Hard For My Boss

by Daryl Banner

  “Link,” calls out the leader with black gunk about his eyes. “Food, glass, and money from the chambers. It’s ours.” And like a good boy, the one called Link grips his sword, puts on a menacing sort of face and takes off.

  Such a good boy a liar makes, she thinks with a scowl.

  The moment he’s gone, the other gang-boys start to laugh. “What a tool,” one says between guffaws.

  She’s been watching them for a while and can tell there’s something different about the one called Link. He isn’t like the others, he doesn’t belong. But he seems to want them to think he belongs. Is there a game being played here among these boys? Does she not see it?

  In the corner of the room, Kid observes a mother with her baby squeezed in arm. It touches her, the baby, mommy’s embrace … Kid’s a young enough age where she can almost remember her final wake, but it’s been long enough that she questions whether she’s recalling it at all, or just lying to herself. All babies in the world sleep until the age of two. Then they wake up for the last time in their lives, forever after staying awake, dreams never to find them again. Until they’re dead, maybe.

  “Did you see it?—the hilt of his sword?? Tell me you saw it,” a boy snickers to another. “It was all pink.”

  “Yeah,” replies the other, sneezing with laughter. “A pink handle, I saw it. Who paints a sword pink??”

  Another priest gets his jaw knocked sideways, for what, Kid doesn’t care anymore. The saddest thing is, none of the priests use their Legacies to defend themselves. So many abilities in this room, and no one even bothers to shield a face. Is that their pride, or their silly Three Goddess beliefs that stop them? What’s it matter, the girl wonders sourly. Death and hurts can’t be stopped by the palms of hands. Everyone’s gonna die just the same, no matter their Legacy. They die as pathetically. Die alone. Whether screaming, pleading, laughing or silent, everyone dies the same. She watches the priest beg, the sorry man he is. No hand can stop death.

  The scrawny Link returns, heaving with the weight of a sack over his shoulder. The sack is spotted in streaks of pink where Link’s hand clutches it. Strange.

  “I have it, Dran, all of it.”

  And the lean, sinewy one with the blackened eyes and greasy black hair, Dran by name, sings to the scared priests: “It’s been fun, but gotta run. Thanks for donating, so very.”

  In the way of the exit, a little girl stands clutching a doll, begging Link to help her. Apparently on their way in, one of them struck down her brother, who still writhes in silent agony on the ground. “Please,” she whimpers.

  The one called Dran is studying Link, the rest of the gang too, all of them waiting to see how their new recruit handles this obstacle. Even Kid finds herself on edge, invested, her interest revived. Her heart begs him to be strong, to not give in, to throw away his desire to win these fools over, to stand against them.

  Instead, Link rips the doll from the child and twists off the head—which takes more effort than he was expecting, clearly. He grunts in the effort before the head pops off with a sad little squeak. The girl cries out, but Link silences her by putting the pink hilt of his weapon into her cheek. This action moves a priest between them in some sad attempt at protecting the child, but Link is quicker and strikes him too, a blunt hit to the back. For a moment, horror flashes across Link’s face at the red he’s just drawn from the man’s backside. The priest attempts to rise for one pitiful second, then drops to the floor, unable, wailing in agony.

  The moment that follows stretches on and on. The little girl and her brother, both on the ground clutching at nothing, pain seizing the boy in so many places he doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands. The struck priest, he can’t even turn over to witness what else is going on, his eyes in a panic. The rest of the sanctuary holds tensely, watching, begging good riddance to their intruders who with such ease slipped in and took all the money and food they had, every paper and cent.

  Kid, the invisible bystander, the watcher, she just waits and waits with tired eyes, seeing all.

  The little Link puffs up, playing proud of the horrors he’s committed, though his face tells another story, eyes trembling, lip quivering with uncertainty. He faces the room and cries out, “If anyone else wants to talk back, talk now so I can show you what your insides look like!”

  No voice answers him, only silent, cold eyes.

  Link drops the mutilated doll into the girl’s tiny lap before stepping over her to make leave. The others follow, each as though hopping a mere crack in the pavement, paying no mind to the blood on the floor or the quiet, swallowed tears of the sanctuary. Dran trails behind, taking a last glimpse over his shoulder to admire the pretty victory, a greasy sort of smile tickling his lips.

