I didn’t want to admit it to myself. But, as it almost always was, the pixie was right. Without needing a cue from me, Nix launched itself from the wall to my shoulder with a smug little flutter of its wings, and we went off to comb the Hub for our messenger.
• • •
“But it’s death beyond the Wall.” Tamren’s face was white under the general grime marring his features.
“It’s not,” I protested. “It’s dangerous, certainly. But no more dangerous than it is here. Less now, even. At least the monsters out there, you can see them coming. Not like the pixies here.”
Tamren’s face was still healing from the pixie attacks, long red gashes in his skin like lines on a map. “Why me?”
“You’ve spent the last few years cycling around this city. You’re fit, you’re clever, and you’re determined. And I trust you.” I felt Nix stir against my neck, hearing me use the same words to win Tamren to my cause as I’d tried to use on Nix. I swallowed the lurking discomfort at the back of my mind. Tamren was even younger than I was—and he could die out there.
He could die in here.
Tamren’s gaze was still frightened, but no longer full of the raw panic that had flared when I’d first proposed my plan to him. “Everyone says there’s no Resource out there, that we’ll all die if the Wall ever goes away.”
I hesitated, not wanting to explain Kris’s revelation that everyone in the city was a breath away from becoming a shadow. Instead, I said, “Kris has been out there twice on his own, and he’s fine. He can help us find you some portable magic you can bring with you. Like a bubble of air around you, only magic.”
Tamren gazed askance at the bustling core of activity that was the Hub. I’d pulled him aside without much explanation, waiting until we were out of earshot to explain my plan. I wanted no one else to know of it. No use getting everyone’s hopes up if it no one came. Or if Tamren never even reached them in the first place.
I found it hard to meet his gaze when he looked back at me again. I wanted to hold my breath, but I couldn’t let him see how desperately I needed him to say yes. He had to decide this by himself, not because I made it impossible for him to say no.
“You know I’ll do anything you ask, Miss Lark,” he said slowly. “If you tell me we need this, then I’ll do it.”
My eyes burned. This is why Kris was wrong, why I could never be a real leader. Caesar made decisions like this every day, potentially sending friends and loyal allies to their deaths, as though he was simply deciding on what to eat for breakfast. I felt as though I was tearing off a limb. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m going to figure out how to get you the magic you’ll need to take with you. In the meantime, keep this quiet. Don’t tell anyone.”
Tamren nodded. “I understand.”
My feet yearned to flee, to escape the weight of his expectant gaze. Abruptly I was glad I could count the number of people this devoted to me on one hand. How could I ever hope to earn that kind of trust? “Thank you,” I said again and hurried away, leaving him standing there in the Hub to think about what lay before him.
• • •
Kris was in the infirmary, which was no more than a corner of the Hub with a few cots and a poorly trained medic. The city’s doctors were all architects, so we had to make do with a medical research assistant with a shaky grasp of practical application. Kris looked up when I inched around the grubby curtain dividing the infirmary from the rest of the busy Hub.
“How are you?” I asked softly. There was only one other patient in the infirmary, an elderly woman suffering from malnutrition, and I didn’t want to disturb her.
“I feel as though someone dropped a building on me, but I’ll be okay.” Though he didn’t smile at me, the tiny flicker of humor in his words washed over me like a cool breeze.
“I need your storage crystal,” I blurted, too tired of justifying my plan to launch into it a third time.
Kris’s brows went up, and he was silent a long time. I didn’t understand the source of his hesitation until he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t leave us again. Please.”
“What?” My mouth fell open, but I realized my mistake almost immediately. “No—Kris. I’m sending someone with a message for Basil and the Renewables for the Iron Wood. I’m sending for help.”
Kris’s eyelids fluttered closed for an instant. “I’m sorry, I never should have assumed.”
“It wasn’t that much of a leap,” I said wryly. “I ran away once; what’s to say I wouldn’t again?”
“You’re different now, and I know that.”
