by Daryl Banner
Forge clears his throat. “I’ve given a lot of thought to—”
“They almost didn’t let me up here,” says Aphne, cutting him right off. “Something about protocol. And a new, necessary system of enforcement. And something to do with ‘We don’t know where you fit into all of this.’ Which leads me to wonder …” She now turns her face to his, pensive and cold. “How do I fit into all of this?”
This conversation has long been coming. “Aphne Lodestone.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Your full name. Aphne Lodestone. Remember how all of us were injected with a chip on our way into the Keep?”
“Yes. Obviously.” She shrugs irritably. “So …?”
“The chip’s purpose is, as I come to understand it, unknown. Even the guards don’t know. It’s something of a Sanctum secret. If I remember correctly, you once assumed it was the reason that our Legacies are dampened … or at ‘half-power’, as you put it.”
“Aye, and I also said it might be a tracker chip, or a sterilization chip, or a charm to make us sexually attracted to Greymyn’s wrinkly balls, I don’t fucking know. What’s your point?”
“My point is …” Forge rises from his chair. Aphne’s eyes follow him, wary. “I think there’s more to them. They might serve nearly all of those purposes. And if so, tapping into them might help us find out who killed the boy.” He pauses. “I’d like you to find out.”
Her face wrinkles. Clearly she was expecting something more accusatory or confrontational. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She glances at the screens again, then back at him. “That’s the reason you called me up here? To assign me work?” She huffs. “And your math isn’t simply telling you the answer you seek? Why don’t you just know the killer already?”
“The math isn’t so simple on this one, it turns out.” Forge eyes her. “I will appreciate your discretion in this matter.”
Aphne looks beside herself, staring at him. “I can’t believe this. Interrupted for … for this shit. And I had my fingers halfway up that pretty cook’s pussy when your pup boy Wyass called my name. Fucking almost had her creaming on my hand, you asshole.”
Forge, heavy of heart and unamused by her crassness, moves to the door, takes a slow glance down the hall either way, then with a deep and heavy sigh, gently shuts it.
Aphne has pushed away from the wall, her body tensed up at once, her eyes searching. “What’s going on?”
He turns around to her, calm as a flower lazily aiming its face at the sun. Just from her body language alone, he has pieced together so many little things, so many possibilities and predictions.
“This next part stays between you and me.”
“All parts stay between us,” she snaps, impatient. “What is it?”
“You said something to me the first day I was here,” he tells her. “You were my first friend, and you said something to me that, yes, I suppose I should have taken deeper to heart. But with you showing me the ropes, who was I to question you? I trusted you outright.”
“Trusted? Past tense?” She’s on the defense at once, her words clipped. “So what did I say, then? I said many things.”
“You said people down here will tell you anything to scare you. They’ll make up a story for why they’re here. Make up a family, or an enemy … or a lover.” Forge eyes her. “Did that include yours?”
She crosses her arms at once. “You know my story. I used my Legacy to make money out of paper, and my girlfriend Rhine had—”
“There is no girlfriend Rhine.”
Aphne’s next words are cut off, her mouth left open as she stares at Forge, baffled. Then she scoffs and blurts, “Yes, there is.”
“No, there isn’t,” Forge grunts. “Remember those numbers I was missing? Or have you forgotten already that I know things?”
“Forge …”
He taps the side of his head with two thick fingers.
Aphne narrows her eyes resentfully. “Just like anyone here, I’m perfectly within my right to reveal, or not reveal, whatever I please about myself and my personal life. What right do you have?”
There it is.
And now I know.
Forge nods. “Yes, you are quite right.” He moves away from the door, then takes a seat once again at his screens and kicks up his feet.
Her eyes are on him, suspicious and unsettled. A long time goes by where she seems to burn holes through his beard, as if expecting he’ll come at her with something else. But he doesn’t, and the door is perfectly available for her to walk right out of.
