LEGACY LOST Read online

  She frowned, uncertain of exactly what she was seeing.

  Who is that? she wondered. And . . . how? How does she look exactly like me?

  “So, you figured you’d just go buck naked in our bed, huh?” the girl asked mildly, stooping to examine one of the bunks.

  “Legacy, it is ungodly hot in there,” the boy snapped, following her down the small set of steps and into that room of devices.

  Coal inched along the space within the wall, fumbling silently after the retreating couple. So, the look-a-like’s name is Legacy. “Leg.” My sister, the man said, she recalled, grim and all the more suspicious. The girl, Legacy, may have resembled her – even exactly – but she was still dressed in those gaudy, decadent garments of the air city. She was still ungrateful for everything she’d ever been given. The woman wore a damn vest of gold, after all.

  After an hour of unsuccessfully scouring the decks, the forecastle, the berth, communications, the lab, the library, knocking on every individual cabin and even checking the sweltering engine room for Coal-Radia, Legacy and Dax accepted their failure and retired to their cabin near sunrise. Rain offered to maintain the helm until Vector could return.

  “Do you see what I mean?” Dax pressed, unbuttoning his shirt and stripping it from his torso. “And it’s cooled down a little bit, even!”

  The tiny cabin, sharing its wall with the engine room, seeped heat through the wall – as well as the rumbling of churning machinery. It was hotter than it’d been before, though; a sweat immediately broke across Legacy’s skin.

  She hesitated, grimaced, and hitched one leg onto the mattress, unlacing her boots. She had tamped their speed back down to twenty-five miles per hour after putting some distance between them and the castle, but it had also been forty-five miles per hour for a while. She hoped she hadn’t damaged anything, and worried now that maybe Vector had reasons for insisting the speed remain stable at twenty-five.

  Peeling the shoes from off her legs, she next shrugged off her vest, carefully draping it on the door’s coat hook. This was no ordinary vest. That was why its wings had sprung open when she’d leapt from the shifting ledge of the dome: an automatic, mechanical response. It had been a gift from her father, Patrick or “Patch” Legacy, the one-armed poor man’s inventor of Icarus.

  Her father rummaged in a tin full of mechanical assistants. There was every variety of instrument within, dragonflies and figurines and tiny top hats and coiled snakes of glass. Personal assistants were probably his best-selling and most reliable product, easy to make, if you knew what you were doing. Through trial and error, Mr. Legacy had learned. Kind of. Mostly. He’d been getting better.

  Mr. Legacy extracted a golden waistcoat from the pile; it was delicate enough to shift with movement and gleam only faintly, so that, upon first glance, it seemed cloth. But a closer glance would reveal the small key, fashioned to resemble a corsage, plunged into the lapel, and the tiny speakers rather than buttons. “Perfect,” he said. “This one hardly talks at all. Good for . . . for stealth.” He shot his daughter a look of understanding and dire importance. “It’s got a lot of tools,” he said, idly extending a pair of matching silken wings folded onto the back of the vest, “but – I – I know we don’t have time, so just register this, okay?”

  As she hung the vest – Flywheel-2, registered under the alias Audio Swan – her countenance darkened and dampened. She began the suddenly daunting task of unbuttoning her blouse, arms thick and leaden as she worked.

  “You should go, Exa,” her mother said, first sympathetic and then stern. “You should go before they come, and don’t – don’t tell us where you’ve been staying. You’re right. It’s better that way.”

  Her mother pressed a hard kiss to her cheek, and her father gave her a hug that cracked three vertebrae in her back.

  Legacy sighed deeply and shrugged the wilted linen garment from her shoulders.

  “You okay?” Dax’s voice perforated her rain cloud of thoughts.

  “Yeah,” she muttered, unfastening the fish-tail skirt from her hips and letting it puddle in the floor.

