Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  She would have to run for blocks to find safety, run and pray—and she felt her fatigue like a weight of stone.

  Shai hovered at Xhea’s side, her anxiety accentuating her helplessness. Shai’s eyes seemed brighter than Xhea remembered, though—sharper, as if true death had brought her an intensity denied in her former ghostly half-life. She watched everything as they fell.

  For a moment they descended through the empty gap between the City and the ground, a stretch unbroken by Towerlight or traffic. Then the roofs were rushing toward them and Xhea reached out, unable to fight the feeling that she was falling to smash on the pavement below. She caught a glimpse of bright light behind the blur of Senn’s black glass windows, the flicker of rooftops, tangles of strung wires, and then she was landing.

  Her boots hit the street and the elevator dissolved, spell ribbons fluttering down around her as the elevator port sped back to the City. While the elevator had protected her from the fierce wind and noise of travel, so too had it shielded her from the night’s chill. With the spell fizzling against the asphalt, she keenly felt the lack. Xhea peered around, orienting herself, and took a tentative step forward.

  Yet it wasn’t only the cold that made her shiver, but the sudden silence, the Lower City’s absolute still. It seemed as if her breath were the loudest sound, quick and fearful gasps that even a closed mouth could not stifle; and when the wind came, rustling through the ancient corridors of concrete and steel, setting distant balcony charms to jangling, it only served to enhance the silence that lingered beneath.

  It wasn’t the silence she needed to fear, Xhea knew. But if the quiet was not her enemy, neither was it her friend; even the sound of the broken asphalt crunching beneath her boot-soles echoed, announcing her presence to anyone—anything—that knew to listen.

  “Run,” Shai whispered. Warning or encouragement, the word was the only spur Xhea needed to take flight. She knew these streets. Even panicked, she could navigate almost by instinct, memory providing the details that speed and darkness obscured: the blocked alleyway, the pothole deep enough to turn her ankle, the sagging line of charm flags that she had to duck beneath. She stumbled down the street that divided Edren from Orren and through the intersection where a single traffic light still hung, defying gravity and scavengers alike. The Lower City’s smells were all but choking, drawn deep into her lungs with each panting breath. As she sped into an alley, all she noticed was the smell of refuse and urine, mud and putrefaction.

  She’d run two steps before she saw the figure, and two more before she was able to bring herself to a skidding, pinwheeling stop.

  A man stood before her, midway down the alley—and it was a man: she knew from his height and bulk, the way his shoulders seemed to fill the narrow space. He was still and silent in a way that she, gasping and shaking, couldn’t hope to replicate. She stared, caught between the urge to beg for protection and her body’s demand that she turn and run somewhere, anywhere, so long as it was away.

  The man stepped forward—cautiously, like an uncertain animal—and Xhea noticed the hunch to his back and his head’s lolling bow, lank hair hanging around his face and shoulders. Another step and he came into the thin pool of Towerlight that shone, faint as starlight, into the alley. He was dirty and naked, untold filth hanging in clumps from his body. That, she thought faintly, explains the smell.

  He did not look at her—his eyes, she saw, were clouded milk-white—but Xhea could feel his attention, see the way he rolled his head slowly back and forth, nostrils flaring as he caught her scent. He inhaled, seeming to draw her essence deep into his belly. She knew that sound, had heard it countless times that long frozen night she’d spent in the ruins, trapped with only a ghost’s voice for comfort. What hope remained turned to ice inside her.

  Don’t move, she thought. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe.

  Then Shai stepped forward, moving to stand in front of Xhea as if her incorporeal body were a shield. Xhea saw the ghost with a clarity with which she could not view the night walker, as if Shai were softly lit from all sides.

  Xhea thought the gesture useless, yet at Shai’s appearance the walker again stilled, his building tension changing as he shifted to view this new threat. He could see the ghost, that much seemed certain, wincing as if sight of her pained him; and yet when he inhaled, sniffing for her scent, he made a querulous sound, his head rocking on a neck that seemed too loose.

