by Daryl Banner
Lately, it feels thin as water.
0241 Athan
Athan has memorized every crack and fissure of the ceiling of Wick’s room, painted by the light of a distant streetlamp or two. The cramped space has such a personality of its own, with its window built into the wall by Wick’s father, whom Athan had the pleasure of meeting for all of ten seconds before he was arrested. The window is always smudged by cooking smoke drifting past it from all of the neighbors’ yards, but Athan likes it, believing it gives the glass character. This must have been Wick’s view, growing up, Athan tells himself, hugging the sleeveless red hoodie like a child’s blanket to his bare chest. This was his home. His community. His family and friends.
The peace is interrupted by a bout of arguing in the front yard below. Athan shifts his naked body over to the window and observes Prat and Arrow under Lionis’s tree, disagreeing about something. As usual. The pair of them throw their hands, cross their arms, and shake their heads as they argue.
Athan hugs the hoodie tighter as he watches them. This must be how Lionis and Wick fought, he thinks, smiling. The two of them are just like brothers, Prat and Arrow. They will see eye-to-eye someday.
Prat storms off. Arrow shouts out after him, then slaps the tree at his side and huffs before marching into the house. The sound is then transferred to the inside where he hears Arrow downstairs in the kitchen, fussing angrily with some pots and cutlery.
Athan rises from the floor, shrugs on the sleeveless hoodie, then hurries across the hall to fetch something to wear from a dresser the occupants of the house all share. Ivy and Arcana stay next door with the Penlings, so thankfully Athan only has so many others’ clothes to fish through. Unfortunately, he finds that all his clothes are in the backyard pinned to a cable and drying in the wind, so he makes a choice and pulls out a pair of someone else’s shorts. He struggles to put them on, feeling them tight at his thighs. Once on, he discovers they come nearly six inches above his knees and hug his ass like a tight leather glove. I feel like a pleasure boy in these tiny grey things.
He figures it’s better than being naked; Arrow downstairs will appreciate being spared the sight of his privates, surely.
Athan comes down the narrow staircase leading to the kitchen, where he finds Arrow has stopped fussing about, his hands gripping the edge of the island counter so tightly, he could break it clean off. He’s glaring into the den, which is lit only by a sheen of sunlight coming in through the sliding glass back doors.
“Need some help with dinner?” offers Athan lightly.
Arrow glances at him once, then does a double-take, his startled eyes drifting down to his shorts for a moment. “Out of laundry?” he finally asks. Then he squints. “Are those Prat’s?”
Athan shrugs as he comes up to the counter and flips open a cabinet. “What do we have in here to make? I did find a few cans of beans the other day, which I know we’re rationing, since the eighth markets are running low. Of course, I could still make us a pot.”
“Too many thieves,” mutters Arrow.
While rummaging through a cabinet under the counter, Athan lifts his gaze. “Are you and Prat okay?”
“I’d … rather talk about literally anything else.”
“Hmm, alright. How comes the charm in the backyard?”
Arrow’s eyes narrow.
“Okay, okay.” Athan lifts his hands in surrender. “We can just enjoy each other’s company without any exchange of words. That’s quite fine, too. Perhaps preferable, actually. My mind is too fat with thoughts of my own.” He smiles politely at Arrow. “I … really can’t imagine how mentally taxing your position is.”
Arrow’s eyes detach as he stares ahead at nothing. Athan, deciding it best to leave well enough alone, finds the perfect pot to warm up and stir some beans in. Though the electricity out here is miniscule and only comes in little bursts, thanks to someone’s tech knowledge and cleverness in connecting most of their homes to the self-sustaining streetlamps, the stove has enough stored juice in it to work today, and so Athan gets to work seasoning a can of beans for them to eat. He had observed Lionis cook many times in their sixth ward hideout, and he remembers the proper proportions. A pinch of this, he recites in his head, and a pinch of that.
Thirty minutes later—and despite Arrow insisting that he has no appetite—the two of them are eating bowls of crispy, seasoned beans on the front doorstep of the Lesser home, watching the activity in the street before them like some interesting slummer-operated show on the broadcast done by a crew of underpaid ninth ward actors.
