by Daryl Banner
“He’s rather very good,” notes Dregor from his Marshal’s throne behind her.
“Yes, he is,” Erana agrees dreamily—which of course comes out in perfect, unenthusiastic deadpan through her voice.
The two other seats next to Dregor are empty, for there is no separate Marshal of Legacy, and the Marshal of Order, Axel, doesn’t always attend the boring, routine work of hearing people’s interests.
There have been no arrests since Erana’s crowning, and very few people request an audience with the Queen at all. ‘It is because they are not sure what to make of you, yet,’ Dregor had assured her before. ‘Give them time for the trust to build.’
Erana is certain it will never build.
No one trusts a Queen from the slums, even if she has lived in the Lifted City for the better part of two years. Or is it three, now?
Still, regardless if no one sees her at all, Erana must admit how very good it feels to sit on this throne. She feels taller than anyone in the whole world.
Indeed, other than the harpist Kane or the Peacemaker Dregor, she is higher above anyone in all the Last City of Atlas right now.
Closest to the sky, to the stars, to the moon.
She glances up at the glass, domed ceiling high, high above her head. Even in the dead of night, starlight illuminates and magnifies itself along the glass, shining and reflecting and bouncing here and there, filling the whole throne room with its pale, winking light.
Between that and the harpist’s music, Erana’s soul feels full of more love and beauty than she can handle.
And that Axel bitch thinks she owns my soul.
The tiniest of superior smirks creases Erana’s lips, victorious.
Then, at once, the throne room doors burst open, and a figure hurries down the way toward them, shoes clacking and slapping along the mirror tiles.
Erana’s little heaven is shattered in seconds as she stares ahead, alarmed. Dregor has risen to his feet as well, and the harpist Kane has drawn silent, but Erana hardly notices, staring ahead.
The voice comes before recognition does. “We have a problem.”
Dregor has stepped in front of Erana. “What is it, Axel?”
Finally having crossed the long length of the room, Axel comes to a stop before them. “The Lifted City has been breached.” Her words carry a distaste, and she adds in a lower tone, “It’s been breached by peace seekers.”
Dregor squints inquisitively, his vertically-slit irises seeming to darken when he does so. “Peace seekers …?”
“From the Coalition. The Slum King himself, actually.” Axel lifts her chin and purses her lips. “He … seeks an audience with the new Queen. Erana.”
That last bit of news seems to bring Axel great displeasure.
Erana glances worriedly between them. “What does this—?” she starts to ask.
“Quiet,” Axel snaps, “and let the grown-ups speak.” She returns her irritated expression to Dregor. “I might think of a way I could turn his mind upon his people to our benefit. We hadn’t planned for this significant of a meeting so soon.”
“We need to take care here, Axel,” Dregor warns her. “He has a lot of influence, from what I have gathered from the stranded Chaots still slum-bound. If we truly are aiming to gain the Lower City’s trust and loyalty, the Slum King serves us far better alive and satisfied than mind-twisted and harmed.”
Axel hisses at him, annoyed. Then, after a thought, she shrugs. “Fine. You will handle this Slum King. I will stand in the back and be upon guard, to ensure no foolery on their end is the play here.”
“Call for the rest of the Posse,” Dregor tells her, his tone polite, “who will serve both as our muscle and our audience for him. They will fill the seats of the Court of Elders. Kane,” he says, turning to the harpist, “you may stay right where you are, and continue to play your pretty music.”
Axel scowls. “Why must he—?”
“For atmosphere.” Dregor gives her a curt nod. “For this to work, we must present a welcoming air. These are our guests.”
“Trespassers,” spits Axel.
And then, as meek as a chirping cricket from the corner of the room, Erana asks, “How did he reach the City?”
All eyes turn to Erana, even Kane’s, who is so dashingly sweet and charming that he looks as if not even Axel can intimidate him.
It is Axel who answers. “Via a … bridge … from the wreckage of Lord’s Garden.”
“A bridge?” Erana wrinkles her face. “There’s … a bridge?”
“There is now,” states Axel tersely. “He grew it.”
“Grew it …?”
Axel turns away from Erana and faces Dregor. “I will bring the party of five in. The least I will do is subdue any aggressive desires.” When Dregor’s face pinches, Axel adds, “For our own protection, you scaly-faced prude.”
