by Daryl Banner
“I-I had no choice,” Arrow sputters. “They were attacking! They had ranged weapons. Crossbows. Arrows. If I’d tried to take her with me, I would’ve been shot dead too!”
“You did the right thing,” murmurs Prat in half a voice.
Lionis huffs irritably, rolling his eyes and heading for the stairs. The sound of his heavy footsteps drum harshly—loud and wooden—until he reaches the bottom where the restaurant, a sleeping Wick, and Juston reside.
When Arrow faces the table, the fury is evident. His jaw is tight and his eyebrows are pulled together. Prat and Athan share yet another worried look. Nothing they say can possibly touch Arrow. Too much has happened between all of them, too much to even discuss or console one another about. Their little world seems so much bigger now, and it’s quite suddenly spinning out of control.
“I did my best …” Arrow finally mumbles, his hands pressed into the table as he stares down at it the way one peers into a bottomless well, all his rage and despair and helplessness pouring from his stern, tearless eyes. “It wasn’t good enough.”
“Arrow …”
“She’s dead. Rain is broken. My charms failed me. Eyes and ears. I should have outed Yellow and Gandra when I had the chance.”
Prat sighs. “Maybe … Maybe you misheard them.”
“I mishear nothing,” hisses Arrow, taking offense to that at once. “Those two fled. They’ve lost the charms I gave them. Deliberately, if I might be so bold to presume. We’ve been led by cowards, and they have led us into an abyss of death and hopelessness. If I saw either of them on the streets, I’m not sure I’d hide precisely how I felt, if I wasn’t so perfectly confident that Yellow would steal my memories just to save his own hide, and that Gandra would … do whatever the fuck it is she can do, if anything at all. I bet she’s as weak as her ideas, as weak as her ability to lead us, as weak and empty as the promises she made us—all of which she’s broken.”
After his storm of words, Arrow moves to the ladder leading up to the roof. Prat and Athan and Ivy watch him as he ascends, his hands and feet slapping each rung with anger as he goes. The roof hatch opens with a loud bang, then crashes shut.
Athan shakes his head. “I … I didn’t know. Yellow and Gandra abandoned us?”
Prat nods. “He told me after we fled the sixth. I don’t know what exactly it is he heard, but …” He shakes his head. “I’ve always kinda wondered that same thing, if I’m being honest. About Gandra.”
“You mean her Legacy?”
“Yeah. I kinda wonder if … if her power is in her secrecy. I was told when I joined Rain that she could kill people with just a glance. I was told not to look her in the eye if I ever saw her, but of course, until recently, none of us saw her at all. I thought Yellow was her and that this ‘Gandra’ was just a tool by which to scare us into obedience, but of course I see that I was wrong. And maybe I’m wrong now. Maybe her Legacy is formidable and as deadly as they say … but what if it isn’t? What if she never reveals her Legacy because the fact that we don’t know it … is scary enough? What if her power is in her secrecy?” Prat shakes his head, then slaps a hand to his cheek. “It doesn’t much matter anymore, does it? We’re totally without their knowhow now. And we’re without all of my maps. We’re without computers or weapons or armor or … well, any means at all, really.”
Ivy shuffles in the corner, then sinks to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Athan observes her for a moment, curious. He can’t quite picture Arrow diving bravely into a place struck down by the Imp’s red light. He can’t even imagine what sort of insanity had to take over Arrow’s mind to do such a thing, if that’s the way of how it went. Maybe some things seem more grand in their mystery. Maybe Prat is right and Gandra’s power is in the world not knowing what she can truly do.
The hours pass by with spots of idle conversation and a whole lot of nothing. Prat changes his bandage twice out of habit, only to discover that the bleeding stopped long ago. He can’t even properly recall what cut him in the first place. Arrow comes and goes from the roof, adjusting his charms and listening like a scientist. Twice he leaves with Prat into the streets, planting his ears farther down the way and scoping the neighboring blocks, which seem surprisingly deserted, they later report. The nearest buildings have clearly been picked through by looters and foragers, as they can’t find a speck of food. The hours drift by and their stomachs complain about it.
