Shadowlark (3 page)

I stopped dead. Tansy was still moving up the street, oblivious to whatever Nix was sensing.

“How do you know they’re watching us?” I whispered, arching my back until it popped, turning my head this way and that. If anyone were watching me they’d see a weary traveler stretching—not inspecting the surrounding buildings for watching eyes.

“Watch the windows.”

I shifted my attention forward, toward the dark hollows in the buildings. I saw nothing—no faces or movement. I was about to say so when something did move. Subtle, quick. Just a shutter closing in a building on the next block.

Tansy had stopped, and I caught up with her in a few strides.

“I’m pretty sure there’s—” I began, keeping my voice low.

“I see them,” she breathed back. “Can’t tell if they’re a threat.”

I sensed nothing, no matter how I strained. I couldn’t tell if it was due to the inconsistency of this new ability to sense the world around me or the fact that iron made up the skeletons of these buildings, potentially muffling anything inside.

Nix spoke up, its voice even quieter than Tansy’s.
“They do not appear threatening. In fact, they appear to be more frightened of us.”

A shutter cracked open nearby, no more than an inch. I could see nothing beyond it but darkness compared to the pale winter sunlight outside.

I took a deep breath. “Hello!” I shouted. “We’re not here to cause trouble or harm to anyone. We’re travelers, seeking a man named Basil Ainsley.”

Only silence answered me. We kept walking, eyes drawn to every quick movement at the windows, ears tuned for each light click or thud of a shutter closing or door locking. The temperature was dropping fast, and we knocked cautiously on a few doors, hoping for shelter. But we got no response, and when, in growing desperation, we tried a few handles, they were all shut tight.

We’d gotten about a mile into the downtown part of the city when a noise made us jump back. The clang of one of the ancient garbage cans lining the streets.

The people here were afraid of something—I couldn’t help but think of the most terrifying thing in this wilderness. Shadows. I reached out with everything I had but felt nothing. I tried to make myself move toward the sound but found my feet rooted to the crumbling street.

Tansy slipped her bow from her shoulder in one smooth movement, dropping into a low stance, ready for action. She nocked an arrow to the string and crept toward the sound, slow. I ached to tell her to be careful, but bit my lip, watching.

Just before she reached the cans, a small figure burst out with a frightened yell, darting past Tansy—and straight at me. We collided with a thud, sending me sprawling and my assailant dropping on top of me with a groan of pain.

It was a kid, no more than seven or eight. Dirty in that little-boy way, but in relatively clean clothes. No blood around his mouth. No signs that he was anything other than a little boy. More than anything else, he felt human. He lacked the golden magic glow Tansy and all the Renewables had, but there was no dark void, hungry for magic, as there was with Oren. He felt like nothing—like walking into a room at exactly room temperature.

“Let me go!” he shouted, scrambling backward, eyes darting this way and that. To my astonishment he started to cry as he scuttled sideways into the shadow of a nearby stoop.

Just then a pair of people burst out of the building across the street. A man and a woman, both brandishing weapons. The man, about Tansy’s height and thickly bearded, wielded a knife. Much smaller than Oren’s knife, and clearly designed as a tool, not as a weapon. The woman, whose expression was even more frantic than the man’s, carried a club fashioned from what looked like a piece of a bedpost.

“Get away from my son!” the woman screamed, voice ragged with fear.

Tansy lowered her bow instantly, straightening out of her hunting stance and lifting her hands. I picked myself up off the ground where the boy had knocked me, stumbling backward a few paces.

“We aren’t going to hurt him,” I said hoarsely, trying to get air back into my lungs. “It’s okay.”

As soon as I backed up enough that I wasn’t between them and the boy, the woman ran past the man to kneel in front of the kid, who was still leaking tears, frightened as much by his mother’s fear as anything else. As his mother ran her hands over him, looking for injuries, and mumbled reassurances, the father stepped forward, fingers white-knuckled around the handle of his knife.

“You’d better keep moving,” he said, expression largely hidden by his black facial hair.

Tansy moved over to my side, returning her bow to her shoulder, uncertain how to proceed. I knew how she felt.

