by Daryl Banner
And then the world learns why. For the first time in his life, Link watches King Greymyn rise to the stage, his creepy fish-egg eyes fixed on the boy. The act of the King opening his mouth is, in itself, a disturbing thing. It seems almost like his jaw detaches, the whole of the bones seeming to snap and lengthen and let go. Then, the world is greeted with no sound, because Janlord has contained it using his Legacy of sound manipulation. Instead, the world watches the King perform his Legacy in a perfect mute. His jowls shake and flecks of blood fly from his furious hole, catching in his beard and on the white-crystal tiles of the stage. Within Janlord’s force field of sound, Dran’s little brother receives the full impact of the Banshee King’s death-cry. His hands chained to the floor, he can’t even bring them up to shield his ears.
When the deed is done and the boy’s fallen limp to the ground, sound is revived, and the stomach-wrenching screams of his brother Dran rip across the Crystal Court. The word he screams over and over cuts Link straight into the heart, and it is then that he’s reminded of the name. “FYLAN!! FYLAAAAN!!” Collapsing to his knees, Dran heaves and cries out in desperation. The black of his eyes has melted down his face in gooey waves of ink, teasing into the creases by his mouth, some of it to his lips, the rest dribbling down his chin and neck.
Link drops the knife. It lands with a loud, unnoticed clangor. With an odd limp, he cuts through the crowd of sanctuary folk who are watching this, pushing himself up close to the broadcast. I have to see this. With my own eyes, I have to watch Dran die.
On the stage of the Crystal Court, the Marshals shift their feet and wait for the next execution to commence. The King has returned to his perch, where a woman with long silver-white hair stands next to him, dressed in black and red. She watches the proceedings with a tense scorn in her eyes, the broadcast showing them clear, focusing on the King as two men are grooming him, ridding his beard of blood and discolor.
Then the cameras shift back to Dran, who has seemed to empty himself of his grief in those several throat-splitting screams. Now slouched, on his knees and with a face nearly covered in the mess of grease from his eyes, Janlord announces that it is now Dran’s turn to face his end and pay the final price. “Any last words?” the Marshal asks, managing a tone that’s almost kind.
Dran cannot seem to move for a while, his eyes still resting on the lifeless body of his brother, who’d just had the life screamed out of him. Just when Link thinks all hope’s lost, Dran recovers. He lifts his face to the camera. The whites of his eyes are made so severe by all the black on his face. Link feels his chest thicken, as if Dran is looking right at him, as if his last words are to him.
Dran parts his mouth, says, “Make it fly, Shye.”
Link inhales sharply, his eyes wide, his lips parted.
Dran’s execution will be by a method different than his brother’s. From across the stage, the Marshal of Legacy Impis presents his man: Metal Hand. Stomping gracelessly to the front, the faceless block of armor removes one long gauntlet and steadily approaches Dran, who still smartly, stubbornly, proudly stares into the camera. His eyes shine with pain for his brother. His lips play with secrets that will die with him. His black …
Metal Hand presses a finger to Dran’s forehead, and then there is no more Dran.
Clothes that once held a boy fall to the floor. The Crystal Court applauds, and Link just stares and stares and stares. The broadcast going on, Marshals and speeches and words … Link finds something stinging his eyes. The tears hang at the corners of his eyelashes, hang at his nostrils, and he realizes even his mouth is hanging. He’s staring at the broadcast as if Dran will, at any moment, reappear. Make it fly, Shye.
Link turns away finally, takes notice of the people in the room. Where once they were all ignoring him outright, now they are all, each and every one of them, watching him. He stammers, tries to say something, but it comes out in a sickly grumble. He realizes he’s crying, the tears dripping down his face, and all the people of The Brae now find him a suitable form of entertainment.
Then, as if summoned, he sees the priest Baron at the back of the hall, right next to the cell he’d been kept in. The Baron stands there as if daring him, his figure blurred by Link’s tears. Come, the bald priest seems to be saying. Make a show for all of us, his quiet demeanor says. Give us a reason to execute you just the same.
