The Summer Prince (28 page)

“City?” I say.

“Yes, June?”

“I love you too.”

Funny thing, though: Despite the effort Oreste expended to get a name, as far as I can tell, she does nothing with it. Fall makes friendly gestures to winter, parliamentary hearings drone on with Ueda-sama occasionally taken out of the strict seclusion of high security to give testimony, and still Auntie Maria sits serenely in the back of the hall. She gives public updates on the “state of security” in the city. She even personally attests to the destruction of the war-tech cloud, once Lucia’s work has finished. In public, she and Oreste and Auntie Isa are as cordial
with one another as ever. When I try asking Auntie Yaha, she just shakes her head and changes the subject conspicuously.

“But, Mother,” I say tentatively, after another evening in which we find ourselves eating dinner alone with each other. “She practically murdered two people. She invited
war tech
into our city and she’s the head of security. How can they just ignore it? Why bother to get her name in the first place?”

Mother twirls the wineglass in her fingers, looking somewhere between me and the ruby liquid spiraling up the inside of the crystal. “When I was at the university, before I became president, there used to be these … wars, I guess you could call them, between the various departments. Antiquities and Environmental Studies in particular hated each other. Getting Administration on your side was always a coup. At its worst, it seemed as if everyone was some kind of spy. It tanked careers, those wars. I remember the mind-set: Assume that everyone else wants what you have, or that they’ll use you to get something better. Trust no one, except to the extent that you have something on them.”

She trails off, still engrossed in that empty space between us. She takes a long sip of wine. I take a large, burning mouthful of my own. Mother hasn’t talked about her old work since she married Auntie Yaha. Maybe not even since Papai died. I don’t know what to make of this. She’s so uncharacteristically loquacious. She reminds me … but I can’t bear to think of who this mamãe reminds me of.

“So sometimes we’d find out that there was a spy in the department. Some new secretary we hired, some visiting adjunct professor. You’d think we’d just fire them, right? Report the spying to the Administration?”

“Doesn’t that make sense? That way you get rid of the spy and make yourselves look like the good guys.”

“But we didn’t. At least, not immediately. We’d wait, June. For months sometimes. Years, once. We would wait and watch. We’d feed her false information and see what happened with it. We’d set traps
and hope she’d fall into them. We made her life a living hell, and
then
, when we’d used her up, we pretended that we’d just found her and reported her to Administration. Best of both worlds. Sometimes, in a war, your best friend is your known enemy.”

I understand her now. The cold calculation of the strategy takes my breath away. “But there aren’t any wars in Palmares Três.”

“There’s politics. And that’s what your stepmother fights in every day.”

I pour myself the last of the bottle of wine. It’s unusual for the two of us to finish a whole bottle on our own, but then, it’s been an unusual night. “So you think they’re watching Auntie Maria to see what else she plans to do? Isn’t what she’s already done enough?”

“Maybe they’re watching her to see who else she’s planning to do it with.”

I consider this. It makes sense, but still something about it makes me stupidly, childishly upset. “Did Auntie Yaha tell you all this?”

She shakes her head. “She won’t tell me any more than you.”

But it’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Unless Oreste and all the Aunties are in on the plot, and that I refuse to believe.

“I wish … is it so hard to just be
honest
? To just say, no, this is wrong, and stand up for that, and not think about advantage and placement and promotion and all that other Auntie bullshit for just one second? Is that all you grandes are? Is anything real?”

I slam my glass on the table; the wine spills warm and wet on my hand. I expect Mother to yell back at me about irresponsible wakas and accepting the world the way it is and not the way I want it to be, but instead she just puts her head in her hands. As if it’s grown so heavy it might just droop off.

“Why do you think I left, filha? Too hard, without your papai around to keep me sane. João would always say to me,
But what is right, Valencia?
So that at least I’d remember, even if I went the other way.”

It’s the first time she’s mentioned my papai since he died. At least, the first time that feels like a real
remembrance
, and not just a way of wounding me or blaming herself. The first time she’s said his name, and I realize he was a man we both loved.

“What is right, Valencia?” I repeat very softly.

She sighs. “I don’t know, June. I’m not an Auntie. I’m not even a university president anymore. I’m just a housewife, as you never tire of informing me.”

If I blush, I blame it on the wine. “And Auntie Yaha?” I ask.

“She tries, June. You know that.”

I know that. But …

“Why should the Aunties get to make such an important decision? What about Regina’s and Wanadi’s parents? What about the people who might get killed if another one of these clouds gets loose in the city? What about —”

“I know, June.”

“What about everyone else?”

I’m crying. Oh, God save me, I’m crying. In front of my
mother
. I press my knuckles to my hot, throbbing cheeks. I try to force myself to stop, but it isn’t working.

