Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  “A moment later, she collapsed, and only then could anyone break her brother’s hold on her body. But it was too late. I’d seen him take something from her—something glimmering held in his tight little fist.

  “I ran. Just turned and ran as hard and as fast as I could. My parents believed me—or believed something, absent gods only know why—and they took me away.”

  Suddenly Xhea remembered the first time she’d talked to Lane about ghosts. It had taken time; young Xhea had been convinced that if Lane knew about the ghosts, that she’d kick Xhea out, send her away. Reject her.

  She’d told her about a ghost that she’d seen in the market, and Lane had been shocked, angry—or so Xhea had thought. Now she wondered if what she’d really been was afraid.

  Over and over Lane had said that Xhea was lying, just making up stories to scare her. It had taken weeks for that sudden coldness between them to fade; longer before Lane suggested using her talent to make money. Only now did Xhea truly understand that fear.

  “But why—?”

  “The Spire,” Abelane said. She snorted and gestured at the walls around them. “What I saw then, a dark magic child stealing a living person’s spirit from their body, is a secret that the Central Spire holds very, very closely. People know that dark magic users exist—that they are rare and highly valued, that they’re needed to make soul bindings that join Radiants to their Towers—but they don’t know what else they do. Don’t know what they can do.”

  “But what does it matter?” For how many Lower City dwellers now knew that very secret? Herself included. More, certainly, than she had fingers; likely many more.

  “I don’t think you realize how many spirits these children consume during their lives.”

  “Dozens?”

  A short laugh, bleak and without humor. “At least. They need a source for all those spirits. They use the criminals sent to the prison.”

  A source for ghosts, Xhea thought in slow shock. For as plentiful as ghosts could be in some areas, their presence was neither predictable nor certain.

  She thought, too, of the speed at which Ieren had emptied Farrow of whatever ghosts might have once lingered there. For there had been none that she’d seen or heard or even distantly felt, which was hardly the case anywhere else within the Lower City.

  But prisoners?

  Abelane explained, “It’s part of the Spire’s arrangement with the Towers. All criminals convicted for serious crimes—however those may be defined by the individual Tower—are not to be held by the Tower itself for a period of more than one year, but sent to the Central Spire for imprisonment. The Spire is contractually bound never to kill a Tower’s citizen. Only hold them and, if appropriate, free them when they have been reformed. But few ever come out.”

  The night walkers.

  If the Spire could not kill a person, why spend good renai to house and clothe, feed and care for what was only, in the end, a useless vessel? And so they were tossed, carelessly, to the Lower City. The prisoners were not killed but they died all the same, starved and broken; and sometimes they killed others before dying.

  Which said nothing about what happened to their spirits, those final months or weeks or days in which they were slowly consumed.

  No wonder a vacant body can always be found for a Radiant ghost, Xhea thought, dazed, remembering that Shai had said a Radiant spirit must be anchored to a living body to continue generating magic. The Spire has an endless supply of empty bodies, which they discard, living, like waste.

  “But you’re just a witness to a crime, not a criminal. Why are you even here?”

  “I am a criminal, Xhea. Tried and convicted. It’s a crime to attempt to evade an Enforcer or dodge the Spire’s justice, and I did both. And after what I had seen? I was too dangerous to be let go—but too useful to be allowed to waste away in some cell. So here I am.”

  “Serving the dark magic children?”

  Abelane nodded. “Making their food. Doing their laundry, bringing them new clothes, helping teach the younger ones their lessons. Telling them stories. Cleaning their rooms. Comforting them in the night when they have a bad dream.” She shrugged; it was a strangely hopeless gesture.

  “But why didn’t you just stay?” Xhea asked, helpless to stop the plaintive note that crept into her voice. “We could have run, we could have hidden—we could have figured something out. Together.”

  Some part of her, it seemed, was always nine years old, waking to an empty room and pacing those floorboards long past nightfall. Some part of her was always dust-coated and desperate, searching the ruins of the collapsed Red Line subway tunnel, as if beneath a pile of crumbled concrete she could find the bloody, broken reason why she was suddenly alone.

