by Daryl Banner
“Wait, wait.” Athan’s head is spinning. If Wick’s doubled back and is heading for the sixth … “We’re still looking for Wick and Juston. Have you heard from them? They might be heading back there now! Your earpiece charms aren’t working.”
“Because my charms are at the Warden’s tower. All my charms went crazy and started screeching, so I had to abandon them. That means we have no ears on Wick or Juston, either. I only just now remembered that I’d made these dumb rings as a sort of emergency thing, but Wick and Juston aren’t responding to theirs. Listen,” he says, speaking faster than Athan can keep up. “I’m with Prat and … and someone else. We need to meet up with you and Lionis until we figure out where Rain is convening. I don’t have any communication with Gandra or Yellow. They’re totally in the dark.”
Athan sighs, despairing. “I … I can’t find Wick. The warehouse had collapsed. One of your charms was in it, and—”
“I had charms planted there already. It’s possible they may have gotten out. You need to find them.”
“I’m trying.” Athan’s eyes are wild, scanning every building in sight and squinting down the road, begging his eyes to find Wick and Juston staggering toward him in the distance, but no such thing happens. “I’m by the entrance to the Dark Abandon.”
“You crazy? Don’t go in there.”
“I’m not.” Athan glances back at the ghostly road into the ward that seems like its end is swallowed by a great shadowy beast, cast into darkness and shapeless mist.
Then he sees it.
Stumbling past the threshold of the twelfth ward, Athan rushes to the thing he spotted. He crouches next to it, his heart leaping into his throat.
Arrow keeps speaking. “Listen, we’re in the tenth right now. It’s as far as the secret passageways from the sixth could take us. We’re staying underground, right by the exit to the street, until all of us are joined back up, alright? Prat and I think it’s best.”
Athan peers into the infinite dark, fear gripping him by the throat as his fingers play in the soft material of the item he found. “Okay,” he chokes at the ring charm on his finger.
“Find Wick and Juston. With the seven of us together, we’ll be alright.”
Seven. “Where’s Victra?”
There’s a long silence. Then, Arrow’s voice sullenly responds, “She … She didn’t make it.”
It’s Wick’s red sleeveless hoodie that Athan has found, bunched up on the side of the road by a lamppost that makes no light. Tears sting Athan’s eyes as he glares at the darkness of the ghostly twelfth ward before him. “I’m going to find my Wick,” he promises, bringing the jacket to his face and breathing in his slum boy’s scent.
0166 Tide
He moves through the dark streets of the Abandon, which are never really dark when he’s walking them, considering the soft pink-or-purple glow that follows him. It’s predominantly pink lately, but he doesn’t much care about it.
The other outlaws—some have started calling themselves “the neons”—won’t have a thing to do with him. No matter what color they glow or why they were struck or for what crime they were never successfully arrested, it doesn’t matter. Ever since Tide failed his mission and got his partner killed as a result, he isn’t trusted or very much liked at all.
No one steps up to him anymore either. One large man, who was apparently a friend of Scorp’s, confronted Tide with a group of six others. They had very specific plans for him. They were going to pin Tide to the ground, pull off his clothes, and then four of them were going to take turns having their pleasure with the boy. What, precisely, that pleasure entailed, Tide could only wonder with dark amusement. Then, after they were done, the man threatened that he would pull out rusted needles and pink ink and tattoo Tide’s glow marks permanently onto the boy’s body, not caring if he drew blood or infected him in the unclean process. To all of that, Tide grunted, amused, then pulled a hurricane of wind down the street. The men crashed into one another so hard, two of them broke their noses. The others were dragged down the hard, unforgiving pavement of the road, bloodied rashes forming down their legs and arms as the wind ruthlessly pushed at them. By the time Tide’s wind calmed, the men were tattooed in their own blood. Tide’s never been bothered again.
