“Really?” Pasqual says. “Have I missed one of your projects?”
“No,” I say, smiling. “When I have one, you won’t miss it.”
Bebel, of course, breaks through the tension like a battering ram. “That’s very mysterious, June. And I told Ieyascu you must be plotting something.”
“You did?”
“Sure. She was asking me if I thought you’d drop out. And I said she didn’t know June if she thought that for a second.”
“I’m …” Appalled? Confused? “… surprised.”
“Don’t be. A good rival is almost like a friend, isn’t she? You make me try harder.”
Something like a smile lifts the corners of her mouth, but her eyes stay serious.
Perhaps Bebel’s always seen me far more clearly than I see her. All those times I thought she was faking or playing nice for the grandes or just trying to get under my skin, could she actually have been supporting me? Because she liked the competition?
“I have to go,” I say. “See you around, Bebel. Pasqual.”
I stumble backward, grab my bag from under the bench, and open the door. I can’t have much time left. Enki is depending on me.
And Bebel needs a good rival.
Every five years, the summer king chairs special sessions of parliament and is meant to lead discussions of major reforms or new legislation. But in moon years, this position tends to be reduced to an opening convocation and listening to long, boring debates about transport-pod modification. The summer king is free to offer his opinion, and the Aunties are free to ignore him. All government sessions are publicly broadcast — since Enki became summer king, more wakas than usual have started watching parliament, hoping for a glimpse of him. That means everyone will see it. And another reason we know the gossip casters will be over it like stink on fish?
You can’t ignore your nose.
Six minutes before parliament begins its afternoon session, I deposit the first canister in an empty public train waiting on the Sé line. It says “Not in Service” but the doors close as soon as I open my first little piece of the verde inside. Enki told me it would be waiting here. I asked how he knew, and he said the city told him. The stink is instant and overpowering. The car stops at the Gria transfer station just long enough to let me out. A few of the people on the platform stare at me with bored curiosity, but my hunting outfit looks a lot like the uniform of an engineer and they don’t make much of it. If they catch a whiff of catinga, they don’t take it as anything out of the ordinary. I gauge my time from the public holo in the center of the platform. Five minutes to go. Someone has switched one of the four feeds to the parliamentary session. I smile. I sprint.
Next is the Amarela line. At the end of the platform, my Not in Service train awaits. I get in, the doors shut, and it rockets forward, so quickly that I nearly fall on top of the canister. Close call. I don’t think I’d ever get clean again if I got the stink on my skin. I stash it under a row of seats and wait for the car to stop. It does at Royal Plaza. This is the trickiest part of the plan: With parliament in session, Auntie Maria, our head of security, has officers all over the platform. The cars that take the Aunties to the parliament building aren’t even open to normal citizens like me. But they do break down, and I walk as calmly as you please into the one that even I didn’t believe would be waiting. I don’t ride this one — it would be too dangerous — I just pretend to check something on the array by the door while I roll the canister ever so gently inside. I step back and the door closes just as the loosened lid slides off, releasing its odor.
I wait a few seconds to make sure that nothing’s gone wrong. But though a few of the grandes on the platform give me hard looks, I can tell by now it’s just general distaste at having a waka near their distinguished government proceedings. Sun goggles cover half my face and I’ve bound my hair in a scarf, but if someone gets a good look they’ll probably still be able to identify me. I walk right past one of Auntie Maria’s security agents, a woman with a white pyramid pinned to her lapel and a dazzle in her irises that indicates a certain kind of biomod.
“I hope you’re not missing school, filha,” she says.
I smile at her and pray I don’t look memorable. “Just wanted to sit in the park for my lunch break.”
She nods and turns away. A moment later, she frowns as though someone is speaking to her, and her mod-eyes glint. I hurry toward the park. It’s small, but since the Aunties use it, there’s a large holo right by the water lily pond.
I sit on a bench a few feet away, take a deep breath, and count to five.
“Summer King,” says Auntie Isa from her place beside Oreste’s empty chair. “Will you convene the session?”
