by Moira Crone
For a few minutes, I managed to forget what was wrong. For a moment, I was awake, and in daylight, not in the bruise-brown world. I made a few remarks, a few plans. We had to leave the house, I knew that. We had to let Vee and Marilee leave. WELLFI could be coming soon, to deliver the new pendant, they would start looking for Lazarus, put out an alert.
“Where are you going?” I asked, sitting up. I’d forgotten. Or wasn’t sure Ariel had told me.
“Cuba,” he said. “We have our brothers—right? Maybe? You should come. Remember what I was telling you? Remember anything? Did you believe any of it?” He rubbed his bare neck, where the Nyet collar had stained it.
I did, or I half-did. But I said, “I have to see Lydia. I am still going to be Treated.”
I was afraid I was going to be Treated. I was afraid of becoming what Lazarus was, what Gepetto was, what any of them were, except Lydia, I thought. I had promised her—I had to honor something.
“But your Trust was transferred to Vee’s people, didn’t you—” Ariel said.
“He told me he’d put it back,” I said.
“How do you know he did what he was saying he was going to do? You think he was in his right mind?”
*
Entering the office was almost unbearable: how everything closed down around me, how I could hardly hear Ariel now, nor make sense of his remarks. I was haunted by the things I had done in our last encounter. How I had shouted Lazarus down, for what, for changing, for exactly what I myself had started to do. I could not deny it. Although now I had had enough of these changes. Being Treated was the only change that made sense. I was going on. It had to be one way or another. I would be an Heir, if it could be. I wouldn’t make the mess of it at the end that Lazarus had made.
I had wanted to kill him.
Ariel rushed to the chair in front of the screen, opened the files, got to the accounts. He turned to me. I was standing in the middle of the room, remembering the scene of the crime. “Look, he took it out of the funds for Chef Menteur. He put it back to you. He’s not the sponsor anymore.”
“Who is?” I asked, and inside, I felt both at once—relief and terrible guilt and trepidation. It occurred to me my guardian had done this last thing before he killed himself. That afternoon. Listened to my harangue, taken it to heart. This made me very sad. Made me want to give the Trust away. Made me want to do what he’d wanted to do.
“Greenmore. Your queen.” Ariel looked at me smiling.
I asked, “Why do you call her my Queen?”
There was a wand of light in the room from the top of the jalousie blinds, and in it dust was floating and tiny feathers, very beautiful and silvery. I was staring at it, this beam, it seemed as if it would help me somehow. Ariel said, “I’m not mad at you. You know, it could all be a story, about the Salamanders? I don’t know what I believe, really. I just can’t follow their way.” Ariel’s long, handsome face pressed into the streak of sun and his long lashes and his brown eyes were illuminated by a bluish white, almost a film, coating them. “You think I am desperate because I have less than enough Trust, I’m grabbing at straws, don’t you?”
I was the one who was grasping at straws, I knew.
I looked away from the screen, and away from the sun, as if I could find the answer somewhere in the room, but the room was dark. Only sadness was there, no information, no instigation to make a plan, to form an intention. I had been so confused when I was here, that last argument. I’d told him I hated him. But I hated my own confusion the most. I wished I could tell Lazarus that. Once, I had known what I wanted. To be with Lydia, and before that, forever, to be an Heir, what Lazarus told me to want. That wasn’t so long ago. To be with Lydia, in Re-New Orleans. Or in Snow White, or some other deathless urb. “I don’t know,” I managed. “I don’t know.”
“Well, get your things, you and I are going to Port Gramercy. Vee and Marilee have to leave too. We all have to leave together.”
“Why are you going to Port Gram?”
“Finding a freighter that will take me to Cuba,” he said, blinking once. Then he waited a minute, he pursed his full lips. He was concerned for me. “And you—?” Ariel asked. “And you? You are going to the arraignment, remember, for Serio? Testifying? And if he gets off, we can give him his boat back. We have to leave Lazarus’s boat here, we can’t let them think he left, can’t let them think he was off somewhere—we will all be brought in a dragnet. He killed himself. It is no crime. We can’t be blamed for it. He had a right. He lived what, two hundred and some years? He’d had enough. You read the letter.” He paused. “You know it is nothing you said. You know, right?”
