Burning Kingdoms Page 20

The sun cannot decide whether it wants to stay. It hides behind clouds, peeking out only enough to put light in the trees, throw a glimmer on some of the stones. The Pipers march ahead in their familiar order, and the rest of us straggle a few paces behind.

  Thomas holds Pen’s hand, a gesture she can neither reject nor embrace; she looks away from him, her lips moving as she reads the names on the stones we pass.

  Basil walks beside me, our arms not quite touching. If there was tension as our affections for each other began to bloom on Internment, there is tension now as our affections seem to be waning, and we cannot decide whether to cling to them or let them go. All I can know for certain is that I care for him, that if he’d been lost that night at the harbor, a part of me would have been lost as well, just as a part of me is still halfway between life and death since the explosions, like Birdie in her hospital bed fighting to survive.

  “I think that’s the priest,” Judas whispers from behind me. He’s looking at a man dressed all in black, but for a white strip at his collar.

  On Internment, we have officiates to bear the ashes, read about the tributary, and throw the ashes into the wind.

  Rather than ashes, there’s a glossy wooden box just the right size to hold a child, and a gaping hole in the ground. Annette and Marjorie break into a new round of tears. Jack Piper glances at them, and his tense jaw softens a bit, and he tells the priest, “The girls would like you to read the burial prayer.”

  It may be the only kindness his children can expect from him today.

  The priest thumbs through his Text. Up until now it has been a source of entertainment for us, a bit of mythology to help us learn about this place. But now I see that it is as real to the people of the ground as our history book is to us. Whether the tributary exists, or whether the words in that black book are true, the idea of them is equally important. There is a need, in every world, to believe in things that cannot be seen.

  The priest begins, in a theatrical, almost musical tone, to recite the prayer the girls have requested. It’s unfamiliar to me, but Pen whispers as he goes on. She has already read this one.

  I look at Nimble. His hair is parted and slicked, and he’s much older in his plaid suit. Celeste is wound around his arm. But he doesn’t hold her the way that she is holding on to him. If they were beginning to fall in love before this happened, she has advanced, while he’s become frozen in time. He’s still standing at the harbor, waiting for Riles and Birdie to emerge from the smoke so he can bring them safely home.

  I hope that she’ll be patient with him. He needs her, and when he is ready to rejoin the living, he’ll see that.

  The priest finishes his reading. There are two men in dirty clothes, and they manipulate a series of ropes and pulleys to get the box into the ground. It jerks with the motion, as though the boy inside has come alive again.

  The hole in the ground seems infinite, and I’m surprised when the box reaches the bottom and it’s still in sight. The Pipers grab handfuls of dirt, and, according to height, they take turns dropping it onto the final resting spot of their son and brother.

  There is a moment of hesitation, and when a wind moves through, I feel that it has severed something that cannot ever be repaired.

  I hope that Annette was right, and that the burial prayer will guide Riles where he needs to go.

  Basil nudges me, and when I look at him, he nods off into the distance. Beyond the cemetery fence, half-hidden by trees, is a tall woman in a low-waisted dress. Nimble sees her too, and the numbness in his gaze turns to worry. He steers his sisters around so that their backs are to her. “Come on,” he tells them. “Back to the cars.”

  “Are we going home?” Marjorie asks.

  “No,” Jack Piper says. I don’t think he’s seen the woman in the trees. “I’ve got a surprise for all of you. We’re going to see the king. He’s going to announce something special on the radio.”

  Celeste turns her head sharply to me.

  I begin to understand. Now. King Ingram means to announce to his kingdom the news about the jets, now that the country is war-torn and broken and the people are most likely to cling to the hope that there is something in the sky to save them.

  A thousand horrified apologies are in Celeste’s eyes.

