Lark Ascending Read online

  But Eve just smiled, her eyes never leaving Oren’s face. When she replied, she acted as though Oren had spoken, as though I wasn’t even there.

  “I can cure you,” she said.

  • • •

  Caesar was waiting outside the door for us when we stumbled out. He was either used to the effect Eve had on people or was so befuddled himself that he didn’t notice the state we were in. Oren was pale, jaw clenched so tightly I was worried he was going to hurt himself.

  Eve had refused to explain further, asking only that Oren meet her tonight, after most of the rebel forces were asleep. No, “refused” wasn’t the right word. She’d simply declined, and we were both so captivated, so under her spell, that we’d accepted her at her word.

  But now my mind raced with questions, and when I glanced at Oren, I knew his must be too. But he didn’t return my gaze, kept his on the floor.

  “What do you think?” Caesar asked gruffly. All traces of that uncharacteristic smile were gone, but he was speaking to me, looking at me. That was a start.

  “She’s—” I struggled for the right word and ended up just gazing helplessly at my older brother. There weren’t any words.

  But Caesar just grunted, the closest he ever got to a laugh. “True.” He gestured for us to move along the corridor. “We’ve had some new intelligence. I’ll fill Eve in once she’s had some rest, but you may as well hear it now.”

  I glanced at Oren. He was still silent, tight-lipped, and I knew that he wouldn’t be able to think of anything except Eve’s cure until it happened. I wished we could slip away and talk about it, but the only excuse I could think of to give to Caesar was that we needed to rest. And the last thing I wanted was to seem weak.

  He led us to the office where I’d shouted at him before, but gave me no second glance to tell me he was thinking of it still. It was as though the confrontation had never happened. Caesar limped straight to the packing crate desk on the far side of the room and picked up a dirty piece of parchment, so thin from being erased and reused that it was becoming translucent.

  “Until now, the main thing standing between us and the Institute has been their machines.” Caesar handed the parchment, which was covered in drawings, to me. “They had the magic, so they had the advantage. When we found out they were moving Eve, we had to assume they were planning something, using her power; we took that advantage back.”

  “And now they don’t have Eve.”

  Caesar nodded. “We don’t know how much power they have left in reserve, but unless they find a way to gather magic from beyond the Wall, they’re stuck with what they have.”

  I let my eyes roam the surface of the parchment. It was covered in drawings of machines and mechanisms. Basil would have scoffed at the clumsy efforts of the artist, but they were enough to convey the idea. Some I recognized, like the pixies and the harvester machines—others were wholly new to me. “So we wait them out,” I replied. “No need for a fight at all. They’ll run out of power, and then they’ll have to make a deal with us.”

  Caesar shook his head. “For all we know they have months of power in reserve, and we don’t have the supplies to last that long.”

  I lifted my head, scanning his face more closely. He’d lost weight since I’d last seen him. The beard had concealed his thinner cheeks at first glance. “How bad is it?” My own stomach growled, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since the morning before I crossed the Wall into the city.

  “The Institute still hands out daily rations, but only to citizens, not rebels. Some of us are still able to collect rations, live among the civilians and share what they can spare with us. But for most, it’s too dangerous to go aboveground. We aren’t going to last for more than a few weeks.”

  Oren cleared his throat, and I glanced at him. His eyes were still shadowed, but he was finally focusing on something other than the distant possibility of banishing his demons forever. “Not to mention that a cornered beast is a dangerous one. The closer the Institute comes to running out of power, the more they’re going to consider an all-out frontal attack before they lose that chance.”

  One look at Caesar’s grim face, and I knew we wouldn’t survive such an attack. “What’s stopping them from just attacking now?” I asked.

  “They’d win, there’s no doubt of that.” Caesar ran a frustrated hand through his shaggy hair. I guessed he’d been cutting it himself; he looked nearly as wild as some of the shadows I’d seen. “But they’d lose a lot of resources in the fight. Maybe too much to survive afterward. In killing us, they’d be destroying themselves.”

