by Daryl Banner
“Here?” mutters Forrest. “There is a tunnel over there that looks narrow as well. And also the one by its side, just as narrow as—”
“This one,” orders silk-face snappily. “No questions. Just obey. If we get turned around, I will get very angry.”
“You get angry easily,” states the Charmer thoughtfully, almost drowsily. “It doesn’t do you favors, having such a short temper. One day, you may regret not holding your tongue.”
“I more often regret holding it. Keep going,” he instructs Forrest.
“After the mess you almost made in the ninth—”
“Quiet.”
That catches Halvesand’s attention. Ninth?
“You are overzealous,” the Charmer goes on. “You are impatient. You are getting your allegiances crossed and your loyalties confused. You are going to lose us the ninth.”
He spins around suddenly, a knife produced from some unseen pocket, and he holds the point of it right between the Charmer’s eyes threateningly. She gasps in surprise and grows still as stone, staring cross-eyed at the blade’s tip.
“I think,” murmurs the man behind the black scarf, “that it may, perhaps, be wise for you to practice a lesson in holding your tongue, lest an overzealous, impatient, short-tempered fool lops it clean off.”
She licks her lips, stiffens to muster her dignity, then quietly replies, “Perhaps that is wise.”
From the front of the vehicle, Forrest sighs. “We’re approaching a dead end. The tunnel is too narrow to turn around. We must back out of this skinny Waterway and—”
“No.” The scarf-man lowers his knife from the Charmer—who breathes a sigh of relief—and rushes to the front. He looks to his left, then to his right. “Ah. We are here.”
“Here?” Forrest looks around herself. “Where?”
“Bring it to a halt, kill the engine, and open the door.” Then he turns, eyes the twin boys, and gives them a nod.
The boys hop from their seat, and suddenly there’s four of them, each taking a different weapon and holding it toward a different person—Liaff, Halves, Bee, and Cope. The silk-faced man, still armed with Forrest’s blacksteel, points it upon her as she does what she’s told: stopping the chrome, killing the engine, then tapping a button to make the door slide open.
“Now, off we go.”
One by one, each occupant of the vehicle steps out. Halves is made to go first, the Charmer muttering, “We’ll keep an eye on this one,” as Halves is thrust forward by one of the bloody-shouldered twins (there are three of them now), who clearly has a vendetta against him. With little room to empty on the side of the chrome, they move around to the front of it where the narrow-yet-very-tall tunnel comes to an abrupt brick-wall end. Two sewage grates are high above them, water slowly trickling down from their heights. He had always thought the Waterways were the source of their water. Was it also where the waste goes? Have I had it backwards all along?
Then he realizes it isn’t the most important thing that ought to be on his mind.
Maybe the muddlement is affecting me, after all.
“Here,” announces silk-face as he reaches the brick wall.
No one, save the boys and the Charmer, seems to know what he is doing as he lifts his free hand to the wall, like he’s expecting the wall to somehow grow stony fingers and give him a handshake. But then, before their eyes, the wall seems to shift and blur, like a badly transmitted image on the broadcast coming into focus. The wall goes dark, like a thick black mist, and then suddenly it’s a door.
“I didn’t know you concealed it with your shadows,” mutters the Charmer. “That’s a necessary precaution now? Even with the muddlement? To also hide the very door itself?”
“One can never be too cautious.” He pushes open the door—a heavy steel-and-wood thing with an enormous handle that looks like the head of a great-toothed dog—then steps to the side to allow the others through. “Onward, my friends. Onward and downward.”
Downward? Forrest leads the way with two more copies of the boy rushing forth with knives. Can the twins duplicate our weapons, too? They can certainly duplicate clothes. He can’t seem to remember how many knives and daggers and guns they came armed with.
Halves isn’t given much time to consider it at all before he’s prodded in the back by one of the scowling, bloody-shouldered boys. He steps through the door, entering a winding stone staircase that leads down, down, down. Their process is slowed somewhat by Lord Liaff, who takes his time descending the stairs.
