The Scim child called Mud had been leading Darius through a network of tunnels for a half hour. “This tunnel is named Wilfred,” he said. “He’s been helping us for about two weeks now. A friend of the Maegrom, I’m told. Came here with his brother Wallace.”
The people of the Sunlit Lands said strange things like this from time to time. “Why Wilfred?”
Mud shrugged. “Why are you Darius? Why am I Mud?”
Darius knew precisely why he had his name. “My father named me. Darius means ‘kingly.’ That’s why.” This topic was tied to one of Darius’s most vivid memories of his father. Darius had been, what, eight? Some kids at school had called him “derriere,” and Darius had been furious at his parents for giving him his name. His mom had said, “Talk to your father,” so Darius called him. His dad had actually come over, sweeping into their place without knocking, which his mom hated, but she didn’t say anything. Darius could tell he was angry. His dad took him outside, walked with him down the street. It was cold that day, raining, and his father just kept walking, smoking a cigarette, his eyes hard. Then he stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk and made Darius look at him. “Kingly,” he said. “That’s what your name means. Some stupid kids want to make it French? Your name is from one of the oldest languages in the world. Persian. Your name existed before France. Those kids, they call you a name, but Darius is your name. Understand?” Darius didn’t understand. He shook his head, mumbled something about the kids at school again, and his father crouched down, flicked his cigarette into the street. “You are a king—that’s why me and Mom gave you that name. You don’t get mad at those kids for calling you names. They jealous, that’s all. When people come against you, when they try to make you feel small, when they say you’re nothing, you remember they’re commoners, Darius. But you. You’re royalty.” Then his dad stood up, said that a king should be treated like a king, took him to the 7-Eleven, gave him twenty bucks, and said to get whatever he wanted. Walking home with a gigantic Slurpee and his pockets full of candy bars, Darius had felt like a king. When the kids made fun of his name after that, he knew what to do. He gave them that look, the one he’d seen in his father’s eyes that day. He learned to make his eyes hard. And those kids learned not to call him names anymore.
Mud sneered. “Kingly, huh? Humans have strange names.”
Darius snorted. “So why Mud?”
Mud considered this. “Because mud means rain, and rain means crops. If there’s mud, there’s life. Mud does more for the commoner than a king does. That’s what my mother said, anyway, before she died.”
He said this so matter-of-factly that Darius thought it must have happened a long time ago, which seemed unlikely, given that this Scim was only a child. But such was the lot of a Scim in the Sunlit Lands. Tragedy piled on tragedy, but it was embraced with a sort of fatalistic understanding that this was ordinary, not something to derail your life.
“You’ll have to crawl in this part,” Mud said, ducking down into a shorter tunnel.
Darius got on his hands and knees. Crawling with shackles on and carrying a sword was difficult. He was surprised again by how much the chains themselves had been bothering him. Not just the inconvenience of them or the sores that were forming on his wrists, though he didn’t like those. There was a sort of incipient panic as well. The thought that the chains were just the start of worse things to come. Imprisonment or slavery or both. He thought of his cousin Malik, who ended up in jail because of a corrupt system. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but he had still been arrested and then convicted. The one time Darius had visited Malik, his face was drawn, more angular than Darius remembered, more angry, less expressive. “They’re taking care of me,” Malik had said. The taxpayers took care of your room and board, sure, but you gave them something in return. A feeling of security, or hard labor on a farm, or help in making license plates. The prisons’ job was to keep you in chains, whether actual ones or through laws and iron bars. The job of the enslaved was to either shut up and work or try to find a way out or maybe both. Darius didn’t have a stomach for any of it. He’d been taught his whole life not to let himself get in a place where someone would take away his freedom of movement, his freedom to choose his own life. These chains were eating away at his self-determination, and he was eager to get them off.
Mud led him into a small chamber which was cluttered with stones, roots, and piles of dirt. A small grey person—about the size of a human toddler—sat on a twisted root, his feet dangling. Darius could almost stand up straight in this room. “This is Oreg,” Mud said.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Darius.”
