Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (13 page)

Forgiving himself the effrontery, Xander grabbed the woman’s arm. “Where am I?” he all but shouted over the din.

The woman finally met his eye, but she just smiled before returning her attention to the stage. A moment later, she threw back her head as a belly laugh shook her slender frame.

Xander slouched back in his chair, defeated.
Still,
her eyes are quite lovely.
Their shade, reflected clearly in the dark, reminded him of the sapphires traded by Highwater merchants.

But this is not Highwater.

Lacking other options, Xander resigned himself to watching the show. He’d missed much of the story, but the splendors onstage captivated him. Men and women in garish costumes delivered bombastic dialogue; their sweeping gestures amplified by dazzling bursts of light and sound with no discernable source. The players spoke with a strange accent that Xander perceived as clipped and lilting, and much of what they said made him burn with wonder and shame. The woman beside him sounded less stilted than the actors, but her speech resembled theirs enough for him to suspect that it was the local norm.

Where did that thrice-damned gate take me?

Luckily for Xander’s sensibilities, the gaudy display soon ended. The players took their bows to generous applause before panels in the walls and ceiling filled the room with light. Bereft of distractions, Xander noticed a musty tang under the prevailing candy-like scent. He was rubbing his eyes when someone tugged his sleeve.

“C’mon,” the woman said in her glib staccato voice. The lights revealed her hair to be deep red. “Show’s over.”

“Wait!” Xander shouted as she turned to leave. “What is this place?”

The woman jaunted up the center aisle, never looking back. “The Paragon.”

“I doubt that those wantons are paragons of anything,” Xander said.

They’d reached a large antechamber beyond the auditorium before the woman finally turned around. “The opera house,” she said slowly. “On Fortieth Street?”

“What town has
forty streets
?”

“This one.” The woman paused as if in thought. “There’s a hundred and twelve if you count Southridge.”

Xander’s confusion must have shown, because his impromptu female companion frowned and said, “You’re either really lost or really high.”

“Please just tell me where we are,” Xander groaned.

The woman turned on her heel and marched through the brass-fitted double doors. Xander chased after her. Damp bitter air stung his face as he stumbled into a scene that made the garish opera seem sedate. Bright lights of every color glared against an omnipresent backdrop of drab grey metal and stone. The lights formed words that screamed for his attention, but it was the teeming crowd that strained his hold on reality.

So many people!
he marveled.
Can the world hold such multitudes?

Xander feared losing his fellow theatergoer in the mass of humanity, but he soon found her standing beside a wagon of some kind. It was painted a ludicrous yellow, and it had no wheels. Yet it hovered above the trash-littered road, giving off a low whine.

The woman saw Xander and motioned toward him. “This is him,” she said to a young man seated behind a smoked glass window lowered just enough to show his head. His unkempt hair almost matched the vehicle’s paint.

The blond man squinted in the direction she’d indicated. “Damn, Neriad. You been trollin’ the Battery?”

Neriad smiled despite the man’s offensive tone. “No. I saw my dad off and found this kid sitting by the gate.”

The wagon driver sneered. “Enforcers didn’t pinch him? What’s the world comin’ to when they let head cases squat at the cube?”

Neriad shrugged. “The Enforcers’re busy slumming in Northridge. Speaking of which, can we get a lift home?”

The blond fellow eyed Xander. “You? Sure. Don’t know ‘bout him.”

“C’mon, Dez,” Neriad made a show of pleading. “He’s harmless. Just needs to come down is all.”

Dez grunted.

Xander detected a peremptory motion behind the glass and heard a hollow click. Neriad swung the vehicle’s rear curbside door open and climbed in, pulling him with her. The interior—covered in a strange black fabric posing as leather—smelled like burning moss. They started moving before he was fully inside.

Xander stared in awe at the strange world that streaked past the tinted windows. Huge drab buildings hunched in the misty shadows of still loftier towers. The impossible crowds never thinned. He started to think that Neriad wasn’t joking about the city having over a hundred streets. If his friends had been drawn to this mad place, finding them would be a miracle.

