Lark Ascending (6 page)

But wait—there'd been an instant, before the blast knocked me backward, when I'd seen through the Wall to the other side. The illusion of iron had vanished for a split second, compromising the Wall.

“It's a weakness,” I whispered aloud.

Kris was still talking, but Oren heard me and turned. “What?”

“The anomalies.” My mind raced. I had only a second or two before the ripple came through the Wall. If it blasted me this time, when I'd used so much of my magic already to try to break through the iron, there was no predicting what it could do to me.

And yet…

Movement in the distance caught my eye. A ripple was racing along the edge of the Wall toward us.

Somehow, Oren realized I was about to move half an instant before I did. But I was ready for him and managed to dodge when he lunged for me. I threw myself at the Wall just as the distortion reached us. Magic seared my body, but this time I was ready for it, and I channeled the power back at the Wall. Every nerve screamed, on fire—but it was over in an instant, and I was flying through the air. I hit pavement and rolled, gasping. Hands pulled me up and dragged me along, a tangle of voices and a metallic, frantic buzzing emerging from the blood roaring past my ears.

I opened my eyes to find Oren and Kris leaning over me and Nix buzzing this way and that, their concern almost tangible like a warmth against my face. But even their worry couldn't distract me from what I could see beyond their faces. Instead of the clear, warm blue of the spring morning sky overhead, I saw only a broad, endless expanse of rippling, violet light.

We were in. I was home.

Growing up, the Wall was always there. It was as constant as the air we breathed. It was impossible to imagine anything beyond it, anything more vast. To us, the Wall was the edge of the world.

It wasn't until I fled my home that I lived for the first time without its gentle violet glow bathing the world. Its absence was so profound that it throbbed like a wound. Even after I'd grown accustomed enough to the vast, empty sky that it didn't give me nightmares, I still missed the feel of the Wall around me, constant and enduring.

I'd expected to feel that sense of safety again, once I returned. Here there were no shadow monsters lurking. There was magic in the air, so Oren would stay human even without my presence. Not an abundance of food, but enough. Always just enough. No starvation, no running for my life.

But instead, gazing up at the shimmering curtain of magic, I felt nothing. My heart was empty but for the constant background ache of hunger for power. The shadow in my soul stirred sluggishly, sensing the vast energy source all around me.

“We should get moving.” Kris kept his voice low, touching my elbow to get my attention.

I let him lead the way. From all that Kris had told me, I'd half expected to find my home in ruins, on fire, streets running with the blood of the rebels and architects alike. But instead it was quiet. The streets were deserted, though this close to the Wall that wasn't unusual. For a strange, dizzying moment I felt as though I was retracing my steps from the day I'd fled, in some frozen limbo. I could hear nothing: no hum of pixie wings, no distant sirens.

The air was so still that the hairs lifted on my arms. I'd never noticed the city's stillness when I lived here—I'd never felt wind before, knew no better. But now, my skin crawled. We were outside, in the open, walking down a street—and yet the air was close and still as though we were in a small, tight room. It was like being in a doll's house—a doll's city. As though everything around us was fake, like a set in a play.

I glanced at Oren beside me, knowing the stillness for him would be an agony. His jaw was clenched, but when he caught me looking at him, he nodded back at me. He'd survive, for now. All his time spent underground in Lethe had at least prepared him for this.

The sun disc hung low in the sky, only just visible through the buildings on the horizon. My body told me it was morning, as it was outside the Wall, but here in the city it was sunset. Night was coming on quickly, and my instincts told me to seek shelter—even as my mind pointed out that there was nothing to shelter
from
in here. Only the architects.

“Where is everyone?” I asked finally. My voice emerged in a whisper—though the streets were deserted, it felt like my voice could carry forever in the stillness.

“Curfew,” Kris whispered back. “This is the rebel-occupied sector, but it's not safe here after dark.”

Maybe there was something to shelter from after all. My pulse quickened a little, eyes searching the lengthening shadows.

