Shadowlark s-2 Read online

  Shadowlark

  ( Skylark - 2 )

  Meagan Spooner

  Ever since she escaped the city within the Wall, Lark Ainsley's wanted one thing: to find her brother Basil. She's always believed he would be the one to put an end to the constant fear and flight. And now, hidden underground in the chaotically magical city of Lethe, Lark feels closer to him than ever.

  But Lethe is a city cowering in fear of its founder, the mysterious Prometheus, and of his private police force. To get the truth about what happened to Basil, Lark has no choice but to face Prometheus.

  Facing her fears has become second nature to Lark. Facing the truth is another matter.

  Lark never asked to be anyone's savior. She certainly never wanted to be anyone's weapon. She might not have a choice.

  Shadowlark

  Skylark 2

  by

  Meagan Spooner

  For Jeanne Cavelos:

  You told me I could do this—and I listened.

  And for my friends from Odyssey,

  who taught me how much I still have yet to learn.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  The clockwork dawn is loudest in the old sewers. The sound of the machines pushing the sun across its track in the sky echoes through the tunnels, shaking the ground beneath my feet. Mortar crumbles from the ceiling and falls like snowflakes, surrounding me in a column of white.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, reaching out for Tansy’s hand. “This happens every day. It’s safe.”

  She shrinks back from me, standing just beyond arm’s reach, twisting her hands together. “Where do we go?”

  I turn in place, peering through the flakes of mortar. For a moment I’m disoriented, trying to make sense of the route I’ve known since childhood. There: a tunnel gapes black through the haze. “This way.”

  Tansy can read the trees and the sky and the breeze, but this is my domain. This is the world I know. My path is certain—and where I falter, my brother’s ghost leads the way. It’s as though Basil’s just ahead, waiting for me to catch up.

  I crawl into the sewer pipe and hear Tansy follow after. Her breathing grows sharp and heavy behind me, the air thick with magic and fear. She’s not used to confined spaces. In the clammy dampness of the sewers, her power shines in my second sight like a beacon, golden and warm despite the tunnel’s cold.

  When we emerge into a junction, Tansy stumbles into the muck on her hands and knees. I reach out to help her to her feet, but she backs away, scrambling up on her own.

  “Do you hear that?” she gasps.

  I close my eyes, concentrating. There’s wind blowing somewhere, whistling through the tunnels, and in the distance I can hear the rustling of leaves. But beyond that there’s something out of place, a sound that doesn’t belong. Pixies? No. Splashing, like footsteps. Kids, then. Rivals, trying to beat us to our destination. Other students come to break into the school.

  “Come on, let’s move faster.” I can feel Basil’s ghost moving further away, slipping out of my senses. “Hurry, and we can beat them there.”

  “Wait, Lark.” She takes a step toward me, then stops, turning her head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. “Listen. They’re dangerous.”

  I close my eyes again, and this time I can hear their snarling. My foot slips in the muck, splashing loudly, and the snarls change to howls. They’ve heard us. In my mind, I can see their hungry white eyes, their sickly grey skin, their ravenous mouths.

  Tansy reaches for her bow, but she’s not wearing it. Her hand closes on empty space. “What if we run into them in the tunnels? There’s no room to fight in there.”

  “Fight?” My stomach twists, sickening. “You can’t fight them, they’re just children. They’re just like me.”

  “That’s your problem,” Tansy protests. “You’re too soft. Too trusting. They’ll take advantage of that.” She takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Fine. If you won’t fight, then we need to run. What about this way?” She sticks her head into a pipe leading east.

  I know that route. I used it when I was younger. But something halts me, the hairs lifting on the back of my neck. Basil didn’t go that way. I can’t sense him anymore—and that alone is enough to trigger the alarm bells in my mind. Basil is everywhere down here. It’s the only place I know he still exists, the only place where I have more than just a folded paper bird to remember him by.

  “No,” I whisper. “No. Not that way.”

