Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  “Shai,” Lorn said again, and his tone had changed. There was something softer, gentler about the sound. She flared the light brighter in response.

  Then she let her power flow. It would not be so hard to shape the word Farrow in midair, surely; yet she struggled. She could form the shape from magic almost without thinking; she’d drawn magic-patterns as a way of calming and centering herself since she was a child. She could make a visible light and adjust its brightness with but a thought. But combining the two? The magic twisted and evaded her control as she attempted to change the light spell into something that she could shape with the ease of raw magic. The more she thought about it, the harder it became.

  She suddenly felt so tired. Where was that strange calm, that empty flowing state she’d reached when she had healed Mercks? Gone now, as if it had never existed. Simpler, then. She just had to get her message across; she was not being judged on her ability with magic, no matter that it felt otherwise.

  She let her half-woven spell go and brought the light toward the map until it came to hover above the shape for Rown, skyscraper Edren’s intended target. Again Lorn started speaking, and Shai jerked the light to the side in quick and sudden denial. Whether he understood, she did not know; yet he quieted, watching. She made that quick movement above Rown, the light twitching back and forth like a head’s shake.

  “Not Rown,” Emara said.

  Shai moved the light across the map until it hovered above Farrow—drew the light in a circle about that shape, made the light shine brighter and brighter.

  “Here,” she said, as if words might somehow reach them if her frantic gestures did not. “They did this.”

  “Farrow took Xhea?” Lorn asked slowly, and Shai felt her stomach twist. Why couldn’t she remember whether one or two flashes meant yes? Instead, Shai bobbed the light up and down in jerky affirmation.

  Lorn swore and sank slowly into a chair. He put his head in his hands.

  It was Emara who asked quietly, “Is she there now?”

  Shai froze, and the light with her.

  “Have they hurt her?” Emara asked instead.

  How could she answer that? Yes, Shai gestured, emphatically, and watched their pained expressions with something like despair.

  Lorn looked up, directing his quiet, bitter words to his wife. “It won’t change anything. The attack and abduction are only his justification for the attempt to reclaim the warehouse district.”

  He turned back to Shai’s light.

  “Edren won’t sanction Xhea’s rescue, even with the attack on Rown. I was going to plan something anyway—I can’t just leave her there. Except, if she’s in Farrow …?” He stopped and swore again, then rubbed at his face with one wide, tattooed hand.

  How do I tell them that there’s no point? It hurt to hear them talking this way, as if death were a barrier from which a loved one might simply be plucked whole.

  Emara finished Lorn’s thought, directing her words just above and to one side of Shai’s light, trying to meet her eyes. She missed, of course, but Shai shifted just to have the illusion that someone could see her face.

  “When Edren faced Farrow before, they—we—had allies. Edren had a close partnership with Orren until near the end of the war, and a truce with Senn. We couldn’t have stood against Farrow alone. Farrow has more citizens, more territory, and far, far more magic—renai and spells both. For all the things one might say of Verrus and his leadership, he is not foolish, and he does not make decisions in haste.”

  “Attacking Farrow would be suicide,” Lorn added darkly.

  “Rown, on the other hand,” Emara continued. “Edren has a score to settle with Rown, even after all these years—as much as Orren has a score to settle with us. I don’t think much will turn Verrus’s eyes aside. Even if the attacker was Senn or Orren …” Emara shook her head and sighed, her expression turned distant as if from some old memory.

  It was Lorn who finally asked, “But what does Farrow want with Xhea? Or do they only want you?”

  Shai did not know how to answer, only closed her fingers one by one, reabsorbing the magic until the golden light vanished.

  After they left, Shai stared at the closed boardroom door. Absent gods, she felt like a fool. Flailing around with a pinpoint light, poor gestures with a spell so basic a child could master it in hours.

  What good is power if you can’t use it? She was the most powerful person in the Lower City—and it meant nothing, nothing, because all that power was the next thing to useless in her untrained, insubstantial hands. She was what she had been raised to be: a conduit for power, a magic-generating machine, nothing more.

