by Daryl Banner
Arrow’s eyes wander down to the red sleeveless hoodie Athan wears. He wears it every day. Seeing it all the time, it’s almost like Wick never died. Arrow notices the small hole Athan tore in it when the material accidentally caught on a fence as he rounded a corner several months ago. Athan could have burned down the whole of the ninth for as angry as he got. He was much less balanced then.
“He was nice,” Athan goes on. “I gave him my day’s earnings.”
Arrow blinks. “All?”
Athan nods, then glances at Arrow. “Sorry. I know it’s … not very considerate. To give away my gold without consulting—”
“Don’t worry on it.” Arrow places a hand tentatively on Athan’s shoulder. He’s gotten so much thicker and more muscled over the months, it’s almost alarming. “Do what you will with your earnings.”
“Who have you lost?”
Arrow freezes. “What?”
“Everyone’s lost someone. Anwick. Lionis. Victra. Juston. Rone. Rone’s sister Cintha. Prat’s home. Erana.”
Arrow wrinkles his face. “Prat’s home? What of Prat’s home?”
“His neighborhood was raided by Guardian when the Weapon went missing long ago. His family lost their home. His three sisters live in the eleventh now, unless I have it mistaken.”
Arrow swallows and bites the inside of his cheek, thinking. He can’t remember the last time Prat ever revealed anything personal to him. All Prat does now is strut around like he’s second-in-charge and whine about his maps. And sit close to Ivy every meal. Too close.
“I lost my father,” Arrow lets out.
Athan listens. Arrow isn’t so certain he wishes to let out the whole horrible story, yet he realizes with a start that the Broadmore boy is about the only person he can count on to trust implicitly. There isn’t a single bone of deception in that Lifted boy’s stout body.
“And my sister’s brain was permanently damaged,” Arrow goes on. “A … false Guardian raid of our house. Sky Guard, sent by my father’s employer at the time, who felt my father had insulted him.”
“An insult repaid in murder.” Athan sighs and shakes his head. “I am so sorry.”
“It was long ago.”
“Yet I’m certain it stings just the same. Pain can change, sure, but it never leaves, does it? It never truly leaves …”
Arrow studies the side of Athan’s face knowingly. It’s occurred to him Ivy may have more in common with Athan’s tragic loss of his entire family in one fell swoop than Arrow. Except I know the ones responsible for my family’s murder; Athan may never have that solace.
“Erana,” murmurs Arrow, shifting the topic back upon the other names on Athan’s list of lost souls. “She was your friend, yes? From the Lifted City?”
“She was friends with Wick, too. They met at the Academy. She’s the reason we got away. She sacrificed herself, staying behind so that we could make our escape—Sedge, Arcana, and … myself. She’s likely dead by now. They are not so forgiving, Impis and his sadistic Posse. I don’t wish to think on what they might’ve done to her. I almost hope she’s dead.” He shuts his eyes. “What an awful thing to hope for. But it’s out of mercy. I care about her.”
“I’m sure you do,” Arrow mumbles reassuringly.
Athan glances up at the underbelly of the Lifted City. Then, ever calmly, he changes direction. “I … I would rip out the throats of every last one of those fuckers up there. If my Legacy is what Wick always believed, then I would survive it anyway, no matter how reckless or dangerous my endeavor. Isn’t that true? Nothing … can hurt me.” There’s a hint of cynicism in his voice. His jaw tightens. “Nothing can hurt me at all.”
We all at some point in this thought we were invincible, Arrow might say. And we have all at some point been proven sorely wrong. But he swallows the words, and the pair of them spend the rest of their middle night watching the Lifted City sit there in the sky just as it has for half a year—silent, dark, and knowing.
0236 Halvesand
Halvesand Lesser has to make a trek across the fourth floor of the Eleven Wings Hospital to deliver a message.
That’s right. Halvesand Lesser, survivor of neck poison, stopper of trains by the palms of his hands, is a messenger boy today.
A fucking messenger boy.
