by Daryl Banner
He looks down at Dog, who seems taken in admiring his work. The boy gives a nod, then looks up at Tide, worried. “Is it okay?”
“Sure,” mutters Tide, feigning not being impressed much. Of course he won’t admit that he loves it. No one’s ever taken the time to actually make me anything before. “How’d you get the fit? You didn’t even measure me.”
“I have an eye for clothes.” The boy bites his lip, his eyes grazing over every inch of Tide’s torso. He can’t tell if the boy is admiring him in a longing, sexual way, or if he’s simply appraising his own work, taking notes on where he might improve. “I’ve been a tailorist since I was eight. It was my dad’s business until I moved out on my own.”
Moved out on his own? “How old are you, Dog?”
“I’m nineteen.”
Tide nods. He’d suspected the guy was just a year or two older or a year or two younger. “Eleven years’ experience did you well,” he blurts in response, to which Dog just gives a halfhearted shrug and keeps his eyes averted. “You know it’s almost midnight, right?”
“Yes,” agrees Dog with a hint of sadness.
Tide can’t help but puff up his chest, the tight outfit giving him a sudden confidence. “Once I get that girl, she may fight me. I might have to force her to come with me back to the Abandon and not stop by here,” Tide warns. “This might be the last time you see me.”
“It was a great last time,” the boy decides, his eyes still resting on Tide’s torso, probing every inch of him with his sad brown irises. “I hope you have a safe journey.”
He won’t follow you to the Abandon. You can’t talk him into it. He’s too afraid. Just say goodbye. “Goodbye, Dog.”
The boy doesn’t respond. Tide moves to the side door, pushes through it, then lets himself onto the street for the first time in half a week.
He makes his way toward the market, using what the boy’s told him as a guide. The roads are lit by small lanterns that hang off the cables. No one seems to be out at this late hour, which makes Tide wonder if there’s some sort of curfew enforced in this ward. He pays it no mind, since he sees no one outside patrolling said curfew, as he turns a corner and happens upon the silent market. Maneuvering quietly—yet glowingly—between the closed-up tents and emptied carpets laid out upon the smooth brick plaza, he makes his way to the east end, ready to make a go with this Gin girl and be off.
Before he makes it past the last kiosk in the square, something firm touches his backside, causing him to stop. A gun? A sword? A stale loaf of bread?
“I’m here to meet someone,” says Tide to the person at his back, whoever it is.
It’s a young woman’s voice who answers back. “So am I. And it isn’t you.”
“It very well may be. A little guy, round face, tiny wimpy body. He’s been poking around for a Gin.”
“What do you know of this Gin?”
“I’m the one who’s looking for her.”
There is silence at his back. Out here in the open, he’s already armed with a hundred different currents of air twisting and dancing and lazily meandering through the tents. Trouble is, he’s not sure he can get his wind to thrash upon the woman at his back quick enough to dodge whatever weapon it is that she holds.
When he shifts his back slightly, he discovers that it’s sharp. A knife, if I had to reckon.
“Leave,” she murmurs, her voice low and threatening.
Tide smirks. “Gin. It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Leave, I said.”
“I’m here by order of the Queen. I’ve been sent to collect you and take you back to the—”
The jagged sound of the girl’s breath interrupts him. He frowns and starts to turn his head, but she jabs the weapon at his back. “Stay there! Don’t look.”
“The fuck you hiding from me for?” he growls back. “What’s it matter if I see you or not? We’re both from the Abandon. Chances are, we’ve already met and I just never knew your name. You are coming back with me whether you like it or—”
The next instant, the girl thrusts Tide with impressive strength, and he tumbles into a wide, long tent at their side, which is complete with a merchant’s counter and two tiny display tables inside. The smell is musty and thick and the whole interior glows bright pink at Tide’s presence.
He spins around just as the girl closes them within the tent, sealing its door. She faces him. Despite the sexy sound of her voice, her front is anything but. The woman’s nose is a blunt cliff of flesh that overhangs lips that are wide and ungainly. Her eyes are too big and her hair is an unimaginable mess of dyed green tangles, blonde at the roots.
