Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  There was no use going back toward the landing bay and so she crept in the opposite direction, her hair pulled over her shoulder to quiet its chime. Some few of the doors she passed were locked, but others had their bolts drawn back.

  Xhea paused at one of the unlocked doors.

  If they locked the children in, then an unlocked door would mean that there was no one inside—or that the room was used for something different. There could be something useful there, or a way out. She cautiously turned the handle.

  The door cracked open to reveal a room identical to the one she had left—and entirely different. It was the same structure and layout, yet there was no way she might mistake the two. While her room had been stark and impersonal, this looked like a home—a messy one. The couch in the corner was piled with blankets, the table with books, the counters with plates and meals half-finished. A child’s paintings were roughly tacked on the far wall, none hung higher than Xhea’s shoulder.

  Standing there, her hand on the door handle, she felt something else: a slight pull, an ache at the edge of her senses. A person and a ghost.

  They’re not all locked in after all.

  Footsteps approached from one of the adjoining rooms. Xhea recoiled and hurriedly pulled the door shut. Yet she’d hardly walked much farther down the hall when the sound of voices reached her, speaking quietly, laughing; a little farther, and they seemed like all she could hear.

  There was no running; no point, even, in trying. While to her right doors continued at wide, even intervals, on the left there was only a wide open space from which she heard the voices. She could not pass by unnoticed—and behind her there was nothing but her own room, yet more locked doors, and the landing bay.

  She hesitated, weighing her options, before tightening her grip on her cane and squaring her shoulders. Xhea turned the corner and walked into a wide, open room filled with children.

  Dark magic children, each with a ghost tethered to hands or heart or chest.

  Four kids gathered around the wide table that dominated the room’s far end, books and papers spread before them. The oldest among them seemed perhaps ten years of age—and a very small ten at that. Others, obviously younger, sprawled across the floor, playing with wooden blocks and fighting over puzzle pieces. In one corner, a cluster of kids gathered around a man in a pale gray Spire’s uniform, that familiar cascade of magic obscuring his features as he read to them from an open storybook.

  Some of the ghosts stood in a circle nearby, their tethers drawn taut, looking like parents keeping half an eye on their kids while they discussed the neighborhood gossip. A few others floated, eyes closed, oblivious.

  Children and ghosts alike looked up as Xhea entered, her hair chiming. The Spire’s servant cautiously lowered the book to his lap.

  “Hello,” said a little girl on the floor. Her long, dark hair was in braids. “Feeling better?” She smiled, the expression sweet and welcoming.

  Another boy—one of the eldest, sitting at the table—grinned. “Hey. Didn’t think they’d bother to let you out. Thanks for the swear words.” They’d heard her shouting, then; heard her throwing things and demanding to be freed.

  Xhea moved closer, acknowledging neither greeting. There, in the room’s far corner, she found what she was looking for: two ghosts huddled together not to chat, but seemingly for warmth. One was a man, large and muscular, whose pale-skinned face was bruised dark, his shaved head crisscrossed with scars. His right eye was swollen shut and seeped shadowed tears—bloody tears, though she only saw gray. His other eye met Xhea’s gaze, hard and angry, as he tightened his arms protectively around the ghost he held.

  That ghost was a girl who might have been Xhea’s age when she’d died. Dusky skin that Xhea guessed to be light brown, her close-shorn hair standing in uneven spikes. She did not move, only stared blankly as if lost in a haze of grief.

  The man’s fingers were gone, and his hands—holding the girl to his chest—had turned hazy. But the girl had no feet anymore, no calves, no hands or forearms. Though she was visible, she no longer looked quite real; Xhea could see through her as if she was made only of mist.

  Xhea wanted to go to the ghosts, kneel before them and… what? There her imagination failed, for she could think of nothing that might undo what had been done to them. Instead she followed their tethers to their anchors: two of the older dark magic children, both at the table. She gauged the look of each, and wondered what might happen if she lunged and cut both tethers.

  She imagined two children like Ieren, powerful and far better trained than she was, raging out of control. Imagined what the others might do if she suddenly attacked one of their own.

