by Daryl Banner
“Yes, Lead Officer Obert, sir.” Halves’ throat is so dry, he can’t bring himself to swallow.
“You’ll have a new partner soon. Take the day to recoup. You’ll work the study thereafter, until a new assignment’s been had. I assume I am understood. Now, go.”
Halvesand goes. He takes the stairs up three flights, passes through the commons without getting himself a speck of breakfast. He moves through the corridors and the halls ignoring every greeting and wave and call. He might’ve passed by Ennebal, she’s as good as a ghost. Even his brother, yes, even his brother might’ve tried to say something to him, but every face is Grute’s dead one, and the dead don’t talk. I am honest.
When Halvesand Lesser of the ninth makes it to his dorm at the top of the building, he gently closes the door and pushes a desk in front of it … not sure what he’s trying to keep out. With jerky hands, he pulls off his pants, drops his underwear and flings them both across the room, damp and smelly. He rids himself of his shirt with such force, the underarm seams tear. He cuddles the bare corner of the room and holds his knees to his naked chest, the only comfort anything in the whole building can hope to give.
It is only then, squeezed in this dim corner with nothing but his flesh and his breath and two cold knees against his chest that he lets himself sigh, and sigh, and heave until the tears appear in his eyes, until the world blurs and he chokes on empty air, gasping and choking and coughing the tears off his face, off his lips, a sobbing little child.
0041 Ellena
My sons are missing.
She gets on the train, stunned to find it so vacant. Maybe no one wants to ride today. Maybe no one wants the company of someone as miserable as her. No, that’s dumb, they wouldn’t know. No one knows. Terrible things happen every day. Terrible things people complain about all the time, and all she says is, sorry, and, oh no, and, I can’t imagine …
But when it’s her own sons that are missing, she realizes no word kind or otherwise can touch her. Both my oldest to Guardian, both my youngest to the city. She’s so lost, she considers simply not going to work today, despite where the train, uncaring of her plight, takes her. She thinks, what if I just go the other way?
Eleven minutes later, she’s knee-deep in the muds, searching tediously through thorny rows of bramble for andragora seeds, plucking and plucking, then depositing them into a pot under her arm. Even without a rake or a spade, mud still finds its way to her face, speckled over her clothes, brushed into her wispy hair.
Suddenly, the unmistakable rumble cuts across the field and Ellena perks up, searching. A chrome caravan. That woman … That luxurious woman has come back.
With the pot thrusting about like a tambourine under her arm, Ellena hops across the muds and toward the parked vehicle, which looks more like a giant, polished beetle made of silver. The exquisite lady has stepped out—she wears heels of glass today!—and saunters directly into the greenhouse. Ellena can’t say what exactly is so appealing about the lady. Maybe the muds have proved so tedious and boring, Ellena finds herself attracted to such a fancy woman, obviously sky-born, highborn, made of gold and glass.
Ellena knows she really should keep to her work. She’ll never make her quota of seven-hundred seeds by nightfall if she stops. It would be foolish to stop.
So naturally Ellena drops her spade at once and edges to the greenhouse, boots sloshing unrepentantly in the muddy road. When she peers through the glass, she sees the woman, draped in so many flowing silks and bunched-up fabrics and pink tufts of fur that she seems like a fat, beautiful bird. She’s being shown a selection of floral arrangements by the snob florist from sixth—whose name lovingly remains unknown. We’ll call you the Thorn in my rosebush. Thorn the snob grins—an awful sight—and sweeps her hands around like some dumb illusionist presenting a trick. I hope the Sanctum lady thinks you as much a fool as you are. Even her rigid boss is there, sporting his own brand of artificial merriment.
Perhaps driven insane by her missing boys, Ellena suddenly finds herself inside the greenhouse, looking at an arrangement over the Thorn’s shoulder. It’s a solid four minutes of blah-blah-blah before anyone takes notice of her. Ellena’s presence cuts the snob off midsentence, which draws the Sanctum lady’s attention.
But only for a second. She regards Ellena with as much care as she’d give a blow of wind, then turns back to the flowers. “You would think, with all the power of earth down here in your little thumbs, that you’d make something befitting my home. None of these will work.”
