Tali

  Despite its name, travel on a glider is anything but smooth. It bucks and sways constantly as if we’re riding an air current full of large boulders, and my awareness of Xan’s pain makes me wince at every jolt.

  By the time we stop, the morning after leaving Sunward, my body is aching from the tension of trying to wrangle the blighted glider while keeping Xan upright and breathing.

  Lucas and I help Xan dismount and support her as she lowers herself gingerly to the ground. One look at her grey, half-coherent face confirms the fear that’s been growing in me for hours. We can’t put her back in the glider saddle.

  I’m shaken more than I want to admit by this pale, trembling version of Xan. It’s difficult to reconcile it with the woman who yanked a crossbow bolt out of her own sternum while holding a grown man hostage at knife-point just a few hours ago.

  When I look up at Lucas, he’s just as frightened as I am and this somehow frightens me more. If he looked like he thought we could get the situation under control, I might have been able to believe it too.

  “I’ll keep going. Get help.”

  I can tell he wants to argue—insist that it’s not safe, and we can figure it out together—but he only nods.

  “I’ll keep her alive,” he says, knowing as well as I do he lacks any control over whether he can keep that promise. “Get back soon.”

  We never got our supplies back from Sunward, so we only have what we were able to tuck away from our quarters there—a single blanket which Lucas has tied around his shoulders, some fruit that has seen better days, and a few stale sandwiches.

  I take one of the sandwiches, then re-mount the glider. My body is screaming at me to stretch, and drink water, and sleep, and get the fuck off the cogging glider.

  “Wait!” Lucas calls just as I’m about to turn the throttle. I look back at him and he waves me over to where he’s kneeling over Xan. My stomach lurches and I tumble back down from the saddle and run to them. For two or three terrifying seconds I expect to see her face frozen in death, but her eyes are open and lucid, though red with exhaustion and pain.

  “Listen,” she says, grimacing at the effort to speak. I lean close and listen.

  “When you get to the Citadel, find Morton Street. Last house on the street. Ask for help and give my name.”

  “Morton Street,” I confirm. “Okay. How do I find it?”

  She’s shaking her head before I’ve finished the question. This is as much information as she is able or willing to give.

  “Just find it.”

  I wish to any god that might be listening that I still had my slate, or something to write with, but the gods remain unhelpful. For the billionth time I curse Sunward internally. Out loud, I repeat, “last house on Morton Street.”

  I squeeze her hand and stand. Lucas stands with me. There’s real concern in his eyes as he grasps my wrist.

  “Tal, be careful.”

  No one but Charlie has ever called me Tal. It catches me off guard for a second but I let it pass for now.

  “Just hang in there okay? I’ll come back as fast as I can.”

  A moment later, I’m on my own—my jaw clenched as I try to tame the rebellious glider beneath me. I don’t look back at my friends—though I’m not sure whether that’s to prevent the tears that threaten to spring up at any moment, or because I’m afraid I’ll steer the glider into a tree if I try.

  I take a moment to mark our surroundings, looking for any significant landmark. There’s nothing but flat ground to our right, but to the left is a small mountain range. The nearest peak has a strangely smooth indent, as if a chunk of it was sheared off by a landslide. That will have to do.

  The next few hours, or days, are a blur. It feels strange to be alone for the first time since Nokon City. There were nine of us when we set out. Ten if you count the Professor, which Ren would, so I will.

  Then we were down to three. Now only I am left and with every cut of the pruning shears, the stakes get higher. I know I’m being a little maudlin, but I think I’ve earned it.

  I learn a little about the glider’s moods, begin to anticipate and adjust for its judders and lurches, and eventually gain some measure of control.

  The abatement of my single-minded focus on staying successfully seated, however, leaves room for my attention to wander toward a dozen other problems.

  I don’t know how long it’s been since I last slept. Between the exhaustion, dehydration, and wind, my eyes burn and my vision is beginning to blur. I’m nauseated from hunger or tiredness or both. And I don’t know how much juice the glider has left in her.

