Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  “First things first.” She looked toward the market tents. When her balance had steadied, Xhea stepped cautiously from the alcove. She felt a tugging against her sternum as the tether stretched, then began dragging the ghost in her wake. The ghost girl gave a yelp of surprise, which Xhea ignored, instead tilting her head back so the quickening rain fell upon her upturned face. The clouds were just gray, but aircars wove among them, their shimmering exhaust like fine strands of copper wire strung across the sky.

  She found a vendor who knew her and offered no more than a raised eyebrow at her less-than-sober state. With a chit, she purchased a few skewers off the grill—some sort of fatty meat, and a starchy, crunchy thing that might have been a potato, the taste of each buried beneath a thick layer of spice. Xhea hummed happily as she chewed.

  “What . . .” the ghost said, then faltered into silence. A moment later, she tried again: “Why . . . why am I here?”

  “That was the deal,” Xhea said, turning to look at the ghost over her shoulder. The world spun at the movement. “Nothing personal, I assure you.”

  She turned down a side street, slipping between low apartments. Their ground levels had been reinforced or disguised to look abandoned: doors bricked or boarded over, windows clouded from untold years of dirt. Higher, the ruse had been abandoned. Warning chimes and fluttering prayer flags hung from balconies, while a line of laundry strung between two buildings was heavy with dripping clothes—all pinned too securely to be dislodged with a thrown rock.

  “Deal?” the ghost asked. “I was just sleeping. And now . . .” The ghost looked down, apparently just realizing that she inhabited a space without gravity, hovering five feet from the ground and skimming forward without walking.

  “Oh,” said Xhea. “That. You’re dead.”

  “I can’t be,” she whispered, peering over her crossed legs and watching the pavement speed by. “No. I’m just asleep.”

  Great, Xhea thought. A talker. She had seemed so quiet at first, so serene; Xhea had thought that she might dream away her death in silence. It would have made things so much easier. Perhaps this was why the man had wanted to get rid of her—a sense that an unseen presence was doing her best to talk his ear off.

  Well, she had only committed to a day, perhaps two, and then she could let the tether go. The girl would catapult back to her original anchor and be out of Xhea’s hair—unless, of course, the man wanted to pay her significantly more.

  “I’m asleep,” the ghost girl insisted. “Only asleep.”

  “Then this must be a very bad dream.”

  Xhea made her way through the Lower City core and out toward the edges where the buildings fell in slow surrender to the surrounding ruins. After a few more protests, largely ignored, the ghost fell into an uneasy silence. She made no attempt to propel herself forward, leaving Xhea to drag her by her tether like a rock on a string.

  Just a City girl, Xhea thought, glancing back at the ghost. She’d probably spent the whole of her life in the Towers, never looking down, never considering what lay on the ground below or all the lives scratched out in the dirt and ruin. Then again, few even from the Lower City chose to leave the core; out in the ruins beyond, Xhea felt that she had the whole world to herself, a wide space that held only the memory of people and the echoes of her footsteps. Here the infrastructure was succumbing to rot and the slow erosion of rain and wind and time. Buildings sagged where they hadn’t fallen entirely. Even the clearest streets were strewn with rubble, bits of lives—of a time—that even history had forgotten.

  But here, too, it was beautiful. Shoots pushed up from between storm sewers and around the stagnant ponds that had once been basements, and the broken street was veined green from new leaves struggling through the cracks. Xhea looked from one small plant to the next, caught by their perfect green.

  At last she came to her destination, a low building that from the outside seemed no different from its collapsing neighbors. Stepping between glass shards and exposed rebar, she made her careful way to the door. It hung from rusted hinges, leaving only a small gap for Xhea to squeeze through. She closed her eyes against the rain of paint flakes that fell from the old frame, then grabbed the tether and dragged the ghost in after her.

  Inside, it was so bright she had to squint. Daylight poured in from every side, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, as if she stood in the shade on a sunny day. Captured light, the owner called it: a spell that gathered sunlight on bright days and brought it inside, tamed to the flick of a switch. After days of rain and overcast skies, the effect was dazzling.