But it isn’t the opinions of the hardened men and women of the streets that matter to him. The Queen has been disappointed by Tide, and he’s not been sent on any missions. If he gets no missions, then he gets no foodstuffs in return. A day and a half it’s been since Tide’s eaten a decent meal. A smirking young man had shared half his stew with Tide just last evening, though he suspects he did it more out of fear—since Tide’s little hurricane assault was witnessed by several—and less out of any kindness that might’ve lived in the young man’s heart. The stew had sat horribly in his bowels, and he found himself crouched in an alley later that night to empty himself of significantly more than what he’d eaten.
Even with the glow, Tide has grown pale. He shivers sometimes and occasionally fights an urge to pass out. That would be the end of him, he knows. If he loses consciousness, the others will descend upon him, and he’ll never again wake. He has no friends here. He’s only made enemies—and worse.
Life outside the Abandon is not an option. Once one begins work for the Queen, they aren’t allowed to leave. The Queen even assigns some people on hunting missions to seek out those who have fled the Abandon without a task. If he flees, he’ll just be another mark on the Queen’s list. He’ll be dead before he reaches his home in the tenth—if it even still exists.
Just give me a mission, he’d beg the Queen if he could. Trust me again. I am so sorry. I fucked up. I fucked up so fucking bad. Please.
He still doesn’t understand what went wrong at the warehouse. That wind, it was not his own. Wick had such a dark look of intent in his little scared eyes. Could he somehow … smell a storm into existence? That doesn’t even make sense. Tide’s jaw clenches just at the thought of Wick’s stupid face and what went down. I should have cut off his stupid head when I had the chance. I should have—
“Tide?? Is that you??”
He looks up. A muscled boy with blond hair stands there.
“Who the fuck are you?” growls Tide, hardly having the energy in him to even shout.
The boy blinks. “I-It’s me. It’s Athan.”
Tide stares at him. Who the fuck is Athan? He studies the boy’s face, his soft-looking greyish-blue eyes, his short, wispy blond hair, the meat of muscle on his body. He doesn’t look like he belongs in the slums at all. This Athan fool couldn’t look more out of place.
“Fuck off,” he growls at him. “You playing some kind of game with me? I’ll suck the wind right out of your lungs. I’ve done it before. I’ve suffocated people with my Legacy.”
Quite frankly, Tide isn’t sure he’ll ever have the stomach to do that again. The visual of Scorp’s terrified, suffocating, lumpy face was the most horrifying thing Tide has ever seen. He can’t even begin to fathom the amount of pain Scorp must have felt in that last, gruesome moment of his life.
“You have a very … strong power with wind,” agrees the boy called Athan, his eyes reflecting a bizarre uncertainty. “I … I don’t know what you’ve been through after the Fall of Sanctum, but—”
“I said fuck off, didn’t I? Didn’t I just threaten your life?”
“Tide, I’m looking for Wick.”
Tide feels the blood rush out of his face. With a grunt, he pushes himself off the ground, staggering to his feet. His knees are wobbly and his stomach feels like a sharp, jagged chasm, infinitely deep. “The fuck did you just say?”
“W-Wick,” repeats this dumb muscled Athan kid. “I’ve lost him. I found … I found this,” he says, lifting up a dirty red jacket. “Have you seen him around here?”
He’s coming for me. That mad-eyed fucker is coming for me. “If you find him, you tell him he better not fuckin’ come near me. Unless he has a wish to die.”
“Tide …
”
“And if you have that same wish, keep talking,” Tide growls.
He stands there stupidly, his mouth parted as if he wishes to speak, but suddenly can’t let out the words. If it wasn’t against the Queen’s orders to take eyes from people within our own ward, I’d have her twenty bags full of severed heads—and this Athan fool’s would be at the top. Lucky for him, the Athan fool gives one curt nod, a tinge of regret seeming to sting his eyes, and then he retreats away slowly, the jacket hanging from his clenched fist.
Tide watches him go, glaring. He wonders if the Queen would soften her stance on him if he were to capture Wick—his original tenth head—and bring him in. He could redeem himself, and then he would get missions again and be able to feed himself.