  She felt the cold, bound knot of her power, all but useless.

  Even so, Xhea curled her free hand into a fist to keep from severing those bonds regardless.

  “Where’s your bondling?” asked the boy tethered to girl’s half-eaten ghost.

  He, at least, had understood the direction of her stare. His expression was less friendly now, and he watched warily as if unsure whether, lacking a bondling of her own, Xhea was going to make a play for his.

  “Not here,” Xhea replied flatly. She touched the tether that joined her to Shai, as much for reassurance as to demonstrate that she already had a ghost.

  He frowned, perplexed. “Why do you allow your bondling such freedom?”

  “Allow? She is not property.”

  The boy shrugged. “You can command her to do whatever you want. Why let her run around? Something could happen to her.”

  “Is that a threat?” Knives were less sharp than her tone.

  “Hey, kiddo,” said an older voice, interrupting.

  She turned, expecting to see the man in the Spire’s garb—yet though he had risen, it was only to flee, the storybook abandoned on his chair. It was a ghost who spoke, an older man who stepped away from the gossip ring, moving toward her.

  “You’ve had a rough day, but let’s not get off on the wrong foot, okay?” He smiled, white teeth gleaming, and gestured to the table. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell us your name? I’m Darsen, and this is my little boy Amel.”

  Amel was perhaps four years old. The child blinked at her with wide, dark eyes.

  The wrong foot? Xhea thought incredulously. Except it was clear that these gathered people, children and ghosts alike, saw her not as a visitor but a new addition to their number.

  “You’re old.” This from Amel; his ghost—his father?—reached forward to shush him.

  “Amel,” chided the girl with the long braids. “You know we don’t talk about age here.”

  Because age was correlated with power—the more powerful the dark magic, the quicker it killed its user. Xhea’s age was like wearing a sign around her neck that declared her to be weak. It was not scorn she saw in the children’s eyes as they processed this fact. It was pity.

  “Yes,” Xhea said. “I’m old. I have a ghost—a bondling—but I’m not like you.” The loathing in her voice, the way she looked from the dissolving ghosts to the children—children doing their schoolwork, reading, playing, as if those spirits and their pain were beneath even casual notice—made that point clear.

  “Child,” Darsen said. “You don’t understand.”

  Xhea turned to him in a clatter of charms. Darsen was an older man, or had been when he died; he was a City man from his accent and tailored clothes and the coiffed sweep of his graying hair. The tether connecting him to Amel was a heart tether, thick and strong.

  “No,” she said, harsh, condemning. “I don’t.”

  But she’d felt that hunger—the need to consume a ghost to counterbalance the effects of dark magic on her body and soul. As that hunger had grown, it had overridden her thought, fear, compassion. Now, as in days past, Xhea tried not to think of what the hunger might have driven her to do had Shai not returned.

  And that same hunger in a child? she asked herself. Do you think a little kid could have so much restraint—or unders
tand the consequences of their actions?

  And, unlike her, they didn’t have a Radiant ghost to save them.

  “Not all are taken,” Darsen told her softly, gesturing to the other ghosts. “Not all are hurt. Not for a very long time.”

  Xhea had the feeling that there was more he wanted to say, and only the children’s presence stopped him.

  They were, Xhea realized, only children. They had not had her life. Despite the challenges of their magic and the hunger its use engendered—despite all that the Spire made them do—they had never known a life where everyone living shied from their touch. They had always had each other.

  She envied them that, if only a little.

  But she did not want this life. There was no place for her among them, not now or in any of the years past.

  “Not for a very long time,” Xhea said to Darsen, “isn’t the same as not at all.”

  “No. It isn’t.” Yet he smiled at Amel, and reached for the boy’s head as if he might ruffle his hair.

  Xhea looked to the ghosts she’d named gossiping parents, and wondered if there was some truth to that thought. Each had a tether near as wide as the one that connected Darsen to Amel, unspooled from their hearts.

