by Daryl Banner
There was a time when Ruena was only seven and her parents were already gone, and Aunt Kael, her only caretaker, had just sent away two of the servants because little Ruena insisted she was too afraid of them to request tasks be done. “You let a speck of dirt make you tremble,” said Aunt Kael, riled. “A slum cat given twenty baths can gouge out your little eyes just as keenly as a dirty one. The slumborn are here to serve us, not to scare us. They are tools. Utilities. You must think on them like a case of stairs, Ruena. A tool to get you from one floor to another, nothing more. You don’t thank the stair every time you ascend it, do you? ‘Thank you quite much, stairs.’ Well, do you?” Little Ruena gave a little smile and a laugh. This was before her scar, and all the white of her hair shook with her giggling. “Tools, Ruena, and nothing more. And no guest under the Mirand-Thrin roof fears a tool, do they?” Thereafter, whenever Ruena ascended the stairs of the Mirand-Thrin Palace, every step was a slumborn face. And whenever she reached the top of the grand stair, little seven-year-old Ruena would resist a playful urge to thank it.
So what are the boys, Dran and Fylan? Are they two more tools? Are they a means to an end?—or a pair of dirty cats to be tossed back to the streets? A Queen knows how to make best of her people, of her men and women who serve, and most importantly, of her fears.
Ruena whips off her hat, unafraid, and points her eyes at the King on his throne, who still awaits her answer. What would Queen Ruena do? Nothing stands between her and her grandfather, not a guard, not a Marshal, not a missing Aunt or a case of stairs.
“I won’t fear them.” Young Ruena Netheris with her electric-white hair, she spreads a mouth and speaks to a King. “No King or Queen will fear a thing …” Her eyes flare, blue-white sparks tickling the tips of her fingers. “Not even rain.”
0039 Athan
The streets of the slums are in constant bustle and noise, no matter the hour of the sun. Certainly different from the Lifted City, which is nearly quiet and breezy all the days long, and especially the nights when people tend to stay inside. In this particular part of the city, the buildings look like they were all once one-story tall, but then a crazy man decided to put houses atop other houses, followed by nonsensical builders rising the structures higher up, two or three stories more, then yet deciding to add another story on top of the already haphazardly-stacked rest. Every street seems hugged by giants made of discolored brick and greasy glass and creaking, rotted wood that smell both homely and nauseating. Just peering up at them is stomach-turning. And not long ago, Wick and I leapt from roof to roof. Its height is strangely scarier from the bottom than it is from up atop those trash-laden roofs.
Many of the buildings seem to hold hands—tens and twenties of hands—joined together by metal halls and caged strips and access ways, wooden and concrete and barred walkways that hang with all matters of ornaments, laundry and bulbs of light. Athan had never imagined how vastly populated the slums are, every window seeming to move with the business of yet another person’s life. All the struggles, all the worry, all the fending off things unwanted, all the making it from day to day, meal to meal.
This is the life of the slums.
In the underpass of a particularly loud train, they find their first moment’s rest. Wick is leaning heavily against a smelly stack of buckets while Rone and Victra scout the streets, attempting to figure how far they’ve all gone from home. Athan can see Victra closing her eyes a lot and turning in all directions, likely using her Legacy to see what others in the area are seeing, searching for less populated areas to traverse, searching for indicators, signs …
He finds Wick breathing slowly and looking plenty agitated, rubbing his eyes and picking at his fingers. “Wick, you alright?”
“No.”
He bites his lip and looks off to where the big one called Tide is standing, somewhere behind the scaffolding of the railway above them. He looks like a huge human lantern. In terrible danger, running for their lives, all of them trembling from neck to knee … and all Athan feels is thrill. I have never had this much fun before in my whole life.
“No,” Wick repeats, “not alright at all, Athan. It’s already sunlight again. I’m … I’m gonna miss school, I’ll be marked truant. They’ll come to my house, I’ll be missing. Athan, that’s bad, that’s very, very bad.”
There’s nowhere decently clean to sit, so Athan just crouches next to him. “Surely your parents will cover for you, right?”
