“I’m sorry,” Shai said, glowing like a candle in the darkness. Xhea struggled to catch her breath. “I was distracted—I should have seen them coming, they just . . .”
“It’s okay.” With tentative fingertips, she cataloged her new hurts, countless bruises on her arms and legs and side. “We’re both idiots.”
Not now, Derren had said. Not “Stop,” not “What are you doing?”
Not now—as if only the timing had been wrong. Of course his offer had been too good to be true. Hope did such terrible things to one’s sense.
She heard shouting from beyond the gate and then the crunch of heavy footsteps on the stairs. With a grimace, Xhea made her way into the subway station to stand in the shadows past the turnstiles, watching. Waiting. Listening to the footsteps grow nearer. A voice murmured but there was no reply, only the crunch of a second set of feet. Oh yes, she thought. She knew that voice. Knew, too, who had trashed her maintenance room in the Green Line tunnel, and used that knowledge to harden her expression and heart alike.
“Business,” she reminded herself in a whisper, watching the shadows the approaching figures cast. “It was only ever about business.”
A man arrived first: lanky and sandy-haired, Torrence looked like some City kid gone slumming and enjoying every moment of his temporary fall from grace. Equal parts charm and businessman, with one part knife-you-in-the-back, that was Torrence. Yet his easy smile was nowhere in sight as he straightened and squinted, searching for Xhea in the gloom.
His partner followed a moment later—slower, more carefully, and in perfect silence. She was short, barely reaching Torrence’s shoulder, with a hard face and a build of pure whipcord muscle. Daye had none of Torrence’s charm or easy manner, and was as likely to knife you in the throat as the back. You knew exactly where you stood with Daye—on perpetually uneasy ground—and for that reason she and Xhea had always gotten along.
“How are they following?” Shai moved restlessly like a flame in midair.
Xhea had no fear that either would see the shining ghost; both were so magic-poor that their signatures barely registered. They had turned their joint weaknesses into a business, stealing, collecting, hunting, and going places few others in the Lower City could. The jobs that had required them to go too deep underground they had outsourced to Xhea.
She shook her head in response to Shai’s question. This station might be deeper than some—but it was far from truly underground. Yet she knew, too, the pair’s normal preparations for venturing underground included both meditation and drugs, a mix that allowed them to endure the pain. She doubted that their quick pursuit had allowed for any such planning.
At the movement, the coins in her hair clinked softly. Daye stiffened and turned, her eyes meeting Xhea’s in the near-darkness.
“Ah,” Torrence said. “There you are, darlin’. And here I thought you went sneaking off rather than waiting for us.”
He knew not to call her darling, or sweetie, or the thousand other names he used to mock his marks—they’d agreed on that their very first job together. He was just trying to goad her, annoying rat that he was; and the thought was almost enough to make Xhea grin, despite everything.
“Now why would I do that?” she replied, casual and slow. “Seems like such fun to be dragged away to—hmm, which Tower hired you again?”
“Tsk, tsk. You know the rules, doll, and you know how this is going to go. Nothing personal, you understand—all past favors aside, et cetera, et cetera.” He waved a hand airily. “We have a job to do here, and it’s best for all of us if you don’t make that any harder than it needs to be.”
His voice was steady, Xhea gave him that, but sweat already beaded his forehead. She watched as a droplet trickled down his cheek, glinting in the faint daylight from above. He tried to smile—that easy, habitual gesture—but it soured, lips twisting into a pained expression.
Oh yes, she thought. I know how this is going to go.
“I wouldn’t dream of making your life harder,” she said. “Business is business.” But she did not move, the turnstiles and the expanse of dirty floor between them as solid as any wall.
“Right, that’s a girl.” Torrence swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Now what I want you to do . . .” He paused and swallowed again, then raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. His fingers shook. He stared at his hand, turning it over in disbelief before suddenly balling it into a fist and shoving it into his pocket, out of sight.
Too late, she thought. From the glance that Daye spared him, she wasn’t the only one.
He tried again, slower: “What I want you to do is . . . is to step forward . . .” His voice caught, and his hand flew to his stomach. His arms were shaking now, and his knees. With his free hand, he reached for the wall to keep from falling.
“What’s happening to him?” Shai asked.
“Just watch.”
“I . . . I can’t . . .” he said, before doubling over and retching. He trembled like a junkie in withdrawal as he reached for stair rail to haul himself upward, nearly falling as his stomach doubled him over again. Xhea listened to his fumbling, staggering steps recede.
Daye was stronger. She always had been.
Daye grit her teeth and stepped forward. Xhea didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. Just stood, calm and casual, watching with feigned indifference as the woman attempted to approach. If Daye came within five feet of her, Xhea would be down the stairs to the platform and gone—they both knew it. That didn’t stop Daye from forcing herself closer, just to prove that she could.
Step by careful step, the woman approached. Sweat broke out across her face, and her hands shook, and she took another heavy step, and another. By the time she made it to the turnstiles, it was all she could do to hold one with shaking hands and stare at Xhea unblinking. She would go no farther.