  Did they kill their parents? If so, they’d been forgiven, or the parents had gone willingly; Xhea wasn’t sure which she found more upsetting.

  “Don’t tell me they chose this.” Xhea pointed to the two ghosts in the corner. Because she’d heard that lie once already, and wasn’t so foolish as to believe it a second time. “Don’t pretend this is what they wanted.”

  “They’re just prisoners,” said one of the children.

  Another shrugged, confused by her objection. “Their lives are forfeit.” She sounded like she was quoting something oft-heard. “There’s a cost to being a criminal.”

  A cost? For even the worst crimes in the Lower City, punishment was swift, if no less final. No one deserved a slow torture of unmaking. Xhea realized that if she searched the Lower City’s nighttime streets, she might find them: the ghosts’ bodies, empty eyes staring as they walked.

  She swallowed her angry retort, though it pained her, and instead asked: “Is that where you get the bondlings you take from the living?” Because that’s what Ieren had attempted when he’d grabbed Torrence—to replace his bound ghost with the spirit of a living, breathing man.

  “Sure,” said the older boy. “Them, or sometimes people like her. Nobodies.” He gestured behind Xhea.

  She turned. Right behind her stood a woman wearing the Spire’s uniform, a stack of folded towels held in her arms. The Messenger’s uniform had been white, and the Enforcers’ were that dark gray Xhea knew to be red, but this woman wore a nondescript pale gray. Green, Xhea thought, or perhaps blue. Of her face, Xhea could see nothing; only that shimmering mask of magic.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman started—then froze, staring at Xhea.

  Maybe the new girl bites.

  “She counts as expendable?” Xhea gestured to the woman. “Why, because it’s her job to bring you towels?”

  As if the answer could be anything other than yes.

  The older boy shrugged again, still confused; the expression was mirrored on the other children’s faces. “Sure,” he said. “She’s a criminal, too. A nobody.”

  “No face,” said one of the girls on the floor, her angelic face framed with cute, blond pigtails. “No name. Nobody.”

  “Laney’s not nobody!” one of the smaller kids protested, only to be shushed by his friends.

  Xhea watched as the “nobody” woman backed away, then hurried down the corridor without a backward glance.

  She, too, wanted to leave. These kids can’t help you. They can’t help the Lower City.

  But she could use one as a hostage.

  The idea made her go still; she knew the children’s value. She was larger and stronger than any of them—and immune to the pain of their touch.

  But who could she threaten? And what would she demand?

  Before Xhea could move, the girl with the long braids abruptly stood. “I don’t like you,” the girl declared, turning up her nose. “You’re too angry. It makes you ugly and mean.”

  Xhea would have said that the girl was no more than six years old; given her experience with Ieren, she added a few years to that tally. Standing, the girl came only to Xhea’s mid-chest. Despite both the girl’s apparent age and stature, the others deferred to her—even the ghosts.

  Her own bondling—a man—huddled at the far end of his tether, refusing to even look in their direction. It was another of the ghosts who tried to object, saying, “Lissel, listen, if you’d just—”

  The girl, Lissel, knocked the objection aside. “No,” she said, force of command behind the word, and the woman fell silent. “I don’t think we should let her be like this. I don’t think we should talk to her at all until she learns to behave.”

  Xhea looked down at Lissel with unfeigned scorn. “And who put you in charge, little girl?”

  “I’m first, here!” she said, stung—and apparently not realizing she had already broken her imperious decree.

  “First what?”

  “This.”

  Lissel held her hand before her and smoke wreathed her fingers, spiraling into the air in a sinuous column. Magic—and not mere wisps of gray, but magic deep and black. Yet it was not its shade that made Xhea hesitate, but its shape; as she watched, that single column split and split again, bursting outward until the girl held a tree of dark magic on her palm.

  Xhea had marveled at Ieren’s control—but this was beyond anything she’d imagined. It reminded her not so much of her own power, but Shai’s, that bright magic creating fractal patterns between her hands. Perhaps Xhea’s own magic, unbound, was more powerful; but she had nothing approaching that kind of control.

