by Daryl Banner
After all was said, it was still decided to leave well enough alone. The neck armor was slapped back on, reinforced, and his wound had been dressed with some kind of Sanctum-grade flexible mesh. One of the doctors claimed it can now withstand even a knife thrusting right at it. Halves knew of course that the doctor’s claim was a gross exaggeration, but let him have it. Besides, neither doctor knew hand language and wouldn’t understand his response without a translator. The only thing he got across to those who aided him was to express his desire not to tell his mother of this unfortunate mishap. After her hearing the tragic news of his two younger brothers, he couldn’t bear to put any more emotional weight on her, especially weight that was so easily avoidable in the first place.
But was it avoidable? Halves, even now, still fights a strand of anger about the whole thing. If he could redo that moment in the locker room, he’s certain he still would’ve picked that fight with Aleksand. Just the thought of punching him in the face makes blood charge through his veins with conviction all over again, whether that blood is black or red or otherwise.
Maybe the anger is a good thing. Maybe it saves him from feeling the pain of losing his brothers to the Madness.
Maybe this isn’t about Aleks at all.
He doesn’t have to depart for another hour, so he figures it’s long enough to catch a meal downstairs. Besides, at this hour of the night, there won’t be very many people there, and he’s trying to avoid as many goodbyes as he can. My brother doesn’t need to see me before I go. Neither does Ennebal, who thinks me a fool for fighting him anyway. My mother will hear about my departure from someone else, and by then, any reason to worry will have already passed.
He takes advantage of the moment and heads off, leaving his bag on a chair in his room. The halls are quiet and unpopulated on the Guardian floors, as most are on patrol, since after nightfall is the worst for crime. When he arrives at the cafeteria, he finds it empty as expected save for one table in the corner where three young nurses are gathered, chatting on and laughing about something. He makes a walk through the serving aisles unnoticed, helps himself to a bowl of stewed vegetables and peppered root soup, then takes a seat by himself at a table at the opposite end of the room to the nurses. He uses the flat of his spoon to smash down the vegetables to something more manageable to eat, considering the trouble his neck gives him with all his meals. If the doctors were going to go through the trouble of reinforcing my brace, they might as well have made it easier for me to eat a fucking bowl of vegetable soup, perhaps by allowing me the simple ability to open my mouth wider than half an inch.
“You’re leaving?”
Startled by the unexpected voice of his mother, he swallows his bite too soon, causing it to feel like a ball of lava down his throat.
Ellena comes around the table to stand before him, her eyes wide in disbelief. “It isn’t for good, is it? You’re not transferring to the Core, are you? I heard you were transferring to the Core. Tell me that’s a lie, Halvesand. Tell me right now.”
Halves can’t quite lift his eyes to meet his mother’s. He doesn’t know if the doctors—or Aleks or Ennebal—betrayed his wishes and told her what happened. And even if they hadn’t, something about the intensity of his mother makes him feel she might not only absorb wounds, but also worries and guilt from his mind.
He lifts a hand, waves it, points to his wrist, then gestures off.
Ellena sighs. “Oh, Halves. Why didn’t I know sooner? Why is it so instantly? It feels like we only just now …” She sighs again and plops down on the seat across from him. For some reason, she has a towel in her hands, which she wrings as she speaks. “It feels like we only just reunited. All of us, here in one place again. Ennebal is due in a month. You’ll miss the birth of your own son! Why?”
It is clear to Halvesand how strongly his mother is plainly and blatantly avoiding the subject of his brothers’ deaths. She will stop at nothing to pretend their deaths never happened and can’t possibly be at least part of the reason for Halves’ decision.
He brings his knuckles to his chin, then moves his finger over his neck. As he moves his hand toward his chest, his mother grabs it at once, stopping him. Halves’ eyes flick to hers, confused.
