“I know,” Legacy responded. Dax never called her Legacy. Not unless something was really wrong. “Is that the reason you’re quitting the CC?”
Dax sighed and glanced at her, his blue eyes flashing. “I ran the numbers on our membership versus the entirety of the Icarus population,” he informed her. “We comprise roughly half of one percent.”
Legacy bristled. She didn’t like talk of the machines. Of probabilities and logic. That was exactly the system that had brought forth the laws against which they currently fought. “So?” she prompted.
“So, in every two hundred people, there’s one Chance for Choicer,” he deduced for her impatiently. “So, in a battle, we would be smothered in seconds.”
“Yet Malthus is dead,” Legacy retorted.
“How do you know that?” Dax asked, his eyes dark and eyebrows low. He advanced on her with a violent potentia, but froze at the brink, merely seething. “Even I don’t know that, and I was there!” He flung a hand in the air, and Legacy flinched. “Even I don’t know that, and the whole thing was my damn idea!”
Legacy summoned her tongue. “I’ve–The earl–” Dax’s pupils stoked at the mention of the title. “When I was arrested –he was –kind to me. We became . . . friends. And he told me.”
“When you were arrested,” Dax repeated dully. “You became friends.”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. Kind of.
Dax shook his head and his eyes shifted away. He braced his hands against his hips. “Even if the impossible occurred and we were to take Icarus, let’s be honest. What is Icarus?”
“A metropolis!”
“An industrial hub, sure,” Dax allowed, nodding. “But it’s certainly not the biggest city in the sky, is it? It’s not the city of the monarch, is it? So we can take our Chance for Choice, one hundred strong, and topple Icarus? That’s the grand plan, isn’t it? That’s as far as Trimpot ever fever-dreamed, wasn’t it? Even if we had another five hundred members, minimum, would you have the strength to not betray us to the damn duke himself? And if you did have the guts to dethrone your fucking boyfriend, then we’d go ahead and storm, what? Heliopolis? The military center of New Earth, with its millions?”
“I would never do that!” Legacy cried, heart hammering. “I wouldn’t betray–”
“Oh, really? You’d never do things like accept gifts from the royal family, would you? Would never do anything like warn him of our movements?” As Dax spoke, he seemed to loom and inflate, though Legacy was sure it was her imagination that he could suddenly expand to encompass her entire line of sight. “And yet he feels close enough to you, Legacy, knowing you’re in the CC, to visit your damn home. Yet he feels close enough to you, Legacy, knowing you’re in the CC, to not arrest you for the conspiracy to murder his father? Do you know how unlikely that is? Don’t you think he might be manipulating you? That mechanical assistant he gave you is probably bugged!”
“It was from my dad!” Legacy spluttered, reddening. She had to avoid every other point he rose. They were good ones. He knows, she realized. He knows that Kaizen came to my parents’ unit two days ago. Which means he also . . . saw. He saw the way we were.
“You said you didn’t trust him, but you must!” Dax went on. “You do! And so, how can the CC trust you? Friends with the duke?” He reiterated incredulously, “Friends with the duke?”
“Dax . . .”
“The revolution is doomed and you and I are doomed if we have something like that working against us,” he told her. “You’re ineligible now, by the way,” he added, suddenly lacking all the heat of his earlier statements. “Liam was reassigned.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Legacy murmured, her gaze drifting to the floor. “It just happened,” she blurted.
Dax shook his head. His eyes, too, flitted elsewhere. “What does that even mean, ‘it just happened’? What doesn’t just happen? Are you implying that it could’ve been worse, somehow, if Malthus had arranged for a rebel speechwriter to meet and woo his heir? If your room had been papered in posters of every girl’s earl rather than Celestine?”
“I’m trying to say that I’m sorry,” Legacy snapped, glaring at him.