  It was designed, after all, for short-range travel, not for station-to-station. Typical glider ranges vary depending on the mods attached but now that I know what I know about Sunward, I don’t even know if this one even needs a mod. Maybe its range is directly proportional to its distance from the secret city. Worrying about it won’t help, but it keeps my mind occupied so I don’t have to wonder if Xan is still alive. If I’m not careful, I can conjure up a dozen different scenes, each worse than the last: returning to find Lucas burying Xan. Returning to find Lucas is gone, and only Xan’s corpse remaining. Returning to find Lucas pinned to a tree by the antler-folk like Khalid.

  Better to worry about the glider’s range and how to find Morton Street.

  I think it’s been about two days since leaving Lucas and Xan when the glider finally stops working. It could be more though—I’m fully drunk with exhaustion and just aware enough of my mental state to know it’s not good.

  When I realize I’m no longer moving, I topple gracelessly off my steed and blink at the sky until it goes black.

  When I wake, the sun is low and the air has started to take on the chill of evening. My mouth and eyes feel like they’ve been dragged behind the train and it hurts to flex my fingers.

  Groaning, I drag myself to my feet. I guess I’m hoofing it from here. I orient myself in roughly the direction I think I’m supposed to be going, keeping the mountains to my left, then pause. I consider the Herculean effort it would take to put one foot in front of the other, and find it demands more than I have available.

  I do it anyway. Then one more time. This method seems to be effective, so I keep doing one more time until my body takes over.

  I don’t know how long I walk. I draw in on myself, shutting out every sensation that I can. I breathe in, then out. Take a step, then another. Every step is an inch. Every step is a mile.

  At some point I become dimly aware of the changing shape of the horizon but I don’t trust my own perception enough to trust it. I’m wandering in a fog, where anything might happen or appear to happen.

  I have never been a believer in miracles, but when, during one of my brief slides into awareness I find myself approaching what can only be the high Citadel walls, I can credit nothing else.

  I stumble along the perimeter until I find a small gated entrance. It’s unlocked and doesn’t appear to be guarded. No one stops me when I push it open and step through onto the street beyond.

  I don’t think I’m in any part of the Citadel I’ve ever been before. The street is more of an alley than the broad thoroughfares I’ve seen near the station. It doesn’t appear to be either a neighborhood or a shopping district, but a strange combination of both, with sad-looking secondhand stores and droopy houses lining the sides in no immediately discernable pattern. There are a few people out, but they barely glance my direction as I amble drunkenly toward the nearest structure.

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  If there is something I am supposed to do here, it is not relevant. For as far back as I can cast my memory, my sole purpose has been only to make it to the Citadel, and here I am. Pleased with myself and counting my task complete, I promptly pass out.

  Magda

  The unexpected knock at her door sets off all Magda’s internal alarms.

  Maintaining a reputation in the Undercity, while not gaining one in the Citadel Proper, is a constant balancing act. When people in the Undercity need help, especially medical help, Magda wants them to know where they can turn. She also wants the Committee to view her as a low-level mod dealer at worst, or not at all at best.

  If there were a clean separation between the two, it would be easier, but that’s not how humans work. There’s too much overlap between the Undercity and Citadel proper, and where they mix, lines get muddy. Someone who needs her help one day may need to curry favor with the Committee the next. A citizen in good standing with the Committee may need her off-book services to maintain that standing. Wherever there are humans, there are needs and incentives and conflicts of interest.

  To an extent, anyone who operates in the Undercity has to walk the same knife’s edge, but for Magda it’s especially important because she knows about magic. Nevalya once called her a Committee-level mage and while that’s not really accurate, it’s close enough. Magda knows magic. She’s good at magic. She’s better at magic, in fact, than anyone on the Committee. Those so-called mages forgot anything they knew about how the stuff really works more than a century ago.

  She understands the principles. The Committee produces mods and crops and medicines and flashy displays of wealth with a blanket algorithm and a sort of brutish efficiency that makes all of it look impressive, and none of it look easy. There’s supposed to be a natural flow to magic. It’s a type of communication. The difference between Committee magic and her own is the difference between persuading a frightened animal to approach you and clamping its leg in the toothy jaws of a trap. Between violent disfigurement and gentle trust.

