by Daryl Banner
The eighteen-year-old looks up coolly, responds, “So make him unsmart.” A thump of some weapon against flesh answers back, one shriek, then silence again. The boy calmly turns back to the old lady. “Tell me, is this fine choker of yours my birthday present?” She says something about just taking the damn thing and being on his way. “Thank you. No kinder words have kissed my ears.” He makes a sidelong glance, his eyes moving down the line.
His gaze meets Ellena’s. She looks down at once, items clasped tighter to her chest. Look away, look away.
Then he’s standing next to her, eclipsing the sunlight from the front glass of the shop. “Hey, pretty.”
Ellena doesn’t look up, doesn’t even flinch a finger. Just say nothing, say nothing and don’t look. He will ignore you as everyone does. Just another flower in the garden. Just another clot of dirt. She clenches her jaw and stares at the shoes of the person in front of her.
“Hey, pretty,” he repeats gently, right into her ear.
It may anger him not to respond. “Hi.”
“Making yourself a paper castle?”
After a second of confusion, her eyes flick down, reminded of what she carries. “The paper’s for my boss.”
The boy with blackened eyes gracefully fetches a bag from one of the others, flings it open, presents it to Ellena. “Perhaps a boy needs paper and—is that ink?—for his eighteenth year of life. Don’t you agree?”
Eighteen, she thinks bitterly. I’m good as Forge with my guesses. “It’s for my boss,” she repeats quietly.
“I imagine so’s that cash you have in your hand.” Ellena clenches the cash tighter in the cage of her fingers. It crinkles. Her life in mortal peril, and her last dying thought will be: My boss will be so, so angry … “A boy needs cash too. A fistful of tens, is that?”
“So take it,” Ellena says calmly.
“Might you kindly put it in my … sack?”
Her fingers open, the eleven crinkled tens drop to the ground, not in the sack. Despite his dark and unblinking stare, the boy seems to take no insult. Instead, he smiles and slowly lowers himself to her feet to fetch the money. I could kick him right now in the teeth. But instead of just his anger, I’d then invite the dozen of theirs on me. I wouldn’t flee this store alive—just another lowborn name the night broadcast fails to mention. He seems to linger below, and she does not dare inspect what it is that keeps his attention. Then, ever so leisurely, he rises, and she knows his eyes run up her body like greasy black spiders. She doesn’t care. Her heart is racing and tiny muscles twitch as she wrestles her face into submission—no fear, no panic, no crying.
And then: “Please,” she finds herself saying. “Please, the money belongs to my boss. It was only lent to me to get these supplies. Please, I’ll lose my job, my only job.”
The boy’s risen, his lips hovering at her ear. Almost politely, he says, “There are necessary evils in the world, and then there are just evils.” The boy tilts his head, and she feels his cool breath on her neck. “Which one’s your boss, and which one am I?”
Gently slipping the paper and the ink from her arms, they drop into the sack. Everything she’d come here for, taken in one cool swipe of his pale hand.
It’s only now that Ellena remembers the dagger stowed away in her back pocket. I forgot to deposit it at Forge’s shed … I still have it. Her mouth is dry and her fingers shake. I could give him a good cut, the door is only right there. I’d make it out easy and—
When he slings the sack over a shoulder, that’s when she sees it: an ugly wound running like a snake down his forearm, to the wrist. He’s already been cut. A fresh wound too, she can tell.
Is it the mother in her that inspires her next action? Or the reckless fool?
Ellena grabs that wrist. The boy with blackened eyes lifts a brow, his dark gaze meeting hers again—but he does not pull away. He only watches. Carefully, she turns his wrist over, studying the wound with just a look.
“Occupational hazard,” the boy murmurs, the trace of a smile playing on his long lips.
I won’t give you a cut, she decides. I’ll take you a cut.
Then she works her talent. Before their eyes, the wound transfers like data between disks, like breath between a kiss, undrawing itself down the length of his arm and drawing up hers. For a brief moment, the boy seems genuinely amazed, all the coolness and savvy of a man robbing a store replaced with boyish wonder.
