As She Ascends

by Jodi Meadows

  These cliffs were only part of Crescent Prominence; the rest of the city thrived below, with the council house, the temple, and everything else that made the city home. Only the city’s elite lived up on the prominences. My family. Most of the Luminary Council. Other public figures wealthy enough to afford the great houses that overlooked the sea.

  As the Chance Encounter drew past the noorestone-lit buoys, the lighthouses, and alongside the prominences, I tried not to think about the silent boy next to me. That would mean admitting how I’d broken something not with my actions, but my words.

  “Is that what you think of me? Of us?” The questions haunted me.

  I focused on the city growing ahead of us.

  That was what I needed to think about.

  Not this.

  Not him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE HARDEST PART OF LEAVING THE SHIP TURNED out to be the dragons. Crystal kept flying onto Ilina’s shoulder, while LaLa got on the floor and crawled to me, using her good wing for balance. Both made pitiful chirrup noises, terrible enough to break my heart.

  “We’ll be back, sweet lizard.” I scratched LaLa’s chin. “In less than a day.”

  We couldn’t take them. Our belongings would be thoroughly searched at the customs point, and we couldn’t risk anyone finding them. If LaLa could have flown, we might have loosed them on the ship and reunited once we were through the gates. But, while LaLa’s fractures were nearly healed now (dragon bones healed quickly), Ilina didn’t want to risk reaggravating the injury.

  Ultimately, we tricked them. We brought One and Teres into our cabin, getting them to offer the dragons bites of mango and smoked perch, which distracted the lizards long enough for Ilina and me to escape.

  After that, leaving was simple.

  Briefly, we’d worried that the dockworkers would recognize me. After all, this was my home port. I’d regularly traveled through here, and most people in Crescent Prominence knew my face.

  But:

  1.No one was expecting me.

  2.I was changed after months in the Pit and on the run.

  3.My papers had a different name.

  4.The scar.

  By the time we got through security, it was well after midnight. Weariness tugged at me, but I’d napped before my practice with Aaru because it would be a long walk to Ilina’s house.

  “Are you nervous about seeing your parents again?” I linked my arm with Ilina’s, matching my strides to hers. We walked close behind Hristo, who’d decided to lead the way even though Ilina knew how to get home just fine. Aaru brought up the rear, so quiet I had to turn my head to make sure he was still with us.

  Ilina gave a one-shouldered shrug. “They’re going to be angry about the whole running-away-with-Hristo situation.” She glanced toward the prominences. “What about you?”

  “Your parents love me. I can’t wait to see them.”

  She jogged my elbow. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I’d rather focus on one step at a time,” I said. “Get to your house. Let them take us to my house. Then I’ll decide how I feel about seeing my parents.”

  In truth, I was terrified of seeing Mother. And Father, but I had no idea what to expect from him; he might not have noticed I’d been gone. Zara, reliably, would ignore me.

  We’d spent a lot of time arguing about the wisdom of going to Ilina’s house, then mine. The more stops we made in Crescent Prominence, the more likely it was that someone would recognize us and word would get back to Altan.

  Even going home was a huge risk, but we didn’t have a lot of other options. Father worked at the council house, which was definitely unsafe, and Mother moved from place to place as quickly as a butterfly. She always had untold numbers of social engagements that demanded her full attention. Even the scandal of my disappearance—or her efforts to have me returned—would not affect her schedule.

  So there was nowhere to “accidentally” bump into my parents and lead them to a safe location where we could talk. And the four of us wouldn’t be able to get through the gates without using our real names. The list of people approved to enter was carefully maintained; each family who lived in the prominences had a number of people who were permitted without an escort, which was usually limited to close friends, servants, doctors—trusted people who visited frequently enough that an escort would be needlessly inconvenient.

  Which meant that Ilina and Hristo could get in, but not without revealing themselves.

  Ilina’s parents, however . . . They could get us through the gates.

