Lark Ascending (23 page)

I wanted to scream at her, to dig beneath that calm exterior the way I had this afternoon. I wanted to force her to show what she really was. “Fine,” I said shortly. “You're right, I was after your magic.”

“I wish you could see that we're the same,” Eve whispered, her gaze infinitely sad. “We're sisters, you and I. Connected. If you let me, I could cure you. I'd keep you safe when the others are no longer necessary. I could make you whole.”

“I
am
whole!” I burst out. “I don't need curing. The Institute did this to me, but it's part of what I am now.” The words startled me even as they flew from my lips. It was one thing not to want Eve to cure me. It was another not to want to be cured. “I'm not looking for help.”

Eve's expression hardened as I spoke, like water crystallizing slowly across a lake's surface. “And when you realize you're drowning? What will you do then?”

“I'm not drowning. I never
was
. I need my darkness.” I gasped for breath, listening to my own voice speak truths I hadn't stopped to admit myself. “My darkness, my light—I need them both. They're what give me strength.”

“False strength,” Eve countered. “Hollow faith and hope. You'll see.”

I shook my head. “No. You're wrong. And if you try to harm this city, I'll stop you.”

Eve never took her eyes from my face. I could feel her gaze, slow-burning and heavy, as though she was memorizing my features. “You have only the power you can scrape from those around you, nothing of your own. How would you do anything to me?”

“If I have to, I'll kill you,” I said quietly.

While I watched, her lips curved into a slow, secret smile. “Won't that be an interesting day.”

I could feel her thoughts, amusement and grief warring with the anger and the pain that was already there. She didn't know whether to laugh at my threat or mourn our tattered connection. I felt the blow as deeply; we
were
tied, bonded together by our shared experiences, by the magic that had made us what we were. I felt her rage and her agony as tangibly as my own, mingling with my own grief. She was lost, beyond my help. And as clearly as I knew that we
would
face each other one day, I also knew that day wasn't today. Not yet. Right now we were still on the same side.

But for how long?

•  •  •

I found Kris with Tamren when I returned to the Hub. As I drew closer I heard the architect-turned-rebel describing what he had encountered on his way to the Iron Wood and how to deal with the hazards beyond the Wall. I kept silent, listening. The way I'd handle the hazards was completely different—and useless for Tamren, who didn't have my abilities. Of all the people equipped to advise Tamren, Kris was perhaps the best choice.

Kris noticed me after a few moments, catching my eye. I nodded, placing a hand over the crystal that hung from my neck, still burning a hole against my skin. It felt tainted, uncontrollable, as wild and dangerous as Eve herself. But someone as untrained as Tamren—I doubted he'd even be able to feel its warmth, much less detect anything off about it. And magic was magic. It would do.

I let Kris finish his lecture, and then the three of us headed out to the entrance Tamren used to guard. It was still blocked by the cave-in I'd caused, but Tamren claimed he knew a way around it, learned during his long nights spent guarding the entrance. I gave him the crystal, which he eyed dubiously. I knew he couldn't sense the magic inside, so to him it seemed little more than a piece of ugly jewelry.

I promised him it would keep him safe, then crouched down with a bit of recycled paper liberated from the Hub. While Kris held the lantern overhead, I sketched out a map.

“The first time I went to Lethe,” I explained, “I went there via the Iron Wood, which is to the west of us.” I pointed to a blank space off to one side. “But Lethe is north, making the third point in a sort of triangle. There's no need for you to go to the Wood, so you'll go straight north.”

“Is there really a sun out there like ours?” Tamren asked, eyes flicking from Kris's face to mine. “To tell me what direction I'm going?”

I nodded. “But it's much brighter. You'll get sunburned like I did, so try to stay under the trees as much as you can.”

“Burned?” Tamren stared at me.

“Not like with a fire. It itches more than hurts. You'll be fine, I promise.” I had to fight irritation and impatience. “Kris told you about the shadows?”

Tamren nodded, face draining a little more of its color. “Yes.”

