LEGACY LOST (3 page)

Exa Legacy had been milling around this landslide in her mind for hours now. She couldn’t sleep. While the rest of the boat lightly drowsed on makeshift bunks, even spilling out onto the deck itself, Legacy roamed in her fish-tail skirt, blouse, and golden vest – its jointed wings now folded against the back – for they had dried, and she had no other clothing onboard, this was all so sudden. Legacy roamed, idly fondling her chin, eyes drifting without anchor or destination, and she avoided any pesky outcroppings of mental images from the last twelve hours.

Instead, she focused on the pearly clots of cloud shifting in the distance.

Slivers of glass from store windows or busted automatons littered the street, along with an occasional spray of gears or a stray key. Single people ran past Legacy without even glancing back, though there were no groups. Fires poured out of windows, but no one came to extinguish them . . .

The stars were so bright in the night sky without the fogged, scratched plating of a dome to obfuscate them. Hundreds of the things. And there hung the waning moon, a dusky sliver near the horizon, mysterious and foreboding. Yes. Wonderful. Focus on that.

The ground subtly tilted beneath Legacy’s feet, and her stomach lurched. The buildings around her groaned as if under the strain of gravity, glass windows crunching like fractured teeth . . .

The patched sail of
Albatropus
buffeted in the warm wind, pleasant, hypnotic clinking of metal on metal as it banged against its mast. Stop thinking about the . . .

She shouldered her way through the gate and onto the metallic grid of the exterior aerial dock, twisted onto the railing – which was now at sixty degrees, somehow, or maybe it only seemed that way to her fevered brain – and leapt, Coal-Radia still slung over her shoulder, nothing but raging winds and sheets of frigid rain above, nothing but Icarus slowly capsizing below . . .

No, it didn’t. It didn’t. It didn’t. It didn’t.

Legacy gripped the rail of the stern and closed her eyes tightly, focusing intently now on that blackness, as if only a complete blackout might blot the event from space-time. There was this desperate, clawing sensation in her chest – her lungs – as if an animal struggled to breathe and was pinned . . .

“Leg?” Vector’s voice was characteristically cheerful and alert, but just now, was sharp with concern. “What are you doing?”

Her eyes popped open and she glanced over her shoulder. She’d been so lost in thought, or in non-thought, she’d forgotten about Vector, trapped at the helm indefinitely. She scrambled to rub at her damp eyelash and turned to join him at the wheel of the ship, gently shifting back and forth.

Quirky and creative, Vector Shannon had mischievous, bespectacled eyes, an upturned nose, long black dreadlocks (around which one could find the occasional copper spring coiled), and often wore rigid, fingerless gloves to protect his joints from the delicate mechanical work in which he was constantly engaged. He was nice. He was nice, if not a touch obsessed with his inventions.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Vector went on, allowing her to dodge the question of what she’d been doing when the answer was now so very clear.

“Can’t sleep.”
I’m surprised anyone can,
she added silently. “What about you? You’ve been at the helm since–” She waved her hand as if to wave away the rest of her sentence.
Since it happened.
“When are you going to get some rest?”

Vector shrugged and offered her his best smile of denial. “Well, it’s a non-stop flight,” he explained brightly. “So, in five days, give or take a day?”

Legacy considered this. “Why don’t you let me take the wheel for a bit? I can keep us on course. And–”

“I don’t know, Leg.”

“Why not?”

He frowned and cast his eyes about as if searching for a physical escape from the question. “We just can’t afford any mistakes. We really, really can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, do you know anything about cloud harvesting?” he asked.

“Of course! I mean, a little, at least,” Legacy replied. It was a common technology to the floating cities and to the airships traveling between them. Vertical, nonporous sheets collected the water from passing clouds and siphoned it into a barrel. “There’s really nothing to it. The sheets do most of the work, don’t they?”

“Technically, it is very simple,” he agreed, although the frustration in his voice betrayed the conflict in the statement. “But there are forty-seven people on this ship, including us. And a healthy body needs half a gallon to maintain, every day. So that’s twenty-three and a half gallons per day that this ship needs just to drink.”

Legacy nodded. Normally, she found mathematics vaguely annoying, but privately, she also welcomed the distraction from her own problems. “That’s not so bad,” she volunteered. “Clouds have millions of gallons in them.”

“But what if there’s a cloudless day?”

Legacy actually laughed, though it was a spiteful kind of bark. “When was the last time–”

“This ship was never intended to be the living quarters of a movement, Leg! Our water barrel? Holds ten gallons! And what about showers? What if we need to clean something? We’re going to be
constantly
scavenging for clouds and
constantly
moving. There aren’t even more than ten pails! And there’s no storage of vitamins here, either, so you can just forget about food!”

Legacy peered at Vector for a moment and then placed her hand over his. “Let me take the wheel for a few hours,” she offered. The grief of losing her family in the collapse had also given her, strangely, a clear mind unencumbered by panic or exhaustion. She supposed she was in denial. Perhaps her parasympathetic nervous system had kicked in when the city had begun its surreal tilt, and not yet turned off. For whatever reason, she found the world around her very sharply detailed, yet flat and plain. It was comprised solely of emotionless fact. “You need to get some rest, and I’ll be fine. You can take her back at sunrise.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I just woke up,” Legacy lied. “I’m as fresh as dew.”

