by Daryl Banner
“I’m hiding from someone, too,” confirms the girl.
“We need to get out of the Waterways,” Link says quickly. “He is coming for us. He can feel where we are.”
“I know the way out,” she replies proudly.
And so she leads the way, the two boys dragged by either of her hands. Link stumbles in the unseeable world, awed once again by her perfect, brilliant power. If only I was able to use my own power with such perfectness, with such brilliance … I could’ve painted the world to look like anything I wanted. I could have been a great and powerful illusionist. I could have … I could have …
He could have done a lot of things, but right now, his life quite suddenly feels very short and unbearably fleeting.
They round a corner, and the familiar ladder looms just ahead. The girl lets go of their hands so the boys can ascend separately. Twice, Link checks behind him to make sure the girl is following. He has never in all his life been more pleased to see someone than he is to see her. If I had a little sister, she would be it. His desire to protect her the way that she so aptly protects him is overwhelming.
They come up from the ladder and empty onto the streets of the tenth. Link reaches back and helps the girl out of the hole. Then the three of them sprint together down the road, and for the first time in a long time, Link feels free. The smile stretches wide across his face, and when he makes a quick glance at the girl, he finds a similar one across hers.
“I missed you,” he says.
She laughs, but then when she faces front, her smile dies and she comes to a stop.
Link and Ames do too when their gazes aim ahead. Standing in the open square that the road led them to is the figure of Baron. He looms there silently, as if he had been waiting all along for Link and Ames to fall right into his trap.
Then he approaches, and Link realizes the error of his eyes. The man isn’t Baron; it’s the man who claimed to be his brother. With another jump to his chest, Link makes a second realization. “You said a week later that I’d … you said I’d …”
Baron’s brother nods approvingly. “And here you are. Oh, and you brought the friend I was expecting.”
A friend? Link turns the other way and discovers the girl gone. A pang of disappointment lances through him. Don’t dismay, he tells himself just as fast. She may, in fact, still be there. “Yes,” Link answers quietly, returning his gaze back to the man. “Your brother is trying to kill us.”
“He’s after that vision you had. And he will be here very soon. I have seen it countless times and it surprises me less so each time.” The man extends a hand toward the boys. “Are we ready to embark on a mission of our own?”
Ames turns to Link. “What is this man talking about?”
“This is Baron’s brother. And he’s seen the end of the world. And he thinks I’m the key to saving it.”
Ames squints at the man, dubious. “So he’s insane?”
“Most likely.”
“I will tell you outright why I need you, Shye,” says the man, a smirk playing on his lips that look so like Baron’s, “and it will be in your hands whether you choose to come with me or stay with my Sister-hungry brother.”
Link scowls. “My name is not Shye.”
“And you are not really half-alive. You are completely alive, but simply in a state of … suspension, should we call it? It’s like the opposite of time-walking. Frozen in time, yet able to move.” The man gives a curious wiggle of his fingers, as if to demonstrate the point. “Really, it’s the best middle ground between life and death, if one were to ask me.”
“One is not asking you,” spits Ames impatiently. “Our lives are in danger.”
“Yes. Everyone’s is, which is precisely the reason I’m here. Shye, my boy …” He grins at Link, taking a step toward him. “The truth is, ten years ago today, a Sister escaped from her delicate hiding place, and is somewhere in this vicinity. It’s a place only Sanctum knows of, a place Kings and Queens whisper of … and before she is caught by the wrong hands and she and her two Sisters are never heard of again, I mean to intercept and save her … with your help.”
“Sister? Sisters?” Link stares at the man as if his nose has fallen clean off. “Are you talking about Three Goddess?”
“Indeed. And it is the third Goddess who has fled her chambers ten years ago today. I believe that you—and that little vision you had—are the key to locating her.”
Ames snorts derisively. “Ten years ago today?” he blurts. “The hell do you expect us to do about that? Sounds like we’re ten years late to your party, old man.”
