Shadow City

by Francesca Flores

  “Good, but don’t tell her anything about it, just in case. The shipment isn’t the only thing we have to worry about. He’s planning to poison the Sentinel.”

  “I’m aware,” he said suddenly, his hands gripping the edge of the windowsill so hard, his knuckles turned white—reminding her of how he’d dangled from the edge of the train, his hands the only thing hanging on. “None of the Jackals realized I was on the train that day, so Bautix doesn’t suspect me yet, but he’s still in hiding and only sends messages at random. This morning, he sent a Jackal to ask me to brew the poison for him. He’ll pretend to want to negotiate, but he’ll slip the Sentinel poison while his men come through the secret entrances to take the Tower. Can you brew the poison, and make antidotes as well by the day of the shipment?”

  She nodded, her thoughts racing and the thrill of a new plan settling over her. “We’ll poison him instead. If he’s pretending to have a negotiation with them, he’ll have a drink of whatever he serves them so it won’t look suspicious. Convince him to put the poison in his cup too, and give him an antidote. But it will be fake. We’ll give the real antidote to the rest of the Sentinel, and Bautix can die in front of them while we stop his second weapons shipment from ever reaching the city. Turn his plan on its head. I’ll find a way to tell the Sentinel what’s happening.” Her eyes trailed north toward the Tower, and she considered Fayes’s notes, still tucked in her pocket. There’d only be one way into the Tower now—Fayes’s secret tunnels. She’d never imagined working with the Sentinel before, but if it would stop Bautix, she’d do it.

  Kohl nodded, then one side of his lips tilted upward in a smirk. “The first time he tried to kill me, he did it with poison. Now? The last time we see each other, I want to use the same weapon. I can only hope I’ll get to watch him drink it.”

  The words sent a chill down her spine. They would both do anything to get what they wanted, and even though she’d saved his life on the train, he would still come after her. So then, what did it matter, those notes he’d written, the relief in his eyes when he saw she was safe?

  Will I still go after him? she wondered, and his hands tightened over the windowsill again as if to mock her.

  Kohl met her eyes with a surprising softness in his own, and said, “I never thanked you for not letting me fall to my death on the train. For a moment, I really thought you would do it. Step on my hands, maybe. Slice through my fingers. Simply let me hang there until my grip slipped and you could laugh as I fell over the edge. For a long time, I thought that was what you wanted most of all.”

  She swallowed hard, trying to keep her face clear of emotion. “You don’t know what I want, Kohl.”

  As long as he still wanted the Dom, the plan was on; she couldn’t let him see that doubts and questions had sprung up in her thoughts. That was a weakness he might latch on to in order to win, and she could afford no weakness now.

  But as she walked away, the letters from the horse came to the front of her thoughts again. He had weaknesses too. Tilting her head toward him so the sunlight hit her face, she unstuck her throat and asked, “You could have come after me in the Tower and killed me before I ruined Bautix’s plans last month, Kohl. Why didn’t you?”

  A long pause passed before he answered, and she held her breath throughout it. His eyes flashed briefly with some emotion she couldn’t read. For a moment, she was certain he would ignore her.

  “You’ve been an influence on my life since I was fourteen, Aina,” he said, his voice quiet as the ash falling on the city. “I fear knowing what my life would be like without that influence.”

  As soon as his words trailed off, she turned away and walked down the stairs as fast as she could, not taking a full breath again until she reached the lobby of the train station.

  So Kohl feared something, after all.

  And maybe, when she’d saved him on the train, it was because she too feared knowing what her life would be like without him in it.

  26

  Once Aina reached Rose Court—which was, unsurprisingly, already back to normal business even after the fires, the rich not caring what happened farther south—she approached the harbor where she and Kohl had escaped from Fayes’s ship. When she reached the docks, she scanned the area for Diamond Guards.

  It was mostly empty except for dock workers and ship crew. Some sat on the edge of the docks, legs swinging over the river as they passed a bottle of firebrandy between them.

  None of them paid attention to her. She supposed the Diamond Guards weren’t here because the traitors no longer needed to pretend to do their jobs, and the ones who weren’t traitors were too busy dealing with the aftermath of the fire to stand around.

  Before heading to find a boat, Aina glanced behind her. The rain yesterday had smothered most of the fire, but smoke still curled into the air from the damaged buildings farther south.

  “Where will you go?” one of the crew employees sitting at the edge of the dock called then, and Aina turned to face them, the hair on the back of her neck prickling.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “We’re talking about where we’ll go when another war starts,” another of the men said before taking a swig from the firebrandy.

  Noting that he said “when” and not “if,” Aina swallowed hard before answering. “I’m staying right here.”

  They shook their heads slowly, as if she were a fool. But she wouldn’t abandon Kosín or Sumerand. Someone had to be here once the war ended, when the rain would wash away the scent of dead bodies and the sky would clear.

  “Well, where are you going now?” another one asked. “They’ve blocked ship travel out of the city while they try to sort out this mess.”

  Aina reached into her pocket, withdrew a gold kor and turned it, letting sunlight catch on it.

