On second thought, there was also a chance Liam would be there.
Legacy dismissed the dissonance as soon as it cropped into her frontal lobe. This was her preferred method of coping. Denial.
Unit #4 shuddered with an adamant knock.
Damnit.
How could Liam have not yet gotten the hint? She ignored his every call, every message, every visit. It wasn’t going to happen. But Compatible Companion Selection Services had bound the pair together almost three years ago, and some people placed credence in the judgment of the strange difference engines which tallied traits and probabilities as if she and he and everyone were just an algorithm.
She didn’t have to be with him. But she couldn’t be with anybody else. And he’d accepted that she wanted to wait, at first, and then, that she was focusing on her career, at second, and then, that she was just busy, at third, but his patience was growing threadbare now.
Cook was right. I’m going to have to tell him sooner or later. Just face him. Bluntly. I suppose he trusts all those stupid tests they had us take more than he trusts the woman they concern. I suppose he thinks it’s better to be with someone, anyone, than just alone, but I—
“Come in!” Mr. and Mrs. Legacy bellowed in synch, pulling their daughter from her bitter carousel of thought.
We can’t just invite him in—
The door was flung wide and Dax Ghrenadel came striding through the den-study with all the familiarity of a brother rather than a friend. Having grown up three flights above the Legacy unit, the pair had been inseparable for the past ten years.
“Hello, Mr. Legacy; hello, Mrs. Legacy,” Dax called to them, nimbly ascending the ladder to Legacy’s room as if it were a mere extension of himself. Of course, she could’ve been in a state of undress, but Dax . . . Dax didn’t think of her like that. “Hey, Leg,” he greeted, clapping her over the shoulder. He was, as always, wearing his rebreather. The rest of his outfit was composed of sensible boots, pin-striped, high-rise slacks, and a collared shirt partially unbuttoned and pulled loose to combat the heat. In turn, he also scrutinized her garb. “You look . . . odd.”
“I look nice,” Legacy corrected him.
“Oh, yes, that’s the word.” Although his face was hidden, his eyes took on a gleam, as if he was smiling. “So, I take it you’ll be attending the thing then, yeah?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to, but did you hear, they’re giving a—”
“How’s that new gauge working out for you, son?” Mr. Legacy called from the other room. He’d been the one to engineer Dax’s current mask.
“Not a problem one with it, Mr. Legacy, thank you,” Dax answered.
The price of medical gear was simply astronomical in Icarus. It was as if the duke was merely willing the ill to go on and die and be done with it. But Mr. Legacy was a quick study at imitation, so his entire market was knock-offs for poor people. His products were ironically like the clamp that had torn his arm from its socket twenty years ago: a small margin of risk was involved. But the Ghrenadel family hadn’t been able to afford the standard gear, like many others, and so Mr. Legacy had been their outfitter for years. He’d replaced the rebreather’s oxygen gauge a few times now.
“Anyway,” Legacy went on, “I’m going to try to get—”
“And how’s work?” Mrs. Legacy chirped through the wall. Legacy rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Really interesting, actually!” Dax called back. “We’ve got a case with two different companions—I mean, completely identical scores—and no one knows what to do about it! What are the odds, right!”
“Oh, what a lucky girl!”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mr. Legacy replied.
Mrs. Legacy laughed. “It’s just— It’s nice to— I mean—” Legacy glanced at Dax and found him looking back at her. The corners of his eyes crinkled mischievously. “Nothing, dear,” Mrs. Legacy amended. “That sounds simply terrible, the more I think about it.”
“I suppose I should be getting ready, too,” Dax said, his eyes still connected to hers. “I’ll see you there, Leg?”
Legacy smiled weakly. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”
She was sure it was her imagination that his hand seemed to linger on her shoulder as he pulled away, the fingers sliding for a moment and then gone. He climbed back down the ladder, threw the front door open, and collided with Liam Wilco.
