by Daryl Banner
It is her High Commander Axel whose hand the Queen shakes last. And it is through the Psychist’s eyes that, for one brief instant, the slumborn girl in the glass cage stops screaming, and she peers up at a small hole of light. Through that pinhole of light, she sees Axel Icarade looking down upon her, as if from a mountaintop.
Erana Sparrow, Queen of Shit, Queen of Lies, Queen of Nothing, pleads, “I promise, Axel, my Lady and Lord. I’ll never betray you again. I swear to the Sisters Three that I will be good. I swear I will be good. I swear it, I do. Please, Axel. Free me from this cage. I will be good.”
Upon Axel’s face, the tiniest smirk of victory lives. From that mountaintop, she simply replies, “Oh, you stupid, stupid girl.”
The pinhole of light slowly shrinks until it is gone completely, and the slum girl is left hanging in that glass cage, floating in the eternal darkness, lost in the oblivion.
0337 Tide
He sees a shard of light like a curtain, dust floating in the thick air, the whole room hot and sticky. It’s a shard of light coming from a cracked-open door, ungenerous in its way of barely spilling into the dark room in which he stands.
From that bright room comes a woman’s voice. He doesn’t hear what she says, perhaps uninterested in the conversation at all. Then he hears a man’s voice, muffled, as if far, far away—a quiet mumble. Back and forth, the man and woman exchange words, and the only thing Tide can focus on is how uncomfortably thick and hot the air is in this stifling room. He hates it, and he hates them, and he hates everything about his little life here in the loft.
The loft?
What’s the loft?
“Because it is a concern!” the woman’s words ring out, her voice raised suddenly, startling Tide who still stands outside. “Why would he give us a gift like the Weapon of Sanctum if he didn’t want us to do something with it?”
“It.” The man scoffs. “It. You refer to the Cold Boy as an ‘it’. Oh, Gandra, what has happened to you?”
Gandra …
Is this a memory? Or is this happening now?
Where am I?
“Like it makes a difference. The Weapon has no love for either of us, as well you know. He would be an easier Weapon to handle if you were ballsy enough to disarm him.”
“Memory isn’t that easy to manipulate so freely.”
Yellow. The man is Yellow.
“All you need do is hide away his memories of Sanctum and his forced loyalty to them. You realize it wouldn’t take much. They are the real enemy, here.”
“What if he gave us the Weapon so that we might protect him? Why must we use the Cold Boy, Gandra? Always your first thought with people, your first and only thought: What use will he or she be to us? You’ve lost sight of what our purpose is here.”
“Sometimes one must pit fire against fire, or whatever they say.”
“Aye, then you have a serendipitous complex upon your hands, as what we have with the Weapon is not fire, but cold.”
“And I have not lost sight of our purpose,” she says suddenly, and with a few hard footsteps, Tide hears her step right up to Yellow. “My child might never come back. But at least I can live long enough to see that Lifted City fall. Perhaps that is the gift he gave us, with that Weapon. Perhaps that is the gift Shye meant for us.”
Tide’s chest grows as cold as if the Weapon just touched him.
Shye …
Then he thinks of the Weapon actually touching him, filling his body with ice-cold agony. He feels it as if he once knew the painful sensation very intimately, as if he once knew the Weapon like just another slum fool on the streets.
Why is that so familiar?
And who is this fucking Shye …?
“What else would you expect from the Thief Renowned himself, who steals treasures out from under the King’s nose, who kills the wicked in the night beneath shadows and floors and watchful eyes, who led us straight to the fucking Weapon of Sanctum?”
A long, aggravated sigh fills the room like the slither of a snake. “Gandra. I’m going to say this once, then I’ll never say it again.”
“You say that all the time.”
“In the end of all this, I want us to … still be good.”
“Good? The fuck do you mean with that? ‘Good’?”
“I want us to know we’ve done the right things. I want us both to be able to look ourselves in the mirror, and with no irony, say that we did our very best to take down Sanctum once and for all. I want us to say that we were the ones who ripped out the King’s tongue, who stopped his screaming for good, who truly saved Atlas.” When Yellow lowers his voice, Tide still picks up the words: “Even with the help of a demon like Shye, we cannot turn dark, we cannot go bad—not like him, and not like Sanctum. And so I say, in the end of all this, I want us to still be good, Gandra. Good.”