“I discovered a new aspect of my ability.”
Athan turns to Arrow. “Oh?” he grunts, muffled through his full mouth.
“Yeah.” Arrow has already finished his bowl, which rests on the step in front of him. He plays with the spoon, twirling it between his fingers. “I have just one big charm in the control room upstairs. And I made several sisters from that one charm, sisters which I’ve placed at the edges of the ninth, even as far as the Noodle Shop. I planted that one a month ago. And I can actually hear all of them through the big mother charm in the control room.”
Athan swallows his bite. “That’s incredible.”
“It’s alright.” Arrow shrugs, always the one to play modest with his own great accomplishments. “I have to get better at distinguishing where each sound is coming from. At times, it’s just a big noisy mess and … well, I still have much room for improvement.”
Athan nods back toward the house. “You think that big charm in the backyard is something like that? A mother charm?”
“Well, every Charmer is a little different. They don’t all create a communication that transmits between metals, like I do. There are some Charmers who might make metals that just emit a noise only they can hear. Or that gather sound. Or store it. I heard some can ‘speak’ to computer systems, like the ones they use at school, or the ones in the Lifted City, perhaps—I wouldn’t know of those—but I’m not sure I believe that. I can’t say I know many other Charmers.”
“So that big hunk of metal might … do something different than your charms?” Athan asks, trying to follow.
“Yes. The tragedy of Charmers is that we’re all so different, the ways we speak to metal. It’s like I’ve spent my whole life developing some secret language that only I and my charms can understand. To figure out someone else’s language … that’s the near-impossible part. It’s what confounds me. I know it’s a charm, yet I don’t know what it’s saying or doing or what it was meant for.”
Athan smirks and nudges his friend encouragingly. “Sounds like a job for the best Charmer in Atlas, who I happen to be sitting by.”
Arrow snorts and shakes his head. “Far from. I’m clumsy and all my methods are experimental, at best. I’m still learning.”
“It’s important to do that,” Athan decides proudly. “Don’t ever stop learning.”
“You, too,” Arrow fires back, eyeing him.
Athan is struck for a second by that. My Legacy … A dark cloud of frustration enters his mind. My Legacy … What the fuck is it, if it’s not survival? If it was survival, then my Anwick would be here by my side with me.
“I must be off,” Athan decides abruptly, setting down his bowl with the last two bites untouched in it, then rises and steps down from the porch.
“To the pits?” calls Arrow at his back, stopping him. “Wearing that? You’ll scare away the men with the outline of your ass crack in those tiny things.”
Athan smirks back at Arrow, then shrugs. “Let them stare. It’s the eighth, after all. Aren’t half of them naked anyway?”
“That’d be the seventh, buddy. ‘The Skinny’ where … where the Wall Breaker fuckers live.”
Athan nods knowingly. The teenage girls of the streets led by the green-haired traitor named Quin to whom Rain was sold out—the very ones who killed Victra with an arrow through her head. He gives a slap to his own ass and tugs on his red sleeveless hoodie. “I doubt the pits pay me for the
clothes I wear, but rather for whose blood I wear.”
Arrow shakes his head. “You need to be careful, Broadmore boy. I pity the ones pitted against you.”
“Me too. Each and every one of them.” Athan gives him a short nod, then is off.
And only when Athan has made the long trek to the eighth and finds himself standing in the pits with the roar of the crowd and the announcer working them up, does he finally feel at home once again. This is the only thing that fills my heart now. Fighting. Purging. Fist to flesh. Meat against meat.
This pain dulls the other.
His name is called. His opponent is a man with a canyon shaved down the center of his big beard, making the hair look like either blade of a double-sided axe. The man bares his teeth. He has twice as much muscle as Athan, his biggest opponent yet.
Athan doesn’t win it easily. He punches and swings and parries as he does all his matches, but the man stands stronger than those who came before him, and for his size, he is surprisingly quick. Maybe a Legacy, Athan considers mildly after the man scores a direct hit to his jaw. Athan spits out blood, then comes back into the fight, lifting his fists to protect his face.
