by Daryl Banner
Ennebal shifts her legs, her boot scraping against the tile floor. “You look like shit, Halves. Listen, you don’t gotta be a father if you don’t want to be. We live in a volatile time. Not ideal to bring any damn baby into this mortal coil.”
He coughs again, a bit harder. His chest feels really tight, like he can barely breathe. He hears a rasp each time he draws a breath.
Ennebal straightens up. “Halves.”
He looks up to find her alarmed and her eyes on his mouth. Idly, he runs his forearm over his lips, then draws it back to find a streak of blood down its length. You’re coughing up blood, he tells himself the way a parent tells a child some simple fact. Parents. Children. Am I going to be a father?
The decanter slips from his hand, crashing to the floor. A spray of red soup explodes across the tile, not looking unlike the blood that just sprayed onto his chin from his recent cough.
“Come.” Ennebal is at his side the next instant. “I’ll take you back and get a white-coat to come to your room.”
He gives a short nod, then releases his cane from its upright lock and uses it to guide his steps while Ennebal slowly walks beside him. The leather of her pants squeak with her every stride. Halves coughs twice more, his mouth tasting of acid and iron and something foul. Was it the unreleased laughs in his throat that caused this? Can he not even feel amusement without the poison in his throat punishing him? Must he not even use his voice to sigh or breathe deeply or draw too much breath?
Not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of the woman with the ash around her eyes—like Dran—and the poison on her green lips. He thinks of all the dozens of different little opportunities he had to murder her and prevent this from happening to him. He thinks of all the chances he let slip through his stupid fingers before she drew that knife across his throat. And if I was paying attention in that last moment, if I hadn’t let my guard down, I could have stopped not only the blade, but the poison too.
The bed creaks under his ass when he’s lying on it again. Mercy pulls the sheets over him and brings her face close to his.
Mercy? Halves looks at her and jerks away, blinking his eyes rapidly and retracting his hands.
Ennebal lifts her hands and takes a step away from him. “What? Did I do something?”
He keeps blinking and blinking the image away. She isn’t Mercy, he has to tell himself, again like a parent to a child. She isn’t Mercy. This is Ennebal Flower, the woman who just told you she’s two months pregnant with your child. This is not Mercy. You are safe.
“Halves?”
Before he can reassure her of anything, the doctor has entered the room with the nurse who’d instructed Halves about the cane. Ennebal stands in the back of the room near the window as the two men care for Halves, cleaning up the blood on his chin and giving him an oral medicine to help with the bleeding in his throat. The nurse gently massages Halves’ neck at the doctor’s command.
“Trying to speak again, aye?” says the doctor, who isn’t Halves’ usual one, Dr. Turtle. This is a new doctor who’s recently arrived from a hospital in the fourth. “No good. Keep ye mouth on the dead, Mr. Lesser, like ye don’t have one. Speak with ye hands, it makes it all easier.”
“He’s supposed to learn a hand language now?” asks Ennebal, throwing her question at him in a harsh tone that sounds like an accusation. “He hasn’t spoken a damned word all day.”
“Aye?” The doctor, so old and wrinkly that his skin looks like it’s melting straight off his face, lifts his glasses as he peers down at Halves. “That the truth of it, Mr. Lesser? Give a nod of ye head if it is. No, no, a nod can hurt ye neck. Rather a blink of yer eye for a yes.”
Halves blinks once with meaning.
“Hmm.” The doctor puckers his lips as he squints and thinks, a finger or two drumming along his chin. “Well, Dr. Turtle was against the idea, but I’ll run it by ye in case ye got a different take on it.”
“He vetoed a neck operation,” interjects Ennebal, anticipating the doctor’s words.
“No, no. I propose something less risky, but still risky even so. The poison’s living in yer neck, aye? And Turtle’s tack is to ignore it and bear with the suffering because it could rupture and kill ye.”
“Get to your point.”
The doctor shoots her a tired look, then faces Halves. “What I propose is that I take a needle to it, then—”
“Already tried,” Ennebal cuts in, crossing her arms and leaning against the back wall. “The poison can’t be removed, obviously, or it would have been taken out by now.”
