Authors: Rachel Eastwood
“Legacy.” Kaizen closed the door and touched her shoulder. “Why don’t you just lay down before you go? Just for a minute?”
She cast her eyes suspiciously onto the wide mattress, assuredly soft and smooth enough to tide anyone off to sleep as soon as they dared blink. “No,” she answered stiffly. “I’d better not.”
“Legacy,” he said again. He called her name as if calling her to her senses. “Just take a nap. What will it hurt? Come on. And then you go. Then you go home, I promise.”
She slanted her suspicious gaze at him next.
He hasn’t really been hurting me, or forcing me to do anything,
she thought.
He’s just been showing me what life as a duchess could be like, really.
Legacy caught herself sighing inwardly and stifled the sensation.
Not that you care,
she reminded herself.
“I guess I could lay down for a minute,” she allowed.
Legacy approached the bed as if it might bite, as if it was a threat, and then crawled in and collapsed.
All her fears were realized. It was the most plush mattress and breathable sheet she’d ever touched. She sank into the pillows and felt her joints all unlock. Her knees. Her shoulders. Everything loosened like spaghetti, and she sighed.
The mattress sank beside her. “Can I lay down too?” Kaizen asked.
One eye cracked open and glared. “No,” she said.
“I didn’t sleep last night either,” he explained defensively. “I just want to lay next to you. That’s all.”
Legacy closed her eye again. She was too tired to fight. She was so tired. “All right,” she said. “Fine.”
She stiffened at the sensation of his breath on her neck, though he did not touch her. She kept her eyes shut and told herself she was too tired to notice what she was noticing, too tired to care about it, too—
Her heart thundered when a single finger traced the shape of her shoulder, her side, her hip.
A shameful part of her—the same part which had broken open and flowered when they’d kissed in the dungeon tower—yearned for him to take her face in his hands and kiss her.
But he didn’t.
He curled up against her, burrowing into her neck as if seeking shelter from a storm, and threaded his fingers through hers. He sighed into her hair, as if he too were experiencing a luxury he’d never encountered in all his life, and they both dropped off to sleep, a warm, smiling slumber.
On the other side of the spectrum, the headquarters of Chance for Choice were abuzz with furious plotting.
“This may be our only option!” Dax yelled, pounding his fist onto Vector’s workbench. The inventor stiffened as a row of his projects all shuddered. “You know how heavily armored that drawbridge is! Well! The security will have to be loosened for the coronation! Hundreds of people are going to be there!
Rain
received a formal invitation from her work! And didn’t you, too, Vector?” Vector nodded. “When will that drawbridge ever open up like this again?”
“
Well,
for
starters,
” Trimpot replied, eyes flashing as he, too, braced Vector’s workbench and leaned across it. Vector tensed as the possibility of violence escalated, all right next to his fragile prototypes. “We don’t have the
manpower,
and we don’t have the
technology
anywhere
near
that of the duke!”
“You were the one who said that you were tired of civil disobedience! Don’t you think having your speechwriter pulled from her own home, with no formal charges brought, no mention in the news, might qualify as an act of war?”
“They knew we’d been to Old Earth, obviously!” Trimpot shouted. “We’re
lucky
they
only
took her!”
“
Only took her?
” Dax seethed. Vector lunged to form a protective shield over the Contemplator. “It was your blasted idea to go down there, not hers! All she did was see it, and wonder what was down there! It was
you
who were convinced that it was some private getaway for the elite! You just can’t stand the thought of someone having something you don’t, Trimpot!”
“I don’t care for your
insolence,
Ghrenadel, and as I
said,
regardless of whose fault it is that she’s gone, she’s
gone.
We
don’t
have the technology, and we
don’t
have the manpower, to go into battle right now.”
Dax expelled a long, frustrated breath. Flywheel, who had been in his pocket when Legacy was taken, buzzed around his head, a constant reminder of her absence. The mechanical assistant had imprinted with him ever since.
“Well,” Vector mentioned in a small voice.
“Well
what?
” Trimpot snapped.
“Well,” Vector went on again, “you did say the place was crawling with automatons.”
“Yes,” Trimpot simmered. “I did say that. What’s your
point?
