“A few days, I think, at most. We’re doing what we can, but …”
“Making him sleep in the basement is ‘doing what you can’?” Xhea asked incredulously. “And do you prefer to hit him with sticks or with rods to ensure his comfort?”
“He’s more comfortable there.” Somehow, Ahrent managed not to sound reproachful. “He says the pain is less, and he can sleep.”
Thinking of the way some unseen burden seemed to lift from her shoulders when she went underground, Xhea could almost believe it. Still, she shrugged. She didn’t want it to be true; didn’t want to think about the implications of that statement, of the dark magic seeped into the Lower City’s deepest levels.
“Why are we sitting here, anyway, if timing is all so important?”
“We are sitting here,” Ahrent corrected. “The casters on my team are most assuredly not. And I’m here with you because this discussion and the attempt to gain your willing assistance is worth more than any magic I might weave.”
Willing assistance—for he had no way to force her. Not in the time he had, not given the nature of her magic. Disable her power, and she had no use. Attempt to force or torture or blackmail an angry girl with dark magic, and what would he earn but death?
It should have made her smile, that sudden understanding. The power truly was in her hands, and Ahrent was here to beg her assistance. It was what she had always wanted: to be the one not crouched and cringing, but making the decisions. The achievement felt hollow. Xhea took a long, slow breath and looked down at her hands. Hidden in her lap, they quivered even now—her body’s betrayal of a weakness that she prayed Ahrent could not see.
Her bowl wasn’t empty. Even so, she pushed it away. “I don’t want …” she started, and didn’t know how to continue. She realized that she had no idea what to want anymore, no idea what to do.
“Xhea,” Ahrent said. “Please. We need you. Ieren’s power is fading—and there’s no one else who can connect the volunteers or reinforce the bindings when the transformation begins. You can support Ieren while he lives—learn from him. Help birth Farrow’s living heart.”
Xhea met his eyes. “Do you understand what you’re asking? This work will mean my death.”
If not now, nor in a week, then soon. If ten was old, then fifteen was leagues beyond; whatever time she had earned by suppressing her power for so long was surely being undone by her dark magic workings, now and two months past. The power of death, running unchecked through her flesh.
That’s what she felt now, she understood; what she had felt each day and night since pouring the darkness inside her into Eridian’s living heart as if she were bleeding into midair: the effect of dark magic on her body. Not just her inability to heal but the fevers, the exhaustion, the shakes … the desire to curl up somewhere cold and dark, and have the world pass her by unnoticed. The desire to simply stop.
And now, as she began to learn to use that power, the hunger.
“Yes,” Ahrent said quietly. “I know.”
It was a long moment before he found the words to continue: “I understand what I’m asking of you—but please know, in return I will grant you anything within my power. Truly, anything. You will have a place here, in Farrow with us, if you want it—and all that it entails. I will tell you about your magic, or the workings of the Central Spire, or the details of how a dead building becomes a living Tower. I can tell you of your history or that of your family, or the workings of the City itself. You have but to ask.”
Knowledge. It was a coin that Farrow knew how to trade, and trade well. Spells and history and politics: Farrow knew them all. For all his dissembling and misdirection, this man, it seemed, was the true power behind Farrow.
Xhea looked up to meet his eyes. “Will you tell me why,” she said quietly, “if you knew who I was and where I came from, Farrow just left me out there?”
A blink: it was not, she knew, the response he expected. Nor was she finished.
“Will you tell me why I grew up hungry and cold and alone if my family was within these walls? Will you tell me why I nearly starved to death on the streets if you knew I was born here, that I belonged here? Will you tell me why you only came for me—why you only want me—now?”
“Even that,” Ahrent said at last, though they both already knew the answer. It echoed in the air between them, unspoken.
Say it, she thought to him across the table. Say it out loud.
