Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  But even if it were not for the people bound, willing or not, to these walls, she found she could not destroy what Farrow had made. For all his lies and misdirections, one thing Ahrent had said remained true: this was their only chance, their only way up, their only way to defy the fate, the life, forced upon them by the vagaries of birth.

  She was angry, yes, but not just at Ahrent, not just at Farrow. At the City above them, all the countless Towers. At the Central Spire. But mostly at herself for so wanting what Ahrent said to be true—for so wanting to be needed—that she had tried to ignore all else.

  Xhea pushed away the details of her magic vision, suddenly again seeing the small room with its beds and wires and unconscious occupants. Even so, the walls still glowed, sparkling and flickering in ways that hinted at the bright workings beneath. Across the room Daye rose from her chair and stood aside, no longer blocking the door, that movement slow and reluctant, as if she too had little desire to open that door, to step beyond, and face what waited there. A moment, then she squared her shoulders.

  Xhea was slower and infinitely more awkward, pushing despair back into the corners of her mind as she grasped her cane and fought to gain her feet.

  “Tell me we can run.”

  Daye just looked at her; no easy comfort there. Not that she had expected it.

  “There are bombs below,” Daye said at last. “We’re blocked in.”

  “Bombs?” Xhea’s voice all but squeaked on the word. Understanding came a moment later. “To free Farrow as it rises.”

  Daye nodded, and something in her expression said more: that their escape plan, whatever it had been, had used the underground routes. Routes that would now be blocked and inaccessible, if not destroyed entirely.

  Xhea swallow. “Fine. What can we do?”

  Daye closed her eyes a moment, as if steadying herself. But all she said was, “Be ready.”

  That shiver came again, rippling through the skyscraper like shock and aftershock.

  Daye opened the door and stepped out, Xhea following unsteadily in her wake. In the hall, the activity had only increased. People shouted as they ran from one room to another, or stopped and pressed their hands to the wall, heedless of who might be passing. Casters, Xhea judged, as much for their intent expressions as for the sparks of magic that flickered about their fingertips.

  There was chaos here, yes, but little fear. For all that both the Central Spire and Rown had pushed forward Farrow’s timetable, this was the culmination of their life’s work—and the life’s work of people who had lived and died, their contributions written in the spells and charms and the song that even now rose around them.

  With every step the air felt thicker, the magic within it stronger, brighter. Xhea’s own magic rose in response—and with it came the hunger, roaring within her like an enraged beast. She stumbled to a stop, gasping, barely able to think; there was only the magic, clashing within and without, and the need beneath that raged stronger than all else.

  Breathe, she told herself, and struggled to do even that.

  A caster pushed past her, muttering something about her doing work or getting the hell out of the way; his words seemed distant and all too easy to ignore. Because she was suddenly aware of a presence before her—a presence she could feel through the walls and despite the increasing activity in these halls. A presence that called to her, urging her onward.

  She took a step and the hunger roared its approval.

  Daye had turned back to her, a hint of a frown between her dark brows. Xhea shook her head, clinging both to the wall and her cane as she made her unsteady way forward, step by step. The pain in her knee, her weariness and exhaustion—they were not gone, but suddenly seemed so distant to be unworthy of notice. So too did the pressure of the bright magic against her skin fade with each step, and she only noticed how blurred her vision had become when it suddenly cleared once more. The dark magic rose harder, faster; when she exhaled, her breath hung before her like fog.

  Daye gestured farther down the hall, but no, that wasn’t what she needed. Closer—another step, another, and Xhea stood in an open doorway, her hand on the frame for balance.

  Ieren was there, and two casters who were weaving spells atop one of the unconscious forms; she ignored them all. Instead, she looked to the ghost of the young boy that sat, curled and cringing, in the room’s corner. Xhea could not look away from the ghost—could not so much as think of anything else.