  Kid doesn’t watch where they go, nor does she follow. Instead she observes the wounded of the sanctuary gather themselves, rising slowly off the floor, in pieces, emerging from dark corners of the hall and the stair and from beneath benches where they hid, not one of them saying a word for so long. The silence and shuffling of feet speaks enough.

  If there’s anything Kid hates worse than the constant disappointment, it’s a liar. She whispers his name bitterly. The wounded boy on the ground stirs at the sound of Kid’s whispering, searching for the voice, so Kid thinks the name instead: Link.

  Liar-boy Link … liar, liar Link …

  0001

  WICK

  For once, he is not alone.

  There is a boy sprawled out on the ground with the gold of sunlight in his hair and the blue-grey of sky in his piercing gaze. A lifetime of feeling alone, wiped out the instant Wick’s eyes fall on this boy with the beautiful face. For some reason, they don’t speak. Nothing to say, maybe. What the hell can be said to a boy who turns strong, clever, brave guys like Wick into a helpless, melted mess? Red, furious light dances across their faces. Fire, he realizes belatedly. Everything is on fire. His chest, his eyes, his knees … Knees that all his life held him up, crumbling in the presence of this boy. Blue-grey eyes that smolder, dissolving Wick’s every pinch of strength. He imagines them opening mouths to each other … How he might taste … His smell lingering on his clothes … You’ve gone and set everything on fire, Wick accuses the boy, a smile playing on his face. He knows the boy’s lips are warm, and it’s not because of the fire. For once, I am not alone. Wick reaches for the boy, and the boy reaches back. Fire hugs them like a swarm of yellow friends. The boys grow closer and closer and closer … yet never seem to touch.

  Then Wick opens his eyes, and it’s all gone. The fire, the boy, the touch that never happened. Gone.

  How cruel a dream can be.

  Wick hears breakfast sizzling in the kitchen before the aroma reaches him. With great reluctance, Wick abandons his attempt at squeezing himself back to sleep; the warm lips will wait for another night. When he pulls on a pair of pants, he finds the dream left him with one other considerate gift in his pants. Sighing, he gives an honest consideration to taking care of his distractingly peppy friend before heading downstairs, but judging by the dagger of sunlight striking through the window, there really isn’t enough time.

  Getting ready takes Wick exactly fourteen seconds. After thrusting on the only pair of clean socks he owns, he coaxes his feet into a pair of running shoes with red stripes that cut up the sides. Pushing a spray of hair under the hood of the same red sleeveless jacket he’s worn for years—and long since outgrown—he opts not to don a shirt underneath, as laundry hasn’t been done in half a week and the jacket fits snugly enough without one.

  He staggers out of the closet he’s called a room his whole life and makes a stop at the tiny bathroom he and his brothers and parents share, only to find the faucets make no water. “Come on,” he moans tiredly. “Just a spray. Just a trickle’s all I need.” With a sleepy, resigned sigh, he continues his short trek down the steep narrow stair to the den, stepping over a dune of dirty shirts that haven’t made it to the laundry and a half-dumped backpack.

  H
e takes a creaky seat at the island counter, the only thing separating what can be called den or kitchen in their tiny, crowded living space. His brother Lionis, who generally inhabits the den as his own room, has left something loud and crackling in the pan.

  “Cooking without water?” moans Wick, pulling on the short spikes for sideburns that play on his cheeks. “Hey, where’s mom?”

  Returning, Lionis doesn’t reply, pitching a dash of who-knows into the pan. Lionis looks like a starved version of Wick. Lionis’s short brown hair is combed forward and pressed flat to his forehead today. He has the blunt nose of their dad and is always flushed with mad craters of acne, masked only by wiry, overgrown stubble that runs in patches up his cheeks. His eyebrows are two blunt dabs of dark that seem in a permanent state of concentration.

  “Do you know where Link was last night? He wasn’t home when I …” Seeing the cold half-closed eyelids of his brother, Wick just gives up. He pushes palms into his eyes, trying to forget that beautiful boy in his dream.