“I would say the same to anyone else … who didn’t have my Legacy.” The man gives his hands a little rub, then folds his arms. “The choice is yours, Shye. In a matter of seconds, my brother will have caught up. A Sister needs our help, and with her, all of Atlas.”
“My name is not—”
“Five, four, three, two, and—”
And their time is up. “TELL IT TO ME!” booms a voice from behind. Link and Ames spin around to find a most displeased Baron standing there in his heavy white robe. He is out of breath and crazed, his eyes zeroed in upon the boys.
“Oh, he’s a mighty hungry one,” the other man notes jeeringly.
“Shut up, time-walker. This boy belongs to me.”
“No, he belongs to no one, now. His parents have lost him to the streets. Or, more accurately, you. And now he’s lost to you, too. And soon, he’ll be lost to you forever.”
Link’s head flips back and forth between the men who stand on opposite sides of him. He has the most distance from Baron—and he wishes to keep it that way; he isn’t completely convinced that the priest wouldn’t just turn him to dust whether he learns this so-called Goddess Mission or not.
“I’m not sure I wish to choose either of you,” mutters Link, his eyes dark as they drift from man to man, from choice to choice. “I just want to be free. I belong to myself … to me.”
“Ah, but with duty on your shoulders …” begins the brother.
“It’s more than a duty,” interrupts Baron, seething and sweaty. “It’s a Goddess-given gift! It’s a …” His demeanor changes instantly, his eyes tearing up. “It’s a privilege. Boy, to me. Come to me now. Together, we’ll save—”
“You’d be the end of Atlas,” interrupts his brother. “Finding the missing Sister is the only way to save the city from this Madness and from the coming Doom. You know it, Baron, and I know it.”
“I know you,” growls Baron, his voice deep and thunderous. “I know what you really are. I know the only one whose best interest you fight for is your own. Boys, do not trust this man. He doesn’t mean to save Atlas. I mean to save Atlas. He wants to—”
“Trust me or the city falls,” states the brother. “It’s a simple fact.”
“Aye,” says the priest, “and here’s another simple fact for you.”
The priest draws a knife. Link and Ames take one step back until they realize what Baron intends to do with it. He brings the sharp, shining blade to his own throat, staring at the two boys with bright, challenging eyes.
“If you go with my brother,” the man hisses, his jaw tight and his teeth bared, “then I take all our lives with just a pull of my hand.”
“Don’t,” whispers Ames.
“Put the knife down,” begs Link.
The brother comes to the boys’ backs, hands on their shoulders. “Time’s tick-tick-ticking. He will do it no matter. I’ve seen it.”
“He’s b-bluffing,” sputters Ames at once, most likely praying to Three Goddess that it’s the truth.
Link swallows, his eyes glossing over. He knows for a fact that the man is not bluffing. Baron will have nothing left to live for if Link denies him. The Goddess Mission is this man’s life, and Link may or may not hold the very semblance of it in his crowded, anxious brain.
“He’s not bluffing,” says Link grimly.
“If … If he k-kills himself, then … we die too.” Ames can
’t believe his own words, his lips trembling in fear. “If-If he kills himself …”
“I heard you. I know,” says Link tersely.
But then he feels another presence at his side. She’s still here, he realizes with a jump. Quite suddenly, he finds he’s not alone at all. If Baron ends his life, Ames and Link will turn to dust, as Link has witnessed by the other boys. Baron holds all the cards, and yet the man at his back, this so-called time-walker, he promises that they …
“You won’t survive another five minutes if we wait here,” warns the brother at their back. “Come with me into the past or stand here and watch your lives end before your eyes.”
Into the past … Time-walker … That’s what Baron just called his brother a moment ago. Does that really mean …?
“Hurry, boys. A decision. Baron’s knife grows tighter. See?”
“Take us,” blurts Link, feeling a certain invisible someone cling to his arm. “Take all of us away from here, from now.”
“Wait!” shouts Ames.