But after another quick swing, the man leaves an opening, and Athan takes advantage and uppercuts him right in the hairless part of his chin between either half of his beard, sending him flying two feet into the air and then crashing to the ground. He stirs, confused, eyes blinking away the stars before them as the announcer counts to three. Then the crowd roars, and Athan is declared the winner.
He doesn’t have long to celebrate. As Athan makes his way back to his side of the pit for a rest, the man is back on his feet and charging him from behind. Athan spins just in time to catch the man’s fist at his cheek, which throws him to the wall with a grunt. The announcer shouts a word of protest, but the crowd’s screams and boos drown it out. Athan lifts his hands, dazzled, to block the sudden assault of bonus punches from the man. The fucker is quick and quicker with them, one coming right after the last. Athan’s arms get quite a beating, acting as his shield.
“CHEATER!” cries the fork-bearded man, his voice strained and hoarse, his words turning to spit. “You have an illegal upper hand! A Legacy at your aid! You’re a cheater! A fucking dirty cheater!”
Out of nowhere, three big men show up to peel the infuriated beard-cleaved man off of Athan. He still spits curses and shouts as he’s dragged off.
Athan stares after him, wide-eyed, as the crowd, ever on his side, fizzles into boos and demands for retribution.
Athan only stares in wonder, lips parted.
His mood, soured by the assault, does not soon improve.
Hours later—and only three wins later, since the scandal scared away or soiled the atmosphere for the rest of the day’s challengers—Athan decides to call it quits, not caring to wait longer for his name to be called again, his heart not in it anymore anyway.
He visits the challenger’s pavilion outside the pits, collects his earnings—a mere eighth of what he usually gets—and then heads toward the defunct nine-north train tracks, which he follows on foot to get home.
When he reaches the tracks, a voice stops him. “My, my. Didn’t expect to actually see your hunky ass in the flesh, like, ever.”
Athan lifts an eyebrow and scans the dark streets. From a tall shadow of a building comes a short and slinky shape. When he gets closer, Athan finds it’s a young man wearing nothing but a silk red jacket cinched at the waist, the crotch of his gold thong barely visible where the jacket ends short, and two gold-colored slippers.
“Who are you?” Athan calls back.
The boy comes to a stop in the middle of the street and folds his arms. His hair is dusty, almost grey, and wispy as cotton. His face is so fair and pretty, Athan would almost think he’s a flat-chested girl with short hair, if it wasn’t for his deeper voice, wide shoulders, and no curve to his hips at all to speak of. He might be about Athan’s age, though it’s difficult to tell.
He lifts his chin haughtily. “Allow me to confirm you’re the one I think you are. You are Lifted, yes?”
Athan studies the boy’s pretty face long and hard. He doesn’t feel any danger, if his senses are to be trusted. “Yes, once, I was.”
“Once. Right. Before the Laughing Finger. Okay, it’s you.” The boy examines one of his fingernails, all his attention drawn to it for a second. “Yes, yes, and judging from the fact that you are here and not up there, I can only assume Sniff got his way and found you.”
Athan’s face scrunches up. “Sniff?”
“Your lover. The bleeding heart slum boy. Friend of Rone’s.”
The mention of Rone’s name stops Athan’s breath. He looks over the boy again, wondering if he ought to know him.
“I tended to your friends, long, long ago,” he explains loftily as he files his fingernails against his chest. “I never forget a face. One of them was your lover. The other was his friend. Don’t get all worked up,” he adds with a roll of his eyes. “I’m harmless as a Lifted Lady’s lingerie closet. That’s very harmless, by the way. Oh, Lifted Ladies … they are boooring. It’s why Lifted Lords come downstairs for a happy hour or two with the likes of me. No offense, but Lifted folk are my bread and butter.” The boy approaches Athan and comes to a stop an arm’s reach from him. He closes that arm’s reach with his own to offer a handshake. “Name’s Edrick. My friends call me Edrick, as do my clients. Edrick. They call me nothing else, so don’t go and make any cute nicknames. None of them will be cute. Edrick is all.”
Unsure what the purpose of that long last bit was, Athan warily accepts the handshake, his eyes on the boy, waiting for more.
