The Summer Prince (18 page)

“What,
my lord
,” he says, getting into Enki’s face like I wish he wouldn’t. “The music isn’t good enough for you? Three months out of the catinga, and he thinks his shit smells better than ours.”

Enki doesn’t move. Not even when some of Felix’s spit gets on his face. “I’m just wondering if you fight with as little soul as you play.”

To my right, the bloco amarelo laughs. One of them plucks the berimbau and they start in on a beat that’s simpler, softer, and instantly recognizable as a challenge. It excites me, but it seems to set the crowd on fire. Before I know it, I’m herded with the rest, back and back until we form the ring, the roda viva of the song.

With Enki and Felix in the middle.

I’m not going to cling to Enki like some hapless girl in an old-Brazil drama, begging him to save himself. I remember the way he said
fight
before, and the effortlessly deliberate way he goaded Felix into this contest. He’s a man and a king besides, and nothing I can say will sway him.

But I am worried, I will admit that, because I haven’t seen capoeira fought like this outside of a holo — without pads, on a concrete floor, with a circle of chanting onlookers and a bloco for the drums.

They say things like this happen in the verde. But I’m a Tier Eight brat, and my stepmother is an Auntie.

No wonder Enki wanted to take me here.

The drums get louder. The berimbau twangs and booms, speaks of violence and grace. Enki moves like a tiger, Felix like a monkey. I have no doubt about who will win, but I wonder how hard it will be.

“Good luck, Enki,” I say. It isn’t a whisper, though it isn’t very loud, certainly not over the drums and the chanting crowd, but Enki turns and winks at me. Just for a second, no one else notices, but my worry eases.

I watch.

They strip their shirts. Enki bounces on his toes, shakes out his hands. Felix shuffles around him, not caring much for the dance of capoeira. His eyes are nothing but violence. I think there must be something else between them, some injured past that brought them here. Then, faster than I can think, Enki flips into a sideways tumble, his left hand barely grazing the ground. Felix whirls, ducks instinctively, which is good because Enki’s already kicking at the air where his head used to be.

Felix rolls away and Enki drops to a crouch. Felix is panting; Enki gleams like a god. Their smiles are eerily similar, feral and hungry.

“Forgotten how to play, Summer King?” Felix says.

“Forgotten how to dance, vermelhinho?”

Pia, the amarela girl, shouts and then trills, a sound from the deep of her throat that raises the hair on my arms. The drums get louder, but no one chants. You don’t sing for this kind of fight.

Felix runs toward Enki headfirst. What he lacks in grace he makes up in raw power: His first blow to the head doesn’t land, but his second to the ribs does. We all hear the smack, but Enki doesn’t even seem to notice. He just springs into a forward flip, arcing over Felix’s head like it’s no more trouble than jumping a log. Felix doesn’t even have time to turn. Enki’s leg shoots out and hooks, sending the vermelho boy crashing to the concrete floor.

I hiss. It sounded painful, and when Felix surges to his feet, he’s gripping his shoulder. Enki cocks his head, as if to say,
Had enough?
but of course vermelho boy hasn’t. He can’t just lose like this in front of his bloco and his gang. Enki knows it, he loves it, but that doesn’t mean his offer wasn’t sincere.

“Enough,” Felix says, and that’s when the play turns ugly.

Felix jumps into a flying kick that doesn’t connect, but drops into a leg sweep that does. Enki catches himself fast, but not fast enough to block the hard, vicious connect Felix’s shoes make with his hip. He winces this time, and I feel obscurely relieved at the reminder of his humanity. Sometimes, even to me, Enki seems like he’s made of stone.

Enki springs from his half crouch into a scissor kick I’m pretty sure should be impossible. Felix hits the concrete face-first, temple bloody from the kick and his nose bloody from the fall. Enki waits for him to climb to his knees, then kicks him in the ribs. Around me, wakas laugh and clap. Enki’s putting on a show, even if Felix doesn’t seem to know it. Felix’s body blurs as he starts a series of flips and leaps I can’t keep track of. Enki goes still, watching and waiting, and when the blows finally come he evades them as easily as an overhanging branch. He laughs, and we all laugh with him. I think that every waka in this room — even the vermelhos — must have voted for him. Here, the summer king has his court. I only hope Felix realizes it soon enough to salvage some of his pride.

Or maybe he won’t have to.

Above us, the massive gates that shield the spiderweb from the vortex of garbage chutes and information hubs start to rumble and groan. The eight triangular metal slabs slide back, letting in the brightness of the city’s lights — and then a great black shadow.

“Spider!” Pia shouts. She and her bloco scramble to gather up their instruments. “Out! Hurry!”

Wakas run in every direction — shouting for friends, instruments, money. But I stand still. I look up.

The mechanical legs come into view first, carefully gripping the docking tube as it lowers itself into the web. They creak as they move, but not so much as I might have expected, given its size and weight. The bot is probably two hundred years old, with the dents and patches to prove it, but I’m overcome by the sight of it, by its sheer size and unexpected grace.

It keeps the city alive with a thorax full of nanotubes.

And if I stay here much longer, it might crush me when it docks.

Enki’s hand grips my wrist, an anchor in the sea of fleeing people. “June?”

Funny, I think, he’s asking if I’m all right. “Okay,” I say, but I don’t move.