  Magda loves magic, and what she can do with it, and she finds the bulky, malfunctioning mods plastered to everything and everyone obscene in their crudeness.

  But understanding real, powerful, transformative magic and how to use it makes the reputational balance even more difficult to maintain. Word spreads quickly, and not always to the right people. So every unexpected knock at the door heralds one of two things: a person in need of urgent medical intervention, or a more official visit of the kind she hopes never to receive.

  She lets the knock go unanswered the first time, considering. It comes again, this time louder, and a cold certainty settles over Magda.

  This is the second kind of visit. Someone sold her out to the Committee. She performs a mental inventory of recent patients, trying to guess who it was. Probably the husband of the woman whose arm she healed. Maybe he was the one who broke it.

  In the end, it doesn’t really matter who. The sound of someone wearing jack boots pounding on a door is recognizable in a way little else is. Anyone who has been awakened from a dead sleep by a keepers’ raid knows it. Nevalya knows it. And Magda knows it. On some level she’s been waiting for it for years—the knock that marks the end of her service to the Undercity and probably, she admits with a sort of clinical detachment, the end of her life as well.

  “Well, nothing lasts forever,” she remarks to the empty kitchen, then rolls her eyes at the cliche. Her steps, as she moves to the counter, have the shuffling cadence that comes with age.

  She needs to leave a note for Nev and anyone else who may come looking for her. The keepers will certainly take her slate, but that’s alright. Anything important—patient notes, scheduled visits, balances owed—is written down in her neat handwriting on cards in her recipe box.

  She removes the box from the cabinet and sets it by the stove where Nev will surely notice it, but hopefully the keepers won’t.

  The pounding on the door resumes, hard enough this time that a framed photo in the entry way shakes loose from its anchor and lands with a crash on the floor.

  That’s my last warning. They’ll break the door down the next time. No use going to meet them, though. She shuffles back to the table in the middle of the kitchen and resumes her seat. The table is covered in a bright lemon-patterned tablecloth and cheerfully lit by the light coming in the little window over the sink.

  Magda has spent so many years in this little home; as a final sight for old eyes, she could do worse.

  She stirs the tea as she waits for the door frame to splinter. Someone is shouting outside the door already.

  Magda frowns. Her hearing isn’t what it used to be, but the timbre of the voice is not what she is expecting. There is more panic than authority to it. She leans forward, straining to hear what the voice is shouting.

  After a few seconds she begins to make out a stream of particularly insulting curses, occasionally punctuated by her name. First name only, not her full government name.

  Her eyes widen a little and she stands, knocking her tea over onto the lemon tablecloth and scowling at it.

  Now that she actually wants to see who is at the door, her steps are quicker, more certain. She swings the door wide and blinks into the face of Leon, one of the Undercity’s many errand boys. The young man’s face is red with exertion and dripping sweat. Over one shoulder is draped the body of a person about his own size who appears to be unconscious or dead.

  “What the fuck took you so long?”

  Magda can feel the faint chagrin in her expression. Apparently the jackboot knock is not so obvious after all.

  “I’m an old woman, Leon. Everything takes longer when you’re my age. Who’s this?”

  She steps aside to allow him and his guest space to get by. He doesn’t answer but only grunts with the effort of hauling the body into the entryway. Magda directs him to deposit the body onto the sofa, hoping she won’t regret this instruction later. She’s not particularly fond of corpses on her sofa.

  When he’s relieved of his burden and panting in the sitting room she repeats the question. “Who exactly is this?”

  The look Leon gives her could mean a variety of things.

  You made me wait on your doorstep with a body for way too long, or

  You made me wait on your doorstep with a body and now you want to ask me questions? or

  You’re not even going to offer me water or something? Dead/unconscious people are cogging heavy.

  When she fails the parse the meaning quickly enough, he gives an exaggerated shrug.

  “How should I know?”

