Shadowlark (14 page)

“No.” Wesley moved toward me, nudging the fallen bucket aside with the toe of his boot. “I’m saying it doesn’t make you special. Whether a man dies because he’s been stabbed with a knife or because he’s had the magic ripped out of him, he’s still dead.”

“But someone wielding a knife can choose to put it down. They can stop themselves.”

“Tell me something.” Wesley dropped into a crouch in front of me. “Could you kill me? Here, now?”

I stared at him.
He’s insane
. Except that he seemed merely curious, not frightened or even alarmed. He didn’t recoil, but examined me with interest. Cautiously, I let my other senses come out, letting the golden and violet sparks of his shielded magic overlay themselves over my normal vision.

Slowly, I nodded. “I think so.”

“Fascinating,” he murmured. “And why don’t you?”

My mouth fell open. “What? I—because there’s no reason to. I mean, you helped us.”

“So if you’re not a murderous psychopath on a rampage, why are you so afraid of what you are?”

“Because—it feels good. When I take someone’s magic. A part of me wants it, all the time.”

“But you’re controlling yourself.”

I grimaced. “I didn’t exactly control myself out there, with that Eagle.”

“To be fair,” Wesley pointed out, “they were shooting at you and your boyfriend.”

My head snapped up as I tried to formulate a protest. Wesley waved a hand. “Whatever. The point is that you didn’t have time to think. You had to operate on instinct, so you did what your instincts told you. Survive, at whatever cost. It’s hardwired into us—doesn’t make us monsters. Even the shadows up there”—and he flicked his gaze toward the ceiling—“are only doing what they’re programmed by nature and magic to do.”

“But if my instincts are to kill to save myself—”

“Then you learn to control them.” Wesley straightened and offered me his hand. “And I think I can help you with that. That is,” he added, raising an eyebrow at me, “if you want to stay, and finish what your brother started.”

Somehow, the simple knowledge that someone else knew my secret, knew my fears about myself, and hadn’t cast me out made it feel as though the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I took his hand, all too aware of the supernatural warmth of it, my traitorous senses telling me he had magic ripe for the taking.

“Good,” he said, hauling me to my feet. “Now, you’d better put something back in your stomach, because before today’s done, you’re probably going to wish you were dead.”

After a shower and a second attempt at breakfast, I felt better. I would’ve thought having someone know my secret would be panic-inducing, but instead, it was just a relief to have it known. Wesley had promised he wouldn’t share the truth of what I was with the others. “For one thing,” he’d said, “I don’t even know what you are, so how can I explain it to them?” But I knew that the instant I became a danger to anyone within the walls, all of that would change.

And so I agreed—I needed help. I needed training. I expected Wesley to leave Oren behind, but instead he led the both of us down into a vast cavern. It was, he said, one of the few “rooms” that wasn’t left behind from a previous incarnation of the city. The training room was a natural cave, undiscovered until my brother had explored these hidden passageways and found it.

Most of the people working in the training room were children barely old enough to have been harvested in my home city. There were half a dozen of them, all working with older mentors. And every one was a Renewable.

I averted my eyes, jaw clenched. Control.

“So, I’m up, huh?” The cheery voice belonged to Olivia, who sauntered in after us. Her eyes were on Oren, thoughtful, speculative.

“Morning, Vee,” Wesley said, fiddling with a rack of machines against one wall of the cavern. “Be nice.”

“I’m always nice,” she replied, eyes still resting on Oren as she smiled. She looked none the worse for having been awake much of the night, talking to me—whereas I felt like I’d been run over by a carriage. Her hair was as bright and curly as ever, her eyes gleaming, cheeks and lips flushed. And she was
still
looking at Oren.

His eyes darted from her to Wesley. “Why am I here?” His voice was quiet enough that it didn’t echo in the cavern. “I’m no Renewable.”

“Ah, but is it true you killed an Eagle by pummeling him to death?” Olivia put her hands on her hips, circling Oren and making a show of examining him.

Oren glanced at me, fleeting and quick. I felt Wesley watching me as well and kept my eyes on Olivia as she moved. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” Oren said finally, warily.

“Of course you didn’t,” she replied. “Accidents happen. We’re going to try to help you learn not to make those same mistakes again. But first I’m going to need to see what you’re made of.”

And then, without warning, Olivia feinted in one direction and then leaped at Oren, swinging low and aiming for his ribs. Oren danced away, turning as he did and dropping into a half-crouch, lips curling in surprise and anger.

“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” said Olivia, delighted. “You’re not going to balk at the idea of hitting a girl, are you?”

Oren frowned, anger and wariness replaced by obvious confusion. “Why would I do that?”

Olivia laughed. “
Finally.
”

A hand on my shoulder jerked me away. I pulled my eyes from Olivia and Oren sparring to find Wesley there with a rueful smile. “Do I need to ask them to find another place to play, or are you going to be able to focus?”

