LEGACY LOST (8 page)

“Oh, Leo!” the girl cried, whipping the wheel again. But this time, Trimpot was there, and he gripped its spokes, steadying the island before the tilt could spill them both to the ground. She twisted to gaze up at him, and he made the effort to not stare in revulsion at the crude stitch work along her face. His arms were already around her in order to hold the wheel that she had forgotten entirely. Instead, Sophie arched onto her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, cradling her body against his in an odd combination of innocence and intimacy. “No longer Sophie Taliko,” she sighed.

“Just a lucky survivor of the collapse of Icarus,” Trimpot said. He looped one arm around the small of her back, hugging her closer, and freed the other to tick the speed of the island a few more notches upward.

Legacy was in bed long before Dax, but kept awake by the clangor of the engine room and the unbearable heat and the distant thunder of laughter and footfalls. Following the showers of the day, the crew of the
Albatropus
was in high spirits . . .

For the most part,
she thought to herself. Legacy rolled onto her side and stared for a moment, then stretched to power the radio propped on the cabin’s bedside table. The horrors of the world around her were always a good way to drawn out the smaller, more personal horrors of her daily life. After all, how could one cry underwater?

She twisted the dial to station
CHN-1, City of Heliopolis News.

“. . . industrial-strength breathing apparatuses from fifty pieces or more! You’ll never see prices this low anywhere else in the City of the Sun, so come find Olly Olly Oxygen Free on the corner of Hazzard Street and . . .”

Legacy grimaced, descending back into the muck of her thoughts.

That message she’d sent to Kaizen earlier, so terse and dismissive, still made her feel a little bit sick. But it was all for the best. It was what she had to do. If Kaizen could only know that, he would understand it. Of course, she would never be able to tell him or he would not rest until he found her – she knew him now, well enough to know this . . . And so his heartbreak, the lack of resolution, the end of it all, was necessary.

“Mm, what refreshing flavor of iron is this? Lemon-esque! From Nanny’s Assemblage, the only synthetic vitamin dispensary that guarantees . . .”

And how could they dance, when none of them had a friend alive in the world outside of this vessel? Perhaps they were punchy on the false sense of victory brought by the storm, as if they had brewed it themselves, as if to have enough water to live another day was some kind of great achievement and not a stepping stone to the battle of tomorrow, as if the weight of the next four days had yet to settle on anyone, much less the weight of Celestine. Did none of them think . . . that maybe the parting offer made by Lovelace could have been polite, automatic, ingenuine? And he had invited her, yes, but maybe it’d been a trap, and even if it had been genuine, no one had invited forty-five of her closest–

The door swung open and Dax staggered inside, such a sharp, bright contrast to the shadows which crowded Legacy, hovering and smothering. His rebreather was on, but she could tell that he was smiling nonetheless.

“Hey,” he huffed, collapsing onto the bed in a full sprawl. His clothes were damp, as were his hair and face.

“Are you drunk?” Legacy asked from where she was curled.

“Really not,” he replied, kicking off his shoes. Next he pulled long, wet socks from his feet. “Just danced my ass off on the deck. Started to rain again. Refilled all the pails and the barrel. Nobody can party like a rebel ragamuffin, I tell you!”

“Oh. That’s good. I was worried. Because, you know. Alcohol dehydrates you.”

Dax’s gaze shifted to where the girl huddled in the corner of the mattress, bleak eyes staring out as flat as gold in shadow. “You look terrible,” he informed her.

Legacy broke eye contact. “Thanks.”

“No, I mean–” He twisted and crawled to her, drawing his legs criss-crossed in front of himself. “I guess it is kind of weird to be at a . . . party.” He nodded, eyes shifting sideways. “After everything.”

“No, it makes sense,” Legacy replied, following the natural shift of finding the negative space in a conversation and filling it. If someone is noted to be a jerk, someone else will feel compelled to note the opposite. “In times of tragedy, everyone wants to move on as quickly as possible, or pretend it never even happened.”

“Everyone but you,” Dax said.

