Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Shai sped farther into the ruins. Darkness was gathering quickly, twilight surrendering to evening, and one by one clouds blotted out the stars.

  She passed person after person, and it hurt to keep going, knowing she could help them and continuing regardless. Each time she glanced at a family huddled behind a broken wall, a lone woman perched on a high ledge, a band of men sitting back-to-back with weapons drawn, she could not help but wonder if they would live until morning. Which of these people might survive even if she did not pause to help? Which of them would die because she left them there alone?

  Terrible choices; and though she told herself that she had to keep going, had to find a larger group, had to protect as many as she could at once, Shai could not help but feel her stomach twist with slow, sick guilt.

  Nor were the walkers the only threat. For all that she saw groups of people banding together out in the ruins, there were those, too, who sought only to prey on the weaker around them.

  As if the Towers haven’t taken enough, Shai thought in disgust, watching as a young man stole from an older woman’s bags as a girl—his sister, probably—held the woman down in the dust, a twist of sharpened metal held to her throat. As if the Spire won’t take everything.

  Such times—hard times, desperate times—revealed a person’s true self, routine and nicety stripped away. The good and the bad and the lost; they were all here in the ruins.

  Light led Shai onward, glowing from a far quarter of the ruins. Following that light to its source, at last Shai found what she had been seeking. A makeshift wall surrounded a few hundred people in a great, uneven ring. Parts of that wall were ancient foundations, but the rest was just rubble, heaped high. Staring at that mess of rock and concrete and rebar, Shai thought of Edren’s underground barricade: protection built from whatever was at hand.

  It was not the wall itself that held Shai’s attention, but the power that wove through it. Spells had been laid upon that rubble; spells upon spells to bind the bits into a whole, to make them stand strong and true and withstand an impact. As Shai approached, she could see people working in the darkening twilight to weave more spells, bit by painful bit.

  These were their life’s savings, Shai suddenly understood, poured out into that broken stone. But what use were life’s savings when one might not live to see dawn?

  Here she could help—and not one but many. All the people working to build those walls higher, stronger; all the people huddled behind them.

  As she drew nearer, already planning her reinforcements, Shai recognized people moving behind those walls. It was the tall man she saw first—a man hard with muscle, his face edged like a hatchet. It took her a moment to recall his name: Pol, Emara’s father. Overseer of Edren’s arena and the fights within, and, years ago, Edren’s general during the Lower City’s desperate war.

  No fear showed in his face or movements; he only worked, directing the men and women around him. He gestured to points on a map scratched into the dirt, and the gathered forces nodded, some few saluting, and ran about their tasks.

  Shai knew then: Edren has fallen. Not the building perhaps, though that might follow; not the soul of the place, not the people. But if Edren’s wartime general was here, defending this encampment—if their gladiators were here, and their security members—they were no longer attempting to defend the skyscraper itself.

  Tower Lozan had won.

  But more than Edren’s citizens were gathered inside these walls, and as she neared Shai saw a group of defenders ushering more people inside, all of them wearing Senn’s distinctive sigil on their packs.

  Now that she knew to look, Shai saw Emara nearby—not commanding, but working. She was down to a thin shirt, muscular arms glistening as she heaved a heavy stone into a secondary wall that ringed around a group of children and their minders. Councilor Tranten worked at her side, the smaller woman not lifting the stones but weaving spells over them—thin and tired spells, Lower City spells, but spells nonetheless.

  Yet it was a voice from outside the walls that drew her.

  “There’s the ghost girl,” Torrence said, and Shai looked down.

  Torrence and Daye stood outside the protective wall of rubble, the pair slightly apart from a group of six others. They, like the hunters that stood near them, were armed—though not, she thought, with all the weapons to their name. Daye had her knives, while Torrence rolled a slim blade back and forth between his hands, restless.

