Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (27 page)

“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 she’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 now, 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.

The silence stretched between them. Xhea dared not so much as glance at the ghost, still hovering in the window behind her mother’s right shoulder; yet she could see Shai’s distress, the fretful twisting of her hands as she looked from Xhea to
her mother.

“Don’t you understand what it would mean?” Xhea cried at last. “What it would do to her?”

The Councilwoman sighed, an untold weight in that breath. “Of course I understand, child. I know more of Radiants than but a handful of people in the City. I know what it is we ask of them, and the pain their gifts exact. I’ve known since Shai was born what her talent would mean for her, how it would shape her life, and her death—and yes, everything after.”

Again Xhea’s anger surged, and her fear, but they felt weak compared to the sudden force emanating from the woman before her, a power that seemed but a glimmer away from becoming visible. And oh, in that presence she felt so small. So inconsequential.

“But how could you—how
can
you ask this of her? A lifetime spent trapped and dying . . .”

“How could I not ask it, Xhea?” Softly, so softly. “It’s how the City is run—don’t you see? On the strength—the magic—of its people, and yes, some must give far more than others ever can. I try to ensure that her power isn’t wasted or spent frivolously, but I cannot change the workings of our society, child. Not even for the one person I love more than anything else in this world.”

The Councilwoman shook her head. “I cannot ask for what I would not give. When a Radiant is born, I, as part of the Council, ask the parents to give that child to the good of the Tower. I ask that child to learn and grow and dedicate themselves to Allenai—and yes, to die and keep on giving, should that be their fate.” Her eyes were fierce, shining. “How can I ask—how can I
take
—what I would not myself willingly sacrifice?”

“Your daughter.”

“Shai,” she said, shuddered, and burst into tears.

Xhea could but stare, helpless at the sight of this woman who hid her crumpling expression behind a manicured hand. As if caught in a dream, Shai rose from her perch on the window ledge and moved toward her mother. She reached to cup her mother’s face in her hand, as if in this small way she could make her presence known. As she touched her mother’s tear-stained cheek, Councilwoman Nalani looked up, eyes wide and almost frightened.