Burning Kingdoms

by Lauren DeStefano

  “Oh?” the king says.

  Celeste’s face becomes guarded. She sits, prim and rigid. She folds her hands in her lap. “As you can imagine, Internment being so small, there’s only so much room for advancement.” She lowers her eyes, composing herself, and then she looks at the king. “My mother, the queen, is rather ill. She’ll die soon if she isn’t treated.”

  And with those few words, it all makes sense. The tranquilizer darts, and holding me hostage while demanding information. Not telling her father or the patrolmen the truth when we escaped and injured her brother in the process. The stowing away, holding a knife to Thomas’s throat so we wouldn’t cast her out.

  She wasn’t a bratty princess discontent with her tiny paradise and striving for grander things, and she wasn’t trying to torment us like the game she hunted for amusement. She was desperate.

  King Ingram takes this as a bit of politics. “We know you haven’t got a sister,” he says. “Is there a prince?”

  “Yes, my older brother.” Celeste hesitates. “He’s incapacitated at the moment.”

  King Ingram tucks his lens into his breast pocket, pats it into place. “So I have Internment’s heiress presumptive in my parlor?” he says.

  “Yes,” she says, with some difficulty. “If you’d like to call it that.”

  “It isn’t a matter of what I like to call it,” the king says. “Your mother is dying, and your brother isn’t fit to inherit the throne—”

  “Not at the moment, Your Majesty, but—”

  “So at the moment, you are it.” He smiles, all the lines in his face spreading out, making him a drawing of himself. He breaks into a laugh that is startling, coming from a man so small in stature. “I think you should embrace it,” he says. “You’re your kingdom’s only hope. Yes, I believe we can work together. I’d be a fool to say no.”

  I don’t know what this means. I only know I’ve given up the idea that I’ll like him.

  There is talk of airplanes and biplanes and altitudes and atmospheres. According to King Ingram, Internment sits above the troposphere at thirty-five thousand feet, in a zone called the stratosphere. The most powerful planes the kingdom has to offer right now are hardly capable of leaving the troposphere and are unable to endure the stratosphere anyway. But there is talk of a new sort of plane that may be able to reach Internment. A jet, he calls it.

  “We had a lot of fancy hopes about visiting the floating island,” King Ingram says. “But then the war began and we’ve had bigger fish to fry. There is an archipelago that sits between the kingdom of Havalais and the kingdom of Dastor. King Erasmus and I are having, shall we say, a disagreement about who should have it.”

  “An archipelago is a cluster of islands,” Nimble tells us.

  “Yes, thank you, I gathered,” Celeste says, though I’m sure she hadn’t. We would have no cause to know something like that. I’ve only just learned what an ocean is. Celeste looks to the king. “Am I to understand that this war is all about a cluster of islands?”

  “It isn’t the islands,” the king says. “They’re too small to be inhabitable. But they contain something precious. There is a substance that occurs naturally beneath its soils, called phosane. When it is in rock form, it isn’t of much use. But once melted down and refined, a few gallons could fuel a city for a year.”

  If the war seemed absurd when I thought it was being fought over islands, I think it’s doubly absurd now that I know it’s being fought over fuel. Sunlight is always free and fuels Internment, and there’s plenty of that to go around. But I don’t say that, for I will surely talk myself into a corner again.

  “I’m certain my father would love to help, speaking on his behalf,” Celeste says. “If you were able to return us to Internment and your doctors were willing to help my mother, I’m sure he would allow you to use Internment as a sort of base. It’s quite a vantage point, you must agree.”

  This is exactly what Pen was against. My heart palpitates at the thought. How could Celeste be the daughter of a king and truly not see the risk of what she is doing?

  Or perhaps she sees it, but the alternative is to let her mother die.

  And now I’m thinking of my own mother, turned away from me in what I thought was sleep. Wouldn’t I have saved her if I could? And my father, killed in the melee. And Lex, who was once so full of energy and life but who is broken now. I would want to save all of them, and the last thing on my mind would be the cost.