When the stairs stop, the hall opens to a great, long, dimly-lit-by-firelight chamber that so reminds Halves of his worst nightmares of what the Keep must look like beneath their feet. When he passes a greatly aged and rusted Guardian emblem hanging on the wall, he suddenly remembers from his studies of histories about the long-defunct Quadrant Twelve that boasted of a great fortress plunging deeply underground. He swears he read that it dug as deeply in the earth as it was tall above, a tower stretching ten stories high and low, both ways. Could this dark place be that very fortress? The once-proud headquarters of Quadrant Twelve, lost after the great explosion?
How fateful, that such circumstance would bring him back to the Dark Abandon.
“Onward, onward,” instructs silk-face, leading them from the side as all the scowling-faced boy-clones do the work of shepherding the five of them across the giant chamber. The walls are lined with torches and Guardian emblems. Halvesand imagines this might have been a commons area of some sort, except over the centuries, all the tables have been cleared out. What its use is today, he cannot say. A hideout for bandits, brigands, and thieves.
Then they pass under a great arch, entering a slimmer hallway. From there, they take a right, then another right, then enter a great door, which silk-face must open. It is here that they find themselves met with the first people they’ve seen since the ones who captured them. They all look like lost, homeless souls on the street, yet they stand like guards, armed and straight-postured. None of them stop the man in the mask nor ask him his purpose, each one permitting the crowd of them to walk on by. Halves is nurturing a suspicion that the man behind the silken scarf is more than just a man behind a silken scarf. He is respected here. He has some sort of authority.
Then a creaky door is opened. “In here,” silk-face orders Forrest.
She complies, stepping inside. He shuts the door, a heavy metal thing with giant bars on the front through which Forrest’s glowering face can be seen. She eyes Halvesand importantly as they move on to another door, which silk-face then opens just as creakily and nods at Bee, who is then thrust inside by two of the boys. Once the door slams shut at her back, the boys—their task complete—turn to dust and vanish.
It’s at a door near the end of the hall that the Charmer gives a swat at Halvesand’s ass. “In there,” she states before the silk-faced man can speak.
Halves steps inside his cell, a very small, ten-foot-by-ten-foot space with no window save the barred one on the door itself. The door shuts at his back, taking ninety-percent of the light with it. He rushes up to the window and brings his hands to the rusty bars, watching as they put Cope in the cell across the hall from him, and then Lord Liaff in the cell next to that one.
“We shall be back for your like,” calls the man, words forever muffled by silk, and then a sauntering of footsteps away takes them out of their sight.
Cope is at his window, his tiny, terrified, beady eyes on Halves. “W-W-What do we do?” he calls out, voice shaking.
“We wait,” states Forrest shortly from her cell down the hall, reflecting no fear in her own voice.
“Wait for what?” asks Cope, unable to help himself.
Bee has a thought. “The trackers in our armor. They are being read still by the Upstairs, right?”
“They had a Charmer,” Forrest points out unnecessarily. “You don’t think they already took such precautions? For all we know, that Charmer rerouted our trackers and the folk back at Eleven Wings think we’ve alrea
dy made it to our destination.”
Bee lets out an aggravated huff. “Fuck.”
“So we wait,” repeats Forrest. “We wait, and we don’t fight.”
“Don’t fight??” cries out Cope, exasperated.
“No. We do not fight. We don’t yet know which power we’re in the hands of. I, myself, have never met the Queen of the Abandon. I thought her to be children’s rumors. Perhaps I was mistaken. These people very well may help us.”
Queen of the Abandon. Halves sulks against the bars. He didn’t see any evidence of a Queen’s work when he was last here stopping a train with his palm. Of course, that was nearly eight months ago. The whole world can change in eight months.
A life can grow within a belly in eight months. A life can be forever changed, mutilated beyond recognition. A life can be taken …
Halves sinks to the floor, giving up on trying to catch sight of anyone. It’s hard enough with his neck being unable to turn, but also being confined behind a set of rigid, rusty bars, he is unable to see anything but Cope’s sad, worried little face across the hallway from him. They had taken all their weapons, even the hidden ones in their bootstraps, armstraps, and shoulder sheaths. Other than their very Legacies, they hold no leverage.