”
“My point is that—it wouldn’t be impossible to craft another program for the Contemplator. We already have the disable program. So, we get in. We go with disable. We run the new program through the Contemplator. Wouldn’t be too hard at all. Quite simple, really, the more I think about it. Very dangerous. But quite simple.”
“
What
new program?” Trimpot and Dax asked in unison.
Vector shrugged. “A kill program.”
“Wait, wait,
wait,
” Rain, who had been watching in mute horror, stepped forward. “I thought we were just talking about a rescue mission, not an assassination!”
Vector frowned. “Oh, were we? My mistake.”
Dax frowned, but he also nodded. “Why not both?” he wondered.
“
What?
” Trimpot and Rain exclaimed in unison.
“You said we had limited manpower and technology,” Dax reiterated. He gestured to Vector. “Vector has a plan that requires one bot and two program reels for the Contemplator.”
“What does that have to do with Legacy?” Trimpot asked.
“You leave Leg to me,” Dax replied. “I’ll get her back. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s find the woman I love. We may require an incident like an assassination, anyway. I could get in and out pretty swiftly during total pandemonium, I think. Especially if all their force gets diverted from the tower to the castle.”
Trimpot shook his head. “I don’t
like
it,” he said.
“Why?” Dax snapped.
“Because! It’s got nothing to
do
with me!” the petulant rebel leader replied. “I’d be risking my life to save your damn girlfriend!”
“I kind of like it,” Vector confessed. “I mean, what have we been doing? Making a bunch of weapons for the fun of it? Painting buildings like a bunch of children? What is this all for, if it never gets serious? Don’t you see, Neon? It has everything to do with you, and with all of us. Dax is right. We’re never going to get another chance like this to take out the duke.”
“No, no, no,” Dax said. His eyebrows settled low over his blue eyes, which were not bright anymore, but seemed almost black. “Not the duke. Not the duke. Kaizen.”
“Whoa,” Rain interrupted again. “Why Kaizen? He seems all right.”
“Figures the girl would want to save Kaizen,” Vector inserted, rolling his eyes.
“It’s not about that!” Rain rebutted. “But he hasn’t done anything! He’s not the duke!”
“He will be, though,” Dax replied. “That’s what this entire show is about, isn’t it? The coronation is unusual, isn’t that what Dyna Logan said? A coronation is unusual when it’s held prior to the death of the duke, but it is done to solidify intent. To clarify the passage of the crown in future time. It’s the duke’s way of telling us that nothing is going to change. It’s the duke’s way of telling us that, even after he’s dead, he’ll still have won, because the order of the monarchy will prevail. What would send a greater message, then, than to target Kaizen? Let all of Icarus know that this duke is over.”
There was a tense silence as the gravity of the suggestion settled.
“He’s right,” Vector spoke up. “If we were to target the duke, it’d only mean that the crown would pass to Kaizen immediately. Nothing would really change. But if we target Kaizen? The duke suddenly has no heir. He’d have to either forfeit the throne, or petition an amendment to the Companion laws, at any rate, because Duchess Olympia is too old to have kids now. He’d have to get reassigned, and I don’t think you can get reassigned, legally, after you’ve already had a kid with your Companion.”
Dax’s eyes gleamed. “That’s it, then. Let’s get started.” He clapped Vector on the shoulder. “We don’t have long.” Whistling and extending his finger, Dax again marveled at the way Flywheel now functioned as if he were state-of-the-art. “Flywheel, begin note,” he commanded. “Leg, we’re coming to get you. And we’re going to get Kaizen, too. End note.” He gave the dragonfly’s tiny key a hard spin. As long as Legacy was imprisoned somewhere with an open window, the little assistant would be able to find her and deliver the missive. Maybe not before, when he malfunctioned regularly, but now, he trusted the dragonfly with the complex task of flying to the castle grounds.
Dax cradled the brass automaton in the palm of his hand, walking from the workshop in order to let Flywheel fly.
He didn’t see the way Trimpot’s glare burned daggers into his back.
Legacy woke slowly, pleasantly, to the sensation of arms wrapped tightly around her, and a gentle tickle along her bare shoulder. “
Good day, Exa,
” a voice that sounded an awful lot like Flywheel greeted her. Her eyelashes fluttered open. Kaizen was nestled into the crook of her neck, sleeping peacefully. They were in a tangle of limbs—something they must’ve done unconsciously. She was still wearing those handcuffs, oddly. The sun had yet to rise, and the room was dark. She’d thrown her leg over Kaizen in her sleep.
