by Daryl Banner
“You know nothing of what she felt or didn’t feel,” Link states, nearly growling his words.
“So is it true, then?” the doctor asks, lifting her eyebrows with mild curiosity. “Did you fall in love with her? Did she convince you that she was in love with you, too? Did she mate with you? Did you produce an offspring? Did the two of—”
The doctor’s face turns suddenly, snapping upon Kid at once.
Kid grows still, confused. She swears she didn’t make a sound.
Yet the doctor’s eyes are directly upon hers, like she sees her.
How …?
Emery brings a hand to her chest at once, her eyes flashing and wide. She stares at Kid in total awe, unblinking. “Who … Who …?” the woman stammers, at a total loss.
Kid glances down at the covered body on the table. Reverse … Legacy …
It hits her too late. Kid steps away from the table at once, and at once, the doctor’s eyes turn confused, searching for the teenaged girl she just a moment ago saw.
“Who was that?” the doctor asks, glancing at Link both in fright as well as open-mouthed wonder. “Where did she go?” Her red eyes then start to scan the room, spinning around.
Kid watches, wide-eyed, as Link stammers for a fast, convenient lie. “I can create visions from the mist. Shadows. Illusions. The girl—”
“She even looked like her. She had her eyes. But …” The doctor shakes her head. “No, that isn’t the child. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t be that old. She couldn’t be.” Doctor Emery is upon him at once, her voice almost accusatory. “What sort of trickery is this?”
Kid has rushed to Link’s side at once and grabs hold of his white coat, ready to pull him into the invisible plane should he give her the signal. She has made a terrible mistake and didn’t even mean to.
Link, after a moment’s hesitation, nods at the doctor. “The truth is, I need your help.”
“Where is she?” The doctor advances on him a little more, now but a pace or two away.
“Somewhere you will never find her,” he answers carefully. “If you agree to help me—”
“Show her to me again.”
“No. I must get Faery back from the King. She—”
“Faery? Is that what you call her?” Emery’s voice shakes with conviction. “You’ve given her a human’s name?”
Kid’s grip tightens on Link’s coat. We have to leave, and now, she would tell him, growing more panicked by the second. Link, please …
“This is folly,” states the doctor, shaking her head. “Stop all of this nonsense at once. She doesn’t belong to you. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t want your rescuing. The child is a mistake, and it is a mistake that you may pay with your life, Shye. Do the right thing and take me to the child.”
“Take me to Faery—” Link sighs, then growls, “—to the Subject Dreamer, and then the child … the child is yours.”
But just after he says it, he reaches behind him and takes hold of Kid’s hand at once, as if knowing precisely where it was. He gives her a reassuring squeeze, and Kid realizes it’s part of his ruse. Of course he’d never hand me over. We’re all we have.
The doctor, apparently, isn’t buying it. “You have no leverage here, Shye. The Nether will never stop searching for her. Lives will be taken. Streets will be purged. The King will stop at nothing until he gets that child.”
The words strike deep fear and misgiving into Kid’s heart. She knows exactly how much death and pain it will cause others as the Mask Men comb the slums with greedy fingers looking for her. It pains her to even think of all the lives taken simply on account of the fact that she exists.
The thought makes Kid heavy with guilt.
“Your only option,” the red-eyed doctor finishes, “is to bring me to the child. I will accept no other answer. I will neither help you to find your Faery, nor will I in any way betray my King.”
Link squeezes Kid’s hand, a signal. “Then you’re more a fool than I took you for. I will be seeing you again, Doctor Emery.”
At once, her eyes flash. “W-Wait!” she cries out.
Kid has pulled Link into the invisible plane, and together, they stand there in the freezer, waiting, watching, silent as they hold their very breath.
The doctor’s eyes search around her, focused mostly on the area in which Link last stood. She hugs the book tighter to her chest, and she appears sad for a moment.
Then her red eyes turn resentful just as quickly. “You will regret this,” she announces to the freezer, her head turning here and there, not sure where to direct her ire. “You will regret this day, Shye. You will see that you should have trusted me. You will see that I …” Her lips slap shut, her face wrinkles with frustration, and then her words turn soft. “You will see that I was right.”
