Which you are never going to get, June.
My fingers slip; the ties of the dress fall back over my shoulders. I try again.
“Gil said you had spies and minders.”
Enki kneels in front of me. Gently, he takes the ends of the dress from my clumsy fingers and ties them together in a simple bow.
He smiles. “I could have gotten away from the Aunties anytime. But sometimes it’s useful to make them think they can hold me, you know? And it’s never any trouble with Gil.”
No, it wouldn’t be, would it? These days, if Enki’s troublemaking began and ended with his less-than-diplomatic selection of Gil as his primary partner, the Aunties would probably dance in Royal Park.
“You want to go out to the islands?” I ask. “I haven’t been able to get more lights yet.”
He shakes his head, a strange smile playing on his lips. He looks like a mischievous god. Even when Enki is completely honest, I never know what he’s thinking.
“Am I only art to you, June?”
No, I think. “Of course,” I say.
He stands and offers me his hand. After a moment, I take it. “I thought I could show you something,” he says. “Nothing to do with art.”
“But everything has to do with art.”
Now Enki stares at me. His light brown eyes look like pieces of colored glass in the red light of sunset. He leans forward. I feel smooth and still, a fly drowning in amber. We stay like that for an endless moment, hung in time like the sun from the sky, waiting and watching each other. What will Gil think?
And then something loud and mechanical buzzes behind me.
I turn around, but Enki’s already let go of my hand. He frowns. It’s a camera bot, and I can’t tell from this distance if it’s a caster’s or one of Auntie Maria’s.
“I told them not to follow,” he mutters. He draws his eyebrows even further together and his eyes flash somehow, though I can hardly believe it even as I watch. They turn yellow or green and then back again, and suddenly the camera bot is wobbling in the air like it’s drunk. Enki snatches it and hurls it over the side of the balcony.
“I think we should hurry,” he says.
“Was that …”
A mod? But I trail off. His gaze is steady. He has that look, like he might tell me if I ask.
Do you really want to know? I can hear him say.
I don’t. Not now. Not when I felt … not when we almost …
Just this once, I want to forget that Enki is the summer king. Today I don’t want to remember what that means.
I learned to fight like every kid in the verde, with fists and feet and an eye to avoiding them. I learned to jump higher than most, kick harder, to feel the rhythm of the roda so deep beneath my eyeballs that even when it was my blood on the concrete floors, the pain felt like just another beat. You love my skin (you will ask how I know that when you’ve never said it, but you might as well ask how I know that the wakas love me or the grandes envy me or that our city is the most beautiful in the world). On Tier Eight, a negro like me has the beauty of the exotic, the forbidden. You forget that the slaves were black too, and the morenas like you couldn’t wait to become as white as our masters.
In the verde, they remember. In the verde, no one wants a negro baby — we’re too close to what that used to represent.
There aren’t any slaves in the verde, but in the roda, we still fight like master might catch us.
And they made me fight hardest of all.
We go to the spiderweb. I say I’ve already done this with him and he grins and says not like this you haven’t. I laugh though I don’t know what he’s planning. But he’s Enki, and that’s enough.
The noise hits us before we even drop down through the garbage vent Enki uses to take us there. Much easier than crab-walking upside down through the transport tunnel. Good thing too, because I’m still wearing my dress and neither of us has our nanohooks.
The voices that reverberate through the cavernous room are raucous and wild. I recognize the sound of wakas before I see them. When I do, I’m surprised to find a few grandes here and there. They’re probably not too old, but after thirty-five pretty much all grandes look the same. Boys and girls, most of them in the wide pants and colored shirts that proclaim their membership in one or another of the verde’s gangs. These are all amarelo or vermelho, colors well known for their blocos and the occasional fight, though those aren’t usually fatal.
