Outlier: Rebellion (49 page)

“I can’t get it off,” Link complains sourly, giving it a feeble tug. “And I’m
not
a sky-boy. I want nothing to do with sky-boys or girls. I want the Lifted City to fall.”

The man tilts his head. “So full of what you want, poor boy, so blind to what you have. Why’d you join the foul Wrath anyway? You are not made of the same skin as they.”

“I’m worse.” Link doesn’t care. He feels the seething incense of passion filling his chest. “Twenty times worse. I’ll slit all your throats on my way out of this sanctuary, I promise you that.”

As if interpreting his threat as a request, the bald man plucks a knife out from a pocket in his robe, tosses it at Link. It lands on Link’s food tray, setting a spatter of stew onto his front. The man leans forward, offering his neck. “If it’s all my red you want to see, to feed the red in your heart, please. You’ve taken all else.”

Link’s eyes move from the knife to the priest, back and forth a hundred times it seems.
He’s crazy,
he decides.
This stupid bald priest is a crazy, sick man. His Three Sister probably has some sick concept of death, like the Immortal Sister.
Link takes up the knife finally, but not to perform the deed asked of him. He slips the blade under the black band on his arm, gives it a wiggle, and the black at long last snaps, dropping to the floor. He doesn’t let go the knife, but lets his stare pore into the old man, observing his reaction deadpan.

Somehow, the bald priest looks both surprised and equally unimpressed. “It was just a squeeze of fabric.” The priest shrugs. “The real black that must be cut from you cannot be touched with a knife.”

“I didn’t cut it off for you.”

The man smiles softly. “Call me Baron. It is what my brothers and sisters of The Brae call me. The brothers and sisters that your Wrath didn’t cut down, I mean.”

“I cut no one down.” Link gives his foot a twitch, and the food tray is shoved at the bald priest, Baron, whatever he wants to be called. Link will make no use of that stupid name.

“The Lifted City is a magnificently large thing.” Baron calmly wipes a speck of stew off his chin from the earlier spatter, brings it to his mouth. “You realize there is an arm of it that resides directly overhead? There is an arm stretching a good length of the ninth ward too, and the eighth, seventh, sixth. Well beyond other parts of the city, I’m quite certain. Even a length of the Greens.”

Greens.
That word cuts into him deeper than this dumb knife ever could, the image of his mom washing forth. It hurts more than he’ll dare admit to this terrible bald man. “I can still slit your throat.”

“And much easier now, as you have the knife I gave you.” The man called Baron chuckles sweetly, licks his lips. “I suppose dropping the Lifted City on us would be
one
way to bring gold to our sanctuary, though I doubt any of us would be alive thereafter to appreciate it. Indeed, no gold in your heart, little boy, and so no gold for us.” The man rises, moves to the door.

You forgot your knife
, Link wants to shout, but holds back.
Maybe he’s forgotten.
Link stows it away under the pillow as the man turns to latch shut the door. When he looks up to meet the priest’s eyes, he realizes that the man intended to leave him the little blade.

“I will slit your throat on my way out,” Link says, promising. “I want you to know that. When I heal and I leave this place, your throat’s opening up for me.”

“Yes, throats open and cities fall and boys put black about their eyes, yes, yes. We hear it all at The Brae.” He gives another tilt of his hairless head, peering through the little window in the door. “But poor boy, you do not understand the cost of your own wrath. When you bring down the Lifted City, upon whose heads, exactly, do you think it will fall?”

00
52
Wick

It is surprisingly bright for being underground, but the tunnel leads them exactly where Victra claimed it ought to: the subterranean rail, which will take them closer to home far quicker than mere feet. The walls of the tunnel are lined with amber fluorescents up high and tiny bulbs in the floor covered by grimy see-through tiles. When the tunnel gives to the actual station, it is vertically cramped, but vastly wide and full of people waiting their long ride, much to Wick’s annoyance.
Why must every corner of this part of the city be so fucking crowded?
The presence of so many people brings his head to a boil, daring to knock him out.

“You okay?” Athan asks him when they’ve come to a stop.

