by Daryl Banner
The person at his side rises, moves to the door, crash as it shuts. He’s next and can’t keep his leg from hopping in place. The guard with kind eyes watches him, and Rychis can only stare back apologetically. I am Rychis Bard, he rehearses. I have a temper and lost my wife, and … No, that’s not it.
The doors yawn again. His turn has come.
He rises, left knee cracking under his weight, and moves into the room. He sees the King on the throne and it’s so, so, so far away. The room is endless, on and on, he just puts one foot before the other. Each step assaults his ears, the clack of heel on pearl tile dancing up the ridiculously tall room, the sound rattling above him like invisible birds. Everything is glass, just like they said … He can’t manage to swallow, his throat tightened. He walks evenly, not daring to trip and make a fool. I am Rychis, I lost my temper, I broke my wife—No—a machine. I lost my temper and broke a machine. I am Rychis Bard and I …
Then all too soon he’s before the King and his Marshals, the lords that he’s been ruled by all his life yet never seen in person. To one side of the throne are two of the three Marshals. He knows them so well from the broadcasts, the morning news and the night; they are the King’s chief executives. Taylon, the very young Marshal of Order who runs the elite crew of law-enforcers called Guardian … the very ones who brought him here for his mishap this morning. And the wise and kind-faced Marshal of Peace, Janlord, who looks so much taller in person, so much grander. The model of warmth, a youthful, cherry-cheeked grandfather to all. The other side of the throne holds the third Marshal, the colorful one, the Marshal of Madness—No, no, that’s what the cynical and mocking call him. His true title is the Marshal of Legacy. His name is Impis.
And of course, there’s the noble King Greymyn Netheris. The Screaming King, they call him. The Banshee King, because his Legacy is the shout of death. Such a marvel, the King and his massive tangle of a beard that hides his mouth—the death-cry of legend. And that beautiful throne, the chair whose sole occupant governs all the city and the slums and the eleven wards, the Greens and the gardens, all to the very edge where the high impassible Wall stands beyond which nothing else exists. He’s lord of all, dressed in a plain grey robe with a buckle. So unpretentious, so “one-of-the-people” … the Kingship is kind, the Kingship is good.
But it is neither the King nor his impressive beard that addresses Rychis. It is Taylon instead, Marshal of Order. Oh, how small he looks … Only fourteen years old, last he heard. To hold such a position of power so young … but that is what abilities mean in this city. It isn’t who you are or where you’re from; it’s what you can do. That’s the thing that puts you where you belong for the rest of your days: your Legacy. Taylon, his Legacy is breaking bones with a thought.
“Have you forgotten yourself?” Taylon asks.
“What?” Rychis mutters.
And then his bones bend. It is the strangest, the most bewildering sensation, to have your own body betray you, and suddenly he’s on his knees by the force of Taylon’s mere thought. How stupid could he be?—to make his first impression one of such disrespect? Even a dumb kid knows to kneel before the King.
“Do you understand your crimes?”
Rychis keeps his eyes to the white floor and recites, “I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby—”
“Do you understand your crimes?” repeats Taylon.
Rychis dares a small glance at the King, who appears almost bored, then continues reciting, “I … I lost my temper. I broke a machine at my job. It will never happen again.”
“Yes,” Taylon agrees softly, yet his voice carries, filling the room with a boyish echo. “ ‘It won’t happen again.’ I’ve seen this over and over,” he says casually to his fellow Marshal, “what tempers do to the citizenry and balance of all the city of Atlas.”
Not daring to look up from the blinding mirror-polished tiles, Rychis dares wonder how a boy could possibly know what he’s talking about, speaking about balances and tempers and things. I was celebrating the coronation of Greymyn before you were even born …
“I know all about anger,” the Marshal of Peace Janlord gives. “Any soul pressed enough will rebel, like a cornered cat in an alley.” He sighs, his tone so mature compared to the boy’s. “Perhaps this Rychis has only been burdened too heavily at his job and simply needs a reassignment.”
Rychis looks up, the sixty-something-year-old face of Janlord like a grandfather’s beaming gently down at his grandson. He has always been the kindest of the Marshals, the most reasonable, the voice of the people. That’s his purpose and Rychis’s heart swells at his words. Yes, yes, I’ve been so burdened, so heavy …
“I’m not interested in moving a problem,” Taylon complains. “Move an ugly flower from one pot to another, still’s as ugly.”
