by Daryl Banner
Arcana smirks knowingly, then nods after his thought is read. “I am not yet confident enough either … in whether my ability can penetrate the lines of Legacy defenses he likely has,” she finishes for Arrow, so as not to out her connection with the Slum King.
“And how is Athan any better a choice??” cries out Prat.
“Athan’s gift—while unable to be defined properly—may help in certain situations. Your Legacy of floating is less versatile,” Arrow is sure to point out. “Also, Athan is strong, personable, and Lifted.”
“And I’m knowledgeable, smart, and—” Prat has trouble finding a third word that he is.
“Impulsive,” finishes Arrow for him. “And whiny.”
“Oh, whiny, okay, this is coming from the whiny Charmer who couldn’t get out of bed for a week because he over-charmed himself.”
“Pratty!” scolds Ivy, gawping at him.
Prat rushes up to Arrow and points a finger in his face. “I should be on that team and you know it. You make fun of my gift because you hate me. You’ve always hated me. You are jealous of my … my intuition with these things. You hold me back, Arrow, but you’re not going to hold me back for long. No, no, you’re not.” With that, Prat leaves the room, bumping into a table on his way out and causing some loose metal fastenings lying there to rattle.
Arrow sighs and faces the rest of the group. “Anyone else have a protest to make? Or can we move on to executing this plan?”
It’s Arcana who speaks. “This ‘Yellow’ person. His Legacy is to erase the memories of others?” Arrow nods. “Is that not a concern? That we may be risking Athan’s and Edrick’s memory? Oh,” Arcana interrupts herself as Arrow’s answer surfaces in his mind, and thereby heard in her own. “I didn’t consider Locke’s Legacy.”
“Technically, neither had I, as it’s a mystery,” points out Arrow. “At least, in part. All I know is that he has an unusual ability to … cloak things. It is protective in nature, if I’m to believe the confusing words of his sister Hadie. He can protect his, Athan’s, and Edrick’s minds from any Psychists, Yellow included.”
Of course, that doesn’t help that no one knows Gandra’s Legacy. I pray Locke’s ability can protect them from her, too, if anything bad were to happen. For all I know, it will simply be a happy reunion, as the pair of them were rather fond of the Lifted Boy Athan in the end.
“I pray that’s true,” murmurs Arcana, hearing his thoughts.
Arrow smirks appreciatively at her, then gives a nod at the others in the room. “I’ll prepare Athan to depart after our next meal. I suppose that’s all we have to discuss.”
“And what of Lora?” Arcana asks, prompting him.
Arrow had already told them all of the discovery of her Legacy, and its accuracy in reading Juston Markmake’s buried body. “I would like her to be escorted back to the eighth to … use her newfound gifts to take note of each and every body she has buried there at the edge of the Greens. I think she needs to train her Legacy.”
“Yes, yes,” agrees Arcana encouragingly.
“Perhaps we can send the kind man down the street, the one with the beard and the piercing in his nose, as an escort. He and his wife can escort Lora together, in fact. He’s menacing yet personable, and can manage any Greensfolk who are still peeved, and his wife’s Legacy with her eyes can be most keen in managing the way.”
“Wise,” says Arcana. When Arrow nods her way, finished, she then gives a clap at the others. “Good! Let’s get to work, then!”
A baby’s cry is heard from the other room.
Auleen shoots Arcana a sharp look. “Perhaps you could’ve done without the clap, as it has clearly disturbed our baby’s sleep. He’s only got so many left before he’s awake forever.”
The perturbed mother leaves the room to tend to Rip while Arcana turns and gives an uncharacteristically apologetic wince to Iranda, who only shrugs lightly and departs to the kitchen.
It’s an hour later when the sun’s down that Arrow sits in his upstairs room of the Lesser house before his computer, lit only by a small candle on the windowsill. His gadgets are inputted, his charms too, and the circle of the Last City of Atlas displays on the screen. He has the map zoomed out so far, he can barely tell where each of the occupants within Atlas reside. The only thing he watches is that sole dot far, far outside the city, that dot that bears Wick Lesser’s name.
