by Daryl Banner
His impression of Taylon, Marshal of Order, is he’s a little boy. Even scrawnier and littler than Link, this Taylon is supposed to be the leader and chief-in-head of all Guardian. Looks are deceiving in Atlas, however, as Taylon has the Legacy of breaking bones with invisible hands that reach into you and squeeze, they say. “Don’t even look Taylon in the eye or he’ll crush your skull without ever laying a finger!” Halves may have no love for Taylon, but sure as hell’s smart enough not to show any disrespect.
He stares out the window of his dorm, all his clothes unpacked and shoved away into smelly metal cabinets cool as ice, and he swears he can’t see even a stir of life in the Abandon. One of the guys down the hall, a gangly and overly-cocky fellow named Grute, says he can spot the ghosts of past Kings on the building tops when the moon is full, but Halves doesn’t believe in ghosts. He knows better; the buildings of the Abandon are just inhabited by stray animals, gangs, and the homeless.
Braving a tray of edibles from the squatty slop-shop downstairs, he takes a seat in the commons room with a pair of friends he’d made and eats in silence. Most of the contents on his tray make him grimace as they reach his tongue, texture or taste not ideal, but he was never the type to complain. Sure isn’t Lionis’s cooking. Part of him misses home already.
Halfway through his meal, he notices a woman eating by herself. She isn’t the prettiest—but she sure isn’t ugly. Her eyes are too close together, but there’s something inviting and dark about them, something that hungers, almost dangerous, sexy, drinking in every little thing. I wish they’d drink me. Her mouth is too big and her nose tiny, but it makes Halves beam. Cute, he thinks, wondering how soft those lips may be. Yes, there’s definitely something about the way she eats … the way her shoulders hunch over the tray like she’s guarding a pile of nuts in a circle of dancing squirrels … He’s drawn to her, smiling despite himself.
But there are ordinances in place, a no-fraternizing rule of which his brother Aleks was very quick to inform him. “Yeah, you’ll meet a sexy lady or two,” Aleks had told him on the long train ride to the dorms, “and while you’ll hear rumors of things happening, it isn’t allowed. Just last year, two girls were caught in the bathroom. One of them had her teeth at the other’s nipple … Would’ve paid half a month’s to see that, hah!” Halves smiled, certain he wouldn’t have such an issue, as his dream had always been to hit it high in Guardian, impressing his superiors and someday scoring gold for his family. “Just keep your boy in your pants and follow my lead, bro. You’ll be fine.”
Two answers. Halves reflects on his brother’s warning. The trouble is, Halves isn’t one for following any lead of his brother’s, much preferring to set his own. Their whole childhood’s been an unspoken, fierce competition toward some imaginary finish line. Both of them running, racing, clawing at the dirt, biting at the air before them … Neither any closer to an end.
Halves notices a table of guys in the corner of the commons taking peeks at her—then breaking into hushed laughter. Her hair is cropped strictly at the shoulder and runs pitch black. The ordinance is to not have sex, Halves ponders lightly. It doesn’t mean we can’t make friends. Still, for as brave as he thinks he is, he can’t bring himself to just get up and make a walk to her table.
Halves takes another bite, chews and wonders what a girl like that’s named. He chews and chews.
In a dark hour of night, Halves is called from the dorm for an uninterrupted twelve-and-a-half-hour bout with Training Master Obert. It’s only the third hour when Halves makes his first major misstep; he’s spared the life of a simulated woman who, moments later, took to hand a long serrated (and just as simulated) knife that would’ve gone through Halves’ lungs were it, or her, real.
“Sympathy will kill you,” Obert barks, shoving an elbow into the motherboard, the holographic scene freezing in place—as well as the eight other trainees in the room, Halves’ peers … his brother Aleksand among them. “Hesitation will kill you. You show your heart on those streets, you die.”
Halves’ eyes meet the lanky man at the other end of the room, that greasy-haired fool named Grute who’s grabbing his junk and silently making a joke with a guy near him, then nodding at Halves, the obvious punch line. Is Grute the idiot propositioning for a suck-job, or is he just prone to itching his dick when he has a thought? Halves narrows his eyes, soured and humiliated.