“I don’t care!” Dax cried, turning to face her again, seeming to pantomime explosions as he spoke. “I told you I wanted you to be happy, and that’s still true, so I hope you are! I hope you’re deliriously ecstatic! But you should know that you and I are both ineligible now, so the only way to be with the same duke you’d have to depose is to stick with the CC, because they’re the only ones who want to fight for a new constitution. I’m sure Kaizen is madly in love with you, but I’m also sure he doesn’t want his family ousted from the aristocracy, which is exactly how Ferraday would handle a problematic newcomer. It’s so much simpler and easier than ratifying his own ideology or going to war. I know you aren’t fond of logic, and so maybe you’re fond of its conundrums, but this is kind of a paradox.” He looked away.
Meanwhile, Legacy stared at a fixed point on the wall, brewing. “You’ve known about this since that night, though, haven’t you?” she asked. “The night we went to Old Earth, last week? And you didn’t mention it. You didn’t say anything. But you knew. And still, you kissed me. Still, when I told you I loved–”
“We almost left you behind on the surface of a toxic world populated by monsters,” Dax snapped. “I was . . . happy to see you return. Maybe I thought that I still stood a chance. After all, how long could it have possibly been going on? We were kissing at the centennial.”
Legacy glanced at him, but now it was he whose eyes were staring at a fixed point. He was staring into the past. The brass forest which hemmed Heroes Park, misty, drizzling. Their first kiss, so desperately exploratory, the pressure of years behind it. She almost told him that was the night she’d met Kaizen, but held her tongue.
“But I can only look the other way so many times,” he went on. “Yes, I’ve known. I just wasn’t willing to admit it. What chance have I against a duke?” He turned his eyes on her again, dire in an instant. “And what chance have you? Legacy, you need to think about these things. I know it all seems . . . Let’s talk facts, all right? You’re ineligible, and you’re one of the key members of a rebel group. He’s the new duke, and your rebel group just killed his dad. There’s no way Ferraday would consider ratifying the constitution under the suggestion of a newborn inferior, and he must know that, so he must know that any and all contact with you is both illegal and futile. I’m sure he finds you attractive.” Dax winced. “But that doesn’t mean it . . . matters. What does matter is that you’re the key component in his suppression of the revolt; you know that, don’t you? I hope you do, because he certainly does. You’re his access point. I know you don’t want to think about this, but–”
“He’s not like that,” Legacy insisted, finding her own fire stoked at the suggestion.
“You’re an idealist, Legacy,” Dax said, grim. “You believe what you want to be true. He has a life of luxury, doesn’t he? Access to the finest things.”
The memory of the hot bath he’d given her – sprinkled in rose petals – flooded to the surface of her mind.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t want to take a placement test and do actual work,” Dax finished. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to be relegated to one hundred square feet and a cold shower every day, knowing some other family was given his castle, knowing he threw it all away for the half-formed notions of an ineligible peasant girl.”
Legacy sneered. “It’s not like that!” she reiterated. “I’m not –And he’s not –Get out!”
Dax frowned. “Guess that’s a sensitive spot for you, is it?” he seethed. “The darling duke.” He shook his head and pushed past her to the door. “Do whatever you want with the fucking duke. See if I care where you end up.”
The door slammed, and Dax was gone.
Legacy slumped down into a rigid fetal position on her soggy mattress and shivered, full of rage. She felt sick.
It’s not lik
e that, she told herself. He’s not like that. He’s not, and . . . It’s not a sensitive spot!
She hadn’t been sitting there long when another knock sounded at the door. Legacy sprang to her feet and stalked forward, gripping the knob and wrenching. “I told you to get –oh!”
It was Glitch, with his perfect little black mustache and side part, as pleased with himself as ever.
“H-hello,” Legacy greeted, thrown from her stride. “Is everything all right? We weren’t being too loud, were we?”
“Everything is marvelous, darling,” Glitch replied, snaking his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into the narrow, dim hall. “We have a special guest tonight just dying to meet you.”
“Oh, no, I’d really rather–”
“And in exchange for your hospitality, I’ll include unlimited free drinks,” Glitch went on, guiding her toward the stairs.
“But no one even knows,” Legacy protested. “No one even knows I’m here!”
“I know!” Glitch replied, delighted. “It was sheer fate!”
