Outlier: Rebellion

by Daryl Banner

  “Hello, Anwick,” she says, hoarsely.

  He stares at her, cautious. Lady Gandra—Professor Frey—is quick to pull two glasses into view, pouring a swig of liquid into either one.

  “Have a little sit-sit.” She nods at the chair across from her. “We have much to discuss.”

  “We’re getting Athan back.” Wick won’t compromise. He came here with one simple intention. “Athan and Cintha, both.”

  She nods, lifting her glass and drinking already. After a loud swallow that carries across the otherwise silent room, she says, “And more.” She licks her thin lips, pulls a pin out of her hair and lets it fall in a bushy, tangled mess of grey and auburn. “Rain is no longer the sweet calling-to-arms it once was. No, I fear it was never meant to be just that, for with the Rain comes the Thunder and the Lightning. Anwick, I think our friend Adamant had a point. Remember him? The hothead?” She laughs hollowly, kicks back her glass once more, then says, “The King’s going to sing his song until we rip that tongue out of his throat. To do that, we must get to his throat. And to get to his throat, we must rise to the Lifted City.”

  Wick’s heart flutters, warmed, revived. Is she serious? Is this even possible? “Gandra … Frey … How do we get into the Lifted City? Since the last rebellion, not a single slummer’s found the way in. It’s changed. We cannot simply go anymore.”

  “Ah,” she agrees, winking and clicking her tongue at him. “But we’ve something no other rebellion has yet to attain. Don’t forget our hand, Anwick: We have a Weapon.”

  “And …” The new voice is Rone, emerging from a shadow with Victra at his side. “If the Weapon does not help us into the Lifted City, then we’ll use it to bring the Lifted City down to us.” Rone is stern, his face made harsh with the hostility and pain in his heart, that much is clear. He is on the chemical, Wick realizes, because it’s likely the only way he can cope. “We’re getting her back. Sanctum will pay. A King still screams.”

  “A King still screams,” agrees Tide, who’d entered from the stairs a moment ago to listen, and now joins in, his body bringing a scattered aura of violet light into the dark room. “My dad is a broken man, broken by that fucking King and his mouth, and with every day, my home crumbles more. There isn’t gonna be nothing left while that King lives. I’ll pull his tongue out myself and make a belt of it. I’ll pull the wind right out of his lungs until he chokes.”

  “When I was thirteen,” Victra offers, her blue-shadowed eyes venomous, “I used my sister’s sight and watched a Sanctum woman’s blade swing into her face. That was the end of her life, and it was the end of my sight. For three weeks after, I was blind. Sanctum not only took my sister; they took my last sight of her. The funeral, the family, the memory. Once I’ve seen through dead eyes, I’m trapped. I still don’t know what finally freed me … but I remember the face of the sword-bearer and her snaky eyes. It was the last thing I saw before plunging into darkness for three weeks, her face burned into both my visions. For the life of my sister, for the lives of many others … I will find that woman. I will find that woman and I’ll put out her eyes.”

  The room feels warm with the company of soldiers, each of them like a vibrant candle in a dark place, bringing forth their passionate contribution to the fire. When the tapestry moves and downstairs stirs with the sound of quiet feet, he discovers that everyone else has shown up too. They coalesce slowly in the loft like lost souls that have been so long wandering, at last found. Juston comes first, giving Wick half a smile and looking worn. Arrow takes a seat before the lion’s tapestry, a broken gadget hanging from his hand—something the Guardian broke in their upturning of the loft for rebel paraphernalia. Yellow and Prat put themselves at the table, Prat armed with his latest renderings and maps—courtesy of a certain Sanctum boy that fulfilled a promise.

  Wick realizes that he woke up alone this morning, and ended up among a second family here. There is no mistaking it; each and every person in this room has a personal stake in this. Not one of them has a doubt any longer: the big thing in the sky has, too long, kept the rain from touching the slums below. The people of the sky are soon to learn that the rain cannot be stopped.