“I’m fantastic,” he lies. “I’m so okay. Where’s the train?”

Wick has caught very little sleep since the rude awakening of his friends in that abandoned building, partly because they’ve been on a nonstop move—and also due to his own self-consciousness. How can he comfortably drift to sleep knowing his friends will be there, staring at him like some peculiar creature?

What Rone told him that morning still tortures him.
Outlier
. What else could his Legacy possibly be?
Outlier.
It wouldn’t be the first time Rone was wrong about something, but …
What if …?

He feels Athan’s soft muscled body press into his back. For a second he assumes the crowdedness of the station to be the reason, but then he feels lips at his ears and a stomach-stirring fit of electricity works down his body. “I’m going to look after you. Now that I know you … Now that I’ve your innermost secret, and there’s nothing else between us, I promise you … I’ll protect you.”

Wick wants to smile. He wants to spin around and cling to Athan and do a handful of things not appropriate in public, but as fast as the happy urge finds him, so does reality. He is marked truant by now. He cannot have a homecoming anymore. His family is as good as dead to him, as he will have to explain his disappearance—and any matter of explanation will work against him, especially when brought to the ears of Guardian, his brothers included. He has a scrape of glow across his back that cannot be removed. He will be abducted by Sanctum, truant, taken to the King and sentenced to live the rest of his years in the Combs where he can cause no more trouble.
Wake the world …
It seems such a stupid thing now. Nothing is more awake than it was when they set out. The King still screams.

“It’s all a waste,” Wick says to the air. The noise of the crowd swallows his words, so they fall on no ears. “I should’ve stayed home that night. I shouldn’t have searched for a world without a screaming King. It’s my dream that did me in …”

The train has arrived. The screams of a neglected, under-kept rail fill the subterranean station and threaten to jostle everyone’s skulls from their heads. Wick stares at the thing from across the way.
What’s the point in boarding it? What’s the point in going home? I have no home, not anymore.

Rone and Victra move toward the station, Tide following, self-consciously looking over his massive, plate-armored shoulder. Athan’s idea was genius; it’s like the armor itself is cause for the glow, not Tide’s guilty neon-soaked skin.

“Come,” says Athan, tickling Wick’s ear once more. “I’m craving a bowl of peppered white-noodle stuff, aren’t you? We’ll share a bowl of it when we’re back … whatever it’s called.” He comes to Wick’s front, gives a wink, then reaches out for his hand.

Wick gives half a playful squint, shoving down his stubborn, negative feelings. “I don’t hold hands.” But he does anyway.

When they reach the doors to the train, Wick’s heart gives three panicked jumps: a jump for each of the Guardian standing watch, eyeing them. The three Guardian do not look kind.
What is it with Guardian,
Wick wonders, trembling,
that make them like that?
Are Halves and Aleks like this too, turned stony and cruel?
Please
, he begs,
we’ve already had a run-in. Please, please, not again. Please.

But somehow, he already knew it would happen. He is ready to face it. Every hair on his body prickles with anticipation.

“Hold it,” says the Guardian closest to them. “You.”

Tide jerks, all his ridiculous armor protesting in little metallic screeches when he stops to face them. He shows the whites of his eyes and swallows hard, licking his fat lips.
Tide, you idiot, could you
try
to look a little less guilty?

Tide makes a squeak, which Wick belatedly realizes is a word: “Sir?”

“What’s with the gear?” The lightly-armored Guardian is equipped with a neon in his left hand and a long, hungry blade at his hip. The other two carry daggers in their belts.
We could take them,
Wick decides.
They only have one neon … and even if we can’t wrest that from them in time, what trouble’s a few more glows?

Rone and Victra have already vanished into the train. Athan stands at Wick’s side, his breath pounding on his neck. Tide’s gone stone-scared, his mouth making impressively flexible movements, but not making words.
Tide, you idiot.
A lot of good the armor does when the wearer is too dumb to speak.

Wick pushes forward. “We’re headed home from the armory in the seventh, Sir. It’s for an important, time-sensitive school project. We’re in a hurry.”

