“And if they have been supplying us with our raw goods, how else will we get them?”
“They have rights!”
“Look around. None of us have rights. All anyone has is luck.”
And the talk went on like this, in floating provinces of only ten acres, in floating provinces of over six hundred.
“What will the monarch do?” some whispered. “Will we go to war now, do you think?”
“There’s no reason to go to war with a bunch of dead people, stupid.”
The castle in the sky moved slowly. The modern airships of some Icarus-bred aristocrats had already fled at high speeds, veering directly into the storm, but the castle was too heavy for such maneuvers. It moved like a pregnant cow along the horizon, impervious to the wind and the rain.
“I never thought we’d have to use this,” Master Addler mused, extracting a key from his cabinet of the things.
There were still so many parts of this very castle that Kaizen did not know. “Use what?” he asked.
“Oh, you’ll need to know this,” Master Addler agreed with barely contained delight, as detached from the horror of the destruction below as the castle itself was. He hobbled toward a spiraling staircase which led higher in the keep. “This key will unlock the steering wheel. You see: the castle is itself one gigantic machine.”
Kaizen sighed deeply. There was so much for which he was responsible, even now. He had his mother, and his sister, the royal machinist, a small staff of sentries, Claude, all on the limited supply of food in the kitchen. Augh, and Trimpot. Where could they dock that would accept their parasitism until further notice? What was a duke without his duchy? Who would look the other way if they saw Sophie? Oh, god, and Monarch Ferraday. His Hermetic transmitter was soon to be arriving, in six hours’ time.
Master Addler unlocked the highest compartment of the castle keep, which opened onto the fresh air, and peered down from the parapet to the surrounding ground and out onto the open sky, finally beginning to clear as they drifted from the storm.
A steering wheel was erected at its center, surrounded by some sort of brass patio, levers and gauges.
“I’ve never been here,” Kaizen murmured.
“Nor I, not in almost forty years,” Master Addler replied. “But it was part of my training. You can steer, and control the rudders, from here.”
Kaizen grasped the wheel and took a deep breath. An amber-colored, glass map, identical to that of the keep reader but detailing the entirety of New Earth, was to the left of the wheel.
“Where . . . where should we go?” he asked Master Addler.
The royal machinist just laughed.
“Wherever you want,” he finally replied with a sublime smile and a shrug.
Kaizen turned this notion over and over in his head.
The closest major cities, still several days’ flight, were Celestine and Heliopolis. And between the two men he’d have to face – Archibald Ferraday the Third, or the pleasant Montgomery Lovelace – he had to say that the latter was the more inviting.
“Celestine,” he finally answered. “Let’s set course for Celestine.”
It’s too hot, Legacy thought, kicking at her sheets. They were tangled all around her, as if she’d been literally wrapped in her sleep. It’s always too hot in here because one, Dad leaves his stuff running and they overheat, and two, it’s a freaking dome in August. She rolled and sighed, strangely sore all over. Why are my braids so . . . damp?
Lunging forward and dragging in another breath, Legacy’s eyes bulged open and blinked rapidly. Her heart squeezed and thundered.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
But it must have been real.
Because the close walls of her cabin with Dax – the cabin beside the airship boilers – Vector’s airship – they surrounded her. And when she glanced over her bare shoulder . . .
There was a shaven, malnourished girl who otherwise bore her a shocking resemblance, sleeping so deeply as to appear dead if not for the rosiness of her cheeks. She, too, was nude and wrapped in a dry blanket.
Legacy pushed away from the girl, onto her feet, the blanket still tucked beneath her arms and trailing now onto the floor. She tried to collect her scattered thoughts, but they were like a dish of nuts and bolts overturned, spinning under furniture. She could hardly bear to touch them, much less grasp.
The way the cobblestones had steepened until she’d been climbing them like mountainside.
And the screams . . .
The gears and pistons from which she was separated by only a thin wall rattled and groaned.
How many people were here, she wondered. Where were they going, and would they have enough food to get there in time before . . .
But no. There’d been enough death for one day. She wouldn’t think about that. Not now. Not freshly upon waking.
But where are we going? It was an important question.
Who would accept fugitive rebels into their city walls?
Legacy departed from the cabin, allowing the girl – her sister-stranger – to rest, and found her way to the laboratory, empty. Why was everything so very quiet?
But Dax . . . I’d seen him . . .
She climbed to the common room, barefoot, hair loose, and garbed only in the sheet, entertaining the morbid fantasy that the ship had become deserted of all its crew.
Her dazed eyes peered around the berth of the Albatropus.
Though thronged with people, strangers and familiar both, residents and refugees both, none spoke. Those who did speak spoke only in murmurs to nearby ears. Many sat with distant stares. Two by two, the eyes turned to her as she strode across the room, numb, dream-like.
Legacy opened the door onto the deck of the bow. More people were out here. They leaned on the railing, speaking again in muted tones to one another, slowly halting their sentences to stare after her as the others had. She advanced to the railing, ignoring this, and braced it with both hands, leaning out.
The sky sprawled away from her in every direction, the land of Old Earth far below. The rain had cleared off and the breeze pulled at her hair and her sheet, but otherwise, there was a sublime peacefulness to the view. It was almost imaginable that Icarus – that what happened, she corrected herself starchily – had never happened.
She glanced up, and her stomach lurched.
The Taliko castle was floating not far overhead and slightly to the right, its rudders spinning lazily.
Legacy gulped and glared, tearing her eyes from the sight.
Good old Kaizen, she thought. Just lift that drawbridge, huh?
