Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Lin grabbed his things and stood, leaving only the tray with her barely-touched breakfast. “I’ll be back to check on you later, okay?” he said, not meeting her eyes, and hurried away. The sound of the door’s closing reverberated through the bare room. Xhea listened: his footsteps receded, then an elevator door opened and closed. She counted the seconds in silence.

  After two full minutes she pushed the breakfast tray away and untangled her legs from the blanket. Yet the twinge in her knee at even that much movement made her reconsider standing. After clumsily turning in the cot, Xhea managed to shift herself into the chair. It was still warm.

  She glanced at the pants waiting by the bedside. Later, she thought, ignoring her goosebumps. Heating, it seemed, was too good for a guest of her stature—or Orren’s re-engineers had yet to find a way to force air to the ruins of the upper floors. Neither would have surprised her.

  When no one came to force her back to bed, Xhea began to push the chair across the floor with her good leg. It was a slow and frustrating process, the chair’s metal feet squealing against the concrete, but she reached the door and rattled the handle. It was, of course, locked.

  She pulled a tool from her jacket pocket. Slim with a pointed end, she had no idea what Lin might have used it for; she hadn’t asked before she’d slipped it from the table and hidden it beneath her leg until he left. The door had no visible locking mechanism, but, squinting, she could just see a deadbolt between the door’s edge and its frame. Slipping her stolen probe into the doorframe, Xhea began the careful work of earning her freedom.

  The tool finally snapped an hour later, even surgical steel giving up in the face of the strongest deadbolt in the known universe. Xhea dropped the broken handle in disgust, watching as it rolled to the center of the room and lay there, as useless as she.

  She turned to stare at the bare expanse of wall beside her and the dimple in its center that might be a hole or a hidden camera or nothing at all. “I hope you’re finding this funny,” she said, and began the slow work of pushing herself back to the cot.

  Despite Lin’s promise to return, Xhea remained alone. The hours passed in slow tedium. It was only when she searched her pockets for distraction that she realized her last cigarettes were gone, along with her matches, any length of string long enough to be useful—and her knife. Of course they would take her weapons. They had no idea what it meant to her—nor would they care. Still she seethed.

  Xhea’s only distraction was her knee itself. By unfocusing her eyes and squinting, she could see past flesh and bone to the shimmering lines of Lin’s spell. Threads of energy wove through the joint, differences in brightness, density, and tone indicating hidden meanings at which she could only guess. She was no expert, but it seemed to be good work.

  Good, and fading. Despite Lin’s reinforcement, she could see flickers in the lines’ vibration, fraying ends, and bit her lip at the sight. For all her bravado, Lin’s warning echoed. Though she feared Orren and a lifetime of servitude within its ancient walls, she could not imagine how she’d survive if she could not walk at all. She focused on her power until it felt like a small, hard stone lodged beneath her breastbone.

  Evening had come before she was disturbed again. The door opened and a short woman stood in the frame, neat and plainly dressed with her dark hair pulled back and a clipboard in her hands. A small light hovered above her right shoulder, dispelling the room’s shadowed gloom. Xhea blinked, her eyes watering in the sudden light. She’d imagined what might happen if Orren recaptured her, but never had she thought that she’d be relegated to some late-shift administrative lackey.

  Well, that’s one way of putting me in my place.

  The woman crossed the floor to Xhea’s bedside, the heels of her sensible shoes ticking against the bare concrete. She settled in the plastic chair, adjusted her skirt, and began to review the notes on her clipboard, the words scrolling by at a flick of her pen—all without so much as a glance at Xhea.

  Hello to you too, Xhea thought in the silence. But what she said was, “You’re here because of what I said to Lin.” She knew she’d run a risk trying to talk to him about how he was being used, or why Orren wanted her.

  “What you did or did not say to your medical care provider is of no consequence in this conversation.” The woman flicked her pen, and more text flew by.

  “Then what is?”

  A pause, then the woman looked up, the slow lift of her gaze as full of meaning as the eyebrow quirk that accompanied the movement. “The past, Xhea,” she said. “Not to mention your current situation.”

