Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do, Xhea thought with a sigh. But first: a nap, then a bath, then another nap. Maybe another nap after that. She felt she could sleep through to breakfast tomorrow, for all that the sun hadn’t yet reached midday.

  “Stop,” one of Edren’s guards said, raising his hand before Torrence and Daye could ascend the stairs toward the main door. Xhea didn’t blame him: they still wore clothing that clearly identified their affiliation with Rown, and Torrence’s infirmary said nothing good about their innocence.

  Edren would need them, Xhea thought, little though any knew it yet. Magic-poor though they were, they were two hunters experienced with traveling underground. There were few who could withstand the dark magic underground; fewer still who might help Xhea in her new, self-appointed role.

  Ambassador. Who else might connect to the Lower City’s heart?

  Xhea stepped out from their shadow, and everything changed. The guards called inside for support. A moment later, there came the sound of running footsteps.

  “Xhea!” Mercks exclaimed as he hurried out into the sunlight. Xhea blinked, amazed, startled into a smile.

  “Mercks,” she whispered. “You’re not dead.”

  Lorn was hard on his heels. “Is she with you?” he asked, before he had even come to a stop. “Shai. Is she okay?”

  At the first question, Xhea’s heart sank, that faint smile vanishing. Of course, came the thought. Someone else who wanted the ghost for her magic. But in his next words, she heard his concern: the whole Lower City burning and rising and ripping itself to pieces, and Lorn was worried about the girl who was already dead.

  Xhea did not answer. Instead she turned to Shai as the ghost drew her power to her and let it flow, shining brighter and brighter until she was as she had been when they were first joined—bright as sunlight, and brighter still. Xhea knew the moment that Shai’s light passed into the visible spectrum because Lorn gasped, and Torrence averted his eyes, wincing. Only Daye stood still and steady.

  Lorn smiled then—a true smile. It transformed his face.

  No, Xhea realized. Not Lorn—Addis.

  Shai looked from one person to the next, her magic falling upon their faces, their ash-stained hands, and she smiled in kind.

  “I’m okay,” Shai said. “Truly. We’re all going to be okay.”

  Only Xhea could hear the ghost, yet she remained silent. There wasn’t, in the end, any need to translate.

  For three days it rained, steady and soft. The rain didn’t so much break the heat as sweep it away with the dust and the ash and the bloodstains, leaving clearer air behind. When Xhea stepped outside on the morning of the fourth day, it felt like entering a new world.

  It was still hot, yes; it still smelled of sweat and garbage and ash long cooled. It was still summer in the Lower City. But the oppressive humidity had lifted and with it had gone some of the tension and fear that had bound the streets since Rown’s attack and Farrow’s rise and fall. People were outside again, walking, mending, arms heavy with belongings and building materials; and though their eyes were shadowed with pain and fatigue, they were there.

  Xhea was there, in spite of everything. Still standing.

  It took time to make her way down the steps; she did not rush. Did not, if she were honest, want to. Even in the street, she moved with none of her habitual hurry: only careful movements, steady and slow, taking the time to look around her as she went.

  Within sight of Edren’s main doors, young children played, laughing and shouting, as their parents and older siblings gathered to do laundry. Keeping pace with her, a bent-backed man dragged a cart laden with reclaimed tile toward where the market had once stood, the cart’s wheels squeaking. Somewhere nearby, bread was baking.

  It was not normal. Not even close. The heat had broken, and the fear, but not the anger. That simmered beneath every word and movement, the scents of everyday life and the light of the morning sun that cast long shadows across the ground. Even without looking toward the mess and ruin that had been Senn’s territory—that had been the market building and the sprawling tents that had surrounded it in wide rings—she felt the difference. That anger was why Rown’s doors were shut tight, its citizens glimpsed only through windows or on the opposite ends of weapons raised warily—those citizens that had not fled entirely.

  Survival was the priority. Food and shelter, strong walls to keep the elements and the walkers at bay. Supplies for the coming winter. Lives and livelihoods rebuilt from the ground up. But that did not mean that the desire for revenge was not there. This wound was deep and fresh and would be a long time healing.

  Time, Xhea thought, leaning heavily on her cane as she walked. The same word that she had been repeating these past few days—when she wasn’t lost in an exhausted sleep. Time heals all wounds, wasn’t that the saying? Except that it wasn’t quite true.

  Not for her, and not for the Lower City.

  Oh, they could and would rebuild. New structures would take the place of the ones that the fire had destroyed, and if they had neither the height nor the strength of the ones constructed from the bones of the city that had come before, they would at least be standing. But even without the skyscraper that now loomed above the ashen ruin of the market, or the tendrils grown of asphalt and rebar that held it aloft—even without the unhappy turmoil between the skyscrapers themselves—the Lower City could not return to what it had been.

  But maybe, she thought, it could grow be something better. Something more.

  And Xhea? Without realizing it, she’d managed to deal with the reality of her injured knee only by reassuring herself that it was temporary. A wound, healing—and if her body failed to do the job on its own, she had put her trust in Shai. If one healing spell had done so much good, what might a second do, or a third? Especially given how much Shai had learned in the days that they had been apart.