  “They have my father,” Wick hears himself saying, his throat tightening with rage. “They have Cintha,” he says, his eyes on Rone, “and they’ve taken Athan. The Lifted City has risen far enough, hasn’t it? It can only fall from here. Sanctum will, too. There’s a storm coming to Cloud Tower.” He gives Gandra a knowing look. “We are the real weapon.”

  “We are the real weapon,” she agrees, lifting a glass.

  And then Rone says it, stepping into Tide’s light by the table. Victra joins in, emboldened, full of zeal. Juston, followed by a quiet Arrow and a wordless, sunken-eyed Pratganth and a grunting, cane-wielding Yellow. All of them, pulled forth from shadows, calling out in the dawn of a coming storm.

  Conversations begin to break out between the remaining members of Rain, and Wick finds himself wandering downstairs to the dark restaurant. Standing in front of the window, he peers at people as they walk by the closed Noodle Shop. He thinks on the hundreds of mothers and fathers of Atlas. On the countless children, the brothers and sisters of the slums. There are so many of us, he thinks, overwhelmed. The Lifted City is so small. We outnumber them by tens of thousands. He bends his neck, looking into the burning orange sky of a day breathing its first hour, setting afire the rooftops and the beds of clouds. It may be true that I’m the only person in all of the Last City of Atlas who woke this morning. But I am not the only one who dreams.

  “You realize we can’t go home now, right?”

  Wick smiles at the arrival of his friend Rone, who’s come up to his side. They touch shoulders, coming in for a half-hug that keeps them staring through the window, the light of morning playing on their faces.

  “No turning back,” Wick agrees. “But with the fall of Sanctum so imminent, with a Weapon beneath our feet, with only a lifetime of oppression and suffering and sameness … who the fuck would want to turn back?”

  Rone shoves a forehead at Wick’s shoulder, sighing.

  Wick grabs him and pulls him into a hug. “We’ll get her back. It’s not a question, Rone. They need her alive. They want to learn all they can from her. She’s smart. She’ll make the information last long enough for us to get to her. And when we do, we will have our say, believe me.”

  When Rone pulls away, his eyes are fried with the influence of the otherworldly chemical. He smiles drunkenly and says, “Your boy’s waiting for you up there.”

  Now it’s Wick’s turn to avert his eyes, but Rone pulls him right back, forcing Wick into Rone’s sapphire gaze.

  “You ready to fight this war, Anwick Lesser of the ninth?”

  Wick tickles the dagger at his belt and gives Rone the smile he’d been looking for. “Dream big, my friend.”

  Epilogue

  He sits in his favorite chair, a plush red thing with diamond-shaped cuts of golden felt lining the arms. Sitting here makes him ponder how very bored he is. And there’s nothing more dangerous in all the Last City of Atlas than a bored Impis Lockfyre.

  “Yes,” he agrees, giggling at the chandelier that sparkles and winks and giggles back in the morning sunlight. “Hmm, yes.”

  He meets countless curious boys and girls on his many Legacy Tours. There was a boy who could turn his neck into scales. “I do like Morphs,” he insists, crossing his legs and stretching a booted foot as if to point at a spot on the wall. “You, yes, you, I like you.” The boy could be a little lizard. He imagines him popping out his tongue, making a sound. Impis does it too, then giggles. “The city will fall to a lizard.” He laughs louder.

  There’s nothing funnier than a Legacy.

  A girl that can make her voice come out her toes. Whispers to the floors of Atlas. Secrets to the earth. His face wrinkles in fear. “Ooh, I don’t like you very much at all.”

  “Are you quite done, Impis?”

  He twists his eyes up to meet those
of an insolent man. Janlord. And then Impis suddenly remembers he is not in his private chambers. He is in the throne room attending a trial to decide whether a man lives or dies.

  “Have you anything to add?” asks Janlord patiently.

  “Yes!” agrees Impis with fervor, kicking himself out of the red chair with such force he nearly knocks himself over. Dancing into the view of the Court Of Elders, he leans in to get a better look at the man on trial. It is a coarse man, a stubbly man, a brute of a man with a brush of fresh scars up his cheekbone. Boring, boring, boring, and boring.

