Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  Inspired by the look on his face, Wick swallows all of Athan’s cock, picking up speed and working him to the edge. Athan gasps, taken by the change of pace, and throws his head back, groaning.

  But Wick can’t stop thinking. It’s not just his family Athan lost. Gone is the comfort of the Lifted City, which Athan lived in his whole life. Gone are the great big house and the mirror pool and the flowing silks and the lavish bed he never slept in since he was two. Gone are the daily trips to the Eastly gym and his frequent tossing of a lucky gold coin over the Lifted City ledge. Gone are his strolls through the courtyards, the Glassen square, the Crystal Court, and the marketplaces on a bright afternoon when the totally unobscured sun beamed down upon his happy, carefree face.

  Athan is mourning the loss of his own life, too.

  “Fuck, Anwick, oh … oh, I’m close …”

  Always close, never close enough. “Let go,” Wick says between having his mouth full of Athan Broadmore. “Let go.”

  And at last, he does.

  Shortly after the enormous, eruptive release, the boys settle onto the floor, wrapped up in each other’s arms. The breastplate and gauntlet remain on, but they’re so light that it isn’t uncomfortable pressing between them. Wick’s head rests mostly on Athan’s arm anyway, finding it a suitable pillow with Athan’s soft breaths falling on his forehead. It isn’t long before the heavy fingers of sleep start to pull upon Wick’s mind.

  “Who do you think will put a sword through Imp’s belly?”

  Wick flinches at the sudden sound of Athan’s voice, peeking open an eye. Imp—that’s what Athan calls the Mad King, as if they’re buddies in some warped dimension of his mind and carry nicknames for one another.

  “I’m trying to sleep,” Wick groans woozily.

  “Hey, you sure I can’t reciprocate somehow?” asks Athan. “You have to be hard as a rock down there,” he teases.

  “Little Wick’s gone to sleep. That was all about you,” Wick adds with a sleepy smile. “And trust me, I enjoyed it just as well.”

  “Clearly. You practically ate me up.” Wick laughs at that, his hand rubbing up and down Athan’s side, tickling along his exposed ribs as the sleepiness tries to reclaim him. “You’re so good to me.”

  What else would I be? I wish I could be even more. I wish I could fix your heart and take away all the hurts, forever. “You make it so much easier to wake up,” Wick replies instead. “I used to hate when the dreaming ended. Now … it’s like it never ends.”

  A peaceful silence passes between them after that. Wick smiles, satisfied, and lets himself drift away.

  “Someone has to put a sword through his belly,” Athan says suddenly, resting his chin softly on Wick’s shoulder, his big arm squeezing Wick tightly against his muscled body. Wick stirs, pulled awake again. “Every Queen and King who’s taken the throne has had the justice set upon them. No one gets away with it, not ever. At least, not historically. That’s one of the last things my tutors taught me. Of course, the Slum Queen Atricia Sunsong couldn’t get away with what she’d done, nor the ones who overthrew her. It just takes a hero to get up and do the job, really.”

  “Athan …”

  “Then a new King or Queen will take Imp’s place—unless Ruena is found first. Oh, oh …! Maybe it’ll be her who does him in,” Athan posits, “and the Lifted City will be restored.”

  He grimaces at Athan’s words. What does he think will happen if the Lifted City is restored? Does he think he’ll get his house back? Does he think life will somehow return to normal, as if his past two months in the slums have just been a temporary getaway? There’s no chance of going back, Athan, he’d tell him if he dared. No more a chance of that than of me ever again sharing dinner with all my four brothers and both my parents—in that quaint house in the ninth in which I grew up.

  “Mmm,” Athan moans, squeezing Wick again like a big stuffed animal, nearly taking the wind out of him. “I can’t wait for it.”

  Wick stares at the endless wash of silvery, polished armor on Athan’s chest. “You know … you don’t need to … armor yourself up. You’re safe with me. You’re safe no matter what.”

  The stillness he gets for a response tells him he’s right in his hunch: Athan doesn’t feel safe. He’s ready at all times for some rogue in the night—some killer he’s never even seen—to come and take his life, too. He may never learn who murdered his family. He is literally armoring up, ready to defend his life against an unknown enemy. No amount of armor will make him feel safe, not truly.