I couldn’t take my eyes from his face, the weary haggard lines that weren’t there a day ago. He needed a shower and a change of clothes, and he needed sleep. He needed to believe in things again, but everything he’d ever put his faith in had betrayed him. I longed to put him to bed and take my troubles to someone else, but I had no one else. Only Kris had been outside, using the architects’ technology.
Did you know that it’s the architects’ fault that the world is what it is? The words bubbled up in my throat, but I bit them back. If he knew, there was no point in dwelling on that fact now. And if he didn’t, the last thing he needed right now was more reason to feel betrayed by those who had once been his family.
“I’m sending Tamren. He’s been harvested, and if I send him out there with no magic he won’t last a day. I need your storage.”
Kris reached inside the collar of his tunic and pulled out the crystal he wore around his neck. “You’re welcome to it, but it won’t do him any good.”
“Why not?”
“It’s empty, remember? I wasn’t sure I’d even have enough to make it home when you found me out there. There’s certainly not enough to get Tamren to the Iron Wood. Or to wherever you’ve hidden the Renewables.”
I let out my breath slowly, summoning calm. “Okay. Fine. Then we recharge it. How do the architects do it?”
“How do they do anything? With machines. It’s an extremely tricky and delicate procedure, involving machines that our ancestors designed. I can’t do it here.”
I wanted to shake him, to point out that he could do anything, he was their most brilliant engineer. But he was right, and short of breaking into the Institute, we weren’t going to find the magic that way. “All right,” I conceded. “What about me, then? I give Oren and Nix power. I can give this power too, can’t I?”
Kris hesitated, thoughtful. “Maybe. But Oren’s a negative drain—he draws power from you, it’s not a passive process. Nix, too, I designed it that way. The crystal is just inert. You’d need a large surplus of power to get it to fill, more than you have.”
He looked up and met my gaze, and at the same time it hit us both.
Eve.
CHAPTER 21
I stood outside Eve’s door, skin crawling. I didn’t have to knock to know she was in there. Her presence burned through the stone, even now, so soon after she blasted a hole in the side of the Institute compound.
While I wasn’t sure Caesar would want me to bring in outside help, I was certain Eve wouldn’t. She wanted mutual destruction of all those without magic, not one side’s victory. I wasn’t sure even the entire Renewable population of Lethe would be able to stand in Eve’s way, but it was better than nothing.
I couldn’t simply ask her for her help. I had to just keep her talking long enough to find out if proximity would be enough to charge the storage crystal for Tamren. I took a deep breath, knocked, and then slipped inside.
Eve was sitting cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed. She didn’t open them immediately, leaving me to shut the door behind me and stand there, waiting. She wasn’t asleep, but I wasn’t convinced she was entirely inhabiting her body either—she seemed so at peace, her outward calm so perfect and encompassing. If I hadn’t seen that rage burning behind her eyes, I would think she was the most rational of us all.
I studied her face, looking for some sign of her true age. Her face was unlined, lips full, eyes unshadow
ed. Her hair was white, but unnaturally so, the way all of her had been drained into nothingness by the years of torture at the hands of the Institute. In Eve’s memory that we’d shared, Gloriette had been a much younger woman. But Eve hadn’t aged a day.
Without warning Eve’s eyes opened, pupils dilating in the sudden light and then fixing on mine. “Hello, Lark. I’m surprised to see you here so soon. I expected it would take longer for you to see how things were.”
After I all but fled from you this afternoon? But I didn’t say it. Instead, I summoned up my most humble tone and replied, “I can’t stop thinking about what you said when you cured Oren. That you could cure me too.”
Eve’s eyebrows lifted, a rare moment in which she was startled. I could never surprise her, given that she and I seemed to hover at the edge of each other’s thoughts. And no wonder this came as a surprise—in reality the last thing I wanted was for Eve to come anywhere near me.
“It won’t be the same as Oren,” she cautioned me. “Though the darkness is in both of you, it’s different.”
“I know.” I don’t tear people apart, I thought. I just stop their hearts. “But you think you can make it go away? Can you tell me how it works?”
