Lark Ascending (27 page)

I swallowed heavily, trying to rid my throat of the lump lodged there. “Eve, why not help me? Together we could get into the Institute and find a solution. One that doesn't involve genocide.”

Eve's eyes had wandered, but when I spoke they snapped back, the pinprick pupils darting this way and that over my face. “Return to that place and to their device? I will not hand my enemy the power they need to destroy me.”

“But what if we could use their device against them? Maybe we could change things.”

Eve's fingers were still idly stroking my brother's hair; I couldn't tell if she was even aware of the movement. She was silent for a long time, and when she finally spoke, I wasn't even sure if she'd heard me. “Sometimes I think about your brother, and his death. I wonder if he would still love me in that moment.”

It was pointless. She'd lost what little sanity she had left, up on that roof. I fought the urge to shout at my brother, to wake him and drag him bodily from the room if I had to. “It's not love,” I retorted. “He's under your magic. No more.”

“Of course he is.” Eve dropped her hand, fingers stroking along Caesar's knuckles, where he'd fallen asleep with his fingers wound in the hem of Eve's dress. “How is your pet any different?”

“My—” I started to ask, but it took one look at Eve's face, the tiny smile there, to understand. “You don't get to talk about Oren,” I breathed. “Ever.”

Eve shrugged. “I gave him what he wanted,” she whispered.

“He wanted a cure!” I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep from shouting.

“He wanted freedom from you.”

My stomach seized as though I'd been punched in the gut, and I nearly staggered. She was wrong, I knew she was wrong. Oren cared for me—he'd always told me that he'd follow me whether he needed my magic or not.

And now he didn't—Eve had made it so his shifts to shadow and back weren't affected by magic. Now that he didn't need me… where was he?

Eve rested her hand on Caesar's cheek, watching me. “When you change your mind about these people, I'll be here. I'll let you help
me
.” Something flickered in my mind, the slick tingle of deceit. I was growing more deft at reading her thoughts the way she read mine.

Sick, I turned my back on her and left, pausing on the other side of the door to rub at my eyes and my face, trying to scrub her presence away. There was no saving her anymore. The magic was poison—without the Institute leeching it away, it was destroying what little was left of her mind. Killing an entire city so that only Renewables would be left was a madness I couldn't even understand.

Except that part of you knows she makes sense.

I hurried away, taking the stairs two at a time in a futile attempt to leave the touch of her mind behind.

The lobby of my apartment building was full of refugees from the sewers, no more than lumps of blanket and clothing scraps littered around the floor. A few of them stirred as I passed, the dim lantern light brushing their faces, but none woke.

I slipped outside, dropping the lantern and sinking into a crouch as I tried to force the remnants of Eve's mind from mine. Being around her was like walking through cobwebs, leaving traces of invisible, creeping thread all throughout my thoughts. It seemed colder than I was used to, but I knew I was imagining things. Even if the environmental controls went offline when the Wall did, it would take more than one night for the temperature to start dropping.

I rose to my feet and stumbled down the steps into the street. If the sun disc had been working, it'd be dawn. As it was, the street was shrouded in midnight. Not even the lamps were lit. As I left the stoop of my building, and my lantern, behind, the darkness swallowed me.

“Oren,” I whispered, eyes searching the darkness. “Come back to me.”

Instinct made me search for him with my second sight, reaching for the well of shadow that had always been beside me. But that was gone now, after what Eve did to him. There was no more division between his darkness and his light; there was only him, and I couldn't find him in this impenetrable midnight.

But then my straining eyes did pick something out; a shadow slipping from behind a corner into the shelter of a doorway. My heart skipped, and I moved toward it. “Oren?” I whispered, knowing it was foolish, and not caring. If it was one of the Institute's Enforcers, so be it. They'd find us anyway, if they were this close.

The shadow froze, and for a pounding moment there was only silence. Then came a voice. “Lark?”

My feet went numb, and I stood rooted to the ground. “Basil?”

