by Daryl Banner
The blond boy sighs with deep relief, clenching shut his eyes and biting his lip. “Finally …”
Ames rubs the boy’s back consolingly, then shakes his head and, with a smirk, mutters something to the others which Link cannot hear. It’s not easy when the noise of rushing water does its best to drown away all sound. Not being able to hear anything further of their exchange, Link lies back down, letting his hand back in to float as he recalls the day when Baron once held his head beneath the flowing waters, drowning one life out of him and giving him another. He frowns, thinking about what he saw in those waters …
And then what he said he saw.
Hours later, Baron has returned, and he is fortunately much calmer. Link has since relocated to the other side, joining the rest as they gather for an announcement. “We will push forth through the Waterways,” Baron tells them, “beneath the wards, without any of their knowing, and make way for the Dark Abandon.”
That alarms Link. “Dark Abandon?”
The boys turn to him. Baron’s watery eyes meet his. “Yes,” he says simply. “We are no closer to completing our mission here and, if counting serves me well, there are thirteen of you, and still we have not been guided by the Sisters.”
“But why the Dark Abandon?” presses Link. “That’s a … a place even the Sisters abandoned.”
“And where did you hear that? From your school?” asks Baron, inspiring a light chuckle from some of the boys. “From the King? From your friends? From the Marshal on the broadcast? Poor boy, we’re being made to fear the Dark Abandon for a reason. They are hiding something there. Sanctum is. Or was. And with Sanctum broken, now is our chance.”
Link already knows in his gut that the Dark Abandon will reveal no more answers than the Waterways have. Baron’s grown paranoid. He can’t help the sick ball of guilt that rolls around within him. Even now when he thinks back on the day of his drowning, he doubts the things he saw in the water. That can’t possibly be the vision Baron was looking for, Link reassures himself, trying to ease his guilt. It didn’t even make sense, what I saw. The Sisters. That girl who could turn invisible. Gold, lots and lots of gold. He even heard his mother singing, didn’t he? A song his mother used to sing …
“They have abandoned the light,” Baron decides, his voice deep and heavy with importance. “So it’s our duty to seek them in the dark. Yes, that’s where they’re leading me. And you are all one with the Brotherhood now. You will not die until the Brotherhood does. The Dark Abandon should not inspire fear in you. Nay, nothing ought to inspire fear in you, not anymore. Now that you are immune to the threat of death, you should feel a freedom that all others in Atlas would envy … especially now.”
Link’s hand drifts to his chest instinctively at those words. Still, he feels no heartbeat. My life force belongs to Baron now, he reminds himself. I don’t die until he does. None of us die until he does. Looking at the old man, he finds himself suffering an unfortunate working of numbers in his head, feeling much like his father. Did I just cut my life in half by joining this Brotherhood? What if Baron dies today? What if he dies tomorrow? What if he dies five years from now?
Five years. Could that be all Link has left to live?
It is decided that the group will pick up their things and begin to make a move at the next nightfall. Link is chosen to keep watch on the sun, so he flings himself up the tall ladder to the street and watches from the hidden, unassuming entrance to the Waterways under a curb and a dip in the road. He drums his fingers along the pavement, staring out at the empty streets that slowly grow redder from the gentle burn of dusk.
Annoyed suddenly, he pushes himself out of the hole and stands in the road, stretching his legs and arms. No one comes out at night anymore, it seems. He walks quietly along the street, listening for any signs of life. He can’t even hear the stirring of bodies or the murmur of distant voices through the walls. He does, however, catch a rat scuttling behind a dumpster, as if to hide from him. The more he listens, the more he’s awed by what he notices. Without a pesky pulse or heartbeat to distract him, he feels like he could hear any tiny presence on the whole street.