“No,” she hisses quietly, barely more than a breath. “Please. I … I haven’t even begun to … figure where to put the hurt of losing them, what to do with it. It’s immeasurable. We all … need to be together right now, Halves. Not running off into the city. No, you can’t. It’s selfish, Halves. It’s wrong. Especially at a time like this. Without your father here, I …” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “I … I still can’t believe it. I broke my favorite pot in the ninth. Shattered it right on the floor when I heard, like a madwoman. My favorite one. Lionis used to cook in it, too.”
Just the name makes her eyes gloss over. She’s still holding the hand of his she caught. Her grip loosens, but her fingers stay clung.
Halves watches the whole thing play out across her face. For a fleeting moment, it takes him out of the crypt of his own personal torment and makes him notice, of all silly things to notice, how very bright this cafeteria is. It’s always bright here. It’s always full of light. Out there in the streets, the place I’m headed, it will be dark, always. Dark and deadly.
But that is what he chose. That is what I still choose, no matter what my mom says right now.
“Sorry,” she slurs tiredly. “I … know you have to do what you have to do. Maybe I have to do the same.” Another short breath of air pushes out of her lips, then she meets Halves’ eyes, squeezing his hand she still holds. “I just wish you’d stay at least until your son is born. Just a month. Really, I can’t believe that you’d voluntarily miss out on the most important day of your life.”
Halves’ dead eyes meet his mother’s. Most important day …
“I mean, I know being recruited for the—the troupe? Is that what you call it?—I know that’s a really, really big deal for a first year Guardian.” She shakes the hand she still holds hostage as she speaks with conviction. “A great honor. You get to work alongside Lead Officer Forrest. See? I know nothing, and even I know that. But she’d understand. You’ve had a death in the family, Halves. Two deaths.”
Halves notes the three nurses looking their way. Perhaps his mother ought to keep her voice down, lest anyone overhears that she has completely omitted the mention of the “third death” in their family—that of his youngest brother Link who might or might not actually be alive out there somewhere.
Only Aleks, Halves, and Ennebal know the truth, that Link may be alive. The rest of Guardian believe him dead, his body identified (falsely and deliberately) by his mother in the sixth.
Halves, with his mother still holding his hands, subtly lifts three fingers and raises his eyebrows.
Ellena shakes her head. “For all we know, him too. Oh, we just don’t know. We still don’t know. Three deaths. Two. Your father. Is there a single one of us not in danger? Not possibly dead? Please.” She shakes his hands, her frustration mounting. “You need to grieve. You can’t keep it inside you like a poison.”
What a hilariously unfortunate choice of words. He pulls his hand away from her at once, a scowl over his face. He draws a clumsy circle at his eye, points at her angrily, plants his fist into his other palm, then flicks two fingers upwards at the sky.
Ellena watches as he goes on, making a speech with his hands. After a while, her gaze eventually sinks to his face where it remains, her expression growing sadder by the second.
Finally, whatever sentence he was forming left unfinished, he just drops his hands to the table, giving up, and asks with a wiggle of his fingers if she’s even listening to him.
She stares at those fingers long and hard, then closes her eyes and bows her head. “Every time, Halvesand … I underestimate your heart. I underestimate your … courage. You have what it takes to do what you do, there’s no mistaking it now. Oh, Halves.” She chokes back a sob, then shakes her head sud
denly, fighting her urge to cry. “I feel as if Guardian’s taken you away from me, too. You’re making a mistake. You’re making a terrible mistake.”
Halves’ appetite fled the moment they started this conversation. Perhaps it’s for the best. He’s never been fond of goodbyes; he learned that the day he left for Guardian and ate one final meal with his brothers and parents. It was such a happy morning that it breaks my heart every time I think on it. I almost wish it never happened.
He rises from the table too quickly, his knee banging against it. He marches his tray to the depository bin, empties it, then ditches it on a counter where a custodian will find it. It aches him to know he’s leaving his mother in such a state, but he can’t fathom spending the whole night tiptoeing around the real issue: that the baby isn’t his, that this isn’t just a promotion or a mission or a transfer, and that he is sick of feeling anything at all. Perhaps it’ll all sort itself out, but it’ll have to sort itself out without me here.
