The Summer Prince (32 page)

Some cheers, some boos, many confused murmurs. I barely hear it; my eyes have locked on Enki, and God save me but I love him, I love him, he can never be mine, and I want him more than art.

“Young king,” says Auntie Maria, attempting to match his contempt but failing in a way that makes me hope she is finally afraid, “for all your accomplishments, you don’t know much about the workings of the world. Perhaps a representative of the Pernambuco militia undertook the trek herself, after a remote communication. Why, perhaps they even had assistance from certain free agents in our own society with access to many mods. You would know about that better than I, my king.”

Enki has more admirers than I’d imagined, here in this bastion of the Aunties. My angry shout is hardly alone.

Auntie Maria shrugs it off. She scored her point. “All I can say to you, my king, and to all my people is that I’m exceedingly sorry for my lapse in judgment. I assure you that all waka gatherings will be monitored with special vigilance, particularly those with demonstrated interests in antigovernment activity, protest, and illegal technology. So long as I remain at my post — pending the findings of the honored committee, of course — I promise you all that I will never let a tragedy like the Pernambuco affair happen again.”

“Thank you, Auntie Maria,” says Auntie Isa when the noise has quieted. “I believe we have all we need for now.”

Auntie Maria inclines her head gravely to the committee and walks back to her seat. Everyone in the room watches her.

Almost everyone. My lights ripple and my stomach clenches even before I look up to find Enki staring straight at me.

“June,” he mouths. Just my name, so gently, and I wish I knew what it meant. I wish I could take back this burst of
I love you
, so fierce and overpowering I feel as though I’ve been modded.

Auntie Isa looks up from her personal array. “For our next testimony, the committee would like to call —”

“Honored Auntie Isa, if I may intrude?”

Auntie Isa is not so good at controlling her expressions as Queen Oreste. Or perhaps she simply doesn’t care as much. “Yes, Enki,” she snaps, and even I recoil at the rudeness of using only his given name in this setting.

But my summer king, my beautiful boy, he merely widens his eyes. “I thought perhaps I could bring up my own witness.”

“The king has that prerogative,” she says, though grudgingly.

That feral smile. I shiver. “What’s he doing?” I whisper.

“Who knows,” says Ueda-sama.

“In that case,” says Enki, “I call June Costa to the stand.”

“Lucia gave you a name,” Enki says.

The lights shine brighter here. Sweat drips down my back, slides past my ears. I should have known. I should have seen it in his steady gaze, in the way he mouthed my name. He was glad I had come. Not to see me, but because of the knowledge I refuse to confess.

“King,” says Auntie Isa, “what —”

“Someone high up in the administration,” he continues, oblivious. “Perhaps even an Auntie? We all know someone had to have helped the technophiles get the war tech.”

This rouses Oreste to speech. “We all know nothing of the kind, Enki,” she says in her mild, withering way.

Maybe Enki thinks he’s alone. He leans forward. He looks at me like he did that time on the boat, just before our grand show, just before he kissed me. Time moves sticky and slow, just like then. For a moment, I have a flash of him in the rain: steam rising from his skin, water spraying from his hair. That surprised disappointment.

I am not as good as he thinks I am. I am not as good as I thought I was.

I am June Costa, a regular waka in Palmares Três.

“She gave you a name, didn’t she?” he asks.

Oreste grips the sides of her chair. “Enki, this isn’t —”

“Yes,” I say. I shouldn’t have answered him. I wouldn’t have, even five minutes ago. But under these bright lights, I realize I’ve made a choice. There’s movement in my peripheral vision, background noise that seems to hem me in, but Enki binds me like he has from the first moment I saw him, with smiles and dance and eyes that see clearly.

“What’s her name, June?” We might as well be alone, arguing on the rock of O Quilombola, jumping and plunging and
Happy Christmas, June
and —

I stand. People move around me, they try to touch, but they can’t stick. Two, three, four steps and I’m less than a meter away.

“June?” Enki says. I kneel. A subject to her king. I take his hand. His grip is firm and warm and dry; he smells of hibiscus and sea salt.

I never really believed you would pick the Queen’s Award
, he said. And he was right, in the end.

“The person —”

Enki puts his hand over my mouth. He looks scared. Has something else happened to the city?

“Quiet.” His lips barely move.

“This meeting of parliament is over. As Queen, I declare a hiatus period effective immediately during which we will review our findings and pursue the possibility of reconvening another committee.”

Oreste’s voice. I can’t see her or the crowd still shouting behind me, but the authority in it chills me. What did she do to make Enki so afraid? Threaten him? A moment later, someone drags me up by my elbow. I look for Ueda-sama, but he’s vanished into the crowd. All I can do is keep hold of Enki’s hand as we’re pushed through the special Auntie entrance in back and down through a silent, carpeted hallway. I look at Enki, my face wild with questions, but he just shakes his head and I let them settle inside me.

The security officials lead us to a small room and tell us to wait. They close the door behind them.

“It won’t be locked,” Enki says.

I test it anyway.

“Should we leave?” I say.

“Where would we go, bem-querer?” He leans forward so his forehead touches mine. “What else is there?”

Tokyo 10, or one of the Parises or even Salvador might not be as bad as they say
… but then I realize what I’m thinking, I realize what it would mean and he’s right: Our whole world is Palmares Três. That unlocked door is a symbol. If we leave, they’ll only bring us back.

