Authors: Rachel Eastwood
Legacy took the golden card without hesitation, but she asked, “Won’t you get into trouble for this?”
Kaizen shrugged. “I’m always in trouble,” he said. “If you ask my dad, I never do anything I’m supposed to.” Weighing the ramifications of a second stolen kiss against the probability that he’d never see this Exa Legacy again, Kaizen leaned in and brushed his lips just barely against hers. “See?”
Legacy smiled lightly. “Thanks for this,” she said. “Goodbye, Kaizen.”
He watched her go with a strangely profound sense of loss, then turned toward the stair which had been the scene of their crime, seriously considering one more cigarette.
Her little mechanical insect was there.
Now that it was completely still, he could see that it was a dragonfly with a tiny brass key stuck into its back.
Scooping it up, Kaizen slid the little treasure into his pocket.
Maybe he would see her again after all.
The walk from
CIN-3
to Heroes Park was a dull bliss of carriages and automata. Her gait was wayward and dreamy, more than once pausing to examine a shop window or the dome itself. Flywheel was the furthest thing from her mind, and so was Dax.
She was moving through the brass forest when the impact of what she’d done suddenly and fully settled. The mossy potion, with its immediate onset and intense impact, wore off just as immediately and intensely. And, unlike drinking fermented power pops, that anxiety tonic left her memory still clear as crystal: Kaizen’s body, lithe and muscled, draped at the foot of the stairs; the poison fumes she’d inhaled, unquestioningly; the information about her blacklist status. Most of all, the clutch of his fingers in her hair, his tongue tangling in her mouth, and the way she’d returned the pressure of his body on top of hers.
Legacy halted.
Oh . . . shit.
Her eyes panned around the hedge of gleaming tree trunks as if they housed some portal to the memory, a portal from which the event could be modified and resubmitted.
Shit!
Of course, she knew why it had happened. That damn tonic had been to blame. Yes, she found Kaizen Taliko attractive. Who wouldn’t? He had the physique of a classical god and was filthy gorgeous. That hair was like gossamer ribbon, and that elusive taste in his mouth, smoke, yes, and something else, too . . . something sweet . . .
Legacy marched forward, brow creased.
Like he’d said, it’d been an
accident.
She hadn’t responded the way she normally would have, with
resistance
, because she’d been under the influence of an insidious beverage. At the time, kissing Kaizen seemed as natural and acceptable as kissing anyone else whom she wanted to kiss.
. . . Not that she had wanted to kiss him. She hadn’t.
It’d been an
accident.
And it didn’t even matter because she was never going to see him again! Kaizen—
the earl,
she corrected herself, as if to strike from her thoughts that they’d ever been formally introduced,
the earl
—rarely left his archipelagos. Yesterday and today both had been coincidences, unreplicable and totally random. The result of a wrong turn, perfect timing—
Bad timing,
she amended—and a system of pivots from a variety of external points, and it was never going to happen again.
Legacy broke into the industrial territory, eyes on her boots.
What if Dax finds out? What if
anyone
finds out?
Even just that single moment, no longer than a third of a minute, had been illegal. It would have been illegal with anyone other than Liam, but with the Earl of Icarus, after connections had been drawn between her and a revolutionary sect?
Legacy paused and glanced up. The factories belched their wavering streams of steam, indifferent.
What she had done was probably considered treason. Conspiracy.
Legacy stepped forward again, sickened.
And then there was Dax.
The thought of jail, exile, or execution didn’t bother her as much as Dax’s eyes.
Although her boots moved swiftly across concrete, in her mind, she was standing in front of Dax. His eyes were shifting with comprehension, like waters made choppy by the assault of a stone. He’d heard. He knew. “No, that—that makes sense, actually,” he said, and the skin around his eyes crinkled to betray the smile behind his mask. But it wasn’t a smile of happiness. It was an uncomfortable, self-loathing smile. “He’s every girl’s earl, as they say. And who wouldn’t take the chance to be a duchess?”
