Broken Crowns

by Lauren DeStefano

  “What if he can’t?” I stand and pace to the window and back, my heart thudding.

  “Morgan, if it does come to that, I think you need to be honest. Your brother was a jumper, and he and his wife ultimately took part in a plan to betray the government and escape the city. Judas is a fugitive. Pen—well, she’d do anything to keep Internment safe. I may not know a lot about her, but I do know that.”

  She’s right. “What’s your point?” I say.

  “Morgan, sit down. Be calm. Think about it. If they can’t be saved, don’t you think they would find a way to be at peace with it? Don’t you think they would die for Internment?”

  “That can’t be part of your plan,” I say. My mind is going into such a panic that my vision is clouding. “You can’t just sacrifice them like that.”

  “I’ve already told you that my brother will do all he can to save them.”

  “You don’t sound too certain.”

  “Nothing is ever certain.”

  “You don’t sound certain enough.”

  She frowns. “It was the only way. I hope that you can see that. My brother is down there, too. And the father of my child. They’re at risk as much as everyone you care about. I’m worried. Do you think I’m not worried? But worry doesn’t help. We’ve got to think positively. Have some faith.”

  “Faith,” I echo miserably. “What choice do I have now?”

  “That’s the spirit,” she says, undeterred by my glare. Pen once accused me of having a delusional sense of optimism, but the princess has certainly surpassed me there.

  “I have to return to my mother,” she says. “It’s almost time for her lunch, and if I’m not there when she wakes up, she’ll worry.” She stands, and puts her hands on my shoulders. “King Ingram promised he would help her, you know. He promised me that he would fly her down to that big bright hospital in Havalais and the doctors there would make her better. He lied about that, and now she may not have much time left. So you see, we’ve all lost something in this mess, haven’t we?”

  I don’t know what to say to that, but she doesn’t seem to require a response. She drops her hands from my shoulders, and she leaves me with that.

  And all I’m left to do is hope.

  Basil returns shortly after the arrival of our lunch cart. He seems troubled, but he won’t tell me what happened during his meeting with the king. Instead, he wants to know what happened at the glasslands. In whispers, I tell him everything. The plan to let Havalais murder King Ingram, Prince Azure’s intention of returning on the jet, the potential danger to everyone from Internment. “She had the audacity to tell me that Pen and my brother would be willing to die for the cause.”

  “Pen would be,” Basil admits. “You know she’d do anything to protect Internment.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I agree with you. It’s terrible. But, in a way, it’s the only plan that’s got a shot at working. If King Ingram is dead, maybe Internment will be safe.”

  “Safe may be asking for too much,” I say. “We’re never going to be safe. We probably never were safe, not even before all this. We only thought we were.”

  He stares distractedly at his plate.

  “Are you going to tell me what you and King Furlow talked about?”

  He shakes his head. “It was nothing important. More rambling about what’s expected of us in the coming days. That’s all.”

  “Basil, I don’t think I can survive all of this if we’re going to be mad at each other. I can’t stand the thought of fighting with you.”

  “I don’t want to fight, either,” he says. “I just can’t get the image out of my head. And don’t tell me it didn’t mean anything; clearly it did, or you would have told me sooner. But it happened. It’s done.”

  “It’s done,” I agree. “He came by to say good-bye to me before I left, and I told him that you were a part of me. I told him that I couldn’t betray you again. I suppose that may not be worth much to you now, but—”

  “It’s worth a lot,” Basil says.

  “I meant it.”

  “I know.”

  He stares at his plate, forces himself to eat one of the grapes. When he looks up again, he offers me a smile, and I know that he wants to let this be the end of it. But I also know that something has changed between us. I don’t know what it means, but I know it can’t be undone.

  The rest of the afternoon is a blur. The king sends us out to the field where our jet first landed. A patrolman tells us about the sunstone mining process, but his words are very rehearsed. The guards in gray are listening to everything we say.

  It isn’t until after dinner, when the sun has just set, that Basil and I are granted a few moments of reprieve. We walk a narrow dirt path in the garden behind the clock tower. There are guards and patrolmen along the way, but if I ignore them, it feels a bit like Basil and I are alone.

  “You’ve been wearing that worried expression all day,” I tell him. “Is it because of what we talked about?”

  “No,” he says, and in a show of devotion he takes my hand. “No, it has nothing to do with that.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me? I was never good at guessing games.”

  He hesitates. “If I don’t, you’ll find out soon enough. May as well hear it from me.”

  “Hear what?”

  He stops our walking, and as I face him, he takes my other hand. “I’ve loved you my whole life,” he says. “Even when we were children, before ‘love’ was the word I’d use to describe it. And you were always running over the boundary lines, wherever we were. If there was a line to the shuttle, you had to move ahead. If there was a butterfly, you had to run after it and see where it was flying. And as we got older, your boundaries broadened. I’ve always sensed your need to wander.”

  I don’t know that this is appropriate talk with patrolmen in such proximity, but I don’t try to stop him. Somehow I know that what he’s trying to say is big, and I want to hear it.