There is a long silence that swells between the two.
Tide’s heart races in his chest, and as it races, the dark room in which he’s in—the loft, it’s the loft of a restaurant, a restaurant that serves spicy noodles and soups and little spice-filled pastries—seems to swell with pink and purple and orange light. It isn’t long before he realizes the light comes from his own body—a fierce glowing.
There comes a voice from behind. “Excuse me.”
Tide flattens against the wall, and at once, he realizes he’s in the throat of a staircase, a staircase that leads up to that loft, and the boy behind him is slender, wears a pair of glasses, dark of skin, and with hair buzzed nearly to the scalp, and his eyes are heavy and knowing. The boy—his age, perhaps a year or two older, it’s hard to say—goes past him and comes up to the cracked-open door, to which he gives a knock. “Yellow, Gandra,” he says calmly. “I’ve … bad news. Very bad news. The Weapon …”
When the door opens wide, the eyes of Yellow and Gandra look straight past the young man, ignoring him, and fall upon Tide.
Gandra’s eyes squint with suspicion. Yellow’s jaw tightens as he leans forward on his cane. His cane.
Tide’s insides shiver with fear. Gandra is Professor Frey. The Athan boy was right. Gandra is Professor Frey, and I’m—
“The Weapon has escaped.”
Yellow and Gandra turn upon the young man. “What??” cries out Gandra, aghast.
“H-He escaped,” he repeats. “His chains must have loosened, for they aren’t broken. He’s not in the basement cold room. He’s gone.”
The young man takes Gandra straight ahead, hurrying down the stairs. But Yellow lingers behind, his cold and calculative eyes upon Tide, who stands his ground and, despite all his fears, lifts his chin defiantly at Yellow.
“You heard …?” asks Yellow simply.
Tide stammers when he answers, “I j-just came up with Arrow.” Arrow? Is that the young man’s name? “Just now. I came up to give the bad news, too. H-Heard what? What are you talking about?”
Yellow’s eyes look greasy yet firm as he studies Tide. Then, with a dismissive grunt, the man moves down the stairs, his cane stabbing each step as he goes.
Stab, stab, stab. The memory starts to turn cloudy and strange. Stab, stab, stab. With each strike of the cane, Tide feels farther and farther away from that loft.
Stab … stab … stab …
Then Tide opens his eyes, and he’s staring up at the plain, white ceiling of a room. His head is cradled by a thick pillow, which feels uncomfortably warm and moist from the sweat of his hair.
“He’s awake!” cries a soft, familiar, and bothersome voice. “He’s awake! Doctor! Doctor! He’s awake! Oh, it worked, it worked!”
Tide winces, annoyed by the shouting. “Sh-Shut up,” he grunts, then lifts a hand to shield his face from something bright to his left, sunlight perhaps. “Fucking fuck …”
“It’s me! It’s Dagger! Oh, I’m so, so, so happy you’re alive. You saved my life, Tide. I owe you everything. You saved my life!”
“You’re hurting my head with your yapping.” Tide winces.
“I used
my Legacy on the fluids they were putting into your body to make you heal and wake up. Oh, it worked. I thought—”
“Shush,” Tide groans. Can anyone even hear him?
“I thought I’d lost you.” Dag starts to cry, and then Tide feels the weight of the boy’s body as he drops onto Tide’s legs, hugging them.
Tide grunts and lifts his head off the pillow. He finds his whole chest wrapped in tight, constricting bandages. Only one of his arms is free. The other …
Tide blinks, trying to move his other arm. Upon doing so, a dull ache surges through his right arm, up the shoulder, and to his back. He feels like it ought to hurt more than it does, considering—
The memory returns at once—a more recent memory.
Gin. Her fused hands to his arm, to his shoulder, to his back.