“Well. I do. I do want to do those things. I just . . . can’t.”

Dax scooted to the head of the bed, uncrossing his legs and opening his arms, gesturing for her to come to him. Legacy just stared, like he was crazy. “Come on,” he coaxed, leaning over and gently collecting her. He unfolded her cradled between his thighs, her back reclined on his chest, and draped the length of his arms over hers, as if he could be a shield for her. The scent of moist leather vivified her senses, and Legacy inhaled deeply yet subtly through her nose.

“Did you know I had ‘the talk’ with your dad when I was, like, nineteen?” Dax blurted, seeming to suddenly find this too funny to hold in any longer.

Legacy again knew that he was smiling, but couldn’t bear to join him. Her heart ached at the mention of her absentminded, soft-hearted father. “The talk?” she prompted weakly.

“Yeah. The talk where a father says to a young man, you know, ‘how would you treat my daughter,’ and stuff.”

Now he had her full attention. Legacy twisted to examine Dax’s face, but concentrated on the eyes and didn’t notice the oxygen gauge’s needle trembling over a yellow stripe. “I thought those conversations went out of style with the choice to marry. Why ask a mandated Companion about his intentions?”

Dax shrugged. “Your dad also wasn’t supposed to be working freelance as an engineer, especially of knock-off medical equipment,” he mentioned, and the tone was so good-natured, she almost didn’t notice how he had to use the past tense. “I don’t think he had much respect for convention. And he seemed to think that there was something between us strong enough that . . .” Dax’s eyes lowered as he searched some secret pocket in his mind for the next words. “. . . that maybe we’d end up together no matter what.” He closed his eyes. “And your dad – Mr. Legacy – he told me about how you didn’t care about money, really. You didn’t notice how shitty the life around you was. So I didn’t have to worry about that. Or about looks, you know. About . . .” He gestured to his rebreather. “. . . this. You just cared about people treating people right. And so, he said, it was easy for a good man like–” He faltered. “–like me to keep you happy.”

“What else did he say?” Legacy wondered.

“That the hard part of keeping you happy would be protecting you from things like this. Things that are hard, and unfair. That you didn’t understand them. Why everyone can’t just . . . always . . . be happy. But–” He frowned and hesitated as if he wanted to say something else, but then changed his mind. “I’d only just lost my dad, you know, so I got what he was saying. I was still on the ground myself, and you . . . you may not have realized it, but you – you, and your parents, and that sense of family I had, being with you – it was the only thing that pulled me up again. Your dad, your mom. They were great people, and it was – it was a great surrogate family to have. I miss them too,” he whispered.

Dax’s fingers crept between Legacy’s, lacing there and squeezing. She squeezed back.

The radio was still playing, but it seemed to echo from a million miles away.

“Anyway, you got assigned to Liam, of course,” Dax murmured, laughing huskily, a mirthless laugh. “And your parents seemed to think he was a good guy and shifted their attention elsewhere.”

“No they didn’t,” Legacy replied quietly. “They always loved you best. But, like you, they also wanted me to have a chance . . . chance at a normal life.”

“Well.” Dax nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sorry for the whole Kaizen thing.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry that . . . I didn’t let it be. Let you go. You’re a good–”

“Dax–”

“–a good woman, and you deserve–”

“Dax, stop!” Legacy twisted in his loose embrace, unsettled from the warm nest of memory.

“You deserve to be happy, and I was blocking it at every turn.” His eyes were deep with anguish, a sheen of sweat on his brow, partly from the heat, partly from the oxygen deprivation. “I just didn’t know.” His eyes flashed away. “Didn’t know when you fell out of love with me. It was so fast.”

Searching her mind for the moment to which he was referring, Legacy found it was not there. “I didn’t,” she replied simply. Still, she peered at him, though he would not look up. “I never fell out of love with you.”

Now he looked up. “Don’t tell me that,” he begged. His eyebrows twisted.