  “You loved to explore,” he says. “So I wanted that for you. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you found a way to the ground.” He squeezes my hands. “I love that about you; you have to know that. I’ve never wanted to be the thing that held you in place.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Basil, what are you trying to say?”

  “This morning, when I spoke to King Furlow, he told me that our return to Internment may or may not be permanent, but he emphasized how important it is for us to give our people hope. And the way he means to do that is to make examples of us. Show everyone that even though we went to the ground and came back, and even though all of this mining is going on, things can be normal. They can turn out happily.”

  I search his face. I can see sweat forming at his temples. “Turn out happily?” I say.

  “In marriage,” he says. “King Furlow wants us to get married.”

  My mouth is dry and I can’t feel my heart beating. I am hollow. “When?” My voice feels far away.

  “In another week, on the first of September. He wants to hold a big ceremony.”

  “But there’s never a big ceremony for weddings,” I say, though none of this feels real. When Alice and Lex were married, I think he gave her a bouquet of flowers, and we had a small party for them in our apartment, but weddings happen often enough, and it would be impractical to turn them into a big affair.

  “He says I’ll get to see my parents and Leland there,” he says lamely.

  I nod. “Good. That’s—that’s good.”

  He frowns. “Morgan, if you don’t want to, maybe we can reason with him.”

  “No,” I say, because we both know there is no reasoning with King Furlow, and I don’t want Basil getting killed because of me. “No, I think we should do it.”

  “Really?”

  “It isn’t as though we weren’t going to get married eventually anyway,” I say practically. “It’ll be a little sooner than we expected, is all.”

  He
tries to smile, and I can see how frightened he is. Of the king. Of this new plan. Of everything.

  “I’m only sorry Pen can’t be there,” I say. “When she finds out I got married without her, she’s going to throw a fit of epic proportions.” When I laugh, Basil laughs too, both of us trying to make light of this bizarre situation.

  All around us, the stars are bright and still in their sky.

  I don’t allow myself to wonder what’s happening on the ground below our floating city. I can’t afford the pain.

  12

  Celeste is surprisingly sympathetic when I tell her about the wedding. She tells me that I can pick any of her long season dresses and the seamstress will alter it to fit me. She can’t allow me into her family’s private apartment upstairs, but she sends the seamstress down with armfuls of dresses for me to choose from. Celeste shoos Basil from the room and sends him down to the garden with a patrolman.

  “This is girl stuff,” she tells him. “It wouldn’t interest you.”

  He gives me a worried look but I nod, and he allows the patrolman to lead him away.

  I drop onto the stool by the bed, deflated.

  “He really is a sweet boy,” Celeste tells me. “You should see the mess that I’m betrothed to. He has an unusual nose, you know, and I didn’t quite know how to describe it until we got to the ground and I saw all those birds up close. Wouldn’t you know it, his nose is exactly like a beak.”

  Despite everything, I laugh. “Now you sound like Pen,” I say. “She’s always saying things like that about Thomas, even if none of them are true.”

  “Oh, believe me, it’s true,” Celeste says, and holds up a paisley pink dress that only a girl with her confidence could ever pull off. “Not that his nose is the real problem. It’s who he is. He’s truly one of the most awful people I’ve ever encountered. Cocky, self-serving, and the way he looks at me—like I’m a buffet. Just the thought of being married to him makes me shudder.”

  “What does your father say?”

  “Papa adores him,” Celeste says. “His mother and father are both doctors, very motivated. Apparently they were both at the top of their class as students. And Papa was so impressed with the pair of them that he selected them from dozens of other couples in the queue to birth my future husband. It was sealed before the boy was even conceived, and months before I was born.”

  She holds up a bright green dress the color of grass. “Here, try this one on.” As I move to the changing screen, she goes on. “I guess it went to his head, knowing that his sole purpose in the world was to marry the princess of Internment. Maybe he would have grown up to be a decent person if he hadn’t had his destiny sealed, but I doubt it. And anyway, who cares? I’m not going to marry him now.”

  “What’s to stop your father from claiming the baby is your betrothed’s?” I say.

  “He won’t do that,” Celeste says. “I won’t let him. He won’t have his way, not about this. Oh! Come into the sunlight. That looks so pretty on you. But it clashes with your eyes. I’m sure I have something with more blue in this pile somewhere. . . .”

  “Do you have anything white?” I say.

  “Lots of white. And pure white, too. Not that cream or beige stuff everyone else wears.”

  “Birdie told me that people wear white when they get married on the ground,” I say.

  Celeste begins plucking choice dresses from her collection and making a separate pile. There are a dozen of them, at least. Some with fake feathers, others with fluffy petticoats, others simple with straight hems. “I think a ground wedding would be nice,” Celeste says. “Nim says that when we get married, we won’t have to go to a church. That’s what’s popular down there—churches. But he says we can get married in a garden if I like, or on the ferry.”

  “Celeste.” I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the fabric of all the dresses. “Be honest with me for a minute. Are we really going to make it back to the ground? Can you say that with any certainty?”

