by Daryl Banner
“Where? W-Wait … Why?” Wick asks, but too soon Rone’s taken his sister’s hand and phases through the walls of the train in an instant, showing off his Legacy and leaving him in a mist of confusion and bereft of answers.
Wick sighs … If only he could pass through objects and walls and people so easily, like a mist. He would’ve let Tide’s stick phase right through him, turned the contest of strength right around, put Tide on his own ass and show him in front of all their peers. But Wick is no Morph, no phaser like Rone. He’s no wind-pusher either. He’s a sleeper … A simple Mentalist Legacy, like dad said. I’ll sleep you all to death, Wick thinks, mocking himself.
Strolling home from the station, he makes a game of kicking trash, sending bits of paper and cups and children’s toys flying. 1200 and first block, 1200 and first block, 1200 and first block … Hopping over fissures in the long thin road that leads to his house, Wick keeps repeating the address to himself, forcing it to memory.
If only he can make sure his sword-happy dad won’t think to wake him for more training tomorrow night.
0007 Athan
The Lifted City is quiet and serene, the cool light of morning pouring in and painting the walls. He’s pressed against the glass of his window, looking down at the perfect, perfect view. It isn’t a view likely anyone else would desire in the Lifted City, but he loves it to tears.
It’s a view of the slums below … expansive and webbed with complex streets and marketplaces, buildings poking up everywhere in the most fascinating shapes. Oh, he loves studying it at night through the smog that rises from it … all the lights and colors, the whole city seeming to explode in hues of red and blue and green, a starry nightscape to mirror the less exciting one in the sky. Athan pushes his nose against the glass and stares and dreams and smiles himself drunk.
If he lived down there … Oh, wow. He can’t even fathom the thrill he’d have, how much excitement his life would hold. A new adventure every day. Curious people with complicated, beautiful lives … Every moment on the spur, every friend is made for life, every brother and sister … Athan always wanted brothers and sisters.
Well, other than the ones he has.
His servant knocks lightly on the door, and Athan announces he’s decent, though he really wouldn’t mind spending another hour or two dreaming about the slums below. The servant enters and helps Athan into his clothes for the day, dressing him smartly from neck to foot. Athan fusses a bit with the shirt; they can never find garb that properly fits his short yet muscular figure, broad-shouldered and all, his top hugging him tight. His sister mocks him for it, but he loves working out at the Eastly Gym every evening; the area with the weight machines catches the setting sun in such an appealing way, he’ll stop his exercise just to watch it burn the heavens. A fuss is made of his head, the servant’s hands working to remedy Athan’s permanently disheveled gold-yellow hair. Despite its short length, it all seems to thrust to one side, strands poking about, little rebels they are. Nothing less than industrial-strength gel can tame them.
He’s finally brought downstairs, ushered to the grand hall where the long blue-white breakfast table overlooks the sky and the morning sun, more servants ready to serve today’s delicacies. When Athan’s seated near his sister Janna, his mother and father comment again on Athan’s lack of posture, which he quickly corrects, then smiles for their approval. His sister smirks, but it doesn’t bother Athan much; nothing can douse the flame last night’s excited city-watching ignited in him.
And nothing ever will, he beams proudly.
Janna complains about the temperature of her first course, having the plate sent away for correction. As the server walks by, Athan tries offering compliments, but his mother scolds him hard. “Athan. You will not address them directly. Must I tell you this every morning?” And Athan is reminded yet again that servants are not people.
But when he wanders into the kitchen later, he finds the nice server he’d given compliments to. The server even looks the same age as Athan, seventeen about. He’s got a handsome face too. Gentle in the eyes. “I just wanted to say, I thought it tasted really great. You have to forgive my sister, she’s … hard to please.” The server is too timid to smile, can’t even meet Athan’s eyes. “Here.” Athan presses a gold coin into the server’s palm. When their hands touch, his heart gives a jump, and he wonders for a moment if the gold coin were somehow electric. “No, please, take it,” he insists as the server tries to refuse, “as thanks for the tasty breakfast. Seriously, best I’ve ever had.”
