LEGACY RISING

by Rachel Eastwood

  But his father didn’t know where he was. His father was busy preserving the social order of Icarus, and Kaizen, for a few more minutes, was just like a real boy.

  He pulled another drag deep into his lungs. It burned all the way down.

  The door in front of him gave way to a low-lidded, smirking girl with silvery dreadlocks—except the cluster of black there, at her ear—and a pinwheeling mechanical assistant, a brass insect with slender, stained glass wings. The smoking boy coughed and sat up straight.

  “Kaizen,” she greeted, as if this was often how they met—which it was. There was something different about her today. She wasn’t quite the Legacy of before, tentative, discerning, and she also wasn’t like anyone from Kaizen’s daily life. Gone was all stiffness and formality, replaced with a languid state of presence and a casual, slouching gait. For God’s sake, she was a woman in trouser suspenders with a single, fraying sleeve wrapped around her neck.

  “Legacy,” he replied.

  “What’s that smell?” she asked, taking her seat beside him. “What have you got there?”

  “Oh, a—a cigarette,” he answered, brandishing the dwindling cylinder. “Have you never?” Well, of course she hasn’t, you idiot, he thought. There were less than two dozen in the entire castle; his father had purchased them as a novelty from a rare antiques auction in Heliopolis the year before. “You should try some of this one. They’re really marvelous, you just . . . pull it in from the other end. It’s called a drag.”

  Legacy’s fingers slid over his to claim the cigarette between hers, and she took the slender vessel to her lips. His heart stuttered at the way her eyelashes kissed closed in welcome to the smoke, the way her mouth closed so readily upon an invention wholly unknown . . .

  But it was only a second before she convulsed and spewed its runoff back into the air.

  “It’s just like the smog!” she cried. “Poisonous!”

  “It’s not a poison.” Kaizen delicately took possession of the thing, ashing it onto the stairs. “You just have to get used to it.” He took another draw.

  “Yeah, well. That’s true of all poisons.”

  Kaizen considered. “All right, then,” he allowed. “All I know is that it helps me unwind when I’ve been wound up. So, what are you doing here?”

  “Oh . . .” Her eyes shifted as she scoured her memory for exactly why she was here. “I needed to speak with my Compatible Companion.”

  Of course. Kaizen’s eyes panned away. Of course she’s got a Companion; look at her. Good stock, as Dad would say. It probably took all day for the difference engines to find someone even close, but they did. They would have to. Of course she’s been matched. Of course. Couldn’t let her slip through their steel fingers.

  “Your Companion,” he repeated, eyes trained on the ground between his feet. “That must be nice.”

  “Must be,” she echoed him.

  “Weren’t you the one asking about the repeal of the Companion Law at the annual?” Kaizen looked at Legacy and found her with her chin between her knees, staring at a dent in the wall.

  “Yeah,” she answered, offering nothing more. “Did you know there are amendments to the Companion law which state that I’ll officially become ineligible if I refuse to marry in ten years’ time? Or if anything should happen to me before then that would render me incapable of bearing children?”

  Oh, Kaizen realized, experiencing a wicked little squeeze to his heart. She has a Companion . . . but they’re not together. That’s why she wants the laws repealed. So she can be free to meet someone else!

  “I didn’t know that,” he answered honestly, brightening up.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t. Men never become ineligible, unless there’s something ‘wrong’ with them, or they’ve already been with their Companion and had their one kid. Otherwise, you just get reassigned another Companion until your fertility comes into question. So you never have to worry about it, probably.” She rolled her eyes half-heartedly. “Let me have another drag.”

  He held the cigarette toward her and she leaned forward, pursing her lips again around its unfiltered tip, then yanking away with a spasmodic sputter.

  “Not for me, I guess,” she deduced, eyes watering. “It’s too intense.”

  “Yes . . . I’ve been told that there are cigarettes which filter some of the toxins out, but this doesn’t have one.” Kaizen considered the cigarette, then glanced back to Legacy and said, “Here. Let me help you. Just . . . hold on.”

