by Daryl Banner
“He is not getting better,” the timid nurse explains, a Lifted Lady with an explosion of freckles on her cheeks and chest, and fiery, curly hair pinned and teased into a beehive up-do. Her uniform is a silky gown, off-white. “I’ve treated his fever as best as I can, with our limited supply of chemicals and herbs and charms, but the best Lifted doctors fled in the Madness, and we’ve only so many skilled hands. The boy’s health has been declining now for—”
“Enough,” says Axel, cutting off the woman.
Erana comes up to the side of the bed where the boy lies.
His name is Chaos. He has black hair that has since grown out to his shoulders, tipped red with dye at the ends, just like Impis had dyed the tips of his own.
This boy was once the Fiery Red Bolt of Madness, for it was his Legacy to summon a great and destructive beam of fiery light from the skies wherever he aimed. No one knows quite how his Legacy works, only that it does—and with great consequence.
“It isn’t that,” clips Axel, giving a sideways glance at Erana. Her tone is very annoyed, and seemingly without instigation. “I know the thing you’re thinking, Puppet Girl.”
Erana puts an innocent look about her face and lifts her demure eyes to Axel. “That he … is still under your mental influence?”
“Yes, obviously that is what I meant, foolish, idiot girl.” Axel is clearly half a person without her twin being able to read minds. It seems to annoy her worse every day. It annoys her so much that she clearly has taken to pretending she can read minds. “And he is not.” Axel flips her hair with irritation and faces the boy in the bed, who looks as still and lifeless as Impis Lockfyre himself, but for the exception of his slowly rising and falling chest. “I released him from my power many, many months ago. Yet still, he … fevers.”
Erana wonders if that’s true, for it wasn’t what she heard from three different sources, and overheard from four others. It was said, rather, that Axel merely changed the conditions of his fever. Chaos once believed that he was incorrigibly overheated, and that the only way to relieve himself of the fever was to emit his great red light at Impis’s command. This forced fever, whether purely psychological or not, took a toll on his body and, sadly, made him very ill. Erana heard that Axel, after Impis’s fall, crept into his mind and convinced him that the fever would grow mild, but only because his body’s purpose was solely to serve Impis Lockfyre, and while Impis slept, Chaos would never be his own person again.
Erana feels deep, overwhelming pity for the boy.
His mind will never be his own again, unless some great act of Legacy or chemistry were to break him from the mental trap.
“A Weapon of Sanctum,” murmurs Erana, curious.
Axel flinches at the sound of her voice. “What is it, stupid girl?”
Erana hadn’t quite meant for the words to slip out. Too late. “He is … like the Weapon of Sanctum. Confined merely to his use for the King. Like the boy who could summon winter with a shrug.”
“I am well aware of Atlas’s various Weapons. Kendil was just its most recent, and its most recently discarded. There have been many. Countless. It matters not. What is your point?”
Erana isn’t sure what her point is. She never quite saw Chaos as another Weapon until this very moment, strangely. She never felt a pinch of sympathy for the former Weapon, Kendil of the sixth, or of her home ward, until this very moment as well.
Why is it the Kingship or Queenship’s desire to hold such people of great power hostage? Why cannot the King or Queen and their kind, various, willing, and dedicated Council be their own Weapon?
“Why did you bring me here?” asks Erana quietly.
“You are Marshal of Legacy,” answers Axel with impatience, as if Erana ought to have known the answer already. “You’ve millions of Legacies and contacts and shit permanently in that head of yours. Utilize all that shit that’s up there and come up with an answer for me. Is this boy’s life salvageable, or is it not?”
Erana might dare to question Axel in this very moment, telling her that if she truly and completely releases Chaos from his mental chains, he may survive. But that would further implicate that Erana does not believe Axel’s own claims and, instead, trusts in the rumors and the whispers of all the people around her.
Perhaps that would not grant an ideal outcome.
“Yes,” answers Erana automatically. “He can be saved.”
“Is that so?” Axel’s words are like bullets.
“Yes.”
“And with whose Legacy?”
