How Shai had once envied that control, that expression that hid everything and gave away nothing and never, ever yielded. How she had hated it, even as she’d tried to school her own features in its hard reflection.
“I’ve had a lot of time these past weeks to think. Too much, perhaps. When you can’t change the choices you made, sometimes that’s all you can think about. What you should have said or done differently. It can eat you whole.”
Shai nodded, making the gesture broad enough that her mother could see it from across the room. Reconsidered and stepped closer, reducing the gap that her angry steps had opened.
Aliane tried to smile. Failed. “I couldn’t save you from your magic. I couldn’t give you the life I so desperately wanted you to have, and couldn’t change the world to make your path easier. I think I stopped trying, stopped hoping that things could be different. That was my mistake, and I regret it.”
There was, Shai thought, a stiffness to the confession that made her think it was not entirely spontaneous. They were words, perhaps, that her mother had repeated in her mind these past months—words she never thought she’d be able to tell Shai.
It was not an apology; Shai didn’t know whether she deserved one. Need a parent apologize for their choices? Need their child? Because she, too, wanted to apologize; wanted, foolishly, to collapse into her mother’s arms and beg forgiveness for the hurt and sorrow she had created just by living. By her magic, and the destiny it entailed.
By fighting, in the end, her fate and magic both.
She wanted to beg forgiveness, but would not—because, out of everything, that was not the part of her life she would do differently. Though she’d made mistakes since her death, learning to stand up for herself was not among them.
“What you’re asking, Shai,” her mother said softly, “for Allenai to intercede with the Spire, to create protest—dissent—among the Towers…”
“I understand what it would mean,” Shai said. “Of course I do.”
Her mother couldn’t hear her; even so, she seemed to understand.
“I’ll try, Shai, but I can’t promise anything.” She shook her head, and Shai tried hard not to see defeat in that gesture. The known futility of the effort. “This time, I’ll try. For you.”
It was, in the end, all she could ask.
Anger didn’t just disappear; nor did the complex tangle of emotions that knotted beneath that anger, complicating and fueling it. For the first time, Shai understood Xhea’s desire to pace. Anything to burn out the frustration.
Yet she could not stay in her home, could not stare at her mother’s grieving face any longer. Instead she walked through Allenai’s halls, past the library and her school, past the swimming complex and the upper shopping promenade and the paths that led to the offices at the Tower’s peak. At last she found her way to the garden at the Tower’s center, where trees had grown vast beneath Allenai’s living heart.
She paused, looking up. Allenai’s vast heart shone so brightly that she’d always thought it pale. Now, with no true eyes to blind, she could see the truth: color churned deep within it, a thousand fractal shades of red and violet, silver and blue. Staring at that complex, swirling magic, she couldn’t help but think of Farrow’s dark and sputtering heart, held in her incorporeal hands.
Gasping. Flaring. Dying. Its soft light tarnished gray.
Just one more thing she couldn’t bear to think about.
Shai closed her eyes and floated. Lost, aimless, she drifted, allowing the Tower’s light to fall upon her upraised face, her outstretched hands, her tired and aching heart.
Magic could not wash away hurt or anger, though sometimes it seemed that way. She felt Allenai’s power pour over her, shine through her, and imagined its warmth was akin to silence.
No words echoed through her head, again and again—not her mother’s or Xhea’s or even her own; no recriminations or regrets. Even the sound of the wind through the trees below her, the distant sound of voices, the burble of a nearby fountain, faded to nothing.
Quiet was peace—or so she had believed. She had always loved Allenai’s central garden and the silence that could be found on its pathways. Allenai’s garden was not as large as some Towers boasted, not as showy as others; it was not as wild or glorious as those in the Central Spire. But it was hers—or it had been.
Now, as all else fell away, the quiet she’d so prized felt like stagnation.
If she stripped away the words and the anger, the frustration and the futility of everything she’d tried, what was left? She felt like an insect caught in a spider’s web. To do nothing was to allow death to creep close as if accepting its inevitability. But to fight would only wrap her tighter and tighter in those invisible bonds, earning nothing but fear.
Shai’s hands curled into fists and slowly relaxed. She sighed, struggling to calm herself.
There are always the spell generators, she thought, thinking of the metal spires left on Farrow’s rooftop. She’d lost but a span of hours on her futile mission; that was not the same as defeat.
Yet it felt that way, because for a moment she had believed that she was going to turn the tide. She snorted softly in derision. As if a single plea might save the Lower City when nothing else had.
Her mother would try to help—but for all her previous optimism, Shai knew those efforts would come to nothing. A dead girl and a grieving Councilwoman on compassionate leave. Some champions.
She understood what Allenai’s council would say and the reasons they’d give to remain impartial. What possible benefit could Allenai gain from intercession? Much to risk and little to gain. Shai had come asking, but what value could she offer in return?
Only herself.
That was the true reason she was angry. Not her mother, not even Allenai; only herself. For she held a solution in her hands as surely as she’d held Farrow’s heart—and she did not know if she was strong enough to use it.
She could surrender—willingly return to the fate she’d feared all her life, and had so narrowly escaped. Allenai’s council would not turn her away. In return she could demand that they help the Lower City and its people.
