With Shai at her side, Xhea left Edren behind. She walked to the abandoned food court where she’d seen Ieren for the first time—where she’d fallen, where Mercks had been stabbed. His blood remained on the tiles, dried now into a patch of black.
Then they went farther, out into the branching shopping corridors beyond. The floors were thick with dust, the ceilings stained and sagging where they had not collapsed entirely. The halls were lined with the dirty glass panes of former storefronts, shadowy lumps and toppled displays all that was left inside.
Everything was dark, and breaking or long broken; everything smelled of age and decay. The underground was silent but for the scuff of her boots, the soft chime of her hair, the tap of her cane against the dusty tile.
Home, Xhea thought. She smiled sadly.
For all that she knew the Lower City’s streets and the ruins beyond, this was her true home. There were other markings here—marks left by Torrence and Daye, and the few others poor enough to withstand the pain of traveling below, however briefly—but most of the paths in the dust were made by years of her footprints. There, to the left, she’d hidden a cache of food and a spare blanket last winter, just in case; a little farther on, beneath a broken elevator and the fractured skylight somewhere above, was one of her many rain barrels.
But this place felt different now. Almost strange, as if the dust of her absence had settled on every surface, though little more than two months had passed since she walked these halls with regularity.
Or maybe it was only knowing that, no matter what happened, she could never return. Perhaps some part of the underground would survive the Spire’s attack; perhaps the deepest subway lines might not fall, or the ones farthest out in the ruins. Perhaps there would be some place left where, for all the dust and dirt, the chill and silence, her heart would sing home.
But she did not think so.
Xhea’s years here had not been good or easy. For all that some hidden corner, some forgotten artifact, some glimpse of a scuff made by her own, smaller hand made her smile, she was not so sentimental that she forgot what her life had been like. The hunger, ever-present; the pain. Cold days and colder nights; the times when everything froze solid and she faced the very real risk of dying, alone and huddled in too-thin blankets. Beneath it all, the hurt of loneliness, so raw that she should have bled from it.
The pending loss of these halls seemed like a dream. How could a place that had existed for so long be destroyed so suddenly? The city that had come before had existed for untold hundreds of years; the Lower City for untold hundreds more. It seemed impossible to imagine it gone.
But then, this whole day seemed impossible, more dream than terrible reality. She felt that at any moment she might wake and find everything normal, balance regained. She’d be in her small room on Edren’s ground floor, listening to the clatter from the skyscraper’s kitchen. Or she’d be in one of her rooms down here in the tunnels, ready to head out to find the day’s customers. And the market would not have burned, and Farrow would stand where it always had, and…
Shai would not be with her. Xhea winced at the thought. For all the pain the past few months had birthed—for all the strange consequences of their meeting, and their decision to remain together—she could not imagine returning to a life without Shai. It would be easier to cut out her own heart and cast it aside.
Xhea looked up, thinking to say something, thinking to tell Shai—oh, she didn’t even know. The words were slippery, hard to catch and harder to speak. Even so, she’d opened her mouth to try when something caught her attention.
She hesitated, looking at the corridor to their left.
“What is it?” Shai asked.
“I never went down here,” Xhea murmured, staring at that hall. “I always knew it was dangerous, but I never thought why.” There were many places like that underground—places where the tunnel risked collapse, or that flooded with rainwater, or where the sewer pipes had ruptured.
“It looks normal,” Shai said. And it did. It was a straight corridor with shops to either side. Midway down, there had been a leak; the ceiling tiles were stained dark and sagging, the ground patterned with debris from flooding.
The only real difference between that hall and the one in which they stood was that, there, no footsteps marred the dust. Not a single one.
“It does,” Xhea agreed.
But at the end of the corridor there was… nothing. No light, nor its absence; only a vast span of darkness that had both shape and presence. Darkness that radiated, as if shadow had the same properties as light.
The Lower City’s living heart.
“I never questioned why I didn’t walk here. I never heard it. Never felt it. Not once.”
Except, with its power filling everything around her, how could she not? Despite her ignorance, she had to have felt something from this hall and the entity at its end, if only enough to keep her away.
The underground was silent, but there was sound too, now that she knew how to hear it—sound that had nothing to do with the air or her ears. If she let herself listen, it was all but deafening, an echoing choir of inhuman song.
It called to her.
Xhea stepped forward, raising her free hand as if to feel the heat from a fire. Another step, another. She should not go closer; she knew the danger. Yet that darkness drew her, step by step.
She wanted reach out with more than her hand—wanted to understand the thoughts and words and images of the living Lower City’s song—but didn’t have even the faintest wisp of power. She knew what would happen if she tried to overpower the binding on her magic: the tracking spell would call out, and all but incapacitate her.
Perhaps it had no power over her here, so close to the Lower City’s living heart. Perhaps the tracking spell’s call would be muffled by the layers of earth and air between her and her unknown pursuers.
Perhaps. But she did not think so.
“Xhea.”
She glanced back. She hadn’t realized how far she’d walked until she saw the ghost standing ten feet behind her.
“Please come back,” Shai said. “I can’t follow.”
