Broken Crowns

by Lauren DeStefano

  Nim shakes his head. “I can’t leave Havalais. Someone will have to keep an eye on things here once you’ve gone. I don’t trust my father, or the king.”

  Two kings who can’t be trusted. What a fabulous predicament we’re all in now.

  We walk back to the hotel, all of us silent, knowing there are no words that could reassure any of us.

  5

  It’s a week before Jack Piper returns home. Nimble plays a contrite role that is painful to watch, but it pays off. He convinces his father that we could be of some help to the king.

  Jack Piper, whether it is arrogance or exhaustion, mistakes our scheme for gratitude for Havalais’s hospitality. Over dinner he tells us that he’s arranged a meeting with King Ingram in the morning.

  I stare at my plate, trying to ignore Judas’s and Amy’s stares. True to my promise to Pen, I have not told anyone about our encounter with the prince. Not even Alice or my brother.

  If things go as I hope, I’ll tell Lex that I’m leaving. He may wish to stop me, but he won’t be able to. He knows that he owes me that much, after letting me think our father was dead. I have to try to find my father as well.

  Thomas clears his throat. “Pen?” he says. “Can I speak with you privately?” His calm tone is a mirage.

  “It’d be rude to leave the table before dinner is over,” Pen says, mirroring his tone.

  Basil and I exchange worried glances but say nothing.

  When the Pipers begin clearing the dinner plates, I have never been so relieved in my life as I leave that dinner table. Pen, poised and cool, follows Thomas outside. Basil and I go upstairs.

  Once we’re in my room, I close the door behind us and drop onto the edge of my bed.

  Basil sits beside me. “That’s going to be an ugly fight the two of them have.”

  “I wish she had just told him,” I say. “He would have been happy. He wants her to go home. He begged me to find a way to get her back to Internment.”

  “Unless she means to go without him,” Basil says.

  “I believe that’s it,” I say. “She’s forever evading him. It’s been that way since we were children.”

  “They’ll work it out eventually,” Basil says. “They always do.”

  I think of Pen’s drawing, the ugly word she wrote over and over on that scrap of request paper, and I wonder if I will ever fully understand her. I wonder if she would want anyone to.

  And am I any better than she is? I’ve got secrets of my own. Even now, the words are on my tongue: Basil, I kissed Judas.

  I almost say it. I let it replay in my head over and over as this loaded silence exists between us.

  But I don’t. Selfishly I rest my head on his shoulder and I think about the jet breaking through Internment’s atmosphere. I think about what will await us when we arrive, if we arrive, and I wonder if any of it can be undone.

  Pen is gone for most of the evening, and she returns just as I’m turning down the covers. I’m only going through the motions; I know I’ll be too nervous to sleep.

  “Well, that was brutal,” she says, and falls onto her bed.

  “What happened?”

  “He was upset that I didn’t clue him in to what’s going on. It’s just that he worries about me, and I feel how much he worries about me.” She squirms against the mattress. “All his doting can make me so itchy.”

  “Did he go along with it?” I say.

  “Ultimately, yes. He hates this world. Maybe he’s foolishly hoping that we can go back to Internment and it will be as we left it. I don’t know.” She wriggles under the blanket. “He’s going to try to come with us if the king will allow a fourth. I suppose I owe him at least that much.”

  “Mind if I turn out the lights?”

  She shakes her head, closes her eyes.

  It’s only after I’ve gotten into my bed and we’ve settled into the darkness that I’m brave enough to say what’s on my mind.

  “Do you think I’m a detestable person for kissing Judas?”

  “From what I saw, he was the one who kissed you.”

  “Even so.”

  I hear the sheets rustling as she moves. “You’re not a detestable person, Morgan. I mean, if you were—what does that make me? I’m sure if we kept a tally of our sins, I would be in the lead.”

  “It’s not the quantity of sins in this instance, but the magnitude.”

