Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (37 page)

She was speaking as she came through the door that a guard held open. “We’ll need to enact emergency transport procedures Seven A through N, until such time as—” She stopped. “Well,” she said slowly. “Xhea. This is a surprise.”

A surprise? Xhea glanced from the woman to the guards and back. They hadn’t been after her? No, she realized: they’d been dealing with the broken elevators. Catching her mid-escape had merely been coincidence. Score one against vengeful destruction.

“I don’t recommend you get any closer,” Xhea said to the security men. There was no fear in their expressions, no surprise, just irritation at this girl blocking the way with her little metal pipe.

Xhea loosened her grip on her magic. The guards did not react to the sudden rush of dark from her skin, the pooling shadow at her feet; stupid as sticks she judged them both, and all but blind to magic. Not so the woman. She stiffened at the sight, as one might when suddenly faced with an unknown danger.

Xhea smiled thinly at the reaction. “I don’t recommend you get any closer,” she repeated.

“I see,” the woman said, her voice gone quiet. She raised a hand, gesturing for the confused guards to fall back against the stairwell wall. She was no simple administrator, Xhea realized, no matter what she might feign.

She studied Xhea, as if she were a specimen beneath glass. Her eyes followed the darkness that drifted up and swirled around Xhea’s head like aimless smoke and pooled beneath her like living shadow. Details, details: from her white-knuckled grip on the plumbing pipe to the damp, mildew patches that now marred her pants, Xhea had no doubt that there was nothing about her that this woman missed.

At last the woman said, “You’re leaving, then?” Her face was hard, but there was only faint disappointment in her tone, as if Xhea were a guest insisting on leaving a party early.

“Looks that way.”

“But Xhea,” she murmured, “our business here is not done.”

“No need to bill me for the elevators.” Xhea gestured for the woman to stand aside; what little patience she’d possessed had vanished a few dozen flights of stairs ago. “Just add ’em to my tab.”

The woman’s eyebrow twitched at the word “elevators.” She hadn’t known that was Xhea’s work, then.
Cleverness on top of cleverness
, Xhea thought, and grit her teeth.

“Lovely chatting with you again,” she ground out, “but I really must be going.”

“Let us escort you, then.”

“No need.”

“Oh, but I insist.” The woman stood aside and gestured to the vacant doorway and the dimly lit hall beyond.

Xhea tightened her grip on her pipe, and inched past them into the hall.
Faster
, she thought; she couldn’t just creep away. She tried to step forward and gasped at the searing pain, stumbling and all but falling. Half-blinded, she clung to the pipe. Yet even through the tears, she saw the sudden rush of motion toward her.

“Get back,” she cried, throwing out her left hand, fingers stretched wide. Only the woman saw the rush of darkness that all but eclipsed the gesture, but it was enough: she grabbed the security guard closest to her, stopping his lunge toward Xhea just in time.

Steady
, Xhea thought, trying to slow the sudden pounding of her heart and rein in the darkness. Perhaps a single touch of her magic wouldn’t have killed the man—but she didn’t know.

“Please,” she said, ignoring her voice’s sudden quiver. “Just stay back.”

Even half-healed, her knee could not bear her full weight; yet she refused to pull herself along the floor again like a child still learning to walk—not now, not with witnesses. If the leg would not bear her, she’d simply drag it behind her.

Easier said than done. Her progress was slower and more painful than she imagined, each hopping step jarring her swollen knee even within its protective brace. Xhea was soaked with sweat before she’d traveled more than ten feet, and the hall stretched out before her. She heard the whisper of the woman’s slippers pacing slowly behind her, the security guards’ heavy treads, and envied them their ease of movement.

They can’t just let me walk out of here
, Xhea thought. There was something she was missing.

The answer, when it came, was so soft she almost missed it: a slight clink like metal on metal. Xhea hesitated, mere steps from where the hall turned toward the left and led to the skyscraper’s front lobby. Something about the sound . . .

