Defiant

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Though more mature—or better fed—if she had been able to conceive and bear a child.

  “Have you ever heard of anyone else with dark magic?” Xhea asked haltingly. She glanced up, including Ahrent and Daye in the question.

  It was Marna who answered. “No, dear. Only Nerra. And we worked hard to keep her hidden, lest the Spire take her—though I’m told that her power was quite weak by their standards.”

  Weak? She was from the Lower City. What else would she be?

  Xhea thought of what Lorn had told her earlier, before everything had fallen apart: the story of the assassin who had spread fear and death in equal measure, who had all but brought the Lower City’s elite to their knees in the early years of the war. Farrow’s masked assassin, a man with dark power.

  Except that assassin hadn’t been a man at all. They had only ever known one dark magic user, and that had been Xhea’s mother.

  Even thinking it felt strange—not her mother’s role, but her very existence. To think of her mother as a person who’d had a life and death and a story in between; something more than a concept, forever absent.

  “And my father?”

  A pause. “Life here can be violent and … unkind. Though Nerra told us,” Marna said carefully, “that he did not survive your conception.”

  That was clear enough. Xhea took a long breath and let it out slowly. It was a long time before she was able to reply. “Good,” she said.

  It was Ahrent who spoke then—and Xhea suddenly remembered that this was not why she was here. He had promised her answers, yes, but not about her life.

  “I need to make sure that Ieren’s ready,” he said. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”

  Xhea looked up. “But you said—”

  Ahrent cut her off with an upraised hand. “I did,” he said, knowing she wanted his promised explanation. Perhaps seeing how little she wanted to be left here with a stranger with tears in her eyes who said—who thought—she was family. “I will. A moment more only.” He stepped outside and his footsteps receded down the hall.

  Daye looked at Xhea for a long, weighted moment before she too stepped outside and softly closed the door, leaving Xhea alone with Marna.

  Marna changed then, ignoring her tears and looking at Xhea with an expression turned fierce with intent. Even her clouded eye seemed to pierce Xhea in place.

  “Xhea,” she said. “Listen. Your magic will kill you, if you let it.”

  “I—”

  “Listen. When you were born, your mother bound your—”

  Footsteps outside. Marna hesitated, drew back—and suddenly looked no different than she had moments before: sad and gentle and old, hunching into her thin cotton pajamas.

  Ahrent opened the door.

  “Ready?” he asked, looking at Marna. The way he spoke, it wasn’t really a question.

  For a moment Marna seemed to show the weight of heavy years. Then she took a deep breath and smiled, face creasing into well-worn lines.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Xhea retreated to a chair as an assistant came in and helped Marna lie down. He moved with practiced efficiency, swabbing the inside of Marna’s elbows and her neck with antiseptic, and hooked up an IV, all without speaking. It was only as he brought out shears and made to cut away Marna’s curls that Ahrent raised a hand to stop him.

  “Later,” he said. “The boy is here.”

  The assistant nodded and slipped out. Daye held the door open, and a moment later her partner and his charge arrived. Torrence’s expression held no sign of his usual easy smile. He nodded to Ahrent, then to Xhea, murmuring, “Hello, darlin’.” Only then did the edges of his mouth lift in the ghost of a grin.

  He knew just how much she hated being called that.

  Ieren stepped inside. He looked stronger now, happier; his eyes were bright and he broke into a wide smile when he saw Ahrent. He showed no surprise to see Marna lying on the bed, nor at the medical equipment that surrounded her. No, the only surprise was the ghost he dragged behind him at the end of a short tether.

  The ghost was a boy little older than Ieren appeared to be, his face flushed and his lips cracked as if from long fever. The ghost did not walk but slid across the air in Ieren’s wake, curled in upon himself and staring at the floor. When Ieren stopped, the ghost child glanced up anxiously, then scrambled into the room’s far corner at his tether’s farthest extent. Ieren ignored him completely.

  New ghost, Xhea judged. New and young and scared, with no idea what’s happening. She knew that look: the boy didn’t understand that he was dead.

