Burning Kingdoms Page 18

  Dreams are indistinguishable from truth. I know I’m awake only because in all my waking moments I am calling for Basil, because I worry he’ll leave my side, and calling for Pen, because I worry her survival was a fever dream and that she was lost at the harbor. Across the room, Pen isn’t much better off. I hear her sobbing, Thomas whispering.

  When Nimble appears in the doorway, his left arm in a sling, I’m not sure if he’s really there at first.

  “Everyone alive and accounted for?” he asks. There is something wrong with his voice.

  “They’ll be okay,” Basil says.

  Nimble nods. “Good,” he says. “That’s good.”

  “Birdie?” is the first thing I’m able to get out.

  He looks at me, and his face softens. His eyes are shining with tears. I think of what his mother said, about him being all soul inside.

  “It doesn’t look good, kiddo,” he tells me.

  “But she’s alive?”

  He rubs at his eyes under the lenses and nods.

  “Riles?” I say.

  Across the room, Pen sits up, listening.

  Nimble turns away from us, and I think he’s going to leave. He takes a step. But then he turns back around. “Riles is dead.”

  I don’t understand. My body won’t let me understand; it is so bruised and tired and shocked, it can’t make room for this news. My vision clouds and I smell ashes.

  Nimble’s mouth is a wobbly line. He looks to Basil and then Thomas. “Take good care of them, boys. We already have more fatalities than this kingdom will be able to stand.”

  It could be days, or hours. Nobody will tell me what’s happening outside the hospital. The nurses force Basil and Thomas to leave because it’s too crowded to accommodate the well in addition to the wounded. But they don’t want to go. They tell us they will stand outside if they have to. They say, “Don’t worry; we’ll be here.”

  “We’ll worry less if you go to the hotel, where we know you’ll be safe,” Pen says. What she doesn’t say is that the hospital may be another target.

  A nurse says she loves our accents and asks if we’re from someplace called Norsup. Pen says that we are, and I hope it isn’t another kingdom that King Ingram has angered. We get new roommates in the three empty beds. The nurses curtain us off so that I can hear only the other patients’ groaning and whimpering and snoring, but Pen and I leave the curtain open between us, always.

  She recovers quickly in the coming hours, and doesn’t seem to notice the layers of gauze wrapped around her forearm. Several times she leaves the room, only to later return, escorted by impatient nurses who tell her she needs her rest.

  She sits on the foot of my bed. “I found Birdie,” she says.

  I prop myself on my elbows. My leg is throbbing through the numbing salve they’ve applied to it. Sliced open by some airborne sharp object, but not broken. I could force myself to walk on it if it means seeing Birdie alive. “How is she? Can you take me to her?”

  Pen shakes her head, looks at the ground. “This is bad,” she says. “All of this is just . . . unimaginable. Nobody even died in the bank explosion; it was a weekend, everything was closed. That was meant to be a warning. King Ingram ignored it.”

  “Jack Piper is his first and only adviser,” I say. “I’m sure he had something to do with that.”

  “Well, hooray for him,” Pen says. “He just got one of his own children killed, and maybe another.”

  “You said Birdie is still alive,” I insist.

  She strokes the back of her hand against my face. “It isn’t good, Morgan,” she says.

  “I have to see her,” I say. “Pen, you have to show me where she is.”

  “You can’t walk,” she says. “Do you propose I carry you?”

  “I can walk if I lean on you for support,” I say. She hesitates. “Pen, if she isn’t going to make it, I should be able to see her. Time is a factor.”

  Pen leans back to peer into the hallway. “It’s chaos out there,” she says. “We might be able to get by unnoticed.” She helps me get to my feet.

  The instant I put weight on my leg, it ignites with new pain. I bite down on my lip to stifle my scream. That’s all it takes to make Pen change her mind. She pushes me back against the pillow. “I’m not going to let you hurt yourself,” she says. “Just—just stay there, all right? I’ll be back.”