Fourth floor, Goddesses help me. It seems like the blink of an eye ago that Guardian only needed two floors to house their imprisoned. Four whole floors now carry the criminals ripped off the streets of Atlas for their thievery, looting, rioting, and murder. How just four floors of a hospital can look like a fresh wing of the Keep is alarming.
Halvesand ignores the shouting, jeering, and taunting from the prisoners whose faces paint the windows of every door he passes. The only face he cares for is the one at the end of the hall, that of his Lead Officer Forrest who he was told would be down here in these miserable depths. Though the lighting here is the same as the rest of the hospital, it always seems vastly dimmer, like something sinister lurks about every corner.
But Halvesand doesn’t scare as easily as he used to; now, mostly healed, he practically invites anything to confront him.
Lead Officer Forrest is consulting with a circle of five other Guardian by the entrance to the prisoner’s commons, which are empty at this hour. She is a formidable woman with a robust figure, curvy hips, large breasts, and who boasts the height of a tree. Halvesand has never seen what color hair she has, for she always wears a helmet that seems glued to her head like a second scalp, black as oil. He always pictured her hair to be as black and oily as her suit of armor, which she always wears. Her lack of visible hair accentuates the beauty in her face, which is a far cry from her predecessor Obert Ranfog, whose nose is a cliff of cartilage and whose cheeks are gaunt and bony, making him look thrice his age. Forrest’s beauty lends an unexpected softness to her eyes, yet her demeanor is of a commander: unapologetic, with an iron backbone.
When Halvesand draws near them, the conversation ceases, and all eyes turn his way.
He’s gotten used to the broken looks of pity that seem to befall even the toughest of Guardian faces when he is around. He loathes them all for their sympathy.
But Lead Officer Forrest knows better than to look on him in that way. “Lesser,” she greets him curtly with her beautiful eyes on his. Her jaw moves like wrought iron, and her voice, the sharp teeth of rust that catch on one’s fingers.
Halves wastes no time. He hands her the message he’d come all this way to deliver.
She takes it and slips her knife into the crevice, opening up the paper. Her eyes give it two seconds of her time before they flick back up to Halvesand. “At first I thought it was sort of clumsy and weird-looking,” she says, “but that neck armor looks rather good on you.”
Halves gives himself one brief glance at the shiny metal door by his side, taking note of his reflection and the thick metal brace that now wraps around his neck like a steel stranglehold, cradling his jaw and chin and resting upon his shoulders. With it on, he cannot turn his neck, nor nod, nor even open his mouth more than an inch.
Also with it on, he is in no danger of rupturing the venom that has been caught in his neck since the merciless dead-lover-avenger Mercy put it there. His one and only weakness now has three thick, nearly impenetrable inches of Sanctum-grade steel around it.
Even without Halves’ Legacy, that armor will stop any knife.
“Don’t think too much on it,” she adds, noting his long look at himself, pulling his eyes back onto her. “Armor does you no good if it gets no use. I assume the Upstairs are still wasting your talents being their errand boy?”
The five other Guardian warily await Halves’ answer—among them Bee, a woman with long, feline eyes that are always as focused as an archer’s, and Cope, who looks twelve and scared of everything, the pair of them having been part of the crew who delivered Halves’ mother safely here.
Of course, Halves cannot answer anyway unless he wishes to use his hands. And unless Forrest has m
ade use of her off-hours to study the obscure hand language, no one here can understand him.
Forrest sighs. “Don’t answer that,” she mutters. “Your talents are wasted on errands and fucking paperwork, Lesser, I pray you know that. I’ll have a word with the Marshal. We’ll get you on the streets.”
Halves can’t nod, so he salutes, then turns to head back down the long hall.
“Lesser.”
He stops again, turns his whole body, and faces his Lead Officer.
She nods toward the others. “Come and join us for dinner duty tonight. Midnight ought to do. Don’t worry a damn on the Marshal,” she adds the moment she sees the pinch of concern on Halvesand’s face. “I will deal with the Marshal and her infuriatingly overcautious handling of you. We have enough prisoners in here to outnumber our like. We need all the arm we can get to ensure their obedience.”