  “I don’t think it was right,” she admits. “But I know you, and I know you wouldn’t have done something like that at home. It’s this mad world that’s made us all feverish.”

  I think of the night I saved Judas from the patrolmen who were coming for him. I pushed him into the lake to hide him, and after that he tried to scare me off. I still remember the fresh grief in his eyes, the severe angles of his face. He was nothing at all like Basil, and yet he stood so close to me that I could feel his breath. I was terrified with intrigue.

  But Pen is right. I wouldn’t have kissed him, because back home I did all I could to follow the rules, to be what was expected of me.

  “I spent my life thinking all those little things mattered back home. Those rules. But five minutes in this world and it all came undone.”

  “Stop punishing yourself,” Pen says. “Everything I ever loved about you is still intact. I’m sure Basil feels the same way.”

  We don’t speak after that, and eventually her breathing changes, and somehow she has found a way to sleep.

  I’m still lying awake when the sun begins to lighten the sky. Nimble knocks on the door and says, “Ten minutes.”

  It’s still early enough that the rest of the house is sleeping. The night’s insects are still singing.

  Nimble is waiting for us at the door, weaving the car keys between his fingers anxiously. He watches as Pen, Basil, Thomas, and I convene before him. His eyes are sympathetic. “Sorry, kiddos. The king sent word this morning that he’d like to speak with only you and you.” He nods to Basil and me.

  “What?” Pen says. “But I thought—”

  “Prince Azure’s request,” Nim says. “We should be grateful that he convinced King Ingram to meet with you at all.”

  Pen looks from Thomas to me, fury in her eyes. “That royal terror is trying to ruin everything.”

  “He must have a plan,” I say, trying to calm her. “Let Basil and me go. We’ll see what it’s all about, and I’ll tell you everything once I return.”

  Her teeth are gritted, but she knows no good would come from arguing and she gives in.

  Nimble is our driver, and as usual, Jack Piper is nowhere. “I visited with Birds yesterday,” Nim says, trying to sound cheerful to lighten the mood. He glances at us in the rearview mirror. “Father finally got around to visiting her, and wouldn’t you know, they spent the whole time arguing.”

  “Why?” Basil asks.

  “She’s got scars,” Nim says. “In particular, this deep continuous gash that runs down the side of her face and her arm. Father says it ruins her. He says no man will ever marry her and that he’d like to send her overseas to this surgeon in the north who can fix it. Only, she doesn’t want it fixed. She wants to keep it. She says it’s a part of her now.”

  “She should keep it, then,” I say.

  “Father hates the reminder. I dare even to say that he feels guilty for what’s happened to her. Maybe he has a conscience in there after all.”

  Like burials, this is another custom I don’t understand. We wear our scars where I come from.

  I meet his eyes in the mirror for an instant before he looks back to the road. “If that’s what it’s about, don’t let him send her off to that surgeon,” I say. “If her scars remind him of what he did, he should have to look at them every day. Maybe it will change his mind the next time he goes along with the king’s warfare.”

  “It’s a nice thought, but nothing can change his mind once he’s made it up. Especially not when he’s working for the king.” He glances at me in the mirror again. “What’s your king like
?”

  “Celeste didn’t talk about him?”

  “She did,” Nim says. “But with a sort of hopefulness. I got the sense that she was idealizing things when she said he could be reasoned with.”

  The king’s castle has begun to emerge from the distance, and I’m getting a queasy feeling in my stomach.

  “Whatever you do,” Nim says, “don’t let on to the king that you know anything about the phosane. He doesn’t think much of broads anyway, so all you have to do is act dense. You don’t know anything. You just want to help.”

  That shouldn’t be hard. King Ingram makes me so uneasy that it’s hard to speak around him anyway. Maybe it’s a good thing Pen isn’t here; she isn’t intimidated by anyone.

  It’s a perfectly sunny day, but when we reach the castle, it doesn’t glimmer as much as it has in the past. A shadow seems to loom over it.