“No, I wouldn’t remove it. I’d take a sample of it, see? Suck out a bit and take it to me lab.” The doctor nods. “With a sample, I’d test it against my other specimens from every known poison in all of Atlas. We’ll find its mother poison and deduct a proper antidote, aye? Then with a month or two of treatment—”
“Another month or two??” blurts Ennebal.
“The poison may start to fight itself, aye? Then soon, clear itself of ye neck completely. Antidote does all the work.” Ennebal makes another snide comment, but both the doctor and Halves ignore it. “It is a choice up to you, Mr. Lesser. We try it or we don’t, result’s just the same. But if ye coughing blood without using yer voice at all …” The doctor gives a shake of his head. “I can’t promise that sack a’ venom in ye neck isn’t gonna someday burst anyway, operation or not, killing ye the rest of the way.”
The room is stirred to silence by that last comment. Halvesand feels a ringing in his ears, unable to even process the soft beeping of the heart machine by his bed. I could still die? asks Halves, the child in his mind. After all the recovery I’ve been through, after all the work, after all the time and the suffering, the poison could still win?
“Or ye could be lucky,” the doctor goes on with a shrug, “and the poison may never let itself out. I could devise a brace for ye neck so ye can’t turn it or nod or look up or down. It’d keep ye neck as immobile as possible. I imagine that’s what’s got your whole throat a’ bleeding.” He licks his lips, then gives Halves a curt nod. “Take ye time, Mr. Lesser. Think it over. Ye got options.” As the doctor passes by Ennebal, he leans into her and mumbles, “Good for ye for being a champion to him. He’s gonna need one.” Then, the doctor leaves. The nurse, a rueful look on his young face, only lingers a moment longer before dismissing himself as well.
Ennebal’s face replaces the doctor’s, hovering over him with her short curtains of hair hanging down. The two stare at each other, not saying a thing for the longest while.
“Decision’s yours,” she says finally. “Baby. Poison. Neck brace. Antidote.” Ennebal sighs, her breath wafting over his face and disturbing his hair, which has gotten so much messier and longer and unkempt over the weeks he’s been bedridden. “I’ll write the two options on a piece of paper and you just circle what you want to do. We’ll make it easy for you, alright?”
Halves only stares at her. I can’t even nod. I can’t even shake my head. I can’t fucking move without daring the poison to consume me.
Ennebal seems to sense this, or else she is simply the intuitive type who knows precisely what to do, as she goes for some paper and a pen. After scratching some words on its surface, she sets the paper and pen in Halves’ lap. He lifts the paper up high so as not to need to bend his neck down to read it.
It has a few words upon it: Antidote. Neck armor. Two Answers. Both have the same risks: try to live and possibly die anyway. Why does it feel like he’s picking his means of death on this unassuming sheet of paper?
And who’s to say Ennebal wasn’t already letting Aleks between her legs two and a half months ago when they were assigned as partners? Who’s to say it isn’t Aleksand’s baby growing in her belly? In six and a half more months, will I become a father or an uncle?
The slip of paper caught in his fingers may determine whether he lives long enough to become either of those things. He stares at the words long and hard, taking his time, spending his minute
s, and savoring his hours. He spends so much time that Ennebal retreats to the window to stare out of it, then sets herself into a chair to play with a weapon of hers—pulling it apart and lazily putting it back together—and then finally pacing into the hallway where Halvesand overhears her inquiring to a nurse about the maternity ward and how often they conducts births and whether any of the doctors are “completely incompetent morons” that one might avoid.
It’s when he’s alone and the afternoon sun is burning through his window brightly that he finally circles a word.
0194 Kid
It’s the very next morning that Ames gets his wish.
Kid stares longingly at the house as they depart, eager already to be back within its walls. Even without furniture, it still feels like her one and only true home. She did, after all, live in it all by herself for years after her mother disappeared and her father was killed, his body dragged away by the masked men.