Erana pulls the first name she can find. “Lady Turlyne from the Eastly. She has a Legacy in manipulating the temperature of flesh.”
“Only flesh. Not inside the body where it counts. Who else?”
Erana pulls another name. “Lord Govinis of the Westly. He can emit cool-tempered breath from his lungs.”
“Your suggestion is to hire a man to breathe on Chaos for the rest of his life? Who else?”
Erana pulls another name, almost desperately now. “Lady Hume of the Westly. Her tongue leaves a residue that feels cold on the skin. The sensation might—”
“So you are suggesting that a dignified Lifted Lady is going to come to the Westly Wish and lick Chaos from head to toe like a slum cat?” Axel nearly cackles with her mocking tone. “Who else, Erana, Queen of Stupid Ideas?”
Then Erana makes a terrible mistake. “There is Lady Arwall of the Starlight’s Rise, whose Legacy allows her to—”
“Lady Arwall?” interrupts Axel, her eyes flaring.
The words had come out of Erana’s mouth so fast, she did not realize to whom she was referring. “I … I forgot. I’m … I could …” She closes her eyes, if anything but to shut up her stammering.
“You dare to mention the mother of the boy who betrayed us?” spits Axel, her words like needles thrown at Erana’s ears. “The Lady Mother of Sedge fucking Arwall?”
Erana, in yet another reckless move, turns her gaze upon Axel. “If it weren’t for the Arwall boy, Impis and the rest of his Posse—you included—would still be locked in the King’s Keeping, and King Greymyn would be alive.”
Axel’s eyes turn deadly indignant at the retort.
Just in time to prevent a very unfortunate situation, a familiar voice comes into the room from the hall. “Queen Erana. Axel. Yoli.”
Erana and Axel turn to the sound of Dregor, who stands there with a placid smile upon his unsettlingly calm face. Yoli is but a silent bald figure standing at the other side of the bed, eyes half-lidded, appearing bored.
“A troupe is formed and moving door to door, my Queen, to bring welcome, to offer aid, and to take notes of how we may work to enrich the lives of our loyal Citizenry. Ah, have we come to visit Chaos?” asks Dregor airily, either completely oblivious to the tension in the room or deliberately ignoring it. “How is his health?”
“Beyond recovery,” snaps Axel. She shoots Erana one harsh and withering look, then saunters out of the room. Her heels stab the tile as she disappears down the hall.
Long after Axel has gone, Dregor slowly turns to Erana and gives her one warning lift of his eyebrow. “What have we said about upsetting ‘Writer’?”
Erana doesn’t respond to his little question. Instead, she poses another. “She is getting steadily more unbalanced. I think she feels a deep disconnect from her Legacy in the absence of her twin Arcana.”
Dregor gives Erana a mild nod of acknowledgement. “So she is. Some twins feed off one another’s Legacies, and they were certainly an example. Together, they were nearly inside one another’s head, as if they shared a piece of the other’s power. They could finish each other’s sentences. It was remarkable to witness, if a bit disquieting.”
“Why must we regard her at all?” questions Erana.
A very unbecoming and uncharacteristic look of surprise flashes across Yoli’s face, and then he gazes at Dregor, as if wondering if the man shares his shock.
Dregor regards it calmly. “Erana, my Queen, I might s
uggest that you veer away from thoughts like that. Particularly, the uttering of them out loud.”
“What’s the worst to happen?” Erana rides upon a sudden rush of valor, which mustn’t sound like much in her inescapably deadpan tone. “I am the Queen of Atlas, whether I have any power or not in that mind writer’s eyes. Aren’t the rest of the Posse tired of her, too? I can think of twelve others alone who would easily band together to put an end—”
“We’ve heard enough.” Dregor lifts a hand the moment Erana is about to speak more. “Enough,” he repeats, then inclines his head meaningfully toward her. “All’s in a matter of timing and grace, my Queen. Timing … and grace.”
Yoli glances between the two of them, as if trying to catch up to something he’s missing.
To Dregor’s words, Erana simply gives a tiny huff of impatience followed by a mumbled, “Chaos is as good as dead. I’m going to go listen to the harpist awhile,” before seeing herself out of the room.
