Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (9 page)

“But it’s something,” Xhea said. Some bit of hope, a direction to travel. Ignoring her muscles’ protests, she forced herself to her feet and dug in her pockets until she found a bit of dried fruit, its surface caked with lint. Emergency rations—and never as fresh or as plentiful as she’d have liked. It had been a long winter, she thought as she shoved the piece into her mouth.

“Xhea?” Shai’s voice was soft.

Xhea paused in her chewing, grimacing at the leather-hard stuff between her teeth. Not fruit, but some sort of jerky. Very old jerky.

“Yeah?” she managed around her mouthful.

“Thank you.”

Xhea stopped. Turned. Shai was staring at her hands, fingers twisting nervously, but looked up to meet Xhea’s eyes. “For doing this,” she said, a gesture taking in the desolation around them, the cluster of Towers above. “For helping me.”

Xhea’s mouth was suddenly dry, and it had nothing to do with the jerky’s salt. She tried to swallow; failed. Tried to speak, and failed at that too. At last she nodded and turned away.

The lengthening light was all the distraction she needed. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to get back before dark.” Straightening her shoulders, Xhea started for the distant huddle of structures of the Lower City, the ghost trailing silently after.

By angling her approach to intersect with the Green Line subway, Xhea figured she could make it home—or at least to shelter—before sunset, even tired, hungry, and parched from her long run. Yet an hour into her walk home, a sound made her freeze mid-stride: a rustle of movement in dead weeds, a falling-rock rattle of shifting rubble. To her right stood the remains of a brick building, just a corner still standing, its window gaps like black eyes. To her left was a hill, only a protruding tangle of electrical wire betraying that it had been a building, not a burial mound.

Nothing should have been moving, she knew. Not yet, not before nightfall.

“What is it?” Shai asked. Xhea ignored her, attempting to pinpoint the sound. It had been close, but not immediately so; sound carried farther in the ruins. Ahead, she thought, and somewhat to her right—directly between her and the way home.

Again it came: a rustle, a scrape of stone on stone.

Xhea crept forward a single step. Then another step, and another—each placed with only a whisper of boot soles against the rocky asphalt. It took forever to reach the end of the brick wall that shielded her; forever again to gather the courage to peer around the corner.

She saw a stretch of empty road with collapsed houses to either side, the only movement the dust’s slow twirl in the bands of light cast by the setting sun. One breath held in waiting, another—then a section of ground heaved. The piled edges of boards and asphalt slabs rose and shuddered, crumbled and fell away as something struggled to free itself from its burrow of stone and refuse.

It was not the movement that caused Xhea to recoil and press herself against the brick wall as if she could sink within the crumbling structure, but the sound. As the boards and piled soil lifted upward and the sunlight fell upon whatever lay beneath, there came a scream, high and sharp and inhuman. It echoed through the ruins long after the source had fallen quiet.

She’d seen no reaching hand, no glimpse of a face—yet Xhea knew that no mere animal struggled to free itself from that rubble. Certainty turned her bones to ice: it was a walker, one of the once-human things that stalked the Lower City’s nighttime streets.

It shouldn’t be out so early
, Xhea thought, panicked. Sunlight burned their eyes, some said, or their skin; and perhaps, given the thing’s scream, there was truth to that story. Yet common wisdom also held that the things spent their days burrowed beneath the ground out in the badlands, far from the Lower City itself, and only drew near as darkness fell—and that, she could see all too clearly, was false.

Shai had followed her around the corner and back again, mirroring Xhea’s caution if not her fear. Xhea braced for the questions that she didn’t have time—nor could she risk the sound—to answer: who is that person, what happened to them, why are they there, buried, screaming? And even if she could speak, what could Xhea say but “I don’t know”? No one knew where the walkers came from or what had made them the way they were.

Yet the ghost only whispered, “What can I do to help?”

