LEGACY BETRAYED (8 page)

              So Kaizen had been telling the truth.

              And if this automaton, registered to Dax, received that message, it also meant that Dax’s personal automaton had received that message. And if he didn’t visit her within the next three days, he’d have no way of knowing that it was a trap.

              And what if . . . what if Trimpot had already been around? What if he . . . had gone to see Dax, and was slowly building up an arsenal of incriminating evidence? How deep did this newfound allegiance to the monarchy go? What if he had to make sure that no one could possibly blame him for Malthus’ death? And Dax wouldn’t know. Dax would never suspect. The guilty party would be ferreted out, for all intents and purposes, the monarchy secured, Trimpot given an informant’s stipend and a new home beyond the gates of Lion’s Head, and Dax gone forever.

              Legacy lunged from the bed, spinning the key-corsage on her golden vest – which she still mentally considered to be “Flywheel-2.”

             
“Good m-m-morning, Audio Swan,
” the assistant greeted.
“The date is Wed-wed-wednesday, August the Sixteenth, Two Thousand, Three Hundred and Twelve. The time is 7:38 pm. No events on schedule. Two old messages. No new messages.”

              She had to do something, something big, before Friday . . . It wasn’t just about Dax. She couldn’t let all those good people – people just like her, who wanted the option to love and work as they pleased – go to jail.

              Preoccupied by thoughts of this, the old messages played on. The first message was from her parents.

              Mr. Legacy’s voice came over the iris-speakers first.
“Just calling to let you know that we’ve got some clothes and vitamins all packed up for you–”

              “Just in case!”
Mrs. Legacy added.

             
“–so drop by and grab them if you can, okay–”

              “But be safe!”

              “–and we love you.”

              “We love you!”

              The second message was from Kaizen. Legacy stared numbly at the brass dragonfly as the shadows encroached from outside.

             
“I bet you’d hoped that I’d forget,”
he said with a forced, self-conscious laugh.
“But I . . . clearly . . . did not. Uh, Legacy . . . look. Can we–? Let’s talk. It’s not what you think. I’m not –I’m not–”
He sighed.
“Just call me back.”

              She hadn’t called him back.

Legacy continued to stare down at Flywheel-2, her fingers playing across him idly, then shook the daze from her head and commanded, “Send call to Dax Ghrenadel.”

              She heard the free automaton in the corner begin to vibrate.
“Inc-c-cominnng call f-f-frommm Audio S-s-swannn.”

              She ignored the sputtering bot and felt the release of relief as Dax’s familiar tenor emitted from Flywheel-2’s button-speakers.

              “Who is this?” he demanded.

              “It’s Legs,” Legacy answered. “This was just a gift so that I could be reached. Not registered under my real name, obviously.”

              There was a long pause.

              “Well?” Dax prompted, oddly brusque. “What is it?”

              “I–I don’t know if I want to say it like this, over automata,” Legacy went on, unsure exactly what was going on. Hadn’t come back since Monday, and now this tone?

              Dax muttered something.

“What?” Legacy asked.

“Nothing. Look, Legacy, what is it? I don’t feel like playing around. Just tell me.”

“I–Okay.” Something was definitely wrong, but she didn’t know what she could do about it from Groundtown. “I just wanted to warn you: don’t go to that thing,
the event,
in the message from you-know-who.” The automata of Icarus weren’t the most secure form of communication, so she spoke in simple code. “It’s a trap. Okay?”

Another long pause.

“I don’t know, Leg,” he finally said.

“You just have to trust me,” she pressed.

“No,” he elaborated, suddenly colder. “I mean I don’t know if I’m going to stay with Chance for Choice.”

“What?” Legacy asked, tensing at the frankness with which he spoke. “What are you talking about?”

Dax sighed. “You’re right, this is a shitty conversation to have through miniature speakers,” he agreed. “I’ll just come by.” As if it was a matter as simple as going out the door.

