Lark Ascending (29 page)

My eyes struggled to focus on the thing the others were fighting; a dark shadow, quick and nimble, everywhere at once. Recognition flared deep in my mind even as somewhere behind me, I felt Dorian gather his magic in for a blow.

With an eye-watering effort I forced my lungs to suck in air and croaked, “Stop!
Stop!
It's Oren.”

The shadow thing danced back as Kris swung at it, momentum carrying the movement through despite my shout.

Dorian hesitated, and it was enough for me to drag myself onto my hands and knees and crawl forward.

The thing hovered just at the edge of the lantern light, breathing labored. I heard pacing footsteps, a groan that tore at my heart.

“Oren,” I whispered, hoping the fight hadn't attracted the attention of the sentries Nix had sensed. “It is you, isn't it?” I couldn't sense him, couldn't identify the shadowy pit that I'd grown used to.

The pacing stopped, and I gestured to Kris to step forward. The light revealed Oren, the shadow swirling beneath his skin like inky water. He lifted his head, eyes dilating in the glow of the lantern while his irises deepened, shading slowly from white to blue.

“I'm sorry,” he gasped. “I'm so sorry.”

I dropped my pack and stumbled forward, arms going around him as he dropped. “It's okay. You didn't hurt me.” I lifted my gaze to find the others staring. Kris still had one hand balled into a fist, and Basil and Dorian were poised to run at us. I shook my head, trying to warn them off, pulling Oren close.

“I thought if I lost myself down here in the tunnels, I wouldn't hurt anyone.”

“You didn't,” I whispered, thinking of the woman in the reservoir. Had she been torn apart before her death or after? Did Oren kill her? Either way, there was no point in telling him. I tightened my arms. “Don't run away from me again. Please.”

He lifted his head, and as I watched, the last traces of shadow vanished from his skin, sinking back down into the depths. “What am I?”

I swallowed. “I don't know.”

He shuddered. “I can control it, mostly. You just startled me. But it's gone—it's gone now.”

I reached up, one shaking hand brushing the hair back from his brow, letting me see his face more clearly. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, or eaten, for that matter. But as he gazed back at me I saw a little of that calm return, the calm that Olivia had taught him in Lethe. With that calm came control.

“Lark, what's going on?” Basil asked as Kris lifted the lantern higher, his face grim.

I hesitated, glancing at Oren. It wasn't my secret to tell. But he nodded at me, so I turned back to the others. “Oren is—was—a shadow person.”

The reaction was electric; Dorian, recognizing him now as the boy he'd caged in the Iron Wood, flung his magic back up in a defensive pattern; Basil's face drained of its color. I kept speaking, hoping to forestall their hostility toward him. “In the past my magic always kept him human. But Eve did something to him. She said she burned the shadow away with her magic, but…”

“But it's still here.” Oren's voice sounded a little stronger. I felt his arm tighten around me just a fraction. “And now I can only control it with focus. With concentration. Lark can't help me anymore.”

Kris moved forward cautiously until he could crouch down in front of Oren, lifting the lantern higher. “So it wasn't a cure.”

I glanced at Oren, whose exhausted face bore the tale of the last few days, the internal and external struggle. But it also showed no sign of the shadow he'd banished—by himself. With no help from anyone else.

“I don't know what she did to him,” I admitted. “But something's changed. I can't feel him anymore—I can't feel his shadow, and I can't feel his humanity. If I wasn't looking at him right now, I'd swear there was nothing here.”

“Fascinating.” Kris had left his caution behind and was peering more closely, inspecting Oren's face as if it were a circuit board he could coax to reveal its secrets. “I wonder…”

I waited, but he just crouched there, scanning Oren's features. “Kris. We don't have hours. What are you thinking?”

“I'm wondering if she somehow removed his magic altogether—not just drained him, but completely made him impervious. It'd explain why Lark can't sense him, why her magic doesn't affect him anymore. He exists outside of magic.”

“Outside of magic?” Dorian sounded as confused as I was. “What does that mean?”