  “Hmm, yes, I agree. What is the man’s Legacy?” asks Impis, never removing his crazed eyes from the man.

  “Mathematical foresight,” says Janlord. “Unreliable at best.”

  The brute of a man is focusing on them with great intensity. Why? Oh, Janlord has robbed him of sound so that they may deliberate in peace. This realization makes Impis hoot with laughter, then he lifts a brow and says, “Yes, yes, good point. What is the man’s name?”

  “Forgemon.” Janlord’s growing impatient, he can tell. The man’s always been so impudent and restless. He must soon take a leave, yes, yes, a great and permanent leave, the old peacemaker fool.

  “I don’t like that name,” Impis decides, running a finger from the start of his eyebrow to the base of his jaw, then sucking at the end of it to form his next words. “Put an end to him. He’s ugly.”

  Janlord gives a short glance to the King who returns a tired grunt and a sigh. Then the Marshal of Peace lifts the Court from silence and says, “The decision is made. You, Forgemon Lesser, are sentenced to die by the hand of the Legacist’s m—”

  “Did you see it coming?” Impis asks immediately, excited, crouching down to hug his own knees. “Did you already know the decision, you ugly brute-thing?”

  The man lifts his bearded chin, gives no sign of an answer. For a moment, Impis worries the Marshal of Peace is still working his song of silence.

  “Come forth,” says Janlord, making a gesture at Impis’s man.

  Metal Hand makes his slow and deliberate dance across the stage, his song of clinking metal and rattling armor and tittering and tapping.

  “Hmm,” mumbles Impis, humming a tune of thought.

  Lesser … Lesser, Lesser, Lesser, Lesser, Lesser.

  Metal Hand stops in front of the ugly brute-thing, and slowly removes his gauntlet, exposing the finger.

  Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser.

  Lesser.

  “No,” insists Impis, rising. “No, no, no.” He descends the steps from the throne to the brute-man and places his own hand on the man’s forehead, his cape sweeping forth. For a moment, his magnificent green cloak shrouds them both like a glimmering emerald hug. “I want to keep him. To the Keep with him. To the Keep with this one. He is mine.”

  “Impis.”

  “I dislike the ugly thing, but I find him curious. And I like curious things.” He plants his lips on the forehead of the brutish thing, then finds himself disgusted instantly. He just wanted to know what such a foreseeing brute’s brow might taste like; he’d expected something sweeter. “Futures never taste of sweetness,” he decides, wiping his mouth clean, then wiping again, and again.

  Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser.

  Why does that name confound me?

  Impis returns to his pretty red chair lined in the gold diamonds while Janlord tiredly watches, and he perches on its soft pillow like a bird. He studies the face of the brute-man and finds himself disappointed that the man does not look more relieved. I just changed your sentence, you ugly thing. Shouldn’t you thank me? “It is quite better than the death,” Impis agrees to no one, his eyes wandering.

  “Then it is the decision of the—” Janlord turns, lifts his brow once more to the King for another approval, then finishes. “—of the King that you, Forgemon Lesser, will be sent to the Keep for life. This is your sentence.”

  Impis finds the man so curious, even for as ugly and hairy and thick and dirty as he is. The taste of smoke and sweat and ash still tickles his lips. Their eyes meet and Impis wonders if the ugly thing will ever thank him.

  Impis’s left eye twitches. Wicked things happen when Impis’s left eye twitches. His Legacy begins to take influence on those around him. His mad, mad Legacy. The Marshal of Madness keeps wondering and wondering—Will he thank me?—wondering until the man himself is now smiling.

  It is a strange smile. A crazed smile. A tickled smile.

  Impis’s left eye twitches, twitches, staring, staring, staring …

  Others are smiling now. And then there is a giggle from somewhere in the Court, a giggle of madness. Yes, I do agree. Impis keeps focusing, focusing, focusing, focusing, focusing, focusing, focusing and another giggle joins the first, and then another. The left eye twitches and even the great and stoic Janlord finds himself tickled, his ever-straight face breaking. Marshal of Madness. The sentenced lets out a little chortle, his lips hanging open, the madness having touched him too. The hilarity spreads like a fog, the whole Court stirred, laughing, laughing more, laughing harder.