  “Remember your Legacy,” Wick whispers to him, running a hand up and down Athan’s arm slowly. “You’re safe, always.”

  “You really believe that?” Athan snorts once. Wick can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a derisive snort, not having his face within eyesight. “My Legacy can’t be survival. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does to me.”

  “Or is it luck?” he goes on. “Is my Legacy that I’m just lucky? That makes even less sense, Wick. And what class of Legacy is that? Psychist? Elementalist? Sensor? All of them?”

  “Mentalist, like me,” answers Wick automatically.

  “No. Just mental,” responds Athan, borrowing a joke they once shared between each other long ago.

  Wick smiles, but soon finds his smile deflating. “Maybe it’s as simple as you sensing danger. Maybe you can sense danger.”

  “Can you sense anything?”

  Wick chuckles, gives a shake of his head. “Alright, then. I’ll just keep focusing when I’m around you, and if I find myself suddenly capable of turning water into chemical, I’ll know it’s your Legacy.”

  “And you’ll also be Rone’s best friend,” Athan teases.

  But the joke falls flat, stabbing Wick in the chest like a poison dart with the memory of his best friend Rone who he hasn’t seen in over two months. Their last words to each other were harsh and horrible. He may not even be alive, Wick realizes. He could be—

  “I’m sorry,” Athan says suddenly. “That was really insensitive.”

  “No, no,” Wick says at once, realizing he had gone silent. He rises to put a quick kiss on Athan’s worried face, then offers a smile. “I’m fine, Athan. And I’m sure he is, too.”

  “Me too,” Athan agrees too quickly.

  Wick lays his head back down on Athan’s armored chest, staring off. He thinks about the argument between him and Rone. He thinks about the joy he felt when they reunited in the dark streets of the Lifted City at night. He thinks about the thrill he felt when they left Rain in the dark hours on their own quest to reclaim Athan. He thinks about …

  He thinks about a time they shared on the rooftop of Tide’s apartment complex, a time that led to a little fun with Rone’s cock while they were under the influence of chemical. Wick feels a pang of guilt. He’d joked to himself at the time that Athan’s only reaction to Rone and his little rooftop tryst would be wanting to have had Rone shared with him, too. He’s not so sure Athan would take it as lightly anymore.

  “Wick? You alright?”

  Or maybe he would. “Months ago … before we made it to the Lifted City, Rone and I …” Wick squints, trying to gather his words. “Rone and I were hanging out on the roof of Tide’s old worn-down homing complex and … and we were sharing some chemical …”

  “Did all your clothes come off?” Athan jumps in.

  Wick chuckles nervously, then swallows. “Well … I’m not sure our clothes came off. But his pants did.”

  “His pants?”

  “And I sorta gave him a suck job. It wasn’t even … intended. I just sort of … It just sort of …”

  “The chemical?”

  “Maybe. Most likely. I … I just haven’t really thought to tell you about it because, well … it didn’t really mean anything. We were both high. We were both lost over our … respective loved ones. And I was staring up at the underbelly of the Lifted City, longing for you. And all that chemical was racing through my system …”

&nbs
p; “Radley wanted to get me a pleasure boy,” mutters Athan.

  Wick jerks his head up. “Really?”

  “I didn’t go through with it. It was more of an … offhanded little offering, really. How’d he taste?”

  Wick squints at him. Athan seems to be taking the news a touch too easily. Pleasure boy …? Wick’s heart quickens. “You mean Rone?”

  Athan meets his eyes. “I’m not mad at you, if that’s what you’re so worried about. How can I possibly blame you, Anwick? You were in a state of mind. You thought you’d never see me again. Emotions can get really …” His eyes drift, the joy in his face vanishing. “Really complicated,” he finishes finally, almost to himself.

  Wick sits up completely. Is Athan truly okay with what he’s been told, or is there something now that needs spilling from Athan’s mouth? “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his heart fluttering anxiously.

  Athan shakes his head at once. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. Seriously. I’m not upset. I was … I was just …” Staring off, he licks his lips, distracted by a thought. “I was thinking you should find your family. Gather them back up. Bring them here where it’s safe.”

  Wick lifts an eyebrow, his mind spun around. “My family?”

