Shadowlark (7 page)

I knew my brother wasn’t here. Our city had done to him what it had done to me, turned him into the same thing I was now—and I was falling apart. Perhaps my brother had made it this far, and perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he was one of the cursed townsfolk, oblivious, fearful of the dark.

Perhaps he was nothing but a shadow himself.

• • •

When Tansy woke again, rousing Oren and me as well, she spent some time trying to get at the lock with the knife. When finally she threw the knife down with a clang, I jumped, heart racing.

She glanced at me apologetically and stooped to pick it up again, offering it back to me. I put it back in my pack. My brother’s paper bird looked at me from among my supplies, but I just shut the pack again, ignoring it.

“Well, seems like we’re going to be here for a while,” Tansy said, flashing me a weak smile. “And I’d rather not be trapped in here with a monster.”

She glanced at Oren, who straightened, eyes flicking from her to me. Before I could protest, Tansy held out a hand to me. “Well?” she said. “Take what you need.”

I stared at her outstretched hand, uncomprehending. “What I need?”

“To keep him human. I know it’s you, your magic, whatever makes you unique. I saw it back in the Iron Wood, and I saw it when you saved us in the alley.”

“He saved us,” I corrected her, still not taking her offered hand.

“Whoever saved who, he’s looking a bit grey around the ears, and I don’t want to wait and find out how long it takes him to turn back.”

Alarmed, I looked over at Oren. I knew it didn’t work like that—you were either shadow or not, no in between— but I couldn’t help but inspect him closely. He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest.

“So,” Tansy interrupted my thoughts. “Let’s get this over with. Just—not so much this time?”

I swallowed. In the alley, I’d torn what magic she had in one instant, ruthless and quick. Taking a deep breath, I reached out for her hand. Her palm was sweating—she was nervous. But her hand was steady, and she didn’t pull away.

“Are you sure?” I asked, glancing at her.

She nodded. “It’s necessary. And I trust you.”

I wanted to scream at her that she shouldn’t—that I’d taken more than I needed in the alley, that I could’ve stripped her and left her for dead. That part of me wanted to do that now. But she was right. I didn’t have much left from what I’d taken that first time, and without it, Oren would revert back to his shadow self. And we’d both die.

I closed my eyes, looking with my second sight for the flicker of magic around her. It was weak, almost invisible despite the dampness of this underground cell. A meager meal of apples was not going to help her regenerate much. But even a little would do.

I let down my guard just a fraction, feeling a little warmth slide into my hand from hers. A few hours and I’d forgotten how good it felt. I opened the channel a little wider, taking a slow breath, basking in it. Tansy’s hand felt clammy in mine, but I ignored it, focusing on the magic, the life force. I’d never had the luxury of examining this connection, the intimacy of it, how I could trace it back through our joined hands and up her arm, through her veins and muscles, to her heart, which danced a steady beat through the web of magic inside her. I tugged at a strand of the web and felt Tansy give a strangled gurgle of pain.

I jerked my hand away, gasping, opening my eyes and willing the dark, cold cell to return and banish the lovely warmth of Tansy’s magic.

Dizzy with the aftereffects, my vision blurring and dancing, I tried to sit back up, to find Tansy amid the swirling shadows. She was on her back, breathing hard, but otherwise fine, watching me, massaging her hand and grimacing.

“You okay?” she asked.

A sound rather like a laugh escaped me as I tried to put myself back together. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“I feel a bit like I’ve fallen out of a tree, but I’ll live.” Tansy started to struggle up onto her elbows, but Oren left his post by the cage wall and went to her side, offering her his hand. She stared at it for a few moments, gaze flicking from his outstretched hand to his face, and then gingerly let him help her up into a seated position.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

I heard Tansy swallow, audible in the muffled quiet of our prison. Her brows drew in, lips pressing together. “Yeah,” she replied. “Well, I wasn’t doing it for you.”

He let go of her hand and retreated again, but I wasn’t fooled. I knew Tansy enough to know that a week ago she wouldn’t have offered what she’d just offered. She wouldn’t have even accepted his hand to help her up.