Not to mention that the freedom from the constant noise of the water is a gift in and of itself. He breathes, allowing himself a smile, then starts to walk with confidence. A light breeze pushes through his hair, which has grown longer and bushier over the months. His natural brown color is coming in at the roots, pushing out the dyed black tips. I ought to cut off all the black, he muses, to be rid of The Wrath for good. He wears just the loose white shirt The Brae gave him and the very jeans he wore the day he fell through its roof, so long ago. Considering their location, washing their clothes as well as themselves has been a nice, daily luxury. He is very proud to say that there isn’t a speck of pink on his shirt, and that’s because his Legacy is no more; he traded it for the Brotherhood.
Limited invincibility. Freedom from a Legacy. Link’s pace starts to slow as he reconsiders his situation. He can’t help the nagging feeling that he’s made a horrible mistake. I didn’t trust it from the beginning, he reminds himself. What changed my mind?
Was it Ames, the boy who annoyed him so greatly at the start, only to turn around and become his only friend? Was it Baron, who taught him repentance and purged him from the guilt of associating with black-about-the-eyes Dran and The Wrath? Was it the way his family made him feel? Inferior, radical, bothersome, less-than, weak, small, juvenile, problematic …
It’s somewhere in the midst of these self-doubts that Link finds himself in the square where The Brae used to stand, tall and simple. Half of it has since burned down due to a mystery fire that chased them out one day long ago. The faint scent of smoke still hangs in the air, even months later, and Link feels the soft ash beneath his shoes. Maybe I came here to say goodbye, he considers. I came here to tell The Brae goodbye, to tell the Sisters goodbye, to tell my family—who may or may not still wonder if I’m alive—goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. His whole past seems to be slowly letting go of him. Even the glow on his leg went away when he gave his first life to the Brotherhood, perhaps unable to sustain itself without the beating of his heart, if Link had to guess. He doesn’t miss it at all. Goodbye, glow.
Then he sees a figure. Link steps back, startled. The figure wasn’t there a second ago. Are his eyes playing tricks on him, or did a man just rise from the debris of the temple?
“Just where I expected to find you,” calls out the figure.
It’s a man. Baron, Link first assumes, judging from the shape. Baron followed me here. But then he’d have to figure out how Baron possibly got in front of him, and though Link may not be the fastest boy at his school, he certainly can run faster than Baron could ever dream to. This figure is not him.
“Who are you?” asks Link, squinting across the dark square.
The man, cloaked in shadow, steps down from the debris and calmly crosses the way as he speaks. “Do you realize, boy, that the end is coming soon, and your life as well as the lives of all you know and love—or will know and will love—are in danger?”
Link frowns. What an annoyingly vague thing to say. “Every person’s life is in danger,” he spits back, “and all our lives will end. Eventually. That’s no news.”
The figure laughs, still slowly approaching. “I’ve always loved your sense of humor. You will need it.”
He isn’t close enough to pick out facial features, but he appears to be wearing a strange sleeveless jacket or leather jerkin, perhaps, and his pants are flowing like silk—maybe it’s even a dress, or a robe of some kind. He is bald, just like Baron.
“Aren’t you a boy of riddles? I have one for you.”
Link scoffs. “Riddles are for children and bored old men. I’d rather you say it plain, whatever it is you aim to say. Say it and go. Don’t step any closer,” Link adds suddenly, stepping back.
“Didn’t you hear my brother properly?” asks the man. “Death is no consequence to you. You have nothing to fear now.”
/> Brother? “Y-You’re Baron’s brother?”
The figure stops. The silk of his pants or robe, which flowed as he walked, now stands still as a carved statue. His face is still covered in shadow, but a tiny glint of light catches his eyes. Link swallows hard, watching him warily. I hardly trust Baron. How could I trust his brother? How did he know I’d be here?
“Do you have a message?” asks Link, searching for the purpose. “Is that why Baron chose me to keep watch of the light tonight? Did he intend for me to wander off … to walk into you? Are you working together, the pair of you?”
“Oh, hardly.” The figure folds his arms and tilts his head to the side, giving him an oddly casual sort of stance. “My brother and I never much got along, the hungry demon he is.”
“Hungry demon?”
“Not literally, of course. I don’t believe in demons. But I believe in hunger, and my brother … is the hungriest. I’ve seen where he’s been, I’ve seen where he is, and I’ve seen where he goes. I see all.”