Tide whimpers suddenly, blinking through the bright, annoying fog of confusion and medicine and whatever else. He struggles feebly against the tight bandaging, unable to get a look at his own shoulder or arm. What’s happened to me? “M-My arm …” he whimpers.
Dag’s sobbing ceases, and the boy lifts his face. “You’re injured. You’re injured badly.”
“My arm …”
“The doctor said it may take a while before we know whether you can use it again. You’re … You’re injured very badly.”
Tide can’t feel his other arm at all. He squirms in the bed, trying to get a decent look at it, and the more he tries, the angrier he gets.
His sheets billow suddenly, then a howl slowly fills the room, disturbing the curtains of a nearby window, causing items to slide on the table next to his bed, and lifting Dag’s hair right off his forehead.
“Tide … Tide, calm down. Y-You saved my life, Tide. You—”
Tide screams out. The wind builds like a storm, coming from all directions. A jar of something is thrown. A picture flies off the wall and crashes somewhere. Then there’s a doctor with his coat flapping behind him, struggling to reach the bed. When he makes it, a button is pressed, and a cool liquid flows through Tide’s body.
The wind gently, gently settles.
0338 Wick
Anwick Lesser of the ninth is home.
Truly home.
And he is with Athan Broadmore again, seated next to him at the kitchen island with the mismatched barstools, in the warm, quiet privacy of his home.
My real home.
He shares a modest meal of cooked cabbage, seasoned potato mash, and salted greens with Rychis at one end of the counter, Puras and Chaos eating side by side on the couch in the living room, and Ferra curled up on the first step of his narrow staircase, so excited to eat that her fingertips glow with every bite she takes.
Wick drinks so much water, it could come out his ears.
Athan doesn’t eat. He just watches him, lost in a dream, smiling, then not smiling, then smiling again, tears coming and going from his beautiful grey-blue eyes that have seen so much.
This is hard enough for me, Wick knows, but I’ve had the benefit of knowing what truly happened to my like. This is all new for Athan. I cannot imagine what is going through his head.
The whole confusing mess was explained on the long, long walk through the Greens. Athan kept quiet most of the way, too stunned perhaps to ask any questions. The journey through the Greens was tiresome, but being within the Wall of Atlas once again, Wick and his four faithful companions seem so renewed of spirit, it’s hard to tell the amount of hardship they’ve endured to get here; all that’s written over their faces is gratitude and deep, deep relief.
Halfway through his meal, he finds tears in his eyes again.
“Anwick?” Athan rubs his back.
Wick swallows his bite, then gently shoves his half-finished dish away. “It’s just … I thought I’d never see my house again. I thought I’d never see you again. And now I’m here, and somehow, it doesn’t feel complete … not while knowing I’ve left Rone in the wilds.”
Athan nods, still rubbing his back. “You also said he survived on his own out there. He isn’t lost. He’s going to find his way. With his Legacy, he can make one brave leap through the Wall, no matter where he happens to meet it.”
After breaking through and seeing exactly how thick that Wall is, I doubt very much Rone can make it in one blind jump. But he keeps his fears to himself and, in the quiet noise of Chaos and Puras carrying on an unrelated conversation in the living room behind them, Wick shifts the topic. “I’ve no idea at all how you survived here in Atlas.”
“Carefully,” answers Athan. “I found ways to cope. I wear your jacket. I pretend to sleep and drift away in your room. I—”
“Aww,” coos Ferra from the bottom step, listening, smiling up at the two of them. “That’s so sweet.”
Athan blushes. “Well, I suppose grief does things to you.”
“It does,” agrees Wick. He glances down at the cabbage on his half-finished plate, reminded of his brother. Even the potato mash is something Lionis would have cooked in this very kitchen.
He wonders if, during all his time in the wilds, he ever gave himself proper time to grieve his brother’s death. Or has he buried all that twisted guilt and pain somewhere deep down, somewhere dark and untouchable?
The touch of Athan’s fingers gently running up and down his back sends chills of delight up his spine, and he catches himself smiling again. These accidental, spontaneous smiles followed by sudden tears is going to be a compulsion we’ll have to get used to for a while. He faces Athan, puts a kiss on his lips, then says for the twentieth time since they’ve returned: “I love you, Athan Broadmore.”
