by Daryl Banner
“I’m Cintha,” she says. “But maybe you already know that.”
For a moment, she feels really stupid. She feels like she should be letting the others feed him. It’s been Juston most of the time, or so she thinks. She saw him down here once, but maybe they take it in shifts. Yes, perhaps that’s it. And this is her shift. That’s all this is. It’s just her turn to feed the … Weapon.
“You have a name,” she says, suddenly upset about the fact that everyone calls him Weapon, including herself. No one should be a thing. No one should be a tool, whether for Sanctum or Rain. He’s a human being first. “Please tell me your name.”
He doesn’t.
“I know Sanctum has used you for your power,” she says, the soup in this bowl suddenly the only warm thing she knows in the whole world. “The Sanctum calls you their Weapon … or the slums call you the Sanctum’s Weapon, whichever. Doesn’t matter to me. You’re not a Weapon or a t-t-tool or a … or a …” She shivers, then finishes. “You’re a person … you know, with a name and a home and a mom.”
“Dead.”
Cintha stops, watching him. Dead? Which is it that’s dead, she wonders. Or was it a threat? She watches him watch her. Only one word she got from him. She’s just heard his voice for the first time and somehow she still doesn’t know what it sounds like.
“I …” Cintha finds herself shivering again, and it’s so difficult to say whether it’s from cold or from nerves. There’s nothing to be scared of, she keeps telling herself, but—
“Killed.”
Another word. The spoon within the bowl begins tapping, tittering, and she realizes her hand is shaking. Bringing the other hand to support it—grateful for the warmth still radiating from the bowl—she halts the sound and whispers, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry they … killed your mom.”
“Not they.”
His eyes are still pressing on her with a dark, cold permanence that reaches so far into her, she’s likely to cry at any second. His stare is so intense. Something deep within her stirs, something that worries that, maybe, possibly, even those thick chains cannot contain his power.
“I’m …” She shakes for a second, the weight about her arms and belly jostled by the effort, then tries again. “I’m not going to g-g-give up on you. We can … We can rise up against Sanctum together. You don’t have to be alone anymore. You’re not a thing. You’re not a … not a weapon. My name’s C-C-Cintha, and if you don’t want to tell me yours, that’s fine. But … But I …” She lifts the bowl, the spoon clanking within it. “I’m going to feed you. I’m going to show you there’s … s-s-still good in the world.”
She swallows hard. She feels so stupid and weak. I must look so stupid and weak to him. I see the hate in his eyes.
Carefully, she spoons some of the warm broth. With utmost caution, and a little fear, she brings the spoon to his mouth. His maddened pits-of-tar-for-eyes not leaving hers, his whole body still as a stone, he only parts his lips to let in her offering.
Then his teeth clamp down. Cintha flinches, startled. His teeth hold the spoon within his mouth, his eyes still making no emotion, his body still unmoved … and then frost begins to crawl up the whole length of the spoon, from his teeth to Cintha’s fingers. She lets go with a sharp gasp.
Then he spits it out. The spoon drops to the floor with a rigid clangor, the broth within it frozen solid.
Cintha ditches the bowl. She runs out of the room, breath stolen away, and pulls the door shut behind her with a ringing bang. He’s not a beast, she tells herself. He’s not a beast. He’s not a beast. She’ll say it again and again until she believes it.
0050 Kid
The doors of the school creak open and a woman with a wart for a nose juts out her head, squinting into the thick, smoky dark. “You there?” she whispers. “Here, here.” Like she’s calling for a cat. I might as well be a cat, Kid thinks bitterly, except even cats are given more of a care than a homeless girl. The woman steps out in full now, swinging a bag of trash at her back. With a sick grunt, she flings it into a dumpster, then lets loose a length of bread from her pocket. “There or not, they won’t notice just one of them gone. Sanctum-paid, it is.” She waves the long stale thing in the air, as if making one last dare. “Show yourself. It’s been an awful long time, hasn’t it? An awful long time not to see someone’s face.”
Kid has learned. She has learned so well. I will never show my face to another person. She doesn’t want anyone else to die. People seem to, no matter, when she lets herself out of the sightlessness.
