Councilwoman Nalani gestured down the dirty street with a perfectly manicured hand. “Shall we?” she said. Side by side they walked, Shai trailing silently behind.
Councilwoman Nalani led her toward the skyscrapers and the well-preserved shops in the center of their uneven protective ring. Here, there were areas where the roads and buildings were mostly uncracked, the sidewalks smooth, the stone façades posing little threat to those passing below. Coming to these few blocks felt like stepping into another world, a city almost frightening in the way it brought the ancient to life; and it was this, as much as the silvery presence of Orren behind her, that made the back of Xhea’s neck crawl.
It felt strange to walk here unhurried, with another at her side—not spirit but flesh and blood. Strange to hear the sound of shoes on asphalt, high heels echoing, falling in time to Xhea’s own. Their breaths puffed in the chill, early morning air: two clouds of white, rising. The strangeness asked for her silence, and willingly she gave it, not mentally mocking the imitations of riches in the stores that they passed, not scoping out the few people on the street for the dangers they might pose—not wishing or hoping or thinking of things that could have been—but walking. Simply walking.
They came to a restaurant, its entrance marked by a slim sign. A string of bells on the door announced their presence; the narrow flight of stairs leading upward creaked beneath their weight. The woman waiting at the top greeted them, hung up the Councilwoman’s coat, and led them to a small table made private by a folding wooden screen. The server poured tea into small cups and promised to return with food.
Xhea blew the steam from her cup, staring at the tea to avoid meeting the Councilwoman’s eyes. She could just see Shai, who hovered at the window behind her mother’s back with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. With each moment, the expanse of table seemed wider, the presence and unspoken expectations of both mother and daughter pressing down until Xhea struggled to breathe. She took a swallow of the scalding tea just to break the tension.
By the time she’d finished choking, the server had returned with a towel-covered basket and a tray with small dishes, tiny spoon handles protruding from beneath their lids. At the Councilwoman’s gesture, Xhea drew back the top layer of the towel to find baked goods—crumbly-topped muffins and puffy buns filled with sweet bean, scones and rolls—fresh and steaming, hot to the touch. She took a few almost at random, intoxicated by the smell alone, then peeked inside the dishes, finding berry jam, lime marmalade, butter, and honey. She slathered a muffin with butter and jam and began stuffing it into her mouth.
She’d never tasted anything so good.
Halfway through the muffin, she looked up, met the Councilwoman’s eyes, and momentarily forgot to chew. Shai’s mother had broken open a scone that now lay untouched on the plate before her. Hands folded on the tabletop, she watched Xhea eat. She looked so much like Shai, Xhea realized then. They had different hair and a different nose, but something in the line of her cheekbones and curve of her jaw, maybe something in the cast of her eyes, was so similar that not even the creases of age and weariness could disguise their kinship. Xhea kept herself from looking from mother to ghost, but only just.
She swallowed, and Councilwoman Nalani smiled sadly. “You’re hungry,” she said.
Xhea shrugged. “Of course.” She couldn’t be embarrassed by hunger. She was again reaching for her muffin when she understood the Councilwoman’s expression. Xhea folded her hands on the table in purposeful mimic and stared back.
“Don’t pity me,” she said, voice hard.
“Pity you?”
“I’m not starving. I don’t need this.” She pushed away her plate.
The Councilwoman sighed. “Relax, child. I didn’t say you did.”
“Don’t lie to me, either.”
Anger stirred in the Councilwoman’s expression. “The truth, then. It’s not just you. I pity all of you here, living in dirt and ruin, no way to make yourselves anything more, anything better.”
She shook her head, and Xhea saw the tears she tried to blink back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t . . .” She looked at her untouched scone as if it held answers. “I feel the weight of my privilege, these days. My responsibilities.” As if that were explanation enough—and perhaps it was.
Xhea pulled her plate back and took a bite of her muffin. Reached out, and picked another from the basket.