  The building was a warehouse, clean and neatly kept, entirely filled with labeled shelves. But it was the structure itself that always took Xhea aback, for it was something that no one in the Lower City ever saw: a new structure, little older than Xhea herself, with straight walls and floors that did not dip or sag underfoot, its ceiling unstained. No reclaimed materials had gone into its construction, she knew, and she marveled at the cost. The exterior was an illusion, the owner had assured her, as if that was the start and end of it.

  “Hello?” Xhea called into the warehouse’s perfect quiet. “Wen, Brend, are you here?” As if Wen could be anywhere else.

  After a moment, she heard the floor creak from the office on the floor above, and a voice called down, “Xhea? That you? I was just—” There was a scrape, a crash, and the voice added, “I, uh . . . just need a minute.”

  “Take your time,” Xhea muttered. She wandered farther inside, running her fingers along the shelves’ edges, peering at their contents: computers and hair dryers, old novels and magazines, beads and tins and glass bottles with their metal caps still attached. Just bits and pieces and odd finds, possessions lost or discarded in the fall of the city that had come before. Junk she’d once called them; artifacts, Wen had corrected.

  But it was a living. While Xhea had only heard of a few with the knack of catching a glimpse of a ghost, and knew of no one else who could do what she did, the ghost-afflicted were not plentiful enough to keep her eating. There were hundreds of jobs in the Lower City, from hunters out in the badlands to builders and re-builders, charm twisters and makers and vendors of every kind—and none of them were suited to a girl with no magic at all.

  The only gift her lack of power granted her was the ability to go below ground, down into the subway tunnels and buried shopping complexes that wove beneath the Lower City. Normal people couldn’t stand going underground, feeling discomfort and even pain the deeper they traveled—feelings that left Xhea untouched. And underground was where the good junk—the artifacts, the treasures—could be found.

  As she slid between the shelves, Xhea spotted familiar items that she’d brought to Wen over the years. Others had been sold—not to Lower City folk like her, but to City museums and stores and art collectors. A citizen himself, Wen had had access to people far beyond Xhea’s reach, though he’d always kept his warehouse hidden away on the ground.

  Wen waited at the table in the center of the warehouse and greeted her with his usual distracted smile. “Come, come, sit,” the old man said, waving her closer and gesturing at the empty seat across from him. “Anything good today?”

  “You tell me.” Digging past the chits, she unload the week’s treasures onto the table: a light bulb no larger than her thumb, a remote control, and a small gold frame with a photo trapped behind its cloudy glass. Wen peered at the items through the half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose. The best came last: a working solar calculator. Wen exclaimed as Xhea’s gentle touch brought the calculator to life; though its display showed only random lines, that it worked at all was miraculous.

  Leaving Wen to his examination, Xhea kicked back in her chair, plucked a familiar tube from a nearby shelf, and placed it against her right eye. Colors sprang to life before her, blue and green tumbling across red and yellow, blurring into purple and orange and brown. The kaleidoscope hadn’t been one of her finds; she would have never let it go.

&n
bsp; Wen spared her a glance. “High again, are you?”

  “Just got paid.” She gave another twist and watched the fractal patterns dance. “I don’t know how you got anything done with this thing around.”

  “After eighty-odd years, watching beads in a tube lost its fascination,” Wen replied dryly.

  Xhea felt a tug at her sternum and opened her left eye. The ghost had come forward to hover over the table, her skirt all but brushing the tabletop, and peered over her legs at the items spread before Wen.

  “Hello there,” Wen said, and looked up to meet the ghost’s eyes.

  The dead girl recoiled as if struck, flying to the far end of her tether with a look of pure panic. Xhea jerked forward as the tether yanked at her sternum. Her heels fell from the table’s edge, the movement almost enough to send her tumbling to the floor. As Xhea flailed for balance, the world suddenly darkened: the colors vanished, replaced by shade and shadow, charcoal and gray.

