by Daryl Banner
“Cintha?”
She takes a short breath. “Yes,” she finally answers in a voice so small, it hardly touches the ears. “El … Elimination.”
“You understand the risks?”
“Yes.”
The woman hugs her clipboard and smiles. “You are a brave young woman, Cintha Two.”
Cintha lifts her chin and returns the smile with a tiny one of her own. “I think Ruena Netheris is brave,” she replies quietly. “I look forward to watching the coronation on the broadcast. Just two weeks away, isn’t it? She is going to make a remarkable Queen.”
“The Queenship is kind,” recites the woman, her eyes beaming. “The Queenship is good.”
Hopefully, thinks Cintha.
0138 Sedge
The Queen is dead.
That’s what they say.
Ruena Netheris, my friend that I loved and betrayed, my model, my idol … she is gone. The world is lonely. The world is empty.
Her Queendom—a flash of lightning, then gone just as quickly.
Children first learn about “the good guys” and “the bad guys” when they’re told their first stories of heroes and legends. Everyone identifies as the good guy, and everyone despises the bad guy—no matter the reason for his or her villainy.
I’m a good person, every child tells themselves without any hesitation. They’re quick to brand themselves the heroes long before they question any morally-ambiguous act it may take to vanquish the horrible evil. It isn’t until one special moment in a child’s life that they learn that “good” and “bad” is simply a matter of perspective. It isn’t until a child grows to a certain age—and does one certain thing that they cannot undo—that they learn the coldest lesson no school will dare teach them.
That they, in fact, can be the bad guy.
Sedge stares across the plaza of broken glass at the woman who floats over the edge of the Lifted City where the Lord’s Garden used to be. It’s by the very powerful telekinetic Legacy of one of Impis’s Posse that the woman floats. She struggles and wrestles in the air, as if caught in some enormous, invisible spider’s web—and nothing can free her. The man called Yoli stands poised at the ledge with his arms at his sides and eyebrows furrowed, as if he was just glaring at her with the pouty conviction of a child about to throw a tantrum.
That’s one tantrum Sedge wishes very much not to be caught in front of. He’s seen many people hovering over the ledge, the cold slums waiting so far below. Many people who hovered by Yoli’s incredible telekinetic Legacy. Many people who begged for Yoli not to look away, to keep glaring at them until he pulled them back to safer ground … but Sedge knows better. They never come back.
“The sun is on the rise,” complains the skinny, scaly-armored, self-important idiot named Dregor who Sedge can’t stand. “Another day without the Almost-Queen.”
“Another day without the Almost-Queen,” agrees Umi, the large, curly-haired woman by his side with huge, half-lidded eyes and a tiny mouth. “I say we drop the slum fool.”
“Drop her and listen to her bones crunch.”
“Listen to her brains splat on the pavement of the ninth ward.”
“Isn’t it the tenth below?”
Umi smirks back at him. “You can tell the difference? Ninth is as dirty as tenth, as dirty as eleventh, as dirty as eighth, seventh, sixth—the whole lot of them. I doubt they even distinguish between themselves down there. The whole city’s broken.”
“I don’t care for it,” Dregor mutters back. “I wouldn’t mind if I never stepped foot down there again.”
“I doubt it would mind either.”
Dregor bristles at her cold words, then steps right up to the edge of the road, peering down with a wrinkled face. “Greedy,” he mutters in disgust. “And foolish.” Then, with sudden conviction, he grips the makeshift railing and yells out, “If you turn her over, the rain of blood and bones will END, fools! Quit your hiding! Turn over Ruena Almont-Sunsong Netheris to us and the death will end!”
“Quiet your mouth,” drones Umi. “I doubt they can even hear you.”
The scaly-skinned man squints down at the slums with dislike, then turns away. “I’m tired of the spectacle anyhow. Let her drop.”
When he passes by Sedge, his eyes narrow, as if the very sight of him is annoying. Then the moment’s passed, and it’s just Sedge and the big curly-haired Umi, who appears significantly calmer now that the scaly man has sauntered off.
“You know,” she murmurs, quiet and weary, “I do feel sorry for them. Each and every one of them we sacrifice. I mean, what could they have done with their lives, had we let them live?”
