LEGACY LOST (18 page)

But then she felt Kaizen’s lips press her collarbone. Bury into her shoulder. His embrace became more stifling.

Legacy pulled away, but he misinterpreted the movement to be one of positioning and descended to kiss her again, on the lips now, fully, firmly, not thinking. Just feeling. But the next thing he felt was Legacy squirming from his arms, and the hard sting of a slap resonating against his cheek.

She bolted through the open gate of the dome, onto the castle grounds. She’d gone several paces when a wave of vertigo rocked her, followed by a deep, settling exhaustion. When had she last slept? Two days ago, or was it three?

She remembered that she had no power here. She remembered that this was a dangerous place for her. The castle grounds, such a cheery shade of green, appeared malevolent and encroaching to her eyes. She bound her own arms around her torso and glanced haltingly toward Kaizen, who had followed faithfully. She supposed she had known that he would.

“What do I do now?” she wondered, lost. After Dax’s funeral, she had felt so cold and clear, so empty and sharp, but now . . . she realized what a mess an empty and sharp container could make if it broke. How thin those pieces, how far they could shoot from one another, so that putting herself back together felt impossible. The debris resembled the previous structure so little.

Kaizen winced and examined her. He may have been thinking the same thing.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Legacy. You shouldn’t be here. I just–” He braced his fingers to his forehead, a gesture both of intense concentration and the attempt to block incoming data which made the future so very unpleasant. “I just lost my sister, and you were there, and I didn’t want you to get hurt, and I don’t know, I thought I could help, but, and . . .” His eyes met hers again. She’d forgotten how dark they were. How they always seemed to be in a slight amount of pain. So unlike Dax . . . who had been almost brutally forceful in his assertions that nothing hurt him. “. . . and I can help,” he finished, pursing his lips. “I can help. We just have to keep you away from Ferraday.”

He cast his eyes toward the castle, and Legacy was sure they were full of doubt.

The
Albatropus
was not on the ground of Old Earth long before the
Chrysalis
, being towed from Pollax to Celestine, trundled into view hitched to the trailer of a red, double-decker tub boat comprised totally of propellers and jointed wings.

The castle automata remained onboard, with the exception of the strange human one, whose body had been thrown unceremoniously over its rail. They weren’t trying to be rude. They simply had no idea who she was, and no one wanted to sit with a dead body for a few hours while they waited to be towed from a strip of valley. Everyone huddled into the berth and remained sequestered after the Hermetic device had been sent to the tow truck driver; the appearance of a spider, or spiders, was a real concern.

Liam claimed he saw one through the porthole. He would not describe to anyone what it was doing, but it appeared to be a scavenger. It laced the unknown dead girl in its silk, spinning her nimbly in its many slender legs, and toted her off toward its web.

There was talk. Quiet, small conversation sprang up between groups. Discussion of how the castle had known the identity of their ship. Questions to Claire regarding how she had known their passcode, and then of how being raised by the royal machinist had affected her. Harrowing tales of near-death with the automata, who remained on the dirigible. However skeletal and terrifying they all still appeared, they were completely reset. They were also impossible to command. They seemed to prefer to stand and look around.

But nothing was discussed quite so much as the disappearance of Exa Legacy, snatched from the crow’s nest by the duke himself.

“Something tells me she’ll be all right,” Liam muttered.

“I don’t know, man,” Vector replied. Both men seemed to speak with some secret insight as to the relationship between the rebel girl and the young nobleman. “They’re not in Icarus anymore. I mean, Icarus is gone, man. So what’s Kaizen? On his way to Heliopolis, I’m sure. And in Heliopolis? He’s a nobody. Doesn’t have that crazy amount of control he had in his own damn duchy.”

Liam grimaced, asking himself when Exa would stop getting into such trouble.

The others discussed in more practical terms. For example, what kind of blow would the rebellion face if someone of theirs – like Legacy – was publicly executed, or some similarly drastic punishment? The movement would die in its tracks. No one would touch it, talk about it, think about it. Ferraday must have known that.

When the tow boat arrived (
Superhero Tow
), it descended with the
Chrysalis,
and
Albatropus
was attached via cables to its massive underside, her balloon folded and retired for the evening.

By the time the airship was back into the air, no need of a captain to pilot her, it was already mid-afternoon. The cabins and common rooms were being cleaned when Augustus paused to offer his airship to the movement of Chance for Choice.

Vector beheld him with a gaze simultaneously awestruck and skeptical. “Really?” he asked. “That’s . . . amazing. Why?”

