The Cracks in the Kingdom Page 20

  Keira narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s just Jagged Edge slang, there’s nothing —” but then seeing the spark in Elliot’s eyes, she said, “Quit making fun of me. You know what I mean,” her dimple returning.

  Samuel spoke again. “My parents have passed on,” he said. “An accident. I live alone above the kitchens at the Cat and Fiddle Inn.”

  Keira’s dimple faded.

  “When did you lose your parents?”

  “At the age of eleven.”

  “But how old are you now?”

  “Twelve.”

  Again, there was a rustle through the room.

  Everyone looked at Samuel. His face was smooth and plump, but there was something worn about the edges of his eyes, gaunt in the lines around his mouth.

  “The index cards you gave me are all written in fountain pen,” Elliot remembered. “Didn’t you say you were only allowed to use pencil?”

  “I am,” agreed Samuel. “I write them out again when I get home. Late into Sunday night I work on them.” He shrugged. “My pencil scrawlings are pale and nigh illegible! I would not wish them upon you!”

  The Princess leaned her elbows onto the table, her chin on her hands. “Samuel,” she said, “do you think you could get us the originals? I know the important bits are all blocked out and whatever, but maybe — I don’t know, with the right kind of magnifying glass — maybe we could get something useful?”

  Samuel looked at her, aghast. A tremor ran across his face. “You wish me to steal from the archives? To sneak the originals out of the library?”

  The Princess shrugged. “Yes.”

  Samuel looked at the celery in his hand.

  “If I could get some real food —” he began.

  “Chocolate!” exclaimed Sergio.

  He flung back his chair. “Come!” he said. “We are needing the break, and we are needing the hot chocolate! My chocolate, in especially!”

  The others turned to Princess Ko. Her shoulders rose and fell.

  “But will they have what you need in their kitchen thing?” she asked.

  “Refreshment point,” Keira corrected automatically.

  “Let us see!” cried Sergio, and he danced into that room, the others following.

  He stopped at the sink, and opened the cupboard, gazing at the rows of containers and canisters.

  “It is well stocked,” he said. “See this? The Jagged Edge dark chocolate is the best in the Kingdom, yes, but the secret ingredient —”

  “That Samuel’s a surprise,” said a voice, clear, deep, thoughtful — and Sergio stopped, confused.

  “Impressive.” That was a woman’s voice. “How’s he breaking into the archives anyway? What’s he mean about getting himself a key?”

  In the small kitchen space, they frowned at one another. Then Elliot drew the earpiece from his pocket, and placed it on the sink.

  The paper clip was still on the table in the conference room. It was transmitting the voices of the security agents.

  “But Sergio,” said a male voice — Agent Ramsay — “seriously, what is the Princess thinking?”

  Princess Ko reached for the earpiece, but Sergio stopped her hand.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad,” said the voice of Agent Nettles, “if he didn’t have to dance everywhere. Honestly. The leaping, prancing, and twirling! Does he have to be that effervescent?”

  “And that effeminate,” agreed Agent Ramsay. “He’s so ridiculously slight.”

  “Well he’s from Maneesh. They’re a little people. But I know what you mean — people that skinny give me the heebie-jeebies. Can’t he eat more? Or work out or something? I think he’s even got one of those concave chests.”

  “And the horse analogies!” said Agent Ramsay.

  Agent Nettles laughed, then her voice grew quieter.

  “The Princess is blinded by her friendship,” she said. “I mean, the boy is —”

  Princess Ko grabbed the earpiece and switched it to the Off position.

  There was silence.

  “They’re security agents,” Keira said eventually. “You’d think they’d have noticed the listening device still on the table.”

  The Princess returned the earpiece to Elliot. The silence continued. It was occurring to each of them that the agents did know. They just didn’t care.

  “Cayenne pepper!” said Sergio. “And cloves,” and his hands moved along the shelf, reached for containers, pulled them out, the faintest color crossing his cheeks and fading away almost at once.

  4.

  It was eleven P.M. and the warning bells were ringing.

