Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  She wanted to rest, to sleep, to close her eyes and just stop thinking. Stop remembering.

  Just … stop.

  Instead she turned and staggered back towards the stairs and the darkness below, her movement slow and uneven as much due to the tears that half blinded her as to her lingering weakness. Voices rose and fell around her as she went—orders and conversations and whispers—as Edren prepared for whatever was to come. She could not help but hear.

  Rown. That was the word said over and over again. Rown and attack and—against all expectation, mentions of a warehouse district.

  Shai slowed, hesitated. Listened.

  It took her a few moments to piece together the meaning from a dozen disparate half-heard conversations between the security personnel, Lorn and Emara’s aides, and even the cleaners sent to mop up the pink-tinged water from the floor. Some thought the attack was orchestrated by skyscraper Orren, in revenge for Edren’s betrayal and killing of the Orren family at the end of the last war. Yet more pointed the finger toward skyscraper Rown—and not just because of the sigils Mercks had seen on the hunters’ sleeves, but because the day before Edren had conducted a covert attack on Rown’s territory in an attempt to claim the warehouse district for their own.

  Shai blinked at that, then followed a passing security pair who muttered as they took up their posts at the top of the stairs; she was certain she’d misunderstood. But no: for all the debate and whispers, everyone agreed that the attack held at dusk the night before was the cause for retaliation.

  An attack, Shai realized, whose aftermath had been hidden by a wild party within Edren’s walls—a party, like the fight held in the arena itself, that she suddenly suspected had been nothing but a distraction.

  But why would Rown hurt Xhea? Because the ghost and the dark magic spell seemed designed to draw Xhea’s attention, and her attention alone.

  Again Shai looked to the stairs and the evidence she knew remained below. Hesitated, shame once more rising up her throat like bile, then turned and rushed after Lorn as he vanished into the elevator.

  Emara was with him, their argument already in full swing. Shai slipped in beside them, pushing herself against the far wall in an attempt to avoid notice; yet each stared at the other as if there was no one else in the world.

  “A weapon?” Emara was saying, her frustration evident. “If you think Xhea will turn on us, you don’t know that girl half as well as you pretend to.”

  Lorn shook his head. “The risk is still there.”

  Emara crossed her arms to hide the way her hands curled into fists. “So you mean to tell your father?”

  “No, we can’t. You know what he’ll do. And the council’s a sham—that lot doesn’t piss without his say-so.” He ran a hand over his face, weary and frustrated.

  “What, then?” Emara asked.

  “I don’t see that we have a lot of options—but, love, we’re heading for war. The others have been creeping around Edren’s edges since the first rumors of the Radiant’s magic spread. Now, with what my father’s done? The attacks on Rown’s warehouses, the attempts to take Senn’s trading contracts, that nonsense posturing against Farrow—it’s just a matter of time.”

  “We can’t let that happen.” Emara’s voice had gone hard. We won’t.

  Lorn reached out and hit the stop button; the elevator jerked to an unsteady halt. “Do you see another choice?”

  “You don’t understand. The only scars Lorn’s body—your—” Emara stopped, took a deep breath, and tried again: “The only scars your flesh bears are ones from the arena. Not mine. Fighting as one of Edren’s troops was vastly different than what you experienced—you and your father and your brother, all safe and sound within these walls.”

  “That’s not fair,” Lorn protested quietly. “I didn’t spend every moment safe inside—no one did.”

  “It’s not the same.” Emara shook her head, expression haunted. “You think of the war, and you think of the skyscrapers clashing. Politics gone wrong. Threats, posturing, tactical movements. One of your father’s cold cost/benefit analyses.”

  And oh, the anger in those words, the hurt and frustration and despair.

  “I think of the war, and I remember kneeling in the street holding a child stabbed with a blade spelled for pain as she bled to death, crying for her mother.” Emara had to stop, then; she closed her eyes and struggled to steady her breathing.