  And Xhea had died because of it. Already the guilt threatened to crush her; her fear and despair felt more tangible than the world around her, more real than gravity. One and all, they told her to sit down and let herself—her power—be used.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being used. Maybe her magic might save lives. Maybe, somehow, Lorn could convince his father that they shouldn’t attack Rown after all.

  Slim hopes, all. But what other choice did she have?

  Alone, Shai stared at her hands and the glow of magic within her. She thought back to the days when she and Xhea had hidden in the underground, always moving for fear of pursuit and the magic-poor bounty hunters on their trail. This must be what Xhea had felt, Shai realized, with her strange dark magic flaring entirely outside her control. Then, Shai had sat with her, taught her breathing exercises, and made her practice, practice, practice.

  Had she truly believed that it would be any different for her? That an ability to not just shape her power, not just read existing spells, but to create spells of her own would just come to her?

  She smiled sadly. Yes. Of course she had. As if an unpracticed talent might be birthed fully formed.

  And why not? Though she had never been taught proper spellcraft, nothing more than the basics, what little she knew had come as easily as breathing. Now, in truth, it was little different: she lifted her hand, and a light appeared. A thought, and it vanished, only to be replaced by a filament of pure energy that wove through the air, forming the word Farrow, then Stop, then They killed her. That last message she held, letting her power shape the words over and over again until they glowed red before her eyes like an afterimage.

  The few tricks she knew, she knew well. Is it enough? she asked herself. She opened her hand and released the power, letting the magic fade into the air.

  Enough for what?

  Not enough to help Xhea. Not enough to help Edren, if they even deserved her help. Not enough to stop this senseless war that threatened, curling and cresting on a tide of her power.

  She would have to do better. She knew it and yet … and yet …

  Shai realized: she was afraid.

  Afraid she couldn’t learn, or couldn’t learn fast enough. Afraid that, when it counted, she would fail—as she had failed already. Afraid that the one spell that had worked, the strange spell-song that had healed Mercks, had been only a fluke, never to be repeated. Afraid …

  She bowed her head. Afraid that this was a choice she should have made a long time ago, when she still had breath and blood within her.

  For a long moment, the ghost of the girl named Shai sat curled, thinking of all the things that might have been, all the lives she might have lived, if only things had been different.

  If only.

  Then she lifted herself from the floor and rose through ceiling after ceiling until she was suddenly in clear air, up on Edren’s rooftop. The sun had just gone beneath the horizon. Quiet and stillness spread through the Lower City’s streets while the Towers above came alight. The City was always cast in a myriad colors that shifted and changed even as the Towers themselves did—but at night, they made the sky glorious. She looked up at a sky aflame with magic—magic like the power that ran through her, sure as blood.

  That golden light, green light, red and blue, made the shadows shimmer and dance in the darken
ed alleys below. No one was out now, no one was moving. Only a few brave souls attempted to make their beds on sagging rooftops or concrete balconies rather than closing themselves away in stifling hot rooms, barred windows cracked in hope of a breeze. The walkers would be heading in from the badlands now, their steps slow and steady, their eyes blank, their fingers grasping at nothing.

  She had seen it all. Night after night as Xhea slept, Shai had walked the Lower City streets, and caught glimpses of the thousands of small, dark lives lived down here in dirt and ruin. She’d been searching for her father.

  Shai thought of the men and women who would be preparing, even now, for the dawn attack on Rown. She thought of her father walking somewhere in that darkness, thoughtless, uncaring. She thought of Xhea.

  There was nothing she could do to help them, not any of them. Nothing to undo the mistakes she had made, nor their consequences.

  But she would not stay helpless. Because in that spell that had healed Mercks was the answer to how to use her power. She had no known spells, learned and re-created strand by painstaking strand; she discarded her reliance on rules and old teachings and her belief in the way things had to be.

  She had only years of knowing magic, feeling magic, having magic run through her like an unending river. She had to trust that, past the fear and uncertainty and near-crippling doubt, she would find her talent.

