Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (21 page)

“So a Radiant makes the most energy?” she guessed, remembering the harsh white light of Shai’s magic as she died.

“A lot more,” Wen said softly.

Xhea turned to Shai. “They’re trying to capture your ghost because you’re insanely rich?” She couldn’t keep the incredulity from her voice. But she followed her train of thought, speaking again before either listener could refute her. “No,” she said. “You’re their
mint
.” The ancient word came readily to her lips, and she touched one of the coins caught in her hair, as if the feel of ancient money could make the concept more solid.

“Well . . .” Shai wrung her hands.

“Yes,” Wen said. “Part mint, part power plant. Even with the thousands upon thousands of people living in every Tower—even with all their excess magical energy fueling that Tower’s economy—there isn’t enough power. Think about it, Xhea. Think about the magic needed to keep even one of those Towers aloft. And that doesn’t even begin to touch the energy required for everyday tasks, or transportation—never mind huge energy expenditures like a takeover.”

Xhea nodded. She’d seen takeovers, where two Towers merged their physical structures, energy, and population and became something entirely new. Most takeovers were slow and graceful, completed over weeks; hostile takeovers, in which one Tower attacked and absorbed another, were faster, more brutal—and much more fun to watch.

“Towers need Radiants. They’re born rarely, and are never allowed to change their citizenship. But the human body isn’t designed to hold that much energy. So much life force . . . the magic kills them in the end.” To Shai he added, “That’s what happened you, yes?”

Shai only hesitated a split second before agreeing, but that fractional pause was enough. Shai remembered exactly how she’d died.
And still
, Xhea thought,
she came back to me. With me. For me.

Thinking of that day, Shai’s broken body all but incandescent with magic and fever, Xhea clenched her hands into fists. At last, that bright spring of energy at Shai’s core made sense: she had fueled the healing spells, even as her magic caused the damage that the spells attempted to repair.
All except the darker spells
, she thought, remembering that fine, complex spellwork that had reminded her of steel lace.

“There were spells on Shai,” she said slowly, “to keep her from dying.”

Shai startled at that, looking as if she wanted to capture Xhea’s words and hide them away unsaid.

Wen made a thoughtful noise and leaned back in his chair. His chair, however, didn’t lean with him, and Xhea watched as the chair back slid through his body until its uppermost rung appeared through the front of his chest.

“I wouldn’t know about that, truthfully,” he said. “I was an excellent spellcaster, but this wasn’t my area of specialty. But it seems a sensible practice, does it not, to keep your Radiant from dying as long as possible?”

“But she’s dead now.”

“And glowing. I assume that’s not normal for ghosts of your acquaintance?”

“No. But without a body, without a way to find her ghost—I mean, how would they harness . . .” Xhea’s words fled as she thought:
Resurrection
. Hard on the heels of that thought came another:
Was that what Orren had been attempting, all those years ago?

Wen raised an eyebrow. “No way to find her ghost? That explains why they wish to find you, does it not?”

“But would Shai actually be useful? I mean, the amount of magic produced by a ghost . . .”

“Look around,” Wen said. “She’s refueled the daylight spell as we talked.”

Xhea blinked, realizing he was right. There were no flickers anymore, no moments of darkness like heavy clouds skidding across the sun; only light streaming in from all sides, as clear and bright as if they stood in a sunlit patio. As one, they turned to Shai.

“Um . . . you’re welcome?” Shai offered, and tried to smile.

Xhea took an unfamiliar route into the ruins, picking her slow way through the broken streets. No use making it easy for their pursuers.

As she walked, her thoughts returned to her trashed hideaway in the subway tunnel. If Allenai knew that Shai’s ghost was with her, why would they attempt to terrorize her? If they were trying to find Shai or Xhea, how did ruining one of her underground havens—or setting Rown’s trained crazies after her—help attain that goal? If Allenai was as powerful as Shai implied, surely there were more effective ways to gain her assistance.

No, these people weren’t stupid or impulsive. They wouldn’t have sent thugs after her—at least not without reason. But it was that reason she failed to see.

Then again, maybe Allenai hadn’t sent the hunters. If it were known that a Tower wanted her, other Lower City dwellers might attempt her capture in hope of a reward. But was that potential temptation enough to endure the pain of traveling underground? Xhea shook her head, wishing the pieces would fall into place. Wishing the cold knot in her stomach was only hunger.

“So,” Xhea said, breaking the silence. “What was it about the spell keeping you alive that you didn’t want Wen to hear?”

She didn’t need to look at Shai to see her startle. The movement broke the rhythm of her false walk, and for a moment Shai slid helplessly through the air as if across ice. Xhea couldn’t help but grin, and not even Shai’s offended glare could chase the expression away.

“When I die, you’re welcome to laugh at me too,” Xhea offered. “I imagine it’s hard getting used to being dead.”

“It’s almost too easy,” Shai admitted, regaining her balance. “What’s hard is remembering what it was like to be alive.”

“You’ve only been dead—what, a little over a week? Were you outside your body for so long?”

“No.” She made a sound that was almost a laugh, bitter and hard. “But I was dying for a very long time.”

“Months?”

“Years.”

They walked together in silence, the ruins quiet but for the rustle of the wind through new leaves and the crunch of Xhea’s footsteps. At last Shai said, “Being dead is almost like being real again. Even if I’m only real to you, and to Wen.”

“If you were suffering, why wouldn’t they let you die?”

Shai sighed. “Power. Of course. It’s all for the magic.”

“And the spells binding you to your body?”

“My father tried to break them. I think he damaged them enough that I wasn’t always trapped in myself, and yet . . .” She shook her head. “Kept alive, a Radiant’s body can generate magic for a long time, even if the person is . . . like I was. Unable to stand, or eat, or even think. Caught on the edge of death.”

