by Daryl Banner
“Obviously there is more to the story,” says Ivy, “otherwise, we would not be where we are right now, and I wouldn’t still trust you enough to share the same roof with you.”
He’s bracing himself against the wall. She is on the other side of the room. The distance between them hurts somehow.
“I’d like to hear the rest,” she tells him, “but … perhaps not yet.”
After a moment of discomfort, Arrow returns a short nod.
Ivy comes closer to the glass, then sits upon a cushioned bench that lines the whole length of the window. “Prat and you … there’s a thing between the pair of you. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s a nasty thing. It drove you to rage, that gun in your hand. And it drove him to … to out you in the worst possible way.”
“I don’t know.” Arrow’s words are choked and small. He cannot say anything past that, too traumatized by that one ugly moment on the roof to relive it, or to put words to his ever-twisting feelings.
“Promise me one thing, Arrow. Just one thing.” She turns from the window and lays her pretty, sparkling eyes upon his—sparkling even from across the room. “If you feel that rage inside you again for a person, whether it’s Pratganth, or this new Queen, or even me …”
“Ivy …”
“Tell me.” She puts a hand delicately upon her chest. “Confide in me. Confide in someone. You can’t do this all alone. No one can. Teigon, the yellow-bearded man who lived here, he couldn’t bear the burden all alone either. You need a person, Arrow Fyrefellow. If you have no one, then let me be that person for you.”
She doesn’t want to hear the rest of the story, Arrow realizes. She will never be ready to hear the rest of it. She will never accept that her father sent the envoy of Guardian who murdered my father, raped my mother, and broke my sister’s brain. She will never want the truth.
She will never know. “Promise me,” she says.
Before Arrow can say a thing, a deep, booming knock is heard.
Arrow and Ivy turn at once to the door, their eyes wide. Neither of them move. Neither of them breathe.
The booming knock echoes through the house again.
And then: “Worry not, my friends,” comes a voice from outside the door—an affable male voice. “The Madness has long since ended. You need not fear a silly visitor of Sanctum. I am here with relieving news and a message. Please, if you will be so kind, receive me.”
Arrow and Ivy exchange a look.
Quickly, she hurries to him. “What should we do??” she hisses, eyes wide.
“We ought to answer. He knows we’re in here.”
“But he said ‘my friends’. What if he knows Teigon?”
“Teigon is not here. We will simply say we are friends of Teigon, and we …” Arrow struggles for an answer. “We are … visiting.”
“Visiting,” agrees Ivy uncertainly. “F-From where …?”
The pair of them move to the door, Arrow holding himself up as best as he can without clinging to a wall or piece of furniture. Ivy is the one who, with a timid touch and a worried glint in her eyes, pulls open the front door.
Standing before them are two figures. One is a tall and slender man whose whole body is covered in smooth, silvery scales save for an oval where his face shows, and the irises of his eyes are vertical slits. Despite his oddness, he has a regal demeanor, perfect posture, and an unexpectedly friendly smile. To his side stands a young man with bright blond parted hair, wearing only a shiny chestplate, his muscled shoulders and arms exposed. The chestplate cuts off above his navel, showing a set of hairless abs. He wears pants with silver plates affixed to his thighs and shins, and a pair of boots.
“Hello, good middle-night, and thank you for answering. I am Dregor, the Marshal of Peace,” says the silvery-scaled one, “and this is Aegis, Head Commander of Queen Erana’s Sky Guard.”
“H-Hi,” squeaks Ivy.
Dregor regards her with kindness. “You must be the lovely Lady Mendy.” He gives her a curt bow. “Wife to Lord Teigon Goldwater,” he adds with a stiff, friendly nod at Arrow. “We have not yet met. I am very happy that you, at last, have answered your door, my friend. I’ve tried many times, but I’m afraid some still carry the fear of the Madness in their hearts. You’ve no worry anymore, I assure you.”
Ivy and Arrow share a look. Mendy and Teigon Goldwater …?