  According to the schedule, they were at their leisure on the Palace Entertainment Terrace.

  In fact, they were in an alleyway outside the Palace Kitchen.

  Princess Ko had knocked back Sergio’s hot chocolate in one gulp, closed the meeting, dismissed the security agents, then told the others to meet her out here.

  As they’d arrived, she’d handed out armbands: “to get around the city.”

  “We are seeing the city?”

  “It’s a sparkleshine,” the Princess had said. “We have to see it. I’ve been here often, but it’s Keira’s hometown so maybe she’ll give us a tour?”

  Keira had blinked, then turned to study Elliot in his faded jeans, and Samuel in his ruffles and sailor’s hat.

  “Take off your hat, Samuel.”

  “My hat! As to a curling iron in lip balm! But my hat is the height of my identity! It is my declaration of fashionable aptitude!”

  “You want me to show you my city, lose the hat.”

  So Samuel had removed it, and at that moment the warning bells had chimed.

  He replaced his hat at once. (Keira swiped it off. “Your hat didn’t make that happen.”)

  They all hesitated, deciphering the bells.

  “That’s twinned Colors.”

  “Blue and — what? Aquamarine?”

  “No, Blue and Green.”

  “Level-four Blue?”

  “Better: 5(a).”

  “Then it must be Green 6(b). They travel together.”

  Sergio spun on his heel. “Then it is Turquoise Rain! It is what I have wanted to know ever since I am coming to your Kingdom!”

  The Princess and Keira were both grinning. They caught each other’s eyes.

  “You’ve been in Turquoise Rain before too?”

  Keira nodded.

  Nobody else had.

  “Anyone who wants to go inside, go now,” the Princess said, swinging her elbow back toward the kitchen door. “But I’m staying out.”

  “What’s it like?” Elliot asked.

  They were speaking over the warning bells, which continued to chime. Nearby, doors were slamming, shutters clattering, footsteps running. Something made of glass hit the ground, spiraled, then stilled. The laneway was empty.

  “It’s like possibility,” Keira said, her eyes searching the night sky.

  “You feel wild,” the Princess explained. “Like you could dance on the wildness — catch ahold of it, straddle it, and fly it.”

  “I have read,” said Sergio, “that it makes the world sing with hidden doors. That the effect is so beautiful you wring it from your clothes for days to come.”

  Samuel took a step backward, eyes alarmed.

  “Turquoise Rain!” He crouched to find where his hat had fallen, hands trembling. “It is dangerous! It has been known to quicken the heart so that some fall dead!”

  “Not many,” the Princess countered. “And they’ve usually got a preexisting condition or something.” A thought occurred to her. The volume of the bells was increasing, so she shouted to be heard: “Some people get addicted. They do it once and then basically ruin their lives chasing it around the Kingdom.”

  The bells stopped.

  “So if you’re an addictive personality” — the Princess looked from Sergio to Elliot — “it’s maybe a mistake.”

  “And if this is your first time in a night-dwelling city,�
� Keira added, twisting on her heel, “it’ll be sensory overload already.”

  She regarded Elliot.

  “Especially you, Elliot, since you’re pumping about your dad.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll risk it.” He was trying to see how the armband hooked up. Keira reached out and wrapped it around his forearm, clicking the ends together. Her fingernails, he noticed, were no longer chewed. Now they were long and cut into arrow points.

  Sergio danced down the laneway. “When will it start?”

  “I will see you all on the morrow!” Samuel pressed up against the kitchen door. “Please to be alive at that point.” He reached for the handle — and a drop hit his hand.

  * * *

  The Turquoise Rain fell for only a few minutes.

  Elliot felt it touch his scalp through his hair. He felt pieces hit his neck, run down the open collar of his shirt. Each drop was like a gentle twang that seemed to fold itself into his skin. Like the folding of the melody back into the drumbeat of the music. The folding sank, sank again, and then fanned out. There was something faintly familiar about that fanning, but his thoughts were running like rain. He was stepping into the center of the laneway, turning his face to the sky.

