Broken Crowns by Lauren DeStefano Page B

plan,” I say, trying to calm her. “Let Basil and me go. We’ll see what it’s all about, and I’ll tell you everything once I return.”
    Her teeth are gritted, but she knows no good would come from arguing and she gives in.
    Nimble is our driver, and as usual, Jack Piper is nowhere. “I visited with Birds yesterday,” Nim says, trying to sound cheerful to lighten the mood. He glances at us in the rearview mirror. “Father finally got around to visiting her, and wouldn’t you know, they spent the whole time arguing.”
    â€œWhy?” Basil asks.
    â€œShe’s got scars,” Nim says. “In particular, this deep continuous gash that runs down the side of her face and her arm. Father says it ruins her. He says no man will ever marry her and that he’d like to send her overseas to this surgeon in the north who can fix it. Only, she doesn’t want it fixed. She wants to keep it. She says it’s a part of her now.”
    â€œShe should keep it, then,” I say.
    â€œFather hates the reminder. I dare even to say that he feels guilty for what’s happened to her. Maybe he has a conscience in there after all.”
    Like burials, this is another custom I don’t understand. We wear our scars where I come from.
    I meet his eyes in the mirror for an instant before he looks back to the road. “If that’s what it’s about, don’t let him send her off to that surgeon,” I say. “If her scars remind him of what he did, he should have to look at them every day. Maybe it will change his mind the next time he goes along with the king’s warfare.”
    â€œIt’s a nice thought, but nothing can change his mind once he’s made it up. Especially not when he’s working for the king.” He glances at me in the mirror again. “What’s your king like?”
    â€œCeleste didn’t talk about him?”
    â€œShe did,” Nim says. “But with a sort of hopefulness. I got the sense that she was idealizing things when she said he could be reasoned with.”
    The king’s castle has begun to emerge from the distance, and I’m getting a queasy feeling in my stomach.
    â€œWhatever you do,” Nim says, “don’t let on to the king that you know anything about the phosane. He doesn’t think much of broads anyway, so all you have to do is act dense. You don’t know anything. You just want to help.”
    That shouldn’t be hard. King Ingram makes me so uneasy that it’s hard to speak around him anyway. Maybe it’s a good thing Pen isn’t here; she isn’t intimidated by anyone.
    It’s a perfectly sunny day, but when we reach the castle, it doesn’t glimmer as much as it has in the past. A shadow seems to loom over it.
    Nimble brings the car to a stop. He turns in his seat and looks between Basil and me. “Say as little as you can,” he says. “Be dumb. If the king realizes you know more than he does about the city sinking, you’ll never get what you want. You’ll be trapped here working for him.”
    Two of the king’s guards have been waiting for us, and they open the car doors so we can step out.
    â€œKing Ingram and his guest are expecting the three of you,” a guard says. “Right this way.”
    I have come to hate this castle. The waste of it. How many bricks were laid, and how much money went into this sprawling palace filled with empty rooms? On Internment, children dream about whether castles exist. I used to dream as well. But in my grandest dreams, the castle was not half the size of this one, and every room was filled with parties and food and dancing girls in sweeping dresses, not a gleaming stone gone to waste.
    I’m grateful that Basil is here beside me. When I begin to feel that I’ll drown in this world and its strange luxuries, he makes me remember who I am, where we come from.
    â€œYou’re here,