The bands of tension around my heart eased a little, my mind clearing a fraction as though a fog was starting to thin. Maybe our situation wasn’t so hopeless after all. If I could get Tansy and Oren working together, trusting each other as they had each once trusted me, maybe we could get out of this mess.

I started to suggest that we make another pass at the lock but was interrupted by the outer door banging open without warning.

Two men entered, one shutting the door behind them while the other came forward, his hands full. The light was behind him, so it took me a moment to recognize the long, curved shape slung over his shoulder.

Tansy, however, recognized it right away. She sat bolt upright, her eyes on his shoulder. I could sense her tension as though it were my own.

“So we traced you back to where you’d been squatting.” The man’s lip curled a little, as though we’d been living in a rat-infested dump. “Living with the Empty Ones,” he said, and spat through the bars onto the stone floor.

With a start, I realized what he was holding—Tansy’s pack. And her bow and quiver, slung over his shoulder. I glanced at her, but she didn’t look at me, her wide eyes fixed on the man.

“We were planning on giving this back to you if Prometheus gave the okay,” he said, hefting the pack in one hand, squinting at us through the bars. He wasn’t very tall, no taller than Tansy, but he was a burly man, strong. “Which one of you does this belong to?”

I expected Tansy to leap at the opportunity to get her pack back, after her panic in the alley at having lost it. But she remained silent, lips pressed together, muscles tense. I stared at her, confused—and the man saw me looking.

“Ahh,” he said. “The rest of you, back against the wall. You—” and he crooked a finger at Tansy, “come here.”

Tansy got to her feet, jaw squared, breathing in and out through her nose. She crossed toward the door of the cage, standing just out of arm’s reach of the man with her pack.

“We expected the usual stuff, dried fruit, knife, feathers for arrows.” The man tossed a couple things out of the pack, whatever had been on top, and then dug his hand back into the bottom of the bag. “Imagine our surprise when we found it was full of these.”

His hand emerged, holding a small copper sphere. I’d never seen anything like it before, but I saw Tansy flinch. She certainly recognized it. Her eyes flicked toward me, hidden and guilty. Something tickled at the back of my mind, some instinct that blared alarm.

“Courier pigeons. Now, what reason would an innocent traveler like yourself have for carting a bag full of pigeons around? They’re Renewable messengers. And you’re not a Renewable, are you?”

Tansy didn’t answer, jaw squared.

The man thrust out his hand through the bars, bringing the sphere close to Tansy’s face. Her head jerked back, but she stood her ground. So near to her, the sphere unfolded, its surface rippling, extending wings and a faint glow that responded to the aura of magic surrounding her.

A machine.

The man laughed unpleasantly, withdrawing his hand. The sphere shut up tight again, and he dropped it back into the pack. “So what messages were you sending back to your leader, hmm? The location of our city? The number of people here? Our defenses?”

Tansy said nothing. This time she didn’t look at me, but I knew. A burning cold spread through my body, an icy weight settling in the pit of my stomach.

The man tossed the bag aside and reached for a key on his belt, unlocking the door. “Prometheus wants a word with you. We’ve got a great many uses for someone with your . . . talents.”

As he grabbed for Tansy’s arm, she jerked it away, whirling to look at me. Her eyes were anguished, hot with guilt.

“Lark, please—please, it’s not what you think.”

I could only stand there, pinned to the stone with shock. “You were—spying on me.” The bag of messenger machines lay forgotten on the floor behind the men. Suddenly I remembered her scouting forays, how she’d race through her meals so she could go off alone. To signal Dorian our location. Now I understood her desperation when her pack was lost.

“No!” She struggled as the man grabbed her more firmly this time and dragged her back. “The barrier you made, it’s starting to fall apart, and Dorian asked me to—I can’t refuse him, no one can refuse him. I really was worried about you.”

I swallowed, trying to push the bile back down where it was threatening to rise in my throat. Dorian was no better than Gloriette or the other architects in my city. All anyone saw in me was something unique to be studied. To be used.

“Lark, I’m sorry. Please.” The man was dragging her away—the cell door slammed shut, and she wound her fingers in the bars, trying to stay long enough to make me understand. “I never would’ve let him do anything, he only wanted to know where you were going.”

