by Daryl Banner
“Dad, you’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
The training ends early tonight, and in only twenty minutes, his dad is bandaged up and Wick’s head is back on the pillow staring at the bloodstain his own palm left him. The mark of his wound, his instinct, the little red gift is the last thing he sees when he finally lets himself go. He sleeps easy the rest of the night.
Before they enter school the next morning, Rone meets him by a tree. “Come tonight,” he tells him over the stirring of leaves and grass by a stray breeze. “You can be there, yeah?”
“Yes.” Wick’s heart goes to his throat, excitement choking him. “What’s—What’s changed?”
“The Sanctum boy,” says Rone. “He won’t talk to us. The only person he trusts enough to speak to is …” Rone grins, white teeth bared, “well … you.”
0022 Halvesand
The scene at the square is unlike anything Halves ever dreamed he would pay witness to … worse than any cruel imagining he’d had. He keeps his posture up despite it all, chin lifted like the rest of the crew. Wouldn’t want to look weak in front of any of them, let alone his own stone-nosed brother Aleks.
They’ve not been called to order yet, so everyone’s roaming about. They’ll be briefed by Marshal of Order Taylon himself, and it will be Halves’ first time to see him in person. Ennebal stands nearby as if already called to order, poised and choosing not to meander. Instead, her face is fixed up at the sky where ash still populates the air, greying out the bleak morning sun.
“Is this …” Halves starts to say, then quiets his voice and whispers, “is this the doing of Sanctum?” Ennebal makes no answer, so he puts a hand on her shoulder. She gives him eyes. “There you are,” he says with a smile. She only stares at his lips like she always does. Halves never feels so self-conscious about the movement of his lips than when he speaks to Ennebal. “Do you think this was caused by Sanctum? By their … Weapon?”
“Don’t know,” she mutters, “and don’t want to.”
“If a little flick of the Weapon’s power can bring down a piece of the Lifted City,” Halves goes on quietly, “who’s to say what it could do to the whole city? I mean, I thought bombs were outlawed centuries ago, during the time of the tenth King?”
“Twelfth,” Ennebal corrects him, “and it was a Queen.” Then her eyes screw up. “Or thirteenth, maybe. I don’t know, was never good with my histories.”
He is excited by the way she talks, but maybe more the way she smells … like home, clean and fresh as a flower no matter their setting. Ruins and rubble and he’s just happy to be this close to her shoulder; even bulked by armor and Guardian gear, the dream of what’s beneath is a delight that fills him up, hot and distracting.
“We can study histories together,” he whispers into her ear. She hardly flinches. “I’ve always found it boring, all the Kings and Queens, all the laws …” She turns a corner of her eye to him and squints. “But I’m pretty sure anything read by your voice would keep my interest.”
“You’re cute,” she says dryly, then turns away.
She calls me cute … Her hard mouth moves in such a way, like behind every sentence is a sexy secret lined in sheer panties and lipstick. She calls me cute and I don’t know if she’s mocking me. Everything she says gives me a hard-on. Maybe it’s best she doesn’t know that. Maybe she already knows that.
What are you doing, Halves? “I’ll ask Lionis about the Kings and Queens,” he decides. Ennebal is looking elsewhere now and doesn’t respond. He guesses the middle of a field of ash and rubble that used to be a Lunar Festival isn’t the ideal place for flirts. Nowhere is.
Then, all too suddenly, the chrome caravan arrives, vehicle of Sanctum, and Guardian is called to stand at attention. They form rows, Ennebal to one side and his greasy hallmate Grute to the other. The Marshal of Order Taylon steps off the caravan like a bird and, after a greet with the Lead Officer, faces Guardian.
Instantly, Halvesand finds his opinions of Taylon surging up from his chest like bile … Taylon looks like a small, spoiled Sanctum boy. How can some kid—thirteen, is he?—fourteen?—rule and make decisions for Guardian? Halves lets show none of these thoughts, caring instead to show the respect he swore he’d give no matter. I don’t feel like having my bones bent today.
Taylon talks a lot about obvious things, observations that were already made, and other various wastes of time. Halves is near to rolling his eyes when the Lead Officer makes one small comment, questioning an insignificant fact that was mentioned, and is suddenly bent in half.