Then, abruptly, the doctor heads for the freezer door. As she goes, she drifts right past the table that holds the Meta, and for one fleeting moment, the doctor’s eyes turn pale green. But no sooner than Kid notices, the doctor’s eyes are red again, and the big freezer door closes with a heavy groan. The two of them are alone.
After some time in the cold, Link whispers, “I’ll never let them have you, Akidra.”
“I know,” she replies, not even minding the use of her full name.
Link wraps her in his coat. “Is she our way into Sanctum?”
Kid stares at the table for a moment. She thinks on Kendil, and the secret he showed her once, many years ago, when they walked the streets together. “He keeps a piece of his mother with him.”
Link frowns. “Who?”
“Kendil keeps his mom’s hand frozen to his chest. He showed me.”
Link’s eyes lift to the table. Perhaps he’s deduced exactly what is underneath it, and what caused Kid’s invisibility to reverse at just the moment she stepped too close. “You mean his Legacy of coldness …”
“It must be heat.”
“Or fire …” murmurs Link, half-hugging her in the cold.
Minutes later, they’ve filled a bag of supplies, and they slip their way into a lift that takes them out of Facility for the first time in two and a half weeks.
As the crude iron building falls far behind them, Kid secretly pockets a vial into the bag, a little keepsake of her own.
0262 Erana
No one likes coming to the meetings in Cloud Keep.
Least of all Erana Sparrow, Queen of Nothing.
“I am the one with the most experience and knowhow of Impis Lockfyre’s grand purpose,” Axel announces to the Twenty-Two.
Well, whatever remains of the Twenty-Two.
“I am the one who, with my sister, knew the intimate workings and true purpose of the Madness. I executed both Impis Lockfyre’s rise as well as secured his reign.” Her needle-sharp eyes survey the many before her as she slowly circles the room. “For those reasons, it is only obvious and inevitable that I elect myself Marshal of Order.”
Elect. Erana is amused by Axel’s curious choice of word. No King or Queen or Marshal has been elected in over three-hundred years. The positions have always, each of them, been handpicked or stolen by another’s hands.
As if Arcana herself were here, the thought is pulled right out of Erana’s head and comes straight out of the mouth of Umi, the large, curly-haired woman who acts like everyone’s grandmother, her half-lidded, huge eyes regarding Axel with mild curiosity. “If you choose to use the word ‘elect’, perhaps then there ought to be a vote on this matter. There are others here with experience in military, and others yet who worked directly with Taylon Redbrade. Perhaps we’ve other just as qualified candidates for the position.”
Axel stops abruptly. “Fine.” She burns the room with her eyes. “Who the fuck wishes to oppose me for the position of Marshal of Order?” Not a soul speaks. She eyes Umi. “I am Marshal of Order.”
Umi, always seeming indifferent about everything, simply nods.
Axel’s words echo about the cold, chrome room as she resumes circling it, her ample words bo
uncing up from the long, oval-shaped, obsidian table around which they are seated and echoing back down from the domed glass ceiling over their heads. There are no walls in the room, but columns made of a polished grey-black metal that hold up the glass dome, outside of which sprawls the Cloud Keep gardens. Ahead of them is a view of the leaning Cloud Tower across a clean crisscross of courtyard paths, grass clearings, and lamp posts that glow a cool white color at night—which is rather spectacular as viewed from the King’s Chambers high above, Erana notes fondly.
All of these details are what Erana focuses on instead of Axel’s constant prattling and self-congratulating and power-tripping. It doesn’t much matter, anyway; Erana is not really the Queen, is she? Erana doesn’t need to pay attention in meetings. She won’t make a single decision as Queen of Atlas; that much, Axel made clear. She only needs to do and say what she is told, and be thankful that her mind is her own while she’s doing it.
Besides, she’s had a strange obsession today which has driven her nearly mad.
The obsession is a boy from the slums named Rone Tinpassage.
