Broken Crowns Page 17

  He looks helplessly into the distance. He wouldn’t know how to get to the clock tower even if I did let him go. “The prince won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Nim shakes his head. “She wanted to believe the best of her father, but I knew—I knew he would put her in danger. Her and the baby.”

  I drop my arms to my sides. “What did you expect, Nim? You’ve got royal blood; you’ve seen how kings are. They don’t like having their position challenged, much less by an infant.”

  He stumbles forward and catches himself against a tree. He’s breathing hard, teeth gritted. In his urgency to get to Celeste he forgot about his injuries, but the pain has reminded him now.

  “All we can do is wait for word from the prince,” I tell him. “I’m sorry.”

  He limps back to the cavern, utterly defeated, and hits the rock face in frustration. Almost in tandem with the motion, there’s a sound within the depth of the woods. A creak. I push Nimble into the shadows of the cavern and follow after him and hold my breath.

  It was foolish of us to speak as loudly as we did. Patrolmen will be looking for us by now.

  I hear the noise again, not so much a creak as a whimper. A figure emerges from the trees, and it whispers my name.

  Prince Azure. His steps were silent, not so much as a rustle of leaves or the snap of a twig, expert hunter that he is, but that whimpering persists, and as he gets closer, I realize that he’s holding something in his arms.

  “Morgan!” he whispers.

  I crawl out of the cavern. “I’m here.”

  Nim is rushing to get past me, but before he can make it to his feet, the prince has knelt down before us. The bundle in his arms is moving, and it gives out a feeble croak.

  Nim gasps. “It’s—”

  “Yes, yes,” the prince says, like he’s bored with the whole thing. “It’s a girl, born just a few moments ago. Perfectly healthy from what I can see, but I’m no doctor.”

  “Is it safe for a newborn to be outside like this?” I say, marveling despite myself at its pale face like a faded little moon in the darkness. “There’s a chill in the air.”

  “Safer outside than inside,” the prince says. “My father thinks I’ve taken her outside to drown her in the ravine.”

  Nim is shaking when he reaches for the infant, but the prince hands her to me. He’s perhaps still too untrusting of this boy from the ground.

  I hold the infant, feel her slight bit of weight. The next generation of an ancient royal lineage in my arms. Instinctively I raise the blanket up past her ears to keep out the chill.

  “I’ll escort you to the jet,” the prince says. “I’ve been interrogating men from the ground and there are three whom I trust to fly you back to the ground.”

  “The ground,” I echo dumbly. “But Basil—”

  “He’s already there waiting for you. Your loudmouthed blond friend too. See? I keep my promises.”

  Nimble is staring at the child. His child. He surely has a million questions, but all he says is, “What about Celeste?”

  “What about her?” the prince says, exasperated.

  “Is she coming with us?”

  “No, she’s not coming. Don’t be a moron. She’s so heavily sedated, she wouldn’t know her own name if you asked her.”

  “I’m not leaving without her,” Nim says.

  “Suit yourself.” The price rises to a stand. “But that baby is leaving this city tonight, if you want it to survive.”

  I move to follow the prince, and Nim grabs my sleeve. “Morgan.”

  “He’s right,” I say, with all my sympathy. “I can’t make you come along, but I think you should. Celeste would want you to take care of your kingdom. You’ll find your way back to each other again; of course you will.”

  Nim looks up at the prince. “You claim to keep your promises. I need your word that Celeste will be safe.”

  “She’s not the one in danger,” the prince says.

  Hesitantly, Nim moves to follow, and in a rare display, the prince helps pull Nim to his feet. Prince Azure doesn’t wait for us, though, before he moves forward into the darkness.

  The prince has a hunter’s stride. Silent, graceful. Nim struggles to keep up, panting and clutching his wounds.

  The infant is mercifully quiet, unfazed by the ordeal of her birth and the great trouble it has caused.

  We move through the agriculture section, away from the city’s lights. We cross the train tracks, and Prince Azure cuts through the fence with his hunting knife and makes an opening that I can duck through.