The Lead Officer shrieks once, then can’t make any more noise. His body is bowed backwards, inexplicably past the point of breaking, past anything natural. He hangs there with absolutely no means of relief, gasping sickly.
“Question me again,” dares Taylon arrogantly.
Where once a man bold and nasty of mouth stood, now only a whimpering boy. “In front of … my men??” is all he can say.
Then the Lead Officer’s body drops to the uneven ground, still twisted of bone, and Taylon lifts his chin to the stoic-faced Guardian. “Obert Ranfog, Unit Trainer. I promote you to Lead Officer, seeing as your prior one is now … too bent for the position. Do you accept?”
Obert steps forth, his face impressively unshaken. “Yes, Marshal. My new post is accepted.”
Quick as that, the Marshal Taylon continues his instruction, casually stepping over the man he’d just bent in half who, in muffled moans, still writhes in a private agony. Halves can’t pull his eyes away from the sight of his old Lead Officer attempting to right himself somehow. Even with Taylon’s Legacy having let go of him, he can’t manage to get to rights. It sickens Halves—he feels his eyes wetting with his own alarm—that the man’s pride and dignity won’t even let him the mercy of begging to be taken to a hospital. As Taylon goes on and on with the instruction, Halves wonders if they are all, aware of it or not, witnessing their old Lead Officer dying slowly in front of them. It’s really only a matter of time, if he isn’t helped, that his body will give in, broken, folded … if it hasn’t already.
Ennebal at Halves’ side, she appears completely unmoved, her eyes following Marshal Taylon with total focus, undistracted. So tough, so immovable … just like his Legacy, really. If only he had half her courage.
“As we’ve yet had no leads,” Taylon finishes, “I suspect your team will be adequate and thorough in their scope of this scene. Any speck of evidence, cause, or culprit … Any sign at all, bring it forth. I’m certain you will be luckier than the predecessor, Lead Officer Obert.”
“We will make King Greymyn smile,” says Obert, his voice droning with the bother of a humorless man.
“Never mind the King,” says Taylon, brushing ash off his shoulder. “Make me a smile or two, Obie.”
With that, Taylon sweeps across the rubble toward the vehicle, then stumbles once and nearly falls. Every breath in the square is held for one desperate moment until Taylon lifts his chin, righted, and carries on to the chrome vehicle unperturbed, boarding it, and off it goes.
Dust and ash settling in its departure, Obert speaks briefly to the group, then everyone disperses to their tasks of searching. As Halves passes the body of his old Lead Officer, he realizes it no longer stirs. Obert watches the man too, with nothing in his eyes, then looks up to Halves. “Blood thick enough, Lesser?”
“Yes, sir,” says Halves, then pries his eyes away from the stomach-turning sight of the bent man and goes on his way.
After two and a half hours of silence, save the scuffing of shoes against dusty cement, Halves becomes certain that nothing remains here to be found but death and unnamable faces and graves of children.
“Devil’s barbecue,” says Grute as he slumps past Halves, his steel boot knocking into a severed burnt-to-black appendage of some poor fellow as he goes.
Just the two little words bother Halves to the tips of nerves, the tactless plank of a man that is Grute. How some people are accepted into Guard
ian and not others, it is lost on the mind of Halves. Aleks said it had something to do with Grute’s dad, that the dad had a history with Guardian and therefore his son was accepted without question. The slums are not known for being fair. Halves’ own father said that once. Is Sanctum so desperate for recruits that they take anyone nowadays, or was the selection in Grute’s home ward so dismal?
He gets his stomach, steels himself, and pushes on.
Halves happens upon a strange canister. At first it seems like a small blue pot that should carry a plant, yet there is no adequate opening for soil and green. He turns it about in his hands a few times, confused, when at once the thing bursts from the end, bullets of blue ejected from it with such suddenness that Halves drops it, terrified, thinking he’d just detonated some ancient, long-forgotten bomb … but it was just a spray painter, nothing more.