  They were used to the ruins and the badlands and the horrors that walked these grass-clogged streets. But for all the blades, Shai saw more empty sheaths—and the weapons that many raised could not have been their usual armaments. A long shard of glass, fabric wrapped around its end; makeshift blades of sharp plastic or twisted sheet metal; shivs and chains and lengths of rusted iron pipe.

  Shai came to stand before the pair, though only Torrence’s head swiveled to follow the movement. He was, for the first time she’d seen since Farrow’s fall, not wearing his dark sunglasses.

  “Have you come to rescue us, O Angel of Light?” Torrence asked her with a mocking grin. “Come to shield us from the monsters and soothe our despair?”

  His words were edged, but his expression was not. It’s not in his nature to plead, Shai thought. No more than this.

  Daye did not look for Shai, only continued sharpening her blades, her gaze flicking once and again toward the ruins around them. The walkers would be coming soon.

  “Ready?” someone from the other group asked—one of Edren’s hunters, Shai realized, recognizing his face. “Best if we meet them farther from the walls.”

  “Just a moment,” Torrence replied though Daye was already straightening, rolling her shoulders, readying a knife in her strong, callused grip.

  Perhaps it was the weapons, or their stance, or the way that the hunters stared out into the darkness beyond, but only then did Shai realize: they were not going to defend the walls. They were going out to find the walkers.

  Find them and kill them, before they could kill everyone else.

  It made sense; she knew it. Xhea had told her that people had tried to clear the ruins of walkers time and again, but such efforts were costly. Walkers could come upon a man slow and steady and silent; they could surround him before he even knew they were there. They could not be intimidated; they did not feel fear or pain, and would grasp and tear at anyone who came within reach.

  And no matter how many walkers were killed, they always returned, like a pool filled from an underground spring.

  The plan made sense—destroy the threat, no matter the cost, and most of the Lower City dwellers would live to see morning. The idea filled Shai with horror nonetheless. The walkers were monsters, yes, but monsters who had once been people. She could not help but imagine her father’s gaunt, once-beloved face as those knives sliced him open, as those clubs beat him down.

  The spell generators, Shai reminded herself. She shuddered, pushing the images away, and looked at Torrence. If they could bring the generators here…

  Quickly, she kindled her light and wrote in the air before Torrence and Daye both, explaining the situation in short, sharp words. Though the words were dim, just shining into the visible spectrum, Torrence squinted as if half-blinded. The hunters from the other group gasped and shied away, then drew weapons in response to this seeming threat.

  Torrence and Daye ignored them.

  “If we get the generators,” Torrence said, cutting to the heart of the matter, “will you be here to power them? Because without you, that’s just a fool’s errand.”

  Yes, Shai wrote, hoping it was true.

  “I think I saw an aircar hidden in the ruins a ways back,” Torrence said speculatively. He gestured to his left.

  Daye nodded and slid her knife into its sheath. “Yes,” she said in her oddly soft voice. “Model VX-47 with modified lifters, cargo storage back, and new-welded towing hooks. Covered with a tarp. Low walls on two sides, backed into the corner protection. Guard on nearby
wall, blind spot at his seven o’clock. Marks of footsteps in a ring—irregular patrol, one man, maybe two. A small distraction would draw them away.”

  Shai blinked, then glanced in the direction Torrence had gestured. No sign of any of that. She knows that just from memory? Just from passing by?

  “Can you get it?”

  Daye looked at Torrence flatly. Shai saw nothing in that expression, but Torrence raised his hands as if in surrender, saying, “Okay, okay. I just asked. You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  Which, Shai thought, probably meant yes.

  “They weren’t letting many aircars out of the Lower City,” he said. “It’d be tough to get in, but tougher to get out. Never mind actually grabbing the generators.” He sounded, if anything, excited by the prospect. “What do you think?”

  Daye leaned against the piled-high wall, considering. She looked at the ruins beyond, lit now only by candlelight, Towerlight; she tilted her head to stare at the Towers above. She was, for the span of a breath, so still that she might have been the statue of a woman—then she nodded once, shortly.

