Lark Ascending

by Meagan Spooner

  Text copyright © 2014 by Meagan Spooner

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  Cover and interior photographs: © Illustrart/Dreamstime.com (rusty metal);

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  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 11/15.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Spooner, Meagan.

  Lark ascending / by Meagan Spooner.

  p. cm. — (Skylark trilogy)

  Summary: The final volume in the Skylark trilogy finds Lark fighting her way back into the City Behind the Wall, the place where it all began and where she will finally discover the cause of the cataclysm that caused the world to fall.

  ISBN 978–0–7613–8867–8 (trade hard cover : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–4629–8 (eBook)

  [1. Fantasy. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S7642Lar 2014

  [Fic]—dc23 2013046702

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 7/15/14

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-4629-8 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-7449-9 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-7450-5 (mobi)

  FOR JOSH:

  THERE’S NO ONE I’D RATHER HAVE

  ON MY TEAM, FIGHTING FOR ME

  AND FOR MY STORIES.

  AND FOR ANDREW:

  WHO WILL ALWAYS BE THE VOICE OF

  MY SHOULDER DEVIL, TELLING ME

  TO WRITE THE HARDER, DARKER,

  MORE IMPOSSIBLE THINGS.

  PROLOGUE

  Their clockwork sun is rising. In these half-forgotten tunnels beneath the city, the sound is like the roar of a rainstorm, lashing my ears again and again. The swell of magic washes over me like a tide, flooding my senses; I taste copper, and I don’t know if it’s magic or blood from my bitten tongue. Breaking through their barrier drained me of every ounce of magic I had, making this surge overwhelming. It nearly drives me to my knees in the ankle-deep water. My sloshing footsteps are lost in the din as I stagger forward, bracing myself against the tunnel wall. The stone bricks are slimy to the touch, wet with decades of mildew and mold.

  I pull myself upright again, a moan echoing away from me down the tunnel. There’s no telling what security sensors they might have—for all I know, the city’s forces are on their way already, wondering what foreign danger breached their defenses for the first time in a century. I can’t be here when they arrive. I keep moving through willpower alone.

  It was Dorian who taught me how to do it. He deciphered the theory of it, spent months locked up in his house, poring over equations and diagrams. Sometimes in the night I’d awaken, consumed with fear and doubt about what lay in store for me. I’d look out my window and see, across the darkened sea of the Iron Wood, a single light—like the solitary lantern in a lighthouse, calling to me, drawing me to him.

  I always knew he could teach me how to get inside, but only I could break through the flawless metal dome enclosing the city. Only I am strong enough to magic iron.

  I’m too drained to even conjure a light, so I rely on the dim illumination that filters through the occasional grate in the street overhead. As the cacophony of the sunrise fades, I begin to hear the noise of carriages and foot traffic here and there as the city’s citizens shuffle off to begin their days.

  With the fading of the sunrise’s harsh magic comes the return of my senses. The city itself is an utter mystery to us—no outsider has been inside since before the cataclysm over a century ago. There are no maps, and I can’t risk showing my face aboveground until I absolutely have to. We don’t know how many people live here, or whether they’d recognize me as a stranger if they saw me. In the Iron Wood, we all know each other. We’d recognize a newcomer in a heartbeat.

  So I have to follow the scent of magic. The moment I crossed through their barrier I could feel it, a shining beacon in the hazy unknown. Though there is magic in the air here, most of it resides at the far end of the city, in a complex of buildings. I could see them lit up like stars when I scouted from the rooftop in the predawn hours before I retreated beneath the streets.

  If anything can tell me the secret of how this city survived the cataclysm that turned the rest of the countryside into ruins, it’ll be there. Dorian thinks they had something to do with the end of the world. And we’ll never be safe until we know they can’t do it again.

  Over the sounds of distant machinery and street traffic, something else catches my ear. A tiny buzzing, almost musical. I pause, listening carefully. The sound is coming from down here—from the tunnels. And it’s coming closer.

  I pull back against the wall, tucking myself into an alcove. Whatever it is has magic, I can feel it now, bobbing nearer and nearer. They have sentries even down here. Carefully I pull the last shreds of magic I have close around myself, imagining a hard, iron shell. Camouflage. Holding my breath, I wait.

  Eventually, a tiny machine flits into view. Its wingspan is no bigger than my pinky finger, and if it hadn’t buzzed through a shaft of light from the streets above, causing its copper body to flash, I never would’ve spotted it. I hold even tighter to my shell, willing the sentry to move on past.

  Though it pauses to scan its surroundings—I can feel the sweep of magic slide past me—its senses don’t penetrate my camouflage. It hums off into the distance again, leaving me alone with my pounding heart.

  I have so little magic that I feel naked, vulnerable. If that sentry had spotted me, I’m not sure I could have destroyed it before it took word of my intrusion back to its masters. Summoning my strength, I step out of my crumbling alcove and slip on through the maze of tunnels.