The thought is like a meal, rejuvenating his muscles just the same. Tide’s posture straightens as he walks the streets with a new intent in mind: finding that wimpy fucker. And he’s without his stupid jacket, Tide realizes. I’ll spot him in a second, and the Abandon is my home; I know its streets as intimately as the wind.
He makes it two streets before happening on a sight that stops him cold. Two of the Queen’s guards are marching toward him.
“Tide Wellport,” one of them states when the pair of them come to a stop not two paces before him.
His teeth rattle in his mouth. I’m shaking because I’m hungry, he tells himself. “Yeah. That’s me.”
“The Queen summons you.”
Tide feels his lips parting. His mouth turns dry in the space of a heartbeat, his insides hollowing out. What does the Queen want with him? Is he being forgiven? Is he being given a mission?
Is he being executed?
“This way,” grunts the guard, the other remaining silent.
The two position themselves on either side of Tide as he is walked down the dark street, their armor painted an indistinct shade of pink from Tide’s glow. He masks the trembling in his legs by marching more forcefully than is necessary, each of his footfalls planting into the pavement with a purpose. His eyes never stop scanning the curbs and the darkened storefronts and the creaky porches of houses that line the street. He looks for Wick’s face, but all he sees looking back are suspicious eyes, resentful stares, and faces of people who want him dead.
The doors to the fortress open as dauntingly as they always do. The stairs downward seem to go on forever and ever, and three times Tide has to blink away a dizziness that threatens to topple him down the rest of the steps. Focus, he pleads with himself.
The Queen’s hall is opened to his fearful eyes. When he passes the threshold of the gates, the guards shut it with themselves on the other side. Tide swallows hard, not liking that at all.
He puts one foot in front of the other, slowly making his way down the hall toward the Queen, who waits by the pale brazier at the end. This may be the final walk Tide ever takes, so he tries to enjoy every step. He thinks about that girl Maris with the big boobs he used to kiss back in school and his buddy Westly who he liked because he’d laugh hardest when Tide came up with a new name for some wimpy kid in the yard. Westly was named after a section of the Lifted City, which Tide made fun of when they first met before they became friends over beating up a kid in the bathroom.
He misses all of them. He approaches the Queen. He may never see a single one of their faces again. He keeps moving his feet. This may be the last day of his life.
He reaches the end where five short steps lead to the Queen’s throne. The brazier burns bright and pale, the Queen standing to its side. The light from the fire casts a tall and menacing shadow of the Queen against the stone wall, which dances as the flames do.
She doesn’t look at him when she speaks. “You are being sent away, Tide Wellport.”
He gapes. He hadn’t considered exile as an option. “P-P-Please. Queen. I’m sorry. I know I failed. I—”
“On an assignment,” she clarifies. Her voice is the iron-cold slam of a hammer against the anvil. “There is a girl named Gin. She—”
The shuffling of feet interrupts them. The Queen lifts her face, her heavy-lidded eyes coldly regarding the interruption. It’s a man who’s come with a tray of food. How Tide didn’t hear the doors open or the man walk down the way, he doesn’t know.
“Y-Your dinner, my Queen,” says the man in a voice so small, it could have come from a cricket.
The Queen’s ire is evident, yet impressively controlled. “I am in a meeting. I will take my meal in twenty minutes’ time. As I had previously ordered.”
The man sputters a response, seems to not know what to do with his feet or the tray in his grip for two turnabouts of his brain, then nervously decides to place it on the ground next to the brazier. He leaves after a clumsy bow, rushing hurriedly back down the long way to the gates where he is then let out.
Tide lifts his eyes to the Queen expectantly.
The Queen purses her lips tightly. Tide can imagine a hundred different ideas of how to punish the early-brought meal passing through the Queen’s head this very instant. None of them go voiced, of course, as she turns her cold eyes onto Tide and resumes precisely where she’d left off.
“There is a girl named Gin. She was sent to the first to infiltrate the tri-ward unity. It was her Queen-given mission and she was sent a month ago. She has not returned.”