Link moans again, unintelligible, his every word a pain to his side, a cramp in his gut, and he fights the crippling tears that insist on being shed—but for why? For who? Dran? Fylan? Himself?
“You’ve no gold,” says Baron from across the room, his voice carrying through the flocks of righteous people and priests and do-gooders and pitying eyes. “No gold in your heart, no gold for us.”
I repent, Link tries to say.
“No gold in your heart, no gold for us.” The Baron takes a step forward, taunting him, dancing with him.
“I repent.”
“No gold through our broken roof. No golden rain from the sky that the Lifted City blocks. No golden flowers in our garden.”
“I repent!”
“Who are you, Link? Who are you, Shye the Unseen?”
“I REPENT.”
“Tell us who you are.”
He slams his body into the floor, pounding with fists, tears exploding from his eyes, Link screams and screams: “I REPENT!! I REPENT!! I REPENT!! I REPENT!! I REPENT!! I REPENT!! I REPENT!! I REPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENT!!!”
The silence after is piercing.
His sobs grow quiet.
Then he opens his eyes to find the world he’s changed. Slowly, his eyes tell him what’s in front of him. The wooden floorboards he just slammed his fists into, they glisten with the luster of yellow gold. It makes no sense until he lifts his chin a touch higher, finds that the yellow glimmer runs on and on and on down the aisles … an explosion of the rich color.
He turns his astonished gaze. The glistening gold has run up the sides of the benches. Even up the shoes and robes and pants of the people nearest to him, the sheen of bright yellow going on. Indeed, blasted across the floor, running even up the walls, up to the ceiling where the gleaming sparkle of gold’s secret wink at last terminates in little spikes and fronds of color, Link’s Legacy having made gold of the whole throat and body of The Brae.
His stunned eyes find the bald priest much closer now, standing on the golden floorboards and wearing a smile that is a million smiles: a grandfather’s, a father’s, a brother’s, a friend’s, a companion’s, a mentor’s, a priest’s … He lowers himself to a knee, his pleasant round face brought even with Link’s bewildered one.
“Now,” he says, and Link can even see the gold gleam caught in the priest’s eyes, “the true repentance begins.”
0068 Athan
“You reek of the under pipes of runways and wells.”
These are the words with which his mother greets him. When he enters the tall front doors of Broadmore Manor, his footfalls play like loud drums that echo up, up, up and through the bowels of the tiled great hall. Everything seems strange, seems far away, seems … too white. His sister Janna watches from the winding stair, but she does not approach. She thinks I’m dirty, he realizes when his sister makes no effort to greet him or appreciate the fact that she, in fact, did not lose a brother. Maybe she’s disappointed.
“I knew you’d survive,” the mother says, taking a turn at kindness in her tone, though she still refuses to lay a single finger on her dirty son. “You always do.”
Her words do nothing to touch his heart.
When he’s standing before his own grand bathtub for the first time in weeks, a servant runs the water and begins to undress him. The grey shirt Wick had lent him peels off in one clean stroke and is tossed carelessly into a bag. Then follows the threaded pants he was given, and the underwear, and the long white socks. Athan doesn’t bother to protest; he knows the clothes will be hastily burned no matter what he requests.
Naked, he sits down in the tub and the hot water
runs. Filling his ears with a hypnotizing wash of sound, Athan lets the servant move water and chemical through his hair. The color crawls down his neck and back in blue callous ribbons. The bath turns into a shimmering veil of liquid sapphires. Even the suds seem to sing the song of colors, and Athan watches his thighs and cock below the surface as if they’re not his own. When his own tears begin to mix with the blue ones, the servant is kind enough not to say anything. Maybe the servant knows his pain, too.
Maybe no one knows.
It is all so slow, like a drifting fog, a slow and lazy drag from one second to the next. Even the bluish drops letting go his hair seem to take their time reaching the bathwater. For as comfortable as he’d made himself in the slums, he resents so deeply how these fragrant smells and lathers feel strangely more like home to him. These precious, pretty things of a Lifted City life.