“My dad went to that show too. Who’s to say he’s even alive right now? I … I don’t know what’s going to happen. My life has fallen apart in an instant and it’s my fault … it’s all my fault.”
It feels quite ill-timed, but Athan considers putting a hand on Wick, relaxing him the only way he can think of. Yes, yes, the whole world is awful and there’s men in scary uniforms hunting them down, and Athan’s the last remaining “wanted” face, a missing Son of Sanctum, and the splash of blue-green color in his hair isn’t nearly mask enough … but all he wants to do is steal Wick away, curl up somewhere private and warm and ask the slum boy if he likes where he’s putting his hands.
“It’s no use,” Wick calls to Tide, though he isn’t listening. “Once struck by the glow, it’s permanent.”
Athan studies the muscular backside of Tide, surprised anyone his age can be so massive, especially down here in the slums. He always pictured everyone here to be so skinny and rat-like, just like how his mom would describe it. But you’ve been plenty wrong before, he considers bitterly. All those things she said about them; he’ll have so many things to say to her in return, so many things she’s dead wrong about.
Rone and Victra return from their scouting session. “From the look of it,” Rone shares, “we’re not far into the seventh ward.”
“Seventh??” exclaims Wick, all the breath pouring out of him in that one word.
“If you had a dream of getting home soon, dash it,” says Victra. “The both of you—three of you,” she adds, nodding at Tide who’s stubbornly refusing to take part in this conversation, “will be marked truant by now. If they even notice. Their eyes are everywhere at this point, so we can’t be too sure. All the mess might actually buy us a few days.”
Rone pats Wick roughly on the knee. “Wipe your tears, bro. We’ll fix this.”
“I’m not crying,” snaps Wick.
“You wouldn’t happen to be able to … smell a way out of this, would you?” Wick only glowers, no reply. “Thought that’d be too convenient. We could make it home in a few hours if we took a different train. Y’know, the legit way: inside of it, this time.”
“You fucking nuts?” Everyone turns. Tide’s breath has grown deep, evidenced by the lift and fall of his huge chest. “My shoulder’s glowing like a moon! Look at this! Look at this shit!” He twists, flexing a shoulder. No one dares point out that it’s not just his shoulder that was hit, but also the small of his back, and a huge spot on his hip too.
“We don’t owe you anything,” says Victra lazily. “You’re just a clob who got in our way. Besides,” she nods at him, “if you wanna chop off that glowing shoulder of yours, might as well take Wick’s left arm too.”
Wick looks confused for a second until he turns, noticing the dull glow that runs across his arm … two parallel lines of neon. They’re very faint, which seem to indicate that he was less hit and more grazed.
“Y-You were shot,” Athan murmurs dumbly.
“I’m sick of this.” Wick puts his head between his knees, seeming to throw away the world. “Please. I need a moment. Damn it … Damn it …”
“We don’t have moments,” retorts Victra. “We need to get moving. Here.” She pulls off her glossy blue jacket, pitches it at Wick. Grudgingly, he tries the thing on. It seems to hide it enough.
“Great,” grunts Tide. “Cover his little smudge of neon. What the fuck about mine?”
Rone sighs, resigned. “Well, we are in the seventh.” He pulls off his shirt, revealing quite a toned and slender bronze build
. “Get over here, you big clunk.” Confused, Tide stands still while Rone wraps his massive shoulder with the shirt on top of Tide’s own, tying it off carefully, then steps back to observe his work. “Hmm. Yeah, no, we’ll need more. Still glows.”
After adding two feeble pairs of socks to the covering, they’re out of clothes and hardly made a change. Victra’s given up her jacket to Wick for his glowing, and …
“Here.” Athan pulls off his own shirt.
Wick’s eyes become a cloud of warring expressions. Surprise? Yearning? Whatever it is, it brings Athan’s insides to a happy boil, and with no reluctance, he hands his dirtied shirt to Rone.
A million times he’s been dressed by the hands of servants … Oh, what freedom it is to undress himself, in the half-dark of a train’s underpass, among people he barely knows. A boy named Wick among them. He wonders if he’s become his own fantasy, living among slummers, on the run from Guardian. Instead of dreaming it through his window in the sky, he’s living it … He chases from bad men with guns, he swears by the sides of rebels, he offers a companion the shirt off his back …
“You can still see it,” complains Tide after Rone’s finished.