“Are you not hungry?” she asked, as if their conversation were only beginning.
“No. Not even a little.” Councilwoman Nalani looked down at her scone, sighed, and slowly spread butter over its surface. She watched the butter melt, then bit and chewed as if it were a chore.
“She doesn’t eat when she’s stressed,” Shai whispered. “Or when she’s upset. I had to remind her. Bring her meals in her study.”
“You haven’t been eating.”
“Of course I haven’t. My daughter is dead.” Then, slower but no less bitter: “But then, you know that, don’t you?” It took Xhea a moment to realize that it was a real question; a moment more before she nodded.
“Can you tell me how you know?”
Xhea raised her eyebrows. She suppressed a desire to say, “Are you asking if I killed her?” That, she knew with cold certainty, was not a subject she wished to broach with the Councilwoman. Not ever.
“I’m not blaming you for anything,” Councilwoman Nalani continued. “I’m just trying to understand. My daughter is gone and I’m just trying . . .” She took a deep breath.
“I see ghosts.” Only that.
“That’s what I heard.” The Councilwoman failed to hide her skepticism. “But that’s also what I don’t understand. If the reports I’ve received are true, then my husband sought you before Shai’s death. Now why would he do that?”
“Perhaps,” Xhea said softly, “you should ask him.”
“I would if I could. He hasn’t been seen since we found Shai’s body.”
Xhea tried to hide her confusion in yet another morning pastry. Was she lying? All too clearly, Xhea recalled Shai’s saying that people had taken her father away, and that the tether between them had snapped. She’d assumed he had been taken and killed by Allenai—but if that were the case, would not the Councilwoman have known?
“In my experience,” Xhea said slowly, “a person’s spirit can leave their body before the moment of death, especially if the death is slow or prolonged, as I believe your daughter’s was.”
“There were spells on Shai to prevent that from happening.”
“Were there also spells keeping her from dying?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And she’s dead. So who am I to say what happened?”
“But you admit that you saw her ghost. Shai’s ghost.”
“Yes.”
“And spoke with her.”
“Yes,” Xhea said, not liking where this was going.
“When did you see her last?”
“I . . . can’t quite say.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
Xhea shrugged and turned to the window. Yet now she could see Shai, curled awkwardly against the window ledge, misery writ large in her expression.
“You need to understand, my daughter isn’t just dead. She was abducted.”
Shai froze. Xhea gestured to her beneath the table, and yet Shai pretended not to see, pretended that there was no reason to turn away. Nothing to explain, nothing to apologize for.
Not missing, not hidden—abducted. This is what she would not tell me, Xhea thought, and mentally cursed Shai, her ghostly memory, and her stream of lies by omission.
The anger would come later, Xhea knew. Now, she said only, “Abducted?”
“By her father.”
“Why would he do that?”
“We had a disagreement, he and I, over Shai’s future. I believe that he felt he had no other choice.” Simple words, stripped of emotion.
Xhea thought of those bare rooms where sh
e’d found Shai dying: a spare and ramshackle place, no furniture that wasn’t for Shai’s survival or comfort. A temporary location—a place for her father to hide them both until he could find a way to let her die.
“Xhea,” the Councilwoman said. “Xhea, please. She was more than just my daughter. You don’t know what her loss means, not just to me, but to all of Allenai.”
“She was your Radiant.”
The word brought the Councilwoman up short. Her expression changed in that instant, her grief masked quickly and fiercely, vulnerability vanishing. “You know what that means.” The words were both question and statement, spoken in a politician’s even tones.
Xhea shrugged again, aware of how very little she knew, her ignorance almost a physical pain. “I know some. I know that she generated far more magical energy than even the best casters. That the Towers run on the magic generated by Shai and others like her.”
Councilwoman Nalani nodded. “Put simply, Shai’s death has moved Allenai into a position of instability, politically and financially, and there are those who seek to profit from that instability.”