“
The date is August Twelfth, Two Thousand, Three Hundred and Twelve,
” the voice that sounded an awful lot like Flywheel’s continued to announce. Now it was circling overhead.
Kaizen grumbled and shifted against her.
“
One note,
” the voice concluded.
Legacy’s eyes focused in the dark. It was Flywheel. She recognized the faint glimmer of the jewel tones on his wings. He landed again, with delicate precision, right on top of her hand.
“Play note,” Legacy commanded dreamily.
Why are you here?
she had to wonder at Flywheel, as if the question was not,
Why am I here?
“Leg, we’re coming to get you,”
Dax’s voice emitted clear as a bell from Flywheel’s irises.
“And we’re going to get Kaizen, too.”
Legacy went rigid and icy at the words.
Going to get Kaizen, too.
The Earl of Icarus shifted against her again, nuzzling into her neck. He seemed so innocent just now. His lips barely parted, breathing evenly, deeply. So helpless. Legacy ran her fingers through his hair, held him tighter, and tried to think.
As the sun rose that Saturday morning, homes both aristocratic and common bustled to prepare. The women uncovered their most striking plumage and settled it sideways on their heads. The men rifled in drawers for lost cufflinks. The roads clogged with carriages on their way to the drawbridge, a destination to which only an elite few had ever been privy in this lifetime. Airships again thronged the sky, though only the airships of the upper-crust. The dukes of other duchies. Perhaps the monarch himself. The ships were massive and slow-moving, filled with entire staffs of automata.
Back at the castle, Earl Kaizen was in an unusually upbeat mood, considering the distaste he had for the crown to which he was sworn to commit his allegiance. Personal automata swarmed over him, brushing his hair, straightening his sash, polishing his shoes. Legacy, meanwhile, watched from the bed, looking nauseas.
“Are you okay, Leg?” Kaizen asked, frowning at her. A repaired Newton-2 swirled around him, tucking his shirt into his pants, and Kaizen staggered and spluttered. Usually he dressed himself, but apparently today was a big thing.
“I don’t know,” Legacy replied dully.
I really don’t. If I don’t tell you what’s going to happen, you’ll die. But if I do tell you, Dax will.
“You don’t look very good,” Kaizen said. “You look sick.”
“I feel sick.” In fact, she was certainly going to vomit if she didn’t get these words out of her mouth first. “Kaizen—”
“Hey, is that your little guy?” he interrupted, gesturing to Flywheel, who had nestled into her braids again and hung there like a large, shiny ornament. “He found you, huh?”
“Kaizen,” Legacy repeated. “You can’t go through with the coronation.”
Kaizen froze, although the automata around him continued to busy themselves. One dusted his face with a brush of flesh-toned powder. Another strung a tie around his neck and began to tighten.
“I have to,” he reminded her. “Those were the terms of your suspension, Legacy.”
“Well—well, maybe I shouldn’t have been suspended!” she burst. “Maybe I should serve my sentence! I don’t—I don’t need you rushing around to rescue me, I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself! It’s none of your business what I do or what happens to me, you know, and I just really, really think you shouldn’t go through with this coronation! I mean—I mean—” She blanched, considering what might happen to Dax if she went too far, and said too much. “It totally invalidates your principles! You don’t even want to be a duke! So reject the coronation!”
“Such a rebel, you are,” Kaizen said, smirking at her lovingly as Newton-2 secured his belt. “It’s not my dream, but it’s all right. It’s mostly symbolic, and anyway, after my father dies, perhaps I could—petition for those amendments to the Companion laws.” For a moment, he simply stared at Legacy, and she thought that he was implying that, after his father died, perhaps he would make her his duchess. But then he clarified, “And you could be with that—that person you want to be with. Whoever they are.”