Despite not being in the mood to see or speak to another soul, he makes a trip to Obert’s room for a simple farewell, figuring with Obert that it will be a quick and emotionless one—exactly what he needs. Unfortunately, for the fourth time this week, he isn’t there. “Upstairs for another test, this time on his partly frozen left lung, poor thing,” explains the same red-haired nurse who always seems to be tending to the former Lead Officer. “He’s freezing to death in a room warm enough to cook an egg on his chest.”
Halves stands at that doorway long after the nurse leaves him, staring at the empty bed once more. Obert might be the only person here who can appreciate the tough decision he made—and why. It isn’t every day a first year Guardian is asked to escort a To-Be-King.
That’s the real mission: to escort To-Be-King Liaff to the Core, where the new regime will be established.
He thinks on the fateful moment when Lead Officer Forrest told him of her intent and invited him onto the crew of secret escorts. “It will be an intimate crew. A secret crew,” she had explained, her intense and dazzling eyes locked on him. “Only four of us. No one knows we are escorting Lord Liaff, and no one will. Once we arrive at the Core, our real mission begins. In a caravan, the travel will only take an hour. Tomorrow before the sun rises, we will have a King in power, three Marshals at his side, and a Lifted City to reclaim from directly beneath their feet. It is a matter of days before Atlas is back to rights, then many years more to secure its precious people. First the quick task, then the long one. Are you up for this responsibility, Lesser?” She extended a hand, ready to shake his. “There is no room for distraction. This very well may lead to you being first on his Sky Guard. This is no small matter. This is, truly, the highest honor any Guardian can possibly hope for. And there is no room for second-guessing. Once you take my hand, the journey to restore Atlas begins and ends in the next twenty-four hours. Don’t take it if there is even a shred of doubt, or a shred of misgiving, or a shred of—”
Halves took her hand the next instant and shook it firmly.
He’s been ready for longer than anyone can possibly know.
Halves is snapped back to the present with the sweetest words: “You’re a fucking idiot to run off in your condition at a time like this.”
When Halvesand turns, he finds Ennebal standing in that same gown she wore the day his neck broke apart, hands still holding her belly. Why was the stubborn woman out of bed yet again?
He throws his hand toward her, then waves at his own mouth, telling her: You’re one to speak.
“Is this your way of punishing me, Halvesand? For what?”
Halves narrows his eyes, his jaw so tight, he could pop his neck armor right off again if he focuses hard enough.
“You’re abandoning your son,” she accuses him, her voice steely and her eyes steelier. “I hope you know that’s what you’re doing.”
He wrinkles his face, wiggles fingers in front of his nose, then points at her belly flippantly.
To his surprise, she actually understands him. Her voice loses all its hardness, deduced to something barely more than a whisper. “What do you mean it’s not yours? Of … Of course it’s yours.”
He spells his brother’s name with a hand, then gestures angrily at the ceiling and back at himself.
Ennebal takes a few steps toward him, but Halves takes a few back. He can’t trust his temper lately. He’s already proven himself too volatile on the very matter they are so flippantly discussing—a matter they should have resolved so many months ago.
Something must occur to Ennebal, because her whole stance seems to change before Halvesand’s eyes. Her posture slackens. Her eyes turn soft. There is almost pleading in them, begging, a wish of something she can’t say.
That look in her eyes, it’s the truth. Right there in her eyes. It’s the truth Halves has been looking for, all along. The truth is that she doesn’t know herself. It could be me. It could be Aleks. It could be either of us, or maybe a third or fourth she coupled with eight months ago.
Even Ennebal doesn’t know who the father is. She just wants it to be him so badly.
A cold and calculated resolution falls upon his shoulders. Halves lifts his hands and tells her: No matter whose baby it is, it will be in good hands. My brother and my mother are here. And you. I don’t own you, and I never did. We aren’t husband and wife. We—
It’s then that she interrupts him. “Then let us marry, Halves.”
