Shattering the Ley (9 page)

They stared at the tower as the crowd around them broke out into hushed conversation, some of the people scurrying away. Allan eyed them all warily, but no one approached the Wielders or the protective circle of Dogs that stood around Baron Arent and Augustus. Everyone’s attention appeared focused on the spire and the white light that burned within it.

Hagger gripped Allan’s shoulder and pushed him toward Daedallen. “Let’s go. We’re going to be busy in the next few weeks, what with the Kormanley and these subtowers to activate. There are still eleven more to go.”

Allan sighed. He had hoped to make it back to the barracks and Grass in time to catch Moira as she passed through the inner gardens on her way home from work in the Amber Tower. He had only seen her a few times since meeting her at the sowing, but he definitely wanted to see her again.

Hagger chuckled and shook his head, as if he knew why Allan had sighed, then growled, “Welcome to the Dogs, Pup.”

Kara felt the surge of power through her feet, energy tingling in her soles and sending shivers up her spine.

She halted dead in her tracks and turned, even as Cory and Justin gasped on either side of her. Cory grabbed her arm, so hard she winced, and pointed. “Look!”

From the street where they’d fled after seeing the Dogs, they could see one of the spires that had been grown nearly a week before. Eleven others had been grown throughout the city; she’d heard the hawkers talking about it in the market.

Now, the spire in Green glowed with an internal light, appearing cracked, like shattered flagstone. A steady light glared out of the top, like a fiery white star. Kara could feel the energies beneath her feet as they rearranged themselves, patterns shifting into new flows. The air tingled against her skin. She glanced toward the two other spires they could see from their location, but they remained empty.

She didn’t think they would stay that way for long. Whatever the Wielders were doing, it was progressing fast. Not even Ischua knew what the Prime Wielder was attempting, but he claimed it was because he was only a Tender.

When it became obvious that nothing else was going to happen with the spire, Kara pulled her arm from Cory’s grasp, rubbing the bruised flesh. She glared at him, saw him shrug in apology, then noticed that everyone else on the street had halted to watch the spire as well. They were close to home, only a few streets away. At the intersection ahead, a group of young mothers had been bathing their small children in the fountain, but now they stood in a small huddle, children on their hips, pointing toward Green. A merchant on horseback had halted as well and spoke to a group of younger men who stood nearby, all of them talking excitedly. One or two others had paused, but were now moving on their way again.

Then, abruptly, Kara said, “What’s that sound?”

Cory, who had begun chattering with Justin, quieted. “What sound?”

“That sound,” Kara said curtly. “Can’t you hear it?”

She grimaced as the high-pitched buzzing noise increased. At first, it had barely registered, more of an annoyance, like a bug flying too close to her ear. But as it increased, it steadied, became a high-pitched whine. Both Justin and Cory winced, Justin covering his ears with his hands. The adults on the street and in the intersection ahead suddenly turned and began searching for the source of the sound. A couple of the infants began crying. The mothers hushed them and bounced them up and down, then began hastily gathering up clothes and bags and toys. Out of the corner of her eye, Kara caught a flare of white light, nothing more than a candle’s flame. The sound escalated—

Then abruptly cut off.

Kara drew in a sharp breath and held it, turning toward where she’d seen the small flicker of light. It held there, hovering in midair, flaring once.

Before she could point it out to Cory or Justin, it collapsed in upon itself.

Tension bled through the air, caressing her skin. Pressure built as the adults glanced around, a few of the men shrugging, the women glaring uncertainly at nothing, lips pursed.

“Kara—” Cory began, fidgeting, reaching out toward her as if for reassurance.

And then the air before Kara wrenched and tore open.

She cried out and stumbled backward a step, throwing up a hand to ward away the small flare of color that bloomed where the light had been. It unfolded like a flower, arms of distortion swirling outward as it spun. It expanded until it was the size of an orange, small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, and then the coruscating arms of red and orange slowed and halted.

Kara lowered her arm, Cory breathing hard behind her, as if he’d just sprinted all the way from school to reach her. One of the men shouted in dismay and pointed, even though Kara, Cory, and Justin were far closer to the strange, colorful light than anyone else. Through the air, Kara could feel the wrongness of the light, even though it was beautiful. Like something the glasswrights would produce for one of their aristocratic patrons. Intrigued, Kara stepped toward it, reached out a hand as if to pluck it from the air, but she halted when Cory shouted, “Don’t!” Even without touching it, she could sense it, the air around it somehow brittle and cold, frozen like ice.

She shuddered.

