Outlier: Rebellion (6 page)

“What judgment?” Rychis asks quietly, so quietly he might think sound was still robbed of him.

The Kingship is kind …

Taylon, Marshal of Order, fourteen-years-young and small as a child, says, “Rickor Bard. By the hand of the Legacist’s man, you will die. This is your sentence.”

“No, lord, Marshal, no, no,” Rychis begs, then bites his own tongue, or maybe it’s that Taylon has taken hold of Rychis’s jawbone with a thought, for at once his jaw’s clamped down, his tongue bleeds, and he’s unable to open his mouth. The rest of his body holds rigid as ice … Any movement he makes might snap an arm, or crack his spine in three places.

Metal Hand, the ogre of a man with the elbow-high clunky gauntlets, is stepping forth. He’s slowly removing one with the slippery ease of a velvet glove. His footsteps are monstrously loud.

Will those footsteps be the last thing I hear?
Rychis was sure all executions were done by the King, that the last thing any convicted had the pleasure of hearing was the baleful scream of Greymyn. He much preferred that nightmare over this one, to be touched by the monster at Impis’s side, the so-called Metal Hand. He knows what happens to any fool unlucky enough to be touched by that ungloved hand … They are destroyed instantly, turned to dust in one quick moment of agony, particles of what once was a human being now scattered at his fingertip. The Death’s Touch, the Eraser …

I am Rychis Bard. I have a wife and one baby boy …
He’ll have to make do thinking it, because he cannot speak.
I lost a machine and broke my temper … I … I …

His beautiful wife, her lips, she’ll never know why he didn’t come home this day … Her crystalline irises and her laugh …

His baby boy, whose Legacy he will never learn …

Metal Hand draws close, his ungloved hand drawing closer. The only thing that exists in all the world, the only thing Rychis can see. The Doom Touch closer and closer.
The Kingship is kind, the Kingship is good …
but where did it all go wrong? How did he blunder so terribly?

Worse things are done.
I am Rychis Bard …
Worse things unpunished, he knows.

I have a wife and one baby boy …

Then he can’t contain it any longer. His locked-shut jaw forces out the words in an agonized muffle. “I am Rychis,” he begs through stubborn, unmoving teeth. “I have a wife and baby boy, I lost my temper, I lost my temper, I lost my temper …”

And the finger touches his forehead.

000
4
 
Link

He knows they laugh at him. He knows they regard him as a scrawny, sad little fucker. He’s well aware they make fun of his fantasy of being the next Shye, thief renowned—he still regrets telling that one.

So naturally he goes on another mission with them.

“It’s going to be the hardest yet,” leader Dran, with black around his eyes, tells him on the train. “You really wanna test that dream of yours?” Link holds a bent blade close to his hip, his eyes squinted, wordless. “We’ve all passed. It’s your turn.”

The train is taking Link further than he’s ever been from home. He can’t figure out where they are now, maybe even as far as the eighth ward, or further. He doesn’t want them to see his concern, but he dares a glance out the window of the train, trying to judge their distance. He doesn’t recognize any of the buildings.

“You’ll be the stealer, again,” Dran tells him quietly. Two Wrath are perched across from them, both grinning like gargoyles with stony eyes on Link. They can’t wait to see him fail, he knows this. They’re waiting for him to fuck it all up, but he won’t. He swears he won’t. “Solo, this time. 100% up to you, Linker.”

“What’s the mission,” Link asks bluntly.

“Your mission is this train.”

For a second, Link doesn’t follow. Then he considers the purse by the foot of a woman, and a bag slung over someone else’s shoulder. “Someone on this train, you mean?—But who?”

“Anyone.” Dran winks a blackened eye at the other Wrath. “As long as it’s up two hundred, we’ll take it.”

Link doesn’t flinch. If there’s anything Link’s good at, it’s keeping his reactions to himself. Though his heart rate may have just elevated a few thousand beats a second, he keeps his face cool as a pool, lifts his chin and studies the other occupants of the train. The woman with the purse at her foot … or the man with the bag, perhaps?
Neither, they’re too obvious.