  Crescent Prominence was not a city with a busy night life, so there was no crowd to disappear into. The streets were all but deserted, save the occasional group of people leaving a tavern or party—usually identifiable by the clothes they wore.

  And dressed in the simple shirts and trousers the others had bought back on Harta, we fit in with the roving groups of delinquents hoping to sneak home before their parents discovered their absence.

  We approached Water Street, one of the major thoroughfares in town. It ran all the way from the tip of the prominences, cut a circle around the council house, continued by the Temple of Damyan and Darina, and went on until it left the city.

  This part of Water Street was relatively minor—boasting a bank, an inn whose owner knew every scandal, and the restaurant run by the famous chef who’d trained my family’s personal chef. From here, we could see the soaring arches of the temple to our right, and the bell tower of the council house to our left.

  A few carriages rolled down the street, but no one paid us any mind. We were anonymous. Harmless. Crescent Prominence was a safe city and no one worried about four reasonably dressed youths.

  We were only three blocks from Ilina’s house.

  Three blocks from safety.

  When Hristo waved us across the street, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Aaru was still with us. Our eyes met.

  I looked away first.

  “What’s wrong?” Ilina kept her voice soft. “You seemed upset earlier.”

  I was upset. I was still upset. “Not now.” Not where Aaru could overhear us.

  There was part of me that wanted to explain my side to Ilina, knowing that Aaru would be able to hear every single word. Like maybe if he knew how deeply I felt for him, and how ardently I wanted to respect that what was proper here was definitely not proper there, he would forgive my gaffe.

  But that was cowardly. He deserved something real.

  I just had to figure out what that was and how I would ever get up the nerve to speak to him again.

  The moons were moving toward the horizon as we closed in on Ilina’s neighborhood, casting more than enough light to see by. Still, lampposts with mirror-brightened noorestones stood every twenty paces. When we turned onto Ilina’s street, several light posts were decorated with ribbons and flowers.

  Though my legs ached from the long walk, seeing Ilina’s street made me feel as though I could fly. I’d spent little time here—Mother liked for Ilina to come to me when we weren’t in the sanctuary—but I’d burned this street into my memory. The expectations attached to my title always disappeared here, and I was just one of the hundreds of Crescent Prominence girls named Mira.

  “Almost home.” I squeezed Ilina as we walked.

  There wasn’t anything terribly special about this neighborhood. The houses were nice, all with granite facing and seven or eight front windows. They had two floors each, and mimicked the arch style of the temple, but the most impressive thing about them was that Ilina lived here. In this ordinary neighborhood. In an ordinary house.

  My extraordinary best friend.

  Close. So close. Just two houses down.

  One house.

  When we stopped at Ilina’s door and waited for her to find the spare key, I half expected Altan and his warriors to erupt from across the street. Getting through Crescent Prominence unscathed had been too easy, hadn’t it? Surely it had all been a trap.

  Aa
ru lingered in the shadows as he took in the surrounding houses, the peak of the temple reaching to the sky, and the view of the prominences that rose above everything. My house stood on the center prominence, windows winking in the moonslight.

  ::Never seen anything like this.:: He tapped on the gray granite wall—carefully, as though he was afraid to break it. ::So much wealth.::

  I didn’t know how to answer, but I didn’t have to. Ilina found her key and opened the door, and we began to file inside.

  Aaru tapped on my shoulder, one eyebrow raised in question. ::At home we take shoes off. Rain.::

  Because it rained a lot on Idris, and no one wanted to track in water. “You can leave them on,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  A look of deep discomfort passed over his face as he stepped inside. He scrubbed the soles on the front mat before venturing too far in.

  “Stay down here.” Ilina motioned toward the parlor, where we’d spent hours reading from her parents’ home collection of dragon books—not just anatomy and behavioral texts, but stories of individual dragons’ lives, various dragon trainers and keepers throughout history, and everything else we could possibly dream of. They had four hundred and eighty-six books here. I’d counted, not because I’d needed to, but because I’d wanted to know how high I should set my goal for my own dragon library.