When he climbs onto a piece of wreckage twice the height of him to explore further, he peers down at the blue spray he’d effected … and curiosity grips him anew. It did not simply spill color everywhere. When the thing gusted, its dye formed a very distinct pattern across the shattered slabs of cement: a large and artful drop of water painted cerulean.
Within the shape, three words: LET IT RAIN.
0023 Wick
When he gets to the Noodle Shop, his hands are so sweaty, his every finger trembling with such anticipation that he can hardly grip the door handle. He considers taking a minute to gather himself when suddenly the door opens and Cintha stands there. “They’re waiting upstairs. Be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just be smart, okay?” She moves aside, letting him pass.
Wick nods tentatively, not sure what she means. “Thanks,” he says anyway, entering to find the place devoid of customer. When he makes it up the wooden passage to the loft, he finds Rone and Victra at the table. They both turn—Rone’s face bright and welcoming, Victra’s stony and decorated in her tackiest blues.
“If you want,” Rone offers before even a greeting, “I can go in with you. You don’t have to do it alone.”
Wick shines the dagger at his belt. “I’m prepared.”
From behind a tapestry, Yellow emerges like a fog and slowly crosses the room—foot, cane, foot, cane. “Anwick.” He clears his throat. “As there are only so many hours in a night, let us discuss what we need to know from the boy. Rone, Victra, you can go.”
“No way,” says Rone. “I’m staying for this. Victra, too. She can see through others’ eyes. And, should that door become blocked and trouble came—not that it will, buddy, calm down—I’m the only one that can pass through walls to get us in there.”
Yellow squints at the two of them, doubts not easily hidden from his pale face, then nods. He turns back to Wick. “To begin, you must gain the boy’s trust, convince him to work with our ever-friendly Pratganth in mapping what he knows of the Lifted City—which should be ample—and ask of him two important facts: who fell the Lord’s Garden, and where is the Weapon.”
“Weapon? What Weapon?”
“Seriously?” This comes from a wide-eyed Rone. “You haven’t heard of the Sanctum Weapon? The King made it himself, or a past King, I don’t know. It’s the size of a building! Or, well, at least that’s what I heard. And it can—”
“We know nothing,” says Yellow, cutting him off. “Neither do we know its size or capability. But that’s why we have the boy.”
“Once he’s divulged all he knows,” says Wick, “and that’s assuming he even does, what then?” His eyes move from person to person. “Are we … giving him back?”
Yellow squints his eyes. “You think I mean to kill the boy when he’s through?”
“You said it yourself,” points out Wick. “We don’t kill, but for the enemies up there, in the sky. This boy is from that sky.”
“No,” says Yellow simply. “We will not kill him.”
In truth, Wick can’t be sure he can trust Yellow. Though he hasn’t yet failed on his word, nor has he given Wick a solid reason to stay wary, he takes issue in trusting a man who could literally make him forget his own name.
But really, Wick hasn’t much a choice. “I’m ready.”
Yellow moves to an ugly door in the corner of the room. “He’s through here. Keep to your watch, Anwick Lesser … We will keep to ours to ensure your safety.”
“What’s the big scare? He’s just an unarmed guy,” argues Wick, annoyed at all the caution and intensity—it really isn’t playing well with his body’s already fraught nervous system. He’s suddenly very thankful for skipping Lionis’s dinner; it might’ve ended up all over the floor by now.
“We don’t know his power,” warns Yellow.
“And he doesn’t know mine,” retorts Wick, then he crosses to the door, twists the lock, pushes in and lets the ugly door shut.
The room is tiny and the walls are a vague off-white wash, the only window having been sealed with a metal plate from the outside. In the corner is a squatty bed upon which their guest lies. He sits right up, all his muscles contracting in the effort, visible even through his shirt—Wow—and when those bright blue eyes connect with Wick’s, all the confidence in him goes.
“You saved my life,” the boy says.
Athan Broadmore. Wick tries to smile, realizes he can’t. His face is burning … His back is pressed into the door and his heart races with an urgency. His insides are turning worse than when he was in the middle of the square, meteorites falling from the sky, at any moment his death imminent. It seems for Wick, being in such proximity to a thing so beautiful is more dangerous than hellfire.
