Perfect Ruin

I don’t say very much. Basil worries. Lex has Alice check the dilation of my pupils and he pays close attention to my temperature, asks me to describe any stomach cramps or dizziness. I tell him that I don’t feel much of anything. He has nothing to say to that. He was never very good with emotions. It’s staggering to think he’s the only family I have left.



There are probably patrolmen in the apartment now, rifling through our drawers and looking for signs of treason to justify the murder of an entire family. When they get to my bedroom they’ll find an open textbook at the desk, and the wooden marionette Pen bought for my festival of stars gift. They’ll find blue bedsheets and a closet full of uniforms and a feather headband draped over the mirror. They’ll find pieces of a girl who followed the rules.



That girl is gone now.



There’s no daylight here. There are no clouds. I hear a rumbling that I think is the train up above us. I lie with my face in the mattress, and Basil rubs circles on my back. He says nice things and he stoops down to kiss the back of my neck. Despite this hollowness inside me, the feel of his lips raises bumps in my skin.



I hear the door open, and Alice calls my name.



When I don’t answer, Basil says, “I think she’s fallen asleep.”



Alice doesn’t believe it. When I was younger, there were nights when my parents still went out together, when they would be gone long into the starlit hours, only to return with giggles and whispers, shushing each other as they slammed doors and stumbled off to bed. While they were gone, Alice would look in on me. She would know if I was pretending to sleep, and she would tickle my feet.



She doesn’t touch me now. She only says, “We’ll sort this out, love.” She doesn’t say my name, but I know the words are for me. “You aren’t alone.”



The door closes.



“She’s been crying,” Basil says, lying down beside me.



After a few seconds, I raise my face from the mattress to look at him.



“I don’t want to talk,” I say. I feel like I can’t get the words out in time. They spin angrily in my brain but disappear on my tongue.



“Okay,” he says, and wipes at a streak of my tears with his thumb. “You don’t need to say a word.”



“Never again?” I say.



“Not if you don’t want to. I’ll just read your expressions. Everywhere we go, I’ll speak so you don’t have to.”



I know he isn’t being serious, but it’s a nice thought. Him always at my side, always knowing what I’m thinking until our dodder days are over and we’re dispatched.



Only I don’t know if we’ll be allowed in dodder housing. I don’t know what’s going to happen or where I’ll go if Internment is too dangerous for me.



I close my eyes.



“Want me to turn out the light?” he says.



I shake my head. He tucks the blanket over both of us. It’s rough and unfamiliar, so I wrap my arm around Basil. The boy I’m supposed to spend forever with. He still feels and smells like home.



“What about your parents and brother?” I say.



“They’ll be safer if I don’t try to find them now,” he says. “They had nothing to do with any politics. I can’t imagine they’d be a target.”



He doesn’t sound very sure about that. Their son is betrothed to a girl the king tried to kill, after all.



“You must want to see them,” I say.



“I can’t,” he says, and his voice falters, and I know he’s trying to be strong for my sake. “You heard what they said. It would put everyone at risk—them, you, me, everyone on this bird. My family will understand. They know that my place is with you. I was going to have to leave home eventually.”



I think of Leland running along the cobbles the day we picked him up after class. He’s disappearing in the sunlight and I can’t bring him back.



“But not like this,” I say. “You shouldn’t have to leave home like this.”



“You’ll be killed if the king finds you,” he says. “It was my worst fear that something would happen to you, and I won’t chance it again. If you’re leaving Internment, I’m leaving, too.”



“If I were nobler, I’d beg you to stay with your family,” I say.



“It wouldn’t change that we’re meant to stay together.”



“What if we get to the ground in this flying bird somehow, and there are no rules like that? What would keep us together then?”



“The same thing that’s keeping us together now,” he says.



It’s quiet after that, and I’m left to remember that beautiful, strange thing he said to me before the medicine pulled me under.



I love you.



Is this what love means? That the rules aren’t the reason you stay together?



Buried away from the clock tower’s chimes, I rely on Basil’s wristwatch to know the hour. When he falls asleep, just after midnight, I slide out from under his arm.



“Morgan?”



One foot off the mattress, I freeze. His eyes don’t open, though, and I realize he’s only talking in his sleep.



Carefully I slide the rest of the way out of bed and kneel before him to be sure he’s really asleep. “I’ll be back soon,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”



I close the door behind me when I leave.