“Hey, come on, man!” Liam’s bushy, auburn eyebrows settled low over his slate gray eyes and his mouth pulled straight and grim. “Crowded world, can’t be running around like—” His eyes drifted to Legacy and fixed there. “Exa! I’ve been trying to find you,” he told her in a strangely authoritarian tone, more like a stern father than a potential lover. “You’re always out on the scaffolds.”
Dax’s eyes shifted between the two for only a moment, and then he put his hand on Liam’s shoulder, patted it, and stepped to the side. “Sorry, mate,” he said, taking his exit. He didn’t say goodbye to Legacy, only looked at her from over Liam’s shoulder for a glimmer of a second, then waved and closed the door behind him.
“I—I could have been getting dressed, you know,” Legacy informed her suitor starchily.
But Liam didn’t heed the tone. He instead offered the girl a bemused smile. “With Ghrenadel here?”
Legacy’s cheeks darkened.
“I’m sorry, regardless, to come to your home unannounced,” Liam said. “I just haven’t been able to get in touch with you. I wanted to know if you’d—well.” He hesitated, seeming to reconsider the positioning of this moment. With him still on the ground floor, and Legacy peering down at him from above, and her parents, unacknowledged, listening silently, watching . . . it was just awkward. Still, he pulled the tweed cap from off his head and crushed it between his sizable fists, suddenly seeming oddly small for a man of such width and height. “I wanted to know if you’d consider accompanying me.”
“I . . .”
Damnit, this is exactly what I was afraid of. Legacy tried to keep her face neutral, though she was sure notes of disappointment and sympathy were skating across it.
“I . . . wasn’t really planning to . . . go.”
“Not planning to go?” he asked incredulously. “Aren’t you getting . . . ready for it?” He squinted up at her.
“Well—yes—technically,” Legacy stammered. She could almost feel her parents’ nervousness through the wall. For some reason, they liked this guy. They said he reminded them of her, which was ridiculous, and anyway, they also liked Dax, but . . . they knew that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t happen. “But I wasn’t going to dance or anything. I— There’s going to be an opportunity to speak with the duke, you know,” she explained, blush deepening on her cheeks. She felt suddenly composed of glass. Not fragile, just . . . transparent. “And I had a question for him.”
“I’m sure you’ll have time for at least one dance,” Liam disagreed.
“I’ll probably have to wait in line for clearance most of the night!”
“But then, after that,” Liam said. “After that, you’ll be all dressed up at the Taliko Center, and . . . it would be the perfect opportunity for a dance.”
Legacy met his searching eyes and wilted. “Yeah, that’s true,” she admitted.
“Why don’t you just save me a dance?” he asked, placing his dented cap back onto his head.
Legacy bit her lower lip, considered, and honestly couldn’t see the harm in one simple dance. “Sure,” she allowed. “That’d be . . . fine.”
Liam beamed. “All right! It’s a date, then! I’ll see you there!”
Her suitor let himself out, and Legacy expelled a deep sigh. She collapsed onto her tiny bed and plunged her fingers into her hair, massaging her scalp. The sigh evolved into a groan of total misery.
“Everything all right, Ex?” her mother ventured.
Legacy froze. She’d completely forgotten that she wasn’t alone. After all, she certainly felt it. �
��Yeah,” she lied, coming to a stand and dusting her slacks, walking to her parents’ room.
Since she’d last laid eyes on them, they’d both dappered up in preparation for the evening ahead. Mrs. Legacy was in her corset now, and wore a handkerchief skirt in order to both combat the heat and appear feminine (as well as to avoid the whole thing of being fifty-three and showing a shade too much ass). Mr. Legacy had donned a frayed top hat and matching dinner jacket, however moth eaten and one-sleeved it may have been. All his attire was one-sleeved, due to the sparks which would occasionally spurt from his robotic arm.
Chapter Two
Taliko Center was lit from the zenith of every angle, so that it appeared almost like a constellation to its several thousand guests, some harbored within the sweeping ballroom, and others spilling out into the courtyard, which was nonetheless dazzling beneath its own canopy of jeweled fixtures. City-operated automata coasted to and fro, politely extending plates of fizzing fermented power pops to anyone within a two-foot radius. Unlike Cook’s model, these were porcelain, ball jointed figurines, and would be uncanny in their human-like appearance if not for the gleam of the lights on their eerily perfect faces.