“The first ward?” Tide has never heard of any so-called tri-ward unity.
“The Coalition, some are calling it. I care not the name it’s been given. It’s lead by a man who wears all white, and if I have a moment of ego to spare about it, I say there’s only allowed one King or Queen known for their white attire, and that will be me.” The expression on her face is almost bored, the way her eyes hang heavy. “Go.”
Tide flinches. Go? That’s all the instruction I’m given? “The … The first ward? I-I’ve never been to the … the …”
“You failed me, Tide. Ten heads I need every month. Not nine. If you cannot appease me, then ghosts will have you.”
“But I need more th-than just that,” he stammers back, thinking on how he’s expected to just waltz into a ward he’s never been in and find this so-called Gin. The first ward is one of the biggest, if he remembers what he’s studied—even twice that of the ninth, the Greens included.
“Ghosts … will … have you.” The Queen’s voice is severe and her tone, prickly. Tide feels ice lance down his chest, regretting at once raising his voice. “Your soul belongs to me, Tide Wellport. Your body belongs to me. Your wind is mine. Your arms are mine. Your every heartbeat and your breath. And your eyes.”
She pulls back her robe and, with a sudden sweep of her hand, draws out a sword as long as her leg. She points it, the tip coming an inch from Tide’s face. He steps back with a start. The blade is as white as a monster’s tooth, brilliant and shiny, and the Queen holds it with perfect balance, as if it weighs nothing at all.
“When one abandons the Abandon, they forfeit their life. If you turn on me, Tide, I swear it by the God I work for, by the demons in the underearth, by the shadows of Cloud Tower and devil’s root, you will become just another stone in my hall.”
Tide’s throat is so tight, he can’t bring himself to swallow. He is trembling so bad, his lip quivers like a child’s. He doesn’t need to turn his head to know what’s there. Lining either side of the long, long hall, buried in the shadows, are chalk-white statues of people. Some of them are missing legs. Some of them, arms. Some of them, heads. No matter, the fact remains true that each of them used to be a person … and each of them defied the Queen. Among the statues are deserters, runaways, betrayers …
And if Tide missteps, he could be among them.
“Newer, better foragers will secure for me ten heads a month,” the Queen states—sword still pointed, unwavering. “A fool like you will never again be trusted with that task. If you want to redeem yourself and bring to light a braver, better, stronger side of what I know to be the lowly rat that is Tide Wellport … then you will find this girl. And you wil
l find her in the first. And you’ll find her alive.”
Tide nods quickly, feeling like his head could fall off on its own.
The Queen seems to regard him a moment too long, as if some thought has circled into her head the way a playful gust of wind dances into a room through the window. “Questions?” she murmurs.
The aroma of the Queen’s meal, still sitting on the tray, reaches him and inspires an earthquake of longing in his empty stomach. To the Queen’s question, Tide shakes his head quickly at first. Then, a second later, he asks, “And when I find her?”
The Queen tilts her head. “You bring her to me, unharmed.”
Tide’s eyes drift down to the brazier and its pale firelight.
“Any more … questions?” she asks, her voice echoing down the hall, as if all the chalky-white statues are repeating her words in a frightful, creepy unison.
Tide screws up his forehead. “What … do you do with them?”
“With what?”
“The h-heads. The eyes in those heads.”
The Queen observes him for precisely ten solid seconds. “If you wish me to take your head, then you will find out.”
“N-No, thank you. I’ll … I will find Gin.”
“Yes, you will,” the Queen agrees, her white robes glowing in the fire. “Your life depends on it.”
The gates shut heavily at his back after he departs the hall. With each step he takes to the surface, he feels his life coming closer to its cold end. All of this is Wick’s fault. Wick put him in this situation. I will find this Gin, he decides, and end Anwick’s life for my reward.
0167 Athan
He holds the jacket to his face, his back against the wall of the alley he’s slipped into. I was an idiot to come in here. Every person has the look of murder in their eyes, like they’d end his life for simply looking at them the wrong way.