I didn’t.
He took my shoulders, demanded my gaze. “Look, you read the letter. Come on. Come on.”
I nodded and followed him.
We came out of the office and saw bags in the hall. Vee and Marilee were there, ready to leave. Ariel told them, “Go upstairs, and mess up a few rooms—toss the kitchen, the office. The story is you were both at the Ginger Sim. The story is Lazarus was alone.” Vee nodded. “Do you have something long, metal, a crow bar?”
Vee thought for a minute. “There is one of the poles from the swing set,” he said. “We struck it down.”
“Is it rusty? Does it still have strength?”
“I think it will do,” Vee said.
“Then help me get it to the boat.” Then he turned to me. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Didn’t you read Lazarus’s letter?”
I nodded.
“Well, then, we have to move. Move.”
*
The time had come for the last element of the scheme: leaving the Home, abandoning it.
We left Lazarus’s office a complete mess, everything still there, sans the testimony, the rope and the body. We also went through rooms upstairs, at Ariel’s insistence, throwing open drawers, breaking dishes and keepsakes in Vee’s and Marilee’s private quarters.
I took the testimony. His story, that he left for us. Ariel instructed me to keep reading it. According to his directions, we walked out and left the doors open, and the old brick perimeter, and the fancy iron gate, we also left ajar. We climbed up and over the newer floodwall to where the boats were tied to the outside rebar steps. We carried our few possessions with us, plus tins of Ariel’s for dinner in the evening and meals the next day, and more, on the open Sea of Pontchartrain. Ariel got on Vee’s and Marilee’s craft. I was by myself, piloting Serio’s. Ariel had the ashes of the prodermis in the several handsome jars that had once held the whole peaches. He was planning on dropping these into the deepest part of the Sea.
He told Vee and Marilee to take grappling hooks and hold on tight, keeping the side of our boats close to the cinderblock floodwall.
He called out to me to start the motor on Serio’s boat and sail away. I managed, and steered out from the Home, then I cut the motor after I was about one hundred feet distant.
From there I saw Vee and Marilee holding tight to the ropes that were attached to the grappling hooks. Then I saw Ariel raise the rusted post from the swing set over the heads of Vee and Marilee, as if he was going to hit them, knock them out. For a moment, I thought I’d read everything wrong, and Ariel was completely insane.
But then Ariel did a very sad and clever thing.
While Marilee and Vee held the cords attached to the grappling hooks tight, keeping the boat close, Ariel had the leverage to attack the gates, with the steel pipe, and pry them open from the outside. When he got them apart, the canal waters flowed in, slowly at first, then with more force. In a few minutes, the water opened them wide. The canal rushed in. The Home took in seven feet of water. All this, while we motored away.
I was not able to see it, actually, because I was too far away, but I saw it anyway, in my heart, inside. I saw water quickly moving in and overtaking the entire Foundling House—play yard, main house, dormitories. Brown-blue water, claiming everything—the tables in the dining hall, the wooden counters in the kitchen, the o
ld black stove, the carpets and books and hundred files of lost children in Lazarus’s office, the bench with the green cushions I’d sat on the first time he called me. Ariel hadn’t explained beforehand that he was destroying the entire Home—perhaps because he didn’t want anyone to protest, to complain, he didn’t have time for any more emotion. But the pried-open gate—sign of forced entry, and the flooding—would probably convince WELLFI investigators of malfeasance, of brigands who’d come in, and inadvertently caused a death. Should they ever inquire as to what happened to the person, the Heir, Lazarus de Gold, the answer would be that he was the victim of a break-in and the flood that followed.
When Ariel told them to let go, to haul in the hooks, they did so. Vee went to his helm, and steered his boat out into the open water. I saw a glimpse of Vee’s jaw thrust forward, as they passed me. His expression was hardened, ready for the rest of the journey. Steeling himself. Saying goodbye. I fell in behind, steering Serio’s tub, for they knew the way.