  The knot of magic at the end of the city draws me onward, and eventually I feel it start to shift. It’s no longer ahead of me, but all around me. Somewhere above my head are the answers I seek.

  The world around me is nearly pitch-black now, no more grates leading to the streets. There are buildings above me, and no more easy escapes. Swallowing my fears, I send flickers of magic ahead of me, feeling the way they caress the stone and bounce back from the metal. I’m forced to form a picture of my surroundings the way a bat does, ghostly images coalescing in my mind.

  There—a ladder. I grasp for it, fingers curling around the clammy iron. No hiding underground anymore. I have to cling to the rungs for nearly a minute before I summon the courage to step out of the water and climb up to the hatch above.

  The wheel-lock screeches as I open the hatch, but it gives way—there’s nothing blocking it from the other side. The trapdoor is heavy, forcing me to lean my shoulder into it awkwardly as I try to shove it up and away while balancing on the ladder. Finally I manage it, and it falls back with a clang. Light floods my eyes.

  I stagger out of the hole in the floor and let the hatch drop closed a
gain, and then catch my breath. I’m in a vast room, larger than any I’ve ever seen. The ceiling is a huge dome with skylights to let in the artificial sunlight, crisscrossed with tracks for machinery. As I watch, an immense ring with a fiery sun on it ticks over, a simulated passage across their simulated sky. The floor is polished marble—when I look down, the hatch is nearly invisible, masquerading as a beautiful compass rose inlaid with gold at the center of the floor.

  Corridors lead in every direction, labeled with signs. Most of them I cannot understand, despite being one of the few in the Iron Wood who can read. Biothaumatic Laboratory, reads one sign. Museum and Archives, reads another.

  Archives. That one, I recognize. I take a step forward.

  “Hello.” A voice echoes out from behind me, freezing my blood and making me whirl.

  A woman stands there. She’s older than I am, but not by much. She has short black hair and a round face with keen, narrow eyes. She’s a little plump, wearing a long red coat that reaches to her knees. Around her neck she wears a gold necklace adorned with an ornamental version of a drawing tool I’ve only ever seen in Dorian’s office, used when he studies his maps and diagrams. A compass, my mind supplies.

  She doesn’t seem surprised to see me—she seems only interested, curious. Even pleased.

  My thoughts tangle, trying desperately to seek out some excuse, some reason for being here. My pant legs are sodden from my trip through the tunnels—in the silence I can hear them dripping on the immaculate floor. The droplets strike out a rhythm against the floor like the ticking of a clock, measuring the time since she spoke, the time I’ve failed to reply. Too late. Too late.

  The woman’s head tilts to the side as she studies me the way Dorian would study one of his maps. “Welcome to the Institute,” she says. “What’s your name?”

  I open my mouth, my dry throat working soundlessly. Finally, painfully, I whisper, “Eve.”

  She smiles, but the expression leaves me cold, makes me wish I’d stayed in the damp, musty tunnels underground. Her smile makes something at the base of my skull ache—her smile lifts the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “Hello, Eve,” she says. “My name is Gloriette. I think we’re going to become the best of friends.”

  CHAPTER 1

  My hands ached, my lower back screaming a protest. I longed to move, but even so much as a tiny shift to relieve my sore muscles might give away my position. I had the advantage up here, in this tree—but moving would shake the branches, and the tiniest shiver of leaves would be all Oren needed to find me.

  In a way, I was grateful for my discomfort. The pain grounded me, drove away the fragments of my dream that kept coming back, no matter how often I tried to dismiss them. The dreams came more often now, the closer I came to my home, to the city where I was born. They felt like memories, but of events that never happened. At least, not exactly. I’d been in those tunnels under the city, but I’d been trying to break into the school, not the Institute. I’d been caught by Gloriette, but not in the rotunda. Her smile had made my skin crawl too, but she was so young in this memory, so much younger than I remembered.

  Unless—unless it had happened that way. Unless my memory was wrong, warped somehow by everything that had happened to me. Perhaps I was the one becoming twisted.

  But this—this branch, its rough bark digging into my palms, carving deep impressions in the skin there—this was real. I tightened my grip.

  A small, tinny sound prompted me to lift my head, slow and cautious. The buzzing grew louder, more familiar, and in spite of my aching body, I smiled.

  “Anything?” I whispered as Nix winged in and lighted on my shoulder.

  “He’s moved off in the wrong direction,” the pixie said smugly. “He lost your trail back by the river when you walked in the streambed.”

  My heart surged with relief and no small amount of satisfaction. I’d outwitted Oren, the best tracker and hunter I’d ever met.

  If Oren was headed for the wrong end of the copse we were in, that meant I could move. I straightened with a badly stifled moan for my cramped limbs. My jerky movements made the branch I was clinging to leap and shudder, and I was glad for Nix’s scouting. I could sense the dark pit of shadow that was Oren when he was nearby, but once he got out of my immediate range, I had no way of tracking him.

  Carefully I started climbing down the tree. I could double back to where he’d already searched for me—it’d take him hours to come back around again, and he didn’t have that kind of time to waste. The second to last branch was about six feet off the ground, and I let myself down to dangle there.