Her eyes met mine. I felt sick, nauseous, barely able to stand. Her fingers were white-knuckled, clutching at the bars. I didn’t know who Prometheus was or what these people wanted with Tansy, but the only uses I knew for a Renewable were tantamount to torture. I thought of the captive Renewable powering my own city, in perpetual agony, constantly harvested of her magic, again and again.

Tansy was crying. “Lark, forgive me.”

All I could think of was her bitterness in the alley at having been fooled by the shadow family, the anger I recognized now for shame. I said the only words I could think of. “There’s no forgiveness for betrayal.”

When the outer door slammed closed, it was all I could do not to drop to the ground like a stone. I couldn’t think through the roaring in my ears, couldn’t begin to pull myself together with my stomach knotting itself over and over.

Kris, Dorian, Tansy, Nix, even Oren himself—I was tired of the people around me taking advantage of this awful power I didn’t even want. Tired of them taking advantage of
me.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Oren stalking from one edge of the cell to the other, long strides eating up the distance and pale gaze sweeping the shadows beyond the bars. More than ever he reminded me of an animal, some untamed beast raging at its captivity. For a long time there was no sound but the scrape of his shoes on the stone and his harsh breathing.

Then he abruptly whirled toward me with a snarl. “We’re running out of time, Lark. You have to do it.” There was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.

“Kill me.” He indicated the knife in my hand with a jerk of his chin.

I took a step back, staring. “What?”

“You couldn’t do it at the Iron Wood, fine. You could shove me off into the wilderness and forget me. Here you don’t have that luxury. It’s now, or it’s later when I come at you in your sleep.”

I gritted my teeth. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trying to forget anything.”

“But you wouldn’t have to watch me fall,” he hissed. “You said to me—before, you told me that we weren’t a team anymore. Fine, we’re not. But Tansy’s gone now, and you’ve got no source of power. When you run out, that’s it. I’m a shadow again, and you’re dead.”

I could see the betrayal in his gaze—but why was it such a crime not to want him
dead?
“You’re afraid,” I retorted. “Because we’re in here, because you don’t like not being under the sky.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “So? That doesn’t change the facts.”

I shook my head, shoving the knife back into its sheath in my waistband. “Panicking won’t help. We’ll figure something out.”

“By standing there sulking about Tansy?” Oren started pacing again, making two circuits of the cell before halting again and turning toward me slowly. “You’ll have to defend yourself.”

I met his gaze, watching as his eyes narrowed and he took a few steps to the side, circling me. “
If
you change.”

“
When
I change. So I might as well speed up the process. Make you defend yourself now.”

I could feel my heart starting to race, wondered whether he could hear it, whether any of his shadow-self traits lingered when he was in human form. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The tension drew out between us as he circled, and I could feel it stretching thin. Without warning he feinted a lunge at me, making me fight to hold my ground.

“You don’t want to hurt me,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even. If Oren decided to take matters into his own hands, I wasn’t sure I could hold my own.

“That’s right,” he burst out. “That’s why—” He let out his breath, dropping out of that deadly hunter’s stance. “That’s why I need you to act. I can’t do it. I’ve tried.”

My blood roared in my ears. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

“I mean I tried. After I found out, after you sent me away.” Oren turned to look through the bars of the cell, so all I could see was his profile, the tension in his body. “Animals don’t kill themselves, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it. Every instinct fought against it, and I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not stronger than the thing inside me.”

For a moment my mind tried to picture it, tried to imagine what awful thing Oren tried to do to himself, to rid the world of one more shadow.

“Not killing yourself isn’t weakness,” I said finally. “It’s not cowardice.”

Oren just shook his head, moving forward until he could press his forehead against the bars, a plaintive gesture. His long fingers wound around the iron. “It’s certainly not bravery.”

I had no answer to that. Not when I didn’t know what I was myself—perhaps we were both no more than things, echoes of who we once were. Maybe we both deserved death. The silence thickened the air.

“That girl,” Oren said finally, still gazing out at the darkness beyond our cell. “She was your friend?”

“I thought she was.” The words tasted sour, and I swallowed hard. “I can’t forgive what she did.”

“You thought I was your friend, too, and look where we are now.”

