“This is a war, remember,” she says. “After King Erasmus bombed us, we bombed back. But King Ingram doesn’t make that public knowledge. He wants to present an image of peace.”
“An illusion of peace,” I say. Even more reason for me not to trust him.
Amy dreamed that Internment fell to the ground and everyone’s screams were caught in the clouds. It was the week we all succumbed to the weather, so it may have been her fever, or it may have been a premonition.
“You look like you’re cold,” she says. “It’s getting dark. Let’s get you back inside.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to go back there,” I say.
“I’m not going to breathe a word about this to anyone,” she says. “Nimble won’t either. It’s too soon. So you’ve no need to worry.”
This does nothing to ease the guilt. I’ve been outside all day. “I’d like to sleep out here,” I say.
“It gets chilly at night,” Celeste says. “Besides, that would be terrible for your back.”
“Go inside if you want,” I say. “It shouldn’t matter to you what my back and I do.”
“Of course it matters. I’m your friend.”
“We aren’t friends,” I say. “You don’t want me for one, anyway. I’m not a very good one.”
“What are you talking about?” she says. “You dove into a frigid ocean to rescue Pen.”
“And then I told you her secrets. The last thing she wants is for this kingdom to reach Internment. She thinks they’ll destroy it, and she’s probably right, and I’ll be to blame.”
“Hey,” Celeste says. “If I thought for a second that were true, I wouldn’t have told King Ingram about the glasslands. Internment is my home, too. My kingdom. I would sooner grow old and die down here than see it destroyed.”
I look at the moon.
“You’re putting too much on your shoulders,” Celeste says. “Let me bear some of the burden. Diplomacy is in my blood.”
“Pen hates you,” I remind her.
“Pen hates everyone. She doesn’t count.”
I suppress a laugh.
“You’re more cautious and discerning, and you like me,” Celeste says.
“I never said that.”
“You do. And I like you, too, and I don’t want you to catch a chill, so let’s go inside.”
“Pass,” I say.
She rests her forearms on the table and leans toward me. “Very well,” she says. “You trusted me with Pen’s secret, and it’s only fair that I trust you with a secret I’ve been keeping as well. Maybe it will even things out.”
I should tell her that this isn’t necessary. When I came to her about the phosane, it wasn’t because I expected anything in return. But I can’t help being curious; she has spent her life in that clock tower high above the city, and nobody on Internment gets an opportunity to hear about what that’s like.
“My brother and I have had betrothals since birth, like everyone else,” Celeste says. “Mine is . . . well, he isn’t the kindest boy, to be certain. I’ve never much cared for him, and he sees me as nothing more than a way to boost his social status. He’ll be a prince once we’re married; if my brother predeceases him, he may even become king, and all I am is the property that makes this so.”
“That sounds awful,” I admit.
She waves her hand, brushing the thought away. “I’ve always seen him as an annoying obligation, but my brother has had a worse go of things. The girl to whom he’s betrothed is quite beautiful.” She looks away from me, to the hotel in the distance. She seems uncomfortable. “But Azure doesn’t have any interest in beautiful girls,” she says. “He keeps it a secret from Mother and Papa, of course. What would they do with a prince who dreams of falling in love with another prince? He even tried to keep it from me, but it was always just the two of us growing up away from the rest of the city; we were each the other’s only friend. Of course I figured it out.”
I remember the glib joke she made while I was their prisoner, about her brother being attracted to her betrothed. An attraction to the same sex could mean being declared irrational if an attraction camp provided no solution.
“When did you realize something was wrong with him?” I ask.
She looks sharply at me. “I’ve known about it since we were children,” she says. “But there is nothing wrong with my brother. It’s our world, our rules. I—” She cuts herself off, flustered. “You couldn’t know what those camps do, Morgan. Papa has shown my brother and me many things we’ll need to know when Azure inherits the city. There are tonics involved, and surgeries that are worse than death. You wouldn’t ever want to see for yourself, much less send someone you love there. I’ve feared for my brother’s life every day. If Papa were ever to find out, I truly worry that Az would end himself.” She struggles with her next breath like the words were strangling her.
There’s a lot of ugliness behind what keeps Internment going, I’ve realized. Even its prince and princess live in fear. I was certain the princess looked down on my family for having a jumper, but in truth she’s had a similar fear for her own brother.
“You’re right,” I say. “I haven’t seen, and I wouldn’t want to. But my father and brother did, and it changed them.” I meet her eyes. “I’m sorry I accused you of not knowing what goes on outside your clock tower. It appears you know more than most.”
She tries to smile, but can’t quite manage. “Az says that once he’s king, he’ll do away with betrothals, and stop the drug that keeps eggs from splitting into a double birth and things like that. But that’s only talk, of course. It wouldn’t be that easy. The city would fall apart without its rules.”
“ ‘Rules,’ ” I sigh. “I’ve come to hate that word.”
“I’ve come up with a plan or two of my own,” she says. “My brother will be king one day, but he’s all whimsy and little logic. He needs me. I truly believe that a union between Internment and Havalais will change things. Internment needn’t stay the same forever. The ugly things needn’t be the mortar that keeps the pretty things in check. So you see, Pen’s secret will not be wasted.”