  She had done no more than gasp when the magic once more washed through her system, nausea hard on the heels of color. She looked at the ghost in shock. What had she done? For a moment, it had felt as if the bright magic had vanished—almost as if the ghost had disrupted it, or pulled it from Xhea through the tether. Yet ghosts were as devoid of magic as Xhea herself; while a few spells could affect ghosts, the dead couldn’t wield any true power. Not magic, then. But what else could have affected her payment?

  The ghost, trembling on the far end of her tether, clearly had no answers. She stared at Wen with wide eyes. “He can see me?” she whispered.

  “So it seems,” Xhea replied. The bright magic surged through her, and again she thought, Breathe. Breathe.

  Wen looked away from the calculator, shaking his head. He pulled the half-moon glasses from his face and wiped the lenses on the edge of his shirt, seemingly without thought. “Xhea,” he said at last, “you’re callous with the souls in your care.”

  “No.” She swallowed in an attempt to settle her stomach. “Just short on time.”

  “You mean impatient and disinclined to care.”

  Xhea shrugged and looked away, disguising her discomfort in a search for the kaleidoscope. She fished it from beneath the table and placed it before her eye. “Same thing.”

  Wen ignored her, turning to the ghost and showing her his empty hands. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”

  The ghost stared, those wide blue eyes making her seem strangely young.

  “What’s her name?” Wen asked softly.

  “I don’t know.” At his look, she added, “She’s only been with me a couple of hours. And you know they don’t all remember.” Ghosts forgot much about their lives—whether through death or choice, she never quite knew. It turned some transactions into exercises in frustration.

  Wen sighed at the beginnings of their familiar argument. “You think that’s excuse enough? Must you be paid for kindness? You know—”

  “Shai,” the ghost said. They both turned to her in surprise. As if speaking had steadied her, she took a breath and pushed her hair from her face with a careful hand. “My name is Shai.”

  “Hello Shai,” Wen said, a gentle smile lighting his face. “Welcome.”

  Whatever Shai might have replied was lost at the sound of a heavy tread on the stairs from the upstairs office. “Sorry about that,” a younger man said, coming to stand by the table. “Still going through some of those old boxes.”

  “Hey, Brend,” Xhea muttered. She reluctantly slid the kaleidoscope back onto its shelf. “Break anything important?”

  Brend ignored her comment, instead walking around the table to look at the items she’d brought, careful not to touch Xhea as he passed. Side-by-side with Wen, it was easy to see the resemblance between them: same round face and dark hair, same wide flare to their noses, same hunched stance as they looked over Xhea’s offerings. Yet though he watched Brend, eyes riveted on the younger man’s face, Wen made no move to greet his son.

  When he’d inherited his father’s business, Brend seemed to have kept it open out of a sense of loyalty—or perhaps, Xhea thought none too kindly, he just didn’t know what to do with the masses of junk that his father had acquired and had not the heart to let it all crumble into ruin once more. Though he had skill as an antiques dealer and something of his father’s eye for hidden value, Brend had little love for the trade itself. Xhea had often wondered what Brend had given up to maintain his father’s business—and whether he resented his other finders as he seemed to resent her.

  He examined the pieces quickly, turning each with a practiced hand and exclaiming over the functioning calculator. He was quick to give her an offer on the lot, too—one so low it went beyond insult into comedy.

  “Brend, Brend,” Xhea murmured, grabbing the kaleidoscope and returning her heels to the table’s edge. “I just can’t decide: are you trying to ruin your father’s business, or just conning a young girl out of her dinner?”

  “My father,” Brend began, his expression strained.

  “His father,” Wen interjected, “says to offer something halfway decent or he’s disowned.”

  Xhea grinned. “Little late,” she told Wen, but passed the message along. Brend’s next two offers were similarly ridiculous.

  “Seven hundred for the calculator,” Wen said as his son hemmed and hawed, saying something about falling market interest in certain items, which Xhea ignored. “Three hundred for the rest.”