“It’ll have to do.” Victra snaps her fingers. “Now let’s get a move.” She closes her eyes, concentrating. “We have a window of opportunity down … that street.”
They quickly depart the shadows. Wick’s eyes are all over him, and he minds not at all. Athan’s seen other slummers going shirtless on the streets, men and women. It shouldn’t be a matter.
Victra curses under her breath. “We have to hide again. Shit, this isn’t good. Guardian’s everywhere they look.” By ‘they’ she is referring to the eyes of others, Athan realizes belatedly. “Rone, pull us into a place. Quick, quick, quick.”
Rone’s already on top of it, phasing through the nearest brick at once. The rest of them crowd close to the wall, feigning interest in the signs of local stores. Tide stands nearest the wall with Athan, Wick and Victra in front to block them from view. Victra keeps cursing under her breath. Even Athan feels the anxiety, or maybe it’s still excitement. He watches a family pass by, two bushy-haired girls and a dad behind them, or an older brother, he’s not sure. It’s so different upclose, witnessing these people at such a proximity he could literally shake their hand.
And touch them. The back of Wick’s neck so close, shoulder pressed against his chest, he leans forward ever slightly and whispers, “I hate to admit it, but—”
Suddenly a hand’s gripped him, and the world falls away—blinding white light—and then he’s plunged into the dark.
The hand still gripped to his arm, he turns to find Rone smiling at him in the dark. “Fun, isn’t it?”
“Being—Being pulled through a wall? Never done it before.” Athan laughs, but no sooner than he does, Rone is already reaching through again, pulling in Tide, then Victra, then finally Wick. It’s easy as that, like drawing cats through a curtain.
“Someone’s sweet pad,” Rone reports, smiling proudly. “No one’s home, right Victra? Better make use while we got it.”
“Get to the kitchen,” Victra orders. “A night of running and hopping train-tops, I’m starved.”
Victra, Rone, and Tide move through the dark and into the den, still lit from a back window. They poke through the kitchen, bantering about what diets the residents of this place must keep.
Wick seems less interested in food, staring off. Athan searches the room in the dark, happens on a small closet. “Look here,” he says with a smile, peering back at Wick. “Think it’d be so bad to borrow something from this person with no intention at all of returning it?”
Wick stumbles across the shadows, bringing his face right up to Athan’s. “I think you’re rushing the act of redressing yourself.”
Athan lifts a curious brow, playing coy. He can’t see an inch of Wick’s face. “Don’t think I should dress just yet?”
“No,” says the silhouette.
Laughs echo from the kitchen, Rone and Victra making a play at each other about things they’re finding in the den, followed by Tide who still whines about his back. Wick seems odd, prisoner to some unseeable fog. Is it just how Wick reacts to trauma, or …?
Athan moves to a pile of pillows in the corner of the room, makes a spot for his body, sits. “Here.” He waves a hand, smiling. “Come here.” Wick obeys, gently sitting next to him. He seems to be waiting for another request. “Come into my arms. It’ll relax you.” Wick seems reluctant to consider it—something inside him is fighting and I wish I knew what it was—then finally he gives in, laying his head on Athan’s chest. They feel so warm together, skin on skin, nothing in the way. Athan wraps his arms around the slum boy, brings him into a tight embrace. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be just fine, your dad too.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. Call it my Legacy.” Athan smiles, his chin resting on the top of Wick’s head, tickling the hair. “I know this isn’t the right place to say it, or the right time, but … but I’m really glad that … that I …”
Wick reaches with a foot suddenly, kicking the door of the room shut—Rone and Victra and Tide vanished from their little world—and the glossy jacket suddenly peels off his body, flung to the other end of the room. Athan watches, stunned.