  “Back away,” Shai whispered without turning. She seemed as frightened as Xhea felt; her voice shook as she spoke. He can’t hurt you, Xhea wanted to say, but she suddenly felt unsure.

  Walking blindly, Xhea stepped back and back again, retreating from the alley. She crept around the corner until all she could see was a space between buildings that gaped like a dark mouth, and then she ran.

  Fearing the sound of bare feet pounding after her, their movement a fast-paced metronome. Fearing the silence. The closest unbarred subway entrance seemed impossibly distant. There were people all around her in the low, barricaded buildings, behind those dark, blank windows. They would hear her scream if she were caught and killed. They would listen as she died—as she had listened, over the years, to others. Nothing to do, no way to help: caught on the wrong side of the walls, those on the nighttime streets were truly alone.

  Senn was behind her, and Orren. By the time she reached Edren, the antique hotel with its towering addition, she didn’t even try for quiet: her boots fell heavily upon the broken asphalt and she whimpered with every breath. The revolving door was locked tight and barricaded; the lower levels’ embellished window frames held concrete blocks, not glass. Nothing to break—nothing, even, to pound against. She wanted to scream at Edren’s darkened façade, reach her hand for the slivers of light she saw in the windows above.

  Help me—oh please, help.

  As if her words had been screamed in truth, there came a sound from the alley on Edren’s far side, and a sudden beam of light shone from an opened door. Xhea changed course without thinking, barreling down the narrow passage and through the service entrance to the promise of safety just beyond—smack into a large man’s chest.

  A clothed, warm, breathing chest. The metal door closed with a bang that echoed down the bright hallway, and she almost collapsed in relief. Not thinking, she flung her arms around the unknown man, buried her face in his shirt, and wept.

  He flinched but did not push her away. She recognized the way he tensed, the quiver that spoke of discomfort and the effort required to remain still as she clung to him. Later, she would be humiliated by her weakness; yet shuddering and gasping, she could not force her arms to release him.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured, his voice a soft rumble that vibrated through his chest and against her cheek. “Stand down.”

  A moment passed before she understood the words; a moment more before she could raise her head to see the other man who stood before her, holding a length of shaped metal as one would wield weapon. Whatever it was, he lowered it slowly and with obvious reluctance.

  “But—”

  “I’ll handle it. Return to your post.”

  The pause spoke louder than words. “Sir,” he said at last, and turned.

  Xhea swallowed and felt her face flush with embarrassment. She stepped back.

  “It’s okay,” the man said again, and Xhea suddenly knew his voice and the rhythms of his speech—knew his face, that close-cropped hair, that dark skin. Lorn Edren, the eldest living son of the skyscraper’s ruling family—and the man whose life she’d saved two years before.

  Xhea took a deep breath. Nothing happened, she told herself. You got away. Yet her knees still quivered hard enough that she thought she might fall.

  “You all right?” Lorn asked. Now that the guard had gone, his voice softened, the gentleness of his tone belying his hard exterior. She nodded shakily.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “What were you doing out there?”

  “It wasn’t by choice. It . . . it’s
a long story.”

  He stared down at her for a long moment. “With you,” he said at last, “it would be.”

  Xhea shrugged; he wasn’t wrong. “How did you know I was out there?”

  “You tripped the perimeter spell. Lucky for you, I was supervising the watch.”

  Lucky indeed, Xhea thought, nodding. Slowly, she looked around. She stood in what had once been one of the hotel’s back service corridors: pale paint flaked from breezeblock walls, the floor a river of cracked linoleum. Wires had been stapled along the hall, branching up the walls and through the ceiling. While some seemed to power the electric lights overhead, others had the telltale glimmer that spoke of magic.