“Don’t go near it!” the merchant commanded, riding forward on his horse and motioning everyone else back.

“What is it?” one of the mothers asked. A few of them had already fled from the fountain, but two remained behind. One of them ignored the merchant and stepped closer, eyes wide, hand half raised, as if enchanted by it, even as she kept her body canted to protect her little girl.

The merchant glared at her, then cast his frown on Kara, eyes glinting. But Kara saw a layer of fear beneath the glare. “I don’t know,” he said gruffly, “but someone should summon a Wielder. They’ll know what it is, and what to do about it.”

No one moved, and a moment later the strange distortion flared and pulled in upon itself, vanishing without a sound.

Someone exhaled harshly, as if they’d been holding their breath the entire time. The mother sighed in disappointment. The merchant’s horse stamped its foot and snorted as its rider frowned down at where the flare of colorful light had been.

Kara turned to face Cory, his face creased in confusion and worry.

“What was it?” he asked, as if Kara would have the answer.

She shook her head. “Let’s get out of here before the Dogs or Wielders show up.”

“W
HERE ARE WE GOING?”
Cory asked breathlessly. He was trotting to keep up with Kara as she led them through Eld’s marketplace, Justin trailing behind doggedly. Justin’s eyes kept flicking toward the crowds of hawkers and customers, head bowed, brow furrowed deep with concern. She could almost feel him vibrating with tension without even glancing back, a strange counterpoint to her own excitement.

“The ley station,” she answered.

Cory paused, startled, then rushed to catch up. “Why are we going there? We aren’t allowed to take the ley barges, not without our parents along. We aren’t even supposed to leave Eld.”

Kara didn’t answer, focused on pushing through the crowd, cutting between a stall selling colorful shawls from the Gorrani Flats to the south and a man with a blanket spread on the market’s flagstones to display crude pottery. But Cory snagged her arm on the far side, forcing her to halt. Justin sidled up behind them, standing closer than he normally did, ignoring them as he scanned the flow of people behind them.

“Where are we going, Kara?”

She could hear the anger that had edged Cory’s voice since she’d told him she’d be leaving for the Wielders’ school. She hated it—it set her teeth on edge and made the skin at the nape of her neck crawl—but she didn’t know what to do or say to Cory to make it go away.

So when she answered, her tone was curt. “We’re going to the Eld ley station. I heard they’re activating one of those subtowers in Shadow today.” When Cory’s eyes widened with the same excitement she’d felt since that morning—when she’d planned their escape from her father, who thought she and Cory were headed down to the riverfront—all of her annoyance with Cory’s tone fled. She grinned. “I wanted it to be a surprise, but we’re going to go see it! I’ve got three passes for the barges and three more to get back. The subtower is supposed to be lit this afternoon, so we have to hur—”

“Wait. Shadow?” Cory barked. “You want to go to Shadow? That’s three districts away! And my father says there’s nothing there but thieves and cutthroats, as bad as Eastend. He won’t even deliver candles to that area!”

Kara rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “It can’t be that bad. Besides, we missed the subtowers being activated in Green and Hedge. All of the rest are too far away. This is the only chance we’ll get to see one.”

Cory chewed on his lower lip, glancing toward Justin as he wavered.

“We’ll be fine,” she said in exasperation, drawing his attention away from Justin by catching his arm and pulling him toward the next row of stalls, tents, and blankets. “We’ll hop on the ley barge, get off in Shadow, see the subtower get lit—it’s practically being raised in the middle of Shadow’s ley station—and then climb back onto the barge and head home. No one in Shadow will even know we’re there.” And hopefully no one in Eld would find out where they’d gone.

Whatever resistance Cory still had left vanished. Keeping Justin in sight, Kara and Cory snaked through the press of people in the market, then passed into the less dense side streets of Eld, where they trotted through the narrow alleys and back gardens until they reached the stone steps that led up to the open doors of the ley station and entered the huge mezzanine beyond. All three of them stood stunned beneath the arching pillars carved like tree trunks and the interlaced branches etched into the ceiling, but the awe didn’t last. They crossed the smooth marble floor to the tunnels leading down to the ley lines and barges below, Kara handing over three chits as they passed down into the platforms.

“Where do we go?” Cory asked.

They were huddled, backs to one wall, people moving back and forth before them in a riot of activity. Kara licked her lips in uncertainty, but before she could answer a piercing whistle cut through the room and made her jump. A moment later a ley barge pulled up alongside the platform where they stood and a man in a gray uniform trimmed with weathered gold shouted, “Mainline—Leeds, Light, Shadow, and Reach!”