“You only follow me because you can’t help it, the monster can’t let me go. You said yourself that I shine in the darkness.”

With a weary groan, Oren straightened and turned so he could look at me again. He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling. “You’re the only thing that keeps me human,” he said after a silence. “But if I woke tomorrow completely cured and whole, I would still follow you anywhere.”

My throat closed. I couldn’t look at Oren, couldn’t listen to his voice, without my mind replaying the night we parted. The sweet softness of his mouth cut by the metallic tang of blood, the wave of longing mixed with revulsion. The hopelessness in his eyes when I told him not to touch me. His bitterness now as I kept him at arm’s length, too confused to know what to do with him.

He was so careful not to come near, to stay away as I’d demanded that night—and yet now he stepped forward and lightly brushed the back of my hand with his knuckles. Just enough so that I could feel the electric sizzle of power passing from me to him, pulled away by the dark void of shadow inside him.

“Sometimes we can’t help the things we do.”

Every impulse in my body wanted to turn toward him, to slide my hand into his and let our fingers wind together. To smell grass and wind all around me, a light in the deep, dank darkness of this prison. Instead I just stood there, remembering the taste of shadow, waiting for something I knew wasn’t coming.

I cleared my throat and sucked in a ragged breath. “I’m not going to just sit here and wait to die.”

Oren stepped back, letting me move around him and head for the door of the cage. I crouched by the lock, running my hand over it, but I knew I didn’t have enough magic left to open it. When I’d freed Oren from his cage in the Iron Wood, I’d been surrounded by Renewables, and though I hadn’t known it then, I’d been able to draw on them all to bend the laws of magic and iron and open the lock with my mind.

Here there was only me. And I couldn’t magic iron on my own.

My eyes fell on Tansy’s pack. It was still lying where the man had dropped it, well out of arm’s reach even when I lay down on my stomach and stretched my arm as far as I could through the bars. Even Oren’s long arms wouldn’t be able to reach it.

There may not have been Renewables around, but that pack was full of machines. And inside them, somewhere, were tiny hearts full of the magic that powered their clockwork mechanisms.

I closed my eyes, trying to reach past the muffling field cast by the iron bars between me and the pack. I tapped into the tiny, dwindling reserve of energy inside myself and concentrated on my arm, still stretched out past the bars. All I needed was a tiny nudge. A spark. One little touch to get one of the copper spheres to roll my way.

I felt the power spark and pop inside me, my head spinning, but I forced myself to keep reaching, keep trying to nudge one of the machines my way. I opened my eyes a fraction, squinting through the haze of golden sparks and threads.

The bag moved, bulging as something inside it shifted. I groaned, head dropping as the magic flowed from my outstretched fingertips.

Something rolled out of the mouth of the pack, and I dropped like a leaden weight, collapsing down onto the stone. I’d thought magic under ordinary circumstances was tiring— working through so much iron was like trying to run uphill wearing a coat lined with rocks.

Blearily, I lifted my head, forcing my dazzled eyes to focus. One of the spheres had rolled toward me, but when I reached out, my hand still fell short. My heart sank.

A tiny whir of clockwork jolted me out of my daze. A panel separated itself from the smooth surface of the sphere, followed by another, a slow unfolding with a groaning protest of gears, like muscles gone stiff from the cold. A tiny flash of sapphire within the depths of the sphere winked back at me.

“Are they gone?”

I gasped, lightheaded and dizzy from the magic, and unwilling to trust my own eyes. “Nix?” I breathed, staring.

Oren came to my side as I spoke, and together we watched as the sphere painstakingly unfolded itself. It had none of the ease of the courier pigeon the man had shown Tansy—I could tell this form was difficult for the shape-shifting pixie. Nix stopped halfway back to bee-form, gears stirring feebly as it lay on the stone floor. I imagined it panting and sweating, trying to catch its breath.

I reached out my hand as far as it would go, and the pixie crawled onto my palm. “How—I thought maybe you’d escaped when we were taken. Did you double back inside the building?”

“I hid in that antechamber where they keep their suits,”
the pixie said.
“They never even noticed. When they went out to search the area where you were found, they saw the other one’s bag and the machines inside. I flew in when they weren’t looking.”
With an obvious effort it finished its transformation back into its favorite bee form and then cast its crystal-blue eyes over the cell.
“Where is that other one?”