She seems to make a decision. Her body relaxes, and she drops onto the chair next to him. She sets her elbows on the desk holding the control panel full of buttons, knobs, and a keyboard. A soft sigh escapes her lips, coming out in a silly sputtering sound.
Then, distantly, she asks, “Is it even worth it?”
Forge keeps his eyes on the screens. He doesn’t reveal a trace of his inner worries and suspicions. He’s going to let Aphne Lodestone do all the talking. “Is what worth it?”
“Telling you about myself? About … my real self?” She looks at him with heartbroken eyes.
“I’m not sure,” answers Forge coyly, then turns his eyes upon her. “Is it?”
“I never meant to deceive you,” she blurts, “you big dumb fuck. You’re the only person I ever actually liked in here. You’ve only been here less than a year. I’ve been here twelve. You don’t know what it’s like to lie to every person you meet just to get them to respect you. It becomes a habit. It’s a way of life down here. Boasting. And scaring. Appealing to one’s emotions, strength … knowing things …” She sighs. “Can I ever get back your trust in me … or is it gone?”
He takes in what she says, then responds to the screens, his chin lifted and stiff. “You never lost my trust, Aphne.”
She frowns. “I haven’t?”
“No. Doesn’t matter to me what you did. It makes no difference what’s happened in your life to this point. The one and only thing that matters to me is what’s in your heart right now, and whether you still wish to survive … and to get the fuck out of this filthy place with me.”
To that, Aphne gives her signature smirk. “You bet I do.”
“Then it’s settled, and you and I are alright, and I’ll expect to see you figuring out what the fuck is up with these chips inside us.”
She gives him a resolute nod, then rises from her chair and goes to the door. With a hand on the doorknob, she stops, and it’s there that she pauses a long while. Then she peers back over her shoulder at him and softly says his name: “Forge …?”
He turns in his chair to get a look at her. “Aph …?”
For a moment, it seems as if she’s changed her mind about whatever it is she was going to say. Then, her face all tightened up, she asks, “Are you … absolutely sure … that it doesn’t matter what I did before I got here? That it doesn’t matter what I’ve done? That it makes no difference to you why I was put down here for life?”
He shuts up the math.
He shuts up the numbers.
He ignores all the figures and the calculating and the predicting and the mess, and he simply looks his friend in the eye.
“Yes,” he answers as firmly as a hammer to the anvil. “I’m sure.”
Aphne swallows once, hard.
For the first time since he met her, there is true fear in her eyes.
“Kason’s been put in a cell down the hall from Geoff,” she tells him plainly, as if reciting from a script. “The boy broke two tables and swung an armorer’s hammer at a guard as soon as he’d heard the news about his little brother, lashing out just like his father did. Your newly appointed team of guards handled the situation swiftly, and all seems to be in order again.”
Forge nods solemnly, his eyes detaching from hers as he gazes at the floor, pensive, calculative.
Then, as casual as a report on the weather, Aphne lets the rest slip ri
ght out: “And I was arrested twelve years ago for the murder of June and Ever Netheris, mother and father of Ruena Netheris.”
0336 Erana
Queen Erana Sparrow comes forward.
The Lifted citizenry have filled every seat in the Crystal Court. The morning sun shines fiercely through the purple crystalline walls and the bluish glass columns. It is before the crystal podium that the Queen stands, facing her crowd of loyal Lifted.
And inside another glass chamber that no one sees, a mental glass chamber, deep, deep down within the deepest recesses of the Queen’s mind is a lonely, naked girl lost in the dark. A slumborn girl trapped in a glass cage hovering in the middle of oblivion, in the middle of a vast, blank nothingness, a glass cage that swings and swings. She screams from that dark abyss as a voice, deep down, tells her of Rone’s death, tells her of Ruena’s suicide, then wipes away the memories of both, over and over. The slumborn girl who can’t even remember her own name, trapped in that glass cage in the middle of oblivion, screams into the dark, tears exploding from her face.
But high, high above that abyss, up here in the world of reality, the only thing anyone in the audience can see is another girl entirely: a young and dignified woman named Erana Sparrow, the Queen of Atlas, and she does not cry.