“I’m here on the Queen’s orders,” she answers back tersely, her voice quiet as a hush. “She is growing impatient, that much I know. But I have needed all this time to infiltrate the Coalition, and I am but two steps away from—at last—completing my mission. I will not go back with you, not when I am so close to succeeding. And if I do succeed, the Queen has promised me my pick of this ward.”
Tide’s eyebrows pull together. “What is your mission?”
The girl, who Tide must assume is Gin, takes a step toward him and brings her voice even lower. “It’s a mission that I’m now going to enlist your help in completing. We’re both of the Abandon. We’re basically family.”
I wouldn’t be related to anything as ugly as you, Tide would dare to say, if he wasn’t sure this Gin woman would hollow him out with whatever weapon she’s hiding.
“I can trust you, can’t I?” she grunts under her breath.
Tide smirks, his posture straightening and his chest puffing up. If he helps her complete the mission, maybe that’s a better feat to run back to the Queen with. Surely that would redeem him for the fuck-up in not getting enough eyes. “So you have a plan, then?”
“I’ve had a plan for weeks. I just haven’t had a way. Now, I do, and your presence here will only make that easier to accomplish. Tomorrow, the Slum King will be making an address. People will be gathered from all three wards. A guard stands at either end of his post. It will be your duty to take out one of them and allow me to be their timely replacement.”
Tide sneers. “Just two guards? Two measly guards protect this infamous white-garbed Slum King? Is that the way of it?”
“Yes. The Slum King is stupid and foolish and light-eyed as ever. I have half a mind to think the idiot is a Lifted, as trusting as an idiot could possibly be. And gullible, too.” She wrinkles her nose. “But we cannot get too comfy. The same cannot be said about the people who worship him. They are as mad as the Posse in the sky. These people revere the Slum King. We must stay wary.”
He’s had his own dose of these people’s devotion to the man in white. “So you take the place of one of the two. And then what?”
“He shakes the hands of each of his guards one at a time when the speech has ended. The crowd cheers. But when he takes mine, my hand will fuse with his flesh. Unless he’s brazen enough to cut off his own hand, he will be bound to me.” She straightens her back. “And that is when I will murder him.”
Tide gives a short, unimpressed nod. “Fine. Kill the fool. And how do you expect to escape the ward and return to the Abandon with your life still in you? You’ll be spilling your last blood before you even have a chance to sneeze.”
“It may be a suicide mission. But I am not here for the Queen’s reward.” Gin’s eyes lower. “She must not have mentioned to you that she holds my sister as collateral. I failed a mission prior to this. She took my sister from me and caged her in a room full of statues of others that have failed.” Gin’s jaw tightens, dimples pushed out that Tide did not know were there. “All I see when I blink is my sister in that room with the statues. She’s my older sister, at that. The one I’ve looked up to my whole life. Now it is her who will be looking up to me after this, after I succeed, after I complete the mission. She will reap the benefit of my valor, and that will be a welcome gift to carry with me as I meet the Sisters on the other side.”
“It’s no game. The Slum King will die tomorrow.”
“And so might you.”
“So might I.” Gin purses her lips, which does nothing to make her less ugly to Tide, and then she lifts her pointy chin. “And I am ready,” she adds, flicking her wide, creepy eyes at Tide. “Are you?”
Tide rolls his eyes, undaunted. “And what are the two of us to do until the morrow’s fateful speech? Hide in this tiny tent and cuddle? Share ghost stories?”
“We will get closer to the speech site. There is an outdoor latrine in which we will stay until people gather for the King’s big address. Then we will blend in with the crowd and make our way close to the stage to do our work.”
“Good,” grunts Tide. “You’re too ugly to cuddle.”
She gives him a onceover. “If men made me wet at all, you still wouldn’t do it for me.”