  “I escaped the market without being seen,” Abelane said, “but they tracked me anyway. Some things not even a skin sculptor can change.”

  A moment, then: “Your magical signature.”

  It was a revelation. Xhea had always known that Abelane had more bright magic than many Lower City dwellers; yet she had rarely used that power. She’d paid for food when they had no chits, but only then; and all her other spells? Tricks, Xhea had thought of them. Just little tricks of magic that helped them steal food or heal a cut or quiet the sound of their ragged breath when a pursuer came too close to their hiding spot.

  But what if it hadn’t been that Abelane couldn’t use her magic, but only that she was too scared to try? Terrified that any given spell might attract attention from the wrong people.

  “They tracked me to our apartment. I didn’t sleep that night—too wound up, and certain that at any moment there would be footsteps on the stairs and it would be them. Before dawn I looked outside and there they were, two Enforcers standing on the front step. I looked back and… there you were. Curled up. Sleeping.

  “I knew you would try to stop me. When you got angry, there was nothing that could stand in your way—certainly not sense. And you’d touch one of them, and they’d know what you are, and they’d take you, too.”

  Abelane looked up, and in her face Xhea could see the girl that she’d been: fourteen years old, standing in front of that dusty window in the pre-dawn light, terrified and alone. No one to help her or stop what was going to happen; only a small, sleeping person who loved her.

  “Why let them have us both when they only wanted me?”

  A sacrifice.

  Why didn’t you wake me? Xhea wanted to ask. Why didn’t you at least say goodbye?

  But she knew. Abelane was right: nothing would have stopped Xhea. She would have thrown herself between Abelane and the Enforcers, Lane’s sacrifice be blighted. She would have clung to Lane’s hand, heedless of the pain. She would have volunteered to go.

  And this, she thought, looking at the Spire’s pale walls around her, would have been my life. Her mother’s binding would have broken sooner—and how many ghosts would she have destroyed since then? And none of them Radiant, none of them enough to keep her safe and steady and sane.

  In all likelihood, she would have already been dead.

  At nine years old? She would have done anything to save Lane.

  “I thought I could protect you—I thought I had protected you. Maybe it didn’t matter in the end. You’re here. But I tried.”

  “Six years,” Xhea whispered. “You’ve been here for six years. While I…” How could she even explain what had filled those years? She lacked the words even to try; lacked the desire.

  “How did they find you?” Abelane asked then. “Because you’re not like them, not really. You could always see ghosts and your touch hurt, but you always had so little magic that you couldn’t have…”

  Xhea stretched her hand into the middle of the table, palm up, and called her magic. It hurt as she forced that thin, weak stream of power through the crack in the binding, down her arm and out into the air beyond. It was just a pale wisp of wavering gray, like the smoke from an extinguished match, vanishing as it rose.

  Even so, Abe
lane gasped and pushed back from the table in shock.

  “No,” she said in disbelief. “Xhea you can’t—you shouldn’t—”

  “I have their power,” Xhea said. She released her hold on her magic, wanting to press her hand against her stomach to ease the pain. “But I’m not like them. What you saw—I’ve never done that. Not ever. I even stopped a dark magic child from stealing a living man’s spirit. Ieren,” she said, suddenly realizing that if Abelane had been here all this time, she would have known the boy.

  Abelane nodded hesitantly.

  “Ieren tried to steal the spirit of someone I knew, and I put the man’s spirit back. He’s alive. He’s fine.” Mostly, Xhea thought, but there was no need to say that aloud.

  “But if you have their power,” Abelane said softly, “then you need a ghost. You destroy people anyway.”

  Xhea curled her fingers in one at a time, feeling the chill of her fingertips against her palm. She was hungry, she realized, but it was only normal hunger.

  Keeping her movements slow and unthreatening, she reached for a cookie. Abelane tensed, ready to run. Xhea pretended she did not see, as if that reaction wasn’t another bruise to her already battered heart. She lifted the cookie and took a bite, using the movement to hide her indecision.