  “Lark, we have to go! Now, or they’ll find us!”

  “That way’s wrong, it’s too small. I’m too old now to pass that way.” Around us the snow is hissing into the water, melting against our skin. Tansy’s hair is a halo of white.

  “I don’t want to die here, underground, so far from the sky.” She starts trying to force herself into the pipe, stopped first by her shoulders and then, when she tries to go feet-first, by her hips.

  I move away from her, eyes scanning the junction. It looks familiar. I’ve been here before, although it’s different now. Vines have grown through the cracks in the bricks, swarming up the walls, reclaiming these sewers for nature. In the spring it will all be moss and flowers and earth, like there was never a city here at all.

  A snowflake lands on my cheek, and I look up. Beyond the swirling white sky I can see a hatch.

  “We have to go up.”

  “What? Are you insane?”

  “We’re underneath the Institute now. We can go there instead of the school. They’ll have the Harvest list there, too— we just have to get into the Administrator’s office.”

  Tansy pries herself back out of the pipe and comes toward me, peering up through the snow. “We’ll never make it. There’s no ladder. I have no rope. We aren’t wearing climbing gear . . . ” Her voice fades into the background, still listing the things we’d need to climb up into the white sky.

  In the distance, far above us, I can hear a bird singing. My brother speaks to me, as he often does down here in the old sewers, down here where I’m closest to him. I ask him, How did you do that?

  He smiles. Magic.

  “Tansy.” She stops abruptly, mid-word, turning toward me. I reach out. “Take my hand.”

  She shrinks away, fearful. “I can’t.”

  “You have to trust me.” I take a deep breath. “I promise, I’ll keep you safe.”

  The howls have grown to the point where I can no longer hear the birdsong, but I know it’s still there.

  Tansy hesitates a moment longer and then reaches out, her palm meeting mine with a jolt that sends the snow swirling away from us, thrashing against the walls of the sewers.

  We rise, and the snow rises with us, up into the sky. The hatch bangs open and we go soaring through it to land on the other side. The snow streams through after us, and it takes us both pushing with all our weight to close the hatch against the storm behind us. It slams shut, the sound echoing through the vastness of the space.

  We’re standing in the rotunda of the Institute, with its domed sky inlaid with gold and precious stones in a mosaic meant to imitate the world beyond. The sun and moon dance across the interior of the dome in tracks much like the one in the Wall outside.

  Tansy is silent now, not looking at me, arms wrapped around herself as she crouches on the marble floor. I can’t see the halo of power around her anymore—but there’s no time, and I haul her to her feet. She pushes my hands away, but at least she’s moving again.

  Together we hurry across the floor towards a door on the far side marked “Harvest and Resource Administrator” and, below that, a plaque bearing the name “Gloriette.” Even though I know she won’t be inside—she’ll be preparing for the Harvest Day ceremonies where she officiates—my heart still pounds as we ap
proach.

  I press my ear to the door, but it’s made of iron, and I can hear nothing on the other side of it. But even if the other students don’t catch up to us, there are pixies everywhere, and we have no time to waste. I twist the handle, take a deep breath, and shove.

  We stumble through, and the door bangs shut behind us. We’re standing in Dorian’s house, exactly as it was the day I left the Iron Wood. His bed is neatly made in the corner, the dresser stands covered in curios, and the map still hangs above it. I squint, trying to make out the city where my brother was headed, but the lines and words blur before my eyes, impossible to read.

  A flicker of city magic, twisted and unnatural, touches my senses. Pixies.

  “Come on, Tansy—we have to find the list of names for the harvest.”

  I start rummaging through Dorian’s kitchen. My heart has risen into my throat, choking me, making my mouth taste like bile. Even though it will change nothing if I find the list, I have to know. Either my name is on it or it isn’t, but at least I can find out if all of this has been worth it—if this time, finally, I’ll be where I belong.

