LEGACY RISING (2 page)

Legacy went, first and foremost, to fetch Flywheel, her mechanical dragonfly. She passed the countertop which ran along the left wall, overflowing with trinkets which hummed to life at her movement, jointed spiders which were also sugar pots, a robotic eye which popped open to observe her. Legacy had grown up alternately avoiding and ignoring the piles of her father’s semi-successful inventions, all of which had been spurred on by his first semi-successful invention: his own robotic arm. Without a proper engineering education, however, his talents were doomed to moral victory alone.

Flywheel slumbered, his stained glass wings folded low over top of one another, in a small iron cage dangling from the ceiling over the sink at the back of the “house.” Composed of brass and glass, cogs and joints, the creature had been one of her father’s more whimsical inventions, and like so many others, was slightly dysfunctional and therefore totally incapable of sale. Even so, she loved him, and he loved her. Or, at least, he’d imprinted her and would be able to find her in a crowd—unless he malfunctioned, reset, and imprinted a stranger, which wasn’t unheard of.

“Flywheel,” she chirped, spinning the tiny key in his back. He murmured and jerked at her touch. She was used to his murmurs and jerks, however.

“One message,”
Flywheel shuddered. He was supposed to request a password in order to continue, but—oh well.

Dax’s voice immediately emitted from the small speakers implanted in Flywheel’s irises.

“Hey, Leg,”
the familiar tenor issued forth, rapid and scratched by static, “
just wanted to see if you were going to the thing tonight, so maybe I’ll see you there, I dunno. I’ll be there for a while, but I dunno how long. Anyway, I’m told it’ll be not-terrible. Yaaay. Okay, bye.”
Then the message was ended, and Flywheel buzzed busily as he either erased or rewound the message; it was impossible to tell which.

Dax was the name by which everyone called Dachs Ghrenadel, the twenty-three-year-old statistician at Icarus’ Compatible Companion Selection Services. He was a willowy, ocher-skinned brunette, with cool, sharp blue eyes, but that was all most people could say. He was seldom without his rebreather, a leather face mask modified with an oxygen gauge and a small filtration tube. His rebreather covered half his face. He was quite handsome without it, his nose and jaw both narrow and long, his lips thin and flush—when the filter was functional—but . . . he couldn’t
be
without it. Born with a rare lung condition, both hereditary and chronic, his health was regulated solely by the contraption strapped over his nose and mouth, and it was in continuous limbo. Particularly in Icarus, which had as much fresh air as any balloon.

              Flywheel buzzed from his cage and circled Legacy’s head, dutifully issuing forth the date and her schedule.
“August the Third-Third-Third, Two Thousand, Three Hundred and Twelve. Fifty-Second Annual Foun-Foun-Founder’s Ball at Taliko Center, Business District, Icarus, at Eight o’Clock. Remember to wear your best . . . wear your best . . . smog. Smog warning imminent.”

              Legacy smirked and clambered up to her bedroom, hardly larger than a closet and cramped with warped drawers, papered in posters of cities she’d likely never see. In the leftmost corner, a screen that was almost nothing more than a grate was unfolded. Behind it was a faucet and a drain which funneled into a pipe between the floorboards, giving her a personal shower, however pathetic and often frigid. First, she shut herself behind this screen and gave her body a brief but vigorous scrub. Patting her now radiant skin dry, she next selected a pair of khaki stirrup pants, a thin, white linen blouse, and an emerald and gold brocaded vest. She swept all her damp braids to one side and tied them into one gigantic fishtail down her shoulder. This was all quite uncharacteristic of the young metalsmith, particularly the embroidered vest, but the event called for formal attire only, and there was that chance Dax would be there. It was a nice vest, wasn’t it?

              On second thought, there was also a chance Liam would be there.

              Legacy dismissed the dissonance as soon as it cropped into her frontal lobe. This was her preferred method of coping. Denial.

              Unit #4 shuddered with an adamant knock.