  The body belongs to a young woman, and the young woman is not dead. Good news for the sofa. Also for the young woman, probably.

  According to Leon, the girl was unconscious when he found her, lying in the street. A perfunctory scan is enough to see she’s severely dehydrated and probably hasn’t eaten in a good long while.

  Magda cradles the girl’s head in her lap, placing a hand on her dry, hot forehead, and begins a gentle probe. She listens with her fingers, first to the girl’s heartbeat, then her lungs. Then, she goes deeper—connecting to each part of her, listening and sending subtle signals back in answer.

  This is the way Magda learned to do magic. It’s like a conversation; tentative at first, and more confident as trust and understanding grows. She can sense the threads of the girl’s life, follow them as they course and weave through her body until she finds where they are connected, or where they aren’t and should be, or where they are flagging or have become snarled.

  Ever so gently, she tugs at the threads, sending tiny pulses down some, carefully rearranging and untangling others. She doesn’t make any drastic changes: not this time. Just enough to remind the body of the harmony it once enjoyed within itself. Once she’s corrected what can be corrected and encouraged what needs encouragement, the body will take over and continue healing on its own.

  The process is delicate. By the time she’s done, the light in the house has grown dim with the setting sun. She must have been sitting here for a while judging by the stiffness in her back and the little growl of hunger in her belly.

  She sent Leon out for food and he’s not back yet. Magda stands, stretching her limbs and ignoring the various cracking sounds proceeding from her joints, then heads for the kitchen and her trusty teapot.

  Leon returns just as the water begins to boil, bringing with him the scent of warm, salty noodles and fresh bread. Magda serves Leon, then herself. When they’ve eaten she strains the remaining noodles, collecting the broth in a mug which she takes back to the sitting room with her.

  Careful not to choke her unconscious patient, she spoons it into the girl’s mouth, a few drops at a time. She can already see, or at least sense, some health returning as the girl’s body continues the repairs Magda began.

  “Will she be alright?” Leon asks, his voice tentative. He could have left as soon as he’d delivered the patient to her, but he seems invested now. She can sympathize with that. It’s hard not to get invested in any person whose life you’ve attempted to save, even complete strangers.

  She turns to look at him, answering with a reassuring smile. “There’s nothing wrong with her that some rest and food and water won’t fix. It’s a good thing you brought her here when you did though. Any longer and it might have been too late.”

  This last part is a bit of a stretch, but the boy beams at her.

  A little while later, the girl begins to stir. Her eyelids flutter a time or two, then open. With a gasp she sits up, staring wildly around her.

  “It’s alright,” Magda says in her best soothing voice. “You’re safe.”

  The girl tries to speak but it only comes out as a rasp. She clears her throat and tries again. This time it’s more of a croak, but a comprehensible one.

  “Morton Street.”

  Magda frowns. “What about Morton Street?”

  “I need to find it.”

  That’s worrisome. A little tendril of fear sprouts in Magda’s gut, and she glances at Leon. Was this all an elaborate trap? But if he is not every bit as mystified as she is, he’s an excellent actor. Anyway, what would be the point of a trap? If the Committee decides to come after her, they are far more likely to use their typical forceful style than espionage. That still leaves a lot of questions.

  Why would the girl be looking for her specifically? This is certainly not one of her regular patients. So someone specifically sent the girl here, to find her. Whoever it was didn’t feel the need to come along, so either the girl’s condition was significantly better when she set out, or the person wants to hide their identity, or the girl sought her out on someone else’s behalf.

  If the first, what happened between now and then? If the second, why? If the third, is someone else out there waiting for help? And how far away must they be, considering the state of their messenger?

  She pauses, considering how to answer. The girl doesn’t look coherent enough for proper questioning.

  Fuck it. “You’ve found it,” she says.

  The girl’s eyes widen and a look of profound relief crosses her features, followed by one of slight bafflement.

  “Okay,” she says. Then, after a few seconds’ pause. “Okay. good.”

  This crucial detail sorted, she slumps back into the sofa and goes immediately back to sleep.