Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  So, too, did she feel exhausted in a way that she had not experienced since her dying days. Sometimes she would find herself staring vacantly, as if her thoughts and will had vanished with her power. Again and again she shook herself and struggled forward, only to find herself drifting once more, as if her body was trying to slip from this world, her purpose done.

  Rest, came the thought. Just rest.

  “I won’t,” she said, pushing the idea away. Her voice was all but lost beneath the sound of the flames’ roar and crackle. “I can’t.”

  The fire grew and spread despite all their efforts, despite everything. The market was gone, the assembled tents and ancient mall both, nothing left but burning wreckage and cinders. Heat beat against her face, intense even though it caused no sweat, brought her no pain; Shai could only imagine how it felt to the crowd trying desperately to fight the flames.

  “Are you happy now?” she whispered to Rown. She conjured her cool wind, trying to keep the flames from spreading from one building to the next. Farther, another building collapsed in a sudden rush of burning timber and an explosion of skyward sparks.

  Of Rown’s hunters, she’d seen no sign. Neither had the skyscraper attempted to fire again; they had exhausted their unexpected power, or achieved their end, she knew not which. This, it seemed, was Senn’s punishment for daring not to surrender—a punishment that might have come to Edren or Orren, had only the timing been different. But no matter who had stood up to Rown first, no matter whose territory burned first, all of the Lower City would suffer.

  Suffer, if not fall.

  There was nothing she could do to stop it. Her magic was gone now, she realized, staring at her hands. Gone or so weak that it made no difference. Her attempts to aid, to heal, to fight the flames did nothing now; and her hands, when she reached out, only passed through others unfeeling. She was just a cool presence, a momentary disturbance in the air; and who here, now, would sense such a thing?

  No one saw her weeping.

  Shai sank to her knees and then lay on the ground, wanting to sink into the earth, sink through the ash and the concrete, through the tunnels below, and be gone.

  She had failed. Once and again she had failed, in spite of everything.

  This is what you wrought, she told herself as the flames rose higher. Your magic here, in these streets. Is this what you wanted?

  It didn’t matter what she wanted; it never had.

  I tried … But she could not finish the thought.

  She only wished that she might have found out what had happened to Xhea, and why. She missed her friend. She missed having someone who could see her and speak to her, yes—but it was more than that. Xhea was the first person who had treated her like herself, neither intimidated by nor caring about Shai’s magic until it had called Allenai and Eridian down upon them.

  Xhea had taught her, in spite of everything, how to stand up for herself. How to fight for what she believed in, even when the odds were stacked against her. To try, because the effort alone had value.

  “Xhea …” Shai whispered, thinking of her friend; thinking of Xhea’s laughter and the edge of her sarcasm, her stubborn ways, her determination and her smile and the chime of her charm-bound hair …

  A tether unspooled from Shai’s heart.

  Shai gasped, looking down at the near-invisible line that suddenly joined to her sternum. She felt the moment that the tether connected to its destination; it sent a shock rippling through her whole body. She felt the person on the other end of that line.

  Xhea. Alive.

  There was only time for that single, brief thought, before a sudden wave of magic knocked her senseless.

  Her magic had been gone, fading to nothing—yet now it rushed through her, hard and fast. Shai struggled to cope with its sudden resurgence and the disorientation in its wake. There was so very much light.

  At last she realized: a Radiant ghost had to be bound to a body for their magic to flow. She’d just never imagined that might mean a slender tether connected to another living, breathing person.

  Hard on the heels of that thought came another. Something’s wrong. She could feel a difference in the tether’s vibration. Shai closed her fingers around that so-familiar line, frowning. No longer did it seem to hum against her skin in a low and steady tone, but surged and stuttered, almost fighting her hold. She might have thought it only a reflection of her own fading power; yet now that power shone from her, strong and steady like sunlight, as if it had known no break.

  No: something was wrong with Xhea. They had done something to her, hurt her—and Shai hadn’t been there, hadn’t tried to stop them, hadn’t even known. Ignorance, once more, was the root of her failure.