And a thing he said to her just before he stabbed the Mad King in the neck. ‘You remember things.’ His words were crisp and warm. ‘So remember this face. And remember these words. I will take care of Impis. I will make sure that everyone is made happy. And you must stay here—safe—because I will be back to this very spot to collect you.’
The moment took place one night in the Crystal Court. She had been programmed by Axel to kill Rone or anyone else who assisted Ruena Netheris, should she happen upon them.
Erana remembers that face, that beautiful, handsome, adorable face. That brilliantly blue-eyed face. That chiseled, gorgeous face.
And the way he laughed, and how it made her want to laugh.
I’ve never felt more human than I did in his arms.
She remembers Ruena’s face, too. The scar that traced down the side of her head, no hair growing where its path ran—the scar that was just as grotesque as it was oddly beautiful. And her hair, her long, blonde-white hair, electric, blinding as lightning. The way that Ruena would look at her and make her feel like the only woman in the whole world.
Erana always wanted to be a part of something. Ruena, the To-Be-Queen, she made her feel a part of something very special indeed.
Ruena and Rone, both.
We should have stayed in that house.
‘I will stay here,’ Erana had agreed to Rone that day, long ago, ‘and then when you return, I can finish killing you.’
To that, Rone only agreed: ‘You can kill me then.’
Erana doesn’t need to keep that promise any longer. Rone is dead. Axel said so. He was forced to phase by her power and fell through the city to his doom. Ruena is dead, too. Took her own life.
Perhaps she should see their deaths as a relief.
No one means anything to her in this world anymore.
Erana Sparrow, Queen of Nothing.
“And how do we know we’re not simply being controlled by your Legacy right now?” asks Kellen lightly with his gaunt face and long white hair, playing with a small bony sword he produced with his Legacy. Hearing someone else’s voice for once has pulled Erana’s attention back to the table. “Maybe no one is opposing you for the position because you’ve entered all our brains and told us not to.”
A few in the room give a nervous titter to that, finding it funny. Others stay silent, whether out of fear—or indifference, like Umi. Some make a private smirk of amusement.
Axel, still circling the room, lets out one unamused chuckle. “I guess you’ll just have to live never knowing how much or how little I’ve tampered with your boring, futile brain.”
Kellen’s smile fades.
“Dregor.”
The uttering of his name makes his scaly head perk up, his unsettling slits-for-pupils eyes zeroing onto Axel. Of course, he has such annoyingly perfect posture, the motion of Dregor perking his head up is nearly microscopic.
“I believe it goes without saying that you are, undoubtedly, the most diplomatic of the Twenty-Two.” Axel stops between Nermia and Aegis, then sets her cold gaze upon him from across the table. “Even Impis used you to lead the way into countless homes and be the voice of contact for all the schools on his Legacy Tours.”
“Indeed,” agrees Dregor politely.
“So it is obvious that you should be the Marshal of Peace.” Axel glances between other faces. “Well? Anyone care to oppose him for the position?” She eyes Umi coolly. “Or shall we hold a fucking vote?”
Umi inspects her own nails, ignoring the mockery.
Her indifference seems to annoy Axel, who stares at her with an intense, stony stare. Nothing at all seems to happen at first, the room sitting still and silent.
And then, instantly, Umi slams her own head against the table in front of her.
The crash is so loud and unexpected, everyone stirs from their seats with a scandalized gasp, some rising to their feet at once.
Umi herself is last to gasp belatedly, as if she didn’t realize what she’d just done. She winces and grabs her head in pain, confused and bewildered.
“Are we awake now?” Axel asks. “Or are you thinking you may need some more encouragement?”
Umi can’t seem to talk, still aching from the sudden slamming of her own head against the table. At sixty-two years old, the woman is the oldest in the room and, arguably, commands the greatest respect among the Twenty-Two.
But in this instant, she’s just a fool with stars in her eyes.
Just when Erana thinks it, Umi slams her own head against the table once again, this time earning her a burst of blood from her nose and lip. She fumbles out of her chair, as if trying to escape her new favorite habit. “S-Stop!” she screams out once feebly, stumbles, then falls face-first to the floor with a pained grunt.