Eve watched me, and for a long moment I thought she knew why I was there. I could feel Kris’s amulet around my neck, warming to the temperature of my skin, but it was too early for me to tell if it was refilling with Eve’s wild magic. Then Eve nodded, and I fought the urge to sigh with relief.
“You’re so fond of comparing this affliction to shadows. If you think that way, shadows cannot hide from light,” Eve said, her lips curving to a smile. “I simply fill the sufferer with my light, my magic. In the torrent the shadow simply cannot survive. I burn it away.”
I wanted to shiver, fascinated and horrified at the same time. Instead I concentrated on the crystal around my neck. There—was it my imagination, or did it feel a little warmer than my body temperature now?
Keep her talking. “Does it hurt?”
Eve laughed, her eyes looking through me for a long moment. “Nothing like what you have already endured, sister.”
“I meant you,” I whispered. “Does it hurt for you?”
Eve hesitated, looking briefly, truly taken by surprise. “No more than breathing does,” she said finally.
I swallowed, scanning her features. Sometimes they were hard to read, blurred by the glow that sometimes emanated from her skin. But just now I realized that there were lines there. Lines of pain. Before I could stop myself, the edge of my thoughts sought hers, brushing against them like a fitful breeze. A creeping horror slipped up my spine, accompanied by a realization. Eve’s torment hadn’t ended the day Caesar liberated her from the Institute. She carried it with her everywhere. Whatever they’d done to her, it was permanent, and this uncontrollable magic burned in her veins every day.
I jerked back before my sympathy could rise, lifting my eyes to hers and searching their depths for that burning madness I’d seen there. Her gaze stiffened a little, and she turned away. “You can continue to think about whether you’d like me to help you,” said Eve. “But perhaps it won’t matter.”
Not if all of us are burned away by your rage.
The amulet had begun to burn where it rested against my chest, as though I wore a live coal around my neck. I took a step backward. Any more magic absorbed and I’d risk the thing exploding. “I’ll let you know,” I mumbled, turning for the door.
“Lark.” Eve’s voice was soft, but it brought me up short. “If you wanted some of my magic, all you needed to do was ask me.”
My heart stuttered, my tenuous calm shattering. “I—I wasn’t—”
“The ocean wouldn’t miss a bucket of seawater,” said Eve. Now that I knew it was there, I couldn’t hear her speak without sensing the thinly veiled anger behind it. The worst part was that none of it was directed at me—I was merely nearby, her fury spilling out in every direction.
I wanted to scream at her, to dig beneath that calm exterior the way I had this afternoon. I wanted to force her to show what she really was. “Fine,” I said shortly. “You’re right, I was after your magic.”
“I wish you could see that we’re the same,” Eve whispered, her gaze infinitely sad. “We’re sisters, you and I. Connected. If you let me, I could cure you. I’d keep you safe when the others are no longer necessary. I could make you whole.”
“I am whole!” I burst out. “I don’t need curing. The Institute did this to me, but it’s part of what I am now.” The words startled me even as they flew from my lips. It was one thing not to want Eve to cure me. It was another not to want to be cured. “I’m not looking for help.”
Eve’s expression hardened as I spoke, like water crystallizing slowly across a lake’s surface. “And when you realize you’re drowning? What will you do then?”
“I’m not drowning. I never was. I need my darkness.” I gasped for breath, listening to my own voice speak truths I hadn’t stopped to admit myself. “My darkness, my light—I need them both. They’re what give me strength.”
“False strength,” Eve countered. “Hollow faith and hope. You’ll see.”
I shook my head. “No. You’re wrong. And if you try to harm this city, I’ll stop you.”
Eve never took her eyes from my face. I could feel her gaze, slow-burning and heavy, as though she was memorizing my features. “You have only the power you can scrape from those around you, nothing of your own. How would you do anything to me?”
“If I have to, I’ll kill you,” I said quietly.
While I watched, her lips curved into a slow, secret smile. “Won’t that be an interesting day.”
