by Daryl Banner
“And you with an older-than-natural version of me.”
Link smiles, which is all Kid desperately needed for her heart to swell up with relief. “I forgive you. But really, there’s not a thing to forgive. We’ve got each other’s backs. I trust you. You trust me. We’re surrounded by liars and betrayers and thieves, both Lifted and not. I will always be someone you can count on.”
Kid throws her arms around Link right then, so very grateful for his existence. She has never, until he crashed into her in that dim, eerie Waterway so long ago, had someone be a part of her life this long. Everyone leaves, except him …
Then a thought starts to click in place. “Ames …” she murmurs.
They’re still hugging. “Yes?” he encourages her over a shoulder.
“If … If Ames is in the Keep …”
“Then he’d have been there for seven years already,” Link then finishes for her. His body tightens, a thought occurring to him as well. “Or … we might consider that he was likely given … a sentence.”
“A sentence,” agrees Kid uneasily.
“And he might have served that sentence to its end already … and have been released.” The pair of them pull apart, looking at one another importantly. “He could be out there right now. Somewhere on the streets. Somewhere in the slums.”
“Somewhere,” echoes Kid, glassy-eyed.
Now that is a thought that had not occurred to her.
“If Ames is out there,” says Link, “then we must stay unseen. I trust he will not like the sight of either of us.”
0286 Rone
The truth is, Rone has no idea whether he told Dran or not.
Chemical has a way of taking memory and swirling it about until there’s nothing but a word here, a sentence there, a flash of a face, a splash of sound, and nothing much else.
I must’ve let it slip, Rone thinks to himself, sitting on the bottom step of the porch while his friend sleeps inside. Distant insects chirp. The last embers of the evening’s dinner campfire glow and smoke, slowly dying. There’s no wind on his face tonight, the whole world still and silent as stone, except for the folk in the cabin one over who won’t stop chatting loudly about nothing important at all.
Rone’s stomach turns with regret. He and Wick shared some very tense words with one another, neither able to tell Korah or anyone else that it was likely an exchange Rone and Dran had the night before that put the black-eyed fool in a foul mood and inspired him to take off.
It’s the worst feeling, to betray one’s only friend in the world, and to not have been in control of one’s own mind when doing it.
I can’t keep blaming chemical the rest of my life.
I have to stop.
He lifts his eyes to the Chief’s cabin across the clearing. His leg bounces and bounces in place as he juggles his worries, wondering if he ought to see her. But what would I say? Would I have an answer for her? Would I have a perspective to offer? Would I just stare at her tits?
Figuring he doesn’t have much business here anyway while his friend sleeps, Rone rises and marches toward the porch opposite the one he was just sitting on.
Rone stops at the door, which was left open. Chief Cagemont is alone, sitting in a chair with her feet kicked up onto the map table, gently rocking the chair back on its hind legs, gnawing on the end of a finger as she stares at the wall opposite her, face blank.
“Korah.”
She turns only her head, her tired eyes on his. Then she drops her finger and gives him a nod. “Rone.”
“May I …?” He gestures inside.
She shrugs. “You’ve already.”
Rone nods, then steps inside the cabin. The air inside is warm and thick and fragrant, perhaps a flower or herb of some kind burning by a candle, if he had to guess. He was struck the first time by how bare the room is. Most cabins have at least a bit of decoration in them, like hanging leaves, or ropes and cords forming nets, or a carving or two of artwork in the wooden planks and walls. The cabin of the Chief is bare save for the few scattered chairs and the table in the center of the room, upon which is drawn all they know of the realms of Oblivion.
Rone comes to a stop some distance from the table. “My friend is asleep. I don’t know many others here other than Dran, and …” He shrugs. “Well, I guess the nights are going to be lonely now.”
“Lonely.” She seems unnaturally calm, demure, perhaps a little looser than usual.
“I think Dran might’ve … dared the trek.”
“Dared the trek, you say?” Korah purses her lips in thought, her eyes absently drifting to Rone’s chest, nearly looking bored. “I would say that’s an awfully stupid move, if true. To steal from our stores and brave the sands, alone. When he fails—and he will—he’ll become food for the scorpions and the vultures and the white wyrms.”