“I will make my message quick and plain and be on my way, as I have many homes to visit this night.” Dregor lifts his chin to them. “Our Queen Erana is requesting an audience with all residents of the Lifted City upon the morning. There is a great and most important announcement to be made. It will take place in the Crystal Court, and it will be broadcast to all the Last City of Atlas. It will be a most lovely day. I hope the pair of you can attend. Really, you should.”
Neither Ivy nor Arrow say a word, perhaps both still stunned to silence by the mistaken identity.
Dregor, his eyes flitting between them, seems to decide that his job here is done, and so he gives a polite bow and takes one step backwards. “Thank you for your time, Lord and Lady Goldwater. We do hope to see you on the morrow.” With that, the strange, scaly man departs their front step. The young blond one Aegis, his petite yet muscled backside bare, gives them each an unsmiling nod, then follows his partner quickly away.
Ivy shuts the door, then brings her astonished gaze to Arrow. Neither say a word for some time.
“Lady Mendy,” tries Arrow, looking upon Ivy.
She stares back, breathless. “L-Lord Teigon.”
And in that one instant, like many life-changing instances the pair of them have experienced, the two slumborn of Arrow and Ivy become the married Lifted couple, Lord and Lady Goldwater.
0332 Ellena
Ellena awoke a day ago in a bed much like the one several of her own patients have rested in. She remembers thinking the bed felt so oddly cold, as if she’d just been laid upon it.
She was given the news, too. Ennebal Flower is dead. She has no parents to mourn her, so Ellena was told. The Flower bloodline had ended with her, survived only by the newborn six rooms away.
Lionick, the little boy was named.
Yet another day later when Ellena is deemed recovered, and the only souvenir she has from the near-fatal experience is a headache—as not even the crooked smile she drew across her belly gave her a scar, all of it passed to Ennebal—she makes her way to the nursery to observe her grandson, who sleeps in a tiny plastic dome with wires and little things attached. Aleksand stands by it, his posture broken, his eyes red from hours upon hours of tears.
“What has come of this world?” asks Aleks when Ellena enters the room, though he doesn’t once look up from the baby to even acknowledge her arrival. They had kind words when Ellena first woke two days ago in a bed, and they shared many tears. Now, all that’s left is a shell of her older son. “Halvesand should be here.”
“I know.”
“He clearly doesn’t think either of us are owed the courtesy of a simple note from the Core.” Aleks has a hand upon the plastic dome, his heavy eyes gently watching the baby sleep. “Even Lead Officer Forrest hasn’t communicated or given orders. I heard from Upstairs that communication from the Core is silent. Dead silent.”
“Your brother would be here if he could,” Ellena tries to say.
“No.” Aleksand shakes his head with conviction, then his mouth twists into a scowl. “No, he wouldn’t. He didn’t love her, not like—” He shuts his eyes, and a new wave of tears shakes his shoulders.
Ellena comes up to her son and hugs him from behind. Tall as he is, her head presses to the back of his neck, and the two stand there in choked silence. Only a digital beep here and there from the machine monitoring the baby is heard.
Lionick … dead mother, faraway father …
“She didn’t deserve this,” her son whimpers. “She should be here standing over her baby. She didn’t deserve to die. She was supposed to live. She was supposed to see her son grow up into a fine boy,
a strong boy, a boy with a clever, perfect Legacy …”
“The Sisters are never fair,” murmurs Ellena helplessly.
“No, they are not.”
When Ellena turns her head, she realizes she left the door open, and standing at it is her sister Cilla, who watches the pair of them with a faraway, glassy look. Her sister hasn’t changed her clothes in days. Her arms are crossed as she stands there like a corpse, her hair a mess, and a stain across her waist from a glass of juice she’d spilled on herself after hearing what happened. After another moment, Cilla departs from the doorway, and her soft footsteps carry her away.
“She said she would marry me.”
Ellena’s hold on her son turns rigid. “Ennebal …?”
“She … I … It’s complicated. She thinks the boy … may be mine.” When Aleks sighs, he puts voice into it, making the sound into a moan. “She said—before she went into labor—she said she would have married me. She told me she wanted to have my family name.”
