The Fifth City (25 page)

Thirty Nine

Neve awoke with a start—Ember was in her room, shaking her awake.  She nearly fell off the small window-side bed before she could stop herself.

She had been living in Sylvia’s room since she and Falcon had made it to Meadowcity.  By Ember’s wild hair and wide eyes, Neve could tell something was wrong.  She leapt out of bed.

“What is it?” she hissed, as she gathered a sweater she had tossed on the floor last night and bundled herself up.

“They’re back,” Ember explained.  “The Defenders who went to Lightcity.”

“Alright—but what are you panicking about?”

“I think there’s something wrong.  There’s a lot of people with them.  We should go.”

Neve found her shoes and slipped her feet into them, a hint of dread boiling in her stomach, but she asked, “Go where?”

“The gate.”

She followed the girl without a word.  As they ran through the city, jogging down the stone paths and finally the wooden perimeter path, Neve’s dread grew, swelling her chest painfully. 

Something’s wrong, something’s wrong.

The words pounded in her head with the timing of her footfalls.

When they approached the gate, Ember headed for the nearest ladder so they could look out from the parapet.  But there was no need.  With a monstrous groan, one of the doors to Meadowcity’s treegate swung open with the gatekeepers’ effort.

Neve followed Ember, rushing to meet the men and women entering the city.  A small crowd had gathered at the courtyard in front of the gate.

“What’s happened?” Ember demanded.

At the head of the returners, a young Hunter with a bow slung across his back stopped in front of the crowd.  Anguish was clear on his face.

“Lightcity is…gone.  It’s been destroyed.”

Neve stopped breathing.

If Ember hadn’t grabbed her by the arms, she would have collapsed to the ground.  The redhead held her, but hastily waved over the leaders of the group with her other hand.

The Hunter and his short-haired friend came over, avoiding the bombardment of questions from the rest of the crowd.

“What happened,” Ember hissed between closed teeth.

Neve just stared at the group of travelers pouring in through the gate behind the Defenders.  Lightcity.  Was this all that remained of her home?

She immediately thought of her uncle, and the pathetic goodbye note she had left.  She whimpered and closed her eyes.

“Not now,” the short haired boy replied harshly.

“Help me, will you?”

“Who’s this?”

Neve jerked out of her daze momentarily, wondering what they were talking about.  Then she realized it was her.  Standing was no longer something she could do.  The Hunter lifted her up under one shoulder, and Ember the other, and together they headed toward the Citizen’s Hall.

The four of them entered, and the Hunter had several tense words with the man at the desk inside.  In a blur, they were led to Gero’s office.

“What happened
?” Ember repeated when a pale-faced Gero let them in.

Neve slumped into a chair, her mind going numb.

The short-haired boy looked to the Hunter, who remained quiet, then spoke.  “Sylvia wasn’t there.  A glassworker told us she left for the fifth city a long time ago.  So we decided to do something against Greyling—something that would disable him.”

“We were moving the orbs.  Some Scouts interfered,” he explained haltingly.

“We gathered everyone we could after the explosions.”

Explosions
.  The word burrowed into Neve’s brain.

All her fault.  Again.  The orbs—would it always come back to her and her stupidity?  The orbs she had created had now destroyed her home, and all those who lived there.  She sunk into her chair and Ember kindly put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her tightly.  If anyone knew what it was like to have their home defiled, Ember did.

The others conversed in short, terse sentences, but none of it made it past Neve’s ears anyway. The question on the tip of her tongue burned, but she knew asking it would make it real.  How quickly could her world fall apart?  She bit her lip.

“Is my uncle with you?” she mumbled, not daring to look at the Hunter.  She could see death in his eyes.

Ember jumped in, “Ven, this is Neve—she traveled with Sylvia from Lightcity—”

“You mean Harry?” the short-haired boy interrupted.

Neve shot up in her chair, “Yes! Harry Stoughton?” her nerves buzzed like the electric shock in Seascape.  Was it possible her stupidity hadn’t gotten her uncle killed?

“He’s with us—he’s alive,” the boy gushed, perhaps eager to dole out some good news. 

Neve closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead, a weary smile forming at her lips as warm tears fell down her cheeks.  Then she jumped up and turned for the door, wondering where the refugees had gone.

“I’m sorry,” Neve said.  “I have to go—”

She looked to Ember, who silently asked her if she was okay.  She bobbed her head in agreement before rushing out of the office.  They could talk of Lightcity’s destruction without her.  All she wanted was her uncle, her family.

In the hallway, she could hear loud voices coming from a room to the right.  She bounded down the corridor and skidded into the room.  She darted through the crowd, searching, studying every face until she found him.

“Uncle!” she cried, slamming into him with a tight hug.

“N—Neve?”

