Lark Ascending Page 12

  “We’ve got no other choice,” snapped Tek from the background, scowling at Kris. He was a slender man, tall, with a shaved head, and clearly not a fan of the architect-turned-rebel.

  “Is losing Lark as a resource your only reservation about her plan to infiltrate the Institute?” Kris asked, ignoring Tek and watching Caesar.

  “Aside from the fact that it’s suicide to boot, yes.”

  “Then I’ll go,” Kris said simply.

  My heart stopped. “Kris, no. They must suspect by now that you’re with us. They’ll kill you.”

  Kris shrugged. “Maybe. But I worked there a long time, and I don’t think so. You all like to think that the Institute is made up of a bunch of faceless, heartless architects, but the truth is that most of them are just trying to save this city. Some of them are going to want a way out that doesn’t involve flattening the lot of you under their machines.”

  Some of them. Meaning not others. “You can’t,” I said firmly. “This was my idea—for me to go, no one else.”

  “Think, Lark,” Kris said gently. “Even if they didn’t need you here, I’m still the logical one to go. They know me. I speak their language. I know exactly how close they are to their own destruction, and ours to boot.”

  He was right. But it was one thing to sacrifice myself, to be willing to place myself in the hands of my onetime torturers and captors, and another thing entirely to send someone else to the same fate.

  Eve, who had been silent up until now, spoke. “If there is anyone who has the right to believe that the Institute is filled with monstrous, unforgiving people, it would be me,” she pointed out. “Yet I believe there is common ground. If this boy thinks he can speak with them, perhaps it’s worth exploring.”

  Caesar looked at me. I wanted to protest, to scream that this wasn’t right, that I was the one who was supposed to go. I shook my head mutely, silently begging him to understand. But before I could come up with a legitimate reason to stop Kris, Caesar made his decision. “Done,” he said, nodding at Kris. It was as much a nod of dismissal as approval. “Go draw up a plan and have it to me by morning. If there’s no reason to delay, you’ll go tomorrow.”

  Kris inclined his head. He turned for the door, eyes lingering on my face for a moment before he slipped through it.

  “Lark,” Caesar snapped, frowning at me. “Stay focused. We’ll need you to help us figure out where to target our strike. You can see magic—the rest of us can’t, except for Eve, who’s too easily spotted to go above ground.”

  I shook my head. “No strike until Kris is back. If we attack them while he’s negotiating a truce, they’ll kill him for sure.”

  “Of course,” said Caesar. “But we need that plan in place, should Kris fail. Even you must see that it’d be foolish to just hope that everything goes well. We have to be prepared.”

  Prepared for Kris to die. But I had no choice. I nodded.

  Caesar gestured to the table, where the others were leaning over a map of the city. “Let’s get to work.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I noticed time passing only when my stomach began to growl. Eve had long since left, begging exhaustion, and so it was only Caesar and his advisors. Caesar sent Asher to fetch us our evening rations, which I noticed were far more meager than the midday rations were. The meal was a silent one, each of us absorbed in thoughts of what lay ahead.

  The part I would play was small, but crucial. Because of my second sight, I’d be able to see where the city was spending most of its resources. Kris had confirmed that they used vast amounts of energy to send their harvester machines across the Wall to tend and bring back the food crops, so it stood to reason that the areas with the most power would be near the warehouses. Machine storehouses were the second priority, if I couldn’t locate food. With Eve to power them, the more machines we could bring back and reprogram to fight for us, the better our chances of being able to withstand a frontal attack by the Institute.

  I longed to protest at every turn in the conversation that none of it would be necessary. Kris’s silver tongue and charming smile—not to mention the unassailable logic of his argument, that a war would bring only mutual destruction—would see us through. But I knew Caesar was right. Despite Kris’s confidence, the architects had never been entirely predictable. There was no guarantee they’d listen to him.