“Three kids like you?” The Guardian wrinkles his face. He seems to be debating whether or not to believe them. “Armory, you say? I know every single one. What’s the name of this armory you claim you frequented?”

Of course, the group had phased into the basement of said armory, not having actually seen the name of it on any sign or posting in the street. “It’s … It’s …” Wick gives a genuine show of a person searching for a name. “We went to six or seven different stores. I can’t remember what the armory was called. Can you?” He looks to Tide innocently—and judging from the terror in his eyes, figures him to be the wrong person to have turned to—then faces Athan. “Do you remember?”

“Yeah, no, I don’t.” Athan plays along, rubbing his face. “We went to so many places. The one with the old man at the counter, and then the one with the funny smell … and then there was—”

The Guardian cuts them off, not having it. “How about you take off that armor, boy. Show us you aren’t hiding anything.”

Tide lifts a brow, as if he hadn’t heard the plainly-spoken request. “H-Huh?” He shifts a bit, the armor coughing with yet another trembling song of steels. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again.

Wick makes a sad glance at the train, where Victra and Rone have emerged, watching this scene. They’re staying apart from it, likely in case something drastic has to happen—or so Wick tells himself. Surely Rone isn’t debating leaving them here. Victra’s eyes are closed; perhaps she’s looking for a way out through someone else’s.
Little help that’ll be,
Wick thinks bitterly.

The train makes a screech, steam filling the air above them.
It’s about to leave us whether we get away from these fools or not.
“We really have to go,” Wick complains, trying to hide any sign of desperation from his voice. “Look, the train is about to leave. Sirs, please, we’re already late as it is.”

They are unflinching. “Once your boy here shows my friends and I what’s under his armor, we’ll let you on your way.”

Wick keeps his eyes steady. His once-beseeching eyes are turning cold and hard.
I’ve never killed anyone before
. He considers how fast he can get that sword from the Guardian, how fast he can push it through him like a loaf of bread. He wonders if he can show this poor man the amazing payoff of his nightly training.

Suddenly, a new voice enters the tussle. “Why are we not embarked yet, children? Must I drag you three by the ears?”

Wick tries to turn his head, but the new person has wrapped a hand about his neck so firmly, he can only stare ahead in a startled and uncomprehending daze. It’s a woman’s hand and voice, and the other hand is gripped to Tide’s neck like a flesh noose from behind.
I know that voice,
Wick realizes, his stomach dropping.

“I’m—I’ve—” Now it is the Guardian who stammers, his little voice reaching for an answer. “I’m in the middle of questioning this boy for his—for his—”

“For the costume he’s donned? Yes, it’s for a school project. These are my students, and we’re late in our return, and you know very well what happens to late students, don’t you, Jerron?”

Professor Frey … It’s Professor Frey.

“Yes,” she continues, feeding off the now-frightened look in the Guardian’s eye, “I remember you. I taught in your ward when you were only a wee pip of eleven or twelve years. Didn’t know much then, don’t know much now.” She pushes ahead, bringing Wick and Tide behind her, almost protectively. “They told it straight, didn’t they? A school project, for which they were sent to the seventh ward for costumes. My boy Tide here has found half an armory, looks like—overdone it, really.” She gives him an appraising glance-over and half a chuckle.

“He’s got a glow to him,” another of the three Guardian puts forth, daring to sound brave in front of the ever-intimidating Frey. “I see it beneath the sleeve of his armor. This boy’s been hit by—”

“Yes, he has,” Frey retorts, her voice carrying a deadly, icy severity. “And when I find out what
foolish
Guardian stung my innocent student with glow, I
will
have his head. You do know how much weight my word carries against you Guardian kids, don’t you? I’m a Professor of twenty years’ experience in the ninth and five years in the eighth, which basically makes me a Queen. I’ll be sure to let the Marshal of Peace himself know the grievance that has come to dear Tide for this wrongdoing.” Her eye twitches as she stares down the next Guardian boy from head to toe, and adds, “And don’t think for a second I don’t recognize you too, Hundro. You were smartest in my class. Please don’t tell me Guardian’s stolen away
your
smarts too. I’ll have to hold a funeral to mourn the passing of all my children’s brilliance.”