“Oh.” The snob tries to hide her dismay. “Well, put your eyes on these! And, and, and onto this one here. This—oh, yes!—this here is one of my most prized: a spray of azure wildbloom with golden straws of sunlight. Look at how it’s glowing, look here, how it glows with just the sun through the window. Gold like your moneys. You were fondest of the blue, yes, weren’t ya?”
Ellena had never really taken the time to observe the snob’s work. She realizes too late that it’s as bad as her own. Already she pictures her awful practices at the temple greensmith lessons. It’s been so long since she’s been to one, but she remembers the lessons well enough. She knows exactly what’s wrong with the snob’s work.
“It’s too sad.”
She didn’t mean to say it, but realizes she’s drawn everyone’s attention with just those three tiny words. The snob gapes, nervous beads of sweat along her brow, and her boss seems mortified by her presence. The Sanctum lady, however, regards her curiously.
“No one asked,” the boss cuts in, dowsing whatever chance might have, for a moment, pleasantly existed for Ellena to have her say.
“Too sad?”
The Sanctum lady’s voice squeaks a bit on the high notes, her tongue slippery as a song. A tinny flute.
“Well.” Ellena’s eyes go wide, daring herself to say something else about the awful, flat, blue arrangement. Say it all or say nothing, say it all or say nothing. “I make the same mistakes, every time. Really, Thorn—” Her eyes go wider if that’s possible, and she suddenly doesn’t know what to call miss snobby sixth. “The florist,” she corrects herself, “did well with the blue, but … but maybe it could use a kinder compliment than the gold sticks.”
“Straws,” Thorn corrects her nastily, her voice not unlike the snap of a dog’s jowls.
“And you’d suggest … what?”
The Sanctum lady wants to hear more. I wish I were better at lying. To be honest, I don’t remember half of what the lessons taught me. Three Sister, pleeeease give me inspiration. “The … The sun is more than just gold, I read once. Well, actually, it was my son Lionis who, in fact, read about it. He told me that the sun was made of all the colors. My youngest, Link—” Just saying his name sends a pang of hurt through her stomach. “—has a Legacy for color, in fact. His … His boldest color is a light red. Pink.”
“Ooh. Pink, you say.” The Sanctum lady turns to the flowers, considering something. “Yes. I think I like the idea of pink. All the colors are in the sun, you say?”
Or so said the sciences of the Ancients. And my son. “Yes. Even blue. Even gold.”
“Even pink.” She turns to the florist. “I think I’d like a spray of pink in this, please. Perhaps some—what do you call it?—blushing daisies, is it?”
The snob has lost a lot of the flair she had only a moment ago. “Well. Those are more red than pink.”
“Whatever you have that’s pink. I want pink in this, yes.” The lady pokes over the flowers, points at one. “What’s this? Add some of this. Spray it throughout. I’ll be ordering twenty-seven of these, each to fit in my windows that face the sun. I’d like to add sapphires as well—actual sapphires. I hear you can press them to the pedals? Is that true?”
“You’d have to go to the Mechanoids for that,” drones the Thorn, her voice flat and unkind. The boss nudges her, his face flushing with the redness of urgency. “Yes, but, uh … Yeah, we can get that ordered. It’s our practice anyway, ain’t it.”
“Yes,” agrees the lady. Her eyes land on Ellena once more, surveying her. “You look a mess. A lovely flower lady you have here,” she tells the boss, “but a mess.”
Ellena can’t help but smile at the kinda-compliment, her face turning its own shades of furious pink. When she looks to her boss and coworker for a twinkle of approval, she gets it from neither; in fact, if she knows them well at all, she’s just made two enemies.
“How long have you been in the flowers?” the lady asks, her voice lilting innocently.
“Actually,” says Ellena before anyone else can say a word … I’m going to have to confess … “I’m—I’m not a girl of the flowers. I work in the muds.”
The lady frowns. “Oh. Well, whatever makes you happy.” The naïve Sanctum lady doesn’t understand that people don’t always choose their lives here in the slums, that the muds may not have been Ellena’s first choice. “So,” she goes on, facing the boss, “I will take thirty of these with the blushing daisies—or whatever you have that’s more pink, I’ll leave that to you—and infused with the sapphires. I have the gold or credit, whichever you take.”