  My feet took me to the first bookcase before Ilina finished directing us.

  While Ilina disappeared upstairs, Hristo helped himself in the kitchen. “Everything is spoiled,” he muttered, closing a cupboard.

  He was right. Something felt off. Dust had settled over all the books and their shelves, and cards had been left scattered across the table.

  Aaru stood in the parlor doorway, his head cocked with listening. Then he met my eyes and tapped against the doorframe. ::No one is here.::

  An instant later, Ilina raced down the stairs and ran toward us. “There was a fight,” she breathed. “My parents are gone.”

  AARU

  One Decan Before Arrest

  SOME PEOPLE SAID IDRIS KILLED MY FATHER.

  I’d been promoted to overnight overseer, which left me mostly nocturnal, but in charge of fifteen young men sorting through trash all night. I didn’t mind, as it was preferable to the manure and fertilizer jobs, but I didn’t like how little I saw my family, or Dema—the eldest daughter of community leader Kader, and my betrothed. Mother and Father had arranged the engagement. I still didn’t know how. I was far beneath her.

  Still, the job was quiet. None of my workers spoke aloud, and though I could have—I was their superior—I kept my communication limited to quiet code as well. It was just better.

  At least until I went home one day and the earth shook.

  THE EARTHQUAKE WAS eerie.

  Silent.

  I awoke in the basement—where Father and I had built two small beds in the corner and hung strips of old cloth to black out the windows—to find jars of canned fruit walking off the shelves, water sloshing in a cleaning basin, and tools falling from their places on the walls.

  But there was no sound.

  My heart pounded painfully in my throat, but I couldn’t even hear the sound echo in my own head. No crash of glass. No smack of metal. Just pure, unadulterated silence.

  The whole earth swirled, trying to knock me off-balance, but I staggered toward the stairs and pulled myself up. What if the house fell on me?

  Everyone was running toward the doors. Hafeez glanced at me and opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  We emerged into bright daylight—all of us, except Father, because he was at work. Alya and Safa huddled together, as they always did, tapping and tapping, while Korinah went around to everyone, asking if we were harmed. No one was.

  Water sloshed from the rain barrels, and dirt rose in heavy plumes. Then, finally, the shaking subsided. My heartbeat slowed to a normal pace. Sound returned in small measures, first in my own head, and the gasp of others’ breathing, and the last rumbles of the ground shuddering.

  That was when I noticed it: our family’s old noorestone. It was tiny to me now, no bigger than my palm, and its glow had been faint for as long as I could remember. It had rolled out of the house and sat in a corner of shadow now, and I was certain—absolutely certain—it had not been lit before. But now, the soft, deep hum I’d always sensed from the noorestone was back as well.

  The earthquake had silenced even the light.

  It was unsettling, Idris’s silent seizure, but it wasn’t the worst thing that happened that day.

  An hour later, a cart rolled into our yard and a man jumped out. He strode straight toward Mother and me, tapping out the quiet code:

  ::The High House collapsed in the earthquake.::

  ::Dema?:: I asked. We’d been betrothed only a month, but I’d already begun to let myself imagine a life with her. Though how I would make her happy, I could not fathom.

  ::Kader’s family escaped, but none of the workers were able to get out. They’re all dead.::

  Including my father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  HRISTO WENT UP TO LOOK, WHILE I TOOK ILINA BY the shoulders and steered her toward the sofa. “Sit,” I said as gently as possible, around the ache of my own pulse in my throat. And, when Ilina didn’t move, I tried again. “Sit.”

  She obeyed, but her hands were shaking and her eyes were wide with horror. She perched on the edge of the seat, as though she was ready to dart away at the slightest noise.

  “Tell me what you saw.” I hugged her, waiting for her muscles to soften, but she remained tense. Waiting for her cue to flee. “Ilina.”