“Stay by water as much as you can. Crossing it will confuse your scent. Avoid making fires, but if you must, dig a pit down into the earth so its light doesn't go far. And cover it back up in the morning.”

Tamren hefted his pack, which was laden with tools: a knife, some cord for building shelters, extra socks, a makeshift hat for the sun, a flask of water. He was infinitely better prepared than I had been, stumbling through the wall with only the clothes on my back and not even a pair of shoes. And yet my heart lurched as I looked at him. No amount of preparation would really, truly
prepare
him.

But this was war. I hardened my heart and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “You'll be fine. Just follow the map and stay away from the shadows. I know you can do this.”

Tamren swallowed. “I'll do my best,” he said, in what he no doubt thought was a strong, firm voice. But he only sounded younger, voice cracking on the final syllable.

He turned and knelt down by what seemed to be a bit of crumbling brickwork, but turned out to be a hole barely big enough for him to crawl into. He gave me one last look, then wriggled through, vanishing into the darkness beyond.

I couldn't stop staring at the tiny hole until Kris came up behind me and took my hand, gently turning me and leading me away.

“He'll be fine,” Kris said in my ear. “You sent the right person.”

“I know,” I said grimly. “But that doesn't make me feel any better. Even if he succeeds and brings the entirety of Lethe's Renewable population here—” I tried to imagine the carnage that would occur once both sides had fearsome weapons, and my mind refused to picture it.

“We should get back to the Hub before Caesar begins to wonder where we are.”

“Or what we're up to.” But it was not my brother's fury I feared, not anymore. When I closed my eyes, it was a different rage altogether that I felt, slowly burning away my reservations, crowding in at the edges of my mind. I felt only the sea, and the spray, and the coming storm.

Oren joined us for dinner, and but for the thick tension stiffening his spine, it was the closest thing to normal that I'd felt in a long time. Myrah sat with us after serving us our evening rations of mush, taking a break to eat her own dinner. My mind was still reeling from all that had happened during the day, so I was content to listen to her telling stories about the ways people tried to get around food restrictions. Even Oren seemed to be listening to her, and Kris laughed from time to time, and I felt almost normal with Nix humming lightly against my neck.

That is, until my ear caught something unusual. “Wait—what was that, Myrah?”

Everyone turned to look at me, as though they'd forgotten I was there. Myrah recovered first. “One of the missing people was found.”

In the midst of everything, I'd nearly forgotten the reason Caesar gave for moving up our plans, that missing people meant potential captures and information leaks. I'd half dismissed it as a lie meant to excuse sending me off on my fool's errand.

“Found where? Who was it?”

“Sorsha, one of the guards. They pulled her out of the reservoir.”

“She was dead?” The bottom fell out of my stomach. Nix's humming by my ear had stilled, and I knew it was listening too. If pixies had gotten inside again, undetected, there was no telling what damage they could do.

Myrah nodded, utterly sober now that conversation had shifted. “They're saying she drowned herself. If only she had lasted one more day, she could have seen today's victory, and maybe that would have given her hope.”

She went missing after Oren's encounter with Eve, so there was no chance that she was there when we were, and we'd missed it. Still, I found myself looking across the table at Oren, who was staring hard at his food, his scowl returned.

Kris had stopped eating and was gazing at Myrah. “That doesn't make sense,” he said slowly. “Sorsha was fine a few days ago. No sign she was even unhappy, much less so depressed she'd want to kill herself.”

Myrah just shrugged sadly. “You never can tell. I see it sometimes with the older people down here. Eventually they just stop eating, decide they're done. They're often peaceful, almost happy with their decision. You don't know what's going on in a person's heart.”

I glanced at Kris, who was still frowning. He wasn't convinced, and neither was I. Even Nix made a disparaging sound of disbelief for my ears only. The rebels were hardly well-organized. It'd be exceedingly easy for the Institute to slip a spy into their ranks. If Sorsha had figured something out, it'd be the work of a moment to lure her away from the others and stop her from exposing the mole. Or—if that dark little tendril of thought was right—it would have been easy for my brother to kill her, turn her into a martyr for his cause.