  Nimble brings the car to a stop. He turns in his seat and looks between Basil and me. “Say as little as you can,” he says. “Be dumb. If the king realizes you know more than he does about the city sinking, you’ll never get what you want. You’ll be trapped here working for him.”

  Two of the king’s guards have been waiting for us, and they open the car doors so we can step out.

  “King Ingram and his guest are expecting the three of you,” a guard says. “Right this way.”

  I have come to hate this castle. The waste of it. How many bricks were laid, and how much money went into this sprawling palace filled with empty rooms? On Internment, children dream about whether castles exist. I used to dream as well. But in my grandest dreams, the castle was not half the size of this one, and every room was filled with parties and food and dancing girls in sweeping dresses, not a gleaming stone gone to waste.

  I’m grateful that Basil is here beside me. When I begin to feel that I’ll drown in this world and its strange luxuries, he makes me remember who I am, where we come from.

  “You’re here, you’re here!” King Ingram is clapping as he greets us in the hallway. He walks straight to me and takes my hand in both of his and kisses my knuckles with enthusiasm. “Now I’ve seen your brilliant little kingdom for myself. It’s magnificent!”

  “Thank you,” I manage, startled by his energy.

  “And your friend the princess was kind enough to give me the grand tour. Your people were so happy for her return that there were parties daily. Parades. A marvelous festival.”

  The only celebration we have on Internment is the Festival of Stars in December, and it both worries and intrigues me to think of the celebration he’s describing. King Furlow must have been frightened if he was willing to expend the city’s resources to throw such an affair.

  But when I realize that King Ingram is waiting for me to speak, what I say is, “And how is Princess Celeste?”

  Nimble stands beside me now, and I see his face come alive at the mention of her name, but he quickly hides within himself before the king might notice.

  “The poor thing has taken ill. The festivities were a bit much for her. But she is back at home in her charming clock tower castle getting the rest she needs. The journey back to Havalais would have been too much for her, but she sends her love. And I’ve brought a surprise for all of you, sent from your King Furlow himself.”

  King Ingram leads us to his parlor, saying “Come, come!” as he goes, like a child excited to receive a gift rather than a king about to give one.

  He throws open the heavy wooden doors, and Prince Azure rises up from the wing chair. He is dressed in the fashions of this world: a plaid sport jacket with a silk handkerchief in his pocket, and gray pants with sharp creases. But even in the foreign fashion, something about his posture makes me think of home.

  “May I present to you Prince Azure of Internment,” King Ingram says.

  Basil and I feign surprise. He nods into a bow, I into a curtsy.

  “Your Highness,” Nim says. “Welcome to Havalais.”

  “Such formality!” King Ingram says. “It’s nice to see young people with a regard for custom. Refreshing. But please sit. Sit!”

  I sit on the same couch cushion as I did the very first time I met the king, Basil at one side and Nimble at the other.

  It has been mere hours since I saw Prince Azure, but he looks the worse for wear. Or perhaps it’s only that the lantern light concealed his true condition. He is pale, with light purple bags under his eyes that have been dabbed over with cosmetics. He seems smaller in the daylight, regal but still frail. His hair has grown a bit longer, and a lock of it is doing little to conceal a series of pink scars at his right temple.

  He meets my eyes but offers neither a smile nor a frown. A politician’s neutral gaze, so much like his father. “I’ve heard quite a bit about this world, and I’m glad for the opportunity to see it myself,” he says.

  “Yes, yes, we have quite the itinerary planned,” King Ingram says. “Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be presenting our Prince Azure to the rest of the kingdom. My staff is already at work organizing the festivities. There will be radio announcements broadcast today at the top of every hour.”

  “Plans?” Nimble says.

  The king looks to Basil and me. “Well, yes, of course. Our Havalais has fallen on some dark times, I think you’d agree. Warfare, bombings, deaths, and devastation. Of course the phosane mining will fix that, and soon enough peace will be restored. That’s all well and good, isn’t it? But all of that is a lot to take in, and the people will need a bit of a morale boost, yes? Someone to cheer for.”

