by Daryl Banner
Mercy doesn’t so much as crack a smile.
Once the crescendo of laughter passes, Liggie slaps a hand onto Mercy’s shoulder. “Very well, green-lipped bitch. Then this weak and Lifted Scot man will be our toy. Yes, you’ll share him. And we’ll use him until every last Lifted fund—digital or otherwise—is in our slum pockets.” Liggie eyes the weak man in the chair the way one minds a cow in the meatery pastures of the fifth ward. “Lifted,” she mutters in disgust. “I should’ve known.”
Scot, who is breathing so fast, he might be hyperventilating, turns his worried, watery eyes to Mercy, beseeching her.
To those eyes, Mercy only smirks, then says, “Go upstairs and stand in the corner until I’ve decided what to do with your like.” When Scot’s eyebrows crease with confusion, she spits the words out with more force. “GO, LIFTED SCUM! GO, NOW!”
Scot is stirred from his seat at once, rising onto shaky legs, then hurries to the stairs, which he ascends so fast, he trips himself going up the steps two times. A whole new wave of laughter erupts among the women in the room.
Liggie gives Mercy an appraising glance. “Aye, you’ve a mouth on you, I’ll give you that,” she mutters after her own laughs die, “but if you keep anything from me again, I’ll throw the pair of you into that same grave I dug the Lifted bitch from this very house.”
Mercy crosses her arms and gives the woman an obligatory—and very forced—nod. “You know all my secrets now.”
“All?” Liggie snorts. “Ain’t no one knows all of anyone’s secrets, not ever, not in these times.” She gives a nod at her ladies. “Up and out, women. Four of you. We need a report of the streets. You four,” she directs, pointing, “up and out, up and out.”
The women organize, four of them gathering themselves and heading for the door, the others chatting and discussing plans and, now and then, laughing after another snide comment is made about Scot, their new Lifted toy.
Mercy, forgotten now, only peers up at the stairs where Scot had disappeared to. She purses her lips, sucks on her tongue, and narrows her eyes with cold calculation.
0273 Arrow
The edge of the Lesser porch has made Arrow’s ass go numb an hour ago, but he still won’t rise from its uneven, splintery surface.
Until the early afternoon when a quartet of ninth-armored men and women come into sight down the street, the sun beaming over their heads. They escort between them a woman whose dress is torn in three places and whose hair, likely once done up and braided, is straggly and frayed like a bird’s nest. She looks to be about his age, give or take a few years. Her face is strong and mannish, but her eyes glisten with a sensitivity that betrays her unexpectedly tall figure, growing taller the closer she comes.
The four soldiers come to a stop in front of Arrow, the woman between them. “This is the offending woman from the eighth,” says the head. “She refused to cooperate and relinquish her Greens space.”
“Please,” Arrow says with a brief lift of his hand. “Release her. We’re not animals here. She’s one of our own.”
She pulls her arm away from the woman who holds her, brow furrowed, then nurses the arm where a bruise might be forming. There’s no telling how long they’d walked, considering the distance to the border of eighth and ninth ward is just short of an hour’s casual walk away. She is clearly a strong woman from the look of her squared shoulders and sturdy arms, despite the softness in her eyes. Never be deceived by softness in the eyes, Arrow tells himself. The Guardian who spoke to you during your mother’s rape and your father’s murder and your sister’s brain damage had eyes as soft.
“One of your own?” the woman questions. Her voice is soft and airy, though her general register is lower, as if each of her words come from the gut. “With the way I’ve been ripped from my home and dragged halfway across Atlas, I don’t very much feel like one of you. Rather a disobedient housecat.”
“You are no housecat.” He gives a nod at the others. “Please, you may take your leave. I’ll speak with her.”
The quartet of ninth soldiers give one another a questioning look, then decide to obey, taking their leave.
Arrow rises off the porch with a grimace and a little effort. “I’m sorry for the way they likely treated you. Times have been tough for us all, you included, I am sure.”
She studies him dubiously for a second, still rubbing her arm, then finally gives him a short nod. “Indeed.”
“My name is Arrow.”
