Outlier: Rebellion (17 page)

Link slowly puts down the mini-shovel. “Do you … Do you have a name?”

“Ana, maybe.” She brings a nail to her mouth. “Or Dana. Sometimes I’m liking names like Patra and Lanabell and Madda.”

“You’re playing games with me.” Link’s too far spent for amusements from a little seven-or-eight-something-year-old girl. “Just tell me your real name.”

“They call me Kid. ‘Get away Kid, scram, go, off my porch, Kid!’ I guess that’s my name now.”

“Kid,” he mutters. “Yeah, I know that name too. Everyone at school calling me kid … My mom thinking me a kid. They take me for a kid, all of them. But I’m no kid, I’ll show them all someday. I will.”

“The other boys with black in their eyes?”

“Yes, The Wrath. You know them?” Link’s face turns sour, two fists for hands. “Fuck them. A stolen bag of gold don’t prove a thing. I don’t want their black band. Fuck it too.”

“I gived it away. I gived it to a nice baker, I did.” Link’s eyes find the girl’s, unsure how he feels about that at all. “Ya saved me, I saved you. Now we’re even.”

And then she disappears.

“Wait,” he breathes, reaching out. She’s gone, not even a breath lingering in her absence. “Wait, wait, wait.” He spins around, unable to find her, unable to see.

Shye, the unseen, the lark, the jester of dusk …

After a long and uncertain moment of pressing ear to metal, Link finally dares himself out of the toolshed, making sure to cover his every side, then over the east fence he goes. Still half a limp every other stride, he clambers out of the perilous property, safe in the grimy streets once again. He hurries to the train that will take him home, beaming with the fact that he’s still alive, that his luck burned bright against the dark, that he’ll see his brothers and his mom and dad again … that the thief girl he’d set out to find, in fact, found him.

And saved his life.

The whole way home, he keeps looking over his shoulder, certain he will see her again. He can’t stop looking for her.

00
18
 
Wick

“My rebel group would be the Cyclone,” Tide boasts from the front row. Professor Frey seems to patiently let him amuse himself. “The Hurricane. The Great Winds. We’d brew up a storm that would topple even the Banshee King himself.” His two equally-as-annoying friends in the class laugh, egging him on; a round-eyed girl with big boobs called Maris and a pointy-eared pretty boy called Westly. What they see in Tide, Wick may never know. “That’s right, you heard me. You’re talking to the new King of Atlas … The Wind King!”

Wick, so tired of class time wasted on the bully’s ego, lets slip a small remark: “And when you’re King, they’ll say you really
blow
.”

The classroom was already quiet, but now it’s as if all breath is stolen away. Heads turn, all of them, and Wick realizes he has invited onto himself the blaring spotlight—as well as Tide’s glare.

“Hey, can you smell that?” Tide says so darkly it may be a whisper. “I think that’s the scent of you getting the breath knocked out of your teeth.”

Wick’s courage—or foolishness—keeps it coming. “Breath is kept in the lungs. Take a biology class.”

“Or maybe it’s your own death you’re smelling.” With those words, the math assignments on neighboring desks begin to jostle about as if disturbed by unseen winds. Even Tide’s own hair flits about, his stifled fury building up and arresting the air.

Then at once, a long-stick bore by Professor Frey lands square on Tide’s desk, bringing the stirring of wind to a halt along with Tide’s attention. “What’s my first lesson?” she asks him, frowning down her nose, the stick still planted firmly. “Never underestimate your fellow person. Especially his Legacy, whether that be seeing or smelling or otherwise. Even the King himself thought his only strength was a voice that stretched the length of fields. Never did he know it for a weapon of sonic death … until he did.”

Tide may be a rough-spirited muscle-bound ego-bloated bastard, but he respects Professor Frey, and his every ounce of attention he only a moment ago served to Wick is now given to the professor and her words.

“Perhaps we could use a reminder that here in this room, we are among family.” She makes sure to look at every face in the classroom, arriving lastly on Wick. “All of you are among friends. Tensions are high for those of you who haven’t yet taken your Legacy Exam …
I know who you are
… and we must remember that the real enemy is ourselves. Even Kings and Queens can be born low. Remember your histories. Your power is not all you are, and you are
not
your power. Don’t ever let any fool, highborn or low, convince you otherwise.”