  “We’ll get them,” she said.

  Torrence grinned, then went to speak with the group of hunters, telling them to leave without them, that they’d catch up sometime later.

  “Good hunting,” one said, and Torrence replied in kind. The other man smiled, and there was nothing kind in that expression: the dim light and the stranger’s blackened teeth turned his face into a grinning skull.

  He’ll keep them safe, Shai told herself. He’ll help keep walkers from reaching the walls. Even so, she shivered.

  And perhaps that would be enough. The walkers were no army, no matter their numbers, and strong walls were often enough to keep them at bay. Perhaps they would move on to seek other targets, easier targets—though that was poor comfort this night.

  Despite their numbers, the refugees drew little attention. Voices were hushed and lights shielded; most made do with the flickering Towerlight.

  Shai glanced up. Above them, a feud was in progress: Olton encroached on Celleran and Altaine, with their allies up in arms. Defensive spells flared across the sky, like living clouds lit with lightning, casting the ruins in shades of green and gold and blue.

  Blood looked black in such light.

  She pushed the thought away. Defenses, she told herself, and began planning spells—their anchors, their spelllines. Thinking, too, of a Tower’s strong walls, of a window holding back a storm; remembering the great dome of power she’d conjured to hold back the worst of Rown’s fire from the Lower City market.

  Yet even as she wove the spells, light glimmering around her fingertips, she worried. Torrence and Daye would retrieve the spell generators from Farrow, she reassured herself; these defenses only had to hold out for a few hours.

  Even so, some part of her whispered: Something’s wrong.

  She frowned, thinking. For she knew that the walkers were drawn to any sign of life caught beyond the barrier of strong walls—sound or light or movement—and while Shai had never seen them kill a person, the stories had been bad enough. They ate people, some said; yet, having watched them, Shai didn’t think it was true. They were starving—and yes, they tore people apart and perhaps ate what was left behind—but it was not the need to eat that seemed to drive them.

  Not food that made them hunger.

  It was magic.

  Magic that drew them and magic they desired; magic that they sought within the flesh of their victims, as if the light of that power might fill them once more. As if any amount of power could heal what had been done to them, or replace what had been lost.

  Shai remembered the walkers’ upturned faces, their blank attention as they followed her through the streets the night before. And she thought of the light that had drawn her to this encampment—not the light of the shielded candles that even now burned within the walls, but the spells on the defenses. The light of the small spells on people’s belongings, their weapons and keepsakes; the light of the people themselves.

  Dim lights, all; they were so very poor. But here, in such quantity? They would be a beacon.

  Wait!

  Torrence and Daye were walking away, but Shai cast the word before them, bright and shimmering. Torrence cringed from it, squeezing his eyes closed.

  “Of all the blighted—” he muttered and then looked up, searching for her with tear-bright eyes. “What is it?”

  What do you see? she wrote, dimmer this time.

  He shrugged. “Right now? Blighted lot of spots.”

  The walls. The defenses. You see like the walkers now. What will they see?

  “Like the walkers,” he said. “Don’t expect me to thank you for that comparison.”

  But he turned, rubbed his eyes, and looked at the growing encampment. Frowned, took a step back, and looked again.

  “If this is how the walkers see,” he said then, softly, “then they will be here soon.”

  Daye stepped beside him, and perhaps Torrence saw some question in her stance, her movement—something that Shai could not. He turned to her and said, “No. I think we should go.” He looked back to Shai and said, “We’ll get those spires fast as we can, ghost girl, but don’t expect any miracles.”

  No, Shai thought, watching the bounty hunters walk away. But these people, if they knew she was here, would expect miracles of her.

  Yet that thought was unfair. For all of Torrence’s earlier mocking, these people were not looking for a savior. They worked, backs bent, sweat shining on their faces and dripping from their hair. They were not waiting to be saved but carving salvation out of the dirt and rubble around them, shaping it with blood and sweat and will.