  She’s been in and out of our room so many times, she’s gotten quite good at getting around the nurses. I’ve always known her to be clever, but even I am impressed when she returns with a wheelchair. She seems quite pleased with herself.

  “I’ve memorized the building’s layout as best I can,” she says, wheeling me out into the hall. That’s the mapmaker in her. “We’re in the east wing, which is where they seem to be keeping all of the cases that aren’t life-threatening. Burns and breaks and things. Birdie is across the building. There’s a sign that says it’s the burn unit, but there’s a whole mess of patients everywhere. No one even noticed me.”

  These are the halls I walked after the professor collapsed, and the driver took Celeste and me on a tour. The halls were nearly empty then, voices soft and calm, patients quiet in their beds. But now there are burns and tears and trays of bloody bandages everywhere we go.

  We round several corners before my wheelchair collides with the white skirt of a nurse who looks positively undone. Her hat has come unpinned on one side, and it’s flapping like a dog’s ear against her severe ponytail. “What are you doing out of your beds?” she says.

  “Hang on,” Pen tells me, and with a lurch, she runs down the hall, pushing me so fast, my hair is blown from my shoulders. I claw at the armrests. The nurse’s high heels clack against the polished floor as she chases us, but her insensible shoes are no match for Pen, and Pen knows it, which is why she’s laughing. It’s absurd enough that I laugh, too, and call back, “We’re sorry, truly,” as we disappear around another corner.

  Pen slows to catch her breath, but there are still traces of laughter even as she coughs.

  That is, until we come to a stop before an open door. Unlike the other hallways, it’s quiet here. There are many doors, and I would like to think Pen has made a mistake stopping before this one. The body in that bed could not possibly belong to anyone we know.

  Slowly, Pen wheels me through the door, bringing me close enough to the bed that I can have a better look. The body in the bed has one leg elevated on a rope that hangs from a pulley on the ceiling, and the leg is wrapped in bandages that are soaked through with brown splotches, blood; the mouth is parted open, held that way by a thick hose that disappears down the throat. The eyes are swollen and pink, smeared with some greasy salve. The face is scratched, scraped, patched by white strips of bandages. The hair is matted with blood, but, strangely, it’s the first part of Birdie that I recognize. It still has a bit of a wave to it, and it rests over one shoulder, the way it always has.

  “Birdie?” I whisper.

  But she doesn’t hear. Her chest rises and falls in tandem with some sighing machine, which, along with the ropes and bandages, is holding together what’s left of her.

  Pen touches my shoulder. She wanted to protect me from this, but I insisted. Up until this moment, I thought that whatever state Birdie was in couldn’t be worse than Lex after he went over the edge. But Lex, at least, still looked something like Lex. I didn’t have to stare at him, trying to find traces.

  This is— I don’t know what I am supposed to make of this.

  “My brother was right,” I say. “There’s cruelty here, too.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Pen says.

  I look over my shoulder at her. “Why isn’t anyone with her? She shouldn’t be here all alone.”

  “They aren’t allowing visitors,” Pen says.

  “But her father is the king’s adviser,” I say. “That’s got to mean something.”

  “On the contrary, it means less than nothing,” Nimble says. I turn in my chair a
nd see him standing in the doorway. “Everyone hates the king right now. It’s been only a day, and already there’s talk that he planned for this to happen. And that’s just in this one building. Imagine what the rest of the kingdom must be saying.”

  I can’t bring myself to look at Birdie again, and so I focus on her brother. There are purple shadows under his eyes, and he’s whiter than the walls and bedding in this place. I see the veins in his good hand as he clenches and unclenches his fist.

  “I’m sorry,” is all I can say.

  “It’s my fault,” he says. “When our mother left, Birdie developed a habit of sneaking away at night. I thought it would be good for her, maybe she’d make some friends for a change, take her mind off things. None of us gets much freedom.”

  “It sounds like you were only looking out for her,” Pen says.