She wonders how differently she would see the scene unfold if she watched it now. There is still fear in her heart, but she has grown smarter and stronger from it. For I am a ghost now, and ghosts …
Well, ghosts can die, it turns out. Looking up at Link, her ghost in the flesh, her friend who is as much alive as he is dead, she realizes that he is walking upon a countdown. Ten years later, he will be dust and bone in one quick instant, so he says. The same fate will befall Ames, though she can’t seem to figure out how she feels about him. He’s annoying. He’s selfish. He blamed her for their situation … and Kid isn’t so sure she isn’t to blame. I put that knife in Baal’s chest. I took away their only chance at extending their lives.
Soon, the tenth ward gives way to the ninth. They manage to board the nine-north, which circles around to the eighth, and get a car all to themselves, so they let go of each other’s hands between the stations. Kid sits by the window, excitedly watching the city fly by as the train moves.
“What if, ten long years from now, we get ourselves to The Brae at the exact time at which Baron kills himself?” poses Ames eagerly. “What if we prevent him from dying, thus saving his life and ours?”
“Unlikely,” mumbles Link.
“How?? It’s so fucking easy, Link. We just … be there when it happens. We can stop Baron. Hell, we should even go a step further than that and actually find ourselves before Baron pulls the knife. We can intercept ourselves in the Waterways and save all the boys’ lives. I can stop myself from telling him—”
“You’re not going to do that.”
Ames doesn’t stop talking. “Oh! I’ll just find myself when I’m in The Brae. I’ll wear a disguise, I’ll visit The Brae like I’m just a visitor wanting to worship Three Sister, and I’ll tell my younger self every damn thing.”
“And then what?” blurts Link, impatient. “You’ll undo us even meeting Baal and then we won’t have gone into the past at all, which then undoes what you’re trying to do in the first place—I think. Or is that even possible?”
“There’s a word for that,” mumbles Ames. “Like, it’s when you take time and tie it in a knot and …” His voice trails off, squinting at the empty seat across from him, lost in a horror of thoughts.
Kid lifts her gaze to Faery, who stares back. Sitting next to Link, Faery gives a tiny smile to her, which Kid does not return.
She doesn’t know what it is exactly about Faery. It’s not that Kid doesn’t trust her. In fact, she thinks she likes her. Maybe. Is it the fact that Faery and Link have gotten really close in such a short amount of time? It confuses Kid because she’s always known Link to be an angry, lonesome type—like her, except without the angry. This new Link, this bright-eyed Link, this curious, adventurous, free-spirited Link … Kid doesn’t know him at all. Maybe that’s what scares her.
But it’s a good thing, isn’t it? Not everything has to be coldness and death and revenge, like Kendil taught her. There are happy times to be had, too. There is laughter to share. There is compassion. There is the sweet embrace of a mother. There is the warm pat of a father’s hand on the back. There is a friend to sit by your side in the night and a companion to join you on an adventure.
Kid once had none of that. Now, she has three companions, and they are on a very unique adventure together. She feels like she has a family now and somehow, this family feels far less temporary than the ones she’s formed before.
Two hours later, the four are hiding behind a familiar set of bushes on a dirt road in the eighth. Walking here on foot was a much different experience than time-walking here. The city gave way to sparser buildings, and then to hardly any buildings at all. This dirt road is lined with tall grass and the houses are spread so far apart, Kid wonders how the neighbors even know of one another’s existence. There isn’t a speck of Lifted City in the sky, which makes Kid long to see it at nightfall. I bet there’s a lot of stars out here, she wonders dreamily. I bet it’s just like the Lifted City sky.
“She’s not outside today,” complains Ames.
“We’ll sneak by a window.” Link nudges Ames encouragingly. “You were an idiot when we came here with Baal. You’ll be smarter this time. Plus, we have my buddy Kid here to protect us.”
My buddy Kid. Kid grins at the sound of that, then gives Faery and Link’s hands a quick jerk. “Come,” she urges them.
The four slip through the field, the grass parting for them as they edge up to the largest window unseen. Through its glass, Ames and the others get a front row seat to a woman and a man and a boy at the table eating their midday meal. His mother, his father, and him as a four-year-old.