  Whatever Farrow had done to her, she would not leave Xhea to face it alone. Trying not to yield to the screams and cries for help all around her, Shai launched herself into the sky and followed the tether’s lead.

  Within moments Farrow loomed before her, a pale shadow in the smoke. Of all the skyscrapers, it alone seemed unguarded, no armed or armored people threatening or defending. If anything, the streets around the skyscraper seemed unnaturally still compared to the chaos of the rest of the Lower City.

  The building’s only defense was the trench she had seen earlier. It was deeper now, and far more extensive, in places exposing the building’s foundations, while the excavated rock and soil had been piled high in a great ring around the building. Were there any people close enough to attack Farrow, that pile alone might have been enough to keep them at bay. A defensive moat? As she watched, explosives buried in those depths detonated, one after another, shattering the concrete foundations.

  They’re going to bring the whole thing down, Shai thought in shock. All those people …

  As she approached, the building shook and shuddered. Glass shattered in a line of windows along the skyscraper’s farthest edge, sending shards raining down, glittering, to the upturned earth below. Farrow’s concrete façade cracked, fissures spreading like lightning across the building’s surface, while the makeshift barriers on the balcony platforms tore out from their moorings and fell away.

  Farrow was destroying itself from the inside out. Except, as Shai drew closer, she saw that the air around the skyscraper had begun to shimmer, as if the whole of the building were surrounded by spell exhaust. No, more: light shone from the very walls, growing from a faint glow to a bright halo as she watched. A halo of magic.

  Then the defensive spell generators on Farrow’s roof came to life, like two fountains of pure bright magic. Shai hadn’t noticed them, hidden as they were in the various antennae that bristled on Farrow’s rooftop. These were not pointed at the ground, as Rown’s had been, but upward, each mounted on opposite corners of the skyscraper’s roof. Magic swirled and cascaded down around them in wide, glowing arcs as a defensive spell began to take form.

  No, they couldn’t possibly …

  She pushed the thought aside and would have turned away, except that it was to that rooftop that the tether led. She had momentum now, traveling faster and higher almost as if the tether were dragging her forward.

  And then: dread. The sudden feeling made her recoil.

  The boy, she thought. He was there, with Xhea—for as Shai approached, once more she felt that sick churning fear in the base of her stomach. She forced herself onward, clinging to the tether with one hand as if it could steady her or slow the sudden pounding of her imagined heart. The fear only grew as she came nearer. Absent gods, she did not want to move closer; it felt almost as if her ghostly body screamed at her, having scented a predator that her conscious self could not name. She wanted to stop and run away as fast as she had come. Run and hide.

  Like you did before? she asked, the words hard and vicious. Just letting them take her? Guilt was the goad that drove her forward when all else bid her flee.

  A protective bubble of power arced up from the spell generators and over Farrow’s rooftop like an umbrella, the magic flickering and fading a
s it attempted to cover the skyscraper’s sides. Defensive though it was, Shai slipped through that barrier without pause, neither her magic nor her ghostly form hindered by the nascent spell. Only once she was through did she see Xhea.

  The girl sat awkwardly on the skyscraper’s closest edge, a cane by her side, next to the sprawled form of the dark magic boy from whom Shai had fled twice. The coins and charms bound into Xhea’s hair glittered in the spells’ light as they arced up and over her, bright despite the smoky haze all around her.

  No, not haze: magic. A fog of dark magic to push back so much light.

  Shai touched down on the building’s flat rooftop behind Xhea and took a cautious step forward, fearing at any moment that the boy would see her. Run, her instincts screamed. For all her growing skill and renewed power, Shai knew of no spell that could keep her safe here. Still she raised her hands, magic shining about her fingers, and prepared a blast of pure magic.