“Thank you all for gathering on this beautiful morning,” she recites. “Please, allow me the due pomp of presenting for you my prestigious and most loyal Council.” Her left hand spreads leftward. “Peacemaker Dregor, my Marshal of Peace.” Her right hand spreads rightward. “High Commander Axel, my Marshal of Order.” Then her hands come center. “And myself, Royal Legacist Erana, your Marshal of Legacy.” Then she gestures off to the right where two rows of benches are lined out upon the stage, filled with the remainder of the Posse and a few select individuals recently elected after their last meeting. “Our esteemed Court of Elders.” Then she gestures to the opposite side of the stage where a crew of armored men and women stand at attention, with the handsome blond boy before them. “Your dutiful Sky Guard and their Commander Aegis.” Erana’s hands come back to the podium. “Myself, Queen Erana Sparrow, Queen of Unity. Our souls are here to serve yours, my lustrous citizenry of Atlas.”
The audience politely claps. No one hoots. No one hollers. No one shouts. It is merely a by-rote applause from a Lifted audience who know better than to whoop, scream, and shout like the rowdy, unruly slumborn who live literally beneath their feet.
And a slumborn girl screams from a glass cage, somewhere.
Then the applause is ended, and attention is returned promptly to the Queen. “You have been called here today on account of a very important development. I have news for you regarding your fallen Mad King Impis Lockfyre, former King of Atlas.”
A few heads turn. Husbands turn to wives. A murmur here. A whisper there.
“Do not be afraid,” Queen Erana tells them. “You have nothing to fear. The real enemy is not here in the sky, but down below. You have all been deceived during the Madness … as have I. Your Former King, Impis Lockfyre, is not who you thought he was.”
Then, on cue, another presence enters the stage from behind. It is an unintended coincidence that the last time this figure entered the stage from behind, it was to strike a blade through the bloody throat of Greymyn Netheris.
This time, however, he carries no blade.
Nor does he have a speck of makeup upon his face, for today, it is plain, and clean.
Nor is his hair a bundle of ponytails and tufts and spikes; today, he wears it all combed to one side, the right, and while it is uneven and some rebellious strands stick up here or there, it’s mostly unified in its swept-over, subdued style.
Nor is his attire a mess of color and brightness, as he chose for himself a modest purple tunic, and a flat pair of black silken pants, making him look nearly like any other Lifted in the Crystal Court.
For a moment, no one even seems to recognize him.
Indeed, that may be the very point.
“Impis Lockfyre,” announces the Queen of Unity to the crowd, who are all brought to utter silence at his unexpected, oddly serene presence. “I wish you to wipe clean from your minds everything you thought you knew of this man, for it is not true, and I shall prove it. Impis Lockfyre is a victim of circumstance—and a victim of one very greedy man who has taken advantage of his generosity.”
Impis stands next to the Queen, and though he tries to remain still and calm and relaxed, every now and then his arm twitches, or his eye twitches, or his neck twists one way or another.
It is an exceptional effort for him to appear normal.
“There is a root common to many gardens here in the Lifted City. It is known as silver root, or Silvenium, a distant cousin to the andragora root,” the Queen tells the crowd. “It is also common in the gardens of the first, second, and third wards, who grow plants to make the thread and yarn that is fed to our textile factories. The root can be sterilized so it is safe, but consuming the raw root, even in miniscule bits, brings about a psychotic state of mind. One might hallucinate. One might assume they are all-powerful, or dangerous. One might … fall to Madness.”
The Queen lifts her face, taking note of the cameras, both to the left, as well as to the right, as well as straight ahead—all the cameras that broadcast this very speech to the slumborn below.