             
Damnit.

             
How could Liam have not yet gotten the hint? She ignored his every call, every message, every visit. It wasn’t
going to happen.
But Compatible Companion Selection Services had bound the pair together almost three years ago, and some people placed credence in the judgment of the strange difference engines which tallied traits and probabilities as if she and he and everyone were just an algorithm.

              She didn’t
have
to be with him. But she couldn’t be with anybody else. And he’d accepted that she wanted to wait, at first, and then, that she was focusing on her career, at second, and then, that she was just busy, at third, but his patience was growing threadbare now.

Cook was right. I’m going to have to tell him sooner or later. Just face him. Bluntly. I suppose he trusts all those stupid tests they had us take more than he trusts the woman they concern. I suppose he thinks it’s better to be with someone, anyone, than just alone, but I
—

             
“Come in!” Mr. and Mrs. Legacy bellowed in synch, pulling their daughter from her bitter carousel of thought.

             
We can’t just invite him
in—

              The door was flung wide and Dax Ghrenadel came striding through the den-study with all the familiarity of a brother rather than a friend. Having grown up three flights above the Legacy unit, the pair had been inseparable for the past ten years.

              “Hello, Mr. Legacy; hello, Mrs. Legacy,” Dax called to them, nimbly ascending the ladder to Legacy’s room as if it were a mere extension of himself. Of course, she could’ve been in a state of undress, but Dax . . . Dax didn’t think of her like that. “Hey, Leg,” he greeted, clapping her over the shoulder. He was, as always, wearing his rebreather. The rest of his outfit was composed of sensible boots, pin-striped, high-rise slacks, and a collared shirt partially unbuttoned and pulled loose to combat the heat. In turn, he also scrutinized her garb. “You look . . . odd.”

              “I look
nice,
” Legacy corrected him.

              “Oh, yes, that’s the word.” Although his face was hidden, his eyes took on a gleam, as if he was smiling. “So, I take it you’ll be attending the thing then, yeah?”

              “Well, I wasn’t going to, but did you hear, they’re giving a—”

              “How’s that new gauge working out for you, son?” Mr. Legacy called from the other room. He’d been the one to engineer Dax’s current mask.

              “Not a problem one with it, Mr. Legacy, thank you,” Dax answered.

The price of medical gear was simply astronomical in Icarus. It was as if the duke was merely willing the ill to go on and die and be done with it. But Mr. Legacy was a quick study at imitation, so his entire market was knock-offs for poor people. His products were ironically like the clamp that had torn his arm from its socket twenty years ago: a small margin of risk was involved. But the Ghrenadel family hadn’t been able to afford the standard gear, like many others, and so Mr. Legacy had been their outfitter for years. He’d replaced the rebreather’s oxygen gauge a few times now.

“Anyway,” Legacy went on, “I’m going to try to get—”

“And how’s work?” Mrs. Legacy chirped through the wall. Legacy rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Really interesting, actually!” Dax called back. “We’ve got a case with two different companions—I mean, completely identical scores—and no one knows what to do about it! What are the odds, right!”

“Oh, what a lucky girl!”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mr. Legacy replied.

Mrs. Legacy laughed. “It’s just— It’s nice to— I mean—” Legacy glanced at Dax and found him looking back at her. The corners of his eyes crinkled mischievously. “Nothing, dear,” Mrs. Legacy amended. “That sounds simply terrible, the more I think about it.”

              “I suppose I should be getting ready, too,” Dax said, his eyes still connected to hers. “I’ll see you there, Leg?”

              Legacy smiled weakly. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

She was sure it was her imagination that his hand seemed to linger on her shoulder as he pulled away, the fingers sliding for a moment and then gone. He climbed back down the ladder, threw the front door open, and collided with Liam Wilco.

