Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (16 page)

“How do they know I’m here?”

“I recognized a man who talked to my father. I followed him and saw him meet with Celleran’s security.”

“They showed security the picture of me,” Xhea said, heart sinking.

“No, they gave a signature print. Mine.”

“But why . . . ?” Unless, Xhea realized, they assumed that Shai was still with her, and that enough magic still lingered in the ghost for Shai’s signature to register. Did they not understand that Shai’s magic had been an anomaly, the effect of a living ghost?

Not that any of that would matter, if she were found. How far had they descended? Two floors? Three? Each circuit seemed to take forever, the road’s incline so shallow as to feel like level ground. And oh, she was tired. For all that the magic had brought her a brief rush, she suddenly felt her days of immobility—days she’d barely woken long enough to eat. Worse, the dark magic itself took a toll. She felt contentment in its wake, yes . . . but something deeper too. As if the dark smoke was her spirit burning.

“They were gaining permission to do a full sweep of the Tower,” Shai said. “They’ll be here within the hour—less, now.”

That, Xhea thought, was her only bit of luck. Of the two groups looking for her in Celleran—the people from the hospital and the people from Allenai who had connected her with Shai’s death—neither would exactly be looking for Xhea. One sought a girl who was desperately ill, while another had Celleran security searching blindly for a murder suspect with a stolen magical signature. That gave her less than an hour to get herself off this blighted corkscrew of a Tower before people who might recognize her arrived in force.

Xhea stopped dead in the middle of the road. Ignoring the sudden exclamations from the people around her—ignoring how she knew she would look, addressing the empty air—she turned to Shai and said, “I have a plan. Do you know the fastest way out of any building?”

Shai shook her head. “No, but Xhea—”

“Get thrown out.”

“No!” Shai looked stricken. “You can’t let them detain you.”

“Detain?” Xhea glanced about, frowning. Celleran was far too clean to have anything like rocks strewn about its perfect roadway. She couldn’t even spot a bit of garbage. Instead, she grabbed one of the coins from her hair and pulled it free, wincing. “Why would anyone detain Lower City scum like me? Eviction is so much easier.”

She spun and hurled the coin out at the lines of aircar traffic. It seemed to glitter as it flipped through the air, bounced off the roof of a passing taxi, and ricocheted from a speeding pile of boxes. The impotent
ting
as it hit the ground was likely just her imagination.

Not, she thought, the effect she needed. She grabbed another coin, ripped it free from its tattered ribbon, and threw it.

The first coin had been nearly useless, but the second . . .

She watched as it sailed over the lanes of traffic before striking the Tower’s magical barrier just beyond. At the point of impact, the spell that protected the roadway dissolved with a hissing, spitting noise. The dark-edged hole widened like a cigarette burn sizzling across paper, and a wild gust of wind swept across the crowd. People screamed as air was drawn out in a rush: perfect hairstyles were ripped into fluttering strands, papers and carelessly held sweaters flew airborne as if tossed, and the river-borne stream of objects was drawn hopelessly off course. Traffic swerved and collided, creating yet more destruction.

Xhea’s eyes widened. She’d hoped to hit an aircar windshield, maybe cause a small accident;
this
was a little more unexpected. Though the fabric of the Tower’s exterior protective spell was quickly repairing itself, the damage had already been done: almost everything on the road had come to a complete stop.

“Oh my,” Xhea whispered. The wind caught her hair and set the charms to ringing. She couldn’t help but smile, thinking:
This might actually work.
She only hoped that her strength held until the authorities arrived.

She caught bits of the confused babble.

“Honey, are you okay? We have to—”

“It was a hole in the field—an actual hole!”

“—couldn’t have, I’ve seen the specs for that spell myself, and—”

Xhea turned, putting the grounded aircars and the healing hole in the exterior spell at her back, and looked into the gathered crowd. Confusion, fear, curiosity—and no little bit of anger. She latched on to this last, struggling to find words that would fuel their discontent.

“Oh, come on,” she yelled, forcing all the scorn she could muster into her voice. She raised both arms in a broad gesture of disgust. “What’s your problem? Crying over what—a few dropped packages? A dent in your fender? A two minute delay in your schedule? Whiners, the lot of you. You think this is bad? You think this is
damage
? Ha! This is nothing.”