Hot tears were streaming down her face, and she wiped them on her sleeve as she pulled away.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, a rare smile on his face.  “I thought you went to the fifth city?”

“I—I came back to deliver a message.  But what happened, I heard there was an explosion—”

He sighed, taking her into a hug again.  “It’s a long story, Neve.”

Forty

After the third task, Sylvia and Atlan spent every afternoon together.  They whiled away their days before the final task by taking walks to the next village, or just lying in the grass in their clearing in the woods, staring up at the sky.  They hadn’t locked the door to her suite, but she didn’t have the urge to wander the castle alone anymore.

The first thing she had done when she saw Atlan after her collapse was ask about Lightcity.  She would never forget watching the explosion repeat over and over in the observation room.  It had even begun to appear in her dreams.

Atlan told her all he knew.  It had happened the same night as their second Trial, as they were climbing the cliffs.

He had seen the vids, he said, because he had figured out the controls to the looking-glass in his room.  One of the bird-drones had been destroyed in the explosion, but not before capturing the vid of what happened.  Atlan said a group of people were trying to move large stores of something—all of Lightcity’s bombs, Sylvia figured—but the Scouts had come along and a fight broke out.  One of the Scouts had been using an orb to threaten the rebels, but somehow it ended up getting thrown in the air, and hit the bombs, setting off the chain reaction of explosions that tore the city apart.

It broke Sylvia’s heart.  The Four Cities were now three.

She couldn’t help but blame Greyling—for creating the bombs, for forcing innocent people to craft them, and for his selfish plans to conquer.  She was determined to stop him.  And what made the tragedy at Lightcity even worse was it had been inadvertently caused by people trying to help liberate the city.

There was truly nothing she could do about Lightcity while in Seascape, except mourn those who had called the city of light home, and do her best on the final task to finally gain Lady Naomi’s help.

Arcera had been a peaceful and wonderful home all her life; though the wilds were full of dangerous paths often prowled by wolves and mountain lions.  But Greyling and his men had ruined everything.

Lightcity was destroyed, Riftcity enslaved, and Sylvia harbored a constant worry that Meadowcity would be next.  They were lucky their stolen stash of orbs had held off the Scouts this long.  They just needed to wait a little longer, and Sylvia would return with help from Seascape once she finished the Trials.

Atlan could offer no hints at what the final task would be.  He admitted that most of the initiates had known beforehand what the previous trials were, or at least had a general idea, since it was common for their families to give a little extra help, even though it was against the rules. 

But no one spoke of the last Trial, which scared Sylvia even more.  They could do nothing to prepare.

During their afternoons in the sun, he filled her in on the ranking system, which she had been oblivious to until now.  She had no access to the vids available to the islanders, which apparently offered insight into the progress of the trials so that all of Seascape could see what this next generation was capable of. 

Sylvia figured Lady Naomi wanted to keep her in the dark; either to protect some of Seascape’s precious secrets, or just to unnerve Sylvia.

Then he told her how at the third Trial, Thea Dorhni had called out the initiates in order of their current standing, starting at the top.  Sylvia’s jaw had dropped.  She had been third.  No wonder she had gotten dirty looks from some of the others.

The last Trial would determine Sylvia’s next move.  The startling realization that she would be leaving Seascape in less than a week had hit her like a blow to the stomach.

Only two days before the Trial found Sylvia and Atlan in their usual clearing in the woods, laying head to head in the soft grass.

“They’ve been talking about your tapestry, you know,” he said.

Sylvia stared up at the sky, cloudless for once.  “Who’s they?”

“The other initiates, some people in the castle.  They say Thea was very impressed.”

She scoffed.  This
they
couldn’t be very trustworthy.

“What did it look like, anyway?” he prodded.

She laughed and heard him move, flipping onto his stomach to face her.  Suddenly his face was hovering directly over hers, upside down.  She stopped laughing at once, and her heart felt as if it were trying to escape her chest.  She wondered if he was going to kiss her again.  She beamed at the thought of it.

“It was Meadowcity—the treegate,” she murmured.  “The sides were the gate trees, and up top, the leaves.  The center was gold for the sunset, and there was the path that led inside.”

Atlan’s face creased.  “You did the whole thing?”

Sylvia pulled out from under him and flipped onto her stomach to look at him straight on.  “Weren’t we supposed to?”

He put his hand over his mouth as he chuckled.  “They don’t expect you to do the
whole thing
.  It’s
supposed
to be your first try.”

“But what about the tapestries in the corridor?” she protested.

“Those don’t happen in an hour,” he said, incredulous, then looked at her sideways, “well, maybe some.”

Sylvia flopped back onto the grass, and Atlan followed suit, this time laying beside her.

“You’re probably first now.  No wonder you were out so long.  That must have been a lot of work.”

