Lark Ascending (2 page)

My hands ached, my lower back screaming a protest. I longed to move, but even so much as a tiny shift to relieve my sore muscles might give away my position. I had the advantage up here, in this tree—but moving would shake the branches, and the tiniest shiver of leaves would be all Oren needed to find me.

In a way, I was grateful for my discomfort. The pain grounded me, drove away the fragments of my dream that kept coming back, no matter how often I tried to dismiss them. The dreams came more often now, the closer I came to my home, to the city where I was born. They felt like memories, but of events that never happened. At least, not exactly. I'd been in those tunnels under the city, but I'd been trying to break into the school, not the Institute. I'd been caught by Gloriette, but not in the rotunda. Her smile had made my skin crawl too, but she was so young in this memory, so much younger than I remembered.

Unless—unless it had happened that way. Unless my memory was wrong, warped somehow by everything that had happened to me. Perhaps I was the one becoming twisted.

But this—this branch, its rough bark digging into my palms, carving deep impressions in the skin there—this was real. I tightened my grip.

A small, tinny sound prompted me to lift my head, slow and cautious. The buzzing grew louder, more familiar, and in spite of my aching body, I smiled.

“Anything?” I whispered as Nix winged in and lighted on my shoulder.

“He's moved off in the wrong direction,”
the pixie said smugly. “He lost your trail back by the river when you walked in the streambed.”

My heart surged with relief and no small amount of satisfaction. I'd outwitted
Oren,
the best tracker and hunter I'd ever met.

If Oren was headed for the wrong end of the copse we were in, that meant I could move. I straightened with a badly stifled moan for my cramped limbs. My jerky movements made the branch I was clinging to leap and shudder, and I was glad for Nix's scouting. I could sense the dark pit of shadow that was Oren when he was nearby, but once he got out of my immediate range, I had no way of tracking him.

Carefully I started climbing down the tree. I could double back to where he'd already searched for me—it'd take him hours to come back around again, and he didn't have that kind of time to waste. The second to last branch was about six feet off the ground, and I let myself down to dangle there.

Before I could drop to the leaf litter, a face melted out of the foliage—fierce blue eyes, and white teeth bared in a grin.

“Gotcha,” said Oren.

I shrieked and let go of the branch, landing heavily and rolling when I hit the ground. Dazed, but heart pounding, I started to scramble to my feet. A hand closed around my ankle.

“Oh, no you don't!” Oren gasped, dragging me back. “I found you—don't try to get out of this one!”

“Nix!” I screamed as the pixie danced around just beyond the reach of my grasp. “You little traitor!”

“You're too trusting of your allies!”
Nix called in a sing-song voice. It gave a little shiver of its wings—
laughing
at me.

“Do you yield?” Oren was laughing too, in that quiet, breathless way he had.

I made one last attempt to break free, but his grip was too tight. I went limp. “Fine,” I muttered. “You win.”

“Don't sulk,” Oren said, kneeling over me. “You came close that time.”

“I hope you know that I
could
get out of this,” I told him. “But you could get seriously hurt in the process.”

“Ah,” said Oren gravely. “Well, thank you for deigning to be captured, in that case.”

“Shut up.”

His grip relaxed, though he gave no sign of moving to let me up. “I was watching you back there,” he said idly. “I saw your face go blank—those dreams again?”

That he'd been there, watching me while I thought I was completely alone—his skill at camouflage, at using the forest as a tool, it never stopped amazing me. In the city Lethe, he'd been like a caged animal. Here he was free. Here he was home.

I nodded. “Or whatever they are. I can't get a moment's peace—it's all the time now, when I sleep, and even when I'm awake, bits and pieces come back to me constantly.”

“Nerves,” Oren suggested quietly. “Going back to your city, facing down the people who did this to you.”

“Maybe.” I gazed past him, up at the shards of blue sky scattered through the leafy treetops. Spring came as we traveled south from Lethe, leaving the last of the wintry frost behind. We'd needed only a few weeks to reach the outskirts of my home city, but here, in the south, the spring came quickly. The trees were alive with tender leaves and blossoms that shattered at a touch.