The offer was a surprise. Xhea jerked to face her, charms clinking at the movement—and cringed, expecting the sound to draw the thing from cover, sunlight be blighted. After several long moments of silence, she opened her eyes; a few more, and she released her caught breath.

What could the ghost do? Xhea’s mind spun; she barely knew what she could do, never mind what help Shai might be. If only she could run. If only there were a chance, however faint, that she could sprint to a subway entrance in time; if only her exhausted legs would let her make the attempt. She needed tunnels, concrete rooms with doors that could be locked or barred—a bomb shelter, an old bank safe, the highest floor of a building not yet fallen. And had none.

“I need to hide,” she said softly, so softly. “Can you see . . . is there anywhere?” Shai nodded and pulled away, struggling against her tether’s limits to search the nearby ruins.

Xhea forced herself to swallow, then pulled a length of folded cloth from a jacket pocket. Each movement slow and careful, she bound back her hair, wrapping the length with its charms tightly, and tying the whole thing into a knot at the back of her head. She couldn’t let the sound of her hair give her away.

Shai returned a moment later. “I’ve found a place.” Xhea pointed to the ground, questioning: a basement? Oh, to be underground, where it was dark and safe and nothing in the world could touch her. But Shai shook her head and pointed at the crumbling wall beside them. “It still has part of a floor above,” she whispered. “There are enough gaps in the bricks that you could climb up.”

At Xhea’s look, she added, “There’s nothing else, not as far as I could reach.”

“Okay,” Xhea whispered. “Lead me there.”

She climbed as quickly as she could manage, attempting silence as she hauled herself up the crumbling brickwork. If she were to fall, she had to pray to break her neck. It would be faster than the death that thing would grant her.

Xhea made it to the top of the narrow platform and crawled across the triangle of rough flooring to the corner where she curled, pressing her shoulder blades against the walls and pulling her knees tight to her chest. Shai sat at her side, the magic inside her flickering at the edges of Xhea’s vision. They looked out across a stretch of ruins, jutting girders and twisted lampposts where there might once have been trees. The walls of her shelter blocked most of the setting sun’s light, casting darkness across the ground, black on gray.

As the shadows lengthened, the thing freed itself from its daytime shelter. Xhea heard it rise to its feet and slowly exhale as dirt and rubble clattered to the ground around it. In the Lower City streets, these once-human creatures never spoke, and this one seemed no exception. Yet she listened as it stumbled and began to walk, each step echoing through the ruins’ silence; listened as its gait steadied and breathing slowed as the land grew dark.

Xhea trembled, not from weariness now, nor hunger, but fear. There was nowhere to run. No escape. Only the hope that on this tenuous perch she might pass the night unnoticed, with untold hours to wait until dawn.

She drew out her knife with shaking hands and extended the tiny blade. Where was her magic now? She had no darkness but that of sky and shadow; no curl of smoke, nor the sweet calm that swelled in its wake. When she breathed, there was only air; and the tears that trailed down her cheeks were just water, warm as blood.

Clutching her knife, she waited for the walker to see some scuff-mark she’d left in the dirt; to hear her breathing or the thud of her heart; to smell her, terrified and drenched with cold sweat. She’d heard people die at the hands of these things, distant screams and pleas that she’d tried to block out. Once she’d even found the bodies of two people caught outside when darkness fell. At least, she thought there had been two.

It seemed hours before the night walker moved away. Longer still before she could draw breath without shuddering.

It was cold now and the wind had picked up. In the distance, Xhea could just see the cluster of buildings that was the Lower City, huddled together as if for warmth. Lights flickered in the skyscrapers’ upper windows, but whatever lamps still burned in the smaller structures were masked, rare glimmers creeping from around drawn curtains or windows boarded tight.