“These things that you use to soften lovers and make dads smile,” Obert goes on, “they will end your life. Sure as a stab in the lung, Lesser.”
Halves, already feeling his cheeks burning from the attention the scolding is earning him, takes up his weapon, but Obert lands a steel foot down on the blade, bringing Halves back to his knees.
“Your life is forfeit, remember? You’re killed dead. A sweet woman you’ve spared on the streets just killed you dead.” Obert taps the motherboard and the scene resets before their eyes, the simulations vanishing—all except the one Halves spared, the killer. “Will your blood be thick enough? Even if the target is a pretty lady with big pretty tits? Or a child? Would you kill it?”
“Yes.” Halves stares the frozen simulation in the face, still bent to the knee, blade gripped in his sweaty palm. Two answers. “Yes, sir. My blood’s very thick.”
“Thick enough to kill, should that face be a friend? Thick enough to kill your own friend dead, should he defy Sanctum?—should he commit a crime?—should a single word be uttered to taint the Good King’s name?”
The lanky lad grabs his junk again, sticks his tongue out at Halves and wiggles it, provoking him worse.
“Thick enough to cut a boy’s throat? Thick enough to spill a boy’s life from his little boy neck?” Obert circles him, dares him, his foot no longer restraining the blade to the floor. “Tell us how thick’s your blood, Lesser.”
Two answers. Halvesand Lesser judges just how thick his blood is. His first thought is his brother Wick … young, naïve … the dreamer. Halves can even hear him now, snoring lightly, all the times Halves would creep into his room just to watch him sleep, fascinated. Wick, his broken brother who shuts eye when no one else can, an outcast even among outcasts. Outlier by definition, yet no one in the family dares say it. No one, not even wise, all-speaking, all-knowing dad … He loves Wick with all his heart and would protect him to the end, no doubt.
“Thick enough to kill, even if—”
Halves swings the blade in perfect form, the head of the simulation lopped off with such suddenness that two trainees hop out of its way as though it were real, the holographic head flying between them.
Says Halves: “Even if a brother.”
0010 Ellena
The first thing she notices when Wick comes downstairs is the cherry bruise on his forehead.
“Sweetie, what happened?”
“What?” He doesn’t even look at her, seating himself at the kitchen counter and pulling before him a can of mixed nuts.
“That mark on your head.” Ellena tries to get a look, but of course he just flinches away. “Anwick.”
“Mom, the last time you healed me I was eleven. You know that.”
Things have never been the same between Ellena and her son since the day he discovered what his mother can really do. As roughhousing kids, Link and Wick always came home scuffed and scratched up and she, generous as a mother can be, always undid their wounds, healing them with her Legacy the way one wipes a chalkboard clean, gone. Then one day Wick caught a glance at her in a sleeveless gown, saw all his bruises from the day before gathered up her arm like devil’s kisses. The sight of it cut him like another fresh wound.
Never been the same, not after seeing the truth of her Legacy. No, she isn’t exactly a healer, not in the conventional sense. More like a wound-taker … an Empath, in fact. It’s the rarest of the classifications of Legacies, and the most costly.
“You need to look after yourself better,” she tells her son anyway, annoyed he won’t let her take his little bruise. “Really, it’s a bit unsight
ly.”
“Who am I bothering to be sightly for?”
“Me,” she quips, bops him over the head.
Lionis is cooking dinner for everyone, and Ellena just perches at the kitchen counter and sighs with delight at her son’s talent … and just as much sadness yet. He’s grown up so fast, they all have. But really, being such a caretaker is in his blood. Ellena simply can’t cook a thing. She remembers the awful burn she took from Lionis’s hand the first time he cooked a bird for the family. Halves was still living here back then—such fond memories to hold tight on a night like this. She had her first son so young, Aleks when she was hardly sixteen. Forge and her were young lovers who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. Thinking on their first night, when Aleks was likely made, Ellena blushes and looks away as though her sons could read face. Their first night was so unromantic and animal, but the memory still makes her grin stupidly.
