Outlier: Rebellion (5 page)

I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby boy. I lost my temper, I broke a machine at my job, it won’t happen again.

This is what Rychis recites over and over as he’s ushered down the endless chrome corridor. All he hears are the soles of his boots, clacking, clacking. That and the heavy song of chains.
Are they really necessary?
He’d happily face the King without restraints. The Kingship is kind, the Kingship is good.

He doesn’t have anything to fear.

I am Rychis Bard.
He recites his line over and over like a lyric and he hates music. The only music he knows is of hissing steam and banging hammers, his home at the metalshop where he’s worked loyally for seventeen years—until this morning when he lost his temper and found a pair of cold handcuffs kissing his wrists.
I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby boy …

Others have been arrested today too, it seems. Many men, some women, even a boy somewhere ahead of him in the line. Seeing the boy sends a searing pang through his body, making him think on his little son. The wife will understand that he could not be home, but what of his baby boy? His boy won’t know why daddy has gone.

Soon
, he promises him.
The King will forgive the fuck-up and send me home to you by supper.

A set of monstrous iron doors sliding open sobers him, and he reminds himself stupidly that he is not home … far from it. There is no wife to slip his hands around, only the uniformed men leading them through the doors and down many an endless hall. His chains giggle at him when he gives his thick orange beard a good scratching, and he listens to the beeps of access points, the tapping of keypads and passcodes, and more steely doors sliding open with electric hums and hisses. Marching on and on, up and up the metal contraption that is Cloud Tower, he wonders how much longer it’ll be before reaching the throne room of good King Greymyn, the Banshee King, where his judgment waits. They say the room’s like a huge glass chamber, its only neighbors the stars, with mirror-polished tiles and a ceiling so high it’s gone.

I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby boy …

His true home is a small one-bedroom in the grimiest of the ninth ward slum where even the acrid fumes of neighboring factories cannot soil his heart, for there is a beautiful woman in that home whom he calls wife … a woman who’s already claimed his heart plenty. Last night’s memory keeps him smiling as he moves down the hall … How she laughed when he pushed her into the couch, the baby asleep at last … Pulling himself over her, running a single finger up her leg to learn what she wore underneath. And she took that finger and put it just where she wanted. “Nothing,” she said. “That’s what’s underneath tonight.”

He needs to get home soon, he realizes. She’s likely waiting for him right now, wondering why he’s so late.

Soon,
he promises her too.
Once this farce is over with
…

He stumbles, and a guard with kind eyes brings him to standing again. Rychis tries a smile, reassured. All the things he and his wife were told in the slums, they’re all wrong. The Sanctum is good, the Kingship too. This place is not the nightmare his coworkers at the metalshop hiss and spit about, he’ll be so proud to tell them. The people of this Lifted City are just another people, not the rich monsters and cruel dictators and capitalist evils from which his childhood tales were spun. Even the guards ushering them to their judgment have eyes that smile.

He can’t wait to tell the guys at the metalshop. They were wrong, they were all wrong. What a good laugh they’ll have, repairing the machine he’d broken in such a careless fit. He already misses their jeering. The chains on his wrists already feel so light, they might as well not be there.
The Kingship is kind …

At last the marching comes to an end, and now they’re seated on a steel bench the length of the hall. As each person is ushered into the throne room, the rest of them grow more anxious. The chrome hallway echoes monstrously with the crash of the iron throne room door each time it shuts. After the fourth or fifth slam, Rychis thinks of it like the heartbeat of Cloud Tower. Not unlike his own thrashing chest, he can’t seem to breathe evenly.
I am Rychis … I have a wife and baby boy. I lost my temper …

No one seems to be returning from the throne room, which comforts him.
Each person is being shown mercy.
They’re released out another door, put onto a train back to the slums in time for dinner. The Kingship is kind. The Kingship is good. Greymyn the Great.

First thing I’m going to do when I see you
, he thinks of his wife,
is take you for all the hours in a night.

