by Daryl Banner
“Understood,” both supervisors say in unison, and then the pair of them are off, muttering to one another unintelligibly.
As Forge strolls through the quiet mines, thoughts race through his head, each of them as desperate for attention as the next. Geoff is a plant sent here by the tyrant. All of the thoughts make some sense. None of them make complete sense. Geoff calms me because around him, my math is muddled; I cannot think clearly. Even Aphne turns into some strange, unfamiliar, giggling woman who speaks politely and begs people’s pardons. He is a Psychist of the worst kind. He robs a person of their own sense of danger. He is like the too-sweet taste of a poison before it kills.
He can’t let one single man destroy him like this. This is part of the poison, Forge coaches himself. He turns your own mind on itself. He makes you wonder what you can trust. Forge focuses on the lights over his head, determined to keep his mind about him.
Those lanterns and metal lights swinging over him paint his world in mottled orange and deep brown hues, which remind him so much of home somehow. Despite being imprisoned here, he finds a lot of unexpected comfort in these dim mines. Something about the lighting and the echoing atmosphere reminds him of his many years at the metalshop, from the clanging of pickaxe and stone to the very smell of grit and fire and heat.
This is my home now.
But then he reaches the mouth of the mines, which opens to the northwest end of the Great Hall, and across the room, his eyes give him a gift: Geoff.
As well as another group of folk gathered about his table.
As well as Aphne among those folk.
Forge’s face tightens. It’s at times like this that he wishes deeply he had the Legacy of blasting a spread of fireballs from his fingertips. Geoff might be today’s lucky recipient of them.
The next instant, a shout is heard.
Everyone turns at the same time as a boy courses through the aisles of tables like a rat through a maze. He hops over one table, ducks under another, then darts down yet another aisle the opposite way, dodging his pursuers. From his arms, small items fumble and drop along the way like breadcrumbs.
“STOP HIM!” shouts the man and the woman who chase him, two cooks from the kitchens, their aprons stained with the day’s lunch ingredients. “THIEF!”
The kid takes only a moment to glance over his shoulder. That unfortunate mistake costs him his footing, and he goes tumbling to the floor, all the contents that still remained in his arms spilling out: two sweet-red apples, several packets of dried proteins and chocolate nuts, three tall cans of berry’s blood, and a half-opened bag of raw elbow roots and sweetened nightblossom herbs.
The cooks are upon him, peeling him (still kicking and trying to scramble away) off the floor and his pile of dropped stolen goods. The woman restrains him by hooking her long arms under his and pinning the boy to her body. The man is shaking his head as he looks down and observes all the items the boy took off with.
Geoff and the others have already risen from their table to get a closer look at the commotion. Forge heads toward them too, his eyes wide as he observes the scene. “Excuse me.” Others move out of his way as he cuts through the crowd. “Aside, please.”
He pushes past Geoff last, breaking to the front of the crowd that has gathered. The male cook is picking up all the stolen goods, griping to himself about how foolish and mad people have become. The female cook says nothing, holding the now-no-longer-fighting-back boy against her body, facing outward.
That’s when Forge takes in the boy thief’s face. It’s Ace, Geoff’s youngest son.
“Oh, look at what you’ve done,” Geoff is first to chide him. “Did someone coerce you into doing this, Ace? Why would you—?”
“I was hungry,” mumbles the boy.
Geoff scoffs at that, then gestures at the items now in the male cook’s arms. “Hungry for all of this? We have four regular meals a day here, Aceyn.” He shakes his head and folds his arms. His voice takes a softer turn. “You’re used to old habits, aren’t you? Poor thing. You’re used to us fending for ourselves in the streets back at home. You’re just looking out for your family, huh?”
Ace hangs his head, flushing. He doesn’t respond.
“Aye, yes, of course. You mean well. What a poor boy.” He faces the others in the crowd. “I’m sorry for what you’ve had to witness. The boy has had a difficult life. He doesn’t yet understand that we are welcomed guests in your place. He will take time to trust. I am so sorry for this unfortunate mishap.”