“Pity,” says the woman, then tosses the loaf to the ground. “One of these days … one of them, I’m sure.” Then she reenters the building, pulls shut the door.
Kid makes a swipe at the loaf, annoyed that it hit the ground, but bread this quality is difficult to come by. There is a lot in this city that is so easily within her grasp, that just a fade of her image and a tickle of fingers can get. But this bread is her favorite, and there is no price to be put on such delicacies. She buries her teeth into it, hears the crunch … the sweet taste, the almost-gooey inside and how it chews. Who cares if it touched the ground? She’s eaten worse and survived. Now that it’s in her hand, it’s invisible with her. Anything she touches is brought to her secret world.
The streets of this part of the city are long and silent. The buildings shoulder together tightly, claustrophobic, unable to give to the usual crease and crinkle and shadow of alleyways where Kid always finds peace.
At a bend in the road, however, the buildings do part to make way for a little yard with a few trees—and it is littered with many loud, playing children. A squat, three-story building with roofs jutting out at odd angles beneath its windows casts a shadow over the fenced-in yard, and the kids are running about screaming and laughing. Another school? Funny how she seems to discover a new place every day, like the city holds a chest of countless secrets that even over the course of three or four years a little girl on the streets cannot completely unveil.
She dodges the scurrying, clambering, guffawing boys and girls and sits by a tree to watch. They are all so annoyingly loud, Kid is half-tempted to throw a stone at one of them. She could do it, too. They’d never know where it came from. The thought is so appealing, Kid’s got a pebble in her hand before she knows it.
One quick chuck, and it misses. Really? Nearly a billion children in the yard and her rock misses every single one. Determined, she plucks another from the dirt at the base of the tree and readies her arm. This time taking aim, she pulls back, ready to let it fly.
That’s when she spots the girl under another tree across the yard. The girl is looking right at her.
Kid wrinkles her brow, looking back. How does she see me? Kid makes a check of herself, confirming she is, indeed, invisible. She’s staring at the tree at my back, she realizes. Ignoring the weird girl, she returns her attention to the boy she’s about to hit—the annoying, loud one with the grimy blonde hair and the mud stain down his front. Meet my throwing arm! She licks her lips, then finally swings, pitching the thing with all her strength. It hits the back of someone else’s head, a girl with six braids going in six directions. Her head lurches forward, giving a yelp, then the little thing spins around to look for the thrower. Look all you want, dummy. You weren’t the one I meant to hit. The annoying blonde boy is making a shove at a friend of his, oblivious, and the braided girl is rubbing her head, tears forming in her dumb little eyes.
Kid sighs. Her aim’s gotten so bad. She picks up another rock, tosses it in the air, catches it. She’s figuring its weight before trying another throw. I’m going to hit you this time, she promises.
“What are you?”
Kid jumps, drops the rock. The girl that was watching her from under the other tree now stands before her, staring. Kid takes two steps back. How can she see me?
“Are you a ghost?” asks the weird girl.
Not the first time someone’s called her that. “You can see me?”
“It�
�s my Legacy.” The weird girl tentatively reaches out a finger as if to poke, but Kid slaps it away. The girl gasps, drawing back her hand. “Wow! You are real!”
“How …?” Kid hides behind the tree and the girl’s eyes follow her. It’s her Legacy? They slowly circle the tree, Kid edging away, the weird girl on the curious prowl. Her eyes are large, her irises are only tiny green dots. Her night-black hair is short and chopped unevenly everywhere, no shape to it at all. When she moves, the shards of hair seem to float and bob softly, teased as if by an unseen breeze.
“How,” Kid finally says, still circling the tree, “how, how, how do you see me?”
“You’re all red!” The girl doesn’t quicken her pace, following Kid in a slow and steady ellipse around the tree, her eyes never straying. “Things that are hot look red. Other things, dead things, buildings and chairs and cold food, they look blue.”
“You see hot and cold?” Kid trips over a thing in the ground, pays it no mind as she scrambles back to her feet to continue the circle uninterrupted. “But no one sees me.”