The jangle of keys, she realized. She leaned on her pipe, not needing to feign fatigue, and looked carefully ahead. There: a shadow shifted across the threadbare carpet. She wasn’t being escorted; they were leading her into an ambush.

Xhea let the pipe and wall hold her weight, and slapped her free hand flat against the drywall beside her. Flecks of paint fell in a whispering rain. Her awareness followed her magic through the wall to the workings beneath. As in Edren, great bundles of wires ran through the walls—a physical structure to shape and hold the spells that ran the skyscraper. She mapped their paths in a second, then her eyes flew open and she stared down the woman and the guards at her sides.

“I will not,” Xhea said, speaking slowly and forcefully for all that her voice trembled, “let you hold me here any longer.”

“Child, I wasn’t . . .”

“The guards around the corner. Tell them to stand down.”

A lift of that perfect eyebrow. “Or?”

“Tell me,” Xhea said. “What spells do you have running within these walls? Security, lighting, communications, information flow . . . ? Let me walk out of here unhindered, or they’re all gone.”

“Xhea, do you really think that—”

“Do you really think I’m bluffing? It took me seconds to destroy the elevator—if that. I could unravel in an instant what it’s taken Orren decades to build, you know I could.
And I’d enjoy it
.”

The woman’s mouth thinned into a hard, flat line.

“Let me go,” Xhea said, forcing her voice to be soft. Let her think it a plea. “Just let me go.”

The moment stretched, aching. “As you wish,” the woman said. “For now.”

At her nod, the guards stepped back. Others moved too, and only then did Xhea realize how many witnesses had gathered. She took a firmer grip on her pipe and forced herself forward again, step by agonizing step. As she went, doors opened behind her. No fancy rooms these, not in a service hall of the skyscraper’s ground level, yet they were occupied nonetheless. Light streamed from opened doors, and people began to peek out, curious, cautious. In the way.

There was a whisper of silken fabric as the woman gestured the witnesses back. Xhea could feel their eyes on her, heard their motion as she passed—footsteps, more footsteps, whispers and murmured questions, all following behind.

Sweetness save me
, she thought.
I’m leading a parade.

Down the hall and through the doors into the skyscraper’s battered front vestibule, chipped faux marble and stained mirror glass. The gap where a revolving door had once stood had been boarded over, only a soft breath of night air slipping in through the nail holes. The doors to either side had been bolted and barred, chains wrapped around the handles.

Almost there
. The lie was so bold it was laughable.

A babble rose behind her when Xhea gestured for the doors to be unbarred.

“It’s dark, she can’t—”

“Surely she doesn’t mean—”

“She’ll be killed!”

Somehow the thought of again facing the night walkers held little fear. She stood stoically, face as blank as she could manage, while one of the security men fumbled at his belt for the correct keys.

“Xhea,” a voice said. Lin. For him alone she turned.

He stood just a step from the small crowd, hands raised, palms out and empty. He stared, his jutting Adam’s apple bobbing wildly as he swallowed. “The brace,” he said. “If you turn the adjustment screws on the side, you can keep it from bending.”

Xhea nodded. It took a moment to do as he said, fumbling for the screws through the fabric of her pants. At last she felt the brace harden: not magic, but a stiffening of the material itself, the kind of mechanical genius that marked the inventions of the before-times. Tentatively, she shifted her weight onto her injured leg. It hurt—oh sweetness and blight, did it hurt—but it held.

Lin almost smiled at the sight, something like pride warring with the fear in his expression. Xhea wanted to speak, but the simple words died on her lips.
Thank you
. Instead she nodded as she turned away.

Outside the air was cool enough to make her shiver, but it was a chill that spoke of early mornings and dawning light, the swirl of air through the Lower City’s crumbling structures. She stepped away from Orren—stumbled, staggered. It took a few hurting steps, near-falling, before she found her stride. Then the rhythm of her makeshift cane striking the asphalt reverberated with a sound like a bell, singing in perfect time to her breathing.