“Lark is ready,”
Nix said confidently.
“Lark can do it.”

“This is why we're training.” Oren reached out but stopped a few inches short of touching my cheek. He was so careful to avoid that touch, knowing the currents it sent through me, the reminder that his shadow was always there, draining my magic. The reminder of what he was. “Even in the city without a tree in sight, this is how you beat them. How you stay hidden, stay quicker than they are.”

His eyes were so earnest that I found my smile and nodded. How could I tell him that training my instincts and my reflexes wasn't going to make the difference in fighting the people who'd turned me into a monster? It was a different kind of strength I'd have to draw on there.

But the training helped in other ways—vented my nervous energy, gave me an outlet for my fears, distracted me from what was coming. Helped me trust my arm again, which I needed to get used to being healed, despite the way it ached still during the cold spring nights.

Oren leaned down, touching his lips to my hair. Even that touch, though he avoided brushing my skin, was enough to set my nerves shrieking. Something inside me responded to the monster in him, always. Though I longed to tilt my face back and let him kiss my lips, the rest of me shuddered away.

Then he lifted his head and pulled away, but not before I saw the darkened eyes, the brows drawn in, the not-so-hidden grief in his expression. My heart ached, and I concentrated instead on the magic, reaching out to find Nix as it flitted off through the forest.

Then I froze. Nix wasn't the only thing out there with magic.

“Oren,” I whispered. He sensed the urgency in my voice, his body going instantly rigid. “There's someone out there.

“Shadow?”

“No—human. Not a Renewable, but there's something. I can't tell—there's something strange about him. His magic is shielded somehow; I can't tell how far away he is. I think he's coming closer.”

“We'll hide. Quick, back up the tree.”

I wanted to groan a protest, but I knew it was the smartest course of action. We'd had few encounters with shadows on our way back due to our vigilance. They traveled in small packs, but when one pack found something worth chasing, their howls drew the others. Whatever was out there, if it found us and caused a ruckus, it could bring every shadow for miles sprinting straight for us.

Oren sprang to his feet and reached for my hand. But before I could take it, something leaped out of the undergrowth and swung at Oren's head. The impact knocked the breath out of me in sympathy—a huge branch had sent him sprawling with a grunt of pain.

“Oren!”

I kicked out, knocking whoever it was back into the brush. I sprinted for Oren's side, feeling for injuries with both hands. The shadow in him stirred at my touch, drawing greedily on the meager reserves of magic I held. Oren gave a soft, half-conscious groan when my fingers encountered wet, sticky blood in his hair. Something rustled behind me and I whirled, gathering my magic, ready if the thing in the brambles made a second attempt on him.

The bushes parted and a man ran out, still brandishing his branch. I readied a blast of magic, lifting my eyes to his face—

—and stopped.

I knew this man. His clothes were ragged and torn, revealing scratches on the skin underneath. The brown eyes were wild and desperate, and a dark, thick stubble had spread across his jaw and throat. But in the heat of the moment, I knew him.

“Kris?”
I gasped.

“Is it dead?” Kris rasped. He sounded as if he hadn't spoken for weeks. “Lark, get away from it—it could still hurt you—”

“Kris, what the—what are you
doing
here? This is Oren. This is—” My thoughts were so jumbled I could barely spit them out in the form of words. Abruptly I realized that Kris and Oren had never met, that the name would mean nothing to him.

“I thought it was a shadow,” mumbled Kris, the branch dipping until it rested on the ground. “It had you pinned, I thought—he looks like a shadow.”

Oren was stirring feebly, to my relief. I looked down at him, helping him sit up when he reached for my hand. He was as dirty as I was from weeks of travel, as fierce as ever, as though he hadn't spent all that time learning to control his ferocity in Lethe. If I didn't know him, and didn't know better, I might think he was a monster too.

And, of course, he was. But so was I.