“Please,” I tried again. “I’m just looking for a man named Basil Ainsley. Do you know him? Did he pass through maybe a couple of years ago?”

The man’s eyes narrowed, darting to the side as his wife picked up their child, then back to me again. “Why are you searching for this man?”

My throat was so dry my voice came out like sandpaper. “He’s my brother.”

The man considered this, watching me suspiciously, then shook his head. “I’ve never heard of him,” he said gruffly. “You may have noticed, we’re not looking for company. This place isn’t for you, you’d better go.”

The woman crossed back behind the man again, carrying the boy. I saw a flash of red and realized he’d skinned his knee when we collided. The blood was dripping down his shin.

I took a step forward, and the man reacted instantly, the point of the knife swinging toward me.

“Wait!” I said, freezing. “I just want to—here.” I took off my pack, very slowly, and crouched so I could put it on the ground and go through it. Somewhere in there was a pot of salve from Tansy’s mother, an herbalist.

As soon as I opened it I saw Nix, who must have darted inside during the commotion. It looked up at me, flicking its wings silently in recognition—and in warning. I knew why it was hiding; without knowing these people’s history, it was impossible to know how they’d react when confronted with a machine, the very symbol of the extravagance and wanton use of magic that led to the wars in the first place.

I took out the bag that held my last few apples and tore a few strips from it, then located the pot and straightened. Both mother and father were watching my every move, wide-eyed, fearful. What had happened to these people that they lived in such fear?

“It’s medicine,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and calm. “For his knee, so it heals faster and doesn’t get infected.”

The mother cradled the boy’s head against her, eyes flicking toward the father, who was just noticing the skinned knee for the first time.

“Can I?” I asked, taking a slow step toward them.

The man and woman exchanged glances, as though speaking privately, without words. The woman broke first, taking a step toward me and nodding. “You may.”

I couldn’t help a little smile at that—she sounded like my own mother, correcting my grammar. Even if she was brokenhearted from losing Basil, even if she largely ignored me in favor of my other brother, Caesar, I missed my mother.

I moved forward, and the woman crouched so that the boy could lean against her while I tended to his knee. He’d stopped crying and was more interested in examining my face and watching what I was doing. Though he grimaced when I mopped up the blood and spread a thin layer of the salve over his scrape, he didn’t cry again. I noticed that he had freckles, something no one in my enclosed city had. How strange to see just an ordinary human—not a Renewable, not a shadow— living out here. I wondered how it was possible, but I knew enough that now wasn’t the time to ask.

I wrapped the last of the strips around his knee, tying the tightest knot I could. I knew from having two brothers that boys never stayed still long.

“Thank you,” his mother murmured as I straightened. “Sean, what do you say?”

“’anks,” the boy mumbled before squirming out of his mother’s grasp and making a beeline for the building his parents had emerged from.

“Okay.” The man still had his knife between himself and me. “Get going then.”

“Brandon,” the woman said, chiding. “Be civil.”

He shook his head, still watching me, still suspicious. “Don’t trust anyone from the outside. We don’t know who they are.
What
they are.”

The woman looked up, shading her eyes. I followed her gaze to the bright reflective object on top of the spire. It was dimmer now as the sun made its way down the sky. I still couldn’t make out its shape, but I thought it might be some kind of crystal, refracting the light into a million different beams across the city. The way the woman gazed at it reminded me of the way people in my city checked the time by the sun disc. Maybe it was a kind of clock.

“It’ll be just as dangerous for them out here in a few hours,” the woman said, speaking as though Tansy and I weren’t there. “She helped our Sean. They’re not here to hurt us.”

The man’s eyes went from me to Tansy and back again. His beard moved as he grimaced beneath it, uncertainty twisting his features.

“Fine,” he said eventually, defeated. “One night only. And that one leaves her weapon outside.” He seemed more suspicious of Tansy than of me, his black eyes narrowing at her.