Orren, Xhea wanted to say—but how could an earthbound skyscraper possibly threaten one of the City’s most powerful Towers? Instead, remembering Brend’s sudden panic, the smashed teacups and the lighting spell damage in his haste, she took a stab in the dark: “Eridian?”
The Councilwoman became still. “How did you hear that name?”
Got it in one, Xhea thought. Beside her Shai whispered, “No. Oh, no.” She placed her head in her glowing hands. Xhea had to strain to hear her next words: “They loaned against me.”
She didn’t know how to respond to Shai’s comment or ask what she meant. Instead of answering the Councilwoman, Xhea fished in her jacket’s breast pocket. There, beside her knife, she found the metal token that she’d taken from Brend’s food stash. She placed it with its sigil facing upward and pushed it across the tabletop with a finger.
Councilwoman Nalani made no move to touch it; she looked from the token, lying in the shadow of the honey dish, back to Xhea’s face. “You’re working for them,” she said.
“No. You asked how I knew the name. An acquaintance is a citizen, nothing more.”
“An ‘acquaintance,’ as you say, would never give you this.”
“I never said he did.” Xhea wondered, suddenly, what she’d stolen. She slipped the token back into her pocket.
The Councilwoman paused, considering. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “it would be in your best interests to avoid this particular acquaintance for a while. Especially if he knows of your . . . ability.” Again, the skepticism.
There were so many questions she wanted to ask, yet it was the skepticism that caught her. Slowly, Xhea took a third muffin, which she ate as she buttered a biscuit. “You were asking about your daughter’s ghost,” she said. “So why does it sound like you don’t believe in ghosts at all?”
The Councilwoman smiled thinly. “It’s not ghosts that I disbelieve, only you and your abilities. Forgive me,” she said in a tone that was anything but apologetic, “but saying that you can see ghosts strikes me as an effective way for you to earn a living. Given so few options.”
“I’m not a fraud.” Xhea shrugged. “I don’t need your approval.”
“Be that as it may.”
“You believe my talent’s fictional, and yet you believe in ghosts?”
“With your talent, I have only your word that it’s true.” She took a sip of tea. “But ghosts? It’s not uncommon for spirits of the more magically inclined to remain behind. An echo of their power, perhaps. I have even seen evidence of a Radiant’s spirit who remained for a time in this world after his body died.”
You mean you’ve seen a ghost forced to resurrect and inhabit a body foreign to them, Xhea thought, and was surprised at the force of the anger she felt rising. She hid her reaction in another sip of tea.
But with the anger came magic, dark and curling, swelling on the tide of emotion. Not now, she thought. She pulled her hands from her teacup and shoved them beneath the table to hide the smoke-like wisps that drifted from her fingertips.
“Evidence?” she asked in a tight, uneven voice.
The Councilwoman waved the question away and leaned forward, catching and holding Xhea’s gaze. “Please,” she said. “I’m looking for my daughter’s ghost—not just for me, but for the safety and security of my whole Tower. You understand, I wasn’t with Shai when she died. I had no idea where she was—and her ghost, if she did stay in this world, is lost to me.”
Beneath the table, Xhea’s energy flowed. She dared not look down, only imagined the spreading mist of darkness wreathing the legs of her chair, growing like a thunderhead. She expected Shai to notice and readied herself for that now-familiar shock; but the ghost seemed unaware, and still the power rose.
“Tell me why you want her back.” As if she had the power to command. As if forcing a confession of her intended enslavement of her daughter’s ghost would somehow give Xhea a power—a right—that she did not currently wield.
“Allenai—”
“Yes,” Xhea said through teeth. The magic surged. “But tell me why.”
“Why does it matter to you?” the Councilwoman countered, her anger growing to mirror Xhea’s own. “I’ve asked about you—all you worry about is getting paid. You don’t care. You didn’t even know her.”