  He pulled the smoke into his own lungs, willing the harmful chemicals to bind there and stay, then shifted toward the girl and braced her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger. Most people might find such a gesture alarming, but Legacy’s eyes remained even and receptive, as if he couldn’t possibly hurt her, not in her mind. He leaned into her space—until he could feel the heat of her skin radiating onto his own—and applied the slightest pressure with his thumb, opening her mouth. His lashes tilted up and down as he examined her features, but he didn’t dare close his eyes.

  The smoke coursed between them, tying them together, and Legacy inhaled the dizzying vapor. Her own eyes were shut.

  Kaizen had never been this close to a girl before. Even touching one. Even sharing a breath together. It was almost too much, and he worried he might just burst.

  Flywheel hummed overhead, forgotten by both parties.

  Legacy exhaled luxuriantly, a cloudy sigh escaping into the space between them, buffeting off of Kaizen and dissipating. Her eyes opened, still so even, still so receptive.

  Kaizen’s fingers skated lightly along her jaw, trailing down her throat, over the makeshift scarf, and then lingering on her solar plexus, half-spellbound, half-hesitant. Her heartbeat pulsed under his fingers.

  “It kind of hurts, but at the same time, it feels good,” he said, unable to break from her eyes. “Kind of . . . bittersweet.” Like being so close to someone you couldn’t possibly ever have, but feeling, at the same time, like . . . maybe you could. “I’m sorry,” he told her in advance, crossing the line between them and pressing his mouth to hers.

  She yielded with warmth, almost calmly submissive, as if accepting the motion of the lead in a dance.

  But this was Kaizen’s first kiss, and behind it the pent-up pressure of years. He couldn’t have ‘calm.’ He couldn’t have ‘warm.’ He pushed his tongue into her mouth, his free hand into her hair, and her back against the stairs. Incredibly, her fingers clung to his lower back, her legs curled around his in welcome, and Kaizen groaned under the sudden, acute agony of their separation. Friction contributed to their velocity, and he felt like he was on an airship with broken levers and madly throttling pistons, shooting sparks, threads of electricity incidentally being discovered along every joint.

  “Ow,” Legacy murmured, glancing down. “Something is really . . . hard.”

  Kaizen was about to apologize when he remembered Newton-2’s key and grinned. “Sorry,” he said, pulling the large brass key out of his pocket. He tossed it, with a tinny clatter, to the foot of the steps, and went back to losing himself in her. The outside world blurred around them and the hand he’d been using for support, the same one holding the forgotten cigarette, changed positions and went to peel down one of Legacy’s suspenders.

  Is this what I’ve been missing? It’s narcotic!

  Then the girl yelped and shoved Kaizen away, leaping to her feet after an ember had brushed against her bare arm.

  “Okay, I’m sorry!” Kaizen reiterated reflexively, still having forgotten about the cigarette and certain that his advance had repulsed her. “I just—I’ve never—”

  “It’s all right,” Legacy told him, pressing her burnt arm with her hand. “It was just an accident.”

  “Yeah, kind of,” he said, looking away in embarrassment. His eyes fell across the dwindling cigarette. “Oh! This!” He stubbed it out, equally regretful that the kiss was over and high-spirited that it had happened. “Right! I’m sorry!”

 
Legacy’s lip quirked with amusement. “You’ve never?” she had to ask. Although such things were technically illegal, most kids—particularly those too young to have taken their Companion tests—had kissed someone at some point. It was like exiting a store with a drop of candy in their pocket. It was mostly just for fun, and understood that it didn’t mean anything, and yes, Legacy had kissed before. Of course, most of them were part of some silly game, and none of them had been anything like the one she’d received the night before.

  Kaizen nodded, running his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, never . . . kissed anyone before,” he admitted. “The difference machines can’t match me at all, and girls never visit the castle grounds, you know. No one does. It’s just me . . . and the servants . . . and Sophie, of course, and our—” Shit! No one could know about Sophie’s existence! Particularly a suspected rebel! “—our other horses,” he finished lamely.

  “I imagine Taliko would probably put us in jail if he knew,” Legacy noted thoughtfully, seeming otherwise unperturbed.