When the deed is done, their eyes meet again. The other boys are ready to bail, their own sacks filled as they hover restlessly by the exit. The boy, smooth as ever, gently slips his wrist from Ellena, licks his fingertips and says, “Tell your boss The Wrath send sweet kisses.”
And just like that, the boys are gone.
Ellena remains frozen as though still holding his wrist, her mouth dry and her ears a million miles off.
When awareness finally returns to her, she hears the people in the store recovering. One lady in the back wails, the boys having made off with all her money she’d earned this week, and another man is scolding her stupid, saying she’s a moron to have brought all her money with her. A pair of girls are sobbing in the corner of the store, their mother consoling them. The person ahead of Ellena in line grunts, says, “Where’s the fucking Guardian when you need them?” and shoves his way out.
Ellena puts a hand to her mouth, the warm feeling of it against her lips bringing her odd comfort. With her hand still there, she pushes out the glass doors, resigned to returning to the muds empty-handed. She schleps down the street and rounds a corner, only to immediately trip over a thing in the road. Landing on her freshly-wounded arm, she winces, sits up to find she’d tripped over a heap of office supplies.
Ellena blinks. Five stacks of paper and two inks.
Looking left, looking right, she lifts the items into her arms without a single misgiving. Necessary evils. Pressing them to her chest like newborn twins, she hurries down the road to the train station. Acrid thoughts tangle in her mind: does there truly exist a Goddess—let alone three—to answer her pitiful begging? If that boy had taken her life today, would any Sister or Goddess or Greater Something have called it right? The new cut down her forearm stings something unkind.
She boards the nine-south and drops to a seat. The boss is going to have to do without his apple mash this afternoon.
0029 Wick
After getting clean in the trickle of hot water from the rusted spout they call a shower, Wick is drying himself when he overhears his parents talking downstairs in the kitchen. The voices draw him out to the hall; he holds the towel to himself and turns to stone, listening. His dad’s telling her about the dagger, that he worries what his sons are involving themselves with. Mom admits Link got himself in a fight with another boy at school twice his size, that she too is concerned. Tide, most likely. He’s never up to any good. Dad sighs heavily, there’s the sound of clothes shuffling and a wet smack—something between a kiss and a spank, likely one of the two—and says, “Wick has a solid head on his shoulders, always has. Level just like Lionis, whether he admits it or not. And he isn’t the reckless stuff of his younger brother Link, nor is he insane with the competitive ambition of our oldest.” Mom says she still doesn’t think Wick should brandish daggers. “Even if the ninth is going to shit,” she says, “boys shouldn’t need knives in their pockets.” But dad admits he isn’t so sure. “Our son is not like other sons,” he reminds her, and they both grow silent.
Wick glares and glares and glares, brooding like a storm. He could punch a wall really, but finds it wiser not to give away his eavesdropping.
Turns out, there’s more to hear: “I’ll be down at the shed. Need to get my pieces touched up and ready for the Weapon Show. Remember, that event I mentioned? It’s two nights from now at the Crossing? Ah—yes, you remember. Everyone from the metalshop will be there, as well as amateurs and artisans from all over the four metal wards, all showing their latest work and weaponry. Even a Sanctum man or two will be present, I�
��m told. Maybe scouts from the Marshal of Order, or Legacy …”
“Yes, yes,” she says, issues a heavy sigh. “I really don’t know if it’s a good time, with all the crime and the rebel gangs … I wish you’d stay home. Forge, honey, it’s such a bad time for big events like that.”
“Come, don’t be like that. I don’t have … I don’t have any ill feelings on it. Nothing will happen.”
Wick hears the doubt in his voice … but even beyond a voice’s tinge, he feels the doubt as though it were his own—without even knowing the math and numbers his father certainly sees. The Weapon Show? Wick’s found himself an idea … How much exposure will this event get, exactly?
“Why such worry?” Forge goes on, voice changing. “The whole of your face … Has something happened? Something at work? A crime?”
“No, no,” she says too quickly. Wick frowns and feels the sting of mistrust. His mother’s lying, something has happened indeed to make her worry about this Weapon Show … Wick can’t say how he knows that with such certainty, but he does.
