Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Power that reached into the skyscraper—and only there did she see the light that she had grabbed to haul herself away from that hungry grasp: magic. Edren’s magic—no, her magic. Because the energy that flowed through the skyscraper and fueled its myriad spells was all touched by her signature.

  Shai shook her head. Didn’t matter, couldn’t matter.

  “Xhea,” she whispered, and tried to stand. There was no response, no tether to which to cling; only a sudden, aching absence. Her hands trembled as they slid through the wall and the floor, finding no purchase. Perhaps something of her had been stolen after all, for she felt so transparent that it seemed light should shine through her like glass. Shai struggled to pull herself up, struggled to rise—struggled to do anything but cling to this bit of reality and try to hold on to her very existence.

  Xhea’s all right, Shai told herself. She has to be.

  The broken tether told another story.

  Get up, she commanded, her anger growing to equal her shame. She had abandoned Xhea to the boy and the silent attackers, not even trying to help. No more.

  Get up. For the pain she felt, the disorientation, was not real: she had no body to hurt, no weakness of muscle or mind. No, if she were weak, it could be no more than weakness of will, weakness of the self.

  It was hard to pull her hands from the wall of Edren’s foundation, as if each had been bound by the palm to the aging stonework; hard, too, to step away from that wall and leave it behind her. Shai’s breath became short and her knees felt weak, and she told herself that her physical symptoms were nothing but her imagination.

  Her imagination hurt.

  She stumbled down the hall. This time she did not hide behind the corner but continued toward the dusty food court that lay beyond.

  “Xhea?” she called. Her voice was but a whisper. She forced herself to be louder: “Xhea, where are you?” There was no one there, only silence and stillness. No body where she had fallen; only her walking stick, abandoned near a wide scuff in the dirt on the floor.

  I have to find her, Shai thought—but she could not look away from the floor. She who needed no air suddenly could not breathe.

  Shai stepped closer, hesitantly, fearfully, and knelt where Xhea had fallen. That wide scuff in the dirt was marked red with smears of Xhea’s blood. She reached out, fingers hovering but a breath away from those marks, as if the blood were a story she might read by touch alone.

  They had hurt her somehow. They had hurt her, and she had cried out, and then—

  And then—

  The tether had snapped.

  Shai drew back and pressed her hand to the center of her chest where the tether had connected, thinking of that surge of emotion, all that fear and pain and regret. She, more than anyone, knew what a broken tether meant—and it had broken, that much she had felt. Not dissolved naturally, the ghost’s purpose in the world completed; not cut, as Xhea might have done with her silver knife; but snapped, suddenly and roughly and finally. Xhea had told her herself: tethers only snapped when the living anchor to which they were joined died.

  No, Shai thought desperately. It’s not true. Maybe she just cut the tether by accident. Maybe she was just trying to protect me. And then the attackers abducted her and—

  She looked around, half panicked. Footsteps in the dust crisscrossed this space now, leaving no clear path for her to follow. She didn’t even know where these paths went—she’d never traveled here with Xhea. But she would follow every path, every footstep—she would search for the smallest drop of blood. She would—

  Shai’s breath caught in her throat and she stopped, struggling in a vain attempt to stop her tears from falling. For she knew her words for lies, her hopes for ashes.

  Shai had been here before, had clung to denial, had nursed this same awful hope—and for nothing. The tether that had connected her to her father had snapped, and it had felt the same then, the exact same. Though she’d found that whatever had been done to her father had not killed his body, she could not say that he lived. Only an empty shell was left, no spirit inside. There were some fates, she knew, that were worse even than death, and counted his among them.

  Two tethers snapped. Her father was dead, and now Xhea—

  Oh, Xhea.

  The unknown attackers had killed her—for what else could have broken the link between her and Shai? They killed her and took her body and Shai—

  She had let them. Sweet, absent gods, she had let them.