It isn’t a patrol route, but it’s something, and Halves is ready. He gives her a firm look and a blink.
The message is received. She nods. “On your way, then.”
And on his way Halves goes.
The way back, the prisoners are twice as loud. Halves pays them as much mind as he did on his way here: none at all. It isn’t for any lack of empathy for the ones locked up in these cells; Halves knows that, to some degree, they are getting a disservice in the name of true justice. Without a proper system of judgment yet in place, none of these prisoners will know justice. Until the Upstairs decide to name an interim Queen or King who will preside down here in the slums, the prisoners’ only hope is to wait, bide their time, and pray for the judge’s mercy. Only for certain “lesser crimes”, a criminal will be seen by the Marshals, administered a punishment or fine, then sent back on their way.
With the amount of people still in these halls, Halves wonders who has so strictly defined the terms of what makes a “lesser crime”.
He would not like to be a captured criminal anytime soon.
0237 Ellena
Ellena Lesser reaches her tired arm out to the nine other nurses around the bed. “Hold,” she directs them.
Each nurse grips a part of her outstretched arm, then they brace themselves. Ellena turns toward the patient in the bed—a young, injured Guardian from the tenth. He has brown hair and eyes with high cheekbones, just like her sons. Poor thing.
“Ready?” she murmurs to him with a tiny, reassuring smile.
The boy grits his teeth, then nods slowly.
In the space of a second, the Guardian’s deeply bruised face, abs, and thigh course through Ellena and dissipate into all nine nurses, each of them taking a fraction of the wound. Ellena feels their grips clench, squeezing her arm as the pain enters them. If they squeeze any tighter, I’ll have my own bruise from the nurses fingers.
Then they let go, and the procedure is complete.
Ten times, Ellena and the nurses have to endure this. A crew of Guardian were ambushed by brigands on the edge of eleventh, likely from the Dark Abandon, and a number of them suffered injuries. She doesn’t mind the circumstances by which she’s put to so much work. It makes her feel fulfilled and useful. And oddly happy, she realizes as she enters the room of another recovering patient, checking up to see if there’s anything else she can get them.
Many hours after nightfall, the hospital grows strangely quiet, so Ellena takes herself downstairs to the temple room. It is a room that is often empty, as so few pray to Three Goddess anymore. It’s only a matter of time before this room is turned into another criminal’s cell. But despite all Ellena has suffered, she keeps her faith.
Sometimes, the Sisters are her only friends.
The room is always dim. It is narrow and smells of fire, a candle burning endlessly at the very front where the altar of Three Goddess is, which is really just a mural on the wall and a tiny, unremarkable clay sculpture of the Sisters made by some unknown artist. The aisle down the middle is lined with copperwood benches on either side, though Ellena has long suspected they are actually made of clay and simply painted over, from the feel of them.
She doesn’t care what the benches are made of. They hold her ass well when she sits upon the one in the front, left side, bows her head, and thinks on the Three Goddess and all the mercy they have shown her.
Thank you for protecting my beautiful sons. Indeed, Halvesand could be dead today. Isn’t that true? Instead, Three Sister showed mercy and helped Halvesand stop the fatal wound. Thank you for protecting my children on the street, wherever they are. Though she can’t know for certain, she is sure in her heart that Link, Lionis, and Anwick are safe out there. Perhaps they’ve even all found their way back to the ninth and are in their family home, surviving as one.
Still, she cannot know for sure. Not until she sees them herself.
Link’s location, perhaps, confounds her the most. The boy’s body was not his, she reminds herself, eyes closed, as she recalls the day she sat in a holding room of the sixth ward Guardian Quadrant Six headquarters. The moment the woman poked her head in the room and said she needed Ellena to identify a body, Ellena’s heart was in the Goddesses’ hands. Please, Three Sister, let it not be any of my sons, please, please, please.
And it wasn’t. Despite having the words “Link Lesser Returns His Gift To Three Goddess” carved into the chest of the boy Ellena was asked to identify, it was not her son.