Tonight everyone seems friendly enough. Near one fat-bellied spider so old its skin is rusting, two blocos prepare to make music. The verde blocos are the vanguard of the naturalist music trend. They make their own instruments or use broken-down antiques that they’ll patch up in interesting ways. Most of them won’t even use amps, performing instead in spaces with natural acoustics. The tech-heavy electronica of my mother’s generation might as well be a declaration of war in the verde. And I’m not inclined to make it — I was raised with my father’s classical music, but I grew up with the modern blocos. I’d heard of these impromptu music sessions in the verde, but I’d never thought I would be lucky enough to see one. The musicians for the amarelo and vermelho blocos shout good-natured insults at one another as they wet the skin of their cuíca drums, test the tension of their pandeiros, run practiced fingers over the single string of hand-made berimbaus.
“Oy, Felix!” a girl in a yellow shirt calls out. “Your cuíca sounds like a rusted spider!”
A boy in red gives his drum a squeeze and fills the room with its booming laughter. “You mean your papai? Or is that just how he sounds when your mamãe leaves the bed?”
There’s laughter, a few groans. The amarela girl bites her tongue and starts a hard, challenging samba on her pandeiro. Someone nearby shouts and gives a running tumble, springing on his hands high into the air before landing upright. Everyone claps. I turn to Enki.
“Gil can’t even do that.”
“Then someone should teach him.”
The rest of the bloco amarelo fall in with her lead. A whistle blows, shrill and high, and I feel something rising in my throat, like a shout and a laugh and a song all at once.
“Enki, what is this?”
We’re still on the edge of the crowd, not quite hidden, but unnoticed in the shadows of the great machines. “It’s a still night,” he says.
“What?”
“When the winds don’t blow, and the catinga gets worse, the blocos will come here sometimes.”
“To dance?”
His eyes are still on the crowd, but I think his smile is meant for me. “And fight.”
He walks into the crowd; I’m right behind him. The knowledge of his presence runs through like wind riffling the bay. They part for us, but they don’t stop dancing. When we reach the blocos, the girl on pandeiro raises her arms and releases her rhythm in a shiver of tiny shaking cymbals. The rest of the bloco stops playing.
“The summer king!”
“Pia,” Enki says, and they hug.
“Didn’t think we’d see you again.”
“How could I stay away on a still night?”
She looks thoughtful. “I wondered, you know. It’s our first of the summer.”
“Oy,” Felix, the vermelho boy with the cuíca, calls. “Is this a contest or a reunion?”
“Don’t you see we’re in the presence of royalty?” someone calls from the crowd.
Felix spits. “Like I’ll bow to some trumped-up verde negro. He’s no better than any of us.”
The nervous laughter covers an oppressive silence.
Enki sketches a mocking bow. “Don’t worry,” he says. “These things don’t last.”
“Isn’t that right,” Felix says. His smirk is too hard — he’s uncomfortable, unsure of Enki’s popularity here in his home.
“So prove it, vermelho,” Enki says. His voice is very soft and low in a way I haven’t heard before. I know it means something, but nothing in my life has prepared me for this scene. There are wakas in the crowd singin
g to the air, holding on to one another and rocking. I know they’re tripping, and not on something as safe and familiar as wine or Auntie Yaha’s weekend blues either. Others are tuning in to what look like foreign feeds on an ancient, bulky holo modded with wires and tape.
“Give us a dance,” Enki says.
Felix’s lips pull back in a snarl and he actually starts his band with the cuíca, which rarely happens. It’s so insistent that it works, somehow. The vermelhos are mad, pounding and plucking and scraping so fast I’m sure they must be hopped on something illegal.
And the wakas dance. Some just sway, but others move so fast I’m sure their feet will be all blisters by morning. I expect Enki to dance with the rest of them — even I’m trying — but he just stands there and smiles.
Like he knows something else is coming.
Suddenly, in the middle of the beat, Felix curses and throws down his drum. The musicians take a few more bars to realize he’s stopped.
“What, my lord,” he says, getting into Enki’s face like I wish he wouldn’t. “The music isn’t good enough for you? Three months out of the catinga, and he thinks his shit smells better than ours.”