“Impis Lockfyre was a victim to the poison of silver root, and he has been under its terrible influence for a long time.” The Queen lets the words sink in, turning her face to the left, then right, scanning the crowd and the cameras. “After over five months of investigation, it is my belief that Impis Lockfyre has been poisoned by it. Someone has ground the root to fine dust and sprinkled it into all of Impis’s makeup, for which he is widely known. This was a plot by a specific, cruel-hearted person aimed to discredit and use our former Legacist Impis Lockfyre, driving him into an irrecoverable state of Madness, which ultimately led to the death of Greymyn Netheris, as well as countless others, who fell victim to Impis’s altered state of mind.”
Impis bristles, clears his throat, twitches, then lets a light titter wiggle up his throat, unheard by all but Erana herself, and then he presses his lips closed tightly, determined to behave.
“The poisoning became so great,” the Queen goes on, “that he fell into a coma. He has been asleep, trapped in this coma, for nearly twenty-six weeks. Only recently have the effects worn off, and Impis Lockfyre is recovering from his weakened state. While the effects of the silver root may be undone, the sad and disturbing consequences cannot. We cannot bring back to life all the poor souls who have been lost, both slumborn and sky, both Lifted and Sanctum, and all others affected by the Madness—the Madness, which was brought on by some devious, selfish, cruel-hearted person. For that, I feel deep and unending regret, and will likely spend the rest of my Queenly days attempting to rebuild what’s been lost.”
A girl deep in the dark screams and screams from her hanging glass cage, her cries lost to the endless oblivion.
“But of one thing, I am absolutely certain.” The Queen of Unity lifts her chin to the Crystal Court. “The poisonist, the murderer, the one who is responsible for all of this Madness, for all of this death, for all the worst that you have had to endure … his identity has been recently made known to me. And I assure you, this evil person who knows much about silver root, this poisonist, he will be found, and he will be brought to justice right here in the Crystal Court, before all of your eyes.”
Impis titters, then bites his own tongue, his eyes wide, his left one struggling not to twitch.
“And so I stand before you, people of Atlas, and I ask for your help in bringing to justice the one who truly deserves death.” Queen Erana Sparrow spreads her hands grandly. “The poisonist’s name … is Chole, known by many as the Slum King, King of the Coalition.”
Murmurs and gasps rush over the Crystal Court, sounding like the whispering of grass at the arrival of a sudden breeze.
“If you have love in your hea
rt for Atlas,” the Queen says over the murmurs, “and if you so wish to see justice returned where it has long lacked, and if you wish to find retribution in the Madness that we all have suffered, then I must implore you, my citizenry of Atlas: bring Chole to me so that he may swiftly see the Queen’s justice.”
The people of the Crystal Court are now revived with surprising vigor, and from the looks upon their faces, each and every last one of them has been won over by the Queen’s speech.
Even despite a girl in a glass cage who screams.
Even despite Impis, who titters, bites his lip, and twitches.
Even despite the cold, calculated look that Axel gives the Queen the whole time she speaks, concentrating a bit too hard to be natural.
“So it is my final prerogative today, in the face of all we have recently learned, to step down as Marshal of Legacy and, with pride and due humility, reinstate our original Royal Legacist to his post. Please, a gracious and welcoming applause for the vindicated, one and only, true Marshal of Legacy: Impis Lockfyre.”
Impis does not speak, but he gives the crowd a stretched smile so tight, it could rip his face in half if stretched only a fraction more. In his mouth, his teeth clatter and grind from his excessive effort in keeping himself behaved, the tiniest of laughs wiggling and dancing about in his constricted throat. The applause he gets is mild.
“And so concludes this morning’s audience, and the holding of the Crystal Court. May Three Sister smile upon you, my citizenry.”
And after the Queen has made her final conclusion, ending the meeting and cutting off the broadcasts, she gives a last and assertive handshake to her Royal Legacist Impis Lockfyre, to her Peacemaker Dregor, to her Commander Aegis, and to each and every member of her Court of Elders.
Including Umi, Lyth, Kellen, and Yoli—who each return glassy, soulless stares to Erana as their eyes meet.
And through those glassy, soulless stares, the four of them cry out from their individual glass cages, deep within their taken minds, screaming in their own black oblivions past their puppet eyes.
