Lark Ascending Page 15

  “Hold your fire,” snapped Gloriette, her voice crawling into my ears and skittering to awaken long-suppressed memories. The voice of my nightmares.

  I lifted my head to see Gloriette watching us. For a moment her eyes were wide with shock, then transformed by the briefest flicker of something bright and hot. Triumph. Then it was gone, and she only watched, her thin lips pressed together, her gaze almost amused. I felt my magic building with my rage. I could kill her now, where she stood, with a single thought. I could stop her heart the way they’d stopped Kris’s.

  My tongue was thick and heavy in my mouth, no words emerging. She didn’t speak either, and for a split second we froze in that tableau. Then she raised an eyebrow in a sickening, mocking challenge.

  You thought you could save him?

  I tore my gaze away from Gloriette’s and laid Kris back down against the stone. Throwing a silent thank-you to Wesley for showing me how to do this, I folded my hands together over Kris’s heart and thumped once, twice, three times—again and again, with the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

  Once my body had the cadence of it, I let my concentration go to the store of magic hoarded by the shadow within me. Coaxing a tendril free, I let it drift down through my arms, past my clasped fingers, and into the motionless body in front of me. Kris’s face was wet with tears, my tears, and each time I bent to breathe for him, I had a hard time gathering the strength. I was growing lightheaded, dizzy. I should stop and take a proper breath myself. But I couldn’t. Not while Kris lay there like—like a dead man.

  No magic. No pulse. No breath.

  It was supposed to be me.

  All my fury and helplessness erupted as I slammed my clenched hand against Kris’s body where I’d been trying to restart his heart. I felt the magic explode, too, a dark blast of chaotic energy. All at once Kris sucked in a ragged breath and then rolled over onto his side, coughing and gasping.

  I fell backward heavily. “Kris,” I gasped. Abruptly I could feel my own body again, my breathlessness, my lips swollen from breathing for him, my hands sore from trying to jump-start his heart. I crawled back to his side and slid my arm under his shoulders to help lift him into a position where it’d be easier for him to breathe.

  He groaned something that sounded like my name, focusing on my face with some difficulty. It was a long moment before he spoke. “What’re you doing here?”

  I wanted to laugh, feeling the hysteria bubbling somewhere just below the surface. Instead I lifted my gaze again. The steps were empty—Gloriette was gone.

  CHAPTER 18

  I managed to get Kris a few streets away from the Institute gates before we had to stop. I needed the rest almost as much as he did. We fell in a heap, searching for breath and dragging ourselves back away from the door of the building we were sheltering in. Kris pulled his legs up and let his head drop between his knees. His face was white, so pale it seemed to reflect the purple Wall overhead and looked almost blue in the dusk.

  “Thank you,” he said, sounding as though he’d swallowed sand. “What happened?”

  “I think it was Eve.” I watched him closely, hunting for signs that he wasn’t improving. Any sign that moments before, he’d been dead. “I don’t know what she was doing near the Institute, but I felt it, I know it was her. It was like a bomb going off, and I think the Institute took it as an attack.”

  Kris was quiet, listening without much reaction. “That would explain their questions. I think they thought I was a decoy.”

  I swallowed, my heart still hammering with fear and regret. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let you go in there.”

  “It wasn’t your decision,” Kris said softly, his eyes still on the ground. There was no hint of a smile, no sign of the charm he always carried in a cloud around himself. “It was my call. They could have just as easily tried to kill you.”

  I hesitated uneasily. They could have captured me while I was trying to revive Kris. They should have captured me. Why didn’t they?

  “What did they do to you?” I whispered instead.

  “What they’ve been doing to everyone else,” Kris replied. His voice was detached, as though being fed through Nix’s recording device rather than his own lips. “That’s where everyone in the sections near the Institute went. They’re all dead. The architects killed them.”

  The bottom fell out of my stomach. Through the roaring in my ears, I murmured, “No. Even they wouldn’t—why? Why would they just kill everyone?”