  From behind he gets a sudden embrace from two tiny arms, mom’s citrusy perfume finding him before her face does. “Hey. Morning, mom. Water’s out again. Where’s Link?”

  “Upstairs.” She kisses him on the brow. “He stayed out all night working on a project, something for school.”

  “Sure.” Wick knows better; his little brother’s late night antics are always suspicious. He doesn’t like how Link’s changed, turning from the bright thinker he once was into this angsty stranger who keeps secrets and wears too much black—even his hair’s dyed black. He even insisted on taking the whole room upstairs when his older brother Halves moved out. But Wick’s no room to scorn others for secrets, considering his own.

  “Get enough sleep last night?” his mother whispers into an ear, and Wick nods irritably, shrugging her off.

  It’s the family secret. Everyone knows children wake for the last time at the age of two … so why at seventeen does Wick still sleep? Mom coddles him and makes a fuss like he’s still her baby because the only people left in the world who sleep are toddlers. But Wick is no toddler.

  “Breakfast,” says Lionis.

  “Not hungry,” says Wick, disinterring his backpack from clothes and clutter on the sofa and checking it for his proper books before slinging it over a shoulder.

  Mom calls at him when he reaches the front door. “You really should eat, sweetie.”

  “There’s lots of things one should do, and doesn’t,” says Wick, feeling smart, “and things we shouldn’t do, but clearly do.”

  Like sleeping. Like dreaming.

  He doesn’t wait up for Link. The air outside is thick and smelly as his mood, dust settling in the morning air as his shoes slap against damp pavement on his way to the station. He draws his hood, squeezes it to shield most of his face as he boards the overcrowded nine-two, which takes him halfway through his home ward with only three midway stops. On the fourth, he hops off the train and walks the long nine and a half blocks to school.

  Today’s lesson does nothing to lift his mood.

  Professor Frey’s going on about Legacies and Kings, her gritty voice marveling how vital it is to express oneself without fear. She gushes on and on about the importance of being free, of not having to hide one’s Legacy … so why are Wick’s parents so adamant that he hide his at all costs? Why must he keep secret that his unique, special power is the unheard-of ability to sleep?

  “Dream,” Professor Frey urges her students, smiling wanly, “and dream big. For the King only cries once.”

  Wick rolls his eyes at that. Dream … Hah. If only she knew how deceiving a simple dream can be. Wick dreamed once he had the Legacy of flight, found himself flying to the Lifted City, straight to Cloud Tower and meeting the Banshee King face to face. In the dream, he plucked out Greymyn’s tongue, removing his death-cry once and for all. Yeah, the King only cries once, but after Wick’s through with him, he’ll hardly be able to cough.

  But it was just a dream. These people who don’t sleep … his classmates, his brothers, his mom, his dad, Professor Frey … they only consider the joy of dreaming.

  They fail to consider the agony of waking up.

  “Most of you are seventeen. For those of you who haven’t taken it early, your Legacy Exams are impending. A good word. Gets to the point, I think: impending. Inevitable, I like that one too.” She pops the back of a boy’s head with her hand, putting a stop to a side conversation he was having. “Each of you may have a unique Legacy—a little gift from the Sisters … a talent, a special ability, a power, whatever you’d so love to call it—but in honor of some of your impending Legacy Exams—there’s that word again—I’d like to focus on what makes us alike, not what makes us different. Tell me.” She stops in front of a girl’s desk, interrupting the girl’s important business of picking her nails. “What are the three classes of Legacy?”

  Hands shoot in the air, but Professor Frey ignores them all, staring needles into the girl, who has frozen in place. After too long a moment, the girl finally offers an answer. “M-Mentalist.”

  “Mentalist, yes, there’s one,” she agrees dryly, “but allow me to share a few fun factoids, as I know not all of you are as bright as a Lifted City sunrise. The majority of Legacies are, in fact, Mentalist. If you conduct regular practices of your Legacy for your Exam, I suggest quiet areas. Get into your own head. Psychist. That’s another word for a Mentalist who channels others’ minds. Could also include sensory abilities, Sensors … mathematical abilities … and so forth. On a scale of influence from 0 to 10, we place them at about a 1. And the second class of—If I have to pop you on your head again, you won’t have a head.” The boy rights himself, his private, hushed conversation brought to a shut-up.