  “I need a small boat. Not to go out of the city. Just around it.”

  One of the men raised his hand in the air and she tossed the coin to him. He gestured for her to follow him and led the way down three more piers until they came to a grouping of four small boats with two oars each.

  “I’ll bring it back tonight,” she said, and without another word climbed into the boat and took up the oars. He grunted as if he didn’t believe her, but he and the other men seemed not to care about anything other than their eventual escape, and her gold kor would certainly help him in that.

  She wiped sweat from her brow before picking up the oars and beginning to row north, resuming the path she and Kohl had taken the other day. His face flashed in her thoughts then, his relief that she had survived … and then she pushed it away. Wondering what to do about Kohl wouldn’t help her now, and she’d need all her focus to make it to the Tower safely.

  A half hour later, when she was in the shadows of the bridge leading to the Tower, she reached into her pockets and withdrew the notes from Fayes. A couple of them were singed on the edges from the explosions, the weak paper catching quickly, but they were still legible. As Ryuu had said, it would be nearly impossible to get into the Tower by simply requesting an audience with the Sentinel, even for someone with his status. And after the explosions yesterday, the security would be even tighter.

  If she was going to show these notes to the Sentinel and convince them to do something about them, the best way would be to prove that they worked.

  Taking a deep breath, she picked up the oars again and rowed toward the other shore of the river. There was nowhere to grab on to and pull oneself to land; it was a sheer drop, at least twenty feet. Whoever decided to choose this path in or out of the Tower had no other options and would simply have to hope the currents of the river that day weren’t strong enough to pull them under.

  From her pocket, she withdrew a small flare to cut through the shadows cast by the shore and the bridge above. The secret entrance she searched for was a fold in the wall, one that you wouldn’t find unless you were looking for it. Using the flare, she searched each crack in the wall, every curve, moving downriver ab
out twenty feet to search there as well.

  Finally, after about an hour of searching, she found a deep crack in the wall. She stuffed her flare back in her pocket and rowed toward it.

  She could fit in there—and it would be a tight squeeze—but her boat certainly wouldn’t. She took off her shirt and trousers until she was in her underclothes, and rolled them into a ball that she could hold above her head. The last thing she wanted was wet clothing slowing her down.

  As she reached the secret passage and perched at the edge of her boat, the sun flashed a sliver of light into the entrance, revealing it briefly. She looked over her shoulder once more at the buildings she could see from here, at the smoke still curling into the sky.

  The city was coming apart at the seams, cracks and crevices opening in the walls and the ground where people like her could slip through and take advantage; kidnap the bones of the city and construct it in their own image; revel in the chaos and forge their new successes in the flames like a blacksmith making a sword for heroes.

  With everything in her, she would fight to make sure the wrong people weren’t the ones who did that. She held her breath and jumped off the boat.

  The cold pierced her skin, making her teeth chatter immediately. One hand holding her clothes above her head, she used the other to push herself forward through the water and then claw at the cliff walls until she wound her way inside a narrow passage.

  She swam in complete darkness, her breath and the ebb of water the only sounds. After long minutes, the walls around her widened and her shoes touched sand. Scrabbling for purchase, she walked as quickly as she could in the water, and eventually hit a wall.

  Feeling her way across this cavern wall, she began turning inward, deeper into the cave, and up ahead, light flickered against the walls.

  Moving faster, she soon left the water entirely as the path continued gradually upward. A new tunnel opened with a single torch in a bracket on the wall. Another torch hung from the wall twenty feet down. As she approached it, the sound of water sloshing against cave walls reached her. She soon reached the second torch and saw that the floor vanished into a cavern so deep, the light barely revealed anything. A rusted ladder led downward.

  She breathed in deeply, hoping she wouldn’t run out of oxygen in this cavern, and then began climbing down the ladder one-handed. Her other hand still held her clothes in a ball above her head. All of this reminded her of traversing the tunnels beneath the city last month with Teo, Ryuu, and Raurie to find Kouta, before any of them knew that Bautix was the real enemy.

  The ladder stopped abruptly at the same time that her feet met water.

  Looking over her shoulder and squinting through the faint light provided by torch above, she saw another dark crevice in the opposite wall and hoped that would be the exit.

  She descended the last few rungs and entered the cavern water. Teeth chattering, she swam as fast as she could to the other side. It was already colder here than outside, and her lungs began to seize with the effort to draw breath. Briefly glancing into the water, her limbs looked gray as the corpses she’d seen strewn about the city streets.

  Pushing through the last few feet of freezing water, she tossed her clothes onto the rock and began to pull herself up onto the small ledge. Then she noticed that the light didn’t reach all the way into the crevice. Rocks had fallen into it, possibly from the force of the explosions throughout the city the day before.

  The cavern grew deathly quiet as she considered what to do. She could leave, but their plan to stop Bautix would fall apart. He would break into the Tower with ease, kill the Sentinel, and take the country for himself. And if she didn’t do this, who would?

  Frustration curled through her at the thought. The Sentinel had never helped her when she was a child and death approached her on the streets, a bag of glue threatening to choke her. They’d never given her a way to support herself, like Kohl had. Yet here she was helping them when it was the last thing they deserved.