And then I feel her hands, cool as a rivet in winter, slip around my own. I hear her voice as I remember it: soft and comforting.

“Querida,” she says, “this will be okay.”

I want to believe her. But I remember that the same Aunties who won’t bring Auntie Maria to justice plan to kill Enki at the end of winter. For the first time, I begin to think that I don’t want this Queen’s Award. Would Papai be happy to see me win like this, or would he shake his head:
But what is right, June?

“I hate them,” I say.

“It’s a terrible system,” says my mamãe, “but it’s the best we have.”

And I think, that’s why she’s a grande and I’m still a waka. Because she can accept that.

I won’t.

Gil and I huddle together for warmth on a bench in Founders Park, the fragmented, muddled strains of some new bloco echoing from the bandstand on the other side of the green. Gil said he wanted to go out and dance like we used to do, to feel normal for once, but the casters and camera bots chased us away. We hid in a pod and then snuck back here.

Though I can’t see him very well in the distant glow from transport tunnels far above us, I feel his sadness like a coating on my skin. But he tries to smile when he turns to me.

“Last night Ricarda said you, Octavio, and Bebel are the front-runners for the Queen’s Award.”

I know he means this to cheer me up, but my chest tightens with confusion and a shameful rush of hope. “Enki thinks I’m stupid to care anymore.”

Gil rests his head on my shoulder. “Think of everything you could do with it, menina,” he says. “I understand.” And I know he does. It would have taken his mamãe years longer to become a successful designer without that contest.

“I’m letting them win, if I give it up. Even if I hate Oreste.” But I think of the weeks of silence surrounding Auntie Maria, and my justification sits uncomfortably.

Gil surprises me when he says very quietly, “I want you to win, and no one could hate her more than me.”

“You?”
I laugh. “Gil, you’ve never hated anyone in your life.”

“No one’s ever tried to kill someone I love before.”

I pull away from him, astonished. He’s crying silently, and for a strange, suspended moment, I remember my verde night and the way Enki looked when he realized that someone had stabbed him.

Panicked, I wipe at his face with the edge of my jacket sleeve, but it’s hopeless. Gil looks broken down with grief, and for a moment, I hate Enki for doing this to him.

“Gil, Oreste is horrible but
she’s
not killing Enki. He knew what he was doing when he declared.”

Gil’s hands imprison my own. He looks very fierce, though he still hasn’t stopped crying. “And what if he changes his mind? They’ll kill him anyway.”

“He hasn’t changed his mind.” I suppose that some other summer kings must have regretted their decision, but Enki never would.

Gil denies this truth with a furious shake of his head. “Do you want him to die, June? Do you think it’s okay that they kill the best of us at the end of winter?”

My mouth opens, but I can’t think of anything to say.
Do
I think it’s okay? I know Gil thought so back in the spring, when we were both so excited to vote for Enki to become summer king. Clearly, he’s changed his mind. But the ritual of our summer king is as central to the identity of Palmares Três as the pyramid itself. Still, when faced with the question, I realize that one thing is true.

I don’t want Enki to die.

“We can’t do anything to stop it, Gil.”

He looks at me very sadly, but at least his tears have stopped. “I wish we could at least
try
.”

But I know better than anyone how dangerous trying can be, and how destructive. Maybe it’s better to let bad things happen than tear yourself apart trying to stop the inevitable.

Couldn’t that be art, June?
whispers a voice like Enki’s.

I ignore him.

His blood sanctifies his choice
— I’ve heard the catechism all my life, though I didn’t understand it until my papai took me to the park to watch Fidel die. It’s barbaric and cruel, our ritual sacrifice of a king every five years, but it’s all in the service of his choice. Every young Palmarina is taught the story of Alonso and Odete — our first king
and Queen, who in the midst of the chaos and death of the dislocation, chose a different path.

The kings die so that their choice of the next Queen can be irrevocable, unassailable, and unprejudiced.

After all, there’s no time for corruption when your throat is being cut.

They tell us the idea came to Alonso in a dream, sent to him by Ogum, the orixá of politics and prophecy. They say he realized that the new citizens would be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of their new home, if the leaders were willing to make a sacrifice for the city. The Founding Mothers reluctantly agreed with his reasoning, and when his year was over, he named Odete first Queen and he died. Even with the changed tradition of the moon years, our system seems to have worked pretty well for the last four centuries. It’s true — a man about to die can make some surprising choices.

But it isn’t much of a waka who doesn’t wonder —
especially
during a moon year — if we couldn’t find a better way. After all, the dislocation and its horrors are four hundred years past and would it really hurt anyone to let the summer kings live after their year-long reign?

Not long after Papai brought me to the park, I asked Mamãe why we didn’t kill the Queens when they were done too.