Enki doesn’t move. Not even when some of Felix’s spit gets on his face. “I’m just wondering if you fight with as little soul as you play.”
To my right, the bloco amarelo laughs. One of them plucks the berimbau and they start in on a beat that’s simpler, softer, and instantly recognizable as a challenge. It excites me, but it seems to set the crowd on fire. Before I know it, I’m herded with the rest, back and back until we form the ring, the roda viva of the song.
With Enki and Felix in the middle.
I’m not going to cling to Enki like some hapless girl in an old-Brazil drama, begging him to save himself. I remember the way he said fight before, and the effortlessly deliberate way he goaded Felix into this contest. He’s a man and a king besides, and nothing I can say will sway him.
But I am worried, I will admit that, because I haven’t seen capoeira fought like this outside of a holo — without pads, on a concrete floor, with a circle of chanting onlookers and a bloco for the drums.
They say things like this happen in the verde. But I’m a Tier Eight brat, and my stepmother is an Auntie.
No wonder Enki wanted to take me here.
The drums get louder. The berimbau twangs and booms, speaks of violence and grace. Enki moves like a tiger, Felix like a monkey. I have no doubt about who will win, but I wonder how hard it will be.
“Good luck, Enki,” I say. It isn’t a whisper, though it isn’t very loud, certainly not over the drums and the chanting crowd, but Enki turns and winks at me. Just for a second, no one else notices, but my worry eases.
I watch.
They strip their shirts. Enki bounces on his toes, shakes out his hands. Felix shuffles around him, not caring much for the dance of capoeira. His eyes are nothing but violence. I think there must be something else between them, some injured past that brought them here. Then, faster than I can think, Enki flips into a sideways tumble, his left hand barely grazing the ground. Felix whirls, ducks instinctively, which is good because Enki’s already kicking at the air where his head used to be.
Felix rolls away and Enki drops to a crouch. Felix is panting; Enki gleams like a god. Their smiles are eerily similar, feral and hungry.
“Forgotten how to play, Summer King?” Felix says.
“Forgotten how to dance, vermelhinho?”
Pia, the amarela girl, shouts and then trills, a sound from the deep of her throat that raises the hair on my arms. The drums get louder, but no one chants. You don’t sing for this kind of fight.
Felix runs toward Enki headfirst. What he lacks in grace he makes up in raw power: His first blow to the head doesn’t land, but his second to the ribs does. We all hear the smack, but Enki doesn’t even seem to notice. He just springs into a forward flip, arcing over Felix’s head like it’s no more trouble than jumping a log. Felix doesn’t even have time to turn. Enki’s leg shoots out and hooks, sending the vermelho boy crashing to the concrete floor.
I hiss. It sounded painful, and when Felix surges to his feet, he’s gripping his shoulder. Enki cocks his head, as if to say, Had enough? but of course vermelho boy hasn’t. He can’t just lose like this in front of his bloco and his gang. Enki knows it, he loves it, but that doesn’t mean his offer wasn’t sincere.
“Enough,” Felix says, and that’s when the play turns ugly.
Felix jumps into a flying kick that doesn’t connect, but drops into a leg sweep that does. Enki catches himself fast, but not fast enough to block the hard, vicious connect Felix’s shoes make with his hip. He winces this time, and I feel obscurely relieved at the reminder of his humanity. Sometimes, even to me, Enki seems like he’s made of stone.
Enki springs from his half crouch into a scissor kick I’m pretty sure should be impossible. Felix hits the concrete face-first, temple bloody from the kick and his nose bloody from the fall. Enki waits for him to climb to his knees, then kicks him in the ribs. Around me, wakas laugh and clap. Enki’s putting on a show, even if Felix doesn’t seem to know it. Felix’s body blurs as he starts a series of flips and leaps I can’t keep track of. Enki goes still, watching and waiting, and when the blows finally come he evades them as easily as an overhanging branch. He laughs, and we all laugh with him. I think that every waka in this room — even the vermelhos — must have voted for him. Here, the summer king has his court. I only hope Felix realizes it soon enough to salvage some of his pride.