When Wick stirs, the sun is already setting. “Hey, baby,” Athan coos at him, having taken a seat in the booth and pulled Wick’s head onto his lap. He brushes hair off his boy’s forehead. “You sleep well?”
Wick’s groggy eyes meet his. “I had this dream where I was in a big house in the sky with you. We were married.”
Athan chuckles at that, which draws a sleepy smile out of Wick.
“And our house was so big,” he goes on, “that I couldn’t seem to imagine what to do with all the rooms. I kept walking around and discovering new ones, even after we’d been living there for a while. We had, like, seven different living rooms and three kitchens.”
“How many bedrooms?” teases Athan.
“One really, really big one. I don’t know.” The boys laugh lightly together. Wick grips Athan’s arm and strokes it. “How are you and the others holding up? Did I sleep long? Fuck, it’s dark already.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Athan keeps gently moving his hand over Wick’s forehead and hair while his arm gets stroked. “We don’t have a good food source here, so we’re figuring out options of how to keep our bellies full. We might have to forage way out and bring a cache back here.”
Wick’s eyes drift away. “Or we could go to my house.”
“Your family,” murmurs Athan thoughtfully, and to that, Wick gives a short nod. “I’d love to see your mother again. Are you sure you want to give up this war, Anwick? Are you—?”
“You only ever say my full name when we’re talking serious shit,” notes Wick with a crooked smile.
Athan laughs at that. “Well, I suppose this is serious shit.”
“And we’re not in a war. Athan, I think the Madness is going to wear itself out. I think we should let it. We can’t do anything in our position. Rain is over with as we know it. We have no numbers. It’s just us, my brother, Arrow, and Prat. Oh, and Ivy.”
“No numbers,” agrees Athan quietly.
“We have no business at all standing at the frontlines of a battle, fighting in the name of the slums and acting like heroes when even we slumborn are viciously fighting each other for whatever scraps remain down here. We’re as despicable as the forces above us.”
“Some of us are good.” Athan leans over and gives Wick a kiss, their soft lips touching and igniting a warmth Athan’s needed within his chest for too long a time. He seems to inspire a little groan of approval from his boy. “And some of us are too good.”
“Way too good.”
“I think the others will be heartened by this decision,” Athan says encouragingly. “We all need to recover. We’re wounded. Even if we later decide to take action, or—”
“No more action.” Wick folds his arms, nuzzling his head into Athan’s lap, nearly burying his nose in his crotch. “Just peace. Bliss. Forever.”
“Peace, bliss, forever,” Athan agrees, petting Wick’s hair. “Lionis will especially enjoy it. Back home, the both of you.”
“I could give two fucks what Lionis thinks,” mumbles Wick into Athan’s crotch, his voice muffled.
Athan smirks, holding his boy as he turns his head and watches the darkness of nightfall grow in the front glass windows. Juston’s noise has dissipated for now, and all Athan knows in this moment is a hope of peace … desperate, needed, longing peace.
0179 Ellena
She learns the boy Guardian’s name while they eat food rations on the old wrap-around porch of some abandoned home-for-the-elderly in the outskirts of a ward Ellena can’t identify. Sixth? Eighth? She doesn’t care.
But the
boy’s name is Cope. And what else does one do with pain they can’t be rid of … but cope with it? The ironies of his name strike her the moment she hears it pass from Bee’s thin lips that she chuckles lightly to herself, then silences her mouth at once and gives a nod of apology at the others. To her surprise, Gabel doesn’t bite at her with his usual attitude. Neither does Bee say something dark or insulting. In fact, the two lift their eyebrows, as if they patiently await Ellena’s explanation of what’s funny.
Cope doesn’t aim the gun at her any longer when they are on the move. Bee doesn’t bother keeping watch of her, several times keeping her back to Ellena without any sign of mistrust. Gabel treats her like the fourth in a group of Guardian who are casually passing through the wards—to where, Ellena doesn’t know. If any person were to observe them moving down the street, they’d not distinguish between Guardian and prisoner.