There is a little giggle from the other side of the throne, drawing everyone’s attention. It is the Marshal of Legacy who giggled, the colorful one called Impis. He doesn’t seem to have noticed his own giggle as he pays absolutely no mind to the attention it just drew, still staring off into a world only he sees. One of his personal bodyguards called Metal Hand, a nasty-faced block of a man with huge metal gauntlets that come up to his elbows, shifts his weight and bares his eyes down on Rychis, causing him to look away quickly.
“Perhaps you can tell us what your Legacy is,” Janlord offers, “as that might pique the interest of Impis, our royal Legacist. Tell us all what you can do.”
Rychis can’t make his mouth operate for a moment, choked by his clenching throat or tongue or something. Then at last he manages: “I can move earth.”
“Curious,” the Marshal says, encouraging him.
“I … well, really it’s more that I can, ah … disturb the soil,” Rychis clarifies. “Minimally. I’m no earthquake summoner, mind you. That’d make me an Out— Well, never mind that. Though, once in the Greens, I was able to uproot a small plant.” Janlord smiles. Good, keep him smiling. “Maybe they have need of me there? My wife and I could move to the Greens with my baby boy. We would happily take a life there, and my talents—”
Taylon cuts him off. “The Legacist is not fascinated, from the look of it. Hardly paying attention. Today’s sun is almost gone and I still have to deal with those crazy fanatical worshippers in the sixth. Are we ready for judgment, court and King?”
“I can do better,” Rychis presses, his voice turning a touch desperate. “Perhaps I can move stone. Make use of me in the Mechanoid Mines, please. I haven’t quite managed stone yet, but surely my Legacy can mature. I could—”
Janlord’s wince … that’s what cuts Rychis off this time.
“You are heard,” states Taylon, “but surely at your age if a Legacy has yet to evolve, there’s little else to see. That’s why we cut off Legacy Examination at the age of seventeen-and-one-half. You know as much, even being slumborn, Rickor Bard.”
Rychis … It’s Rychis Bard.
“Lord of Peace.” The boy Marshal turns to Janlord. “We’ve got ourselves forty-one more cases to consider.”
“Marshals, sirs—” Rychis tries once more.
But the King, his first involvement in this matter at all, simply lifts one lazy hand, and all goes mute. Rychis still speaks but no words are made. His puzzlement ends when he spots Janlord concentrating and realizes too late that sound’s been robbed of him. That’s Janlord’s Legacy: sound manipulation. Janlord alone protects the court from the King’s deadly banshee cry, should it ever be used in their presence. Even here at his own sentencing, Rychis’s voice is stolen by Janlord’s talent. He cannot hear the Marshals’ discussion as they hastily determine his fate … His eyes beseech them, his silent words locked at his mouth, unheard, even his own breaths and frantically battering heart are soundless.
Don’t worry, he assures himself. The Kingship is … is …
He slaps the ground, a test. Even the thunderous clangor of white mirror tiles goes nowhere, not while Janlord focuses his Legacy. The Kingship is kind. R
ychis can only strain his eyes to translate the movement of lips, estimating the words shared between them. The Kingship is good. Oh, but what cruel words to only have estimations of … when those words are deciding whether you live or die.
And then at once, sound is revived. Like a rush of oncoming trains, Rychis is assaulted with air, with his heartbeat, his breaths, the stillness of the enormous throne room. Taylon’s boy voice is the first he hears. “Do you so agree with the judgment, King Greymyn?” The King gives one simple, detached nod. “So be it.”
“What judgment?” Rychis asks quietly, so quietly he might think sound was still robbed of him.
The Kingship is kind …
Taylon, Marshal of Order, fourteen-years-young and small as a child, says, “Rickor Bard. By the hand of the Legacist’s man, you will die. This is your sentence.”
“No, lord, Marshal, no, no,” Rychis begs, then bites his own tongue, or maybe it’s that Taylon has taken hold of Rychis’s jawbone with a thought, for at once his jaw’s clamped down, his tongue bleeds, and he’s unable to open his mouth. The rest of his body holds rigid as ice … Any movement he makes might snap an arm, or crack his spine in three places.