  “I lost mine. Radley. Janna. My mother and father. I lost them all. You shouldn’t lose yours … all your brothers.” Athan bites his lip, his eyes finally returning to Wick’s. “Haven’t we lost enough?”

  A knock at the door interrupts them followed by a muffled calling of both their names. The voice is Prat’s.

  “We’re busy,” grunts Athan, then shoots Wick a teasing smile.

  Prat’s tired voice replies, “Meeting at the round table. Lionis has made us a salad from leftover’s veg scramble. We’re discussing the situation in the seventh and a request from the Warden.”

  “We’ll be there once we finish a discussion of ours,” Athan calls back. When Prat’s footsteps carry him away, Athan sighs, then gives a poke at Wick’s arm. “Hey, I can’t see your glow marks anymore.”

  Wick nods distractedly. “Yeah. They’ve been gone for a week or so. All faded away, what little bit was there. I kinda miss them.”

  Athan lifts his eyebrows. “So … about your family …”

  “We’ll find them,” Wick answers softly just to placate Athan. But finding my family won’t replace yours. He kisses Athan to shut up his own mind. It works. The little kiss turns into a big one, and too soon the boys are wrestling right back out of their respective clothing and armor. The meeting will have to wait.

  0140 Kid

  Well, it was fun at first. Now, even the cat fears the cold boy.

  He’s growing dark. Too dark. “The Rain Frog will die a cold and painful death today,” Kendil recites—a thing he’s annoyingly taken to stating every sunrise, even if no one’s around.

  “I know he knew who I was,” Kendil went on one afternoon when they were sharing a plate of scrap bread and berries Kid stole for them from the bakery by the vineyard. The way he ate, with his long pale hands and his tall, bony shape and black-as-night messy hair, he looked like a strange creature. “The Rain Frog shivered when he saw me in the Pylon. I’ll freeze him in the space of a second.”

  Once, Kid was in the middle of telling him about the man who stopped a train with one hand to save her life when Kendil cut her off, his black, beady eyes filled with dark dreams as he muttered, “I’ll watch as the Rain Frog’s eyes fill with frost. Have you ever seen a person freeze right in front of you? I have.”

  Yes, your own mom. Kid knows the story already, how the Rain Frog—whose name is Obert Ranfog, she can now safely pronounce—invaded his home when he was just a child. He held his mother’s hand, sobbing, and she ordered him to freeze her. “That’s the only way I’ll be safe,” Kendil recited. “She said that. And she said that I’d be King someday. The Cold King … King of Eternal Winter.”

  Kid had a similar experience. That’s why she first connected to the cold boy. Her mom told her she’d be right back, then never was. Her dad told her to hide, and she did, only to witness the storm of Mask Men rush in through the front door and murder her father before her eyes. They came back for her too, but she got away.

  “Masked Men,” Kendil corrects her one evening. “Not Mask Men. They are not men made of masks, are they? They are Masked.”

  Well, they sort of are made of masks. But Kid doesn’t argue the point. She just continues eating her stale lump of bread and smiles, ignoring the soreness in her jaw from chewing.

  He’s been correcting a lot of her speech over the past few months. It’s a welcome thing, to talk more like a proper, adult girl. I’m probably fifteen years old by now, she decides. Of course, it’s a total exaggeration; she’s only ten. Or so she estimates.

  But time has flown by ever since Sanctum fell into the hands of that crazy, colorful man upstairs. Days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into lives.

  She’s seen so many lives end. I thought I was done with death.

  She’s thinking about her mom again when they stop for a rest at a street corner in the tenth ward. They had circled through the space of three whole wards over the weeks, looping back now into the tenth. This is where her childhood began and ended, in a little house at the back of the tenth near the Wall. ‘I’ll be right back,’ her mother said before departing her life forever. Or maybe it was, ‘I shall be right back, sweetie.’ Or perhaps, ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  Every time she recalls it, she hears her mother’s voice a little differently. Maybe she misheard her. Maybe the words were meant as a loving goodbye and Kid was simply too young and scared to understand. Dad, too. Did he know the fate he was about to meet at the hands of the Mask Men? The … Masked Men?

  The older Kid gets, the stranger the voices sound.

