books, and male appointees transcribed them, Morgan. I wonder how many daughters and sisters and mothers wrote the stories that never made it onto the page.”

I know just what she's thinking: She wants to announce her handiwork to her kingdom. She wants to give them their new child of two worlds, and she believes they'll love it the way she believed her father would love it. I know, also, that she can't be talked out of her ideas once she's had them. But still I'm going to try.

Cautiously, I approach and sit beside her. “Celeste.” My voice is soft. “I think what you've done is incredibly brave. I do. And, with time, the two kingdoms will see it as well. Your brother will do away with the queue, and when he opens up a flight path to the ground, everyone will have more freedom than they can fathom. They'll thank you for that.”

She looks at me.

“But,” I go on, “right now, all they will see is that you have something they can't have. You were allowed a right that would be taken from them. They'll hate you for it.”

“Some will,” she says. “But I don't care about that. It isn't my mission in life to be liked. It's my mission to do what's right for Internment and Havalais. I'm here to change things. It's why I was born; I've always known that, even before I knew what it meant.”

“And you
will
,” I assure her.

“Just not today, is that it?”

“Nothing grand can be accomplished in a single day,” I say.

“Oh, I beg to differ.” She stands, and for all her fire, she must move slowly and cringing all the while. She shouldn't be out of bed at all, if she were to take her doctor's advice.

Her brother told me that it was a torturous labor. After hours of watching his daughter struggle, the king ordered the doctor to render her unconscious and to cut the child from her stomach. He was certain her screams could be heard throughout the kingdom and he wanted it over with. Prince Azure could only listen outside the locked door as his sister fell silent.

That was the most he would speak of it. Celeste said nothing of it at all. She is not the sort of person to acknowledge something so unhelpful as pain.

“We aren't different, you and I,” Celeste says. “We don't treat rules as though they're walls. I suppose I was just born surrounded by bigger barriers to climb.”

“Sometimes it's wise to pretend to have no interest in climbing,” I say.

In her sad smile I can't tell if my words have reached her. I hope that they have.