  Except the boy, Shai saw in dawning horror, was not moving. He lay beside Xhea, features slack, eyes wide and staring. The movements of his body were due only to the skyscraper’s earthquake-like vibrations. There was blood on his lips—red, so red—and blood matting his blond hair dark. His hand, held in Xhea’s own, was limp and pale.

  And still Shai felt that fear, that dread and terror that crawled through her like something cold and wet and terrible—the fear that bid her flee.

  “Xhea?” Shai said hesitantly.

  Xhea turned. Her eyes were a pure and perfect black that did nothing to shadow the naked hunger in her expression. Shai stopped, stumbled back, and only then did Xhea blink; briefly, that darkness drew back from her eyes. No joy came in its place, no relief to see her: only fear.

  “Shai,” Xhea said. “Get back. Please.” She shuddered then, and squeezed her eyes closed. Dark magic leaked from beneath her lids nonetheless, slipping down her cheek like tears before lifting into the air and questing toward Shai in thin, twisting tendrils.

  Shai dropped her hands and the magic she’d held within them. Whatever was wrong with Xhea, she would not—could not—blast her friend as she might have blasted the boy. Just a spark, she thought, thinking of the myriad times she had helped Xhea regain control of her power with a little bit of bright magic—and dispelled the thought just as quickly. For never had Xhea’s magic run so fully out of her control; it cascaded from her in heavy, black waves. Shai knew, too, the pain that even a spark of bright magic now caused.

  Xhea would not look at her. “Go,” she commanded. “Go!” She had dropped the boy’s limp hand and clung now to the tether, her fingers white knuckled. She tried to sever the line that bound them once more, attempting to pull it apart or create a blade from her magic; but the tether resisted her movements, and Xhea’s magic moved as if it had a mind of its own.

  All of the dark magic did. It reached for Shai, curling toward her like countless reaching hands. Shai recognized it.

  Ever since Xhea’s magic had first risen, whenever Xhea slept or her attention had drifted, her magic had reached for Shai: gently at first, as if only curious; then stronger and more persistently as time passed. Driven, Shai thought now, by a need that Xhea had not known or acknowledged. In the past, Shai had used her own power to keep it back; yet that would not be an option now, not if she wanted to return to Xhea’s side.

  Xhea needed her. She shook and shivered as if horribly cold despite the summer day’s dawning heat, and her face looked drawn, gaunt and exhausted. Abandoning the tether, Xhea grabbed her cane and tried to rise; and when that failed, she tried only to drag herself away, as if body lengths of distance might keep her from Shai.

  Heedless of the magic that poured from Xhea and the bright spells that arced, glittering over their heads—heedless of the way Farrow shook and shuddered under them, growing brighter by the moment—Shai stepped forward, pursuing her. Closer, and closer again.

  “Xhea.” Shai tried to make her voice sound strong, confident. “You won’t hurt me.”

  “You don’t understand,” Xhea cried. “I will. I can’t stop it.” Such fear in her voice; such loathing.

  “You won’t.”

  Fear bid her run. Shai refused. She had thought the boy a monster for evoking this very feeling; and perhaps he had been, or perhaps she had been wrong. It didn’t matter now. All she knew was that, no matter what her dark magic did, no matter her basest nature, Xhea was not a monster. Sometimes unthinking, yes; callous on more than one occasion. Frustrating, to be sure. But not a monster.

  You trust Xhea, came the thought. But can you trust her magic?

  Except, of everyone, Shai knew that they were one and the same. You could not separate a person from their magic any more than you might sever a brain from a body. Shai herself had lived her whole life—and yes, even part of her death—being thought of as only magic, power incarnate. But she wasn’t: she was a person. As was Xhea. She could not have one without the other.

  “You don’t understand,” Xhea said, her voice gone high and desperate. “I’ll destroy you. I can’t stop it.” Still she scrambled back, her movements jerky and flailing.

  Shai had to leave now, forever—abandon Xhea as so many others had before—or trust that, somehow, neither Xhea nor her magic would destroy her. Another step, another. It was a risk, yes—maybe even a terrible mistake. But Xhea had been hurt because of her, once and again. Xhea had risked everything to save her—even though Shai had already been dead. Could she truly do anything less?