Xhea held out her hand and smoke-like magic rose from her palm in a single swirling column, wisps of gray twining together into something thick and black. More power and more—more than she’d used the day before; more than she’d used ever, but for her attack on Eridian. Power enough that she knew it entered the visual spectrum, clear to see even if Ahrent chose not to look. The hunger rose with it—but also that perfect sense of calm, steadying her, giving her the strength to continue.
“Farrow has always valued magical talent, has it not?” Xhea said, looking upon the column of black that rose, spinning, from her outstretched hand. “The strongest and most skilled casters in the Lower City, all trained by Farrow.”
“We did not think you had your mother’s talent,” Ahrent said. “Weak, latent magic that would kill you. Nothing more.”
A sickly liability instead of an asset.
Xhea smiled, a thin curve like a knife’s blade, as that pillar of dark magic rose between them. “I know,” she said. And when she blew that power toward him like a kiss—when she let it wash across his face like smoke—he flinched.
There should have been more time, Shai thought, watching as Edren tried to recover from the assassination of their leader. Not time to mourn; no single day held time enough for that, no span of hours sufficient to even begin to find the edges of that loss, never mind understand them. Never mind heal.
Time, only, to lift the bodies from the floor and clean their mortal wounds. Time to put the bodies of their enemies to one side until they might be claimed or rejected by the skyscraper that had sent them. Time to lift their fallen leader, and wash the blood from his lips and chest and hair; time to begin to ask, “What happened? What did they do? What could we have done?”
For the attackers had entered Edren in silence and secrecy. They had not broken through any of the doors on the main level, nor disrupted the security perimeter; they had not come up through the tunnels below. Though there was talk that the attackers might have arrived via the roof, breaking through the peak defensive spell, Shai had been there and knew what the security tapes would show: nothing.
They had been waiting, she thought, within these walls. Waiting, perhaps, since the party two nights before; waiting only for their opportunity. It was as good a theory as any she heard whispered in Edren’s halls.
But dawn when it came brought no rest, no easing of these sudden burdens; only more upraised blades.
At dawn, Rown attacked.
Shai had followed Lorn—and he still responded to the name, though Shai could see the change in him in every gesture and word. For a time he shook, seemingly uncontrollably; the aftereffects of adrenaline, of shock and fear. He worked through it, ignoring his shakes as he gave commands, and for all the unsteadiness of his hands, his voice never trembled.
He organized patrols, called in spies from across the Lower City or their reports where the people themselves were not available. It was, after all, before dawn, though only just; beyond the boardroom’s dust-clouded window, the eastern horizon had turned blue.
As Lorn worked to understand what was happening beyond the skyscraper’s walls, Emara took over the management of the skyscraper itself. Nothing, it seemed, was beneath her notice, from the kitchens to the repair crews to the combatants for that day’s hastily cancelled shows. She woke the skyscraper’s elite and put them to work, and made rules for everyone: no going outside, no sending messages beyond the skyscraper’s walls. Stay in, stay quiet, and stay the blight out of security’s way.
The ease with which they worked, desp
ite their shock and the stunned expressions of many of the people called before them, spoke of long practice. So, too, did people respond as if familiar to their instructions. Shai had to wonder how much of Edren’s day-to-day workings had already been in Lorn and Emara’s hands, which small happenings had occurred beneath the notice of Verrus Edren.
There was nothing Shai could do to help, yet still she stayed, telling herself that every conversation taught her more about Edren and its workings; more, too, about these people to whom she had found herself tied. In truth, she just did not want to be alone. The sight of Verrus Edren down on the ground, the way his eyes went blank as he died—the screams of the attacker Emara had injured but not killed—and the blood, so much blood on hands and floors and walls—she saw it all, over and over again, anytime she let her mind wander. She knew that they could not see her, and yet they felt her there; they had nodded to her as she’d entered the room, and once or twice Emara had flashed a tired smile in her general direction. It was something.
Shai had only just begun to feel calm, if no less worried, when a harried young security guard entered the room, interrupting the conversations in progress.