“Ames, you’re so cute,” taunts Link, to which Ames scoffs and gives him a playful bump of an elbow. “Pharis. Gorde.”
“And me.” Ames shakes his head, watching wide-eyed. “Maybe I could just leave myself a note …”
“No.”
He sighs, though the look of surrender on his face seems to indicate that he already knew it’d be out of the question. Kid finds herself studying his face more than the ones through the window.
They stay near the house for hours. Twice they relocate to a different window, watching as the family sits on the couch in the den to watch a lavender-eyed woman give a speech on the broadcast. “Legacist Ambera,” mutters Ames. “I barely remember her.”
“Didn’t she get sick and die?” asks Link, his face wrinkled.
“Impis killed her. That’s how he took over as Legacist.”
Link snorts. “That’s just a rumor, though.”
“It’s the truth. Ah, look, the Peacemaker.” Ames’ eyes light up as he scoots forward to get a better look, nearly pressing his nose to the glass. “Janlord Weathric, Marshal of Peace.”
“I still can’t believe he’s dead,” says Link.
“But he isn’t.” Ames speaks with inspiration, all the bad ideas flooding into his heart again; Kid can see it. “Not today.”
“Ames, don’t start.”
“Is it really such a bad thing to want to guide the world into a better state? Baron was a fraud. Baal was a cheat. But we …? We are the true saviors of Atlas, Link. We—”
“Please, Ames. Please … don’t make me have to shut you down every damn day for the next ten years.”
“Come on, Link!” Ames’ voice is rising. “You’re lying if you tell me there isn’t something you want to go home and warn your mother or father about. You’re lying if there isn’t something you’d scribble on a note and leave yourself. It’d be so easy. You’re just a ward away.”
“Ames, you ought to remember just as well as I how strictly King Greymyn ruled Atlas,” says Link, his voice low. “People were executed or imprisoned for life for the smallest of crimes. Even my own father mentioned a man at the metalshop—Rychis Bard, I recall the name—who was sent up to the King and never returned. His crime? Losing his temper at his job and damaging a machine, which was later fixed anyway at no cost. Even a common thief might be executed, no matter how little they steal. You can’t be reckless.”
“We won’
t be reckless!” Ames says, nearly a shout. Kid notices the mother glance toward the window. Of course the mother doesn’t see them—but she can still hear them. “We will be calculated, Link! We will be careful! We’ll have a plan and work as a team!”
“Your voice,” hisses Link, noticing the same thing Kid notices.
The four of them turn to the window as the mother Pharis comes right up to the glass at once, peering through it with squinted eyes. All four of them stare at her, motionless, wordless, wide-eyed. She glances back at her husband and tells him she thought she heard something, then returns her gaze to the glass with a hand over her brow to shield her eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. The husband seems far less concerned, mumbling something that they can’t hear through the glass. Then Pharis finally gives up, returning to her spot on the couch where a little wide-eyed Ames stares at the glass himself—and for a moment, little Ames and big Ames seem to be playing a staring contest with one another.
“I have to let go,” hisses Ames. “Let me see myself. Please. Let me have this moment.”
“No, Ames. Don’t you dare.” Link grips Ames’ hand so tightly, Kid feels him squeeze her own almost to the point of pain.
“Please. Please, please, please.”
“NO.”
Ames wrinkles his face in anger, furious at being held back, but soon succumbs to the wiser decision of staying put—and invisible. He takes a deep breath, his eyes heavy with pain and frustration. Then, with a short huff, he says, “I’ve seen enough.”
Link looks sympathetic at once. “Ames?”
“I said I’ve seen enough. Fucking go. Ninth, your house. Tenth, Kid’s. Whatever. Let’s just fucking go.”
And with that, they do. The grass whispers as they slice through its tall, plentiful disguise. Another hour of walking finds them aboard another tired train, this one smellier and more cramped, but the four of them manage to stay together in the back of a train car away from the other passengers. Kid feels the tension in Link’s grip, and she sees the frustration in Ames’ face as he stares out the window with a look of hopeless longing.