“I may have entertained notions, from time to time, of a freer world,” he confessed. “One need only examine my trophies, worldly, historic, and fabulous alike, to realize that variety is the great lost love of our planet. Besides, your ship had its invisibility shield destroyed in flight, didn’t it?” he asked. “But no one saw it being towed. We can move it quickly and discreetly, park it wherever you wish, or abandon it entirely. It makes no difference to me. The movement may come aboard until a safer location is determined. Conditions verified. You never know, though. I rather like Celestine. It was founded by Ezekiel Way, the naturalist. You know, they say that his was the vastest of tree collections yet known to man, excepting Old Earth itself, of course, and that his most prized possession was a weeping willow with buds in the shape of upside-down hearts. He claimed that this tree had the power to heal, you know!” Augustus stuffed his pipe with some vanilla tobacco and glanced at Vector. “Have you got a light?”

Vector decided he rather liked this chap.

“I’ve never even seen one of those things before,” he replied.

Dusk was settling by the time Celestine sprouted on the horizon, and Augustus was correct; the city had an ethereal emerald tint to it. There were domes of all sizes connected to the central axis of the providence, all emitting their own luminous kind of florid aura.

              Kaizen wanted to apologize – repeatedly and profusely – for the imposition that their arrival had placed on the good-natured Duke of Celestine, Montgomery Lovelace.

“Don’t be silly, my dear duke,” Lovelace said, gesturing toward the port where the drawbridge had effectively connected, albeit a short tether. “We have multiple inlets for just such an occasion. Of course, we have never before had the honor of hosting an entire castle alongside my own.” Lovelace smiled.

The middle-aged man was of the sort who smiled easily and often, which had also been true of Kaizen’s father; unlike Kaizen’s father, these smiles seemed sincere. They reached up into his eyes. Kaizen found himself, with a helpless urge, wishing to unburden the confession of his sister’s suicide – or accident? murder? madness? – to this near-total stranger, but he relented. He had enough confessions yet to make.

Following the catastrophe of the
Albatropus
collision, Kaizen had stormed to the roof of the castle keep and demanded that Trimpot be manacled for his treason. The pink-haired dandy swore so believably, so innocently that he had only been maneuvering to rescue Sophie, who had suffered a breakdown out of nowhere, whom he had seen leap from the docks. It was all very convenient, but in truth, he didn’t trust the man being anywhere near Legacy. He was somehow certain that, if they remained in the same domicile, one of them would be murdered. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure which, but he couldn’t risk that it might be Legacy. She was the only thing, the only one, to make his heart twist and swell like this, but then – there had been the scene on the dock. The way she had squirmed beneath his lips, as if the very act were painful, and then, the icing, a slap.

Perhaps it would be better for him if Legacy were in the other castle.

He was almost certain that Lovelace was fond of her, and feared that the kind duke was too trusting to be left in the company of Neon Trimpot. God alone knew what might become of Celestine if Trimpot was let through the gates. The city of Icarus had come tumbling down within the week.

At the moment, Olympia was in her chambers. When Kaizen last saw her, she was beating her breast and moaning for Sophie, but that had probably changed. Try as he could, his mother had never really stricken him as that type of mother. She would simply invest that excess energy into herself. She was probably treating herself to a long soak at the moment, possibly accompanied by Trimpot. He’d manacled the bastard in the keep, but he wouldn’t be surprised to find that his mother had undermined the edict, that Master Addler had completely forgotten it or been too busy muttering about the never-ending string of broken and missing automata, nose-deep in some brass guts.

And Legacy . . . Legacy was in his room.

He was certain no one would tread into it without his permission, but even so, he’d commanded her to lock the door behind him.

Something was very wrong with her, he could tell, but immediately after everything else that’d happened . . . Sophie’s complete and total breakdown, Trimpot’s strategy to murder Legacy (Kaizen’s conviction did not need evidence), arrival in Celestine at long last and still being tender from that slap across his face . . . he just didn’t think now was the time to ask. There was a numbness to her. She alternated between seeming dreamy and hyper-focused, one moment resolute and the next lost. But her vulnerability did not extend to him. She made no gesture of desire for his comfort, he couldn’t help but notice.

“I know I’ve asked for enough,” Kaizen told Lovelace, glancing warily at the older man. “But I must ask for one more thing.”

“Absolutely, my boy,” Lovelace replied. “You’ve had a long journey, and such a terrible time of it, and I’m sure the monarch–”

“It is exactly the monarch, yes,” Kaizen seized upon his opportunity. “I . . . He’s demanded of me to give him a scapegoat regarding the city’s collapse, and I have in my possession the man whom I feel is responsible. That having been said, this man was also publicly pardoned by my father . . . and indirectly, by me, for honoring his promise . . . and he had fallen out of the media in recent days.”