What have we done with ours? is what Sedge might reply, but doesn’t, turning his eyes back to the floating sacrifice who, in this moment, chooses to make eye contact with him. He fights an instinct to look away, instead keeping his little eyes locked upon hers. She pleads silently with him, even going as far as to reach out, despite being a hundred feet or more away. The poor woman hardly has any voice left; she’s screamed it all out of her withered throat.
“Yoli,” mutters Umi, defeated. “The day’s done.”
At once, Yoli turns his eyes away, as if he’s just lost all interest in the thing he was only a second ago furiously concentrated upon. The moment the eye contact is broken, the woman releases from midair with a hoarse, wimpy shriek, falling out of sight as she drops to the slums far, far below. Her broken, raspy cry echoes off the buildings like a score of bats screeching in the streets.
The sound doesn’t last long.
Sedge sits in the Great Hall of Cloud Keep, curled at the farthest table as he watches the others eat and banter and laugh amongst themselves. Half the structure of the Great Hall collapsed during the disruption of Ruena’s coronation over two months ago, allowing the sunrise to spill in through the fractured ceiling and split-open walls. Sedge lets the furious sun blind him, too drained by emotions to care. “Have a bowl of mint soup,” offers Nightly, a woman with hair and nails that glow in the dark. Yes, it’s due to her Legacy; Sedge asked when they first met. But to Nightly’s kind offer, Sedge merely shakes his head and declines on account of a turning belly, which is no lie.
But that doesn’t spare him the company he’s granted later when he’s pulled into another search—or hunt, more accurately—through the streets of the Lifted City with dumb-idiot-one and dumber-idiot-two, who seem far more interested in crude conversation than in finding any hiding Lifted citizen or missing Almost-Queen.
“The fact is, he owns the world now.”
“Aye, but what’s he to do with it now that he’s got it?” grunts dumb-idiot-one, the hugely muscled Baigan whose skin is sunburnt red at all times and whose ugly, scarred face is always scrunched up, as if thinking is an excruciatingly difficult task for him.
Tall, olive-skinned, and dressed in an assortment of mismatched clothing, dumb-idiot-two (named Splinters) says, “You actually think someone like the Mad King has a plan?”
“His plan is madness,” returns Baigan with a laughing snarl. He makes a run of his whole arm across his face, wiping away some foul thing Sedge can’t see—a strand of hair or a buzzing bug or a glob of snot, he’ll never know—and then adds, “He does whatever pleases him. He entertains himself. He laughs at the filthy world below as we sit upon its summit, party, and shit on the slum-fucks below.”
These routine hunts for Lifted citizens—who are foolishly hiding in their homes hoping to wait out the Madness—make Sedge wonder how life would be like if he was among those in hiding. All of the ones who haven’t already been captured or killed fled to the slums. The slums will not be kind to them, Sedge knows. It is like a flock of pretty geese fleeing the fire only to land in a den of wolves.
“Careful where you aim your shit,” replies Splinters. “My slum-fuck family’s down there someplace.” The two of them laugh.
Sedge rolls his eyes, tired of the vulgarity and the juvenileness of his company as of late. Really, where has all the
class and dignity and character of the Lifted City gone? It died when a sword came through the Banshee King Greymyn’s chest. It died when Janlord was knifed thrice in his gut, then beheaded an hour later when he attempted to rise from the stage of that Crystal Court. I still wonder how things might be different, had I let him have a go at Impis.
He curses himself for the errant thought. No thoughts are secret, not when Impis has his reader and writer twins among his Posse. Arcana and Axel, the twin sisters who can read and write upon the minds of others—“reader” and “writer”, Impis lazily calls them instead of by their true names. Sedge must be careful what he thinks at all times; there’s no telling when the sisters might be present, listening with their hidden Legacy ears.
“If you’d have me think of a theory or two,” mutters Splinters, his voice turning light, “I’d suspect Ambera’s sudden, innocent death however many years ago was not, in fact, innocent or sudden at all. I suspect it was planned.”
“Planned? You paranoid fool. Royal Legacist Ambera suffered the stony throat—the same damned illness that befell a Marshal or two before her, and near a quarter of the Council of Elders.”