  Because this could be the reason that Abelane was here, all unknowing. If anyone in the Spire had discovered their shared past, they would not hesitate to use it against her. Information, trust, cooperation—she did not know what the Spire wanted from her, only that Abelane was their best route to get it.

  The Spire must already know about Shai, she thought at last. Their stories were inextricably intertwined: the Radiant spirit who had come to the Lower City, and the girl who could see ghosts who was the connection to that power. It wouldn’t be a betrayal to explain that much—wouldn’t put Shai in any new danger.

  “I have a ghost,” Xhea said. “But I would never hurt her. Not intentionally; not ever. She’s a friend.”

  “Your power won’t give you a choice.” And oh, the sadness in Abelane’s voice. “Do you think that they don’t try? That they don’t want to protect the ones bound to them? I know, Xhea—I know more about these children and their power than almost anyone.”

  “But we—”

  Abelane continued, unhearing. “For most of these children, their first bondling is a parent, sometimes a sibling or other relative. Someone who loves them without question. They go voluntarily, and at the moment of their death, they bind themselves to the child.”

  For a moment, Xhea could but gape. A tether, she thought. A dark magic child as their unfinished business, the thing that they could not leave behind.

  “Then the child is taught to create a dark magic binding, if they have not already done so instinctively. It holds them steadier than the tether alone—and helps keeps their power quiescent while they learn to control it. The dual link makes the ghost survive longer.”

  “Why are they not bound?” Xhea asked. For years the binding her mother had woven—combined with the bright magic with which Xhea had regularly dosed herself—had kept Xhea’s magic suppressed.

  “They are when they’re young. But the longer they’re around other dark magic users or powerful ghosts, the more their power pushes against those bindings. Better that they learn to control the power young than have it overwhelm or kill them unexpectedly.” Abelane shrugged. “Or so it’s said. It doesn’t change what they do to the ghosts bound to them. Quickly or slowly, the ghosts are destroyed.”

  “How do you know? You can’t see them.”

  “No,” Abelane said, her voice turning angry. “But they can. You think it’s easier for a kid to see their parent in pain if that parent is dead? And they know it’s their fault.” She gestured sharply. “No, I can’t see what they do, but they tell me. ‘Laney, his hands are gone.’ ‘Laney, I can’t see his face anymore.’ ‘Laney, he won’t stop crying.’”

  “Abelane,” Xhea started, but Abelane wasn’t listening. Her voice was louder, harder, anger cracking through the wall time and distance had built between them.

  “You know what’s even worse? When you know the person that they’re consuming. When the kid wakes up crying because their ghost is whimpering in pain, and that ghost’s your dead friend, and you can’t see them and you can’t hear them and you can’t help them. All you can do is try to dry the kid’s eyes and console them and hope that they don’t kill you next.”

  “Lane,” Xhea said, as if with voice alone she could cut through that rage. “My friend. My ghost. She’s a Radiant.”

  Abelane froze, her mouth slightly open.

  “And no, she hasn’t been with me that long, but we need each other. I keep her strong and she keeps me…” Xhea suddenly had to swallow past a thickness in her throat. “She keeps me alive.”

  No, more than that.

  She gave me a life worth having.

  With that thought, something changed within her. That hard stone of hurt and anger she’d held within her heart for so very long softened—if only a little. Because whatever had happened to Abelane, no matter why she’d left, Xhea had survived. She’d found her own way, her own strength, her own life. She was whole. She was alive.

  She’d even found another person who loved her.

  Xhea lifted a hand to the spelled tether that joined her to Shai. Though she received no thoughts or images, she felt the flow of Shai’s bright magic holding her sane and steady and safe.

  But wasn’t the magic that Xhea cared about, not in the end. It was the person on the other end of that line.

  Across from her, Abelane had grown still, her eyes wide. Slowly her lips shaped the words, “A Radiant?” Yet no sound emerged, not even a whisper.