  When she spoke again, her words were quiet and deliberate, if no less powerful. “I will not fight your father’s battles. I will not help him start another war. I will fight for many things, but not this. Not this senselessness.”

  “You’re a citizen of Edren, under his rule. He won’t give you a choice.”

  Emara’s expression was bleak. “I know.” She took his hand, clasped it in her own as if she walked a cliff’s edge and he was her only stability. “Give me another option.”

  “I—” He would have looked no less shocked if she’d struck him.

  “Edren needs a real leader,” Emara murmured. “This is the best time. The only time.”

  “The best time,” he said at last, “or the worst. Either way, this is not the place to discuss it.” He glanced meaningfully at the elevator’s metal walls, then reached out and pressed another button. The elevator ground slowly upward once more.

  “We’re only going to be given so many chances, beloved,” she said. “You and me and this skyscraper. Addis and I had a dream about what Edren could be when he was at last in command. Things that Lorn would never do, for all his strength and rage and bluster.”

  Emara smiled then, a slow, sad smile. “I think the time has come for you to decide: who are you going to be?”

  Again she squeezed his hand, and met his eyes; she lifted her free hand to gently touch his cheek. When the doors rolled open, she released him and quietly walked away.

  Lorn—Addis—stood staring after her, his expression a study in hope and despair.

  Shai followed in Emara’s wake. Some choices could only be made alone.

  Xhea stared at the man who stood before her smiling, the setting sun sparking highlights from his hair. She did not know him. Did not, in truth, know this skyscraper any more than she did Rown.

  What she knew of Farrow was only common knowledge: that it was the tallest, and—against all odds—the best kept of the skyscrapers, standing some space distant from the Lower City core. Farrow controlled the contracts with more than a dozen Towers out on the City’s edges; and in the battles ten years past, least of all the Lower City’s spilled blood had been theirs, while they had collected the spoils.

  The market, the arena, Senn’s trading contracts—what use were those to Farrow? They traded in a truer coin, one far more useful in the City, Lower and proper alike: magic.

  Farrow was the home of the Lower City’s best casters, the magic-workers, and those powerful enough to train them for such work. This man—to be here, in charge? If he was not a caster, not a magic-worker with quick hands and clever spells, he would nonetheless be a power—or the closest thing they had in the Lower City.

  Though she had to wonder whether being here, talking to her with this dish-laden table between them, spoke to a higher status or a lower one. Who was she in this political tangle? A pawn, that much she knew; but perhaps it was known that, on this strange chessboard, she was a pawn tied to the power of a queen.

  Or had been. She simply wouldn’t mention that she and Shai were no longer joined.

  She’ll find me. Soon.

  So Xhea stepped toward him, hiding her limp as best she could, until she reached the table and placed her hands flat upon it. Welcome home, he had said. Xhea looked into his eyes, making her expression as cold as her voice as she said, “I don’t know you, and I don’t know this place, and this is not my home.”

  The man’s smile slipped as he made his way to the table. Away from the window, the setting sun no longer making his gray-streaked hair gleam like metal, he seemed smaller somehow, ol
der and more human.

  He made to speak, and Xhea gestured sharply.

  “No,” she said. “Home, as you said, does not steal you away. Home does not attack your friends and leave them to die in the dark and the cold. Home does not lock you away, injured and alone. So whatever your welcome, this is not my home.” For all her fatigue and lingering dizziness, her anger felt good—simple and pure. Though she kept her weakened magic contained, again she felt it black and cold in the pit of her stomach, and was stronger for it.

  “My apologies.” He inclined his head. “I misspoke.”

  Xhea raised a slow eyebrow. “As if the words were the offense.”

  He looked to Daye, who loomed behind Xhea like a shadow. Noticed, perhaps, the dark stain on her sleeve where she had wiped her knife clean. “You needed to use force? Ieren’s approach did not work?”

  Xhea did not so much as glance at the bounty hunter, but she heard the whisper of fabric and could imagine the woman’s shrug.

  “She’s here,” Daye said flatly, as if that were the only explanation needed.