  “Not with any certainty,” Celeste says. “One can never promise that. There could be a fatal virus pandemic tomorrow. Internment could fall out of the sky. The sun could explode. Nothing is certain.”

  “Is it probable, then?”

  She heaves a deep breath, lays her dress down, and looks at me. “Here is what I believe. You will marry Basil in a few days, and maybe it will be sooner than both of you expected, but you’ll treat each other well, and you’ll be happy. Nim will find a way to”—she lowers her voice to a whisper—“kill that awful king of his.” She clears her throat. “And then he will find his way back to me. He’ll supersede his father and take over as the new king of Havalais; believe me, nobody wants his father in charge. They blame him for all of King Ingram’s bad decisions.”

  “What happens then?” I ask. I’m trying to make her see that it may not be as easy as she believes, but she’s determined not to.

  “Then this baby is born and we all live happily ever after. The end.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He’ll see that it’s for the best, once this all plays out.”

  She truly believes what she’s saying, or at least she’s trying hard to believe it. What I see is a big mess that’s going to end with all of us dead and Internment a big scorch mark in the sky.

  “Try this dress,” she says, and hands me a simple white gown with billowing lace sleeves. “I wore it only once, to some ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new hospital wing or some such.”

  A year ago I would have been over the moon—marrying my betrothed and wearing one of the princess’s dresses. A white dress, at that. Usually they are worn only by members of the royal family. If all this were happening under normal circumstances, I would be happy. Basil would be happy, too.

  Instead, both of us are fumbling around trying to make this work somehow.

  I try on the dress and then I stand before the small mirror on the dressing table. Celeste stands beside me, her stomach so swollen, it’s surreal. “I love this one,” she says. “What do you think?”

  “I’m frightened I’ll dirty it,” I say. “I’ve never worn white before.”

  “It’s only for one afternoon,” Celeste says. “Just gather the skirts if you go into any high grasses.”

  “It’ll do,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “ ‘It’ll do’?” She pinches my cheek. “Come on. You can give me something better than that.”

  I smile. My reflection in the mirror seems strange. I’ve never seen myself in all white before, and I don’t know who this girl is, about to get married when she ought to be at the academy learning about why the god in the sky loves her so much. “Do you think Basil will like it?” I ask.

  “If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot,” Celeste says with confidence. “If you were wearing this, I’d marry you.”

  I stare at my collarbone, framed with lace. So much like a woman, my mother told me several months back, before all this. She knew then what I didn’t know. She knew all about the metal bird hiding in the soil below our feet, and she knew that something big was coming. I don’t believe she asked for any of it. All she wanted was for her children to be safe, and to hang on to some semblance of the life she and my father had built for us.

  But if she were alive, even with our world in ruins, she would want to be here for this. She would want to see me get married.

  Celeste frowns at my reflection. “You look as though you’re about to cry,” she says. “Oh, Morgan, don’t. It won’t be such a terrible thing. You’re marrying someone you’re truly in love with.”

  “It isn’t that,” I say. I take a deep breath, straighten my back, and steady myself. “If I have to be married at all, I’m glad it’s to Basil. I was only thinking that I wish my family could be here.” I look at Celeste. “I don’t suppose you were able to find out what’s become of my father.”

  She purses her lips together and then says, “I wish I had been able to find out. If Papa knows, he won’t tell me. I did pl
ead a case on your behalf. I told him all you had done for me, and that if he knew where your father was, and if your father were alive, to spare him. But that’s all I was able to do. I’m sorry.”

  This news just gets absorbed into the existing numbness I’ve felt since my return. I nod.

  “Here.” Celeste pulls the stool up to the mirror and guides me to sit. “Let’s work on hairstyles, shall we?”

  In the week leading up to the wedding, the only time that Basil and I get alone is in the evening after dinner. The king has made a point to keep us busy, sending us to talk to the miners and the hospitals like we’ve done something that’s made us famous.

  The hospital is the worst of it. We’re brought to see only the newborns, but the sterile smell is the same in every room.

  When we at last step outside, I feel as though I can breathe again.

  “Are you all right?” Basil asks me as we walk for the shuttle. My legs are trembling.

  There are guards ahead of us and patrolmen behind us, and I keep my voice low, but I don’t really care if they hear me anymore. “That place always makes me think of Lex. I hate it. I hate it, and I miss him, even though he infuriates me most of the time.”

  “He’s okay,” Basil reminds me. “He’s with Alice, and he’s infuriating her for the time being, until you get to see him again.” He forces a smile, and for his sake I return it.

  “Wherever he is now, I’m sure that’s just what he’s doing,” I say.

  “He’s with the Pipers and Alice,” Basil reassures me. “He’s safe.”

  I know he’s trying to console me, but I suddenly wish he would stop talking. His parents and brother are here in the city, and he’ll see them at our wedding. I don’t know if Lex or my father are truly safe. I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again.

  We sit across from each other on the shuttle, and I’m filled with so much jealousy that I can only stare out the window. It’s so strong that I’m certain he can sense it.