The server finally breaks a smile and responds, “Thanks, but I only brought it out. I didn’t cook it … That’s what you have your, uh, chef for.”
“Oh.” Athan chuckles soundlessly, scratching at his arm and watching the server’s expression carefully. He has a nice smile. Does he have a nice name? “Well, everyone has their talent,” he says instead. He shouldn’t ask for a name; all of this directness is already likely to get him in trouble, should mother find out. “The chef has his talents and you have yours, I’m sure.”
“You mean a Legacy?”
“Um … yes, one of those.”
The server appears a bit braver, gripping the coin in his fist. He looks up, meets Athan’s eyes for the first time. “Can I ask what your Legacy is? I’m—I’m only curious.”
Athan shrugs. This clearly confuses the server, his brow furrowing, so Athan explains. “I don’t know what it is. Most people born here don’t focus so much on that. I don’t see the big deal in knowing what mine is unless I want to be King, and I don’t.” Athan laughs heartily, which seems to make the server uneasy, not humored. “And really, who wants to be King when King Greymyn Netheris is doing such a nice job?”
The server’s eyes are downcast again, anxiously turning the coin over and over in his hand like he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“I was hoping,” Athan murmurs, leaning in closer to the server and putting on his sweetest voice, “you might tell me what life is like down there? … in the city below?”
He can feel the burning warmth off the server’s arm, so close to his own. Of all the servants and help that have come and left the Broadmore Manor, this one is the only one who’s given him a chance … Please, he’s begging, his face nearly pressed at the shoulder of the server. Please tell me what life can be like …
Of course, he wasn’t really expecting an answer, and an answer is exactly what he does not get, even with the smiling gift of gold. Instead, two staccato beeps cut through the room from the intercom, startling the pair of them. Without a word, the server rushes off for the call. The opportunity is gone, the cold of the kitchen rushing in to clench Athan in a most unwanted hug.
He spends his day in the warm sunlight of the terrace overlooking the pool that glistens in the afternoon sun like a vast, faceless mirror. It’s a Saturday, so there’s no tutoring. He takes off his shirt and his pants, folding them neatly by the pool, and lies right by the water, his body swallowed in hot, healing light.
It’s when the sun’s setting that his mother finds him in the atrium and explains that the server was fired.
“Why?” asks Athan, exasperated.
“He was a thief,” she explains simply. “We found a gold coin in his possession when he was making to go for the day. Pity.”
“B-But I gave him that coin! It was mine!” Athan is nearly in tears, his stomach twisted by either sadness or guilt, he can’t tell. What did I do??
His bone-thin mother puts a leathery hand on his shoulder. It feels not unlike the paw of a cat, claws too. “I commend you for your heart, Athan, and must reproach you for it just as well. The servants, even some of the chefs, they are not your friends.” Her eyes are the clouded ochre of lion’s skin. “They are from the city below. People there are hungry, and not for food, child. They are lazy, they are stealers, they are drug-abusers … They are of feeble Legacies and cannot be trusted. It is not being unkind to say so, Athan, it is simple fact. And I will be damned to the K
ing if my son is ever befooled by one of them.”
Athan’s lip is tightened, his hands clenching and unclenching. He wishes she had seen the server’s eyes … Really, if she were there, she’d see the kindness too. “I just wanted to thank him.”
“And so you did, but he must find other means to make his money’s end, now. There is surely opportunity, the lower city being large and ripe as it is. Understand that I am a forgiving woman. I didn’t send him to the King for punishment; I simply sent him home. Others hardly would show such a kindness.”
“I understand.” Athan can’t meet her eyes, still thinking on the servant’s face. He doesn’t quite remember what it looks like. Already, even the memory’s gone.
“Some of their kind make a living here,” she goes on, coolly. “They are paid and sent back. I don’t mean to sound cruel, Athan, but don’t you think it’s privilege enough for one of their like to spend a day here in our Lifted City? I feed them as well, you understand … I’m not cruel, see. I’m simply aware.”
