Shadowlark s-2 Read online

  Firewood, I told her, showing her a few branches I’d picked up just before she crested our ridge. To make a hot breakfast. To warm us before we set out for the day.

  But despite the hot mash of water and grains, and the roar of the flames, and Nix’s fire-heated metal body nestled in the hollow of my neck, I couldn’t stop shivering.

  I had no proof it was him, and yet I knew. It was as though I could feel him out there, somewhere, as though our time spent sharing the same magic, the same sustaining power, had linked us.

  Oren. The boy who taught me how to live out here, who saved my life, whose life I saved. The boy who told me he’d follow me anywhere no matter how he tried to stop himself.

  The boy I’d learned was a monster.

  And I hadn’t forgotten what I’d promised him before he left.

  If I find you—and if I’m not me—promise me that you’ll kill me, Lark.

  * * *

  I’d thought my home city was big. When I lived there, it was the only city in the world, as far as most inside the Wall knew. It held the last remnants of humanity. The Wall was the edge of the world.

  But it was nothing compared to the sprawling monster that filled the valley. The snow had stopped, and from the ridge we could see all the way to the sea, little more than a grey expanse in the distance. My mind half-dismissed the sight of it, unable to digest how big the ocean must be in comparison—instead it focused on the city, something it could almost comprehend.

  The city lay in ruins. Even from a distance we could see that the buildings were crumbling, asymmetrical, falling apart. The tallest structures were metal skeletons of buildings that must have once been so tall they would’ve dwarfed the Institute in my city. Where my city was laid out artistically, aesthetically, with broad streets and well-designed blocks, this city was crowded and sprawling and slapdash, like it had just grown together over the years, and people had just kept adding taller and taller buildings to make more room. I couldn’t even imagine how many people must’ve lived in it before the wars. The tallest spire at the center of the city had something gleaming, reflective, at its top—blinding to look at even from this distance.

  As we drew nearer, though, we could see just how dilapidated the buildings were. I fought down a surge of disappointment. Maybe I’d expected a Wall keeping it safe, like the Wall around my own city. Without that shielding against the magicless void in this wasteland, how was anyone but a Renewable meant to survive? Surely the city had to be abandoned—and to judge from the state of the ruins, it would’ve had to have been abandoned for decades, if not more.

  Which meant that there were no experiments going on to do with restoring magic to the wasteland—and no experiments concerning curing my brother and me of what the Institute had done to us. Which meant that there was no reason for my brother to still be here.Tansy kept up a running commentary as we headed down from the ridge toward the crumbling buildings.

  “There are definitely people down there,” she continued. “But not many, and they keep themselves hidden pretty well. There’s nothing that I can see that stops the shadows from coming in—no Wall like in your city, no scouts like in mine. So maybe the people just stay inside as much as they can.”

  “We have to find someone willing to talk to us.” I scanned the long street ahead of us, littered with debris and heaps of garbage made unidentifiable by age. “Dorian said Basil was headed here. I can’t imagine he stayed—this isn’t what he was looking for, that’s for certain. This place looks like it fell decades ago.”

  Tansy readjusted the bow on her shoulder, fingering the string idly. “Maybe, if he talked to anyone here, they might know where he headed next.”

  I didn’t answer. The thought of having to make yet another weeks-long journey, this time through even more snow and bitter cold, with my dwindling supplies, was intolerable. Basil was supposed to be here. He was the only other person who survived what the Institute had done to me—he was the only person who would know how to deal with it. I just had to find him before I lost control with Tansy, and everything would be okay.

  Even now, despite the dry air, I could sense her power just a few steps in front of me. And I wanted it. Now that I knew I could absorb the innate magic of other people, I could barely restrain myself. It was like my actions in the Iron Wood had opened a floodgate that I didn’t have the strength to close.

  I kept my eyes on the street. Even though I could still feel Tansy’s magic, at least I didn’t have to see it with my second sight, glittering and glinting every now and then, as if shining in invisible sunlight.

  Nix alighted on my shoulder, the whirring of its mechanisms oddly comforting in the quiet. Despite my desire to travel alone, I was glad for Nix’s company—and for Tansy’s too. Though when Tansy was near and chattering away, Nix was always silent. I sensed that the machine had something to say, and so I slowed my steps a little, let Tansy get out ahead of me.

  Eventually, the pixie ruffled its wings and spoke. “Smart.” “What is?” I kept my voice to a whisper.

  “Letting her walk in front of you. That way if she turns on you,you’ll see it coming.”

  Ice trickled down my spine, and the pixie’s words in my dream came back to me, clear as day. Is it wise, letting her out of your sight?Nix’s mistrust of Tansy had penetrated even my dreams.

  “Don’t be absurd,” I replied. “Tansy’s a friend. She’s here to look out for me.”

  “That other one was your friend too. Where is he now?” I looked down at it on my shoulder, and it gave the strangest imitation of a human shrug.

  The machine had no reason to lie. In fact, it had proven more than once that it was incapable of lying. I watched Tansy’s ponytail bobbing with each step and gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to be someone who could only trust a pile of magical circuitry, and never another human, flesh and blood like me.