The next person is called, the crash of doors, and only two left before him. Rychis considers whether his wife is home yet, if she’s preparing supper, which makes him worry suddenly: he’s the only one who can get that boy to eat when he’s having one of his fits! His wife never figured out the trick, but it’s the little monster thing Rychis does … acting like a silly creature, the boy laughs and his mouth opens.
It’s so easy, it’s so, so easy …

The person at his side rises, moves to the door, crash as it shuts. He’s next and can’t keep his leg from hopping in place. The guard with kind eyes watches him, and Rychis can only stare back apologetically.
I am Rychis Bard,
he rehearses.
I have a temper and lost my wife, and
…
No, that’s not it.

The doors yawn again. His turn has come.

He rises, left knee cracking under his weight, and moves into the room. He sees the King on the throne and it’s so, so, so far away. The room is endless, on and on, he just puts one foot before the other. Each step assaults his ears, the clack of heel on pearl tile dancing up the ridiculously tall room, the sound rattling above him like invisible birds. Everything is glass, just like they said … He can’t manage to swallow, his throat tightened. He walks evenly, not daring to trip and make a fool.
I am Rychis, I lost my temper, I broke my wife—
No
—a machine. I lost my temper and broke a machine. I am Rychis Bard and I …

Then all too soon he’s before the King and his Marshals, the lords that he’s been ruled by all his life yet never seen in person. To one side of the throne are two of the three Marshals. He knows them so well from the broadcasts, the morning news and the night; they are the King’s chief executives. Taylon, the very young Marshal of Order who runs the elite crew of law-enforcers called Guardian … the very ones who brought him here for his mishap this morning. And the wise and kind-faced Marshal of Peace, Janlord, who looks so much taller in person, so much grander. The model of warmth, a youthful, cherry-cheeked grandfather to all. The other side of the throne holds the third Marshal, the colorful one, the Marshal of Madness—
No, no, that’s what the cynical and mocking call him.
His true title is the Marshal of Legacy. His name is Impis.

And of course, there’s the noble King Greymyn Netheris. The Screaming King, they call him. The Banshee King, because his Legacy is the shout of death. Such a marvel, the King and his massive tangle of a beard that hides his mouth—the death-cry of legend. And that beautiful throne, the chair whose sole occupant governs all the city and the slums and the eleven wards, the Greens and the gardens, all to the very edge where the high impassible Wall stands beyond which nothing else exists. He’s lord of all, dressed in a plain grey robe with a buckle. So unpretentious, so “one-of-the-people” …
the Kingship is kind, the Kingship is good.

But it is neither the King nor his impressive beard that addresses Rychis. It is Taylon instead, Marshal of Order. Oh, how small he looks … Only fourteen years old, last he heard. To hold such a position of power so young … but that is what abilities mean in this city. It isn’t who you are or where you’re from; it’s what you can
do
. That’s the thing that puts you where you belong for the rest of your days: your Legacy. Taylon, his Legacy is breaking bones with a thought.

“Have you forgotten yourself?” Taylon asks.

“What?” Rychis mutters.

And then his bones bend. It is the strangest, the most bewildering sensation, to have your own body betray you, and suddenly he’s on his knees by the force of Taylon’s mere
thought
. How stupid could he be?—to make his first impression one of such disrespect? Even a dumb kid knows to kneel before the King.

“Do you understand your crimes?”

Rychis keeps his eyes to the white floor and recites, “I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby—”

“Do you understand your crimes?” repeats Taylon.

Rychis dares a small glance at the King, who appears almost bored, then continues reciting, “I … I lost my temper. I broke a machine at my job. It will never happen again.”

“Yes,” Taylon agrees softly, yet his voice carries, filling the room with a boyish echo. “ ‘It won’t happen again.’ I’ve seen this over and over,” he says casually to his fellow Marshal, “what tempers do to the citizenry and balance of all the city of Atlas.”

Not daring to look up from the blinding mirror-polished tiles, Rychis dares wonder how a
boy
could possibly know what he’s talking about, speaking about balances and tempers and things.
I was celebrating the coronation of Greymyn before you were even born …

“I know all about anger,” the Marshal of Peace Janlord gives. “Any soul pressed enough will rebel, like a cornered cat in an alley.” He sighs, his tone so mature compared to the boy’s. “Perhaps this Rychis has only been burdened too heavily at his job and simply needs a reassignment.”