She would have anyway, regardless of which brother. “Aleks …”
“I don’t want to hear it. Please. Not now, at least.” He chokes on another sob, then swallows it, trying to be strong. “I don’t want a talk on fidelity and honesty and brotherhood. I don’t want another talk of what I’ve done wrong. I just want to think of what could’ve been.”
Despite all the worries and sudden questions, Ellena decides to oblige her son, and in the silence, they just listen to the little monitor by the baby’s plastic dome as it softly beeps, and privately think of all the could-have-beens.
Ennebal Lesser … Lionick Lesser …
Ellena closes her eyes, and she does not cry anymore.
Moments later, Ellena leaves Aleks alone, closing the door softly behind her, and meets her sister down the hallway in the waiting room with the windows that overlook a wide, empty eleventh ward courtyard, tiny weeds sprouting out from the cracks in the pavement below. “Take a shower,” Ellena tells her. “You’ll feel better.”
“Me?” Cilla shakes her head and sniffles. She’s been crying, too. “You’re the one who oughtn’t be out of bed yet, you stubborn thing. You just suffered half a death!”
“I suffered a full one, that of my almost daughter-in-law.”
Cilla sits on a nearby bench by the wall, then glances out the window. The sun is starting to rise. “I thought you’d died.”
“For a second, I did, I think,” confesses Ellena. The noise of three female nurses walking past in the hallway, laughing as they chat among each other, pulls her attention. When they are out of sight, she adds, “You have a beautiful little grandnephew in there.”
“Yes, I do.” Cilla sighs. “I don’t like his name.”
Ellena smirks, then glances out the window herself. Why am I not surprised? “I’ve been thinking …”
“Me too.”
Ellena looks at her sister. “On what?”
Cilla meets her eyes challengingly. “You first.”
After a second’s hesitation, Ellena gives in. “I … was thinking I’d try to contact Forge’s brother Redge.” She presses her lips together, then shrugs and adds, “I think, despite their estrangement, it may be important to connect with all the Lessers we know.”
Cilla’s face wrinkles up. “You haven’t seen him in ages.”
“I know.”
“You don’t even know if he still lives. Or if he’s married now. Or if he and Forge truly hate each other’s guts, like you’ve said, or if—”
“Cilla, enough with the what-ifs and the worry, Sisters help you. Family …” Ellena gestures between the two of them. “Family is all we have anymore. And we’re running out of it.”
Her sister rises from her chair, gives a stiff nod, then starts to walk off, departing the waiting room.
“Wasn’t there a thing you were going to say, too?” asks Ellena. “Something you were thinking?”
Cilla averts her eyes, indecision in them. Then, as if some dark conviction fills her, she lifts her chin to her sister. “Do you remember that vow I made when we were children? You were ten, and I was twelve. Nearly thirty years ago, it was.”
For a moment, Ellena is lost. Then the memory of her sister’s vow she made on their childhood home porch one rainy, horrible Monday morning surfaces, and she finds herself rooted to the floor. “Yes,” she answers coldly, sobered at once.
Cilla nods slowly. “I swore … that I would never use my Legacy again. From that day forward, I swore it.” She pauses. “I think I may have to break that vow, dear sister. And soon.”
Ellena, after only a moment of processing, gives her older sister one firm, resolute nod, understanding. “If you so think it’s necessary. Mom and dad certainly aren’t here to stop you.”
“No,” Cilla agrees somberly, her one clipped word so far away and cold, it’s barely there. Then the stiff woman heads off down the hall, leaving Ellena by the window in that empty waiting room just as the soft whisper of a morning rain shower is heard tapping along the glass, tap, tap, tap.
Ellena faces that window, now streaked with rain, blurring her view of the weed-ridden courtyard, and she closes her eyes, listening.
0333 Halvesand
There’s one great spark that lights up the whole room brighter than any of the candles hanging from the trinkets over their heads, a soft and sputtering noise like a metallic cough, and silence.
Then Ruena lifts her gaze to Halvesand, who sits on the edge of her bed, and shoots him a smirk.
