The Summer Prince (15 page)

The tree unfurls, now. First its branches, then its light-leaves. The branches cover my breasts and collarbone. I haven’t had a chance to do the trunk.

Not that Mother would let me out of the house wearing something that would show it, anyway.

Gil and Enki look the part of the city’s wonder couple, dazzling in matching outfits Gil’s mamãe designed. The Aunties are not pleased with their summer king. Security officers tail him the moment he leaves his apartments, according to Gil. Aside from the late-night delivery, I haven’t heard a word from him since our perhaps-too-successful catinga project. Everyone knows Enki is responsible, but since he was very prominently giving a speech at the time, no one can quite figure out how. Current speculation is running high on Gil as his accomplice, which made the two of us laugh ourselves sore alone in his garden. Gil plays it up — he’s an attention whore, and he knows it protects me. I
worry about how they’ll react when I reveal myself, but then I think about how wonderful the four siblings will look on their big night and I relax. It’s too good not to win.

Pasqual wraps his arm around Bebel and hands her another flute of sparkling wine. I’m not so sure this is a good idea, but Bebel’s too high to listen to me. Maybe I’m just inclined to be judgmental. I’m in a room with two of my favorite people in the world and I can’t even speak to them. Technically I could talk to Gil, but he’s glued like a limpet to Enki’s side tonight, and I’m not sure I’d want to get in the middle of that even if it weren’t for the Greatest Art Project in History. I’ve had a few flutes of that sparkling wine myself, and the memory of Bebel’s heavenly voice singing “Roda Viva” keeps melding with Enki’s as he says,
You really want to sleep with me
, and maybe I can’t deny the way my stomach warms in his presence, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever act on it. I didn’t approach him because I wanted to be his lover, and besides, if Enki felt that way about me he would have done something by now. I gulp down my glass before I can register my sudden rush of disappointment.

I swear, I hate wine. It’s such an Auntie drug, so old-world, and why they want to be old-world when they run a
city of women
is beyond me, but there you go, that’s grandes in a nutshell: hypocrite central station.

My thoughts have turned so circular and maudlin that I’m grateful when someone taps me on the shoulder.

“You’re the visual artist, right?” she says. It’s one of the other finalists, the one from the verde.

“June,” I say. “And you’re …”

I can’t remember for the life of me, so I shrug and she laughs. “That confident about the competition, huh? I’m Lucia, and I code.”

“Code? Like, games?”

“Or like nanobots.”

My eyes widen. Could
this
be where Enki is getting them? “Biomods?”

“I wish. In this city, you’d have better luck buying nuclear weapons. Mine are lower-level. Self-assembling machines. Lately, I’ve been working on replication.”

“Wow. And the Aunties are okay with that?”

“Are the Aunties
okay
with anything? I don’t think any of us are doing things they’re completely comfortable with.”

I look around the room and see exactly what she means. This is a brilliant, wild, and transgressive group of wakas. The Aunties should be screaming to see us all in a room together, exchanging ideas. And yet Auntie Maria smiles as she chats with Auntie Yaha. I see Auntie Nara who, as our head of culture, probably picked most of us. They don’t look horrified, they look pleased. As though they can think of nothing better than the sight of this group, the future leaders of their city of lights.

“They picked us,” I say.

Lucia smiles. “Strange, isn’t it?”

The music dims and the doors to the dining room glide open soundlessly. Servers take our empty glasses of wine.

“Welcome,” says Queen Oreste from the head of the table. “It would be my honor to have you join me for dinner.”

I sit between Bebel and Pasqual, across from Gil and Enki. I try not to look at either of them, but Gil catches my eye and smiles in a way that makes something unwind, deep in my belly.

The food is very refined — we start with a single scoop of sorbet of açaí and banana, and follow that with prawns stewed in coconut milk and chiles. No one but the Aunties eats much. Now that I can feel the pressure of their judgment, even the smell of the chiles can’t entice me.

“Nazare,” Oreste says, and the head of a boy at the other end of the table snaps up with a crack. “The Aunties and I have been very impressed with your level of playing recently. Have you set up any demonstration events, perhaps? I’m sure Faro would love to test his skills against yours.”

Nazare’s spoon starts to clank against his bowl and he puts it down hastily. He’s tall, angular, with long wiry arms that are likely to make him the best peteca player in Palmares Três in a few years. Unfortunately, skill on the court doesn’t make him particularly adept in social situations, and it’s clear that he’s overwhelmed by the Queen’s attention.

“I … ah …
Faro
?” His voice cracks, and Pasqual is drunk enough to giggle. I glare at him.

Oreste smiles and softens her voice. “Yes, dear. I have it on very good authority that Faro has been particularly impressed with your skills. I think a friendly demonstration match would be just what the city would like to see from one of its finest wakas.”

Nazare stammers out something that might be agreement, but Oreste doesn’t wait, she’s already training that deceptively welcoming gaze on another finalist, questioning her about her skills. As she goes around the table, I realize that every other finalist has either done something publicly or is planning a demonstration. As she circles around to me, the tension in the room quietly rises — it seems that everyone has heard that I’ve done nothing since my nomination. Even Gil can’t stop looking at me, but Enki is cool as he pleases, and I think that his crown of cacao has never looked more appropriate. Pasqual smoothly informs her of his work with Bebel as well as a new theorem he’s close to completing (I’d forgotten how infuriating his grande-pleasing insouciance can be). Oreste gives him a smile I’d almost call flirtatious, and then she turns to me.

