by Daryl Banner
The math stays away and he bangs and he bangs. Something or someone has gotten ahead of it. It won’t leave him alone. What could possibly outsmart the math? What could possibly work faster than futures? He bangs, furious. Faster than numbers? He bangs until the hammer slips from his hand and crashes against the wall. Faster than …
The answer hits him: Outlier.
0020 Athan
When Athan finally stirs, his first instinct is to call out for the house servant, until his eyes adjust to remind him that he is, in fact, not home.
He sits up, gasps in pain, instantly lies back down. It hurts, and he doesn’t know what hurts worse … his back, his left leg, his ribs … Only now does he realize how each breath he takes is a stab to his side, knives, terrible aching. For a good while, he just lies there struggling with the pain. He only manages to find a position that hurts the least … still in great discomfort, worse than the time he sprained his ankle at the gym, or pulled a muscle in his back and felt agony for three days.
Wait … What’s happened? The last thing he recalls is the dinner he had where his sister Janna—No, he’d soon after gone out, right at sunset. The Lunar Festival. Yes, that’s it … He wanted to watch the whole thing from Lord’s Garden. The excitement welled up in his chest, he remembers, it burst from his eyes as he looked on the celebration below, the happy people of the slums dancing and cheering. There were others in Lord’s Garden too, but they weren’t as invested in the people below; they just happened to be perusing the flowers like it were any other boring day …
And then the Lord’s Garden fell.
By all accounts, the fall should’ve killed him. He remembers clinging to a tree, gripping and screaming. The floor fell out from beneath him, the shiny tiles tumbling away as he fell, fell, fell. Something caught him, something else clung and let go, and then he fell a lot more. Fire and light blinded him. His own screaming deafened him. He didn’t know up from down, left from right, the whole world going around him like a laughing friend gripping his hands and spinning, stubbornly refusing to let go. The Lifted City downwards, the slums upwards, he couldn’t tell which one he was leaving, which one he was falling towards.
They both looked the same.
He doesn’t remember landing, not exactly. He remembers his left leg and how it wouldn’t work. “Help!” he had screamed, and then a person kicked him in the face on their way out of the festival. They didn’t mean to, surely, but Athan cried out anyway, blinded. He reached for his forehead, sure it was broken, everything was broken …
And then he saw a face … a kind face. It was bluish … stained blue down the entire left side. The person who approached him—a handsome boy his age—he wore a hood. A brown mess of partly-blue-stained hair shot out from the hood, his arms gleamed with sweat—no sleeves—and his eyes were soft like a friend’s, even with the screaming and flames. “Help me, please,” Athan had begged, in some amount of words or another. And he reached out for the boy in one moment, then found the world black the next.
Now here he is, somehow alive.
He tries sitting up again, ever slowly this time. His eyes drink in the surroundings, trying to make sense of them. He’s been put in a tiny dull room, four walls, a closed door at one end and a square of glass on the other—a window, maybe. Has he been taken to the Eastly Clinic? He manages to get to his feet, surprised to find them working. Only one sharp tinge lightning-bolts down his thigh, down his calf to the ankle. He limps to the door, finds it locked. Knocking quietly, he murmurs, “Hello.” His voice is dry, throat parched. “Hello,” he tries again, “please.”
Then the door opens. Athan steps back, winces at the pain in his thigh. A man is at the door and he doesn’t smell of flowers and kindness. The man is bald, his eyes watery and shifty, and he leans on a crooked cane he might’ve pulled out of a trash receptacle if he knew any better. Athan is revolted instantly by this man, but knows his manners not to show on his face such disfavor.
“Am … Am I in the Eastly?” Athan asks politely.
“The what?”
“The Eastly Clinic?” He tries on a smile; it pays to be polite, even to the servants and aids of the clinic, lowborn as most of them are—though it’s admittedly quite surprising that the clinic would permit someone like this who pays so little mind to his hygiene within its walls.
“No,” answers the man. “Come. Get you fed.”