“Okay,” his dad responds quietly, though his own doubt in that one word is obvious. They share the doubt without knowing it, father and son. “I love you so much, Ellena. You and the boys, you’re my world. That dirty metalshop, if it weren’t for you and the boys I would be taken off, I swear it, just as countless others were taken off by Guardian, their tempers lost, unable to stand it.”
“No, no,” she repeats and repeats, the sound of their clothes ruffling, “no … Don’t say that, Forge.” And he comforts her with soothing words and sounds, then chuckles and says, “Ah, the day that Halves and Aleks have to take in their own father, bow him before the King because he lost his wits at work. The smoke and steam and sweat, it plays a mean trick on the head, even for a man with the math in it.” He chuckles again bleakly, and then they both fall into silence.
Wick leans against the wall, thinks long and hard on his actions. On Rain … and Rone … and a Sanctum boy named Athan. Is he doing all this for glory? Is he doing it for fun? Is he doing it … for a boy?
Am I a greater fool than I know? The knife of doubt in his chest, he can’t seem to pull it free. He gives an honest consideration to whether or not he should stay home. His recklessness, it could bring great harm to the whole family. What if he were caught, locked up by Guardian—by his own brothers, just as his father so flippantly teased—and brought before the Banshee King? He’d never again see the light of day. He’d never again taste freedom, never again see home, never know the joy and pain of growing old with his loved ones. The King only cries once …
But who’s to say even those pleasures are guaranteed to him? If he doesn’t commit to Rain … If he doesn’t help turn the tide of the King’s tyranny and the Lifted City’s privilege … he may lose it all anyway. Perhaps he’s robbed no matter his actions.
When his dad is down the street and his mom thinks he’s gone to bed, Wick sneaks from his room and slips into his parents’ room. Pushing through the drawers, as per the conversation he overheard, he finds the sharp thing that once belonged to him. Time to get my life back in my own hands, he thinks cleverly, shuts the drawer and the door and, with great care, sneaks out the bathroom window, as his father sealed the bedroom’s.
The train ride is so quick it’s like he teleported to the Noodle Shop, already pushing through its doors, the intoxicating aroma of spice and broth consuming him. When he pushes through the wooden stair into the loft, he’s annoyed to find they’ve begun without him.
“You’re late,” says Yellow.
Surrounding the large table is everyone else: Rone, Cintha, Victra, Arrow, Pratganth, and Juston. It seems like they’re already in the thick of a discussion.
“I’m sorry. I had—I was held back by—”
“No time. You’re a smart lad, you’ll catch up.” Yellow turns back to the group. “From this plot-out, it’s better we make at the eighth. The Marshal’s next Exam-giving is there, and he—along with all his private little Guardian—are going to see it.”
“We should do it on the seventh ward school,” puts in Rone. “There are bigger walls, lots of space to utilize. Their Exam is only one or two days later, and—”
“That’s one or two days’ more travel, too,” puts in Prat, “and that much farther from our base, if anything were to go wrong. I vote we stick with eighth.”
Yellow looks between the two of them as they argue back and forth, then finally interrupts with: “Seventh. We will make our act on the seventh. Visibility is key. It’s important we capitalize on the Sanctum’s eyes—which are all on the wreckage of Lord’s Garden. We must move where they move.” His eyes weigh heavily on Rone. “We are going to make our way into the Lifted City by the end of the year, I promise you this. We’ve never had such a hand as we do now. We have one of the three the Sanctum so desperately seek.”
He’s referring to Athan, whom Wick realizes is absent. “Where is he?”
Victra points with a long, lazy finger. “In his cage, where a Sanctum bird ought to be.” Her eyes narrow. “Don’t worry, lover boy … He’s being fed all the proper. A starved bird’s no use to us.”
“He should be treated humane!” Wick argues, ignoring outright her use of the term lover boy. “He isn’t a prisoner! I promised that he’d—”
“Actually, he is,” Arrow corrects him politely. “Any person held against their will without freedom to leave when they please is, I’d say, a prisoner by definition.”
“But he’s not being held against his will. He agreed to cooperate, fully. He’s given us no reason to worry.”
The other members of Rain share looks. It’s Prat who responds: “Well, I think that’s the point.”