Dregor smiles in the face of the slight. “For our protection,” he agrees lightly.
Then Axel is away, and Dregor with her. When Erana rises from her throne, he calls over his shoulder, “Stay here, my Queen. In a moment’s time, we will be returned with the Posse and our visitors. Worry not, worry not.”
After their long walk, the throne doors open, and the throne doors shut with a heavy, ringing sound.
When Erana pulls her eyes at last from that door, she finds Kane smiling mutedly at her. “Do they always speak to you like this?” he asks, his voice as soft and silky as his music. “The Queen of Atlas?”
Erana lowers herself back onto the throne, gives it a moment’s thought, then answers, “Only the Psychist.”
“You’re too sweet to be spoken to in such a way.”
She hardly notices she’s being flirted with. “I’m supposed to be too queenly to be spoken to in that way.” She rights her posture and lifts her chin. “Perhaps I ought to demand anyone’s head who speaks back to me. Perhaps I ought to demand many things.”
Kane chuckles, his smile dashing, yet small. “You’re a delight. What happened to your hand?”
She retracts the charred, burned hand into a fold of her gown and doesn’t dignify the harpist with an answer. He doesn’t seem to mind or care in the least, continuing to pluck his pretty strings.
It’s all too well, because Erana has much else weighing on her than a damaged hand.
Erana knows she doesn’t sound like a Queen. She knows in her veins runs deep, dark slum blood. She knows people hear her voice and sense every bit of trepidation and doubt she’s trying to conceal.
Still, a royal gown is a royal gown, and the throne of Atlas is the throne of Atlas, and the very high glass ceiling under which she sits is the very same under which countless lives have been ended, or sentenced to the Keep, or changed by all the hands of the Queens and Kings of Atlas’s deep and terrible history.
And I am now a part of that history.
Kane plays high, tickling notes on his harp, which are as pretty as they are fragile. Erana studies him awhile, listening to his sweet song. “The former leader and Head Trainer of the Sky Guard himself, his name was Cane, too, spelled with a C. He wore armor of pearl-white platemail, shell and marble of the highest durability. If you are skyborn, you will know him. If not, you won’t. He was rumored to be the next Marshal of Order after Taylon.”
“I am skyborn,” confesses Kane after stroking one gentle chord, “but never cared much for the politics of things. I didn’t know of this magnificent Cane, though I likely saw him once or twice on the big broadcast and didn’t know who I was looking at. Where is he now?”
“Dead,” answers Erana.
0279 Tide
He would never admit this to another soul outside his head.
But as he ascends the countless stairs of Cloud Tower, his every footstep is a shaky, terrified one.
Confidence is a lot easier to have from a distance.
Maybe it was the long and tiresome ascent up the plant-and-vine-and-tree staircase that has already weakened Tide’s resolve. He is exhausted. His thig
hs and calves are on fire. He feels like he walks on noodles, and the very prospect of ascending even more stairs was one to which he did not take kindly.
But Slum King Chole is in front of him, and Shley and Ritney and even the wimpy Arry all suffered the same journey without an outward complaint, so Tide keeps his big mouth shut and suffers with the rest of them.
Then the long stairs mercifully come to an end, they’re down a curved hall lined with tall windows overlooking the world, through a door twice as tall as Tide himself, and then the ghastly long hall of the glassy, shimmery throne room of Atlas awaits.
“Straight ahead,” presents the Sky Guard—or whoever—who has escorted them all this way.
“Thank you,” says Chole confidently, then leads the way.
Tide’s impression of the Lifted City—which was nearly dark by the time they finished their ascent—was one mixed with repulsion and bewilderment. Despite the night hour, the streets were brightly lit by polished, lush-looking lights on fancy metal poles. Tide was put-off with the look of the Lifted City, thinking it too lavish and full of design and way too smooth. He disliked how shiny even the roads beneath his feet were. The Privileged are truly Privileged, he thought with resentment. They have roads so clean, you can eat cake off them even after a hundred sweaty-footed muscled fools stamped down it on their way back from some fancy fucking gym.
And he wasn’t much impressed with the giant outer walls of Cloud Keep. He wasn’t much impressed with Cloud Tower either, which he expected to be so much taller than it was.