Only forty-four seconds it took. Forty-four seconds for the slums to wash out of his hair, like it were never there.
Someone else’s hands move all over his body a moment later, drying him so that he need not waste any effort drying himself. He stands next to the bathroom window, the one he once considered leaping from. He observes his reflection, noting how he’s lost weight, even in just the two and a half weeks he was gone.
He could dress himself. He’d really prefer to, but the servant must do his duty, and Athan lets slip on the tight silky shirt. The servant then helps Athan into a silken pair of dress pants that flow like a night’s breeze, and he doesn’t want to say his life is over, but it sure feels like it. The servant folds the cuffs of his shirt and Athan doesn’t want to say he’ll never see Wick again, but he knows he won’t. Not ever. The Lifted City’s claimed back its toy, and it is not known for sharing.
The table is set and the servers are smiling because they’re paid to. Janna takes her seat and Athan never noticed how her spine is like a perfect steel arc. Her eyes, burnt cold and blue. She hasn’t made a smile of kindness since she was twelve; now, her only smiles are saved for mocking laughter. He hears it again. He sees the faces of boys and girls. And the frilly hat in the pool.
He wonders how long it takes to burn a heart cold.
Dinner is set. The sun is set. Utensils are lifted and the dance of slow and golden deaths begins. His sister complains and sends her plate back. His mother tells a servant, “More salt.” His father makes no word, sipping from a crystal full of blood wine.
There is no more Garden to cry Athan’s tears of gold.
There is no more thrill of what excitements the next sun will bring with it as it gently rises, setting the Atlas skyline on fire.
There is no more Anwick Lesser of the ninth to squeeze in the night. The night’s only squeeze now is a distant, friendless moon. A waning crescent, he observes. His world in the sky has nothing to squeeze but throats, and dreams, and silver utensils.
He realizes only now that he understands Wick more than he ever thought he would. This is what it’s like to wake up.
0069 Wick
She opens his door several times throughout the night, even as he tries to sleep, but none of her words can touch him. His mind is far away, wondering who can possibly comfort the boy in the sky. He wonders and wonders, who will comfort his father in his last hours of life? When he kneels before the King to die?
Just like the boy Dran died. And his brother. That was the last thing Wick saw on the broadcast, and it did nothing to save him from the despair he was already drowning in. Two more lives, the price of our foolishness and our failure. And a King still screams …
And he can’t sleep. Wick pushes himself off the mattress and slips on his red sleeveless jacket. In one pocket, he thrusts a gold coin—the one his father found, his last unknowing gift just before being hauled off forever. Through his belt, he puts the dagger Rone gave him, the dagger with which he holds his own life. No one can take it from me. The only way someone can take it is if I hand it to them.
He moves down the short hallway and pushes the door to Link’s room. It still smells the same. A sheet of unfinished math homework still rests atop an empty crate he took for a desk. A pencil turned pink near its tip where Link would hold it. Leaned against the wall, Link’s black backpack and a notebook full of scribbling and black ink and tortured sketches.
Wick takes into his fingers a trinket tied to a string. It’s a little wooden trinket that’s been tediously whittled into the shape of a flame. Where Link would toy with it, the tiny fire made of wood’s turned a deep pink, almost red. Wick lifts the delicate thing, puts it over his neck to wear it. I’ll keep you close by my heart, little brother.
Finally, he comes downstairs to find his mother in the kitchen staring at an empty pan. When she looks up at him, her eyes are sunken and red with another night’s long, anguished crying. She makes no effort to mask it, simply staring at her second youngest, her wet, glassy eyes almost saying the words for her: You too?
He knows she knows. The stare between them is filled with such intensity, he’d be a fool not to think she’s perfectly aware of what he’s doing. His mother didn’t need his father’s Legacy of mathematical foresight to know Wick is leaving. But all the fight has fled from within her, and she’s empty, beaten, unable to say goodbye to one more son, even Anwick.