When Anwick is sleeping and Lionis and Link are up trees reading books, Ellena excuses herself from the house to attend a nightly greensmith lesson down at the temple. It’s just a three-minute train ride or a twenty-minute walk. Tonight she’s in no hurry and so opts for a stroll on the streets, which are strangely crowded with other folk going about their nightly business—of which likely much of it is questionable. She averts her eyes a few times, certain she’d just witnessed a pair of drug exchanges. Then, in an alley near her preferred grocery store, she hears the moans of a man getting pleasure that he’s likely not getting at home. I wonder how much that happiness is costing him. Still thinking on Forge’s warm hands, the noise of that first night, the bowl that shattered and the giggles, she smiles all the way down the road and doesn’t let another thing she passes bother her. My happiness is free.
The Wayward is a rundown little temple that people tend to mistake for an antiques store as they pass by, and most of its attendees are women, mainly from her neighborhood. First thing she does before joining the class is kneel at the altar, willing away her cares to the Three Goddess. She secretly wishes anyone else in her family believed in the Three Goddess, but so few in the city do; sometimes even she feels she’s playing at a game with no other players. Most people who drop knee for Three Goddess are twice her age or dead. Most can’t even explain what they are, despite the sanctuaries all over the eighth and ninth wards devoted to them. Prayer was a thing her mom and dad felt strongly about, an echo from all four of her grandparents who were just as keen. Though it benefitted them little in life, Ellena still smiles at the murals, the sisters to whom she owes her Legacy and her life. Even with all that’s wrong in the world, the altar loyally remains, and she so values its comfort. Kissing the wall, she thanks the sisters for her health and for Halvesand as he begins his trials with Guardian.
Perhaps she should’ve prayed instead for patience to get through this annoying-ass greensmith lesson.
“I’m jus’ gonna come out n’ say it,” a greasy-looking woman-thing called Magea announces, “I think Three Goddess is a scam.”
Benda sighs. “Please, Mag. Not tonight.”
“They are. You gonna tell me some triplets are responsible for my havin’ life and breath and ability? Even the Ancients had more organization to their faiths than we do, for cryin’ out loud. I heard Three Goddess is jus’ a way the King’s got of mind-controllin’ y’all. That’s what I believe, I’m stickin’ to it.”
Three Goddess, please forgive the woman-thing called Magea. Most the mothers of all the boys and girls that Wick and Link (and formerly Lionis) go to school with are here, and though Ellena can never remember whose boy or girl belongs to Magea, she always pities him or her more after every meeting.
“You hear the latest about Desura’s girl?” Benda throws in. “That girl’s worked her way right into a job upstairs. No joke, she’s got herself two coin a day working for some lady in the sky.”
The women start oohing and making giggles. Ellena, she’s always learned never to open her mouth among so many opinions. The only thing you invite into an open mouth is acid in a room like this.
“Desura hasn’t been comin’ to any of these meetings. It’s no wonder, she got gold pissin’ down on her on the daily now.” Magea hoots out. “Lucky lady!”
“Please, Mag. Language. We’re in temple.”
“If I had a daughter who hit it good on her Legacy Exam,” another woman called Esandra says, “I’d likely stop coming in either. I’d retire early, for real.”
Every child has to take a Legacy Exam at some point before the age of seventeen-and-one-half. Some wait until the very last minute to take it, while others get it over with; only nine years old was the earliest Ellena ever heard of. The Exam consists only of demonstrating your Legacy before an assembly of Sanctum officials, which always includes Royal Legacist Impis, the Marshal of Legacy himself. If the Marshal is impressed enough by a kid’s talent, they could be given the ultimate reward of a job, duty, or assignment in the Lifted City. Even past Marshals have earned their position from a simple, successful Legacy Exam. Even past Kings and Queens of Atlas. It’s seen as a lottery of sorts to those in the slums—a talent show that anyone can win, if borne fortunate enough. And the Three Goddess certainly smiled on Desura’s daughter that day, for she had an excellent show of her Legacy—though Ellena can’t recall what exactly she could do—and caught the interest of Sanctum, scoring her family riches for life.