Confused, Athan limps out of the room, only to find himself in a stuffy loft space, dusty tapestries and linens draped all around. There’s also another man present: a stout-looking person wearing a toughened scowl. Better not to cause either of them an offense, though he is admittedly still quite confused on his whereabouts. Athan staggers over to a very large, wide window at the opposite end of the room, manages to get himself up to the glass. Outside, he sees buildings, greasy stained brick, lopsided windows unclean, some shattered. A building to the right appears like a tall mouth, rows of broken teeth. Even the glass he peers through seems fogged with the carelessness of a people who don’t mind, who don’t fuss.
It isn’t until he peers into the sky that the enormity of his situation dawns on him, for pasted against the glow of a morning sun, through the smoke and dust of expired flame is the underside of a great machine that goes on and on into the distance … a machine that, after a solid minute of studying it, he realizes is the underside of his home … the Lifted City.
“Am I … Am I in the slums?” Athan excitedly turns to the stout guy, then the bald man, his eyes alight, a smile finding him. “Is this the slums??”
“Ah,” grunts the man, squinting nastily at him. “Are you a Privileged? Are you a Rich?—a Baby Of Sanctum, showered in gold and jewel and pearl? Is that the City of Ass-wipers up there in the sky?—You tell me.”
Athan’s face flushes. It only now occurs to him, perhaps for the first time in his life, that the term ‘slum’ may be derogatory.
“S-Sorry,” he finally says. His thigh still throbs. “I didn’t mean any, um … I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“This isn’t just a slum,” he spits back. “This is home. We call our ‘slums’ the ninth ward, and there’s the metal district, and the silver sector, and the shield of the Greens. Maybe to you it’s the place where you get your watches, your necklaces, your shoes, your … salads.” The man licks his lips, presses the cane into the floorboards, which creak unkindly. “And for now, it’s your home.”
“Okay.” Athan steals another glance into the sky, amazement arresting his face again, then he says, “But I must warn you, I think my parents might be looking for me. I don’t mind staying here, really, but … but …”
The man just watches him, his eyes so full of hate, so wet with resentment. Athan’s words stick in his throat and he can say no more. I’m so dumb … I am not loved here. These people don’t want me here. I don’t belong here.
“My Legacy is in memory,” the bald man tells him. “I’m a Psychist. I can make you forget what you know. But in this case, my skill would be counterproductive, as I am very interested in what you know.” The man taps his cane against the ground—In truth, he doesn’t look old enough to need a walking stick, but he has one. “So, if you cooperate, you can go home … only after you tell me what I want to know. And I want to know plenty.”
“Okay.” Athan winces at a sudden pain shooting up his leg. He grips his thigh urgently, willing away the awful sensation and peering at the nearby chairs, but they seem like they haven’t been sat in for centuries, for all the dust and discolor on them. “I think I need … I think I need to sit down and … and …”
“I’m afraid we’ll be keeping you in that room for the time being. I pray you understand,” the bald man says. “Can’t afford a risk. Not today, not tomorrow, not for many tomorrows.”
“Okay. A risk?” Athan swallows, quivering on his weakened thigh. The stout man makes one step toward him, folds his arms across his chest, pointing chin. Athan gets the impression that he ought to do what they
say, or else bad news might spill. “Okay,” he agrees, giving up and choking back an awful urge to cry. I won’t cry. It won’t get me anything. I won’t.
He limps across the room, then stops at the door.
Athan decides, right now, that the kind eyes he saw before blacking out … that boy must be the reason he’s still alive. The handsome one in the hood, the one with the blue all over him, he’s a friend. He has to be, otherwise Athan is truly alone.
“I’ll only speak to the one who found me,” Athan demands. “The one in the hood.”
Belatedly, Athan realizes he really doesn’t have very much leverage to be making such demands. Really, he should be thankful he’s still alive and that the man with the crossed arms hasn’t tried to hurt him. Yet.
For a while, the bald man does not move or respond, his watery gaze locked on Athan for so long, he thinks he might’ve turned to stone. Then the man states, quite simply, “So you will cooperate.”
Athan blinks. “Yes. But only if I speak to the hooded one.”
