LEGACY LOST (10 page)

“No,” Legacy denied, frowning. She didn’t move from where she stood near the door, as if coming closer to the woman speaking might make this all increasingly real. “No, Claire – Mrs. Addler – Dax and I, we were, maybe it was my fault, we were being . . . irresponsible, and he–”

“Issue was compounded by steady deterioration of blood oxygen count,” Claire rebutted. “Ask Miss Ellsworth. They discussed this when you were sent for water last night. Potassium hydroxide scrubber worn down. Needs to be refilled.” The woman finally glanced up from her text, which appeared to be an anachronous medical journal. “It’s amazing how the human body mimics the function of automata.” She sighed and closed the heavy book. “Miss Addler, by the way.” She gave Legacy a significant stare. “Like so many of us, I never married.”

The grand hall had seen so much pacing, a faded path was being worn into the fabric of the rug. Oblivious, Kaizen rolled his returned Hermetic device between his fingers without releasing it. He just weighed. Considered. Should he respond? It was daybreak now, and she’d certainly be awake and couldn’t be that far and he wanted desperately to talk to her.

The message was pretty clear in that he shouldn’t.

“I am fine,” she’d said. “But it is over.”

God, he wanted to talk to her.

Preoccupied, he veered from his path and toward the royal throne room, where he could at least sit and be certain of no interruption.

What did she mean, if he came to her, she didn’t know what would become of him? Was that a threat, or some camouflaged cry for help? She sounded like she truly was fine, but – but –

Kaizen drew up short, baffled. What to make of the scene before him?

The royal throne room was not empty.

Neon Trimpot lounged across the throne, idly fingering the Taliko scepter while Olympia prattled busily and Sophie, well, Sophie appeared to be mimicking the jerking manner with which an automaton would greet its imprint.

Kaizen sealed the Hermetic device in his fist and strode down the center of the room, taking brief, sharp pleasure in the way that Trimpot sprang from off his cushion and quickly, carefully replaced the scepter.

“My lord,” he yelped. “I was just–”

“Kaizen,” Olympia greeted, lackadaisical as ever, reaching toward him with a limp wrist and drifting forward to air-kiss his cheek. “Just the man we were needing to see.” She corrected her hair as she spoke, and he was too distracted by Trimpot to notice how uncharacteristic it was for this particular woman to have flaked and smeared makeup so early in the morning, but her lipstick was everywhere.

“Yes, Mother?” Kaizen asked, not removing his eyes from Trimpot. He should’ve known better than to accept a turncoat into the fold of his castle, even if it was in order to spare him from the potential of abuse.

“Regarding this little ship your sister keeps mentioning.” She offered a perfunctory clap, self-satisfied. “It’s quite brilliant.”

Kaizen turned toward Sophie and started again. The girl was wearing a glossy porcelain mask, as white as bone, with two circles of blush sprayed onto the cheeks and brown strokes painted above the eyes, secured around the back of her head with a length of pink ribbon. She looked just like one of them.

“It was a gift from Master Addler!” she exclaimed, apparently deaf to the entire rest of the conversation but shrewdly aware of Kaizen’s focus on her mask.

“How nice.” His voice came out weaker than he’d intended, and he cleared his throat. “Sophie, what little ship?”

“There’s a little ship in the distance and it’s filled with murderer-nobodies,” Sophie informed him, idly lunging into a pirouette. “Ferraday only wants one. It’s just not fair to let the others all go to waste.” A shadow passed over Kaizen’s face as he realized the only ship she could possibly mean, but Sophie stamped her foot, resolute, sensing his hesitance. She had such patchy lucidity as of late. “But it’s just not fair, Kaizen! I’ve been a nobody my whole life, no name, no ships, no Heliopolis, and I’ve never even killed anyone!”

“Except Lichterman,” Trimpot murmured, examining his cuticles. For a moment, he reminded Kaizen deeply of his mother.

“Except Lichterman,” Sophie allowed, as if the man was a negligible character who didn’t really count.