“White wyrms?”
“They’re worse than they sound.” She pokes a foot his way. “Go and have a seat. Keep me company.”
After taking a minute to admire her incredible balance in both pointing at a chair with her foot and keeping herself precariously half-leaned-back on the hind legs of the chair, Rone goes for a chair and drags it along the floor, bringing it up to the map table where he then takes a seat. He rests his hands in his lap, his legs spread a bit for comfort, then bobs his head in the silence.
He doesn’t realize until a moment later that Korah watches him. “What?” he protests.
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve a lady’s eyes?”
A corner of Rone’s lips curl upward in amusement. “Should I … take that for a compliment?”
“Only if you’re a lady.”
Rone studies the woman. He can’t deny that she’s attractive … very attractive. She has the toughness of a soldier, yet the physical grace and beauty of a Queen. She reminds him nothing of Ruena, yet could be cut from the same cloth as her. Her eyes are shallow, like a clear pool with no secrets—shallow in a way that invites trust and sincerity. He wonders if Korah has ever told a lie in her life, with as outward and direct and real as she seems.
She’s a woman who could put on a pretty gown and steal the breath out of the room.
She’s a woman who could tackle him into a pile of mud and wrestle him to submission.
And now he’s staring at her tits. “You … have incredible balance for a … slightly mean, short-bodied, needle-eyed, unforgiving warrior woman of the wild,” Rone replies.
Korah tilts her head. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“So what’s your story?” Rone asks suddenly, lifting his eyes from her gently rising and falling breasts, which are so maddeningly distracting. “What twisted fate brought you before Metal Hand?”
She pushes herself a touch farther backwards. Her chair creaks. “And why should I divulge this story to you?”
He shrugs. “Because I’m so beautiful and have a lady’s eyes.”
“I said you have a lady’s eyes. I never called you beautiful.”
“You thought it.”
“Oh? Is that your Legacy now?” She leans back some more, her intense grey irises upon him, digging into him like fingers hooking his shirt, hooking his pants, his underwear, his cock. “You don’t pass through objects, but rather through others’ thoughts?”
“No. I’ve met one who can do that. I’d very much never like to meet one who can do that again.”
“Psychists?” She bites her lip. “Are you scared of Psychists?” She again points her free foot, then lets it drop suddenly to rest.
On Rone’s chair. Between his wide opened legs.
Rone’s eyes flick up to hers. “I’m not scared of anything.”
“I wonder if that’s ‘cause you’re actually as brave and dauntless as Wick says … or something else.”
“Something else … like what?” fishes Rone.
She lets her chair come to rest on all four of its legs, then gently pushes her free foot forward—into Rone’s crotch.
“Like my Legacy,�
�� she answers, her eyes on him.
Rone licks his lips, his heart racing with anticipation. “And that Legacy is …?”
As graceful as a choreographed dancer, Korah is out of her chair and straddling his lap facing him, peering down in his eyes with a sharp and hungry animalism in them. Her breasts are in his face, and it is not lost on Rone Tinpassage that the woman is wet below, and he is hard as a rock and ready. “Lonely, you said?” she whispers.
Then she takes a nip at his right ear, making him moan.
She goes for his left, then sucks on his lobe as her arms draw around his lean backside. Rone squirms beneath her weight.
“Are you feeling lonely now?” she breathes.
“Hard,” Rone answers, muffled by her breasts as his face nuzzles in them. “I’m … I’m feeling very—”
“I want you to pick me up,” she says, “put me on this table, and fuck me on top of Oblivion.”
This wasn’t exactly how Rone thought his night would turn out. But it is clear to him that, lost in the wilds as he’s been, he has not enjoyed a sexual release in far too long a time. He would’ve fucked a tree if the opportunity arose.
But Korah Cagemont is no tree. She’s a gem, even among pretty women. And he’s had pretty women.
“Should I close the door?” he asks.
“Let them watch,” she says, then bites his ear.