  My eyes were stuck on one machine in particular, something a little like the police walkers with room for a human passenger. But instead of its usual blunt nose, a mechanism was mounted there like a pair of giant shears, each blade as long as a man’s height. Underneath someone had scrawled the word demolisher, and I assumed the machine’s original purpose had been to tear down buildings to make way for new ones. But here, in the headquarters of the frightened rebels, it was impossible to believe the Institute wouldn’t use it as a weapon.

  I shuddered. “All right. So we need two things. Food and information. The Institute must be maintaining the automated fields beyond the Wall or they’d be starving too. Have you sent teams out to raid them?”

  Caesar spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “How can I? Until you returned, I thought there was no way to breach the Wall. Not to mention, we have no idea what’s out there, whether I’d be sending my people straight to their deaths.”

  I struggled not to look at Oren. No doubt Kris had filled Caesar in on what the architects knew of the world beyond the Wall. Still, it was one thing to be told about the shadows, the magic void, the harshness of the wilderness—and another to live it, to survive it. Caesar was smart enough to know his people weren’t prepared for it.

  I could do it—I could leave, gather food, return. But I was only one person. If I brought Oren with me he’d be a drain on my power, cut my survival time in half. And even then we’d be able to bring back only what two people could carry. It’d barely be a drop in the bucket compared with what these people needed.

  “So we let the city harvest it for us,” I decided. “We take it from them after they’ve already returned.”

  Caesar nodded, but his face was still grim. “We’ve been working on plans for a raid for over a month. We’re still stuck on how to bypass the machines guarding the storehouses.”

  I wondered if Kris had told him how I’d single-handedly leveled the army the Institute sent to take the Iron Wood. Caesar was watching me evenly, waiting for me to give him the answer. But I wasn’t sure I could do that again. It had been a reaction out of fear, grief, anger, desperation. I’m not sure I could summon those things again, not the same way. With control had come caution, and I wasn’t sure I’d survive another outburst like the one in the Iron Wood.

  “Then we need information,” I said, not meeting Caesar’s eyes. “We need to know how much magic they’ve got left, whether they have some way of gathering it from the outside, whether they’re planning an attack.”

  “Kris was our man inside—” Caesar began.

  I shook my head. “He burned that bridge when he left to find the Renewables. They won’t exactly welcome him with open and unquestioning arms when he turns up after having vanished for three weeks.”

  “We could rough him up a bit. He could claim we captured him.”

  I scanned my brother’s face. Now I knew he didn’t realize that Kris had to have been the one responsible for his escape from the Institute. Not even Caesar was so ungrateful as to suggest sacrificing his savior.

  “I have another idea,” I said carefully. If Kris hadn’t told Caesar what he’d done, he had his reasons. It wasn’t my secret to tell.

  I felt more than heard Oren shift uneasily beside me. He had good reason to worry. My plans were never particularly good ones; this one, in particular, made my pulse quicken with dread.

  Caesar
was watching me with raised brows. “Yes?”

  I took a deep breath. “Let me go talk to them.”

  Caesar gave a bark of laughter even as Oren burst out, “Out of the question.”

  “Hear me out,” I cut through irritably. “Without Eve, the Institute is facing a losing battle even without us to deal with. They’ve been running out of magic for years, long before now. Eve was never going to last forever.”

  I thought of Dorian’s haggard face when he confessed the truth about our Renewable, that she’d been a spy sent from the Iron Wood. It’s a miracle she’s lasted as long as she has, he’d whispered.

  “And you think that’ll make them willing to talk?” Caesar’s lip curled in disgust. I didn’t know if his derision was aimed at me or at our enemy.

  “Maybe.”

  “They’ll just take you again,” said Oren, holding back his fury with a clear effort. “Torture you the way they did before, try to use you like they were using Eve.”

  I nodded, my mouth dry. “That’s possible too.” Everything in me wanted to give in, to let Oren’s worry and Caesar’s doubt change my mind. “But even if they don’t talk, even if they try to take me captive again, I’m not the same girl they had before. I’m stronger. I can escape them if I have to, and I’ll be inside, past their machines, able to gather information about their reserves and their plans. And if there’s a chance they’ll listen, that alone would be worth it.”

