by Daryl Banner
The mud fields are vast and measureless. It is the only place in all of Atlas that feels unbound. Rows upon rows of to-be crops sit baking in the warm sunlight, misted in intervals by titanium pipes that run just over surface. Ellena swings around and pulls the wide metal spade, jabbing into earth and yanking, jabbing, yanking, pulling, raking. The soil yields to water yields to mud, and when sweat makes out on her brow, she absently wipes it away with the back of a muddy hand, oblivious to what’s left in its place.
From the distance, she sees a vehicle. Instantly she stops, watches across the field with eyes wide open. It is so rare to see a vehicle even on the streets of Atlas, but out here in the Greens?—Unheard of. She covers half the distance, bringing herself to the side of the dirt road as the large mirror-polished vehicle—which turns out to be a chrome caravan—glides by calm as a bird. It has to be someone from Sanctum, Ellena realizes, awestruck. From nowhere else do chrome caravans come but the Lifted City, the Sanctum, the people in the sky. The spade slack in her hand, she watches the caravan roll to a stop at the squatty main office of the Greens—the only building in all the fields—where her tall, ugly boss sits in an air-conditioned room all the workday long counting seeds and arranging numbers in a computer.
Too overcome with her awe for the people from above, she hurries toward the building, rests her spade against a tree and spies through the nearest window. The occupant of the large chrome caravan was one single lady—certainly a Privileged, from the looks of it. So regal and flowing in silks, Ellena watches the lady being tended to by a trained florist who, after a short discussion, takes her through the tall sliding doors that lead to the greenhouse, a big glass dome attached to the east end of the office. Unable to catch any further glimpses, Ellena fetches back her tool and makes for the fields, but is sure to keep to the edge of the road in hopes of catching one final view of the caravan when it goes.
“You’re from the ninth?” asks a stubby-nosed florist who later comes out to the field to collect a soil sample.
“Yes,” Ellena answers, startled the florist is even speaking to her. In truth, Ellena had always hoped to someday befriend one of them; she’d wanted so badly to work with the flowers. This particular florist is from the sixth ward, some say the wealthiest ward of the eleven in the slums.
“So desperate this place’s gotten,” the florist spits back, jabbing a knife into the earth, “seeking help from the ninth. Nothing good comin’ from that ward. Filthy. Ain’t nothing got its merits no more, not even petunias.”
Ellena takes no offense. She just murmurs back, “I like petunias. I like sunflowers too, and four-tip roses.”
Then she sees the caravan on the road again, her heart giving a lift. She rushes to the curb, watches as the chrome thing glides by, and is just in time to be slapped in the face by a puddle of mud by the caravan, a sheet of it sprayed across Ellena’s whole, head to foot, but she only wipes it out of her eyes eagerly to continue watching as the caravan goes, goes, smaller and smaller as it goes, then gone. Who was that Privileged lady? Ellena wonders. If only I could handle flowers … If only I could make beauty from sodden earth and pottery, then I’d be noticed by a lady like that.
Destroying her moment utterly, the florist says, “Oh yeah, forgot. Boss called for you, ninth. Better go, and don’t go trackin’ mud through the office.”
Ellena abandons her spade at once and hurries down the road past the large dome greenhouse and into the office, careful to deposit the andragora seeds she’d collected into one of eleven giant bins that hoard them outside the door. “You called for me?”
“What?” barks the boss. “Oh, you, yeah. I need you to stay an extra three hours. Sanctum’s got too many demands, we need another fourteen rows secured and at least thirty-hundred more seed by week’s end.”
Ellena’s stomach drops through the ground, her mouth hanging open for some time before she’s able to respond. “I’m … but sir, I’m—”
“I have a meeting with Mr. Itinus, he should be here by now. See if he’s outside and bring him in.”
“Sir,” tries Ellena once more, “I have my kids at home. They need me, and—”
“I recommend you find new kids that need you less.” He pushes a pile of papers aside, turns to focus on his computer screen and squinting. “Three hours, it’s all I ask. I’m being generous, you should realize. I could keep you overnight, and still may if we aren’t making goals.”