I wanted to find out where Sorsha's body was now and examine it for signs that my suspicions were correct. But before I could ask, a commotion at the other end of the Hub interrupted me. A clatter of dishes shattered the general convivial atmosphere, and a ripple of gasps and confusion spread outward, consuming the cavern. Voices rose, then erupted into a chorus of coughs and, increasingly, screams. I lurched to my feet, tangled in the bench bolted to the stone, and saw that the air at the other end of the cavern seemed thicker, hazier. People were running our way, covering their faces with their shirts and their napkins.

“Gas,” I choked, stumbling backward. Something acrid tingled in my nose, and I tried to hold my breath. Nix launched itself from my shoulder, screeching an alarm.

Oren just stared, confused—he'd never seen such a thing before, not in the wild. But Kris reacted instantly, hauling off his torn shirt and ripping it into hand-width strips. He wound one around his face, covering his nose and mouth, then thrust the other strips at us.

Myrah sprinted away from us and toward the food lines instead, to be lost in the panicking crowd as she worked to get her coworkers and friends to safety. Oren, catching on, fixed his own mask and then headed for the exits with me and Kris.

My mind, trying to understand, immediately went to Eve. But if she'd finally snapped and decided to kill us all, she wouldn't do it with something so impersonal as gas. She'd walk into the center of the room and detonate, taking us all with her.
Besides,
I realized as we ran past a canister that opened as we passed,
this is technology. Motion-sensing mechanisms. This is the Institute.

Tamren's entrance was blocked and the hole too small for us to pass through, so we made for the next nearest exit along with half the occupants of the sewer system. We burst into the fresh air and kept running, trying to help those who were staggering to a halt just outside to move further away. In this kind of panic, people would get trampled. I searched in the chaos for familiar faces, for Eve, for my brother, for Myrah. I saw only flashes of panicked faces, some streaming tears from reddened eyes, some retching into the sewer drains. Even Nix was nowhere to be found, lost in the confusion.

My lungs burned, but Kris's quick reactions had saved me from breathing in too much of the acrid gas. I tore the grimy rag from my face, gasping for breath. “How did you know?” I wheezed. The streets and buildings around us looked oddly familiar, though I couldn't place where we were.

Kris had his head between his knees, taking deep breaths. He lifted his head to look at me, his eyes shadowed. “Failsafe,” he managed in reply. “Something the Institute always kept in case of a breach in the Wall. It was meant for shadows.”

My gaze swept across the ever-increasing horde of rebels outside the entrance to the sewers, the family clusters and groups of friends supporting each other as they limped away, others nursing more serious injuries incurred in the riotous panic. We'd been flushed out of hiding, like vermin.

Maybe a hundred rebels had made it out of our entrance, including Oren, Kris, and me. There was no sign of Caesar or Eve, and no telling how many other groups had escaped through other exits. Scattered, bruised and alone, and without more than a few eating utensils and my knife for a weapon, our group was a prime target. We had to find cover.

Before I could figure out how to rally these half-broken survivors, an earsplitting crack resounded through the darkened city streets. Half the group dropped to the ground, expecting some new horror to drop from the sky onto their heads. The crack came again, this time accompanied by the sound of distant screams. I whirled to find Kris standing white-faced behind me, which told me all I needed to know.

The architects had found at least one other group of rebels fled from the tunnels at a different exit, and they were mowing them down. The others were slower to catch on, but as soon as one person gave a little shriek of dawning horror, the rest figured it out. In a few seconds I was going to have a full-blown panic on my hands. And there was no Eve to calm them down, no Caesar to cow them into obedience.

“Okay!” I shouted, my voice splitting with the effort to speak despite my battered lungs. “We've got to find cover,
now.
Either they don't know about this exit or they just haven't gotten here yet—either way, we can't stay here.”

A ripple of quiet spread out from me as the gathered survivors of the attack heard me. Eager to listen to someone,
anyone
, who sounded like they knew what they were doing. I lifted my eyes for a moment to scan my surroundings, then abruptly realized where I was.