  But neither was he hurting. For all that he was tethered to Ieren, he showed no distress not attributable to fear or confusion. She had thought—and now it seemed almost foolish—but she had thought that Ieren simply ate ghosts. As if any spirit that he dragged back would be half-crazed or half-devoured, like the one she had seen in Edren the night before. But maybe it was just the ghost’s presence that helped steady Ieren and reduced the effects of his magic.

  At the thought, Xhea touched the center of her chest where a tether had once been bound.

  She’ll be here soon, Xhea reassured herself. Even without the tether, Shai would find her.

  “You look like you’re feeling better,” Ahrent said.

  “Yep,” Ieren said cheerfully. “We’re doing another one?”

  “And showing Xhea, here, how it’s done.”

  Ieren turned, apparently seeing Xhea for the first time. “You stayed!” he exclaimed.

  “Yeah, I was just having such a great time,” Xhea muttered, “I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”

  He smiled at that. “I know, right? And it gets better.”

  “If you don’t need me, boss-man,” Torrence said to Ahrent, “I’ll just take a bit of a break now.” At Ahrent’s nod, he slipped out. Daye, however, stayed by the door as if she were a guard, watching not the room at large but Xhea, as if she expected her to bolt. As if she could.

  Xhea watched as Ahrent went to the wall, stood on a chair, and drew down a bundle of wires from the ceiling. She went very still at that, staring—instinct running ahead of thought.

  No, he wouldn’t—

  He can’t possibly—

  She was wrong. She had to be wrong.

  Then Ahrent began attaching those wires to Marna’s skin, hands and head and heart.

  “No!” Xhea cried. She was standing and didn’t remember struggling to her feet. She stumbled to the bedside as if her slight body might shield Marna from the rest of the room. “No, you can’t!”

  For she had seen a setup like this twice before, and if each had been vastly different she knew enough to see the similarities. A body lying prone. Life-support machines arrayed all around. Wires in one, binding that body to the storage coils nearby; spell in the other, connecting the body to the glass pedestal on which she lay.

  The failed resurrection in skyscraper Orren. The failed attempt to bind Shai to Tower Eridian. And now this, here. How many times would her promise—Never again—be made a mockery?

  Except this attempt centered not on a ghost, trapped or otherwise, but a living, breathing woman.

  “Enjeia—Xhea,” Marna said, and made as if to take Xhea’s hand. She stopped before she touched Xhea’s skin, but left that hand outstretched, earnest, reaching. “It’s okay. I volunteered. My wife is gone now; I had no other family but her. I chose this. I’m old, my body’s wearing out—what else can I give my people, my skyscraper, but this?”

  “But to give your life …” Xhea started. Because that’s what she was doing: they were plugging her into Farrow as if she were nothing but a battery, and she’d be worn down just as quickly. And oh, she could see why. The poor generated so little power, so little renai; most was used for a thousand small tasks, buying and healing and signing for goods, the very act of living itself. So little left for the skyscraper. Yet if they removed the burdens of choice and wakefulness—if they gave the work of living and eating to machin
es—all of a person’s magic might flow to the skyscraper instead.

  This was why Xhea was being offered the apartment: Marna would not need it. Whether she lived for a week or a month or longer, Xhea understood that she would not rise again. Would not wake. She would close her eyes, surrender to the drugs and the spells, and live only as long as her magic and her body managed to hold out.

  They’d brought her to witness Marna’s final moments of life. And for what?

  All for the good of her people. She had heard things like that from Shai, trying to justify what her Tower had asked of her. Xhea had not understood them then, and did not understand them now.

  “Give,” Marna repeated, emphasizing the word. “A gift—and one that is mine to give as I choose.” She smiled, her face creasing into well-worn lines. “I’ll miss out on—what? A few years at most. But just think of what everyone here will get in return.”

  “A Tower,” Xhea said softly, without thinking.

  Again, that smile. “Yes. A Tower.”

