Perfect Ruin (16 page)

T
HE DARKNESS IS EMPTY OF DREAMS. There are stabs of red pain, hands pushing back my hair. I’m going to spend all of sixty years in this darkness, clawing at moments of awareness. I’ll never be free until I’ve become ashes.

Something burns in my throat and I struggle. “We’re here with you, love, we’re here,” Alice says, somewhere high above the surface of the black. But then I’m alone again.

Her voice was so sad.

Another voice finds me. If anyone could reach me here, it’d be my brother. He knows his way through every kind of darkness.

“Let her pull through,” he whispers. I think he’s talking to the god in the sky. He doesn’t even believe there is a god anymore. “I haven’t requested anything for three years. You owe me.”

The last time I heard my brother talk to the god in the sky, it was when I was seven or eight. He was supposed to be watching me, and I was sour that he was more interested in his writing, so I hid in a tree that surrounded the pond so that he’d be forced to look for me.

I waited for him to notice I was gone. When he did, he called my name. His voice changed each time he said it. It became more afraid. He didn’t consider that I might be hiding in the trees. He ran to the lake first, where I’d been setting leaves on the surface and watching them float when he last saw me.

Uniform and all, he dove into the green water. Pages of his manuscript were scattering in the wind and grass. But he didn’t call to them—he called to me.

I couldn’t answer. His fear had me paralyzed.

I’d only wanted to make him care. Just for a little bit. That was all. But I wasn’t prepared for the power of what I’d done.

Please, he’d said.

“Please,” he says now.

I’m a little girl in the trees. I can’t find the footholds to return down to him. I can’t go back to that day and undo it.

I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry.

A
MOMENT BEFORE I OPEN MY EYES, I hear Ms. Harlan’s words:

Your family must love you very much.

It’s a warm thought. I have a family. This floating city is filled with people, but I belong to only a small number of them.

Then the thought breaks apart, is replaced by shadows and lantern light.

“Morgan?” Alice’s voice is eager.

There’s a smell like metal, sickness, and candle wax.

I don’t know where I am. The lantern on the ceiling is swinging, swinging, making the room jolt. Alice reaches up and steadies it.

“Is she awake?” Lex asks. His voice is hoarse. He’s slouched in a corner, but the room is so tiny that it’s nearly impossible not to be in a corner.

“I think so. Her eyes are open again.” Alice is kneeling in her dress, leaning over me. Her copper earrings catch the light; her hair is coming unwoven.

And I remember that I ruined the dinner she and my brother were going to have before Basil burst through the door carrying me, and everything was swept from the table.

I’m not on the table anymore. I’m lying on some kind of mattress on the ground. It feels as though it’s stuffed with sheep shavings. This room is unfamiliar, and as my mind slowly clears, I become certain that the walls and low ceiling are made of metal.

“Morgan?” Alice says again, pushing the hair from my eyes. My skin feels so tender that the touch gives me chills. “Are you back with us?”

I open my mouth and remember the sick taste on my tongue. Ghosts of my earlier agony are webbed between my ribs, and they stir the moment I move to sit up. “What happened?” I ask.

My eyes go to Lex. His leg is shaking, causing a shuddering in his entire body that makes his chin move as though he’s nodding. He seems small. His eyes are open but there’s nothing there. Nothing but faded blue.

“You were poisoned,” he says. “I don’t know what exactly it was, but it was wicked. I thought giving you something to sleep would help numb the pain, but it didn’t do any good. You’ve been crying out for hours.”

Was I crying out? I recall twisted dreams and bits of light.

My tongue still feels strange. “Poisoned?”

The compassion on Alice’s face gives way to a moment of anger. My brother is tearing at his thumbnail.

“Why?” I say.

After a long moment, Lex says, “That Harlan woman—Basil said you’ve been speaking with her often.”

I can’t untangle myself from the drowsiness, not fully. I want to close my eyes, but I’ve no desire to claw my way up from that fitful blackness again.

I try again to sit up, and this time Alice helps me, propping the rough pillow against the wall so I can lean into it.

“Ms. Harlan did this?” I ask. I never trusted her and never understood what she wanted with me, but I didn’t think she wanted me dead. Now that I think on it, the sweetgold she gave me was peculiarly rich.