  Tears slipped down Shai’s face and fell, glittering with magic, toward the floor below. Shai curled in upon herself in the darkness, weeping, and never—not in life nor death—had she ever felt so weak or helpless or alone.

  It was a sound that broke Shai from her misery. She startled and turned.

  Ignored in the darkness behind her huddled a form at the bottom of the short flight of stairs. Not a discarded pack or heavy patch of shadow, as she had thought, but a man. The guard.

  She moved hesitantly toward him, wiping away her tears. Dead, Shai thought as the light of her magic fell upon him—the man that Xhea had seemed to know. But no, even as she watched he shifted and the noise came again, his breath escaping in something that was almost a groan.

  Not dead yet, but soon. Blood surrounded him: brilliant red against his fingers, pooling beneath his shuddering body, staining his uniform a deep, wet black. Again he curled in upon himself as if all his muscles had contracted at once, before he struggled again to raise his head. Struggled to rise.

  “You couldn’t stop them either,” Shai murmured. It was cold comfort. He, too, was paying for that failure—his failure, and hers. Maybe he, like Xhea, would have lived if only Shai had shouted her warning faster; if only she had kept watch instead of cowering, useless and afraid.

  Shai knelt and reached for his face with one glowing hand. He did not react—of course he didn’t. But she looked into his face, his expression twisted by pain and panic; his eyes were wide, staring blindly. It was dark for him, she realized. Magic-poor and wounded, he could not see her glow, could not see the faintest glimpse of daylight from above—could not see anything at all. The attackers had taken his flashlight, the pack from his shoulder, and all his supplies; only the sledge remained. As far as he knew, he was alone and helpless in the dark, and no one was coming to help him.

  He wasn’t wrong. For without Xhea, what was Shai but magic that remembered once being a person? Not real, not even really here, just … existing. And struggling, now, to do even that.

  Her fingers touched the guard’s cheek and passed through; she felt only the slightest tingle as her hand moved through his flesh, and from his reaction he felt her not at all. Perhaps her touch was nothing but a chill whisper against his skin, less noticeable than the tears that ran to catch in his mustache and slide across his stubbled chin.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, for all that he could not hear her. “I should have …”

  She could not finish.

  She should go, she knew. Somewhere in these under-ground passages the attackers still walked, carrying Xhea’s body. Maybe she could get one last look at her friend, see how she had died. Understand where they were taking her body, and why. Stare at the reality of that death until it felt like anything other than a horrible, surreal dream.

  But what she wanted beyond any thought or reason was to lie down beside this man in the dirt and the blood, and close her eyes. She had clung to life—to living, or its semblance—once and again; now she could only wonder why. Why stay here, why stay anywhere, if this was all there was? If the things for which she had lived could be taken from her, one by one.

  Her father, and his love. Her faith in her mother, and in Allenai; her responsibilities to her people. Her place in the world. Her life.

  Xhea. Her friend, her ally, the anchor for her very existence. The anchor, in truth, for her heart.

  She could just … stop. She knew it now. All the desperation with which she had clung to this reality but moments befor
e was gone entirely, as if it had never been. She could just lie down, and close her eyes, and try to believe that when she slipped from this world she would find more waiting for her than a space of unending nothingness.

  Beside her, the fallen guard groaned again. It was not a loud sound; but Shai remembered making such a sound, time and again, unbidden. She knew the kind of pain from which it had been birthed.

  She could go, one way or another; she could chase fruitlessly after her dead friend’s body, or slip from this world—but either way she would leave this man to die in pain, alone in the dark. She remembered dying, all the hurt and fear that had preceded her death, and could not imagine how she might have faced it without her father at her side. Without Xhea.

  Shai took a long, shuddering breath.

  A light, she thought at last, looking down at the man—a true light, one that he could see. Surely she could give him that much.

  It was a simple spell, one that she’d used since childhood when she’d hidden beneath the covers to read long into the night. She had failed at nearly every new spell she’d tried to learn since her death, tangling the lines of intent, overpowering the spells’ weave with sheer force of magic—but this one she knew.