Vector grimaced but relented. “This map will tell you if you’re off-course or if there are storms ahead.” He tapped the amber globe to the side of the wheel. “If you need to lower
Alba
in the event of another thunderhead, climb into the crow’s nest and you can open the balloon and let out some air from there. She’ll drift down, and then, just re-patch her and maintain. There’s nothing we can do about a high wind, but the weather tonight seems . . . strangely . . . peaceful.” Vector sighed, almost losing track of his trajectory, and then jolted, returning. “Still, be on the lookout for pirates, all right? Very important. Other than dehydration, pirates are my – our – biggest concern. If an unfamiliar ship seems to follow or attempts to dock with us, you ring that bell and wake every ass on board.” He gestured to a single, dangling brass bell erected in the forecastle. “Our barrel is full right now, so you don’t need to worry about finding a cloud. Just remember to keep her at an even twenty-five miles per hour. Okay?” He indicated the fluctuating gauge of her speedometer.

“See?” Legacy said, however dull, taking the wheel from his reluctant hands. She smiled lifelessly. “Everything will be fine.”

Vector glared quizzically, suddenly doubting his judgment in relinquishing the wheel. “Leg–”

“Everything will be fine,” she repeated firmly. “Go get some rest.”

She was privately relieved when Vector finally acquiesced and disappeared into the ship’s crowded berth. Now it was only her versus her thoughts, and that Taliko Castle in the distance, ensuring the battle was a weighted one.

A month ago, she could’ve said that the castle was a symbol of oppression, the emblem of the monarchy, some doomed ideology clinging to its scepter with rubied claw. But now . . . that castle was the place where Kaizen Taliko had ripped her chains in half so that her hands could be free to roam his body.

              A month ago, Exa Legacy could’ve said that she was only in love with Dax Ghrenadel, and she always would be.

              Dax. Huh. Amid this maelstrom of new horror, the romantic wounds which riddled Legacy had almost gone totally numb.

The twenty-three-year-old statistician had bright blue eyes which often sparkled with either wit or annoyance, a long, slender bone structure, and shaggy chestnut hair. He also always wore a rebreather strapped over his nose and mouth, a leather mask outfitted with a large oxygen gauge and a small metallic coil of potassium hydroxide. Parts from the damn thing needed constant refilling and/or replacing, which Legacy’s engineer father had been more than happy to cheaply provide – in life.

A month ago, Legacy could’ve said that if she couldn’t be with Dax, she didn’t want to be with anyone. Due to his chronic lung disorder, he was “ineligible” for Companion Selection, which was the core of the Companion Law. You submitted your gene sequence and personality profile to the difference engines, and they paired you with the optimal complementary matrix. In Legacy’s case, this had meant Liam Wilco, a stout, stern descendant of Ireland whom she hadn’t even known at the time of their pairing. It was Legacy’s passionate defiance of the Compatible Companion Selection system which had led her to join the CC in the first place. But now . . .

              Now, Dax Ghrenadel, Legacy’s best friend since she was twelve and the focal point of her burgeoning sexuality from the age of fourteen, was sleeping without her in their cabin downstairs. Although he had been the one to rescue her from certain death, fishing her from where she’d been caught in the gale of storm winds, he hadn’t stayed with her while she’d recuperated, or asked her when she was coming to bed, or even if she needed anything or if she was okay or . . . or anything. It was as if he’d only rescued her out of habit, and not desire. He radiated coldness, and they couldn’t even talk to each other without a jab or two from their memories, and he hardly looked at her anymore.

“. . . I can only look the other way so many times,”
he’d told her at Glitch’s House of Oil, where she’d been temporarily harbored following the manhunt from the Coronal Massacre. He made it obvious that he’d seen her with Kaizen.
“Yes, I’ve known. I just wasn’t willing to admit it. What chance have I against a duke? 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 had winced at this.

Legacy had to confess that it was all true, everything he had said. She’d been rendered ineligible following her felonious activity with the CC, and the Monarch of New Earth, Archibald Ferraday the Third, would never earnestly hear any suggestion of Kaizen’s to ratify the constitution, even if it had a motivator as pure as star-crossed true love . . . or ill-fated infatuation. Who could say which was which?

“But that doesn’t mean it . . . matters,”
Dax had gone on.
“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.”

“You’re an idealist, Legacy. You believe what you want to be true. He has a life of luxury, doesn’t he? Access to the finest things . . . I’m sure he wouldn’t want to take a placement test and do actual work. 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 had sneered
. “It’s not like that! I’m not – And he’s not – Get out!”

“Guess that’s a sensitive spot for you, is it?”
Dax had seethed
. “The darling duke.”
He’d shaken 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.”

Since that night, things had gotten better . . . to a degree. He’d made some enigmatic reference to the symbolism behind the fact that he’d kept Mudflower, an ancient, dysfunctional automaton of Legacy’s. He’d said this while they laid side-by-side in the same bed, facing away from each other. They’d been thrown into the same cramped, overheated cabin by happenstance.

             
“It’d not been working all day, and you asked me to take a look at it for you,”
Dax had explained, voice flat.
“I worked on it – for weeks – and then . . . then your dad gave you Flywheel, and you forgot all about Mudflower. But I kept working on it, anyway, because I thought it’d be a cool surprise, sort of sweet, even, if I could just – give it to you one day. Just give you back this cruddy old automaton from when we were, what? I’d just turned fifteen. And it’d be functional, and have all these old messages to play for you, and old alerts to go through, and – yeah.”
The tempo of his voice shifted, from accidentally happy to waterlogged again.
“Anyway . . . I thought it would’ve been sort of sweet. But . . . I never could get it to work.”
He’d sighed.
“Kind of . . . symbolic, isn’t it? Me, trying to get something fixed that is totally beyond repair. And you . . . not even realizing or remembering what you lost.”