  “You didn’t need to do anything,” Xhea said.

  “You were not being held against your will?” he asked. Xhea looked at him incredulously. “Again,” he said, “I apologize. You were not supposed to be abducted nor locked away, and if anyone you knew was hurt trying to stop you from being taken, you have my personal assurance that amends will be made.”

  “Your assurance?” Xhea snorted. “And who are you?”

  “My name is Ahrent Altaigh.”

  She did not know him; and though she could not bring the name of Farrow’s current leader to mind, she’d recognize it if she heard it. No, he was not in charge—but not far from the seat of power, unless she missed her guess.

  A caster, then. But what use was she to a caster? What use was she to anyone? Anchor to a power plant, an unending fountain of renai, that’s all—and she already knew how Shai’s power might be used.

  Her thoughts must have shown on her face. Ahrent Altaigh, whoever the blight he was, smiled and raised his hands palm-out as if in surrender.

  “Allow me to explain. Please,” he said, and gestured to the heavy wooden chair nearest to her. “Sit. Make yourself comfortable.”

  She heard no threat hidden in the words, despite Daye’s continued presence. As he spoke he drew out a chair, settled himself and placed a napkin in his lap. How civilized, Xhea thought, dark and unhappy.

  She stared for a long, silent moment, watching the man, watching his calm, easy movements. Some part of her wanted to strike out, to shout at him, to turn and run away as fast as she could. There was a time she would have tried, no matter that closed doors barred her escape. Her anger, now, was no less—but oh, the weight of fatigue. Her will to move seemed to drain from her by the second, her reserves long since stripped from her by weeks of pain and drugs and very little sleep. It was so hard to stand defiant when all she wanted was to lie down, close her eyes, and rest.

  Behind her, she felt the weight of Daye’s silent regard. Some time and planning had gone into attracting her attention, drawing her out from the safety of Edren’s walls, and bringing her here, Xhea realized; some expense, too, to pay the bounty hunters and create the dinner arrayed before her.

  Run, Xhea thought. Run away. But what was there left to run to?

  Xhea sat. There were only two plates at the table, yet she counted ten large covered platters. As she watched, Ahrent Altaigh drew the covers from each, releasing puffs of fragrant steam, then began to serve them both.

  “Please,” he said again, pushing a laden plate towards her. “Eat.”

  Xhea stared at the plate. It was a bribe, she thought—or a display meant to impress. Because oh, sweetness, she’d never seen such food.

  There were steamed greens on a bed of fluffy rice; soft buns cut open to reveal a thick, spiced filling; and long fried pastries dusted in sugar. There was meat—and not just the bits and scraps that Xhea knew from her better meals, meat scrounged or hunted from the few animals that still roamed out in the badlands, but real, thick slabs of meat, spiced and covered in a shining glaze. There were foods she couldn’t recognize, never mind name.

  Not Lower City food, not any of it. This was food from the multi-tiered growing platforms out on the City’s edges. Food not burned, nor gritty from the sand mixed into the spice; food not half-turned, wilted, or cooked a week or more earlier.

  At a faint noise, Xhea glanced back at Daye. Though the bounty hunter stood unmoving, her stone-gray eyes watching everything, she had a pinched look about her mouth. The drugs Daye used to go underground made her nauseated, Xhea remembered—sick, then shaky, then so hungry she could eat a normal dinner three times over and not be full.

  Still in the sick phase. Xhea snorted in amusement. Serves her right.

  Not that Xhea felt much better. Magic, anger, and the aftereffects of painkillers had left her stomach a twisted knot. But it was not her stomach that made her pause and then fold her hands deliberately on the table, ignoring the food, but the man before her. He wanted her to eat, and so she would not.

  Ahrent Altaigh ate a few bites, each slower than the last, before dabbing his mouth with the napkin. “I brought you here,” he said, “to offer you a job.”

  “Generally, job offers are not preceded by abductions.”