  He nods. “The city has always been safe, you see. Safe enough that I wouldn’t think twice about her going off alone, or bringing one of the kids with me when I go.” His voice gets congested and his eyes become inflamed. All of the Piper children have those light blue eyes I’ve always found so beautiful. “I neglected to take it seriously that we’re at war. I found it all sort of funny, the way King Ingram and King Erasmus exchanged threats over a bunch of rocks out in the ocean.”

  “You can’t have known,” I say.

  “I should have. Even Celeste tried to warn me, and I laughed. I laughed. I told her that this sort of cold war baloney had been going on for decades.”

  “To be fair, she is rarely ever right about anything,” Pen says. I’m not sure if she was making a joke, but Nimble laughs anyway, bitterly.

  “Has your father been here?” I say.

  “It wouldn’t be safe for him out here, and anyway, he’ll be busy right about now. The king needs him.”

  “You and Birdie need him more,” I say.

  Nimble shakes his head. “No we don’t,” he says. “Our father is the last person we need. Next to our mother, that is.”

  He watches Birdie, who doesn’t blink or move. I wonder if she is dreaming, or if she has moved past that by now. I wonder if she’s dying, or if in a way she’s already dead.

  “We’re here for you,” Pen offers. I can see in his expression that her kindness has startled him. “If you need us, that is. We’re here.”

  “Thank you,” he says. He is still watching his sister. I don’t know how he has the bravery. Hours ago she was smirking at him in the glow of a streetlamp. “She came after me, didn’t she? After the explosion.”

  He doesn’t need us to answer.

  “We made a promise. Our father has always kept us sheltered, insisting on private tutors, having us live in seclusion so that the political discussions in schools and on the streets wouldn’t conflict with what he’d have us believe.

  “After our mother left, he tightened the reins. Birdie and I would talk about getting rich somehow, running away. One of us would unearth another phosane mine or write the next timeless novel and make millions. At first it was just talk, but the more we talked, the more it became fact. One of us would make it, and then we’d be able to get away. But we wouldn’t leave each other behind the way our mother did.”

  When Pen suggested that Nimble and Riles might have taken the ferry after the bomb hit, Birdie was certain they hadn’t, and now I understand why. And suddenly I have the courage to look at her again, to see what I think Nimble sees: traces of her soft, timid expressions under all the blood and burns; a girl whose life is unfinished, plans and intentions suspended somewhere in the smoke and rubble. A sister, a daughter, a friend.

  I take her hand. In the novels, this is all it takes for a girl in peril to awaken from her trance. But her fingers are slack in my palm, and her skin is cold, and I don’t know where she is, only that I can’t bring her back.

  “She told you, didn’t she?” Nim says. “About our family and who we are to the king.”

  “Yes,” I say, but it had been during one long silly night we shared while we had too much to drink. She never mentioned it again.

  “We used to joke about it,” he says. “But with all the hatred everyone has for the king right now, I don’t know what kind of danger we’d all be in if anyone found out.”

  “No one will find out,” Pen says. “It’s been a secret this long, right?”

  “You’re bleeding,” Nimble says.

  “Oh,” Pen says. “So I am.” Her bandages are soaked through with it, probably from the adrenaline when she ran from the nurse. She presses her fingers against the stain and it comes off on her skin.

  “You should go back to your room and rest,” Nimble says. “Both of you.”

  “We’re okay,” Pen says. “It’s nothing very serious.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” he says. “Please. Birdie would want me to look after you. You both mean a lot to her.”

  I lay her hand back on the mattress. A comatose princess in a burning kingdom. “She means a lot to us, too,” I say.

  Pen grabs the handles of my chair and steers me forward. “We’re in the east wing,” she says. “Come and find us if you get lonely. We’re surely not going anywhere for a while.”

  He offers something like a smile as we pass by.

  We make it back to our room, and after Pen helps me into my bed, she returns the wheelchair to the hallway. Someone will need it more than I do.