              “Hey, come on, man!” Liam’s bushy, auburn eyebrows settled low over his slate gray eyes and his mouth pulled straight and grim. “Crowded world, can’t be running around like—” His eyes drifted to Legacy and fixed there. “Exa! I’ve been trying to find you,” he told her in a strangely authoritarian tone, more like a stern father than a potential lover. “You’re always out on the scaffolds.”

              Dax’s eyes shifted between the two for only a moment, and then he put his hand on Liam’s shoulder, patted it, and stepped to the side. “Sorry, mate,” he said, taking his exit. He didn’t say goodbye to Legacy, only looked at her from over Liam’s shoulder for a glimmer of a second, then waved and closed the door behind him.

              “I—I could have been getting dressed, you know,” Legacy informed her suitor starchily.

              But Liam didn’t heed the tone. He instead offered the girl a bemused smile. “With Ghrenadel here?”

              Legacy’s cheeks darkened.

              “I’m sorry, regardless, to come to your home unannounced,” Liam said. “I just haven’t been able to get in touch with you. I wanted to know if you’d—well.” He hesitated, seeming to reconsider the positioning of this moment. With him still on the ground floor, and Legacy peering down at him from above, and her parents, unacknowledged, listening silently, watching . . . it was just awkward. Still, he pulled the tweed cap from off his head and crushed it between his sizable fists, suddenly seeming oddly small for a man of such width and height. “I wanted to know if you’d consider accompanying me.”

              “I . . .”

             
Damnit, this is exactly what I was afraid of.
Legacy tried to keep her face neutral, though she was sure notes of disappointment and sympathy were skating across it.

              “I . . . wasn’t really planning to . . . go.”

              “Not planning to
go?
” he asked incredulously. “Aren’t you getting . . . ready for it?” He squinted up at her.

              “Well—yes—technically,” Legacy stammered. She could almost feel her parents’ nervousness through the wall. For some reason, they liked this guy. They said he reminded them of her, which was ridiculous, and anyway, they also liked Dax, but . . . they knew that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t happen. “But I wasn’t going to dance or anything. I— There’s going to be an opportunity to speak with the duke, you know,” she explained, blush deepening on her cheeks. She felt suddenly composed of glass. Not fragile, just . . . transparent. “And I had a question for him.”

              “I’m sure you’ll have time for at least one dance,” Liam disagreed.

              “I’ll probably have to wait in line for clearance most of the night!”

              “But then, after that,” Liam said. “After that, you’ll be all dressed up at the Taliko Center, and . . . it would be the perfect opportunity for a dance.”

              Legacy met his searching eyes and wilted. “Yeah, that’s true,” she admitted.

              “Why don’t you just save me a dance?” he asked, placing his dented cap back onto his head.

              Legacy bit her lower lip, considered, and honestly couldn’t see the harm in one simple dance. “Sure,” she allowed. “That’d be . . . fine.”

              Liam beamed. “All right! It’s a date, then! I’ll see you there!”

              Her suitor let himself out, and Legacy expelled a deep sigh. She collapsed onto her tiny bed and plunged her fingers into her hair, massaging her scalp. The sigh evolved into a groan of total misery.

              “Everything all right, Ex?” her mother ventured.

              Legacy froze. She’d completely forgotten that she wasn’t alone. After all, she certainly felt it. “Yeah,” she lied, coming to a stand and dusting her slacks, walking to her parents’ room.

              Since she’d last laid eyes on them, they’d both dappered up in preparation for the evening ahead. Mrs. Legacy was in her corset now, and wore a handkerchief skirt in order to both combat the heat and appear feminine (as well as to avoid the whole thing of being fifty-three and showing a shade too much ass). Mr. Legacy had donned a frayed top hat and matching dinner jacket, however moth eaten and one-sleeved it may have been. All his attire was one-sleeved, due to the sparks which would occasionally spurt from his robotic arm.