“I’ll ring you up in the office.” He smiles rigidly, two hints of teeth peeking through his lips. “This way, kind Lady Oalia.”
And with that, the Sanctum Lady Oalia and the boss stroll to the office, and Ellena stands by the sad blue flowers, forgotten and picking at her nails.
The snob hasn’t forgotten her, however. She steps toward Ellena, and the pink they were all looking for is burning furious in the woman’s pupils. “You ever do that again,” she says, meeting Ellena’s eyes, “I will make the pink fall out your skinny belly.”
Ellena gasps. “I … I didn’t—I just—”
“My son, the one who’s fallen for that girl in tenth? I forgot to mention, he’s inhumanly skilled with a bow and arrow. You should watch your back in those muds, bitch, else he’ll find a spot so far you’ll never see it coming, and his aim will be perfect.” The snob makes a swipe of her hand—for a moment Ellena thinks she means to slap her—but then the sad blue arrangement is on the floor, shattered, pot and all. The soil has flung, the flowers and the roots and the blue. “So clumsy. Made yourself a mess on the floor, didn’t you, muds?” She hisses, an honest, cat-like hiss, then marches out the glass doors.
0042 Wick
I am so fucking sleepy.
They eat whatever they can in the stranger’s spacy kitchen before gearing up to hit the nearest train. This house is at least twice the size of his own, yet it seems far more cluttered. If only I could make a few minutes’ sleep in that room, just a few, I could get myself back to rights.
He’s never felt this sleepy in his life. All those nights where he scurried off to the Noodle Shop, then came home only to catch an hour of sleep before his dad waked him for training … even those awful nights don’t compare to the agony of this. Thirty hours, has it been? Thirty-six? Forty? He can’t keep track anymore, but he’s been told the sun is already preparing to set again. That’s two sunrises he’s seen today … and now his second sunset. How do other people do it?
“Wick, you with us?”
He looks up, blinking away his thoughts—everything is like a dream, I could be dreaming, I might flinch and wake up with dad pointing a sword in my face—and says, “Yeah.”
“There’s a subterranean rail,” Rone is saying, “that can run us straight to the wrong end of tenth, but that’ll still save us several hours. Then we move through ten to headquarters.”
“My back still glows,” mumbles Tide, the sulkiest, dumbest, most useless human being to ever come from ninth. And there’ve been plenty.
“We’ll cover it as best as we can. Just like we have to cover Wick’s arm. Both of you are vulnerable, no matter how many less Guardian might be out there now. I doubt 100% of them have been relocated to the Core.”
Athan leans in, his tight blue shirt stretching. “Sorry, but what’s the Core?”
“The sort-of center of Atlas,” answers Rone, “where near fifty or so of the Lifted City pylons are said to be. It’s also rumored to be where the lifts and the stairs and the—whatever, however one gets from the slums to the Lifted City. It’s still a bit frustratingly unknown, even to us.” He squints, seems to consider Athan for a bit. “Y’know, ever since the fall of the last Queen when all those rebels made their way into the Lifted City, nothing’s been the same. There is no more known way up there. The trust’s broken.”
Athan nods slowly, drawn into thought. Yeah, thinks Wick, studying him too. You’re stuck down here forever, Sanctum boy. Of course, that isn’t true; the Marshals make constant journey back and forth from Cloud Keep itself, as do a rare Privileged now and then. There is obviously a way between the worlds, but no one knows of it. And likely those who do keep dutifully quiet.
“I’ve eaten my fill,” says Victra. “Get over here, you big clob. I’ll bind your shoulder best as I can.” She pulls Tide into the bathroom while he makes snide grumbles about wanting to kill everyone and everything.
“No amount of anything’s gonna bind that.” Wick sneers, filled up to the nose with bitterness. Even the pair of dishcloths they found under the kitchen sink barely conceal the scrape of pink light on Wick’s own arms. They have no hope in the world of hiding Tide’s beacon.