Tide smirks, finding himself liking the woman despite her face, which he can’t quite stomach looking directly at. “Are you sure it was the Queen’s intention to actually off the Slum King?”
“That was the one and only order.”
He realizes, after a moment of sobered thought, that the Queen probably intended Gin’s mission to be one from which she would most likely not return—a suicide mission, the punishment being her own willful death.
And if Tide’s mission is to return Gin to the Queen—alive—then is it also the case that Tide’s very mission is one in which he is guaranteed to fail?
I can’t let her kill the Slum King, he realizes. I must bring her back alive or else my own life is forfeit. Is this just another game of who lives and who dies to the Queen? Another game of pitting her failed workers against one another and seeing who survives? How many more games must he win before the Queen decides he’s worth the breath he can steal out of someone’s lungs?
“You look pale, big boy,” she says to him, crossing her arms and making her big breasts lift. “You too scared to assist in murdering a King? Is the mere thought making you shit your pretty pants?”
Tide finds himself scowling suddenly. He keeps his discovery from her. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Queen wants the Slum King dead and she sent me to aid in the mission. How is Tide to know which way to lean? “A dog made me these pants.”
The pair of them hear the unmistakable scuffle of a shoe. Before Tide can draw his next breath, Gin has darted out of the tent. There is a brief yelp of pain—from someone who is not Gin.
Tide steps out of the tent to find Dog with his neck fused to Gin’s hand. “A spy,” she whispers. “He heard everything. He has to die.”
“Not so quickly,” Tide interjects, coming between them only to discover anew that the woman has fused her hand to the boy’s neck. There is no separation between where the bumps of her fingers end and the veins of the boy’s neck begin. The sight is stomach-turning. “He is the very Dog I just mentioned.”
“This one? This … spy …?” she questions.
“He is trustworthy.”
Dog can’t seem to say anything in his own defense, but Tide can’t tell whether that is a result of his fused neck, or simply because the boy’s trying not to piss his pants in fear.
“If he is of the tri-ward unity, he is not trustworthy.”
“He will do what I say,” Tide insists tiredly. “Remove your hand from his neck and watch him not scream for help.”
Gin gives Tide one long and challenging look, then does as he suggests, releasing her hand from the neck. Dog replaces her hand with his own, nursing it with wide, fearful eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says at once. “I wanted to make sure you’d met the girl safely. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I … I …”
“He heard it all,” says Gin darkly. “Every word.”
“Yes,” Dog agrees. “I did. And I won’t tell a soul. And I … I … I won’t judge you for how you f-f-feel or … or anything. But might I suggest that you give the King a listen tomorrow? Maybe he will sway your heart. He is the King that Atlas needs, truly. Especially now. I b-beg you—”
“I beg you shut your mouth before I fuse my hand there next,” the girl spits back at him. She flicks her ugly eyes at Tide. “What’s your take on this? The dog’s life is in your hands.”
Tide stares at the boy too long, thinking. Dog watches Tide’s chest just like he always does, unable to meet his eyes and looking so annoyingly subservient that just his mere presence dares Tide to misuse him, to mock him, to put him at his feet and demand him to do his every bidding. He’s practically asking for it, standing there like a toy meant for Tide to torture.
Then an idea saunters into his brain. “Is being trusting, dumb, and overly gullible a feeling that your Legacy can handle?”
Dog considers it, then gives a mild nod.
Tide grins.
0202 Athan
Arrow’s leg is considerably better. He doesn’t limp anymore as he walks around. Arrow can’t seem to sit still or relax—not like the others can—so he has taken to creating a sort of control room out of the back room upstairs, which Athan believes belonged to Link, if he remembers what Wick told him correctly. The Charmer is making and planting charms along the streets and even down deeper into the ninth, just before the city grows dense and the neighborhood turns into tall and taller buildings.