Metal Hand, the ogre of a man with the elbow-high clunky gauntlets, is stepping forth. He’s slowly removing one with the slippery ease of a velvet glove. His footsteps are monstrously loud.
Will those footsteps be the last thing I hear? Rychis was sure all executions were done by the King, that the last thing any convicted had the pleasure of hearing was the baleful scream of Greymyn. He much preferred that nightmare over this one, to be touched by the monster at Impis’s side, the so-called Metal Hand. He knows what happens to any fool unlucky enough to be touched by that ungloved hand … They are destroyed instantly, turned to dust in one quick moment of agony, particles of what once was a human being now scattered at his fingertip. The Death’s Touch, the Eraser …
I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby boy … He’ll have to make do thinking it, because he cannot speak. I lost a machine and broke my temper … I … I …
His beautiful wife, her lips, she’ll never know why he didn’t come home this day … Her crystalline irises and her laugh …
His baby boy, whose Legacy he will never learn …
Metal Hand draws close, his ungloved hand drawing closer. The only thing that exists in all the world, the only thing Rychis can see. The Doom Touch closer and closer. The Kingship is kind, the Kingship is good … but where did it all go wrong? How did he blunder so terribly?
Worse things are done. I am Rychis Bard … Worse things unpunished, he knows.
I have a wife and one baby boy …
Then he can’t contain it any longer. His locked-shut jaw forces out the words in an agonized muffle. “I am Rychis,” he begs through stubborn, unmoving teeth. “I have a wife and baby boy, I lost my temper, I lost my temper, I lost my temper …”
And the finger touches his forehead.
0004 Link
He knows they laugh at him. He knows they regard him as a scrawny, sad little fucker. He’s well aware they make fun of his fantasy of being the next Shye, thief renowned—he still regrets telling that one.
So naturally he goes on another mission with them.
“It’s going to be the hardest yet,” leader Dran, with black around his eyes, tells him on the train. “You really wanna test that dream of yours?” Link holds a bent blade close to his hip, his eyes squinted, wordless. “We’ve all passed. It’s your turn.”
The train is taking Link further than he’s ever been from home. He can’t figure out where they are now, maybe even as far as the eighth ward, or further. He doesn’t want them to see his concern, but he dares a glance out the window of the train, trying to judge their distance. He doesn’t recognize any of the buildings.
“You’ll be the stealer, again,” Dran tells him quietly. Two Wrath are perched across from them, both grinning like gargoyles with stony eyes on Link. They can’t wait to see him fail, he knows this. They’re waiting for him to fuck it all up, but he won’t. He swears he won’t. “Solo, this time. 100% up to you, Linker.”
“What’s the mission,” Link asks bluntly.
“Your mission is this train.”
For a second, Link doesn’t follow. Then he considers the purse by the foot of a woman, and a bag slung over someone else’s shoulder. “Someone on this train, you mean?—But who?”
“Anyone.” Dran winks a blackened eye at the other Wrath. “As long as it’s up two hundred, we’ll take it.”
Link doesn’t flinch. If there’s anything Link’s good at, it’s keeping his reactions to himself. Though his heart rate may have just elevated a few thousand beats a second, he keeps his face cool as a pool, lifts his chin and studies the other occupants of the train. The woman with the purse at her foot … or the man with the bag, perhaps? Neither, they’re too obvious.
He looks the other way, sees a girl biting at her nails. Nope. Next to her, two guys reading the same book together. Nope and nope. No one is easy access; this train is too crowded and there are too many witnesses. Link hasn’t earned the black band yet, so the pressure’s really on. He needs to make his steal one that won’t be noticed immediately, one as slick and seductive as a kiss.
“Just two hundred?” Link mutters, wears a searing smirk to play away his fears. “You go easy on me.”
Dran does not smile. “Make it fly, Linker.”
Then he finds him. A long coat hugs the man, but Link sees the glimmer of nice threads twinkling at him from beneath. This man isn’t from the slums; he’s a Son of Sanctum. A bag held at his side, the man is likely sure no low-life on this train would know where the bag’s from, but Link has seen the emblem in one of Lionis’s books, the seal of a Sanctum bank. This is his target.