  “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t particularly want to know what you were going to say.”

  “Yes, you do.” Nix was as calm and unemotional as ever.

  I stayed silent, counting each of my weary steps in my head.

  “The people living here are watching you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I stopped dead. Tansy was still moving up the street, oblivious to whatever Nix was sensing.

  “How do you know they’re watching us?” I whispered, arching my back until it popped, turning my head this way and that. If anyone were watching me they’d see a weary traveler stretching—not inspecting the surrounding buildings for watching eyes.

  “Watch the windows.”

  I shifted my attention forward, toward the dark hollows in the buildings. I saw nothing—no faces or movement. I was about to say so when something did move. Subtle, quick. Just a shutter closing in a building on the next block.

  Tansy had stopped, and I caught up with her in a few strides.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s—” I began, keeping my voice low.

  “I see them,” she breathed back. “Can’t tell if they’re a threat.”

  I sensed nothing, no matter how I strained. I couldn’t tell if it was due to the inconsistency of this new ability to sense the world around me or the fact that iron made up the skeletons of these buildings, potentially muffling anything inside.

  Nix spoke up, its voice even quieter than Tansy’s. “They do not appear threatening. In fact, they appear to be more frightened of us.”

  A shutter cracked open nearby, no more than an inch. I could see nothing beyond it but darkness compared to the pale winter sunlight outside.

  I took a deep breath. “Hello!” I shouted. “We’re not here to cause trouble or harm to anyone. We’re travelers, seeking a man named Basil Ainsley.”

  Only silence answered me. We kept walking, eyes drawn to every quick movement at the windows, ears tuned for each light click or thud of a shutter closing or door locking. The temperature was dropping fast, and we knocked cautiously on a
few doors, hoping for shelter. But we got no response, and when, in growing desperation, we tried a few handles, they were all shut tight.

  We’d gotten about a mile into the downtown part of the city when a noise made us jump back. The clang of one of the ancient garbage cans lining the streets.

  The people here were afraid of something—I couldn’t help but think of the most terrifying thing in this wilderness. Shadows. I reached out with everything I had but felt nothing. I tried to make myself move toward the sound but found my feet rooted to the crumbling street.

  Tansy slipped her bow from her shoulder in one smooth movement, dropping into a low stance, ready for action. She nocked an arrow to the string and crept toward the sound, slow. I ached to tell her to be careful, but bit my lip, watching.

  Just before she reached the cans, a small figure burst out with a frightened yell, darting past Tansy—and straight at me. We collided with a thud, sending me sprawling and my assailant dropping on top of me with a groan of pain.

  It was a kid, no more than seven or eight. Dirty in that little-boy way, but in relatively clean clothes. No blood around his mouth. No signs that he was anything other than a little boy. More than anything else, he felt human. He lacked the golden magic glow Tansy and all the Renewables had, but there was no dark void, hungry for magic, as there was with Oren. He felt like nothing—like walking into a room at exactly room temperature.

  “Let me go!” he shouted, scrambling backward, eyes darting this way and that. To my astonishment he started to cry as he scuttled sideways into the shadow of a nearby stoop.

  Just then a pair of people burst out of the building across the street. A man and a woman, both brandishing weapons. The man, about Tansy’s height and thickly bearded, wielded a knife. Much smaller than Oren’s knife, and clearly designed as a tool, not as a weapon. The woman, whose expression was even more frantic than the man’s, carried a club fashioned from what looked like a piece of a bedpost.

  “Get away from my son!” the woman screamed, voice ragged with fear.

  Tansy lowered her bow instantly, straightening out of her hunting stance and lifting her hands. I picked myself up off the ground where the boy had knocked me, stumbling backward a few paces.

  “We aren’t going to hurt him,” I said hoarsely, trying to get air back into my lungs. “It’s okay.”

  As soon as I backed up enough that I wasn’t between them and the boy, the woman ran past the man to kneel in front of the kid, who was still leaking tears, frightened as much by his mother’s fear as anything else. As his mother ran her hands over him, looking for injuries, and mumbled reassurances, the father stepped forward, fingers white-knuckled around the handle of his knife.

  “You’d better keep moving,” he said, expression largely hidden by his black facial hair.

  Tansy moved over to my side, returning her bow to her shoulder, uncertain how to proceed. I knew how she felt.

  “Please,” I tried again. “I’m just looking for a man named Basil Ainsley. Do you know him? Did he pass through maybe a couple of years ago?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed, darting to the side as his wife picked up their child, then back to me again. “Why are you searching for this man?”

  My throat was so dry my voice came out like sandpaper. “He’s my brother.”

  The man considered this, watching me suspiciously, then shook his head. “I’ve never heard of him,” he said gruffly. “You may have noticed, we’re not looking for company. This place isn’t for you, you’d better go.”

  The woman crossed back behind the man again, carrying the boy. I saw a flash of red and realized he’d skinned his knee when we collided. The blood was dripping down his shin.

  I took a step forward, and the man reacted instantly, the point of the knife swinging toward me.

  “Wait!” I said, freezing. “I just want to—here.” I took off my pack, very slowly, and crouched so I could put it on the ground and go through it. Somewhere in there was a pot of salve from Tansy’s mother, an herbalist.