  Those murmurings that King Ingram was to blame for the harbor were right. He meant to announce Internment when the opportunity arose, and the bombings were just what he had in mind. Maybe it was even Jack Piper’s idea: Ignore the warning bomb at the bank, wait for the real ones to come. He didn’t expect that any of his own children would be there, but he was not above sacrificing someone else’s children, someone else’s parents and siblings and friends. And the funeral of his youngest son is not going to stop him. Things were set in motion the very instant I told the princess about the glasslands.

  18

  The stone of King Ingram’s castle shimmers in the sun. Judas stares on in disgust as we approach. He has a bias against hierarchy, but at least the king who murdered his betrothed had the decency to live with some modesty.

  Pen is too distracted to notice the castle at all. “Morgan?” she says. “At the harbor, I said there was no such thing as someplace safe, and you said yes there was, and you’ve destroyed it. What were you on about?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I won’t be angry,” she says. “I don’t think I could manage anger just now. I only want the truth.”

  “What are you accusing her of, exactly?” Judas says.

  “She hasn’t done anything wrong,” Basil says. I don’t think he believes that; he just can’t stand Judas Hensley being the one to come to my defense.

  But Pen is looking right at me, no matter how firmly I stare at my lap. “Morgan knows exactly what I’m asking,” she says.

  “Then you don’t need me to tell you,” I say.

  “You promised,” she says. “You promised me you wouldn’t tell anyone what we found at the library.”

  “This world made liars of us both, then,” I say.

  Basil touches my shoulder, and I flinch.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” I say. “I didn’t know the bombs were coming.”

  “Of course not,” Pen says. “You can never know what to expect when you deal with kings, or people from a strange land. That’s why, when you discover something valuable, you keep your mouth shut.” She speaks calmly, but there’s enough fire in that last word to burn Internment from the sky.

  “What did you do?” Judas is looking at me.

  The car has stopped, and the driver opens the door for us. Basil helps me with my crutches. “Whatever it is, we’ll fix it,” he says.

  I shake my head. “We can’t. It’s done.”

  Pen is already ahead of us, fastened to Thomas’s side. It’s what he’s wanted ever since Lex jumped—for the girl he loves to distance herself from me. It’s Celeste who’s beside me now. “I’m sure that the rumors aren’t true,” she says. “The king didn’t know that the bombs at the harbor were coming.”

  “If you really believe that, then you aren’t as well versed in politics as you believe,” I say.

  She stares ahead at the castle doors that have opened for us. Her dread is palpable.

  We enter the castle and walk past the parlor, down hallways and into depths I’ve never seen. I feel as though this place is swallowing us whole.

  Basil offers to carry me, but I have no right to make this walk any easier on myself.

  Pen glances back at me, and there’s no anger in her face, but no warmth either. Thomas says something and she turns her attention back to him.

  Celeste is ever at my side. We did this. Together we’ll face whatever may come. She is poised and pristine, but I can feel her hope dying. She is the heiress presumptive of a floating kingdom, and she may have just been its undoing.

  Judas walks behind us, glaring at the back of my head. I see his reflection in windows and polished vases and picture frames we pass.

  A
t last this ominous march comes to an end. Jack Piper has led us to a heavy-looking door just beyond the reach of the window light. And as he turns to face his youngest children, I see how tired he’s become in the trip from the cemetery to the king’s castle. In his daughters he sees at once more life than he can bear, and he clears his throat before he’s able to speak to them.

  “King Ingram is going to speak into his radio, and it picks up every voice in the room, so you have to be as silent as mice.”

  They nod and begin to step behind their brother. As young as they are, even they know there is something to be feared on the other side of that door.

  Jack Piper knocks three times, pauses, two times, pauses, three times. There’s the sound of latches coming undone, and then the door swings open.

  I have never seen so many wires in my life. They’re strung from the ceiling, dripping down one wall and across the floor in thick black rivers and routes, as though we have stepped inside a life-size map. The king sits at a table against the wall, where all the wires connect to brassy machines, one of which appears to be a sort of horn into which one might speak. The king’s men stand guard at every corner of the tiny room, and they arrange us so that we’re standing against the wall. The door closes. Pen looks nervously at me, and in her eyes I’m not sure whether I see blame or contrition.