  The discordant clang of city magic rises all at once, and something metallic and heavy bangs against the shutters. I slam shut the cupboard I’m searching and back away, scanning the room for a place to hide.

  Tansy leaps forward before I can stop her. “Enough,” she cries, breaking her uncharacteristically long silence. “We have to fight.”

  She throws open the shutters.

  I gather my own magic, ready to smash the pixies into oblivion—but it’s not the city’s spies. It’s Nix, and it makes straight toward me, wearing its favorite bee form.

  “They’re coming for you.” Its voice is urgent, clipped. “We have to go, now.”

  Who’s coming? The other students in the tunnels? The city’s pixies? Gloriette and her machines? The Iron Wood scouts? The shadows? It doesn’t even matter. “I need to see that list,” I hiss.

  As I drop to my knees to search under Dorian’s bed, Tansy heads for the door. “I’ll just go keep watch.”

  Nix, hovering behind me, watches her go. “Is that wise?”

  The space under the bed is empty. I sit up, turning to look at the pixie. “Is what wise?”

  “Letting her out of your sight. What makes you think you can trust her?”

  My stomach twists sickeningly. The pixie drops down to perch on Dorian’s dresser amidst the curios—on top of a leather folder. Somehow I’d missed it when I first scanned the room.

  “Nix,” I breathe. “That’s it.”

  I scramble to my feet. My hands are shaking as they reach for the folder, the one that will contain the list of names for this year’s harvest. Finally I can know whether I’ll be safe. Whether I can stop running.

  From the doorway, a flash of light drags my eyes away from the desk. It’s Tansy, glowing with magic—and yet she’s not Tansy anymore. She’s a figure in white, light shining from every pore, pinprick pupils almost lost in white irises. Follow the birds, she says, and I look back down at the folder in my hands.

  I pry it open. It’s empty, save for a single object—my brother’s bird, folded out of old, yellowing paper. As I watch, the edges begin to turn black, as if burned by invisible fire. The scorch marks race inward until the entire bird is consumed. It flaps its wings once, its song more a scream than music. I reach out to try to take it, save it, and it gives way to my touch.

  In seconds the bird crumbles away to nothing—nothing except the shadow staining my fingertips.

  CHAPTER 2

  I jerked awake, a ragged sound tearing out of my throat. The world was dark and white, and for a moment I was back in the sewer tunnel, watching the mortar hiss into the dank water below. Then I blinked, and reality reasserted itself. Snow was falling all around me, frigid ice water rolling down my neck as the flakes melted against my cheeks.

  “Are you all right?”

  Nix. It hovered a few feet away, the whirring of its clockwork mechanisms sluggish and sleepy.

  “What?” My voice was hoarse, like I’d been screaming. “No. Yes, I’m fine.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  I grabbed for my blanket to scrub away the water on my face. “So? What do you know about dreams?” It was barely predawn, only the faintest hint of light to the east to tell of morning’s approach. What had woken me? The dream? Or something else?

  Nix dropped down onto the end of the blanket by my feet. “She’s out scouting the city.”

  “Who is?”

  “That other one.”

  I glanced across the embers of the fire at the empty tangle of snow-covered blankets there. Closing my eyes, I tried to make my mind work through the cold and the exhaustion and the remnants of my dream.

  The snow had begun a week after I left the Iron Wood, and Tansy had caught up with me only a few days after that. I’d sensed something out there following me, but only sporadically. The fact that her magic only worked in the rain and humidity meant that here, in this dry, frigid air, most of it was buried deep.

  I thought I knew who—or what—was following me. I’d stopped and waited, knowing that if it was him, he’d catch up to me. Better to meet him on my terms, find out if he was human or shadow—if he was the boy who’d kissed me or the animal who would’ve tried to kill me but for the bars of his cage.

  I wasn’t ready for the stab of disappointment that jolted through me when I saw Tansy’s face emerging from the gloom.