“Not so awake,” Axel decides. “Perhaps you need a nap. We can easily put you next to dear Impis. Maybe I can convince your mind that you’d like to join his nightmare.”
Umi’s only reply is a whimper and a groan of miserable pain.
“Fine.” Axel turns back to the room. “Please. Back in your seats. We’re not nearly done with the day’s meeting.”
No one speaks a word. Slowly, as if afraid their chairs might have become bombs, those who rose from their seats retake them, a few eyes darting here and there, Aegis looking like he’s wet his pants and Dregor staring across the table at him, stern of jaw.
“That leaves the position of Marshal of Legacy,” Axel states. “As it so happens—”
“Why must this girl be the Queen?”
The protest comes from Kellen, his long white hair framing his face much like Ruena’s used to. He turns a sunken cheek to Axel, unafraid. It’s just so, because the pair of them grew up together in the fifth, from what Erana has gathered. Unlike anyone else at the table, Kellen shares a history with both Axel and her traitor twin.
“Seriously.” Kellen eyes the others in the room. “This girl. This girl we don’t know. This girl who betrayed us already. This girl who spread her legs for the fucker who stabbed our King. This … This girl who so loved the To-Be-Queen Ruena.”
Friend or not, Axel’s voice is just as hard when she responds. “I dropped the matter when the choice was made. The girl made her broadcast to the slums and performed perfectly. One wrong action, she knows what I will do to her.” Axel eyes Erana after that.
Erana Sparrow, Queen of Nothing, simply stares back, deadpan.
Kellen rises and addresses the others at the table. “I could just as easily sit that throne and earn the people’s trust. I was responsible for first containing the Weapon—and his icy Legacy—and I managed that troubled boy with Impis Lockfyre and Greymyn Netheris, both. I come from the slums, just as she did, and from a ward of even less privilege. You should know,” he adds, throwing a look at Axel. “This girl here, she is a waste of our time. Even when her use is expended, she will have to be done away with anyway. Put m
e on the throne, and I can rule even after the city is ours. And I won’t need you to waste your power on my mind to make it so.”
Axel bristles. Heads in the room begin to turn to one another, a whisper here and there, a word from one ear to another. Kellen and Axel stare one another down from across the way.
“So tell me,” Kellen states. “Tell me right and tell me true. Tell me a decent reason—a real and decent reason—why I should not be sitting on that throne.”
“I can give you nine,” says Erana.
The whole room turns to her. Axel, Kellen, and Dregor. Lyth’s skinny face. Ogre’s tiny one. Nermia. Aegis and his bright blond hair. Nightly. Zyeni. Splinters. The bald Yoli. Even the armor of Metal Hand creaks as he turns his iron-covered face her way.
Erana, unaffected by all the sudden attention, speaks plainly. “Kellen, your heart is loyal, but your history is questionable. While you were among the team of Sky Guard led by Officer Obert Ranfog who claimed the Weapon Kendil from his house, you’re responsible for losing him, too. You were also loyal to Peacemaker Janlord and confided not once but twice in him regarding Impis’s plans. Evidence of this exists in the J-3400 database accessible from the Windstone Academy. I had a lot of free time and a penchant to snoop. You had also apprenticed under Janlord during your time with the King’s Research and earned his highest praise, as I gathered from a note left in the same database by your name. You also happen to be associated with at least three others, according to Sanctum’s role sheet of red-marked officials and Guardsmen, who were guilty of aiding rebellion efforts. In your time of training, you befriended people loyal to Greymyn himself as well as another, whose sole initiative was in investigating the death of Ambera, former Legacist before Impis. If it may be then further implied, joining in the investigation of Ambera’s mysterious death—without having formed an allegiance yet to Impis and his Twenty-Two, as that came a year after your departure from the King’s Research—might suggest you harbor a certain belief in the conspiracy that Impis had anything to do with her death, which of course would be treason.”
No one in the room draws a breath.