  “Because they’re running out of magic, and we’re the closest source of power.”

  “But everyone’s already been harvested.” But as soon as I said the words, I understood. Yes, we’d all been harvested by the Institute. But we were all left just enough of our innate magic to survive. Just enough to keep our hearts beating. Now the Institute was taking even that.

  Kris reached down and traced a circle in the gravel underneath us. I thought for a moment that he was drawing me a diagram, about to launch into one of his barely comprehensible lectures on machinery and magic. Instead he just traced the same circle, over and over, his dusty finger etching a deeper groove each time.

  “Are you okay?” My voice was almost as hoarse as his. “They took your last magic, wouldn’t that make you—” My lips couldn’t take that last step and form the word, but my imagination felt no such restraint. My mind’s eye painted over Kris’s form with brutal detail, draining his brown eyes to white, turning his veins black and his skin clammy gray. I could see teeth. I shook my head in a shiver that traveled all the way down my body.

  “No,” said Kris, interrupting my waking nightmare. “It takes exposure to the void to pass that final threshold into—into what you call the shadow men. But it doesn’t matter.”

  I gaped. “How can you say that?”

  Finally he lifted his head and met my eyes. His eyes raked over me, hollow and burning; grief-stricken, he could barely hold my gaze. “Don’t you understand, Lark? We’re all shadows waiting to happen.”

  “What?” My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

  “People have a natural reserve of the Resource within them. It keeps them human, keeps them alive. If they were left to the void there’d be time. Days, weeks, even, before they became shadows.”

  “But we’re not natural,” I whispered, staring. “Everyone here has been harvested.”

  “Harvested to the point of nothingness. That cushion of time—we’ve destroyed that, with our machines in the Institute. The second the Wall fails—and it will fail—everyone in this city will become a shadow, hungry and mindless and gone forever. Me, Caesar, Gloriette, Tamren, your parents, every single living soul in this city. Everyone except you.”

  “And Eve.”

  Kris lifted a shaking hand to push his hair back from his face. “That had occurred to me too.”

  It was too easy to see the Wall gone, only the metal framework remaining. To see the buildings around us grow dark, to see the vines growing over the places where I’d played, the school where I learned my history. Too easy to see shadows around each corner, pouring out of the tunnels, lurking in the darkened halls of the Institute.

  “So you understand now.” Kris’s voice was like lead, as heavy and cold and as unmovable. “Why the architects are doing what they’re doing.”

  “Murdering dozens, maybe hundreds, of innocent people?”

  “To save thousands.”

  My eyes burned, my skin crawling. “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “It doesn’t?” Kris’s grief and his pain were like knives. I never wanted to see him like this. I wished I could turn back time and make him once again the cheerful, wry companion who watched me while I pretended not to notice. “What would you have them do instead? Let us all die?”

  “Talk to us!” I burst out, my voice tearing like a sob. “There has to be—”

  “It’s too late.” Kris tilted his head back, looking up at the thin, shimmering membrane that was all that stood between us and the darkn
ess. “It’s over. It’s us or them, and we don’t stand a chance.”

  I reached out to take his hand, to stop its shaking with my own. “You’re calling the Institute ‘them.’ You never did that before.”

  “Some part of me always thought I could go back.” Kris looked down at my hand around his as if confused to find it there. “But that’s over now too.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t ever go home.”

  I swallowed hard. “Then you and I finally have something in common.”

  In time, I was able to get Kris on his feet again. He was heavier than he looked, solid despite his lanky frame, and he leaned hard enough on me to make me stagger. But I had to get him back to the Hub so that I could find Eve and Caesar and figure out what to do next. If I could just get Eve, or whatever was left of her, to the Institute, maybe I could show them that what happened was an accident. That we hadn’t intended to declare war, and that we did want to talk.