Except, even if she did have real feelings for Kaizen—which was ridiculous, she didn’t even know him—it wouldn’t play out like that. His interest in her was unrelated to her suitability as his Companion. She would only end up in jail, at best. Perhaps he would free her when he succeeded Malthus for the duchy, if she hadn’t been executed already, but even Kaizen couldn’t do anything overall about the laws of Monarch Ferraday. Kaizen—
the earl,
she amended—was obviously lonely, but the difference engines were unable to find a genetic matrix with “complementary” enough correlation. What the machines said was the law. And a city, no, a world of people simply abstained. Got old holding onto the memory of a soulmate who passed them by.
Someone has got to do something,
Legacy thought, breaking through a boundary of dumpsters to reveal the domestic district beyond.
Someone has got to do something, but who? Neon Trimpot?
Legacy turned this over in her mind as she advanced on the towering complex of her home, climbing the stairs to Unit #4 without the characteristic leaps and bounds.
Trimpot had certainly gone far enough. Organizing the band of followers. Initiating a dialogue with the monarchy, however combative it had been so far. But would he go all the way? He didn’t seem to legitimately care about the Compatible Companion Law as much as he cared about a free and transparent market.
However—if Legacy wrote his speeches—she could ensure that the abolition of the Companion system was a key tenet. She could tap those waters and draw him an entire demographic of thwarted romance. After all, who was more devoted a soldier than the lovelorn? Who had more fire than a man or woman denied love?
Legacy let herself into Unit #4, where her father was dabbing a viscous, clear substance onto one of his smaller automatons, a tiny turn-key dustbin. Her mother was behind the shower screen upstairs. “Hello honey!” Mrs. Legacy called over the pounding of likely cold water.
“Hey Mom! Hey Dad,” she greeted, dropping a kiss onto Mr. Legacy’s cheek as she passed, unconsciously following her daily pattern of waking Flywheel from his cage. “What are you working on?”
“Just a little something to revolutionize robotics, that’s all,” he replied with a smile. “It’s an epoxy solution which will bond to the tumblers in the turn-key, disabling function immediately.”
“But who would want to do that?” Legacy asked, moving to the cage over the sink, where Flywheel could always be found.
But the cage was empty.
“Hm. I don’t know,” Mr. Legacy replied thoughtfully.
Oh shit!
Of course . . . he’d followed her out the door this morning. It happened rarely, but it did happen that she might forget to return him to his cage, and so she would spend the day monitoring his position to ensure that he didn’t malfunction and attach to some foreign owner. But then there’d been the drama with Liam . . . and then she’d taken that damn tonic . . . and then there was Kaizen on the stairwell . . . and she supposed she’d just lost track of Flywheel in all the commotion.
Legacy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. In through her nose, out through her mouth, and repeat.
“So,”
Dyna Logan purred over
CIN-3. “Tell us about your ideal woman, Kaizen.”
Legacy’s eyes popped back open. She moved toward the radio, glaring at it as if Dyna and Kaizen were literally inside.
“I think I’m going to have to give up completely on my automatic writer,” Mr. Legacy went on, oblivious to his daughter’s depression.
“I don’t know, I mean, I guess she’d be . . . kind of blonde . . .”
“I can’t stop this string of numbers from printing at the beginning and end of all text, and no one’s going to pay for that, will they?”
“. . . and quiet . . . but strong?”
Legacy lunged for the radio, wrenching its lever from ON to OFF.
“I mean, how can you send a letter with a bunch of nines at the beginning and a bunch of zeroes on the end? But!” Mr. Legacy continued. “The good news is that I’ve completely finished my ocular bot! Of course, you can already buy an ocular bot and all, but mine will be
cheaper!
”
“Could I see it?” Legacy asked. “Could I use it?”
“The ocular bot?” Mr. Legacy clarified. “But it’s the tenth prototype, honey, and I haven’t even—”
“The automatic writer,” Legacy said.