  Ieren hadn’t seen her yet, nor did he notice the sound of her cane on the floor as she moved toward his bondling. The ghost looked up as she came toward him, his dark eyes veiled by long lashes. For a moment, it seemed that he was going to smile at her approach, that shy and hesitant smile that she had seen so very briefly once before—and then he froze, eyes going wide. He pushed himself back, or tried to, but he already sat at his tether’s end, as far from Ieren as he could possibly get.

  No escape, came the thought from an impossibly distant part of her mind. He was so small. He was so young, or had been.

  She wanted—she wanted—

  Oh, she could not name it, could not so much as think of what she was doing. Yet her hand reached out as if it were a thing apart from her, magic swirling around her fingers like living smoke. Reaching as she reached toward the ghost.

  Her finger touched the tether.

  She sucked in a breath as she felt a sudden surge of power—a shock, hard enough to hurt, as if she’d brushed against a live wire. Ieren spun, screaming, at the same time as a sudden surge ran through the skyscraper, shaking it to its bones. Xhea, already unsteady, stumbled back and fell in a heap, cane clattering to the ground at her side.

  This shudder was not in her mind, nor in the skyscraper’s magical systems; the skyscraper around her shook as if in an earthquake. Xhea covered her face as a crack opened in the ceiling, raining dust and plaster. When the shaking stopped, she raised a hand to ward Ieren away.

  “I told you—” he screamed.

  “I fell,” Xhea said quickly, desperately. “He’s yours, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Her words seemed to fall over themselves, tumbling and spinning as frantically as her mind.

  Ieren hesitated, then glowered as Xhea fumbled for her cane and forced herself back to her feet. Behind them, the casters tried to call him back, but Ieren paid them no heed.

  “You’re sure?” he asked finally. “You promise?”

  “Promise.” The lie tasted like ashes.

  Ieren smiled then, his anger vanishing. “Okay,” he said. “We’re almost done with this one. Isn’t this exciting?”

  Xhea shook her head, dispelling plaster dust and setting the charms in her hair to chiming. She took a long, shaking breath, trying to find some calm in the chaos. But even as she made the attempt, the skyscraper shook again, setting everything to rattling, while all around her the bright magic grew stronger and stronger.

  “Yeah, sure,” she managed. She took a careful step backwards, and another.

  Something had changed, she realized, even with so small a contact. She’d barely touched the tether, but as she clung to her cane Xhea saw that her shakes had eased. Again she looked at the ghost boy, who sat curled in upon himself and whimpering, but she could not meet his eyes. The hunger was still there—still roaring, still rising—yet she was able to clamp down on it, hold it back with desperation and an iron-hard will.

  Or at least she tried.

  “I’ll meet you …” she said, swallowing. “I mean, I’ll be … somewhere …”

  Turning, she fled the room and not even Daye’s quiet voice calling after her, not even the pain in her knee, could slow her steps. At the hall’s far end, where the guard’s unoccupied chair sat outside the padlocked door, Xhea stopped and slumped against the wall, gasping. She could not catch her breath. It was only as she raised a hand to cover her mouth that she realized she was crying.

  “Xhea?”

  Not Daye, this time, though the woman stood nearby like a shadow, but Torr
ence.

  She opened her mouth but all that came out were deep, wracking sobs. Not the time, she told herself; yet it was impossible to stop. Impossible to think of anything but the look on the ghost’s face as she reached for him, that hesitant smile turned to horror and fear.

  “Not to intrude, but whatever this is has to wait.” No humor in his tone, only urgency. “Can you walk? We have to get to the stairs.”

  “Stairs?” Xhea managed, voice tight and aching. “But …”

  This was the thirty-fourth floor. Farrow was—what? Fifty stories high? Sixty? There was no way she could handle so many flights of stairs—not in anything less than an hour, not unless someone carried her. Given the way her magic kept surging and flowing around her, fighting back the effects of the myriad bright spells, the latter wasn’t an option.

  “The charges on the foundations are set to blow at any time. We have to go up.”

  Daye raised an eyebrow—the same expression she might have made, Xhea thought, if Torrence had suggested that they all leap out a window. Yet she made no protest, only squared her shoulders as a muscle in her jaw twitched.