Is this petrification of his every muscle and fiber because of … guilt? I sorta felt you up when you were knocked out in the square, he confesses to himself, since he can’t confess aloud. Couldn’t keep my hands off you then, can’t keep my eyes off you now. His face burns.
“Thanks,” the boy—Athan—says. “It seems kind of dramatic to say, but … thanks for saving my life.”
And then suddenly Wick finds his breath again. “Not sure it was me saving your life,” Wick points out, his voice small, “more than it was you being at the right place at the right time.”
Athan smiles.
Oh, wow … That smile.
“Luck always seems to carry me along,” says Athan. “Nice arms. You must be skilled with that knife.”
For some reason, the sudden and unexpected flattery hits Wick sideways, and he finds himself less flattered and more annoyed—even though his arms seem to flex more at Athan’s words. “It’s a dagger.”
“Oh, dagger,” Athan corrects himself, his beautiful blue eyes falling on it … hovering at Wick’s waist, his hip, his weapon. Where are your eyes going? “Looks nice.”
The stark light of these rooms bring out one’s every flaw, but Wick cannot see a single one in Athan Broadmore. His golden hair is dusted lightly of copper, short and everywhere … It seems like something tried to tame it to one side, but the spikes of gold refused. His skin is perfect, simply no other way to say it. Smooth and uninterrupted, his arms sculpted the way art is sculpted. His jaw, strong and set …
Wick finds a new emotion joining the cocktail in his chest: a sour pinch of resentment. As Wick surveys the beautiful Sanctum boy—his face, his body thickened with the tone and muscle of someone who has time and attention and fortune aplenty—he’s reminded of how so different the two of them are. All the fantasies that played on his mind for the last few days, the coveting and the craving … it is all a farce. It was wasted and it was cruel, and nothing good falls from the sky, not ever. The giant scrap metal disc thing in his backyard that could’ve crushed any of his brothers … The colossal shadow cast by the Lifted City as the sun skips over the clouds … The derisive laughter and scorn of highborn, and the scream of a King … No, nothing good comes from up.
And here stands a boy as beautiful as boys can be, and the flames of Wick’s longing turn to anger.
But it is not anger that will score him th
e answers he needs. Play nice, draw the kitty in, and then … “Can we start this over?” asks Wick. Athan lifts his eyebrows, his baby blue eyes gleaming. Damn those eyes. “Let’s … pretend we’re just two guys meeting, you know, before the explosion, before the park and the fire and the—and all that.” He takes only a few steps and has nearly crossed the whole of this small room already, then guardedly extends a hand. “I’m Anwick Lesser.”
He felt it necessary to introduce himself formally, full first name. Athan smiles again—Oh, he has to know the effect that gorgeous smile has on me, this cruel Sanctum boy—and replies with, “I’m Athan Broadmore, of Broadmore Manor,” just as formally.
Of course he knew that already. And then their hands clasp for handshake, firmly, carefully. Some kind of electricity occurs, some kind of … Wow, his skin’s soft. My hand must feel rough. I must look a dog to him, a slum rat … some kind of … Wow …
Then they let go and it’s over. “Nice to meet you.”
“So tell me,” Wick begins, the electricity still stirring his guts into a spicy bisque of blissful agony, “Athan Broadmore … What is your Legacy?”
Athan shrugs two soft, muscular shoulders. “Not sure.”
He’s playing with me. “This will go smoothly if you’re honest. No playing.”
“Well, I mean …” Athan looks upward, gathering the words. Even this moment of thought is the most adorable thing Wick has ever seen. “I don’t know it. It’s never been needed. I mean … My brother can do something great, but he never uses his either, not ever. He has servants that do everything for him. And my sister—”
“Servants,” Wick repeats.
Athan appears to have a lot more to say, but closes his mouth instead, seeming shamed.
Beautiful this boy may be, but the image of “Lifted Life” that’s now stirred up isn’t one Wick can, with any trace of his being, call beautiful. He sees this pretty boy in front of him being served by slaves, maybe even his teeth brushed for him, or lint picked off his socks. How can people use other people like tools? Like toys? Athan may not seem like the type of guy who would use people like that … in fact, he looks kind. But if there’s anything Wick knows, it’s that first impressions are never what they seem.
