Outlier: Rebellion (37 page)

And Ruena is well aware of what this means.

Hours after the knocking has stopped, Ruena finally lets herself down the book tower and into the wardrobes. Pulling open a door, any door, she picks a color and wraps her neck. Another color drapes down her body and a wide lavish hat sits atop her head, angled perfectly to cover the ugly hairless scar. She dresses her neck with big beads and covers her eyes with large turtle frames that decorate the scar-streak that trickles down her temple.

She will have to face her grandfather whether she wants to or not. Better on her time than his.

Sweeping out of the Palace, she crosses the garden and spills into the streets. It’s an impossibly bright and sunny midmorning, and she minds the breeze that pokes and tickles her silks. She curses herself for not choking her outfit with a belt of some kind. All clothes must be strangled into obedience; that’s a lesson Aunt Kael taught her, a rigid woman herself. Aunt Kael always made sharp remarks about Ruena, saying, “You’re so like your mother.” And it wasn’t meant to be a compliment.

Ruena’s parents died very young, so the only mother she knew growing up was Aunt Kael, who never married. Without brother or sister, and now without Aunt Kael, who does she truly have? The whole Palace is hers now, but to what end? Even the Palace she will have to give up, when she’s …
Don’t think of that. Head up, chin up, and don’t think again about that. Aunt Kael Mirand-Thrin will return and this will all be for nothing.

Halfway across the Eastly, she encounters a peck of girls. Four tall sticks-for-legs with plastic hair; that’s what Ruena thinks of them. “Ooh, I
love, love, love
that color on you,” one of them says, poking at Ruena’s sleeve. Another steps in, running a finger along her hat. “Ooh, the details, the details. Very deserving on a lady as you.” The third and fourth come in for their own peck, peck, peck. “Ooh, your eyes catch the sun and simply
glow!”

Ruena smirks. “That might be the electricity. Maybe I’m overdue to let loose a charge, do you think?”

The four titter nervously. Then, perhaps wondering if Ruena meant it to be funnier, they pour into hilarious laughter. “Ooh, you’re so funny! Lady Ruena!” And the one with the orange hair cackles, her voice chirping like a tall, bony bird. “Ooh, my ribs ache, the laughter! Ooh!”

For the next humble while, Ruena truly considers whether some deadly pent-up static can do them good.

“We were wondering,” one of the girls says, her voice nine octaves high and thin as wind, “if you might help us?” Another one swoops in, her smile as plastic as her hair. “Please, Lady Ruena. We are throwing a Ball, a Ball Of Pasts Pretty, and we require costumes of the Time Ago?” Orange hair sighs wistfully, whispers, “Ooh, you can come if you like, sweet Lady Ruena! It is a costumed affair … if you’d so aid us with the costumes. You do have such an …
eye!”

It’s my colors they want,
she thinks, screwing her eyes to them.
These girls who used to criticize my clothes and make japes at me—even before the scar.
But what does she have to lose? Soon, the whole of Atlas might be bowing to her, asking her advice on a lot more than just colors and costumes of the Ancients … of the “Time Ago” …

“I will be happy to help,” Ruena sings back, just as fake, playing just as plastic a role as they, and the four girls are beside themselves with glee, giggling, jiggling. Ruena leads them, her destination unchanged.

The doors of Cloud Keep are guarded by unfamiliar men today, and when Ruena approaches with the girls, one of the men says, “I’m sorry, but the King allows no audience today.”

“Oh, a tough fix for you,” replies Ruena, “denying the King a visit from his only living granddaughter.”

The other guard makes a face, and the one who spoke sputters and chokes, his face flushing deep as a raspberry. “Sorry, oh, oh, sorry. My … My, I’ve—”

“That’s a lot of words,” observes Ruena, putting on a look of concern. “Will you choose one and commit?”

“Oh, oh, yes.” He clears his throat. “Yes, I’m sorry. And … And I forgot myself. And … And …”

“Good words. ‘And’ is a good word, the glue of our language. You’re already improving.” Ruena gives him a tight smile as the great doors of the Cloud Keep yawn, permitting the five of them through. The four girls chirp, giggle, and brag to one another about how privileged they are to be such guests of the lovely, promising, beautiful Ruena Netheris.