“Unlike Exa Legacy,” Lovelace added.

Kaizen stared in wonder at the man before him. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly. She’s . . . she’s with me, too.”

“Of course she is.” Lovelace smirked, though the expression was not unkind. “I recall the very familiar way with which you grabbed her arm in those mad streets.”

“. . . Yes,” Kaizen confessed, eyes panning down. If Lovelace had not been sure before, he certainly was now. “She’s with me, and Trimpot – the man–”

“I know who Neon Trimpot is,” Lovelace informed him.

“Yes, well, Trimpot is ripe to kill her himself, truth be told,” Kaizen rushed on, “and so I would feel much safer – she would be much safer, I mean – if she could stay in the castle for this short amount of time between the two cities. And kept . . . quiet, if you would be so kind,” he finished. “I worry what the monarch would do if he had the opportunity to grasp her, but she’s not – you must know, you met her, she’s not–”

Lovelace nodded. “I recall that, as well,” he said. “I will accept the girl as my guest. Will you bring her forward to me now?”

“Yes, sir! Thank you!”

Kaizen made haste back toward the castle, into the grand hall, up the rotunda, and unlocked his bedchamber. He flung the door wide, nimble with this heady sense of victory, that maybe everything would somehow be all right, and came up short.

Legacy was seated at his writing desk, a cruddy, outdated automaton splayed before her. His chest cavity was open, and she appeared to be wedging into it a small, dark green chunk of rock.

She jolted as he entered, and her eyes flashed up at him. He’d never seen her so . . . walled up.

“Legacy?” Kaizen asked, stepping closer. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she murmured, standing with a disjointed rigidity. She reminded Kaizen of a vessel that had been put together wrongly, or treated poorly, and was on the verge of flying apart with every motion it completed. She closed the broken automaton and plucked it from the desk, folding it between her hands, and looked to him again. She stared for a moment, stared as if she might say something important and true. She took a deep, quick breath, and straightened her shoulders. The wall was so very high all of a sudden. “Can I go now?” she asked.

              Meanwhile, the rebels continued their murmurs amongst themselves, secreted away into the berth of the potbelly patchwork dangling beneath the much larger, much more noticeable
Chrysalis.
The activity in the common room was surprisingly upbeat, considering the previous few days, and everyone supposed it was due to their hunger and their stress and the knowledge that it was almost over. Or, rather, the knowledge that this more difficult chapter had closed, and at least they would continue the fight on solid ground.

“We’re going to take a hit, though,” Vector informed his group, which included Gustav and Coal, both listening with interesting intent. He’d never considered Gustav the most diligent of the bunch, but perhaps that was an unfair judgment. He had certainly risked his neck often enough. “It’s bound to be difficult with a figurehead like Legacy just vanished out from under us. And I mean – after watching her get literally snatched off the ship . . . knowing she’s been arrested twice, had manhunts called for her, been chased through the streets by police . . . who would want to take her place?”

Coal frowned and rose a hand, her eyebrows low with sobriety. “I would take her place,” she answered. “Gustav told me all about the CC. And . . . and I look just like her, don’t I?” she pressed. “The movement wouldn’t need to ‘take a hit,’ as you say. Not at all. If Legacy comes back, then I can return to just being . . . Radia, I guess. It would be a shame to lose so much forward momentum, though, I think. So let Legacy spend some time at the castle, and we can try to get her back at some point, but until then. Until then. I can be Legacy. I mean, we look just alike, don’t we?”

Vector and Gustav scrutinized the girl, imagining her in a wig of blonde braids.

“Ten pounds and you would look just like her,” Gustav allowed.

“Imagine how powerful and victorious the CC would seem if the monarchy said that it had Legacy, and we got to turn around and show New Earth that they didn’t.”

Vector gulped. “Uh. Radia? Coal? You do realize that . . . the trip from Heliopolis to Celestine? It isn’t as long as the trip from Heliopolis to Icarus.”

“No, I didn’t,” the slave girl replied, unblinking. “Why?”

“You should know,” Vector answered, shrugging. “You should know that . . . the monarch might actually come to Celestine – soon – might already be there – looking . . . for Legacy. For you.”

“Well.” Coal cleared her throat and forced a smile. How was it possible to enjoy something that made you feel a little sick, too? She allowed herself to put on a bit of false hubris for the sake of the rest of the table. “Well. It’ll be twice as hard to kill an idea that has two faces, won’t it.” She glanced at her newfound compatriots and felt – for the first time in her life – as if she was home. “So? Shall we? Let’s find me some convincing hair.”