Enki rises, nods graciously, and walks to the center podium.
The summer king customarily delivers a brief poem or statement before he convenes the special sessions. Enki gives them quite a bit more than that.
“In the verde,” says Enki, as serious as I’ve ever seen him, “we love the storms. Sometimes, when we see one come in, the blocos will set up in the terraces and play until the rain drives us inside.”
He pauses here, as though considering his next words, though I can tell he’s just savoring the moment. My last present from the verde must have gone through. Everyone in the audience shuffles uncomfortably. Nostrils flair, discreet coughs echo through the chamber. Some look at Enki, others at one another or the doorways.
Enki takes a deep breath, as though he doesn’t notice a thing. “We have a saying,” he says as murmurs from his audience rise to a wave, “you can’t smell the catinga until it comes back home.”
In the background, I can just make out several guards hurrying through the doors. Enki surveys his work and smiles, a sun breaking through clouds.
“I hereby convene parliament.”
As he saunters back to his seat, Auntie Isa rushes the podium with a handkerchief covering her nose and murder in her eyes. People stand up and hurry to the doors. They don’t know the smell will be even worse in the hallway. Our transport pods are all connected to the ventilation system. It’s meant to help refresh the air supply in the tunnels, but it can go the other direction. It can carry the fetid stink of the verde straight to the noses of people who pretend it doesn’t exist.
In the park, the first of the escapees from parliament gather before the holo. The other feeds have all switched to the news: Gria Plaza in a panic, the shawls of well-to-do women fluttering as they race to open air. Office workers in Tier Eight crowd the walkways — the smell ought to have reached school, by now. When Auntie Yaha and Mother complain about the stink tonight, they’ll have me to thank, though they won’t know it.
Back in Parliament, Auntie Isa declares an emergency end to the session, due to “an unexpected problem with our air-filtration system.”
The parliamentary feed cuts black, and we’re left with the breathless casters, speculating about everything from a broken vat in the verde to a system-wide collapse of Palmares Três. I leave them to it.
It’s a curious thing, this art that I don’t sign my name to. I like anonymity more than I thought I would. For once, I don’t consider how this will play with the Aunties or how it increases my chances of winning the Queen’s Award. In this moment, I’m just June, the best artist in Palmares Três.
You always did love lights. You glowed on that dance floor when Gil held you in the air. I said I didn’t notice, but I did. Your tree has grown since then. Once I said I could read your mind, but I can tell your mood without even glancing at your face. Anger, that’s the easiest of all — a pulse and a flash, like a cracking whip. When you’re excited, you show your brightest colors. There’s a way the branches along your arm seem to sway in a lazy breeze when you’ve just had an idea for an art project.
When you saw the ocean for the first time, I thought I could see them flower.
To love light, you have to love dark. I’m not trying to be profound, I know you’ll understand. I don’t mean
that you have to hate to love, or that you have to die to live.
I mean that sometimes, you turn out the lights just to turn them back on.
Bebel and Pasqual are very drunk, which perhaps explains why she hooks her arm on mine and says, none too quietly, “Do you think we’d get much attention for a threesome?” in the middle of our finalists’ dinner. With camera bots buzzing everywhere, this particular tidbit will be all over the bottom feeds in, oh, now, along with my blush.
“Uh, Bebel, people are watching —”
She giggles. “The point, my June. Aren’t you the one all about Spectacle and Art?”
She has me there. Across the room, Enki pretends he can’t see me while Gil so casually fondles the back of his neck. Octavio sits in a corner, looking morose, and rebuffing any attempt by one of us to converse. A few Aunties mill about, but our Queen has yet to make an appearance. I’ve spent all day working on my light-tree — two nights ago, a cleaning bot climbed through our garden and handed me a bag filled with light implants. I don’t know where Enki found them — they’re naturalist-grade programmable, and they adjust their light to the hue of my skin. I couldn’t thank him, but I gave the little bot a few flowers from our garden, in case she found her way back.
