LEGACY BETRAYED (4 page)

“I know what you’re doing with the earl. And I know it goes a lot further than just kissing. I’m not an idiot. You think I can’t put the clues together? You, running around with the CC, then you, with your hands all over the duke’s son? It’s some kind of a set-up, isn’t it?”

A pause. Legacy spoke, inadvertently confirming his allegations.
“How did you get these?”

“
CIN-3
has slushers. They just review footage and harvest the stuff. Obviously, they wanted this to go straight to the top. It could either be the newscast of the year – or it could mean that everyone at the station gets a nice, fat shut-up bonus from Taliko.”

He could only assume that the cameras that raced along every pipe and slat of
CIN-3
had captured some frames of Legacy and Kaizen. Kissing.

The thought still made his stomach turn.
When?
he wanted to ask her.
Why?
But then, she’d almost been left behind during the turbulent venture to Old Earth, and in her safe return, the tide of his relief had swept the jealousy offshore.

But it was still bobbing out there.

Dax meandered to the Taliko archive, easily locating Kaizen’s file. The lab had experienced so much trouble matching him, the casework had been moved to a shelf accessible without use of the ladder.

Next, he went to scavenge for Legacy’s folder.

When he’d rescued her from the prison tower during the coronation, she’d been wearing this strangely sexy, silky slip dress. And her handcuffs had already been torn free. Why? And why had no charges formally surfaced?

Finally, Dax uncovered his own file.

He had a wonderful, awful idea.

With the three sheaths of paper-thin gold pressed to his chest, he returned to his station with a grim vigor.

He knew he was ineligible. He’d always been ineligible. Born ineligible. His material had never been entered, because what would it matter? At best, the marriage application would be denied and he’d be fired for gross misconduct. At worst, he’d be in direct violation of the Companion Law, which was a felony.

But at the same time, who gave a damn? There had to come a point where all the legal chatter fell away, and the human condition surged forth unscathed. And he’d reached that point.

Limiting the data pool of his difference engine to these three matrices alone, he carefully inserted each page, and began the turning of the crank.

The numerical spines whirled together, tabulating. Comparing. Deducing.

He hardly noticed the way the room began to blur. The sweat prickling his brow. The vague odor of smoke in the air.

But are the engines infallible?
he wondered.
After all, they placed Liam and Legacy together, and those two are just –

“Dax!” Miss Sotheby cried, puncturing the bubble of his daze. The woman approached at a run, flinging a stack of notices onto his personal desk. “Dax, stop!” She raised the hem of her petticoat in a manner most uncharacteristic, fanning at his machine, which was when Dax blinked and stepped back into his right mind. The engine was fuming. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I – I thought I’d run Earl Kaizen’s numbers again,” Dax explained. “I had the extra time on my break – and I –”

“For God’s sake!” Miss Sotheby cried. “I thought I told everyone to stay out of that boy’s file until we were ordered – and besides, there is plenty enough to be done without – and that’s the last thing on the duke’s mind at this moment, I assure you!” He hadn’t often seen Miss Sotheby mad, but she was sputtering through rebuttals, and she had such an excess of counterpoints. “If you want something to do, Dax, why don’t you go for a walk and clear your head? Here!” She stopped fanning the overheated engine only long enough to thrust the stack of notices into his hands. “Deliver these!”

“Are you –”

Miss Sotheby pointed at the door. “Just go! It’s fine!”

Dax grimaced, but took his leave, shuffling through the pile of notes. They involved Companion reassignment, which was a constant pain in the lab, but not one with which he often dealt. People were reassigned for a whole host of reasons, from aging to mental breakdown to incarceration.

Dax exited the CCSS laboratory, pivoting toward
CIN-3
before he realized to whom this notice of reassignment was addressed.

Liam Wilco.

Exa Legacy’s status had officially been updated to “ineligible.”

              Meanwhile, Liam Wilco was alone in the radio station’s third floor prep room, glaring down at a glossy strip of filament strung between his thick fingers.