But in one last effort to protect him, she lied and stated that it was indeed her son.
I have lied, she confesses for the eightieth time to Three Goddess and to herself. But I have since told Halvesand and Aleksand and, by extension, the woman who will soon make me a grandmother. I do not carry the weight of this secret on my shoulders anymore. You have guided me to share the burden. Thank you for your wisdom.
Though in truth, Three Sister say little, if anything, to Ellena.
It’s right then that the doors to her back open and a man comes down the aisle. He softly lowers himself onto the bench on the right side opposite of hers, and bows his smooth, shaved, chestnut-colored head in prayer. He doesn’t once look at her with his striking green eyes, keeping turned his stubble-dusted handsome cheek, his wide, brawny, chiseled jaw tightened in concentration.
But Ellena looks at him. The Former Sky Guard named Gabel. She stares at him hard, resenting the way even now that her heart races in his presence.
You liar, she thinks, frustrated, confused. You cruel, selfish liar …
And then her thoughts soften and change. You selfless protector, you strong, sensible, compassionate man who will defend your chosen to the death …
Her convictions crumble as fast as she’d built them.
The man has started recently coming to the temple room again. He swore off Three Sister after having worshipped them his whole life for a reason he has yet to disclose. What brought him back now? Is it her? No, of course not, she chides herself, frustrated at being so self-centric, looking away. She clenches her eyes and bows her head again. I’m a fool. I’m an emotional fool in this stifling room.
Neither of them say a thing to each other in the silence of one another’s private prayers. The room is as thick as syrup, all of the words and questions and passions floating between them, unspoken.
And then: “It pains me that we don’t speak anymore.”
Ellena doesn’t flinch in the least at his words. No, she saves all her “flinching” for inside her body, which dances with anxiety.
“I have apologized,” he goes on, his words so soft, yet filling the thickly silent room. “Numerous times.”
Not enough. Never enough. She clasps her hands tighter, begging Three Goddess to send her an image of her husband, a memory, a vision of his wellbeing, a reassurance.
“I cannot stand this silence between us a second longer. It kills me. I’m sorry. I was selfish. It was so long ago.”
So was the last time she felt Forge’s firm kiss upon her lips. So was the last time she felt Forge’s strong arms around her body.
“Please. Say something.” Ga
bel isn’t even praying anymore. He faces her fully, his green eyes piercing her side. “I have apologized to you a hundred times, Ellena.”
She rises from her bench. Soft are her words. “Then apologize to my husband a hundred more.”
Gabel frowns at that, but she ignores him and takes her leave.
Really, there is nothing much more to be said.
The hospital is still peaceful and quiet. She walks down a hall that reaches over a wide street below, connecting the east and west wings of the hospital. Large glass windows stretch over both sides, and it’s at one of them that she stops and observes the night outside. She doesn’t think once of Gabel’s handsome face or the stirring she still feels below, as if remembering him inside her.
He’s cast the worst kind of love in me, she thinks bitterly, staring out that window. It’s the dirty sort of love that only begins and ends between the legs. He’s too young, and I’m too married.
And Forgemon Lesser is not dead.
No, of course she isn’t thinking of Gabel at all, nor the way his muscular pecs looked in that tight black undershirt he was wearing, likely having had a suit of armor on over it for his nightly patrol.
She huffs and shakes her head, desperate not to think of it or him or anything but the clear view of the eleven ward slums before her. It frustrates her so much that even with being cleared of all charges, she is still confined to the hospital. ‘Too dangerous,’ they had told her when she asked simply to go for a walk. ‘But this is a free city,’ she argued back. ‘I’m not some frail old woman who may break by a robber’s hand. I’m the one who breaks the hands!’ But no one listened to her. Even her own sons insisted she stay inside, Aleks with his words and Halves with his hands.
Her eyes drift upward. This window doesn’t face the Lifted City; it faces the Wall, which is visible from this very window. The Wall reaches for the sky, blocking the view of the horizon. It seems taller here than it is in the ninth, she keeps observing, making the same damned observations of her environments over and over.