Xhea leaned forward until her face was but a few hands’ span from the Councilwoman’s, clenching her fists not to stop the magic but to feel the sharp pain of her nails in her palms—an anchor. “And I’d need to know her to give a shit? Oh, no, I’d just look at some grief-stricken father and the ghost of his daughter and say, ‘What’s it worth to me?’ Why would I care about some fearful, hesitant dead girl? Why would I care about someone caught in the agony of perpetually dying?” She resisted the impulse to spit, but only just. It wasn’t only the anger; the taste of the truth that lay beneath her savage denials was strong and bitter.
“No,” Xhea said, her voice becoming harsh, “I’m just the selfish Lower City trash that cares for nothing but herself. I only care that since your husband came to me with your daughter’s ghost, I have been arrested, detained, harassed, and nearly captured. My home has been ransacked. My property has been destroyed. Traps have been laid for me in the blighted streets, and anyone who’d ever so much as given me a polite word has been told to stay away from me, or else.”
Xhea wanted to strike out, just to ease the frustration; yet her magic felt like storm waves riding her blood, and didn’t dare raise her hands above the table. Shut it down, she thought.
The Councilwoman blinked and sat back. “You’re not lying,” she said in the voice of someone just waking. “You really did see her. My daughter.” Xhea watched as possibilities were born in the Councilwoman’s eyes, watched scenarios play out lightning-fast in the shift of her expression, and quailed at the thought of their import.
She saw her sudden, dawning value in the look the Councilwoman gave her across their breakfast table, and fear traced a cold line down her back.
This, she realized, was what it was to be seen by someone not of the Lower City, not of a skyscraper or the ruined downtown streets, but of power. To have one’s value judged and measured; to see one’s price—muffins and tea, clean clothes and a place to sit—reflected in the narrowing of eyes, the glimpse of an edge of a smile. It was an expression she’d seen only once before, and that on the face of the man in Orren who’d first had her work with ghosts.
“You can help me,” Councilwoman Nalani said, “and Xhea, I can help you. Even beyond finding Shai, yours is a talent that Allenai could dearly use.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Xhea muttered, suddenly feeling like the unmannered adolescent that the Councilwoman took her for.
“Yes.” Councilwoman Nalani sipped her tea. “Perhaps your future—and the opportunities and rewards Allenai might offer—is something to discuss another time. For no
w, tell me when you last saw my daughter. A week ago? A few days?”
“You have no proof I’ve seen her at all. You’re just making assumptions,” Xhea said, but she felt both denial and misdirection fall flat. She looked at her hands and saw no wreathing magic, no cloud of dark—only hands, soft and shadowed in the morning’s pale light.
“Yes, I am.” In Councilwoman Nalani’s suddenly calm and measured tones Xhea heard not the grieving mother or the politician out of her depth, but something far more dangerous. “Let me make a few more. I know that my daughter’s spirit was freed from her body before her death, and that you at the very least saw her.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“I can. I have a recording from an elevator activated with my daughter’s signature that shows you were the only passenger, and that the elevator took you to the Tower where my daughter’s body was found. So I assume that you have also seen my daughter since her death—in the days after my husband came to you for help, and after your interesting trip to the City—else you would have simply denied it. I also assume that you know more than you would have me believe, as your lines of questioning would otherwise be of little value.”
This time when the Councilwoman leaned forward, steepling her hands on the table, Xhea fought the urge to recoil. “You know why I need her back,” she said, a low murmur laced with steel. “And you know where she is.”
“She can go where she pleases.” Xhea regretted the words as they slipped out.
“Ah. So you have seen her.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, then attempted to divert the conversation. “But since the last time someone tried to trap me, we’ve been—” For a moment, she could only close her eyes.
“We,” Councilwoman Nalani said, repeating the word softly. “Tell me. Is she here?”
“I can’t—” But her mouth was so dry, her saliva vanishing with her words.
“Xhea, I will ask you this once: give my daughter back.”
“She’s not mine to give, Councilwoman,” Xhea replied. It sounded nowhere near as confident as she had intended.
Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One Page 20