  It was the glimmer that made Xhea glance over her shoulder to where Shai usually stood, hovering one step behind like a shadow in midair, but she wasn’t there. Xhea remembered the ghost staring at the blind man, the night walker, and that terrifying look in his milky eyes as he stared back. She turned back toward the door as if her attention would bring Shai to her; and yet it was only a door, flat black and dented, and the ghost did not appear.

  “Don’t worry,” Lorn said, misunderstanding. “It’s stronger than it looks.” Xhea could only follow his lead down the corridor, steps dragging across the broken floor. Lorn still had a limp, Xhea saw, slight but present; a reminder of the accident that led to their first meeting. Farther from the entrance, she heard a distant, rhythmic thump, the bass throb of music filtering down through untold floors and the spaces between. Even if the Towers slept, she thought, perhaps the skyscrapers, huddled in the dark, never did.

  Lorn led her to a room so small she assumed it had once been a maintenance closet. The space held only a cot with a thin blanket.

  “Stay here,” he said, ushering her inside. “No one will bother you.” She heard the words he didn’t speak: No one will know you’re here.

  “But,” she protested softly. “The other man, won’t he—”

  “He won’t say anything.” Lorn’s tone guaranteed it. “I’ll come get you at dawn, okay?” She nodded before falling onto the cot, muscles trembling with fatigue and worry and the after-effects of fear. She thought again of Shai; but there was only darkness.

  Xhea settled onto the cot, and pulled up the blanket. Her eyes closed seemingly of their own accord, and she lay there, thinking: I’ll sleep forever. I’ll never sleep again. Believing both to be true.

  It was only a few moments before a faint light entered the room. Xhea didn’t need to open her eyes; only smiled in relief and shifted position to make a space beside her. There was a pause, then she felt a familiar chill; imagined that the cot shifted with a weight not her own; felt a light pressure against her shoulder that might have been the shape of a hand.

  “So.” Shai’s quiet voice came from somewhere near her ear. “That was your plan?” The ghost still sounded afraid, if unhurt; but also . . . happy.

  “Yeah,” Xhea managed. “Something like that.”

  A jolt of bright magic hit Xhea in the arm, knocking her from sleep and the cot with a cry. She rolled, tucking her limbs close, then sprung to her feet with the wall at her back. It wasn’t elegant or well-executed, but served her purposes: she steadied in a crouch with her hands raised, ready to fight or run or scream. Yet the only thing before her in the tiny room was Shai, the shining ghost standing with one hand outstretched. She wore a shocked expression that could only mirror Xhea’s own.

  Xhea relaxed fractionally. “Did you see what it was?” she whispered. “Where did it go?” Her whole left arm felt strangely numb, though when she flexed her hand her fingers moved normally.

  “I—” Shai whispered, her hand falling to her side. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think . . .”

  It took a moment for understanding to filter through Xhea’s sleep-addled brain. “That was you? What, were you trying to kill me?” She stumbled back to the cot and cradled her arm against her chest, as if that might stop its throbbing. Both the numbness and the dissipating pain were familiar; almost like how she’d felt in the hospital between doses of pure magic. Only less severe, more localized. Only . . .

  Shocked, Xhea looked up from her hand and met the ghost’s eyes.

  “You’re glowing,” she whispered. It was true: Shai looked as if she stood in moonlight, a soft light pale and without shadow, and it was not Xhea’s vision that made the ghost look so bright. She had, she realized, seen the ghost’s glow the night before—had looked for the light of Shai’s presence without considering what that glow meant. Light glimmered in Shai’s eyes and beneath her ghostly skin; it had lit Xhea’s path through the darkness, a comfort when everything was black.

  Throughout her ghostly half-life, Shai had glimmered with magic—and that light had grown stronger, brighter, with each passing day. Yet what Xhea saw now was not a reflection of spell-light or a mirror of the power that wove through her living body. It was magic in truth.

  Xhea’s hand tightened around her arm where the jolt had struck her. Not only was Shai filled with magic, but she could also use the power she held.

  Shai’s expression was unreadable. “Yes,” she said.

