“The glass in the three spires is changing by the day, Prince Charlie! From that ugly dark green to the blue that it was in the old days! Wise folk, those who remember how things worked in the old days, are putting the trolley wires back up. It will be a long time before the cars are running again, and the damn things were always breaking down even in the best of times, but it will be nice to have them.”
“I don’t understand how they can run,” I said. “There’s no electricity except for that little generator on one of the lower levels of the palace, that I guess my friend Mr. Bowditch brought.”
Percival looked puzzled. He didn’t understand electricity, which I think must have come out in English rather than Empisarian.
“Power,” I said. “Where do the trolleys get their power?”
“Oh!” His face, lumpy, but improving, cleared. “Well, the stations give the power, of course. It’s—”
And now it was a word that I didn’t understand. He saw that and made a waving gesture with one hand.
“The stations on the river, Prince Charlie. On the streams, if they’re big ones. And from the sea, oh, there’s a whopping station at Seafront.”
I think he was talking about some form of hydroelectric power. If so, I never found out how it was stored. There were many things about Empis that remained mysterious to me. Compared to how it could exist at all—and where—made the question of power storage seem picayune. Almost pointless.
3
The sun came up, the sun went down. People came, people went. Some dead and some alive. The one I wanted most to see—the one who had gone to the well with me—didn’t come.
Until one day she did. The goose girl who was now a queen.
I was sitting on the balcony beyond the curtains, looking down at the palace’s central plaza and remembering unpleasant things, when the white curtains billowed out instead of into the room, and she stepped between them. She was wearing a white dress belted at her slim （still too slim） waist with a fine gold chain. There was no crown on her head, but on one finger was a ring with a jeweled butterfly on its face. I guessed it was the signet of the realm, and served her when toting around a golden headpiece would have been too much trouble.
I got up and bowed, but before I could put my hand to my forehead, she took it and squeezed it and placed it between her breasts. “Nah, nah, none of that,” she said in such a perfect workingman’s accent that it made me laugh. Her voice was still husky, but no longer hoarse. A lovely voice, really. I guessed it wasn’t how she had sounded before the curse, but it was fine. “Hug me, rather, if your hurt arm allows.”
It did. I hugged her tight. There was a faint smell of perfume, something like honeysuckle. I felt as if I could have hugged her forever.
“I thought you wouldn’t come,” I said. “I thought you’d cast me aside.”
“I’ve been very busy,” she said, but her eyes shifted away from mine. “Sit with me, my dear. I need to look at you, and we need to talk.”
4
The half a dozen or so nurses who had been tending to me had been let go to perform other duties, there was no shortage of work in the weeks after the fall of the Flight Killer, but Dora remained. She brought us a large pitcher of Empisarian tea.
“I’ll drink a lot,” Leah said. “It doesn’t hurt me to talk now… well, very little… but my throat is always dry. And my mouth is as you see.”
It was no longer sealed, but it was still badly scarred and always would be. Her lips were healing wounds lined with dark red scabs. The ugly sore she’d used to feed herself was almost entirely gone, but her mouth would never be completely mobile again, no more than Woody would regain his sight or Claudia the full use of her ears. I thought of Stooks saying I’ll never be pretty again. Queen Leah of the Gallien never would be, either, but that didn’t matter. Because she was beautiful.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” she said. “When I’m with people—which is all day, it seems—I have to keep myself from covering it. When I look in a mirror…” She raised her hand. I took it before she could put it over her mouth and set it firmly in her lap.
“I’d be happy to kiss it, if it didn’t hurt you.”
She smiled at that. It was lopsided but charming. Maybe because it was lopsided. “You’re a bit young for love-kisses.”
I love you anyway, I thought.
“How old are you?” This was an impertinent question to ask a queen, surely, but I needed to know what kind of love I’d have to settle for.