“Not safe how?” asked Oren.

“Pixie squadrons.” Kris came to a halt at the mouth of an alleyway, pressing close to the corner of the building and peering around, scanning the broader avenue ahead. “The architects send them through at night. During the day you can see them coming, but at night, the pixies have the advantage—no eyes, the dark doesn't affect them.”

“Pixies like Nix?” Oren's low voice was skeptical. “I think we can probably handle them.”

I remembered my last moments in the city, cornered against the Wall as a flock of pixies a thousand strong came thundering at me. “One at a time, sure,” I said, shivering. “You've never seen them en masse. Children here tell each other horror stories about what pixies do to lawbreakers.”

Oren shrugged, doubt clear on his features, but he didn't argue.

“That is legend only.”
Nix, who had been quiet through all this, crept out from the shelter of my neck and onto the edge of my shoulder.
“Pixies are programmed not to harm human beings.”

“You've got a needle designed for stabbing,” I pointed out drily.

“There are many things different about my programming,”
said the pixie archly.

“Pixies
used
to be programmed not to harm people,” Kris said quietly, straightening and looking back over his shoulder at us. “Gloriette has changed many things since the failure of the Iron Wood project.”

Nix fell silent, even its mechanisms quieting as it rubbed its front legs over its jewellike eyes. I imagined it as a nervous gesture, like someone wringing their hands.

“But you know some place we can go for the night?” I asked, keeping one eye on the sun disc as it dipped toward the bottom of the Wall.

But Kris was no longer looking at me—his face was tipped upward, eyes on one of the apartment buildings across the avenue. As I followed his gaze, a sharp movement caught my eye. A window shutter slammed, echoing in the silence.

Oren twitched and withdrew back into the shadows of the alleyway. “Spotted us,” he said shortly. “Let's move.”

But Kris stayed put. “I told you, this is the rebel-controlled sector. That much hasn't changed; there'd be Enforcers everywhere if the architects had taken this street. We want the rebels to find us.”

I wasn't so sure—just because one side was definitely my enemy didn't make the other side my friend. But these were the people Kris wanted me to lead, and I couldn't lead if I stayed hidden in the shadows. I took a deep breath, and before Oren could protest, I stepped out into the street.

My shadow flew out in front of me, forty feet long in the low-angled light from the setting sun disc. “Is someone there?” I called. “My name is Lark Ainsley—I'm from beyond the Wall.”

I winced—it wasn't quite what I'd intended to say. I wasn't from beyond the Wall, I was from here. This was my home. And yet, that wasn't strictly true anymore.

Kris and Oren followed me, their shadows joining mine as it stretched down the empty street. For a few moments there was no response to my hail except silence. But then the door of the apartment building opened and an unfamiliar face peeked out. “Lark Ainsley?” said a voice. “The girl who left?”

I nodded, my throat dry.

The door opened wider, revealing a middle-aged woman standing there, staring at me. I didn't recognize her, but she seemed to know me. “You are,” she breathed, eyes going from me to the boys and back again. “I recognize you from the posters. You'd better come inside before you're seen.”

She ushered us through the door and into the lobby of the building. It was dark inside, but the woman crossed over to a bench and retrieved an odd-looking, clunky box with a handle. She grasped the handle and wound vigorously, causing mechanisms inside the device to screech unpleasantly—but when she stopped cranking, a cracked lens on the side of the box emitted a pale gold glow.

I'd never seen anything quite like it. I could sense magic from it dimly, but only after she'd cranked the handle. Kris didn't seem surprised, though, and reached for another such device from the bench.

“Institute cut off all power and oil rations for lighting when we returned from the Wood,” Kris explained, cranking the handle of his own box.

“We?” The woman turned, peering more closely at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Figure of speech,” Kris said, handing the mechanical lantern to me. In the dim light, his muddy coat looked more brown than red.

Kris had told us he'd betrayed the Institute to join the rebels—apparently not everyone knew of the existence of a former architect, and Kris wanted to keep it that way.