  A moment, then Abelane rose unsteadily to her feet. Get up, she mouthed.

  Xhea blinked. All the things they’d spoken of—their shared past, Abelane’s history and imprisonment, the true nature of dark magic—and only this concerned her? A passing mention of Shai?

  I don’t understand. Yet she had but to look at Abelane’s face to see her fear and urgency.

  In all her life, Xhea had only trusted two people without question—and Abelane was one of them. Time stretched between them, and a distance made of past hurts and unanswered questions—a wound that would be a long time healing. But this was still Abelane.

  Not knowing whether she would later curse herself for a fool, Xhea followed Abelane’s lead, moving toward the door. There Abelane paused just long enough to reactivate her bright mask, then led Xhea from the room, down the hall, and away.

  Out in the hall, Abelane’s demeanor changed, all trace of her sudden panic vanishing.

  “Since they let you out already,” she said cheerfully, “let me show you around. We can save the grand tour for tomorrow, but it won’t do to have you wandering around lost, right?”

  “What are you—”

  Abelane stepped on her foot and Xhea fought not to yelp. But she knew the gesture; couldn’t count the number of times she’d had her toes squished in just such a manner.

  Abelane had been a great con artist, her acts so believable even Xhea had sometimes fallen for them. A subtle kick or pinch or Abelane’s shoe grinding down on her toes had often been the only way that Abelane could tell Xhea to shut her mouth lest she ruin the con for the both of them.

  “Can you not injure my good leg?” Xhea muttered instead, the words all but inaudible. Abelane showed no sign that she had heard, only ushered Xhea forward as she talked in a quiet, happy voice about the daily routine.

  They passed door after door—most locked now from the outside, as Xhea’s had been. Extending her senses, Xhea could feel the inhabitants in the spaces just beyond: the twin pull of dark magic and a ghost.

  She glanced at Abelane out of the corner of her eye, trying to keep from frowning; Abelane chattered on, seemingly oblivious. It was as if when that mask went over her face, she became a different person; everything, from the way she walked to the r
elentlessly cheerful cadence of her voice, changed.

  An act, Xhea thought; one that had clearly kept Abelane safe—or at least alive—these past years in the Spire.

  As they walked, Abelane pointed out rooms in the center spaces, off the hall’s left side: the common area, the playroom, classrooms, a dining hall. To their right there were only those numbered doors, stretching on and on unbroken.

  “Are there really so many?” Xhea asked at last. Abelane’s head tilted in question, and Xhea pointed to the doors. “Children.” Because she’d seen—what, a dozen dark magic children? Seen, too, those doors closed and locked. Yet Xhea had counted some twenty rooms already, and they hadn’t yet traveled even the half of the Spire’s circumference.

  “Oh, no,” Abelane said. “The children are here, of course, but there are other rooms, too. Spaces for friends and family to visit, rooms for attendants like me. The laundry. The kitchens.”

  “Your room is here?” Xhea asked softly.

  “Of course,” Abelane said. “Where else would I go?” So much echoing unsaid beneath those seemingly casual words.

  “Do you visit the rest of the Spire? Take the children on trips?”

  But Abelane only changed the subject, chattering on about meal times and seating arrangements in the dining hall.

  Six years, Xhea thought again. Six years had passed and Abelane had spent every day of them here, the whole of her existence limited to this curving hall, this array of rooms.

  They reached yet another numbered door, no different than the rest, but here Abelane stopped, fumbled with the lock, and then ushered Xhea through the open door.

  The air in the room beyond warm and damp, and the machines along the far wall were full of clothing. Abelane had brought her to the laundry.

  Behind her, Abelane barricaded the door with a laundry trolley, then went to those machines against the wall and hit buttons, spun dials. There came the sound of water, the smell of soap, and as Xhea watched the clothes tumbled, cleaning themselves.

  Xhea stared, distracted by a moment of unmitigated longing. Thinking: No cold water, no harsh soap, no dry hands cracked and bleeding—