Oreg grunted. “Never met a Maegrom before, eh?”
“No.”
“We don’t take time for pleasantries. Too busy.”
“Telling me that took more time than it would have to say hello.”
“Yes, but now I never have to say it to you in the future. It’s a long-term benefit.”
“It seems rude,” Darius said. He wouldn’t usually push a point like this, but he was tired.
Oreg leapt down from his root and approached Darius, his tiny grey face poking upward like a mole’s. “Hello. Good-bye. There, now I’ve said them. I hope you’ve had your fill, because I won’t be saying them again.”
“He’s a human,” Mud said, as if that explained everything.
“He certainly is,” Oreg replied, and it seemed clear this was an insult. “Chains,” he said, pointing impatiently at Darius’s hands.
“Yeah,” Darius said. “Rondelo put these on me.”
“Chains,” Oreg repeated unhappily, motioning with his hand for Darius to lean closer.
Darius crouched down, putting the chains within Oreg’s reach. Oreg felt the chains lightly with his fingertips, then leaned forward and sniffed them. He flicked the shackles and turned his head sideways while he listened to the reverberations. Finally, he licked the link where the chains connected to the shackles, gave a small jump, and spit into the dirt. “Magic,” he said. “Of course.”
“We knew that,” Mud said. “Can you get them off?”
Oreg gave him an impatient glare. “What’s one more human in chains, more or less? Up there in Far Seeing they’re lining up to do what the Elenil tell them. Why should this one be any different?”
“No tattoos,” Mud said. “Go ahead and look.”
“Hmm?” Oreg grabbed Darius’s wrist, pushing the shackle back and forth to look at the skin underneath, scraping it over the ragged sores that came from the metal rubbing across his flesh. “How did he come here, then?”
“He made a way,” Mud said.
Oreg stared at Darius in disbelief. “This one? Him?”
“Yes. He’s also the one who came up with the idea for the Black Skulls. In fact, he’s the first of them. He’s well respected by the Scim elders.”
Oreg narrowed his eyes. “This one did that.”
Darius got the distinct impression he wasn’t meant to speak during this exchange, so he kept his mouth shut. But he didn’t much like being called “him” and “this one,” and he didn’t like Oreg poking and prodding him or the shackles.
“I can take off the chains,” Oreg said.
Darius slumped in relief. “Thank you.”
“Only the chains, not the shackles.”
“Unacceptable,” Mud said. “As leader of the anti-Elenil resist—”
“As leader of the anti-Elenil resistance,” Oreg mimicked, mocking him. “As leader, you surely know that not all things are possible. Even though you’re a child. These shackles,” he flicked them with a finger, “are magic. I’ve seen this type maybe twice before. The archon himself forged them, and with rare exceptions, only he can open them. You’ll have to ask Thenody to do it.”
“What sort of exceptions?” Darius shook his chains.
“You have the Sword of Tears, I hear. You don’t happen to have the Disenthraller, do you?”
“No,” Darius said.
“Hmp
h. Well, that would do it. There may be other magical remedies, I don’t know. But nothing I can do here. I can take off the chains at least, leaving you with a lovely pair of matching bracelets.”
Mud pulled on Oreg’s ear. Oreg swatted at him, but the Scim boy didn’t let go. Oreg struck his arm, and Mud released the Maegrom. Mud rubbed his arm sullenly and said, “Any Elenil who sees those will know he’s a criminal and report him to the palace guard.”
Oreg picked up a piece of black stone. “Wear long sleeves.” He touched the stone to the chains.
The chains hissed and moved away from the stone. Oreg grabbed them so they couldn’t move, forcing them into contact with the black stone. The links in the chains gave way, and they fell, making a musical cacophony as they struck the floor. “That was easy,” Darius said.
Oreg gave him a sour look. “If fifty years of experience in the Maegrom mines were easy to come by, you could have done it yourself.”
