by Daryl Banner
Rone …? The smart-ass from the schoolyard with the ugly sister?
Tide is breathing too quickly. His head spins and spins.
The whole world is wrong.
Rone and Wick?
A guard calls his name, but he doesn’t hear it. Tide turns away at once, his hands find the bark of a tree, and then down its brown, bumpy side he lets out all of his lunch—a stew Dag had made them earlier. He doubles over and lets out even more, turning inside-out.
Hands are on his back, rubbing him, sweet words murmuring at his ear, but he shoves it all away with a swing of his arm. Then Tide pushes himself off the tree, blinking through the tears in his eyes. He staggers away and brings his face to a wall, hiding from the world as he breathes in and out, in and out, faster than necessary, eyes shut.
“Tide …” comes Athan’s soft voice. “You need to slow down … You’re hyperventilating. Calm down, Tide …”
“Shut the f-f-fuck up.” Tide slaps his hands to his ears. Shut up, shut up, shut up …
He sees his professor in a dim, dusty room. She’s talking to that bald man, but their words are muffled moans and vowel sounds; Tide can’t make out a bit of what they’re saying. The two of them glance over their bony shoulders at him, and then they shut their mouths, annoyed at the intrusion.
I was an annoyance to them. I was deadweight. They hated me.
Tide blinks and blinks and blinks, tears falling down his cheeks.
“You’re not among enemies, Tide. Not with us.”
He clenches shut his eyes, shaking. He sees Professor Gandra—Or Frey? Gandra? Frey?—as she speaks to the bald man. Tide watches through a crack in the door as she whispers, “He heard us …”
I heard them? What did I hear?
He distinctly remembers the lost feeling of oblivion in his mind.
Right when that bald man with the cane left him alone in his house. That feeling of complete and total absence of self, of existence, of knowledge and awareness and everything at all.
Total oblivion.
And through that hazy oblivion, through the mess of the bald man named Yellow and the frizzy-haired woman named Gandra and their suspicious glances and hushed whispers, Tide grabs hold of one single thing on the other side, beyond it.
He voices the one thing: “Sh-Shye …”
When he pulls his face away from the wall, he finds the pretty boy’s eyes searching his own, not understanding.
“Shye,” repeats Tide with more urgency. “Shye. It’s someone’s name. I know it. I heard them say it. Who is ‘Shye’ …?”
Athan looks as lost as Tide feels.
Tide wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. It’s wet with his own spit. He recoils at the taste in his mouth, then scans the faces of his onlookers through his wet eyes. Some have gathered from the nearby tents of the square.
“The fuck you all looking at?” he shouts at them, annoyed and nearly sniveling. “Fuck off, all of you! Go away!”
The few from the bazaar move on, unoffended, obliging his rude sendoff. Only Athan and his friends remain, though they have given Tide a few feet of distance.
Only now, Tide isn’t sure he wants the distance. This Athan has given his lost memories more hope of coming back than he’s had in months. “R-Rain, you said …?”
Athan nods. “Rain. Yes. Wick, Rone, Cintha, Victra, Pratganth, Juston, Arrow, Yellow, and Gandra … and me. You joined Rain after a detonation of blue ink at a Weapon Show—”
The image explodes in Tide’s mind. He feels the thickness of the crowds. He hears the noise, the screams. “I REMEMBER THAT!”
His shout startles Athan, making him take a step back, but then Athan continues on. “There was chaos. Guardian tried apprehending all of those involved, but ended up going after anyone who ran—which was, in short, everyone. You were struck—”
“MY GLOWS!” Tide slaps a desperate hand to his chest. He is in tears all over again, struck by the memory. My glows. This is where my glows came from. This is the reason for all of my fucking glows. Today, the mystery ends. “I was struck in my back … many, many times. It … It stung …”
“Tide …” Athan dares to take a few steps closer. “You may not recover all of your memories so quickly, but I know that Yellow’s Legacy is not infallible. He took a piece of Wick’s memory from his childhood, and it eventually found its way back. Maybe your stolen memory will do the same.”
