He’s so certain I’ll get myself killed. I say nothing as I climb into the rickety makeshift lift. Judas tugs at one of the ropes, and as he pulls, we begin to ascend the tunnel in the earth.
The light catches the freckles of sweat on his throat. “What was she about?” I say.
He tugs at the rope with both hands. “Sorry?” he says.
“You said murdering the king isn’t what Daphne was about,” I say. “What was she like, then?”
He cants his head back, smiles ruefully at the darkness. “She was mad, for starters,” he says. “Everything she stood for revolved around that.”
I envy a dead girl for the look this boy gives her memory. “She must have been something to see,” I say.
“She was going to do big things,” Judas says. He doesn’t sound at all sad about it. “I don’t have her spark, but I’ll have to do in her absence.”
“My friend Pen says Daphne’s essay was a bunch of whatnot. She says we need to keep our heads in the sky where they belong.”
“Your friend Pen is afraid,” he says.
It’s hard to reconcile Pen being afraid of anything.
Judas goes on pulling the rope. “What kind of a name is ‘Pen’ anyway?” he asks. “No way it’s on the naming list.”
There is a list of approved names that is specific about spelling. Because of that, it isn’t uncommon for people to adopt nicknames later on. There are no rules about those. “She doesn’t like her real name,” I say. “When we were in kinder year, there were three other Margarets in our class, and the instructor started calling her Pen because she always had coloring pens in her dress pockets. I suppose she preferred it after a while.”
I peer over the edge of the crate; it’s hard to see how high we are, and in the darkness I can just about see the metal slope of the bird. I can’t tell if it actually looks like a bird. “And anyway, she isn’t afraid,” I say. “She just has a lot of faith in the way things are.”
“That’s the way the king would like it, to be sure,” Judas says.
“Why? If he’s so corrupt and he kills anyone who proves to be a nuisance, why wouldn’t he just let us go soaring down to the ground and die?”
“Because he’s the most afraid,” Judas says. “He gets to play ruler over this floating rock and nobody challenges him. But if transport between Internment and the ground were easy, his ways would be challenged. He might be overthrown. You’re only proving that point. You already want him dead, and you’re just one person; imagine if everyone knew what he was doing. There’d be a riot.”
“There shouldn’t be a riot,” I say. “He should die quietly, and in pain. He should have someone he’s wronged standing in the doorway, watching to be sure he’s dead. That person should be the last thing he sees.”
“You know that his death will only mean the prince is crowned the next day,” Judas says. “I don’t believe he’ll be any better.”
“Then I’ll murder the prince, too.”
Judas makes a sound that could be a snicker, but by the time I hold the lantern to his face, his smirk is gone.
We reach the top of the tunnel and Judas goes about tying the ropes to keep the rickety crate in place. “You know I’d be a horrible person if I let you go through with this,” he says. “Not to mention it’ll be my head when everyone realizes you’re gone.”
“How do I open this?” I fumble with the wooden door overhead. Judas undoes a series of elaborate and rusty latches. With a hard shove, he throws the door up into the blackness and I’m hit with the smell of ash and something else I can’t quite place.
“After you,” he says cordially, taking the lantern from my fist.
There’s a small ladder leading up to the opening, wobbly and rustier than the latches were. Flecks of copper dirt crumble under my feet. I’m still wearing my uniform, right down to the polished black shoes.
“Careful not to slip on the mold,” Judas says, climbing up behind me. “All the moisture underground makes for unpleasantness. A lot of people think our lakes are replenished by the sky god, but spend some time underground and you’ll come to favor the theory that we absorb water from the clouds.”
Absorbing water from the clouds would make more sense than believing our lakes are a gift from the sky god. But when presented with the evidence, I see how much more terrifying it is to think we’re on our own.
I cough on the ashes and crawl onto the gritty ground. I’m back on the surface of Internment, but I don’t know where. I can’t see a thing because Judas has blown out the lantern.
“What’d you do that for?” I say.
“We can’t let anyone know we’re here,” Judas says. “It’ll look suspicious, a light escaping through the cracks.”
I’m about to ask where we are, but then I can identify that other smell beneath all the ashes. It used to fill my brother’s apartment whenever Alice was in the room. Flowers.
“We’re in the flower shop,” I gasp.
“Or what used to be the flower shop,” Judas says. “The king didn’t know exactly what we were up to, thankfully. But he knew we met here. He had the place burned down as a message to us, I’m sure.”
Amy’s face when I chased her down the street and she saw the fire takes on a whole new meaning now.
The train speeds by, and as the ground rumbles, I drop to my knees, fingertips dusting wilted petals and stems.