“Where have you–” But the connection had gone dead. “. . . been,” she finished to herself, frowning at Flywheel-2 as if this were his fault.

The leak in the ceiling found its seam and dripped.

There was a knock at the door and Legacy went to let Dax in. As soon as their eyes met, the air in the room shifted and became stifling. Uncomfortable. “Hey,” Legacy greeted weakly, falling back to allow him entrance. She had a terrible feeling about this.

“Yeah,” Dax greeted in a strangely clipped, casual tone. “The thing is, Legacy–” He passed her, entering the center of the room, and looked all around, though never at her. His eyes fixed on the wet spot over her bed. “–your roof is leaking.”

“I know,” Legacy responded. Dax never called her
Legacy.
Not unless something was really wrong. “Is that the reason you’re quitting the CC?”

Dax sighed and glanced at her, his blue eyes flashing. “I ran the numbers on our membership versus the entirety of the Icarus population,” he informed her. “We comprise roughly half of one percent.”

Legacy bristled. She didn’t like talk of the machines. Of probabilities and logic. That was exactly the system that had brought forth the laws against which they currently fought. “So?” she prompted.

“So, in every two hundred people, there’s one Chance for Choicer,” he deduced for her impatiently. “So, in a battle, we would be smothered in seconds.”

“Yet Malthus is dead,” Legacy retorted.

“How do you know that?” Dax asked, his eyes dark and eyebrows low. He advanced on her with a violent potentia, but froze at the brink, merely seething. “Even I don’t know that, and I was there!” He flung a hand in the air, and Legacy flinched. “Even I don’t know that, and the whole thing was my damn idea!”

Legacy summoned her tongue. “I’ve–The earl–” Dax’s pupils stoked at the mention of the title. “When I was arrested –he was –kind to me. We became . . . friends. And he told me.”

“When you were arrested,” Dax repeated dully. “You became friends.”

“Yeah,” she confirmed.
Kind of.

Dax shook his head and his eyes shifted away. He braced his hands against his hips. “Even if the impossible occurred and we were to take Icarus, let’s be honest. What is Icarus?”

“A
metropolis!
”

“An industrial hub, sure,” Dax allowed, nodding. “But it’s certainly not the biggest city in the sky, is it? It’s not the city of the monarch, is it? So we can take our Chance for Choice, one hundred strong, and topple Icarus? That’s the grand plan, isn’t it? That’s as far as Trimpot ever fever-dreamed, wasn’t it? Even if we had another five hundred members, minimum, would you have the strength to not betray us to the damn duke himself? And if you did have the guts to dethrone your fucking boyfriend, then we’d go ahead and storm, what? Heliopolis? The military center of New Earth, with its
millions?
”

“I would never do that!” Legacy cried, heart hammering. “I wouldn’t betray–”

“Oh, really? You’d never do things like accept gifts from the royal family, would you? Would never do anything like warn him of our movements?” As Dax spoke, he seemed to loom and inflate, though Legacy was sure it was her imagination that he could suddenly expand to encompass her entire line of sight. “And yet he feels close enough to you, Legacy, knowing you’re in the CC, to visit your damn home. Yet he feels close enough to you, Legacy, knowing you’re in the CC, to not arrest you for the conspiracy to murder his father? Do you know how unlikely that is? Don’t you think he might be manipulating you? That mechanical assistant he gave you is probably bugged!”

“It was from my dad!” Legacy spluttered, reddening. She had to avoid every other point he rose. They were good ones.
He knows,
she realized.
He knows that Kaizen came to my parents’ unit two days ago. Which means he also . . . saw. He saw the way we were.

“You said you didn’t trust him, but you must!” Dax went on. “You do! And so, how can the CC trust you? Friends with the duke?” He reiterated incredulously, “Friends with the duke?”

“Dax . . .”