“I know. They said as much.” She twists her lips and blows out, throwing loose bangs out of the way of her eyes. The effort fails, the hair falling right back into place. “I’m Lora of the eighth.”
“I’ll get straight to the point,” says Arrow, “which I’m sure you already know. I’m to understand that you were holding a piece of the Greens for your own needs. Precious things were buried there?”
“I’ve a right to do it,” Lora retorts at once, indignantly. “The area is not part of any official zone of the Greens.”
Arrow isn’t sure if that’s true or not. “That may be so, but we are in an unfortunate time right now where Greens space is limited. You’ve no doubt heard of the disease affecting crops on the farthest outskirts near the Wall. We need all the space we can manage if—”
“There’s plenty of space. The amount I occupy is miniscule. All of this is a personal attack against me and my … needs.” She lifts her chin and blows hair out of her eyes again—and again, it fails.
“May I ask what, exactly, is buried in your space?”
Lora crosses her arms. “No, you may not, in fact.”
He considers her for a moment. “Is it possible that we may find you a better place to bury your precious items? We’ve plenty of area here in the ninth where grass won’t even grow that you’d be very welcome to. Plenty of area where you—”
“I will not unearth them. It’s disrespectful.”
Them? Disrespectful? Arrow’s eyebrows pinch together, a small prickle of suspicion crawling up his neck. “Is it that you’ve … buried a deceased friend?”
Lora bristles at that. “H-How could you even suggest that? It’s illegal in certain … stricter jurisdictions. I …” Her face flushes at once. She seems to be losing a touch of her confidence.
Arrow nods knowingly. “It just so happens that I’ve broken that lesser known law myself. Twice.”
Her eyes flash. “Have you?”
“Yes. Two of my dear friends. I can take you to their graves in the deep ninth, if you so wish to see the proof.”
Her gaze drifts down to his chest in thought. Her hug about her body tightens as she considers it, but ultimately she doesn’t respond.
Arrow nods, then brings himself to her. She flinches when he puts a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry, Lora. We will not disturb your dead.”
Her eyes find his. At once, tears begin to fill them, and then she whispers, “Thank you.”
“You must’ve had a long journey. Please. We’re about to sit for a late lunch. Join us. We’d be happy to have you.”
What happens on her face, Arrow wouldn’t quite call a smile, but it’s certainly something far more welcoming than the frown she has been wearing since her arrival. For that, he is grateful.
Lora joins the others that afternoon for a generous sprawl of lunch over two long tables. Arrow sits near her so as both to keep her company as well as keep watch over her. After all, he still doesn’t know her, and his father always taught him to listen. Listen, and all truths will out. Listen, and you may never need to speak. Listen, and your every suspicion will prove worthy or wasted.
Tiny conversations have broken out everywhere at the table. Auleen shares something that little Rip did the other day which was “utterly the cutest thing ever.” Athan and Edrick and Nickel, his two new friends from the eighth, are talking about something to do with pleasure bars and the likes of Lifted men. Arcana is at the opposite end of the table, both seats at either side of her empty.
Arrow frowns
, eyeing the seats. He wonders where that odd, pudgy boy from the sky has gone. Locke normally occupies the other seat, yet is also strangely missing tonight. What is so important that they both miss lunchtime?
It’s been an effort in trusting either of them, Arrow finds.
Not long after their plates are emptied and everyone is just sitting around chatting—they just love to meet a new face—Lora has become a new woman. She appears downright lighthearted, in fact.
She’s also apparently flipped on her guardedness about what it was she buried in the Greens, suddenly divulging it all.
“I couldn’t just let them lie out in the street and rot,” she explains somberly, yet even her somber tone carries a cheer of enthusiasm behind it. “It was so upsetting to see, all of the men and women I took from there to the Greens to give a proper burial. It was the least I could do, really. The Madness was so inhumane. I had to bring back the humanity. I had to give them the dignity they were, in their final moments, so sadly not afforded.”
She has the attention of nearly everyone at the table as she talks. Despite the burdensome topic, her voice is perfectly even and strong, not wavering for emotion’s sake at all.
