LEGACY BETRAYED

by Rachel Eastwood

  Legacy reached down and skated her fingers over Kaizen’s limp hand, wrapping her fingers around his.

  He frowned, glaring down at this development. “Malthus,” he corrected her. “Yes, I know. He died.” Kaizen closed his eyes again, forcefully resuming that countenance of stiff tranquility.

  Legacy settled beside him. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask or even seem to really be bothered when you mentioned it before.” She softly touched his loose hair, trailing her fingers through it. “I’d been drinking, and it made everything seem –unemotional. But you should’ve been . . . I should’ve . . .”

  He took a deep breath. “Thought you didn’t think of me like that,” he said. “As if I’m a real person.”

  “Kaizen,” Legacy said again. “Of course you’re a real person.”

  “More than just a duke, you mean? Like, I get to have thoughts and feelings and everything?”

  “More than just a duke,” she agreed.

  Kaizen grimaced. He supposed he believed her. That was the magic of this elixir. Everything that was had always been and would always be, so to fight or pursue change was irrelevant. “I keep remembering this stupid fight my dad and I had, once, when I was a kid,” Kaizen told her. “He was mad because I wanted to go into Icarus for my secondary schooling. I said I wanted to do regular things and meet real people; he said that I didn’t understand what we were. That power required distance. Coldness. Logic. And he said that he’d known for a long time that I wouldn’t be able to handle the transition to his chair. He could tell that I wanted to be . . . normal, damnit.” His brow furrowed as he remembered. “I just wanted all the things everyone else got to have. Friends. Fun. A life. ‘You’ll fail me yet,’ was the note the argument ended on. The look on his face. As if I was just so very weak for being a twelve-year-old boy, daring to long for company.

  “And now here I am. In that chair he said I wouldn’t be able to hold. And what am I doing? No guards. He’d die again if he knew. He’d call me weak again for letting this get to me. In the House of Oil. Licking wounds like a damn dog. Probably my fault, even, that he’s dead.”

  Kaizen felt her fingers skate along his chest. He opened his eyes, though he didn’t look at her.

  “I went to get you from the tower, you know. And you were gone. I thought that you must’ve been part of that plot after all,” he admitted. “Why else leave? It’s hard for me, you know. It’s still so hard for me to try to let myself . . . get close. Let go. Without hearing his voice in my head, telling me that I’m not his son. And you! Working with the CC! If my father were alive to see us here, to know I warned you about our ambush . . .” He closed his eyes again, settling back. “I know what he’d say. ‘You’re so weak, Kaizen. I can’t believe you’re my son. If Olympia had lost you in the womb . . . what a pretty duchess Sophie could have been.’”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Legacy told him ardently. He felt her shifting to peer at him more closely. “I wouldn’t be a part of any murder plot. You know that. If you don’t, you need to. When have I ever seemed like–”

  “Look, I believe you,” he told her before pausing to think about it. “I trust you without trusting myself, trust you in spite of how . . . stupid it must be.” He frowned, his forced tranquility fracturing. “How impossible.” It will never work, he thought. Even if Dad was wrong, and it’s possible to be close to a commoner without weakening the resolve to rule impartially –I still can’t protect you from Ferraday forever . . . nor you I from the CC. It would be wiser for us to submit to our roles in the play and be honest adversaries–

  “I trust you too,” she whispered. He opened his eyes, realizing that her voice was much closer, her breath on his skin. “I wish I could . . . show you, but it . . . it isn’t safe.”

  Kaizen’s eyes ticked over her features: the topaz eyes yawning before him, so intent and vulnerable; the thick braids falling to either side, like silver-and-black curtain; the lush lips agape mere centimeters from his. He was absorbing all this with a hitch in his breath when she suddenly moved, pressing her mouth to his, her chest to his, and her thighs astride his lap. Kaizen reeled and froze, leaning away, almost pushing her off. His curiosity stirred in spite of its chemical suffocation.

  Legacy’s mouth moved against his, deeply and tenderly, as if to incite him to share her decadence, and he was thawing. His eyelashes drooped shut, and he let her kiss him. His response to her touch was lagging. He went to touch her arm, and it was gone. He went to touch her face, and it was gone.