Taliko Center was lit from the zenith of every angle, so that it appeared almost like a constellation to its several thousand guests, some harbored within the sweeping ballroom, and others spilling out into the courtyard, which was nonetheless dazzling beneath its own canopy of jeweled fixtures. City-operated automata coasted to and fro, politely extending plates of fizzing fermented power pops to anyone within a two-foot radius. Unlike Cook’s model, these were porcelain, ball jointed figurines, and would be uncanny in their human-like appearance if not for the gleam of the lights on their eerily perfect faces.

The event was only open to individuals of the age twenty and up, so this was Legacy’s first ever ball. She learned, upon arriving, that she—and her parents—were severely underdressed. Most patrons were garbed in fantastical ball gowns and keen tuxedos, all fashioned of materials and patterns that Legacy had not even ever seen.
Furs,
even! Where could anyone find
fur?
It seemed that the majority of common folk in Icarus simply chose to stay at home on these nights, whereas the aristocrats of other cities flocked in droves to humiliate those citizens who dared show their faces at such a refined celebration.

              The Legacy family waited to have their citizen registration verified for almost three hours before they could finally join the ball. The entire time, Legacy peered about in search of either Dax or the duke, but saw no sign of either. The only good news was that she’d also not spotted Liam.

              Upon gaining entrance to the courtyard, Legacy immediately went to join another line which circled the exterior of the damn event all over again, finally ending in a lavish tent full of security advisors around a table. This checkpoint was intended to screen the residents of the duchy who wished to submit a single question to its duke, Malthus Taliko. The security staff had to make sure that Duke Taliko stayed safe, as well as that the questions were relevant and respectful, and that the answers were prepped beforehand. After all, no one could ever catch the duke unawares.

Duke Taliko was even more reclusive than the Widow Coldermolly; at least she occasionally hobbled her way into the square in order to have her dog’s joints oiled. The duke, on the other hand, stayed sequestered the majority of the year on his family archipelagos, which were satellite to Icarus and otherwise no part of it. Legacy supposed that perhaps there was some inlet from the actual city to this doubtlessly spacious, luxuriant little castle in the sky, but if there was, it was kept secret from the citizenry and guarded fiercely from all passage.

When the duke did make some kind of public appearance, usually to smooth out a wrinkle in public opinion and then disappear again, he was always the same. His deep set eyes were hollow and unsympathetic. His mouth often fashioned itself into a joyless, uncomfortable smile. He was a slender, sagging man who somehow reminded Legacy of the slums in which she was raised. Like them, he seemed stacked too high, sideways, and on the verge of collapse.

The media community of Icarus, however, had no meaningful criticism of Duke Taliko to offer. Ever. Legacy often seriously wondered if there was a genuine watchdog among the whole bunch, or if the entire reporting crew was not only on the budget of the duke himself, but pressed firmly beneath his grinding thumb.

Liam worked with the local radio station as a personal assistant. He didn’t seem to recognize the manufactured quality of
City of Icarus News-3
, and Legacy wasn’t sure, exactly, why she could. But she could. She knew when she was being lied to.

Finally, Legacy reached the front of the line, and found herself staring down at a table of scrutinizing, judgmental suck-ups. She could read it all over their faces. Their pinched lips. Their upturned snouts. She almost preferred the smooth, alien visage of the automata servants, but then, those were never employed for jobs which required a certain quality of discrimination.

“Name, please,” the first of them—a hawk-nosed man with black hair—stated for the record. The record was a large combination device on their table. It looked like a minuscule copper horn welded to a gold tablet over which were suspended a matching series of needles, which swept back and forth, translating.

“My name is Exa. Exa Legacy. The metalsmith,” she said.

“All right,” the hawk-nosed gent went on. He rifled through a database and left an X in a margin. “And what’s your question, love?”

“I would like to hear the duke explain the logic behind the Compatible Companion Law.”

The hawk-nosed gent smirked, as if this question was simply asked too often to be taken seriously anymore. Then again, if a question is asked often enough, does that not lend it all the more credence?