  Even so, it had taken three days in that so-familiar room on Edren’s ground level for her to gather the courage to ask Shai to attempt a healing once more. She’d been surprised; Shai hadn’t hesitated, only smiled as if she’d been waiting for the request.

  That smile had faded when the ghost turned her attention to Xhea’s knee.

  “What do you mean it’s already healed?” Xhea had whispered, after Shai had tried to explain. She’d asked—but she knew. Oh, she knew.

  Shai had shaken her head, looking sad and guilty. “I did my best,” she’d said. “Before. I tried, but I didn’t know …” Again, that shake of her head, her light making the shadows around them dance. “I healed you, but I did it wrong. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Once Xhea would have been angry; would have raged, if only in the confines of her heart. But there was no anger now, no more pain, only a kind of slow sorrow. It was only Shai’s expression that hurt; Xhea had reached out and grabbed the ghost’s hand.

  “Don’t you apologize,” she’d said, for all that her voice had seemed to catch in her throat. “I wouldn’t be able to walk at all if it weren’t for you.” Shai had come to sit beside her, and Xhea had leaned against her, they’d sat there for a long time, not speaking, not moving, supporting each other without words.

  Xhea’s knee would never work properly. She would never again walk unaided. Wounds healed; but some, in healing, left scars.

  And what of it? If this was to be her life, her new reality, she would take it. She was alive. Even that seemed a gift.

  Once she could not imagine what her life would be if she could not walk, if she could not run or hide or flee. But there were other lives than the ones she had imagined—other futures—and she was going to find them, one careful step at a time.

  And she was not now, not ever, alone. Though no one walked at her side, she had both the tether and the dark spell that bound her to Shai, and Shai to her; she could feel Shai at the other end of that dual link. It was strange, that awareness, even as it comforted her. They had yet to understand the full nature of that joining—but tha
t, too, would come with time.

  Xhea paused for breath, clutching the top of the twisted wooden cane that Daye had given her. She reached up and touched the spell-bound tether. There was no need to yank to call for Shai’s attention, as she’d done before; instead, she sent a faint surge of magic down that length, imbued with a quiet invitation.

  As she waited, she looked slowly around. The ground before her was black and gray, and it was not her vision that made the expanse seem so bleak. The part of the Lower City core that had been the market and the surrounding buildings of Senn’s territory had looked bad when they were burning. Blackened rubble, stumps of concrete walls, ash and wreckage: smoking, it had seem incredible. Now, damp and puddled from days of rain, it looked all too real.

  Yet it was Farrow that drew the eye, the tallest of the skyscrapers made taller still, held within that tangled embrace. The skyscraper had shifted and settled and then … doors opened. Windows. People had begun climbing their careful way down the branches toward the ground, and building stairs and ramps for other, less adventurous types.

  Life went on, in spite of everything.

  Xhea felt as Shai arrived. It was not Shai’s light, nor Xhea’s newly heightened awareness of ghosts that alerted her, but something in their link. There was something of Xhea in the ghost now, something of her magic, even as there was something of Shai filling her, sure and steady as blood.

  “I thought you wanted to be alone,” Shai said quietly, coming to stand beside her.

  Xhea smiled, and there was little in the expression that spoke of her habitual edge. “I think I’ve been alone long enough, don’t you?”

  For a time they looked at the ruin that had been the market, and Farrow, and myriad homes. A funeral procession passed, ringing bells made from scrap metal, singing in low voices. A scavenger crouched in the ash, sifting for nails.

  “Walk with me?” Xhea asked.

  As they walked through the streets, talking quietly, with every step, Xhea could sense the living Lower City beneath her. It had a slow thrum that echoed like a vast heartbeat and shivered against her boot-soles—an almost imperceptible vibration that only now could she hear as separate from the rhythms of life here on the ground.

  It was quiet now, almost dormant. Healing, like the rest of them. She could, she knew, reach out to it once more—touch it with her magic and thoughts. Instead, she let it sleep.

  For now.

  There were times that I thought this novel would never be written. There were moments—days, weeks—during the writing process that I thought I should just throw everything away and admit defeat. Yet here it is, an actual book. I still don’t quite believe it.

  Huge thanks to:

  Jana Paniccia and Jeanne Schriel, who read Defiant in all its unfinished glory and helped me make sense of the mess. (And oh, was it ever a mess.)

  Greg Smyth, for enduring the craziness with love and patience, and for believing in me and in this book even when I didn’t.

  Jessica Leake, fellow adventurer on this publishing journey, for all the amazing comments—and for knowing exactly what I was talking about, every time. (Go #TeamTalos!)

  Sarah Jane Elliott, Chris Szego, Julie Czerneda, and Michelle Sagara, amazing friends all, for helping Radiant find the right readers. (And, y’know, for putting up with me.)

  Kelsie Besaw, Jason Katzman, Lauren Burnstein, and the rest of the team at Skyhorse for their hard work, support, and enthusiasm.

  Sara Megibow, agent extraordinaire, without whom none of this would have been possible.

  And you, the reader, for coming back for a second book. You make this adventure worthwhile.