“Here, look,” Ieren said. “I wrote it out for you.” He handed her a scrap of paper. Carefully, she unfolded it and peered down at the gray markings that covered the scrap from edge to edge.
Xhea had long prided herself on her ability to read—had practiced down in the dark and silence until she could read quickly and without moving her lips—but this? Xhea barely resisted the urge to flip it upside down. It was nonsense to her, all of it.
Her first instinct was to shrug and push the paper away dismissively. It was one thing to admit that she had things she needed to learn; yet even the thought of revealing such ignorance to this boy, this child, made her shoulders tense and her lips thin.
Xhea had never been a good student. Oh, she learned, but there were reasons that Abelane had often thrown her hands up and stalked out in the middle of one of their lessons. Many, many reasons.
She handed it back. “I don’t know what it says,” she muttered.
Ieren’s incredulous reaction was just as unpleasant as expected. Once they got through the worst of it, and he had ascertained that no one had told her anything about her power—no, not ever, not even one time—seriously, Ieren, not even once—he sat her down on one of the chairs with a terribly self-important look on his face.
“He can wait,” the boy said at last with a dismissive gesture to the unconscious man awaiting them on the nearby bed. If only she could wave away his smug look as easily. “Let’s start at the beginning …”
With no anger to goad its rise, Xhea struggled to call her magic. Ieren’s explanations made little sense; yet watching him as he drew power up from the core of himself, she could almost understand.
She’d always thought of her magic as a cold, dark lake—and that power, when it rose, raged through her like floodwaters. Not a flood, she thought now; what she needed was just a trickle of power, a thin stream of magic from that central pool.
A few dozen tries later and she had it: a thin curl of magic lifted from her palm like the smoke from an extinguished match. So little power—yet with it came a rush of perfect calm. All her doubts fell away, all her fears; there was only that moment, perfect and still, and the dark magic’s gentle sway. Xhea took a long, slow breath, and another, feeling the power rise into the air. After so much hurt and fear and confusion, the magic’s presence felt like a blessing.
Though she’d conjured a bare whisper of gray, Ieren was impressed nonetheless.
“I thought you’d be weaker,” he said. “Old as you are.”
He’d said something like that the day before, correlating her age with power. “What do you mean?” Xhea asked. “Weak magic means you live longer?”
He stared as if she’d grown a second head. “Uh, yeah.”
Ieren had pretended to be younger in an attempt, she realized, to impress her with the strength of his magic. And he’d already said that he was ill, little though he looked it today. The more power you have, the quicker it kills you. She looked at the thin curl of magic in her hand, suddenly grateful that it was not stronger.
But if Ieren thought that ten was old, and she was ancient at fifteen or so, then how long did powerful dark magic users live? Because she couldn’t help but imagine little children with this dark and terrible power. A power, Ahrent had said, rarer and far more valuable than even a Radiant’s.
Strong power—dark magic more powerful than mine—in the hands of a child? The thought was unsettling. What must it be like to grow up with such strength, unable to touch or reach out to anyone else, and to be fated for such an early end?
But she knew already, didn’t she? She’d lived that life, or the Lower City version thereof; she knew how power and difference built walls between people. She also knew Shai—and though the Radiant’s power was different, its ultimate effect was the same: death.
No matter how much light and magic and freedom it provided, the City’s foundation was death; death its bedrock and the structure for its walls, for all that those walls floated airborne.
“What did you do?” Xhea asked slowly. “Before you came here. What did you use your magic for?”
Ieren shrugged. “Normal stuff, I guess. Bindings, mostly. Some prisoners. Nothing really good like a merger or binding a Radiant, but other than that … whatever the Spire needed me to do.”
Xhea didn’t flinch at the mention of binding a Radiant—but only just. Instead she asked, “The Spire?”
He looked at her with pity. “You really don’t know anything, do you? The Central Spire. It’s the big, tall—”
“I know what the Central Spire is,” Xhea said acidly.