The tree unfurls, now. First its branches, then its light-leaves. The branches cover my breasts and collarbone. I haven’t had a chance to do the trunk.
Not that Mother would let me out of the house wearing something that would show it, anyway.
Gil and Enki look the part of the city’s wonder couple, dazzling in matching outfits Gil’s mamãe designed. The Aunties are not pleased with their summer king. Security officers tail him the moment he leaves his apartments, according to Gil. Aside from the late-night delivery, I haven’t heard a word from him since our perhaps-too-successful catinga project. Everyone knows Enki is responsible, but since he was very prominently giving a speech at the time, no one can quite figure out how. Current speculation is running high on Gil as his accomplice, which made the two of us laugh ourselves sore alone in his garden. Gil plays it up — he’s an attention whore, and he knows it protects me. I worry about how they’ll react when I reveal myself, but then I think about how wonderful the four siblings will look on their big night and I relax. It’s too good not to win.
Pasqual wraps his arm around Bebel and hands her another flute of sparkling wine. I’m not so sure this is a good idea, but Bebel’s too high to listen to me. Maybe I’m just inclined to be judgmental. I’m in a room with two of my favorite people in the world and I can’t even speak to them. Technically I could talk to Gil, but he’s glued like a limpet to Enki’s side tonight, and I’m not sure I’d want to get in the middle of that even if it weren’t for the Greatest Art Project in History. I’ve had a few flutes of that sparkling wine myself, and the memory of Bebel’s heavenly voice singing “Roda Viva” keeps melding with Enki’s as he says, You really want to sleep with me, and maybe I can’t deny the way my stomach warms in his presence, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever act on it. I didn’t approach him because I wanted to be his lover, and besides, if Enki felt that way about me he would have done something by now. I gulp down my glass before I can register my sudden rush of disappointment.
I swear, I hate wine. It’s such an Auntie drug, so old-world, and why they want to be old-world when they run a city of women is beyond me, but there you go, that’s grandes in a nutshell: hypocrite central station.
My thoughts have turned so circular and maudlin that I’m grateful when someone taps me on the shoulder.
“You’re the visual artist, right?” she says. It’s one of the other finalists, the one from the verde.
“June,” I say. “And you’re …”
I can’t remember for the life of me, so I shrug and she laughs. “That confident about the competition, huh? I’m Lucia, and I code.”
“Code? Like, games?”
“Or like nanobots.”
My eyes widen. Could this be where Enki is getting them? “Biomods?”
“I wish. In this city, you’d have better luck buying nuclear weapons. Mine are lower-level. Self-assembling machines. Lately, I’ve been working on replication.”
“Wow. And the Aunties are okay with that?”
“Are the Aunties okay with anything? I don’t think any of us are doing things they’re completely comfortable with.”
I look around the room and see exactly what she means. This is a brilliant, wild, and transgressive group of wakas. The Aunties should be screaming to see us all in a room together, exchanging ideas. And yet Auntie Maria smiles as she chats with Auntie Yaha. I see Auntie Nara who, as our head of culture, probably picked most of us. They don’t look horrified, they look pleased. As though they can think of nothing better than the sight of this group, the future leaders of their city of lights.
“They picked us,” I say.
Lucia smiles. “Strange, isn’t it?”
The music dims and the doors to the dining room glide open soundlessly. Servers take our empty glasses of wine.
“Welcome,” says Queen Oreste from the head of the table. “It would be my honor to have you join me for dinner.”
I sit between Bebel and Pasqual, across from Gil and Enki. I try not to look at either of them, but Gil catches my eye and smiles in a way that makes something unwind, deep in my belly.
The food is very refined — we start with a single scoop of sorbet of açaí and banana, and follow that with prawns stewed in coconut milk and chiles. No one but the Aunties eats much. Now that I can feel the pressure of their judgment, even the smell of the chiles can’t entice me.