“I don’t see your body or anything else. Not like other people. I just see red,” the girl admits, stopping at last. “I’m Aryl. My name is Aryl.”
Kid stops too, studying the girl’s face. Aryl’s face, her big eyes with the tiny green beads in the peculiar pools of white. She’s so weird. “I’m Kid.”
Aryl laughs. Her face looks a lot more normal when she laughs. Her cheeks brighten and the whites of her eyes go away, two blunt black eyebrows pulling together to squeeze out tears of laughter. When she stops, she says, “Kid? Kid isn’t a name. It’s what we are … kids.”
“It’s my name.” Kid won’t let her know anything else. People who know things are in danger. She doesn’t need to learn the lesson again. No one can know her real name.
“Can I call you Red?”
Kid shrugs. “I’m disappeared. Call me whatever.”
“No one else can see you?” Aryl looks to the left, to the right. A strange expression crosses her face, twisting her nose and eyes. “You mean … I’m the only one?” When Kid gives a nod, Aryl giggles, her face going bright again. “I think I like that. A friend, all for me.”
“I’m no one’s friend.”
Aryl squints. “No one’s friend? Show me this ‘no one’ so that I might kill them and make me your only friend.”
Kid doesn’t laugh, though she wants to. This Aryl is very strange. Too strange. “What’s this place?”
“Kindred Abbey. It’s an orphanage. My parents are dead. I’m eleven. How old are you?” Aryl takes a step forward, Kid a step back. “I’m not going to hurt you, really. I’m just a girl.”
“So am I,” admits Kid, “but I’ve killed people.” My parents are dead too, my family. And the family that replaced that one is dead as well. “Girls hurt people just as bad as women and men.”
“Well, I don’t want to hurt anything.” Aryl leans against the tree, crossing her arms. “I won’t be here forever, y’know. I saw a Big Blue the other night. Maybe you and I can get away from this place and look for the Big Blue.”
“The what?”
“Big Blue. Something very, very cold. It was that way.” Aryl points, her green eyes popping. “I want to find it.”
I can’t help you. Kid wants to say this, but with anyone else she could simply disappear and remove herself from their lives. Not so with Aryl who, even as Kid remains invisible, can see her. The mask men will find me—and you—and they will kill you dead.
A bell echoes across the yard, followed by the voice of an old lady at the door of the three-story building. The lady has long and wiry grey hair to her elbows and a huge droopy chin that wiggles as she calls for the children.
“Yard time’s over. Gotta go back.” Aryl sighs. “I wish I could see what you look like sometime, other than all … Hey, can I find you here again, Red? Same time tomorrow?”
“Ya,” Kid hears herself agreeing too quickly.
“Great! You suck a little less than everyone else.” Aryl smiles, lighting up in that strange way. “Bye, then.” She turns, hopping across the yard, then disappears into the Kindred Abbey with the others, doors closing behind the last of them.
Kid really prefers this new friend Aryl not to die too soon, as people who get too close to her have an unfortunate tendency to be killed. Please, at least give me a chance to like this one first.
0051 Link
At least he isn’t being starved. Twenty minutes ago, another warm meal was set on the floor by another priest with milky eyes that looked somehow kind. Only when the priest had gone did Link make an effort to eat. It was a clumsy effort, as it’s still very difficult to move—every flinch and stir of a muscle inviting so much pain into his body that he’s made a habit of screaming his throat raw. But still, three meals a day he gets, and he’s yet to be punished for screaming. Screaming’s perfectly allowed at The Brae, apparently. Encouraged, for all he knows.
Every day, he spends more effort with the pink glow in his leg. Holding his hands to the spot, he tries using his Legacy on his own leg, attempting to change the color, to rid himself of the glow, but it’s to no avail. The glow still glows despite it all, and his flesh is still ever-pink.
Maybe pinker now.
When the bald one finally returns to the room, Link wrinkles his nose and says, “I want to go home. And the food tastes terrible.”