  7

  Celeste is quiet during the drive back to the hotel. She catches herself fidgeting several times and tries to still herself.

  Havalais passes by our windows, less intriguing now that we’ve seen it all before. The sun is bright and the snow is beginning to puddle. I can see traces of sidewalk and grass. I wonder if the grass could ever recover from such a long burial, but I don’t ask. Everyone in the car is respecting this tight silence.

  Once we’ve returned to the hotel, Jack leaves us at the door and drives off to park in the carriage house.

  Judas and Amy are in the distance, heavily clothed and fashioning some poor animal out of snow. They meet my eyes, expectant, inquisitive.

  “Morgan,” Celeste says. Her voice is uncharacteristically gentle. “I see no need for everyone on the ground to know about my mother. As someone who has endured her own hardships, surely you can understand why I’d like to keep something like this private.”

  “Of course,” I say. And I do. It’s the first time since the night she dragged me, paralyzed, to her tower that I feel I understand anything about her.

  “Especially not that incessant friend of yours.” She can’t quite look up from the snow.

  “Celeste?”

  “Yes?”

  I touch her shoulder. Startled, she looks at my hand against the plaid wool. But she doesn’t move away. Maybe some part of her understands that this is it, our fate, and small comforts are the only reward she will have for her valiant efforts. “I really am so sorry about your mother.”

  She almost smiles, and offers the very slightest of nods.

  “I should see what Nim is up to,” she says. “Excuse me.”

  As soon as she’s gone, Pen and Birdie burst through the front door. It’s nice to see that they’ve both recovered so well from last night’s adventure. Pen throws a string of pearls around my neck and then tugs them, harnessing me to within a breath of her face. “You have to tell us everything,” she says.

  I glance behind her to the open door, where the younger children are chasing each other around the lobby.

  “It doesn’t have to be here,” Birdie says. “We can go anywhere. I’m all caught up on my lessons for the day.”

  I nod to Judas and Amy, who are still making some effort at that snow animal while pretending they aren’t straining their ears. “We should invite them along,” I say. “And Basil and Thomas.”

  Pen makes a sour face. “Must we bring Thomas?”

  “This will concern them, too,” I say. “I’ll talk to Lex and Alice tonight.”

  “Why don’t they ever leave their room?” Birdie says. “I only catch the redhead when she’s on her way to the water room. She’s a real doll. So gorgeous. And my sisters love her.”

  Birdie can’t know how sad it makes me to be reminded of Alice’s beauty, and the things she and my brother could have had, if only.

  “It’s complicated,” is all I can say.

  Pen comes to my rescue by shouting to Judas and Amy, “Come on, then! We all know you want to.” She goes inside to find the boys, and as Judas and Amy approach, I turn to Birdie.

  “Can you borrow the car?” I ask. “Or should we take the ferry?”

  “Nim would be fit to be tied if I even asked about the car.” She rolls her eyes. “Now that the sun’s out, I thought we could rent an elegor.”

  “What’s an elegor?” Amy asks, excited.

  “A very big and very slow animal,” Birdie says. “We could rent one for the day, and for a few rubes the boys at the
rental place will hook a cart up to it.”

  “What do they look like?” Amy asks.

  “They’re nifty; you’ll love them,” Birdie says. “They’re bigger than a car, and they have dark silky eyelashes that are as long as your hand.” She holds up her gloved hand. “And they can’t go very fast, but they love it when you talk sweet and feed them sugarcane.”

  Basil, Pen, and Thomas meet us outside and we start walking. Birdie is telling Amy about the pen of elegors in the city, how they like to be patted on the cheek, and how very human they can be when it comes to emotions.

  I walk between Basil and Judas, and my silence must be torturing them, because finally Judas says, “How doomed are we?”

  “I don’t know that we are,” I say.

  Pen is skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk. “I’ve been thinking,” she says.