“But … they were, the most of them, Lifted?” asks Athan from across the table.
Arrow notes that Arcana has grown still. Her eyes are zeroed in upon Lora, a look of sharp concern in them.
That alarms Arrow.
“Yes,” Lora confirms. “It didn’t matter to me. We’re all human.”
And then: “Not all were Lifted,” murmurs Arcana, wide-eyed.
Lora gives her a glance, then gasps with the sudden memory. “Oh, yes, right! My very last one. Oh, the saddest yet. Did I mention him? How’d you know?”
Arrow notes Athan averting his eyes darkly, having grown uncomfortable with Arcana’s sudden contribution to the discussion. I wonder if Athan will ever separate Arcana from her evil twin sister in his traumatized, wounded mind.
Arcana’s response is a flippant, tiny lie: “I just suspected.”
“Well, you suspected right. The last boy I buried, he was clearly not of the Lifted kind. He was slumborn. A sweet, gentle thing. Tall. Brown hair. He was the very last I buried. I hoped to the Sisters that he would be the very last, and oh, he was.”
Arcana, who clearly seems to be steering the conversation, then inclines her head. “Might you tell us the name of this boy?”
She knows something, Arrow realizes. She’s reading it from Lora’s mind. She’s just making Lora say it out loud for our benefit.
Lora’s face goes red. “Oh, it’s silly, really. Please, don’t mind it. I have …” She chuckles and puts a hand to her cheek. “I have a wild imagination. My husband always complained. My sister, too. When I buried each of them, I gave them a name and … sort of came up with a story. It helped. I felt like they were all friends of mine. Family.” She drops her gaze to her empty plate where a crumb of bread remains. “It’s foolish, I know.”
“No, it isn’t,” murmurs Athan darkly. “It’s beautiful.”
Lora smiles. “Thank you.”
Arrow picks up on Arcana’s lead. He puts a hand on Lora’s, who is sitting next to him. “What was the name you gave him?” Arrow asks gently. “The slum boy? The last one?”
Lora waves her free hand dismissively. “Oh, I just named him after a flower that grows in my part of the Greens. Lionis, I named him. Lionis the Last.”
At the drop of that one name, the entire table stills. All eyes are on her at once.
Arrow’s mouth goes dry. He retracts his hand and stares ahead at nothing. No one seems to draw even a breath or move a finger. Even the wind no longer blows.
Lora is the one and only person who moves. She turns her head as she surveys the petrified faces around her. “What …? What is it? What’s going on?”
Athan’s eyes find Arrow’s across the table. The two seem to say a hundred things without a word.
Pratganth, who has all this time remained silent, croaks a single question: “W-What did you say your Legacy was, again?”
Lora blinks. “I didn’t.” She bristles. “I … don’t know what it is.”
Another silence of disbelief swells among the table.
“Don’t worry your mind over it,” Arcana assures her blithely. “I think everyone here is simply … overly excited about meeting a new face. We don’t get many new faces here anymore.” Her eyes land on Arrow once again with importance.
Arrow swallows hard, then picks up her hint once more. “Yes. Let’s change the subject, then.” He glances about the table at ten sets of baffled, stunned, or blank eyes. “The orange-root was delicious, Auleen. Really, seasoned just right.”
Auleen’s blank stare, followed by a halfhearted, “Thanks,” is all he gets.
So much for shifting topics.
Despite a few more awkward efforts, the matter would not be so easily dropped. Not long after that, the folk at the table begin to rise from their chairs and disperse. Lora dismisses herself to a bathroom, of which Auleen reluctantly offers her own, leading the way. Prat and Ivy stand awkwardly near the porch to the Lesser’s house, both muttering to one another in hushed, tensed whispers.
To that, Arrow does not listen.
Instead, he gravitates toward Athan and Edrick and Nickel, the triplet of them standing in the street under the afternoon sun, which is being greyed out by the clouds of a coming shower, it seems. “It’s a coincidence, right?” asks Athan at once, his voice strained. “Tell me it’s a common name here in the slums. In the ninth. Lionis.”
