Ink Stained Legacies

Chapter One

One hundred and fifty three cons got Niel to this moment.

The Academy was within his grasp, he just needed to make it through this one meeting.

Niel tapped his nail on the windowsill as he looked down into a courtyard. Anya and her father Vincent were locked in a heated discussion at the courtyard’s center, her gestures fiery and urgent.

She would fight for Niel, it was why he chose her.

She would make a fierce partner to whoever she found after me.

Anya’s father was head of the Central Provian Trading Company’s counter espionage division, and as much risk as that carried, he was the only mark with enough power to independently approve corporate sponsorship who had a vulnerability that Niel could exploit.

Sighing, Niel saw the argument below starting to stagnate as their body language closed off. They were both digging in their heels but Anya was stubborn, she wouldn’t give up.

Looking up, Niel saw Rater setting on the horizon, its pale blue rings illuminating the evening. “Not long now, I’ll finally keep my promise,” Niel whispered at the gas giant.

Niel’s eyes drifted down. Vincent’s manor sat at the top of a hill, and beyond the courtyard walls you could see squalor piercing the shroud of black smoke.

You could call Niel’s home of one year beautiful, particularly from so high up. But only in the pockets of land corpos carved out their pound of flesh and built walls high enough to keep the rest of the rabble out.

Unless of course, you were smart enough to trick them that you belonged.

If you couldn’t, your fate was simple. Suffer.

Niel had taken the carriage up from the lower wards this morning, and the city had rolled out its usual procession. The stories stayed the same but the faces were never familiar for long.

A boy came to the carriage window. He couldn’t be older than six and a tumor bloomed across his little neck the size of Niel’s fist. The skin was stretched shiny purple over it and his head tilted permanently to one side. He held up cupped hands. A thousand novi could have bought him a sawbones to slice it out. A vial of squid ink would have melted the thing from his throat in under a minute. Niel had neither and the carriage kept moving.

A woman in the mud at the edge of Tanner’s Row, knees drawn up under a swollen belly, blood pooling beneath her in a slow blackening halo. A washerwoman stepped over her legs without looking down. A guard in CPTC blacks turned to study a wall. The carriage rattled past and Niel watched her mouth open and close again and again, as if she had forgotten the shape of the word she needed.

And on the corner of Mill and Sutter, in the gutted bones of a tenement that had burned the winter before, three silhouettes hung from a crossbeam against the gray morning sky. No crowd. No notice on the door. No one to cut them down. Just three shapes, very still, turning a quarter turn in the wind and then back.

That was the simple truth of being born without a wall around you. The Academy offered one and Niel meant to have it–

“Thank you!” Niel heard echo through the yard as Anya hugged Vincent.

Niel grinned and pulled away from the window to sit in a chair, easily falling into the persona he’d crafted for them.

He let a few strands of dark hair fall messily, cast his eyes to the floorboards, and bounced his leg. Moments later heavy footsteps marked Vincent ascending the creaky steps, Anya trailing behind and smiling at Niel.