  “Raw?”

  “Chip-spelled,” Wen countered. At her frown, he sighed dramatically and added, “And the kaleidoscope.”

  Xhea grinned. “Deal.”

  Brend’s face darkened as Xhea conveyed the details of the bargain made without his participation. She suppressed a sigh; from his expression, it would be a few weeks before she could return with more items—and a few more years before he truly got used to dealing with her. Still, what choice did he have? She was the only conduit for his father’s expertise.

  Then again, years spent working with Wen hadn’t made him like her, either. They only truly began to talk after his death and the loneliness that came with haunting. It was easier to condescend to her company when she was the only one who knew he was there.

  By the time Xhea emerged from the warehouse, payment chip in hand, afternoon had begun its surrender into evening. Curse Brend anyway, she thought, dithering over their deal and letting time slip away. Curse her for not noticing. Even she didn’t dare be caught in the ruins when night fell.

  Muttering beneath her breath, Xhea hurried back toward the Lower City.

  Nearly as bad, she could feel a tightness across her forehead—discomfort that heralded the onset of a magic-induced headache. She could barely believe her payment was almost gone; nearly five hundred renai burned through in a single afternoon. She could remember when that much would have lasted days, the world bright with color and the pressure of the darkness within her held at bay.

  She increased her pace to a light jog, the ghost trailing behind her like a strange banner.

  From behind her came a voice: “I’m . . . dead?”

  Oh, sweetness, Xhea thought. Not again.

  “That’s right,” she said. She wouldn’t make it back the way she’d come, she realized with a glance at the darkening sky; there wasn’t time. She considered her options. She could take the highway overpass back to the core, avoiding the chaos on the ground, or she could divert, heading at an angle to the Lower City where she might connect with the subway line. Subway, she decided. Becoming stranded on the ruin of the elevated roadway after nightfall was a disaster beyond contemplation, and she disliked heights at the best of times.

  “And the man,” the ghost continued. “The one who could see me. He was dead too?”

  “Right again.”

  “But where was his . . . his . . .” She gave up trying to find a suitable word and just tugged in frustration at the line of energy joining them.

  “His tether? I
t’s there—he’s just bound to the whole warehouse.” No such thing as an untethered ghost, and praise be for small mercies.

  Above, the Towers glittered like jewels cast across darkening velvet, the shimmering veils of magic that surrounded them far brighter than the emerging stars. Xhea pushed herself into a run, trusting experience to keep her from turning an ankle on the rough roadway. These streets were deserted, but even closer to the core, in the buildings on the edge of the ruins where few Lower City dwellers dared live, the inhabitants would be all safely inside, doors locked and barred, curtains drawn against night’s fall. Night—and the things that walked the streets when darkness came.

  No, she thought, not just things. There were animals out in the badlands—dogs and raccoons and things that might once have been cats—all of which she knew more as meat than living things. Even plants struggled to grow in the core. But so close to the Lower City? The only creatures that moved through the ruins of the city that had come before were human.

  Or had once been human.

  Xhea had never seen them, the night walkers, and gave thanks that there were some horrors of dirt-bound life she’d been spared. Yet she had heard them: their slow footsteps and the sounds of their movement, fingers brushing against door handles and window panes; the pauses as if they were listening, always listening. She’d heard, too, what they did to those they caught outside, heard the pleas and the screams, and seen what little remained of those unlucky few come morning.

  Xhea ran left, right, three blocks straight ahead and then down the sweeping curve of a street that eased to the west—it was routine now, a path she could follow with eyes closed. But familiarity made the journey no shorter. At last she reached a stretch of road blocked by a fallen building, the passage piled with decaying timber and twisted siding. She slowed not for the blockage but the grate in the sidewalk before it. Quickly she knelt, hooked her fingers through the rusty rungs, and heaved, struggling against seized hinges. Winter had been hard on more than her food stores, it seemed.