Wick averts his eyes. His Legacy Exam approaches … Will Rain or any number of daggers save him then?

Hours after the sun’s kissed the horizon, he’s back at headquarters, the humid top floor of the Noodle Shop, where he has at last been accepted into his first event with Rain, yet they cannot officially call him a member. “Only Gandra or Yellow can make you official,” said Rone a bit ago when he met Wick at the door. Now they’re upstairs and it seems the whole of the crew are present: Juston and Adamant the brawn, Prat and Arrow the intel, Victra and her … permanent scowl, Cintha the quiet, Rone the mostly-sober. Then there’s Yellow, who moves to the front of the room, his pasty complexion and spotted bald head standing in stark contrast to the hanging purple tapestry behind him.

He begins the briefing on what tonight’s undertaking will involve. “We will be attending the Lunar Festival as innocent people, unknown and unimportant. Since it is being held near our ward, only three of you will lead the actions of the team, setting the vandal paint bombs we’ve constructed. These bombs will destroy nothing, but will paint our slogans high against the walls of buildings and the streets of the festivities. I must repeat: there will be
no
violence. Our mission is to make ourselves known, to press into the sky a fear that they must not ignore us, to
wake the world.

“The festival’s location this month is opportune, as it is in full view of the Eastly Lifted City Garden, known to those above as the Lord’s Garden. It is even speculated that many sky folk will be observing the festival, which means our name will be known by those above as well as below. The bombs are designed to print our words in such size that even the skyborn will read and know them.

“Though you all will pose as guests of the festival, only three of you will secure the bombs in their places and arm them. The three of you in lead will be Cintha for decoy, Victra for sight, and you, newcomer Anwick, as the bomb layer.”

Wick’s throat seizes up. A few faces turn to him, and though he sees their expressions are all encouraging and proud, he finds the whole of his body locked with fear. He was sure he’d be one of the ones staying behind with the intel, that Rone would be the one to set and arm the bombs … or Juston or Adamant. Why him?

“I …” he starts, stealing a glance at Rone, surprised to find him beaming proudly. “I’ve … I’ve heard of the Lord’s Garden,” he gets out finally, opting instead not to express his utter terror. “It’s my father’s favorite. He says sometimes it rains gold. He works in the smithing district near it, found many a coin there.”

“Well, fortune will rain on us tonight,” responds Yellow, “though I doubt it will be in the form of gold. Do you three accept your roles in lead?”

Cintha only gives one soundless nod. Victra lifts her chin, always appearing annoyed and superior. When Wick is about to speak, someone else does instead: “We need a stronger message than
paint
.”

Yellow cuts off the interrupter. “You need
patience
, Adamant. Our mission has not changed, nor will it. Patience, patience.”

Adamant doesn’t give in so easy. “I didn’t join this crew four years ago to
paint
the city into submission. Patience, you say. Fuck your patience. Why don’t we burn the pylons? It’ll blow up the engine beneath the Lifted City park, and then you’ll have yourself a
real
message: ain’t nothing stays in the sky longer than it belongs. Blow the fuckers up.
Make
it rain gold, that’s what I say.”

“We will not reopen the issue,” says Yellow tiredly, “as you already know and have known since your first day here what our stance on violence and the taking of innocent lives is, Adamant. It will not happen. Find patience.”

“They are not innocent,” he spits back, eyes dark with fury. “Folk with privilege fired my dad from his job because he got too good at it. Put my sister
and
her unborn child in an early grave because we couldn’t afford to treat her for the sickness her Legacy brought on her.
Patience.
” Adamant’s risen, his face visibly turning red with a quickened heart full of rage, and he cuts off something else Yellow was about to say. “Don’t you give me that crap about bombs being outlawed! You’d have to be pretty naïve not to think the King sits on a throne of them, a whole secret chamber. Old, fat Greymyn’s just biding his time.
He’s
surely patient. He can afford to be, the fucker. I heard about a Weapon that the Sanctum’s—”

“Bombs and Weapons and Kings, I’ve heard it all.” Yellow parts through the room, puts his face up to Adamant’s. “We do not have all night and there’s still preparations to make. Lay down your dreams of death and dying and listen to your heart. Even the people up there came once, long ago, from down here.”

