Outlier: Rebellion (46 page)

The front door shakes with activity, then opens. Her heart leaps for two seconds, until she realizes it is Lionis returning from the library. Their eyes catch, Ellena gripping her nicked palm.

His face drops. “Not the one you were hoping to see?” He carries his books to the den.

The words make her feel so guilty. “No, no,” she insists, reaching for him. “I’m happy to see you. Lionis, I’m trying to cook … to cook your breakfast.”

Her breakfast suddenly becomes his in one flick of a thought. Lionis peers at her from across the den, unsmiling, then sets his books down heavily. “Better not let you burn it, then. Leave the burning to me.”

As he approaches the kitchen, she’s relieved to see the humor in his face. He takes over, and in the space of three minutes, a tasty breakfast sits on a plate. Lionis takes one fork of it, then turns a questioning eye on his mom. “Have a bite?” She smiles, takes out another fork and lets herself enjoy a mouth of mashed, peppered egg. “Yep,” she says with a giggle, “that’s how they’re done.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll come home.” Lionis shakes his head, puts in another forkful of breakfast. The utensil scrapes teeth on its way out. “I’ve always said it. Link and Wick, they’re a pair of trouble. But they’ll come back and take whatever punishment awaits them, if the school calls and marks them truant. I’m shocked they haven’t. Someone must be looking out for them.”

Ellena suddenly finds her arms wrapped around her son, interrupting him mid-bite and squeezing him in her arms like she’ll never let go. “Sometimes, you’re all I have.” The words are half a choke. She realizes she’s trying not to cry. “My sweet Lionis.”

Once he swallows the bite, his face turns, something occurring to him. “Sorry, mom. I just realized …” He breaks from her arms, crosses back to the den and thumbs through the books he’d brought home. “Damn. Yeah. I have to go back. I left my book on Empaths at the library.”

You just got home. Why is everyone always leaving me?
“But … Wait, Lionis …”

“Sorry.” He makes for the door.

“Fine,” she snaps, slamming her fork down on the counter. “Fine, then.
Go.
This whole house is cold and silent. Everyone’s lost in the city, no mind at all. Go get lost with them.” She turns around and runs the faucet hard, blasting her hands.

She hears his quiet voice. “They’ll be home soon enough, mom. And so will I.” She keeps her back turned so as not to watch him leave. The door opens, she hears it, and then she hears it quietly close. She shuts off the faucet with a sigh. The silence becomes once again her only company. The unrelenting, ear-pressing sound of no other breath besides her own.

The breakfast grows cold, and her heart colder.

On the train to work, she’s asked for her seat so that an old woman may place down a heavy sack of groceries. “Of course,” says Ellena, rising at once. Sliding between other passengers, she keeps feeling like she’s in someone else’s way, edging around clothes and tired stares and irritated faces. After another stop’s torrent of new occupants, she finds herself pressed to the end of the train, staring at everyone’s backs.
I’m ever so tired of staring at the backs of people’s heads,
she thinks, of so many days of her sons leaving for school, of her husband leaving …

Who’s gonna take my aches away?

Nine hours later when her shift is over in the Greens, and when there is no coworker in sight, and when her boss is not looking through his smudgy office window, and when not a soul is near to dare question her, she takes her hands to one of the giant seed bins—full to the ugly brim—and shoves it over, just because she wants to. The thing seems to tip in slow-motion, and the andragora seeds that took her and the other mudders months to gather spill in a steady rain to the earth. And when Ellena heads for the trains home, all she feels is satisfaction.

00
47
Ruena

She permits herself access to the hall of cells on the thirty-second sub floor. Her escort, a soldier assigned directly by King Greymyn himself, learns how brave he’s
not
as the cold and the dark swallow them. “I will be here when you’re through,” he tells her, taking a position at the elevator door and refusing to advance further. She strolls down the hall, uncaring.
Let him quiver.