The figure bolted from the doorway and came at me. I could barely see his face in the dark, but as soon as his arms went around me, I knew I'd been right in recognizing his voice. “You're here! You're alive!”

For a moment it didn't matter that my brother wasn't the hero I remembered; it didn't matter that he'd been just as corrupted by magic as everyone it touched. I buried my face against his shoulder and clung to him.

We stood there in the false midnight, mumbling reassurances to each other, like children afraid of the dark. Eventually I pulled away, reaching out to touch his face and remind myself that he was really there. I took his hand and pulled him back toward the stoop and my fading lantern. I let go of him long enough to give the lantern a few more cranks, then turned back.

“How did you get here so fast?” I gasped, still breathless with relief. “Where's Tamren?”

Basil's face, now that I could see it in the light, was worn and ragged. He'd been on the road, and it clearly hadn't been an easy journey. “Tamren?” he echoed, brows drawing inward. “Who's Tamren?”

My relief vanished, the bottom dropping out of my stomach. “You mean he didn't find you?”

Basil shook his head slowly. “I left on my own, with Dorian. He's a street or two back. We came to help you. I didn't know where you'd be, I thought I'd try home…” His eyes lifted to the battered façade of where we'd once lived together as a family.

“So Tamren could still be on his way to Lethe,” I whispered, trying to ignore the sick pit in my chest. “Wait, Dorian's here?” I straightened, trying to cast out with my thoughts. Unlike the Renewables in Lethe, the Renewables from the Iron Wood weren't good at shielding themselves. After a moment I found him, a few blocks away, feeling his way through the darkness like Basil had.

“I couldn't go alone, without someone to give me magic. Dorian volunteered. He said he had unfinished business here, though he refused to explain what.”

I swallowed hard. “Eve.”

“Who's Eve?”

“That's the name of the Renewable the Institute's been using for the past decade or two. She was originally from the Iron Wood. Dorian is the one who sent her here.”

“You mean—the Renewables in the Wood are the ones who started all of this?”

I nodded. Even the peaceful residents of the Iron Wood, content to live in rustic simplicity in the middle of a frozen orchard, abused this magic. “I thought you couldn't absorb magic except through machines,” I pointed out. “That you and I were different.”

Basil grinned and lifted his hand, revealing a simpler, smaller version of the glove he'd used as Prometheus. Wires and circuits wrapped around his fingers, crystal pads on each fingertip, conductors for the transfer of power. “Piece of cake for me, little bird.”

I tried not to react, tried to remember that he recreated this machine so he could come help me. But all I could see was the way Adjutant had used it to rip the magic from Tansy, killing her brutally in front of me.

“How did you get inside?” I asked instead. “Even I struggled to get through the iron.”

Basil blinked at me, then looked more closely at my face. “You mean you don't know?”

“Know what?”

Some kind of realization was dawning on his face. “You think… you think the Wall is shut down. Dead.”

“It is,” I said, gesturing at the sky. “Just look up.”

He shook his head. “It's not. It's inside out. We were waiting outside, trying to figure out a way in, when suddenly the iron turned to magic. We thought it was you.”

I shook my head, my throat tight. “And when you came through…”

“Then we realized we were trapped. The Wall we know is on the other side now.”

The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. “You mean anyone—any
thing
—from outside can just walk into the city?”

Basil nodded, his expression grim. “I thought you knew. But there's magic in here yet, I can feel it. Any shadows who come in will revert to their human selves.”

“For now,” I murmured.

Before Basil could ask what I meant, Dorian caught up with us. Basil told him what I'd said, but Dorian was watching me, his gaze difficult to read, but haunted nonetheless, his eyes shadowed.

When Basil had finished, Dorian swallowed. “It's good to see you again, Lark.”

“You too,” I replied. I knew what he wanted to ask, but I wasn't going to make it easy for him. From one perspective, he was the one who had set all of this in motion, by sending a spy to infiltrate our city all those years ago.