“You only say that because they pay you,” Adamant presses on, uncaring. “Must be nice, rendering such service to the highborn superpowers who’d sooner piss on your head than listen to
your
heart. What great heart they must have. To let die my sister and the nephew or niece I could’ve had.”

“I cannot speak for the ones who’ve wronged you and your family. But those in the sky, they
have
hearts, Adamant, and hearts change. It is human nature,” Yellow says, turning to include the rest of the crew in this. “Even a room buried deep in the earth that’s been dark for centuries is changed instantly at the mere strike of a match against its walls. My friends, we are that flame, and after tonight, Sanctum will know. Our patience will pay off.”

“Cheers to that,” says Rone, lifting a glass that is instantly swiped from his hand. “Hey! What the hey—!”

“No chemical for you tonight.” It’s Victra who now holds the glass. “If I have to see straight,
you
have to see straight.”

Yellow nods to the crew. “It’s time to let it rain.”

Over the next hour, Wick is fascinated with the order that takes the room. Arrow and Prat situate themselves at a desk with computers set opposite them, tapping away and explaining to one another what they will do in countless cases of error. Juston and Adamant dress themselves, earpieces in place. When Wick is handed his own earpiece by Cintha, she warns him, “It will squawk unintelligibly into your ear now and then. Arrow tries, being the only Charmer we know, but his gadgets aren’t perfect.”

Wick thanks her, pushes the thing into his ear before Rone guides him to an area behind the three-lion tapestry and explains how the bombs are set.

“My dad wasn’t a perfect man,” Rone tells him as they’re packing up to leave, “but he could always tell if a man had a good heart. Dad and I witnessed a robbery one night when I was only six or seven, a Sanctum man being taken for all his gold by a gang of kids. When dad came to the man’s rescue, I knew it meant the man had a good heart, even if he was highborn. You could tell from the man’s clothes what he was, it was unmistakable: a Privileged, a man of the Lifted City. Son of Sanctum. My dad was not successful in fending off the young robbers, getting a beating himself. Guardian arrived, but it was not to save the day. The kids took off, quick on their feet, but my dad was weary from the brawl, and Guardian apprehended him at once, thinking him one of the assailants. I still remember the look in the Sanctum man’s brown, glassy eyes—the way he stared at us in equal parts fear and disgust. As my dad was carried off, I begged the Sanctum man to speak up, to tell them my dad was not one of the robbers, but the man simply shook in his boots, blood pouring from his nose, from a gash on his forehead, from his left ear, and he said, ‘Get
away
from me, rat! You’re all the
same
… greedy, needy, and …’ Then he made his way, limping into the distance, gone. I never knew the third thing us slum rats are, according to him. I wonder the third thing every day. Evil? Worthless? Dirty? My dad was wrong about him … That was my last thought as Guardian took him away forever: he was wrong. I never saw my dad again.”

An hour passes, and they’re on the train aimed for the Lunar Festival. An unpleasant cocktail of excitement, impatience, and dread clenches Wick’s neck, and it’s twisted worse by Rone’s story of his father.
It was just one Sanctum man
, he tries reasoning with himself.
Just one selfish, horrible man. Not all slum men are good either.
But then there was Adamant’s story too … the sister he lost, and the little one in her belly. Even lacking the details, the why, the how, it gives Wick little reason to feel at ease.
Tonight, we let it rain,
he thinks, trying to coach himself, but the only thing raining is the dread all over the confidence he’d earlier had.

Seated with Victra on one side and Cintha the other, Wick can’t stop pulling on his own hands. The tiny bag slung over his shoulder that carries the graffiti bombs feels heavier and heavier with every passing train station, with every tick of the clock, with every time Victra clears her throat or Cintha pokes at her earpiece.