Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Wen made to move, to turn away, but Shai held him. She watched as emotions played over his features with the speed of lightning: hurt and anger flashing to sorrow and grief and things that she could not name.

  “For him,” Wen said at last, and his voice was broken. He looked to his son and Shai loosened her hold, letting him turn, leaving only a single hand resting on his shoulder. “For Brend. He never loved this work, but what else did I have? This is all I knew how to give to him. And I thought that maybe if he was here, and I was here, then maybe, maybe…”

  Wen blinked and looked away. Swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “Then maybe,” he whispered, “Brend could forgive me.”

  Shai did not know what had happened between them; whether Wen spoke of some great hurt, or only the many small things that might build a wall between a parent and their grown child. It did not, in the end, truly matter. For she thought again of her own mother, curled in upon herself; she thought of the things that she herself had done or failed to do. She knew the hurt that could exist between people who loved each other, and how anger and disappointment could weave through that love until it seemed impossible to tell one from the other.

  “And him?” she asked instead. “Why do you think Brend is here?”

  Wen opened his eyes and looked at his son. They seemed so alike in that moment: not just their dark hair, the shape of their eyes, the line of nose and jaw that spoke of their shared blood, but their expressions. The way their heads bowed toward the floor and their shoulders sagged with something that Shai could only name defeat.

  Then slowly Brend straightened.

  “Dad?” he said. Not in reply to anything Shai or Wen had said; for him, there was only the sound of his own unanswered words. Still he spoke. “Dad, if you’re here—”

  Shai released Wen, and the old man turned to his son. Reached for him with one unsteady hand.

  “I’m here,” he said. “I cannot be anywhere else.”

  Wen was bound by his tether, unable to leave this place, this piece of his history and all the fragments of the past that it contained. Yet Shai did not think that he meant those physical limits.

  “Dad,” Brend said again, raising his voice. The word echoed, catching in corners and returning in flicks and flutters like the sound of a bird’s wings.

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  A pause, then: “I can’t save it,” Brend said. “Everything you’ve built. I’ve tried but there’s not enough time.”

  Brend looked to the ceiling and captured sunlight fell upon his upturned face, shining across the tracks of his tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. But I tried, Dad. For you, I tried.”

  The things that one will say when no one’s there to hear.

  Because she’d seen how Brend stood when Xhea was present: the stiffness of his posture, his forced and overly formal manner. There was none of that now; only an open vulnerability that Shai thought Brend shared with no one.

  Yet his father could hear those words—words that one might whisper at a funeral, bowed over the casket. Words said only when it was far too late to change anything.

  The past could not be changed, or their words truly shared. Shai was not Xhea, able to give voice to the dead; and this was not the time to pass messages with her airborne light.

  No need, in the end, to stand between these two.

  “I’m going to dismantle the spells,” Brend said, and his words had the sound of a decision made. “I’m going to open the doors and let them inside. There are kids outside, Dad. Little kids and their families. Other people, too—people who will steal the things you’ve built. People who will destroy them and feel no regret. People who…” He shook his head, wiped away his tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Brend said again. “I know I’m not the son you wanted. But I tried.”

  He went to the warehouse doors, hidden these long years behind layered spells. The building was disguised as a ruin—a place in no way fit for shelter or protection. Spells, too, were used to provoke feelings of nervousness and caution; spells that pricked the deepest part of the human brain, saying: Danger. Threat. Don’t go here.

  One by one, Brend unraveled his father’s complex workings, and one by one the spells fell. Shai had not been aware of the pressure of the bright magic flowing through the warehouse’s walls, only felt as that power faded away.

  In silence, the two ghosts followed Brend as he threw open the warehouse doors and stepped into the gathering darkness, the light from the daylight spell shining out into the ruins like a beacon.

  Beside her, Wen watched as his son called out to the family that Shai had seen in the nearby ruins, knives clutched in their hands. Already, they had been staring—shocked, Shai thought, at the building that had suddenly appeared before them, no destroyed hulk but a structure strong and straight and true. They stared, too, at Brend as if he was but a mirage, a dream of salvation that would vanish if they reached for it.

  “Hurry!” Brend called, beckoning. “Inside, quickly, before the walkers come.”

  That word—walkers—got them to their feet. The parents and elder siblings created a ring around the younger children, guarding them as they hurried across the street, their few belongings bundled on their backs.

  They stepped inside the warehouse and their eyes went wide, blinking at the light and the laden shelves. But Brend had already ventured forth again. Through the open door, Shai could hear him calling to other Lower City dwellers, inviting them into the warehouse’s shelter and protection, asking them to spread the word.

  Slowly, refugees filed inside and claimed corners of the vast space, fitting themselves in between the shelves. Shai watched as once again Wen looked around at what he had built, his expression so different than the one he’d worn but moments before.

  “If I’m to have a legacy,” Wen said slowly, “it won’t be this place, will it? Not these walls, not these things. Not anything I found or sold.”