  “There was nowhere to hide the jet,” the prince says. “My father had it moved out here. Everyone’s afraid of the thing, even his patrolmen, which is silly if you ask me. It’s only a machine.”

  There was once a time when I feared this side of the tracks. Now I see that it’s only grass and starlight. No maddening song on the wind to lure me over. I still remember exactly who I am and what’s worth fighting for.

  Nim stops to catch his breath, and I let him lean on my shoulder for support. For all his panting and cringing, he stares in awe at the stars, as though he could reach out and pluck them from the sky.

  “This is your world,” he says, breathless. “This has been floating above me all my life.”

  “Yes,” the prince says. “It’s a pity you can’t see more of it, but we really must be going.”

  “Come on,” I tell him. “I can see the jet just ahead.”

  And I can, though there is nothing but starlight to illuminate its dusky, tarnished body. It’s hard to believe this battered thing will have enough life left in it to take Nimble and his new child home, but I have to believe it will.

  The metal door swings open, revealing a mouth of darkness. But the darkness isn’t complete; I can see the outline of blond curls. As we move closer, I can see Pen more clearly. She’s standing as still as a statue in the doorway, with her hand gripping the doorframe.

  Her eyes move to the infant, and then to Nim. Her lips part, and I can see the faint tremble in her lower lip. She glances sidelong into the jet as though someone is speaking to her.

  This isn’t right.

  “What in the world are you gawking at?” the prince asks her.

  “Pen?” I say.

  Her mouth forms a word. She whispers it at first, and then she yells it, “Run!”

  Only then do I see the king standing behind her in the darkness. He brings his face close to hers, and I can see his pale, tired complexion. He says something to her through gritted teeth, and she yells again, “Run, Morgan. He’ll kill you!”

  They’re the last words she’s able to say. Before I can move in one direction or the other, the king has slashed her throat.

  19

  My scream could surely wake the dead in the tributary.

  A clean line of blood appears, thin and even, then dripping. Pen drops to the ground, and I can swear I see her chest rising with a breath when the king kicks her away, into that unyielding blackness.

  In my arms, the infant has begun screaming, a shrill cry that’s scarcely human. All I can think is that I want her to stop, so I can listen for Pen’s breathing, and for Basil, who is surely calling for me. He must be in that jet. He must be injured, or he would come to me now. He would never have let that happen to Pen.

  I don’t let myself think that either of them could be dead. I won’t, until I can see them for myself. I run for the jet, and Nimble is the one to stop me, only as long as it takes for him to grab his daughter from my arms. He no longer has the strength to stand, and he collapses into a kneel, clutching her like life itself.

  The prince stands before the two of them protectively.

  The king comes toward him like a mad beast, but we’re madder, Nimble and the prince and I. The king of Internment, for all his schemes and ploys, may love this city with all his decaying heart, but he will never know the power of loving more important things.

  I have seen too many killed, I have lost too much
, and I will not lose another thing at his hand. He is brandishing something in his grip—another weapon perhaps. I try to grab it, but I am of no interest to him and he shoves me out of his way.

  I’m insubstantial, like his foolish daughter. His son is the one he means to subdue. When the king reaches Prince Azure, he raises something that I believe at first to be the knife. But when he plunges it into the prince’s neck, there is no blood.

  The prince drops to the ground, his eyes still open and blinking, a tranquilizer dart jutting from his skin.

  Perhaps the king truly does love the prince more than the prince could believe. He didn’t kill him.

  Prince Azure’s eyes are on me, and as I meet them, I see what I could swear is permission. The king pays me no mind. Now that he’s removed his most immediate threat, he wants the thing he’s come to kill—his grandchild.

  Nim is struggling to get to his feet. He’s broken and tired, and he’s just walked hundreds of paces, but whatever is left in him, he’ll give. The king knows it isn’t much. It’s almost done. He can toss the infant into the edge and she’ll bounce back, broken and dead. What’s to stop him? There’s nothing here. Just me, sobbing and shaking.