Legacy’s heartbeat kicked up. “It’s true,” she said. “I never stopped–”

“Stop,” he commanded her, as if desperate, and she froze mid-confession, uncertain why he would want her to stop loving him, why he would say that, when he tore the rebreather from his face and she realized, in the split second she had between that moment and the next, that he hadn’t meant to stop loving him. He’d meant to stop talking. “Just stop.” Like the sheets of rain that had pummeled the dry ship that afternoon, Dax was everywhere at once, wet and cool and musk, quenching. Doing nothing but rampaging over her surface, he still saved her.

His fingers went into her hair, binding there and pulling her neck open, the other hand – she didn’t feel its coolness – creeping over her legs and pulling them up and open, peeling her backward and down, opening for him and invaded by him, so there was no space his skin did not occupy, no swath of flesh uncrushed in his mouth. Their kisses were both deep and brief, as so much was demanded, the shoulder to be bitten, the chin swept beneath. The oxygen in the room evaporated. His mouth crawled down her torso and her glassy eyes rolled up in a flight of rapture. He paused only to sip at her belly button, grip twisting like smoke over her hips.

Nails sank into his shoulder as he migrated between her thighs, tongue freeing sharp pleasure sweet and wet as rain. The room blurred and dimmed as she called his name, as if he could save her from what he himself was doing, and she pulled his hair, the grief transmuted into ecstasy for this exquisite moment.

Then he was back again, mouth tracing hers, taste of salt and enigmatic spice, washing over her with a dizzying speed even as she senselessly pleaded for more. His thumbs roved over even her eyelids. His toes curled against hers.

Dax’s hands shook as he laid everything between them bare. Her thoughts took to the clouds as he finally joined her, fully, completely. They cringed up and down, open and shut, as if more sickness was the cure, to go deeper the only way out. Sweat poured from them both, one in flames, the other frost, both pouring just the same. Both deaf and blind. Time frittered from their fingers, weightless as ash.

For just a moment, yet so sudden and excruciating, he pulled away, and Legacy thought she might die. “Don’t go,” she rasped, eyes still closed, and there was a second before he descended again, mouth returning to her ear.

“Never,” he promised, a strange, breathy giggle slipping from him as their rhythm resumed with all its previous intensity.

Legacy’s thighs bucked and her back arched, the sudden stop and start having driven her quick to the ledge. There were unintelligible exclamations to God as Dax bowed against her neck and surged, struggling through the shimmering waves that threatened to rob her of him. He didn’t care. He felt invincible. Powerful. Delirious.

Her hands slammed the wall as she came, invoking his name in a string of whispers that crescendoed into a wail, and he answered in kind, a long and low expression before the vehicle he was driving shuddered and collapsed.

It took several seconds for Legacy’s senses to return, so frenzied had been their obliteration. The first sense to return to her was that of sound.

The voice of the monarch on the radio. How long had he been speaking? How had they missed it so completely?

“. . . floating cities, admittedly delicate. Yet, like the silk which binds our domes, deceptively durable. For, when a fire threatens a home, will we not smother it?” Vague cries of agreement behind his voice, as if he spoke before an auditorium. “If an infection grows in a wound, will it not be eradicated by the immune system?” Another line of cries.

“What is this?” Legacy wondered dreamily, her own voice seeming to come to her from within a fog, opening her eyes and moving gently to detach herself from their tangle of drenched limbs.

But Dax – Dax was as pale as marble, deep in slumber, but his lips . . . his lips were a faint blue.

“Our faithful servant, the young Duke of Icarus, reported that he had detained the responsible party, the figurehead of this careless, reckless movement, whose name I will not sully the air in mentioning.”

“Dax?” Legacy shrilled, springing onto her hands and knees, tilting his face in her palms. “Dax?” She slapped at his cheek.

“An idea, my children, is a dangerous thing, like a spark, like a germ. It is possible to topple an entire monarchy with such things, but trust, children. I will not rest as the fire spreads . . .”

Legacy scoured the bed for his rebreather, placing it over his mouth and fumbling the strap into place. She’d only let herself go for a few minutes, hadn’t it been, just a few minutes, just a few minutes, and come back to find the world shifting beneath her. “Dax!”