  He knelt unseen by a little boy’s side. The boy’s pale skin was smudged with dirt and ash, the tracks of tears creating bright lines down his cheeks. But he was not crying now. Instead, he sorted through a stack of artifacts under his older brother’s watchful eye, and exclaimed over the things he found there. He held up some sort of kitchen instrument, two whisks connected by gears turned by a small hand crank, and puzzled over it. Spun the crank, and laughed as the whisks twirled, heedless of the rust that cascaded down or the grinding sound of the old metal.

  “But maybe I can be remembered for this.” Wen lifted his eyes and looked at his son, ushering more refugees through the doors. “I can be remembered through him, and what he did this night.

  “It won’t last,” Wen said, and the words sounded like a revelation. “Time destroys everything. But it matters now.”

  Shai smiled as she said, “Yes.”

  Perhaps there would come a day when someone would weep over the history they would lose here; the history, too, that would be destroyed in the Spire’s attack tomorrow. All the pieces, big and small, that spoke of the city that had come before and the world in which those ancient people had lived; all the pieces of lives so different from their own that they were nearly impossible to imagine.

  But here, now? Looking at that child laughing—looking at the refugees as they stumbled inside, their fear turning to wonder—there were no regrets.

  Wen watched as Brend worked, an urgency and passion in his movements that made the City man all but unrecognizable—at least to Shai. In Wen’s face? There was only love. Only pride.

  “He’s a good man,” Wen said. “Isn’t he? A good person.”

  Shai had barely spent more than an hour in Brend’s presence, and yet she nodded. For whoever else he was, whatever else he did, she could not watch him save families, save children, and say anything else.

  “He is.”

  “I’m so proud of him.” Wen smiled and looked to her. “Will you tell him that? Can Xhea? Please tell him.” T
ears stood in his eyes, bright, shining, and he did not brush them away.

  “He already knows.” Shai took Wen’s hand, warm within her own. Already it felt fainter, less substantial. “But we’ll tell him anyway.”

  “Thank you.” His voice was almost too quiet to be heard.

  Wen did not say anything else, only stood smiling as he watched his son. Shai held his hand and stood with him, feeling his fingers become as mist within her grasp, watching as the light of his surviving spell shone through him. Watching as one legacy fell, slowly, slowly, and another grew around them.

  At last Wen slipped from the world and was gone.

  It was a long moment before Shai moved. She did not laugh or weep—only felt the world echo around her, soft and slow, as some part of her yearned to go in Wen’s wake.

  But she was needed. Shai reached for the tether bound to the center of her chest and held to it, drawing strength from that bond—strength that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the person at the other end of that line.

  Why did you stay? She had asked Wen that question; yet it had been so long since she’d asked it of herself.

  Once she’d felt torn, drawn toward so much unfinished business that it seemed she was but a rag toy that threatened to tear in two. So many failed responsibilities, so much guilt and regret; and through it all the weight of her own failure.

  If such things were not gone now—and they weren’t—they no longer had the power to hold her. No more did they drag at her, commanding her attention in their silent, recriminating voices.

  No, for all that she struggled to make a difference—make things better, if only in some handful of small ways—there was only one reason that she stayed. One thing, beyond all else, that was worth transcending death.

  Xhea.

  Perhaps they could not save everyone; perhaps there was no way to stop what was happening, no matter what they tried. But they had already rescued each other more times that she could count—in more ways than she could count. Shai would do everything that she could to help these people, because she didn’t know how to do anything else; but in the end it was for Xhea that she stayed.

  In spite of everything, something in that thought made her smile.

  Shai looked around. Some of the refugees had already sent armed runners into the ruins to find and guide others back to the warehouse. Inside, shelves were being pushed aside as people found places to sit and breathe and believe, if only for a moment, that they might live until dawn.

  Through it all, Brend was there, seemingly in his element—directing, instructing, distributing goods and soliciting recommendations. Wen was right to be proud.

  They did not need her. But there were only so many people who were within reach of the warehouse, and the span of newly inhabited ruins was vast indeed. So many remained unprotected, hoping that the dark and quiet might hide them.

  Too many targets for the night walkers to find. Too many dark hours remaining until dawn.

  With one last look at the warehouse and the people now safe within its strong walls, Shai sped out into the night.

  A noise woke Xhea from a deep, dreamless sleep. She froze, every muscle tense as she listened.

  She heard the click of the apartment’s door closing. Footsteps—soft, muffled—in the room beyond.

  Xhea assessed her options. She had her cane and the blankets in which she curled; though, lost in those blankets’ embrace, Xhea did not think she could rise quickly or quietly. She had no knife, no spell, no way to cause a distraction. If she screamed, would anyone respond? She doubted it.

  The footsteps that crept toward her were not a child’s, not another dark magic user. Eyes closed, feigning sleep, Xhea looked into the magical spectrum and saw the glow of bright magic in the hall beyond—a dull glow in the shape of a person. As she watched, the intruder came to stand in the open bedroom door and rested a hand on the doorframe.

  Xhea drew hard on her power, stifling a gasp at the effort; the binding was little looser than before, and she paid for the thin thread of magic with pain. Yet the intruder did not pull a weapon or gather a spell, only stood in the doorway, watching.

  Xhea hesitated then looked closer, seeing not the Enforcer she’d expected, but only a stoop-shouldered person, their breath quick with fear.

