LEGACY BETRAYED (9 page)

It’s not like that,
she told herself.
He’s not like that. He’s not, and . . . It’s not a sensitive spot!

She hadn’t been sitting there long when another knock sounded at the door. Legacy sprang to her feet and stalked forward, gripping the knob and wrenching. “I told you to get –oh!”

It was Glitch, with his perfect little black mustache and side part, as pleased with himself as ever.

“H-hello,” Legacy greeted, thrown from her stride. “Is everything all right? We weren’t being too loud, were we?”

“Everything is marvelous, darling,” Glitch replied, snaking his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into the narrow, dim hall. “We have a special guest tonight just
dying
to meet you.”

“Oh, no, I’d really rather–”

“And in exchange for your hospitality, I’ll include unlimited free drinks,” Glitch went on, guiding her toward the stairs.

“But no one even knows,” Legacy protested. “No one even knows I’m here!”

“I know!” Glitch replied, delighted. “It was sheer fate!”

Kaizen moved through Groundtown with the hood of his black frock coat pulled low, subconsciously inspecting the storefronts and alleyways for any sign of Legacy. He had told himself he wasn’t searching for her. He had told Johannes to leave him on the corner and go; he needed a drink. Today had been the day of his father’s funeral, and he needed to be alone for just one goddamn minute in a place with as much political savvy as a traveling carnival. But, even as he sought an establishment wherein one could sink and vanish, he couldn’t get her out of his head. The feel of her, this insatiable simmer at his fingertips. He kept remembering the way she had sneered at the suggestion of trusting him, as if his lineage alone rendered him vile, soulless.

An entire city still teetered on the brink, awaiting his command, unaware that he was even the duke. In three days, the story would break that Malthus was dead. In only a few days more, that interrogation squad of Ferraday’s would arrive. The days of freedom to meander and moan were ending fast, and then . . .

I must stop this,
Kaizen told himself, eyes panning over the strip of nefarious businesses, all so garish and simultaneously grimy.
I should curtail the entire foray. I don’t have the time . . . and even if I did . . . what would I do? Be with her? It’s impossible. It’s a dream. We had our moment, however brief. A day here, a day there, and that’s more than some people were ever given. Goddamnit, get out of my head, Legacy. I can’t be so weak when my power is made evident. All of Icarus depends upon my focus. Your life might depend on it.

He advanced upon Glitch’s House of Oil, which flickered with promises of any variety of beverage he might crave.

He knew what he needed, though. The same spell that rendered the denizens of Old Earth incapable of wondering at the city in the sky.

Some Kill Curiosity.

Kaizen pulled his hood lower and pushed into the establishment, stepping warily around the sprawled bodies of this drugged den. He was glad he had shirked the accompaniment of even a single sentry just now, and not only because the castle had precious few to spare. He didn’t want another man to see how much he had in common with these sunken shadows of humanity.

Kaizen took his seat on a cracked stool at the bar, where a mildewed automaton coasted forward and greeted him with a strangely disjointed neck.
“Her-her-herllo. Her may I herp you?”

“One Kill Curiosity,” Kaizen ordered.

“
This is your first Kill Curiosity,
” the bot informed him, sliding a glass of sickly yellow, burbling liquid down the bar.

He stared into it a moment, daunted, but rose the concoction to his lips. It was sharp and bitter, not unlike a drag from one of his father’s cigarettes. He let out a long groan as it settled like a stone into his belly. “Another,” he commanded, flinging twenty-five pieces onto the bar. “And a private booth.”

“This is your second Kill Curiosity. GLITCH!”

The proprietor of the place, a dapper fellow with a smug, bright manner that reminded him instantly of Neon Trimpot, emerged from a back room with his own colorful flute in hand: a striped mixture of concoctions green, red, and blue.

“It’s thirty pieces for one of these,” Glitch informed him, as if he hadn’t just imbibed a chemical sworn to dampen any question which may arise. “I call it Connect the Dots. You get Calm, Invigorate, and Cunning, which combine to make the perfect cocktail of . . . You’re that earl.” Glitch blinked, and for a moment seemed speechless. “You’re every girl’s earl, aren’t you?”