Here in the throne room, however, all his judgment drops to the mirror-tiled floors. Here in the throne room—the throne room of Atlas, the one where a King once screamed, the one where a Mad King once laughed—he forgets all his attitude and strength and gall.
All that’s left in him is fear.
It’s the Abandon all over again.
But what awaits them at the end of that long aisle isn’t the cold-hearted White Queen of the Abandon. This Queen could easily be some girl Tide could have gone to school with. A girl in the back of the room he paid no mind to because he was busy with his face lost between the big tits of Maris, his on-and-off girlfriend from school whose name he hasn’t thought of once until now.
This Queen is unremarkable. Long dark hair. Forgettable face. All of that stuck in some royal oversized white gown she’s drowning in. She looks slightly slouched even when she’s sitting up straight.
This nothing girl … is the Queen of Atlas …?
“Queen Erana,” greets Chole graciously. “It is my honor.”
Erana gives him a curt nod. “And you are Chole,” she says, “the one self-styled as the Slum King of—”
“No, no.” He gives a light chuckle. “I daren’t say that’s my title. That’s simply a name my followers give me. It’s something of a jest, in fact … a play on my being named the same as the Slum Queen Atricia’s late lover, Chole. I pray you forgive the coincidence.”
Chole then gives a humble nod toward a pale and slender man with silvery scales all over his body, who stands at one side of the Queen, then another nod at the tall, cool-eyed, dark-skinned woman, whose tight, curvy figure is wrapped in a strangely matching silvery bodysuit, her long hair drawn into a single ponytail that hangs down to the back of her calves. There are no smiles on either of their faces.
The pale, scaly-skinned man, however, does return Chole’s nod and steps forward. “Nothing to forgive,” says the man, his voice light, smooth, and clear as crystal. “I am Dregor Erasmus Leyvine,” he says for a greeting, gives a small bow, then adds, “Marshal of Peace.”
“Peacemaker Dregor,” greets Chole back. “Lovely to meet you.” Then he turns toward the other woman expectantly.
She is considerably less friendly. “Axel,” she states, clipped. “The Marshal of Order.”
Chole stares after the one named Axel for some time, as if there is a thought sitting upon his tongue that he won’t yet voice.
“So we are all met,” states the Queen. “There to your left sit the Court of Elders, or what remains of it, and now you have met my entire Council.”
Tide gives a look at the rows of benches to their left. There isn’t a single person on the bench who he could comfortably call an “Elder” at all. They look like a bunch of misfits, teenagers, and odd-looking slum fools from foreign wards.
Chole looks about, curious. “And where’s the Marshal of—?”
“Me,” states the Queen, rising from her throne. Considering her short height, it doesn’t make much of a difference. “I am both Queen and the Marshal of Legacy. It befits my talent, as it is in memory. I permanently learn everything I hear and see.” She gives a tight and short-lived smile. “And in studying the register of known peoples of the fifth, twelve minutes before you arrived, I found a rather peculiar connection.” She tilts her head. “You grew up alongside my Marshal of Order, Axel.”
It appears that the recognition did not yet dawn on either Axel or Chole, as the pair of them both seem surprised. “Axel,” says Chole with wonder in his eyes. “Right! How could I forget? You … have a twin, don’t you? A twin who’s a Psychist?”
“I’m the Psychist,” replies Axel. “My twin’s a traitor and a cunt.”
The words draw a cold tension upon the room. Arry, standing at Tide’s side, swallows audibly, disturbed by the woman’s boorish language. Sometimes, Tide wonders if this Arry fellow is a Lifted, for as spritely as he acts and as scared of harsh words as he is. The two women—Shley and Ritney—stand tall and silent, saying nothing.
Chole, unaffected, gives Axel a short nod. “It’s a pleasure to see you again after so long.”
“I wish I could say the same,” she replies, the corner of her lips twitching with indignance.
The insult is given as much attention by King Chole as her acid tongue: none.