“Sir!” he cried. “Ma’am! There are soldiers outside!”
“Explain,” Lorn said shortly.
“Hundreds of them—right outside!” The young man’s eyes were wide, his breathing short. “Please, come quickly.”
“I’ll get my father,” Emara said and rose.
The guard led the way downstairs to the main security desk. At Lorn’s urging, he quickly explained, fumbling over his words: the perimeter alarms had gone off shortly before dawn, first on one side of the skyscraper, then the other. They’d assumed the movement was due to walkers, late leaving the Lower City’s streets, but when they managed to pull the images up on screen, they saw not lone walkers but armed and armored personnel moving to surround the skyscraper.
“They’re everywhere, sir,” he said as they came to the skyscraper’s front hall and the chained main doors. Above the doors, the remaining windows gleamed with pale light. “They’re all around us.”
“Rown,” Mercks said, and Shai started at the sound of his voice. The man sat behind the security desk, lit by the glow of dozens of security screens—though it wasn’t just the light that made his skin look wan, nor his expression so tired. No bandages, no wounds, but it would take more than a day to recover from the shock and blood loss.
She looked behind him, and saw that every screen with an outside shot showed the same thing: dark-clad figures taking cover behind walls and fire barrels and low piles of refuse, targeting the skyscraper with both weapons and spells.
What had Verrus Edren called the other skyscrapers’ behavior? Posturing. Mere threats and displays of aggression, any true danger weeks or months away—despite Pol’s obvious disagreement. But now Verrus lay dead and the skyscraper was surrounded—and all the added protections that they might have enacted after Xhea had found the damage to the barricade were still undone.
A moment later, a display showed a heavily armed and armored woman walking up to Edren’s front doors. She held a white flag in one hand and what seemed to be an envelope in the other, a tattoo of Rown’s twisting sigil just visible on the back of one hand, mirror to the designs that ringed her left eye. She pounded on the door and then held up her hands, flag and envelope raised high, and declared: “I’m here on behalf of Rown! We have you surrounded. You have no allies. I bring our terms for your immediate surrender.”
Even on the grainy display, the woman’s smirk was evident.
Once, when she was a small child, a beetle had made its way into Shai’s home. In the Towers insects were a rarity—and a long beetle with a gleaming green carapace even more so. Shai had watched it run across the kitchen floor, scuttling on its tiny black legs—until her mother had knocked it aside and it had landed flat on its back. There it stayed, legs waving, until her mother brought her shoe down upon it with a crunch.
Edren was the beetle now. For all of Verrus’s threats and attacks and use of the power Shai generated, Edren lay with their underside exposed and legs flailing, waiting to be crushed.
Shai turned toward the door, leaving Lorn and the newly arrived Pol and Emara in her wake, discussing their options. Beyond, they had monitoring spells and some few guards, but too little information and fewer options. Shai was not so hampered. She slipped through the chained doors and into the dawning light beyond.
The Rown hunter stood on the steps, waiting just before the twin lion statues that stood on either side of the door. The hunter wasn’t that old, Shai saw, perhaps only a year or two older than she was—or, rather, than she had been when she died. It was only the facial tattoo and the rough, jagged cut of the woman’s hair that made her seem older. The woman had lowered her hands, point made, yet that smug hint of a grin played about her lips. She was enjoying this.
Something in that expression made Shai pause. There were reasons to fight; reasons, too, that Rown would be here, on Edren’s doorstep, armed and demanding surrender. She did not deny it. Yet to delight in the fear and the pain that such actions caused? To laugh? Shai wanted to rub that expression right from the woman’s face.
Unseen, Shai stepped closer until she stood within the hunter’s personal space, their noses all but touching. She did not move, nor speak, only stared as if through force of will she could make her presence felt. For a long moment, there was no reaction. A moment more and the smirk slowly slipped from the woman’s lips. She swallowed, visibly attempted to suppress a shiver, and took a hesitant step back.