“Well, you'll want to head down to the base. I don't recognize your friends, but I recognize you—and if you vouch for these two, that's good enough for me.”

“Down?” I asked, shifting my grip on my lantern.

“Sewers,” the woman replied. “The rebels hide under the city—only place where there's enough iron to hide them from the pixies.”

She crossed the lobby floor and opened a door to a tiny, empty back alley dominated by the large manhole cover in the ground. The woman retrieved an iron bar with a hook on the end and looped it into a hole in the cover, then deftly levered it upward with a clang.

I thanked the woman for her help and lowered myself down until I could drop to the brick tunnel below. Kris and Oren followed, and then the woman handed her lantern down to Kris so we'd have two. As the cover clanged down behind us, I felt Oren let out a long sigh beside me.

Underground, once again. This time, though, there was a difference. I'd spent my childhood in these tunnels, following Basil and learning them like I knew my own brother. Finally, a spark of excitement flickered in my heart where the emptiness had been.

Now
I was home.

The tunnel dead-ended at the manhole to the street, so there was only one direction to go. I didn't recognize this particular part of the city—we were a few miles from where I'd lived with my family, and I'd never had any reason to sneak into any place on this edge of the city. Still, everything about it was familiar. The feel of the walls close around me, the slick damp under my feet, the smell of wet stone and mildew. Suddenly it was like no time had passed at all since that day I snuck into the school to get a glimpse of the Harvest list.

I took over from Kris leading the way. He wasn't any more familiar with this entrance to the rebel hideout than I was, and I was more used to leading than following. Nix flitted ahead, in and out of the circle of lantern light, reporting back with warnings about loose stones and slippery patches. I wished I could see the world as clearly as it could in darkness—I could sense things using magic, but not enough to form a picture of the world complete enough to avoid falling on my face.

It was only about ten minutes of walking before we came upon a door guarded by a skinny boy leaning against the wall. He straightened when we rounded the curve in the tunnel, and we all stopped for a moment to stare at each other.

“We're friends,” I called, hoping to put the kid at his ease. I couldn't see him clearly, but he couldn't have been much older than I was.

“Sure,” the kid called back, raising something clearly weapon-like to point in our direction. “Prove it.”

I heard Oren growl a low warning behind me, and I took a slow step forward. The last thing I needed was this kid provoking him into warrior mode. “My name is Lark,” I said carefully. “I've come back to help in the fight against the Institute.”

“Lark,” the boy echoed before barking a short, bitter laugh. “Right. And I'm Administrator Gloriette.”

“Look, if I come closer do you promise not to zap me, or whatever that thing does?”

The boy didn't lower the weapon, but dimly I made out a nod at the edge of my ring of lantern light. “Slowly,” he agreed. “And your friends stay where they are.”

I felt Nix drop off my shoulder and zip back toward Kris, little more than a flash in the gloom, and hoped the kid hadn't seen it. If pixies were deadly now, having one riding on my shoulder wouldn't help my case. Carefully, I moved forward, watching the edge of the lantern light climb up the boy's body until I could see his face.

I stopped, staring. He was familiar—big ears, long skinny legs, a shock of hair red enough to be visible even in the monochromatic gold light.

“Tamren?” I gasped.

His eyes went round as he stared back at me, mouth falling open. In the half a year since he'd carried me away from the Institute in his carriage, he'd changed. He was still gangly, but he'd begun to grow into it, and there was muscle on a frame that had once been stick-thin.

“It is you,” he breathed, and dropped his weapon.

It went off with a clatter of springs and machinery, sending something flying at me. I threw myself to the ground as the projectile shot past my face, so close I felt the air stir by my cheek. It glanced off the tunnel wall and went screaming down the tunnel, clattering off the stones a number of times before all went quiet again.

“Oh god, I'm sorry—” Tamren dropped to his knees, reaching for me.

“I'm fine,” I managed, raising my voice so that Oren and Kris, who were sprinting in our direction, could hear.