He faces the Queen. “Personally, I’d like nothing more than to sit here with all of you and enjoy a tasty meal, kick back with a glass of wine, and talk about all our various adventures that have brought us to this point. It’s pretty fascinating, right?” He looks to several faces throughout the room. “I mean, we are, all of us, slumborn. Us, the slumborn, occupying Cloud Tower and the Lifted City. Is this not the exact dream that most of us wished for? Is there even a Lifted soul among us?” His eyes meet the Queen’s. “So I must say that, no matter the circumstances that brought us here, I am, firstly and most importantly, so very proud and happy to be among such company.”
“Your kind words are heard,” states Queen Erana simply.
Tide’s face pinches. Every word that drops out of her mouth is more dull and monotonous than the last. He wonders if it’s the way she always talks, or if she is being rude.
“Really, this is truly a historic moment,” Chole goes on, all his words light and friendly—which reminds Tide of the first impression he had of the boy King, the speech he gave to his own people, acting like one of them, just another dude from the slums. “It’s not lost on me that what we’re witnessing here is unprecedented. The slumborn should be very proud of the work you have done in overturning the Reign of Madness.”
“It was an effort of many,” states the Queen.
Axel turns her sharp-as-needles gaze onto her.
Chole gives the Queen a warm smile and a nod. “So then, to the many, I thank them. Anyway, as I suspect it isn’t within reason to host a dinner at the present time, perhaps it would do as well for me to explain my purpose in this impromptu visit.”
“Yes,” agrees the Queen mildly.
Impromptu. Chole had lied to them, saying the Lifted City would be expecting them, that this meeting was somehow arranged. Tide gnaws on his teeth in frustration and unease, staring at the side of Chole’s face, wondering what else the boy King hasn’t told him.
Chole spreads his hands before him. “I know as well as you do that the slums are not warming up well to the idea of you being their Queen. Nor are they trusting the fact that the most of your
Council are, in fact, the remainder of Former King Impis’s ‘Posse’, as they were called. And, I suspect, members of said ‘Posse’ are likely the ones populating the Court of Elders, if I’m not mistaken …?” He gives a sideways nod at the rows of half-occupied benches to their left, filled with teenagers and misfits and odd faces.
The Queen remains perfectly still, with the exception of her two dull eyes, which flick once over at the aforementioned Court, then back to him. “Yes.”
“Yes,” echoes Chole with a gentle smile. “It’s most unfortunate. The slumborn don’t dissociate the Posse from the former King. They don’t realize the entirety of the Posse is slumborn, like you and I and everyone in this room. I reckon the Lower City might never trust the likes of you or your Court and Council.”
Blunt as the words are, Chole says them with such politeness, his statement seems more an expression of sympathy.
The sympathy is lost on the one named Axel. “You have a lot of nerve, Plant King, to invite yourself into our prestigious City and—”
“Silence, Marshal,” says the Queen.
Axel’s eyes turn deadly as she turns to stare at the face of Queen Erana, her mouth left half-open in offense.
The Queen seems not to notice, addressing Chole directly. “It is a concern of ours that the slums are not quick to earn our trust. We are in need of ways to reconcile with the slums.”
“I did see your broadcast, and I am inspired by your spirit,” says Chole with due charm. “And, it so happens, I’ve a solution.”
The room is so silent, Tide can nearly feel the whole of Cloud Tower swaying with its height, the crystal and glass barely creaking and barely squeaking and barely shifting by the miniscule wobble.
Whether the motion is real or in Tide’s head, his stomach twists and turns with every crawling second they’re here.
“Please,” states the Queen with an obligatory nod. “You have my permission to express this solution of yours.”
“And so I shall.” Chole clears his throat and straightens his back. “Dregor, Axel, Court, and Queen.” He lifts his chin. “As you before mentioned, I am known in the slums as King Chole, the Slum King. I have, in the tumultuous Madness of the past eight months, unified four of the wards. I’ve rescued them from bedlam and turmoil, from crime and want and fear. I’m very soon to secure a steady hold on the fifth. All of the people of my wards respect me and my Council, which as well consists of Marshals of Peace, Order, and Legacy, all elected by the people themselves through a true democratic vote. Each and every voice was heard, and each and every voice counted. It is through this open-eared policy toward my people that I have, over the course of all these months, rightfully earned their trust. The people listen to me. The people obey me. And most importantly, the people respect my rule. These are not facts I take for granted, nor do I announce them with pride. I am aware of the responsibility I hold.”