  When I lunge for the knife that’s still in his hand, he isn’t expecting it and he gives a startled cry. He’s got such a firm grasp on the hilt that I have to grab it by the blade. I feel it slicing into my skin.

  He elbows me in the stomach, but to my own surprise I’m laughing, even as the pain hits. He has ruled this floating city for all these years, and all he has to defend it with is a knife.

  Blood has made my palm and wrist sticky, and I don’t know whether it’s his blood or mine. With a punishing shove he manages to throw me to the ground.

  The struggle has given Nim enough of an advance. He’s gone, but the persistent wail of the infant tells me that he’s in the jet. I get a glance and see that the door has been pulled shut.

  Nim and that infant may be it, the only ones who will survive this night.

  I’m in the dirt, and if the king didn’t pay me any mind before, he certainly does now. He’s straddled over me, blood smeared on his shirt. Pen’s, perhaps, or mine. It could be Basil’s, for all I know, but my mind won’t allow me to believe it. For all I’ve been made to believe in the past year, I will not believe that my betrothed and my best friend are gone.

  I grab the king’s wrist, and the knife is hovering over my face, shaking uncertainly, as though the blade itself isn’t sure which of us to kill.

  The king drives his knee into my stomach and I see it for just a moment—the fear in his eyes that I may have something in me after all, that I won’t die so easily.

  The jet’s engines splutter and then roar to life. Dirt splashes my face, and the king raises his head. While he’s been busy with me, the boy he wounded has gotten away. Nim is going to make it. He’s going to fly to the ground and take his place as king, him and his child of two worlds.

  The moment’s distraction is all I need. I grab the knife from the king’s faltered grip and I plunge it into his throat.

  Blood rains onto my face, some of it landing in my mouth, and I splutter and cough as I push myself away from him. Despite my hatred, I cannot look at him as he dies. I hear him struggling in the grass, and I turn to the stars. They are oblivious to my existence on this small, floating rock, and yet I’ve known them all my life. If they cared at all for living things, I believe they would understand what I have done.

  The king ceases to struggle. I don’t know that I believe in the tributary anymore, if I ever did, but if there is any good in him at all to go there, it’s the part that loved his children and his kingdom. Though he betrayed them, though he did deplorable things, it was the best he had to offer.

  The taste of his blood makes me vomit in the grass, and even after I recover, I’m still trembling when I get to my feet. I’m only distantly aware of a pain in my hand and chest. No matter. There’s no time for that now. The jet is still here, and there’s still a chance that Prince Azure and I can be on it.

  “Your Majesty,” I say when I kneel at the prince’s side. His eyes are dull and glassy, but he’s breathing and I know he can hear me. I remove the tranquilizer from his neck. “You have to wake up,” I tell him. “You’re the king.”

  The words feel very far away. The prince-turned-king blurs, and a pair of arms catches me as I fall back.

  My eyes close, and I don’t have the strength to open them, but that’s no matter. I’d recognize Basil’s touch anywhere.

  Motion. He’s bringing me to my feet. My mind registers the feel of the metal steps reverberating under my shoes. I double over, sick in the grass a second time. He picks me up again when I’m through. I hear my own heavy breathing, taste the blood. Something is screaming, screeching like the seagulls that flew along the shoreline of Havalais.

  Darkness.

  When I am able to open my eyes again, I’m certain that days have passed. But the starlight is still streaming through the jet’s window, and I realize, heart sinking, that we have not gone anywhere.

  “Hey.” Basil’s voice is eager. He holds my arm, keeping me steady. I’m in one of the jet’s seats and everything spins when I try to move. “You need to be still. You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he says.

  “Where’s Pen?” I don’t dare look at his face. Before he can answer, I force myself to ask, “The king killed her, didn’t he?”