  When she turned to face the bed, she found that he was already there, reclining against the headboard and staring at her with level, soft blue eyes. Not because she was almost entirely nude. Because he was worried about her

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  “No,” Legacy grumbled, climbing into bed and lying flat on her back. “You know, Dad was an inventor,” she burst, still not looking at him but into the low ceiling. “Maybe he had something that – You know? Maybe he . . .” Her lashes drooped as she faced the reality of her suggestion. Maybe he’d survived? He and her mother, Furnice? No . . . In order to survive, to even have a chance, they would have had to have been close to the exterior of the dome, capable of escaping the collapsing city before impact. The only publicly accessible point would have been the aerial docks at the corner of Lion’s Head and the business district . . . but her parents, when she’d last seen them, had been home. Almost on the other side of Icarus completely. It wasn’t impossible, but it was very, very unlikely.

  “I’m sorry, Leg.” Dax had lost his parents long ago, his mother twelve years ago and his father five, both to cancers likely engendered in the mass production units where they’d worked themselves to death. Still, it wasn’t the type of thing you ever really “got over.” It was just the type of thing you got used to.

  Dax patted her hand awkwardly.

  “It’s fine,” Legacy murmured, ignoring the way her lungs – or her heart? – felt like an overfilled water balloon on the verge of popping. Involuntarily, however, her chest was oscillating in the style of a panic attack.

  “Legacy,” Dax called to her, somber.

  “I’m fine,” she reassured him. It was the last thing she could manage to say before the crack developed in her sternum – that mysterious cavern so filled with water – and the tears began to flow freely. Pulling to the side and drawing her limbs in toward her center, Legacy cringed and cradled her face in her clawed hands.

  Dax gently drew her toward him and wrapped his arms around her. Both were coated in a light sheen of sweat, but Legacy needed the comfort emotionally more than she needed it physically, and so she bowed her face against his chest and wept.

  Her fingers tangled subconsciously in his hair, and she buried into his neck, which smelled so pungently of Dax’s own aroma. Salt and leather and heat.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, along with other senseless lies meant solely to calm. “It’s going to be all right.” He stroked her back and allowed her nuzzling, even though the stifling cabin made it hard for either of them to catch a good breath.

  Finally, finally, the pressure in Legacy’s ribcage abated. Like a drug, she wanted more. She felt better, and logically, if she pressed forward, she would feel even better, and could eventually totally blot her depression out. And this felt so good. To be in Dax’s arms again. To be allowed to let go. To forget all the bullshit. To just unravel.

  When her legs wound around his hips, Dax hesitated, but he allowed it. When her bare heels dug into the small of his back and he felt the subtle but provocative rhythm of her sex against his, he drew a sharp breath and slightly extricated himself from her embrace.

  “Leg,” he said, peering down at her with even greater concern. But when her eyes panned to his, they were frantic and mindless. He went to wipe the tear tracks from her face, but her hands moved too; they went to unfasten his rebreather.

  Legacy had never, ever approved of his removal of the device before, but now she pulled its strap loose without even asking and clutched his mouth to hers.

  For a moment, he responded with a strength and desperation that nearly matched hers, and then, as quickly as it had begun, the moment was over. Dax released his hold on her body and untangled her limbs from his trunk.

  “Leg,” he repeated, now grim. “We can’t – I don’t–”

  Legacy’s brow furrowed. “What?” she sn
apped. “We can’t what? You don’t what?”

  “I don’t want to do it like this!” he snapped back, refastening the leather mask onto his nose and mouth. He sat upright, arranging the sheet over his traitorous erection, and ran a hand through his hair. He took a deep breath, agitated, and coughed dryly. “I don’t want it to just be . . .” He frittered a hand in the air, signifying nothing, dust and wind. “. . . a way to vent, you know? Some coping mechanism.”

  “Forget it,” Legacy hissed, vaulting off the bed and scrambling into her old skirt and blouse.

  “You know I – Leg – I didn’t–”

  “I said forget it! I’m going to sleep in some other bunk! It’s daylight! People should be up, I’m sure there’s one to spare!”

  “Leg–”

  But she wrenched the door of the cabin open and exited, slamming it behind her.