I opened my mouth but was interrupted by a cry of surprise and pain from Olivia, followed by a peal of laughter, albeit a bit breathless.

Gritting my teeth, I said shortly, “I can focus just fine.”

• • •

Wesley wanted to teach me control so I could masquerade as a Renewable. Though I knew I needed help, a tiny part of me kept asking,
Why is he helping you? What does he want?
If I could control this power, I’d be the perfect spy—or the perfect assassin. I half-expected him to lead me through a series of deadly drills and lessons.

But it didn’t take long for me—and Wesley as well—to realize I knew nothing about magic beyond the instinctual level. To my humiliation, he led me over to a group of preteen children and then sat back in a chair, watching
them
teach me. It was like being in my home city again—too old, stuck with children who knew I was different. Only this time, instead of being a magical dud, I was just the opposite.

All morning they walked me through meditation exercises that were supposed to help me get to know my power. The magic was part of us, sustaining the machines that were our bodies, pumping the heart, expanding the lungs, sparking from neuron to neuron in our brains. First and foremost, we had to turn our attention inward and learn every pathway and reservoir the magic filled.

The exercises were far from peaceful and relaxing, though. An hour in, I was sweating, my concentration slipping in and out, my head pounding. The kids’ energy seemed unflagging, whereas I felt like I’d been locked in some sort of endless purgatory. I wanted to
do
something, not sit here and think about my heartbeat. Seeing Wesley sitting on the sidelines, watching with amusement the entire time, didn’t help. Neither did Oren and Olivia, who were now going through a slowed-down series of combat moves, him copying her with flawless grace.

By the time a middle-aged woman—a Renewable as well, to judge from the warm glow all around her that she wasn’t bothering to hide—came to send the kids off to their midday meal, I wanted to scream. Seeing my face, Wesley got up out of his chair with a laugh.

I felt my face warming with embarrassment, but I kept my mouth shut, chin lifting.

“Stand down, girl,” he said, still chuckling. “Matthias, stay back a moment, will you?”

One of the kids, a lanky boy of maybe ten or twelve, peeled off from the rest of the group as they all headed out of the cavern. “Yes, sir?”

“Lark’s wondering what the point is.”

“The point, sir, is that we must know how to control our magic before we can use it without hurting ourselves. We have to know our limits, and we have to know the source of our power before we can tap into it.”

“All true. Can you give Lark a demonstration of what happens when we overextend?”

For the first time, the lanky boy hesitated. “Really?” I couldn’t tell if he was excited or afraid, but whatever Wesley was asking, it was significant.

“Really. Quick now, so you don’t miss lunch.”

Matthias sat down on the mat cross-legged, laying his hands on his knees and beginning a series of deep, slow breaths. Wesley moved up next to me and murmured, “Watch.”

“He’s not doing anything,” I whispered back, confused.

“Not like that,” Wesley said. “Watch with your other sight.”

With a jolt, I narrowed my eyes, stretching out with my senses until the boy’s golden aura came into focus.

“Look closely,” Wesley said. “See if you can follow what he’s doing.”

The dark hunger inside me flared up, the longing so intense I nearly took a step toward the boy. But Wesley reached out, his own magic carefully shielded, and took my shoulder. I swallowed and forced myself to look closer.

I’d never had time to examine these auras before. Regular humans didn’t have them, possessing only the tiny sparks of magic that kept their bodies running. But Wesley was right— there was more to a Renewable’s aura than a simple golden glow. I couldn’t tell whether it was more like fine particles of dust or like dye swirling in water, but there were patterns to it. And as I watched the boy’s expression shift minutely, echoing the shifts in the magic surrounding him, I realized that he was controlling it.

Gradually, the flow of magic began to slow. At first there was as much inside him as swirling around him, but as the seconds stretched on, it seemed like more and more of the power was leaving his body. The boy was forcing it out.

With my second sight, I could actually see inside him—to where his heartbeat was growing slower, slower . . . His head sagged forward as his muscles stopped getting magic and oxygen. His lungs weren’t moving anymore. He’d stopped breathing. And then, as I watched, horror leaping up in my own chest—his heart stopped.

“Wesley!” I broke away from him and leaped for the kid, gathering my own remaining magic without thinking.

I caught Matthias as he began to fall forward, but as suddenly as his heart had stopped, it started again. He sucked in a lungful of air and sat up, eyes unfocused. He blinked a few times and then saw me and smiled ruefully. His lips were a little blue, but already growing rosy again.

“It sucks being the best one in the class at doing that,” he complained, getting unsteadily to his feet, as if he hadn’t been technically dead five seconds ago.

“Thank you, Matthias,” Wesley said. “You can go catch up now.”