  When our meal was finished, Tek slipped out to return to the Hub to oversee the engineers. His real name was Tecate, but he’d earned his nickname due to his prowess at deciphering the Institute’s technology, adapting their machines to suit our purposes. I wished Basil could have met him—they couldn’t be more different in temperament, but Basil would have loved to have someone who could understand him when he started talking about components and data storage.

  Alice and Asher left soon after Tek, leaving me alone with Caesar. For a long time he didn’t speak, surveying the map with furrowed brow. He was so intent I began to wonder if he’d forgotten I was there, and I took the opportunity to watch him more closely. His beard covered most of the scars on his face, at least from a distance. Up close I could see the lines where the tissue was too scarred for hair to grow, and I thought again of the pixies that attacked me. If I’d been a few seconds later in destroying them, would I have had to find some way to cover my scars, too? There were lines around his eyes, even though he was still a young man. He’d been so quick and so certain when he’d agreed to Kris’s proposal; he’d grown used to making life-or-death decisions, forced by circumstance to grow old fast.

  “Having Eve with us changes things,” he said, startling me. I wondered if he’d felt me staring at him.

  “Because she can power the machines?”

  “And because of what she symbolizes.” Caesar began to fold up the map of the city, taking great care with it. The sheet was ancient, well worn at the folds, ready to fall apart. “She survived the Institute. Subjugated for years, and she’s still here, still fighting. If she can survive, then so can we.”

  I fell silent, my eyes going to the empty chair where she had sat. Her mesmerizing presence had been dimmed while she was here, but I could still feel it while we worked, a soothing, soporific effect. When she left I’d felt as though a cool breeze had wiped away a fog.

  “You symbolize that too,” added Caesar. I looked up from the folded map to find him watching me.

  “Because I ran away?”

  “Because you came back.” Caesar shrugged, dismissive. Even so, his next words shocked me. “I’m proud of you, little sister. And not just because you can help us win this war.”

  “It’s not a war yet,” I said, trying to ignore the way my heart pounded in my ears. “I have faith in Kris. We can stop this; it’s not too late.”

  Caesar just grunted and swiveled in his seat so he could tuck the map in between two battered books on the shelf. The light was dimming, and he got to his feet to wind it with a loud grinding of its ancient mechanisms. Once the light flared a little brighter, he let his hand fall, but didn’t turn back to me. Instead he propped one foot up against one of the chairs and dug his knuckles into the muscle of his bad leg, trying to massage away the stiffness there.

  “Why do you find it so hard to believe they’ll listen to Kris?” I asked.

  Caesar’s fingers flexed, as though he was trying not to form a fist. “Because hope is impractical. You haven’t been here—you haven’t seen it all fall apart. Every step we try to take, they come back with stricter rules, harsher punishments.”

  “But you have hope. You keep saying that you think we can win this war.”

  Caesar didn’t answer right away. His head dropped a little, his shoulders suddenly stooped, as though all the books and blueprints and schematics in the room were weighing him down. He was silent so long that I took a step forward. My shoe scraping on stone caused him to straighten.

  “Of course. I believe we can win.”

  I’d always known my brother was a liar, saying whatever was necessary to get his
way. But this time, for once, I could see how painful the lie was. How much he wished it was the truth.

  Caesar turned, leaning back against the table and jerking his head toward the door. “Go get some sleep.”

  “Sleep? But it’s dinnertime.”

  Caesar’s lips twitched. “It’s hours past dinner; we ate late. Most everyone is asleep except for first watch. Hard to tell time down here.”

  My mind froze. Everyone is asleep. Nighttime. When Eve told Oren she would meet him—and cure him.

  “I have to go!” I blurted and whirled for the door, hearing my brother’s startled questions ring down the corridor after me.

  • • •

  I sprinted through the gloom, eyes watering with the strain of picking out my surroundings. With most of the underground asleep, no one was winding the lights in the corridors, and only a few were still glowing.