Athan shakes his head. “Always my full name, with you.”
Puras turns around and throws an arm over the back of the couch. “We’ve decided—Chaos and I—that we’re going to stay here with you guys, because you two are just so cute, and this house is full of love and joy and happiness. Have you a spare room?”
“What of your family in the second?” asks Ferra.
Puras shrugs. “Well, I mean, if what Athan said is true about this Slum King fellow …”
“It’s true,” affirms Wick, nodding. “The Coalition. It’s being run by a man dressed all in white, a strange man with a vision.”
“His name is Chole,” says Athan, turning to better face Puras. “I have met him. He’s restoring our Greens, as his Legacy is in making plants grow instantly, even from seeds. He’s … He’s a good person, I believe. A decent person. Young, our age, about.”
After some thought, Puras shrugs again, then gestures at Athan. “Then they are in good hands, as he describes, and when it is safer to travel across Atlas, I will be ever so very happy to rejoin my family.”
“Chole is likely still in the Greens doing his work,” Athan points out. “He only just started a few days ago. He might be willing to take you back with him to the Coalition, if you wished. He’s guarded.”
The prospect strikes Puras, and it strikes him rather hard, as if he genuinely didn’t believe he would be able to return home—until he heard Athan’s words just now. And even after we’d played that Dream Game on our journey here. That was his Dream, to kiss each of his brothers and sisters, I remember.
“I … I may consider that, then,” says Puras, his eyes adrift, lost in thoughts. “When I first realized it was the ninth we had broken into, I … didn’t think it’d be possible so soon to return home. The second is a long journey from here. Coalition …” His big, curious eyes turn soft. “Kokalata deshi ni minok—a unity of wards, in peace. Why hadn’t you mentioned this before, Wick? You knew I was of the second.”
Wick smirks. “I had mentioned it before.”
Puras blinks. “Oh.”
“I will return to my wife and baby boy,” Rychis announces. He rises from his stool.
Wick frowns. “So soon? We’ve only just gotten here. There’s only under an hour of sunlight left.”
Rychis pulls his eyebrows together, focused and dark. “I have waited plenty enough sunrises and suns
ets. I won’t wait another.” He eyes each person in the room. “Thank you. Each of you.”
“Go and find your fam,” sings Ferra from that first step, beaming with pride for him. “Give that baby boy of yours a kiss for me.”
Chaos raises a fist to the man. “Strength together.”
It is a thing that developed between them along the way, a sort of mantra they formed after the night they bested the white wyrm. After just a moment’s reluctance, Rychis then meets the boy’s fist with a curiously soft tap of his own. “Strength together.”
“Isn’t your family here in the ninth ward as well?” asks Wick suddenly. “You won’t be so far from us.”
“Aye, but in the deeper part of ninth,” answers Rychis. “The ten train, or the nine-north two stops ought to get me there.”
“No trains, remember?” Athan reminds him. “All the trains are down. At least, all the ones I know of.”
Rychis frowns. “Then it’ll be an hour’s walk.” He gives a heavy look to Wick, and then something rather strange happens: the big man turns teary-eyed. “If you hadn’t pushed to make me train my Legacy … and if you hadn’t persuaded Korah like you did … I would still be wasting my time in Gaea. You saved my fucking life, kid.”
Wick gives the man a reluctant smile. Then he says, “We never had the chance to properly cross this bridge, but … I believe you may have known my father. Forgemon Lesser.”
A small light flickers in Rychis’s eyes. “A good man, if I recall. I didn’t know him much, but he was a hard worker at the metalshop. Focused, sharp, didn’t talk much. Really stuck in his head, that one.”
Wick suffers another urge to cry. He fights it and simply gives the man a firm nod. “That’s him.”
Rychis then brings a fist toward Wick. “Strength together, my man.”
Wick meets the man’s fist with his own, firmly. “Thank you for lending your strength, Rychis, to all of us. Without you and Chaos, we’d never have had the nerve to leave Gaea at all.”