But it doesn’t make Ellena feel any freer than she did before. Sure, she no longer has the restrictive gloves on her hands, and she isn’t being forced to work half the day cleaning linens and pans, but following her desire of going home isn’t exactly an option. Dropping by her sister’s to kiss and hold her sweet Lionis isn’t viable either. It’s suddenly such a priority, now more than ever, to have her family together and safe. They’re all that matters to her in the world.
After what happened with Eunice—or rather, the “Thorn”—she finds that traveling in the company of three trained Guardian makes her feel substantially safer than if she were to be walking these dark, unfriendly streets alone. A slumborn like me ought to feel safe in the slums. After all, this is my home. Who ever thought, had one known what would come of our city with a new King, that a Banshee in the sky would be the preferred option?
That dead Banshee in the sky sentenced Forgemon, the love of her life, to the Keep for the rest of his days. She cannot forget that. And now Forge is dead because of the Banshee … who is also dead.
The distant noise of chatter reaches them. Gabel has his gun at the ready, leading the group down the main road, which runs parallel to a dead elevated rail. Ellena feels a strong familiarity with the area, wondering if they’ve already made it to the border between the eighth and ninth. I know that rail, she tries to tell herself, but with the city being so changed and darkened by lack of electricity, its roads only occasionally lit by a weak, self-sustaining streetlamp, she cannot be certain of their location.
The chatter grows more and more until they find themselves approaching a great expanse of road that passes under the rail and cuts deep into whichever ward they just came from. It’s an avenue with a long median of grass and spaced-out trees. Along the sides of the road there are groupings of people milling about, some in social clusters of laughter and banter, others seated on tapestries, upon which they appear to be selling wares and food and other items.
Gabel puts away his gun when he sees the scene before him. Bee and Cope follow suit. The four of them move down the street. They pass a woman bartering the price of a bag of corn. They pass a group of men talking about the change in the season, one of them complaining about the oncoming winter. They pass two children fighting over a jacket while their parents ignore them, discussing something heatedly.
Ellena marvels over how … normal everything seems here.
“We’ll rest here,” Gabel decides, muttering quietly to the others, “as night is crawling upon us. In the morning at the first sight of dawn, we continue.”
“Where are we headed, exactly?” interjects Ellena.
Cope has already parted from the others to inquire about the price of a bundle of carrots, so it is Bee and Gabel who turn to her. Bee is the one who speaks. “Another Guardian holding.”
The answer isn’t what Ellena wanted to hear. What did you expect, fool? That they were escorting you home? That you’d offer them mugs of slum tea and stale bagels when you got there? “Of course,” she mutters in response, nodding at Bee.
Gabel takes a step forward. “Come. We’ll seek out a place for all of us to hole up for the night. Bee, you stick with Cope. Earpiece at the ready.” Bee nods and keeps to the boy, who has started to argue about the overpricing of a handsome middle-aged man’s produce.
The two of them stroll down the bustling street, Gabel with his eyes alert regardless of the seeming normalcy, and Ellena with her arms folded protectively over her chest. For a healthy moment, she forgets there’s anarchy in the sky at all. She might as well be taking a stroll through the market in the ninth looking for something colorful and cheap for Lionis to make a dinner out of. Neither say a word to each other as they walk, but Ellena catches him twice peering her way, and when she lifts her face, he looks away the next instant, playing it off as if he was casually observing the windows of the building above her head.
They find an unoccupied space in an area where the road opens into a small circle, its center filled with grass where people are lying upon blankets, looking up at the sky as it slowly succumbs to night. Gabel and Ellena take a spot by a trash bin near the curb, sitting on the grass and stretching their legs. Ellena leans back with her upper body propped up behind her by her elbows, her eyes swimming in the dark blue sky above, interrupted by only one arm of Lifted City.
“Why do you suspect they hate us?” asks Ellena.
Gabel, cross-legged and picking pointedly at the grass by his armored shins, lifts his stony face to hers. Despite his lack of smile and his (frustratingly) serious expression that he wears at all times, his green eyes seem lighter than usual.
“Who?”
“Them,” she answers with a chin-lift at the Lifted City.