“Sir, perhaps there’s another—”
“Mr. Itinus, welcome,” interrupts the boss, and a large woman moves into the office with a mustached man whose chin wiggles as he greets the boss. Ellena finds herself pushed behind them, their words swallowing the room with important business and pressing matters and numbers and money, and Ellena’s existence and needs and worries lay utterly forgotten.
Outside the office, she catches her reflection in the window, the setting, burning sun flashing in the glass and illuminating the horrid stains of one day’s work that play across her tired face. Really, she should be angry with the sixth warder who so talked down her nose, scoffing at her. They’re sometimes called the Hightowers because those of the sixth ward regard themselves with such esteem, they’re like a miniature Lifted City. Even their buildings they boast are tallest, though hardly lifted more off the ground than a house on fatter foundation. Filthy gold, they’re called. Smudge money. The richest of the starving and poor, they’re called … The greasy queens and kings of shiny slums … Many of them are the result of a son or daughter who’d scored big with the Marshal of Legacy, whose prized talents earned them a lofty place or a high job or some other reverent duty.
But instead, Ellena scorns herself. No wonder, she thinks, still staring at her reflection. Her worn fingers clutch at the stains on her face, rubbing them, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing, the caked-on blemishes of dirt tattoos that have nothing nice to say at all, she rubs and rubs and they won’t come off.
0014 Wick
In the daytimes, school comes and goes and dinners are had and suns rise and fall. But in the night, another tune plays; a song that makes Anwick Lesser of the ninth feel more alive than ever.
“Up!” shouts Rone, and Wick scores a hit on the dummy target. “Over left, quicker!” Wick hits that one too, though less impressively. “Under, quick, quicker! Nope, you’re dead.”
Wick drops the heavy weapon he can’t name and falls flat to the floor, exhausted, breathing heavily. His dad stopped coming to wake him in his room ever since their quarrel, which is lucky for him as it lends ample opportunity to sneak here to the Noodle Shop at night. The trick in training with these people is having to unlearn so much of what his father taught him; their methods are nothing similar and it’s confusing. Where his father taught him caution and distrust, they teach him boldness, confrontation … taking a lead.
Rone perches on the floor next to him like a bird on a tree limb, smiles playfully. “Giving up?”
Of this elite group’s members, he’s met only a few. There’s Juston, the young blonde with an egg-shaped head whose Legacy is noise; on first meeting, Wick mistakenly thought it was raining outside. Once when Juston was startled, a near-deafening bullet of sound cut through the room. No one startles him anymore.
There’s a pair of guys—Pratganth, pale and full of acne, and Arrow, quite dark-skinned and reclusive—who are the self-named intellects of the group, reminding Wick of Lionis. Pratganth has some dream of mapping the whole city, though Wick has not yet learned what his Legacy is; he always assumed it had something to do with mapping because Prat is always found at the tables downstairs drawing out plans and maps and schemas of known parts of the Lifted City. Arrow’s Legacy has something to do with manipulating computers and microchips to server a purpose, even when he isn’t present—which makes him the first Charmer Wick’s ever met … which is really just a fancy type of Elementalist.
He’s even had the pleasure of meeting the group hothead, a big-eared tall fellow with long, slanted eyes named Adamant. He looks l
ike he’s scowling all the time. “He’s had to stuff his anger quite a bit since he joined,” Cintha explained to Wick once over a plate of dumplings, “and he’s never much gotten used to it. When we find broken things, we blame him.”
But with all its members considered, why hasn’t he met the most important one yet? “Why doesn’t the leader show herself?” asks Wick from the floor, still regaining his breath. “What if she doesn’t exist and you guys are all following the word of a ghost? Until you said otherwise, I thought the leader was Yellow.”