“That one,” Kara said, then pushed forward as those waiting on the platform made for the doors.

But Justin suddenly shouted, “Wait!”

Both Cory and Kara turned; Cory spoke first. “What’s wrong, Justin? You’ve been acting weirder than usual all day.”

“That man,” Justin said. He shifted nervously, not looking at either of them, but at the surge of people around them. He stepped closer, his voice dropping. “He’s back. He’s been following us since the market. Following
me
.”

Kara shared an annoyed glance with Cory. “Where is he now, Justin?”

Justin pointed with certainty. “Right there, leaning in that doorwa—”

Justin’s eyes went wide.

“Let me guess,” Cory said, his voice dry. “He’s no longer there.”

“Oh, no,” Justin said, and Kara felt a tendril of fear slipping beneath her irritation at the raw panic in those two words. Justin inched closer toward them. “No, no, no.” He sucked in a noisy breath. “Where’d he go?”

Now Cory rolled his eyes. “Come on, Justin. He’s not there. And we need to catch this barge if we want to see the subtower!”

“Cory’s right,” Kara said, her words harsher than she’d intended. But most of the people had already disembarked and others were filing onto the barge. Only a few remained on the platform. “We need to go. The doors are going to close!”

Cory grabbed Justin’s shoulder and pushed him toward the barge, Kara sprinting out ahead of them. The doors nicked Justin and he stumbled into Cory and Kara with a wild cry. The barge was crowded, none of them able to move far from the door, but then it lurched into motion and Kara felt her entire body humming—from the anticipation of seeing the subtower lit and the stream of ley beneath them.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Cory said under his breath.

Kara shot him a warning glare—there were too many adults around—but couldn’t keep a grin from breaking out as she steadied herself against the wall.

The barge stopped in Leeds, people shoving their way to the door to exit, others piling on. Cory and Kara were pushed to one side, Justin to the other, and Kara’s heart leaped as she lost sight of him. But as the barge began moving again, Justin squeezed closer, taking advantage of his shorter size. At the stop in Light, more people exited than entered and Kara felt she could breathe again, the air not so close and tight. Cory broke out into animated conversation about nothing, not expecting a response, and her own excitement built as the barge headed toward Shadow.

Cory was still talking when they spilled out onto the platform at their stop, his hands waving in punctuation. They trotted toward the tunnels leading up to the mezzanine, Kara in the lead, when she suddenly realized that Cory had fallen silent.

“What’s wrong, Cory? Finally run out of breath?” she asked as she turned . . . only to find Cory twenty paces behind her, stock still, his eyes wide in horror. Something hard filled Kara’s throat, wiping the smile from her face. She swallowed the sensation down and ran back to Cory’s side. “What’s wrong? Why did you stop—?”

But then she realized and a pit opened up in her stomach, her legs going weak. She reached out for Cory, eyes scanning the tunnel behind them, what little of the platform she could see beyond.

“Where’s Justin?” she asked, and her voice sounded hollow to her, removed and far away.

“He was right behind me,” Cory said, voice cracking. “I know he got off the barge.”

“Then where is he?” Kara snapped. She began moving down the tunnel, her pace increasing until she burst out onto the platform and spun, trying to search in all directions at once. The barge was gone. Almost everyone had departed, the platform empty except for a few stragglers, two men in station uniforms who looked bored, and a man asleep on one of the many benches against the walls to one side. Kara turned around twice, the pit in her stomach widening, then locked gazes with Cory.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” Cory said.

“He has to be here,” Kara said flatly, anger seething up from deep down. “Look down to the right, I’ll look left.”

Cory nodded and headed right. Kara moved left, jogging, scanning behind the few columns and searching the benches. But she knew even before she reached the edge of the platform that she wouldn’t find him. As she turned back, she found it harder and harder to breathe. At the far end of the platform, Cory shrugged.

“He has to be here,” she whispered to herself as they closed. Except she knew that wasn’t true. Justin had warned them time and again, since that first time when he’d told them of the man watching him outside of the school. When Justin hadn’t been able to point the man out, she’d decided Justin was being . . . well, Justin. Odd. Weird.

But now, all of his warnings echoed in her head, including earlier at the Eld station. She heard the terror in his voice when he realized the man had vanished and it clawed at her chest.

“He’s not down there,” Cory said as they met before the tunnel.

“Not on my side either.”

Cory’s eyes were filled with panic, with the same hollow fear and knowing Kara felt churning inside herself.