  But they wanted the same thing—safety, for themselves and their country. Just like she knew Kohl wanted to help the south too, and they were working together, so she would go to the Sentinel now. Putting aside her bitterness toward them, she withdrew a knife from her pile of clothes as well as a diamond from the stash Raurie had given her, then shoved the clothes to the side of the crevice to make room. She made a small cut on her arm, blood leaking onto the diamond and into the water. It sank down in little droplets toward the cavern floor. Holding up the diamond toward the fallen rocks, she whispered, “Cayek inoke.”

  A small rock fell, and the others trembled slightly. She swore, her voice echoing around the cavern once more. If that was all the spell could accomplish, then that had been a waste of a diamond.

  Her limbs had begun to feel numb. Coming here alone might not have been the smartest idea. Reaching for the rocky ledge, she began to pull herself out of the water—when a rumble sounded from ahead.

  The rocks separated, one cascading over the other, smaller ones first and then the ones as large as her head lodged near the bottom of the crevice. She scrambled backward on the ledge and her foot slipped on the slick rock. Heart in her throat, she fell back into the water with a hard slap against its surface.

  She held her breath just in time and opened her eyes to clear water lit by the torch above. Turning herself around, she swam toward the light, the cold making her limbs tight and stiff, but the surface was so close—

  Rocks from the crevice slammed into the water one at a time. Aina flung her arms over her head. A few rocks glanced off her arms and shoulders, but when she tried to pivot out of the way, one of the rocks slammed into her upper back. Gasping, she sucked in a gulp of water.

  It seared down her throat, putting fire in her lungs. She spun around, trying to find the surface or a flicker of torchlight, but suddenly there seemed to be light everywhere and nowhere at once. There was no way to tell what was below her or above.

  Panic flooded through her and she suddenly felt certain she would die here. But maybe, with all the death on her hands, she deserved it. Light seared across her vision, and for a moment she thought it was fire. But it was a pale silver light, with a red tinge behind it. Something about it reminded her of the fireworks brought in by Steels once a year for the end of summer. She’d gone to that event every year with her parents, cowering behind her father’s legs whenever the loud noise took over the night, but marveling at the patterns of light in the dark sky all the same.

  This time, the patterns coalesced into shapes, the curved figures of two women with hair that reached their ankles. One of them had bright silver hair, the other crimson red. Aina calmed, her breath coming naturally as if she spent all her time underwater. Her mouth opened a little and no water rushed to fill her lungs. She could tread easily, no longer panicking to reach the surface. She couldn’t explain it, but she was safe here now.

  “What is happening?” she asked, feeling like she might be talking to herself. Then, a suspicion entered her thoughts—whatever was happening, it wasn’t normal. Her mouth went dry even though she was surrounded by water. “Are you the Mothers?” she finally asked the two moving lights in front of her.

  “You’re our daughter,” they said, their voices chorusing and echoing in Aina’s ears like the melody of a harp. If that didn’t confirm they were the Mothers, nothing would. “Remember what we teach.”

  Aina frowned, not really wanting to remember their lessons because everything they taught would condemn her; their most common teaching was that all life was precious. Her entire existence went against that.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice challenging.

  “Because you, and all the people of this land, are in pain,” their voices chorused once more, and suddenly the figures in front of her grew so bright, Aina shielded her eyes with her hand. “You will fail unless you learn to face the real enemy. Embrace your weakness, or else you’ll succumb to it.”

  She bit her lip, having no clue what they mean
t. Weakness? Why would she want to embrace that? She couldn’t afford any kind of weakness.

  “Wait!” she said, but they were already fading away, bright light reducing to shadows in the dark cave waters. At the same time, their effect on the cavern water fell away; water flooded into her mouth and she clamped her mouth shut to avoid taking in any more of it.

  Swimming to the surface again, she spat out the water and pulled herself onto the rocky ledge ahead. She sat there sucking in gulps of air for long moments before moving again. The path ahead was clear, all the rocks that had been blocking it effectively cleared out of the way.

  She should be dead. She wasn’t.

  But the Mothers lived in the earth, in caves like these—it made sense for them to be here, of all places, and they’d stopped her from drowning. But why had they appeared to her? She was nothing like the real Inosen—like Raurie, Lill, June, her own parents. She left a path of destruction everywhere she went. Yet their words tugged at her: Because you, and all the people of this land, are in pain. For a moment, she felt the same, deep sadness she had while traversing the ruined city.

  She pulled on her clothes again, reveling in every touch of warmth. After putting them all back on, she knelt on the rocky ledge and stared out at the cavern water for another few moments.

  If Teo were here, she wouldn’t feel so cold. They would help each other stay warm, and if one of them succumbed to the cold, the other would find a way to go on.

  But if Kohl were here, they’d freeze to death together. Even if they never brought a knife to each other’s throats, they’d still end up killing each other slowly.

  The words in his notes came back to her: Sometimes I wonder if I let you live because I wanted to or because I’m too weak to end you. I hope we won’t have to find out.