  “But you—” Xhea started, and couldn’t finish the sentence. She shook her head in denial, coins chiming.

  Ahrent spoke. “Did you ever dream of living in the City, Xhea?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “Did you ever believe it might happen?”

  Oh, foolish question. She had dreamed and planned and sought a thousand countless ways that she might somehow get herself into a Tower; but she’d always known that they were just that. Dreams. Still, she shook her head.

  “It’s the same for the rest of us. One may escape, if they’re powerful enough. Lone individuals. The rest of us? Even the richest struggle, here. We fight for food and water, for shelter, for safety for our children. There is no way out of the Lower City.

  “Our worth is decided on the day that we are born—earlier, even.” Ahrent looked pained by the thought. “That worth is not in our skills nor talents nor our ability to work, not personality or perseverance. It’s not our capability for love or joy or respect. Only generating capacity—or our lack thereof.”

  No value that was not measured in renai.

  It was true; oh, there was no need to argue, for that truth was one that she’d been born knowing.

  She thought of standing in Tower Celleran screaming before a crowd of City citizens. You’re not better than me, she had yelled at them, so angry that the words had seemed ripped from her. You’re not better than me!

  But the City said they were, each and every one, because of their magic.

  In Ahrent Altaigh’s expression she saw that same knowledge, that same truth—the passion burning behind his words and work both. He was angry; she could see it in the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the way his eyes tightened with the words. It was old anger, bone-deep, blood-thick.

  “To the City, we’re worth nothing. City citizens think we have no place among them. They say, if they think of us at all, that we deserve this fate—that we’re just animals squabbling in the dirt and ruin.

  “How long must we spend accepting their judgment as truth? Being thankful for their scraps, the disdain they call charity? I say that they are wrong. Farrow says that they are wrong.”

  “I say that they are wrong,” Marna whispered. “We never deserved this, not any of us.”

  Xhea swallowed. She met Marna’s gaze—one eye clouded, the other clear and sharp and perfectly sane.

  “I understand what I’m doing, Xhea,” she said. “I’m an old woman, and I’m sacrificing myself so that the children of Farrow can have the life that I never could. The life that Ennaline and I wanted so desperately to give to you.”

  Xhea stared at her, this woman who could have been her grandmother, who could have loved her, and now was a stranger trying not to weep and take her hand. A stranger about to die.

  “It’s my choice,” Marna said then—softly, so softly.

  Silence spread between them, broken only by the hiss of air through the overhead vents. Even Ieren was quiet, curled up in one of the nearby chairs as if this discussion did not, could not matter.

  “May I?” Ahrent asked at last, gesturing to the wires. Marna nodded; Xhea’s assent, unneeded though it was, came slower.

  Was Marna really a victim if she went willingly? If Xhea fought back, if she shouted that people should never be used this way, should she direct her words at Ahrent and Marna—or at the City above? The City that spun on uncaring.

  The thought came: If Shai hadn’t come to me, where would I be right now? Not hurt and limping, no; but she would be in the streets, trying to find scraps of paying work, scraps of food. She’d be scrounging in the ruins for anything she could use or sell. Without power, it was the only life she was allowed. The life she had always accepted as her fate, her due.

  No way out.

  Xhea nodded, and watched as Ahrent affixed the wires to Marna’s wrists, the side of her neck, and directly above her heart. His easy motions spoke of familiarity.

  Marna reached out again, her fingers but a breath away from Xhea’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry that I didn’t find you until now. That I won’t get a chance to know you, or get a chance to tell you …”

  Ahrent touched Marna’s shoulder—gently, Xhea saw, yet the woman went silent nonetheless. “Ieren doesn’t have long,” he said, his voice quiet. “Xhea?”

  Xhea swallowed, then nodded and stepped back. Ieren, roused by his name, came to stand at the bedside as Ahrent did something to the IV.

  “This is just a sedative,” Ahrent told Marna. “You’ll begin to feel sleepy in a moment.”

  “Tell me it won’t hurt,” she said softly.