“Watch me fly,” says Link, then makes his move.
It’s easy to get close to the man, casually slipping near where he sits while arousing no one’s suspicion. The train rocking smoothly side to side as it bullets through eighth or ninth or tenth ward, wherever they are, Link takes a few quick-as-a-snake glances at the Sanctum bank bag, his treasure, his prize.
“What time is it?” Link wonders out loud, feeling his wrists and expressing his desperate need with convincing teenage worry. “Mom’s gonna be so mad at me.” No one pays him mind. He peers at the rich—his target—amazed that he’s so soon caught his attention. “Do you have the time, sir?”
The man lifts a brow, fear flashing in his eyes for one quick moment before, perhaps, deciding there’s nothing to fear. Link is, admittedly so, not all that scary. “Twenty past the two,” the man announces after checking his watch.
Yes, it’s confirmed now. No man from the slums speaks with such regality or regards a kid like him with fear. Only Lifted folk are scared of slum kids, same way they’re scared of rats, reacting just like they would to a cockroach scuttling up their ankle.
Link considers his options, gripping the balance pole and pretending to be interested in something through the window, not the man’s bank bag. His eyes flick for one moment to Dran at the other end of the train who watches with legs crossed, bearing that slippery smile of his. The other Wrath, they’re ready to bolt, ready to make off once Link fails. And to them, Link’s sure to fail.
He can’t wait to prove them so wrong.
“Shouldn’t have had so much,” Link admits to no one in particular, leaning left and right with the train, overcompensating each time he sways. “Oh, but just one more drink, they kept saying … one more, one more …”
Link dares another look; the man’s attention is caught again. You’re dumber than you look. “Hey,” Link blurts, squinting at the man. “Are you the guy from the, uh, thing?”
“You’re a bit drunk,” the man responds, concerned.
Link giggles stupidly, staggering, then falls into the seat nearest the man as though pushed by the motion of the train. “Sorry,” he sings. “Can’t keep my balance. Hey, where�
�s my hat?”
“Hat?” The rich glances around. Lifted folk are so dumb. “Didn’t see you wearing one … What color hat?”
“Is it under your seat?” Link asks innocently, nearly stretching himself over the man’s lap. “Is it—?”
“I didn’t see you with one,” the dummy insists once more, then peers for a brief second under his seat.
This brief second is all Link needed.
“No hat,” agrees Link. “No hat at all. Left it at the bar, I remember now. Ugh … Shouldn’t have kept saying yes, need to learn to say no.” He giggles stupidly again. “Hey, help me back up?—Never mind, I got it.” Link’s back up, aiming his way down the aisle staggering left, staggering right. “Learn to say no, self!”
The train lurches side to side without Link having to exaggerate it, but of course, in truth, he has perfect balance and knows precisely where his feet are. He does not stop at Dran’s seat, but instead passes The Wrath entirely and moves casually into the next train car.
It’s halfway through the next car that he hears the yelling. “Stop him! He took my gold! Stop him!”
And so Link breaks into a run, his act unveiled. Surprisingly, it’s four train cars down that he notices anyone pursuing him.
All too quick, he’s reached the back of the train, no cars left to race through. The track fluttering and skipping beneath his toes, he considers how likely he’ll be to land without breaking all his bones.
Then he’s out of time to decide, the back door of the train opening to reveal the red faces of two pursuing Guardian. Link only has a brief moment to embrace one thought: Quick like Shye, the Shadow, the Key To All Locks …
And he leaps.
The train track seems to slip from under his foot, slick as polished silver, and then the real panic sets in. He’s tumbling beyond the track. Falling now from the height of a two story building. Reaching out, grabbing nothing. The air whistles in his ears, and he screams. It’s dark and he’s plummeting into—he doesn’t know. He screams again, and then his screams are stolen by water, swallowing him up in all directions, drowning him. He’s landed in a bayou, water rushing in his ears, down his throat, up his nose. He screams it all out and yet more rushes in—gagging, choking, rasping—and the water carries him like waste into the darkness of a tunnel, out of sight, his tiny body flowing inward, downward, then dropping again, farther still.