The man only smiles. “You sound worse than a spoiled sky-boy. Considering you fell through our roof, it’s very likely you are one.” Despite his words, his voice is kindly and soft. “I wouldn’t know. The first thing I know of you is that you are a Wrathy boy. You’ve even the band about your arm.”
“I can’t get it off,” Link complains sourly, giving it a feeble tug. “And I’m not a sky-boy. I want nothing to do with sky-boys or girls. I want the Lifted City to fall.”
The man tilts his head. “So full of what you want, poor boy, so blind to what you have. Why’d you join the foul Wrath anyway? You are not made of the same skin as they.”
“I’m worse.” Link doesn’t care. He feels the seething incense of passion filling his chest. “Twenty times worse. I’ll slit all your throats on my way out of this sanctuary, I promise you that.”
As if interpreting his threat as a request, the bald man plucks a knife out from a pocket in his robe, tosses it at Link. It lands on Link’s food tray, setting a spatter of stew onto his front. The man leans forward, offering his neck. “If it’s all my red you want to see, to feed the red in your heart, please. You’ve taken all else.”
Link’s eyes move from the knife to the priest, back and forth a hundred times it seems. He’s crazy, he decides. This stupid bald priest is a crazy, sick man. His Three Sister probably has some sick concept of death, like the Immortal Sister. Link takes up the knife finally, but not to perform the deed asked of him. He slips the blade under the black band on his arm, gives it a wiggle, and the black at long last snaps, dropping to the floor. He doesn’t let go the knife, but lets his stare pore into the old man, observing his reaction deadpan.
Somehow, the bald priest looks both surprised and equally unimpressed. “It was just a squeeze of fabric.” The priest shrugs. “The real black that must be cut from you cannot be touched with a knife.”
“I didn’t cut it off for you.”
The man smiles softly. “Call me Baron. It is what my brothers and sisters of The Brae call me. The brothers and sisters that your Wrath didn’t cut down, I mean.”
“I cut no one down.” Link gives his foot a twitch, and the food tray is shoved at the bald priest, Baron, whatever he wants to be called. Link will make no use of that stupid name.
“The Lifted City is a magnificently large thing.” Baron calmly wipes a speck of stew off his chin from the earlier spatter, brings it to his mouth. “You realize there is an arm of it that resides directly overhead? There is an arm stretching a good length of the ninth ward too, and the eighth, seventh, sixth. Well beyond other pa
rts of the city, I’m quite certain. Even a length of the Greens.”
Greens. That word cuts into him deeper than this dumb knife ever could, the image of his mom washing forth. It hurts more than he’ll dare admit to this terrible bald man. “I can still slit your throat.”
“And much easier now, as you have the knife I gave you.” The man called Baron chuckles sweetly, licks his lips. “I suppose dropping the Lifted City on us would be one way to bring gold to our sanctuary, though I doubt any of us would be alive thereafter to appreciate it. Indeed, no gold in your heart, little boy, and so no gold for us.” The man rises, moves to the door.
You forgot your knife, Link wants to shout, but holds back. Maybe he’s forgotten. Link stows it away under the pillow as the man turns to latch shut the door. When he looks up to meet the priest’s eyes, he realizes that the man intended to leave him the little blade.
“I will slit your throat on my way out,” Link says, promising. “I want you to know that. When I heal and I leave this place, your throat’s opening up for me.”
“Yes, throats open and cities fall and boys put black about their eyes, yes, yes. We hear it all at The Brae.” He gives another tilt of his hairless head, peering through the little window in the door. “But poor boy, you do not understand the cost of your own wrath. When you bring down the Lifted City, upon whose heads, exactly, do you think it will fall?”
0052 Wick
It is surprisingly bright for being underground, but the tunnel leads them exactly where Victra claimed it ought to: the subterranean rail, which will take them closer to home far quicker than mere feet. The walls of the tunnel are lined with amber fluorescents up high and tiny bulbs in the floor covered by grimy see-through tiles. When the tunnel gives to the actual station, it is vertically cramped, but vastly wide and full of people waiting their long ride, much to Wick’s annoyance. Why must every corner of this part of the city be so fucking crowded? The presence of so many people brings his head to a boil, daring to knock him out.