“Gone.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but even I could hear the way it quivered.

The multifaceted sapphires swung toward me.
“So she turned on you. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe someone tried to warn you about that.”

I closed my eyes. Already part of me regretted what I’d said to Tansy as they dragged her away. I’d probably never see her again. “Not now, Nix. Please.”

The pixie shook itself and turned, its little legs like dull needles against my palm as it scanned our surroundings.
“I see this one is still with us, though,”
it said flatly, watching Oren unblinkingly.

“The feeling is mutual,” Oren muttered, turning away and shoving a hand through his hair.

“I couldn’t see or hear anything all balled up like that.”
Nix lifted off of my hand for a few seconds, testing its wings now that it wasn’t stuck imitating one of the dormant courier pigeons.
“This does not appear to be the optimal place to recover and regroup, however. Why are we wasting time in here?”

“We’re locked in,” I said, trying to remember that I was glad to see Nix. Even if it was infuriating beyond all belief.

“That ought to be no problem for you.”

“Too much iron,” I replied. “Not enough magic. I was trying to reach the pack, thinking I could steal some from the machines in there.” My breath caught. “Nix—can you fly out there and nudge them closer? If I can just get my hands on one, I think I could do it.”

“I can do better.”

Nix launched itself off my hand and buzzed out through the bars to land on the outside of the lock. Spidery little legs unfolded out of its body, the way they did when it was damaged and needed repairing. This time, however, they went skittering over the surface of the lock, darting inside, exploring, thorough. Nix’s round head disappeared inside the lock as well, and for a while the only sounds were the clicking of its spindly legs and the gears that made them move.

But then came a solid
thunk
. My heart leaped into my throat.

Nix backed out of the lock, half-stuck, tripping into the air. It staggered a bit, struggling to fly while managing far too many legs—but it finally succeeded in folding the extra legs away and zipped back to land on my shoulder.

Hand shaking, I reached out to touch the door.

It swung open.

• • •

The tunnels under the city were a maze as complex as the sewer system in my own city—but I hadn’t learned this system as a child at my brother’s side, didn’t know where each turning led. It was like being inside my dream again, only I didn’t know where to go, and I couldn’t feel my brother leading me through.

The place was lit at random intervals by tiny shards of magic contained in glass spheres, connected by glass filaments as finely crafted as any I’d seen in the Institute back home. The advanced craftsmanship was more than a little out of place in a sewer underneath the ruins of a cursed city.

Oren was sweating despite the chill. I knew he was suppressing the panic of being underground by sheer force of will—I couldn’t ask him to try and help me find our way out. He had been semiconscious at best when we were brought to the cell anyway. Nix had been even more blind and deaf. I’d been struck temporarily senseless by the presence of so much iron. The only one who would’ve had any chance of retracing our steps was Tansy—and she was gone.

Even in the quiet of my own thoughts, the word made me feel sick.
Gone.

I kept my hand in my pocket, fingers wrapped around my brother’s paper bird, as if somehow through it I could summon his competence and confidence. I chose paths at random, listening for the sounds of wind or the smell of fresh air, but instead the air grew more still, more quiet. I sensed we were moving downward, not upward, and the further we went, the warmer the air grew.

Despite my uncertainty, despite the fact that we were utterly lost, I felt myself breathing easier and standing straighter with every step. I was growing used to the iron supports in the stone around us. I’d stopped long enough to absorb some magic from the machines in Tansy’s pack, and I felt the power shimmering inside me like sunlight, intangible but no less real.

Twice we encountered people coming the opposite direction, but we were able to duck down a side tunnel and avoid being seen. The third time, however, came when we were walking down a long corridor without any branching tunnels. A man and a woman came around the corner unexpectedly, chatting. Oren hissed and I jumped, turning and treading on his feet as I tried to escape backward down a route that didn’t exist. He put his hands on my shoulders, steadying me, as Nix zipped inside the collar of my shirt.

I reached inside me for the bits of power I had left, ready to use it against them if I had to.
I’ve been in a prison twice now. I’m not going back.