I want desperately for her to be right.
“So that’s my biggest secret. My own phosane, if you like. Now will you please come inside before we catch our deaths?”
She grabs my hands and pulls me out of the teacup. My feet are heavy. Celeste won’t tell anyone what I’ve done. Not yet. But still, the guilt of it waits for me in that sprawling building whose lights stretch across the grass.
After I’ve climbed the fence, I realize how far the hotel seems. A lifetime away. Celeste doesn’t mind my slow pace. She keeps beside me. She puts her arm around my shoulders. I suppose she thinks that our secrets have forged a bond between us.
“How is your brother faring?” she asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen him at all since we’ve landed.”
I’m immediately on the defensive. Even though she has just shared her family secrets with me, my instinct is to be protective of my brother. Even on the ground, I feel that it’s important to prove his sanity. “He just likes his privacy. He isn’t irrational.”
“I know that,” Celeste says. She stoops to pick up a dandelion puff, but rather than blowing on it, she twists it in her fingers. “I’m not my father’s spy, you know. I’m not going to write a report on everything everyone says and submit it to him so he knows who to punish.”
The dandelion puff is slowly coming apart. “I used to think everyone in the kingdom loved my father,” she says. “But you came all this way to get away from him, didn’t you?”
He killed my parents, but I can’t remind her, because it’s become impossible to say. Killed. Dead. I am sick of such miserable words. I only nod.
“Well, you needn’t worry,” she says. “You can stay here if you’d like. I’ll go back alone.”
I’m not worried only about what’s to become of us. I’m worried for the entire city.
I say nothing the rest of the wa
y to the hotel. Celeste fills the silence with chatter about the stars and the smell of the grass and how she wishes Internment knew the wonder that is rain.
Basil is on me the second we walk through the door. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he says.
“I went into the city,” I say. I’ve told so many lies since we’ve come here, I don’t see the harm in one more. With each one, the stigma fades a bit more.
I don’t know how I manage to get through dinner. I force down just enough of it to ward off Basil’s suspicions. Annette’s chatter fills the room, and I’m grateful.
Birdie takes a sip of milk. “How are you finding The Text?” she asks Pen. “You’ve been reading it all day, haven’t you?”
“Fascinating,” Pen says.
“Ah yes,” Nimble says. “The world’s greatest work of fiction.”
Jack Piper shoots him a venomous stare. “You may excuse yourself,” he says.
Nimble sets down his fork, gives us a cheery salute, and leaves.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Jack says. “I don’t know where this side of him comes from.”
“From Mother,” Birdie says. The other children stop chewing. It was bold of her to say, but now she looks at her plate, her hair curtaining her face from her father. Jack Piper lets this slide with little more than a clearing of his throat. Fathers are more forgiving of daughters than of sons.
I’m grateful when the plates are cleared and I’m able to leave.
Pen catches up to me halfway up the stairs. “Where were you all day?” she says.
“Just out. Around.”
I can’t look at her. I move quickly, but she keeps pace. “Do you know what Her Royal Whatsit went to speak with the king about?”
“More of the same,” I say. “She wanted me to go along because she’d like us to be friends, but I’m not interested.”
“Not interested in the king’s politics, or being her friend?”
“Either.”
She’s suspicious. I’m quite sure it isn’t merely my guilt that’s telling me so. But she doesn’t push me any further. She lets me go ahead into the bedroom and she doesn’t follow me. Moments later I hear water filling the tub as she draws a bath for herself.
I climb into bed and try to read the latest of Birdie’s novels. But I only find myself envying the protagonist her problems. Her parents have sent her to something called a boarding school to keep her from the boy she loves. But she hasn’t destroyed any cities. In two hundred pages, all will be well again.
I begin to think of Prince Azure, up in his sky, ailing from the wound Pen inflicted upon him. I’ve hoped for him to survive, out of common decency and regard for human life, but for the first time I truly hope Celeste can return home and find him safe and well. Even the prince and princess, dressed in their white furs as they squander their days as they please, are not immune to the horrors of Internment’s king.
As a medical student, my brother was needed more than once at the attraction camps. They’re set far from the residential sections, near the remote fields where food animals are bred. Even the trains don’t stop near them. He never spoke of what he saw there—I’m certain he was sworn to silence. Any time I asked about his work, he called me a pest and sent me away. Now I wonder if he was trying to protect me, or if he was trying to forget.
I used to think attraction camps were meant to help. I thought those declared irrational had done something wrong or were broken somehow. I felt so much love for my city, grew up feeling lucky to have been spared by the god of the sky. I don’t know what to believe anymore, and against all reason I am starting to hope that whatever the princess has planned will fix things.
Pen returns from her bath, and I pretend to be asleep. I feel her shadow covering my eyelids. “Morgan?” She pushes on my shoulder. “Are you asleep? Really? It’s only seven thirty.”
When I don’t respond, she leaves me. I hear the brittle pages of The Text turning as she picks up where she left off.
“The bit about the ark was interesting,” she says. “Their god flooded the world to start over again. So when their god doesn’t like someone, he tries to drown them.”