  The Colors fell like splinters of city lights. The blue was electric, the green emerald, and now and then they mingled to form flares of deep, bright turquoise. Sergio was singing something loud in Maneeshian, his palms out. Samuel had leapt out from the doorway, and pieces of Rain were sliding down his cheeks, shoulders, arms. He held out his sailor’s hat, filled it, and tipped this over his head. Puddles had formed almost at once and the Princess and Keira were jumping between these, fragments splashing out around their ankles.

  It was soaking through Elliot’s shirt, sparking, folding, fanning; sparking, folding, fanning. He pushed his shirtsleeves up to feel it hit his skin direct. The hits to the back of his neck sent rushes down his spine that fanned across his back, then wrapped around his chest and abdomen. He pushed down his collar, and arched his back to feel more. He watched the girls stamping in puddles, and tried that too, and the sparks rose and foamed against his ankles, shins, and knees.

  It was better than the moment of flight in deftball; better than hitting the ribbon in a sprint; better than the surge you feel when your favorite band plays the opening chords of your favorite song and you’re right there by the stage in a stadium. It was better than a sky full of falling stars — and then it stopped.

  Elliot looked at the others, and their eyes caught his and caught one another’s eyes. They were all breathing hard and fast, their chests heaving, and then their breathlessness turned into laughter. He hadn’t known that laughter could form an orchestra, but turned out you could play it like instruments. They were playing one another’s laughter, spinning it against walls, catching it, and throwing it back. And then they were running, chasing the laughter, trailing it behind them.

  For the next several hours, they ran through the crowded streets of Tek, Jagged Edge.

  At first they searched out gutters or drainpipes that still streamed with Turquoise Rain. When they found one they jumped in it, or crouched and splashed one another, or trailed their fingers back and forth through it, or fell on their knees in it. Princess Ko and Sergio ran side by side, sometimes joining hands and breaking into sprints. Elliot, keeping pace with Keira, looked at her swinging hand and thought he might hold it and sprint with her too, but he skidded on a slick of Rain, saved himself, and ran on alone. Samuel pounded behind them all.

  After a while, their bodies were running with Rain, veins lit with it, so alive with Rain they no longer needed to search for it. Then Keira took over, and led them on a tour of Tek, her body curving like ribbons, her hands pointing out where they had to swipe their armbands, her voice calling phrases over her shoulder. They ran behind her, running on the music that rose out of the grates in every street.

  “See that?” Keira called, pointing up to windows of skyscrapers where the shapes of men and women moved behind blinds. “They’re running Cello up there.”

  “You mean Tek,” the Princess called. “You mean they’re running the city of Tek.”

  Keira ran on.

  The city wove through moonlit lanes, lamplit tunnels, torchlit passageways, and unexpected doors. Now and then Keira would fling open a door, and they’d be met by the shock of a square.

  Each square was a fanfare of traffic, arcades, billboards, screens, Coffee Rings, and surges of people who moved frenetically, glinting and beaming with Rain. Stripes of laser light crisscrossed the air like giant chopsticks. Taxis slid past and slid past, like the Turquoise Rain that slid around their bodies, constantly folding and fanning. They kept turning to one another, bright with amazement, to check that the others felt it too.

  “That’s a Dance Arcade. It’s hologrammatically linked to other Dance Arcades across the province.”

  “We will go into it!” Sergio commanded.

  So they changed course, swiped their armbands, and joined the strange intermingle of dancers, some real, some images from elsewhere. You could smile at faraway strangers, step up to them, dance with them, step through them. You could insinuate and blend with your partner.

  Sergio went wild, dancing the Maneeshian punk-rock style, his body like a dart, then he grabbed the Princess and led her in a low, slow tango.

  Samuel swayed from side to side, his eyes closed, his fingers fluttering.

  Keira danced with Elliot. She leaned close and spoke in his ear — “The Rain has washed your makeup away,” she said. “Your black eye’s back.” — then she touched the welts on his hand, raised an eyebrow, smiled, and started dancing again. They alternated between JE style and Farms style for a while, and she studied the movement of his hips, then looked into his eyes.