“The revolution is doomed and you and I are doomed if we have something like that working against us,” he told her. “You’re ineligible now, by the way,” he added, suddenly lacking all the heat of his earlier statements. “Liam was reassigned.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Legacy murmured, her gaze drifting to the floor. “It just happened,” she blurted.

Dax shook his head. His eyes, too, flitted elsewhere. “What does that even mean, ‘it just happened’? What doesn’t just happen? Are you implying that it could’ve been worse, somehow, if Malthus had arranged for a rebel speechwriter to meet and woo his heir? If your room had been papered in posters of every girl’s earl rather than Celestine?”

“I’m trying to say that I’m sorry,” Legacy snapped, glaring at him.

“I don’t care!” Dax cried, turning to face her again, seeming to pantomime explosions as he spoke. “I told you I wanted you to be happy, and that’s still true, so I hope you are! I hope you’re deliriously ecstatic! But you should know that you and I are
both
ineligible now, so the only way to be with the same duke you’d have to depose is to stick with the CC, because they’re the only ones who want to fight for a new constitution. I’m sure Kaizen is madly in love with you, but I’m also sure he doesn’t want his family ousted from the aristocracy, which is exactly how Ferraday would handle a problematic newcomer. It’s so much simpler and easier than ratifying his own ideology or going to war. I know you aren’t fond of logic, and so maybe you’re fond of its conundrums, but this is kind of a paradox.” He looked away.

Meanwhile, Legacy stared at a fixed point on the wall, brewing. “You’ve known about this since that night, though, haven’t you?” she asked. “The night we went to Old Earth, last week? And you didn’t mention it. You didn’t say anything. But you knew. And still, you kissed me. Still, when I told you I loved–”

“We almost left you behind on the surface of a toxic world populated by monsters,” Dax snapped. “I was . . . happy to see you return. Maybe I thought that I still stood a chance. After all, how long could it have possibly been going on? We were kissing at the centennial.”

Legacy glanced at him, but now it was he whose eyes were staring at a fixed point. He was staring into the past. The brass forest which hemmed Heroes Park, misty, drizzling. Their first kiss, so desperately exploratory, the pressure of years behind it. She almost told him that was the night she’d met Kaizen, but held her tongue.

“But I can only look the other way so many times,” he went on. “Yes, I’ve known. I just wasn’t willing to admit it. What chance have I against a duke?” He turned his eyes on her again, dire in an instant. “And what chance have you? Legacy, you need to think about these things. I know it all seems . . . Let’s talk facts, all right? You’re ineligible, and you’re one of the key members of a rebel group. He’s the new duke, and your rebel group just killed his dad. There’s no way Ferraday would consider ratifying the constitution under the suggestion of a newborn inferior, and he must know that, so he must know that any and all contact with you is both illegal and futile. I’m sure he finds you attractive.” Dax winced. “But that doesn’t mean it . . . matters. What does matter is that you’re the key component in his suppression of the revolt; you know that, don’t you? I hope you do, because he certainly does. You’re his access point. I know you don’t want to think about this, but–”

“He’s not like that,” Legacy insisted, finding her own fire stoked at the suggestion.

“You’re an idealist, Legacy,” Dax said, grim. “You believe what you want to be true. He has a life of luxury, doesn’t he? Access to the finest things.”

The memory of the hot bath he’d given her – sprinkled in rose petals – flooded to the surface of her mind.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t want to take a placement test and do actual work,” Dax finished. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to be relegated to one hundred square feet and a cold shower every day, knowing some other family was given his castle, knowing he threw it all away for the half-formed notions of an ineligible peasant girl.”

Legacy sneered. “It’s not like that!” she reiterated. “I’m not –And he’s not –Get out!”

Dax frowned. “Guess that’s a sensitive spot for you, is it?” he seethed. “The darling duke.” He shook his head and pushed past her to the door. “Do whatever you want with the fucking duke. See if I care where you end up.”

The door slammed, and Dax was gone.

Legacy slumped down into a rigid fetal position on her soggy mattress and shivered, full of rage. She felt sick.