Arrow shrugs. “I doubt any name is common. Arcana … clearly knew a thing. I could see it in her eyes.” He glances across the yard. The mind-reading woman is standing and watching the house where Lora had disappeared into, her back to the four of them. Arcana’s extraordinarily long, dark hair curtains about her shoulders, freed from its usual whip-shaped ponytail.
Athan deliberately does not look her way. “I think there is more to the Lora woman than even she realizes.”
“Agreed,” murmurs Arrow. Then he quirks an eyebrow. “Have you seen Sedge? He was missing. He is always at Arcana’s side—”
“I don’t know,” answers Athan abruptly.
The young, orange-haired one says, “It isn’t truly a bother, is it? My mother and I being here? I … I heard you’re the W-Warden of this ward, and I—”
“Warden?” Arrow gives a curt shake of his head. “No, I am no Warden. And no, it is no bother, you and your mother being here. I heard you took an empty house at the end of the street, two over.”
“Yes.” Nickel clears his throat, glances anxiously between Edrick and Athan, then nods at Arrow. “Thank you. Graciously. Thank you. It’s certainly a … time of generosity and compassion that we live in.”
Arrow barely regards him with a mumbled, “Well, you’re in the minority in that thought,” before glancing back at Arcana, bothered by this Lora woman and the mystery that she is.
When Arrow turns back, Athan has already left with his friends, making his way to the Lesser house, hesitantly followed by Edrick, who just gives Arrow a small shrug before he’s off. Nickel walks a pace or two behind them with his hands buried deep in his pockets and his head bowed sheepishly. Ivy and Pratganth stop talking for a moment as the Broadmore boy passes by them on his way in with his friends.
Then, from across the way, the beauty that is Ivy Caldron turns and catches Arrow’s eyes. They hang there longer than they ought to. But just before Arrow can lift a hand to wave, she returns her full attention to Prat, their chat resuming.
Arrow glowers.
It isn’t but half an hour later that the exchange at the table is nearly forgotten. Lora mingles about the yard and in the street, quick to open up and introduce herself to others who had not joined them for the late lunch and missed the peculiar exchange.
Arrow watches, and Arrow listens.
This Lora woman is rather starved for friends. She must know very few people in the
eighth, from the look of it. We are adopting so many people from the eighth lately, one would think the ward itself is chasing its own occupants away. The woman is a dreamer, a woman of imagination, a woman with so much heart inside her, she doesn’t know what to do with it.
Arrow listens.
But how much of that imagination is something else entirely?
She is curious. She is worldly. She is brave.
Arrow watches.
And then Arrow makes a decision.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” Arrow confirms, standing before Edrick. “I know we have not gotten to know one another very well yet. I was a member of Rain when Wick and Rone were sent to your pleasure bar to inquire about a way into the Lifted City. I was nearly asked to go myself.”
“Hmm.” Edrick appraises Arrow for a moment. “And?”
“I need you to accompany me and Lora, if you will. I could make use of your ears, as mine are limited. We are going into the ninth.”
“We’re in the ninth.”
“Deeper into the ninth,” Arrow amends, “where the streets may be less safe, despite Guardian’s patrol.”
Edrick nods, tight-lipped, then glances over his shoulder at Lora, who is chatting with Auna and her dancer daughter across the street. His eyes always have a guarded appearance, always partly closed as if shielding themselves from smoke.
“Arcana will be joining us as well,” adds Arrow.
Edrick faces him. “Oh, will she? Is that to get her away from our dear, lovely Athan?”
Arrow eyes him. “Why would you suggest that?”
“Oh. Everyone knows he despises her. She is twins with the one who aided in killing Sniff. Sorry, I mean Wick. Isn’t it obvious?”
The flippant way in which Edrick discusses such a topic grates on Arrow’s nerves, but he shows none of it on his face. “Gather up your things, and Arcana, if you may. It will be a quick journey, back before the rise of the moon, if we leave now.”
“I hope my shoes do me well,” Edrick sings with a sigh, then is off. Arrow watches him go. His eyes find Ivy again, who disappears into the Lesser house with Prat. The door shuts softly.