             
Damn hair.
No matter how low he pulled this hood, it couldn’t disguise the spill of straight, flaxen hair down his shoulder.

“And you’ll shut up about it if you don’t want your doors locked and the key swallowed,” Kaizen grumbled. “I asked for a private room.”

“Of course,” Glitch went on, shaking his head and downing the last of his Connect the Dots in one swallow.

In Kaizen’s eyes, this den was beginning to flatten. To become gray and constant, as if he’d memorized it long ago, in another life, and not one detail had changed since.

“We don’t normally receive royalty in the House of Oil, that’s all,” Glitch added with a staunch little sniff. “Picture my delight. And ordering that abysmal liquid, of all things. Of what curiosities can an aristocrat find himself denied?”

Kaizen’s gracious host swept aside the velvety drape of his private room, which was little more than a canopy bed set into the wall, its plush mattress maintained with some level of sanitation unavailable to the floor pillows and tufted chaises. “A woman,” he answered shortly, slipping his shoes off and climbing inside.

“A woman, you say?” Glitch asked with a grin and a gleam. “Why, my liege, women abound. If you’ll give me a moment to contact The Electrical Palace, I can have your every curiosity serviced in three min–”

Kaizen shook his head, amusement giving way to disgust. “They don’t have a bot like her.”

“Ah, a specific woman,” Glitch noted with hints of dismay. “No remedy for that, I daresay.” He began to tug the curtains shut.

Kaizen took a sip from his second Curiosity, pulling his knees up. “Silver braids and golden eyes,” he murmured, largely to himself. He sighed and let his head fall back, the hood slipping away in the gesture. The thing truly did taste of piss, but it was getting the job done. He imagined her, and she became increasingly typical. What woman didn’t have that mystical combination of pride and sorrow?

But Glitch hesitated in his business of closing the curtain. “May I bother you in a minute more, sir?” he wondered. “If it is to bring you a most pleasant surprise?”

Kaizen took another sip and cringed. “Whatever,” he replied.

A minute or two passed – long enough for Kaizen to only partially remember the offer to return, and to fully not care whether he did or not – when the drape was swept open again and there Glitch stood, Exa Legacy in tow. Of course.

Kaizen raised an eyebrow, almost uncertain that it was, in fact, her. He was used to such volume and force at the sight of her, but now, there was nothing. She may as well have been an automaton after all. “Hello,” he greeted, as if this was how they often met, one of them stoned and the other sober. Which it was.

“Hey,” Legacy replied, staring at him with both illness and longing.

“I’ll leave you two to be better acquainted,” Glitch simpered, vanishing with a shudder of self-satisfaction.

“Hop aboard, brave traveler,” Kaizen invited, indicating the whole of the mattress with a lackluster sweep of his palm.

Legacy crawled onto the mattress, swept shut the drapes, and glared at the sickly yellow concoction which he’d only begun. “Don’t drink that,” she commanded, pulling it easily from his hand. His reflexes had slowed. “It’s poison!”

“Why are you always taking away my toxins?” Kaizen wondered, cool. Bleary.

“Why are you always so full of them?” Legacy countered, leaning across the sprawled duke to place his beverage on a bedside table that ran horizontal between the mattress and the wall. “What are you doing here?”

“I’d ask you the same question, but I don’t really care.” Kaizen smiled to himself. “You didn’t respond to my message, you know. Again.”

Legacy glanced away from him. “Didn’t know what to say.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kaizen informed her. “I’m going to get over you, one way or another.”

Legacy rose an eyebrow. “By drinking so much Kill Curiosity that you no longer bother to poll your people or consult your court?”

“Just because
CIN-3
polls people doesn’t mean we care. Or, rather, that I care. I suppose there is no ‘we,’ now. But. Shh.” He settled back and closed his eyes. “I didn’t come here to talk about all that. I came here to forget about all that.”

“Why were you even in Groundtown?”