Because the dark magic that wrapped around Xhea, whispering to her of comfort and home, was as a storm wind to Shai. It pressed against her, flattening her clothes to her body and whipping her pale hair behind her like a tattered flag.
“I can’t speak to it,” Xhea said, bereft. “I can’t tell it what’s happened. I can’t…”
“No.” Shai’s voice was soft. “Xhea, come back.”
Xhea looked back at the Lower City’s heart. She did not have her own magic, but felt the calm of the Lower City’s power wash through her nonetheless. She wanted to keep walking and fall into that darkness as if it were a pool of cool, clear water.
“It can still hurt you,” Shai said. “Perhaps not your spirit, but your body. You know what that much dark magic will do.”
“It will kill me.” Xhea’s voice was dreamlike and slow.
“Yes. Come back to me.”
“Does it hurt?” Xhea asked. “Death?”
Because she was not afraid, staring into that ache of black. It sang of welcome, now and always; and its magic, as it surrounded her, felt like the crisp, clear air of a new spring day.
It took a long, slow moment for Shai to respond. “Death? No. But dying…” She shook her head. “I don’t want you to die.”
“I don’t want anyone to die,” Xhea said, and it was true. “Yet we do, don’t we? All of us, in the end.”
“Xhea,” Shai said. “Look at me.”
Xhea turned, hard though it was to tear her gaze from the Lower City’s heart—all that dark magic, the glorious chorus of its song. She made herself look at Shai—and found that she could not look away.
Shai glowed, but not her usual soft, comforting light. Magic shone from her, fierce and brilliant; light radiated from her like wings, holding back the darkness.
Yet it was not Shai’s magic that drew Xh
ea, but her expression. She was afraid, but so beautiful in her fear. Her silver eyes were wide but determined, and she had one hand outstretched, reaching for Xhea if she might span the space between them by will alone.
Oh, Shai could not rival the Lower City’s darkness. If she walked into its heart, it would surely extinguish that fire as easily as Xhea might blow out a candle’s flame. But she would do it, Xhea saw. If she kept walking, Shai would follow.
“Come back to me,” Shai said again. “Please.”
And Xhea felt everything that Shai did not say, hope and fear and longing flowing through the link between them.
Xhea did not realize she was walking until suddenly she could breathe again. Another step, another, and she reached with her free hand for Shai’s outstretched fingers—and in that moment it didn’t matter that they could not touch, that death now stood as a barrier between them. She only reached and reached, and her eyes never left Shai’s, not for a moment.
At last Xhea collapsed on the dusty floor, Shai at her side. For a moment she just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Everything was so very much brighter, away from the Lower City’s shadow.
I could have died. Xhea poked at the thought as if it might birth some fear or horror that she had not felt.
She had not wanted to die, only to… what? Touch the living Lower City’s heart? Let the magic surround her, flow through her until there was nothing left?
That’s just death with another name, she told herself, and knew it to be true.
“Don’t do that to me,” Shai said. “Please. Not ever again.”
“I’m sorry,” Xhea whispered, wanting to take the ghost’s hand.
But she did not make that promise. Couldn’t. Neither of them could be other than what they were.
For a time they walked in silence, fleeing the sound of the Lower City’s heart. Up one corridor and down another, taking a long flight of stairs one slow and careful tread at a time. Resting, sometimes, as she was able.
Xhea’s knee wanted her to stop, but she could not, would not. She had always thought best when she was moving, as if her body’s motion might shake free some forgotten fact or twist the world around her until she might see it from another angle. But what possible solution could she find by taking another step, another flight of stairs? What might she earn from the pain of her motion beyond fresh bruises and stiffness to greet her with the morning sun?
Her mind raced. We need to gather defenses, or help others to fight the poorer Towers, or create some sort of weapon, or…
Her imagination failed her. That, or her will to lie to herself.
“Can you think of a way to stop them?” The words slipped from her mouth unbidden. “The Spire. Lozan and the other Towers. Any of it.”
A long moment passed, then Shai shook her head. “No.” The desolation in her voice said what the word did not.
Xhea stopped, resting her free hand on an age-grimed railing. Her stomach twisted at the thought of the empty air beyond that railing, the long fall to the shopping corridor below; and so she looked at Shai’s face, at the water-stained ceiling above them—anywhere but down.
“I keep trying,” Shai said. “I keep thinking that if I try hard enough—if I were clever enough, powerful enough—then I could fix this. Make them stop, or turn the Spire’s attack aside, or… I don’t even know.”
“Let me guess. You’ve thought of a shield, a weapon of our own, some way to reflect the Spire’s power back at them—”
“A way to disperse the magic of their attack harmlessly, or create a storm to knock them out of the sky—”
“—finding a way for everyone to escape to the ruins and not starve, not freeze to death this winter—”
“—using your dark magic to undo some key point that holds the whole City together—”
“—falling on our knees and begging them not to do it—”
“—working together, just the two of us, to stop them.”
“Oh, right,” Xhea said, pretending to slap her forehead. “Our secret plan to save everyone. What was it again?”
“Magic, of course.”