  After the energy Pen has put forth this afternoon, she is asleep seconds after climbing into her bed. Her breathing is uneasy; she mumbles and stirs. I hear her as I drift into a sleep of my own. I don’t know that it can even be called sleep. It is only moments I’ve already lived, bolder and more vivid now that they’ve had time to grow. The bomb wakes me over and over. Birdie runs into the haze. Nimble and Riles walk into the crowd, their lips moving as they say words that I can’t hear. The ground shakes. I wake clawing at the mattress.

  “. . . His victims are crushed, they collapse.” Pen is sitting beside me, a book open across her knees. “They fall under his strength. He says to himself, ‘God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees.’ ”

  “What are you reading?” I ask.

  “Verses,” she says, struggling to pronounce the peculiar name. “The Text breaks off into this sort of poetry.”

  “Where did you get a copy of The Text here?”

  She laughs. “They’re everywhere. It’s like they mortar the walls with them down here. I thought you wouldn’t mind if I read aloud.”

  “I don’t mind.” I close my eyes. I don’t have to believe the words to take comfort in them. There’s comfort, also, in the cadence of her speech, the subtle inflections and emphases that I took for granted back home, where everyone spoke the same way.

  “I’m trying to skip around to the nice parts,” she says. “But sometimes it sounds nice, and then it goes somewhere ugly.”

  “They like that down here, don’t they?” I say.

  “Are you from the north somewhere?” a voice says through the curtain.

  “Norsup,” we say in unison, and we say no more about the differences between the sky and the ground. Pen reads, and I coast in and out of sleep. This time it is dreamless. And then, when Pen’s voice has faded so far into the distance that it is scarcely there, I relive another moment. I’m standing with Celeste, behind the gold curtain in the lobby, and we’re watching the smoke rise from where the bank was bombed. She smiles at me. “We’ve come just in time to save them,” she tells me. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  I wake with a gasp.

  I am sure I will never again have a night of uninterrupted sleep.

  A nurse is standing in our doorway with a wheelchair. “You’re being released,” she says. “Someone has come to collect you.”

  “Both of us?” Pen asks.

  “Yes, doll.” The nurse is clearly in a hurry, judging by the speed with which she changes our bandages and moves me into the wheelchair. I suppose there’s no shortage of people in need of our beds.

&
nbsp; As we head down the hallway, I wonder if Jack Piper has risked his safety to collect his only remaining son, and to see what’s become of his eldest daughter.

  But his driver is the one waiting for us at the door. Nimble is already there, and he looks as though he needs this chair more than I do. The nurse touches his good arm and he flinches. He looks down the hallway, until it forks into different directions, one of which begins the labyrinth that leads to his sister, and I can see that he doesn’t want to leave her.

  Outside, the smell of damp earth and the singing of crickets go on uninterrupted. The basics of nature see no cause to be still for the likes of us.

  Once I’m in the car, I look back at the hospital. It is made of squares of light against a black and starless sky.

  “I’ve never had a friend like you either,” I whisper to Birdie as we drive away.

  17

  The youngest Pipers are uncertain what to do with themselves when there is no routine. It’s just Marjorie and Annette now. No Riles to tell them which things are too selfish to mention in their prayers, or to reach the crackers when they’re hungry after lunch. And no father telling them to sit straight, eat their boiled carrots, and don’t fidget. They sob all day; it’s one long sound that begins in the morning and never really stops as the sun changes its position in the sky. They don’t speak. Something irreparable has happened; they understand that much.

  Alice reads to them, and they sit still but don’t listen.

  Nimble isn’t faring any better than his little sisters. He sits in a wing chair in the lobby, saying nothing as Celeste fusses over him, bringing him food he doesn’t eat and tea he doesn’t drink. She tells him to please, please talk to her, he’s got her scared, she wants to understand what’s in his mind. But she can’t understand, and it’s that simple. She didn’t see the things we did. When he falls into a frail sleep and wakes kicking his foot like he needs to run away, she has no idea what he might have dreamed, but Pen and I do. The three of us seem to have formed an unspoken agreement to stay near one another. Touching shoulders, touching hands as we pass by, smiling wearily, speaking little if at all.