Their house was gone, their past was gone, his daughter was gone. There was only the future. Marilee was beside him, her face also unmoving.
It occurred to me how WELLFI would cover this story, how they would say this old decrepit, shameful Foundling House beset by robbers was a very good example of why Heirs should not live in hazardous, water-logged islands where Outliars were prevalent, an excellent example of the terrible risks of living outside the U.A. proper, where things like this happen, the risks of running a house full of abandoned children from who-knows-where at the edge of the Heir world. Proof no one should attempt to help the doomed, the lower strats. Maybe one of the ingrates had done it. Proof they should be left to their own ends.
At a certain point, when we turned into the Carrollton Trench, and out of the city, I felt a stabbing pain in my heart. It was all gone. I had nothing, no home, no father. I had my Trust, my future, and all this was supposed to be Prologue, and not matter. But I couldn’t help it. It was all that mattered: what I had lost, not what I would get.
About halfway to the Sea of Pontchartrain, Vee’s boat slowed so I could catch up. When I was beside him, he said Ariel was getting on—they were going to have to veer away now, not go North to Port Gramercy, but further east, to Pond, which was the port closest to the new Chef Menteur lands.
Ariel swung the grappling hook over the rail of the deck of Serio’s boat and then brought our two boats so close together he could climb from one to the other. I appreciated how Ariel could swing around like a monkey, climb aboard like a pirate, cling to legends, be certain he was going to get his due some day.
He would get his real life, the one he might believe in. I didn’t know what I believed, not yet. I gave him Mo Lion’s strange letter, let him read it while I held the wheel. I asked him what thought.
“Good, all good,” he said. “See, there are believers out there. These brothers of ours must exist.”
I told him I didn’t know what I believed.
“You will. One day it will just be clear,” he said. He put his arm around me, as the sun started to blaze pink and orange, its last dazzling net thrown wide, before it sank into the Sea of Pontchartrain.
XII
10:55 AM October 21, 2121
Port Gramercy Enclave Civic Complex
Northeast Gulf De-Accessioned Territory, U.A. Protectorate
It was shocking to see what they had done to Serio. His wrists were bound with wide black metal bands, and from these, a tongue of leather led down to his ankles, which were also shackled. He was marching out of the courtroom with the other prisoners when I first caught sight of him. The bailiff had told us to stand, because the judge—a thick Port Gramercy matron, with a slight lisp—had been called out of the court and was coming back in.
I had been in the place for an hour. It didn’t have paneling and vaulted ceilings like courtrooms in the flats I’d seen—it was lowceilinged, humble, with gaudy mustard colored walls, that seemed to press in upon all the Port Gramercians who packed the place and were watching the proceedings with uneasy attention.
Ariel and I had gotten in the night before. We tied up Serio’s boat at an old abandoned fishing pier about half a mile from Port Gramercy Docks. He’d set off early in the morning to find a freighter to take him to Cuba. I envied his resolve.
He’d told me he’d join me here, but he hadn’t shown yet.
*
The Judge returned to the bench—it was a table, but they called it a bench. Her curly white hair was held back by two clips. A small box-like hat was perched on the back of her head, which other clips seemed to secure. She wore a judicial smock, in an ugly dark green. Behind her was the round FREE WHEEL insignia, very elaborately drawn, the naked figures copulating at the bottom, and the infant at twelve o’clock, the old, bent man with a cane at nine, and youths opposite. It was the largest one I had ever seen, gaudy, polychrome. When everybody was settled again, Serio took his place. And I couldn’t see him anymore over the heads in front of me.
I sat there, in the darkness that had been surrounding me for days and days. Then, something started to lap at my heels, follow me in my deepest thoughts, demand attention. For the first time, I saw the edges of it, bright, and wondrous.
Then it grew, and came back and grew more, and then I heard the question:
How would you have lived differently if you knew, you really knew what Lazarus would do in the end? How he would negate his life? Now that you know how he turned out? Now that you know what you know, what would you do? Then my demons came to me—their indigo, their fists. They showed me Lazarus’s body swinging, his pitiful orange-pink toes. How could he choose that? Then angels asked, what could I choose now?