  “But I thought …” Xhea hadn’t taken their offer; she’d thought that they would leave her. Instead they waited as the skyscraper shook around them—waited for her, in spite of everything.

  Xhea did her best to stifle her sobs. She staggered in the direction that Torrence gestured, trying to keep her head down, trying to heed his words to go quickly, quickly, before anyone noticed. It wasn’t until they were on the stairs, tears still streaming down Xhea’s cheeks, that she was able to ask, “Why are you doing this?”

  The same question she had asked the night before. They didn’t need her, not for this—whatever help she might have been in one job or another had nothing to do with their escape. If anything, she was a burden—and cause enough for Farrow’s people to give chase. Let her go, when Ahrent had said that they needed her so very much? As if.

  “Just go,” Torrence said, urging her onward.

  It was not so very many floors to climb, Xhea tried to tell herself, hauling herself up. But she could not stop weeping, and all around them the magic was rising, rising. Again, her vision seemed to blur, no matter how she blinked or tried to focus; glimpses of color flickered in and out of her sight. The warm gold of her skin, the dark green of Daye’s pants, the brown and ember of her cane’s wooden length.

  Torrence was ahead by a flight of stairs or more, the sound of his footsteps loud in the enclosed space, but Daye kept pace beside her. Daye said nothing—and yet Xhea felt the woman’s question nonetheless.

  “I don’t want to be like him,” she said. The words came out quiet and despairing, for it seemed that she had little choice. Hungry, Ieren had said, and she’d thought little of the word or the drive behind it. She had thought she’d understood hunger’s many facets.

  This was nothing like going without food. She felt weakened, yes, fuzzy-headed and fixated on a potential source of nourishment—but never, no matter how hungry she had become, had she felt hunger could entirely control her.

  This had been different. Worse—a thousand times worse.

  Once she’d killed a man with her silver knife—shredded his ghost and body both to ribbons, to nothingness, and gone. It had been the worst thing she could imagine doing; yet her imagination had failed her—and oh, if only it could fail her again. For now, all too easily, she could imagine herself attacking other ghosts, not because she wanted to, but because she needed to, her body forcing her to act in ways she would never have wanted. Destroying ghosts, not with her silver knife, but with her hands and teeth like a starving animal.

  Perhaps the reality wouldn’t be so violent—but the image felt true.

  For the first time, she was glad that Shai wasn’t with her, because she was suddenly unsure of what she might do to her friend. Of what her magic might do, driven by that hunger.

  “If you don’t want to be like Ieren,” Daye said, her voice just audible over the creak and groan of the skyscraper’s movement, “then don’t be.”

  Xhea shook her head, angry at the words, angry at Daye, angry at herself. But Daye hadn’t seen—couldn’t see—what she’d tried to do. What she truly was. Eater of ghosts. All the fear and revulsion in the thought was directed not at Ieren, not a boy who might not have known better, but at herself.

  And what did it matter, anyway? Because Farrow was going to rise, or it was going to fall, and either way she might die. It was stupid to cry, just a waste of water and breath; it would change nothing.

  Somehow, the thought gave her strength as she climbed.

  By the time they’d reached the rooftop door at the top of the stairwell, Farrow was shaking hard enough that Xhea struggled to keep her feet. The vibrations came in waves in time to the wail of Farrow’s half-born heart, the sound on the edge of her hearing.

  Xhea clung to the railing, fingers white-knuckled as she hauled herself up one blighted stair at a time. Even in the dim stairwell, the light of the magic flowing through the building left her half blind and squinting, her own power pushing back against the onslaught. Cracks appeared in the walls, and spread, fast as thought. Xhea could only hope that the skyscraper could transform before it shook itself to pieces.

  Torrence already had the door to the roof open, the aging lock little barrier to the slim tools he kept hidden up his sleeve. Xhea stumbled past him, panting, out into the sunlight. Or what little sunlight managed to reach the ground.