Kris shrugged. “It's not possible, theoretically. Everything is governed by the laws of magic. Physics, chemistry, life and death—it's all tied to magic. But Oren isn't anymore, according to Lark.”

I felt Oren shift uneasily.

“Well, we don't have time to theorize any longer,” I said, reaching for Oren's hand and helping him to his feet. “Let's go.

“And bring—that?” Dorian jerked his chin at Oren, fear and mistrust on his face.

“I know you think the shadows are monsters,” I said wearily. “But the shadows are victims as much as we are. More, even. They're just people. And Oren's got it under control.” I glanced at him, and he nodded, hand tightening around mine.

Dorian just stared at us, unbending. Even Basil looked uncertain, eyes flicking from my face to Oren's.

It was Kris who spoke up, surprising me. “Lark's right,” he said softly, watching Oren. “At the very least, we could use him. None of us are all that useful in physical combat. And if magic doesn't affect him, then we might need him in there.”

Dorian snorted. “Fine. But he walks in front of me.”

Oren lifted an eyebrow but said nothing; still, he spoke a world in that one tiny gesture. I couldn't help but exhale a breath I hadn't known I was holding inside. He was still Oren. I squeezed his hand.

“Let's go.”

It took a little over two hours for us to reach the Institute via the tunnels; our route had to be circuitous to bypass collapsed tunnels and avoid sentries. But aside from the encounter with Oren, we got through without incident. Basil stopped beneath a round hatch in the ceiling, face upturned.

“This is it,” he said, voice lowered.

Kris lifted the lantern, illuminating the hatch. There was something achingly familiar about it, but I'd never broken into the Institute before; there was no way I could have encountered this particular entrance before.

There was a ladder leading up to the hatch, and I climbed up to test the wheel-shaped locking mechanism. It didn't budge, and I peered closer. It was soldered closed, but when I reached out to test it, I realized it was lead—not iron.

“Can you break in?” whispered Dorian.

“Easily,” I replied. But despite the lack of iron in sight, my senses stopped at the threshold of the Institute. “But I can't tell what's beyond it. It's shielded somehow. There could be architects right on the other side.”

“The shield's a standard defense,” Kris called in a hoarse whisper. “I thought maybe they'd run out of magic enough to power the shield, but clearly they haven't.”

“This hatch should lead directly into the rotunda,” Basil said.

“Then we're probably fine,” Kris replied. “When I was being held, the architects had pulled back to only a small portion of the Institute in order to preserve power. There shouldn't be anyone in the rotunda.”

There were enough “maybes” and “should bes” in there to make anyone balk, but we didn't have much choice. Something tugged at the back of my mind, even as I tried to push through the shields with my senses.

“Eve,” I whispered, my voice echoing in the cavern.

“What about her?” Dorian's voice was hoarse.

“She came this way.” My vision blurred, taken over by a distant memory, one I'd dreamed before I'd even come into the city. A memory of how Eve arrived in the city; how she infiltrated the Institute; how Gloriette had captured her.

“Then we know we can get inside this way. Maybe we can…”

Their voices faded into the background, a buzzing rising in my ears. Only Nix seemed to sense anything was wrong; it reached up and tugged on my earlobe.

“What is it?”

“She's here. Eve's in the Institute. That's where she's hiding.” I blinked, looking down to find everyone staring at me.

“Are you sure?” asked Kris.

“Where else could she hide from me? She's using the Institute's own shields against them, and me.”

“But why deliver herself into the hands of the people who held her captive?” demanded Dorian.

“She didn't.” I closed my eyes, dread closing over me like frigid water. I'd said it myself:
What if we could use their device against them?
“She's right where she wants to be.”

When I looked down again, the faces gathered around the ladder were sober, frightened. I should have kept what I knew to myself; my allies were few, now, and I couldn't afford for even one of them to lose hope. “This doesn't change anything,” I said firmly. “We just need to find out how to use this device first. If we run into her, we just have to hope she's too focused on mass murder to pay attention to individuals.”