She takes the girls to one of the Archives, doing her electrical trick on the keypad to grant them access. The squatty steel door slides open and the girls pour in, oohing over the strange fabrics and outfits and suits of times long ago when the world was more than a city. Really, when one studies the facts and the histories, there is little difference from the clothing of now and the clothing of then: people still wear suits, still wear jeans and dresses and heels, scarves and hats. Ruena never understood the deep hate that people feel for the past, for the Ancients … Where they hated, Ruena always found fascination. There is something to be learned from the people of Time Ago, and Ruena won’t refuse herself the joy of exploring what it may be.

One of the King’s Guardian marches into the room, the four girls startled by the sudden, loud intrusion, their giggling brought to a choke. When the man turns his questioning gaze on Ruena, his skin runs pale. “S-Sorry, my princess.”

Ruena laughs, shocking them all. “I’m no princess.”

He looks confused. “P-Princess of … of …”

“Do we live in a castle?” asks Ruena, and maybe the presence of the girls incenses her—maybe her patience is lost on the current, insufferable company. “This isn’t a castle … This is a
metal fortress
. This is a bunker in the sky, a prison for the wealthy to keep themselves fed without paying mind to who feeds them. It’s a dream wrapped in a big silver box stapled to the sky with promises and kisses from the future. Understand?”

“Y-Yes, Your H-Highness—”

“I’m no Highness either.” She makes a smirk. “Not in these shoes.”

Now, the girls simply regard the intrusion of the guard as a nuisance, like a winged bug buzzing about their face. Ruena considers for one dark, happy moment that she could, in fact, demand all their heads be served to her on a big silver plate.
Oh, the joys of Queenship.
But why doesn’t that even make her smile?

Finding the costumes they need, Ruena asks the guard to escort the girls out of the Keep. The four of them are so happy with their choices, bragging to one another, they forget entirely to thank Ruena for the gifts.

No matter. Ruena has more pressing business.

With a sweep of her silks and a quaint adjustment of her hat, she takes to the long corridor that connects to Cloud Tower, where an insufferable amount of stairs and control panels lead her up, up, up to the terribly long hall, where finally she finds the big metal doors to the throne.

“Sorry,” drones the guardsman—a new guard, apparently, a man of sixty or so years, his beard all white, “but King Greymyn Netheris is among his daily trials.”

Ruena sighs. “How many more does he have left?”

The guard lifts a brow.

“Ruena
Netheris,” she declares with more irritation than intended. “I know about my
grandfather’s
trials. I’m made aware of most of his business, whether I like to be or not. I’ll be happy as a Sentenced to wait until he is free. How many more does he have?”

The guard swallows hard, trembling with a small digital display in his palm. Obviously he did not recognize her. Twice he fumbles with it before finally producing an answer. “Forty-two.”

She hides her gaping expression not well. “Admit me,” she finally manages to say.

“I cannot.”

Her jaw tightens. “Admit Ruena Netheris, heir to the throne of Atlas, or my
grandfather
will have
you
added to your little list there. How do you like the number forty-three?”

The old man clearly makes an effort to mask his own insolence. Chewing on his teeth, he lets open the large, crashing doors of the throne room, and Ruena Netheris slithers in, her heels clacking, clacking, clacking against the white marble tile.

The way to the throne is longer than she remembers, like the hall itself has stretched itself another hundred feet.
Is this what I’ve to look forward to every day of my Queenship? A long walk across half the city to get from one end of the throne room to the other?
Seated on the throne is a tired wrinkle of a man, the most of his face swallowed in grey hair and beard, only bloodshot frog eyes and a bump for a nose peering out from his huge white brows. He’s dressed in the laziest fall of linen, grey and drab and
lazy
. He looks half a slummer. To his left is the rainbow-inspired Marshal of Legacy Impis, colorful and terrifying as ever in his powdered face and pink lips, and to his right, wise Janlord Marshal of Peace in a humble, loose-fitting grey silken suit and a fat pair of boots.

She has clearly interrupted the current trial: an old man with nothing on his head but a sheen of nervous sweat, knelt and bound by chain at the hands and feet. What he’s to be tried for, who knows; she only cared to take note of two or three of today’s trials that piqued her interest. “Good day,” she announces carelessly to the Council.

“Come,” replies Janlord professionally. “The King wished you to attend these trials and take mind.”

The King can’t seem to speak for himself, simply sitting there watching. Or is he even watching?
He wishes me to have a taste of the burden of Queenship to persuade me away from it.
“Of course,” Ruena says instead. She ascends the steps, taking a seat at the chair normally occupied by the Marshal of Order, who is as yet absent.