              In the photo negatives, skin was ink black, the shadows where their bodies met a burning ribbon of white. His Companion with her legs wrapped around the Earl of Icarus. A stranger’s mouth buried in her neck, and that sickening expression of ecstasy on her face. Sprawled on the foot of a goddamn staircase, in public, like animals, when all she’d ever graced him with was that humiliating display of apathy in the very hallway outside this door.

“But this?” She grabbed his hand and pressed its palm over her heart. “I feel nothing,” she told him. “I feel nothing at all . . .”

Still, he’d felt compelled to protect her when the slusher came to him the following Monday, elated with the explosive footage. It was hard to explain why. Frustrating? Yes. Evasive? Undoubtedly. But also trustworthy. Also principled. Compassionate. Or so he thought, anyway. He suspected that this Trimpot fellow was some sort of hypnotist. It was the only way he could lead good people to such a bitter end. She couldn’t have made this decision on her own. It wasn’t her; it wasn’t the Exa he’d always envisioned. Trimpot was puppeteering her, using her as some political Jezebel in his plot. So how could Liam turn this evidence over to Dyna? She’d drag the entire Legacy family into her studio and mortify them. Exa was an innocent girl caught in Trimpot’s undertow.

Of course, Dyna no longer needed this story to make
CIN-3’
s antennae hum, now preoccupied with every little development as it trickled down, from supposed sightings of Exa in Groundtown –
of all places
– to rumors of city-wide curfew and the imminent arrival of the Monarch himself.

The slushers hadn’t forgotten, though.

Liam had kept the negatives for the past week, but they never forgot to ask what Dyna thought of them; even as a retrospective expose on a dead man, it was worth reporting. Of course, not many people knew this yet, but Earl Kaizen was not only alive, he was duke; it was Malthus who was dead. Although Dyna had sworn to progress the new duke’s agenda of disinformation, she had informed Liam, as head of her prep team, of the truth. Would the tawdry story ever run? Doubtful. Did the duke need to be reminded of his place in this delicate ecosystem? Assuredly.

And if Liam didn’t give up the reel soon, the theft would come to light regardless; he’d lose his job, and what if he was charged with something? Obstruction of justice? He didn’t know, but it had to be meaningful, didn’t it? What if the CC successfully brought the monarchy to collapse, using Exa as their Trojan horse? What if their loose, wishful logic exhausted all New Earth’s resources in a matter of months, and all the air cities starved, fell into disrepair, cracked, and crashed into the surface of the planet, populated only by corpses, and it would all be his fault because he never brought this development forward?

Clenching his jaw, Liam pushed up from the table and made toward Dyna’s studio, where she was practically mouthing the microphone she clutched, square and brass with a circular grid set in the center. “. . . anticipate an address from the duke within the next day,” she chewed. “It is 2:30 pm, Monday, August the fourteenth, and I’m Dyna Logan with
CIN-3,
bringing you the latest in this breaking story. Now a word from our sponsors. Tired of tasting the tar in your vitamins? Head on over to Nanny’s Assemblage on Welles Pike for their new
lemon-esque
supplements and
enjoy
the taste of healthy bones!”

Dyna pulled a lever, the OFF AIR sign illuminated, and she looked up at Liam expectantly, raising one flawlessly manicured eyebrow.

Dyna Logan, realistically in her late-thirties but supposedly in her late-twenties, had a stern, brutish kind of beauty, as if she had literally clawed her way to the forefront of news media. Her features weren’t particularly thuggish, and so it must have been all her. Her chestnut hair crept from its bun just now, though usually was smothered beneath extravagant hats or structured into stiff sculpture. A long string of pearls spilled onto her desk from her narrow neck, and her oval face was perfectly powdered and rouged, the red wax of her lips so thick and rich, it was nearly black. She was one of the few residents of Icarus who could afford more than the standard brownish, repeatedly patched fabrics, and today sported an intricate pastel print.

“Yes?” she prompted, pointing a jagged ruby cuticle at him. “What have you got?”