  Some of Kris’s strength returned as we moved, but I knew that he was going to need days of rest and a few good meals before he was even close to normal. Not that I was certain he’d ever be normal again. His smile was another casualty in the long, long list of things the Institute had taken from me.

  The corridors leading to the rebel hideout were empty, but I could hear a commotion echoing through the tunnels. Something was going on at the Hub. I caught Kris’s gaze, and he read my intention before I could speak.

  “Go,” he said, unwinding his arm from around my neck. “I can make my way back from here.”

  I touched his cheek, all I could think to do to show him how sorry I was. I left him there, head bowed, hand pressed to the spot where mine had been, and took off toward the Hub.

  I found the rebels all gathered, the crowd as dense and as perturbed as when the alarms had gone off to warn of the pixie attack. For a brief, panicked moment I thought we were under siege again, that the Institute had come back with a counterattack so swift we had no chance of winning. But then I realized that the agitation wasn’t panic—it was celebration.

  The sea of people was alive with cheers, dancing, people waving rags and brooms and bits of detritus in the air like flags. I could see Caesar across the crowd, up on the table-turned-dais, though it was Asher next to him roaring at the crowd, egging them on. There was no sign of Eve. Caesar looked about ready to drop, but he was smiling a grim sort of smile. He was happy about whatever had happened.

  Fury seized me, and I fought my way through the crowd until I reached the dais. “What are you doing?” I screamed over the noise. Caesar heard and dropped his eyes, then started as he saw me. He shouted something in Asher’s ear, then dropped down off the table. He grabbed my upper arm and started hauling me back toward the office, his limp dragging me off-balance.

  He shoved me into the room and followed after, slamming the door behind him. “The hell are you thinking?” he hissed. “This is the first good news we’ve had, they need this for morale.”

  “Good news?” I shouted. “This has ruined our chances of talking to them and finding some sort of common ground.”

  “Who cares?” Caesar shouted back. “They won’t soon forget that we’re not powerless, and—”

  My jaw fell open, shock and horror sweeping through my body. “You meant for this to happen? You did this on purpose?”

  Caesar scowled at me. “You stroll in here and start telling us all what to do, trying to convince me to give it all up the moment we finally have a weapon, something to use against them—”

  “Eve’s not a weapon!” I cried. “She’s a person. She’s been used for years, decades even, and now you’re just continuing to use her. Is she even alive after that explosion?”

  “She wants this too,” Caesar roared. “And she’s fine. She needs to vent the magic as much as we need her as a weapon. Why do you care? A few more strikes like that and we can win this thing!”

  “Kris was in there,” I retorted. “You sent him in there!”

  Caesar’s jaw hardened. “A necessary casualty,” he said, voice lowering.

  The fury building inside me snapped. “You have no idea that he’s the one who saved your life, do you?” My voice cracked, whiplike, slashing at that core of arrogance and self-assurance that propelled my brother forward. “He did the same for me. He’s the one who arranged for you to escape the Institute. He’s the reason you’re not dead. And you sent him in there to die.”

  The sudden silence was deafening. Caesar gazed at me, impassive beneath his eye patch and his beard, impossible to read. But when he spoke, his voice betrayed him. “It doesn’t matter,” he rasped, voice breaking. “I’m sorry about your friend. But we had to do it. We had to strike before they got wind of our plans.”

  My stomach twisted, sick and empty. And there’d be no more food, not after I’d wasted the day searching for nothing more than a false hope planted there to get me out of the way. “Kris isn’t dead,” I said dully. “They tried to kill him, but I got to him before they could.”

  Caesar’s visible eye widened, flashing with hot relief before he closed it, turning away. “Well done, little sister.”

  I stared at his back, thinking of the knife in my boot, of how easy it’d be to draw it. The white-hot anger swept through, building on my fury at Gloriette. The urge to strike, at anyone, at both sides, left me weak-kneed with exhaustion trying to fight it.