  Her voice trembled hard. “Old blood. Not a lot. Someone tried to clean, but they must have been in a rush because they missed several spots.” Her voice caught, twisted, and knotted. “What if it was my mother’s blood? Or Father’s?”

  I squeezed her, because there was nothing to say to that. It probably was their blood. “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know. We have to look for them, but where? Who would hurt my parents? I don’t even know where to begin.” Ilina dropped her face into her hands. “Gods. Damina. I don’t understand.”

  Suspicion crawled at me.

  Aaru looked at me from across the parlor, and in that glance I knew we shared a suspicion.

  Dragons.

  The answer was always dragons.

  Aaru’s gaze flickered toward Ilina again, then dropped to his shoes. ::Strength through silence,:: he tapped against his fingers.

  Bearing witness to others’ grief was not something that came easily for most people; they needed tasks to feel useful. Aaru, of all the people in the world, was probably best suited to sit with Ilina, but he edged toward the stairs, as though to give us privacy.

  “Upstairs,” I said. “Second room on the left. There’s a good pack in the wardrobe. Take sanctuary uniforms, boots—practical things.”

  Aaru nodded and vanished up the stairs.

  The moment he left, Ilina released the huge sob she’d been holding in. Her body shook as she buried her face in her forearms and bent over her knees, and all the sadness and frustration and exhaustion seemed to pour out of her at once.

  She’d been so strong this whole time, my wingsister. So brave. But even she couldn’t keep holding this stress. It would burst free.

  I broke away long enough to find a handkerchief for her to wipe her face, and then resumed sitting vigil at her side.

  There were no words of comfort I could offer, so I didn’t speak. I just petted her shoulders, not acknowledging her tears beyond the handkerchief; Ilina hated crying—Hristo probably didn’t even know that Ilina could cry—so we sat there until her tears dwindled and she retreated to the downstairs washroom to scrub her face.

  By the time Hristo returned, Ilina was sitting up straight, her eyes rimmed with red but dry now.

  “Aaru is still packing, but I found this.” He offered a scrap of off-white linen. “It’s material from a Luminary Guard’s uniform.�
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  “My parents were arrested.” The words dropped from Ilina like a weight, but she didn’t cry again. She wouldn’t. “Because of me. Because we ran away.” She lurched toward Hristo and took his arms. “We have to find your father. He might have been taken, too.”

  Fear passed over Hristo’s face, but he schooled it away. “We’ll see. He’s a gardener. The Luminary Council might leave him alone.”

  “Or they might have decided he’s the perfect kind of person to make an example of. You know what they’re trying to do to Hartans.” Ilina pressed her hands to her mouth. “Darina. Hristo, I’m sorry. That was terrible to even suggest.”

  Hristo’s eyes darkened, but he nodded. “No, you’re right. We can’t forget that’s happening, too. They could say what a dangerous son my father has. Start changing opinions about Hartans living here.”

  “‘Harta hates harm,’ though.” Ilina shook her head. “People won’t believe you’re dangerous—or your father.”

  He just looked at her, his face deadly serious. “To people who want an excuse to be rid of Hartans, anything is believable. Look at Bopha. They want to deport Hartans, so they say Hartans are destroying fields. And when that wasn’t enough, they claimed Hartans were burning Bophans. It didn’t take long for people to believe it. Now, even people who didn’t care suddenly do. That’s the nature of fear. It happened on Bopha. Darina isn’t immune just because people here think they’re the authorities on love.”

  “Besides,” I said. “Hristo is my protector. Everyone knows that. Ten years ago, people couldn’t stop talking about how strange it was for a Hartan to be a protector.” I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but there’d been several incidents of people throwing things at Hristo while he’d been walking home. They usually shouted, “Harta hates harm!” as though they were more of an expert in being Hartan than he was. “People still talk, but they’re better at keeping it to themselves.”

  Ilina’s face darkened, but she nodded. “Sorry.”