All the women aflutter about Desura, Ellena’s eyes drop to the flower arrangement she’s been fiddling with, and it occurs to her how sad and uninspired it looks. A lump of colored crap, it is. A vomit of petals and weeds. Inside, her stomach is in knots about Anwick’s upcoming Legacy Exam. He’s only two weeks or so from being seventeen-and-a-half, and will be required to take the Exam by then. His brothers made the Exam without a bother, all with easily provable, demonstrable skills. But Anwick …
Anwick will have to prove a lie.
When Ellena gets home from temple, her neighbor Auna is fretting by the door. “Please,” she begs Ellena, squealing, “please, please, you have to help my child! She’s fallen from a tree and hurt a leg. My daughter must dance, she’s nothing without her legs!” Ellena explains she really shouldn’t take on a broken leg, not with her job, but Auna pushes: “It isn’t broke! Please, she must dance! Don’t have me beg … Take her aching away.”
Yes, yes … but who will take mine?
Ellena has a problem with giving in so quickly to her impulses, often acting before thinking it through, but suddenly she has the whiny daughter’s wounded leg in her grasp—just touching it makes the little dancer wail annoyingly. As Ellena becomes aware of the pain transferring into her own leg, she wonders idly if she’s neglecting her children.
Then the pain hits—Ellena shrieks once, gutturally, then drops to the ground. She tries not to cry out again as her leg truly accepts the wound, not wanting to frighten the girl. Maybe it isn’t a broken leg, but it sure as hell hurts like one.
“Ellena!” cries the neighbor, reaching down to assist. “Oh, I’m so sorry!—I’ve asked too much!”
“No, no,” Ellena insists, hiding all the pain in a tight, crazed smile. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” In agony is more like it … But really, she’s heard enough whining and fussing for a night, even from herself.
“Can I get you anything? Please? A water? Or … or …”
“Silence, you can get me,” Ellena says, speaking too quietly to be heard.
“What was that?” asks Auna, leaning in.
Ellena clenches shut her eyes, breathes slowly. “I’m fine.”
When she opens her eyes, she finds Auna’s moved her attention back to her dancer daughter, who is still complaining loudly, even after the wound’s been taken from her. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Auna keeps saying, hushing her and brushing her daughter’s long, pretty hair. “My little dancer’s okay.”
My happiness is free. Ellena finds herself chuckling soundlessly, still clutching her leg as the throbbing slowly, painstaking
ly, lazily subsides. I never thought I could feel my pulse in my hips. Ellena laughs louder, tickled suddenly.
Her first job was at a hospital, but she didn’t keep it for long. They fired her after she treated Jule, an elderly patient with severe abdominal pain. Old and fussy Jule longed to be home with her three little children—she’d say so every night. Despite the facility strictly barring Ellena from using her Legacy to treat patients, she felt for this Jule. In one rash moment, she crept into the woman’s room and, feeling herself brave, embraced the old hag like a sister. The wounds, whatever they were, transferred fast. Then Ellena was on the floor screaming, curling up like a poisoned insect, thrashing and moaning pitifully. It was one of the worst pains she’d ever known, worse than any she can recall even today. Jule wasn’t super grateful, just ready to go, and as Ellena still writhed on the tile, Jule stepped over her on her way out of the room.
The doctors in charge released her from duty that same hour. She hardly heard their words over her own screaming.
And the release was permanent. No hospitals would hire her again. She even tried the clinics, nursing homes, daycares … No one would take her. As she always had a desire to work in the Greens as a florist, she thought this a sign, a nudge from the Three Goddess, and pursued the Greens for a new career. But of course, the only position they had was in the muds. She gave one quick thought to her children and took the job. Now she comes home with mud stains on her hands and face that never seem to clear. She can’t tell the difference between dirt blemishes and actual bruises she’s accepted from others anymore, but really they’re all the same.
Limping home, Ellena realizes her next day of work will be a trying one, raking mud on a damaged leg. But at least she also heals faster than most. She will still suffer, but not as long as Auna’s little dancer would’ve.