“Why don’t you send Arcana with Athan’s team?”
It’s Ivy who’s come to stick her nose in. Arrow doesn’t turn, but speaks to that one blinking dot on the screen as he addresses her. “Locke’s Legacy will interfere with her own. Arcana has said herself that she has trouble reading the minds around him. Not always, but quite often. His Legacy is an enigma.”
“An enigma.” Ivy comes more into the room, placing herself by the window. Arrow doesn’t look her way; he only knows by the shadow now cast over his screen by Ivy standing in front of the candle. What a pretty, dainty, curvy, beautiful shadow … Ivy Caldron. “I wish I had a more interesting Legacy. Mine is hardly an enigma.”
“Many can’t survive a direct hit of the Fiery Bolt of Madness as you did.”
“Your Legacy is an enigma.” Ivy comes closer to the table. She is within Arrow’s peripheral view—and her fair, flowery scent, now caught in his nostrils. It is intoxicating. “I never knew that … that Charmers were so … versatile.”
“We’re just soloists,” mumbles Arrow, then types something on the keyboard, zooming in and bringing the circle large again. He studies the two dots that are Gandra and Yellow. “We work alone.”
“That can be said of anyone.”
“Well, it’s said of me just the same.” Arrow types some more.
Ivy grabs his hands, stopping him.
Arrow looks up from the computer with a frown, bringing his eyes to hers.
“Don’t you see me?” she whispers.
Arrow is looking right into her eyes. He doesn’t speak, frozen by her firm grip and the pleading look on her soft, fair face. With the candle burning on the windowsill behind her, the light makes a show of oranges and yellows across her smooth skin, setting aflame her brownish-red spread of hair.
“Why do you ignore me?” she whispers.
“I’m not …” He swallows, mystified by her gaze. Her eyes are so beautiful. I wonder if her lips taste as sweet as they look. “I’m not …”
“You saved my life, Arrow. Why do you treat me like I’m—?”
“I’m not ignoring you.”
Ivy lets go of his hands, moves to the windowsill, and picks up the candle. She holds her hand directly over the flame, the light dancing across her face and her quickly rising and falling chest, all the shadows pulling left and right and everywhere. “This is what I feel like right now, Arrow Fyrefellow. This—”
“Pull your hand away,” says Arrow, watching, bothered by it.
“This fire is what I feel.” She keeps her hand right in place, the candle’s flame licking and twisting and spitting under Ivy’s palm. “What you’re doing to me.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m constantly burning, yet never burn.”
“I said stop it.”
“Why are you ignoring me, Arrow?”
Her chest keeps rising and falling, the playful, hungry firelight cast over her breasts.
The flame licks and smokes and glows.
“Just tell me why,” she demands. “Just say something to me. Anything.”
“Ivy …”
The fire keeps crackling, spitting, hissing.
“Say something, Arrow!”
He is out of his seat at once, grabs the candle away from her, and thrusts his mouth upon hers.
Ivy relents, letting his full weight bring her flat against the wall. Arrow holds the candle away from them with one hand, and with his other, he slowly caresses her supple backside. He is gentle with her suddenly, their kiss turned to something more tender after its initial, passionate explosion.
It
is quite suddenly like Ivy is the most fragile thing in the world, and Arrow would never do a thing to harm her.
Six bullets.
Five lives.
One life.
Arrow ignores the voices and kisses down her chin, down her neck, down to the top of her cleavage, exposed by her soft, white blouse, which feels in his palm as silky as cream. Ivy breathes deeply as he kisses and caresses her body with his lips.
He feels as if he could cry, the beauty of this young woman, this young woman he by no stretch of logic should be intimate with, this young woman of the sixth, kissed by a young man of the eleventh, her body opened to him, opened to his touch, opened to his kiss.
Arrow feels the touch of her hands on the back of his head, and he feels the gentle pull of her guidance. When he lifts his eyes, he finds hers pouring down upon him.
His lips upon her breasts, his eyes peering up at hers, he says, “I do not ignore you.”