  Oren made a frustrated sound in his throat, like a muffled roar, and turned to pace toward the door and back.

  Caesar, however, was quiet. Thoughtful. Watching me with something very different, unfamiliar to me. “It isn’t the worst plan I’ve ever heard,” he said, voice low and grudging.

  I leaned forward. “I think I can help. You don’t need me here; Eve has proven that. But I can help out there. I can teach them how to use the magic beyond the Wall, where it clusters, how to survive the pockets. If they can sustain themselves, they won’t need Eve. They won’t need to harvest children. And they won’t need to destroy you.”

  Caesar reached out and took the parchment back, and from the direction of his eyes I knew he was looking at the same machine I was, the demolisher.

  Oren, unable to restrain himself any longer, burst out, “This is ridiculous, Lark. You’re not going in there alone.”

  “I can’t bring you,” I said sharply. While Caesar’s eyes were on the parchment, I shot Oren a fierce look. He knew why he couldn’t come, if only he’d stop to think. If the Institute drained my magic, or separated us, he’d become a shadow. And if that happened inside their walls, then killing him would be the least of all the potential horrors they’d perpetrate on him.

  His mouth pressed into a narrow line, his frustration blazing like a tiny sun. “You can’t do this,” he said.

  “I thought I could do anything,” I replied, unable to resist throwing his words back at him.

  His frustration ebbed, leaving him looking merely tired. “I don’t want you to do this.”

  “Neither do I,” I said dryly.

  “I’ll think about it.” Caesar spoke up, interrupting us. “In the meantime, you should head to the Hub and get your name on a food roster. Someone might have some scraps for you and your overprotective friend.” His gaze, as he watched Oren, was far from friendly.

  Oren glared back at him, and I reached out to grab his sleeve and tug him toward the door. “I meant it,” I said quietly, over my shoulder. “I’m not the same person I was back then.”

  As the door swung closed behind me, I heard my brother mutter, “No kidding.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Are you insane?” Oren blurted as soon as we reached our hole of a room.

  “For once I’m inclined to agree with this one,” Nix said, emerging from its favorite hiding spot beneath my hair. “Your plan has many flaws and uncertainties. The probability of success is small, and the probability of your survival is even smaller.”

  To hear my life expectancy analyzed so clinically made me want to shiver. “It’s not what I want either,” I assured them. “But this stalemate is headed for an explosion, and if there’s a chance I can head it off, don’t I need to take it?”

  “You don’t need to do anything for these people,” Oren cut in.

  “It was the Institute who tortured me,” I replied softly. “Most people in the city don’t have any idea what was done to me. All they know is that I could have saved them, and I ran away.”

  Oren’s face was stern, grave. “You owe them nothing. You have no reason to need forgiveness.”

  I sighed. “Maybe not. I don’t think there’s any redemption for me, anyway. But it’s my home, and I abandoned it. And besides, what if the Institute holds the key to understanding what really happened out there?” Though my gesture was at the wall of our little cell, I meant the entire world beyond the Wall. “To stop it happening again, to fix what’s happening now. This city, the Iron Wood, Lethe—none of it is going to last indefinitely unless the world outside starts to heal. I believe I can start to find out how to do that if I can just get to the Institute’s records.”

  Oren just gazed at me, stubborn, unyielding.

  I pressed a little harder. “If the world began to heal, and the magic began to even out, you wouldn’t ever have to become a shadow again. You’d never be without magic.”

  Oren shoved away from the wall and crossed to the bed, throwing himself down on it hard enough to make the cot’s frame creak. “If Eve is right, then I’ll never have to be a shadow again anyway.”

  I couldn’t help but watch him, my eyes lingering on the eloquent sag in his shoulders as he dropped his head, elbows on his knees and hands dangling between them. I knew what Eve’s promise meant to him. Even more, I knew what it’d mean to me. The ability to touch him without recoiling, to know that he’d never have to be in that dark place again; I wanted it so badly I ached, my heart straining. And yet my every instinct was screaming that it was wrong.