  Eve told Oren to meet her after everyone was asleep, at the reservoir. I’d never been there, but she’d described its location to Oren while I’d been there. Past the Hub. My legs burned. Now that I was moving, I knew I couldn’t let Oren go through with this. Four corridors down, turn right at the air pump. He was doing it for me—I did this to him, drove him to seek a cure. How many times had I recoiled from his touch because of the jolt that passed between us? Continue on past the scrap depository.

  I dodged debris in the dark, wishing for dream-Eve’s ease at navigating in pitch-black with magic. I knew I had to slow down; I’d never reach Oren if I broke my leg. But no matter how firmly I told myself to slow, my legs kept pumping.

  Turn left at the—I turned and skidded to a halt just before I ran headfirst into the stone. This wasn’t right; there was no left turn where Eve had said there should be one. I slammed my palms against the wall, trying to feel if there was a doorway I’d missed, but my questing fingertips found only crumbling brick and mortar.

  I stumbled backward, tripping over a broken cobblestone and slamming my elbow hard against the wall. Heart pounding, I stared wildly around the darkness. “Oren!” I cried finally, screaming as loud as I could. But there was no answer except my own voice, echoing back to me as a despairing wail.

  Stop. Think. It was always Basil’s voice, that calm voice of reason. Even after he stopped being my hero, even when I realized he was a man like any other, he was still the one in my head who chided me when I was being unreasonable.

  I stopped stumbling around and closed my eyes. I willed my heart to slow, stop distracting me with its painful banging against my ribcage. Listen. I could hear water. I felt around until my fingertips closed around the frigid metal of a pipe. I had no way of knowing which way the water was running, but on one end of it would be the reservoir where Eve was meeting Oren. I took a deep breath, picked a direction, and followed it.

  Running water wasn’t the only thing hovering on the edge of my senses. I could feel magic. And it wasn’t far away. I picked up my pace, following the pipe and the magic, until I rounded a corner and saw light blossom before me, faint enough that for a moment I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But when I drew nearer, the tunnel opened out into a huge round cavern. Some distance away was a rocky shoreline where water lapped gently against the stones before stretching back, back into the darkness.

  And standing knee-deep in the black water were two figures: one light, one dark.

  “Oren,” I gasped, stumbling forward. I could barely make them out, but my voice bounced around the cavern, amplified across the water. He didn’t lift his head, and neither did Eve.

  The stones shifted and rolled under my feet as I moved forward. It was like trying to run through a field of marbles. My aching eyes caught movement; Eve reached out for Oren, who stepped forward. Then another step, and another, until he fell in against her. She wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head against her shoulder. I bit back a cry and redoubled my efforts to reach them. The shadow was still there inside him, screaming, tugging at me from across the space between us. It wasn’t too late.

  I reached the shore, but at the same instant I felt water splash at my ankles Eve threw up one of her hands toward me, palm out. I hit something solid; invisible, but unyielding. I screamed at her to let me go, but no sound came out. Slowly she lowered her hand so she could wrap both arms around Oren again. The barrier she’d erected remained, and I struggled in its bonds. I couldn’t move forward or back, could only watch in horror as Oren sagged in her arms. She tightened her grip, half supporting him, and then rested her cheek against the top of his head.

  A spasm ran through them, a horrible wrenching, jerking movement that seemed to hit them at the same time. I tried again to make a sound, but nothing happened. I lashed out with all the magic I could muster, but Eve’s barrier didn’t even flicker. Eve glowed brighter and brighter, even to the naked eye, and Oren’s skin too began to shine. I switched over to my second sight and, had Eve’s barrier not been holding me up, I would have thrown myself backward.

  Blinding brilliance lit the entire cavern, reaching to the far wall, which must have been over a mile away. Both Eve and Oren glowed so white-hot I could barely look, and I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Pain blossomed behind my streaming eyes; I couldn’t move enough now even to close them or look away. I could see only this burning singularity, the rest of the world melting away.

  Then a wave of blackness exploded, and at the same time the barrier released me. I collapsed in a heap in ankle-deep water, my panting breaths blowing spray and gravel everywhere. The flash—or implosion—had knocked out my second sight, and I was so shaken that I couldn’t get it back. I could only cast my gaze around the cavern again, trying desperately to remember where I’d been standing, where Oren and Eve had been, how to get myself there.