She passes forty cells that carry forty criminals, men and women who await their final sentencing. A thin, endless ribbon of neon runs down the center of the hall, its only light, terminating at the base of each door. Within the cells, the criminals are nude as babies, but don’t have the sweet comfort of Baby Dreams, as they are far older than two years, and instead enjoy the chilly agony of metal-plated walls, the uncompromising dampness and cold, and the occasional rasps of people sobbing, shivering, or dying.

None of it scares Ruena. Each of them made choices that led them to one of these cells. In their choices, they disrespect the efforts of the King, who gave them good lives. And the great work of Janlord, Marshal of Peace. And the force of the young Taylon and his ever-expanding Guardian. These very same people will someday disrespect Ruena, when she is made Queen.

She arrives at his cell, peering through the one-square-foot window. Unlike every other criminal in the King’s Keep, Dran is practically lounging on the cold unforgiving floor, just as naked as the rest. He looks up, his black eyes finding hers in the dim, eerie light. He makes no effort even to cover up his privates, out there for anyone to see.

“Hey, pretty,” he says.

She lifts her pointy chin. She chose a robe of bright lime to combat the monochromatic gloom of the Keep and cared not to wrap her hair in any matter of scarves or hats today. In the cool breeze of the afternoon, she let her hair fly—but it only made the ugly scar cutting down her scalp and left ear all the more noticeable. His word of endearment hits her sideways, and she resents instantly that this fool criminal would, in his circumstance, have the gall to taunt a woman for the scar on her face. “My name is Ruena Netheris.”

“And what brings you to my humble new abode?” He smiles wide. His eyes seem shadowed, evidence of the heavy black makeup that used to cake them. Like the eyes of a raccoon, brightening the whites. It either makes him look like a thing to be feared, or a thing afraid.

Ruena studies his long shape.
Boys from the slums are dirty,
she thinks, even though he has all his skin out in the open, nowhere to hide a smudge of ash. He looks freshly bathed, in fact.
The worst dirt can’t be seen, the dirt of the mind,
she reminds herself. “I’m not entirely convinced of your innocence. Or your guilt.”

“You’ve come for convincing?” He smiles wider.

“You are the leader of The Wrath, a little thorn in the side of Guardian in the ninth and tenth wards for the better part of a year. Nothing more.” Ruena cocks her head, makes wide her own eyes to show all the white of wisdom in them.
I’ve done my research on you, dirt of the slums.
“But there are plenty more of you. The Wrath did not only consist of you and your younger brother, Fylan.”

Dran shrugs. “You’re the one with all the answers. Whether I live. Whether I die. If you have a question for me, don’t you also have its answer, pretty?”

“Call me that again,” she responds, “and in addition to an answer, I’ll also have your tongue.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “But the question is, where are you wanting my tongue once you have it?”

His quip throws her. She can pretend that his cocky behavior and frisky little words don’t affect her, but she can’t ignore how her breath quickened.
The Wrath,
she muses, regaining her foothold.
What have you to be so wrathful about?

“It is a curious thing that, for all the black in your attire, you made the words blue,” she points out. “I believe, for the sake of consistency, your words would’ve been black as well.”

“So you
do
doubt my involvement?” He lifts his brows curiously, his voice full of innocence and wonder. “Guess there is hope for Dran after all.”

“Doesn’t make you any less of a criminal.” She makes to lean toward him as if to get a better look, but her eyes keep to his face, not daring to give him the satisfaction of wandering lower. “It is your crimes with The Wrath that you are answering for.”

“Ah.” He crosses his legs the other way, his privates making a stir of themselves. Ruena rolls her eyes to the ceiling to avoid an accidental look.
It is ever so distracting.
“So I have to ask, sweet Lady Netheris, to whom does the King answer for his own crimes?”

“Should the King answer for any, he answers to his Council, who make certain he is adequately just.” She stares at the ceiling as she talks, not giving him the courtesy of eye contact. “You may be slumborn, but you know as well as I that there have been no Tyrants in all the history of Atlas.”

“Except the last Queen.”

“I will
not
be that sort, when I am crowned. And she was not a Tyrant. The only ones with the potential to be such a thing are Outliers and we are diligent in our effort to apprehend them.”