Gabel’s mouth tightens. “I don’t suspect they hate you at all.”
“Oh, but they do. Even if they think they don’t. They do.” Ellena remembers the woman with the big decorative hat who had come to the flowers that one day in the Greens, the one she helped add a bit of pink to her spreads—much to Eunice’s ultimate vexation. “They might not mean to, of course. Hate can be innocent.”
“Innocent hate?” Gabel seems amused by that idea, showing so with a light lift of one of his dark, handsome eyebrows. They’re just eyebrows, Ellena; they can’t be handsome ones, you fool.
Ellena lifts her chin haughtily. “Yes. Innocent hate. You look down upon this field of grass and you admire how beautiful and green it is, yes? You admire how little of it we encounter in this city, unless you live near the Greens, yes?”
“Sure.”
“But then you sit upon it,” Ellena continues, “and find the feel of it to be rather … itchy.”
Gabel lets out a light chuckle. “So you suppose that Lifted folk only like your kind … from a distance?”
“Yes. That might be a way of—” Ellena is struck by his wording. She lifts a light eyebrow of her own, her gaze moving to him at once. “Your kind?”
Gabel picks a blade of glass, flicks it from his finger.
“Your kind?” she repeats with a touch more emphasis. “Do you mean that you … are not one of us? You bear the Guardian uniform.” Her eyes scan him over, as if wondering if she’s been mistaken this whole time. “The only Guardian in the slums are of the slums.” She keeps staring at him. “An answer might help me work this over in my head better, you know.”
“I’m from the Sky Guard,” he answers, “and I’m skyborn. My mother is Qaea. My father is Lune Wayward, the grandson of King Vorne Wayward, the Goddess King.”
Ellena’s jaw drops through the grass, plummets four-hundred feet into the ground. “You are great-grandson to the King who filled the wards with temples devoted to Three Sister?” She gives a shake of her head right away. “No, no. I don’t believe that. You’re joking with me. You’re mocking me for my love of the Sisters.”
The first hint of an actual smile creases Gabel’s lips.
“Y-You’re not mocking me?” Ellena asks, her face going straight. “You … You really are the descendent of a King …?”
“The prestige of the Wayward family only carr
ied us four and a half years on the throne before the Council of Elders decided that a King with his head full of Sisterly fantasies was not fit to govern a city that has long abandoned belief in Three Goddess. Dedimon the Heavy took my great-grandfather’s place before he’d even removed his things from the King’s chambers. Or so my father told me.”
“That can’t be true. Or not completely. There are many who still worship the Sisters.” Ellena’s last memory at the Wayward, a temple she used to frequent both for worship as well as greensmith lessons, is not a pleasant one; they all shunned her after news spread of her husband’s arrest and sentencing. “I still do,” she adds quietly.
“I know.” Gabel looks up into the sky. “I used to.”
“I know. Why did you stop?”
His face turns hard, much in the same way it did so long ago when she first asked him that very same question. Gabel Wayward, stern and cold, yet burning hot, brings his bright, keen eyes down to look upon Ellena’s face, then her neck … and then lower …
Ellena swallows, wondering what’s suddenly upon his mind. “If you are of the Sky Guard, then why are you not still in the sky?” she asks to change the subject, partly alarmed by his sudden shift in behavior, and partly finding her thighs squeezing together by the memory of that one heated night they shared.
Gabel still doesn’t acknowledge her questions, his eyes sliding down her much in the same way a pair of hands would, appraising her body like a juicy piece of meat in the market they’d just walked through. His tongue slips out, giving an absentminded lick to his lips. His nostrils flare, likely because an errant thought or two has flared in his mind as well.
“If you’re going to keep ogling me like a woman whose body you want to use for a meaningless fuck,” mutters Ellena, her eyes on fire with the spice of danger, “then you’d better have a good reason for doing it out here on a grassy knoll full of slummers.”
“I stopped worshipping the Goddesses … because I was bad,” he answers finally and suddenly, leaning forward to push his knuckles into the grass, turning onto all fours like a beast on the prowl.