Edrick sighs, his hand dropping to his side. “You … are way too scared of me. Really, I’m the one who ought to be scared of you. I’ve seen you fight. Heard it, to be precise. Could hear it perfectly from streets away, though that’s thanks to my Legacy, and not to say that your fighting is particularly loud. It’s not. You are terrifying.”
The boy talks too fast. “You said you knew my friends …?”
“Oh? Was Rone your friend, too?” Edrick purses his lips, his eyes running up and down the length of Athan Broadmore. “He was my demise for a good week or so. That boy … That boy ruined me. Would you believe it if I said he kissed me like he was my lover?”
Athan scoffs at him. “No.” Then he reconsiders. “Well …”
“Poor Rone. He was a mess over looking for his sister, and … well, never mind. He babbles a lot when he’s under the chemical.”
“How’d you know them?” Athan asks curtly, pushing the boy to the point.
“You in such a hurry? Goodness.” Edrick runs a hand through his hair. “Oh, it was an eternity ago. Your lover Sniff and his friend came looking for a way into the Lifted City. One wanted his sister. The other wanted you.” He squints at Athan. “The one who wanted you wouldn’t say your name. I had to hear it mumbled by Rone months later while he was in a chemical-babbling near-dead state, collapsed on my pleasure bed. Oh, the men I’d fuck while dancing around a half-conscious pretty thing like Rone. Would you believe how many Lifted wanted to make pleasure with him while he was unconscious? Sick. No hearts or respect, all about their own pleasure, those sick, sick Lifted folk. No offense, but truly, they’re sick.” Edrick snorts. “And I’m acting like I have any right to argue morals. I’m as sick as they come, pining over men I can’t have.”
Athan shudders at the boy’s words. He’s heard of these pleasure boys, these skilled sex workers of the slums who make coin off of the lusty wishes of others. If he wasn’t such a believer in love, he would not be so repelled by what these pleasure boys and girls do, stealing husbands and wives away to make gold out of their dirty bed sheets.
“What do you want from me?” Athan finally asks, polite enough to mask his discomfort.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Edrick puts a hand to his chest as he looks over Athan again. “Really, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you escaped from my
own bar, in shorts as tight as those. That jacket is quite familiar, come to think.”
“It’s Wick’s.” Athan pulls on the drawstring protectively.
“Wick. That’s Sniff’s real name, isn’t it? Weird one, that Sniff. I wasn’t much into him … but I can see why he was into you.” Edrick’s eyes play over Athan’s body yet again. “Such an unusual name for a slummer, I told myself … Athan. When I heard the announcer call it out, I had to come. I was in the middle of pleasuring a man in my bar five blocks down from here, and I thought, ‘Certainly, that can’t be a different Athan.’ Well, I suppose I lied. There is something I want,” he quickly adds. “Rone. He stays with you and Wick, I must presume. I have a favor to ask of him, and he owes me.”
Athan eyes the pleasure boy Edrick, wary. Before divulging any information, Athan asks a question in return: “What favor?”
“That’ll stay between Rone and myself, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind.” Athan feels a surge of protectiveness, even if Rone is not here to protect. He might still have his Lifted manners, but he has learned a thing or two about giving in to others’ whims so easily down here in the slums. “Tell me what it is you want with him.”
Edrick lifts a challenging eyebrow and stares Athan down for all of twelve long, cold seconds. “Fine.” He huffs. “Fine, Athan, you big beautiful Lifted boy, you. Fine.” Edrick takes a long breath. “I … am deeply in love with Rone. I love him with all my heart. I wish—”
“Don’t play with me.”
Edrick’s eyes flash. “Goodness. Who’s stuck a pin in your ass?”
“You’re playing with me. I want the real reason, Edrick, or else I go on my way and you go on yours.”
Truth be told, Athan isn’t quite ready to say goodbye to the pleasure boy. If this Edrick has any clues as to Rone’s whereabouts, Athan would like to know. After all, other than the fact that the sapphire-eyed wonder could be very valuable to the ninth, he is also a friend, and Athan wishes to protect him with all his capability.