Meanwhile, Dax and Vector shared a carriage which was trundling toward the drawbridge. Many security measures had been disabled for the increased traffic. The second gate was going to be unlocked for the entirety of the day, as was the third gate, and only the first, with its exterior scan, was still operational. There would visual scans and tickets taken between the third gate and the grand hall, the men were sure of that. Vector had his ticket, which allowed for one guest, but he knew Dax was blacklisted. He also knew that neither of them were planning to follow the current of guests into the event hall, anyway. Dax would be branching off toward the prison tower for Legacy. He would have to attempt to blend with the sentries. Vector would be avoiding any and all security as he searched for the earl’s footman bot, likely at the front of the throne room, where the dignitaries and aristocrats would be seated, socializing. The automaton couldn’t be too hard to find; it would be the most complex of the turn-key attendants there, and it would certainly be standing at the ready, stiff and formal, near to the throne.
If Vector was searched, his Contemplator would certainly be confiscated and destroyed, and he would surely be hanged for conspiracy and treason. But he cared more about his Contemplator being destroyed.
The carriage lurched to a halt, and Vector grasped and steadied his enormous top hat. The carriage then lurched again, bouncing along the cobbled roadway. Another carriage had joined the traffic. The first gate loomed ahead.
“Both got a lot to lose,” Vector noted, staring out the cabin window with anticipation. This clenching in his stomach suggested that something was wrong, but he pushed the premonition away.
“That’s always true,” Dax replied, trying his best to be flippant.
“When I see you again, I’ll be an unofficial duke,” Kaizen said, stooping to brush a kiss against Legacy’s lips. The gesture had been almost accidental, little more than reflexive, and he was too preoccupied with the coming coronation to even notice he’d done it.
Legacy didn’t stop him, either. She, too, was moved by the current circumstance, and laced her fingers up into his hair, clutching a handful of the stuff and opening his mouth with her tongue.
Kaizen responded with the immediacy of a chemical reaction, making sounds as if he were eating a rich dessert, remembering that he normally didn’t kiss Legacy and then forgetting, remembering and then forgetting again, clinging to the fabric of her dress with a groan.
“Kaizen,” Legacy said the moment his lips left hers. His mouth trailed firm, insistent kisses down her throat. “You’ve got to listen to me.”
“You should stay again tonight,” he murmured from her shoulder. “And I promise you can leave tomorrow, I promise, promise, promise . . .” His mouth whispered up her neck.
“
Coronation ceremony to commence in one hour,
” Newton-2 inserted.
“Shut up!” Kaizen yelled over his shoulder, as if Newton-2 could understand. “Go bother someone else!”
Apparently the bot could understand, for he next clinked merrily from the room.
“Kaizen, listen to me,” Legacy said, pulling from him so as to gaze into his eyes directly. “You cannot accept that crown today. Do you hear me? You cannot.”
For the first time, Kaizen regarded her with a sliver of suspicion. “Why not?”
Rain had been kind enough to throw together a crude rendering of the royal sentry uniform, based on Dax’s recollections from his earlier confrontations with the troop, but one key difference between an official royal sentry and Dax Ghrenadel was the rebreather he wore. He doubted any of the soldiers would be shrewd enough to recognize a hurried stitch job or a minor difference in the gradient of the fabric, but the castle would not have hired a man with his deficiency.
The automaton chauffeur braked as their carriage reached the first gate. The scanner hummed, the carriage idled, and then they trundled on again. Rocking back and forth, as if this were a lazy weekend drive.
Dax hadn’t mentioned this aloud—although it was possible that everyone had figured it out already—but he would have to take off his rebreather for the entirety of the mission. At least until he found Legacy, if not throughout. The likelihood that he’d simply collapse would increase as time went on, but . . . wasn’t that always true?
Dax pulled off his characteristic rumpled, collared shirt, and shrugged on the black, militaristic turtleneck. He glanced up and caught the second gate sweeping by in the window. It wouldn’t be long now. He slid a navy blue armband into place, the seal of the Taliko family vaguely rendered in a freehand stitch.
Vector obsessively straightened his top hat. “Here comes the third gate,” he said. “Does my hat look like a normal hat?”
“Because—” Legacy hesitated, the enormity of her words jamming in her throat, and then all exploding in a deluge of confession. “Because someone is going to try to kill you!”
Kaizen didn’t say anything. He just looked at her. A hard, discerning look.
“You weren’t going to tell me something like that?” he asked.
Legacy looked down. “There’s—I—There’s a lot at stake for me, telling you that,” she defended herself. She looked back up at him. Her eyes bore all the somber pride of a dying queen. “I’ll probably be executed now.”