  And if she felt their lives like a yoke of responsibility, that was her choice. Not theirs. These people had lived without her almost their whole lives—generations on generations living and dying in these ruins—and no matter the brutality of this night, they would survive.

  Behind the barricade, a soft voice began to sing. Shai did not know the song, neither words nor melody, yet she recognized it nonetheless: a song meant to lull children to sleep.

  Shai did not know what drove her, yet she let her protection spell fall from her fingers and she rose, following that thread of sound. The children lay within an inner ring of defenses, some three dozen or more, ranging from near-infants to children just old enough to argue that they were adults.

  In the center of that gathering was a dark-skinned young man with a child cradled in his arms. Shai watched as the young man stroked the child’s softly curling hair, his large fingers so gentle; and he sang, his voice a clear, untrained tenor. The children huddled around him, drawing close as if he were a warm fire, their only light and protection from the darkness.

  Sleep, Shai thought to them. There is nothing here to fear.

  The spell she cast over them was not one that spoke of strong walls or valiant defenses, but only of slumber, soft and gentle: a barrier to muffle sound and let them rest in peace.

  The young man’s song continued, though now Shai had to strain to hear him; and one by one the children lowered their heads and closed their eyes. Only then did she work to reinforce the walls around them, all that piled rock and broken concrete, hoping that the strength of her spells balanced the risk of their magical light.

  “They’re coming!” someone cried from atop the main walls. “The walkers are coming!”

  Shai turned.

  Already the defenders gathered, drawn toward the source of that call. She saw Emara among their number, one of her crescent blades in her hand; the other was held by Councilor Tranten, the smaller woman standing at her side.

  Nearby, Pol shouted orders—positions, formations, Shai knew not which—but the defenders moved to obey. Or most of them did. Some stood as if they’d turned to stone, staring horrified into the darkness beyond.

  Some people had never seen a night walker, Shai realized. They’d only heard them: their slow and steady footsteps, their f
ingernails scraping against a shuttered window, a barred door. They’d heard, too, the screams of those caught without shelter, and seen the mess that was left of those unlucky few by morning.

  Shai looked into the darkness—but she did not see what the living saw.

  Perhaps the details were the same. The first walker to approach had been a woman in her forties—or so Shai would guess. Her hair was short, the dark curls streaked with gray and clumped with mud. She walked, slow and steady, despite the bloody ruin of her feet.

  Yet from the drawn gasps and held breaths of those behind the barricade, Shai knew that they saw only a night walker—only a monster in human form. The stuff of nightmares conjured from the dark.

  Shai saw a woman. She recognized her—not from life, but from many long nights just like this one.

  She’d first seen the woman weeks before. Then, her hair had been clean, her skin unmarked, her clothes whole and unstained. She had seemed, truth be told, like someone that Shai’s mother might have known: the kind of woman who would laugh over a glass of wine, debating the finer points of the latest political proposal before dinner was served.

  As the days passed, Shai had caught other glimpses of the woman. She’d watched as her golden brown complexion grew dull and ashy, and her cheeks became hollow; watched as her clothes became stained, with holes in the knees and elbows. She didn’t look much like a person anymore, only the monster that she had become.

  There was a shout. The hunters beyond the walls fanned out, moving to circle the walker, while those inside the barricades prepared some sort of projectile weapon.

  “Get the light!” someone cried. “We need to see where we’re shooting.”

  “No—we can’t risk drawing more of them!”

  Shai ignored the voices and went to the edge of the barricade.

  The hunters were right: the walkers had to be cut down. Destroyed, every last one of them. They weren’t even truly human anymore—just living bodies. Just things.

  Shai knew it, and yet blood was blood, and death was death, and she could not handle more of either. And so she rose, glowing, and drew the walker’s eye.