“Arrow …” she whispers.
And then the candle is set down, two bodies are slowly released from their clothes, and the Charmer and the Hightower make love in flickering, uncertain candlelight.
0297 Halvesand
Halves, after his talk with the Queen of the Abandon, was not returned to the cells, but instead released to the rest of Fortress.
Fortress … It’s even named the same as the destroyed Quadrant Twelve Headquarters of centuries ago, if what Halvesand studied in his training nearly a year ago is correct.
Fortress is a massive underground structure of several floors of reinforced stone. Cave-like in its layout, the halls and chambers are where the Guardian of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth of yore would train, live, eat, and study, and it is where many past Marshals of Order would make their permanent slum dwelling when attending to some longer-term business.
Now, it serves a new purpose.
Halvesand went through a brief process of swearing his loyalty to Queen Kael, though never got his question answered about who this King was that she flippantly referred to. Not that I have a means to ask said question. Afterwards, he was assigned a room to call his own that, in truth, is a lot more like an inmate’s cell in the Keep. He took it with grace, and accepted a helping of clothes to change into as well as direction of which bath chambers he may make use of.
He was also given a metal lantern to get about, as electricity in the Abandon has long since before the Madness been nonexistent. “We get by on fire and water here,” explained one of the guards, all of whom wear those black scarfs about their whole faces, or just the tops of their heads.
Shadow guards, they are called. Halvesand, however, was told that he and a select few were to be trained and tested for a much greater honor that Queen Kael was going to bestow herself. Halves couldn’t fathom what sort of honor that’d be except for perhaps the title of Sky Guard, which certainly appealed to him greatly. After all, has it not been the greatest dream of any Guardian in history to rank so highly in his or her skills that they are promoted to Sky Guard, protector of the Lifted City, of Sanctum, and of the Queen or King themselves?
Aleksand would be so jealous of this great opportunity I’ve landed, Halves realizes, momentarily forgetting they’d even quarreled before his timely departure.
He doesn’t give much thought to Ennebal. Perhaps his heart turned cold and dead the moment he left that Eleven Wings Hospital on a journey toward something better. Perhaps he really has no interest in love. Maybe Ennebal was a romance of convenience, and now that he’s separated from it, he realizes how very little in love with her he was.
Maybe he was never in love with her.
Maybe the only thing he liked about her was the feel of her cold fingers around his stiff cock in the dormitory study. Maybe he only liked her when he could pant and moan without it hurting so much. Maybe he only liked her when he could fuck her and shout her name without his throat bleeding.
That’s a lot of maybes.
Halvesand is not allowed outside of Fortress. In fact, few are. If what he heard is correct, many of the criminals and street dwellers and runaways that populate the dark, scummy corners of the Abandon are, in fact, entirely unaware of the great and important operation happening just beneath their feet. Part of the reason behind keeping folk like Halvesand inside of Fortress is to maintain the secret of Kael Mirand-Thrin’s survival.
He sits among a number of shadow guards in the cafeteria, which is a long and narrow hall, short of ceiling, crowded of tables and chairs, and quite claustrophobic. Halvesand bumped shoulders with every person he passed on his way to this spot, and in sitting down, nearly had to squeeze between two sweaty men. They parted to give him room, perhaps on account of the scary contraption fixed to his neck, of which no one seems to ask anything, yet everyone loves to stare at.
It’s just as well, because Halvesand enjoys the peace of having no bothers while he eats and waits to be called for his training or testing—or whatever it was the Queen and the shadow guard who escorted him to his room said was to come.
Halvesand only knows one thing: he’s fucking ready for it.
What he’s not ready for, however, is a visit—in the middle of his bathing—from Lead Officer Forrest.
She strolls in wearing her full suit of Guardian armor, complete with her helmet that hides all her hair inside it. She is not escorted, coming in alone, and her face, somber and focused.
At the first sight of her, Halves feels modest at once, slipping his hands into the tub to cover himself.
Forrest, however doesn’t seem in the least interested in Halves’ privates. “Lesser,” she says for a greeting as she comes to a stop at the foot of his tub.