  “It wasn’t just that you were alive. Wasn’t just the spells in your body . . .”

  “No.” The single word bore a weight of weariness and sorrow.

  Questions boiled up, too many and too varied for Xhea to make sense of them, even in her own mind. Somehow, the one that emerged was: “You have magic, and you used it to zap me?”

  “I had to,” Shai protested. “You were radiating.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what we call it with normal magic, anyway. Leaking energy unintentionally. But with you it wasn’t light; it was more like you were . . . steaming. Breathing out smoke. It started to surround you like a cloud.”

  Xhea thought of all the mornings she had woken in one Tower or another to find the moss beneath her dead and black, flowers withering, bushes with leaves curled and crisping. Radiating, she thought; everything dying at her touch. She didn’t know whether her sudden shiver was born of fear or excitement.

  “Which was fine, really,” Shai continued, “until the cloud started reaching for me. I really didn’t want your magic to touch me. Not outside of your control.”

  Control. As if she had any of that. Yet, thinking of the ghost of the old man in her hospital bed, Xhea could only nod in agreement. She’d already killed Shai once, in body if not in spirit; she had little desire to finish the job.

  “The . . . shock, or whatever—it was the only way to stop me?”

  “You didn’t wake when I called, and I was afraid to touch you, so . . .” Shai shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “It was just a little spark, I swear.”

  Which didn’t explain why it had felt like being kicked in the shoulder. But—Xhea flexed her fingers—at least there seemed to be no lasting harm. As to how Shai could possibly possess the power to do what she had done . . .

  There came a quick knock, then the door cracked open and Lorn peeked through the gap.

  “It’s dawn,” he said simply. “I heard you were awake.”

  Looking at Lorn, Xhea felt a hot rush of embarrassment. While he might think little of her hysterics, the memory of the night before was enough to make her cringe. Yet he made no comment and did not question her speaking to an apparently empty room; the set of his shoulders said that he could feel Shai there, even if he could not see her. Those who had experienced a haunting knew the sensation—the feeling of a presence, a glimpse of blurred movement at the edges of their vision—and Lorn’s expression said that he didn’t want to know more.

  Xhea used the offered bathroom, where she removed the hospital shift from beneath her clothes and lingered long enough to enjoy the running water, the plentiful soap, and the stack of clean towels. In the hall, Lorn offered her a twist of paper full of crackers for breakfast, which she accepted with barely concealed eagerness.

  “Listen,” she said at last. “Edren owed me a favor—”


  “No,” he said softly; it was still strange to hear that gentle tone in such a deep, rough voice. “Edren owes you a favor, yes, but so did I. For what you did for me, you’re owed more than a night’s shelter.”

  He glanced away and straightened, hiding that glimpse of softness. “Besides,” he said, louder, all false cheer, “I just opened the door last night to check on a disruption to the perimeter spell, that’s all. No one will say otherwise.” He forced a smile, teeth bright in his dark face. “Now I’m going to check the perimeter spell again, and that means opening the back door, if you get my drift.”

  Xhea nodded, not inclined to argue. When he pushed the metal door open again on its heavy hinges, she slipped out into the street.

  “Be careful,” he called with a wave of his tattooed hand. Xhea waved once and the door slammed shut behind her.

  The streets looked different in daylight. Though the overcast sky mimicked concrete, even that dull light leeched the menace from the roadway. The strange, looming shapes half-seen in her terror were revealed to be fire drums, scrap heaps, and other ordinary rubble. But thinking about her close call the night before made her uneasy, and Xhea hurried away from the nameless alley and the memory of the thing that had once been a man.

  She managed not to pat her pockets until they were safely beyond range of Edren’s security perimeter. Her jacket was stuffed with tiny bars of soap from the bathroom, and good quality soap at that—creamy, lightly scented bars wrapped in paper. Even after she traded most of it for meals, she would have enough to keep herself and her clothes clean for months. There’s a balance to everything, she thought, eating a cracker with Shai at her side.