“Wick, you alright?” Athan asks so quietly, though he’s sure everyone’s heard. Wick rolls his eyes, impatient, irritable with anything that moves or talks or whispers. Even beautiful boys from the Lifted City. Nothing at all in the world is more important than putting his face into a pillow right now.
He leans into the counter, shoves his face into a pair of hands. Maybe they’re his own. He doesn’t know.
A world without a screaming King … “I’m so tired of being asked if I’m okay,” groans Wick, the world spinning, spinning, spinning.
And he had almost dreamed. He was so close. Wrapped in Athan’s strong arms in that snug room, he could’ve dreamed himself away, safe in some world of his mind. Now they’re leaving the safe place too soon and he’s seeing stars that aren’t there. Could he trust Athan with his secret? Is it such a foolish thing to consider, to trust anyone but his own family with the secret? Even Link doesn’t know, his own little brother. They never told him, and now he may never have the chance.
He’s so tired of doing what mom and dad tell him to. In saying and not saying what they command. Neither of you are here to stop me, he realizes, both gladly and terribly.
When they finally hit the streets, Athan keeps giving him these looks. Maybe I should just tell him, put him out of his misery. But Wick doesn’t have too much longer to go, he realizes; he will be home within the next three or so hours. So he’s lasted thirty, maybe forty hours without sleep … What’s another three?
When they round the corner, Victra suddenly shouts a word at Rone, whose response is so fast, Wick hardly sees it: gripping Athan’s hand, Rone phases him through the wall of a building, banishing him from sight, but still keeping hold of his hand, plunged seamlessly through the brick.
“What happened??” yells Wick in a delayed stupor before bothering to process what they’ve encountered.
That is: two Guardian casually rounding a corner. One brutish and muscled, ugly-faced, the other slender and wearing a fat orange helmet. In a matter of seconds they’re passing by, their eyes full of beady, oily suspicion. It all seems so strange, so unreal, that Wick questions if he’s seeing with his eyes, or if it’s a dream.
He closes his eyes. He sees a cramped office space. He’s looking about in this space, confused. He can’t seem to pull away because a hand is gripping his own—a hand through the wall. Odd. He wants to look right, but instead he looks left, surveying a picture on a desk. Two girls holding a cat between them and laughing, a man at their back. Father, maybe? His hair is long and white, and he smiles with pointy teeth, like some scary animal.
Wick opens his eyes. The setting sun blinds him again, and he sees the Guardian men as if for
the first time. Tide’s behind him suddenly—how he got there, who knows. “If they take me down,” he whispers, “you’re going down too, you glowing fucker.”
“If you have nothing to hide,” one of the Guardian says, “then you won’t mind staying for a question.”
Rone’s trying to smooth it all over. “We’re already late, sirs. I will be sure to report anything suspicious, of course, like any good citizen. I’ll keep my eyes open. But our friends are waiting for us.”
“So let them wait.”
“I’d rather not. Dinners have a tendency of getting cold.”
Wick wonders for one small moment if Halves or Aleks have any sway in Guardian just yet. If I am today arrested, he considers, would they be able to work a bit of paper and a word or two to free me? And if so, would they free my friends as well? Then he realizes the ache in the whole thing: they have Athan with them. This is why Rone hid him. We’re kidnappers. We are harboring a Son of Sanctum. If we are caught, we’d be blamed and demonized before the whole of Atlas.
The lack of sleep has driven him insane. That, or he’s as reckless as a storm, because the next moment, he’s pushed himself through everyone, putting Rone and the others at his back. “You miss your glow? Need some of it back? Here, have my arm.” And he pulls on his jacket, stretching it half the length of his arm.
The two Guardian appear confused, staring. One looks at the other, then says, “Huh?”
Wick glances, realizes he hasn’t pulled the sleeve far enough. “Stupid thing,” he grunts, pulling the jacket off entirely and tossing it at Victra with a careless sweep of his hand. “Here it is, fools … You blind?” Then he rolls up the sleeve of his grey tee, revealing the faint glow at last.
Guardian wastes no time. The next instant, the brutish one has Wick in a headlock, wrestling him away from his friends. Wick grips his massive arm with white knuckles, swinging his legs about and thrashing like a fish out of the pool.