And if they hadn’t, searching for them might be hopeless.

Dez turned a corner and joined what had to be the world’s largest, fastest caravan. A flood of wheel-less vehicles streaked down a rain-slick track reminiscent of the road to Teran Nazim.

This is how that road looked when it lived,
Xander thought.

Neriad leaned forward to rest her chin on Dez’s seat. “Stop by Third Ward Primary. We need to pick up Nadia.”

Dez slammed his hand on the vehicle’s wheel-shaped reins. “Damn it,” he said. “Your sending didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout her! Can’t your mom do it?”

“She flitted too,” Neriad said. “No telling when she’ll be back.”

Dez gestured with his free hand as if trying to pluck words from the air. Finally he found what he was after. “What about your sister—the other one?”

“No drifter license.”

“Fuck,” Dez groaned. “She can handle the Wheel, but she can’t drive?”

“Dad only let her fly a couple times,” Neriad said. “Besides, mom has the car.”

“How’d you and baldy get to the Paragon?”

“Cube shuttle.”

“The Guild won’t drive you all over town, so you send for me. Typical.”

“I know I can trust you,” Neriad purred.

“Fine,” said Dez. “It’s not like I got nowhere to be.”

Third Ward Primary turned out to be a squat building sequestered behind a wire fence. Like every structure in the strange town, it was grey.

Dez pulled up to the curb. Xander left the car, preferring the moist, vaguely sooty air to the drifter’s stale-smelling cabin.

A group of children milled about the fenced pavement. Xander guessed that their ages ranged from six to ten, but it was hard to tell. To him, all looked softer than their years or frail beyond their right ages.

Except for her.

The girl—a woman by Nesshin reckoning—stood amid the yard. Her vitality set her apart from the children who seemed to orbit her like spheres circling a sun. One small girl in a plain dress clung to her leg.

The young woman fascinated Xander. Her attire defied tribal notions of modesty. But the smudges and signs of wear on her snug canvas pants and short-sleeved shirt absolved her of softness.

Neriad was ambling toward the pair at the center of the yard. Xander saw the resemblance between all three, including their blood-red hair. For the first time since his arrival curiosity eclipsed his fear, and he followed her.

“Hey, fatass,” Dez yelled from the car, “you allowed near schools?”

Xander ignored him and approached the three sisters. The one to whom the smallest girl clung patted the whimpering child’s back with one hand while caressing her head with the other.

“Astlin,” Neriad greeted her middle sibling. “What are you doing here?”

“The school sent for me,” said Astlin. She scooped up Nadia, who wrapped her in a fierce hug.

Neriad sighed in annoyance. “Perfect. I’m a little late, so they drag you out of work.”

“She was by herself for two hours,” Astlin said, gently disentangling her shoulder-length hair from Nadia’s clutching hand.

Neriad swept her arm over the yard where the children had resumed their random mingling. “She’s been with her classmates.”

Astlin’s vivacity flared into barely subdued menace. “This is the
second
class. Nadia’s in the first!” Her wrath ebbed as suddenly as it had kindled. “Neriad, please. I can’t do this alone. It feels like I’m losing my mind.”

“Why should I pick up the slack when mom and dad walk out?”

“Dad doesn’t walk out,” Astlin shot back. “He does more for us than you.”

Nadia’s whimpering became a desolate wail. Neriad recoiled. Xander could see anger and shame warring on her face. The eldest sibling stormed back to the waiting drifter and slammed the door behind her. A moment later it sped off.

Astlin rocked Nadia to silence. “Sorry you had to see that.”

Xander turned away from the fleeing car and met Astlin’s sapphire eyes. “I—” he stammered. “I have pried into your family’s business. Forgive me.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“How do you know?”

Astlin nodded in the direction of her elder sister’s retreat. “She does this sometimes.”