“Lichterman’s dead?” Kaizen interjected.

“The point is that the monarch told you to give him that bad girl, and you have to!” Sophie screamed.

“We got it cleaned up,” Trimpot added, lifting a single finger.

“You have to, and then, what are we going to do with all those other people?” she shrilled. “Just let them go?”

Kaizen’s head spun. It’d been a single moment, days ago, and he’d hoped that it was his secret. But apparently, Sophie had seen the airship as well, and Trimpot had informed her of its significance. Now he had to explain: what logical reason did he have to avoid capturing an enemy’s ship?

“We can’t,” he replied, limp. He wished she would take off that damn mask. It made standing up to her oddly difficult.

“Exactly,” Sophie chirped. “We can’t just let them all go. It’s not right. Not when other, good people need names–”

“No, I mean, we can’t just kill innocent people,” Kaizen enunciated.

Olympia glanced up from the cleavage she’d busied herself rearranging. “Innocent?” she repeated.

“Innocent!” Sophie barked. “
Roberta
shattered her own face chasing me!
Theodore-3
’s chest unit melted into his keyhole and now no one can turn him on ever again! He’s dead, Kaizen! Dead! Does that sound innocent to you?”

“It is your duty, Kaizen, as the former Duke of Icarus, to bring the renegades to justice,” Olympia said. It was the most stern and attentive thing she’d ever said not regarding a tardy masseuse. “Why wouldn’t you wish to avenge the death–” She cleared her throat and flicked a glance at Sophie. “–s of so many people? Keep in mind, as well, that without the city under your rule, performance as a
former
duke alone stands, little more than a man to be judged. How will the monarch rank a duke who brings him a ship full of slaughtered insurgent corpses in comparison to how he will rank a duke who slinks in the back door of a neighboring city after willingly allowing such a conquest to trail through his fingers? Calling them ‘innocents’ to the widow of his father?”

“How do you even know about it?” Kaizen snapped, although it didn’t really effect the point.

“I’m educated on public aff–”

“Widow?” Sophie said.

“I told her,” Trimpot confessed. To the untrained eye, his expression was sheepish, but Kaizen recognized it as smug. “I knew it was the Chance for Choice ship.”

“Well.” Kaizen seethed, cornered. “If the monarch demands the blood of a rebel, we have the founder of the movement under this roof!”

Olympia gasped. “Kaizen! Don’t be rude!”

“
Then who was with you in the arbor?
” Sophie demanded.

“A rebel you publicly pardoned!” Trimpot threw back at Kaizen, ignoring the masked girl’s cry. “A rebel who turned over everything you asked of him! Destroyed himself socially! Made the target of retaliatory action! Left my home in the middle of the night, never to return, and laid myself at your mercy, and yet, yet, who would you prefer to spare? Oh, of course, the pretty speechwriter whose informal ‘arrest’ spurred on this entire catastrophe!
She’s
the one you choose to save! The same one who is
fucking
the mastermind of your father’s assassination!”

Kaizen’s fist flashed into the air with all the impulse of an electrical charge, and Trimpot went down instantly, clutching a gushing mouth and yowling, all concern for reputation crumbled. He stared down at the shameful display in a kind of daze as a muffled female voice, immediately recognizable in its smooth timber, emitted from between the clenched fingertips of his torn knuckle.

“Kaizen. I am fine. But it is over. Please do not seek me. The things we have done – that I have done – have been selfish, and irresponsible, and short-sighted. Heed this warning. If you come to me . . . I do not know what may become of you, or even of myself. Goodbye, and good luck.”

Kaizen’s eyes tilted from the crumpled man moaning on the throne room floor to his treacherous fist, fingers unbending to reveal the Hermetic device sealed inside, depressed, its fluttering light fading to a close again. Olympia’s eyes followed his, down and then up again. “That sounds like the rebel from the radio,” she said.