“They took my memory because I overheard something.” Why can’t I remember their words? “The Yellow bastard took my memory because I overheard something to do with that person … that Shye.”
The same look of confusion passes over Athan’s face as before. “I’m … sorry, Tide, I don’t know. I heard Yellow took your memory because you—forgive me—were of no further use to him or Gandra or Rain. There wasn’t some big, secret reason. They did it to keep Rain protected and, as I understand it, to return you to your life.”
“No, there was a reason,” Tide insists, desperately grasping onto that tendril of memory hanging there in the oblivion. “There was.”
“He and Gandra, they had good intentions, but at times, they also had cold hearts.” Athan shakes his head ruefully. “When things got tough in the Warden’s Tower of the sixth—our next hideout after you were cut from Rain—Yellow and Gandra took off running. They did not run away with the rest of Rain. They … abandoned us.”
Tide frowns. He’s certain there is more to his story than that. Shye … Shye … Shye … He’s furiously desperate to know the reason. There has to be a reason. A bigger reason. An important enough of a reason to fuck his head up like this and send him cascading down a dark path that threw him in front of a deadly Queen, and now got him lost in the weeds of a Coalition run by a Plant King. There is a reason for it all. Shye … Shye …
Athan says, “The last piece of information I can offer you is that Yellow and Gandra … they may very well be here in the Coalition.”
Tide stares at him like he didn’t hear the words. Here …?
“I don’t know where, exactly,” admits Athan. “The pair of them are either in the Core, or here in the first ward. My … source wasn’t specific enough to pinpoint which. I’m sorry I’m not more help.”
You’ve been more help than you know, Tide would say, if he was one to give anyone credit for anything.
It’s then that Chole comes out of the Ferns. He stops at the sight of Tide, and a tiny smile stretches over his freckled face when he sees the pair of them together. “Ah, so you’ve met my new friend!”
“We’ve met long before now,” says Athan somberly to Chole. Then he faces Tide once again. “I do hope you recover all of your memories someday, Tide. We … had some good times together, all of us. Even … Wick.” With that, the boy’s eyes turn heavy, and he turns back to the King. “I will wait by the gate for you and your crew.”
Then Tide watches the blond boy and his friends stroll away. He stares after them a long while, even long after Chole mutters a few words to him, and then a few words to the others. Soon, an arm is over his shoulder, guiding him away from the Ferns and from the tree he vomited on and from the crowd of the nearby bazaar.
For that, he is rather thankful.
Along the way, Tide tells him about his exchange with Athan. Chole cheers him on with a, “Oh, you’ll remember the rest in time, I’m sure of it!” And for the first time, Tide actually believes his King.
Under the shade of a tree at the edge of the market where it is quieter, Chole sits him down on a bench. “I have changed my mind.”
Tide meets his eyes, confused.
“I … am listening to my Council.” Chole nods at him. “You. I am heeding you, and will not meet with the Queen of the Abandon.”
A wave of relief crashes over Tide at hearing those words.
“I said: ‘My Council’,” repeats Chole, lifting an eyebrow at him. “That includes you, you big dummy.”
So affected with emotions, Tide lets out a laugh at that. �
��B-Big dummy,” he echoes, his voice made nasally by his recent tears.
Chole laughs, too. “In a moment, I will head to the Greens and make new friends with the free folk of the ninth, and secure a more proper strategic alliance with the Greensfolk as well. As it turns out,” Chole adds, giving a cocky gesture at himself, “I have a particular Legacy such folk find impressive. They happen to love me.”
“I love you, too, King,” Tide suddenly blurts, his voice shaking. What the fuck has gotten into me? Perhaps it’s the recovery of that one tiny morsel of memory. Perhaps it’s this Athan boy, who claims to know of some secret life Tide lived with him and Wick. Perhaps it’s the emotion of hearing that Wick, his lifelong schoolyard toy and recent foe, is dead. Tide is a confused, emotional, overwhelmed mess. “I am lost without this place. I would be dead if it weren’t for you.”