I think she’s talking to me, but then I hear Thomas say, “That wasn’t an act of god last night, Pen. That was gin.”
“Well, maybe gin is an act of god, then.”
“Not likely.” The mattress creaking. Soft laughter. “Morgan’s asleep already?”
“Yes,” Pen says. “She’s no fun.”
“You could do with less fun,” Thomas says.
“How unfortunate for you,” she teases. A kiss. “I—” Pen begins, hesitates. “I really am sorry, Thomas.”
Murmurs too soft to hear; a side of her I’m not permitted to know. Every couple on Internment seems to achieve this degree of intimacy but Basil and me. I try to love him the way he loves me, and rather than passion, all I can feel is myself trying.
Pen has spurned Thomas’s advances since they were toddlers, and she never runs out of insults. He looks like composted broccoli or she’d sooner marry a toad.
But now that she thinks no one else can hear, she tells him, as clear as anything, “I love you.”
Why would I say a thing like that? she told me.
So we’re both liars, then.
15
Thomas leaves, and Pen reads for what seems like hours. I don’t sleep, not even when the princess comes in and turns out the lights.
Back home, Lex pacing the floorboards above my bedroom used to comfort me, and whatever was troubling me would seem much smaller. But here there’s the chirping of hopping songstresses that go by some other name, and the breathing of my roommates, who only stop arguing when they’re asleep, and the kind of silence that’s a net for too many thoughts.
After my tossing and turning has made enough noise, Pen whispers, “Do you need an anchor?”
“I just can’t get comfortable,” I say. “I think the mattress needs to be flipped.”
“Switch beds with me, then,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re angry with me, just come out and say it,” she says.
“I’m not angry with anyone,” I say. “I’m just uncomfortable.”
“You’re full of it, is what you are,” she says.
I turn away and pull the blankets tighter around me. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the lobby adds itself to the silence.
“Whatever I did, I’m sorry,” Pen says. “Is it what I said earlier about you dragging me to this place?”
“It isn’t you.”
“Well, it isn’t the mattress.”
In an act of great mercy, we’re interrupted by a soft knock at the door. The door creaks open. “There’s a Tony Valencia double feature at the cinema,” Birdie whispers. “Anyone interested?”
“Who’s Tony Valencia?” I ask.
“Haven’t I shown you his picture in the magazines?” Birdie says. “He’s the berries.” I don’t know what this means, but her dreamy sigh gives me a good guess.
“Just what I need.” Pen throws back the blankets. “Another man in my life. At least this one doesn’t speak.”
“Part of his charm,” Birdie says. After we’ve changed, Birdie throws beads and pearls around our necks and hustles us for the window.
The air is brilliant and cool. Before I came here, I’d never been outside of a city and its tiny parks and gardens. I didn’t know grass and flowers could go on and on farther than the eye can see.
We walk to the dock and board the ferry, and Pen kneels at the railing and reaches her hand into the water, letting her fingers slice through it as we move.
I keep her in my line of vision as I ask Birdie, “Does your father tell you much about the war?”
“Oh, no,” she says, and glances over her shoulder at the water. “He doesn’t think girls should be bothered. He’d rather confide in my brother, even though Nim would sooner end a war than be a part of one. They can’t
see eye to eye, but Father keeps forcing it. He’s already polishing Riles to follow suit. He’s twelve; he isn’t meant to care about politics, but he wants so badly to make Father proud of him.”
“Is that why your mother left?” Pen asks. “All the pressure of living up to his standards?”
“Pen,” I snap.
“What?” She turns to Birdie. “You’re the one who brought her up at dinner. You don’t mind if we talk about her, do you?”
Birdie shakes her head. Her hair bounces around her shoulders. “It’s true.” She leans back on her elbows against the railing. “She wanted to see the world, and Father didn’t understand. She was starting to dress differently. He said she’d changed, but she was the same as she’d always been, if you ask me. She was just getting bolder about what she said aloud. She’s the one who gave Nim his nickname; I suppose she thought being named after our father would make Nim turn out like him. But he would never be like him; she told him he was all soul inside, no fight.”
“Nicknames are a rebirth, where I come from,” Pen says. “A lot of people have them on Internment. They’re a way to cheat the system.”
“All of our given names have to be from an approved list,” I say.
Birdie crinkles her nose. “Sounds like something my father would enjoy. He does love his lists.”
“So—what? Your father made her leave?” Pen asks.
“No,” Birdie says. “I don’t know what happened exactly. One morning she was gone.”
“Gone?” Pen and I say.
“Yep. She sends telegrams and postcards, though. The last time I heard from her, she was studying to learn twelve languages and had become a nude model for some painter halfway across the world. That was a year or so ago.”
I can’t decide whether this is romantic or insane. This must be why betrothals are mandatory back home, to prevent such flighty behavior. Not that a woman who left her family would be able to go very far on Internment.
“But you don’t have arranged betrothals here,” I say. “If your parents were so incompatible, why did they marry at all?”
Birdie smirks. “Nim is the reason they got married. He was completely accidental, and there isn’t a day that goes by that our father lets him forget it. Though, Father isn’t really one to talk, if you know what I mean.”
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