Baron, figuring the decision to be made and not willing a second to be wasted, draws the knife across his own throat. A deep gurgling sound issues from his neck as the priest collapses to his knees, a curtain of red dressing his heavy white robe. ‘His robe is not red,’ Link had said to the man a week ago. ‘It will be,’ the man had promised.
“Go!” screams Link, terrified that his life could end the moment that priest’s heart stops beating. “Now!”
Just as the man grips the boys tightly by the shoulders, Link sees shadows gather upon Baron, as if the souls of the boys he holds have come to join him in his final moment of life.
The very next instant, there is no Baron. Link blinks, confused. He was just …
And then the man at his back lets go of their shoulders. “Come,” he whispers. “Quickly.”
Link turns to question where Baron has gone, then finds his eyes growing double at what he sees: The Brae, fully intact and in all its Sisterly glory. It stands tall and proud, unburned, pristine and completely active. People are inside worshipping. The windows are bright. The city all around them, alight. Electricity. Life.
Is this just an illusion? Or …
“Follow me,” urges the man. “Speak to no one. Look at no one. Mind your own and move as silent as shadows. We’re not here.”
Link follows without question, overwhelmed, taking in the sight of everything with his hungry, astonished eyes and, to the best of his ability, paying mind to no one they pass.
As they leave the square—which only a second ago held the burned, ruined remains of The Brae—the horrible distant screech of a great, terrifying bird rips across the sky above, sending icy death chills down Link’s arms. It isn’t until the group of them vanish into the shadows of a distant alleyway that Link realizes the cry wasn’t of a bird at all, but rather of a Banshee … a Banshee on a Sanctum throne, somewhere in that black, unbroken sky.
Cintha’s Patience
Cintha stares at the schedule on the wall and huffs, annoyed.
“Something wrong?”
Cintha shakes her head, not turning toward the voice. The post on the wall has her listed as seventh in line for the treatment. “I just thought there would be an update by now. I’m still seventh.”
The girl leans forward, squinting. “Uh … K … Kin … Kinetha?”
She smirks down at the little girl with the short, cut-up messy hair. She looks like a little fairy creature from a children’s story Rone told her once, a story he said mother told him when he was scared, and apparently even when he was two and still slept. I wish I was a fairy creature that lived under the stoneworker’s pond and granted wishes. I’d make so many people happy. I’d have so many friends.
“It’s Cintha,” she corrects her kindly. “Sin … tha. That’s how you say it. Haven’t we met before?”
The girl shrugs, losing all interest in what’s posted or not posted on the wall, then turns and walks away.
Cintha finds herself leaning against the back wall of the social lounge sometime later staring lazily at the broadcast. She watches the screen as slowly, people gather in the Crystal Court. The cameras show the seats as they fill, people filing in and greeting each other in a Lifted manner: rigidly and curtly. If they held the coronation in the slums, it’d be a very different party. That amuses her, and she smiles.
She shouldn’t be too upset. The six others before her on that evil list have abilities that are of a higher priority to remove. She has no idea who’s at the top of the list, but she overheard one of the clerics mention that the second person on the list secretes acid from her skin all day long. Cintha winces every time she thinks of the pain of such a Legacy. I suppose my Legacy elimination can wait.
A door opens down the hall. Cintha turns. Three individuals wearing the long white masks pass through. They’re wearing clothes common to any slummer, but the masks hide their faces. Some are even built more like helmets, hiding their hair too. She’s been told time and time again not to worry about the people in the masks, that they are devoted to King Greymyn and are simply there to protect them. Still, they give Cintha an uneasy feeling.
“I will kill them someday.”
Cintha lifts an eyebrow at the voice. It’s the little girl again. She stands by the couch, having risen off of it to stare at the three in the masks who pass down the hall and disappear into one of the closed-off lab rooms.
“Those are sharp words,” murmurs Cintha, “to come from a girl as young as you.”
“Sharp,” the girl agrees. “Sharp as the knife I’ll put in them.”