  Trust. She wanted to laugh. But what had she told herself?

  Don’t think.

  Shai spread her glowing hands before her and began to work.

  Ahrent Altaigh returned within the hour, knocking before he opened the door. He did not check whether Xhea had filled her pockets with small belongings. Any other time, that would have been a mistake.

  Xhea met his eyes, wishing she could achieve the blankness of expression at which Daye so clearly excelled. Her habitual façade of confidence felt far beyond her reach—broken as surely as her knee. At least there remained no sign of the tears she had shed unwillingly. That much weakness, at least, she could hide.

  “Are you ready?” Ahrent asked.

  Xhea nodded. Whatever his payment—whatever the truth behind his plan or the history of which he told—Xhea wanted to know more. Wanted to understand—if only the extent of his insanity.

  A skyscraper rising. She would have laughed were it not for Ahrent’s seriousness, the quiet conviction written in every line of his face.

  Xhea made to rise—and only then, failing, did she wonder how she’d struggle out of the sagging couch cushions. Ahrent held out his hand. Xhea looked at him as if he had lost his mind, yet he did not withdraw the hand nor the offer inherent in the gesture.

  Fine, then. Have it your way.

  She grasped his hand and struggled to her feet, fighting her way out of the cushions’ embrace. He did not flinch at her touch, only braced against it. She had to have hurt him, weak though she was, though he showed no sign of discomfort. When she looked at him, surprised, he only smiled.

  Be careful, Xhea thought. She knew enough to be wary of those who could mask pain or joy or intent; she knew what a calm surface could hide. Torrence had taught her that much.

  She should go now, leave as fast as her ailing legs could carry her. She knew it. And yet she walked in his wake through Farrow’s halls, careful and slow, drawn forward by fascination and dread and her own terrible curiosity.

  The first thing Xhea noticed about the floor to which Ahrent brought her was the quiet. The halls looked little different from the one that held her grandmother’s apartment: closed doors and worn carpeting, walls dented and scratched and oft repainted. Here, as there, she saw no people; but this stillness had a different quality—one that she associated with spaces abandoned, ignored, and reclaimed by silence.

  Not what she had expected, especially not in a skyscraper so desirable as Farrow.

  It was only as they turned the corner that she saw they were not alone. A guard sat midway down the hall, an unsheathed knife resting across his knees. He had no book nor bit of carving nor any other distraction, only stared at the door across from him as if expecting it to open at any moment. As it was held shut with three heavy padlocks—newly added, given the sawdust and metal filings on the carpet—she rather doubted the risk.

  The guard glanced up as they passed, sparing Ahrent only a terse nod and acknowledging Xhea and Daye not at all.

  “Who’s in there?” Xhea asked once they’d passed.

  “No one, anymore,” Ahrent said. “We’ll be clearing the room out soon enough.” His tone did not invite further questions.

  Behind them, Daye said nothing. She said nothing very, very loudly.

  Farther down the hall, Xhea heard noises: soft beeps and whirs and a slow, rhythmic rush of air. There was a smell, too, of bleach and plastic tubing and rubbing alcohol, sharp in her nose. She thought it might be Farrow’s medical ward—yet if this was a medic’s, either no one had died here or no one had remained behind. She felt not so much as a hint of a ghost’s presence.

  Ieren’s been here, she reminded herself. The thought made her feel ill.

  Ahrent paused beside a door. “This one,” he said, and opened the door wide.

  Xhea’s first thought was that he had brought her to a waiting room. Mismatched chairs lined the walls, though the astringent smell lingered. On the room’s far side was a narrow bed on rusted wheels, upon which sat an old woman in makeshift pajamas, her head bowed and bare feet dangling. She looked up as Xhea came cautiously closer, one limping step after another.

  She was a large woman with a face marked deeply with lines that spoke more of laughter than anger. Her hair was a tangle of short curls of a shade that Xhea thought could be iron gray, or a faded brown, or something else entirely. Her eyes, though, were that particular mottled shade that she knew to be hazel, one clouded by a cataract.