“It seems illogical, under the circumstances, to hope that anyone's thoughts are preoccupied with mass murder.”
Nix's voice was dry; I could detect undercurrents of concern there nonetheless.

“Hush. Let me concentrate.”

It was only the work of a few moments to slide an edge of magic through the lead sealing the entrance hatch. It was nothing like magicking iron, for which I was grateful. I couldn't afford to walk into the enemy's den already handicapped by exhaustion.

I gave the lock an experimental turn, and it budged half an inch. Oren climbed up on the ladder beside me, balancing on one foot while leaning into the wheel, adding his strength to mine. Bit by bit the lock turned with a screech of long-undisturbed metal.

If there were architects up there, they wouldn't miss that sound. Stealth was out the window, so Oren climbed up a few more rungs and leaned his shoulder into the door, banging against it until the whole thing popped free with a clang.

Oren climbed through and then reached down to offer me a hand, pulling me up after him. The tunnel opened up under the rotunda, exactly as Kris suggested, and as I remembered from Eve's dream. The hatch itself, when closed, formed the center of an ornate compass rose inlaid in tile and stone on the floor.

Overhead was the dome I remembered, stars forming complex constellations above us, moon and sun in separate tracks meant to move with the time of day. But unlike that first time, the dome was dark and still. The tracks didn't move, the stars were nearly invisible with no light to reflect. As Kris climbed up after us, the lantern light picked out a few of them, but it was a poor comparison to the splendor I'd seen when I was first brought here for harvesting.

Basil and Dorian followed, letting the hatch close quietly behind them. Kris's intel had proved correct; there were no architects around, but we had to keep our voices to a whisper. The rotunda may have been dark and empty, but it still echoed and amplified even the tiniest of sounds.

“The archives are this way,” breathed Kris, nodding his head toward one of the many corridors leading off from the rotunda. “Maybe we won't need you for distraction after all, Dorian.”

“Let's hurry,” was Dorian's only reply. He'd been on edge, even more than the rest of us were, ever since we'd entered the tunnels. The problem with being our backup plan was that if we failed, there'd be no one to rescue him from the architects after he'd distracted them. He'd be stuck here and likely suffer the same fate as Eve, experimented upon and tortured.

We headed down the corridor marked
Museum and Archives,
making cautious progress. Nix, picking up on the tension in my body, kept making nervous little forays away from my shoulder and back, landing on the wall, the darkened light fixtures, even Kris's shoulder a couple of times.

The fear thickening the air only deepened when we reached the museum corridor that led toward the records room. The hall was lined on either side with mechanimals, along with stuffed creatures from beyond the Wall, many of which had gone extinct in the century since the cataclysm. Kris's lantern glinted off the bared teeth of the
Ursus arctos horribilis
—the huge bear I remembered, rearing up on its hind legs.

This place had been thrilling and a little frightening when I walked through it the first time, under full illumination and without realizing yet what lay at the heart of the Institute. Now it was nightmarish. The shadows gathered thickly behind each creature, the inconstancy of the lantern making my eyes pick up imagined movement everywhere. Some of the pedestals were empty, as though their occupants had come to life and slunk away, into the darkness, to wait for us.

More likely, the Institute had reactivated them to aid in the war against the rebels. Against me. I hurried past the empty spots, not willing to read their labels and find out what they were. I didn't want to know.

No one spoke until we passed the last case, containing a deactivated pixie settled upon a dark blue velvet background. Nix darted from my shoulder to land on the case, its tiny feet clinking against the glass as it turned this way and that, inspecting its ancient cousin.

I paused as soon as we were out of the museum, letting my breath out in a rush.

“That was horrific,” murmured Dorian—I realized he had never seen it before.

Neither had Oren, and when I turned to look at him his face was as hard and as cold as granite. He'd no doubt hunted animals for food in his life spent surviving in the wilderness, but he never would have seen their pelts stuffed and put on display before. I reached out to touch his arm, which was rigid under my hand.

“Shh—do you hear something?” Kris tilted his head, brow furrowing and eyes sharp.