Rone lifts Korah right then, sets her atop the table, then yanks off her pants with all his muscle. She kicks off her shoes along with them, peels off her shirt, then makes a grab for his, pulling, sliding, and yanking. Rone thrusts his pants only halfway down his thighs, freeing his throbbing meat, and with a grip about her slender waist, he pushes inside.
The table rocks from their movement, and it’s like the whole of Oblivion rocks with them.
Beads of sweat down their brows beget moans beget muscular ferocity beget more moans. What happens between them is nothing delicate. It isn’t sweet or tender or full of love.
It is a pure, hard, raw fucking, if there’s ever been a pure, hard, raw fucking beyond the Wall of Atlas in a thousand years.
Not too soon later, the heat of the cabin has more than tripled, and two naked, sweaty bodies rest on the floor amidst discarded clothes, catching breaths.
“I take people’s fear from their minds,” says Korah to the ceiling. “That is my Legacy.”
Rone, spent after their second round, lets out one dry, breathy laugh. “Then you’ll not have much to do with mine,” he replies, turns his head, then adds, “Ready for round three, Chief?”
To that, she bites her lip, then climbs atop him.
0287 Erana
A lot of things happened very fast.
There was a shout.
One person was thrown against a wall with a scream.
Several people ran away.
Erana was blinded by a great, burning light.
And then suddenly everything was quiet and calm, and now Erana sits in a cell in the King’s Keeping. It’s a sizeable cell, very roomy. Three of the walls are of polished brick, and the fourth—the front of her cell—is a row of crystal bars extending up to the high ceiling from one side to the other, interrupted only by a door, which looks more like a gate. Erana stares ahead through the crystal bars at another cell across from her, which is empty. Through the window down the hall, there is only night sky, so the King’s Keeping is lit only by the small chrome sconces on the walls.
Erana isn’t sure how she got here. Only that she is.
I was here before, but one cell to my right. Across from me sat the boy who was Anwick Lesser’s Lifted lover, Athan Broadmore.
Athan, the one she helped get away. With Sedge. And Arcana.
Erana stares at that empty cell and wonders if she deserves this. All the desire in her for power and beauty and attention is gone. All the confidence of a Queen. All the grace. All the Privilege.
Strangely, she doesn’t feel sadness; she feels relief. Erana leans back against the smooth, polished brick wall of her cell.
Erana closes her eyes and waits.
She doesn’t wait long. “—unacceptable, and for that, she—”
“—are too harsh and misunderstand the point. The girl—”
“—in front of the fucking Slum King? Our enemy? Our—”
The pair of voices chase their way into the King’s Keeping, and now reach Erana’s ears as they draw near, echoing loudly down the long, crystalline hallway. Erana turns just in time to see the source of both voices come into view: Axel and Dregor.
“Apologies, my Queen, but I am letting you out,” announces the scaly-faced and ever-polite Dregor, who goes for the door.
Axel slaps his hand away. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
Dregor turns his vertically-slit eyes upon her with surprisingly intimidating force. “I’m not sure about your intentions with placing our Queen in a cage, Axel, but I certainly as fuck do not wish to risk the entire operation of our Queendom on account of your delicate, wounded ego.”
Axel purses her lips, as if she tastes lemons.
Dregor twists open the lock and pushes open the door. “Queen Erana. Please follow me.”
Erana rises off the ground, smooths out her gown, then heads toward Dregor. Before she can make one single step out of the cell, Axel stands in her way and looms over her. “Don’t take this for a victory of any kind, stupid girl. Remember that at any point I choose, I can put you back into that shrinking room in your mind and make you relive your worst nightmares over and over until the end of time.”
Dregor sighs impatiently, but it is Erana who answers, “Yes.”
Axel snips, “Yes? Yes? What the fuck is ‘yes’?”
“I understand.” Erana lifts her two innocent, dull eyes to the self-appointed Marshal of Order. “I understand, Axel.”
The woman is so close to Erana’s lips, she could either kiss them or bite them straight off like a big vicious bird with a sharp-as-razors beak. Instead, Axel steps aside, her heels cracking against the tiles. Erana and Dregor continue on their way from the King’s Keeping.