  Outside, the air was hot and thick with smoke, even here, sixty stories up and blocks from the market fire. Except, Xhea realized as she stared out across the Lower City, it wasn’t just the market that was burning anymore. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the edge, that so-familiar terror gripping like a hand about her throat; even so, she could see the thick, black plumes of smoke were not limited to the span of Senn’s central territory. Ancient structures of dry and crumbling wood; shacks and lean-tos and shelters built within the walls of buildings that were little more than leaning shells: all just fuel now to the flames that raged skyward, out of control.

  They had to run; but for the first time Xhea wondered if there would be anywhere left to run to.

  She coughed and tried to cover her mouth with her sleeve, not that it did much good. Torrence seemed not to notice the smoke or the distant flames, as if every breath did not make the back of his throat burn. Instead, he went to the garage on the roof’s far side, and unwound the chains wrapped around the heavy doors. The lock had been sawn in two, as had a few sections of chain. In the shadows beyond, Xhea could see the shapes of aircars—not a collection of toys, like Lorn owned, but battered cargo vehicles and reclaimed City buses.

  Old and mechanical though they were, she didn’t much like the thought of riding in one. We don’t have to go far, she reasoned, trying to smother her fear. Just off Farrow’s rooftop. But the thought did nothing to banish the memory of her last aircar trip, all but falling from the sky as her magic destroyed the workings of the car around her. She shuddered and looked away, her hand gripping the top of her cane so hard it hurt.

  Instead she looked to the two spell-spires now mounted on Farrow’s rooftop, inset from opposite corners. They looked like nothing so much as tapered lengths of iron—and not smooth and well-cast, but metal dark and rippled and dented. Small, uneven cross-spars marked the spires’ lengths, some half-melted, their ends rounded and bearing hardened drips of metal. Battered as they were, she would have thought them nothing but reclaimed junk were it not for the aura of magic that ringed them.

  No spells there, nothing so complex; instead, pure magic flowed from each to travel down the spires’ lengths in a lazy spiral of light. Not active yet, Xhea judged; though that power came faster, brighter, with every passing moment. Her own magic surged in response, making her feel weaker, hungrier, even as it protected her from the onslaught.

  The skyscraper wasn’t just waking up; it was preparing to fight its way into the sky. A Tower
born of death and smoke and pure bright magic.

  How fitting.

  Xhea looked to Rown. Their own spell-spire, which they had used to fire upon the market, was hidden beneath a protective tarp. Broken, Daye had said—and, given Ahrent’s shock, Xhea could believe it. That spire wasn’t supposed to be functional for many long years, if she understood Ahrent’s original plan: a payment with a greater future payoff, one designed to bind Rown to Farrow for years to come.

  Instead, Rown had fixed the spell-spire and turned it on the Lower City. Who could have told them how to make those repairs but a Tower? Who else might have provided enough magic to fuel it?

  The thought felt right—and yet there was not renai enough in Rown’s coffers to pay for either. Poorest of the skyscrapers, with the smallest and most vulnerable territory, Rown had little power and less leverage. No, the only way Rown might have paid for the spell-spire’s repair and the power with which to fuel it was with a coin with which Farrow was familiar: information. And the only secret that Rown knew and that the other skyscrapers did not was the truth, the timing, and the extent of Farrow’s plan.

  For Rown to be Farrow’s ally now and as they rose meant securing an ally in the City—a trading partner that had access to resources the likes of which a skyscraper could only dream. Yet the future of any Tower was always at risk—especially the poorer, weaker Towers on the City’s farthest fringes, which Farrow would most certainly become. In the City’s center, surrounding the Central Spire, the biggest and most powerful Towers played out a delicate and complex dance of power, renai, and politics, mergers and acquisitions interrupted only by brief and brutal takeovers. Out on the fringes, the Towers’ movements had all the dance-like delicacy of a drunken bar fight. Poorer, brutal, and often clumsy, Towers on the City’s edges were always moving, always fighting, always looking for an advantage.