  “Welcome,” King Ingram says, not looking at us. He is arranging wires into a panel of plugs. “I’ve been waiting.”

  From either side of our group, Nimble and Celeste lean forward to look at each other.

  “Our sky princess has told me many interesting things about her floating city,” the king goes on. “I was especially interested in your broadcast screens. She tells me they’re something like our moving picture shows, but they can give a live broadcast like our radio waves. She tells me there are no radios on Internment, and that the screens are controlled by your king. I got to thinking that the reason for that must be so the signals wouldn’t cross with ours. Your king really didn’t want to open any communications with us, did he?”

  He looks at Celeste, who flattens herself against the wall. She has lost all the shine and sparkle of her lineage. The hopes she placed in the ground are as dead and buried as Jack Piper’s youngest son.

  King Ingram is a small man unremarkable in appearance, but now that I know his family secret, I see a bit of brightness in his eyes. I see that his grandchildren look something like him. I wonder if the throne would strip them of their souls the way it has this king.

  The king says, “But for those screens to work, there must be radio waves. It’s just that only your King Furlow and his men have access to them.”

  He turns back to his machines. I rest my weight against one crutch, and with my free arm I grab Celeste’s hand. She squeezes it in gratitude.

  “I had the great privilege of speaking with your king last evening,” he says. “He was understandably reluctant to grant our jets access to his city. Because, you see, we would need a place to land. If our jet were to crash into a building and send the whole floating island up in smoke that would destroy all its phosane, that wouldn’t do any good. And if he refuses to build us a tarmac, this could end badly for all of us.”

  Celeste squeezes her eyes shut for a long moment, collecting herself.

  “He asked why he should help us. He’s seen through those scopes of his how destructive we are. He doesn’t want to displease his god of the sky.” The king reaches for a chain fastened to his pocket. Rather than his eye lens, he has a clock. “I told him that I had a compelling reason, if he cared to listen, at noon today. We’re coming up on that now.” He twists at the knobs and rattles the wires, a maestro of this horrific organ. “Hello?” he says. “Hello, hello?”

  There’s a roar of static and something like a voice.

  “How do you do!” King Ingram says. “Is this King Furlow?”

  Whirring and swishing, and then a faraway, “It is.”

  “I’ll cut right to the chase,” King Ingram says. He looks over his shoulder to wink at us. “I have someone here who wants to say hello.”

  One of the king’s men pulls Celeste forward. She lets go of my hand. She stands straight, fists balled. The king holds the metal horn in front of her face, whispers, “Say something, sweetheart.”

  “Pa—” Her voice hitches. “Papa?”

  Static. Agonizing moments of static. And then, “—leste? Celeste! You’re alive?”

  Her shoulders shake, but to her credit she doesn’t cry. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. I’m here.”

  King Furlow hesitates up in his sky. Thirty-five thousand feet above us, he has just revealed his great weakness—that he loves his children, and one of them is held at King Ingram’s mercy.

  Celeste says, “Is Az—”

  King Ingram takes the horn away from her, and with a dismissive wave, he beckons one of his men to push her back against the wall.

  She holds her hands over her mouth, but through her skin and bones I hear the words she’s whispering to the god in the sky.

  King Furlow’s voice is broken, scattered in the airspace between the two kingdoms. Negotiations are made. He says, over and over, the word “yes.” He will build what needs to be built. He will prepare what needs to be prepared. He will gather the men to pave the field beyond the train tracks. All he asks is that his daughter is safely returned.

  There is no mention of doing a thing to help the ailing queen.

  No one says a word on the drive home. We sit still in our fancy clothes, and our eyes don’t meet. And when we get inside the hotel, the radio in the kitchen is announcing what I already know.

  Hello, yes, hello, this is your king.

  Don’t despair.