  Legacy migrated down his chest and Kaizen sucked in a breath, suddenly dizzy. His hips subtly bucked in spite of himself. “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” he said, clenching his jaw. I should take another drink. Finish the glass. Order another.

  “Feeling what way?” Legacy asked, peering up from where she was splayed over his lap, prying at a button.

  “Curious,” he answered.

  “Well, it’s just a chemical, these drinks,” she replied, working at another button on Kaizen’s fall front trousers. “It can only go so far. It can’t make you do anything you wouldn’t ever –What are these things, like, a puzzle box?” Another button popped. “There!” she said to herself.

  Kaizen was reaching for his half-full glass when he felt a velvet warmth encompass his manhood and electricity shot up his spine. Immediately wilting back against the headboard, his eyes rolled. The gray world pulsed black. “Oh my god,” he gasped. Cringing at the immense pleasure culminating so quickly in his abdomen, Kaizen glanced down at Legacy and winced. It was as if she were the sun, and he couldn’t bear to look. She’d wrapped her mouth around him and was rising and falling, simulating what she wished she could show him – but what was too dangerous. “N-n-no, what are you doing,” he called, chest oscillating like a dying man’s. His head spun, and Kill Curiosity burnt away as if purged in some holy fire. It wasn’t the only part of him that had awoken in flames. The woman before him sprang into being, fully formed, in an instant, becoming again the Legacy who had haunted his dreams. Her lips. Her fingers. Her thighs. They all trembled at his touch, and he died inside without them.

  “Stop, stop, stop.” Kaizen grabbed her by the hair, hauling her away from his turgid instrument. Flipping Legacy onto her back, he pinned her wrists to the mattress and rolled on top of her, raining frantically grateful kisses along her neck.

  Plunging his hand between Legacy’s legs, Kaizen found her sex and groaned with relief. He’d felt it before – when he had given her a bath in the palace – but it hadn’t been so slick then, nor so hot to the touch. His ache for her reached its zenith – those twenty pieces for the drinks had been a total waste – and he traced the curve of her labia with his tip before finding the yield of her vulva. “Legacy,” he called to her thickly, as if on the verge of some crucial proclamation.

  “Kaizen,” Legacy blurted. “I’m ineligible.”

  And he sank into her as if he’d heard nothing at all, his mind unraveling in the resultant rapture. Everything came in flashes then. Legacy, a gasp and a cringe. The fleeting thought that they should stop, woven through the physically tangible sensation that they were the only two beings of any consequence in the universe. His dead father and Ferraday, the CC, Trimpot, and this other guy Legacy had mentioned, Icarus and New Earth, all tumbled away as he thrust into her. Deposition of his throne and their children being forfeit to New Earth Extraneous Relocation . . . none of it mattered.

  His thumbs roved her whimpering lips, and Legacy whispered, “Kaizen, I’m going to go,” her eyes clouding with tears.

  He felt a sharp pang in his abdomen as the tension tightened at her mere words. “Me too,” he whispered back. He burrowed into her neck and buried deeper and deeper with each thrust, feeling himself grow, knowing it would be soon, knowing he couldn’t stop, knowing how damned they were, only rejoicing for this sliver of time . . . And then he felt her curl inward, calling out loudly enough to rouse the entire House of Oil, and her insides clamped and shuddered. All re
ason spilled from him and Kaizen lost his mind.

  When the strings fell and the clouds cleared, he was still inside her, panting into her neck, and not entirely sure what they’d done.

  “That was so stupid,” Legacy murmured, largely to herself. She closed her eyes and pursed her lips as if she’d received terminal news.

  “N-no –it was all right,” Kaizen reassured her, pulling from the warmth of her body and hurriedly pinning the front of his trousers back into place as if nothing had ever happened. He still felt lightheaded. “It’ll be fine.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” she said, using the space he’d put between them to button his slacks to slip out and sit up. She also appeared to be composing herself into the representation of a person who had not just had sex. “You can’t get pregnant. You won’t have to incriminate yourself by having a baby.”

  “I won’t let them do anything to you,” Kaizen said. “Or to our child, if we have one.”