Xhea laughed, she couldn’t help herself—nor, after a moment, could Shai. They laughed until tears ran down their cheeks and the empty halls echoed with the sound. Hysteria, Xhea thought, and laughed some more. It felt good, in spite of everything.
At last Shai said, “Maybe if it was one Tower.”
“Or two.”
“Perhaps. Maybe then we could do something. But this…?” There was no fear in Shai’s expression now, none of the anger and panic that had defined their afternoon. Only blank shock—confusion as to how it could have all gone so terribly, awfully wrong. “Nothing I could do would have any effect on the Central Spire.”
Tell her she’s wrong, Xhea told herself. Hadn’t she always fought back, no matter the odds? Fought to stay alive, fought to be something, anything, but another abandoned child ground to nothing in the dirt of the Lower City streets. Together, they’d fought Allenai and Eridian, just the two of them. Xhea had fought the death sentence of her injury, and the weight of her depression; she’d even fought Farrow, in her way.
And Shai? She was a Radiant, one of the most powerful magic wielders in the City, living or dead. The power she could bring to bear made the magic of even the City’s elite seem dim by comparison.
There should have been nothing that could stand against them. Xhea smiled. Oh, if only.
Tell her she’s wrong, her heart said. But she couldn’t.
Instead, Xhea raised her hand to the spelled tether that joined them as if the gesture was a question.
“It’s growing stronger,” she said. “The link. Or changing, maybe, as we use it.”
A nod.
Xhea remembered her earlier wish that she could speak to Shai through that line. “Do you think that there’s some way we could use it? Speak to each other, or send messages?”
“It didn’t work before,” Shai reminded her.
Xhea shrugged. It was true—they’d tried. But that had been only days after their joining, when they had started to realize that more flowed between them than magic.
Besides, she knew that a tether could carry sound; even now she remembered Shai’s scream echoing to her all the way from Eridian when the Tower had attempted to bind Shai to those walls. And who knew what else the dark magic binding she’d wrought could do? For all that she’d woven that dark length, its workings remained a mystery.
“We can at least try.”
Shai touched the tether almost hesitantly, and light swirled around her fingers like a flower’s petals unfolding. That power flowed into the tether, vanishing.
Xhea closed her eyes, trying to concentrate only on the tether and the message that Shai had sent through it. Before, the sensations and images had struck quickly and without warning. Now, she frowned, struggling to detect anything at all.
Was there such a thing as emotional static? If so, that’s what she was getting: the magical equivalent of white noise.
There. Xhea blinked and drew back as something hit her with an almost physical force against her sternum. A rush of heat, and then a wave that felt almost like sorrow, almost like longing, washed over her. She caught a glimpse of…
“A chair?” Xhea opened her eyes and blinked in confusion.
“It worked?” Shai sounded surprised.
“If your goal was to convey an important message about the existence of sad furniture, then yes, I guess so.”
“What do you mean, sad?”
“Melancholy, maybe?”
“Oh.” Shai looked embarrassed. “I was trying to share with you an image of my room at home. I mean, in Allenai. Where I grew up.”
Xhea snorted. “You send a meaningful image of your childhood, I get a sad chair. This method of communication is not without its problems, I see.” She laughed like none of it mattered, and tried to shake off the lingering sadness. Tried to avoid thinking about the meaning of that sorrow.
No secrets, she thought. No lies. Not anymore. True as those words were, Xhea couldn’t help but wonder what Shai would think of her if she heard the restless thoughts that even now flickered through her brain, edged, cutting. She didn’t want to see her friend recoil; didn’t want to see the disappointment on her face when she learned who Xhea truly was, in her heart of hearts.
Stop it.
Xhea sent the first thought that came into her mind, twin to Shai’s own sending: an image of the apartment where she’d lived when she was younger. The wide, dirty windows lit with the sunset’s fading gray, dust motes swirling in the bands of light. The smell of dinner cooking, a jumble of food scraps boiled and called soup. And a figure sitting, head bowed, in the corner of the room. A slim needle glinted in her hand as the girl made stitch after careful stitch in a blanket made from clothing too torn to be mended.
Abelane.
Shai’s eyes flew open. She stared at Xhea in silence.
Why did I have to send that? It had to have been the sorrow and nostalgia in Shai’s sending that conjured the image from the depths of Xhea’s mind.
“I saw Abelane,” Shai said. “Sunlight and windows.”
“Yes. It worked.”
But Shai’s look was so intent that Xhea wanted to turn away, or shrug, or say something, anything, to deflect that attention. She didn’t expect Shai’s next words.
“You were happy.”
Xhea blinked. Of all the words to describe her childhood, “happy” had never made the list. But that day? That moment?
“Yes,” she said softly.
It hadn’t been anything special—no celebration, no holiday, nothing. Even so, it had been a moment that she remembered, even clung to; an image that surfaced when she felt the most alone.
The memory of being loved.
She did not need that memory now, did not turn it over in her mind the way she once had, as if it were a stone to be worried smooth by her attention. Did not need to rage over it the way she had at other times, the truth of her abandonment made clear.
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