Kaizen moved through Groundtown with the hood of his black frock coat pulled low, subconsciously inspecting the storefronts and alleyways for any sign of Legacy. He had told himself he wasn’t searching for her. He had told Johannes to leave him on the corner and go; he needed a drink. Today had been the day of his father’s funeral, and he needed to be alone for just one goddamn minute in a place with as much political savvy as a traveling carnival. But, even as he sought an establishment wherein one could sink and vanish, he couldn’t get her out of his head. The feel of her, this insatiable simmer at his fingertips. He kept remembering the way she had sneered at the suggestion of trusting him, as if his lineage alone rendered him vile, soulless.
An entire city still teetered on the brink, awaiting his command, unaware that he was even the duke. In three days, the story would break that Malthus was dead. In only a few days more, that interrogation squad of Ferraday’s would arrive. The days of freedom to meander and moan were ending fast, and then . . .
I must stop this, Kaizen told himself, eyes panning over the strip of nefarious businesses, all so garish and simultaneously grimy. I should curtail the entire foray. I don’t have the time . . . and even if I did . . . what would I do? Be with her? It’s impossible. It’s a dream. We had our moment, however brief. A day here, a day there, and that’s more than some people were ever given. Goddamnit, get out of my head, Legacy. I can’t be so weak when my power is made evident. All of Icarus depends upon my focus. Your life might depend on it.
He advanced upon Glitch’s House of Oil, which flickered with promises of any variety of beverage he might crave.
He knew what he needed, though. The same spell that rendered the denizens of Old Earth incapable of wondering at the city in the sky.
Some Kill Curiosity.
Kaizen pulled his hood lower and pushed into the establishment, stepping warily around the sprawled bodies of this drugged den. He was glad he had shirked the accompaniment of even a single sentry just now, and not only because the castle had precious few to spare. He didn’t want another man to see how much he had in common with these sunken shadows of humanity.
Kaizen took his seat on a cracked stool at the bar, where a mildewed automaton coasted forward and greeted him with a strangely disjointed neck. “Her-her-herllo. Her may I herp you?”
“One Kill Curiosity,” Kaizen ordered.
“This is your first Kill Curiosity,” the bot informed him, sliding a glass of sickly yellow, burbling liquid down the bar.
He stared into it a moment, daunted, but rose the concoction to his lips. It was sharp and bitter, not unlike a drag from one of his father’s cigarettes. He let out a long groan as it settled like a stone into his belly. “Another,” he commanded, flinging twenty-five pieces onto the bar. “And a private booth.”
“This is your second Kill Curiosity. GLITCH!”
The proprietor of the place, a dapper fellow with a smug, bright manner that reminded him instantly of Neon Trimpot, emerged from a back room with his own colorful flute in hand: a striped mixture of concoctions green, red, and blue.
“It’s thirty pieces for one of these,” Glitch informed him, as if he hadn’t just imbibed a chemical sworn to dampen any question which may arise. “I call it Connect the Dots. You get Calm, Invigorate, and Cunning, which combine to make the perfect cocktail of . . . You’re that earl.” Glitch blinked, and for a moment seemed speechless. “You’re every girl’s earl, aren’t you?”
Damn hair. No matter how low he pulled this hood, it couldn’t disguise the spill of straight, flaxen hair down his shoulder.
“And you’ll shut up about it if you don’t want your doors locked and the key swallowed,” Kaizen grumbled. “I asked for a private room.”
“Of course,” Glitch went on, shaking his head and downing the last of his Connect the Dots in one swallow.
In Kaizen’s eyes, this den was beginning to flatten. To become gray and constant, as if he’d memorized it long ago, in another life, and not one detail had changed since.
“We don’t normally receive royalty in the House of Oil, that’s all,” Glitch added with a staunch little sniff. “Picture my delight. And ordering that abysmal liquid, of all things. Of what curiosities can an aristocrat find himself denied?”
Kaizen’s gracious host swept aside the velvety drape of his private room, which was little more than a canopy bed set into the wall, its plush mattress maintained with some level of sanitation unavailable to the floor pillows and tufted chaises. “A woman,” he answered shortly, slipping his shoes off and climbing inside.