The old man is pardoned for mistakenly assaulting a Guardian. He is going senile and lost his mind in the dark of some night when he was travelling home, having mistook the Guardian to be a robber. “On your way,” says Janlord kindly, and it is unclear whether the old man is relieved or not as he makes the long trek out of the hall. The next trial is a plump woman and her twelve-year-old son who were captured after having been on the run for two weeks. The son was marked truant and the mother couldn’t care less, spitting at the foot of the throne and calling the King a piece of soiled meat. “You can’t care any longer for the child,” Janlord states, “and you have no respect for your Kingship. I fear the end’s for you, but not by death. To the Keep until you’ve remembered your loyalties.” The son is ushered off, to be placed in a sixth ward orphanage called the Kindred Abbey, and the sight of the mother screaming and reaching for her boy as she’s dragged off by the King’s men is one Ruena does not enjoy.
She was a stupid woman,
Ruena reasons, justifying Janlord’s judgment the best she can.
She was a stupid woman whose own pride got her by the throat.

The next four trials might as well be the same thing over and over, the monotony threatening to bore Ruena to death. All of them about starving and stealing, starving and stealing, and Ruena has to bite her tongue so as not to shout:
If you’re so hungry, why not work to make a speck of gold and
purchase
yourself a meal like any other dignified person?
Most slummers are so lazy, they’d rather steal the city for all its worth. Mouths fed with lies and crimes and ruined integrity cannot a stomach fill.

Three quarters of an hour later, kneeling before the king and bound in chain are two boys with very dark hair, similar in size and build. One of them seems to have recently cried black tears, two long streaks of the dark color having run down his cheek and dried. There are no words exchanged for quite some time, and Ruena suddenly finds her patience lost. “Is that evidence of your Legacy?” she asks carelessly. “The crying of black tears?”

The boy looks at her not unkindly, something soft about his eyes, as if smiling without lips. He answers, “I wear grease in them, of course. I’m afraid I didn’t have time to properly wash them out. Had this unfortunate trial of mine been better scheduled, I suppose, I would’ve had the chance to don my dress clothes. I wear a real mean suit.”

“Oh. How discourteous of us.” Ruena sighs airily. “If only we’d given you enough time to clean up those blots of grease, they wouldn’t be running halfway down your face.”

He winces plainly. “My eyes ran when I shed a tear, of course, for the family I’ll never see again.”

Ruena studies him long. “Why do you grease your eyes like that anyway, with the black in them?”

“Oh, but for all the bad I’ve seen.” Now he smiles slyly. “The bad any slum boy or girl must see, he or she can never unsee.”

Okay.
Ruena turns finally to her grandfather, still tiredly sitting his ugly chair. For the hazy glass things he has for eyes, Ruena isn’t even so sure the man’s alive. “King Greymyn. May I request to handle this one?”

“Swee … Swee … Sweet Ruena,” he finally croaks. His voice is a most horrible sound, like gravel running through a machine, gears of a rusted wheel struggling to turn. “Are you ready?”

“Always.” She isn’t certain what he means, but can’t stand to show a speck of reluctance in front of him and the Marshals and these dirty slum boys.

“Vee … Vee … Very well, my sweet. Tell us the … Tell us the fate. Of these boys.” He lifts a finger—what effort it seems to take for him to make such a simple gesture, he must be a million years old—and he’s pointing at the slum boy.

“I have read a note on this trial only this morning,” Ruena announces, a detail or two surfacing in her mind. “I read about the boys who call themselves the warriors or the wrestlers … the whatevers.”

“They call themselves The Wrath,” Janlord offers.

She rolls her eyes, no idea what in the world anyone could be so angry about that they must name themselves such a thing. “Before I reckon a fate, I suppose I ought to learn more about these two.”

“A Queen,” agrees Janlord, “must always make use of her ample wisdom. Good, Lady Ruena. Very good.”

Ruena hides another roll of her eyes.
They treat me like the world’s dumbest. A girl to be carefully guided to a chair where someday
she
can lazily sit and do nothing.
“Very well.” She comes partway up to the throne, then takes a seat on the steps just in front of it. She cocks her lavish hat back, pulls the large frames off her face, blinks, and says, “Tell me, boys. What are your crimes?”