The pink-haired turncoat spat a tooth onto the floor. “Exa Legacy,” he elaborated. “Says it’s
over
, love.” For someone who just had his teeth knocked out, his recovery time was admirable. He pulled his knees up to his chest and laced his arms over them, somehow casual, even with his lips still wearing the morbid rouge of their altercation. “Sounds
almost
like a threat, doesn’t it? But then again, in relationships of scandal and intrigue, it’s always hard to tell the difference between a threat and a
break-up
.”

There were three beats of silence, and Sophie chimed, “All right, if Daddy’s not in court, and he’s not in the arbor,
where is he?
”

Olympia rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously, Sophie!” she snapped. “He’s taking a late lunch!”

              At first, it was simply another speck on the horizon, vaguely golden, resembling the morning star. There were more important things to mind, however, such as the harvesting of a sky clotted in cloud. It was also true that the people of the airship
Albatropus
had never seen such lush foliage in their entire lives as was present below, and so the passengers thronged the deck and peered at these magnificent creatures rooted in soil, the color of emerald, sprouting veined plumes.

              But the speck quickly gained size and dimension. Its rigid balloon was lit from within in an amber tone. Ropes connected it to a massive ship, richly paneled and contoured by flares of emerald and obsidian. The ship was huge in comparison to the
Albatropus,
an ocean liner alongside a dingy.

              The title
Chrysalis
emblazoned its side in bulbs laced by the spidery veins of captured electricity. No, no, were they . . . but it couldn’t be. Fireflies in jars?

              As the potbelly patchwork of a rebel ship made its steady approach, so very imperfect when standing in relief against this impressive machine, the stationary position of the dirigible became all the more obvious.

              It was just . . . floating. In mid-air.

              Not one soul on the deck.

              No movement through its portholes.

              The nets and pulleys digging into its balloon, creaking.

              The passengers of the
Albatropus
congregated at starboard side to examine the drifting curiosity, and Vector, at the helm, wrenched the brake to still their ship alongside it.

              “Do you suppose it’s been abandoned?” Liam asked Dax, finally freed from the laboratory after his blood oxygen level reached into the upper eighties.

              Dax shook his head silently, hair fretting in the breeze. He stared a moment longer at the thing.
Chrysalis.
“Bad feeling about it, truth be told,” he replied.

              “I don’t see any damage to the hull,” Ray contributed. “You know, there may be supplies onboard. A bigger water barrel, for sure.”

              “Or some highly contagious virus,” Rain added, curling her nose and drifting away from the rail.

              A flutter of shadow fell across a dimly lit porthole.

              Legacy stiffened, gripping the rail of the forecastle where she stood, uncertain of her own two eyes. “Should we board?” she called to Vector.

              “No!” Liam and Dax replied in synch from the deck below.

              “I don’t know,” Vector said, shifting on his hip.

              Legacy glared at the captain. “Of all the things you know, Vector, is this really the most complicated problem to figure out? It should be easy. Quite simple, really.” She gestured into the air as if the matter really was clear. Maybe, for her, it was. It always seemed to be. “If it was you . . . what would you rather a passing ship do? What would be . . . fair?”

              Vector grimaced. He supposed they should investigate in case they could be of assistance. It could be the difference between life and death to those inside.

              The tinkle of broken glass and a soft crash sounded from within its bowels, and the thoughtful inventor hurried to turn another of the myriad cranks framing the complex gadgetry of the helm. A plank, initially attached flat to the side of the
Albatropus’
belly, arced up on a series of pulleys, as wide as a narrow corridor and hemmed in thin bands of corroded steel. The companionway raised between the two vessels and settled with a clatter onto the rail of the
Chrysalis,
eerily shifting to and fro on the breeze itself. The thing looked stable, and yet, this high in the air . . . it was suddenly very intimidating.

              Vector hopped onto the companionway, drawing Legacy’s old glue gun – the snub-nosed, glass blunderbuss with a chamber of intelligent adhesive, which her father had invented and which she’d offered for his inspection some days ago – to the ready, and gesturing to any who would follow him. “Well?” he prompted, nodding in the direction of the
Chrysalis.
“Still so simple, Leg?”