“The leader is Yellow’s childhood friend, actually.” Rone kicks back on the floor and reties his boots. “They run this together, pretty much. I’ve seen her shape, a silhouette through window blinds … though I gotta admit, never her face. He calls her Gandra.” He pulls the lace tight with arms flexed and teeth bared for half a second, looking almost a little wolf. Wick steals a glance at the taut biceps of his friend—admiring them with stolen breath a moment—then quickly looks away, annoyed that he’s distracted so easily. Rone doesn’t seem to notice, going on and on, tying and pulling and tying, his toned arms flexing. “If anyone came to know her, our group would be exposed. Even Arrow and Prat haven’t caught a peek. Could you imagine if Adamant found out who she is? We’re only as strong as the shadow we keep, even to each other.” Rone winks. “That’s why we work in the night.”
“But I still haven’t seen the actual work,” argues Wick. “You train me to fight, but this group employs no violence. So what do we do other than glare at the sky and shake our fists? I don’t see any kings trembling at the knees yet.”
Rone moves on to his other boot, forcing Wick to consider once again how toned his friend’s arms are. It’s almost annoying, but Wick doesn’t complain. He’s seen him naked, anyway. “You can’t hug a city into peace. Sweet words only go so far, until even the right to speak them are robbed by a knife at your throat. Hey, that’s an idea.” Rone hops off, returns after fetching something from the table. “Get up. I’ve picked you a better weapon. I don’t think the big-hitter was your friend.”
Wick clumsily gets to his feet, sees the dagger in Rone’s hand and finds himself smiling. “I always could appreciate the lightness of knives.”
“Able to change hands so easily,” agrees Rone. “So versatile, as shifty in technique and style as the rain, which is fitting.” Wick gives him a questioning look, not following the reference. “We’re called Rain. It’s what we call ourselves.”
“Rain …” Wick lets that marinate. “Why Rain?”
“Because it’s a reminder, not everything stays in the sky,” says Rone, all the humor gone from his face. “Not the clouds, not the storms, not the Lifted City. And someday, I swear this to you, that Lifted City will fall—its King and people and promises too.”
A door opens and Yellow softly crosses the room. His hollow eyes hover on Wick as he makes his way, like a breeze passing through, a specter. Then he’s down the steps and gone.
“He’s got a little side business,” Rone explains, as if answering the curiosity pasted over Wick’s face. “He makes money by erasing people’s memories. People all over the quarter and in neighboring wards … and even as far as the Mechanoid Mines will hire him. People are very strange about their secrets, paying big coin to have their lovers’ heads wiped, or parents’, or children …” Rone’s bright eyes flash sadly. “Sanctum may find out. He should be more careful. They abduct people right off the streets, never to be heard of again. Men in shadows who work for the King, or the Marshal of Madness. And who knows what’s done to them? I’ve heard all the worst rumors. Not to scare you, but … I heard they do experiments. Like, what if some Sanctum scientist could alter your Legacy?—or steal it? Imagine that …”
Wick imagines exactly that. Changing his own Legacy. A life without dreaming. A life without sleep … just like everyone else.
“Who am I kidding? If they caught Yellow,” quips Rone, “he’d just make them forget their own names.”
They both find that funny for a while. Rone claps him on the shoulder, chuckling manically, and Wick wonders for an uneasy moment if his friend’s still affected by the sip of chemical he had before they started training.
“Ready?” Then too quickly, Rone is pressing the dagger into Wick’s hand. “This is yours now. Protect it.” Wick stares, gaping. My own dagger? “Every left needs a right.” Rone wraps Wick’s hand with his own, closing it, bright eyes insisting. Wick can’t admit how much he enjoys their hands clasping together. “It was always yours. Not the swords, not the axes, not the whips or knuckles or bats … You’re a dagger boy.”
“But Rone—”
“Consider that dagger to be your life I’m handing you.” Rone turns severe, his tone as sharp as the blade, his icy irises ordering Wick to heed. “If you ever hand it back to me, I’ll kill you with it.”
Wick only stares, stunned speechless.
Rone’s face relaxes at once. “There, doesn’t that feel nice?” He lets on a broad, handsome smile. “You hold your life in your own hands now. No one can take it unless you hand it to them.”