  A laugh, weary yet assured. That’s when my vision comes back into focus and I see that Pen is sitting across from me, her blood-soaked shirtsleeve tied around her collar. “It’s going to take more than that,” she says.

  I open my mouth to speak, but a sob comes out instead. I lean against Basil, who frets and smoothes back my hair. “I thought you were both dead,” I say.

  “Please. He hardly got me,” Pen says, panting from the effort of speaking. “Couldn’t find an artery if there were an arrow pointing to it. Suppose that’s why his men did all the killing for him.”

  “But I saw you go down,” I say.

  “A tip, Morgan: If someone tries to slit your throat, and you’re fortunate enough that they’ve failed, you let them think they’ve succeeded.”

  I reach out and take her hand. Sometime later, after we are all safe and rested and bathed, I should like to collapse into a good and relieved fit of tears.

  “He tranquilized me and propped me up against the wall there,” Basil says. “He said he wanted me to see what happened to traitors and bastards born outside of the queue, that men needed to learn about death before they could be of any use.”

  Pen scoffs, but I see the wince of pain she tries to hide.

  “Nim?” I say. “The baby?”

  “Both asleep at the helm, remarkably,” Pen says. “He wasn’t going to leave without you. He wanted to create a diversion by starting the engines.”

  “Prince Azure?” I say. “Or I suppose he’s the new King Furlow now.”

  “Still out cold. I couldn’t move him,” Basil says. “His dart must have been stronger.”

  The thought of Prince Azure lying paralyzed in the grass, mere paces from his father’s body, is too much for me to take. With great effort I pull myself to my feet. My hand is wrapped in scraps that are presumably from Basil’s torn sleeves.

  A pain in my shoulder flares to life. So the king did manage to wound me after all. Basil does not try to stop me, but rather stands behind me, steadying me when I sway one way and then the other, like one who’s had too much tonic.

  I descend the stairs slowly, Basil’s grip on my arm the strongest thing I’ve ever known.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” I say. “Pen’s wound.”

  “I’m convinced she’s immortal,” Basil says.

  “She needs to see a doctor, and Nim, and that baby. Basil, a newborn shouldn’t be out like this.”

  “Nor should you, in this shape,” Basil says. “But we’re all strong to the point of being stupid, aren’t we?”

 
I laugh, and the pain in my shoulder intensifies. I don’t look at the king’s body as we pass it, but Basil does, though he says nothing of my gruesome handiwork.

  I drop to a kneel at the prince’s side. “Your Majesty,” I say, for the second time. His eyes open and his fingers twitch. He struggles to speak, opening and closing his mouth and groaning before he gets the word out. “Havalais.”

  I think he means it to be a question. “No,” I say. “You’re still on Internment.”

  He falls unconscious again, for once a victim of those tranquilizer darts the royal family so favors.

  “Should I try to drag him onto the jet?” Basil asks.

  “No point,” I say. “He needs to stay here and assume his place as king, and we ought to hear his ruling, shouldn’t we?”

  “Do you suppose it would be in our favor?” Basil asks. “He never did seem to like us. Or Nim.”

  “No, but he loves Internment. He’ll do right by it. I hope.”

  I stay by Prince Azure’s side through the night, weaving in and out of consciousness. Basil sits up in the grass beside me, always awake, keeping watch.

  It’s the baby’s cries that startle us all awake, sometime before dawn. The sound could replace the clock tower’s hourly trills, for it’s surely being heard through every window in the city.

  Prince Azure sits up, wincing, clutching his sore back and neck, shrugging his shoulders. “Are we still here?” he says sourly. “After all that?”

  Pen staggers to the door of the jet and has to yell over the baby’s cries. “It’s not going to shut up, you know. It’s hungry.” The concept of motherhood has always eluded her and this experience is reinforcing her disdain.

  “What do you propose I do about it?” Prince Azure asks her.

  “Don’t ask me,” she fires back. “You’re the king.”

  20

  I don’t retain most of the walk back to the clock tower. I black out for moments at a time, but somehow my legs keep moving.