  “You say that!” Legacy cried. Other than the glow of her complexion and the snarl in her hair, all evidence of their lovemaking had crumbled away all too soon. “But you’re just a duke, Kaizen! And barely that! You make the mistake of thinking–” She paused, took a breath, and he realized she was verging on tears again. He remembered with a start the way her eyes clouded with tears during her orgasm. Why? Then she blinked, and the tears splattered onto the bed. “These aren’t your laws. This isn’t your world. You’re just . . .” She shook her head and called back to a phrase he’d used on the night they met. “You’re just a centerpiece.”

  Legacy swept the bed curtain wide and lunged out, drawing up short as she came face-to-face with Glitch, standing there for God knew how long.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped.

  “I –I just came to offer the young duke –I mean, earl –a refreshed Curiosity,” he claimed. His eyes darted away and back as he spoke.

  “You peddle filth,” she snapped, redirecting her anxiety onto this man. “The last time I came across a vat of the stuff, it ended up down a drain.”

  “You can dump as many vats down drains as you please,” Glitch informed her coolly. “It’s all over Icarus. Earl Kaizen here knows. It’s a staple of the government itself.”

  Legacy glared over her shoulder. “You know about that?” she hissed.

  Kaizen stammered. “You do?”

  “I’m returning to my room,” Legacy directed at Glitch, storming past. “Don’t come up for me again.”

  “Would you like to take a Calm with you?” Glitch asked after her.

  “No!” she cried, pounding up the shrieking, metallic spiral of steps.

  Chapter Four

  Before, Kaizen’s Thursday mornings had consisted of a late breakfast, brought to him by Newton-2, followed by a steam bath, a massage with rocks that had been submerged in heated oil, and then a manicure and pedicure. Now that he was a duke, his mornings began entirely too soon, with an update from Claude, who had replaced Abner temporarily and now held two offices in the court. The first time this morning update had happened, Claude had scurried to help him dress, but Kaizen had batted him away, just as he’d done with Newton-2 for years. But, now that the castle automata were completely disabled, Kaizen did have to venture all the way down to the kitchen for his breakfast: an open-faced sandwich of artisan bread, a sweet, crumbling white cheese they called ricotta, sliced wedges of pear, and a drizzle of honey, the mysterious syrup – the same color as Legacy’s eyes, he noted grimly – of which he still had no clue from whence it came.

  Following the breakfast, which he had to take at the damn table now with his bleary, half-closed eyes and Johannes standing behind him as rigid as a board, he then trundled to the royal throne room – which had finally been cleaned of the debris from the massacre – and was attended by his court of six, including Trimpot, who seemed happy to visit Lion’s Head and the castle itself as often as if he were family. He’d also received a generous stipend for his continued service to the throne, and with that stipend, he’d obviously been shopping.

  Trimpot entered the throne room in a frock coat of pure white, a silken waistcoat of delicate embroidery, white on off-white, white trousers, white spats, a white top hat, and a cane of ivory, a substance more expensive that the seed of a tree. He’d likely spent his entire stipend for the month on this attire.

  The court moved through its requisite tasks: polite inquiry as to Master Addler’s progress, Olympia’s recovery (startlingly swift), and the N.E.E.R. supply task-force (still understaffed), the discussion of when Ferraday’s interrogation squad would arrive, when the story of Malthus’ death and Kaizen’s ascension would air publically, the movement of the people of Icarus and, moreover, of the CC.

  Though the constable noted that few arrests had been made as of late, since it seemed that all of Icarus had turtled following the catastrophic mayhem of the weekend, Trimpot announced, “I see Chance for Choicers frequently, and none seem the wiser. I recommend to each and every one of them to attend my ‘rally’ at the factoryworks. We should have a jailhouse ripe with the blokes before the arrival of Ferraday’s men.” His smug expression faltered. “I didn’t have and couldn’t find Exa Legacy’s registered bot,” he added. “She was the only one.”

  “Well,” Kaizen said. “That’s fine.”

  Constable Wesley and Chancellor Jonathan shared a look.