He was right. Darius and Break Bones had tried everything they could think of to get the chains off, and nothing had worked. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Stop wasting my time,” the Maegrom said. He picked up the links of the chain and shook them at Mud. “And I’m keeping these!”
“Fine, but we need a new bag for his sword. We can’t be walking around Far Seeing with a Scim sword.”
Oreg humphed and threw an empty sack at them. Darius put the sword inside, and Mud forced Oreg to give them some filthy rags, which made it look a little more like a sack of laundry, at least. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it was better than nothing. Darius pulled the mouth tight.
“Come on then,” Mud said, ducking down a tunnel.
“Good-bye,” Darius said, but the Maegrom didn’t answer. Darius followed Mud. “Where are we going now?”
“I’m taking you into the heart of Far Seeing. You want to kill the archon, right?”
The sword practically jumped from the bag into Darius’s hand. “Yes. I really do.”
“So let’s get you within striking distance. We can get you in the throne room easily enough just by showing someone your shackles. The trick is to get you in while you’re holding the sword. I know just the person for it. He’s not far from here.”
“A friend of yours?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Mud said.
The tunnel shook, and a shower of dirt covered them. “What was that?”
“The Elenil recently discovered Wilfred. They’ve been trying to get rid of him. If Elenil magic was working properly, we’d be having a hard time of it. But so far, so good.”
“What happens if the Elenil figure out how to stop Wilfred?”
“We drown in dirt, I guess.”
Darius didn’t like the sound of that. He wished he had a shovel instead of a sword in his bag. Mud was moving fast, and Darius had to walk faster to keep up. They passed other Scim in the tunnels every once in a while, but they were all children: dirty, emaciated, grim-faced children. Then again, the tunnels were a little narrow for a human. It might be impossible for a full-size Scim to get in here in his or her war skin.
“We have to walk topside for a little bit,” Mud said. “Try to look like you belong.”
A cleverly disguised trapdoor—it looked like a bit of cobblestoned street on the top—opened into a side alley near the palace square. Darius pulled himself out of the tunnel. The Sword of Years was practically singing with a desire to be unleashed. So many Elenil were here, and the sword wanted to have done with them.
“Take your hood off, you look like a criminal.”
“It’s raining,” Darius said sullenly. He slung his hood back. It was amazing how wearing a hood or not signified so much. Back home his mom wouldn’t even buy him hoodies. Too dangerous, she said. People might be afraid of you, might shoot you or call the cops. But it wasn’t the hoodie they were afraid of, Darius knew, because he saw plenty of white kids wearing hoodies. They were afraid of not being able to see his Black face. They’d been conditioned by television and movies and the news to see him as a criminal. He thought he had left that behind here. In the Sunlit Lands he was just human. But here in Far Seeing, he actually was a criminal. He was in greater danger if someone saw his face and recognized him. Not many here would know him by sight, though, so better not to look as if he had something to hide. He wiped the rain out of his face.
“Hold there.” It was an Elenil, and just when they walked out of the alley. He held a stone device in his hand. It glowed faintly. “It says here you’re carrying a magical item. Scim magic, it says. What are a human and a Scim child doing with Scim magic?”
Darius’s hand flew toward the sword, but Mud grabbed his wrist and grinned up at the Elenil guard. “Oh, sir, I am so glad you asked. Do you see the bag that my friend here is holding?”
“I am not a fool, Scim. Of course I see it. That’s where the magical artifact is.”
Darius’s heartbeat sped up. The sword was calling to him, telling him to pull it out, to keep them safe. He could make short work of this Elenil.
“Oh, not at all, sir. The magical artifact is not in the bag. It is the bag, sir.” Darius was amazed by how quickly Mud changed his way of speaking. He went from sarcastic and impatient to obsequious and subservient without missing a beat. It was no different than Darius himself, he realized. One set of words for home with the family, another for the kids at his private school, another for the warriors of the Scim. He had learned to speak the language of the people he was speaking to. He had no language of his own.