“Nazare,” Oreste says, and the head of a boy at the other end of the table snaps up with a crack. “The Aunties and I have been very impressed with your level of playing recently. Have you set up any demonstration events, perhaps? I’m sure Faro would love to test his skills against yours.”
Nazare’s spoon starts to clank against his bowl and he puts it down hastily. He’s tall, angular, with long wiry arms that are likely to make him the best peteca player in Palmares Três in a few years. Unfortunately, skill on the court doesn’t make him particularly adept in social situations, and it’s clear that he’s overwhelmed by the Queen’s attention.
“I … ah … Faro?” His voice cracks, and Pasqual is drunk enough to giggle. I glare at him.
Oreste smiles and softens her voice. “Yes, dear. I have it on very good authority that Faro has been particularly impressed with your skills. I think a friendly demonstration match would be just what the city would like to see from one of its finest wakas.”
Nazare stammers out something that might be agreement, but Oreste doesn’t wait, she’s already training that deceptively welcoming gaze on another finalist, questioning her about her skills. As she goes around the table, I realize that every other finalist has either done something publicly or is planning a demonstration. As she circles around to me, the tension in the room quietly rises — it seems that everyone has heard that I’ve done nothing since my nomination. Even Gil can’t stop looking at me, but Enki is cool as he pleases, and I think that his crown of cacao has never looked more appropriate. Pasqual smoothly informs her of his work with Bebel as well as a new theorem he’s close to completing (I’d forgotten how infuriating his grande-pleasing insouciance can be). Oreste gives him a smile I’d almost call flirtatious, and then she turns to me.
“June,” she says, “my blazing light. I hear you’re working on something special?”
She has? Then I remember Bebel and Ieyascu. “You could say that.”
Her smile gets a little harder. It’s strange, but in her presence I can understand why she’s our Queen. She’s brilliant, manipulative, and beautiful. It’s no surprise she convinced the summer king four years ago to name her Queen before his death.
“So secretive, June! But you’re among friends here.”
My lights pulse with my sudden agitation. I know I have to tread carefully, but I’m an artist
, not a politician. I don’t know what to say.
Then Enki starts to laugh, and I don’t have to say anything. The sound is carefree, debatably inebriated. It dispels the charged atmosphere of Oreste’s questioning like a grounding wire.
“Something is funny, King?” she says, an attempt at polite curiosity that barely hides her annoyance.
“Her face, Oreste! How can you stand it?”
“Stand what, Enki?”
“Pushing them into these corners and smiling at them. You’re like a cat playing with a mouse, I swear.”
“I am not a mouse,” I say before I can stop myself.
Enki flashes that smile at me, and for the barest moment I can see his joy like a nod in my direction. He walks a tightrope, knowing the slightest misstep will reveal our secret to Oreste, and utterly convinced he won’t fall.
“You’re being rude, Enki,” says our Queen. She’s not hiding anything now.
“You’re being cruel. So the girl hasn’t done anything yet. You picked her, didn’t you? Maybe you should wait and see what she can offer instead of grooming her like a prize turkey.”
Silence. It stretches for five, maybe six seconds. I’m not sure anyone even breathes. Enki catches my eye, like he’s saying, “Well, I tried,” and then, clear as the bay in a calm, I know what I have to do.
I laugh.
“Well,” snaps Oreste, “I’m glad you two find this funny.”
I meant it as a distraction, but the mirth turns genuine and almost uncontrollable as soon as it leaves my belly.
Bebel touches my arm, genuinely concerned.
“Summer King,” I say between the fountaining laughter.
“June?”
“I’m not a turkey either.”
The city sounds different in the verde. She speaks to us with the same voice, but in a different tone. She apologizes so much we sometimes call her the Sorry Lady and we all learn very early not to rely on her for much of anything. In the verde, we flash a transport pod and sometimes she’ll say “I’m sorry, I can’t send you one right now.” We ask her for the weather cliffside on Tier Seven and she’ll say, “I’m sorry, I can’t access my sensors right now. Would you like to try again later?”
The Summer Prince Page 10