  “No. Rarely are such extreme measures necessary.” He smiled at her expression. “Surely you did not think my first attempt to contact you involved hired muscle?”

  Xhea stared, her gaze never wavering, because of course that was what she’d thought.

  He continued: “I left notes of introduction with your known contacts, but was told that you hadn’t been seen for two months. I hired people to investigate. Later, when I found you were in Edren, I sent messages to you directly. You did not receive any of my notes, did you?”

  “You sent them to Edren?” she asked slowly. “Addressed to me.”

  “Yes. More, even, than I can count, though I received not so much as an acknowledgment in reply. My messengers were told that they could not speak to nor see you, and that any attempt to force a face-to-face meeting would be seen as an act of aggression.” He gestured with one hand. “It was entirely believable when my contacts said that you were in Edren against your will.”

  “Contacts? You mean spies.”

  He did not debate the point.

  As for being held captive—well, it was true that she had barely stepped outside in the two months that she’d been in Edren, though that was due to her injuries and inability to walk, not Edren holding her there. And yes, once or twice she’d tried to walk out the front door only to have security stop her. She’d been asked to wait until someone could accompany her, asked her to use another door—and by then she was usually too exhausted to argue, trembling with pain and fatigue. Returning to her room had been the easier option.

  But they hadn’t actually been holding her, hadn’t …

  “Sweetness and blight,” Xhea muttered. Because she suddenly had no doubt that Verrus Edren would have ordered her restrained and kept in the skyscraper if that’s what was required to keep Shai nearby. Lorn wouldn’t have let them, came the thought—or had his knowledge of the orders to keep her captive been just one more reason for him to avoid her?

  She looked at the piled plate before her. She thought of Shai’s fear of the dark magic boy. She thought of Torrence grabbing Mercks, and the flash of the knife as Daye drove it into Mercks’s side. She thought of that wave of dark rolling over her; that feeling of helplessness as she fell to the ground, unable to stop what was happening.

  She thought again of the tether snapping—not so much a sound as a feeling that had reverberated through her. A sudden, echoing absence.

  She thought of her so-called allies, and darkness swirled within her.

  Oh, no, her rage had little abated. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and tried to think rationally.

  “So I’m not a prisoner?” she as
ked, daring him to contradict. “I could just get up right now and walk out of here, and you wouldn’t object?”

  “I would be disappointed,” Ahrent Altaigh said, “especially given the time and effort I’ve already invested, but yes, you could go. I hope, though, that you’ll at least hear out my proposal.”

  She wanted to tell him what he could do with his proposal. She made to rise.

  Yet even if she stormed—limped—from this place, made her slow and painful way back to Edren, then what? Shai, she thought—and yes, perhaps the ghost would return there too. But if Ahrent Altaigh’s suspicions were true, and Edren had been keeping her captive—and she’d just been too hurt, too exhausted, to notice? She’d be a fool to walk willingly back into that trap.

  If not Edren, there were always the tunnels. Her old ways of living. Maybe, with Shai’s healing, returning to that life wouldn’t be as difficult as she had imagined. And when she found Shai, she could ask her to re-create the healing spell. Perhaps, if her magic stayed quiet, if she could just endure the pain, she could be whole and strong again.

  If, if, if. The uncertainties piled higher and higher—and any way she looked at it, Shai’s power painted a target on her back.

  Xhea lifted her fork and ate a slow and deliberate bite, and another. She chewed and swallowed mechanically as if the fine spices and rich sauce were nothing to her, as if she ate tender meat and fresh vegetables every day. The food seemed to drop a long way before it hit the cold pit of her stomach. Silence settled across the table as she ate.

  “What’s the job?” Xhea asked at last.

  Ahrent Altaigh hesitated, considering. “Are you finished?” He gestured to her plate, emptied twice, little though she remembered eating. She nodded. “Then there’s something I want to show you. Many things, actually, but I think this will help make my offer make sense.”

  Xhea met his gaze, her expression mimicking Daye’s. “Just tell me. Is the job that bad—or can you not pay?”