And then something strange happens. The belly of the beast descends, reflecting our running shapes indistinctly. Its noise drowns even my heartbeat, even his voice. But I see his face when something intrudes, surprises him … hurts him? His mouth opens like he gasps. He stumbles a little and I steady him.

Then I feel the blood.

I move quickly, not so much thinking as
operating
. Some part of me must know what to do, even when most of me is going,
Why? How? Is he okay?
We stumble away, through the remaining crowd and then apart, because I’m afraid whatever hurt him might do it again. When we’re at the terraces, alone by the still water and the concrete and the stink, I let him sink against the wall.

“Are you —”

“Fine. I think someone stabbed me.”

“That’s not …”

He shrugs. “Relatively speaking.”

He lifts his hands. There’s a deep cut high along his rib cage, like someone was aiming for his heart and missed. The free-flowing blood soaks his pants. He begins to shiver despite the warm, still air.

“That’s a knife wound,” I say, as though I hope he’ll shake his head and say,
No, I just tripped
.

He raises his eyebrows. “Clever, for a Tier Eight brat.”

“Was it Felix?”

“I doubt it. Vermelhinho was clear on the other side of the web.”

I rip my dress and press the wadded-up fabric to the gushing hole in his side. My hands shake, but Enki is holding his own shit together and both of us pretend not to notice.

“Enki, who would want to kill you?”

His smile is sad, which scares me. “June, who wouldn’t?”

When he convinces me he’ll be okay, I let him call a pod. The Aunties will wonder how he hurt himself, but that’s better than bleeding out in the verde. He’s stopped shivering by the time it arrives, which I think might be a bad sign, but he’s right, no one gets knife wounds on Tier Eight, and I just don’t know.

“Should I go with you? Will you be okay?”

He leans against the open door, flushed and stoic and beautiful as always.

“Don’t worry,” he says, and fingers my hairline with the hand not holding in his blood. “The Aunties are saving me for themselves.” He laughs, then stops with a wince. “I wanted you to have a verde night, but not quite like this.”

“It was a wonderful night.” It was. I’m jumping from a cliff every time I’m with him, but I love the fall too much to stop. He sighs, a sound with more fondness than it has any right to.

“Oh, June, it’s always art with you.”

I declared for summer king at the feet of Auntie Isa, alongside a hundred other boys. In the other cities, Ueda told me, they scoff at the barbarity of our system, at what they call senseless murder every five years. I told him that we all choose it, that for the three months of the contest no one who changes his mind is forced to stay, that the eventual king is so firmly set on his path that no one could sway him. He said, Why die?

Why trade your future, why give your life, why put your head on that altar and let them slice your throat like a sacred cow?

Isn’t it obvious? I should have told him.

It’s good to be a king.

The wind is high enough to form whitecaps on the normally calm waters of the bay, strong enough to blow sharp sprays of brackish water that drench us before we’re even halfway home from O Quilombola. Less than an hour till our grand debut, I’m silent and focused. The tension whips through my light-tree like a storm. But Enki’s even looser than normal. He leans back in our tiny boat, trails his hand in the water, and takes deep breaths of the wet air like he’s saving some for later.

I’ve hooked the feed from Bebel’s practice room into my fono, and I check it nervously every few seconds as I steer. We’ve tied so much of this into the music that now our success hinges on it. Well, that and the lights, and the recording of voices I’ve spliced from dozens of other feeds hidden throughout the city, and the blocks Enki has sworn will stop the Aunties from shutting down our performance early, and —

I stare at my fono. “The voice track is three seconds too long.”

“I found something new last night. It’s better now.”

He raises his eyebrows a fraction. His smile frightens me and he knows it. I realize I’ve always been a little afraid of him, these past few months. I’ve just been too ashamed to admit it. Because I’m not afraid
he’s hurt our project — I trust his sensibility as much as my own. I’m afraid our
best
art might make me lose the Queen’s Award.

I start to shiver. He takes my hand from the console and the boat stops, left to lurch on the choppy water. “The original track is still there,” he says, surprisingly gentle. “You can change it back.”

I could listen to it now. I could argue with him about whatever transgressive, dangerous bit he has inserted without my knowledge. I could let the best artist I know learn exactly how cowardly and self-serving my ambitions are. He’s going to die at the end of winter, but I still want the approval of the Queen who will cut his throat.

I feel sick, but I tell myself it’s the rocking of the boat. My finger hovers over the fono, a nervous jitter away from betraying everything I’ve ever believed about myself. Am I really so desperate for establishment approval? But then I think about Mother and Auntie Yaha, and how they’ll look at me differently if I can pull this off. If this time I win.
How much of yourself will you give them in exchange?
Enki once asked me. I never answered.

My hand falls to my side. I want to win this award, but not at the expense of the most ambitious art project I’ve ever attempted. If he’s gone too far, I just won’t ever tell anyone of my involvement. I’ll do Auntie-friendly art in the fall and winter and I’ll take my chances. Even if I don’t win, at least that way I won’t hate myself.

“It’s good?” I ask, just to see that smile.

“Oh, June,” he says, and smiles, and puts his arms around me so I’m resting against his chest and warm, wet thighs. I feel strangely relaxed and yet hyperaware of every inch of our exposed, touching skin. I want to sit like this forever. “You hear that?” he says after a moment.

I listen, but there’s just the hum of the city, the evening birds calling, the water smacking the boat. “What?”

“There’s a storm coming.”

I look around, panicked. “A storm? How soon? How can you tell?”