He looks the other way, sees a girl biting at her nails.
Nope.
Next to her, two guys reading the same book together.
Nope and nope.
No one is easy access; this train is too crowded and there are too many witnesses. Link hasn’t earned the black band yet, so the pressure’s really on. He needs to make his steal one that won’t be noticed immediately, one as slick and seductive as a kiss.

“Just two hundred?” Link mutters, wears a searing smirk to play away his fears. “You go easy on me.”

Dran does not smile. “Make it fly, Linker.”

Then he finds him. A long coat hugs the man, but Link sees the glimmer of nice threads twinkling at him from beneath. This man isn’t from the slums; he’s a Son of Sanctum. A bag held at his side, the man is likely sure no low-life on this train would know where the bag’s from, but Link has seen the emblem in one of Lionis’s books, the seal of a Sanctum bank. This is his target.

“Watch me fly,” says Link, then makes his move.

It’s easy to get close to the man, casually slipping near where he sits while arousing no one’s suspicion. The train rocking smoothly side to side as it bullets through eighth or ninth or tenth ward, wherever they are, Link takes a few quick-as-a-snake glances at the Sanctum bank bag, his treasure, his prize.

“What time is it?” Link wonders out loud, feeling his wrists and expressing his desperate need with convincing teenage worry. “Mom’s gonna be so mad at me.” No one pays him mind. He peers at the rich—his target—amazed that he’s so soon caught his attention. “Do you have the time, sir?”

The man lifts a brow, fear flashing in his eyes for one quick moment before, perhaps, deciding there’s nothing to fear. Link is, admittedly so, not all that scary. “Twenty past the two,” the man announces after checking his watch.

Yes, it’s confirmed now. No man from the slums speaks with such regality or regards a kid like him with fear. Only Lifted folk are scared of slum kids, same way they’re scared of rats, reacting just like they would to a cockroach scuttling up their ankle.

Link considers his options, gripping the balance pole and pretending to be interested in something through the window, not the man’s bank bag. His eyes flick for one moment to Dran at the other end of the train who watches with legs crossed, bearing that slippery smile of his. The other Wrath, they’re ready to bolt, ready to make off once Link fails. And to them, Link’s sure to fail.

He can’t wait to prove them so wrong.

“Shouldn’t have had so much,” Link admits to no one in particular, leaning left and right with the train, overcompensating each time he sways. “Oh, but just one more drink, they kept saying … one more, one more …”

Link dares another look; the man’s attention is caught again.
You’re dumber than you look.
“Hey,” Link blurts, squinting at the man. “Are you the guy from the, uh, thing?”

“You’re a bit drunk,” the man responds, concerned.

Link giggles stupidly, staggering, then falls into the seat nearest the man as though pushed by the motion of the train. “Sorry,” he sings. “Can’t keep my balance. Hey, where’s my hat?”

“Hat?” The rich glances around. Lifted folk are so dumb. “Didn’t see you wearing one … What color hat?”

“Is it under your seat?” Link asks innocently, nearly stretching himself over the man’s lap. “Is it—?”

“I didn’t see you with one,” the dummy insists once more, then peers for a brief second under his seat.

This brief second is all Link needed.

“No hat,” agrees Link. “No hat at all. Left it at the bar, I remember now. Ugh … Shouldn’t have kept saying yes, need to learn to say no.” He giggles stupidly again. “Hey, help me back up?—Never mind, I got it.” Link’s back up, aiming his way down the aisle staggering left, staggering right. “Learn to say no, self!”

The train lurches side to side without Link having to exaggerate it, but of course, in truth, he has perfect balance and knows precisely where his feet are. He does not stop at Dran’s seat, but instead passes The Wrath entirely and moves casually into the next train car.

It’s halfway through the next car that he hears the yelling. “Stop him! He took my gold! Stop him!”

And so Link breaks into a run, his act unveiled. Surprisingly, it’s four train cars down that he notices anyone pursuing him.

All too quick, he’s reached the back of the train, no cars left to race through. The track fluttering and skipping beneath his toes, he considers how likely he’ll be to land without breaking all his bones.

Then he’s out of time to decide, the back door of the train opening to reveal the red faces of two pursuing Guardian. Link only has a brief moment to embrace one thought:
Quick like Shye, the Shadow, the Key To All Locks …

And he leaps.