But here she was.
Above her, the intense magic of Allenai’s heart roiled. All the magic of Allenai’s citizens concentrated there, flowing in before surging back out to the Tower’s systems. Some part of her magic was surely there, too, little though she could see it.
Her magic, and that of Allenai’s other Radiants, bound to these walls. Because there were others, few though they were. As a child, she’d only known one. Again and again she’d asked to meet the others, only to be put off, her questions turned aside, until after her Last Binding. Then, still wearing her long, plum-colored dress from the ceremony, she’d been brought to the chamber above Allenai’s heart where the other Radiants lived.
Though “lived” wasn’t strictly the right word.
She’d stared, stricken, at those crystalline boxes, unable to hide her horror. “They’re just beds,” one man had told her. “Just like hospital beds.” Another had explained that the Radiants were alive and comfortable within, that the Tower cared for their every need—that they felt no pain or hunger, but slept, dreaming beautiful dreams.
Shai hadn’t been able to see those shapes as anything other than glittering coffins.
In the time leading up to her death, she had tried not to think of those boxes or the people they held, the Radiants’ features obscured by the faceted crystal. Now they were right there, just on the other side of Allenai’s heart. Like her, neither truly living nor wholly dead.
I could go back, she thought. To save the Lower City, I could just surrender; dream those beautiful dreams. Perhaps it won’t be so bad.
She shook her head. It wasn’t that she was scared—or, rather, it wasn’t only fear that stopped her. But giving herself to Allenai would mean surrendering Xhea as well, or severing the link between them. Shai’s power would belong to the Tower, every last spark—and Xh
ea would die, consumed by her dark magic’s hunger.
She could surrender herself—but Xhea? Never.
Shai wanted to fly up to that room—not to join the other Radiants, but to free them. She could imagine unraveling the dark magic bindings that held them to broken life unending or tied their spirit to a body not their own.
But her actions would not be seen as mercy, but sabotage. Without the Radiants’ power, Allenai would starve, as Farrow had. The Tower’s systems would become erratic, its businesses would struggle, its council would lose political power. Bit by bit, the Tower would slip through the sky, losing hard-won position and altitude.
Allenai would fall.
She could imagine it: the great living structure hitting the ground and shattering, the force of impact too much for even a Tower to handle. All of Allenai’s people cast to the earth like confetti.
No, she could not free the Radiants. She knew it, even though the desire shuddered through her like a second heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” Shai whispered.
As if in reply, Allenai’s heart flared. A great arc of power rose from its surface like a rope of silver flame, and passed through her incorporeal body. Shai gasped in shock.
Then again, in sudden realization.
For she thought of holding Farrow’s heart cupped in her palms. Neither Farrow nor Allenai was human; she’d been told, time and again, that creatures of living magic did not understand human motives or feel human emotions. She did not believe it.
A Tower’s heart was not a spell; it had no lines of intent, no spell anchors, no magical signature. But in the shifting gray patterns of Farrow’s magic, she had seen meaning—as if thought and emotion had swirled before her, written in light and shadow.
Farrow had been afraid. It had been lost and hurting and desperately lonely.
She hadn’t heard a song like Xhea described. Even so, Shai had wondered, Is this what she feels when she speaks to the Lower City? Maybe it was different; but—as she’d looked into Farrow’s very being, felt its life press against her hands—she had not thought so.
What was Allenai but that same creature, that same heart, writ large? It was older and more complex, its body so vast that it had once seemed the whole of her world—but it was the same, too, in the end.
If she could speak with one, why not the other?
Allenai’s council might not be swayed by her plea, and dismiss the arguments Councilwoman Nalani mustered in the Lower City’s favor—but what if Shai ignored the council entirely? Why couldn’t she beg help from the Tower itself?
Shai rose, rushing higher as if buoyed by hope. Allenai’s flaring light filled the whole of her vision.
Unprotected, there was danger in drawing too near to the raw magic of a Tower’s heart—but, dead, she had nothing to fear. So close, Allenai’s magic swept over her like a strong wind, making her hair fly about her face. It was warm, even hot, but Shai did not fear burning; instead, her own power flared in echo as if she might rival that light.
It won’t know me, she realized. Because this wasn’t just Allenai anymore, wasn’t quite the same heart in whose light she’d bathed as a child. It was Eridian, too, or a new entity created from the merging of each—she knew not which.
Even so, Shai reached out with not fear but hope. She touched Allenai’s heart with a single shining hand.
Light. White, sharp, blinding.
Magic so intense that it erased thought, sensation, memory.
A moment passed, an hour—Shai did not know. White surrounded her; it was a color, a shape, a texture. White like the taste of spring rain.
And then: color. Faintly at first, she saw light touched with gold—sunlight. There came a whisper of some darker shade, like a cloud hinting at rain. Then more: a blush of pink, a flicker of orange, a slow twining tendril of green.
It’s speaking, Shai realized. Speaking or thinking, or perhaps there was no difference between the two. Speaking—but not to her. Despite her magic, Allenai hadn’t even noticed her presence. Against its immensity—the power of so many citizens, so many Radiants, so many lifetimes—she was so very small.