  “Please,” Xhea begged. “Don’t make me kill you. Not again.”

  Run away, Shai’s fear shouted. Dread clotted within her, cold and hard. Still she stepped forward, staring not at Xhea but the dark magic that reached for her like a great, clawed hand.

  “It’ll be okay,” Shai whispered, to Xhea, to herself. She walked into the dark magic’s grasp.

  There was only pain. Pain and pain and pain. There was not even space for regret.

  A span of a heartbeat, and then something flared within Shai—something that beat back the pain and the desperation and the fear that underlay it all. Something pure and bright like sunlight.

  Shai took a long, shuddering breath and opened her eyes.

  She floated a hand’s span above Farrow’s shaking rooftop as if caught there, limp and unmoving. She shook herself, fighting a wave of disorientation.

  Xhea had collapsed; yet even as Shai watched, she opened her eyes. Between them stretched the tether. The tether—and something else.

  Shai could still feel that near-invisible line that she had created, but woven around it, through it, were countless tiny gray strands that shone like tarnished wire. Shai reached with a tentative hand and touched the binding.

  She’d always felt the tether’s vibration—heard it, when she thought to listen, like a single echoing note. If the tether had sounded a single note, this binding was a chorus: multiple notes all singing, rising and falling in a strange but perfect harmony.

  One link was hers, a tether created by choice and need. The other was Xhea’s.

  Neither was a passive connection, not anymore, for Shai could feel Xhea drawing on her power—could feel something of herself flow out through Xhea’s binding and travel down that length toward Xhea outside her control. Yet she felt, too, something flow back toward her through the tether that she had made—and if that power was dark and chill, it spoke equally of her friend.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Xhea said. Her voice was little more than a whisper; she sounded like she was going to cry in relief.

  “What doesn’t?” Shai asked softly. “Your knee?”

  Xhea shook her head and carefully pushed herself to sitting. She looked at her hands, held steady before her, turning them over in disbelief.

  “My knee,” she said. “My head. My stomach. Any of it. The pain and hunger is just … gone.” She looked at Shai with naked wonder. “And you’re not.”

  “See? You didn’t even hurt me.” Much.

  “You’re a fool,” Xhea sai
d, but she was laughing.

  Shai was still here, and she was whole, but also … changed. How was it possible to feel so strong and so weak at the same time? Despite the tether, despite the fact that she stood on air, as something of Xhea’s power flowed into her Shai realized that she felt almost real for the first time in years.

  Almost alive.

  Shai looked down at her body. She was shining, she realized, radiating—but more strongly than she ever had before. All around her, it was so bright she thought that the fires must have burned down, that the air had started to clear—but, if anything, a glance told her that more of the Lower City was burning by the minute. Smoke rose in great clouds, thick and black and choking. Nor was the light from the defensive spells that even now arced up from the skyscraper’s defensive spires.

  It was her. Shai shone so brightly to dwarf them all, her radiance like noonday sunlight.

  Magic also surrounded Xhea; but where her power had always moved like coils of restless smoke, this power was calm and steady like a living shadow. So, too, were Xhea’s hands steady when she raised them before her; and her face had lost something of its pinched look, as if a terrible weight had been lifted from her.

  And still the power flowed between them.

  “Xhea,” said a voice, soft and stern and completely unfamiliar. “Get in.”

  They looked up as one to see that a battered aircar had somehow navigated through the narrow space between the defensive dome and the skyscraper’s sides and now hovered just above them. Beneath it was some sort of wide-webbed net that hung like a hammock, swaying with the aircar’s movement. A small, hard woman looked out the open driver’s side door, looking down at Xhea.

  No, Shai realized, not just Xhea—for the woman looked directly at Shai, blinked once, and turned back to Xhea. Shai looked down at herself again, realizing that she shone so brightly that even her passive magic must have entered the visible spectrum.