It was just a tiny step, but it was enough, for when the hunter looked at Edren now there was a flicker of fear in her gaze and no little caution. Shai was tempted to reach out, to hold her hand inside the other woman’s heart just to see her flinch—and then she shook herself and recoiled.
You’re not like them. Once it had been simple fact, no similarities beyond the basics of biology. To be like a Lower City dweller? The idea, had it even occurred to her, would have seemed absurd. Now there was no smugness in the thought, no reaffirmation of her superiority; merely a reminder, a plea. You’re not like this. Remember who you are.
But it had felt good to watch the woman flinch.
Shai stepped out into the morning streets. Yet she could see nothing more than cameras and spells could tell those inside: she saw the same roads and alleys, the same ranks of hunters, the same spell-edged blades and pointed gun barrels. The only difference was that here, so close, she could see the light gleam in their eyes; she could hear their excited whispers as a minute passed and no one came out to answer their messenger’s call.
They want to attack.
No, Shai thought. Not if there was another way.
She rose. Up and up, no floor beneath her, no aircar, no illusion that she was standing on anything but air. Up and up, beyond anything she’d ever thought—ever tried—to do before, to the height of Edren and beyond.
It was only from so high, the skyscrapers arrayed below her, that she saw the truth. It was not just Edren that Rown’s hunters had surrounded, but Orren and Senn as well. They ringed each, using the surrounding buildings for cover, pinning in those that tried to venture beyond the skyscrapers’ walls. Before Orren’s front doors stood another messenger: a small shape that Shai thought was a man, a white length of cloth in one hand. As she watched, Orren’s doors opened and someone stepped out to speak to him. She could not see Senn’s doors from her angle, but could only assume that a similar scene played out there, in sight of the Lower City market.
She saw Rown hunters on nearby roofs, weapons trained on the skyscrapers; she saw Rown hunters in the streets, more and more of them approaching from the warehouse district, which they had defended the morning before. These were not soldiers. They moved not as coordinated units but clumps and groups that split and reformed as individuals chose their own paths, their movement speaking not of professionalism nor seriousness but a chaotic enthusiasm th
at made her more nervous than either.
Only Farrow was not surrounded. The men and women she could see all stood within the protective barrier of that strange, deep trench, and none from Rown came to aggress against them. Farrow alone stood aloof from this conflict, neither aggressor nor target.
She moved, trying to see more, though she dared not leave Edren behind. Of Rown itself, farthest away, she could catch but a glimpse—but it was enough. For atop Rown she saw a shape that caught the illusion of breath in her throat and left her gasping.
What had looked like little more than a hulking shape on the rooftop—one she did not remember seeing in any of the nights past—was revealed to be something like a great heavy gun, the black cover that had hidden it whisked suddenly aside. It was large and ugly, looking from a distance like a long-barreled cannon. Closer, it was clear that it was no common weapon at all.
Bullets, explosives—crude as they were, she understood the damage such basic weapons could wreak. Yet this?
“Oh gods,” Shai whispered, shaking. “Absent gods save us.”
Because she knew this shape, old as it was, rusted and battered and far from its rightful place. What had seemed to be a cannon was nothing but a solid, tapering length of metal, the spell-markings scratched into its surface just visible beneath the rust. Its cross-spars—its directional control—had been shortened to mere stumps. The whole had been mounted on what seemed to be some sort of swiveling turret built from scrap metal.
But nothing disguised what it truly was: a protective spell generator. Every Tower bore generators such as these in quantity, lengths of grown metal that often hid in the shadows of the Towers’ main defensive spires. Most days they created only defensive spells: shields and protections. At night, when attacking, or when defending against an active encroachment, they projected the more aggressive workings—even the most basic of which was so far beyond anything they had in the Lower City that it defied imagining.
Towerlight, here. Sheets and waves of power. Magic strong enough to push a Tower from its place in the sky, magic subtle enough that each Tower had to constantly adapt their spells to compensate, defending one from the other.
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