“She was murdered,” insists Splinters. “It was Impis. I just know it, now that I’ve seen him cut through the heart of a King. I’ve seen what he’s capable of. He killed her way back then, pretty Ambera with the lavender eyes, and took her position as Marshal of Legacy.”
“Seems too calculated. No. Impis acts on whims. He chases the winds as they blow. You act as if he’s the one doing the blowing.”
“Aye, you’d sure as fuck hope so. You wish he were doing the blowing of your cock, don’t you.”
Baigan sends a fist into his arm so hard and fast, a discharge of five finger-shaped darts fly from Splinters’ hands—an accidental use of his Legacy, which happens when he suffers a sudden fright. Splinters takes to rubbing his beaten arm, scowling at his friend.
“Are you,” growls the burnt, muscled abomination, “implying that I, Baigan, want the Mad King’s mouth on my dick? Have you any fucking respect for our god?”
“Our god?” Splinters laughs, the pain of his arm forgotten. “He is no god. He is a crazy man who got lucky, and we’ve been invited to his end-of-world party, the whole lucky lot of us.”
It’s in this moment that Baigan turns his still-furious face to look at the likes of Sedge, as if just now realizing that he has been with them this whole time. “And you?”
Sedge’s little eyes meet the thick red man’s own. “Me?”
“Do you think the Mad King’s a god?”
Sedge works it over in his mind. He knows precisely what he thought of the Marshal of Madness the first time he saw him. Weird, like me. Strange, like me. An outcast, like me. Made fun of, like me. Ridiculed, like me. Beautiful …
Beautiful, like me. “I think he has a plan,” Sedge answers.
The two men study little eleven-year-old Sedge, dubious.
“A plan,” Sedge insists, gaining confidence. “Impis Lockfyre has a plan.” He dignifies the Mad King with his full name. “His Legacy may be in invoking a … a frenzy of madness among those who witness that … that twitching left eye of his. But I know … I’ve seen … I’ve felt his very authority.” Sedge finds himself choked up with inspiration, admiration … some sort of powerful devotion he can’t quite name. “He will save our world and rid it of every last person who laughs at him instead of with him. A person who laughs at him is laughing at me too. And you,” Sedge adds, squinting at Baigan, then turning to Splinters. “And you.”
The two men seem to regard Sedge like a joke for which they are patiently awaiting the punch line. They listen to his words and wait for him to finish, their amused faces left hanging, ready to laugh, ready to cut him down. Have they already forgotten that, had it not been for me, they’d still be in a cell of the King’s Keeping and Ruena would be sitting upon the Throne of Atlas scheduling their executions?
Splinters gives a short, dry chuckle, then turns away, continuing his trek down the road. Baigan soon follows, though his amusement seems to darken, any semblance of a laugh swallowed up in that thick reddened neck of his.
Sedge stares at their backs. “He has a plan,” he insists yet again, though his voice has lost its vigor. “He has a … a …”
But no one’s left to listen to his words. Maybe it’s a good thing, since he’s so heavy with emotion this particular morning. He leaves them to continue their hunt, instead strolling miserably through the streets alone. Images of Ambera’s lavender eyes chase him, though the only thing he can picture now is her staring lifelessly at nothing with Impis standing over her cold, dead body holding a bloody sword. No, he decides. They would have discovered him, the King or the Marshals, or the Sky Guard. He could not have done that and gotten away with it, surely. The Kingship is kind. The Kingship is …
But before he finishes the words, he finds himself standing upon the ruined stage of the Crystal Court with no idea how his feet took him here. It’s not so crystalline anymore since the majority of its glass pillars and glorious walls were shattered during Impis’s invasion, which he had a significant hand in orchestrating. I’m surrounded by my own consequences, every day. Dumb Splinters and dumber Baigan, their very existence is my fault too.
The world is unkind. The world is ungood.
And all the lives, one each day, who are lifted by Yoli’s eyes, then dropped to the slums below … their blood is on him, too. Each day, a life. Each day, a death. My fault, my fault, my fault.