“Why, that’s a fine question, ma’am,” the hawk-nosed gent placated Legacy. “Absolutely fine. All right, then, here’s your number and we’ve got your name.” The man handed Legacy a small, brass numeral 37. “Now, when your name is called, which should be 37th in the line, just state your question then, all right? You’ll want to mind the time. The question and answer session begins at midnight in the concert hall, so you listen for those gongs. It’s in—” He glanced at the distant moon of the clock tower in Taliko Square. “—a little more than half an hour, now. So you just watch the time, then. The duke’d be happy to hear this one, I think. Good question, Miss Exa. Good question. Stand still one moment, please.”

Legacy paused, and the hawk-nosed man looked directly at her. A fraction of his eyeball flashed and then returned to normal again. She shuddered and took the plated #37, though felt hollow and bitter in doing so. She knew this was all just for show. She knew this was just a pat on the head. Good little citizen. Go on then. Stand still while we file your face away in case we need to hunt you later.

Legacy was spat back into the unfamiliar courtyard with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Before her sprawled a labyrinth of laughing, unfamiliar faces, each possessing goblets of drink, each living in another world entirely.

“Fancy a fermented power pop?”
a petite, blonde-haired automaton offered. Someone must have smashed into her; there was a spider web fracture around her right eye, and a fingernail-sized sliver of glass had chipped away to reveal the machinery inside. Legacy was glad the girl couldn’t
really
see her reaction as she cringed away from the churning cogs beneath the porcelain veneer.

“No, thank you,” she said, stepping backward into the jostling current of bodies.

Again, Legacy scanned the crowd for Dax, the duke, or even Liam, but found no familiar face in the sea of well-bred strangers. Even her parents had been swallowed up. Oddly, a moment had finally come upon her wherein she could be grateful for Liam Wilco, but there was no one. Nothing but corsets and curls and pretty girls shrilling, “Oh, that’s a fairy tale! That is
not
where trees
come
from!”

Legacy voyaged deeper into the pit, but only felt more lost as the ballroom walls rose around her, as she neared its center. Party-goers loomed, blowing their noisemakers, blocking exits she gladly would have taken, and the turn-key band chose this opportune moment to bang its pianos and saw away at its violins. So strange were these new walls, made of indifferent individuals rather than stone, so impossible to open were these doors, and Legacy felt a mite dizzy, might puke, and the flags spinning, and the chandelier spinning, and everything, everything . . . .

Legacy dove for the nearest opening in the hedge of silhouettes, gulping for breath. She vaguely registered stumbling over a velvet rope, the sweet coolness of a wall on her cheek, and then there was nothing but spiraling stairwell trailing ever upward, and she was graciously, thankfully alone, swallowed amid shadow, the madness only a vibration down below. She could even hear the echo of her breath, and she stumbled still further, until she was quite sure that the carnivorous crowd was far away, and she alone. There was naught but the beat of her calming heart here.

“Hello.”

Legacy whirled and almost shrieked, but came up short. It was no thief, no murderer, but . . . a boy. A man? He was tall and slender, that was clear. He spoke in a baritone. Not much else could be discerned in the dark. Not much, save a spill of straight flaxen hair, and a diamond of alabaster skin slowly sharpening as her pupils adjusted.

“Who is there?” Legacy demanded, squinting.

The figure chuckled and the face tilted downward. “My name is Kaizen. You may have heard of me?”

Kaizen, Kaizen, Kaizen . . . That does sound familiar. Where have I heard that name before?

“I’m . . . Legacy, the metalsmith,” she said, her eyes adapting to the shade. The face tilted to peer at her again. Contour came into being. The shifting specter of eyes. Cheekbones. “Exa Legacy.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Legacy,” Kaizen replied. His voice was rich and pleasant, like chocolate, like fumes of incense, and it made Legacy almost sleepy to hear. “How did you . . . find me?” The face tilted down again.