She could see it sitting at the far end of his makeshift work desk, where all the misfits went before eventually being dismantled for parts. The machine looked like a leaflet of thin gold papers, a crank on one side, a hammer on the other, and a set of alphabetical systems suspended in the front, poised over the pages, prepared to chisel out or pound down whatever words corresponded to the placement of the letters.
“Oh, of course, dear,” Mr. Legacy said, gesturing vaguely. “It’s on the counter.”
Forcing herself not to think about Flywheel—and how much trouble she could be in if he fell into the wrong hands—or about Kaizen—and how his “ideal woman” sounded vaguely familiar—Legacy snatched up the automatic writer and went to her room to begin typing Trimpot’s next speech.
Throughout Thursday night and into Friday, Legacy ate, slept, and breathed the keys on the automatic writer. Her silver and black braids hung unchecked in her face, the golden sheet pressed onto the tablet consuming her world. The way the hammer of each letter swung down felt as cathartic as wielding her mallet at Cook’s.
Do we not witness their excesses by the castle grounds they keep? The Taliko Archipelagos combined could equal a quarter of the whole of Icarus!
She ignored the quiet rattle of the door frame later that night. “Legs?” Dax’s voice called through the alloy paneling. “Legs, you up?”
Legacy paused and glanced over to the place where she knew he was standing. She really couldn’t bear to see him. Not with the scent of Kaizen’s cigarette smoke clinging to her hair.
“If you’re up, I’d really like to . . . see you for a second.” Legacy stayed rigid and silent, staring in anguish at the closed door, until she heard the whine of the stairwell and knew that Dax had given up and was ascending to Unit #7. Taking a deep breath and telling herself she’d had good reasons to pretend to not be home, Legacy set her eyes back onto the gold sheet before her.
We once accepted that there simply was not enough, but isn’t there enough for our city officials to privately import delicacies from the Old Earth? A planet they claim is dead yields them plants which they SMOKE!
When the sun rose, Mr. Legacy came downstairs to begin drafting revisions to his epoxy formula. “You up all night, Ex?” he asked.
“Hmm?” Legacy murmured, roused from her stare at the automatic writer. “Oh, no. I mean yeah. What?”
Mr. Legacy smiled. “Never mind. Should get some sleep.” But Legacy ignored the advice and continued.
We were willing to believe their rendition of reality, though it was only our hearts they cut out! Only our minds! Meanwhile, their earl remains unmatched, and uncontested! Why should he slip the reproductive noose we all wear?
“Dax came into Nanny’s Assemblage today,” Mrs. Legacy mentioned nonchalantly, unwinding the uniform bonnet from her pill store shift.
“Mm, that’s nice,” Legacy replied, attempting to completely ignore the information. It wriggled and echoed in her tired head as she glared down at the golden sheet before her, forcing herself to focus.
“He wanted to say hello, and for me to let you know that he was trying to get in touch.” Legacy could feel her mother’s eyes burning into her, but she didn’t look up. “Did Flywheel run down? He’s not broken, is he?”
“He’s . . . missing right now,” Legacy admitted, finally glancing up. Her mother was, indeed, giving her that idle sideways stare which pretended to not be as probing as it was. The expression bordered on concern.
“He said he needs to see you . . . and he wants to know if you’re going to ‘the thing’? What’s ‘the thing’?”
Legacy tried not to hurry too much to slip her golden paper into the stack of leaflets on the counter. “I’m not sure,” she lied.
Mrs. Legacy’s eyes shone with a touch more steel to them. “Hmm; that’s odd. He said that you would know what it was. Well, if you are going to ‘the thing,’ let Dax know,” she went on. “He seemed to be hoping you could go together.”
“Hmm,” Legacy mimicked. “Well, I don’t know.”
But she did know.
And she would be there, all right.