Rychis looks up, the sixty-something-year-old face of Janlord like a grandfather’s beaming gently down at his grandson. He has always been the kindest of the Marshals, the most reasonable, the voice of the people. That’s his purpose and Rychis’s heart swells at his words.
Yes
,
yes, I’ve been so burdened, so heavy …

“I’m not interested in
moving
a problem,” Taylon complains. “Move an ugly flower from one pot to another, still’s as ugly.”

There is a little giggle from the other side of the throne, drawing everyone’s attention. It is the Marshal of Legacy who giggled, the colorful one called Impis. He doesn’t seem to have noticed his own giggle as he pays absolutely no mind to the attention it just drew, still staring off into a world only he sees. One of his personal bodyguards called Metal Hand, a nasty-faced block of a man with huge metal gauntlets that come up to his elbows, shifts his weight and bares his eyes down on Rychis, causing him to look away quickly.

“Perhaps you can tell us what your Legacy is,” Janlord offers, “as that might pique the interest of Impis, our royal Legacist. Tell us all what you can do.”

Rychis can’t make his mouth operate for a moment, choked by his clenching throat or tongue or something. Then at last he manages: “I can move earth.”

“Curious,” the Marshal says, encouraging him.

“I … well, really it’s more that I can, ah … disturb the soil,” Rychis clarifies. “Minimally. I’m no earthquake summoner, mind you. That’d make me an Out— Well, never mind that. Though, once in the Greens, I
was
able to uproot a small plant.” Janlord smiles.
Good, keep him smiling.
“Maybe they have need of me there? My wife and I could move to the Greens with my baby boy. We would happily take a life there, and my talents—”

Taylon cuts him off. “The Legacist is not fascinated, from the look of it. Hardly paying attention. Today’s sun is almost gone and I still have to deal with those crazy fanatical worshippers in the sixth. Are we ready for judgment, court and King?”

“I can do better,” Rychis presses, his voice turning a touch desperate. “Perhaps I can move stone. Make use of me in the Mechanoid Mines, please. I haven’t quite managed stone yet, but surely my Legacy can mature. I could—”

Janlord’s wince … that’s what cuts Rychis off this time.

“You are heard,” states Taylon, “but surely at your age if a Legacy has yet to evolve, there’s little else to see. That’s why we cut off Legacy Examination at the age of seventeen-and-one-half. You know as much, even being slumborn, Rickor Bard.”

Rychis … It’s Rychis Bard.

“Lord of Peace.” The boy Marshal turns to Janlord. “We’ve got ourselves forty-one more cases to consider.”

“Marshals, sirs—” Rychis tries once more.

But the King, his first involvement in this matter at all, simply lifts one lazy hand, and all goes mute. Rychis still speaks but no words are made. His puzzlement ends when he spots Janlord concentrating and realizes too late that sound’s been robbed of him. That’s Janlord’s Legacy: sound manipulation. Janlord alone protects the court from the King’s deadly banshee cry, should it ever be used in their presence. Even here at his own sentencing, Rychis’s voice is stolen by Janlord’s talent. He cannot hear the Marshals’ discussion as they hastily determine his fate … His eyes beseech them, his silent words locked at his mouth, unheard, even his own breaths and frantically battering heart are soundless.

Don’t worry,
he assures himself.
The Kingship is … is …

He slaps the ground, a test. Even the thunderous clangor of white mirror tiles goes nowhere, not while Janlord focuses his Legacy.
The Kingship is kind.
Rychis can only strain his eyes to translate the movement of lips, estimating the words shared between them.
The Kingship is good.
Oh, but what cruel words to only have estimations of … when those words are deciding whether you live or die.

And then at once, sound is revived. Like a rush of oncoming trains, Rychis is assaulted with air, with his heartbeat, his breaths, the stillness of the enormous throne room. Taylon’s boy voice is the first he hears. “Do you so agree with the judgment, King Greymyn?” The King gives one simple, detached nod. “So be it.”