“She was just a pawn following orders,” Lex says. “I’m sure she asked you plenty of questions and figured out you were innocent in all of this. You weren’t involved.”

I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. “I don’t understand.”

Lex raises his head, and it’s as though he’s seeing me. I can tell that he wants to. “The king is the one who wanted you to die. Your only crime was being a part of this family. He intended to have us all killed. You, me, our parents, even Alice.”

“A pharmacy bag arrived for us this morning,” Alice says. “We didn’t take them, or we’d have been poisoned as well.” The king would have no reason to suspect they wouldn’t take their dosages. Alice doesn’t like to lie, even on the pharmacy reports, but she owes no loyalty to the king and the government that stole her child. She would suffer the sadness of that termination procedure a thousand times before she’d take the pills meant to leave her numb.

“Where are Mom and Dad, then?” I say.

My brother turns his face to the floor again, as though to look away. Alice sits back on her heels and smoothes the wool blanket that’s covering my legs. My question goes unanswered.

“Lex. Where are Mom and Dad?”

There is a moment of perfect silence. Of oblivion. In that moment I can build a house out of my memories and I can be safe there, with walls and windows that are sealed tight, no room for reality to sneak in. And then he says, “They’re dead.”

The poison returns to my system, blooming and twisting through my bloodstream, winding around my lungs. My vision is tunneling. The heaviness on my chest is like the weight of Internment itself.

“That can’t be right,” I whisper.

“It was too late,” Lex says. “There was nothing I could do. I don’t know why it took so long for the poison to affect you, but you were the only one I could do anything for.”

I think of my mother on the bed, turned away from me when I checked on her. I was sure she was sleeping. I wouldn’t have thought to listen for her breathing. “That’s the real reason you put me to sleep when Alice went downstairs, isn’t it? You didn’t want me to find out?”

He doesn’t deny it. “You were ill, Morgan. Barely hanging on. You wouldn’t have been able to handle knowing.”

“We very nearly lost you too,” Alice says.

“You’re the first person I’ve known who survived that woman’s poisonings,” Lex says. “I knew she was responsible the moment you said her name. She’s done it before. She works for the king.”

“Why—why would they want us dead?”

Lex is wringing his shirt in his hands now. He doesn’t answer.

Finally Alice says, “Tell her.”

Lex shakes his head. “She can’t be hearing these things right now. She needs rest.”

I’d like to argue, but I can’t muster the strength. My throat is dry and it hurts to breathe. Tears won’t come. Shouldn’t there be tears? Nothing about me has ever been right. I have done all I could to be complacent on this floating city, and still I’ve been restless. I’ve taken all the right pills and said the right things, and I have never been satisfied. Now, when I should be crying, all I can think of is the ground. Of those faded, wonderful patches of earth, each color a different city. All the people who must be down there. How easy to be lost. Not like here, where you can run only so far before everything finds you.

I wonder if, surrounded by so many others on the ground, they marry in dozens and droves. I wonder if their capacity to love stretches out further. I wonder if it would seem silly to them that there’s only one person I want to comfort me now.

“Where’s Basil?” Too late, I have the thought that he’s dead too.

“He’s been by your side all night,” Alice says. “But it looked like you were waking up, so I asked him to wait outside. I didn’t want you to get overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed …” My voice trails off. I’ve just been told I was poisoned and my parents are dead, and she didn’t want me to get overwhelmed.

“I want him,” I say, wresting away from her attempt to console me.

Her lips barely move. “Okay.” She stands, and I can see that I’ve hurt her. She touches Lex’s arm and he doesn’t resist when she pulls him toward the door. They leave me alone.

When Basil comes to the doorway, his eyes are bleary, his hair disheveled. His mouth moves to speak, but I say, “Don’t. I’ve had my fill of words just now.”

He’s at my bedside in an instant, his arms fitting around me just so, because we were made for each other. Paired up the day he was born, one month after me. Our betrothal was planned months before we were born, and we were supposed to be born the same week, but I was early. I could never get anything right even from the start, but that never mattered to him. Even if I’m all wrong, even if I’m broken and filled with delusions of the ground, even if I’m orphaned, he wants me.