Or maybe he won’t have to.
Above us, the massive gates that shield the spiderweb from the vortex of garbage chutes and information hubs start to rumble and groan. The eight triangular metal slabs slide back, letting in the brightness of the city’s lights — and then a great black shadow.
“Spider!” Pia shouts. She and her bloco scramble to gather up their instruments. “Out! Hurry!”
Wakas run in every direction — shouting for friends, instruments, money. But I stand still. I look up.
The mechanical legs come into view first, carefully gripping the docking tube as it lowers itself into the web. They creak as they move, but not so much as I might have expected, given its size and weight. The bot is probably two hundred years old, with the dents and patches to prove it, but I’m overcome by the sight of it, by its sheer size and unexpected grace.
It keeps the city alive with a thorax full of nanotubes.
And if I stay here much longer, it might crush me when it docks.
Enki’s hand grips my wrist, an anchor in the sea of fleeing people. “June?”
Funny, I think, he’s asking if I’m all right. “Okay,” I say, but I don’t move.
And then something strange happens. The belly of the beast descends, reflecting our running shapes indistinctly. Its noise drowns even my heartbeat, even his voice. But I see his face when something intrudes, surprises him … hurts him? His mouth opens like he gasps. He stumbles a little and I steady him.
Then I feel the blood.
I move quickly, not so much thinking as operating. Some part of me must know what to do, even when most of me is going, Why? How? Is he okay? We stumble away, through the remaining crowd and then apart, because I’m afraid whatever hurt him might do it again. When we’re at the terraces, alone by the still water and the concrete and the stink, I let him sink against the wall.
“Are you —”
“Fine. I think someone stabbed me.”
“That’s not …”
He shrugs. “Relatively speaking.”
He lifts his hands. There’s a deep cut high along his rib cage, like someone was aiming for his heart and missed. The free-flowing blood soaks his pants. He begins to shiver despite the warm, still air.
“That’s a knife wound,” I say, as though I hope he’ll shake his head and say, No, I just tripped.
He raises his eyebrows. “Clever, for a Tier Eight brat.”
“Was it Felix?�
�
“I doubt it. Vermelhinho was clear on the other side of the web.”
I rip my dress and press the wadded-up fabric to the gushing hole in his side. My hands shake, but Enki is holding his own shit together and both of us pretend not to notice.
“Enki, who would want to kill you?”
His smile is sad, which scares me. “June, who wouldn’t?”
When he convinces me he’ll be okay, I let him call a pod. The Aunties will wonder how he hurt himself, but that’s better than bleeding out in the verde. He’s stopped shivering by the time it arrives, which I think might be a bad sign, but he’s right, no one gets knife wounds on Tier Eight, and I just don’t know.
“Should I go with you? Will you be okay?”
He leans against the open door, flushed and stoic and beautiful as always.
“Don’t worry,” he says, and fingers my hairline with the hand not holding in his blood. “The Aunties are saving me for themselves.” He laughs, then stops with a wince. “I wanted you to have a verde night, but not quite like this.”
“It was a wonderful night.” It was. I’m jumping from a cliff every time I’m with him, but I love the fall too much to stop. He sighs, a sound with more fondness than it has any right to.
“Oh, June, it’s always art with you.”
I declared for summer king at the feet of Auntie Isa, alongside a hundred other boys. In the other cities, Ueda told me, they scoff at the barbarity of our system, at what they call senseless murder every five years. I told him that we all choose it, that for the three months of the contest no one who changes his mind is forced to stay, that the eventual king is so firmly set on his path that no one could sway him. He said, Why die?
Why trade your future, why give your life, why put your head on that altar and let them slice your throat like a sacred cow?
Isn’t it obvious? I should have told him.
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