  Kendil’s memories don’t seem to change; they only fester, the same exact recollection of his crying mother, then his frozen mother, then the barging in of the Sky Guard and Obert Ranfog’s soothing voice as he coaxed Kendil away from his home. Sometimes, Kid even catches Kendil cursing his mother. “Why’d you make me freeze you? We could have ended Obert and his whole Sky Guard. I could have frozen them instead of you. Why did I have to freeze you, mom?? Mom? MOM??”

  He has full conversations with his dead mother. And, of course, he clutches his chest while doing so. I know why he clutches his chest. He showed me his secret, the one he keeps there. Sometimes, Kid thinks he’s losing his mind, and she has no idea how to help him.

  So she does the only thing she can: I won’t abandon him. He’s been abandoned so many times, and so have I. He needs her, even if he’s horrible to her sometimes.

  And cruel. And broken. “Maybe I’m the one who is cruel and breaked … broken,” stammers Kid one morning to Blindy, her ugly one-eyed cat, while Kendil has gone ahead to scout a building that’s been burned to a skeleton by the Great Father Fire—which is what Kendil likes to call the bolt of red lightning that casts down from the sky from the Mad King Impis and his Army of Chaots, which is what the Posse now call themselves, apparently: Chaots, bringers of chaos.

  Doom follows her everywhere. I am good friends with doom.

  One tower—whipped up by a flurry of frozen daggers. One barrack—assaulted by a storm of cold. One tall house, one weapon shop, one marketplace, one backstreet … all frozen up. Kendil’s eyes grow more and more furious, more and more inhuman, more and more darkened with rage each time he lets his Legacy out. Doom still follows Kid wherever she goes, except now it’s kissed by ice.

  “We make a great team,” he tells her at the top of a building next to the statue of a Guardian, frozen alive two minutes prior.

  Kid smiles anxiously. Even Blindy keeps tightly to her side, purring. Thinking Kendil’s calmer today, she quietly asks him, “When will we find my friend Aryl? We have goned in a circle.”

  “Gone. We will find your friend,” he answers, “once I find a warm frog beneath my cold foot.”

  “Do ya know where Facil
ity is? Ya says you’d … You said you knowed where—”

  “Of course I know.”

  She frowns. “You want someone dead. I want someone alive.” The hurt and the doubt starts to flood her again. I swore I would not leave him, yet I am no closer in finding Aryl than I was when we first started journeying together.

  He seems to sense the discord in her because he meets her eyes suddenly. His voice is smooth and comforting when he says, “You are really important to me, Kid.”

  She lifts her face, listening.

  “You keep me safe. Unseen. You are invaluable to me and … and without you, I’m quite certain twice as many people would be—”

  “Dead,” she finishes for him coolly.

  Kendil’s face wrinkles, then he gives a soft shake of his head. “Frozen,” he corrects her gently. “And when someone is frozen, they are never dead. Not truly.”

  Kid smirks, not believing him. When she notices how sincere and calm his face is, she reconsiders. Is that what he tells himself, over and over again? That he’s killed no one? That his mother is still alive? She glances at his chest, covered by the loose-fitting t-shirt he wears with the neck hole so stretched, it hangs off his bony shoulder. She stares at the protrusion on his chest. Frozen … not truly dead.

  “You’ll understand someday,” he assures her.

  Kid nods, bringing a hand absently to the cat’s head and giving him a soft petting. She doesn’t even notice at first that the cat doesn’t flinch or run away; he welcomes her warm touch.

  “But for the Rain Frog, he will know the real death,” he goes on, his voice taking a turn for the darker. “Coldness would be a mercy.”

  A raindrop kisses her cheek. She gazes upward, thinking on the Masked Men who took her dad, her life, and her youth. She turns to Kendil, who seems to ignore the light rain. He is cold, but his anger is red hot. Somehow, his vengeance is starting to feel a lot like mine.

  0141 Halvesand

  There’s rain against the window.

  It’s a recent development ever since a chunk of the Lifted City came crashing down upon the eleventh ward one innocent Tuesday afternoon a month ago, opening up a small sliver of sky through which the weather sneaks in. Halves enjoys a warm, golden sunrise in the morning, the light at just the right angle to slice into his room. And when it rains, his window feels the brunt, provided the wind is coming in the right direction.