He drops his hands.
“Let us marry,” she presses on, coming up to his face so fast, her belly meets his before anything else. “I want to be a Lesser. Make me a Lesser. I’ll even take your name.”
Halves can’t shake his head no, so he calmly lifts a hand to quiet her, palm out, then makes a few soft gestures.
She isn’t listening to him. “I don’t need my name. Flowers only wilt.” She grabs hold of his hands, just as his mother did to shut him up. “Don’t punish me like this. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
He frees his hands, then speaks to her through his language: Keep your name. It’s all you have left of your sister. Don’t give it up. Keep your sister alive with your name.
“I don’t care. I love you, Halvesand. I fucking love you.”
Ennebal’s eyes turn to water. He wonders if he’s ever seen her cry before. It isn’t quite as comely as he expected. She’s an ugly crier. What an unkind thing to think of upon the last time I gaze at her face.
But is it really what he thinks, or does his bitterness blind him?
The longer he lets her be emotional, the less kind she becomes. “Don’t be a fucking coward. I’ve known cowards my whole life. You need to be strong. Stay for your son, Halvesand. Stay for me. Make me your wife. You fucking asshole. Don’t leave us here alone.”
He moves his hands again: Maybe when I get to the Core, it will bring me that much closer to the ones responsible for sending your sister home in a clay casket. Maybe my vengeance can be yours.
“Fuck you, Halvesand. There is no King who screams in the sky anymore. Just a stupid puppet girl who has nothing to do with my sister’s death. Stay. Fucking stay.”
She makes a grab at his hands again. He doesn’t let her take them this time, gesturing for her that he has to leave.
“It’s not fair!” she shouts. Two nurses passing by have stopped, turning their concerned glances their way. “It’s not fucking fair!”
It’s the fairest thing I’ve ever done, Halves would say, had he the gall. It’s maybe the fairest thing I’ll ever do, leaving you in peace.
“We are meant to be one.” It’s her last desperate plea. “You can stop things with your palms. I can stop things with my skin. We are meant to be one, you and me.”
Halves takes hold of her hands. It silences her at once, her close-set eyes big and wet and unblinking. With the tears in them, she looks like a completely different person, a woman Halvesand has never before met. He brings her soft fingers to his lips. He isn’t sure whether he means to kiss them or j
ust feel them one last time.
Instead, he speaks against them. “I’ve …” It is utter agony. “… s-stopped …” Blades and knives in his throat. “… nothing.”
When he pulls her fingers away, there are two tiny streaks of blood across them, marks from his lips and the effort of his words. Ennebal is frozen in place, as if she didn’t even hear him. Halves, against the restriction of his neck armor, leans toward her to put a final kiss on her forehead.
She flinches away before his lips can touch her. “Don’t you dare kiss me goodbye, you fucking coward.”
He softly lets go of her, then makes his way down the hall.
“If you leave, you’re fucking dead to me!” she cries out after him. “I will hate you, Halvesand! That knife should’ve cut all the way and taken your life that day! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!” Her words chase him down the hall like the threatening barks of starving dogs. “I will fucking hate you every day you’re gone! HALVES! Your son will hate you, too! Your brother and your mother will never forgive you! Don’t fucking leave me!!”
But that’s exactly what he does.
0278 Erana
She brought the harpist back to Cloud Keep.
Why not?
His name is Kane. He has a mess of sandy blond hair, tapered so that it’s short and cropped at the sides, yet long and tangly on top, some strands hanging over the shorter sides. He wears glasses, thick-framed like hers, but pearly white. He is very skinny, not a muscle to boast of, but his frame is attractive to Erana’s eyes, and he has this smart little smirk to his lips that she finds herself insufferably drawn to while he strokes the strings of his harp, making the sweetest music.
Kane plays his music in the throne room while Erana sits on her throne. He gives her a brief smile now and then before losing himself to the little chords and intricacies of his music.