In silence, Xhea nodded—a low nod, almost a bow. When she rose, their eyes met one last time, and then Xhea turned and walked down to the subway platform, Shai at her back. Her only farewell was the sound of her footsteps, echoing into the darkness.
“Again,” Shai said.
Xhea looked down at her hands, held cupped before her, and grimaced. Focus, she told herself, willing the magic to come. She remembered how it felt as it rose through her, slow and calm and powerful; she remembered too how it looked, lifting from her skin like steam from a hot stone.
Her hands remained stubbornly empty.
She glanced at Shai across the cracked food court table. “It’s too early for this, Shai,” she said. The ghost simply waited, face impassive, until Xhea sighed and looked back to her hands.
The key to controlling her magic, Shai had patiently explained—time and time again—was owning the power. Magic wasn’t an entity of its own; it was a part of her, and it reacted to her thoughts and emotions and needs. Gaining control was only a matter of practice and time.
Theoretically.
Of course, after three solid days of nothing but practice, Xhea was about ready to abandon the whole thing. Shai insisted that Xhea was improving. Then again, it would have been difficult for her to become more incompetent.
She’d remained hidden underground since the disastrous near-meeting with Derren. Her pursuers had systematically blocked, booby-trapped, or set watchers around every single entrance in the Lower City core, and while she could simply use one of the tunnel entrances out in the ruins, alleviating her own boredom didn’t seem worth the risk. Her food stores were running low, but not dangerously so, and it had rained enough to keep her water stores nearly full. And while she’d heard Torrence and Daye enter the underground more than once, their foreign footsteps loud in her normally quiet haunts, neither could delve deep enough to threaten her, not now that she knew they were coming.
So she stayed in the lowest levels—the food courts and parking garages, the maintenance shafts and back hallways—attempted to smother her frustration, and practiced under Shai’s ever-patient eye.
Xhea wasn’t sure how she would have stayed sane without the ghost; though it would be nice, she thought, to wake up once—just once—without Shai zapping her. Of course, it would have been nicer to perform the tedious repetitions in sunlight, breathing air that didn’t smell like ancient concrete and countless years of dust. It would be nicer to understand who these people were and what they wanted of her, rather than being forced to be a pawn in a—
And there it was: a wisp of dark rising from the palm of her right hand. It’s not that the magic didn’t respond to her; it only ever needed a spark of anger to rise.
Carefully now, she directed the power, trying to contain the swirling wisps in the bowl of her hands, willing it to become the simple sphere that Shai had asked of her. Yet it seemed to slip from her mental grasp, the magic turning and twisting not in response to her will, but evading it.
At last she let out an explosive breath and shook her tingling hands.
“Not bad,” Shai said as the darkness dissipated. “You lasted eleven seconds that time.”
“Eleven whole seconds.”
“Nearly twelve.”
Xhea snorted. “Oh joy.”
She was massaging her hands in preparation for the next attempt when she heard a scuff like a heavy door opening, and then another sound, louder. Xhea tensed and looked to the escalators that led to the mall’s main level, listening.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
“I thought I heard a voice. Calling.”
“I didn’t—”
The voice came again, louder this time: “Hello?” A woman’s voice, faint and echoing.
“It’s just past dawn,” Xhea said softly. She rose from her seat, practice forgotten. “Almost no one’s out yet.” It would take half an hour or more for the streets to fill, safety assured as daylight chased away the last of night’s shadows. Whoever approached did so with caution, not wanting to be seen; and even her voice was hushed by more than the distance between them.
Again the woman called, closer this time: “Please. Is anyone there?”
Xhea swore and backed toward the service hall that led behind the vacant fast food counters and away. Shai did not move. She hovered as if caught in midair, her face gone paler than death, the fingers of a single hand pressed to her lips.
“Come on,” Xhea urged.
But Shai only said, “No.”
“You’re staying? Why?”
Shai turned away from the escalator and met Xhea’s eyes; her silver-pale irises looked almost white with the magic shining behind them. Because of the light, it took Xhea a moment to realize that the ghost’s eyes glistened with tears; a moment more to believe she was truly crying. After all that had happened—even Shai’s death—this was the first time Xhea had seen her weep.
“Xhea,” Shai said. “That’s my mother.”
Surrounded by dust-coated countertops, cash registers, and faded photos of greasy food, Xhea listened as Shai’s mother called again. Hearing the echoes, she knew that the woman was near the external doors on the floor above, only one long flight of escalator steps away.
“Is anyone there?”
This time Xhea answered: “Yes, I’m here.”
For a moment, silence was the only reply. “Can you come out where I can see you?” the woman asked at last.
Xhea moved from the shadows to the base of the escalator where a band of early morning light fell, and looked up at the woman standing just inside the dirty glass doors. Her pale hair was cut to curl and kiss the line of her jaw, and small earrings hung from each earlobe, their sparkle brighter than mere diamonds. Her outfit was simple, pants and a tailored blouse, though even at a distance Xhea could tell that the fabric was far finer than anything she’d known.
Discomfort was written in every line of the woman’s body, from the set of her shoulders to the way she held her hands as if fighting to keep them from fists. As Xhea watched, those hands began to shake, and a rivulet of sweat tricked down from her forehead—and she hadn’t even begun to walk below ground. The spells that had guarded the door were gone; brushed away, Xhea could only assume, as easily as she might brush away an errant lock of hair.