Xander’s brow furrowed. “What does she do?”

“She brings strangers home.” Astlin’s eyes widened as if just noticing him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“No insult given.” I must seem as strange to you as this place does to me.”

The young woman bit her lip as if to keep from voicing agreement. “You probably heard, but my name’s Astlin. This is my sister Nadia.” Lowering her voice she added, “You met Neriad.”

“I am Xander, lately a Nesshin of House Sykes. May God favor your kin.”

Astlin looked askance at Xander for a moment. Then she smiled. “Now we’re not strangers. So how about you escort us back to house Tremore?”

“That is your clan?”

Astlin’s mouth twisted in a wry frown. “It’s not even a house.”

“Where are we?” asked Nahel.

Damus studied the grey flagstones under his feet. Their variegated contours traced intricate patterns across an area larger than most towns. A cold wind blew unchecked. Crumbling spires ringed every horizon. “This is Steersmen’s Square, in the heart of Ostrith. The gate sent us astray.”

Nahel raised his nose to the wind. “Says the guy they threw out of Vale for trying to get in here.”

Damus looked back at the Guild hall’s imposing façade. His hasty search of its prison records had proved fruitless. He touched the vial of blood on its cord around his neck. “Have you caught the boy’s scent?”

“Hard to tell. A city’s the worst place for tracking. Plus there’s a lot of conflicting scents, like after a fire.”

“Did he even pass the gate?”

“I caught a trace in the Guild house,” said Nahel. “At least I thought I did.”

“You lost it?”

Nahel scanned the horizon. His canine face drooped. “Something’s covering his scent…something
wrong
.”

Hardly surprising,
thought Damus.
Ten million people once lived here. The Cataclysm snuffed them out in an instant.
“Can you follow it?”

Nahel frowned. “Follow what?”

“The ‘something wrong’.”

“I don’t think I want to if it means finding whatever was in the Guild house.”

Damus looked the malakh in the eye. “What if it has him?”

Nahel sighed. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

“I could debate you on that point, but we’re wasting daylight. Lead on.”

Xander walked bustling streets, staring at the towers that loomed overhead while stealing glimpses at Astlin’s slim figure and exotic red hair.

“You
are
new to Sali,” Astlin said.

The question caught Xander off guard. “Who is Sally?”

“Salorien. The city.” The young woman’s subdued laughter woke Nadia, who’d been sleeping in her arms. The child yawned; then rested her head on Astlin’s shoulder and lay still.

Shame burned Xander’s face. “I am sorry. I’m a poor escort.”

Astlin feigned a disapproving look. Her façade broke almost at once, and she smiled. “It’s all right. I walk twice as far most days by myself.”

“Most people here seem to walk only from their homes to their…
drifters
.”

“If they have both.”

Xander changed the subject. “It is all new to me. I don’t even know where I am.”

Astlin looked at him the way he’d looked at the city. “Seriously?”

Xander nodded.

“How did you get here?”

“I walked into a sphere of light. Then I was at the theater with your sister.”

Astlin fell quiet for a moment. “Neriad went to the Guild house with my father,” she said at length. “I bet she found you there and decided to drag you along.”

“I see,” Xander said. The explanation fit Neriad’s behavior.

“Where did you come from?”

“Not far from Ostrith,” Xander said. “Or so I heard.”

“You’re from Mithgar?”

“Of course. Where else is there?”

Astlin stopped in front of him. Supporting her sister with one arm, she took his hand. “This is Keth.”

“People live here!?”

Astlin’s face fell. “A lot of them.” She released his hand and pressed hers to his forehead as if checking for fever.

Warmth of another kind spread through him. “I know they did once, but I thought none survived.”

“Survived what?”

“The Cataclysm! The purging fire that scoured my world.”

Astlin recoiled in horror. “My father just left for Mithgar!”

Nadia stirred fitfully.

Xander gently grasped Astlin’s shoulders. “Be still. The fire is twenty years gone.”