0015 Athan
The young tutor tilts her head as she corrects the grammatical error he’d made, all her straggly hair going to the one side. He misses the male tutor from last week, to be honest; he had a cute, small voice and a soft way of typing that Athan liked. But with boy-distractions aside, it is neither word placement nor spelling that currently fills his thoughts like a cool, tasty drink …
“What’s your life like down there?” he asks, bored of the lesson. “Is it true you make your own food?”
She looks scared out of her wits. Just the question alone seems to cut ice into her chest, judging from her sudden change in breathing. This sweet girl’s had good grades in the slums and her father holds such a solid Legacy that she’s been privileged with the task of tutoring Sanctum youth. Athan suddenly finds himself hoping that his mother doesn’t underpay the girl for lessons.
“I’d even pay you for a story,” he says, unable to resist. Already, he pictures the server he’d given coin to … and what awful joy came of that. “I already know about the phases of the moon and the full moon’s a day away and, listen, I don’t need to write more papers. Please, I … I … don’t know your name.”
She lifts the pen, nods to the screen of the tiny computer and, voice detached and airy, says, “This one is waxing. This, waning.”
And Athan is drawn back into studies, whether he likes it or not. He really, really wants the male tutor back. Dreams have their time, and moons have theirs.
When the girl’s left for the day, Athan’s mother finds him reading in the glass atrium and demands to know how his lesson could already be over, instantly blaming it on the tutor’s laziness. “No, no,” Athan insists with an innocent smile. “Turns out, I’ve actually exceeded the lesson. High marks on all my writing assignments, in fact. You know how I hate writing, but she’s a really great tutor and expanded my vocabulary. I know what a waxing gibbous is. Do you?”
It was an easy foolery; Athan’s mother gives the first smile he’d seen from her in days. He doesn’t mean to deceive her, not exactly; he simply has a weird instinct to protect the lowborn. His mother was so quick to dismiss the help, but really, it isn’t because she’s a cruel person. It’s simply that she expects the best of people, and that’s a quality to admire. Because of it, Athan always aspires to be better, to be quicker and smarter and stronger.
“I’m going to the gym, if that’s alright.” Athan smiles, searching for the gleam of approval in her eye. She gives it—a good day it will be, then—and says, “But take one of the servants with you. I won’t have my child a walking slab of sweat across the Eastly. And remember the gathering tonight. Home before the sun’s out, child.”
So it is with an excited quickness that Athan changes into his gear and, in company of a paid servant, makes his way to the gym to lift, to pull, to push and flex and see stars of exhaustion circle his eyes. It’s
two hours later when the sun’s setting that he gathers his things for home, but not before stopping at the balcony to let drop a single gold coin. He smiles into the evening breeze, watches as the flickering thing vanishes. Whose yard or house or hand will it find tonight? Ever since his father said that men of the slums work weeks to earn the value of a single gold coin, Athan was determined to give them away as often as possible, his love for the slums deepening with every let-go.
That night, he is bathed inch by careful inch and dressed proper: a fitted black suit jacket that hugs his form like a lover, matching pants to grip him all over. He turns a hip to the mirror, admiring the work a couple hours at the gym today did on his thighs. He pokes at a spot on his face until the other dressers surround him to make do to his short, messy hair. Mists of scent and oil dissipate at last, but he’s still not free, never free. Stretching his arms out, the jacket and starched white shirt beneath pull on his frame; so suitably dressed, fit to his every contour … feeling not unlike a pretty linen prison.
Joining the guests in the great hall, Athan finds that in addition to his tight suit and polished slippers, he must also wear the smile. Mingling about the crowds of his parents’ many guests and their children, he’s brought around and introduced over and over to people he swears he’s met before, Lords of This, Ladies of That … they’re all the same.
“And here is Lady Kael,” his mother says, and Athan has to search his memory before realizing that he’s in the presence of the heir to the throne of Atlas. Lady Kael Mirand-Thrin stands tall, nearly seven feet in fact, and her eyes are like two tiny pearls. There is nothing kind about her at all, but she’s always smiling. “This is my son, Athan.”
Lady Kael makes no effort to even out the comical height difference. Remaining tall, she merely extends a hand, and Athan does his duty of leaning forward to kiss her silver ring, upon which is clutched one single, perfect pearl.