Wordlessly, he nods to the stout guy, a key dangling in his hand, then turns to leave.
“Wait, wait.” Athan parts his lips, dry as they are, and asks, “Something to drink, please? Maybe some cream of pear juice? Or iced raspberry tealeaf, if you have it? I’m parched.”
The man glares a nasty one, yellowed teeth bared, and says, “We have water. You know … the slum kind.”
The man leaves. Athan moves into his little room and, almost gently, the door shuts and locks at his back.
The four walls are his only friends once more. Where once excitement stirred within Athan’s heart, only a wash of dread remains to fester and multiply. I will not cry.
He limps to the tiny window, straining his neck to find a familiar part of the Lifted City … so different it looks, so dark and ugly from underneath. He studies it, wondering if they know that he’s gone. Janna, mother … Is he missed at all?
0021 Wick
The schoolyard is changed. Guardian now stand at the doors of the school, and the students are allowed in only three at a time, each trio searched for weapons or suspicious articles and questioned.
“We can’t meet, not for a day or two,” Rone tells him quietly in class. “Way too risky, with all of them around.”
Not what Wick wanted to hear. “But they’re only gonna be around for a few days at most. It’s just a precaution, right?”
“Wick, even we still don’t know who blew up the garden.” Rone’s bright sapphire eyes flit about keenly. “Seriously, man, can’t talk here. Too many ears.”
“Is he alright?” asks Wick, cutting perhaps to the real reason for his curiosity.
Rone squints—like making narrow the beams of two bright blue flashlights. “You have it for him, don’t you?” He lifts a brow teasingly. “You have eyes for him?”
“No,” Wick answers too quickly. “He’s a Lifted.”
“But pretty for one.” Rone grins, flashing the whitest teeth in the world, which irritates Wick beyond anything. “He’s a pretty boy, isn’t he? Even I can say it.”
Wick scowls, face burning red. “Anything Sanctum-borne is nice on the outside.”
“He seems nice enough on the inside too,” teases Rone. “I heard he finally came to and spoke with Yellow. He’s a really nice, cooperative fellow. Hasn’t put up a bit of fight. You’d almost think he was happy to be our captive.”
“Captive?” Wick tries to keep his voice down. “He’s being treated well, though? You have to treat him well or else there—”
“Might be deadly consequences, blah, blah, blah, we know.” Rone leans in. “A part of me wishes he’d stayed unconscious longer. There’s a kind of … fascination … with people who’ve been knocked unconscious. I wonder if they dream … if they feel something deep and stirring, something that hadn’t been possible since they were two years old. Do you remember what it was like, to sleep and dream and … and forget the world once a day?”
Without showing anything suspect on his face, Wick looks off at the wall filled with Sanctum laws to think of a response. But within seconds, Professor Frey emerges to begin the class, and their conversation is put to rest.
The thing that bullies Wick’s mind isn’t the lingering anxiety from the tragedy at the Lunar Festival, nor is it fear of the presence of Guardian at his school. It is the mere idea that other people at the Noodle Shop are talking to the Sanctum boy he rescued. Is it so awful that this possessiveness has taken hold? He’s mine, thinks Wick, even recognizing in his head how creepy that sounds. That beautiful face that all last night kept at bay the terrible images haunting him from the fiery fall of Lord’s Garden. No matter the death that grazed him last night, the life he saved is all that’s remembered. And he feels some sort of claim to the boy … He wanted to be the first one the boy saw when he opened his eyes. Wick wanted that specialness … that intimacy.
“Don’t worry,” says Professor Frey. “This will all go away. Just an isolated incident, it was, and once Sanctum gets its treasures back, things will go back to normal.”
It is arrogant spotlight-hungry Tide that speaks up, his voice like a roll of thunder. “I’m glad the Park blew up. All those Sanctum scum looking down on us …” He doesn’t acknowledge that the price of it falling was the lives of countless below, but no matter, he goes on to say, “Good riddance to them. I don’t miss no Son or Daughter and I don’t cry for them … that Park was just another thing in the way of my sunlight.”