  Shai cupped her hand as if light were a liquid she might hold in her palm, and wove the spell within it. Just a small light, she thought. No bigger than a candle’s flame. She felt a spark of satisfaction as the light kindled to life. Dim as it was, the guard recoiled as the light appeared, crying out and lifting one weak and bloody hand to shield his eyes.

  “Who’s there?” he said—or tried to. His voice was thin, his words slurred; and his eyes, when Shai bent to look, were glazed and glassy. Shai did not reply—could not—only drew slowly closer, lowering the hand holding the light toward the floor.

  As his vision adjusted, the guard’s eyes widened as he realized that the light hovered unaided in midair.

  “Xhea’s … friend?” he managed. And oh, that voice; the fear and hope that laced his words in equal measure. Was it worse to be alone in the dark, or kept company by the dead? Down in the blood and dirt, it seemed hope won out in the end.

  Shai raised and lowered her outstretched hand, making the light bob in assent.

  “Xhea …?” He struggled once more to push himself up with a single hand, the other pressed hard to his wound, as he looked toward where Xhea had fallen. Blood flowed over his fingers and he cried out, slipping back to the tile. But it had been enough: even in Shai’s faint light, he had seen that there was no one else there, only Xhea’s stick abandoned on the floor.

  His eyes fluttered; he was losing consciousness. It won’t be long now. Unless …

  Shai froze, staring. No. I couldn’t …

  Yet she reached toward the wound in his gut, because suddenly, foolishly, she found herself thinking of the spell she had worked on Xhea’s knee. A healing spell.

  Despite her power, Shai knew little of the art of magic-work. She knew only basic spells—how to turn on a light or open a door, how to press her signature into objects, how to transform her power into renai. She hadn’t needed to know anything more; and now, looking back, she could see the bitter truth: no one had wanted her to have that knowledge. Every bit of power that she had used or shaped was magic that had not gone to Allenai, power that had not filled the Tower’s coffers or fueled their spells or kept the great structure aloft, dancing the slow political dance of buildings across the sky.

  She could read spells, quickly and with ease; she could discern meaning in intricate spell-patterns the likes of which the Lower City people around her could not even see. Yet it was as if she had been a taught a language as text only. Her eyes could dance across the words and pull stories from their shapes, while her mouth, her clumsy tongue, could but fumble in ignorance, unsure how to voice words she’d never heard spoken.

  Xhea had not known what she was asking, and Shai hadn’t had the courage to tell her. She’d been ashamed, that was the truth of it—ashamed and angry that Xhea had backed her into that corner, had asked her to do something that she felt she had no right to refuse. Worse had been watching Xhea lie unconscious, whimpering and quivering with pain, for hours. Five long hours.

  Had Xhea seen the shape that Shai had wrought within her flesh—had any true healer seen the clumsy working she’d tangled in Xhea’s broken mass of torn ligament, damaged cartilage, and bone—she would have been appalled. Even that had been mere mimicry. Shai had seen earlier attempts to heal Xhea’s injuries, and if the spell-casters had been weak, their spell-lines simple, she was not so foolish as to mistake simplicity for lack of skill.

  But here? Here she had nothing, no guide, only blood and light and a man dying as she watched. Nothing, she realized, left to lose—and much for which she must atone.

  “You’ve seen the dancer on the stage,” Shai whispered as the man groaned again, weaker. “You’ve seen her perfect grace. Now all you have to do is dance. Just dance.”

  Magic shining, Shai reached for the guard. Beneath her hand, he was little more than a faintly lit figure—his magic, so dim as to be all but invisible inside him, faded as she watched. She poured pure magic into him, bolstering what power remained. It did nothing for the blood loss, nor the deep stab wound in his side.

  I can’t. Shai pushed the thought aside. Failure could be no worse for him than the fate he already faced. He was drifting in and out of consciousness now, and his skin had become waxen.