Halves only peers up at her with his eyes, his neck not moving or bending, as he holds himself beneath the water, which was just beginning to lose its warmth, all the soap suds popping away, slowly taking away what little bit of privacy he has left.
“I would have found you elsewhere, but needed to find you alone, and seeing as there is no one else bathing at this late hour …” She inclines her head toward him. “I can only suppose that you’ve figured out the whole play, and I hope you don’t feel deceived by it.” Forrest purses her lips with a thought, then adds, “After all, I have always been serving the needs of Atlas. And here, we serve Atlas.”
Halves’ eyebrows pinch together in the slightest.
Forrest quirks an eyebrow in surprise. “You mean you did not know? Lesser, I took you for a quicker man than that.” She gestures with her head all around them. “This was the plan all along.”
Halves only stares at her, uncomprehending. The bubbles are all nearly faded. He holds his cock and balls under the water, the cool air growing cooler on his wet skin.
“I suppose I could’ve waited until you’re not naked and sitting in a tub,” notes Forrest with a pinched expression, “but in a place like this, it’s nearly impossible to be alone. I’ve yet to reconnect with the others. Cope, Bee … our sweet Lord Liaff. See …” Forrest sits on the end table of the tub where Halves’ towel rests, her ass now upon it. “I knew of Queen Kael’s existence beforehand.”
For a second, Halves forgets he can’t speak, his lips starting to move in wonder. She knew? She knew of this place, of Queen Kael …?
“That surprises you.” Forrest smirks. “I’ll make it plain, then.” She looks at him importantly. “The abduction of our vehicle on our way to the Core was planned.”
Halves closes his mouth at that, waiting for the rest.
“I had to … play my part to ensure that none of you realized the ruse. It was absolutely essential that the only people who knew of our planned abduction was myself and Ghost.” She taps a thing on her wrist, perhaps to check the time, then lays her hand back on her lap. “Ghost was the colorful fellow in the scarf who escorted you here. He is among the Queen’s Shadow Guard.” She smiles. “Hmm. ‘Shadow Guard’. I look forward very much to the day when we can call them the Sky Guard instead. Aye, but for the shadows today, and for the sky upo
n our figurative tomorrow …”
Forrest rises from the table, makes it halfway to the door, then stops and says, “You’ll begin training soon. I handpicked you, Bee, and Cope for a reason. You, especially, O Silent One. And the Queen? She trusts my opinion implicitly.” She winks, then makes her leave. Halves sits in the tub of cool water awhile, making sense of it all.
0298 Tide
It’s a handful of days later that Tide and Dag receive a visitor.
Tide pulls the crate away from the door to let him in.
“Thank you for letting me in,” says Slum King Chole.
Dag is making a fuss. “Oh, it’s an honor, it’s an honor. The Slum King, in my little house. Oh, the honor is completely mine. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. Would you like some tea? I can make a stew. Would you like to sit down? I’ve many chairs you can choose from. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea? Or stew?”
Chole is almost laughing as he places hands on Dag’s shoulders to calm him. “I’m totally fine, my man. Please, relax. I’m just another guy like you, like Tide here, like anyone passing by your windows.”
“Yes, of course, okay, of course, I’ll relax. But if you need just a little tea or a tasty snack or, or, or maybe even stay for dinner, you would be my guest, it would be my honor, my absolute honor.”
Tide is somewhat less welcoming. “The fuck you want?”
Chole closes the door softly behind him, then stands by the short kitchen counter. “I … believe I owe you an apology.”
Tide crosses his arms over his big chest and says nothing.
Dag, perhaps sensing the less than warm atmosphere, slowly lowers himself onto a nearby padded chair, which creaks softly under his weight. His big brown eyes survey the pair of them, silent.
Chole takes a breath before he speaks. “I would like to speak to you about my recent … revelation, if you will … if you would be so willing to listen. I was hasty and … and dumb in my … expressing of emotions regarding our recent …” He nods knowingly. “… mission.”