“June,” she says, “my blazing light. I hear you’re working on something special?”

She has? Then I remember Bebel and Ieyascu. “You could say that.”

Her smile gets a little harder. It’s strange, but in her presence I can understand why she’s our Queen. She’s brilliant, manipulative, and beautiful. It’s no surprise she convinced the summer king four years ago to name her Queen before his death.

“So secretive, June! But you’re among friends here.”

My lights pulse with my sudden agitation. I know I have to tread carefully, but I’m an artist, not a politician. I don’t know what to say.

Then Enki starts to laugh, and I don’t have to say anything. The sound is carefree, debatably inebriated. It dispels the charged atmosphere of Oreste’s questioning like a grounding wire.

“Something is funny, King?” she says, an attempt at polite curiosity that barely hides her annoyance.

“Her face, Oreste! How can you stand it?”

“Stand
what
, Enki?”

“Pushing them into these corners and smiling at them. You’re like a cat playing with a mouse, I swear.”

“I am
not
a mouse,” I say before I can stop myself.

Enki flashes that smile at me, and for the barest moment I can see his joy like a nod in my direction. He walks a tightrope, knowing the slightest misstep will reveal our secret to Oreste, and utterly convinced he won’t fall.

“You’re being rude, Enki,” says our Queen. She’s not hiding anything now.

“You’re being cruel. So the girl hasn’t done anything yet. You picked her, didn’t you? Maybe you should wait and see what she can offer instead of grooming her like a prize turkey.”

Silence. It stretches for five, maybe six seconds. I’m not sure anyone even breathes. Enki catches my eye, like he’s saying, “Well, I tried,” and then, clear as the bay in a calm, I know what I have to do.

I laugh.

“Well,” snaps Oreste, “I’m glad you two find this funny.”

I meant it as a distraction, but the mirth turns genuine and almost uncontrollable as soon as it leaves my belly.

Bebel touches my arm, genuinely concerned.

“Summer King,” I say between the fountaining laughter.

“June?”

“I’m not a turkey either.”

The city sounds different in the verde. She speaks to us with the same voice, but in a different tone. She apologizes so much we sometimes call her the Sorry Lady and we all learn very early not to rely on her for much of anything. In the verde, we flash a transport pod and sometimes she’ll say “I’m sorry, I can’t send you one right now.” We ask her for the weather cliffside on Tier Seven and she’ll say, “I’m sorry, I can’t access my sensors right now. Would you like to try again later?”

You’re surprised. That’s never happened to you on Tier Eight.

So we jack our standard-issue fonos. We mod them so when we ask where the security bots are, the city will treat us like we’ve never smelled the catinga. A tech-head in the verde is one step below an orixá.

I grew up desperate to speak to the city. I would look at the office workers in Gria Plaza and wonder what secrets she had told them. When I asked my mamãe, she would laugh and say the city didn’t tell anyone secrets, she just used more resources for the top tiers to answer questions.

“The city isn’t really a person,” she told me. “She can’t tell you anything important.”

But she was wrong, my mamãe.

The tech-heads think they’re speaking to the city, but they’re wrong too.

The city has a voice, but I had to become a king to hear her.

Sunday morning. Auntie Yaha goes to services, but Mother stays home with me. At first I’m worried that she wants to talk, but she seems content enough to sit in her chair that overlooks the garden and read. I force myself to do some schoolwork, as I cannot bear to let Bebel get so far ahead of me. I don’t feel so annoyed anymore when I think of her. She’s right, isn’t she? A good rival is almost like a good friend.

Almost.

God, I miss Gil. I ping him again, not that I expect an answer. He’s out with Enki, as all the world knows.

“June?”

Mother speaks so softly I can hardly hear her over the morning birdcall.

“I’m working, you know.”

“I just need a moment.”

Her tone is so uncharacteristically diffident that I lever myself off the cushions. She’s turned on the garden holo, and I hear him laughing and saying “querida” before I see his head bobbing over the hydrangeas. There’s a little hand, then a little body, and it’s me, and my papai is teaching me to dance. In the distance, the ghost of my mother says, “Careful, João, I think she’s getting better than you!”

I just stand a foot beside Mother’s chair and watch. In two years, I’ve never looked at a holo. I haven’t heard his voice or even the music he loved to teach. In two years, I haven’t gone a day without thinking of my papai, but somehow I still forgot who he was.

“Try again, June,” he says. The music in the background gets louder, but I would recognize this in my sleep. He sings “Send in the Clowns” and I clap and stutter along with him.

“João,” says Mamãe, “she’s too young for English. We should teach her some good classical music. Make her smart.”

The music changes.
“Baiana que entra no samba,”
Mamãe sings. I laugh. The holo stops; the ghosts disappear.

“Ma — Mother …”

She doesn’t even glance up at me. “It’s his birthday tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I forget,” she says. “How nice it was with the three of us.”

“I …” I think I have too, and it shames me to admit it.

“June, do you think the three of us, with Auntie Yaha, do you think we could ever —”

“No,” I say, harsh and unthinking and immediate.

Now she turns to me. I expect her anger, but I’m shocked to see something like grief in the set of her shoulders. “Your papai would never have wanted —”