She stared down at the sluggishly retreating Earth for a long time.
“Exa,” a familiar, firm voice came from behind her. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
She turned to face Liam with none of the energy she normally brought to their interactions. Her eyes were as shiftless and dead as Coal-Radia’s had once been, and it brought her ex-Companion up short.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted, eyebrows lowering with sobriety. “But at least–”
Legacy pursed her lips and raised her palm to him, signaling for quiet, and shook her head. No “I’m sorry,” she thought at him. She didn’t have the strength to say it aloud. No “But at least,” either.
Legacy walked past him as if the exchange had never occurred, now toward the stern. Someone had to be driving this thing.
There are decisions to be made, she thought firmly. Things which must be talked about.
The way my mother had been sobbing the last time I saw her . . . the last time I’d ever–
No.
Legacy bricked up the thought and whitewashed the wall.
Standing at the helm were a handful of people, but most notably Vector, Dax, and Rain. Vector was on the wheel, gazing out. Rain had her face buried into Dax’s shoulder, and he was stroking her back tenderly.
“You’re up!” Vector called. “Hey!” He abandoned the wheel to embrace her quickly and tightly before releas
ing her again. “How are you feeling?”
“All right,” Legacy answered grudgingly. “Fine.” She was reminded suddenly of Kaizen, who claimed to be fine at the oil den, even though his father had just been buried. She wanted to ask what happened – had Icarus truly fallen? How had Dax saved her with that amazing fiber? But at the same time, she didn’t want to know. She was sure Icarus had fallen. There was no way it could’ve been saved. And she was sure that it didn’t matter whether Dax had reflexively saved her or not.
Rain lifted her head and wiped at her leaking eyes. “Hey,” she greeted shakily, pulling a breath through her clotted nose.
You weren’t even there, Legacy thought.
Dax didn’t say anything at all. He merely stared at her from over Rain’s fretting blue hair, eyes intense but unreadable.
“Where are we going?” Legacy asked Vector.
Vector smiled, a rakish, oddly whimsical smile. “I have no idea,” he answered with a terrified, false cheer. “Just had to go, you know?”
The carriages careening down the streets, slamming into walls and turning over . . .
No. Not now.
“We have to go somewhere,” Legacy iterated.
“That’s what I said,” Dax agreed.
“We don’t have the resources to just float,” Legacy went on, accidentally conjuring Icarus to mind with the words. She banished them with a subconscious flick of her hand.
“No argument here,” Vector replied, lifting his hands into the surrender position. “But . . . let’s be real . . . we’re a shitty boat full of felonious rebels. Some that any government would recognize.” He didn’t specify that this meant Legacy. “So who’s going to take us?”
Legacy walked to the wheel, gently shifting back and forth without Vector’s guidance, and traced her finger along the circular, amber-colored glass map to its left.
Roughly three thousand miles south of them were the cloud forests of a continent once called America, if Legacy recalled her schooling correctly. Either Middle America – or Central America – or South?
A star on the land indicated the presence of a major floating city.
“There,” she answered, circling the asterisk with her index finger. “Celestine.”
Monarch Archibald Ferraday the Third reclined on his throne in the capital city of Heliopolis, his thick fingers steepled. Icarus, a major industrial hub of New Earth, was lost not long ago. He was thankful only that his interrogation squad had yet to arrive when the disaster had struck. He did not know if the young duke had survived the catastrophe. All he did know was that the sudden and inexplicable presence of New Earth Extraneous Relocation fugitives had caused riots to break out across the city, likely leading to its destruction. The only bright side was that the little flame of Chance for Choice had been forcibly snuffed. Exa Legacy was undoubtedly dead. The mobilization of his troops was no longer requisite, and although he would need to address this issue quickly to restore the stability of the whole, perhaps this was truly not so bad. How did the old saying go? To make an omelet, you must break eggs?
He nodded to himself, staring out across the dim, expansive hall.
Perhaps this had been a blessing in disguise, as they said.
The monarch stood and moved at a leisurely pace to procure one of his many Hermetic devices. He depressed its button and the warm light flared on, recording.
“Taliko Castle,” he addressed the instrument. “Inform me of your status immediately, Duke Taliko. Do not underestimate how tenuous your grip. We –we must act quickly to salvage any sense of security in our remaining cities, mustn’t we? Perhaps we shall find a scapegoat. The people will need an enemy in this situation. A threat to be tangibly snuffed and to bring a sense of comfort and safety back into their rustling minds. That enemy will not be me, young man, understand that. I will ensure it. Perhaps it could be that rebel traitor you were harboring in the tower, that Trip Pot or some such? Or that girl . . . Did you ever apprehend either of them? I heard that you invited the girl to a ‘friendly debate’ . . . I assumed, of course, that this was a ruse to capture her. Was it successful? Failing all else, my boy, the scapegoat could always be you.”
He took the Hermetic transmitter to one of his many arched windows and unleashed it over the smog-clotted sky of Heliopolis. As soon as its silvery veneer winked and vanished, he felt as if a great weight had been alleviated.
Someone was going to pay.
Then and only then could the common folk of New Earth return to work assuaged. Then and only then could everything be fine.
Someone was going to pay.
Because if the monarch was anything, he was fastidious about the smoothing of wrinkles. And Icarus had been the crease that would now define his reign. But he would set it right. He would promise his people this. He would tally all the wrongs, enforce every blood oath, and put their worried little hearts to bed.
One way or another. Hell or high water.
Someone was going to pay.
~~~
NEXT: Legacy Lost
LEGACY BETRAYED Page 17