Cintha’s brow wrinkles with concern. “They are here to help. They keep us safe.”
“They keep us prisoner.”
“Well …” Cintha can’t quite argue that point. Indeed, all of them are not really in this facility by their own will. From as much info as Cintha’s gathered or been told since her arrival here, everyone in this place was arrested by Guardian for some minor crime. They were each told that, after an amount of time was served in this place, they would be set free to return to their lives. ‘It’s just like the Keep,’ the lady with the red eyes told her, ‘but kinder.’
“They took my friend to another place,” the girl goes on.
Cintha pushes her back off of the wall, crosses the lounge, and takes a seat on the arm of the couch. “Your friend was arrested, too? Is she a pretty little girl like you?”
The girl doesn’t seem soothed by the flattery; in fact, it annoys her. “We were both taken by those evil people in the masks. They took my friend to another place and brought me here. I wasn’t arrested, not by Guardian. I …” Suddenly the girl’s eyes turn afraid. “I think they killed my friend.”
“Why do you think that?”
“She’s not here. They took her somewhere else. They must have killed her. She’s killed dead.” The girl glowers at her little skinny fingers. “I liked her a lot. She was the only friend I had.”
Cintha frowns. She’s not sure how much of this girl’s story she can believe. The masked people certainly don’t look cuddly or sweet, but they don’t seem like killers of children. “I’m … so sorry to hear that, sweetie. What was her name?”
The girl lifts her wet eyes to Cintha’s. She ignores the question and asks one of her own. “Are you gonna tell them what I said?”
Cintha shakes her head at once. “No. Why would I? I don’t care about the silly people here. Well, except for the ones who are going to take away my Legacy. I’m only here for another month before they let me go. I can’t wait to see my brother again.”
“You have a brother?”
“Yep. Well …” Cintha’s eyes drift to the broadcast, observing more and more privileged, silk-wearing Lifted fools filling the seats of the Crystal Court, which glimmers in the Sanctum-kissed sun. “I have a half-brother.”
“I have no family. I’m an orphan.”
Cintha smiles. “Me too. But no one knows. If anyone knew, see, I’d be put into an
orphanage. My brother didn’t want that, so we … we just never quite, um …” She searches for the words, chewing on her lips between the thoughts. “We just … didn’t want to be apart.”
“But you’re apart now.”
“Yes.” Cintha nods sullenly. “He … He went into the city and he joined a … a club. So I joined with him. I didn’t really even want to be part of the club but … but I had nowhere, no one, nothing …” Her mind slips into murky waters. She sees Yellow’s judgmental eyes. She sees Arrow bent over a table full of metal trinkets and explaining machines and computers to Prat and Juston, and Wick stroking the Lifted Boy Athan’s hair, dyed a rich cerulean. She sees the hotheaded Adamant before he was exiled, his heated arguments with Victra and Rone about all the actions they could be taking, all the figurative—and literal—fires they could be setting.
She sees an enormous vat of steamy noodles in the scullery. Her stomach growls at the memory, inspiring her to hold it suddenly.
“You’ll find him again.”
Cintha jerks her head up, startled to find that the girl has come around the couch and stands before her.
“Your brother,” the girl clarifies, as if she needed to. “You’ll have your family back. I just know it.”
She knows that Rain would’ve abandoned the Noodle Shop by now. After the Guardian raid, they are likely halfway across the city. I’ll never find them. “And you,” croaks Cintha, pushing out the words despite stubborn emotions trying to make a tear or two in her eyes, “will find your friend again. I know it too.” Then they stare at each other, accepting one sugar-coated lie exchanged for another.
“The coronation is almost on!” notes the girl with sudden vigor.
The two of them sit together on the couch, watching the pomp and traditions. Partway through the Peacemaker Janlord’s speech to the Court, the girl leans into Cintha and says, “My name’s Aryl.” To that, Cintha smiles and considers the cute fairy girl to be her new and only friend. Now let’s hope she can grant wishes, too.