When Mr. Legacy’s snores came rolling in concert with Mrs. Legacy’s light, whining exhale, their daughter climbed fully dressed from beneath her sheets. She lifted her pillow and extracted the stack of thin golden sheets hidden there. Then, wrapping a scarf around her face, she skipped silently down the ladder and out the door of Unit #4. The stairwell of the seven story complex still groaned softly beneath her weight, even though she slunk and crept every inch of the way.
When she reached the street, however, she took off running as fleet as a winged messenger, the completed speech clutched protectively to her chest.
The shadows of the factories loomed and receded to her right, then the brass trees streamed past in her peripheral, their dangling leaves clinking like coins, and then she broke into Heroes Park, where the automaton statues rambled their half-truths to all who passed.
Reaching Archibald Ferraday, she paused and glanced around, then delivered a vicious kick to the plaque at the word “freedom” and dove inside.
Now that it was much earlier in the night than it had been before, the Chance for Choice headquarters thrived with busily crafting, plotting, moving parts. In addition to Vector and Rain were perhaps, now, at least two dozen cohorts. Neon Trimpot was separate from the fray like the conductor of an orchestra. Although he had no elite with whom to blend here, there was again something strangely aristocratic about his garb. While most others wore patched breeches and boots, Trimpot was outfitted in pink spats which matched his hair, slim black slacks, and yet another frock coat, this one black and constructed of soft, sheer material hemmed by black silk rosettes.
“. . . but Rain estimates we’ll need at least one
hundred
cannisters for tomorrow night, and I only see
half
that here, but I
know
I told Morgana and Cypress both—” Then his eyes fell across Legacy, and he broke out into a grin. “Legs!
Riveting
news story I heard about you, heavily implied that
you
were with the CC,” he smirked. “Even had to go so far as to bring the duke out of his
hidey
hole and kiss the public boo boo. And I see you have
pages
.” He extended his hand expectantly, and Legacy delivered the document with obedience.
Trimpot’s eyes ticked back and forth over the lines, then lifted to his little speechwriter and took on a glow.
“Such
vitriol
in you,” he purred. “It’s
marvelous. Everyone!
” he cried. “I want you to meet the new woman behind the man!
This
is Exa Legacy!”
There were one hundred and one reasons why Legacy had a sickened, preoccupied expression on her face all day Sunday. She felt like her guts were piled into her mouth, and the nausea culminated in intensity as the sun sank. Legacy laid in bed, eyes shut, waiting for the bells of midnight. Still, she had to wait for her parents to extinguish their bedroom light, and for the snore and the soft whine of her mother’s exhale to float into the air again, letting her know that she was safe to travel unobserved. It was after midnight when Legacy finally slipped out from under her sheets.
But she still had one hundred and one reasons why she felt like she was about to either pass out or throw up.
Tonight, one hundred people were hearing her words, and responding to her call.
Tonight would also be the first time she’d seen Dax since their kiss.
Both hers and Dax’s, and hers and Kaizen’s.
Legacy turned the key on her bedside lamp, filling the room with a soft yellow glow, and rooted through her drawers for something perfect. Something beautiful enough to beg for forgiveness without saying a word.
Obviously, it wouldn’t be in her common style of loose-fitting slacks and grease-smudged tank tops.
She had to dig to the very bottom of her drawer to find something remotely feminine, and as she extracted the lacy garment, she experienced a little shudder of sorrow and self-loathing.
It’d been three years since she’d worn this.
Legacy slipped it over her body and privately relished the fibers from which it had been fabricated.
The material was soft and flexible, lacy, the stark black of raven’s feathers. The way it clung to her figure allowed her the gentle curvature of breasts and hips, a rare set of features by which to distinguish her. The hem fell high on her thigh, but then cut back and billowed behind her in a handkerchief design, that popular style of the time. It was simple, but . . . elegant. It made her feel like she deserved to be touched.
Even if I don’t,
she thought, running her hands over its seams.
The dress had been an embarrassing gift from her parents when she went on her first date with Liam, forever ago, before she got bored out of her skull and faked a migraine headache.