“That’s something, I guess. That’s where I’m from—where we’re all from, all of us with dark magic. Except you.” He nodded to the magic in her palm, that thin streamer still rising. “You going to do something with that, or just sit there looking stupid?”
The morning had passed, and a good portion of the afternoon, before Ieren judged her control good enough to work with him on what he called the bindings. Xhea looked skeptically at the bit of power that she spun from one finger to the other, that calm feeling of rightness swelling in its wake. It was not a thin, straight thread, like Ieren cast; more like a dark ribbon fluttering in the wind. Still, despite the magic’s tendency to twist like smoke, it was her best attempt by far.
Time to go, Xhea thought, stood, and nearly fainted dead away. She clung to the chair and consciousness with equal desperation until the room stopped spinning.
“Why don’t you have a bondling?” Ieren asked, unbothered. “Don’t tell me you don’t know about that, either.” At her look, he tugged the tether that joined him to the little boy’s ghost in explanation.
Except, it wasn’t quite a tether; Xhea leaned in to look closer. There was something different about it, something—
Ieren jerked the tether, pulling both the line and the ghost at its end away from Xhea.
“Hey!” he said. “I didn’t mean that you could take mine.”
The dead boy had been huddled in the corner, and cried out as Ieren sent him sprawling. Ieren paid the ghost no attention at all.
Xhea swallowed her objection. She couldn’t count the number of ghosts she’d dragged through the Lower City for an hour or a day or sometimes more, rarely with so much as a hello exchanged. No moral high ground there.
Still, she remembered how she’d seen Ieren in the underground: Eater of ghosts. Shai had recoiled from him—and severed her tether to keep from getting near. But the ghost now bound to Ieren looked as whole and sane as he had the day before, giving no sign that Ieren had done anything more painful than take him from his familiar surroundings.
He’s not so bad, Xhea thought, looking at Ieren. Not the kindest kid she’d ever met, nor the most patient, but neither was he the monster she’d thought. Or if he was a monster, surely she was as well.
“You mean a ghost?” Xhea asked. “I had one, remember? You tried to take her.”
“You said she wasn’t yours!” Then he waved his hand. “Anyway, she’s gone. You’re going to need someone if you don’t want to black out. You should have that woman take you to the medic’s. Still, like, seven ghosts there.” He made a face. “Just don’t go for that crying woman, okay? So annoying.”
“I’m good,” Xhea said. Already she felt steadier.
“Whatever. Come on, then, I’ll show you how this works.” Without waiting for a reply, Ieren rose and went to the bedside.
Just watch once more. Then go. It wasn’t as if she was steady enough to leave Farrow yet anyway. Leaning heavily on her cane, Xhea limped after.
She’d been trying not to look at the man who lay drugged into unconsciousness, awaiting their attentions. He volunteered, she reminded herself. He chose this. But all she felt was the cold knot of her magic in the pit of her stomach, and longed again for its perfect calm.
Ieren bound the man, and Xhea understood more than she had when he’d worked on Marna. She watched him join those thin, dark threads of magic together,
weaving small pieces into a complex whole. Yesterday, she’d been startled at his work and the ease with which he performed it. Now she thought she could do the same. Perhaps not quickly or well, not yet—but soon.
At what cost? asked a small, hard voice. She pushed it away.
“Your turn,” Ieren said when he was done. “Come on.”
The next room had six beds, all occupied, with a lone attendant carefully checking the ancient medical machines. Xhea looked at the wires that bound each prone form to the skyscraper’s walls, but she saw no flickering light, no flow of power. Waiting, then, for Ieren. For her.
“This one,” Ieren said as Xhea entered. He pointed to the woman on the bed before him. “Come on, you try.”
Her skin was pale as clouds, her lips gray as shadow, and oh, she looked young. Yet Xhea’s hands lifted as if of their own accord, wisps of dark already curling around her fingertips.