  “Morgan and Basil have expressed a willingness to help, of course,” Nim says. “Father said he spoke with you about that.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, and I’m so glad. And I know just how they can help.” King Ingram reaches out and grabs Basil and me each by the left hand, and holds up our ring fingers like a pair of identical trophies. “Love,” he whispers excitedly. “It’s the biggest thing our two worlds have in common. You two are the perfect representatives for your world. You are young, vibrant, hopeful, in love. You’re a prime example of what life on your floating city is all about.”

  My mouth and throat have gone dry, and I can see my hand paling in the king’s grasp. On the surface, he’s correct. Basil and I have always been what we were expected to be. Basil still is. I’m the one who has strayed. I’m the one who daydreamed about the edge and admired the sharp angles of another boy’s face and throat in the moonlight. I’m the one who has left the pair of us in limbo, wondering what we are and what we will be.

  The king releases our hands, and we withdraw.

  Nimble senses our trepidation and does the asking for us. “What is it they’re expected to do?”

  “Well, obviously the pair of you will not be involved in anything dangerous. No. You’ll only be asked to appear before a crowd, read a few prepared speeches, and smile.”

  “We’d be honored,” Basil says, without any resentment at all. I’m proud of him for that. I know how much he hates the king; I saw it in his eyes after the bombing at the harbor. It is the same hatred he has for our own king, who has taken the same liberties with the lives of his own citizens. This whole ordeal has made us all quite wary of kings.

  But if Basil can fake it, so can I. If wearing a pretty dress and speaking some pretty words will keep us all safe, I will happily oblige. We’re getting off quite easily, I think.

  And then King Ingram says, “And after the festivities here, the pair of you will return home.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but words don’t form. I can only try to subdue the alarm that is surely washing over my face. Only the two of us?

  Basil is once again the steady one. “We’re going back to Internment?”

  “You’ll meet with my father,” Prince Azure says. “You’ll oversee the phosane mining and speak to the workers.”

  I look at Prince Azure and just for a moment I see it—a glimmer of fear in his eyes. Worry. Dread. He, too, is a captive of King Ingram.

  But it is not sa
fe to ask my questions, and I may never have all my answers anyway. What I do know is that Basil and I are in for something much bigger than festivities. And home will not be as we left it.

  King Ingram’s staff works quickly. By the time we make the drive back to the hotel, the capital city of Havalais is already hanging banners welcoming the Sky Prince. A stage is being set up before the library.

  I look away, down at my betrothal band. It is made of glass and a bit of the phosane this world so desires. It is identical to all the other betrothal bands on Internment. I wonder at the factory worker who crafted this exact ring. That person would never have dreamed what trouble a little ring could cause.

  Tears threaten in my eyes and I force them away. Now is not the time to show weakness. I make myself feel nothing.

  The driver brings us to the front door, and I do not want to get out of this car. I do not want to face Alice and my brother, and especially Pen, to tell them that I will be returning home without them, and I do not know for how long, and I do not know if I will be back.

  Nimble exits the car first, and then he opens the door for me, and reluctantly I step out into the calm, tepid air.

  He pats my shoulder in some small gesture of reassurance. “I’m going to walk into the city and visit with Birdie,” he says. “I’ll tell her you said hello?”

  I smile. That does lift my spirits a little. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Attagirl,” he says. “See you later.”

  “We don’t have to go inside,” Basil says once we’re alone. “We could stay out here for a little longer.”

  I look at him. “We got what we wanted, didn’t we? I should be happy.”

  “It’s still rather a shock to hear it. And I know that you were expecting Pen to come along.” He glances at the sky and then back to me. “I’ve spent all these months trying to decide if I’d go back, given the chance. It was foolish of me to think I’d have a choice. That any of us would.”