“For years,” Xhea said.

“Years upon years. They can block the pain, but . . .” Shai shrugged, a short, sharp gesture. “But that’s only if the person—the spirit, I suppose—stays in the body. Without its spirit, a Radiant’s body loses its ability to generate magic. The power slows, and within months the body is just . . . a body.”

“Your father believed that if you were separated from your body, it would die without you. You’d be free.” Free to die; free to fade away.

Shai nodded.

“But even if your ghost generates some magic, why do they need you if your body is dead?”

Shai said bleakly, “There are other bodies.”

“Other—?”

“Other Radiants. Their spirits gone and their bodies kept alive until another can be found to fill it.”

“But if only a few Radiants are born, and they bind your ghost to your body, then how—”

“It doesn’t need to be a Radiant’s spirit, though that’s best. Any spirit is enough to keep the body generating magic. Fueling the Towers and their people.”

“And if they only have a Radiant’s ghost?”

Shai’s face was grim. “The same, in reverse: any body will do.”

She’d known possession was possible—but this was worse. The resurrection of a body with a ghost foreign to the flesh. A ghost forced there, trapped there, helpless. The thought was enough to turn Xhea’s stomach.

Shai continued as if Xhea’s reaction did not matter, could not matter. “If Allenai didn’t have an empty body for me, they could buy one from an allied Tower for a price—even arrange to have a body . . . vacated. But there is one. A Radiant’s body.” She looked up at the City. “I knew him when I was a child. He used to tell me stories.”

Xhea tried to imagine it: Shai bound to a body not her own—a man’s body, the body of someone she had known. Hidden away in a Tower, broken and hurting and dying, endlessly dying, for years. Unable to escape. Bound so she couldn’t even try.

“I won’t let that happen,” Xhea whispered, reaching for her knife as if to fend off those futures. There were worse things in the City than she knew, than she had ever dreamed.

“I will
not
let it happen,” she vowed again. She knew she sounded savage, her voice harsh with anger, and did not care. Could not care. “Anything in my power, I will do it, Shai.
Anything.
I won’t let them take you.”

Shai simply looked at her, her face bright with the magic that built inside her, minute by minute, day by day. She reached out and touched the back of Xhea’s knife hand with the tips of her fingers. But all she said was, “I know.”

They walked through the ruins without speaking. Xhea couldn’t break the quiet, even had she found words to capture the sudden tightness in her chest. It had been a long time since she’d made a promise; longer still since she’d meant to keep one. Yet the feel of the words lingered in her mouth, dark like her magic, and heavy; and if those words had a taste, she only knew not to name it sweet.

In silence she asked herself:
What are you doing?
All she had needed—wanted, worked for—was to be safe. To have enough to eat and drink, a secure place to sleep, a way to care for herself when surrounded by those who cared for nothing. Now she was risking what little she had managed to earn—and for what?

Did she mourn the destruction of her safe haven, the ruin of mere things? She mocked herself for it. To keep this promise and protect the strange ghost that had fallen into her keeping, she was setting herself not only against one of the more powerful Towers, but the hidden workings of the City itself. How many Towers were there? They glittered across the sky, plentiful as stars; and if what Wen and Shai had told her was true, a Radiant—perhaps more than one, perhaps many more—was present in each. A dying person, or a dying body with a spirit trapped inside, bound to each structure. She could barely comprehend it.

Against all that, she was but one girl. One girl with strange magic that she didn’t understand and barely controlled, no friends but a ghost, allies few enough to count on the fingers of one hand.

But I don’t have to save everyone
, Xhea thought.
Only one. This one.

She would not abandon Shai to face this alone.

It was only then that Xhea realized where she was walking. At her feet, the road split. To her right the street continued uninterrupted; it would, she knew, take her to a crossroads that led quickly back to the Lower City, mere moments away. But to her left the ground sagged, sloping down and away. The depression was almost circular, and the surrounding buildings leaned in like broken teeth. Farther, she knew, there was no ground, no structures standing; everything had fallen in the collapse of the subway’s Red Line tunnel. Sometimes, in dreams, she still heard that fall: the roar of asphalt, steel, and concrete losing the battle against gravity, the sound almost—almost—enough to obscure the screams.

But it was not that memory that made her want to turn and run, but all the ones that came before. Memories she would have called happy, if she had any right to the word.

She did not run, did not take the safe route home, but turned instead toward the destruction, careful of the asphalt’s crumbling edge. Her feet had found and followed this path, once so familiar, without thought; and though the road had changed much in the intervening years, it still felt like returning home. Had she not walked on such treacherous ground, the thought would have made her close her eyes. As it was, it was all she could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

“What happened here?” Shai’s eyes were wide as she took in the wide bowl of destruction. “An earthquake?”

It was easier to look at now, with the dust settled and the sharp edges of so many broken things dulled by years of rain and wind and snow. Easier, too, now that time had stolen the details of how the buildings had looked while standing, and the names of those who had lived in the fallen structures. Easier not to remember their faces.

“A subway tunnel collapsed.” The Red Line tunnel—the deepest subway tunnel—had been flooded for as long as anyone remembered. Water always won in the end.

She skirted the disaster’s edge, turned left onto a side street, and walked up the overgrown lane to a large rectangular building. The multi-paned windows were hazed dark with grime. It stood far enough from the collapse that the structure hadn’t been threatened; a thrown stone would fall short of the crumbling edge. Even so, it was close. Too close.

There were seven steps to the building’s front doors; she didn’t need to count them. The doors were closed and locked, the large brass handles more solid than the wood in which they were mounted. Xhea did not kick out the lock as she would have in any other building, but reached into her tangled hair. There, braided to a thin cord and hidden against her neck, hung a brass key.