“A woman, you say?” Glitch asked with a grin and a gleam. “Why, my liege, women abound. If you’ll give me a moment to contact The Electrical Palace, I can have your every curiosity serviced in three min–”
Kaizen shook his head, amusement giving way to disgust. “They don’t have a bot like her.”
“Ah, a specific woman,” Glitch noted with hints of dismay. “No remedy for that, I daresay.” He began to tug the curtains shut.
Kaizen took a sip from his second Curiosity, pulling his knees up. “Silver braids and golden eyes,” he murmured, largely to himself. He sighed and let his head fall back, the hood slipping away in the gesture. The thing truly did taste of piss, but it was getting the job done. He imagined her, and she became increasingly typical. What woman didn’t have that mystical combination of pride and sorrow?
But Glitch hesitated in his business of closing the curtain. “May I bother you in a minute more, sir?” he wondered. “If it is to bring you a most pleasant surprise?”
Kaizen took another sip and cringed. “Whatever,” he replied.
A minute or two passed – long enough for Kaizen to only partially remember the offer to return, and to fully not care whether he did or not – when the drape was swept open again and there Glitch stood, Exa Legacy in tow. Of course.
Kaizen raised an eyebrow, almost uncertain that it was, in fact, her. He was used to such volume and force at the sight of her, but now, there was nothing. She may as well have been an automaton after all. “Hello,” he greeted, as if this was how they often met, one of them stoned and the other sober. Which it was.
“Hey,” Legacy replied, staring at him with both illness and longing.
“I’ll leave you two to be better acquainted,” Glitch simpered, vanishing with a shudder of self-satisfaction.
“Hop aboard, brave traveler,” Kaizen invited, indicating the whole of the mattress with a lackluster sweep of his palm.
Legacy crawled onto the mattress, swept shut the drapes, and glared at the sickly yellow concoction which he’d only begun. “Don’t drink that,” she commanded, pulling it easily from his hand. His reflexes had slowed. “It’s poison!”
“Why are you always taking away my toxins?” Kaizen wondered, cool. Bleary.
“Why are you always so full of them?” Legacy countered, leaning across the sprawled duke to place his beverage o
n a bedside table that ran horizontal between the mattress and the wall. “What are you doing here?”
“I’d ask you the same question, but I don’t really care.” Kaizen smiled to himself. “You didn’t respond to my message, you know. Again.”
Legacy glanced away from him. “Didn’t know what to say.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kaizen informed her. “I’m going to get over you, one way or another.”
Legacy rose an eyebrow. “By drinking so much Kill Curiosity that you no longer bother to poll your people or consult your court?”
“Just because CIN-3 polls people doesn’t mean we care. Or, rather, that I care. I suppose there is no ‘we,’ now. But. Shh.” He settled back and closed his eyes. “I didn’t come here to talk about all that. I came here to forget about all that.”
“Why were you even in Groundtown?”
“Knew you were here. You’ve been spotted a couple times now, Dyna says, and then, it was the direction you ran. Not that I care. I don’t. That’s not why I’m here. Not what I meant. My dad –Malthus –his funeral was today, all right? That’s all. No one here with me, no one watching. Sheer chance that you happened to be shacked up at this bar.”
“Glitch called it fate,” Legacy replied. He couldn’t see the closeness with which she gazed at him. There was such a firm resolve to relax on his face. “I suppose life has been the opposite for you as it’s been for me,” she said. “Here I am, holed up, scared to move, nobody seeing me, nobody talking to me, everything just crumbling, and there you are, the new duke. Clamoring court, important decisions to make, and the weight of it all on you. I’m sure Ferraday will be visiting, and he’ll want to see the rebels dealt with. Lots of pressure. And then, on top of it all, a funeral for your father . . . How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” he murmured. “You keep talking to me. Otherwise, totally fine.”
“Kaizen,” she said. “You must not be ‘fine’. Your dad . . .”
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