  “Kris was right,” I whispered. “It is over, all hope of salvaging this.”

  “There never was any hope,” Caesar muttered.

  “There was, before you destroyed it.” I sank down on the edge of a packing crate, no longer possessing the willpower to stay standing. “Today the war started.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Oren was waiting for me when I left Caesar’s office. Nix hovered nearby but declined to give its usual trill of greeting. It looked tired, limping through the air until it could drop down heavily onto my shoulder and crawl over to slump against my neck. The pixie had been searching for Oren all day.

  I wanted to summon some kind of anger or agitation at Oren for his abandonment of me, but one look at his face sent all my fury crumbling away, leaving me weak-kneed with exhaustion. He reached out, and I stumbled forward until I could lean against him and let him wrap his arms around me.

  “Where’ve you been?” My voice was muffled against his shirt.

  “I had to think,” he murmured into my hair. “This changes my whole life. I couldn’t just—I had to process.”

  I stared at him. “It changes my life too, you know.”

  Oren didn’t respond immediately, and I could see something behind the pale blue eyes that I didn’t recognize. Fear, confusion, doubt; something darker lurked there, something he wasn’t sharing with me. I longed to ask, but after a moment he squeezed me, tight enough to make my blood sing. I could push him later to tell me what was going on. For now I could just close my eyes and revel in the fact that my cheek was touching his neck and it didn’t burn with magic.

  His touch invited me to stay that way forever, standing in the hallway outside my brother’s office. The longer I stayed, the harder it was to move, like I was slowly turning to iron like the apple trees to the west. Then condensation dripped down from the ceiling, splattering against the crown of my head. I pulled back reluctantly.

  “Kris was right about Eve.” My mouth tasted like ashes, choking on the words. “I know she helped you, but she’s dangerous. She let my brother use her as a weapon. And she’s unstable.”

  Oren’s expression didn’t shift, but something behind his gaze hardened. “Then that’s your brother’s fault, not Eve’s.”

  “Please don’t fight me on this,” I whispered. “If you trust me, you’ll be on my side.”

  “There aren’t two sides,” he protested. “We’re all on the same side in this war.”

  War. I swallowed. He was right, it was war now. And if it was us against the machines, we’d need the strongest weapon we had. We’d need to find a way to control Eve.


  “No matter what,” he went on, voice dropping to a whisper to match mine, “I’m on your side. Always. If you decided to destroy the world, I’d stand next to you while you did it. You know that, right?”

  Mouth dry, palms sweating, I could only nod. “I’m going to go talk to her,” I said. “Will you come?”

  Oren just looked at me, shaking his head. His face was oddly pale, despite the thick gold glow of the magic lanterns. “I—no. I’ll go train, I need to be alone for a while.”

  But you were alone all day, I wanted to scream at him. I wished I could keep him here until he told me what was wrong. But Oren was the last person on earth anyone could force to talk when he didn’t want to. So I swallowed my frustration and nodded. “When you’re ready, I’m here.”

  Oren vanished down the hallway, but not before shooting me a look that shattered my balance. He wasn’t one to speak his feelings, but now and then he wore them plain for all to see. Or for me to see, at any rate. Heart pounding, I stood there for long moments before I gathered my composure enough to turn around and head the opposite direction—toward Eve.

  • • •

  She was waiting for me. She’d sensed I was coming, and when I knocked on her door I found it standing ajar.

  The bond we’d formed while connected to the Machine came and went, but she was better at reading it than I was. I had only gathered scattered thoughts, half-formed images. A tower by the sea with a light high in its eaves. Small, mathematically perfect shells, something I didn’t even have a name for outside her memory. She’d lived by the ocean. The images were calming, serene, and I took heart in that. Eve could be reasoned with, even if Caesar had convinced her that war was our only choice.

  “Hello, sister,” she greeted me. She was seated on the floor, despite the crates my brother had left to serve as seats. “Join me.”