Shadowlark

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say.”

“Well, maybe I don’t particularly want to know what you were going to say.”

“Yes, you do.” Nix was as calm and unemotional as ever.

I stayed silent, counting each of my weary steps in my head.

“The people living here are watching you.”

CHAPTER 3

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