Then they are truly unseeable, two fumbling silhouettes, but Athan hears him lifting his shirt, struggling a bit at the shoulder, then getting it off and setting it aside almost delicately. The twin stripes of neon glow on his arm, and it’s rather beautiful in the dark. The top one slightly brighter and pinker than the other. Wick breathes slow, different muscles flinching across his abs and arms, barely lit by the glow of his arm which, the only light source in the room, seems to beam proudly. Finally Athan can see his face breaking into a small, tired smile—or at least he thinks he can. For a slender-built slum boy, Wick sure has a show of muscle playing down his front. To be honest, Athan wasn’t expecting it; he’d only had hints of Wick’s build from the shape of his arms in the sleeveless hoodie he usually wears.
“So … what were you glad about?”
Athan tries to remember what the hell he was going to say earlier, distracted still by Wick’s skin. “Well … I’ve only known terrible things, despite what you might think. Really stupid boys I’ve spent my life trying to impress. A few of them I almost called a friend … It’s just so strange to me that … that I had to take a near-death fall to meet a guy like you.” He smiles, broad and bold. “Anwick Lesser … I’m glad that I … that I …”
“Me too,” Wick agrees, and their mouths find each other in the shadows. That I fell from the sky … but really, they know.
Too soon, a sudden voice disturbs them, their mouths separating, and Rone’s head is through the door, phased in. “Sorry to interrupt, boys. These folk seem well-off enough to have a phone, so I called the Noodle Shop, pretended to order some boiled Sanctum heads—that’s our code, Cintha and I … oh, no offense, sky-boy—and she informed me that there’s something big going down. I mean, really big. All of Guardian’s being called out.”
“Guardian? Why?” Wick’s sat up. “What is it?”
“Guardian’s ears have caught wind of something in the Core. Yellow and the others—they made it back safely, by the way—and he’s organized a group to investigate. They want to get there first and find out what it is before Guardian does. Guardian’s being pulled off searching for Weapon Show folk as we speak. Cintha suspects—and again, this is just speculation—but she suspects it has to do with Sanctum’s Weapon … the real Weapon. Bad timing, of course, with the four of us not at headquarters, but he has to act now or lose this game-changing opportunity.”
“Haven’t we done enough?” Wick’s voice is strained and breathy. “The square … The Weapon Show … We haven’t done a thing that’s gone right, Rone. Don’t you feel it too? Let Yellow take our memory, let us have our lives back. The cost is … is too much. I’ve been giving it some real serious thou
ght, and I think—”
“No, Wick. We can’t just give up after a few near-misses. Don’t give up. A world without a screaming King … remember? Don’t lose sight of what this is all for. Wake the world!” Rone nods at them. “No matter how much fun we’re having.” He grins wickedly. “Three of us lost our shirts, looks like. Too bad guys aren’t my style; looks like I’m missing quite the party.” He winks, then phases out of the room, but still hollers from the other side of the door: “Get dressed, bros! Some dignity, please!”
Athan smiles. “I like that Rone character.”
“With or without his shirt?” Wick retorts, though Athan can’t quite tell if he’s kidding, and he begins to stir.
“I know.” Athan sighs. “Things aren’t at their best. I kinda wish it would all slow down a bit too.”
“It’s not that I want to quit. It’s not that I regret joining Rain. It’s just that I …” Wick can’t seem to find the words, shifting against Athan’s body, then settling with a sigh.
“You can stay in my arms a bit longer if you like.”
Wick turns to meet his eyes. “Really, your arms are the most comfortable thing in the city right now, or ever … but we gotta get home. This is our chance to get home.” He climbs to his feet awkwardly and pokes through the closet, the weak glow of his arm following him.
Athan watches, smiling only until Wick’s words sink in. Home, he just said. Athan stews and stews, a weight sitting in his chest and pressing. Where’s my home?
Wick dons a grey tee, then crosses the room for Victra’s glossy jacket. When Athan gets up to browse the clothes himself, reluctantly thumbing through them and unsure what to choose, he realizes he’s never dressed himself. With a shy smile, he lifts a brow and turns, saying, “Help me pick a shirt?”
But he’s caught Wick unable to reply, covering his mouth and squeezing tiny tears out his eyes. What’s he doing? In an instant he’s recovered, coming to Athan’s side in half a drunken stagger to help out. Their bodies pressed gently together, Athan studies his face closely, concerned, feeling there’s something Wick is not saying.