To his surprise, Wick finds himself agreeing with Tide. Not that he’d dare admit it out loud.
Even later when he’s eating stewed carrots and spicy potato mash, his mother and brothers watch footage from the broadcast of the previous night’s horrors … families of Sanctum-borne being interviewed, their sorrows and agonies expressed, their concerns for their safety, and so on and so on … Wick turns to the broadcast as they let roll the names of three individuals still unaccounted for. He stops chewing the instant he sees the beautiful face appear on the broadcast … the face of the boy he’d saved, and his eyes gloss over, insides warring between thrill and deep dread. “Athan Broadmore,” says the broadcast, “of Broadmore Manor. Any information leading to the prompt recovery of this Son of Sanctum …” and so on.
And so on and so on. Wick just watches, unblinking, unable to swallow his bite … Athan.
Athan. The name sits in his chest all night as he tries to sleep, and he can’t tell if the name means to warm his heart or suffocate it. Athan Broadmore. No sleep can find him, not in this tortured state. Please, he begs Rone in his wishes, Yellow, anyone at headquarters, Please let me see him. Please let us meet. It isn’t fair that they should have the pleasure, reap the joy of his prize … Then he reminds himself how obsessed he sounds, how crazed, how out of his mind. He’s a Son of Sanctum, Wick tells himself, unsure what he’s trying to say. And you’re the filth of slums to him.
Sleep finally takes hold one agonizing hour later.
And then he finds himself gripping the blade of a sword.
His father stares down at him, shocked. “How’d … How’d you see that coming?”
Wick lets go the blade, sits up and clasps his now-stinging palm. “Like father, like son?” His hand bleeds, he notices. “You haven’t woken me in days, or—”
“One week, exactly,” his dad corrects him. “It’s time to get you back to the shed, son.”
“Dad, please … not tonight.”
“You don’t choose your death. Death chooses you, and tonight you fight for your life, as we fight for it every day, as gardens fall from the sky …”
Spare me. Wick doesn’t argue further, no matter the ache in his sleep-deprived muscles, the sluggish way his arms lift him from bed—a bloodstain absently smeared across the sheet by his palm—he takes up the dagger from beneath his pillow.
“Where’d you get that?”
Wick smiles tiredly. “A friend. I hold my life in my hands.”
In the spacious shed do
wn the street, sticky and hot even at this time of night, father and son train. “You will outmaneuver your opponent, since you’re weaker. Rely on your ears, son, your eyes. You don’t see weapons, you see chances …” When his dad matches a sword against Wick’s little dagger, he finds himself making a grab at anything resting about for weapon or shield. “Don’t hear your opponent’s breath, hear opportunity …” Wick stumbles, a sheet of metal he used for a shield dropping to the side. “Be braver than a Legacy, bolder than a King. They can’t know what you truly are.” What you truly are … With a rash and angry lunge, Wick’s dagger cuts clean across his father’s cheek—surprising them both—and the fight is at once stopped.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” he blurts.
“No, son.” He touches the wound, looks at the red painting his fingers. “I get cuts at work all the days long, easy to explain.”
“I should’ve worked to disarm you,” Wick goes on, still guilty. “I shouldn’t have made at your face.”
“You’ll have enemies you won’t want to just disarm. You’ll do best going right for the face … trusting their face isn’t one you want to see again.” Then dad puts down his weapon, looks on Wick long and hard. “You need to make up with Lionis. I don’t care what’s got you two at ends, but he’s your brother.”
“I have three others,” quips Wick.
“Family is the only thing in the end, son. When Sanctum falls and Kings fall and gold from the sky … even then, family will be your only remain.” He ignores the wound on his cheek, letting it run in little red tears to his chin as he talks. “Lovers betray you. Authorities and bosses and peers, they listen to the man or woman with money, or who’s the scariest Legacy—neither of which you will have. They are loyal to their eyes, to the growls of their stomachs … not their hearts. For all his smarts, Lionis is fool to never tell you how much he loves you. He needs you just as you need him. The world’s small, son, smaller than it’s ever been …”