  “Well, not me,” Kaizen said. “I’m sorry. I guess we really shouldn’t have.” Now that she wasn’t within an inch of his lips, now that he was breathing evenly, he could view the situation with some clarity, and it was incredibly stupid. He couldn’t even honestly imagine his father’s reaction, but he knew that it had put Legacy’s safety even more at risk. “It won’t happen again,” he told her. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “If only Dyna Logan knew what she’d just missed on her very own stairwell,” Legacy replied.

  Kaizen winced and stood, glancing around as if they could be discovered at any moment. “You should get out of here; I should have told you sooner,” he said. “They’re going to want to interview me, and Johannes will be here any minute, and you—you got a star next to your name on the blacklist.”

  He’d never seen someone so impervious. She hardly reacted. “Really. Well, that’s good to know. Certainly does escalate the circumstances, then, doesn’t it? I suppose I should probably go.”

  “Look,” Kaizen said, compelled to help her escape the notice of the CIN-3 sentries. “If you follow this stairwell all the way down, it’ll dump out right next to the back exit. But it’s guarded by an automaton who’s going to want to scan your clearance. If they’ve figured out you’re Exa Legacy—which they probably have—the automaton’s gonna detain you. But . . . here.” Kaizen fished in his pockets and produced a thin card of solid gold, a series of unreadable symbols hammered into it. “This is mine.”

  Legacy took the golden card without hesitation, but she asked, “Won’t you get into trouble for this?”

  Kaizen shrugged. “I’m always in trouble,” he said. “If you ask my dad, I never do anything I’m supposed to.” Weighing the ramifications of a second stolen kiss against the probability that he’d never see this Exa Legacy again, Kaizen leaned in and brushed his lips just barely against hers. “See?”

  Legacy smiled lightly. “Thanks for this,” she said. “Goodbye, Kaizen.”

  He watched her go with a strangely profound sense of loss, then turned toward the stair which had been the scene of their crime, seriously considering one more cigarette.

  Her little mechanical insect was there.

  Now that it was completely still, he could see that it was a dragonfly with a tiny brass key stuck into its back.

  Scooping it up, Kaizen slid the little treasure into his pocket.

  Maybe he would see her again after all.

  The walk from CIN-3 to Heroes Park was a dull bliss of carriages and automata. Her gait was wayward and dreamy, more than once pausing to examine a shop window or the dome itself. Flywheel was the furthest thing from her mind, and so was Dax.

  She was moving through the brass forest when the impact of what she’d done suddenly and fully settled. The mossy potion, with its immediate onset and intense impact, wore off just as immediately and intensely. And, unlike drinking fermented power pops, that anxiety tonic left her memory still clear as crystal: Kaizen’s body, lithe and muscled, draped at the foot of the stairs; the poison fumes she’d inhaled, unquestioningly; the information about her blacklist status. Most of all, the clutch of his fingers in her hair, his tongue tangling in her mouth, and the way she’d returned the pressure of his body on top of hers.

  Legacy halted.

  Oh . . . shit.

  Her eyes panned around the hedge of gleaming tree trunks as if they housed some portal to the memory, a portal from which the event could be modified and resubmitted.

  Shit!

  Of course, she knew why it had happened. That damn tonic had been to blame. Yes, she found Kaizen Taliko attractive. Who wouldn’t? He had the physique of a classical god and was filthy gorgeous. That hair was like gossamer ribbon, and that elusive taste in his mouth, smoke, yes, and something else, too . . . something sweet . . .

  Legacy marched forward, brow creased.

  Like he’d said, it’d been an accident. She hadn’t responded the way she normally would have, with resistance, because she’d been under the influence of an insidious beverage. At the time, kissing Kaizen seemed as natural and acceptable as kissing anyone else whom she wanted to kiss.

  . . . Not that she had wanted to kiss him. She hadn’t.

  It’d been an accident.