  “We know nothing about her,” I said softly. “She could be capable of anything.”

  Oren tensed. “She’s powerful,” he argued.

  “So? I’m powerful, Oren. But all it means is that I can stop a man’s heart with a thought; it doesn’t mean I can change the way things are.”

  “You think there is no cure?” He looked up at me, and for an instant his heart was in his eyes. How could I break it?

  I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I want it to be true.”

  “Then I’m doing it.”

  It was my turn to pace, the narrow confines of the room making it impossible for me to vent my doubt and confusion. “What’s the harm in waiting? Get to know her better, find out what she can do, before she starts trying to change you.”

  “She’s not changing me; she’s erasing the shadow.”

  “That is you!” The words were out before I could stop them. Even in the tiny room they seemed to hang in the air, invisible and permanent.

  Oren’s eyes closed over, his face shutting down. I hadn’t seen him look at me like that since the days we first met, when everything I did was wrong and weak. Now his gaze stabbed through me, my heart cracking.

  “You’ve always said that I am not the monster,” he said quietly. “That we’re separate.”

  I shook my head, wishing desperately I could erase the last thirty seconds. “I meant that the shadow gives you strength; it’s why you’re here now, with me. It’s terrible and awful, but it’s a part of you. And I don’t want Eve or anyone else changing you or taking you apart, even if they think they can put you back together exactly the way you were.” The words spilled out of me before I knew what I was saying, before I had time to understand my own heart. “I love you, shadow and all. I love all of you.”

  Oren’s expression was stricken. For what felt like an eternity, he just gazed at me, breathing hard. My thoughts screamed at him to speak, to break this awful silence—to say something, anything. When he finally did spe
ak, though, I wished he had simply let the quiet hang.

  “If you’re in love with the monster, then you’re not in love with me,” he said quietly. “And all of this has been some sick, twisted charade.”

  Before I could reply, he turned and left, the door banging shut behind him. I could hear his footsteps fading down the corridor, swift and angry. I wanted to go after him, but I was rooted to the ground where I stood, my eyes burning in the gloom.

  A warm metal body tucked itself close against my neck. “He is frightened,” Nix said. “He will return.”

  “Oren doesn’t get scared,” I whispered.

  “He is human,” Nix replied. “More or less.”

  • • •

  Though I had no interest in eating while my stomach was twisting so unhappily, I knew Caesar’s advice was sound. Particularly if rations were so slim, I couldn’t afford to skip any meals. I didn’t know where Oren had gone, but I felt certain he would not have gone to the Hub, angry as he was. He was still, in his heart, a loner. I still had time to convince him to wait before letting Eve attempt anything. I knew Oren well enough to know that I had to let him calm down before I tried to broach the subject again.

  So as soon as I could walk steadily, I made my way from the room. I was getting used to the tunnels and managed to find the Hub without any wrong turnings this time. I half expected to find the mass of rebels still gathered, faces upturned, waiting for Eve to come back. But when I arrived, it was as though nothing had changed. Craftsmen were still working on bits of machinery, repairing furniture, and poring over schematics. On the far side of the Hub was a line of people shuffling past a low table, behind which a woman sat handing out crude dishes. Underground or no, I recognized a ration line when I saw one. I headed toward them.

  As I threaded my way through the scattered clusters of people, a sound caught my ear. A handful of children were being led by a middle-aged man in a chanting chorus that I recognized—the lilting pledge of devotion to their leaders. When I was a child we pledged devotion to the architects and the Institute that kept us all safe from the horrors beyond the Wall. As a little girl it had made me feel protected, loved, important. Worth keeping safe. In my clumsy, childlike way I’d always felt a surge of loyalty, standing there in my classroom with my hands clasped in front of my heart. I watched the children as I passed, wondering if they felt anything while they chanted, these children of war who never got the chance to grow up feeling safe. Did the chant help?