“Kris.” I couldn't stop saying his name. “What are you doing out here?” Kris opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “Never mind—not now. Help me get Oren up. There's a stream a ways back, where we broke camp—let's get back there. You can tell me what's going on after we make sure you didn't just kill him.”

•  •  •

Though Kris tried to help me as I set camp back up again, he was absolutely useless. Eventually I made him sit still while I built up the fire—sitting on the
opposite
side from Oren, who was propped up against a dead log. Though Oren watched Kris in stony silence, holding a cold cloth, wet from the stream, against his head, Kris just huddled, shivering as though it was the dead of winter, watching me.

My mind raced with questions, making my fingers clumsy. But they still knew the trick of this, and I held my tongue until the fire could sustain itself. I put a metal bowl in next to the crackling wood, filling it with water to clean the gash on Oren's head once it was hot. I rinsed Oren's cloth in the stream, watching the blood dance through the water, then brought it back freshly sopping and cold. He took it, still silent, still watching Kris through narrowed eyes. I could feel his unasked questions behind that stare, but he was waiting.

Waiting for me.

I braced myself and turned to face Kris. He was so changed from the boy I remembered—gentle, handsome, charming. He looked older, but more than that, he looked frightened.

He was still staring at me, through me. When I looked at him he didn't even react—it wasn't until I nudged his leg with my foot that he started, blinking and refocusing on my face. I handed him the canteen and he grabbed at it, gulping down half the water inside before wiping his mouth with a rasp of his sleeve against the stubble on his face.

“Well?” I prompted him. I kept my voice gentle. This was the boy who'd betrayed me, who'd used me to lead the architects to the Iron Wood—but he'd also tried to save my life. And he looked as though he'd been through every trial I had, and worse.

He swallowed. “I don't know where to start. God, Lark, I've—” His hand moved, as if he'd started to reach out to me before his mind caught up with the impulse.

I glanced at Oren, who hadn't moved. “What are you doing out here? Why aren't you in the Institute with the other architects?”

“There is no more Institute.” Kris hugged the canteen to his chest as though it were all that stood between him and some abyss yawning before him.

My breath caught. “What do you mean?”

“The city's split in two—the Institute no longer controls it. Half the population is with the architects, behind the barricades. The other half is in open rebellion. It's all fallen apart, Lark.”

I stared at him, trying to imagine my precise, orderly city fallen to pieces. “I don't understand—what happened?”

“The attack on the Iron Wood took all our reserves. We expected to come back with all the power we'd ever need. We didn't expect—” He blinked at me, swallowing.

I knew what he meant. They hadn't expected
me.

“When we got back we had nothing,” Kris went on. “The Wall began to falter. People are panicking—word got out that the Institute was hiding a captive Renewable, accusations were flying everywhere. People found out about you, that you were a Renewable and ran away. At least, that's what they were told. I—” He closed his eyes. “I left the Institute to fight with the rebels. I told them what really happened, what the Institute did to you. They're on your side; they fight in your name. I couldn't stand what Gloriette was doing, the lengths she was willing to go.”

I reached out to lay a hand on Kris's arm, squeezing it. “But how did you end up out here?” I asked, still trying to absorb all that had happened since I'd defeated the army of machines as they marched on the Iron Wood.

“I was going for help. I volunteered to go—I'd been out here before, I knew how to use the storage crystals to fight the void.”

“But where—”

“The Iron Wood.” Kris stared at the fire. His face was thin, exhausted. “I thought that—well, my enemy's enemy is my friend. The Renewables there have every reason to hate the Institute, and maybe they'd help the resistance if they knew what was happening. I took the last stores of magic we had and went out, but they're gone. The Iron Wood is empty. Not a single Renewable, no trace.”

I glanced again at Oren, who met my gaze this time. We knew where the Renewables had gone—they'd gone to join my brother Basil, to seek refuge in Lethe from the architects of my city, in exchange for helping to sustain Lethe with their magic.

“But that doesn't matter.” Kris lifted his gaze, speaking in a whisper. “I've found something better.”