The event was only open to individuals of the age twenty and up, so this was Legacy’s first ever ball. She learned, upon arriving, that she—and her parents—were severely underdressed. Most patrons were garbed in fantastical ball gowns and keen tuxedos, all fashioned of materials and patterns that Legacy had not even ever seen. Furs, even! Where could anyone find fur? It seemed that the majority of common folk in Icarus simply chose to stay at home on these nights, whereas the aristocrats of other cities flocked in droves to humiliate those citizens who dared show their faces at such a refined celebration.
The Legacy family waited to have their citizen registration verified for almost three hours before they could finally join the ball. The entire time, Legacy peered about in search of either Dax or the duke, but saw no sign of either. The only good news was that she’d also not spotted Liam.
Upon gaining entrance to the courtyard, Legacy immediately went to join another line which circled the exterior of the damn event all over again, finally ending in a lavish tent full of security advisors around a table. This checkpoint was intended to screen the residents of the duchy who wished to submit a single question to its duke, Malthus Taliko. The security staff had to make sure that Duke Taliko stayed safe, as well as that the questions were relevant and respectful, and that the answers were prepped beforehand. After all, no one could ever catch the duke unawares.
Duke Taliko was even more reclusive than the Widow Coldermolly; at least she occasionally hobbled her way into the square in order to have her dog’s joints oiled. The duke, on the other hand, stayed sequestered the majority of the year on his family archipelagos, which were satellite to Icarus and otherwise no part of it. Legacy supposed that perhaps there was some inlet from the actual city to this doubtlessly spacious, luxuriant little castle in the sky, but if there was, it was kept secret from the citizenry and guarded fiercely from all passage.
When the duke did make some kind of public appearance, usually to smooth out a wrinkle in public opinion and then disappear again, he was always the same. His deep set eyes were hollow and unsympathetic. His mouth often fashioned itself into a joyless, uncomfortable smile. He was a slender, sagging man who somehow reminded Legacy of the slums in which she was raised. Like them, he seemed stacked too high, sideways, and on the verge of collapse.
The media community of Icarus, however, had no meaningful criticism of Duke Taliko to offer. Ever. Legacy often seriously wondered if there was a genuine watchdog among the whole bunch, or if the entire reporting crew was not only on the budget of the duke himself, but pressed firmly beneath his grinding thumb.
Liam worked with the local radio station as a personal assistant. He didn’t seem to recognize the manufactured quality of City of Icarus News-3, and Legacy wasn’t sure, exactly, why she could. But she could. She knew when she was being lied to.
Finally, Legacy reached the front of the line, and found herself staring down at a table of scrutinizing, judgmental suck-ups. She could read it all over their faces. Their pinched lips. Their upturned snouts. She almost preferred the smooth, alien visage of the automata servants, but then, those were never employed for jobs which required a certain quality of discrimination.
“Name, please,” the first of them—a hawk-nosed man with black hair—stated for the record. The record was a large combination device on their table. It looked like a minuscule copper horn welded to a gold tablet over which were suspended a matching series of needles, which swept back and forth, translating.
“My name is Exa. Exa Legacy. The metalsmith,” she said.
“All right,” the hawk-nosed gent went on. He rifled through a database and left an X in a margin. “And what’s your question, love?”
“I would like to hear the duke explain the logic behind the Compatible Companion Law.”
The hawk-nosed gent smirked, as if this question was simply asked too often to be taken seriously anymore. Then again, if a question is asked often enough, does that not lend it all the more credence?
“Why, that’s a fine question, ma’am,” the hawk-nosed gent placated Legacy. “Absolutely fine. All right, then, here’s your number and we’ve got your name.” The man handed Legacy a small, brass numeral 37. “Now, when your name is called, which should be 37th in the line, just state your question then, all right? You’ll want to mind the time. The question and answer session begins at midnight in the concert hall, so you listen for those gongs. It’s in—” He glanced at the distant moon of the clock tower in Taliko Square. “—a little more than half an hour, now. So you just watch the time, then. The duke’d be happy to hear this one, I think. Good question, Miss Exa. Good question. Stand still one moment, please.”