  “IMPIS!” belts the King.

  And the laughter dies at once, and Impis looks up, caught by surprise. “My apologies,” he offers, not having meant his Legacy to seep out so powerfully, the unrelenting and playful pet it can be.

  And then Impis finds he owes the criminal an explanation for his change of heart. “You taste of bitter grease,” Impis explains to the ugly thing, “and my Metal Hand has touched quite enough heads for the week. Haven’t you?” He turns to his man for this question who, garbed in his heaviest irons, shrugs. “Hmm, and,” Impis wrings his head about once more, facing the sentenced, “I think I find you less boring alive than dead. Tell me one thing, would you? A foresight, please? How do I die?”

  The brute thing looks up at Impis, for the first time showing something in his stare that is not stony insolence. What is it in his stare? Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it curiosity? Is it pride? Is it love?

  The man says, “By your own sword.”

  Impis swallows once, confounded. “But I do not own a sword. I have my—my—my—my posse who do the battlements for me. You are a liar.”

  “The math never lies,” he responds.

  “Out with him,” murmurs Impis, his eyes piercing the room like lasers, his left eye daring to twitch, and it is the ugly brute-thing’s every step that Impis watches, watches, watches, until the man is gone, banished, out of sight forever. “I don’t own a sword,” he calls out, half holler and half scream, and the words fly up the ever-tall glassy world of King Greymyn’s throne room.

  Back in his chambers, with all his posse outside the many doors of his little tower room, all of them guarding him, all twenty-two of his personal Guardians, he plucks from a stack a list of boys’ and girls’ names. He scans them, squinting and running a two-inch-long red-and-white-striped nail down the length of the list from top to bottom, a single scratch.

  The names inspire a dance, and Impis begins waltzing about his chambers, giggling at the memories of all the Legacies he had the pleasure of witnessing. “That boy with the neck,” he says, agreeing with himself, and he circles the boy’s name. “The one who can speak to animals,” he sings. “Animals, animals, animaaaaals!” He gives that name a circle, too.

  Nine names he needs. Nine to submit to the Court for approval. Nine individuals who will be invited to the Lifted City with their extraordinary or curious gift, to be interviewed and danced with and tormented wondrously. Impis giggles, circling ano
ther name he’d just found, the name of a girl whose acid tongue stole his interest for that day.

  But no Outliers. None. What bitter disappointments, indeed. They must hide them. No other answer. They hide them and they store them away and they want them all to themselves, the selfish slumborn. The King said it best: never make lemonade by the apple trees.

  There are eight names circled. Who is my ninth?

  Who is my ninth?

  Ninth.

  Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser. Lesser.

  Lesser.

  He tosses the list he’d been all the last hour carrying and fetches another one. I haven’t taken from the ninth in over six years of Legacy Exams. What fun! He tosses the new list and fetches yet another, drawing his wild eyes down it until he at last arrives on the name he’d been looking for. Indeed, the reason for his peculiar obsession today in Court.

  Impis finds himself reaching into his pocket. He reaches in to ensure there is still nothing there. Yes, yes, yes, yes. “He smells fear,” says the Royal Legacist, tracing the name on his list with his long fingernail, enjoying the sound it makes as it scratches along the paper. “Nothing. Nothing at all is important to me, no, no. Nothing at all, except …”

  He circles the name of Anwick Lesser of the ninth.

  A giggle dances down his throat. The list has never felt more perfect, never more swelling of harmony, never more complete.

  Table of Contents

  ACT 1

  Prologue

  0001 Wick

  0002 Forgemon

  0003 Rychis

  0004 Link

  0005 Kid

  0006 Wick

  0007 Athan

  0008 Wick

  0009 Halvesand

  0010 Ellena

  0011 Kid