“Aye, shush, you,” teases Chole lightly. “You belong here among us. You are with your new family, Tide Wellport. You are a brother.”
“A brother,” agrees Tide with conviction.
With that, Chole gives him another hearty, loving slap on the shoulder, then rises to make his way to his crew.
But before he goes, he stops to ask one last thing. “You said you recalled a single word from your lost memories. What’s that word?”
“It wasn’t a word, but a name,” Tide clarifies. “Shye.”
Chole’s face falters for a fraction of a second, as if the name has struck him somehow. The queer look is gone just as quickly. “More will come back to you, I’m sure of it. Do take care of my Coalition until I’ve returned, my friend.” The friendly King gives a tightened smile, then departs for the gate whistling a tune.
0315 Link
“Find anything?” Link asks quietly.
Kid doesn’t respond. She let go his hand and sits somewhere in the corner of the room, invisible, thumbing through files and papers.
They had followed the trail of cold carnage out of the basements of Windstone Academy. The trail ended, then picked up a few streets over, where it ended yet again at the broken-in-half frozen body of a poor street vendor caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Past that, Link and Kid disagreed on which way Ames and Kendil went, both seeing signs of coldness in either direction. The more the two searched, the less confident they grew, and soon, it was evident that the Cold Boy and his new unkillable friend Ames were lost to them.
Days of silence dragged by where they fell into their old habits of feeding themselves from Lifted bakeries, who never noticed their missing bread loafs and little meat pies. All hope was lost.
Until an hour ago when they caught wind of a certain hospital in the Eastly that just experienced an “unusual” break-in.
Kid and Link found their way to the Eastly Clinic, and in a third floor hallway lined with windows overlooking a beautiful fountain in the courtyard below, there now lived a blanket of ice that laid two unfortunate hospital workers’ bodies upon the floor like icy rugs.
It’s in an unoccupied office on the corner of that floor that Link and Kid now hide, confounded and frustrated.
“They were just here,” says Kid, annoyed. “Ames, Kendil. They were looking for something.”
Link keeps stealing glimpses out the cracked-open office door, just to be sure no doctor is headed there. The whole floor has been evacuated, but no one official is here yet to investigate anything. Perhaps the stiff-necked Sanctum officials have already come and gone. Link imagines they combed this place for any evidence of their precious Weapon.
No doubt they already put two and two together: Weapon and Ames, both missing. We’ve turned Ames into a criminal. Twice.
“The ice,” Kid goes on, persistent as ever. “It’s not even melted.”
Link sighs, then shakes his head. Doesn’t she realize our lives are in danger, chasing this Weapon and Ames, two people they very much should like to avoid? Doesn’t she realize this Cold Boy Outlier almost killed her back at the Academy?
“App … hin … nee.” Kid frowns. “What’s this say? It’s a name.”
Link abandons his post at the door and crouches where he last saw Kid before letting go her hand. “What?”
Her voice comes from three feet away; he’d misjudged. “This word right here.” A folder seems to materialize right in front of him, slapping upon the ground, tossed there by Kid.
Link picks it up and squints down at the words in the semi-dark of the room. “Doctor Aphne Lodestone.”
“That’s one of the ones Kendil was looking for! He—” Then Kid remembers at once. “Oh, he wanted to kill her.” She frowns. “That’s not good.”
Link reads the file, then finds himself squinting in thought. “She was involved in … some kind of scandal eleven and a half years ago. It’s been scratched out. She’s sentenced to the Keep for life.”
“Oh.” Kid seems disheartened by that somehow.
“Terrabeth—or was it Emery?—mentioned this Lodestone doctor. Emery had a relationship with her, a relationship that Terrabeth was not fond of. The doctor betrayed Emery … or … something like that. I don’t quite remember the conversation.”
“Sounds like you remember it quite well.” Kid’s tone carries a bite of frustration.
Link gives a rueful look in her general direction, then sighs. “Kendil ought to give up his quest to kill this doctor. If life in the Keep is as bad as they say, she’s as good as dead already.”