Tansy opened her mouth as if considering protesting. I didn’t blame her—if they’d tried to take Oren’s knife from me, I would’ve felt naked. I felt a little guilty not volunteering the information that I was armed, too, but I knew it was smarter to keep it on me. I nodded at Tansy and she nodded back, slipping off the bow and her quiver of arrows and giving it to the man. He left them on the stoop as he led us through a revolving door, into the building.

• • •

Once inside, the man retreated to a comfortable-looking stuffed chair in the corner to work on something wooden with his knife. Sean plunked himself down to play with what seemed to be a set of polished round rocks, bouncing them off each other at random, and the woman closed the doors behind us.

They’d made a home in what looked like the lobby of some other building. The marble floors were covered with a slapdash assortment of colorful, overlapping rugs, and the large reception area had been divided into rooms by wooden screens. The revolving door opened directly into what I could only assume was the kitchen and dining area, dominated by a huge fireplace built into the floor and a chimney that descended from the ceiling to hover above it. It must have been a gorgeous piece of art and design back when the building was new, but now it only held a small cooking fire. The flames had an odd green edge to them, and my nose detected the acrid smell of chemicals. When I looked closer I saw that the wood they were burning seemed to be pieces of old furniture. I realized with a jolt that they wouldn’t really have access to firewood here in this forest of buildings. They must have been raiding the other ruins—or the rest of the building, which seemed unused—for wood to burn.

The rest of the furniture in the home was an odd mix of ancient-looking pieces, no doubt liberated from the ruins, and rough but solidly made pieces that looked relatively new. Overhead the ceiling was painted with a faded fresco of winged babies and clouds and swirling ribbons, encircled by intricately molded trim.

“I’m Trina,” the woman said as I turned in place, inspecting the odd mix of grandeur and hominess. “And you’ve already met Sean. My husband is Brandon, ignore him. Are you girls hungry?”

I glanced at Tansy, who seemed uneasy, out of place. If even I, who had been raised in a city with buildings like the Institute, felt overwhelmed, she must feel like she’d stepped into another world. And she looked positively naked without her bow at her side.

I smiled at her, trying to look reassuring, and then nodded at Trina. “Extremely,” I answered.

Trina laughed and went to the fireplace, lifting the lid of the pot suspended over the flames. The smell of something delicious and savory wafted toward us, and it was all I could do not to drool.

“I’ll just add some more water, there’ll be plenty for all of us. Come, sit.”

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly as Tansy and I made for the fireplace, beginning to strip off our outer layers. My nose and my fingertips began to burn and itch as they thawed in the warmth of the room. I kept my pack close so that Nix could stay near me. I could hear nothing and knew it was probably on the verge of hibernation, doing its best to stay silent.

As I looked around the room, something shadowy darted from right to left. All I could see was a blur of feet under the screen. I tensed, staring. While I watched, a pair of black eyes appeared around the edge of one of the screens, gleaming.

Trina noticed my sudden shift and smiled. “Relax. That’s just Molly. Don’t mind her, she’s shy.”

There was a faint squeal of protest and a giggle, and the dark eyes vanished again.

Dinner was a stew made of grains and winter vegetables. I was worried about there being meat in it, but Trina assured me that meat was a rare commodity in the city and that they only ate it when they got lucky—and even then, most people didn’t have much of a taste for it. Most of their food came from farms outside the city limits, tended by the whole community. When the harvest was good they all ate like kings all winter, and when it was sparse, they all scraped by somehow together.

Afterward Trina made a weak but fragrant tea out of dried flowers, and we sat by the fire, sipping it. Even Molly emerged for this, bare feet tucked up under her skirt and huge round eyes always watching me and Tansy. She looked no more than four or five years old.

“How many of you are there?” I asked, thinking of row upon row of buildings with shutters that closed as we passed.

“Only about two hundred of us now,” Trina replied.

“And fewer every week,” Brandon added grimly.

Tansy looked up from her tea. “Fewer? Why?”

Brandon leaned back in his chair with a creak. The fabric was worn and faded, and it sagged in the middle where he sat. He shook his head, setting his mug off to one side and retrieving his carving. It seemed to be a rough approximation of a horse, something I’d seen only seen pictures of in my city.