For a moment, Shai wanted nothing more than to lose herself, flow into that light the way water flowed into a pool. Because for all its raw power, there was peace in the Tower’s heart.
Beautiful dreams, Shai thought, unbidden. She pushed away the thought and the desire from which it was born. Instead, she spoke.
“Hello,” Shai whispered. Only words—because, despite her skill with weaving pure magic, she did not know how to shape a pattern of greeting. What shape spoke of awe or peace, hope or supplication?
The Tower responded.
Shai had never heard magic, like Xhea could; but for a moment there seemed to be a sound like a vast chorus on the edge of her hearing. She could almost taste Allenai’s magic, sweet and sharp and lemony.
She pushed the sensations away, trying to focus only on those that she might understand.
Color, shape, pattern. Light swirled in response to her greeting, purple and blue spirals lit with wire-sharp sparks. Allenai was surprised, she realized; it was curious, but hesitant, unsure. Shai reached for it with fingers outstretched, afraid that the being of light and magic for which she’d once lived would reject her.
Instead, magic flared in answer.
It was only color and light; but in those patterns Shai saw arms opening wide to embrace her and soft lips smiling. She felt warmth close around her like a soft blanket. She smelled cinnamon buns and earth.
In a language that had no words, Allenai spoke: Welcome home.
Shai wanted to weep, or perhaps to laugh. She did both, tears and sound alike flowing into Allenai’s living heart.
Is this what I’ve been afraid of? There was no pain here, no strife; no need, even, to struggle. She felt the Tower around her and the lifeblood of its magic flowing through its walls; she felt the bright sparks of its citizens and saw hints of their lives, all those myriad loves and hopes and sorrows. She felt the swirl of Allenai’s defensive spells, and the rise and fall of the other Towers, and the ground so far below.
Lost in wonder, Shai forgot herself and simply drifted, warm and welcomed and home.
She did not realize that she was dissolving until her tether to Xhea pulled her back with a shock. Power flowed into her through that link—not bright magic but dark, reminding her of other things. Solidity. Life and breath and the pains of living. Sunlight to sunset, dusk to night. Stars’ bright sparks against the sky’s perfect black.
Two hands, touching.
Shai took a deep, shuddering breath, or tried to, and pulled herself back from the edge. As she drew away, she felt Allenai’s questioning—saw its brief confusion as a swirl of orange and blue.
But she had a purpose. With her mother, she’d had to craft a careful argument. Here, there was no need for such struggle.
Instead she thought of the Lower City as she’d first known it—those broken buildings, those broken people—and what she’d come to learn. The Lower City as a living, changing entity.
“The Lower City is alive,” she whispered, and sending the words the way she’d pushed a thought to Xhea through their link: the knowledge carried by magic.
She’d thought to start simply, and yet felt Allenai’s sharp curiosity; it pulled at her, thoughts swirling. Thoughts, words, magic: they flowed from her without her conscious bidding, a trickle of information that became a stream, a river, a flood. The Messenger and the chaos in his wake; the Central Spire’s orders, and the belief that the Spire’s true goal was to kill the living Lower City.
Allenai pulled, and Shai found herself thinking of the Lower City—of the streets and buildings and the twisted underground passages; of Farrow held aloft in its black vines; of the people, running, struggling. In memory she saw the Lower City’s heart, that span of impenetrable black, and Farrow’s, small and stuttering within her ghostly hands. She saw the City citizens and their spool of wire, the denotation
s within Edren—the people of the poorer Towers taking and taking and giving nothing in return.
When Allenai started drawing on her memories of her life and death, her fear of her Radiant magic and a lifetime bound to Allenai’s walls—when it pulled forth thoughts of Xhea and what she meant to Shai—she drew back.
“Enough.” Shai retreated until only her outstretched hand touched Allenai’s heart. The Tower’s patterns swirled in confusion, but it complied.
“Will you help us?” she asked.
Its reply was cascading blue and gold, magic that smelled like citrus and cherry blossoms, burning leaves and tar. Shai stared into the chaotic patterns, no longer able to tell one shape from another—unable to tell one color from another, so fast did they flicker before her.
Yet she could put words to that chaos. Let us think, small light. You have given us much to consider.
“My thanks,” Shai whispered.
She did not know how to convey her joy at this communion or her sorrow at leaving. Such things didn’t need words; they shone from her like light. Deep within Allenai’s heart, something swirled in reply.
Shai frowned and looked closer, thinking she had misunderstood—for it had seemed to speak of loneliness. How many thousands lived within Allenai, in Eridian-that-was? How many Radiants were bound to this heart? She did not know—yet none, she realized, truly spoke to the Tower. Not awake and aware; not as she had just done.
Small light, it had called her; or, perhaps, spark. It was almost a term of endearment. In spite of everything, it made her smile.
“I’ll come back,” Shai murmured. “If you’d like that. If you want me to.”
Magic arced around her as if it were dancing. Shai laughed, because that was answer enough.
Xhea looked out cautiously, but the curving hall was empty. No guards outside, no one waiting for her. Smiling, she slipped the needle back into its seam, then stepped from her room, pulling the door shut behind her.
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