“I-It’s okay,” mumbles the male cook, struggling to keep hold of all the stolen items in his arms, which are nearly as skinny as the boy’s. “I’ve gotten all the items back. No one’s … No one’s harmed.”
Geoff smiles warmly, clearly relieved to hear that. “Very good. Now, Aceyn, I don’t want you doing this again, you hear?”
Ace still hangs his head, saying nothing.
Forgemon’s eyes narrow. He knows exactly what Geoff has just done: he has exempted his thief son of any and all responsibility in front of this whole crowd of people, naming himself the King and the judge of this farce trial. He’s painted a picture of innocence. He has won over the crowd’s hearts, who all have gone from seeing the boy as a thief to now seeing him as merely a lowly boy who can’t control his impulses.
This cannot stand.
“No one is harmed,” Forge admits, his tone firm and loud as he steps forward from the crowd, making his presence known. “That may very well be true. But it is also just as true that this boy tried to steal from our limited foodstores. That cannot be allowed.”
“Yes, and my poor boy’s apologized for it,” replies Geoff, just as loudly, just as demonstratively. “Look at his face. He’s flushing like a shamed cat.”
Ace looks unpleased at fulfilling this sympathetic role he’s being shoved into, his annoyed eyes lifting to meet his father’s. At least he still has the sense to blush—though it looks far more in anger than it does shame.
Forge shakes his head, then stands between the cooks, towering over the “shamed” boy and his reddened face. “Aye, flushing he is, but I’m afraid the boy still must be punished. This kind of thievery, whether out of necessity or habit or otherwise, cannot be allowed in my Undercity.” He won’t look at Geoff as he speaks, whom he’s sure is already trying to form a charismatic counter; he can’t risk whether Geoff will use his Legacy on him and soften the blow. “The boy will have to pay for his crime just as any of us would.”
“And what crime is that?” Geoff asks, turning partway to the crowd of onlookers—of which there may well be over a hundred by now. “The crime of being hungry?”
A number of people in the crowd laugh at that. Then all of the eyes turn back onto Forge challengingly, awaiting his reply.
It’s then that Forge realizes he’s in the middle of a battle. It’s a battle of charm. A battle of wit. A battle of turning tides, of where these people’s loyalties lie. With a man they just met? Or Forgemon Lesser, the man who’s kept them afloat for over half a year?
It is an effort to even open his mouth, for all the gritting and gnashing he’s doing of his teeth. “The crime of theft.” Forge eyes the crowd. “If this wasn’t some sweet boy before you—”
“My sweet son, Aceyn,” interjects Geoff.
“If this wasn’t some sweet boy,” Forge reiterates, “and instead you were looking upon the likes of a hungry middle-aged man with a full beard and arms of stone, would you still feel so sympathetic? Would you all,” he asks, addressing the crowd, “still feel so inclined to forgive him and let him free? What if you caught him walking past your quarters in the housing unit? Would you give a second check to your belongings wherever the man’s been?”
Geoff’s voice loses a touch of his composure. “My boy will not steal again.”
“If that man were to go unpunished, then what of the man in the crowd right now—this very crowd—who has considered stealing a thing or two himself?” Forge’s voice gathers strength. “A
ye, and what would stop him then if he sees that the crime for stealing is nothing but a lighthearted scolding in front of a crowd, a chorus of silly laughter, and then nothing?”
Nothing is exactly what follows Forge’s speech. No laughter. No smiles. Not even a grunt of dissent or agreement.
Geoff takes a breath, then makes one last appeal. “Forge. I see and know your point. It is a true point. I think it makes sense to us all. But he is not a man grown. He doesn’t know the ways of the world of men. Not yet. Give the boy a slip of your eye, please. I beg you … as his father.”
“Aye, just let him go!” calls out some man in the crowd.
“He’s just a kid!” calls out a woman.
Forge’s eyes fall upon Aphne’s, and he is disheartened to find that even she looks taken with the circumstance, her eyes bleeding with sympathy for the wrong person. Where is your cold heart now? he would ask her, frustrated. Why have you let this man turn you into soft mud? Forge feels the strength of his position slipping away. Once again, Geoff slips nails beneath Forge’s grasp of his own Undercity.