Mud pulled the bag open, showing the filthy clothes Darius had shoved on top of the sword. The sword was begging Darius now, asking to be released to destroy this Elenil. Why had Mud brought them out so close to the palace? There were only a handful of Elenil guards anywhere else in the city. What was Mud thinking? The tower was crippled, broken. No doubt there were more Elenil guards than usual. Their previous reliance on human guards hadn’t gone well for them.
“A magical bag that creates filthy laundry,” the Elenil said.
“No, sir, my mother made it. It can take all the filthy laundry of all the Scim in our neighborhood. Then I can carry it to the wash.”
The Elenil guard recoiled. Elenil did not wash their clothes—they placed them in magical compartments, closed the lid, and the next morning found the clothes clean and put away. Of course Darius had seen how the magic worked. The clothes were taken in by Scim launderers, who cleaned them and returned them when the Elenil were elsewhere. It was magic in the sense that they never needed to think about it. The Scim took care of all such distasteful things in their lives.
The Elenil gathered his courage and steeled himself. “Nevertheless, I’ll need to see the contents poured out here. The archon commands that any magical artifacts be brought to him and their owners arrested.”
“Not my mother’s laundry bag!” Mud cried, falling on his knees in front of the guard.
Darius shifted his grip on the bag, getting ready to reach into it for the sword if need be, and immediately realized his mistake. The guard glanced toward him, his eye caught by the unmistakable flash of metal from the edge of Darius’s sleeve.
The Elenil unsheathed his sword. “Why does this human wear Elenil shackles? He’s an escaped prisoner!”
The sword practically leapt into Darius’s hand. He lifted it, the point toward the Elenil. “This is the Sword of Years,” Darius said calmly. He felt a spike of joy to have the hilt in his palm, the blade turning toward the heart of an enemy. “It comes to bring long overdue justice to those who oppress the Scim.” The sword hummed in his hands. “It tells me that you have benefited from the pain and suffering of the Scim people. And the penalty for your crimes is death.”
The Elenil stepped back, a horrified look on his thin face. “Who made you the harbinger of justice for the Scim? You are only a human boy.”
Mud stepped to the side with the quickness of a feral cat, putting himself well outside the range of either weapon. “You’re d
rawing too much attention,” Mud said.
“I don’t care,” Darius said through gritted teeth. The sword made him feel strong and brave and convinced that no one could get in his way. It gave him a certainty, a confidence that he rarely enjoyed back on Earth. “New plan. I’ll fight my way to the top of the tower, with or without your help.”
Mud rolled his eyes. “Wilfred.” The ground opened up, and the Elenil guard yelped as he fell inside. The cobblestones closed back over him with a grinding snap.
Darius stumbled backward, shocked. The sword, disappointed, sent its tip into the cobblestones, like a dog sniffing for a scent. “What did you do?”
“We have to move before anyone comes to investigate.” Mud walked across the street, trying to look casual. “Put your sword away,” he hissed.
Darius scooped up the bag, shoved the sword in, and covered it with laundry. He had a feeling of regret at not murdering the Elenil, a feeling he recognized at once. Every time he successfully fought the sword’s urge to kill, Darius felt this same disappointment. What did that make him? He had killed before, of course, but it had always had a feeling of necessity, of being part of the war. This time . . . well, clearly, it had not been necessary. There had been other solutions. And he had jumped straight to killing in the first moment it seemed that another solution wasn’t working. This, too, filled him with regret, but he had to admit that the larger regret, the one that was stronger and taking up the most emotional space, was that he hadn’t plunged the sword into the Elenil’s chest. So this was who he was. Was this who he had always been, or was it getting worse? He wasn’t sure.
“Up these stairs,” Mud said.
They weren’t stairs so much as a grand entranceway. It was an Elenil home, complete with marble columns and plants hanging from the balconies, and two waterfalls that fell from the roof and washed down on either side of the entrance. The sword sang with delight. More Elenil within reach.
Two humans stood guard, but they let Mud through as if they hadn’t seen him. One nodded at Darius, but the other said nothing. “Not very good guards,” Darius said.
The Heartwood Crown Page 15