“He must have come here looking for her,” she points out. Then she amends her words: “They … must have come.”
“He had a few names on his short list. The mind-reading twins, too. And some Obert—”
“The Rain Frog.” Kid’s voice tightens as she recites that name. Link notices she’s moved closer to him. “Kendil … is still looking for him present day.”
Link nods slowly. “It sounded familiar. The name. You must’ve mentioned this to me before.”
“I have. Kendil must not find the Rain Frog. Ranfog. Heh, we … we made something silly out of the name. Maybe because I was a child back then. We called him the Rain Frog.”
Link shoots her a look—assuming he’s shooting the look to the right place. “You’re still and always a child.”
“I’m a teenager.”
“No.”
“I’m almost a full woman. Just one more year and I’ll—”
“Enough.” Link slaps the folder down onto the floor, then sits and leans his back against the wall. He didn’t realize how sore his limbs and lower back have gotten from all their running about today. Worry is as physical a thing as ice itself; it lives in your bones and pulls on you like a sticky, heavy coat.
There is a moment’s breath, then Kid makes an observation. “It is only the Rain Frog that Kendil mentions in the future. He … He’s only looking for the Rain Frog. Does that mean—?”
“No, the mind-reading sisters are still alive. They are members of Impis’s Posse in our time. I’ve seen them on the broadcast.”
“But he stops pursuing them,” Kid emphasizes. “Somehow, he decides the only life he needs to take is this Obert Ranfog’s.”
“Somehow,” murmurs Link sullenly, staring at the wall across from them. Though there is little light in the room, he can make out the face of a past Queen hanging on the wall by the office door. It is a painting, but he doesn’t recognize the Queen, and there is no name. “Somehow.”
“I’m starting to feel as if there’s less hope for Kendil.”
Link closes his eyes. Why have we come here at all? Why did we break into that freezer and steal a lock of the Cold Boy’s mother’s hair? Why did we take part in Kendil’s release from the clutches of Sanctum?
A soft hand touches his arm. He looks to his right and finds his daughter’s face. Her eyes are shrunken and wet.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Link frowns, all his frustrations and gripes forgotten at once. “For what?” he asks softly.
“Everything.”
He puts an arm aroun
d her and brings her in close. Her fingers still feel cold to the touch, too cold, unnaturally cold. “You still need to warm up, Kid. It’s been days since his blast and your fingers are like icicles.”
“My toes, too,” she mumbles.
“You got too close. You got way too close.” Link is trying not to scold her, but it’s ever so hard sometimes to exercise the difference between frustration and care. “Don’t ever get that close to him again. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m sorry.”
The two fall silent, holding each other in the dark office. There is no sound but the gentle hum of a machine somewhere in the walls or ceiling, likely an air conditioning unit, as is so common here in the Lifted City buildings. The noise is soothing for a while.
Then Kid says, “I think we should visit the doctor wives.”
Link nods. “If Kendil saw this Lodestone name, he also saw her association with the Wise doctors. It’s here in the file.”
“Yes.” Kid bites her lip in thought. “The moment Emery said her name, her wife looked as if she could spit daggers.”
“No one here seems to like this Lodestone person.”
“No one,” agrees Kid, then tugs on Link’s sleeve. “Can we go?”
With one sullen peer toward the door, Link gives in with a short nod, then rises off the floor, helping Kid up along with him. The pair depart the room and, as respectfully and quietly as they can manage, edge around the frozen bodies that sleep in jagged crystals of winter.
By the time they find their way to the doctors’ house, the night has fallen, and in the backyard, Link and Kid find that the glow he had left upon all the flowers with his altered Legacy has been cut away, likely by the doctors themselves, or a landsmith. The message he had written in the flowers with his glow was something to the effect of, “SHYE, THE UNSEEN, WILL TAKE YOUR DREAMS,” which he had meant to inspire the doctors to take action, ideally leading Kid and Link—invisibly—directly to Sanctum and Faery.
It’s not until they reach the back window that they are shown a most unsettling scene.
“He’s been here,” observes Kid grimly.