  And it didn’t even matter because she was never going to see him again! Kaizen—the earl, she corrected herself, as if to strike from her thoughts that they’d ever been formally introduced, the earl—rarely left his archipelagos. Yesterday and today both had been coincidences, unreplicable and totally random. The result of a wrong turn, perfect timing—Bad timing, she amended—and a system of pivots from a variety of external points, and it was never going to happen again.

  Legacy broke into the industrial territory, eyes on her boots.

  What if Dax finds out? What if anyone finds out?

  Even just that single moment, no longer than a third of a minute, had been illegal. It would have been illegal with anyone other than Liam, but with the Earl of Icarus, after connections had been drawn between her and a revolutionary sect?

  Legacy paused and glanced up. The factories belched their wavering streams of steam, indifferent.

  What she had done was probably considered treason. Conspiracy.

  Legacy stepped forward again, sickened.

  And then there was Dax.

  The thought of jail, exile, or execution didn’t bother her as much as Dax’s eyes.

  Although her boots moved swiftly across concrete, in her mind, she was standing in front of Dax. His eyes were shifting with comprehension, like waters made choppy by the assault of a stone. He’d heard. He knew. “No, that—that makes sense, actually,” he said, and the skin around his eyes crinkled to betray the smile behind his mask. But it wasn’t a smile of happiness. It was an uncomfortable, self-loathing smile. “He’s every girl’s earl, as they say. And who wouldn’t take the chance to be a duchess?”

  Except, even if she did have real feelings for Kaizen—which was ridiculous, she didn’t even know him—it wouldn’t play out like that. His interest in her was unrelated to her suitability as his Companion. She would only end up in jail, at best. Perhaps he would free her when he succeeded Malthus for the duchy, if she hadn’t been executed already, but even Kaizen couldn’t do anything overall about the laws of Monarch Ferraday. Kaizen—the earl, she amended—was obviously lonely, but the difference engines were unable to find a genetic matrix with “complementary” enough correlation. What the machines said was the law. And a city, no, a world of people simply abstained. Got old holding onto the memory of a soulmate who passed them by.

  Someone has got to do something, Legacy thought, breaking through a boundary of dumpsters to reveal the domestic district beyond. Someone has got to do something, but who? Neon Trimpot?

  Legacy turned this over in her mind as she advanced on the towering complex of her home, climbing the stairs to Unit #4 without the characteristic leaps and bounds.

&nb
sp; Trimpot had certainly gone far enough. Organizing the band of followers. Initiating a dialogue with the monarchy, however combative it had been so far. But would he go all the way? He didn’t seem to legitimately care about the Compatible Companion Law as much as he cared about a free and transparent market.

  However—if Legacy wrote his speeches—she could ensure that the abolition of the Companion system was a key tenet. She could tap those waters and draw him an entire demographic of thwarted romance. After all, who was more devoted a soldier than the lovelorn? Who had more fire than a man or woman denied love?

  Legacy let herself into Unit #4, where her father was dabbing a viscous, clear substance onto one of his smaller automatons, a tiny turn-key dustbin. Her mother was behind the shower screen upstairs. “Hello honey!” Mrs. Legacy called over the pounding of likely cold water.

  “Hey Mom! Hey Dad,” she greeted, dropping a kiss onto Mr. Legacy’s cheek as she passed, unconsciously following her daily pattern of waking Flywheel from his cage. “What are you working on?”

  “Just a little something to revolutionize robotics, that’s all,” he replied with a smile. “It’s an epoxy solution which will bond to the tumblers in the turn-key, disabling function immediately.”

  “But who would want to do that?” Legacy asked, moving to the cage over the sink, where Flywheel could always be found.

  But the cage was empty.

  “Hm. I don’t know,” Mr. Legacy replied thoughtfully.

  Oh shit!

  Of course . . . he’d followed her out the door this morning. It happened rarely, but it did happen that she might forget to return him to his cage, and so she would spend the day monitoring his position to ensure that he didn’t malfunction and attach to some foreign owner. But then there’d been the drama with Liam . . . and then she’d taken that damn tonic . . . and then there was Kaizen on the stairwell . . . and she supposed she’d just lost track of Flywheel in all the commotion.