“You can see the future?” asks Link suspiciously.
“And the past. Whatever I want, really. I don’t like much of what I’ve seen of my poor brother Baron, but there is one thing we do have in common.”
Link keeps alert, expecting any sudden movement, searching the man’s silhouette for signs of a weapon. He could be trying to deceive you. Don’t trust his words. “What’s that?”
“Our love for the Three Goddess.” At the mention of them, he brings his hand to his chest, then kisses it—a gesture Link remembers his mother doing sometimes when she returned from the Wayward where she’d pray. “Oh, and a taste for red robes.”
“Baron’s robe is not red.”
“It will be.”
The man is about the same height as the bald priest, but his shoulders are broader, and his voice is gravelly. Link picks up a faint citrusy scent from the man, which is a curious contrast to the smoky waste of their location.
“It is nightfall, and you must return,” the man announces, “but I will see you again—here—in one week’s time. But where there is one of you now, there will be two.”
Link lifts an eyebrow. “No. You won’t be seeing me in a week,” he argues, “as I’ll be in the Dark Abandon by then.”
“You will be here,” the man gently insists, “and that is the riddle of it, boy. It’s just a matter of time. Everything is.”
“I am not a child for riddles.”
“Then I must be an old man.” The glint in his eyes shift, perhaps from a smile. “I told you all of Atlas is in danger, didn’t I? I failed to mention that you—my boy—are the key to saving it. You, and that Goddess vision you think I don’t know you had.”
Link’s throat tightens at his words. How did he know? This must be a trick. Baron has sent his brother here to shake Link down, to make him confess his secret—that he did, indeed, see something in the waters that fateful day that Link Lesser died and something else was born … something quieter.
“I had no vision,” Link lies, feeling bold in doing so.
“You can lie to my brother, but you cannot lie to me. I have the unfortunate advantage of knowing things no man ought to know. Things that have passed. Things that are to come. You were a cute little kid before you turned your hair black—and that’s not thanks to your Legacy.”
“I have no Legacy.” Link has never felt more unsettled than he does right now, a hand of his absently going to his hair at the man’s comment. How does he know what he knows? It isn’t possible …
“Please don’t take my words for threats.” His tone grow softer. “I’ve been odd since I was a cute little kid myself, so, so long ago.”
“I’ll tell Baron I saw you,” Link threatens him, his jaw tightened.
“No you won’t. You don’t trust him. And you shouldn’t.” The man shrugs carelessly, then gives his jacket a tug, straightening his posture. “It all began in cold, but it will end in fire. It’s up to you to save Atlas. See you in a week, Shye.”
Link swallows. “My name’s not—”
In the next instant, the man is gone.
0144 Ellena
She’s been getting used to the smell of soap and chemical—and not the fun kind that makes the head dizzy and the heart light.
She scrubs the linens in the big metal basin by hand because all the washing and drying machines have been disabled. Yes, of course this small Guardian holding in the sixth has power, unlike so much of Atlas since the Fall of Sanctum, but it has to be rationed or else certain rooms go dark, and with communications depending on said power, it is imperative to keep the computers going.
Not that Ellena cares. The only rooms she ever sees are the utility room, in which she’s working right now, and an unused room at the corner of the building where she’s pretty sure a man wasted away in his own filth and died at some point, for the faint scent of death that lingers in it at all hours.
Is this all her life is fated to be? Drifting from one unpleasant circumstance to another? She didn’t much like the Greens, even when a promotion into the flowers was all but in her slippery grasp. And though her time working at the hospital before was awful and humiliating, here she is cleaning linens, bloodied by the wounded of the sixth. Three Sister has an unfunny sense of humor as of late.