Athan hears all his mother’s words, and he tries so hard to trust them, but his dream of a life there, thrilling and unapologetic and free … it aches him to think so poorly of the slumborn. And what will come of that server now, fired and cast away? Is it all Athan’s fault?
Does kindness really have such a price?
Instead of the gym tonight, he makes a walk through the large Glassen square to the Eastly, down the long street lined in polished obsidian that reaches the Lord’s Garden, his favorite place in all of Atlas. Even after dark, the colors of the garden bleed with hyper-saturated glory—passion purples, violent reds and cerulean and golden umber.
There is, of course, an ulterior motive to visiting the Lord’s Garden. It just so happens that this is also, in regards to altitude, the lowest part of the Lifted City. It nearly grazes the slums below, he might imagine, like a giant bird swooping by a great plain, its talons tickling the grass. Though it is still difficult to make out a face or spot a person at all even from this low height, it is the closeness that shocks even more to life his fantasies.
He wonders if flowers like these grow down below. He sure hopes they do; those people, even hungry liars and stealers and drug-abusers as they may be, still deserve just as pleasant a surrounding as he.
With a smile beaming on his face, pinching his eyes, he pulls from his pocket a Sanctum coin, gold as gold can be, and tosses it over the brim … watches it drop, drop, drop … vanishing in the city below. Who might find this one tonight? he wonders.
It’s this simple act, with every coin rained below, literally deposited like a fund into his dream, that he feels the connection he so craves. Yes, with every toss of gold, his smiles come a bit easier in the morning as he’s dressed by another’s hands, his each bite of another delicious breakfast, lunch, or dinner made a touch tastier … and so carefully prepared by the crafty, experienced hands of another lowborn chef, set before him by another lowborn server, cleaned away by another lowborn hand …
All of them, more free than he’ll ever be.
0008 Wick
The moon yawns in the window. He’s nearly asleep when he jerks awake, recalling Rone’s instruction. How could he have forgotten? He regrets not having slept more the night before.
But no time for regrets. Wick, very careful to not make noise, opens the window, climbs onto the brief jutting of roof and slides down the side of the house, darting into the night.
He can’t believe how easy it was to sneak out. Considering his dad’s Legacy, he half-expected him to be waiting there in the brush, twelve steps ahead of him and marching him right back to bed. Wick smiles broadly, drawing the hood over his head and climbing the stairs to the station. The ten train is the one he must take to reach the far edge of the ninth ward, 1200 and first block. It is a solid forty-minute train ride. As he’s in the seat watching buildings fly by, he realizes the distance he’s making between here and home is so unsettling, and several times in a row he gives an honest moment’s consideration to turning back. My bed sounds awful inviting …
But something else invites him more.
He pushes himself off the train a stop too early and has to walk the rest of the way, three blocks in. He reaches the destination at last, peers up at the tall, skinny building and squints. “The Noodle Shop.” That’s what the tattered sign says. Did Rone seriously invite him out for noodles in the middle of nowhere? He knows at least a dozen places closer to home they could’ve met, if a little bite was the idea on Rone’s mind.
A world without a screaming King …
Boldly opening the door, he finds just two occupants in the corner at a table eating soup, all the others empty. The slurps of broth and muted chatter is all he hears, and the aroma of the room is, regrettably, appetizing. He moves over the creaky linoleum floor, considers whether he should put his quaking stomach at ease and order a bowl when he notices Rone’s sister at the smoky bar.
“Hey.” Wick comes up to her side. “Is Rone…?”
“This way,” she murmurs, the first words Wick’s ever heard her say. With a healthy bit of reluctance, he follows her into a passage behind the counter and up two staircases cuddled by slanted wooden walls.
At the top, it opens up without a door to a large, cluttered landing. Everything is draped in scarfs, colored handkerchiefs, frayed tablecloths … Beads and charms and odd ornaments dangle from rafters in the ceiling, chains are secured along one of the walls, weapon racks and armor racks set beneath them. Large dusty tapestries seem to casually divide the back half of the room into several odd areas without apparent purpose. The air is thick and musky, the temperature like a sweaty hug.