Suddenly she’s embracing him, tight, squeezing him so much she dares to break his every bone. It’s too early to be headed to school. He knows that. She knows that, but she presses a kiss into his cheek anyway, deeply, as if it were the last time she’d ever kiss her son. Pulling away, she lifts the little wooden trinket off his chest, studies it, recognizes it, and presses her thumbs into it as if meaning to wipe off the pink … or make it more pink … or to rub in it a prayer from the Three Goddess.
Maybe she’s trying to take away all his wounds before he goes, but she can’t take away the deepest ones. Likely best that way, she’d break if she tried.
“I’ll see you later,” his mother tells him, perhaps figuring it best not to say goodbye to all her family in one week.
Outside, Lionis is perched in his tree with a book. The only thing exchanged between them is a stony stare. Wick wonders what words will feel right, considering they may be the last ones he makes to his brother. None of them will feel right, he realizes. With hardly a lift of his chin, he simply says, “Bye, Lionis.” His brother makes no response, so Wick starts to go.
The soft crunch of grass makes Wick turn around, and he finds Lionis descended from the tree, the book hanging by his side.
“You’re not just a dreamer,” says Lionis.
Wick studies his brother’s face dubiously, wondering where he’s going with this.
Lionis turns, reaches behind the tree to fetch a small black bag by its long and thin straps so that it grazes the ground as he brings it to Wick. “Here, take this,” he says, drawing his brother’s arms through the straps, letting the bag hang from his shoulders and coming to rest at the small of his back. “Nonperishables. Food. Water. Money I’ve earned at the library.”
“You earned money at the—?” Lionis hushes him, trying to say more. “But Lionis, you and mom will need this. You and mom alone can’t—”
“Take it. There’s more. Just take it. In that bag,” he goes on, “I’ve included a little book. It’s something you really need to read. The Lost Legacy. I think … your Legacy is within you. Your real Legacy. It’s buried. And one day, when you really need it, your power will find you like an old friend that’s been there all along.”
“Or a brother,” says Wick.
The two of them exchange one last, long look under the wash of amber streetlight. They don’t hug or say anything sweet. His eyes narrowed and foggy, Lionis heads back to the house. When the door closes, the dim lights of the kitchen turn on, and through the front window, Wick watches the silhouettes of his mother and Lionis joining together in the kitchen to make work of a meal.
It’s a nice final image to take with him.
When he boards the ten train, he feels
strangely calm. Lionis’s wisdom hanging at his back, Link’s flame hanging at his front, his life struck through his belt and his father’s coin in pocket … it’s like his family’s still with him.
Athan left nothing behind. Nothing but the memories and the ache. But there’s no way to leave behind nightlong cuddling, or a soft-lipped kiss, or the fire burning between two eyes. It’s gone.
The Noodle Shop on 1200 and first block at the opposite end of the ninth ward is just as it was left. Somehow, he expected the place to be decimated to the ground or boarded up and seized by Sanctum. It is only fitting that the whole lot of Rain, once again, evaded the slippery fingers of Guardian and Sanctum. Falling rain is, admittedly so, difficult to catch between one’s fingers.
Except for Cintha. Cintha … who’s divulgence very well may have been how Guardian was able to track down where Athan was being kept. I can’t blame her for that. Just the thought makes him sick, to feel any ill will toward a friend of his … a friend who’s now in dire need of their help. You were always so good to me …
The door is locked, so he goes down the alley and finds the rear entry by the dumpster open. Two cats leap off the trash and scuttle into the night as he lets himself in.
The kitchen and floor are eerily vacant, the lights shut off. For a moment, worry rushes into his chest. Has something happened since the phone conversation? Wick doesn’t call out and tries to make his steps soundless, as he’s wearing his soft-soled shoes with the red stripes up the sides, but it’s impossible to keep silent with all the dust and grit underfoot. Even his quieter steps are met by creaks from the floorboards as he slowly pushes through the side door and heads up the wooden stair to the loft.
At first he thinks it’s vacant too, until suddenly a light flicks on at the table and Gandra’s face is illuminated.