Yet still, every morning just before the sun burns the windows, she presses her hands together, clamps shut her eyes, and prays to the Sisters for guidance, for protection, and for comfort. Lionis was left at her sister Cilla’s in the ninth, safe and cared for, so he should have a decent roof and food. And though Halvesand and Aleksand are under the protection of Guardian, who is left to protect them in a time like this when their very leaders are dropping like flies? Not to mention one of them dropped at her hands; former Marshal of Order Taylon’s shriek of agony still rings fresh in her ears. And then there’s the question of where Anwick has gone off to, her poor dreamful boy. And Link, she agonizes further. Oh, please let Link find his true place in this world, she begs the Sisters, ignoring the crippling fear in her heart that he really is dead in an alley somewhere. You know best, Sisters, and his safety is in your hands. Please, please …
The image of that boy floating in the water keeps surfacing, the one with “Link Lesser returns his gift to Three Goddess” carved into his chest. That boy … who wasn’t her son, but who might as well be. Where are you, Link?
“Forge …” she murmurs at last, coming to a stop in the middle of scrubbing a hospital gown of blood. “I need you now. More than ever before. I need your sight. I need your figuring and your reassurance.”
But there will be no reassurance; she knows that. None from him. None from her children. None from these ragged, soiled gowns. None from the Guardian who watch over her like she’s some scary weapon that will, at any second, detonate.
She scrubs and scrubs, growing more furious with each scrub. What are these stains? She doesn’t care. Whose blood is she washing out, if not her own, over and over again? She doesn’t even have time or energy to be sad anymore; anger is easier.
The door opens. Noise from the hall floods in. Ellena turns to find Gabel standing there, the young Guardian with the unblemished chestnut-colored skin, brawny square jaw, smooth shaved head, and muscular form. Even through the light layer of armor he wears, she can see his shapely pecs and his broad, thick shoulders. Stubble lightly dusts his handsome face, pierced by two sharp green eyes.
She blinks away her observations. Stop seeing him like that, she chides herself. He’s a Guardian holding you for trial—and is as young as your firstborn! “Good day,” she mutters, annoyed with herself.
“Not for you,” he says back, his voice like iron. “Intake. Ten.”
That means ten more have been admitted to their care, or apprehended off the streets. That’s ten more sets of pans or gowns or bed sheets or other linens and utilities she’ll be required to clean. There are worse punishments I could endure, she does realize, but if I have to wash another mystery stain out
of another beige gown, I will lose my sanity.
“Ten?” Ellena groans.
His gorgeous eyes study her long and pensively. His lips purse, as if tasting something sweet. “Twelve, to be exact,” he finally says, his eyes drifting to her mouth. “The Finger … struck a neighborhood in the outskirts of the fifth. A building toppled into a plaza, plus a row of homes were—”
“I could be of use!” she says at once, clinging to the soap-soaked cloth in her hands as she pleads with Gabel. Even the way he just stands there, poised and watching her, he looks like a muscle god. His jaw is set, strong and dimpled, and his eyes glisten brilliantly and sternly in the sea of chestnut skin that is his smooth face.
“You’re being put to use here,” he interrupts her, licking his full lips, which pulls all of Ellena’s attention straight to them. Does he lick them because they’re dry, or because he’s having thoughts of his own of where on her body to put them?
Stop it, she scolds herself yet again. “I’m a healer,” she says as she hears the commotion outside in the hallway, imagining all the wounds her Legacy could take away. “Put someone else to these stupid linens. Let me work among the medics and use my—”
“A healer?” Gabel scoffs. “You think I’m a fool? You want me to let you work with the medics, so that you can take away wounds and arm yourself with them??”
Ellena had honestly not considered that possibility, but now that Gabel has laid it out so plainly, she finds herself unable to argue.
“If you’d rather be confined to the corner room at the end of the hall all day,” says Gabel, “you only need request it, Lesser.”
She cringes at being called by just her last name. It feels so cold and dissociative. “I have … I have better uses,” she argues feebly.
“Should I remind you what you’ve done?” he offers almost politely, taking a step toward her. Every muscle in his body, visible even through his light gear, tightens and dances invitingly with his every movement. “You murdered Taylon Redbrade, the Marshal of Order. I don’t care if it was intended or not. Sanctum has fallen, and until order is restored to a new King or Queen and you are given a proper trial, you will remain under my strict custody.”