  As soon as I opened it I saw Nix, who must have darted inside during the commotion. It looked up at me, flicking its wings silently in recognition—and in warning. I knew why it was hiding; without knowing these people’s history, it was impossible to know how they’d react when confronted with a machine, the very symbol of the extravagance and wanton use of magic that led to the wars in the first place.

  I took out the bag that held my last few apples and tore a few strips from it, then located the pot and straightened. Both mother and father were watching my every move, wide-eyed, fearful. What had happened to these people that they lived in such fear?

  “It’s medicine,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and calm. “For his knee, so it heals faster and doesn’t get infected.”

  The mother cradled the boy’s head against her, eyes flicking toward the father, who was just noticing the skinned knee for the first time.

  “Can I?” I asked, taking a slow step toward them.

  The man and woman exchanged glances, as though speaking privately, without words. The woman broke first, taking a step toward me and nodding. “You may.”

  I couldn’t help a little smile at that—she sounded like my own mother, correcting my grammar. Even if she was brokenhearted from losing Basil, even if she largely ignored me in favor of my other brother, Caesar, I missed my mother.

  I moved forward, and the woman crouched so that the boy could lean against her while I tended to his knee. He’d stopped crying and was more interested in examining my face and watching what I was doing. Though he grimaced when I mopped up the blood and spread a thin layer of the salve over his scrape, he didn’t cry again. I noticed that he had freckles, something no one in my enclosed city had. How strange to see just an ordinary human—not a Renewable, not a shadow— living out here. I wondered how it was possible, but I knew enough that now wasn’t the time to ask.

  I wrapped the last of the strips around his knee, tying the tightest knot I could. I knew from having two brothers that boys never stayed still long.

  “Thank you,” his mother murmured as I straightened. “Sean, what do you say?”

  “’anks,” the boy mumbled before squirming out of his mother’s grasp and making a beeline for the building his parents had emerged from.

  “Okay.” The man still had his knife between himself and me. “Get going then.”

  “Brandon,” the woman said, chiding. “Be civil.”

  He shook his head, still watching me, still suspicious. “Don’t trust anyone from the outside. We don’t know who they are. What they are.”

  The woman looked up, shading her eyes. I followed her gaze to the bright reflective object on top of the spire. It was dimmer now as the sun made its way down the sky. I still couldn’t make out its shape, but I thought it might be some kind of crystal, refracting the light into a million different beams across the city. The way the woman gazed at it reminded me of the way people in my city checked the time by the sun disc. Maybe it was a kind of clock.

  “It’ll be just as dangerous for them out here in a few hours,” the woman said, speaking as though Tansy and I weren’t there. “She helped our Sean. They’re not here to hurt us.”

  The man’s eyes went from me to Tansy and back again. His beard moved as he grimaced beneath it, uncertainty twisting his features.

  “Fine,” he said eventually, defeated. “One night only. And that one leaves her weapon outside.” He seemed more suspicious of Tansy than of me, his black eyes narrowing at her.

  Tansy opened her mouth as if considering protesting. I didn’t blame her—if they’d tried to take Oren’s knife from me, I would’ve felt naked. I felt a little guilty not volunteering the information that I was armed, too, but I knew it was smarter to keep it on me. I nodded at Tansy and she nodded back, slipping off the bow and her quiver of arrows and giving it to the man. He left them on the stoop as he led us through a revolving door, into the building.

  * * *
>
  Once inside, the man retreated to a comfortable-looking stuffed chair in the corner to work on something wooden with his knife. Sean plunked himself down to play with what seemed to be a set of polished round rocks, bouncing them off each other at random, and the woman closed the doors behind us.

  They’d made a home in what looked like the lobby of some other building. The marble floors were covered with a slapdash assortment of colorful, overlapping rugs, and the large reception area had been divided into rooms by wooden screens. The revolving door opened directly into what I could only assume was the kitchen and dining area, dominated by a huge fireplace built into the floor and a chimney that descended from the ceiling to hover above it. It must have been a gorgeous piece of art and design back when the building was new, but now it only held a small cooking fire. The flames had an odd green edge to them, and my nose detected the acrid smell of chemicals. When I looked closer I saw that the wood they were burning seemed to be pieces of old furniture. I realized with a jolt that they wouldn’t really have access to firewood here in this forest of buildings. They must have been raiding the other ruins—or the rest of the building, which seemed unused—for wood to burn.

  The rest of the furniture in the home was an odd mix of ancient-looking pieces, no doubt liberated from the ruins, and rough but solidly made pieces that looked relatively new. Overhead the ceiling was painted with a faded fresco of winged babies and clouds and swirling ribbons, encircled by intricately molded trim.

  “I’m Trina,” the woman said as I turned in place, inspecting the odd mix of grandeur and hominess. “And you’ve already met Sean. My husband is Brandon, ignore him. Are you girls hungry?”

  I glanced at Tansy, who seemed uneasy, out of place. If even I, who had been raised in a city with buildings like the Institute, felt overwhelmed, she must feel like she’d stepped into another world. And she looked positively naked without her bow at her side.