  This was not the first time someone had tried to intimidate Xhea into compliance. Growing up on the Lower City streets, there had always been someone bigger and stronger than she was, and the discomfort of her touch had been slim protection. If someone had shown off the way this girl was now? There were two choices: hit them harder or run away. Sometimes both.

  Her hand tightened on her cane, preparing to swing, but Xhea made herself draw back. Just a child, she reminded herself. Hurting the girl would earn her nothing.

  Instead she said quietly, “I see.”

  Lissel looked triumphant. Her hands dropped and the magic faded into the air.

  “Is everything okay in here?”

  Xhea turned. In the doorway were two more “nobodies” in the Spire’s uniform—clearly nervous, yet walking forward nonetheless. One reached up and touched her neck; the shimmering mask of magic fell, revealing a woman’s face.

  “Everything’s fine,” Lissel chirped. She smirked at Xhea before flouncing away, the other children making room for her as she went.

  The Spire’s servant watched Xhea warily. “I didn’t realize you would be joining us already.” Polite-speak, Xhea figured, for How did you get out of your blighted room?

  She smiled. “I was just leaving.”

  When Xhea returned to her rooms, there was no one waiting inside. Not the official she expected at every turn; not a jailer or guard. Not even a ghost.

  Yet someone had been there while she was gone: her food wrappings had been taken away, the dishes she’d thrown had been cleaned and placed in the cupboard, the vase she’d attempted to smash righted and filled with leafless sticks.

  The servant, she realized.

  Again she heard the child’s words: No face, no name. Nobody. She’d seen four of those so-called nobodies, the people tasked to serve and watch over the dark magic children—and who risked their hunger and fickle wrath each day.

  Prisoners, indeed.

  On her walk back, Xhea had tried every door, locked and unlocked; those that opened had been clearly the children’s rooms. She’d found nothing useful—no stairwells, no utility closet full of tools, not even a blighted
window.

  Now she moved through her rooms, restless, irritable. Useless. She wanted to hit something, wanted to spit—and the pain in her knee didn’t help. At last she flopped back onto the bed, upon which fresh sheets had been laid—and then couldn’t resist lying back, just for a moment. She’d never felt anything so comfortable.

  Xhea stared at the ceiling—a perfect span of unstained white—and tried to think. She could run—but where? She could damage her rooms, or the halls and communal spaces beyond—but to what end? She could fight or scare or hurt the dark magic children. And none of it would help her escape or prevent the Lower City’s fate. Time felt like sand, running through her fingers.

  Perhaps she should stay safe and quiet, giving Shai a chance to act before the Spire’s attack tomorrow. As long as they were bound, Shai’s magic would flow, strong and steady. Surely, Xhea thought, that was something.

  It didn’t make her feel any better.

  Tomorrow. If she looked, would she see the weapon spell the Spire meant to cast upon the ground being woven somewhere above her? Refocusing her vision to see pure magic, Xhea looked at the ceiling—and beyond.

  For a span of a few stories, there was nothing: no light, no spells, only a blankness that she understood to be no magic at all. Nothing that dark magic might reach or destroy. Beyond that? Oh, there was magic there—but unlike anything she’d seen.

  Raw power shone in intense spots, their light all but blinding. No, she realized. Not spots—channels of power. They were rivers of power that flowed along the Spire’s length to its peak, lost in the sky; it was only her perspective beneath them that made them look like round points of light.

  Farther, there was a ring of light that had to be a living platform, spells thick in its walls and floors, bright pinpricks of people moving within. Higher, there was another living platform, wider than the first; higher, another. No matter how far it seemed she looked, she could see no end to the Spire’s levels.

  Yet she could see no sign of the weapon they meant to turn against the Lower City—no sign of any disruption at all.

  Unless the weapon is the Spire itself. The thought was disturbing—yet it made a strange kind of sense. For it was the Spire that poured dark magic on the ground; if it could channel that power, and channel bright magic as she saw above, surely it could be a conduit for a spell. It was, after all, the greatest of the Towers—if one could call it a Tower at all.