She stepped closer. He was tall, but it didn’t matter. She could ascend one step and be level with his eyes. His face had developed, like a photograph, and he was beautiful. He was like sculpture, like art: the kind of thing you wanted to run your fingers across, if only to know it better. Aquiline nose. Razor cheekbones. A mouth as pouty as her own. The hair was longer than hers, too, and as fine as a sheet of gold. His clothes were dark, his body obscure, but she could see the angles of broad shoulders and the vague outline of a top hat.

“I just had to get away,” she answered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t— I wasn’t looking for you. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any ‘Kaizen,’ either. Sorry.”

The face tilted up again. Kaizen’s face. He seemed oddly pleased by this admission.

“I’m the Earl of Icarus,” he replied, completely serious. “Son of the duke, Malthus Taliko?”

With an echoing click, the information fell into Legacy’s schema.
Kaizen Taliko. Every girl’s earl!
That was where she’d heard the name before. He was something of a sex symbol to the propaganda machine of this city. As if having a sexy earl somehow made the dearth of rights more palatable.

“I’m . . . still just Legacy,” she replied. “I’m sorry if I bothered you, sir.”

“Sir?” Kaizen laughed. “Sir,” he said again, as if he’d never heard the word. “Okay. Well . . . you’re excused?”

“What are you doing up here, all alone?” she had to ask. “There’s a party downstairs. It was pretty much made for people like you.”

“People like me,” Kaizen repeated thoughtfully. “People like me. Hm. I don’t really know anyone down there, you know? I don’t really know anyone down there, but I do know walls. I know walls . . . very . . . well.” His hand swept across the stone, illustrating his intimacy with their boundaries. “So it’s not really a party for me, is it?” he asked. “It’s a party for them, and I’ve been set out for decoration. Like a centerpiece.”

              “You don’t know anyone at all?” Legacy found that hard to believe. With these throngs of visitors, he must’ve known someone, surely.

              “No one,” he answered. “I suppose Dad always wanted to keep me safe and sound, tucked away from any possible mayhem or danger.” Legacy frowned. It was odd to hear him speak of the duke as his father. It was odd to think of that man as anything other than a tyrant. “And here I am, so I suppose it worked quite well,” Kaizen went on. “Well, except for now. Now I know you. Legacy. Would you like to sit with me?”

              “Right here? On the stairs?”

              “Well, yes,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”

              Legacy tried to measure his intentions in the dark, but couldn’t see with enough clarity to gauge his trustworthiness. “And then what?” she asked.

              Kaizen laughed at her. “I don’t know?” he replied. “We become friends?”

              Legacy took a step closer to him, squinting up into his face. They were almost touching, she stood so close now. “You’re, like, a real person,” she said, as if inspecting a precious stone.

              Kaizen tipped his hat in reply.

              The gonging of the city’s clock tower vibrated heavily throughout Taliko Center. It went off . . . twelve times.

              “Oh, shit!” Legacy hissed, looking up at Kaizen, then backing away. “I’ve— I’m sorry— I’ve got to go!”

              Had it already been half an hour?

              “But—” Kaizen began.

              “It was nice to meet you!” Legacy called over her shoulder, already trundling down the dark infinity of twisting stairs. “You’re really not that bad!” And with that, she staggered over a velvet rope and into a sentry, aghast.

“Hey, now!” he commanded, gripping her arm. His eyes were wide with near panic. “Who are you? When did you get up there? Stay right here, miss! I’ll need to be alerting my superiors!”

“Alerting them as to how abandoned your post was?” Legacy countered, eyes flashing. “Let go of me!”

The sentry glared, considering, but then released her, and Legacy floundered backwards into the swarm of merrymakers. It was like waking from one strange dream—the solitude of the tower, Earl Kaizen in the shadows, the quiet, intimate conversation—and then being spat immediately into another, a nightmare of lights and laughter, the smiling, porcelain figurines offering their trays, the elaborate, bustling skirts of dancing debutantes.