“You and your friends, right?” he asked. “It’s Chance for Choice, isn’t it? That’s how you know.”
Now that she’d begun to speak candidly, she found it difficult to stop. It felt good to tell the truth. “I’m sorry, but I told you, and now you know, and it doesn’t matter what happens to me or—or anyone else, because the blood of an innocent man isn’t on my hands.”
Kaizen turned this information over in his head. “All right,” he said. “All right. Stay here. I’ll . . . I’ll be back.”
He turned from her and strode to the door, and the image of the young earl, wearing the full regalia of his house, struck her like an ill omen.
“Kaizen,” she called, feeling sick.
He hesitated and met her eyes, jaw tense, then strode the length of the room back to her and kissed her once more, furiously enough to bend her backwards. He gripped the thin chain of her handcuffs and tore it in half, freeing her hands to travel his body. Then they separated, a fresh ache to throb in both of them, and she watched him leave and not look back. Flywheel crept into her hair as if he, too, could sense the coming storm.
Duke Malthus Taliko was in the throne room, of course. That was where the royal family should all have been—with the exception of Sophie, who was not allowed to be seen, certainly by a visiting dignitary. Malthus had been patiently and graciously receiving guest after guest for the past hour or so, occasionally forcing himself to smile and explain, as he was to Duke Lovelace now, who had been kind enough to attend the Taliko coronation ceremony, that Kaizen was perfectly aware of the time and certainly was on his way posthaste.
“Good, good,” Lovelace said, smiling. “Need to be a strong duke in a city like Icarus, I imagine. I’ve heard you’re having . . . problems here.”
“Oh, no hand stronger than Kaizen’s, I assure you,” Malthus lied. “He’s got the heart of a fire-breathing beast.”
He caught sight of his wayward son just then, approaching in the regalia of the house, at long last. The coronation was due to start in less than an hour and his damn footman bot had been in the throne room longer than he had.
“Here he is,” Malthus announced through gritted teeth.
“Dad!” Kaizen cried, sounding more like a young pauper than rising nobility. “We need to talk!”
Malthus offered Lovelace an apologetic smile of false calm. “Excuse us,” he said coolly.
Lovelace smiled at Kaizen, shook his hand, congratulated him, and descended from the throne.
Malthus turned on the boy with hateful eyes. In truth, it was he who breathed fire, and not his son. “
What
is the meaning of this?” he demanded, apoplectic. “You’re late! And you’re informal! That was the Duke of Celestine! Celestine!”
Unprecedented, the earl grabbed his father’s arm in some display of humility, like a beggar.
And on the day of his coronation! In the damn throne room!
Malthus raged on silently, sick with desire to smack his face. But he couldn’t. Not here.
“I have it on good authority that there’s going to be an attempt on my life at the ceremony,” Kaizen gushed. “You’ve got to call it off.”
The duke glared at his son thoughtfully. “An attempt on your life?” he repeated, his voice like a knife of ice. “How? Who? Where did you hear that?”
Kaizen opened his mouth, but his eyes belied that he had any words to speak at all.
“It’s that girl, isn’t it?” he growled. “You’ve seen that girl with the CC.” The blankness in his son’s eyes only widened. It was like peering into the night sky, his eyes were so vast and empty. “That is it,” he concluded. “Legacy, wasn’t that her name? But you haven’t left the grounds. You haven’t left the grounds, and she’s been blacklisted from public events, so she would not be permitted here. So, then, where is she?”
“She’s—She’s not—” he stammered.
“Can’t you see that this is what that little harlot wants? You! Blinded! Her puppet! Playing perfectly into the CC’s hand! If only I could go back in time, I would’ve let you be with a woman, by God, any woman, a porcelain woman, just so long as you could keep your head on straight when it really counted. Kaizen. If we cancel this coronation, it would be as if you’d bowed down from the throne itself. I might as well stand here and invite every single citizen of Icarus to give me hell, right in the gut. That’s how weak we would look. How tender of foot. Uncertain. Unpredictable. Untrustworthy. Is that what you want to show Icarus? What a soft, scared leader you will be when I am gone?”
Kaizen was at a loss for words, and Malthus glowered down at him. The duke was always able to make his son feel like a miniature of himself, and as brainless as automata.