0271 Halvesand
The only sound that touches his ears is the distant drip of an old showerhead. The droplets tap the floor once a second, sounding like the tiny, bony finger of the Goddess of Death tapping patiently on a thin, stone door, waiting to be let in.
Anwick let her in.
Lionis did, too.
Halvesand is sitting on a bench in the corner of the locker room clutching a helmet between his legs, his hands cramped from the firmness in which he grasps it. He wears nothing else save his neck armor and a pair of black briefs. All his clothes and armor is in pieces at his feet, slung or torn or otherwise ripped from his body. He is a sticky mess of panting, sweat, and darkly clouded thoughts.
The corner of the lockers has been his home now for a solid hour. He reckons he’ll be here several more. He can’t move a muscle except for his fingers, still tightly clutching the helmet. He wonders if his fingers alone can break the helmet in two.
The Goddess of Death still taps on the door. Tap, tap, tap.
Anwick let her in.
Lionis, too.
This bench is the farthest his feet would take him after he heard the news, and the farthest from any consoling voice or pity-bleeding face. He doesn’t need a bit of consoling. He doesn’t need any pity.
He needs his family together. All of them. He needs his brothers back. He needs his father. He needs the world to feel less heavy, even without them at his side. He needs someone else to die for a change, someone who deserves to. He needs the Goddess to stop tapping.
Tap, tap, tap.
Anwick answered.
So did Lionis.
Why …?
He needs to be able to move his neck. He needs to spend a day not wondering whether it will be the day the poison ruptures at last. He has never, in all these months, felt like the armor suffocates him.
Today, it suffocates. Today, the Goddess taps on his door.
Anwick.
Lionis.
He needs to be back in his dormitory seventeen blocks to the east where the only thing he had to worry on was the bleak view of the Abandon outside his window, the bleak view of the ghosts and the dead Queens and Kings and the train and the invisible girl.
The invisible girl for whom I stopped a train with my palm …
But it wasn’t just Anwick’s death that his mother and Aleks so cruelly reported. She had one more knife to dig in: “Rain,” his mother had said to him. “He was part of a resistance group who wished to turn the hands of Sanctum over to one with a purer heart, someone better, someone like the now-late Ruena. They called themselves Rain.”
Along with the bittersweet memories of his old dormitory—back when he had a voice of his own—come other helpful memories, too.
Memories like the sole canister of ink that burst after the fatal explosion resulting in the collapse of Lord’s Garden from the sky.
Memories like the blue ink that exploded at the Weapon Show so long ago—the last Weapon Show the tenth ever had—resulting in the arrest and eventual execution of Dran and his brother.
Blue ink that read: Let it rain.
He always knew Dran and the Wrath weren’t responsible for the crimes they were arrested for. Dran may have been guilty for a hundred other crimes that went unpunished, but for the blue ink, Halvesand always knew he was innocent.
Is it possible that Anwick—his dear brother Anwick—was part of a group that was truly responsible for the tyrannical message at the Weapon Show? Is it possible that Dran was blamed for a crime Anwick, in some part, committed?
Is it then possible that Mercy went on a rampage of vengeance for her wrongly-executed lover, all this time hunting the wrong person? Is it possible that Halvesand, caught between her and her destination, got his throat slit and his voice and strength stolen from him based on a simple misdirection of blame?
And if that is true, then is it possible, by extension, that Anwick is actually to blame for all that’s happened to him?
The Goddess knocks.
Anwick answered.
And Lionis …
The second the thought enters his mind, Halvesand rises up for the first time in an hour and throws the helmet at the locker across from him so hard, it dents the door. A thunderous boom of metal ricochets down the throat of the whole locker room, and all Halves can see is that dent he made as he pants angrily, breathing in with bared teeth, breathing out.
His tears haven’t fallen, so they burn his eyelids instead.
Even his sweat stings.