“Knew you were here. You’ve been spotted a couple times now, Dyna says, and then, it was the direction you ran. Not that I care. I don’t. That’s not why I’m here. Not what I meant. My dad –Malthus –his funeral was today, all right? That’s all. No one here with me, no one watching. Sheer chance that you happened to be shacked up at this bar.”

“Glitch called it fate,” Legacy replied. He couldn’t see the closeness with which she gazed at him. There was such a firm resolve to relax on his face. “I suppose life has been the opposite for you as it’s been for me,” she said. “Here I am, holed up, scared to move, nobody seeing me, nobody talking to me, everything just crumbling, and there you are, the new duke. Clamoring court, important decisions to make, and the weight of it all on you. I’m sure Ferraday will be visiting, and he’ll want to see the rebels dealt with. Lots of pressure. And then, on top of it all, a funeral for your father . . . How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” he murmured. “You keep talking to me. Otherwise, totally fine.”

“Kaizen,” she said. “You must not be ‘fine’. Your dad . . .”

Legacy reached down and skated her fingers over Kaizen’s limp hand, wrapping her fingers around his.

He frowned, glaring down at this development. “Malthus,” he corrected her. “Yes, I know. He died.” Kaizen closed his eyes again, forcefully resuming that countenance of stiff tranquility.

Legacy settled beside him. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask or even seem to really be bothered when you mentioned it before.” She softly touched his loose hair, trailing her fingers through it. “I’d been drinking, and it made everything seem –unemotional. But you should’ve been . . . I should’ve . . .”

He took a deep breath. “Thought you didn’t think of me like that,” he said. “As if I’m a real person.”

“Kaizen,” Legacy said again. “Of course you’re a real person.”

“More than just a duke, you mean? Like, I get to have thoughts and feelings and everything?”

“More than just a duke,” she agreed.

Kaizen grimaced. He supposed he believed her. That was the magic of this elixir. Everything that was had always been and would always be, so to fight or pursue change was irrelevant. “I keep remembering this stupid fight my dad and I had, once, when I was a kid,” Kaizen told her. “He was mad because I wanted to go into Icarus for my secondary schooling. I said I wanted to do regular things and meet real people; he said that I didn’t understand what we were. That power required distance. Coldness. Logic. And he said that he’d known for a long time that I wouldn’t be able to handle the transition to his chair. He could tell that I wanted to be . . . normal, damnit.” His brow furrowed as he remembered. “I just wanted all the things everyone else got to have. Friends. Fun. A life. ‘You’ll fail me yet,’ was the note the argument ended on. The look on his face. As if I was just so very weak for being a twelve-year-old boy, daring to long for company.

“And now here I am. In that chair he said I wouldn’t be able to hold. And what am I doing? No guards. He’d die again if he knew. He’d call me weak again for letting this get to me. In the House of Oil. Licking wounds like a damn dog. Probably my fault, even, that he’s dead.”

Kaizen felt her fingers skate along his chest. He opened his eyes, though he didn’t look at her.

“I went to get you from the tower, you know. And you were gone. I thought that you must’ve been part of that plot after all,” he admitted. “Why else leave? It’s hard for me, you know. It’s still so hard for me to try to let myself . . . get close. Let go. Without hearing his voice in my head, telling me that I’m not his son. And you! Working with the CC! If my father were alive to see us here, to know I warned you about our ambush . . .” He closed his eyes again, settling back. “I know what he’d say. ‘You’re so weak, Kaizen. I can’t believe you’re my son. If Olympia had lost you in the womb . . . what a pretty duchess Sophie could have been.’”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Legacy told him ardently. He felt her shifting to peer at him more closely. “I wouldn’t be a part of any murder plot. You know that. If you don’t, you need to. When have I ever seemed like–”

“Look, I believe you,” he told her before pausing to think about it. “I trust you without trusting myself, trust you in spite of how . . . stupid it must be.” He frowned, his forced tranquility fracturing. “How impossible.”
It will never work,
he thought.
Even if Dad was wrong, and it’s possible to be close to a commoner without weakening the resolve to rule impartially –I still can’t protect you from Ferraday forever . . . nor you I from the CC. It would be wiser for us to submit to our roles in the play and be honest adversaries–