Pratganth and the Ivy girl seem to be getting cozy with one another, as she always gravitates toward him and never seems to smile unless he’s nearby, but Athan can recognize the fright in her eyes every time there’s a loud sound or someone enters the room, no matter who it is. It’s a fright that runs deeper than anyone’s, the fright of someone who’s lost loved ones tragically, of someone who has skirted the edge of death, of someone who waits for it to come for her next. Athan knows the feeling too intimately.
Wick is asleep upstairs and Lionis is outside somewhere. The two are not talking to each other. Twice Athan overheard the still-bruised Lionis complain to Arrow about a throbbing in his nose, to which Arrow—both times—suggested that he visit Iranda and Auleen down the street. Lionis only huffed both times and busied himself with something else. To Athan, Lionis seems restless, and at times, he wonders if Lionis is simply feeling guilt for the animosity that has brewed between him and his brother. Or maybe it isn’t guilt, but rather indignance. Athan can relate to that, for all the times Radley would unintentionally patronize him and ruffle Athan’s feathers.
Athan goes to Wick’s room and returns to his position by his side. Wick, in his twice-cleaned red hoodie and nothing else but a white set of briefs, adjusts sleepily to grant Athan some space on the narrow mattress. Athan nuzzles his face in Wick’s neck, then closes his own eyes and enjoys the sound of his boy breathing in, breathing out, breathing in …
Breathing out …
Breathing in …
“I wish I could dream,” whispers Athan.
Breathing out …
Breathing in …
Breathing out …
Breathing in … “What would you dream?” asks Wick sleepily.
Athan smiles. He knew he was awake. “I would probably dream of my family every night. That way, I could still have them with me, forever. I’d dream dinners with my family, and I’d dream resting by the pool, and Radley would never be away at his King’s Research. Nope. He’d be sharing crystals of moonskin with me.”
“Moonskin?”
“It’s like an alcoholic milk,” Athan explains, trying to describe it. “The taste is sweet, almost too sweet, but we’d add a pinch of bitter chocolate. That cuts the sweet just right. Really nice to drink in the winter. I wish you could taste it. In my dreams, I’d taste it every day.”
“I wish dreams were so easy,” Wick mumbles in that deep, gruff voice he has when he’s just woken up—Athan finds it so sexy, “or the ones you want, so accessible
."
The fingers of Athan’s hand slowly run up and down Wick’s chest, bumping along the ridges of his abs and chest. “Accessible …?”
“I don’t think dreams work quite the way you think they do,” he explains. “You can’t really choose what you dream about. You go to sleep and … the dreams just sort of find you. Dreams are not always pleasant. Sometimes your mind tricks you, or takes you somewhere you’d rather not go. You don’t have the freedom to do whatever you want, either, as if you’re still restricted by your same dumb fears and inhibitions. You don’t really do anything you wouldn’t normally do otherwise … which sometimes defeats the purpose of dreaming in the first place.” Wick sighs. “Though, one time, I did have a dream that I could fly, and I flew right up into Cloud Tower and pulled out King Greymyn’s tongue. Of course, my dad was likely in the house too, so I wonder if some of my dreams were weird visualizations of math and possibilities.”
“I remember you telling me about that dream,” murmurs Athan. “In retrospect, maybe you used your dad’s math to see some future where you got close to a person with a Legacy that did allow them to fly, and you flew along with them.”
“Wow. That’d be something.” Wick chuckles dryly, then rolls onto his back. Athan adjusts, keeping his hand on Wick’s chest and gazing down into his brown eyes. “I’d like to meet someone who can fly. It’d make ending the madness that much easier.”
Athan can’t resist, his face diving into Wick’s for another kiss. The boys breathe deeply as one, then seem to hold their breath as the kiss turns soft and gentle.
When their faces separate, Wick mumbles, “Well, good morning to me.”
Athan grins. “Good morning to you.”
Wick sits up, then leans against the wall, staring out at the street through the smudgy, makeshift window that touches the floor. “You know, I came to realize something about my Legacy.”
Athan leans against the wall opposite him, hugging his knees to his chest, causing his arms to bulge in the effort. “What’s that?”