Legacy paused, and the hawk-nosed man looked directly at her. A fraction of his eyeball flashed and then returned to normal again. She shuddered and took the plated #37, though felt hollow and bitter in doing so. She knew this was all just for show. She knew this was just a pat on the head. Good little citizen. Go on then. Stand still while we file your face away in case we need to hunt you later.
Legacy was spat back into the unfamiliar courtyard with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Before her sprawled a labyrinth of laughing, unfamiliar faces, each possessing goblets of drink, each living in another world entirely.
“Fancy a fermented power pop?” a petite, blonde-haired automaton offered. Someone must have smashed into her; there was a spider web fracture around her right eye, and a fingernail-sized sliver of glass had chipped away to reveal the machinery inside. Legacy was glad the girl couldn’t really see her reaction as she cringed away from the churning cogs beneath the porcelain veneer.
“No, thank you,” she said, stepping backward into the jostling current of bodies.
Again, Legacy scanned the crowd for Dax, the duke, or even Liam, but found no familiar face in the sea of well-bred strangers. Even her parents had been swallowed up. Oddly, a moment had finally come upon her wherein she could be grateful for Liam Wilco, but there was no one. Nothing but corsets and curls and pretty girls shrilling, “Oh, that’s a fairy tale! That is not where trees come from!”
Legacy voyaged deeper into the pit, but only felt more lost as the ballroom walls rose around her, as she neared its center. Party-goers loomed, blowing their noisemakers, blocking exits she gladly would have taken, and the turn-key band chose this opportune moment to bang its pianos and saw away at its violins. So strange were these new walls, made of indifferent individuals rather than stone, so impossible to open were these doors, and Legacy felt a mite dizzy, might puke, and the flags spinning, and the chandelier spinning, and everything, everything . . . .
Legacy dove for the nearest opening in the hedge of silhouettes, gulping for breath. She vaguely registered stumbling over a velvet rope, the sweet coolness of a wall on her cheek, and then there was nothing
but spiraling stairwell trailing ever upward, and she was graciously, thankfully alone, swallowed amid shadow, the madness only a vibration down below. She could even hear the echo of her breath, and she stumbled still further, until she was quite sure that the carnivorous crowd was far away, and she alone. There was naught but the beat of her calming heart here.
“Hello.”
Legacy whirled and almost shrieked, but came up short. It was no thief, no murderer, but . . . a boy. A man? He was tall and slender, that was clear. He spoke in a baritone. Not much else could be discerned in the dark. Not much, save a spill of straight flaxen hair, and a diamond of alabaster skin slowly sharpening as her pupils adjusted.
“Who is there?” Legacy demanded, squinting.
The figure chuckled and the face tilted downward. “My name is Kaizen. You may have heard of me?”
Kaizen, Kaizen, Kaizen . . . That does sound familiar. Where have I heard that name before?
“I’m . . . Legacy, the metalsmith,” she said, her eyes adapting to the shade. The face tilted to peer at her again. Contour came into being. The shifting specter of eyes. Cheekbones. “Exa Legacy.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Legacy,” Kaizen replied. His voice was rich and pleasant, like chocolate, like fumes of incense, and it made Legacy almost sleepy to hear. “How did you . . . find me?” The face tilted down again.
She stepped closer. He was tall, but it didn’t matter. She could ascend one step and be level with his eyes. His face had developed, like a photograph, and he was beautiful. He was like sculpture, like art: the kind of thing you wanted to run your fingers across, if only to know it better. Aquiline nose. Razor cheekbones. A mouth as pouty as her own. The hair was longer than hers, too, and as fine as a sheet of gold. His clothes were dark, his body obscure, but she could see the angles of broad shoulders and the vague outline of a top hat.
LEGACY RISING Page 2