  Coal-Radia, having followed the couple by slinking along between the walls, watched them fly apart, wondering at the mention of this father she supposedly had. She’d never really wondered about who her parents had been before.

  When Kaizen ascended the castle keep stairwell, intending to alleviate Johannes of his shift at the helm, Claude was already there, patiently shifting the spokes of the wheel and steering the island ever closer to their destination of Celestine. “Ah, good morning, Duke Taliko,” Claude greeted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Kaizen frowned. “I thought I was relieving Johannes.”

  “You were, but you – needed sleep,” Claude explained, smile barely faltering. “So I offered to take over. Besides, you know, I’ve never cared much for omelets.”

  “Well, it’s – it’s just as well,” Kaizen said, waving his hand dismissively and settling near the parapet. “I could use some of your advice, actually. You know, on more than one occasion, it’s been implied that you are a rebel sympathizer, Claude.”

  The steward blanched and lost his tongue.

  “So I would be most interested to hear your thoughts on this,” Kaizen continued, fishing the Hermetic device from a pocket within his trousers. He depressed the button and allowed the pompous monarch’s thinly veiled threat to play for his most humane courtier. Certain phrases sprang forward as particularly antagonistic. Tenuous grip. Scapegoat. A threat to be tangibly snuffed out. When the light of Ferraday’s voice ceased its flickering, Kaizen closed the silver ball again and re-deposited it into his pocket. “I wish to be no innocent man’s executioner,” Kaizen added. “Nor do I wish to sacrifice myself.”

  Claude considered. “No innocent man’s executioner,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Well. Let us consider the crime to be the collapse of Icarus. Now, shall we examine, most factually, the factors which contributed to it?”

  Kaizen nodded, listening.

  “There was, first, The Coronal Massacre, perpetrated by Chance for Choice. In this regard, perhaps it would look better if Exa Legacy were to be apprehended, considering that it would appear you’ve absolved Trimpot after offering him a position amongst the court in exchange for information. Of course, though, Exa Legacy is undoubtedly dead.”

  Kaizen nodded again, breaking eye contact. “Yes. There is no chance she would have survived the collapse.”

  Claude continued, hardly noticing the falter. “But Trimpot is here. And he was the leader of Chance for Choice long before Exa Legacy was a household name.” The suddenly mischievous steward paused, allowing this information to fully sink in. “I mean,” he repeated, “he is right here. Like a . . . How does the saying go? A sitting goose?”

  “A sitting duck,” Kaizen corrected him. He knew an unusual amount of Old Earth sayings, thanks to his father.

  “Better than you,” Claude concluded. “After all, you didn’t do anything, did you? Maybe Exa Legacy would’ve been easier to blame; she got on the radio in an effort to spread the name of Chance for Choice throughout the New Earth and she hadn’t been publicly pardoned by the throne for The Coronal Massacre, no known immunity from the courts, but she’s dead.”

  “She is dead,” Kaizen agreed tonelessly.

  Unseen by either man, a hot pink up-do disappeared back down the twisting stairwell of the castle keep.

  Neon Trimpot had to admit that he was pleased with himself. He rarely offered to help anyone, but when he finally did, it had this handy tendency to benefit him immensely, at which point it would immediately cease in its altruistic nature. For example, the moment he decided to extend a hand to Exa Legacy, inviting her to his headquarters and offering her the position of “speechwriter.” Never had he dreamed she would also supply him with a legally advantageous fall guy – or lady, as the case may be. This particular boon was a doozy in the same vein, and even now, even catching wind of an indirect murder plot targeting his marvelous head, he couldn’t help but smirk.

  He’d been alerted through the magic of eavesdropping that Monarch Ferraday wanted someone’s head on a platter to be presented to the people of New Earth, gestured to, and said about it: “This is the one we all should blame, but sleep tight, my obedient working class, for they have been judged, sentenced, and executed.”

  Trimpot spilled down into the machinist’s chamber, out and through his own makeshift bunk, another spiral of stairs.