  Slowly, Xhea sat and opened her eyes.

  “You’re awake,” the intruder said. Her voice was soft, her words subtly distorted by the masking spell over her face.

  It was one of the servants Xhea had seen earlier, the one who’d carried the towels. Yet there was something else, too. Something in the woman’s stance, the way her long-fingered hand clutched at the doorframe—something, perhaps, in that voice—was familiar.

  “No thanks to you,” Xhea muttered. The words came without thought; the fear that had bound her tongue was leaving her, as was the tide of adrenaline on which it had been borne.

  Still, she didn’t want this woman—the Spire’s servant, the so-called nobody—to see her hands shake, and so she shrugged and carefully pushed her nest of blankets aside.

  Xhea expected an apology; strange, that desire, yet she only noticed it when an apology was not forthcoming. That more than anything made her turn back to the servant, narrowing her eyes.

  She had a slender build, her curves hidden by the uniform’s severe cut. Her callused hands were marked with half-healed cuts and bruises, and her skin was pale in a way that made Xhea think it had been a long time since she’d seen sunlight. She was a woman, no scrawny teen like Xhea herself, and yet she didn’t look old.

  She held nothing: no towels or sheets, no cleaning supplies, no message, spelled or otherwise. She only stood, poised, as if waiting. As if unsure what to do next.

  “What do you want, anyway?” Xhea asked, sounding every bit the angry adolescent she surely looked.

  “Manners,” the woman snapped, and Xhea blinked. The woman, too, seemed to take a mental step back, as if surprised that word had come from her mouth.

  And something in that word, or the speaking of it—

  Something in her tone, or the subtle shift in her stance—

  Something, something—

  No, Xhea thought suddenly, almost violently, and recoiled from her thoughts as if they were knives.

  Yet they lingered, growing stronger as the woman moved toward the bed and Xhea at its end. I’m trapped, Xhea realized; the woman stood between her and the door. Even so, she was not afraid.

  Because she knew this woman. There was something about her that, in spite of everything, said safety.

  Comfort.

  Home.

  The woman touched the neckline of her uniform, unbuttoning the collar to reveal a shining ring of metal around her neck. Xhea would have said it was a necklace; yet despite its shine, it looked neither decorative nor beautiful. Magic flowed through it in an unending loop; magic flowed from it, up and over the woman’s face in a waterfall of blurred, shimmering light.

  The woman hit some unseen switch and the masking spell fell away. She pushed her dark hair back from her face with one hand, fingers trembling. Tried to smile.

  “Hello, Xhea,” she said softly.

  Xhea could not smile. She could not shout, though she wanted to; she could not weep. She could not, for a long moment, do anything but stare.

  A word rose like a lump in her throat, a word that refused to be swallowed back unspoken. A name, once more dear to her than her own.

  “Abelane.”

  “I thought it was you,” Abelane said. She sounded sad, somehow, even as she tried again to smile.

  Xhea just stared and stared and stared.

  Because it was her, it was Lane; Xhea would know her anywhere.

  She was older, yes, as Xhea was. Her face was different: longer, her chin more defined, her cheeks no longer gaunt from untold months with too little food. That face was so familiar and so strange at the same time. Abelane had to be—what? Twenty by now.

  Yet, looking at
her, Xhea saw neither the woman who stood before her nor the room that surrounded them. She saw only their apartment on the edge of where the Lower City surrendered to the ruins. That near-empty, dusty space with its wide windows and half-finished loft, the fire drum that had been their stove and heating both, the nest of blankets in the corner that had served as a bed.

  Abelane had rescued Xhea from the streets, and for years she had been Xhea’s whole world—her sister and mother, teacher and best friend. Together they had built a life for themselves out of scrap and ruin and nothing.

  Xhea thought of those days, the two of them scrounging and stealing, running the countless small cons that had enabled them to keep going, keep eating, to be safe and sheltered for one more night. She thought of the nights when she had curled in the nest of dusty blankets near Lane’s shoulder, close enough that she could feel the older girl’s warmth, but not so close that Xhea might accidentally touch her. It had only been when she was asleep that Lane had looked her age: just a handful of years older than Xhea herself, for all that the girl had cared for her and taught her everything she knew.

  For years they’d been family to each other. There were few memories from her childhood worth keeping, and Lane featured in all of them.

  And then Lane had just vanished. Abandoned her or died, and Xhea had never known which was worse: the death of the only person that she’d ever loved, or knowing that Lane might have just gone without a word or a backward glance, leaving her alone.

  Xhea had woken one morning to see Lane’s bed empty, her quilt folded neatly, her shoes and jacket gone from by the door. She had thought Lane had just stepped out to get breakfast; but hours passed, and then days, and she never returned. Xhea had only been nine years old.

  “You’re alive,” Xhea whispered, in spite of herself.

  Echoing unvoiced: I thought you were dead.

  It was the obvious thing to say; it was true. Or, almost so.

  I wanted you to be dead—that was the full truth, the shameful truth, and the one that almost kept Xhea from speaking at all. Because it had seemed better at the time, young and hurt and in mourning, that Lane be dead rather than to have left her voluntarily.