  “It’s easier to fall in love at night,” she said.

  They watched couples pressing close on either side of them.

  “Into love and out of love,” she amended.

  “Come on, let’s go somewhere else,” the Princess shouted suddenly, and they were running through the streets and squares again.

  They were falling against one another as they ran, linking arms, unlinking arms, and all the time the Turquoise Rain seemed to braid and blend them.

  There were fountains of light. Sudden cheers rose and fell from every direction, and now and then a sharp scream or clamor of shrieks. Each time that happened, Elliot would feel an adrenaline surge, and he’d look around wildly. Once he saw Sergio trip in surprise at a scream, and Samuel often stopped altogether.

  But Keira always ran on, her face shining and calm.

  “Is it always like this in Tek on a Sunday night?” Elliot asked. “Or is this the Turquoise Rain?”

  “Both.”

  “You guys know how to party,” Sergio shouted.

  “It’s the Ethos,” Keira called back.

  “The what?”

  But she had slipped ahead, and was touching her armband to a door.

  Sometimes, when the crowd in a square got too solid, they had to pause, then Keira would talk faster, her hands pointing, phrases accumulating, twisting like her body.

  “That’s a Coffee Ring. The snacks are all turmeric, chili pepper, lime. That’s the Ethos too.

  “That tower’s an Observatory. Night-dwelling cities have the best mathematicians and astronomers in the Kingdom.

  “Those giant chess pieces? That’s a semi-virtual game.”

  Outside one square, Keira counted a row of green doors — one, two, three, and stopped at the fourth.

  “I’ll show you something.”

  Down a flight of steps into a tunnel and out into another square.

  “This is a Sky Square,” she said, and they looked up to see airspace crowded with streaks of light and fixed wings. A series of drawbridges were strung between the skyscrapers, and flying machines darted amongst these.

  “Night makes people want the sky,” Keira explained.

  They looked up, and d
irectly above them, a thin girl balanced on a tightrope.

  They ran out of the Sky Square.

  “We like to get air,” Keira called. “To get up in the air. We like danger.”

  “She’s a motocross champion,” Princess Ko confirmed.

  They saw Keira’s shoulders shrug as she ran. “It’s the Ethos.”

  There was another scream.

  “That’s a stadium,” Keira called. “Motocross, skate park, bike spinner, or skydiver. People crash and fall all the time. That’s why the screams.”

  They turned into an alleyway where colored cubes were suspended, passed a series of Graffiti Walls, then crossed a grassy area. A snake slithered across their path.

  “We let wolves, snakes, bears wander the streets,” Keira said. “For the danger.”

  “Don’t people die here all the time?” Elliot asked.

  “Of course they die here all the time,” Keira’s voice sang back.

  People and objects appeared and faded on street corners: a shower of pebbles, the prow of a ship, a woman crouching to button a child’s pajama top.

  “Those are holographic effects,” Keira called.

  They crossed another square, swiped their bands, walked through another tunnel.

  Keira pointed to a doorway.

  “Never go through a green door,” she called. “They lead to the Shadow Quarters. Dangerous.”

  “We went through one earlier!” Samuel cried from behind.

  “Fourth green doors are okay. Be careful how you count.”

  “I thought you liked danger,” Elliot pointed out.

  “I like that we have Shadow Quarters. They keep us alert. Crime is part of the Ethos. But you’ve got to be alive to be alert.”

  Samuel’s voice sailed forward again: “Keira, what is the Ethos?”

  Keira slowed. She was pointing up.

  “See the architecture?” she said. “Impossibly narrow, impossibly tall? Edges and angles? That’s the Ethos. Ruthless and extreme. It’s our ideology.”

  She threw open the door to another square, and colored lights spilled over them. In the center of this square, people were passing around buckets of the Rain, pouring it over one another. Music pumped. Three men sped past them on wheeled boards, followed by children in wheeled shoes.