And hers …
To the audience full of no one, Sedge leans over the broken podium and says, “Why won’t you simply come forth? Ruena, you could end all of this. Don’t you see how selfish you’re being??” Sedge snorts at his own words, growing furious suddenly. “Every day you spend defying the Marshal of Madness, another innocent soul goes falling to the slums below. Every day you spend—”
Suddenly he catches himself. He is no Marshal of Madness anymore. Impis is the self-proclaimed new King of the Last City of Atlas. King Impis, the Mad King, who didn’t even protest when the unofficial title surfaced. He made no effort to dignify himself with a better one; in fact, he downright embraced it. “Yes, Mad King Impis, yes, yes,” he sang in his high-pitched, twisty voice, laughter dancing around in his throat and never quite coming out. “It is ever so right!”
But Sedge did not count on Impis’s very first mission for the lot of them to be the capturing of Ruena—or rather, for the lot of all that remained of Impis’s Posse, the Twenty-Two, which since dwindled to a mere Seventeen after some unfortunate incidents left a number of them missing or brutally murdered after one of Impis’s manic episodes that sent all of them into a thoughtless frenzy—all of them but Sedge, who could melt his body and render himself unaffected.
Just that thought makes his arms shapeless as wet clay, pouring over the podium lazily as his chin rests upon its jagged surface. Even his chin shapeshifts itself accordingly with his mood. He feels so sour all of a sudden, angry at Ruena, his former friend, his former Queen, his former everything. If you’d just show up, Impis wouldn’t have to kill an innocent person a day. If you’d just reveal yourself …
Sedge’s mind takes a turn. And if you were here … I’d … be less afraid of Impis and his unpredictable behavior. If you were here, you’d tell me what to do, what to fear, what not to fear. If you were with me at my side, as you were supposed to be … then we could rule together.
We could have ruled together, if you were here.
“But you’re not,” he says aloud, stiffening up both by his literal shape and his posture. “You’re probably dead.”
The world is dead.
Impis was not convinced that she died that day, which is what so many people claimed. Sedge always admired how glorious Impis looked with all his madness, all that power teeming off of him. It’s in the way the others regard him too, doing his bidding, even if the bidding is strange and makes no sense. Sedge nearly drools upon the po
dium, thinking of Impis’s power. Oh, what I could do, what I could do with such sweet reverence …
This would all be so much more fun to enjoy with Ruena at his side. She’d get him to smile; she’d just offer him her silks to wear. Silks and shoes—that’s all it took. He scowls again, but the emotion seems to betray him. I miss her, he realizes with a pang of doubt.
And if he miraculously was the one to find her, would he really hand her over to Mad King Impis? Could I really betray her twice …?
The sound of a foot scuffling draws his attention.
At the other end of the stage he spots Arcana—“reader”—a woman with a tightly-pulled ponytail of shiny, perfectly straight hair running down the whole length of her slender body. Her enormous hazel eyes are locked on Sedge, flashing and beautiful against her dark, velvety complexion.
But he cannot admire her beauty, stricken by fear as he is. Arcana’s Legacy is in reading minds. She knows what I just thought, he realizes with terror. She heard everything. She’s hearing every …
And as quick as he thinks it, she turns, disappearing down the side steps of the stage and out of the Crystal Court. She was without her twin sister today, the one who controls and manipulates minds. The pair of them are deadly, he knows.
But it just takes the one to rob Sedge of all his peace, of all his mental privacy, of all his security. She heard my doubts …
“She wouldn’t do anything,” he decides defiantly, straightening his spine. “She wouldn’t dare. I’m Impis’s Special. I’m the King’s only Marshal.” Unofficially, but still. No one’s protested; they owe Sedge their freedom, don’t they?
Don’t they …?
He looks up from the wreckage of the Crystal Court, lifting his anxious eyes up to the peak of Cloud Tower that punctures the sky nearby. He has a plan, Sedge keeps telling himself. Impis the Great will make me see that it was not a mistake, that what I did to Ruena was for the best, that the world will learn its flaws. He will make every person peer within themselves and see the ugly sides of them that mock people like Impis, that mock people like me, that disregard anything and anyone who isn’t precisely, exactly, perfectly like themselves.