I don’t make a sound. I never thought grief could be so silent. I’m sure I’m not processing the news of my parents properly. When Alice came to the hospital and she saw Lex confined to a bed by wires, with his eyelids taped shut and his breaths coming through a tube, she ran to the water room and I followed her. Through the door I heard her scream; only it was more than a scream; it was a cry that must have shot through the heart of the sky god himself. If he has a heart. If he even exists.

“I knew you’d be okay,” Basil says. “But it was a very long night.”

“I didn’t feel any of it,” I say. I felt nothing but dreams. I wish I could go back to them. Even the darkest nightmare holds the hope that I’ll awaken in my own bed. Not so here. I don’t even know where I am.

There are no city sounds. It’s quiet, save for our breathing. Basil and I are so close, collarbone to cheek, chin to crown. But there are questions between us, words dripping down our skin. I’m afraid to ask them. I’m afraid to even let go of his shirt.

But I know that I have to. I can’t let my parents die without my knowing what happened. I can’t sink back under this blanket and go back to dreaming.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“We’re underground,” Basil says.

“In a basement?” I say, drawing back to look at him. He doesn’t look at me with pity, and I’m grateful for that. He knows me even better than I could have hoped.

“It’s …” He looks up as though the answer is on the metal ceiling. “More like a body,” he says. “The others explained it to me last night, but it was hard to pay attention with you lying there in pain.”

“Others?” I say.

“They’re waiting outside,” he says. “Morgan.” He takes my hands. “Whatever you decide, I want you to know that I’ll stand behind it. I said I’d follow you off the edge, and I meant it. I’d jump into the sky with you. Wherever you go, you won’t have to go alone. Even if you want to go back.”

The words are wonderful, but I’m not sure what he’s trying to tell me. I know that I’m about to find out.

“It’s going to be a long story,” he says. “Are you up to hearing it yet?”

“Yes,” I say. I won’t want to hear what the others have to say, but I have to. I stretch my legs off the makeshift mattress. There’s no time left for resting, and no room for dreams. It’s time to wake up.

I ignore the dizziness as I rise to my feet. There’s a low ceiling; Basil can just about stand at full height. The floor is made of wooden planks that are crudely finished, full of knots and nicks; they shudder and creak under my steps. Basil opens the door; its green color is chipped, the wood splintered and aged. The entire room seems to be made of pieces of different buildings. Beyond it, there’s a narrow hallway. I hear voices murmuring from a room at the end of it, where lantern light is flickering through an open door.

The murmurs cease when Basil and I enter the room. There are tattered couches and cushions arranged in a half circle on the floor. Lex is of course on the floor, with Alice beside him.

Judas’s and Amy’s eyes are on me immediately. I tug the sleeves of my red sweater over my hands. My necktie is missing, but I’m still in my academy uniform. It feels more like a game of make-believe to wear it now. One look around this room, and I’m sure my days of being a schoolgirl are done.

Amy is looking at me like we have loss in common. Or maybe I’m imagining that.

“Sit down,” Lex says.

Basil and I share a paisley green cushion that once belonged to what I’m sure was a hideous couch.

“I’m sitting,” I tell him. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what sort of place I’m sitting in.”

“It’s a machine,” he says. “Or, if you prefer, we’re in the chest of a giant metal bird.”

What a thing to say. I wonder if our parents’ deaths have driven him mad.

Madder still is that, with all that has happened, it isn’t the hardest thing I’m made to believe today.

“It’s far more extraordinary than a bird,” says an older man, likely near his dispatch age; as though to keep track of his remaining time, there’s a copper clock on a chain clipped to his pocket. He’s short and round with tufts of hair that at one glance seem white, but at the next a sort of yellow. “It doesn’t simply fly; it can also burrow like a dirt warren.”

I try to reconcile this. Dirt warrens are small black creatures that burrow in the ground and eat worms and things. Birds, from what I understand, are known only for flying. “How can it be both?” I ask.

The clock man opens his mouth to speak, but my brother interrupts. “First,” he says, “you should know the reason you’re here.”