  “What’s that, darling?” Thomas asks.

  “Once all the clouds clear up, we’ll see Internment again. I was thinking it can be our star.” She nearly crushes a limp weed that has grown through a crack. She will let it live, in case it should bloom when the weather turns warmer. “I was thinking that would be better than not having it at all.”

  True to Birdie’s description, the elegor is much larger than a car. I keep imagining that if Internment had such heavy animals, it would never manage to stay in the sky; that it would hover above the water, shuddering and tilting, depending on where these things walked. Its short, squatting legs are as thick as tree trunks. There’s a folding ladder attached to the cart on its back.

  I should be frightened, but any worries I have about the security of the cart are abated by the creature’s cooing murmurs as we board. One of the boys at the rental house pats the elegor’s face, and the elegor curls its large, ropelike nose in pleasure.

  Judas is trying to give Amy a boost up the ladder, and she’s swatting at him, telling him she feels fine and to lay off. I don’t blame him for worrying; it takes so little to provoke one of her fits.

  Pen climbs after them. “You’ve got to come up and see this,” she says, waving a red silk cushion she’s taken from one of the seats. “We’ll be set up like royalty.”

  “When we ride them, my little sister Annie likes to pretend we’re princesses,” Birdie says.

  “No, not princesses,” Pen says, pulling me up as I reach the top rung.

  “Queens,” I agree.

  “Absolutely,” Birdie says, emphasizing each syllable, looking back at us as she takes the reins. She seems so brilliantly happy when she’s outside the hotel.

  Basil and Thomas are eyeing us suspiciously. They can see that they’re being left out of something. When Basil sits next to me, I pat his knee reassuringly. He has placed himself directly between Judas and me, making his opinion known. Basil hasn’t forgotten that Judas was accused of murdering his own betrothed, Daphne, and a part of Basil still believes it to be true.

  The elegor starts to move with a lurch, and I tense.

  “Don’t worry,” Birdie says. “The cart is fastened on about a dozen different ways. It won’t fall off.”

  Basil is watching me closely. And when he can see that I’ve calmed some, he says, “What did you learn this morning?”

  Much more than I was prepared for, that’s certain.

  I tell them about the planes and the altitude and the phosane. I tell them everything but that the queen is dying; that part isn’t my secret to tell, and I’d like to think my promise to Celeste means something.

  “Fuel?” Pen makes a face. “That’s what this war is about?”

  “It isn’t just any fuel,” Birdie says. “Phosane is naturally produced by the soil in that one archipelago. It would take thousands of years for it to run out, if it ever did. It’s a real world wonder.”

  Pen looks thoughtful. “What does it take for this phosane to work?”

  “Heat, I think,” Birdie says. “The king’s men have been the world over, and there’s nothing like it anywhere else. You can find about a billion pictures of the stuff, but no one’s mined for it yet.”

  “If so little goes so far, why can’t they just share it?” Amy asks.

  Birdie tugs on the reins. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? King Ingram and King Erasmus are both afraid that if they share it, the other kingdom will use it to enhance their warfare. They both want it all to themselves to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

  Even Amy, a young girl, can see why this is appalling. “They’re having a war to prevent losing a bigger war that may not even happen?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Pen has gone quiet, body jostling with the elegor’s steps as she watches the city. I nudge her with my foot, and she offers a weak, distracted smile.

  “What is this King Ingram like?” Judas asks.

  Birdie shrugs. “He’s a politician.”

  “So, awful, then.”

  Birdie laughs, but doesn’t deny it.

  The conversation turns to Havalais’s capital city and what the theme park is like in the summer. Having heard not a word of this, Pen blurts, “Birdie, do you have libraries down here?”

  “Of course we have libraries,” Birdie says. “Did you need to find something?”

  “No,” Pen says. “Just looking for similarities between here and home.” She cants her head back against the railing and stares at the sky until the clouds move from the sun and she’s forced to look away.