“Sense any worries, Lord Liaff?” calls Bee with a sarcastic tinge to her words. “Any information that may assist us?”
Lord Liaff replies with a short sigh, then a, “None other than our own, I’m afraid.”
Nothing is said for quite some time. Cope makes a comment about being thirsty, which is aptly ignored by all, and then Bee says something about what the Core will do when they notice that they haven’t yet arrived, to which Forrest mutters about communications and search teams. Liaff keeps his thoughts to himself, it seems.
Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest strategy to escort the next King of Atlas with a small band of Guardian. They thought it would be less conspicuous—just another Guardian caravan transporting cargo from one site to another, as they do five times a week.
Instead, it left them wide open for the slaughter.
Except none of us have yet been slaughtered, Halves notes.
Footsteps break the monotony of ambient dungeon noise and mindless muttering. Halves rises to his feet to get a look. Soon comes the shape of a man wearing a black silk scarf over the top of his head instead of covering his face like before. Is it the same man? He comes to a stop in front of Halvesand’s door, his grey eyes calm and patient. The man’s face is youthful, perhaps Halves’ age, yet it bears a deep scar like an unsightly canyon running jaggedly down his right cheek and over the edge of his very wide lips. He has a short bump for a nose and flared nostrils, through which is pierced a small silver ring on the same side as his scar. He is unshaven, yet Halves would hesitate to call what this young man has a beard, patchy in places and smooth as a babe’s ass in others.
When he speaks, he confirms it is the same silk-faced man who escorted them here. “Lesser, is it?” the man asks lightly, eyeing him through the bars. “Will you cooperate if you come with me? As it turns out, the Queen wishes to speak with you, and you only.”
Cope’s eyes go wide. The others are still as statues in their own cells, from the sound of it. Halves can neither speak nor nod, so he only stares at the man, steely-eyed and silent.
Then, from down the hall, Forrest speaks on his behalf. “He will go,” she states, “and he will cooperate.”
The man squints and tilts his head, curious. “Can he not speak for himself? Or did he bite his tongue off when he was a child?”
“No. His throat was slit and poisoned by a madwoman,” answers Forrest. “He has been to Death’s door and back.”
“Hmm.” The man appraises Halves in a whole new light. “And with all your capabilities and Lifted knowhow, you weren’t able to procure a treatment for him? A simple surgery would have fixed him in the Lifted City. Nevertheless.” He gives Halves another nod. “Will you cooperate if I take you to the Queen? Blink if this is so.”
To that, Halvesand Lesser blinks firmly.
0285 Kid
Something has been eating away at Kid.
It’s been eating away at her for years now. Each day, she tells herself, Today I will confess it to him, I will tell him what I did. And each day passes when she realizes she still hasn’t done the deed.
“Of course I believe it,” Link replies, answering Kid’s rhetorical comment about the words exchanged between King Greymyn and his daughter Kael Mirand-Thrin. “We know without a doubt that you are the daughter of a Goddess. But … the key to immortality?” Link shrugs. “I’m … not sure I can make much sense of that part.”
They are seated outside a Lifted bakery sharing a loaf of stale bread between them. Though the sun shines over their heads, the shadow of the tall, domed bakery at their backs keeps them hidden from its blinding, unrelenting beams. “Link …”
“Yes, it does connect with a thing or two I read once in a book,” he goes on. “Kings who live forever. Myths of Three Sister. Stars that fall from the night sky. I must have heard a hundred different stories from my brother Lionis and my … my own mother.” His eyes detach as he seems to fall back into a memory. “She believed in them. She paid her worships. She spoke her every wish to them.”
Will she ever get an opportunity to just out with it? “Maybe … Maybe we should go back to look for her some more.”
“We searched everywhere after we fled the King’s stuffy room. Looked about every inch of Cloud Keep, it seemed. Found nothing.”