Shai’s mother took a few slow breaths before speaking again. “I’m looking for Xhea. Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“You can be a difficult person to find.”
“Intentionally, these days.”
“Is that so?”
Xhea inclined her head, using the movement to hide her glance back at Shai. The ghost had remained in the shadows, out of her mother’s line of sight. Xhea caught a glimpse of Shai’s expression. Shai stared at her mother with such naked pain, such hurt and sorrow and longing, that Xhea briefly wished she could take the ghost’s hand or curl an arm around her shoulder. Yet it wasn’t Xhea from whom Shai wished comfort, and Xhea bit her lip as she turned away.
“Would you mind coming closer?” Shai’s mother called, her voice echoing. Xhea could only hope that Torrence and Daye had not yet entered the complex this morning. “It’s a little difficult, shouting down to you like this.”
“Rather not, thanks. It’s safer for me here.”
“Safer?”
“Big set of stairs between me and you. I like that sort of distance until I know why you’ve come.”
“Even though I could just walk down the stairs?”
“I think you’d find that more unpleasant than expected.”
A pause. “Is that a threat?”
“Simple fact. Citizens don’t like to go below ground level. It’s rather painful, I’m told—but you’re welcome to give it a try.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself.
“I know who you are, Ms. Nalani,” Xhea said. “Though I can’t say I know why you’re here.”
“Councilwoman Nalani,” the woman said with a hint of a smile, “but yes.” She had the same smile as her daughter, Xhea saw, a slight upturn of her lips that spoke both of soft humor and sorrow.
Councilwoman? Xhea raised an eyebrow. Shai shrugged and bowed her head—apology if not explanation—and Xhea could not help but wonder what other secrets the ghost had hidden, or how much more of Shai’s strange past she would have to encounter by surprise.
Each Tower was run differently; Xhea had never quite managed to grasp the intricacies of the political structures that governed each—nor wanted to. Yet she knew that each had a Council, a controlling body that was government, economic control, and judicial system wrapped into one, accountable only to the Tower’s citizens and the Central Spire. If Shai’s mother was on Allenai’s Council, she was not only in a position of great power and influence—if Wen were to be believed, she also helped rule one of the most prominent bodies in the City.
And she stood at the top of a dusty mall escalator with her shoes caked in mud.
“As for why I’m here,” Councilwoman Nalani continued, “I thought you would know that better than I.”
“Did you?”
“Please, child,” she said, and if her tone was patronizing, it spoke equally of grief and exhaustion. “Don’t play games with me.”
Abruptly, Xhea remembered that despite all that had happened, this was a woman whose daughter had just died. She would never hear her daughter’s voice again, nor feel her touch; could only mourn the child she would never see grow to adulthood. She hadn’t even been there for her daughter’s passing. Sometimes it was too easy to forget the pain that death brought.
Yet what did she expect Xhea to say? Ah yes, you must be here about the ghost of your magical daughter, the one whose ghost is hiding behind me. Or perhaps: You must have come about the traps laid for me—or is it the attempted kidnapping that you’d like to discuss?
Instead, Xhea simply replied, “Nor you with me. Speak plainly, or I’m leaving.”
“I could find you again if you ran. Track you down.”
“That doesn’
t sound like much of a way to gain my cooperation, and I doubt I’d make it so easy,” Xhea said. “Still, your choice.”
The Councilwoman hesitated, then sighed and briefly closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just . . . this isn’t going how I wanted.”
“And what did you want?”
“I thought that I’d find you, and I could take you for breakfast, and we could . . . talk. Just talk. Much has happened, and it seems that you might be the only one with certain answers.”
“A talk over breakfast. How civilized.” At the Councilwoman’s look, Xhea hastened to add, “Not that I’m complaining. It’s just that no one’s made quite that offer before.”
“Then you accept?”
Xhea hesitated. “Only breakfast? You’re not going to try to take me anywhere, capture me, anything like that?”
“Capture you?” Councilwoman Nalani sounded surprised, even shocked. “No, I promise, only breakfast. I don’t mean you any harm. I won’t let anything happen to you while you’re with me.” She spoke with her hands spread, palms upward. She was a politician, Xhea knew, and lying was in her job description. Still, she sounded sincere.
“I just wonder if I can trust you.”
Again, that smile, lips wreathed in sorrow. Softly Shai’s mother said, “I wonder the same thing.”
Into the silence, Shai said, “She can be a hard woman, my mother, but she’s never broken her word.”
“Okay.” Xhea sighed. “I’ll make the leap of faith for both of us.” All of us, she mentally amended, sparing a glance at Shai.
“You’ll come out?”
Xhea nodded. “I hope I don’t regret this,” she whispered.
She thought she’d spoken softly enough that only Shai would hear, but the Councilwoman replied, “I hope that I don’t, either.”
More than her promise, it was that brief admission of reluctance that compelled Xhea to climb the ancient escalator and walk out into the early morning sunlight. At last, it was a reaction that she recognized.
Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One Page 19