“You don’t think it was . . . that man he’s always talking about?” Cory asked. “Do you?”

Kara scowled, even though that’s exactly what she thought. “He must have passed us somehow. He’s probably up in the mezzanine.”

Cory looked doubtful but followed her up the tunnel and out into the mezzanine, a less artful and much dirtier version of the one in Eld. The high windows were yellowed with dust, the stone columns gritty with blackened edges, the stone flags of the floor cracked. They searched the mezzanine for twenty minutes, Kara becoming increasingly frantic, until Cory caught her wrist and said, “The station guards are starting to notice.”

She glanced toward the two guards in gray uniforms conferring with each other near the mezzanine’s entrance. One of them motioned toward Kara, then they both turned, their faces lined with suspicion.

“We should tell them.”

Kara spun. “We can’t! They wouldn’t believe us. And we aren’t supposed to be here anyway.” Her throat closed up and she had to swallow twice to continue. “They probably think we’re pickpockets . . . or worse.” She suddenly felt the taint of Shadow weighing down on her—all of the rumors, her father’s warnings about leaving Eld. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

“What are we going to do?” Cory demanded. His fingers dug into her skin. “We can’t just leave him.”

Kara glanced around again, noticed one of the station guards heading toward them. She grabbed Cory’s hand and dragged him back toward the tunnel. “He must have gotten back on the barge, headed back to Eld. He’s probably already home.”

She didn’t believe it, knew Cory didn’t either. They used two of the ley tickets and boarded the barge when it arrived in silence, Kara casting one last longing, hopeful glance down Shadow’s platform. But she saw nothing and the doors closed.

When they disembarked in Eld, they searched the platform and mezzanine, but found nothing.

Kara stood outside the ley station’s doors, staring at the wide steps, Cory beside her. Her eyes burned with tears now, and her nose felt clogged and thick.

“We need to tell our parents about Justin,” she muttered, voice weak.

Cory fidgeted beside her. “Maybe he’ll be at school tomorrow. Maybe we should wait and see?”

“Maybe,” she said. But she didn’t believe it. Why would Justin go without saying anything?

But when they arrived home, Cory dashing off to his own door with a wide-eyed glance backward, Kara halted. What if Cory was right? Justin hadn’t wanted to go to Shadow in the first place, and Justin had always been different. He
could
have bolted and run home.

When she pushed open the door, her father turned from his work on a clock and smiled. For a moment, Kara felt the rush of warmth she’d always felt when returning home and finding her father at work, but then her father’s smile faltered.

The wall that had formed between them since they’d visited Ischua at Halliel’s Park returned.

Kara stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

“What’s wrong? Where have you been?”

Kara’s breath caught in her throat. “Nowhere. We were . . . we were at the market, playing Thistle Snatch.”

Her father met her gaze and held it. “What happened?” he repeated.

She drew breath to tell him about taking the barge to Shadow, about Justin, but in the end she simply said, “The Dogs showed up. They were harassing one of the hawkers. So we left.”

Her father relaxed, the smile returning. But it still wasn’t like before.

He motioned her forward and hugged her tight, holding her close and then pushing her back to look at her, hands on her upper arms. “You let the Dogs bother you too much. They’re simply doing their job, protecting the Baron—and us. I’m certain they had a good reason to go after the vendor.”

He squeezed her arms, then sighed and rumpled her hair before turning back to the clock. “You should finish your schoolwork.”

Her gaze slid to the gears and other pieces spread out across the black cloth of the table. “I could help,” she said, hope tingeing her voice as guilt seized her chest. Even from where she stood, she could see what needed to be done next.

But her father shook his head. “I’ve got it. Your schoolwork is more important.”

But Kara knew what he truly meant. He hadn’t asked her to help him with the clocks since speaking to Ischua, because after the Wielders came for her, she wouldn’t be working on clocks. Unlike Cory, she wouldn’t be taking over from her father. Or her mother.

Her father leaned over his work, intent on fitting the next piece into position. He’d already forgotten her. She shifted into the kitchen, where vegetables roasted in a low simmer in the heated ley oven, the hearty scent making her stomach growl. She stirred them, the juices in the bottom of the pot already thickening. She cut a slice of bread from the loaf on the sideboard, dipped it in the sauce, and ate it as she settled into one of the kitchen chairs, staring out into the outer room. The bread had no taste, and didn’t help the empty feeling in her stomach. She didn’t realize she was waiting for her father to start humming until she ate the last of the bread and it was still silent; she suddenly realized he hadn’t hummed while working since they’d visited the park.