The hallway contains a few other bunk rooms like mine. I hear voices behind the closed doors. Professor Leander means for this to be a sort of house if it lands on the ground; his intentions lie in the faucets and electrical fittings that don’t work as of yet.



There’s a spiral staircase that leads me down into a kitchen. It’s mostly dark, save for a little lantern hanging from the ceiling. I walk as softly as I can to avoid creaking floorboards. If the upstairs is the chest, then I wonder what part of the bird this is; the stomach, I suppose.



The lantern lights only a small bit of the room, allowing me to see outlines of cabinets, a stove, and a cold box. There’s also a chandelier hanging over a table on the far end, but I haven’t seen any evidence of working electricity on this bird. It has all been flame lanterns.



No matter, though. I’m able to find the drawers easily enough, and it doesn’t take much rummaging for me to find a knife.



“I hope you weren’t looking to fix a midnight snack. There’s not much food.” Judas’s voice throws my heart into my throat. My shoulders go stiff. He hops onto the counter in front of me and stares at the open drawer. “The professor had big dreams of making this place a second home, but by now he’s accepted that we’ll all be lucky enough if it gets us to the ground without killing us. A one-way journey to be sure.” He eyes the knife in my hand. “May I see?”



I hold the knife out but don’t let him grab it. “There, you’ve seen,” I say, lowering it again.



“A serrated blade,” he says. “Great for slicing bread or potatoes.” He narrows his eyes. “Not so great as an assassination tool, though. You’d want a paring blade for that. Short, easy to conceal, and a pointed edge that would go right to the vital organs.”



“I can’t imagine what you’re getting at,” I say.



“You know,” he says, “if you try to take the king’s life to avenge your parents, you’re likely to get killed by his security before you’ve made it halfway up the clock tower.”



He knows what I’m up to, then. There’s no sense pretending. He reaches into the drawer and selects a paring knife, which he graciously holds out for me to grasp by the handle.



“Are you going to tell the others?” I say.



“They were your parents,” he says, “and this is your decision. I’d advise you to revisit it later with a clearer head, but it’s not my place to stop you.”



“You can come with me, you know,” I say. “The king had a hand in your betrothed’s death. You’ve just as much a right to this grudge as I do.”



“No thanks,” he says. “Believe me, I’ve wanted to. I hate that she’s dead while he’s still breathing. But that isn’t what Daphne was about.”



I wrap the blade in a cloth napkin and tuck it into the waistband of my skirt. “Suit yourself,” I say. “How do I get out of here?”



It’s too dark to be sure, but I think he’s grinning when he points to a door across from us. “There’s a ladder that’ll take you down and out of the bird. We’re pretty far underground, though. Let me go with you and show you how the pulley works.”



He grabs the lantern from the ceiling hook and leads me to the exit. We scale the ladder down a tunnel that leads to a metal door.



“The bird’s all rickety inside,” he says, “but it’s airtight. The professor says the air is thin beyond our atmosphere. He says we’d suffocate on our way down if there were so much as a crack in this thing.”



If my parents were still alive, all of this would fascinate me. I would have questions and I would be certain that I was dreaming, so spoiled would I feel at the idea of the ground being a possibility.



Now the idea of sailing to the ground in a metal bird only stirs a rivulet of blood in my stomach where there should be excitement. I can’t quite bring myself to care. The colors have all dulled around me.



I was a different girl yesterday. I also possessed more patience and sanity.



Judas opens the metal door and bows with a flourish of his arm, the lantern raised to light the way. “After you,” he says. “Watch that first step.”



Beyond the bird, there’s nothing but dirt and rocks. “How far below the surface are we?” I ask.



“Not as far down as you’d think,” he says, hopping from the bird to stand beside me. “The first time I came down here, I thought we were too deep, and that if we kept digging we’d fall right through the bottom of Internment itself.”



I used to think something like this when I was little. I would watch worms wriggle into the dirt and I would imagine that at the bottom of the city there were clumps of worms falling away with pebbles and crumbs.



Judas hands me the lantern. “Here, hold this.”



Holding up the light, I follow him to what appears to be a wooden crate and a series of ropes.



“Your betrothed carried you all the way down here in this thing, you know,” he says. “Can’t have been easy. It’s hard maintaining balance when it’s in motion.”



“He’s strong,” I say.



“It would be a shame for his efforts to go to waste,” Judas says. “It did seem like he wanted you to live.”