  “You’re here to try to indenture me.”

  “Try?” The woman smiled slightly, a humorless expression. “I’m afraid that was long since done. You signed yourself into Orren’s keeping—” a brief glance at the clipboard “—more than five years ago. It is merely time to repay that debt.”

  Xhea snorted and crossed her arms across her chest, hoping the woman thought her shivers were due merely to cold. “As if the few measly renai you spent on me are worth this hassle to collect.”

  That smile again, dry and thin as old bones. “Shall I introduce you to the concept of ‘interest’?”

  “Sorry, try again—I’m not buying it. The pittance I owe isn’t worth the trouble you’ve taken to abduct me.”

  “Perhaps you are unaware, but your account also shows that you bear partial responsibility for the destruction of two medium-capacity storage coils—a cost that is indeed worth the effort.”

  Xhea gaped. The storage coils? She thought of the failed resurrection attempt, her hands and knife slick with blood, a man’s soul ripping at her touch—and they wanted to charge her for their blighted storage coils? A thought surfaced: better that than charge her with murder. A body’s death, a soul’s death—nothing could repay that debt.

  The woman continued, oblivious. “We acknowledge that you bear only partial fault for that particular . . . incident, and have adjusted the totals accordingly. For the storage coils, feeding and housing you during your period of residency, and the cost of attempting to collect on that debt to date, you owe an estimated fifteen years of service.”

  Xhea choked. “Fifteen—”

  “Now that total is based on an assumed productivity value from manual labor. Additional—or, say, more specialized—contributions would speed your repayment considerably.” The woman seemed only then to notice Xhea’s reaction. She frowned. “We gave you years, Xhea, to return on your own terms. You knew you had a debt to repay, and you chose to ignore it. Chose, too, to dodge the messengers we sent to request your return using rather less forceful methods.”

  “Messengers? Try thugs.”

  Again, that slow lift of her eyebrow. “You still have an overactive imagination, I see. The fact remains that the nature of your return was, if not at your choosing, at least a direct consequence of your actions.”

  “And now you’re holding me captive.”

  “With that leg, I hardly think you’d want to be up and walking.”

  “That makes it okay to lock me in here?”

  “If you were on the ground floor or in an unlocked room, would you run away again?” Xhea’s silence was answer enough. “Exactly. You’d be gone, and your debt would remain unpaid. We are merely taking appropriate precautions.”

  “This isn’t about my debt.” Xhea tried to keep her voice firm and forceful, and failed utterly. “You wanted to use me! You still do!”

  “Use you? Like Lin is used, when he heals? As a chef is used, when cooking your meals? You act as if we’re hurting you, giving you a bed and shelter, work to do that plays to your talents—and doesn’t involve scrabbling in the ruins for scraps. It’s clear you haven’t eaten regularly since you left here; you’re all muscle and bone, Xhea. You’ve barely grown.”

  Xhea shook her head, the defiant rattle of charms speaking where she had no words—for the woman was not wrong. “It’s my choice,” she managed. “You never asked what I wanted.”


  A thin smile. “Children rarely want what’s best for them. But if you were unhappy, you need have only said so. We could have arranged for a transfer to another skyscraper—found you another home, and worked out the debt later.”

  “As if you would have let me go.” Orren, giving one of their land-bound rivals a potentially useful asset, merely because she was unhappy? Never. And if they told no one of her ability to see ghosts, what use would another skyscraper have for her, lacking even the poorest magic? Besides, one only needed to look at her during those long months to know she was unhappy; it had been written in every move, every gesture, the sullen silences that she’d never really lost.

  “Did you even ask?”

  Xhea stared. Ask? Surely, the woman had lost her mind.

  The woman shook her head, and when she spoke her voice was weary and frustrated. “Of course not. Because it’s easier to see yourself as the victim. Exiled and taken advantage of—isn’t that it?” She sighed. “Child, the world is not out to get you. Orren has done nothing but care for you when you were hurt and in trouble. We have fed and clothed and housed you, now and for more than a year in the past—and yet you find it awful that we would ask you to contribute in turn. Is it too much to ask that you earn what you receive?”