I could feel her thoughts, amusement and grief warring with the anger and the pain that was already there. She didn’t know whether to laugh at my threat or mourn our tattered connection. I felt the blow as deeply; we were tied, bonded together by our shared experiences, by the magic that had made us what we were. I felt her rage and her agony as tangibly as my own, mingling with my own grief. She was lost, beyond my help. And as clearly as I knew that we would face each other one day, I also knew that day wasn’t today. Not yet. Right now we were still on the same side.
But for how long?
• • •
I found Kris with Tamren when I returned to the Hub. As I drew closer I heard the architect-turned-rebel describing what he had encountered on his way to the Iron Wood and how to deal with the hazards beyond the Wall. I kept silent, listening. The way I’d handle the hazards was completely different—and useless for Tamren, who didn’t have my abilities. Of all the people equipped to advise Tamren, Kris was perhaps the best choice.
Kris noticed me after a few moments, catching my eye. I nodded, placing a hand over the crystal that hung from my neck, still burning a hole against my skin. It felt tainted, uncontrollable, as wild and dangerous as Eve herself. But someone as untrained as Tamren—I doubted he’d even be able to feel its warmth, much less detect anything off about it. And magic was magic. It would do.
I let Kris finish his lecture, and then the three of us headed out to the entrance Tamren used to guard. It was still blocked by the cave-in I’d caused, but Tamren claimed he knew a way around it, learned during his long nights spent guarding the entrance. I gave him the crystal, which he eyed dubiously. I knew he couldn’t sense the magic inside, so to him it seemed little more than a piece of ugly jewelry.
I promised him it would keep him safe, then crouched down with a bit of recycled paper liberated from the Hub. While Kris held the lantern overhead, I sketched out a map.
“The first time I went to Lethe,” I explained, “I went there via the Iron Wood, which is to the west of us.” I pointed to a blank space off to one side. “But Lethe is north, making the third point in a sort of triangle. There’s no need for you to go to the Wood, so you’ll go straight north.”
“Is there really a sun out there like ours?” Tamren asked, eyes flicking from Kris’s face to mine. �
�To tell me what direction I’m going?”
I nodded. “But it’s much brighter. You’ll get sunburned like I did, so try to stay under the trees as much as you can.”
“Burned?” Tamren stared at me.
“Not like with a fire. It itches more than hurts. You’ll be fine, I promise.” I had to fight irritation and impatience. “Kris told you about the shadows?”
Tamren nodded, face draining a little more of its color. “Yes.”
“Stay by water as much as you can. Crossing it will confuse your scent. Avoid making fires, but if you must, dig a pit down into the earth so its light doesn’t go far. And cover it back up in the morning.”
Tamren hefted his pack, which was laden with tools: a knife, some cord for building shelters, extra socks, a makeshift hat for the sun, a flask of water. He was infinitely better prepared than I had been, stumbling through the wall with only the clothes on my back and not even a pair of shoes. And yet my heart lurched as I looked at him. No amount of preparation would really, truly prepare him.
But this was war. I hardened my heart and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll be fine. Just follow the map and stay away from the shadows. I know you can do this.”
Tamren swallowed. “I’ll do my best,” he said, in what he no doubt thought was a strong, firm voice. But he only sounded younger, voice cracking on the final syllable.
He turned and knelt down by what seemed to be a bit of crumbling brickwork, but turned out to be a hole barely big enough for him to crawl into. He gave me one last look, then wriggled through, vanishing into the darkness beyond.
I couldn’t stop staring at the tiny hole until Kris came up behind me and took my hand, gently turning me and leading me away.
“He’ll be fine,” Kris said in my ear. “You sent the right person.”
“I know,” I said grimly. “But that doesn’t make me feel any better. Even if he succeeds and brings the entirety of Lethe’s Renewable population here—” I tried to imagine the carnage that would occur once both sides had fearsome weapons, and my mind refused to picture it.
Lark Ascending Page 17