  Then, slowly, a tiny hint of light returned. I tried to focus, eyes streaming, on Eve, her gentle glow illuminating a circle around her and the boy in her arms. Then she released him, and he slumped down onto his knees in the water, then sagged sideways, facedown.

  I gave an inarticulate cry and half swam, half crawled out to him. Eve stepped back, saying nothing as I threw both arms around Oren and started dragging him back toward shore. As soon as I could sit and hold his head above water I stopped, cradling him close. Pushing the wet hair back from his face, I scanned it, trying to detect in my panic whether he was even still breathing.

  The glow grew brighter, accompanied by the sound of a gentle sloshing as Eve approached. “I am sorry I had to shut you out,” Eve said softly. There was something wrong about her, something in her voice that made my skin crawl.

  I lifted my gaze, water and tears obscuring my vision, making her seem like a watery apparition. “What did you do?” I sobbed, pulling Oren’s motionless body tighter against me. “How could you—I need him. I need him. Put him back.”

  “I did what I said I’d do.” She reached out, and in my near-hysteria I forgot Kris’s warning that we shouldn’t come close. As her shining fingertips strayed close to my face I felt the hairs on my skin lift and reach toward her, a charge like static, like fear, rippling through my skin. I knew I couldn’t let her touch me, and yet I didn’t have the strength to pull away. I moaned, and she let her hand fall again before her skin could contact mine.

  Then Oren coughed, spitting out water and dragging in a huge breath, choking on the air. The rest of him came to life, his hands grabbing at my arms. I thought I’d shatter with relief, pulling his head in against my chest, making sure he didn’t fall below the water again.

  I lifted my eyes to find Eve’s face close to mine. Her white eyes burned, the pupils mere pinpricks amid the fire. Her cracked lips parted. “I can cure you too.”

  In that instant I realized what was strange about her voice. Despite the water, the cavern all around us, the cocoon of stone and damp—her voice didn’t echo.

  I had no response. I stared at her, the fire in her gaze, the fire transforming her. She blazed there, a hand’s width away, and then withdrew, sl
owly leaving us in darkness once more.

  I realized I was gasping for air as though she’d truly been on fire, drawing all the oxygen from the room. I shifted my grip on Oren and half crawled, half staggered toward shore, dragging him up to where the pebbles were dry. I let him go, and he fell away onto his back. Though there was almost no light coming from the corridor, where the last hints of lantern light still lingered, my eyes adjusted until I could see him staring at the ceiling, eyes wide, unseeing.

  “Oren?” I whispered. “Talk to me. Please—say something.”

  His lips moved once, and then he squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m okay,” he rasped in a voice that frightened me.

  “I tried to stop you,” I said, the words pouring from me in a rush. “I need you, and nothing is worth risking you over—not even a cure.”

  Oren’s hand moved in the darkness, groping until he found mine. His water-clammy fingers curled tight around mine. I’m still here, said the gesture.

  “What did she do to you?” I whispered, bending over him and pushing back the wet hair clinging to his forehead.

  His tightly closed eyes relaxed, then slowly opened, the unseeing gaze focusing with some effort on my face. He swallowed, staring for a long moment; then his eyes widened, face going even whiter.

  “She cured me,” he whispered.

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Fumbling, gasping, I tried to find my second sight again; when I switched over my vision was dazzled, still half blinded by the magical implosion that marked the end of Eve’s ritual. I searched, my gaze sweeping over him again and again, but I could see nothing.

  He lifted himself up on his elbows, shaken, cautious. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he said, watching my face. “The shadow’s gone.”

  I met his gaze after a long moment, and he read the truth there in my eyes. The boy in front of me was a monster no longer; he was just a boy, no different from Kris or Caesar or Tamren. I could sense no shadow but the one always lurking, always waiting, inside my own heart.