  A slow flush climbed Xhea’s cheeks unbidden. The woman was trying to mess with her head—but it didn’t change that grain of truth, nor the way it burned to hear it spoken. Even with her face radiating heat, Xhea raised her chin, clenched her jaw, and stared.

  “You want me to believe,” Xhea said, teeth clenched against the words, “that this has nothing to do with Allenai and their missing ghost. Nothing to do with Eridian. It’s just coincidence that you wanted me back at the same time they sent hunters after me.”

  The woman capped her pen with an air of finality. “Child,” she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But if we have indeed spared you from a fate at the hands of the City proper, then perhaps you should be more grateful. After all, all we want of you is a bit of your time.”

  With that she stood and made her way to the door, the hovering light following obediently. One hand on the handle, she turned back only long enough to add, “And Xhea?” She gestured to the breakfast dishes at the bedside. “That’s the last free meal. The next you have to earn.”

  Or starve. The words resonated, unspoken.

  The door closed with a thud, and there was a click as the lock engaged. Xhea sagged back on her cot and closed her eyes against the return of darkness.

  Earn. As if she didn’t understand the value of food, warmth, and security. As if she didn’t know what it was to scratch and scrabble and steal, to carve such things from nothing with will and hands alone. She pulled the thin blanket to her chin, cot creaking beneath her. Orren wanted something from her that had nothing to do with her debt, that much she knew sure as breathing. Yet it didn’t make a single thing the woman had said untrue.

  Fifteen years, Xhea thought, and stared at the ceiling in silence.

  Night had fallen, Towerlight patterning the sky beyond the windows, when Xhea heard a scratch at the door. She stiffened, vulnerable on her cot in the middle of the empty room, a thin blanket her only defense. The sound came again: a scratch, then the handle rattled and the door opened just wide enough to admit Lin. He crept across the floor like a nervous, first-time thief, and crouched by her bed.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “They wouldn’t allow me to come any earlier.”

  “Wouldn’t allow?”

  Lin shook his head. “Doesn’t matter—I’m here now. How’s your knee?” He reached out, visibly bracing for her touch. Fifteen years, Xhea thought and drew back.

  “It’s fine,” she said.

  Lin stared, eyes unfocused, then shook his head. “No, it’s not—it’s weakening again. I’m so sorry, my work usually isn’t like this . . .” Again he reached, and again Xhea pulled away, wrapping the blanket tighter around her legs.

  He hesitated. “I know this is uncomfortable, but with a couple more days of treatment you’ll be walking again.”

  “I can’t afford a couple more days of treatment.”

  “I told you, I’ll pay—”

  “And what will I owe you?”

  Lin looked shocked, then shook his head in swift denial. “It’s not like that,” he stammered.

  “Then what is it like, Lin? Tell me. Why are they using you to get at me?”

  “Using—? No one’s—I mean . . .”

  Xhea leaned forward, the cot creaking beneath her. “Haven’t you asked what they want from me? Why they’re holding me here?” She gestured around the ruined room, the bare structure and the unbroken expanse of glass. “Ever wonder why you’re the only one they’ve let see me? Why you’re the only one allowed?”

  “I—”

  She’d rolled that question over and over as the long hours passed, knowing the answer. If she had a weakness here, it was Lin, the one person she’d almost trusted during her long, lonely year within these walls. But sometimes you have to leave someone behind.

  Xhea made her voice cold. “I don’t want you here. Not now, not ever again—get it?”

  “If this is about how I wouldn’t—how I can’t help you—”

  She cut him off. “I know Orren,” she said, low and angry, “and I know that it holds no safety, no warmth. No friendship that isn’t bought and paid for. They control everything here and nothing that happens is ever a coincidence.”

  “Not even your escape?” Lin’s voice was thin, brittle and breaking. His eyes, too, betrayed him: for all his newfound size, he was so young.