Forge swallows firmly. His mouth has gone so dry, he feels he can taste his own tongue. He’s one card left to play, a card he was hoping he wouldn’t ever have to play.
“You … haven’t once asked what my Legacy is,” Forge notes, at last bringing his stony gaze to Geoff’s imploring one. He takes two steps toward the father, then inclines his head. “Have you wondered what it is? I’ve certainly wondered what yours is.”
Geoff’s eyes shrink. The change is so microscopic, Forge almost thinks he imagined it.
“My Legacy,” Forge goes on calmly, “is that I know things. Yes, everyone here is aware of that. Everyone here but you. And do you know what I know?”
Geoff says nothing. Is that fear Forge sees in the man’s once-charming eyes? Is that resentment? Is it anger? All of those emotions look the same suddenly.
Forge pulls the trick from his own hat, and it is not a pretty one, hat nor trick. “If your boy is not punished this day, the very peace of this Undercity will be slowly crumbled to nothing. In the matter of just two weeks, everyone here will be dead, dying, or ruled by a tyrant sitting over our heads, just like your former Keep.”
Whatever indignance lived among the crowd, it is gone now. Each and every face has either gone pale, been stricken with glassy eyes, or has gone dropped of jaw. No one seems to breathe at that piece of information.
Indeed, Forge’s trick was the scariest of all. Fear has always been Forge’s upper hand, regardless of whether he acknowledges it or not.
And the worst part is, it isn’t true. Forge feels all of his insides tightening up. The math doesn’t say a damned thing about whether or not I punish this boy. There are no numbers to support my claim.
I am lying through my teeth.
I am a fucking liar.
And here Forge goes, lying even more: “The boy must be given a punishment today, else our glorious Undercity is compromised. As the King, I must …” King? Did I just say that? “… I must make difficult choices. Some choices do not feel … compassionate. But I must do them. I must do them to protect what we have built, Geoff. Father to father, you have no choice but to understand and comply.”
Aceyn’s face has changed from an indignant red to something of a scared, uncertain pink, his eyes watery with worry.
The fight has fled Geoff’s eyes, too. He is now only looking at his son, a defeated slouch about his shoulders. Finally, after too long a time of dead, stony silence, the father speaks. “H-How will you … p-punish my son?”
The words are ever difficult for him to say. It is now that Forge feels an untimely rush of pity swarm his mind and soften every brick of hard stone Forge had laid since this confrontation began.
That is Geoff’s Legacy, Forge insists, fighting the emotion. Don’t let it in. Push the sweet poison out. Keep your ground.
“He will be punished, but not harshly,” Forge decides. “The boy will simply be confined to his housing unit, alone, to give him time to think on his actions. He will be freed at such a time when he has learned his lesson.” Forge turns to give Aceyn an appraising look. The boy returns it with a crippled, sad one of his own.
“So … a child’s ‘time-out’, then?” murmurs Geoff, a sour taste in his question.
Forge returns his question with a shrug. “He is a child. So it only befits him.”
“A child who, if left unpunished, will bring down the likes of your whole Undercity?” asks Geoff dubiously, glancing back at some members in the crowd. “That is what we are to believe …?”
His question, however, is met with scared eyes, flat faces, and none of the usual chuckles to his japes. It is perhaps then that Geoff realizes the impact Forge’s fearful Legacy has on the people.
And perhaps, also, how very much they trust it.
Likely knowing he no longer holds the upper hand, Geoff then turns back to Forge and gives him a simple nod. “Very well. A child’s time-out for a child who will learn his lesson. Ace,” he states with a tilt of his head. “You won’t do this again, will you, boy?”
Aceyn’s response is a subtle, insolent pursing of his lips, his face burning red all over again.
Geoff settles for that response. “Good boy,” he mutters, defeated.