“I want to show you something.” She brings the metal arm to him and presses it to his chest. “Carry this—and please don’t be a fool and touch the wiry end. It would be a rather fatal mistake.”
Halvesand holds the arm, wide-eyed, and most certainly does not touch the wiry end.
The two of them descend the staircase all the way to the bottom where the moonlight does not touch, but rather where just the faint glow of occasional torchlight reveals the walls. Ruena leads the way as they pass through a wide archway and into a vast, dark chamber.
A vast, dark chamber in which Halvesand pretends he has never been before.
Ruena lifts her hand, and a pulsing, nearly gentle crackle of light dances about her palms, fizzing and spitting, and giving faint flashes of light to everything around them, but not at too far a range, still keeping most of this chamber’s features a secret. They pass between many of the thick stone columns that interrupt the room’s airflow. Halves looks to the right through the cold, infinite darkness. Far, far away at the other corner of the chamber, he spots that pale-flamed brazier and the big circular door. He observes the door with wide, searching eyes, reviving all the questions that have burned in his mind since the first time he snuck here.
But it is not toward that door that they go. Ruena leads them to a corridor Halves did not notice through the dark. Her tiny flashes of light from her palm reveal a spot in the wall that appears to have a hole torn into it, like a bomb exploded the wall apart, creating a very narrow tunnel.
Through the tunnel they go, and then farther and farther still as it winds and curves and descends. “Scared yet, Halvesand?” taunts Ruena, giving him a teasing smirk over her shoulder. Halves only keeps on his stern, unsmiling face, exuding strength and courage.
And yes, I could shit my pants right now.
That thought, however, stays mercifully buried.
The tunnel opens into a small cave lit by three bright torches, a cave perhaps only twice the size of Halves’ old dorm room, if he was to eyeball it. All around are vases of white roses, small paintings that lean against the walls, and a stack of books in the corner.
“Mind your step,” murmurs Ruena as she takes him across the room—and Halves steps over a few books left opened on the smooth slate floor—and up to a wooden door built into the rock. She lifts her knuckles and, after the sparking light vanishes from her hand, gives the door three sharp raps.
Silence befalls the room. Halves waits, anxious. A tiny, faraway whistle of win
d is the only thing he hears, perhaps playing its way in from some fissure in the stone, or perhaps from the tunnel from which they’d come. They wait and wait.
Ruena, with a frown, gives the door another three knocks, then folds her arms. They wait some more.
“What are you doing down here, my dear?”
Ruena turns at once with a gasp, and Halves, too, as quickly.
The tall, gaunt, pale figure of Kael Mirand-Thrin stands at the entrance to the tunnel. She’s in her usual deathly white gown, but her hair is twisted up atop her head, affixed by a pearl piece of fancy jewelry. An ornate and heavy-looking necklace rests upon her chest, silver-white with a great big stone set in its middle, marble or pearl, if Halvesand had to guess.
“I was just …” Ruena lifts her chin. “I was bringing Halvesand here to meet … him.”
Halves quirks an eyebrow. Him?
Kael scrutinizes the pair of them closely. Her gaze drops to the metal arm. “And that?”
“I wanted him to see my latest … well, the latest …” Ruena sighs and gives an annoyed gesture at the door. “Is he here or is he not?”
Kael purses her lips slowly, appearing annoyed at the way she is being treated. A cold, thick silence swells in the too-small chamber.
Ruena seems to correct herself at once. “Sorry, Aunt Kael.” She clears her throat. “I am … simply … eager to share my latest version of the … of my arm. I wanted to see if it’s compatible.”
“That is something you could easily have taken up with me, and me directly, and me alone.” Kael’s eyes shift toward Halves.
Ruena takes a step forward. “Was it not your entire purpose to send me someone I could trust with my life who, as well, would keep our secrets? He has proven himself loyal, and he has proven himself trustworthy. If I am to have someone who guards me all of my days, then he ought to know the full picture of what I am doing. He sees it, after all, every day in my tower.”
The Queen, again, moves her pale eyes upon Halves. After just a moment’s pause, she gives one tightened nod. “Then we shall give him the full picture.”