             
Gustav jumped up after him like a true adventurer, and she supposed he was. His jacket and dark blond hair tarried in the breeze. He had hardly anything to gain, but all Vector had to do was ask.

              Dax and Liam shared a significant look before grimacing and joining.

              Legacy sighed and hopped up after them.

              “You don’t have to come just because I’m going,” Dax whispered to her. Vector had already set off, creeping the companionway toward the
Chrysalis.

              “I know,” Legacy whispered back. Gustav crept forward next.

              “I’ll be fine,” Dax pressed.

              “I know,” Legacy repeated. Liam set off.

              The two of them stood in the cool wind, gripping the thin, corroded supports over a thousand feet of open space, strange emerald plumes below mired in low-hanging, gentle cloud coverage.

              Dax stared at her as if he wished to say something – or do something that he couldn’t do.

              “You ready?” Legacy prompted.

              He broke the eye contact as if it’d been a spell. “Yeah.” He crept forward, leaving just Legacy standing, wind tugging, alone, a ship full of eyes on her back.

              She stepped out onto the swaying bridge between this ship and the next, feeling how it groaned softly under her weight.

             
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

             
Legacy inched along the companionway in this trembling fashion, her hands gripping the rail tight, focusing on Dax’s shoulders and the deck of the other ship.

              Dax stepped down onto the deck and turned as if instinctively, gripping her hips and lowering her swiftly. Suddenly . . . she felt . . . all the more vertigo than the companionway had caused, and his hands left her again. Even though they’d slept together now, it still felt as though they’d never even kissed before. It still felt as though they were awkward teenagers catching eyes and brushing hands and blushing with a fury.

              The deck of the ship, spacious and clean, was nonetheless quiet and empty. The only object of interest was a small personal flyer. Resembling a golden canoe with cycling pedals in its floor and a glass encasement for roof, the two-seater possessed jointed, leathery wings, similar to the ones on the back of Legacy’s vest,
Flywheel-2
. Its two seats were large ones, not unlike a small carriage with no cabin or the automaton rickshaws of the city. This vehicle may or may not have belonged to the captain him- or herself, though.

              From all of this they could be sure was that there was conflict aboard.

              And whoever was aboard might have known that they were coming.

              Gustav slipped to the front of their adventuring party and gestured them forward, down into what would have been, normally, the berth . . .

              But the interior of this ship was lined in glass-plated cabinets, crowded by colorful compositions of . . . everything. Creatures fantastic and alien. Sculptures of the tiniest, finest detail. Confiscated love letters and magic potions and lights which migrated within glass baubles like stars. Was this the force which lit the inside of the very balloon below which the ship was suspended?

              Erected along the wall was a platter of winged insects, glossy and vibrant, which seemed fake, perhaps cast in glass or jewels . . . but their carapaces were pierced through with needles, fuzzy, and so eerily detailed. Their bleak, black eyes forever frozen. At the bottom of this cabinet shelf was a skull with no jawbone, yellowed and authentic, eyes empty and dark, bookended by thick glass bottles labeled “ORACLE WATER” and “AMAZING CRAZING MIND AND HAIR ELIXIR.” A bejeweled spritzer with a pink perfume poof read, “SERUM FOR DEEP SLEEP.”

              Legacy reached out to touch it, to perhaps sniff the bottle, but then she jerked away.

              Next to this glass cabinet was a stuffed reptile carcass, dark green and scaled, the size of Legacy herself. Its slitted, yellow eyes gleamed with reflective light.

She gulped. Its gaping smile was filled with jagged pieces.

              “Come on,” Dax whispered, bracing her elbow in his hand. The group clustered together as they tread deeper, like a gaggle of awestruck children, beneath gigantic feathers and waxworks of spiny, gaping fish.