Strangely, it is at this moment that the tiniest of smirks curls Erana’s lip, and she realizes, It’s the Queen’s Keeping now.
A private pinch of victory lives in her chest, and there is nothing Axel can do about it.
The rest of the night, Erana stands at the balcony of a low floor of Cloud Tower, one that happens to be tall enough to overlook the walls of Cloud Keep and survey the restored Crystal Court, which is at the perfect angle to the moon tonight to glimmer brilliantly in an array of purples and blues and sharp whites. Erana is hypnotized by the sight, feeling the night breeze on her skin.
“They’re all gone,” comes Dregor’s soft voice from behind.
“I know,” says Erana sullenly in return.
“It raises several concerns among the Court and Council. How the Slum King was so easily able to make his way into the Lifted City from the slums. If he can, there’s reason to think anyone else can. Plus, there is now a literal staircase up which anyone can … well.” He shuffles behind her, coming up closer. “I’m afraid we must host a meeting to discuss what to do about it. The Queen ought to attend.”
Erana gives one last glance at the Crystal Court, then turns to face the man who might be her only friend here, if the term “friend” can be stretched beyond its limited definition. “You are a Morph.”
Dregor wasn’t expecting the question. “Yes. I suspect you knew that already, as is evidenced by my appearance, and—”
“Your files, yes. Except there are many blank spots in the files as well,” Erana notes. “Such as the fact that Axel cannot get into your mind. Why?”
Dregor’s eyebrows, ever slightly, turn upward in surprise. “My, my. You are not only good in memory, but you are observant.”
“Being good in memory is being observant. Why?” she repeats.
Dregor lifts two fingers to his head, covered in the skintight suit of scales he seems to wear al
l over his body, save for a circle cut out for his face, then taps his temple. “I suspect my Legacy makes a sort of unintended barrier on my mind. She can pull upon it—and yes, I feel her, as I once felt her sister, too—but she can’t seem to control it.”
“That frustrates her,” Erana concludes.
“Yes, but …” He shrugs, dropping his hand. “I’d like to think it bestows a bit of trust in me, too. We were two of the first in Impis’s Posse. Well, three if you count her sister Arcana.”
“And you do not hate her sister,” Erana goes on to point out. “You don’t see her as a traitor, not like the others do.”
Dregor smirks, perhaps appreciating Erana’s openness with him in spite of all that’s happened tonight. “I believe both of the twins are rather …” He chooses a word. “… opportunistic in nature. They go where their skills are best served. They go where they are best taken care of. I’d say, were the opportunity to arise that dear Axel makes a better companion to the arrogant Slum King himself, she would depart us in a second’s time.”
“So what keeps her here?” asks Erana, knowing full well she is pushing her luck, pushing every limit of her illusion of freedom here, pushing as far as she’s able.
Dregor lifts one single finger and points upward. “Your answer is lying in a bed in the King’s chambers.”
Erana’s eyes drop to his scaly chest in thought.
She finds she has nothing more to say or ask.
And so with that, the pair of them depart the balcony and head up the long, long stairs, one step at a time. Erana keeps her head bowed in thought, or perhaps to watch that she doesn’t misstep on her way up the tall, winding stairs.
A misstep at this height could be deadly.
The meeting room is already occupied with every member (that remains) of the Posse. It isn’t long before Erana is seated at the end of the table, and all the people that once served a Mad King now discuss the matter of a Slum King’s surprise invitation. Aegis, bright, blond, shirtless and chiseled of chest, demands that they burn down the tall plant bridge and revive the lifts and the Sky Rail. Dregor counters that they might build upon the bridge, fortifying it, and simply place guards upon its base and its top, to regulate and monitor those who travel between the Lower and Lifted Cities. Lyth, a skinny girl who can paralyze others’ muscles at the sound of her own singing, points out that the bridge is very aesthetically pretty, and perhaps might be symbolic of a revived Lord’s Garden, as it’s built with the very plants and flowers that once resided there. Kellen offers half an idea, then decides it’s a stupid idea and retracts it with a red-faced scowl.