The lanky boy wandered off, leaving me kneeling on the mat, bewildered. Wesley watched him go, thoughtful. I waited for him to tell me what I had just witnessed, but he seemed content with silence. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“What was
that?
” I burst out, lurching to my feet. “You teach kids how to kill themselves?”

Wesley turned toward me, feigning surprise. “It’s perfectly safe. It takes great focus and concentration to shift all the magic away from the basic functions of the body.”

“But—his heart stopped.”

“And then as soon as it did, and he started to lose consciousness, he was no longer concentrating on draining his magic away. And it all came back again.”

I stared at Wesley, still shaken by what I’d seen. “Why teach them this?”

“In these controlled situations,” Wesley answered me, “the magic isn’t gone. The kids are just moving it around, manipulating its flow. It’s still there, ready to be tapped the second the mind fails and instinct kicks back in. But if Matthias were to use all his power on something—powering a machine, moving something large, tapping into the elements—it would be gone. He’d have to wait for it to regenerate on its own, but that’s a slow process. If he drained himself to the point of death, there’d be no magic to jump-start his body again. We do this so that they know what it feels like, how to recognize it. So they know how much they have before they start tapping into what keeps them alive.”

I closed my eyes, trying to summon the awareness that had been so infuriatingly fleeting during the morning’s meditation exercises. I tried to see how the magic flowed through me, but I could only sense it pooled within me. There was no connection to my heart, to my brain. But then, my magic wasn’t
mine
. It was the Eagle’s.

“I didn’t show you this so you could get in touch with your own life force.” Wesley’s voice interrupted me. “Although that’s exactly how a Renewable would begin her studies, too. But you’re not like them.”

“Then why?”

He didn’t answer, but instead turned and began to lead the way toward the exit. The room was quickly emptying, and I realized with a pang that Oren and Olivia were nowhere to be seen. I turned to follow him, suddenly realizing, now that the children were gone, that I was ravenous.

But Wesley wasn’t done yet.

“I showed you,” he said as I trailed after him, “because now you know exactly what you did to that man who died. You know
how
you killed him.”

I stopped short. He kept walking, the eyes on his feathered coat watching me with a hundred unblinking stares.

“And now you know how to keep yourself from doing it again.”

• • •

I saw very little of Oren over the next several days. Wesley moved my training into a private room, citing secrecy, but I knew it was at least in part because I couldn’t focus when Oren and Olivia spent half the time I was trying to concentrate rolling around on a sparring mat. Whenever I did see him, at mealtimes, he’d be sitting with her. They’d always ask me to join them when they saw me—but sometimes they didn’t even notice when I came in.

In the mornings I trained with Wesley, and in the afternoons I learned about magical theory from Parker. I struggled to get along with Wesley most days, rubbed raw by his unfailingly blunt attitude. But Parker was different. He was quiet, thoughtful, hugely knowledgeable. Though my father knew nothing about magic theory, Parker still reminded me of him. Something about the comfortable silences and insightful questions, maybe. The golden glow of his Renewable power was gentle, warm. It was easier to control the shadowy hunger within me around him.

I learned that the very first people to make a science out of studying magic were the Hellenes, the same people whose myths had inspired Prometheus. They existed thousands of years ago in a land across the ocean. It all boiled down to what their philosophers poetically called the music of the machine. In their eyes, all of nature was a machine, from the vastness of the world, with its weather and intricate ecosystems, down to the tiniest plant. A seedling machine needed magic to draw water up through its roots, just as the human machine needed it to have a heartbeat. There was magic in everything, and therefore everything could be manipulated by magic.

And it was the Hellenes who first used magic to power a manmade machine, though their attempts, while aesthetically impressive, were so inefficient as to be useless.

Parker clearly loved studying these people, his gaze lighting up when he spoke of them. He had a habit of wandering from the subject, branching off onto tangents that I could barely even follow, much less apply to my own experiences.

“Many scholars think that the music of the machines theory was fundamentally flawed, as no one has been able to reconcile the concept that magic is in everything, to a lesser or greater extent, with the truth that iron repels magic. The Hellenes had no scientific explanation for this, but I believe it’s simply because we don’t understand it yet. The theory is so simple, so elegant, that to abandon it for one loophole seems ludicrous.”

I remained silent, letting him continue. Wesley had stayed true to his word and not shared my secret with anyone—and even he didn’t know that I had magicked iron, first on the lock on Oren’s cage, and then again on a huge scale, turning the Iron Wood into a living forest again.

Parker—and the Hellenes—were right. There was magic in everything, even in iron, because I’d tapped into it.

Though I was exhausted by the end of each day, I still felt the nagging, irritating desire for action. Somewhere out there, Nix needed my help. The pixie was linked to me and could find me anywhere, and the fact that it hadn’t returned yet had to mean it was in trouble. And of course there was Tansy. Being forced to sit there meditating and learning about archaic theories made me want to scream. But even if we could manage to get inside and rescue her without being caught or killed, where could we go?