              A wide, arched entryway led deeper, beyond a thick veil, and Legacy murmured to herself, “I wish I could see ahead of us.” Reminding her that this article was in fact an automaton, a tiny, spiraling periscope sprouted from its breast pocket like a popped spring. “Guys,” she hissed, plucking its tip from the fabric. “Let me go first. I’ve got a thing . . .”

              Legacy crept forward, ignorant of the way Dax grabbed for her in passing, and slunk up to the curtains.
Hm. There’s that smell again. That sweet, syrupy smell from the swamps of Old Earth . . .
Sniffing at the air, Legacy placed the tiny brass periscope to one eye and leaned into the drapery.

              Beyond lay another sprawling room of artifacts and wonders, vivid shells in twisted design juxtaposed with magnificent horns and tusks, all seeming to belong to archaic and terrifying beasts, the bloated yet skeletal carcass of a mermaid at the feet of a smooth china sculpture of a nude woman, heavy with child and blank-faced. A tangle of vines with pink flowers gaping apart, as fleshy and gossamer as a living mouth, fringed in a disconcerting ring of jagged green teeth.

              Next to this oddly attractive and repellent plant was a middle-aged man sitting comfortably in a rusted cage, spinning gently in place. A stiff, white safari hat was clutched between his fists, pillowy pants the color of sand and high leather boots drawn up to his chest. He was a shade overweight, which Legacy had never seen in a real person before. He was bespectacled, mustached, long-faced, silver-haired, lightly wrinkled. A glum expression pulled his face down even further and deepened the lines around his mouth and eyes.

              No one else was in the room.

              Dipping through the curtains, Legacy sprinted low toward the cage and gripped its bars, peering at the older man inside.

              The sharp rise and fall of bickering voices could be heard deeper in the ship.

              “Don’t you think I tried that?” a surly female voice demanded. “‘Look for the key,’ she says. That’s rich. Real brilliant. He ain’t got a key, ya brainless fart!” Another crash emitted from the room. “Shit, Tilde. We might need that part, you know.”

              “We’re here to help you, I think,” Legacy whispered to the caged man, glancing toward the source of the voices.

              “Well, are you or aren’t you?” the man replied, mildly annoyed.

“Let’s just tell him we’ll kill him,” a high-pitched voice giggled. “I’ll go tell him right now.”

“Then how would we get home?” the surly voice retorted. “Brains over here just tore off a lever! I’m sure it weren’t important, though!”

“Then we could tell him we’ll tickle him!” the high-pitched one amended triumphantly.

              Legacy frowned and glanced back toward the uppity hostage. “That all depends. Are you being held captive, or do you simply enjoy close spaces?”

              The man sighed. Irritation was better than fear, she supposed. “My name is Augustus,
Doctor
Augustus Perry Kenneth Summat. I’m a professor of natural science, and collector of historical fineries and the grotesque, not – not perversions and absurdities!”

“Forget it, let’s just kill him and take our own lil’ boat home,” a throaty female voice said. “There’s nothing any good on this blasted barge, anyway. Who wants a freaking feather?”

“I wouldn’t mind a feather,” the high-pitched one said.

Surly: “Shut up, Cookie.”

              Legacy, too, rolled her eyes. Maybe she and the surly one would have gotten along in another circumstance. “How many are there?”

The others behind her, Gustav, Dax, Vector, and Liam, slunk in now, though they lost Vector to investigation of the monstrous Venus fly trap – “Ow,” he winced, even just touching its pink flower with one reddened finger, and the teeth snapped shut with artful precision. “Jesus,” Vector added.

They also lost Gustav, distracted by the dehydrated mermaid corpse.

              “It’s not real,” Augustus informed him plainly. “There are four. Pirates. All women.” He grimaced at the acknowledgment.

              “Ah, I’ve got it,” the throaty voice announced. “What does the sad old loon love more than anything else in the world?”

              “Oooh, and I already saw the perfect feather for my new top hat!” Cookie piped.