  That trusting nobody, Claude, was ready to believe Kaizen Taliko, as if the honorable duke had no motive to lie. He was ready to believe that Exa Legacy was dead simply because he hadn’t yet seen her alive personally.

  Well, that was the difference between him and Claude. He had. He’d seen the delightful bitch piloting the Albatropus, of all things, which meant that not only was she alive, but a portion of Chance for Choice remained to struggle against the elements, like some tiny candle guttering.

  Trimpot strode purposefully toward the parallel wing, where the girl – what was her name? – where Sophie stayed. Trimpot’s lip quirked. Kaizen’s attempt to obfuscate the identity of the madwoman had been noble, but simple. Without the lurking guard staff of automata to apprehend him, he’d investigated these halls thoroughly. And the girl, Sophie. Her room was directly across from Kaizen’s. As if they were on the same level in this family, as if they always had been. Siblings.

  What an oddity to New Earth.

  Trimpot knocked at Sophie’s door. “Hello? Is there a pretty girl inside?”

  No answer. Well, if she wasn’t in Master Addler’s chamber, and she wasn’t in her bedchamber, there was only one other place she would be on these grounds: the arbor, a wooden lattice overgrown with vines and foliage, the centerpiece of a small garden-and-menagerie at the back of the palace. Trimpot grimaced and receded along the rotunda yet again.

  Claude was right about one thing: people would rather blame Legacy than blame him. She’d started the riot at the Fifty-Second Centennial. She’d been the voice on City of Icarus News-3, informing New Earth of Chance for Choice’s mission statement. She’d been invited to formally debate with the duke. The court had no record of granting immunity to her. How many laws had she broken? It was even arguable that the collapse of Icarus was her literal fault. If she hadn’t wrapped Dax around her little finger, he’d likely have never formulated that insane assassination plot. Then, Malthus would still be alive, and Trimpot never would’ve had to give up the location of the CC headquarters, where the police had grabbed Vector’s electrical cannon, wrested by hoodlums in the riots and fired into the dome.

  Trimpot exited onto the castle grounds, looping toward the garden, the overgrown arbor cropped up in the middle.

  It was just too easy for them to give him up; he was right here. Claude was right about that. But what if . . . what if Legacy was right here, too? After all, that potbelly airship couldn’t be far ahead. If he could get his hands on the wheel, he’d ensure they reconnected with the vessel. Reconnected, and performed reconnaissance.

  But he had no say in this court. Even that sycophant, Claude, was of higher station than he. Even the miserable hunchback, Addler, was of higher station.

  Sophie, ho
wever . . .

  She was the secret duchess of the Taliko nobility, her madness and her vulnerability securing her as the sympathetic favorite of both Kaizen and Olympia.

  Trimpot ascended the back of the crowded arbor, winding his arms around its wooden supports and swinging downward, toward its bench.

  “Pretty girl?” he called again.

  “Here I am,” Olympia Taliko replied, smiling indulgently.

  Trimpot pulled up short, almost confused. He wanted to ask her where Sophie was . . . but realized that, doing so, he would utterly ruin whatever sense of satisfaction was allowing the former duchess such a proud simper. She reclined on the arbor’s swinging bench, dressed in a light, silken, empire-waisted robe which was almost . . . see-through. Her thick blonde mane tumbled over her shoulders and obscured her breasts.

  “Here you are indeed,” Trimpot agreed, taking a seat beside the former duchess. “And what are you doing?”

  Olympia slung an arm around the back of the bench and shifted toward him. She was a dazzling woman, confident and voluptuous, and Trimpot could tell that she had been a stunning beauty in her youth. She brought to mind Sophie’s soft features, the lips, the pale blue eyes, but her overuse of powders and creams served to outline the fine lines developing around her eyes.

  “Just thinking about the plight of the rebels,” Olympia said, walking two fingers over Trimpot’s shoulder and trailing up into his hair. He would have been shocked, but then again, Olympia did strike him as a lonely woman who was very used to getting her way. “Tell me again about their passionate struggle.”