“Maybe she was hiding.”
“Maybe they have her in some strange other place we’ve yet to discover. There’s a lot of maybes.” Link sighs.
It’s now or never. Tell. Speak. “Link, I have something to say.”
“Feel free to say whatever it is,” Link tells her, “but we’re never going back into that … that Cloud fucking Keep. The whole place gave me the permanent shivers. I’d sooner watch the Madness of three-years-from-now eat it all up, head to toe, in glorious flames.”
“I let go of Ames’s hand.”
Link’s face goes flat. He doesn’t follow. “What?”
“I let go of his hand at the bakery.” Much like the one at my back, she might say, but slummier—slummier like my heart, like my soul, like me. “He … didn’t escape from me or pull away. Not like I said he did. I lied all those years ago. I … I let go of him on purpose. I let him be caught with his mouth stuffed and his arms full of stolen goods.”
Kid has grown quite sensitive to every flinch, pull, push, and change in Link’s body and demeanor. It’s only natural, their hands being glued to one another’s for the majority of their days. It is for this reason that Kid knows Link is instantly affected by her words without even needing to see his face; his palm and the side of his body tells her everything.
“I’m a terrible person.” Kid doesn’t shed a tear when she makes her confession—a confession she’s been withholding for nearly seven years. She feels no relief. She feels no pleasure. She feels no pain. “I’m ashamed of my actions. I was younger and … and stupid. And rash. Impulsive. I thought he was a problem. I … I had to do something.”
Link doesn’t move. Kid closes her eyes and waits for him to say something. She knows he will need time to sort his thoughts. She knows he may even hate her for what she did, and yet will still need to stay by her side to preserve their presence here in the past.
What an awful thing I’m doing to him right now.
Then Link speaks. “He … He would’ve been caught eventually.”
Kid blinks, surprised by his response. Still, she waits and listens.
“Perhaps it’s just another of time’s curiosities. Or fate’s. Or … Or whatever it is you might believe in. Destiny.” Link’s voice struggles with the very words he’s saying, yet he goes on. “Faery once told me that there must have been a timeline, long ago, when I first came to the past without you. The original time. A timeline when I did not know you in the
present, when I could not have run into you in the Waterways the day you took my gold.”
“Your stolen gold.”
Kid winces, wishing she had held her tongue. But Link doesn’t seem bothered; he picks her words right up. “Stolen gold, yes. Faery told me that, in that original timeline, you were not here in the past with me. At least, not until you were born. I’m … I’m not sure my mind can completely follow her logic. I’m not even sure it makes sense anymore. But if I were to accept her train of thought, then it must also be accepted that Ames would have been lost to us in some other way … some other way that was not your doing.”
Kid wonders if that’s true. Or if it’s just Link’s way of reaching for an excuse not to blame her for such an awful act. “Mom said that?” she asks quietly.
“She did.”
Kid closes her eyes again, worry lancing its way through her gut and her chest. She would be glad for him to expound for days on end about timelines and could-have-beens—anything to distract from the fact that Kid was, at one brief point in time, undoubtedly, irrefutably merciless enough to do such a thing to Ames.
“He must be in the Keep,” Link reasons. “All this time. In the … In the Keep. If he was executed—”
“He wouldn’t be,” Kid blurts. “Not for the stealing of pastries.”
“You don’t know Sanctum as I do. The Kingship is not kind nor good. Ames might’ve been touched by Metal Hand for all we know. He could be turned to dust before the Banshee King’s wrinkly feet.”
Kid imagines a pile of dust at the feet of King Greymyn—a pile of dust that was once a troublesome, annoying boy named Ames.
She shudders. I wish I’d not imagined it. “I’m sorry.”
Link glances her way. “For what?”
“Not telling you. I know you won’t forgive me. Not yet, but—”
“Of course I forgive you. You’re my … my daughter.” He shifts his weight on the ground to face her. Kid finally dares to meet his eyes. “I know that’ll never quite feel right to say, but it’s true, even if you’re interacting with a younger-than-natural version of me.”