  It was Ieren who replied. “Okay,” he said, cheerfully enough. “It won’t hurt.”

  Marna closed her eyes. But as the sedative was taking effect she waved Ahrent closer, gesturing weakly until he leaned down and put his ear next to her lips.

  “Did I do well?” she whispered, almost too quiet for Xhea to hear. Her slurred voice sounded fearful, needy.

  “You did,” Ahrent Altaigh replied just as softly. “All promises kept, all debts repaid.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Rest, now. Your part is done.”

  Marna’s eyes fluttered closed and did not open again.

  “Ieren,” Ahrent said, and the boy stepped forward.

  The wheeled bed came almost to mid-chest on him, and he stood on his toes in an attempt to look at Marna. Ahrent brought him a chair, and the boy clambered up to stand on the seat. Again Ahrent checked the IV and then the cascading wires with gentle fingertips, as if running through a mental checklist.

  Ieren turned to Xhea. “Watch really carefully, okay? I’ll try to do it slow.”

  “Do what?” she asked.

  But she knew: this was the binding at which Eridian had failed when they’d stolen Shai; the binding at which Orren’s casters had attempted so blindly in their resurrection. Spirit to body to the structure beyond.

  Xhea was afraid. Yet she stood, holding the bed for balance, as Ieren raised his hands and began to work. She didn’t see him call his magic—but she felt it. It echoed through her like the sudden sounding of a bell, and Xhea sucked in her breath in surprise.

  She recognized the sensation. This was the feeling that had drawn her, once and again, in the underground; the feeling of magic, twin to her own. It drew her even now, the whole of her attention swinging to Ieren like a compass needle.

  A moment later, that magic seeped from his outstretched fingers, soft and dark like a shadow in midair. Carefully, he touched each of the wires that ran from the ceiling in turn; touched, just as gently, Marna’s flesh at the point where those wires joined. But it was only when Xhea shifted her eyes’ focus that she could see what he was doing.

  Thin tendrils of dark magic spun out from his fingertips and into Marna’s body beneath, so delicate and precise that Xhea could but marvel at his control. His magic did not curl and coil like hers, with a restless movement like smoke, only unfurled like lengths
of thin, dark thread.

  As he wove those threads into a complex pattern, Xhea stiffened in recognition. She had seen spells like this before—spells that did not gleam with light, but were a cold, dark gray like lace woven from tarnished silver wire. Dark magic had woven the spells that had bound Shai to her body, and her spirit to life.

  So, too, did these spells bind. As she watched, the end of those spell-lines created hooks that dug into Marna’s spirit and drew it inexorably toward the wire—a wire that was suddenly as much a part of her as her hair or fingernails—tying the two together. Where the living spirit went, so too did the magic. Marna was not a rich woman, nor a powerful one; the flow of her magic was the barest gleam of light. Yet still it flowed, through her body, into the wires—and every last bit of it went into the skyscraper.

  Soon, machines would need to take over the myriad small burdens of living. With Marna’s magic no longer helping keep her body alive, she would need the battered life support equipment to keep her heart beating, her lungs breathing, until there was no magic left.

  “Just like that,” Ieren said proudly. “Did you get that? I can draw you the spell-lines, if you want.”

  Xhea opened her eyes, not knowing when she closed them, and blinked as if to clear what she’d seen from her memory. Movement did not change the sudden trance-like state into which she’d fallen, nor the feeling of calm that had swept over her as she’d watched Ieren work—watched that dark magic not hurt and destroy, as hers so often did, but bind, careful and delicate and slow.

  She took a long, shuddering breath and looked at Marna’s face. There was no pain in the woman’s expression, no fear; only slack features. Xhea wished that unconsciousness looked like sleep, that she might pretend Marna was safe now in the embrace of some gentle dream.

  “One woman?” she asked at last. Her words dropped into a moment of perfect silence.

  For Xhea knew: no matter how long she lived, how much magic she had, one woman’s power would never be enough to bring about the transformation that Ahrent promised.