  “The truth,” she’d said, “is that I couldn’t stop thinking what trouble you could get into. No magic, no weapons. Alone except for that thing.” She jerked her chin at Nix, who crouched sullenly on the opposite side of the fire, watching Tansy in unblinking, frosty silence.

  She had followed me at a distance, respecting my desire to travel alone, but after the snow started she was worried I didn’t know how to handle myself in the cold, and came in to check on me.

  I knew she was worried about him. I wasn’t the only one certain I’d be followed as I headed north, away from the safety of the Iron Wood. “He would’ve fooled anyone,” she said, mistaking my silence for shame when she brought it up. “And you didn’t know that They turn human when exposed to magic. It’s not your fault. If he ever shows his face again, he’ll pay.”

  I thought of the boy in the threadbare shirt, whose pale blue eyes could be so fierce and so soft. I thought of him swimming in the summer lake, and the utter contentment on his face after he’d finished eating dinner in the clearing with the bees. I thought of that last piercing look before we parted, and I held my tongue.

  We kept following the ruins of the highway marked on the map in Dorian’s house, and we came upon a ridge overlooking the city the next day. A once-vast city that now lay entirely in ruins.

  Tansy wanted to head into the remnants of the city immediately, but I decided we’d make camp on the ridge and wait. If there was anyone living there, we’d be able to see the signs of it—smoke rising from chimneys, people moving around the streets. I was sick of flying headlong into situations I knew nothing about. We agreed to stay a couple of days—which, I realized, sleep-muddled mind slow to comprehend, had passed. Unless Tansy had found anything, we’d be heading down into the city today.

  I shivered, though I could not be sure if it was because I was cold or because I was frightened. I shoved a hand deep into my pocket until my fingers found the blunt, creased contours of my brother’s bird.

  I disentangled myself from my blanket and shoved on my boots. Wrapping my heavy coat around my shoulders, I stepped out past our muddy campsite in the shelter of a ruined restaurant and into the freshly fallen snow. I could see the remnants of Tansy’s tracks, half-covered, leading away toward the city. She was always going off on her own, impatient—old habits died hard, she said, and she was used to scouting.

  I took a deep breath, trying to shake the uneasiness that lingered in the wake of my dream. There was no reason not to trust Tansy’s motives for foll
owing me. It was only my subconscious reacting to one too many betrayals, looking for the next blow before it landed.

  Something was wrong. My instincts caught on before I did, and I turned in a slow circle, keeping myself from shivering in the cold with a monumental effort. There was something in the air, still though it was. My nose picked up leather. Wind. And, impossible over the snow, the green tang of grass.

  I knew that scent.

  No. NO.

  The snow had almost completely covered the tracks we’d

  made last night. Searching the ground outside our shelter, I found half-filled hollows to indicate Tansy’s footprints and mine, the area I’d trampled looking for firewood, a somewhat more recent path to some trees where Tansy must have relieved herself in the middle of the night. I tried to calm my breathing—it sounded harsh and alarm-loud in the still dawn air.

  It was my imagination. I’d thought of him, and my mind was producing whatever evidence it could to make it seem like he was here. He’d have to be a shadow again by now—if he’d found us he would have attacked.

  As I turned back toward the shelter and the warmth of my blanket, something caught my eye. I would’ve missed it except that the light to the east was growing, and the snow was beginning to shine as well with an eerie, violet-orange glow.

  Footprints.

  Not mine or Tansy’s—too large. And too widely spaced. My heart in my throat, I followed them as silently as I could. They led to the ground floor of the structure, to the part of the floor that served as roof to our cellar campsite. There the tracks vanished into noise, as though someone had paced back and forth, churning up the snow. The tracks were fresh— fresher than Tansy’s leaving to scout the city.

  Though I searched, I could not find tracks leading away— and yet there was no one there and no place to hide.

  By the time Tansy returned I had erased the tracks, tramping through the snow and disturbing it to the point where it was impossible to tell anyone but me had passed there. She found me kicking and kicking at the snow, my breath steaming the air, soaked to the knee.