A few people turned toward her, seeking the source of the noise, but most turned away just as quickly. One or two shook their heads or pursed their lips in mild irritation before returning to their conversations, debating whose aircar caused which accident.

“Settle down, kid,” someone called.

Come on
, she thought. She needed to make enough of a disturbance that she’d be arrested and thrown out with few, if any, questions asked. If she’d snuck into the Lower City’s inner market and made even half this much noise, she’d have been tossed in moments. Had been, many times.

“Xhea, don’t do this,” Shai begged. “We can still sneak out of here, no one would know—”

“You want to know who did this?” Xhea cried, louder, and her voice echoed. Shai covered her face, wincing. “Me! I just wish that I’d broken more—taught you brainless City drones what it’s like to lose something.”

The crowd turned toward her again, and this time voices fell silent—watching, listening, trying to understand how this small, strange girl had caused the hole.

Xhea caught sight of a woman on her knees, scrabbling after a bag of shopping she had dropped—too important, it seemed, for the parcel stream. An aircar had run it over, leaving only battered bits of what had once been a pair of shoes—if the strappy bits of glitter even deserved the name. The woman’s face was stricken, fighting tears. Over
shoes
.

Not a child. Not food or clean water. Sweetness-blighted
shoes
.

“You don’t understand what you have, do you?” Xhea said, and heard her voice twist, true pain coloring the words. “Not any of you. You’ve stopped seeing all the things you’ve been given. Gifts heaped on you for being born normal. Clothes, family, food. A place to sleep. People to love. You’ve stopped being grateful—if you ever were.”

“Calm down,” a voice said from nearby. “I understand that you’re upset, but—”

Someone from the back of the crowd interrupted: “What do you want? The shirt off my back?”

“Yes!” Xhea cried. “Your shirt, your home, your
life
.”

“Earn it,” the unseen speaker called back.

A hand reached for her, coming to rest on her shoulder—then the unknown person yelped and recoiled.

Shai was there, too, trying to get her attention. “Xhea—Xhea, stop, you have to listen to me—”

But she couldn’t stop. “Earn?” she yelled back. She was breathing hard now, and not just from running, not just from weakness. “
Earn?
You were born a citizen! Born with magic—renai—in your blood. What’s there left for you to earn? You just can’t stand the thought that you’ve had it easy—that all your little struggles are a whole lot of nothing.”

It’s just a show
, she reminded herself.
A way out. They’re supposed to be mad, not you
. But the anger felt like her magic: dark and fierce and not entirely under her control.

“What do you know? I’ve worked hard for what I have, and I—”

“Hard?” Xhea screamed back. “You don’t even know the meaning of the word, you pampered, brainless—”

“Xhea,
stop
,” Shai said, louder this time, trying to stand between Xhea and the crowd. “That’s enough!” But Xhea didn’t hear her; didn’t even try. The words were already in her mouth, their bitter taste one she’d been born knowing.

“What’s really your problem?” she yelled. “Don’t like being called on what you are? You, who don’t lift a finger to help anyone—who treat people from the Lower City like
garbage
. You and your precious City, you and your goddamn Towers.”

She ripped another coin from her hair, and part of the braid with it; she felt no pain, only the beat of her anger and the rush of blood in her ears. She stared at them, that crowd of upset faces, milling witnesses, searching for the one who had shouted back. He could have been any of them, these nameless people who lived lives that she could never have.

She threw the coin blindly into the crowd. “What makes any of you so special?” she yelled, and her vision darkened not with magic but dizziness. It was too much, she was still too weak, but she couldn’t stop. “Towers and gardens and hospitals? Sweetness-blighted fountains full of renai, you fools—
money
, when we have nothing. Nothing! What makes you worth this?”

To her left there was a commotion as the crowd made way for a vehicle to speed uphill. She barely noticed, only registering the presence of Tower security as they surrounded her.

“You’re not better than me,” Xhea screamed as gloved hands closed around her arms. Her legs gave way and she kicked, though whether to strike at her captors or regain her footing even she couldn’t say. “You’re not better than me!”

