LEGACY LOST (16 page)

              Sophie stiffened. “Master Addler said that her repairs would be complete soon. She’ll be fine. He said she’d be fine.”

              “Of course! They’re
all
fine. Except
Theodore,
of course. He’s dead. His key will never turn again.”

              Sophie turned from Trimpot to examine the small ship. They were rapidly gaining and would, in a minute or two, pass perhaps fifty feet over the
Albatropus
on their left. He tilted their trajectory slightly left and considered the distance between them and the amount of pressure he would have to apply to Sophie; how much longer until she broke? He tamped down their speed for the fear that he would be unable to push her to a breaking point within the window of their paths intersecting. If Trimpot was anything other than materialistic, it was calculating.

              “And
Valkenhayn
, of course.”

“
Valkenhayn
is fine! I saw him only last night!” she cried, notes of distress arching her syllables.

“Well, yes, he’s fine, in a way,” Trimpot allowed, mind pumping furiously. “But he was found wandering the grounds this morning, apparently searching for someone outside of his ‘small group’ to
kill
.”

“No! I – I
made
him do that,” Sophie said, sounding much like her old self in this moment. Tortured and morose and about to pop and spill out something much less sweet than of what she appeared to be made. “We had to ensure that the program hadn’t spread,” she added limply. “The bad people came.”

“Ah, yes, the bad people. Such a shame that they would escape with these crimes. But, without the bad people apprehended, there will be no one to blame but you automata yourselves.
Valkenhayn,
regrettably, will need to have his key removed.” As she listened, Sophie’s chest rose and fell, deep and shallow, deep and shallow. Her fingers twitched as she, too, began to consider the
Albatropus.
“
Valkenhayn,
and
Roberta,
and
Ariela,
and
Belladonna,
and
Maureen.
”

              “Th-those are all my best friends.”

              “Well, we can’t have dangerous monsters like that rocketing about, can we?” Trimpot asked. His blood pressure danced as he fantasized how easily she could jump at him and tear into his face, but she seemed distracted by the ship. “There must be someone to blame for what
Valkenhayn
did to Daddy,” he pressed her trigger. “You can’t possibly know how a monarchy is run, like I said, but there needs to be some form of retribution when a kind, loving man like Daddy is beaten to death by poor
Valkenhayn.
Of course, you and I know that
Valkenhayn
didn’t
mean
to do it, would never
possibly
do it on his own, but someone needs to be blamed!” His voice rose in pitch as her fingernails dug into her palm, and he carefully applied the brakes, allowing the island to drift over the
Albatropus
below. “Someone needs to be
killed
for what happened to Daddy, someone needs to be hurt the way he was hurt; the monarch will make sure of it, even if Kaizen doesn’t! Without the true culprit, that bad girl, Exa Legacy, and her weapon, the one that infected your friends with that bad program, he’s
got
to execute the actual person themselves, even if they were only following their commands, even if they’d been driven crazy and they couldn’t help it and they’d never–”

              Sophie shot from the manipulator’s side, galloping the stairs of the keep, and Trimpot frowned. Hm. He’d expected her to grab the wheel and maneuver the island herself – ideally, crushing the
Albatropus
below, damaging its balloon and sending it into a spiral toward the earth. Extracting his new scope, he observed through its blinking, emerald lens as Sophie charged from the castle, howling and pounding toward the gate of the external aerial dock. “Ohhh, shit,” he murmured to himself, laughing in a soft chagrin.

A small string of automata clattered and trundled in her wake.

He watched in utter disbelief; perhaps he’d been wrong about the remainder of a human Sophie lurking beneath the porcelain veneer; perhaps the only remainder of her humanity was its emotion and impulse, heedless of reason, even of basic spatial awareness and survival instinct.

Sophie wrenched the dock’s gate wide and propelled herself onto its walk. From the movements of her mouth, she was still shouting things, ducking to and fro in a jerking, haphazard way, as if seeking an access point. Her automaton followers were not so careful in their judgments of distance and trajectory.

One by one, with zero hesitation at all, the glass figures swooped over the railing and disappeared from view. Seven had catapulted from the ledge of the dock when Sophie herself crawled over the rail and vanished.

Trimpot sighed and rolled his eyes. He should’ve figured this would happen. If the damn girl leapt to her death onto the rebel dirigible, all he’d have would be a drifting ship which he could claim was filled with dead rebels and wandering automata. But he’d have no proof. He’d have no tangible snuffing, as the monarch had said. Perhaps, though . . . perhaps he could say he’d only intended to settle the island in order to salvage the ground for Sophie’s body, that he had no idea there was a dirigible beneath . . .

He noted blithely that Kaizen had exited the castle and was racing toward the aerial dock, shouting nonsense. Of course, it was much too late, Trimpot was sure. What did the duke think he could do?

The island began to lower with Trimpot’s manipulation of the levers, smug in his certainty that he could at least destroy the
Albatropus
to the point that it crashed, and how would Kaizen ever explain to the monarch that he wished Trimpot be executed for such a clearly loyal action? More loyal than a duke, he was!

What would be really perfect,
Trimpot thought as Kaizen dashed through the open gate and onto the dock to observe the carnage below, whatever it may have been,
is if Kaizen died too. It would just be me and Olympia docking in Celestine, and if the monarch really wished to maintain some kind of superficial office for Icarus, there’d be no one better for it onboard than yours truly.

He’d had a feeling. He couldn’t explain it. Kaizen had had a feeling that it wasn’t over yet. Even after burying the two – no, God, it was three – three women, and after cleaning up the gore and collapsing into unconsciousness with that damn Trimpot at the wheel . . . He’d known the murders hadn’t been the end of it. He’d seen the cracks in Sophie’s mind deepening for so long, but what could he do? She was the invisible duchess. It would literally cost his family all they had to confess her mere existence.