It didn’t matter that she’d practiced; touching a living person’s spirit with her magic felt different than she’d expected—sharp and intense and deeply personal. The world around her fell away, and there was only the power, flowing from her, flowing at her command. No torrent of black, this; it was something precise and careful and controlled. Even so, within moments she tired, and the magic curled and twisted once more, slipping from her grasp as she tried to bind spirit to wire. Ieren stepped in to finish the job.
“Not bad,” he said, as if repeating words once said to him. “But I know you can do better.”
Just one more, Xhea thought, swept up in the magic’s tide. She’d already come so far, so quickly—she just had to learn to maintain her control. One more and then she’d go.
It was easier, Xhea found, not to look at their eyes. Lying there, the men and women were almost like dolls, their shaved heads and identical cotton shifts making them seem alike. No voice nor expression nor gestures to remember; only their flesh, steadily breathing, and the light of their magic—their spirits—inside.
Volunteers, she told herself those first few times. They chose this sacrifice.
Sometime during the afternoon, she stopped repeating the words. They simply vanished from her head, like water into steam, there and then gone.
She and Ieren moved from one room to another, dark magic twining through their fingers, bright magic shining in their wake. Xhea leaned more and more heavily on her cane, limped more, though she felt little pain. If anything, it seemed that she drifted in a trance, lost in a sea of perfect calm. For all her myriad hurts and fears, for all the things that had gone so terribly wrong, this at least felt right. The power in her fingertips, in her stomach, flowing through her flesh. It burned everything away—burned some part of her spirit, perhaps, or burned away years of her life—but left her feeling as if everything was real and true.
She had forgotten that magic made her feel this way. She forgot, too, why she hadn’t wanted to be here, what had made her want to flee.
At last she sank into a waiting chair, her power as exhausted as her body. Her hands, clutching the metal-topped cane, trembled; and the world around her was spinning, spinning.
Ieren dropped into the chair beside her and peered at her without sympathy. “See,” he said. “I told you that you needed a bondling.” He shrugged. “But you did good. We got through lots of them.”
“I need …” Xhea managed. “I need to go …” She could not stand.
She looked to the window, bricked over and solid—then looked through it to the world beyond. Dark now. Night. How had she let a whole day go by?
Wait. How did I—how could I see—
Only then did she realize that she was seeing with her eyes closed. Seeing magic, yes, but everything else too: all the world around her cast in a thousand shades of gray.
Eyes open. Eyes closed. It made no difference. Xhea held her hand before her eyes, and it looked no different, dusky-gold skin gray as always. The ceiling, Ieren’s face, the magic flickering through the wires that led from the bodies to the skyscraper’s walls: gray, gray, gray.
And farther? A whole world unfurled to her vision, if only she looked long and hard enough. The next room, and the room past that; the hall and the window and the whole City beyond.
“My eyes …” Xhea started. But what could she say?
Ieren leaned in, peering at her eyes. “Not blind yet,” he said, “but almost.”
“Blind?” The words seemed to come from very far away. It wasn’t that she could see nothing, a landscape dark and blurred; it was that she could see everything. Things that eyes could not see.
“Sure.” Ieren shrugged. “I’ve been blind since … forever. But you don’t really need your eyes anymore, so it doesn’t really count, does it?”
Xhea blinked and stared and the world spun around her and nothing made sense anymore. “I think I need to lie down,” she said. But where—the floor? She clung to her cane and rested her head in her free hand.
“Okay, sure,” Ieren said. “I’m going to check out the next room, see what we’re doing tomorrow.” She heard his footsteps, then he paused. “You did a good job today.” The words had such overdone kindness she almost expected him to pat her on the head. Another time, she might have laughed, or scoffed, or spit. Now she just held her head and tried to think.
It was too much, too quickly, and she felt as tired as if she hadn’t slept for days. And she was hungry. Funny that she hadn’t realized it before. They’d taken a few breaks, eaten a quick snack or two—but now hunger roared in the pit of her stomach, loud and insistent.