  She’s trying to be together about it, but I fear what will become of her without her home. I worry that all those years she’s invested in our history book will unravel, and she’ll be left holding the tangled threads she once thought made up a god.

  And, strangely, I worry for the princess, whose mother will die without a doctor from that sprawling hospital. What will it do to her to know that she can never go back, that she left her kingdom for nothing?

  But greater still is my fear of these things they call airplanes. Because, whether or not Internment has anything to gain, King Ingram and his army may find a way there soon enough. Even without our help.

  It is the worst worry, the helpless sort.

  Birdie has begun playing tour guide, and the grim conversation turns to a lighthearted geography lesson. Basil leans close and speaks at a volume only I will hear. “It doesn’t bode well, does it?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t see it ending well for anyone. Internment can’t handle a war.”

  He has more to lose than I do. His parents and little brother are still up there, oblivious to what is going on below their haven. And that’s what it was for us: a haven. The king was putting people to death for trying to leave, but while his actions were deplorable, I’m beginning to think that he saw this as his only way to protect the city. Keep the people safe. Keep them in the sky. Maybe he saw through the scopes what was happening on the ground.

  And where does all of this leave my parents? Surely they only wanted my brother and me to be safe. Internment was our home, but its edge blinded my brother, and its government took away his and Alice’s child before it could have been born. Internment is an imperfect world that sits atop another imperfect world.

  “I feel that we have nowhere to go,” I say to Basil.

  “We’re here,” he says.

  “For now,” I blurt.

  Pen breaks free of her brooding to say, “All this moving around is making me ill.”

  I’m immediately concerned. While the food has been an adjustment for all of us, uncertainty and sullenness have taken Pen’s appetite away completely. The tonic at the brass club is the most she’s consumed of anything but oxygen since we arrived. It was only a matter of time before it caught up to her.

  Thomas frowns and places the back of his hand to her forehead. “Do you feel sick to your stomach? I’ve told you that you should try to eat more.”

  “It isn’t my fault vegetables are hardly so much as a garnish down here. I should love something that didn’t have to die for my appetite
at every single meal.” But she rests her head on his shoulder, and all he can do is fret and worry and insist that she go straight to bed.

  I don’t mind that our elegor ride is cut short; after all I’ve learned this morning, I think I’d like to lie down as well.

  But as soon as we return and I’ve followed Pen into the bedroom, she closes the door behind us. “You must tell me everything you learned about phosane,” she says, with all her usual verve.

  “Pen! You’re feeling all right, then?”

  She waves my question off. “There’s no time for that. Thomas will be up in the time it takes to boil broth and toast bread for me, and I need this to stay between the two of us. What did you learn?”

  “Only what I’ve already said. It’s a substance that can be used for fuel once it’s melted.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “I didn’t see a picture,” I say. Her anxiety is palpable. “Why? What do you know?”

  “Possibly nothing, but we’ll have to go to the library before it closes. After Thomas leaves, I’ll pretend to fall asleep and we’ll use the window.”

  “We could have asked Birdie—”

  “No. One. Can know.” Her words are slow and deliberate. She climbs into her bed. “I looked in one of the tourism pamphlets in the lobby, and I’m sure we’ll be able to find the library on our own.”

  “How do you do that?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Just be able to navigate your way through a strange city.”

  She shrugs. “No matter which city you’re in, it’s all buildings with numbers. It’s easy.”

  Sure enough, Thomas is soon at her side with a tray of broth and toast. I would think it dishonest of her to make him worry, but his doting on her will do them both some real good. He’s also brought drawing papers, which for Pen has always been the greatest medicine. As I’m leaving the room, I see her wield the pencil, and I know that she is going to begin a new map.

  It’s nearly an hour before Thomas comes downstairs carrying a tray and a worried expression. “She isn’t running a fever,” he tells me, “but she’s sleeping. She asked me not to wake her for dinner. All of this ground business has taken its toll.”