  Xhea’s expression mirrored the woman’s: brows creased, mouth slightly opened, eyes moving as if she might take in every detail at once. They stared, each at the other, in curiosity and confusion.

  The woman drew in a soft breath. “Enjeia,” she whispered, the word little more than a soft breath. Her face was transformed by wonder.

  “Yes,” Ahrent said. “But she goes by Xhea now.”

  The woman laughed at that, a sound full of gentle humor that was cut short by a wheezing cough that seemed to go on and on. Xhea winced. When she’d caught her breath again, the woman just looked at Xhea and said, “You never could pronounce your name. We called you Jeia most of the time.”

  It was not her name—but it was easy to imagine those shortened syllables mangled by a child’s mouth and clumsy pronunciation. A memory came back to her, suddenly sharp for all that she’d not thought of it for untold years: crouching with Abelane behind their apartment, scratching the dirt with a stick as they attempted to figure out how to spell her name. Zia. Zeeah. Shia. She’d liked the look of Xhea best. She had written it over and over again until it felt like it had always been hers.

  Xhea shook her head, pushing the memory away.

  “Xhea, this is Marna,” Ahrent said.

  Her grandmother’s wife. A woman who, that morning, had sat on her couch sipping tea, and now wanted to give Xhea her apartment while she … what? Underwent an operation? The unsettled feeling in Xhea’s stomach returned.

  “Hey.” Xhea gave a half-hearted wave. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to think.

  Marna seemed not to notice Xhea’s awkwardness. Instead she opened her arms to Xhea, her face lit with a wide smile. Xhea stared, confused. It took a long, uncertain moment before she recognized the gesture: Marna wanted to hug her.

  “I—” Xhea said. “You can’t—I mean, I don’t …”

  “Remember, she has her mother’s power,” Ahrent supplied quietly.

  My mother? Again, Xhea wished for her lost walking stick; she felt like she might fall.

  Breathe, she told herself, like she used to when high on bright magic. Breathe, breathe.

/>   She didn’t know why it felt like such a shock after she’d sat in an apartment where her grandmother had lived, and stared at the image of a woman who had loved her. But a mother? Xhea swallowed, her mouth gone dry.

  “Oh,” Marna said, and let her arms fall. “Of course. I’d … forgotten.” A moment, then she patted the bed beside her. “Perhaps you could come sit beside me, then? Just for a moment.”

  Xhea felt sharp words in her mouth, begging for release; something, anything, to make Marna take an emotional step back. Yet she wanted, desperately, to sit before her legs gave out beneath her. At last she limped across the room and perched on the bed’s far edge, as far from the woman as possible.

  “I can’t believe it,” Marna said. She looked at Xhea and her eyes filled with tears. “Enjeia. Ahrent told me that he might have found you, after all these years, but I never truly believed it. If only Ennaline …” She shook her head. “Your grandmother never gave up hope of finding you, you know. She was sure you were still alive, somewhere.”

  “She was right.” Xhea had been somewhere: underground. Living a life that she’d carved out of nothing with hands and will and talent alone. If her grandmother had been looking, it couldn’t have been thoroughly nor well.

  Anger flared hot—and brief. Xhea just looked at her, this strange woman who had been her grandmother’s partner, and felt the silence resonate between them. So many questions unasked, so many things unsaid.

  “Is it true?” Xhea blurted.

  “Which part, dear? Your grandmother?”

  Xhea nodded, though really she meant any of it, all of it.

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled. “Ennaline lived for you, especially after Nerra died. Your mother.”

  Your mother. Of all the words, why did those two spin around in her head like a terrible echo?

  “How … how did she die?”

  “Ennaline? Or your mother?”

  Xhea shrugged. Either. Both.

  “With Ennaline, it was heart failure, in the end.” Marna closed her eyes for a moment, and brushed away a tear that slipped down her wrinkled cheek. “Your mother, though … it was her magic.” Of course. A pause, then she added, “I think she was not much older than you.”