The crowd applauded as she was dragged away.

Xhea had been thrown out of more places than she could remember—for touching another person, for the state of her clothing, for her inability to bribe the thugs, for existing. Yet she, who’d been tossed out of the Lower City market in under thirty seconds one memorable summer evening, was unable to spur a response from the officers escorting her stronger than, “That’s enough.” As Shai predicted in a low tone, Xhea was placed in a holding room until she could “calm down”—and, apparently, until security had the time and manpower to devote to such a minor problem.

She’d made a fool of herself, and for nothing. No, worse than nothing, for now she was caged and at others’ mercy. Again.

Xhea collapsed onto the chair in the center of the small room, covered her face with her hands, and closed her eyes. The sound of the door’s lock engaging echoed in memory long after all else was silent. Shai settled onto the edge of the table, and even with her eyes closed Xhea could feel the ghost’s presence like a pressure, an
awareness
in the space beside her. It seemed that, at least, hadn’t changed with Shai’s death.

“I didn’t mean . . .” Xhea whispered, and let it trail away. She had tried; she could say that much, little good that it did her. It seemed that in Celleran, at least, procedure wasn’t made to be ignored. How was she to know that security was so different here than in the Lower City?

Common sense
, some part of her replied. Or she could have listened to Shai. Instead, tired and hungry, she was forced to wait in a hard plastic chair as the minutes crept by and her chance of evading Allenai’s pursuit dwindled to nothing. There was no clock on the wall; she didn’t need one. Every breath bore the weight of long seconds, counting away the last of her freedom.

Shai didn’t speak, only waited in silence. It felt worse than any accusation.

An hour or more had passed before the door opened to admit a small, neatly-dressed man with a narrow rod held loosely in one hand. “Hello,” he said. He placed the rod onto the table and settled into the chair across from her.

She looked from the nondescript length of metal up to the man’s face and back again, her jaw tightening.
Not a cop
, Xhea thought.
Not security.
He looked too soft, too compact. Was that why he thought he needed a weapon? Did he expect her to believe that they beat adolescents here for minor crimes—or was he only playing to her fears? Unclenching her hands, Xhea exhaled and leaned back in her chair.

Ignoring her insolent look, he said, “I’m Jer Errison, your appointed negotiator. I’m afraid we don’t have a name on file for you. Is there something you’d like to be called?”

“Not particularly.”

“It might make this conversation go a little smoother.” A wry edge colored his tone. “Give me something to call you instead of ‘hey you.’”

Xhea shrugged, glancing away.

He nodded, acknowledging the refusal. “All right, then. To business.” He spoke calmly. “I’ve heard that you caused a disruption on the thoroughfare this afternoon. Quite a bit of damage. You upset some people, too.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Was that your intention, then? Upsetting people?”

Shai spoke into the expectant silence. “Tell him you’re sorry.”

Xhea kept herself from turning toward the ghost, but only just. As it was, her surprise at the interruption made her startle, and she saw Jer Errison take note of her sudden discomfort. She couldn’t shake her head; she had no way to express what she thought of that terrible idea—except plowing on as if she hadn’t heard.

“I suppose—”

“No,” Shai interrupted, her tone made sharp by anger. “We tried it your way, and now you’re locked up and making things worse. It’s my turn. Tell him you’re sorry.”

Xhea stared at the man’s face, at his eyes, and grit her teeth until she could hear them grind together. What Shai was asking, she couldn’t possibly—

“Xhea.” Quieter this time, that sudden anger restrained. “Please.”

Xhea whispered, “I . . . apologize.” With the words, it felt as if all the fight drained out of her. Her shoulders slumped and her expression fell—her carefully crafted façade crumbling all around her, and nothing she did could call it back. She wanted to scream at Shai for ruining everything. She covered her face with her hands, feigning rubbing her tired eyes, as if hands alone could shield her from the shame of such weakness.

Jer leaned back slowly. “For?” he asked.

Xhea struggled with the words, their foreign shape—but again Shai was there, prompting. “Just say it. Explain what you did.”