Sylvia’s insides wriggled a little, but she kept her face neutral.  It had actually seemed easy after she had figured out how to do it.  But the headache and the recovery afterward were hard to forget.

“Maybe that’s why Lady Naomi postponed her meeting with me,” she mused.

“What meeting?”  He turned to face her, on his side.  She did the same.

“About whatever help she’ll be giving me after I complete the Trials, I hope.”

His expression shifted, and he said, “When are you…leaving?”

Her heart sunk.  She could already see the pain in his face, though he tried not to show it, and it made her want to reach out and take his hand.  When had they grown so close?

“I’m not sure.  It all depends on what happens after the Trials.”

Atlan reached across the grass and took her hand firmly in his, like he had read her mind.  It was warm and strong, and it felt like his hand had been made to hold hers, it was just right.  She sighed.

She was really going to miss Seascape.

*   *   *

The next day, the day before the final task, Lady Naomi finally called her to tea.  Sylvia answered her door with a grin, jubilant to see Medina again, until she had a sudden realization that this might be the last time she saw the woman. 

The Rider watched as Medina transformed a plain datawoven dress into a gold and green creation—the two colors complemented each other in a wide swirl that led up the garment.  The sleeves were barely there: a thin strap on each side, with a soft fluttering of fabric that brushed her shoulders.  As always, Medina made her look beautiful.  It was hard to believe that she would be leaving this wonderful place in only a few days.

Medina seemed to be thinking the same thing as Sylvia.  Before the Rider left for tea, Medina looked her in the eye and told her, “I’ll be here when you get back, and tomorrow, for the Trial.  Don’t worry,” she said with a slight smile.

Sylvia gave the woman a sad smile and slipped out the door to join Oliver, her escort as usual.  A mix of emotions was cycling through her, and had been since yesterday with Atlan.  It was really hitting her now that her stay in Seascape was coming to an end.  She had been here almost a month and a half.

At times she was excited for the final Trial—if no one truly could prepare for it, then she was sure it was something she could handle, or at least this time it would be a fair test.  But she also felt sad at the prospect of leaving the strange island.  She would even miss Oliver.

A guilt-invoking idea had even occurred to her last night—what if she could stay in Seascape a little longer, and not have to face the war yet?  The burden for the Four Cities was heavy on her shoulders, and the past few weeks had been an amazing—albeit strange—experience.  She had seen and learned things that she could never have imagined possible.

  But she couldn’t do that to her family, to Meadowcity, and especially to those who had given their lives in Lightcity.  She was ashamed she even had the idea.

Tea was the usual affair with a luxurious assortment of baked delicacies, and a steaming pot of tea, all set upon a tray on the spindly table.

Lady Naomi sat resplendent in her indoor garden, her long black hair pinned up on her head to reveal her long neck, adorned with red and black jewels that matched her gown.  The dress was by far the most exquisite one Sylvia had seen on the Lady yet.  Bunches of deep red fabric fell to the floor, and the neckline swooped from shoulder to shoulder, loose in the middle.  Sylvia sat down in awe of the decadent attire, but still felt a little silly, as if they were playing pretend.

The Lady grinned at her with her usual feline grace.  Sylvia smiled politely back and accepted the tea the Lady offered.

“You did well at the third task,” Lady Naomi remarked, before delicately sipping out of her teacup.

“Thank you,” Sylvia replied.  The Lady’s eyes were exactly like Atlan’s.  Her stomach fluttered.

“I have a proposal for you.”

Sylvia raised an eyebrow and put down her tea.

“In addition to our original agreement,” Lady Naomi waved her hand reassuringly, interpreting Sylvia’s expression correctly.  Sylvia had thought the Lady was about to go back on her bargain.

“You have shown quite an aptitude for Seascape’s technologies.  The speed at which you grew to grasp them, the work itself…” The Lady drew a deep breath through her nose.  “I would like to invite you to reside here and work in the castle, once you complete the final Trial, that is.”

Sylvia jerked her head in surprise, but the Lady continued.

“Your work in the third Trial shows a high capacity for manipulating data.  Transforming the appearance of the datastrands is a similar process to manipulating the data itself—we call it coding.  You would be perfect for it.”

“But what about the Four Cities?” Sylvia blurted.  A small ember of hope and excitement had blossomed in her chest.  She tried her best to quash it.

The Lady waved her hand again, as if swatting a fly.  “My dear, the war will end eventually—soon perhaps.  And then you will need another adventure, am I wrong?”

Sylvia’s cheeks warmed.  “So, what, you want me to come back after the war is over?”

“I think you can find more than one reason to return to Seascape.”  Again, the grin.

“But—But what about the help you promised, after I complete the Trials?”

Sylvia’s heart was pounding.  She could come back to Seascape.

“As promised.  We will discuss the details after tomorrow.”