“Apprehend? Hmm, interesting. I thought Outliers were celebrated for their extraordinary and rare Legacies, brought up to the Lifted City and showered with gold.”

“Well, with any person of such power, there is room always for concern.” She dares a peek at him, then looks away quickly.
He’s staring right at me. Ugh, the gall.
His pitch-dark irises pierce like black lightning, stealing her resolve. “You aren’t one, so I’d—”

“How do you know I’m not an Outlier?”

“You think me a fool?” She turns her burning eyes back on his naked form.
When I’m Queen, I’d allow them at least the dignity of a pair of underwear.
“What do we have a Royal Legacist for, if not to know and survey any who come before the King? We know every single thing about you. Your Legacy is mundane.”

At that, he squints hard, and where a moment ago his eyes were without their black, suddenly the black returns in a sprout of inky tears.
He oozes the grease from his eyes.
The whites in them glow.

“As you so demonstrate. A mundane Legacy. Your power’s only in your knife and your tongue. One which you’ve lost, the other likely to follow.” Ruena lets a lazy gaze run down his figure, observing the dust of hair down his legs, on his privates, up his stomach and tickling on his chest. “But not in your Legacy.”

“I prefer it that way. People who depend on their Legacies are weak. Hey, pretty, my face is up here.” Ruena snaps her eyes back to his. “There you go.”

“I told you, the next time you called me that—”

“So tell me where you want it.” He licks his lips slowly, unsmiling.

Suddenly she’s not sure at all why she came down here. What was she hoping to find? A scared boy begging for his life? Deep, bleeding remorse? An apology? Maybe she doesn’t even know the real force that drove her to put on a wash of lime silk, to don her glass heels … even her best pearls dangle from each ear, her Aunt Kael’s. Why all the fuss? Her fingers tingle with the threat of electric discharge, and that’s what tells her that she’s spent enough time here in the Combs.

“I want it behind your teeth where it belongs.” His eyes look hungry, the black around them bleeding.
He is playing with you,
she tells herself.
He’s playing with your desires. He’s making a fool of you.
“I must’ve been a fool.”

“To come and pay me a visit? No.” Lithely, he rises to his feet, his slender shape proving careless of its exposure, his posture straight as a line, his eyes sharp as needles and smiling without a smile. “You were genius to do such a thing.” Ruena squints at him, doesn’t dare ask what he means. So he lets her know: “Now, when the King changes his mind, I can die in peace.”

“What peace have I brought you?” She can’t help herself, staring at his wide, unsmiling lips.
I could’ve had your tongue. With one cry, I’d have it in my palm or elsewhere.

“The peace of knowing someone cares.”

Ruena takes two shallow breaths. She lifts her chin once more. “You have a fiancée. Mercy is her name, if you remember it. I do. Does she not care?”

“Not likely. Never did.” The lie is difficult to hide from his eyes, bared as they are.
He is lying to protect her … Playing his fiancée off as nothing so that we will not pursue her.
Something about his cockiness seems noble. “The rest of The Wrath are likely disbanded now too. Given up, gone home. Without me, they’re just … boys with bad tempers.”

She studies his face good and hard. A Queen doesn’t show a speck of softness, not to a slumborn. “You’d like me to believe that, wouldn’t you, Dran?”

“What I’d like you to believe,” he says, taking away all her smarts, his dark eyes somehow growing darker, “is that I’m innocent. Because I
am
. And since I am innocent, it begs answer to one critical question: who
did
bring down the Lord’s Garden?”

Ruena studies his face. Is she looking for a wink of falsehood? Is she finding herself seduced by his claim?—by his dark eyes?

“Because,” he goes on, serious and even of tone, “I can assure you, no matter what comes of me, your mind will not be eased, and your problem will remain unsolved, until you find out who—or what—caused that mighty explosion to happen. I promise you, whatever it is, it’s still out there. And it’s a threat to both of us.”

“There is no threat to me,” Ruena arrogantly pushes on, knowing full well she’s wrong, feeling the doubt clutch at her throat and threaten to take away her breath. “I am the most protected woman in all of Atlas, too soon to be its next Queen.”