There’s an echoing laughter from the end of the room somehow familiar and unfamiliar to Wick. Slowly edging across the landing, he finds the source behind a purple tapestry.
Rone? Is that you? The words stick like honey in his mouth, for there’s a shirtless boy with a distractingly toned bronze body strewn across a litter of pillows on the floor. His arms flex as he grips the head of a long-legged woman with thick blonde curls of hair that dance with her every movement. Her movements being: a steady rise and fall of her tall head, up and down, at his hips. He lifts slightly, abs crunched up, and lets out a quivering moan like a shiver, and then he starts to laugh, throwing back his head. It smacks the floor and he hardly notices, still giggling, and when his eyes open, they’re wild and wet and searching for her—he flexes his arms again in the effort of bringing her face up from his cock. Her half-shut, wide-apart eyes, decorated with electric blue powder on the eyelids, flit to the side, spotting Wick.
Her own giggling is silenced at once. “Who’s this?” she asks, annoyed.
Rone seems mesmerized by her neck, ignoring the question and staring the way a child watches a rainbow. Then he looks over suddenly, noticing Wick, his eyes alight like sapphire torches in the bronze sea of his face.
“Sorry,” Wick mumbles, averting his gaze.
Rone smiles and says, “Wanna join in?” He laughs and runs a lazy hand down the woman’s face, which inspires an annoyed huff from her. The woman is dressed scantily and she wears a tight, permanent frown. “She’s very kind. And she’s—what’s the word?—giving.”
“N-No, thanks.” What the hell has Rone invited him here for? Some sort of prostitution thing? Getting head from some slum woman with blue eye shadow?
“Oh.” A thought seems to cross Rone’s face. “Oh. I didn’t realize … Well, hey.” He stretches his abs, runs another lazy hand down them, grinning. “You can have a lick then, if you want. Guys don’t really do it for me, but I’m havin’ so much fun, can’t deny my buddy when I’m—Oh, or did you want—?” He grabs his cock, gives it a wiggle and lifts a brow. “Yeah? No?”
Somewhere between Rone’s first word and his last, Wick’s rate of breathing has tripled. He finds his eyes glued to the floor, unable to look at the sex buffet his friend is turning himself into. “I … No, I’m …” He shifts his weight, looks at Ci
ntha for comfort—only to find that she didn’t follow him to this end of the room, still lingering far away at the stair and picking her nails.
“Again.” The woman slowly draws the back of a long hand across her mouth to wipe it. “Who … is this?”
Rone shifts himself, his still-hard cock flipping from one thigh to the other, casually answers, “Wick. That is my friend … My friend, Wick … and Wick is his name.”
She studies him, squinting as though through a fog. “What loving mother names their child such a thing?”
“He’s my friend,” Rone responds warningly. “It wouldn’t benefit us to scare him away so soon. He hasn’t seen me like this before.”
“Like what? Naked or high?” she asks innocently.
“Either. Unless he’s had a peek I don’t know about.” Rone lifts his chin at her. “Do you like me this way?”
“Are you any other way?”
“I’m several ways.” Gripping her firmly at the hips, he pulls the woman toward him and buries his face in her breasts—and for an awkward while, clothing and pillows and curly hair can’t be distinguished. Rone’s still hard, his moans muffled, and he starts to laugh uncontrollably. For whatever reason, so does she, throwing her head, all her wild curls and coils of blonde with it.
Wick looks away, uncomfortable. His eyes find the sister still far away at the stair. “Should I … go?” he quietly asks her. She doesn’t respond. “Should I go?” he repeats, a touch louder.
Suddenly Rone’s shoved the woman off him like a bed sheet and, despite her irritated moan, he’s to his feet and sauntering over to Wick, his dick bobbing left and right—Wick’s forcing his eyes at everything above Rone’s shoulders. “Pardons, my man. I’m so, so, so, so, so rude. Would you like a glass of chemical?” His pants are at his ankles, his belt clinking with his every step.
“Um … no.”
“But it’s so good for you.” Rone’s already pouring two. “Rids the mind of pesky things like common sense.” He’s already tipping his own glass by the time he gets one into Wick’s hand.