  She looked down at her hands and smiled, the lift of her lips like a knife’s slow curve. “Not even that,” she whispered, and knew it to be true. She didn’t look up when Lin rose, only saw the stiffness of his back, the hunch of shoulders drawn tight with anger.

  He paused at the door to look back, staring as he had on that night years before. “You know, Xhea,” he said, “you’re going to run out of people willing to try to be your friend, and then what’re you going to do?”

  She did not say anything, could not, and this time he was the one who walked away. It wasn’t until the door was long shut, his footsteps vanished into silence, that she wished to speak. Words lodged like stones in her throat: hard and cold, and as useless.

  “Wait,” she wanted to say. Or, “I’m sorry.” Or even just, “Talk to me.” As if she deserved to be forgiven. So long alone in the dark tunnels and rarely had she wished for the sound of another voice, living or dead, as she did in that moment.

  She didn’t know how to speak such words; only how to choke them back, how to twist and turn them until they hurt not in speaking, but in hearing. Words like rocks thrown. She thought of the line of Lin’s shoulders, the flat mask of Shai’s face, and knew she used her weapons well: once and again, she had drawn blood.

  Wasn’t that what she’d wanted? She felt an ache that had nothing to do with her injuries, and knew it was the only thing she had rightfully earned in days. The dirty dishes beside her should glimmer with the renai they represented, each morsel a mark in the tally of her debt. The ancient cot was Orren’s too, and its thin mattress and blanket. If she didn’t deserve friendship and had already taxed Orren’s so-called charity, let her take nothing more of either.

  The pants, though—those were hers. Replacement for the ones they’d cut away.

  She pushed herself to the cot’s edge and used the plastic chair to lower herself to the floor, leaving the blanket behind. The process was slow and painful, though her gasps were barely audible over the cot’s squealing springs. She wished she could crawl; instead she slowly dragged herself across the floor. Her new pants were soon mottled gray with dust and chips of broken concrete, and she shivered—from cold, from fear, she knew not which.

  At last Xhea collapsed in the corner to where the two walls of windows met. She who had run tirelessly through the Lower City now lay panting, exhausted and un
able to catch her breath. She looked at her trembling hands, the skin marred with near-black smears of blood, her myriad scrapes reopened. Behind her, the marks led like deepening footsteps from the cot to her corner in an uneven, stuttering trail.

  Pillowing one arm beneath her, she curled up and tucked her good leg toward her body for warmth. Still she trembled; the floor pulled the heat from her body like wax through a wick. She didn’t let herself think of the blanket she’d left behind; she’d been colder, and for far less reason.

  Ignoring her familiar fear, Xhea peered out the window. Down and down and down she looked: the shops and homes that huddled near the skyscraper’s base looked like toy blocks, dirty and damaged from too much use. Above, glimmering Towers and the shifting veils of their light obscured most of the sky. The Central Spire was somewhere overhead and behind her, and no amount of craning let her see more than a reflection of its glow: shadows cast slantwise, glints in window glass.

  She could identify only a few of the countless Towers scattered above her; their constant movement and transformations made most unrecognizable. But there, its deep hues almost lost against the darkening sky, was Allenai. She could just see its shape, long and needle-like, its center swelling with its central living platforms. Shai had said it was maroon, and yet the energy it exuded was far brighter, swirling and shifting until the Tower was all but lost inside the veils of its own power.

  I’m sorry, she thought to the distant Tower. Everything had gone wrong, it seemed. She had lost everything, as had Shai and Allenai, despite their intentions. If the Tower and its leadership were not innocent, neither were they guilty of all the crimes for which she’d blamed them. She looked away, searching.

  There: her eyes lit upon a Tower shaped like a stack of widening plates impaled on a single long spear, a shining gray that she thought to be green. It was no longer as Wen had described it to her; its shape was narrower, and its widest platform bristled with defensive spires like a crown of swords. Though still low in the sky, it was now positioned directly below Allenai, close enough to the City’s center that a streak of the Spire’s light shone along its mirrored sides.