The train track seems to slip from under his foot, slick as polished silver, and then the real panic sets in. He’s tumbling beyond the track. Falling now from the height of a two story building. Reaching out, grabbing nothing. The air whistles in his ears, and he screams. It’s dark and he’s plummeting into—he doesn’t know. He screams again, and then his screams are stolen by water, swallowing him up in all directions, drowning him. He’s landed in a bayou, water rushing in his ears, down his throat, up his nose. He screams it all out and yet more rushes in—gagging, choking, rasping—and the water carries him like waste into the darkness of a tunnel, out of sight, his tiny body flowing inward, downward, then dropping again, farther still.

He lands with another splash—colder now, freezing, these waters—and his feet are still kicking helplessly, his arms thrashing. When he pushes forth, his head breaking the surface of water for the first time since his bayou plunge, he coughs with the might of a thunderclap, water pulling and pushing at him like a million murderers hanging on his every inch of body, not giving up. His hands and feet still kick, determined despite the agony in his lungs to keep his head above water.

It’s a generous amount of long seconds later before his hand grabs a stone—a concrete ledge. He clings to it, grapples with it, throws a leg over and rolling his back upon it. Then, spinning to his stomach, he begins the attractive process of heaving out the water that’s raided his body in unrelenting waves.

He’s never heaved so much in all his fifteen years of life.

He cries and he retches and he gags.

And then it’s over. He’s coughed it all out, and now collapses on the stone walkway, strewn out and breathing heavily in, out, in, out, in. His eyes dance around, and soon the panic begins to subside.
I’m safe
, he tells himself.
I’m alive. I can breathe … I’m alive.
Balance slowly squeezes its way down into his belly, calming him.

I’m alive.

Dizzily, he notices the bank bag still in his fist, partly turned a rosy hue. It’s simply unbelievable that he kept ahold of it all this time, his prize. He lets himself smile, gives a pained chuckle, proud of his brilliant feat. He even forgives himself for turning half the bag pink; he doesn’t care. Such a price he paid for it, falling from a train and landing in the …

Where is he? Link sits up, coughing several times more, water still working out of his lungs. It’s a large, echoing tunnel of stone that goes on and on, breaking periodically at four-way intersections and curving off. There’s a very wide manmade stream of water flowing through the middle, cement walkways lining either side.

He gets to his feet, cramps riddling his gut, but he doesn’t listen to them and carries on, hoping to find a way out. He makes a left turn at the intersection, a right turn at the next. The ceilings, regularly checked for a ladder, an upward access, anything. He’s always known about the undercity waterways, but never actually been in them. Part of him doubted they actually exist.

Then he turns a corner and freezes.

A little girl is standing a few strides ahead, her eyes locked on him like a cat’s. She neither moves nor speaks nor even appears to breathe, frozen just as well as he. Her eyes flash … Is it fear? Is it recognition?
Does this girl know me?
He certainly doesn’t know her. She’s obviously a street rat, skinny as a plant with eyes huge and wild. Her hair is twisted into a mess of dirty braids bound flat to her tiny head, only a few tufts of hair poking out defiantly.

“Lost?” she offers finally.

Link finds the sound of her voice comforting and kind. After hearing only loud rushing water for twenty minutes, a voice is a welcome disturbance to the monotony. “Yeah.”

“The way you gon’ get out is, um, back where you comed from,” she says, pointing. “Back, back, up.”

She can’t be older than eight, maybe nine. Her speech seems clumsy, like she has trouble finding words, but he understands. “Back the way I came?”

“Yeah … Back, back, and up. Can I show ya?” She smiles sweetly. Link returns the smile automatically, feeding off her kindness. He can really use a bit of friendly help right now, though he wonders why a girl so young is down here at this time of night. Of course just as well, why’s he?

“You’re gonna show me the way out?”

“That way, ya.” She smiles again.

Link starts heading back the way he came. The water is so loud, so swallowing of all else, he thinks she’s said something. “What was that?” There’s no answer, so he turns his face halfway and asks, “Hey, so what’s your name? My name’s—”