  Before I could drop to the leaf litter, a face melted out of the foliage—fierce blue eyes, and white teeth bared in a grin.

  “Gotcha,” said Oren.

  I shrieked and let go of the branch, landing heavily and rolling when I hit the ground. Dazed, but heart pounding, I started to scramble to my feet. A hand closed around my ankle.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Oren gasped, dragging me back. “I found you—don’t try to get out of this one!”

  “Nix!” I screamed as the pixie danced around just beyond the reach of my grasp. “You little traitor!”

  “You’re too trusting of your allies!” Nix called in a sing-song voice. It gave a little shiver of its wings—laughing at me.

  “Do you yield?” Oren was laughing too, in that quiet, breathless way he had.

  I made one last attempt to break free, but his grip was too tight. I went limp. “Fine,” I muttered. “You win.”

  “Don’t sulk,” Oren said, kneeling over me. “You came close that time.”

  “I hope you know that I could get out of this,” I told him. “But you could get seriously hurt in the process.”

  “Ah,” said Oren gravely. “Well, thank you for deigning to be captured, in that case.”

  “Shut up.”

  His grip relaxed, though he gave no sign of moving to let me up. “I was watching you back there,” he said idly. “I saw your face go blank—those dreams again?”

  That he’d been there, watching me while I thought I was completely alone—his skill at camouflage, at using the forest as a tool, it never stopped amazing me. In the city Lethe, he’d been like a caged animal. Here he was free. Here he was home.

  I nodded. “Or whatever they are. I can’t get a moment’s peace—it’s all the time now, when I sleep, and even when I’m awake, bits and pieces come back to me constantly.”

  “Nerves,” Oren suggested quietly. “Going back to your city, facing down the people who did this to you.”

  “Maybe.” I gazed past him, up at the shards of blue sky scattered through the leafy treetops. Spring came as we traveled south from Lethe, leaving the last of the wintry frost behind. We’d needed only a few weeks to reach the outskirts of my home city, but here, in the south, the spring came quickly. The trees were alive with tender leaves and blossoms that shattered at a touch.

  “Lark is ready,” Nix said confidently. “Lark can do it.”

  “This is why we’re training.” Oren reached out but stopped a few inches short of touching my cheek. He was so careful to avoid that touch, knowing the currents it sent through me, the reminder that his shadow was always there, draining my magic. The reminder of what he was. “Even in the city without a tree in sight, this is how you beat them. How you stay hidden, stay quicker than they are.”

  His eyes were so earnest that I found my smile and nodded. How could I tell him that training my instincts and my reflexes wasn’t going to make the difference in fighting the people who’d turned me into a monster? It was a different kind of strength I’d have to draw on there.

  But the training helped in other ways—vented my nervous energy, gave me an outlet for my fears, distracted me from what was coming. Helped me trust my arm again, which I needed to get used to being healed, despite the way it ached still during the cold spring nights.

  Oren leaned down, touching his lips to my hair. Even that touch, thoug
h he avoided brushing my skin, was enough to set my nerves shrieking. Something inside me responded to the monster in him, always. Though I longed to tilt my face back and let him kiss my lips, the rest of me shuddered away.

  Then he lifted his head and pulled away, but not before I saw the darkened eyes, the brows drawn in, the not-so-hidden grief in his expression. My heart ached, and I concentrated instead on the magic, reaching out to find Nix as it flitted off through the forest.

  Then I froze. Nix wasn’t the only thing out there with magic.

  “Oren,” I whispered. He sensed the urgency in my voice, his body going instantly rigid. “There’s someone out there.

  “Shadow?”

  “No—human. Not a Renewable, but there’s something. I can’t tell—there’s something strange about him. His magic is shielded somehow; I can’t tell how far away he is. I think he’s coming closer.”

  “We’ll hide. Quick, back up the tree.”

  I wanted to groan a protest, but I knew it was the smartest course of action. We’d had few encounters with shadows on our way back due to our vigilance. They traveled in small packs, but when one pack found something worth chasing, their howls drew the others. Whatever was out there, if it found us and caused a ruckus, it could bring every shadow for miles sprinting straight for us.

  Oren sprang to his feet and reached for my hand. But before I could take it, something leaped out of the undergrowth and swung at Oren’s head. The impact knocked the breath out of me in sympathy—a huge branch had sent him sprawling with a grunt of pain.

  “Oren!”

  I kicked out, knocking whoever it was back into the brush. I sprinted for Oren’s side, feeling for injuries with both hands. The shadow in him stirred at my touch, drawing greedily on the meager reserves of magic I held. Oren gave a soft, half-conscious groan when my fingers encountered wet, sticky blood in his hair. Something rustled behind me and I whirled, gathering my magic, ready if the thing in the brambles made a second attempt on him.

  The bushes parted and a man ran out, still brandishing his branch. I readied a blast of magic, lifting my eyes to his face—