“The Renewable,” he began. “The one you said helped you find the Iron Wood. Is she—”

“She's not really Eve anymore,” I said gently. “You had to know that.”

He flinched, but didn't retreat. “But she's alive? She's here?”

“I'll bring you to her.”

I turned to lead the way back into the building, my thoughts surging. Until now, Eve had been the only Renewable we had access to. I hated myself for thinking of Dorian as a weapon in our arsenal, but given how wildly out of control Eve was, his arrival changed everything. He'd be able to help us infiltrate the Institute; he'd give us a fighting chance.

And maybe all hope wasn't lost for Eve. In the earliest memories I'd shared with her, before she became the Institute's captive, she'd thought of Dorian often. I'd felt the wistfulness of those thoughts, how deeply she cared for him. At one time, Eve had loved this man, when they were young together in the Iron Wood. That young girl had left her home and volunteered for his mission because she cared for him so.

I had to hope there was some part of that girl still somewhere inside the glowing, mad creature chained in our basement. I had to hope Dorian could reach her.

I let the lantern die a little as we picked our way across the lobby. It was definitely closer to morning; the light made the sleeping bodies stir, and a few sat up behind us as we went. I hurried on, not wanting to have to pause to explain these two new faces.

Dorian's magic, natural and untwisted, was like a gentle balm after the raw, raging storm inside Eve. I wanted to stop and bask in it, but I settled for letting my shadow taste its edges as I made my way down the stairs. I should have been paying attention to what I wasn't sensing. We reached the basement floor, and I lifted my lantern high, expecting to see Caesar still sprawled out in Eve's lap. But instead all my light illuminated was a set of rusty chains wrapped around the boiler, empty.

She was gone.

I could hear footsteps and confused shouts as I pounded back up the stairs and through the lobby, but I didn't dare stop to explain. I could still feel Eve's magic, and though I couldn't pinpoint exactly where she was, my senses drew me toward her. I burst out of the doors into the thick darkness and flew down the stoop into the street. There was nowhere in this city that she could hide, not from my senses, but if she found a way to break through the shell of the Wall, she'd be lost forever, and her power with her. I had to get to her before that happened.

And insane or not, we needed her.

I closed my eyes, which were useless in this darkness anyway. I let my senses take over, using what Eve had taught me through her memories. Casting magic around me I could feel the reverberations off buildings, curbs, parked carriages. I vaulted over a barricade, lungs burning and soles skidding as I turned down an alley. I was getting closer. Maybe Caesar was slowing her down—for he had to have helped her escape. I wondered why she didn't just leave him and flee.

A few blocks more—

A blinding light swooped in front of my face, dazzling my second sight and sending me reeling back. I fell, landing with a jarring pain on my tailbone. The thing swooped again, and I opened my eyes, crying out. A pixie. It was dark—I'd forgotten that night was the time the pixie patrols ruled the streets. I threw up my arms, trying in vain to gather my scattered senses.

“What are you doing? You'll run straight into the Institute's patrols.”

I gasped for air, dazzled eyes searching until I made out two tiny pinpricks of blue. “Nix!” I breathed.

“If it wasn't me, you probably wouldn't have a face anymore.”

My breath sounded like a sob, not the laugh of relief that bubbled out of me. “I'm glad to see you, but I have to—”

Nix waited patiently for me to finish, but there was nothing to say. The hints of Eve's magic were
gone
. I looked up, but there was no shift in the iron shell around our city, nothing to indicate that she'd blasted her way through it. She was still here, somewhere. But somehow, against all I'd come to understand, she was hidden from me.

It ought to be impossible. I could feel her even when I was out in the wilderness beyond the Wall. And yet it was as though that connection had never existed.

I closed my eyes, trying to make my pounding heart calm. I'd grown so used to feeling Eve in my mind that her absence was unsettling. “Nix, where have you been?”

“Investigating.”
Nix landed on my shoulder, tunneling in under my hair.
“The dead woman these people found right before the attack scattered us.”