“Stand. I call out the names and you stand,” the judge said and picked up a long piece of paper. “Aubert, Babineaux, Bascomb, Costello, Cox, Fabio, Gagin, Gert…”
The entire group had been brought in for drunk and disorderly conduct. A strange assortment of every color and shape. She gave them all a lecture about how, every year after the Cycle Fest “we have to crack down—”
Ariel suddenly slipped in next to me and whispered: “She’s just behind us. Did you see her?”
I hadn’t. When I turned, a shiver went through me. Her hair was up and seemed lighter somehow. Perhaps it was the sun on her through the low window.
“Look at you, what a puppy,” he said.
“What?”
“You should see your face—” he grinned.
*
The public drunkenness crowd had been chastised and given suspended sentences after a very long speech full of Free Wheel Philosophy about the “Golden Mean,” and the cliché that there is “for everything, a season.” And then, another recess.
I followed her out into the crowded vestibule. Why wouldn’t she turn and notice me? She had pulled her hair back tightly. She was trying conceal her beauty, and this upset me. I took it personally. I thought the same of the high-necked shirt with its folds and stitching that obscured the line of her figure. In front of me, as I tried to get to her, I felt my sadness over Lazarus like a broad and thick impenetrable blue, a dense pool. But somehow, on the sides of that indigo, bright flashes, the closer I got to her, and I heard a new question.
I touched her shoulder. She turned around. The miracle of her gorgeous, open face.
“You’re alive! They lied!” She stopped, took me in, started again. “Careful. My brother-in-law is around. Or one of his crowd. They follow me everywhere.” She put her sturdy fingers in the pocket of the apron she had around her waist and came out with a folded piece of paper.
“Lazarus is dead,” I said in a whisper—Ariel had said we should tell no one, WELLFI might eventually come around and ask questions. But instinctively, I knew I could tell her. I had to. She had to understand how I was, how I was free.
“I thought they couldn’t? Dead?”
I shook my head. She glanced into the crowd, saw something, or someone following, mouthed the expression, see me, bye bye,
and pointed to the folded paper, which she’d given me, then to the corner of her eye. When she turned, all light went out.
*
“PORT GRAMERCY COURT OF FREE WHEEL JUSTICE IS IN SESSION,” the bailiff shouted. The crowd was larger than ever, now. We could hardly squeeze back in our seats. Not far in front of me was Domino’s wide head, his short neck. He was in a different costume, a jacket with epaulets.
“Don’t you need to get to the pier?” I asked Ariel after we sat down, for he was obviously uncomfortable in his tiny space at the very end of that pew.
“Look, shut up, you need me, I got there early. I’m set. Have a berth. S’great. Madder Rose, sails after the hurricane warning is lifted—” he said.
“Shhhh,” said someone behind us.
“Serio de Klamath Johnson Kieu, Chef Mentuerian,” the bailiff called.
I saw him once again, moving in his shackles to the low table opposite the Judge’s. He was alone, except for his lawyer, a thin man with a broad nose, a Rouge Gaist, as far as I could tell—they always wore red. He looked bored. Serio’s hands were drawn down almost between his legs—he was hobbled, had to throw out his feet to take a step. Where was Klamath? I didn’t understand. Ariel touched my shoulder. “It will be okay,” he said. “It will, just speak for him, you can do that—”
“His father isn’t even here,” I whispered.
Serio looked forlorn and cowed. In jail on account of me. I wanted to call out, shout out.
“Calm down,” Ariel told me. “They are pretty fair, even lenient, in Free Wheel court. Make up for the hard ass police.”
“Shh—shhh.” The man behind us again.
“State’s Advocate? Read the charges,” the judge began. “Read the charges to the prisoner.”
A narrow little man with a bow tie—I recognized it was Sy, the one who had won the bet, had warned me about Lou Rae—stood and said, “State’s Advocate has been called to the jail. I came here to tell you that he won’t be back until this afternoon. He’s sorry.”