  There is hope.

  Help is coming soon.

  I move for the stairs as fast as my crutches will allow. Arms go around me to hold me steady. Pen and Celeste. No matter what tensions exist between us, we still belong to the same world. We’ll still band together when we need to.

  We say nothing as we make our way up the stairs. In our room, we sit on the edges of our beds, forming a sort of triangle.

  Celeste is the first to speak. “I didn’t get to ask Papa about Azure. He seemed barely alive when I last saw him. I don’t even know if he’s woken up.”

  Pen shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have come,” she says. “You’re the reason Internment is going to let Havalais in. Everything is going to fall to ruin.”

  “Pen, don’t,” I say.

  “Don’t you dare,” Pen says. Her voice is dangerous and low. “You don’t get to tell me what to say. Not after what you just did. I don’t even know who you are since we’ve come here.”

  She stares at me, and I don’t look away, because she’s right and I must face it: I betrayed her, and I betrayed our kingdom, and I’m not sorry. To keep her safe, I would betray a thousand kingdoms.

  “Why must you always be so awful?” Celeste says to Pen. “We’ve all lost something, and here we are coping. You’re the only one determined to make things more miserable than they already are. What’s happened in your life to damage you so much?”

  Pen flinches as though some invisible demon is blowing on her hair. “I don’t have the head for this,” she says, and leaves the room.

  I fall back against my mattress. “Another fantastic mess,” I say.

  “My father has something up his sleeve,” Celeste says, but she doesn’t sound too sure. “If King Ingram really does intend to harm Internment in some way—and I’m not saying he does—my father and his men will have ways of preventing that from happening.”

  “You said King Ingram’s engineers were working on getting the jets to fly,” I say. “How soon will they be ready?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “They may be ready now, if he’s announcing it on the radio. He said that if my ring was made of real phosane, it would be enough to fuel them.” I feel her eyes watching me. “You don’t look well,” she says. “You’re sweating.”<
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  “I’m all right,” I say. “Today has just been taxing, and it’s barely past noon.”

  She sits on my bed, touches my forehead. “Can I get you anything? Some water?”

  “You wouldn’t have a time machine, would you?”

  She laughs. “If only.”

  If only. I’d push Riles and Nimble and Birdie and Pen back onto the ferry. I would say, I have a funny feeling we shouldn’t be here.

  Celeste pats my knee and stands. “You should have a nap,” she says. “I’m going to find Nim.”

  “Hey,” I say.

  She’s already in the doorway and she turns to face me. “Be patient with him,” I say. “He’s hurting and he’s afraid.”

  She smiles, sadness in her eyes. “I know that.” And then she’s gone.

  When I close my eyes, I see Riles and Birdie crouched together and pointing at the stars. They’re laughing. They don’t see me.

  The pain wakes me.

  “Sorry,” Pen says. Celeste is gone, and I hear evening crickets through the open window. Pen is sitting at the foot of my bed; she has undressed my wound and is dabbing at it with some liquid from a glass bottle. She frowns. “I can’t tell whether it’s infected.”

  “Where did you run off to earlier?” I ask. My voice sounds far away.

  “The hospital to check on Birdie, if you must know. I had a dream last night that she disappeared. I looked everywhere I could think of, and it turned out that she had become queen, and her throne was a thousand paces high, and when I looked up to see her, I was blinded by the sun.”

  “It sounds like a wonderful dream,” I say. “All I’ve had are nightmares.”

  “How can you think what I had wasn’t a nightmare?” she says. “To dream of someone who is most certainly gone and to be tricked into thinking she’s still here.”

  She dabs at my wound again and I suck air through my teeth.

  “Has this been hurting?” she asks.

  “Not very much until you started doing that. Could you stop?”

  She tears the gauze with her teeth and sets about wrapping my leg. “Thomas told me what he said to you the night I nearly drowned,” she says. “He said the reason you told King Ingram about the phosane was because of me. Is that true?”