And now she had stabbed a woman to death with a key.

The night before they were to arrive in Celestine and seek harbor of a duke who probably didn’t encourage such philanderings on his property.

Kaizen had the Hermetic device in hand, unaddressed but preparing to be sent. He would record his message on the dock, maybe. The incident in the throne room had taught him to be particularly tight-lipped when holding a Hermetic device. But when he’d stepped from the grand hall, he dropped the tiny silver ball onto the path.

The dock was thronged in automata.

They were lunging over the railing as if commanded to kill themselves, and with them . . .

It couldn’t be.

With them was Sophie.

She dove and disappeared along with the others, and Kaizen leapt forward two feet, staggered a third, and drew to a halt. He had to know, in his heart of hearts, that there was no fall of this distance she could survive. Still he sprinted down the path, as if his eyes might be playing tricks on him, as if the luminous Thursday morning sky wasn’t all around, as high as heaven. Still he sprinted down the path, screaming the nonsense phrase of “Balderdash gas!” and fantasizing that they were somehow within fifteen feet of solid ground.

Kaizen wrenched open the door to the dock and flung himself against the railing.

Directly below was that funny little ship. That funny little ship that the rebels drove, all patchwork and so hilariously shaped . . . but there was nothing hilarious now.

Now, his sister lay face-down, haloed in gore on their deck.

Now, more than a half dozen automata had clambered to their feet, skin shattered away, and were proceeding to scour the crowd with violent gestures as if searching for someone. Someone to kill.

And there . . . there was the lone bright spot in this moment . . . and the spot became all the more intense for the way the shadows crowded round, threatening to have it.

Legacy.

She crawled over the madhouse of a deck, not gazing up at the dock above. He was somehow certain that it was she the automata sought. It would just be . . . typical. He called to her, to all of them, but the wind stole his voice before even he could hear it.

Suddenly his feet shifted beneath him and he was forced to grip the railing and pin against it lest he, too, topple to his death.

The island was sinking.

Its movement was slow, almost measured, but perceptible.

Kaizen turned back to glare at the castle keep, seeking to discern the source of this terrible maneuvering. Of course, the distance was too great to differentiate anything such as facial features . . . but he could spot that speck of hot pink easily enough. “Trimpot!” he howled. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”

But of course that psychopath couldn’t hear him. And even if he could, he wouldn’t care. Such was the nature of the psychopath. If anything, he was sure Trimpot would find the flare-up to be amusing, especially considering the threat likely came in the same moment that he intended to kill its speaker. If the course remained uncorrected and the
Albatropus
below continued its aimless drift on the winds – and who could get to the stern, littered in homicidal automata as it was? – the dock and the ship itself would collide.

The dock was reasonably sturdy, but against an airship? It would probably tear free and send him hurtling to his death.

He couldn’t say that he was too surprised, though.

If he’d had to guess how he was going to die, “Trimpot” would’ve been in the top three.

Watching the black parachute flutter away beneath their portside, a sudden burst of clarity imbued her eyes, as if the loss of her best friend and first love was a smelling salt rousing her from an altered state of consciousness. This dream that had been the past forty-eight hours, from the moment the monarch’s voice on the radio called her back down from an orgasmic haven to this moment: the moment that it was really all over. In spite of this clarity, still, the sense of vacancy persisted. Maybe she wasn’t the new, molted spider, afraid to touch anything lest she be damaged, creeping on the perimeters of a world which held her constantly at bay. Perhaps she inhabited the husk, and the new, molted spider was the part of her which had the will to fight and cry as much as it had the will to laugh and love. That part of her had walked away and left this part behind. Empty. Numb. Yet curiously conscious. Curiously attuned to the world around her.

She was reminded again of the feeling she’d had, ignoring – deaf to – the pedantic Doctor Summat, rambling on and on overhead about going back to the ship, about his peridotite, about whatever else he’d said, she couldn’t be sure. There was a Zen-like liberation in her mind without . . .
desire
to hold it back. Without even pain now. She had gone beyond both, perforating onto whatever was the other side. Nothingness. And that nothingness enabled her to consider reality solely by its concrete dimensions and forget the abstract cache attached.

The scent of smoke singed into her brain, and the earth below clicked into place, sharp and bright, and Legacy’s eyes panned up.

They touched on Coal-Radia, her twin sister, the one who had preferred to sequester herself in the very walls and avoid her at every opportunity rather than thank Legacy for the risk of her own life – but these thoughts no longer occurred in her mind. Instead, they touched Coal-Radia blankly and turned past her. They touched Rain and turned past her as well. Everyone except Legacy seemed to have joined in conversation and left the would-be widow to her tragedy. Or maybe someone did try to talk to her, and she just didn’t hear it. That was equally possible. As inhumanly sharp as sight, and touch, and smell had become . . . she appeared to have gone spontaneously, willingly deaf as well.

So Saul nodded and gestured, rubbing at his mouth, while Vector shook his head and frowned . . . Gustav busied himself with securing the small, cloud-harvesting sail to its mast . . . Izzy stared at Legacy, but when their eyes connected, she hurried to reconstruct her expression as if she were deep in conversation with Ray . . . Coal-Radia appeared to be ranting at a fellow Old Earth refugee, both of them in their haggard old tunics . . . Claire Addler patted Rain on the shoulder, who was speaking animatedly while sobbing like a damn, well, leaky dam . . .
I mean, what is the point,
Legacy wondered.