  Don’t think, she told herself, and let her power flow.

  Shai did not know how to make a true healing spell; for of all the ones she had seen, in this dark and empty place she could remember none of them. Still she worked, pouring her light into the man’s wound and shaping it, willing it to work as she bid. Minutes passed before Shai realized that she was humming. It took a moment to recognize the song: a simple, foolish tune from her childhood about a man who made a net of magic to pull his daughter down the stars. Her father had sung it to her when she was but a child—and again, later, as she was dying and he thought she was asleep.

  Comfort, the song said to her. Comfort and warmth and wholeness. Some days it was hard to remember anything of her life but the pain—but now, here, she remembered what it was to breathe. She remembered the feel of blood and of flesh, the warmth of a living body. She remembered what it was to live. She did not think nor question the thoughts as they surfaced, only wove them, one by one, into her spell.

  At last, she finished. Beneath her, the man was still. Sometime during her working he had lost consciousness entirely; his face was no longer tight with pain, but soft and somehow blank, like a discarded mask. Yet as she watched, his chest rose and fell—shallow breaths, but steady.

  She could not move his protective hands, nor open his bloody shirt to see the skin beneath. She felt that her spell had worked—it was a crude healing, but perhaps just enough to get him back to Edren alive.

  The realization made Shai look from the man to her glowing hands and back again. She had done it—if not perfectly, nor well, if not even in a way that she quite understood, she had nonetheless succeeded. She shook her head mutely in disbelief.

  The guard regained consciousness slowly. “Hello?” he murmured, disoriented and afraid; his voice cracked on the word. “Are you still there?”

  Shai kindled another light and sent it to his hand. She should go. Every moment took Xhea’s body—Xhea’s attackers—farther from her. Farther, too, from any hope of understanding why. The guard would be fine now; he just had to get himself back to Edren. A slow process, to be sure, but he had the sledge to help him.

  Yet his face was gray, and his limbs weak. Though she had stopped his bleeding, her work had done nothing to undo the damage done by blood loss, nor address the risk of shock. Neither had her work changed the effect of being underground. Again the guard trembled, his hands and arms and lower lip. He fought against the shakes as he struggled to rise, slipping and sliding in the smeared puddle of his own blood.

&nb
sp; “Get up, old man,” he told himself. But his voice had lost whatever strength it had once had, and despair tinged the words. She watched as he struggled to rise, once and again, cursing himself and his weakness with every motion. Every time he fell back it took him longer to try again.

  Shai looked around—at the footsteps in the dust, at the spots of Xhea’s blood—caught in a moment of terrible indecision. How long had she spent clinging to Edren’s foundation as if the skyscraper were her only hold on life? More than a simple minute or two. Admit it. They’re long gone. The attackers and the strange boy would be out in the Lower City by now, or down a subway tunnel, or in another skyscraper, or—absent gods only knew where.

  Shai bit her lip. She felt like she was abandoning Xhea once more. Yet she couldn’t leave this man here alone to die. At last she returned to his side, trying to push away the grief and guilt that threatened to overwhelm her.

  As she drew closer, Shai watched as the man’s shaking eased. It did not stop—and his face remained the color of curdled cream, his skin damp with sweat, his pupils dilated wide. Even so, he seemed stronger as the light of her magic fell upon him, as if even that slight touch of power eased his pain. Or, she thought, as if her magic pushed back the pain and the pressure that the underground caused, creating a bubble of safety—if only for a moment.

  She extended her hand and sent a stream of magic toward him. Magic was power and money, yes—but more than either, magic was life. It was the light of living, the light of growth and health and strength.

  He gasped as her power washed over him, and his face flushed pink; his hands stopped shaking long enough to grab the edge of the wheeled sledge and drag it toward him. Slowly, awkwardly, he pulled himself atop the board. A moment for breath, and then he pushed with his feet; the wheels squeaked as he inched down the hall back toward Edren.