  “The second class’s a Morph,” offers another boy.

  Professor Frey’s stony gaze lingers on the little whisperer a while longer, daring him to speak again before moving on. “Didn’t ask for it just yet, but well done. Morph. Please, someone put me out of my misery and tell us what the hell a Morph is.”

  “It’s someone whose power affects the body,” the same boy finishes quickly.

  Frey leans on a desk, crossing her legs and looking to the ceiling as if for help. “Must I beg for an example?”

  Another girl, thin-faced and squeaky of voice, gives it. “My dad and his brother both can make their skin rough at will. My dad’s can feel like a stony texture, my uncle’s, sort of reptilian, like snakeskin.”

  “I don’t like snakes. Terrible examples, but they’ll do. On our scale of influence, Morphs are about a 2.” The professor turns about, engaging a tall, wiry boy in the back who hardly ever speaks. “And the third class?”

  “Elementalist,” he mutters, voice deep.

  “And they affect …?”

  “Things … Things outside the body. Elements.”

  Sucking her tongue, Professor Frey nods once. “We have a few Elementalists among us, don’t we? Even someone who can bend paper. You ought to practice origami, dear, don’t miss your obvious calling.” A few classmates chuckle, and the one she refers to blushes and twirls a pencil in his hand. “On our scale, Elementalists come at about a 3.” She arrives back at her desk, facing the room. “Legacies grow as you mature and gain life experience. It’s a fact, not a myth, not a sugary fantasy your mommy and daddy tell you. It’s fact. We grow and we learn and we evolve. Many of you will regret taking your Legacy Exam so early; you might discover you underestimated your ability … and I consider that a great offense in my class.” She leans forward, her eyes carving into the front row of students. “Never underestimate your Legacy. Not ever.” She winks at no one in particular, gives a lift of her chin. “No two of you are identical, and neither your Legacies. Twenty people can open the same door, but will open it twenty different ways. Remind us of the special class of Legacy.”

  No one answers. Wick sighs, irritated by the fact that not only is his class full of idiots, but he’s surrounded on all sides today. Every d
esk around him, occupied by an idiot. He’s always hated crowding; it makes him so edgy, nearly sick in the head. Social anxiety, his mom calls it.

  Wick finally says, “Empath,” just to kill the silence.

  To that, Professor Frey smiles approvingly. “Yes,” she agrees. “Empath. It’s a special class, as it incorporates the transfer of something from one person to another, and its influence can range anywhere from a 1 to a 3, depending on the person. For example, a person who can plant fears in others—or take them away … In fact, the thirty-seventh King had such a Legacy: King Rainly Prime. They named him the Scare King. But to escape fear is to feed it. Once the people learned that, well, so long to him. He took the throne after infamous King Chole, the Dust King.”

  Pudgy-nose speaks again. “How’s Rainly called an Empath and not a Psychist? Or Mentalist? Didn’t he push fear into others?”

  “Good point. It’s a matter of perception. One can go their whole lives misunderstanding their own power. Consider our current King. The Banshee King, called so for his cry that brings death to any who hear it. Who knew that as a kid, his yapping would develop into the life-rending weapon it is today?” She stops by the girl’s desk, peers over the brim of her bony glasses. “Dream big, child, for the King—” Only cries once, Wick finishes bitterly.

  “Are there even higher classes?” asks a kid right next to Wick, his voice too loud. “What if someone’s Legacy is over a 3? What if it rates at a 9 or 10 on the scale? … or even higher?”

  Professor Frey shrugs lightly. “Outlier.”

  “What?”

  “Outlier. They’re called Outlier, and those types, I’m afraid, cause proud Kings to go cross-eyed and Marshals to shiver, and that’s all we’ll say about that.” Abruptly, Professor Frey flips open the book on her long knobby desk, says, “Chapter 8. Open your books and let’s discuss the history of our first ten Kings, and how their Legacy Exams won them a damn throne.”

  Wick closes his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. Or maybe it’s last night’s dream forcing its way into his terrible day … A very welcome distraction it’d be.