“I’m coming,” Xhea whispered. She clung to the tether like a lifeline, face streaked with pained tears. “Hang in there Shai, I’m coming.”

She walked without turning back, cloud-tattered darkness swirling all around her.

“One,” Xhea panted. She dragged herself forward a single step, hopped to regain her precarious balance, and leaned heavily on her length of pipe. A breath and then she swung the pipe forward, shifted her weight, and pushed forward again.

“Two.”

Only three more steps until she could pause for breath. Then five more steps. Then five more.

Edren was only a few blocks from Orren, and little had troubled her path but cracks and stones, yet that short walk had already taken an hour or more. Her legs hurt, and her knee; she had expected no less. It was the pain in her bruised shoulder and hands that took her aback, the muscles exhausted and trembling from use of her makeshift cane; that, and the sharp ache in her palms, unused to bearing so much of her weight. The rust stains on her hands were a deep enough gray that she almost mistook them for blood.

“Three,” she said, and dragged herself forward. “Four.”

On the next swing her pipe struck a curb and Xhea looked up in slow surprise. Edren stood before her, the bulk of the antique hotel dominating the block. She leaned on the pipe, and watched the long shadows shift across Edren’s decorative façade as dawn broke on the far horizon.

No back-alley entrance, this; she’d come to the former hotel’s front doors. Four thick pillars supported an overhang that was easily two stories overhead, and decorative lions stood guard beside massive doors with handles of upswept brass. At least she thought they’d once been lions. The creatures’ faces were pitted and smashed away, as were their claws, leaving only hulking pale shapes with edges smoothed by the touch of countless hands. Neither had Edren escaped time’s ravages: the pillars were cracked and stained, the windows were boarded or bricked, and those elegant brass handles were tarnished black. Yet in that soft light, Xhea could almost imagine it as it must have once been, a thick carpet unfurled down its wide front steps, uniformed doormen waiting to usher guests inside.

Forget them
, Xhea thought, carpet and doormen both—she’d settle for a sentry coming to see what she wanted. The curb and shallow flight of stairs between her and those doors felt like a barricade, complete with armed guards. It would be better if she went around back, as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Yet her legs shook, and her arms; she did not know that she could make it so far. Did not know if Shai had the time left for her to make the effort.

The only other option seemed to be to lower herself to the ground and drag herself to the door, step by uncomfortable step. Except—no. She knew that Edren set watchers, human and spelled alike; knew that she had to be watched, even now. What attention would knocking earn her that she didn’t already have, emerging as she had from the pre-dawn darkness to stand unmoving in the road before the skyscraper? No, they knew she was here. What she needed was to provoke a reaction.

Xhea took a deep breath to steady herself.
Help
, she wanted to cry,
please help
—and could let nothing of that weakness to show.
Stand up
, she told herself. She shifted her weight to her good leg and relaxed her aching arm, moving her grip to hold the pipe as if it were a weapon rather than a cane. She pushed her shoulders back and shook out her hair, letting the charms chime freely.

She was not exhausted; she was not hurt or desperate or afraid; she was not moments from collapsing.
Believe the lie
, she thought, and smiled.

“Edren!” Xhea’s voice was loud and steady, and the echoes circled like a flock of birds. “I’ve come to speak to Lorn Edren. We have business to discuss.”

There was no response, not that she’d expected any. No, all she wanted was for the on-guard duty to watch her—and know who to run and tell when things became interesting.

And
interesting
was most definitely her goal.

She drew a long, deep breath and held it, focusing. When she exhaled, it was as if releasing a long drag on a cigarette—and her breath stained the air black.
More
, she thought to it, urging it on, and the magic surged forth, rushing out of her hard and fast. She felt a chill as the power left her, but gripped her makeshift cane all the harder and maintained the flow. She held on until it seemed the magic was a dark presence above her: no raincloud, this; no puff like smoke; but a deep ache of black, a spreading patch of night.