Blind. It shouldn’t have been a revelation. All the world seen only in shades of gray. Seeing underground—seeing in perfect darkness. It was clear that her vision used something that was not natural light—and yet she was blind?
Xhea remembered what she’d seen when Shai had performed her healing: not just color, as she’d expected, but a world gone blurred and dark. Her inability to focus, no matter how she blinked or squinted. Smeared vision that faded and returned to perfect, clear gray as the bright magic bled from her body. Was that smeared darkness all that her eyes could see when her magic was suppressed?
“Excuse me?” said a small, hesitant voice—not Ieren or Daye. Xhea forced herself to look up.
Ieren’s bondling stood by the far wall. The ghost of the young boy stared at the floor, his hands pressed tight against his stomach. He glanced up, met Xhea’s eyes, and immediately looked to the floor again, shoulders hunched and cringing.
“Yes?” Xhea said. In the doorway, Daye turned toward her in question—seeing, Xhea supposed, her talking to the wall.
It took the ghost a moment to work up the courage to speak again, and even then his words were so soft as to be almost inaudible. “He wants you to come see him. In the next room.”
“Who does? Ieren?”
The boy cringed, ducking his head as if expecting a blow. A moment, then he tugged on his tether in reply.
“Okay,” she said, though in that moment she didn’t think she could manage to stand, never mind walk down the hall.
Still the ghost did not move, only stared at the ground as if he wished he could sink into it. Xhea looked at him carefully. He didn’t seem to be hurt or injured—his hands were all there, and his feet, and he gave no sign of being dimmer or less real than he had before. Ieren wasn’t hurting him, then; he’d just had a hard life that ended too soon. Nothing she did could change that.
Xhea wanted to just turn away, ignore the ghost until he left. But Shai, if she were here, wouldn’t have turned away. She could imagine what Shai would say, her voice reproachful: Xhea, he’s just a little boy.
It was true.
Xhea forced herself from her chair and tried to crouch down, struggling with her bad knee and her dizziness and ignoring Daye’s look at her fumbling attempt. She extended a shaking hand. “Hey,” she said—and the ghost flinched at her voice. “Hey,” she said, softer this time, quieter. “Are you … okay?”
In the resulting silence, she c
ouldn’t help but think, What a stupid thing to ask. Of course he wasn’t okay; he was dead. Dead and unhappy and in a foreign place, being dragged around by a stranger as if he was nothing more than a toy on a string.
After a long moment, the ghost glanced up. Slowly, hesitantly, he looked at her through the veil of his long, dark lashes. His eyes seemed almost black, his cheeks stained dark by the flush of the illness that had killed him. He blinked as he looked at Xhea, then flinched away as Xhea met his eyes. Seconds passed, then he again looked up cautiously.
Oh, sweetness, what do I say? Xhea had never been good with people, nor with easy kindness, neither given nor received. She fumbled for words.
“Is there …” she tried. “I mean, can I help you … somehow?”
The ghost’s voice was but a whisper: “You won’t hurt me?”
“No. Of course I won’t.” She felt the irony of those words, here in a room of people she’d help bind to a slow and unhappy death. Still she said them, because it was what Shai would have said—what Shai would have wanted Xhea to say.
Xhea reached out, slowly, slowly—and hesitated, staring at his tether. There was something different about it, she thought again, leaning to take a closer look. It’s not a tether at all, she realized, as her hand hovered above it. She could feel a hint of its vibration against her palm. Not a tether, but a spell.
She stopped, frozen, as she became fully aware of the ghost. Suddenly, she could feel him standing there, feel the chill presence of a ghost in the room—and it was all she could think of. There was a roaring in her stomach and her head—a sound, a feeling that grew stronger with every passing second.
Wanting, needing. Hunger that grew and grew the closer she came to the ghost.
Xhea swallowed and tried to push herself backwards, push herself away, and yet she only trembled. Her hand reached out seemingly beyond her thought or control. Her magic reached with it: a current of dark that rose up through her body and out, twisting and coiling in midair as it stretched toward the ghost.
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