Wick doesn’t follow. “What do you mean?”
“Can you ever really trust a Lifted?” Prat goes on. “I mean … Hasn’t it struck you as strange that he survived such a fall? Isn’t that a bit … convenient?”
“He could be a spy.” The suggestion comes from Victra and her eternal smirk. “A bird sent from Sanctum. Sent from the King himself, wrapped up in the package of an innocent pretty boy.”
Wick tries interjecting, but Prat talks over him. “You know how they dissolve rebel movements? From inside. Sanctum has the power. Sanctum has the resources. Spies infiltrate and secretly report back. I heard they even recruit new members of Guardian from the deep slums now, hoping to hear the whispers of people, the secrets.”
Wick’s had enough. “Do I have to remind you guys that I saved him from the square?? He didn’t ‘infiltrate’ his way here … he fell into our arms. We caught him.”
The looks on their faces are not kind. Once again, Wick considers that he may not be so much a part of Rain as hoped. Doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do. Maybe they don’t even trust him. Why should they? he thinks bitterly. I’m a liar anyway. They think I smell things.
“He’s right,” murmurs Cintha.
Everyone turns to her, pays her one second of mind, then Victra speaks: “Right or wrong or otherwise, I trust no boy or girl from the sky.”
At last, Yellow rises from the table, his cane piercing the floor. “Here is the long and short of it, Anwick Lesser.” Wick glares, resenting the use of his full name, like he’s some reprimanded child. “Were my ability able to seek truth out of one’s mind, I’d be King of Atlas. Sadly, I can’t, and I’m not. As it goes, I could still wipe the boy’s mind clean, were he to hear too much. His role as a ‘spy’ would be for naught, as he’d remember nothing to take back. That much is known.” He lifts his chin, his gaze darkens. “The sobering reality is, there are hundreds of eyes on the street, and all of them are hunting the boy. Aside from him, they’re hunting the missing Kael Mirand-Thrin, heir to the throne of Atlas, our next Queen. As well as some other Joed Sand-something. The boy Athan must remain out of sight. Even here in the loft, eyes can find through our window. Hears, too. It’s imperative, now more than ever, that we not play our cards and expose our hard work.
Even now I contemplate the uses of working my Legacy to have you all forget we hold the boy in that room.”
Victra lets out a long sigh. Rone leans against the table, folding his arms and staring pensively at the floor. Cintha and the others only sit still, adding to the room’s fill of silent unsettledness.
“I have an idea,” says Wick rather suddenly. Yellow lifts a patient brow, listening. “I heard word of …” He can’t believe he’s about to say this, but his father planted the seed, and it’s one he cannot ignore. “I heard word of a big event that will take place in the Crossing. It’s quite soon—tomorrow night, in fact—but there will be many from Sanctum in attendance, as well as thousands of slummers. Important people … bosses, heads, scouts.”
“The Weapon Show,” says Arrow, drawing their attention. “I heard, too. I thought it’s only for smiths?”
“Smiths, enthusiasts, metalshop men and women, and Sanctum. Even members of Guardian will be there. Likely the Marshal of Order himself.”
“The little Taylon twerp,” says Victra icily. “Always so hungry,” Rone adds in a distant, mindless murmur, “always hungry for the new and latest weapon to torture his people with.”
A thoughtful, brooding pause has filled the room. Everyone is considering this idea heavily, opportunity tasting like blood in their teeth. “Yes,” says Prat finally with a nod. “I like this idea.”
“Me too,” says the stout-and-muscled Juston. “We can mark the Crossing with our name in so many places. Anyone in the arena of the Weapon Show will see it, anyone and everyone. What if the thing’s broadcasted? Oh, that would be … wow …”
Even Arrow agrees. “I can charm us some earpieces for radio. We can set it up ahead of time, then simply pay witness and keep a safe-distanced watch.”
Soon, everyone’s throwing in their agreement, more and more inspired. Wick peers from face to face, satisfied on one account: they embraced his idea. But with a pinch of sadness, he knows this does little to help the boy in that prisoner’s room over there. Wick’s eyes wander, coming to rest on the ugly lock of that ugly, ugly door.