How is Anwick even capable of all of this? Halves can’t decide whether he’s underestimated his younger brother, or it’s just one big deception all over again. Maybe Wick had nothing to do with Rain’s plans that set into motion Dran’s tragedy and Mercy’s bloodthirst. Maybe Wick was just a bystander, no say in what went on.
Maybe a lot of things.
“I heard.”
Halves turns, which of course means turning his whole body in the direction of her unmistakably steely voice. Ennebal stands tall between two benches. She wears a loose off-white gown that drapes over her large belly, which she holds with two long-fingered hands. Her close-set eyes look weary, though whether it’s from the tragic news or the pregnancy, Halves cannot say nor tell.
He lifts a hand to his own bare belly, then touches the side of his cheek and points at her, furrowing his brow.
She shakes her head in reply. “I don’t need rest. It’s all I do. All I do is rest, every day, every night. I don’t need rest.” She approaches him and places a hand on his shoulder. “I heard. I came as soon as I heard. They said the same thing: stay, rest, don’t get out of bed. But I have never been one to listen. I’m sorry about your brothers.”
Halves only stares at her, dead-eyed. His heart doesn’t race when she touches his shoulder. But there is no poison in his mind when he thinks of her, either. There is nothing even when he flicks his eyes down to her swollen belly, wondering whether he will even recognize the little boy’s eyes that look up at his.
A boy. It’s going to be a boy. That’s what the doctors say, from the tests that were run many months ago.
“He’s fine. Strong,” she assures Halves without his asking, likely following his eyes to her belly. “Come, put a hand.”
Halves doesn’t move. He only stares down at her belly, thinking on his nephew. Or my son. He still could be my son.
With a short huff, Ennebal takes his hand and brings it to her belly. Standing there in nothing but his neck armor and underwear, he feels the bloated belly of Ennebal.
“I’ve given it thought. All the way up here, up the lift that only the authorized are meant to take, I gave it much thought.” She turns her stony face down to observe their hands. Her fingers rest over his, feeling less like a gentle hold and more like a belt, locking his hand in place over her belly. “We don’t have to name him Jenevin after my dead sister. It was a stretch anyway, naming a boy after a girl. Not that it hasn’t happened before.”
Halves wrinkles his face, unsure of her point
.
Ennebal lifts her eyes to his and makes it plain: “We could name our boy … after one of your brothers.”
Halves parts his lips, yet says nothing. Not that he would. His hand still cupping her womb grows still.
“I was thinking perhaps … Lionick. Or Anionis. Anny for short. Or perhaps just Lio. Or—”
Halves shuts his eyes and lifts a hand to shut her up.
She doesn’t. “Wickis, I thought of as well. Or Wickinis. Or—”
When he pulls away from her with a snort from his two flared nostrils, that does the trick. She stills as he moves to the locker he’d just put a dent in and attempts to lay his forehead on the cool metal. His neck armor makes the maneuver impossible, resulting in Halves simply staring at the dent, seething. He doesn’t even know what he’s angry about anymore.
The Goddess keeps tapping, even here with Ennebal and his unborn son or nephew at his back. Tap, tap, tap.
Anwick answered.
Lionis, too.
Halvesand just wants to be left alone. He wants nothing to do with anyone for some time. He doesn’t want to consider names. Or answers—whether Two or more. He doesn’t want to see Ennebal’s face and picture it panting beneath his brother’s—his brother, who has always strived to win every competition since they were just two loud boys in the yards of the ninth ward slums. Aleksand, the one who didn’t get his neck sliced. Aleksand, the one who couldn’t keep his hands off Ennebal. Aleksand, the one who—
“What’s going on?”
Of all times. Aleksand’s superior voice rings from the same place Ennebal had emerged from. Of course he’d follow her here. Of course. Wherever Ennebal is, there is Aleks, like a slum puppy, sniffing his way back. Halves does the smart thing of keeping his eyes glued to the dent in front of him and acknowledging nothing.
Aleks, clearly, does everything in his power to thwart said smart thing. “Why is Ennebal here?” Aleks asks, his voice a step away from demanding an answer. A brief shuffling of footsteps later and he is by her side. “Are you alright? You should be in bed.”
“I came to see your brother.”