Liam took a deep breath and forged ahead. “The slushers brought me something,” he forced himself to say. Extending the filament in his hands to Dyna, he stood and awaited her reaction.

“Is this–?” Her eyes tipped up, and for a moment, the awe on her face softened her features into something more classically feminine. “This is Exa Legacy,” she whispered. “And is that–?”

Liam nodded. Even from behind, Kaizen Taliko’s long, pale gold hair was instantly recognizable.

Dyna smiled, and all the softness crumbled away. “Thank you, Liam,” she said. “I’m sure this must’ve been hard for you to do,” she noted with strange relish, as if delighting in the torments of the human condition. As if wishing she could add this footnote to her report and make it even juicier. Dyna knew that Exa was his Companion, and had already almost threatened to fire him if he wouldn’t provide her with an exclusive interview. It was only when he assured her that he himself hardly knew Exa that she finally relented, sullen, merely commanding yet another Invigorate from the drink cart instead.

              An electronic voice patched into the station.
“Visitor for Liam Wilco.”

Liam tensed, praying it was not Exa.

“Who is it?” Dyna squawked, brightening. Clearly she was thinking the same thing.

“
Messenger, CCSS,
” the voice replied.

Dyna dampened. “Send them in,” she told the speaker. “Go take a break, Wilco,” she said to her assistant. “You’ve got two minutes.” Dyna added this with a glowering severity, pointing that jagged ruby cuticle once more before grasping her mic, pulling that lever, and rattling on about affordable automaton repair in downtown Icarus. How quick she was to forget gratitude.

Liam stepped into the hallway and immediately recognized Dax Ghrenadel, Exa’s best friend, examining the percolating fount of mossy green on the drink cart, a popular choice known as Calm the Nerves. This likable sidekick had always aroused Liam’s suspicion, but then, everyone needed a friend, didn’t they? And anyway, Dax was sick. Like,
really
sick. Couldn’t kiss someone while you were wearing a rebreather, could you?

“I’m talking about real life,”
Exa had said to him, almost two weeks ago, during that awesome conversation about how she’d rather die alone than be with him.
“Things happen! Things happen that are spontaneous and inexplicable and illogical. It’s . . . it’s magic, not math. The leap in my chest that I feel when he smiles has nothing to do–”

“Who?”

“Dax.”

“Ghrenadel?”

Liam’s jaw clenched with the recollection. Apparently, the attention Exa paid to Dax’s eyes was so painstaking, she knew when he was smiling, even though his mouth was always covered.

Though, considering the film those slushers uncovered, jealousy of Dax was a bit pointless, wasn’t it? Perhaps he’d be better served to simply join him in a drink of Calm and a toast to the dog that bit them both.

“Ghrenadel,” Liam greeted. His voice carried with a natural firmness, so he almost always sounded irritated. “How goes?”

Dax glanced up, startled, and said, “Oh, hey, Liam.” For a beat, the guy just stared at him, fumbling for the next word. “I’ve got a notice for you.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Liam replied, frowning. Frowns also came naturally to him. “I forgot you worked with the CCSS. Let’s have it then.” Dax wordlessly passed him the notice, and Liam continued, “You, uh, seen Exa lately?” without looking down at it. “Last saw her Friday, myself, in Heroes Park, but, uh . . . her flybot’s . . . not taking my messages anymore.”

“Yeah, she –she broke it,” Dax answered, scratching his head. The boy seemed uncomfortable. Suspiciously uncomfortable. “I don’t know, man. She’s not at home?”

“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” Liam countered. “Thought you two were constant . . .” The phrase was a common one, and halfway out of his mouth, but he wished he could call it back. “. . . companions,” he finished.

And if you’re pretending you think she’s at home, when we both know she’s not and she hasn’t been, then you’ve got something to hide, too.

“She’s probably hiding. That’s what Dyna says anyway, isn’t it?” Dax answered sharply, his own eyes beginning to glimmer with a touch of aggression. “After all, the duke’s probably looking to pin the whole coronation catastrophe on her, isn’t he?”