  “Fine?” Trimpot scoffed. “She was the only member of the CC to make the news this past month, other than myself. Shouldn’t you want to be able to give Ferraday her head on a platter, if not mine?”

  “I suppose her disappearance may have been due to her death, don’t you think?” Kaizen suggested. “After all, we have sentries posted at her home. She hasn’t been there. She was last seen–”

  “I know how we can find her,” Trimpot mentioned coyly. “We go to Dax. If she’s alive, she’s been to see Dax.”

  I’ve heard that name before.

  “Who’s Dax?” Kaizen asked.

  “Dax Ghrenadel. That’s the filthy little usurper who thought up that entire, awful attack,” Trimpot confided. “He’s also something of a boyfriend to Legacy?”

  Red, constricting veins crept into the peripherals of Kaizen’s vision and throbbed. His Legacy. His. The sole receptacle of his grief and anxieties, the only thing which could both fog and clear his head. And was this Dax the reason she never returned his calls? Was this Dax the reason she’d cried during her orgasm last night?

  “I can’t, I –I’m already –I have someone.”

  “You told me you didn’t want to be with your Companion.”

  “And I don’t want to be with my Companion. I want to be with someone else.”

  “The last time I saw them together, anyway,” Trimpot went on, oblivious, “they were all over each other, talking about ‘I love you,’ and whatnot.”

  Kaizen’s fingers dug into the tufted velvet of his throne and his nostrils flared. She’d never told him that she loved him. Never.

  Trimpot rolled his eyes. “He’s a fragile fellow. If he isn’t dead, she’s alive.”

  “Mobilize your men, Constable Wesley,” Kaizen commanded. He suddenly felt, perhaps for the first time in the past five days, like the Duke of Icarus, albeit the petty, jealous Duke of Icarus. “Raid the domicile of this Dax Ghrenadel for any evidence regarding Exa Legacy: whereabouts, history, tendencies, anything, everything. If he is there, he must be taken. He must be imprisoned under suspicion of conspiracy to assassinate.”

  Constable Wesley moved to exit the room, but paused when Kaizen stood and descended from the throne.

  “Anything else, my lord?” he asked.

  “I’m coming with you,” he rapped, as if it should’ve been obvious.

  Every member of the court, even Claude, smirked a bit.

  “Th-the duke doesn’t attend to arrests, my lord,” the constable informed him patiently. “You’ll stay here.”

  “I’m coming,” Kaizen repeated, as simply
and firmly as the first time. “I’ll ride with you. This meeting is dismissed. Thank you, Trimpot, a sentry will see you to the keep.” As he swept past the row of auxiliary guards, he snatched from one a short, thick, bronze firearm with a corkscrew barrel.

  “Sir, that one is my death ray!” the sentry called after him. There was no way he hadn’t heard the words, but the young duke paid them no heed.

  Legacy wrapped the white scarf tighter around her nose and mouth, striding at a swift pace through the business district of Icarus in the early afternoon. She felt as endangered as a mouse trying to blend in with the hair on the back of a sleeping cat. At any moment, someone could look too closely at her eyes. At any moment, a jangling police vehicle could rocket around the corner and over the cobblestones, its black and amber lights whirling.

  She’d told herself that she was going to infiltrate CIN-3 yesterday, but then the message had come in from Trimpot, and she’d called Dax, and Dax had come over and they’d fought, and then there was the whole . . . Kaizen . . . thing, and her responsibility to justice had just flown out the window.

  But she’d been thinking about it all day today. How to get in: Liam’s staff key. Where to hide: the stairwell. When to go: the commercial break. What to bring: the glue gun.

  Except that the glue gun was about as long and thick as a third arm.

  She’d been at an impasse on this point for most of the day when it suddenly struck her.

  She still had that glass blunderbuss, the color cannon. If she could empty the solution into its paint chamber, perhaps it would shoot the strangely intelligent adhesive just as well as it could have shot magenta. So, she’d drained the chamber in the shower stall at her rental, and refilled it with the glue, and now, only time would tell. She hoped that it’d come in handy for the staff of automata that bustled in the place. Her father had designed the formula to be capable of binding to specific sites.

  Legacy also hoped that Liam could forgive or understand any havoc she might wreak.