A moment later, Oreste herself walks through, followed by Auntie Maria. The door closes behind them and part of me wishes we’d left when we had the chance.

“Well,” Oreste says, visibly angry now that we’re away from the cameras, “what a show, Enki, even for you.”

“It seemed to me,” Enki says, “that you might actually let her get away with murdering two people.”

“I murdered no one, you stupid little boy,” Auntie Maria says. She crosses her arms angrily; her turban slowly unravels in the back. “I made sure they had what they wanted and I let it happen. You have Lucia and her faulty programming to thank for Wanadi and Regina. The way you wakas overrate technology …”

I gape at her. “If you don’t want tech, then why would you …”

Oreste and Maria share a wry look, the sort I’ve noticed among grandes before. It’s a peculiarly deep friendship you would develop, I suppose, over the course of half a century.

“Since you are so curious, June,” says Auntie Maria, sweet like burnt sugar. “I have no use for new technology other than certain interesting advances in security mechanisms. But I knew that, provided with war tech, technophile agitators could be counted upon to create an incident that would give more than enough cover for a thorough crackdown on imported tech. Given the spider-bot disaster this summer, we needed something like this more than ever, and it certainly worked.”

I had told mother that I hated grande schemes, but I’d never dreamed of something this cold-hearted.

“Enki, of course, decided to play games,” Oreste says. “And people wonder why we only have kings for a year. I’m surprised you told him, June. I’d have thought the Queen’s Award would be more than enough.”

Enki snakes his arm around my waist, and I don’t know if it’s an embrace or a restraint. My skin tingles, not entirely from anger or fear.

“You knew,” I say in a voice flatter than paper. “You sent me to Lucia, but you already knew.”

Auntie Maria sighs. “You’d think someone who causes so much trouble would have a little more aptitude at politics.”

“I think that’s precisely why,” says Oreste, as if we were not in the room.

“She needed to know how much Lucia knew,” Enki says softly, in my ear. “Lucia was protecting something. She needed to know if it was simply Auntie Maria’s name, or something more incriminating to Royal Tower.”

Oreste nods in almost businesslike appreciation. “More or less correct. The Queen’s Award is yours, June, so long as you don’t speak a word of this. And if you think to say something after you win, I will immediately release the evidence I have of your academic cheating.”

The threat doesn’t go far enough, especially after everything they’ve revealed in this room. I wonder how venal I must seem to her. Does she think nothing will break my ambition for public approval? But then, look at how much it did take.

I realize that she’s lying, that the consequences of my breaking this pact will be far more onerous than just the public reveal of my cheating. But if so, why not just tell me?

Because she wants to see if I’m gullible enough. She wants to know if she even needs to provide me with greater consequences, because that will tell her how much of a threat I am.

And there is Enki behind me, afraid of something that he can’t say, so uncharacteristically silent that he must be walking his own political tightrope in this room, hoping to help me without revealing himself to the two most powerful women in Palmares Três.

Oh, June
, I hear, just like my papai would always say,
what mess are you in now?

I am afraid, so I let it show on my face. I let my weight fall, very gently, against Enki. I say, “Yes, okay, yes. It’s a deal. I promise.”

Oreste stares at me for a very long time. Long enough to make me squirm, and I do that too.
Don’t go too far
, I remind myself.
Don’t let her see through it.

And then she nods. “Good. You are talented, June. You could make something of yourself, one day. Come to me in ten years, and maybe we’ll see what Royal Tower can do for you.”

They leave without another word, though Auntie Maria gives us a long, enigmatic glance before following Oreste out.

I stare after them, too shocked to form a sentence. There passed my last illusions. Those are the women who will slice Enki’s throat with a ceremonial blade at the end of winter. Those are the women who will proclaim his sacrifice to reinstate Oreste as the Queen for another five-year term.

Enki turns me gently toward him. “June, I —”

“Let’s throw a party,” I say desperately, touching his collarbone, his shoulders, his chin, and his lips. “Let’s dance.”

He cups the back of my head. “Whatever you want.”

I wonder who they threatened him with. Whose life they said they would ruin if he didn’t stop me from speaking. No other reason for that look of terror on his face. I can’t ask him here, but I guess I don’t need to.

“Gil will come,” I say, and his relief is instant and the love follows soon after.

We throw the party in Royal Tower, in that grand banquet hall where Enki first met Gil. We invite the world, and they all come.

Bebel and Pasqual and everyone from my cohort at school. Casters, agitators, grandes and wakas, technophiles and isolationists. Enki
went on Sebastião’s feed to let the city know: If you think you should be here, then come. You have an open invitation.

The Aunties aren’t happy — maybe they’re only truly happy when they’re scheming — but better to let us bring the rabble to Royal Tower than endure the fallout of trying to stop it. Enki is the most popular summer king in a century. Better to wait him out than fight that power.

Enki and I spent a day programming and rigging holos throughout the room. Gil wanted to help, but he had class and I haven’t bothered to go back to school in the week since the parliament incident. For once, Mother hasn’t hassled me. She says it’s okay to go back when I’m ready.

I wonder if I’ll ever be ready. I didn’t realize how much my ambition for the Queen’s Award was holding me together until I lost it. Now I feel as helpless as Gil as we stare down the end of winter.