Lauren DeStefano - Broken Crowns

Basil’s standing close. His eyes are on me, and whether or not he knows it, he still sets my stomach fluttering.

Another gust of wind comes, and even the fearless Pen hugs her arms across her stomach and shivers.

Thomas frowns at her. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Not all over, clearly, or you’d have found me,” she says.

He stands at a pace’s distance from her, and I can see the worry in his eyes. I can see that he is trying to get a whiff of tonic on her breath. When he can’t find one, he looks to me, and while Pen isn’t watching I give a slight shake of my head. She’s sober.

The jet has quit rumbling in the sky; presumably it has landed.

“Come on,” I say to Pen, and hold the door open. “Let’s see if we can find something in the kitchen you’re willing to eat.”

She follows me into the house, past the smallest Piper children, who are playing a war game in the living room. Annie is a soldier whose legs were blown off in an explosion, and Marjorie is a nurse applying a tourniquet. I have seen them play this game a dozen times, and it is anyone’s guess whether Annie will survive her wounds. Last time, an explosion hit their pretend medical tent and all the nurses and soldiers were killed.

I hate this game, but I think it makes them feel closer to Riles.

Up at the top of the stairs, Amy watches them from between the bars of the railing, not quite ready for human interaction. She has been quiet since her grandfather’s death, and she’s added another cloth around her wrist beside the one meant to symbolize her sister.

“Let’s say I lost my arm too,” Annie says.

“Which one?” Marjorie asks.

“The left.”

“Would you girls like to help me in the garden?” Alice calls down from the top of the stairs. She cannot bear this game of theirs.

Annie sits up from her deathbed on the hearth. “Why do you tend to the garden? We have a gardener.”

“It just makes me happy, I suppose,” Alice says. She reaches the bottom step and holds her hands out to them, and they forget their game and happily follow her outside.

In the kitchen, Pen and I sit at the small table reserved for the maids, and Pen bites into a raw carrot from the cold box.

“I wish you’d stop looking so worried,” she says.

“I can’t play it as cool as you, I suppose.”

She stares at me for a long moment, and then she says, “You’re not the only one who has nightmares about what’s happening back home. Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“I know that you care. That’s what’s so frustrating,” I say. “We’ve hardly spoken in months.”

“What are you going on about ‘we’ve hardly spoken’? We share a room. We speak every day. We’re speaking right now.”

“You know what I mean.”

She takes another bite of the carrot, with a crunch I swear is meant to be pointed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t entirely trust you with my secrets these days.”

I know just what she means. It has been a source of contention that’s never fully gone away these past several months. She discovered that Internment’s soil contains the very fuel source King Ingram wants for his kingdom, and she confided this secret to me. But after she nearly drowned, I told the princess everything, hoping an alliance could be forged between Internment and Havalais, giving us all a chance to return home.

Instead, King Ingram used the princess as a hostage and has been depleting Internment of its soil as he pleases.

I don’t know the enormity of what’s already happened and what’s to come, but even so I wouldn’t take back what I did. I’m still holding out hope that I’ll be able to return Pen home to her family, to the city that she loves so much that she’s been going to pieces without it.

So I say nothing, and Pen can see that she’s wounded me. “Nim says Birdie has had her last surgery, and can come home soon,” she says to change the subject. “She’ll still be confined to her wheelchair, but I doubt that will last for long.”

I push my chair away from the table. “I’m going to make some tea for Lex.”

“Oh, Morgan, don’t be cross. I didn’t mean it. I’m just on edge because of that bloody jet.”

“I know,” I say softly.

I hope that this time the king has returned, and the princess as well, alive and safe. Whatever news they bring will surely be better than all this wondering and fear.

I don’t know what sort of mood Lex will be in when I reach the top of the stairs, but he’s been especially sour lately. He’s running low on paper for his transcriber, and soon he will no longer be able to spend his days hiding in his fictional worlds.

I knock when I reach his door.

“Alice?” he says.

“No, it’s me.” Back home he always knew when I was the one approaching him, but something about this house and its noises disorients him. “I’ve brought some tea.”

“Oh,” he says, rather unenthusiastically. “Come in.”

He’s sitting in a wing chair near the open window, and the worry on his face mirrors my own from earlier. He doesn’t care for the wind; perhaps it reminds him too much of the edge. “The weather down here takes some getting used to,” I say. I press the teacup into his hand, not letting go until I’m sure he’s got a grip on it.

“I have a bad feeling,” he says.

“Me too.”

I hesitate, standing before him, debating with myself whether to tell him what I saw in the sky.

But in the end I’m not given a choice. Even without his sight, Lex is clever at sensing when anything is wrong. “What is it, Little Sister? What’s happened?”

I wring my skirt in my hands. “We saw the jet about an hour ago. Pen, Basil, Thomas, and I. We’ve been waiting for someone to come home and tell us what it means.”

Lex is silent for a long moment. “I heard.” He takes a sip of his tea and then with minimal fumbling he sets it on the window ledge. “So it begins,” he says.

“There’s no need to be so theatrical,” I say. “It may be good news.”

“A greedy king in a wasteland of wealth holds a princess hostage so that he may invade a tiny floating city, and you still think he may return with good news. My sister the optimist.”

I am tired of being called an optimist as though it were a bad thing. Pen has used this word against me as well. “I’m merely trying not to panic, Lex.” I hold myself back from saying anything too combative. I don’t want to fight, and it has taken me so long to stop hating my brother for lying to me about our father being dead. I would like for us to be reasonable with each other.

“Where is Alice?” he asks. Maybe he wants to avoid an argument too.

“She’s in the garden.”

“And she knows about the jet?”

“I told her when we came back inside. We’re all waiting now. Drink your tea, all right? Alice will be up to check on you in a bit.”

As I cross the threshold, he says, “Morgan?”

I turn.

“Be careful.”

“I’m only going downstairs.”

“I never know what mad and wild adventures you’ll get off to on a whim.”

I can’t help but smile at the thought. Mad and wild adventures. It’s not something he ever would have accused me of back home, when I was tucked safely in our little floating world.

They never exhale, the trees. It was the same on Internment; on a very windy day, the trees rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something were trying to strangle the life from them. The dark sky watches on, filled with anticipation, wondering if this will be a great night, or a horrible night, or the last night of the world.