The City above showed no such fear. Xhea watched through a veil of tears as the Towers came alight. Within moments, every structure was haloed, twinkling as stars did, and brightening until they lit the whole sky on fire. As each Tower’s shape was unique, so too was the energy displayed: in sheets and tendrils and waves, the power and status of every Tower was writ large across the heavens, brighter than any aurora. Xhea knew Towerlight for what it was: defensive spells and spell exhaust set alight, flagrant displays of power meant to show wealth and intimidate rivals. With spells that moved like living things, the Towers tested each other’s defenses and guarded their own boundaries, their shimmering halos as much weapon as defense.

Brightest of all was the Central Spire. Vast beyond imagining, the great needle stretched like a luminous pillar set to pierce both the Lower City and the darkness above. It was gold, she knew; but even seen as silver and gray, it was beautiful. Beautiful and distant and so very cold.

It was probably the last thing she’d ever see, Xhea thought, and no matter how tightly she clenched her fists or curled her legs to her body, she could not stop shaking. Again she heard footsteps. More footsteps—two sets, three, more—all moving closer, all perfectly steady as if walking to the beat of an uncaring heart.

“Sweet gods,” Xhea whispered. “There are more of them.” How many hours until sunrise—eight? Nine? Without meaning to, she made a low sound in the back of her throat, almost a moan.

“Xhea?” Shai pressed close, ghostly hands against Xhea’s right shoulder. Not real hands—for despite the girl she saw so clearly beside her, Xhea knew she was alone. Only empty stretches of nothing between her and safety, nothing and no one with her but the things that walked the ruins. Below her perch, the walkers circled as predators might, tracking the scent of their prey.

Her teeth chattered. She shoved the knuckle of her left thumb in her mouth and bit down hard, tasting dust and sweat.

“Xhea, please . . . look at me.” Shai’s hands were on her face, the touch cool and tingling. Xhea turned at the ghost’s urging, silent. There was nothing she could say, nothing so important that she dared voice it.

Yet the very sight of Shai was enough to give her pause. Had she thought the ghost lit by mere glints and glimmers? Here, in darkness broken only by Towerlight, Shai was luminous. It seemed the Spire’s light fell full across her face, shone from her hair, caught the shining folds of her dress. Even the hands pressed to Xhea’s face felt . . . different. Like a ghost’s hands, yes, but somehow more present—as if the bright magic bound to Shai’s spirit gave her a physical presence, a strange radiance that brushed across Xhea’s cheeks lightly as breath.

The ghost caught her gaze and held it. Fear etched her features, and Xhea imagined the expression a mirror of her own. Yet there was something in the set of her jaw, the faint creases between her eyebrows, that spoke of determination.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Shai said, no louder than a whisper, but careful and steady. “I don’t know what’s wrong with those people and . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t need to know. Not now.”

The walkers gathered below, the crunch of their footsteps echoing. Shai’s hands slid from Xhea’s cheeks. Xhea felt where the ghost had touched her, as if the shape of Shai’s fingers might still shimmer there in the darkness.

“I know you’re out here because of me.” Shai glanced down at her hands, glowing as if in moonlight, Towerlight. “And I can’t do anything. Except I know what it’s like to be afraid, like you are. I know how it feels to fear dying.”

Not like this
, Xhea wanted to say, hopelessly, angrily.
Oh, not like this
. She could hear them less than a stone’s throw away. She could hear them breathing.

And yet . . . looking into the silver of Shai’s eyes, Xhea reconsidered. She had but the fear of pain and suffering at a mindless thing’s hands, and all the terrible moments that would come before death. Shai had not just feared pain, but felt it; she knew to fear suffering, for she had known it. And death? What could Xhea know of dying that a ghost did not?

“I remember that there were times . . .” Shai’s voice seemed to catch, and she closed her eyes briefly. “Things got bad. But I also know that my father used to sit with me—hours at a time, hours upon hours. I think he used to stay even when I was asleep, just to be there when I woke. When the pain came, or when I was afraid, he would hold my hand and tell me stories. Sometimes it was bad enough that I couldn’t understand him, couldn’t even
think
—but I knew he was there. It was enough, somehow, to just hear his voice.