Some guards were among the crowd, it turns out, and so it is a quick effort for them to take custody of little Aceyn and guide him toward the housing units. Forge watches as the boy goes and the crowd about them disperses. Already, Geoff is talking lightly with a few of his friends, and they laugh it all off as a silly sort of thing that all boys and girls do at a certain age. Forge stares after him and, somehow, despite this little victory of his, still feels the sting of resentment toward that insufferably unbreakable man.
Aphne is at his side the next instant. “Is that what we are now?” she asks tersely.
Forge regards her with a squint. “What?”
“A Keep? We’ve become a Keep within a Keep??” She gestures off at the boy, halfway across the Great Hall now. “He’s just a stupid little kid, Forge. You could have spanked him in front of us and been done with it. All of this for a bag of elbow roots and some apples?”
“It must be done,” Forge states grandly. “Otherwise—”
“Oh, yes, of course, right, your math.” Aphne huffs and crosses her arms. “I regret ever telling you to say you know things. Ugh, even I know that’s a steamy load of slummer’s shit.”
If he wishes the lie to carry its weight, he must deceive her, too. “But it isn’t, Aphne. Not a bit of it.”
Her gaze snaps to him at once. She takes a moment to process before she can gather words. “You mean to say …?”
Forge’s chest tightens. He has always been an honest man. “The boy, if left unpunished, will … beget a series of fatal events that lead to the doom of our Undercity. It’s a near ninety-percent certainty.”
Her eyes flash. “Shit.”
“Yes. Shit, indeed. Or a steamy load of slummer’s shit, you said?” Forge snorts at her now, then takes off to resume his duties, leaving her to drown in the illusory fear.
A King must make difficult choices … but even that thought is as difficult to swallow as the lie was to tell.
0308 Wick
“Absolutely not.”
Wick sighs. “Korah, if you saw what I did with Rychis’s power out there in the woods …”
“So what?” The woman spins on him, her face looking manic in the yellow candlelight. “Breaking the Wall is but one obstacle out of many that must be solved. Crossing the sands, for one. The scorpions and the sand wolves—yes, even the desert has them. And, if that isn’t enough, the white wyrms. There is no sense whatsoever in leaving our camp, where we—”
“I don’t want the tired argument all over again.”
“Then stop making your own tired argument, which I have heard a hundred times since you got here through that portal.” Korah lifts a hand to her face as if to nurse a headache.
Wick comes up to the table, directly across from her. Oblivion lies spread before them, drawn and carved and colored over the wide and knobby wood. “You want in just as badly as I do.”
“Fuck you, Wick.”
“Oh, who are you now? Rychis? He wants in, too, by the way.”
“So you’re turning the whole camp against me?”
“I can see into your heart, Korah.” Wick’s caught her grey eyes with those words, his voice lowering. “You forget my Legacy allows me the use of your own. I see your fears.”
“Wick …” she warns him, nostrils flared.
“Let me do the favor you afford so many of us without our even knowing it. Let me take away your own fear.”
Korah studies him long and hard. “It will mean death.”
“Death only comes to the fools like Dran who take off on their own, or to the couplets and triplets and tiny bands of idiots who have no plan or means. We would be going as an army, Korah. All of us. Rychis, who can break the wall. Chaos, who might strike it down with a bolt from the sky. Puras, who can aid in healing us along the journey. You, who can keep us brave.”
“You think the lack of fear is bravery?” Korah scoffs. “You poor, foolish boy. I took you to be smarter than that.” She slaps two sweaty palms to the table, squaring off with him. “A lack of fear just makes you more reckless. Don’t you realize the very gift that fear is? Fear keeps us humble. Fear keeps us smart. Fear keeps us from doing foolish things … such as running off into the sands to chase a dream of Atlas and happy-ever-afters.” She pushes away from the table and stands at the window, her back to Wick. “Don’t touch my fear. I am mighty in need of it, if so many of you are choosing to be fools.”
“We’re choosing to live.” Wick sighs. “Or … at least I am. I don’t know if anyone will follow me, or if their spirits will fade when it is truly time to depart. But I know that I cannot let my only friend in the world die out there, nor let my lover go the rest of his days not knowing that I survived that day in Cloud Tower.”