Donning some high, striped stockings and a knee-high, low-heeled pair of lace-up boots, Legacy left her braids down, shrugged a light jacket, dirtied and patched, over her shoulders, and moved with a controlled creep out the front door.
“Dax!” she hissed, quietly shutting it behind her.
He was leaning on the balcony of Unit #4, facing away from the door and up—up toward the now waning full moon in his constantly rumpled collared shirt, open vest, and high-rising pinstriped slacks.
“Leg,” he replied, turning. There was something different about him. Normally, his tone was buoyant, and it was he who dragged her out of funks. But now it was he who was wreathed in a kind of heaviness. “Sorry to . . . You look . . . really sexy.” He laughed breathlessly. “Where did you—I mean—Well, never mind.” His eyes panned away uncomfortably. “You just look really sexy.”
In spite of everything, Legacy had to smile. “You can look at me, you know,” she said. “It’s okay.”
But when his eyes panned to her, they were full of uncertainty. “I’ve been trying to get in touch since Thursday,” he said. “Is Flywheel broke or something?”
“I’ve been really busy,” Legacy explained lamely. “I wrote the speech.” She avoided using the name Trimpot or Chance for Choice, just in case anyone was listening above or below. She also avoided mentioning that Flywheel was missing . . . as if Dax would magically know that he’d gone missing because she’d drunk some anxiety tonic, and then kissed the Earl of Icarus while under its influence. “We should probably go, it’s already started,” Legacy went on.
“C-can I walk with you?” Dax asked.
Legacy almost glared at him. It was offensive to think that she would reject his company. “Of course!”
How was it possible that they could love each other secretly for years, and then, after finally confessing all, find themselves less certain than before?
But the walk to the rally was made in near total silence, Dax looking to Legacy and then away, Legacy looking to Dax and then away.
The lot behind the factory was thronged with the expectant faces of militant ragamuffins. Someone had set the garbage bins aflame, and they now roared with a toxic emerald fire. As the pair perforated the mob’s horizon, threading through a dense hedge of grumbles, shouts, and shadows, Dax instinctively grabbed Legacy’s hand tight. They moved toward the front, where Trimpot stood poised in the more common style of the crowd. Gone were his delicate frock coats and spats, replaced with tattered work pants and coal-blackened boots of thick tread. The speech had already begun. Legacy could recognize its lines as he pounded them out into his brass megaphone.
“This is it!” Legacy yelled to Dax. “This is my speech!”
She had a hard time listening to the actual words Trimpot spoke, and was more invested in gauging the reaction of the crowd. At her—or, at Trimpot’s—mention of the size of the palace grounds, boos and hisses came pealing. “Bet his bedroom’s got four walls!” someone cried.
“We climb six stories for a cold shower!”
“Three people in one hundred and seventeen square feet!”
At the mention of their secretly imported goods, more howls came. Some rebels tossed stray trash, as if the duke were here, as if he could see this happening.
Dax slanted an inquisitive look at her.
“What?” she asked, looking around. In all of this din, why would he focus on her, standing quietly?
“Meanwhile! The
Earl
of Icarus remains
unmatched
! And uncontested! Why has
he
slipped the reproductive noose
we
all wear?”
“How did you know—” Dax began.
“
Hang him!
” someone bellowed from the midst of the masses.
Legacy stiffened uncomfortably, feeling as if she were riding a monster bare-backed and didn’t know when it might buck and devour her. More trash went flying overhead, the sound of glass breaking emanating from somewhere in the crowd, and Dax ducked over Legacy, shielding her head. “Kind of madness, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“Guess the speech worked,” Legacy replied.
“What are we going to do!” Trimpot demanded of the crowd. “Are we going to just let them keep
taking
and
taking?
Are we going to say nothing, again and again, while they commit interviews to the damage control of their public image? Image! We don’t care! We live in shanties! Forced into arranged, state-mandated marriage! But there’s a castle in the distance! They come out once or twice a year to pat us on the head and tell us what good little citizens we’ve been! But we’re
not
good little citizens anymore!”