by Naomi Cyprus
Halan glanced at her in shock.
Nalah was a little surprised herself, but then she realized that there was no other way. The princess might be the daughter of a villain, but that didn’t mean she was a villain too. She would never have let them kill her. The bond Nalah felt with Halan was unlike any she’d felt before.
“Seyed, put that away,” said Ironside evenly. “We don’t murder people, remember? We’re better than that. The princess will stay here, safe and sound. If everything goes well, perhaps we’ll let her go home. If not, we’ll think of something else to do with her.”
Seyed snorted with derision. Nalah stood in front of her tawam, giving the boy what she hoped was a believable version of Halan’s imperious stare. The princess is in my protection now. No one hurts her while I’m around. She wasn’t about to help any organization that murdered defenseless girls, either. She could find her own way to get her father out of prison.
Finally Seyed put the knife away, and Nalah let herself exhale and step aside.
“You don’t have to do this for them,” Halan told her. “You said your father was imprisoned in the palace. If I could just talk to my father, the king—”
Marcus sidled up to Nalah. “If her father is the king,” he whispered, “then he must be—”
“Yes, Marcus, I know!” Nalah hissed.
There was that prickle of unease again—it was impossible. How could they be tawams of each other, but have different fathers? Perhaps Halan was secretly adopted? Nalah wanted to ask the princess for details, but she still wasn’t sure if she could trust her completely.
“Nalah, when her father kidnapped yours, did you get the impression he could be persuaded to give him back, just like that?” Ironside asked smoothly.
Nalah swallowed hard. “Who told you it was the king who kidnapped my father?”
From the back of the room, Darry raised his hand. “You told me, remember? Why, was I supposed to keep that a secret?”
Nalah looked over at Halan, who was taking in this new information. “You think my father kidnapped yours?” she asked Nalah. She almost sounded hurt, as if Nalah’s accusation had betrayed some kind of sacred trust. And, weirdly, Nalah almost felt bad. Almost.
“I’m sorry,” Nalah told her, “but he did. That’s why we came through the mirror. To get him back.”
The princess shook her head. “I’m sure there’s an explanation,” she said. “For this—for everything. Don’t you believe me?”
Nalah thought about all of her interactions with the king—Asa Tam. She shook her head. The princess was her tawam, and Nalah wanted to be loyal to her, but she knew she couldn’t trust that man.
And she was here to save her father. Not to make friends.
“We can help you save him,” said Ironside. “Get him out of the dungeon. Let you both escape to wherever you’d like to escape to.”
Nalah thought longingly of their shabby little house in New Hadar. Had she really been in this world for only a few hours?
Soren stepped toward her, lifting her chin so that their eyes met. “But we desperately need your help in return.”
“The prisoners we’re trying to free,” said the tall girl who was still holding Halan, “they’re our parents and our brothers and sisters and our friends. We love them as much as you love your father. And their lives are at stake.”
Halan suddenly stamped her foot, bringing Nalah’s attention back to her. “They’re all lying to you!” Halan snarled. “Don’t you see? All of those people must have done something to get locked up. They’re criminals!”
Nalah wanted to believe her—but she wasn’t so sure. New Hadar and the Magi Kingdom were very different, but some things felt very much alike. How many people had been taken away for questioning by the Hokmet—and how many had never come back?
“Halan,” Nalah said, gently touching her tawam on the arm. “I’m very sorry. But I came here with one goal: I’ve got to free my father. And Ironside’s right—you don’t know what these people did, any more than I do! If they are innocent, wouldn’t you agree that they should be free?”
Halan looked confused. “If they really were innocent, of course I would agree—but I don’t see any reason to believe that,” she said. “In case you’ve forgotten, before you got here I was tied to a chair.”
Nalah took a deep breath and turned to Ironside. He was looking at her with those sincere brown eyes again.
Why would a teenage lord want to free a prisonful of hardened criminals, and why would he gather this gang of street urchins who are mostly even younger than he is?
And just like that, her decision was made. Halan might still be right—Ironside might be a liar, and a traitor to the throne—but with King Tam in charge, Nalah would have to be a traitor too. She had to get her father out of there. Every moment that went by without him felt like an eternity.
“You must promise me that Halan won’t be harmed,” she said to Ironside. “And after we release the prisoners, you’ll let her go. Those are my conditions for helping you.”
She heard Halan let out a gasp of surprise, but couldn’t look at her just yet.
Ironside hesitated, raising an elegant eyebrow at her, as if he was impressed that she would negotiate. But finally he nodded. “That’s reasonable. Yes, I promise.”
Nalah thrust out her hand. Ironside looked at it with a curious smile, then shook it.
“Then it’s a deal,” Nalah said. She cast a look back at Halan. The princess looked quite disappointed, and a little worried, but when she caught Nalah’s eye she gave a tiny, very wary nod.
“And when she’s in there, if a guard gives her any trouble, she can just melt their swords!” said a young, excited voice. It was Darry. Nalah flushed. He’d just been getting to that when they’d discovered Halan had escaped. Ironside folded his arms.
“That’s right,” he said, “What did happen out on the street? Darry said something about turning a sword red-hot!”
“Well, that’s what happened,” said Nalah. “But I don’t know why it happened. I’ve never even heard of anyone doing that in my world, and I’ve read all the Magi Kingdom stories hundreds of times, and no one in this world seemed to be able to do it, either.”
“Nalah’s always been different,” said Marcus. Nalah glared at him, but he shrugged. “You have, though. Sure, you’re like a bull in a china shop when it comes to Thauma, but clumsy or not—you’ve got power.”
Nalah tried to pretend she wasn’t blushing. “Thanks a lot, Marcus,” she said. She turned back to Ironside. “Ever since I was little, I was always breaking things. My father made me wear gloves so I wouldn’t accidentally lose control in public. Anytime I was scared or upset, or even really happy, things would shatter. But it used to be just glass! And then recently, it started happening with other things too. Metal, fabric . . . I don’t know how to make it happen, it’s like it has a mind of its own.”
The rebels all stared at her.
Have I said too much? she wondered. She had never in her life spoken this openly about her power, about her problem. She imagined them all shrinking back from her, starting to look at her as if she was the more dangerous tawam. . . .
But they weren’t shrinking back. They were staring; their eyes were full of wonder instead of fear.
“I told you,” Darry whispered. “It was amazing. She bent the metal, just like that!”
“I can’t believe it,” said Ironside quietly. “It’s like something out of a fairy tale.”
Nalah laughed. “That’s what I thought about your whole world!” she said. “Where I’m from, there are hardly any Thaumas left, and even the ones who are still around can’t produce anything like the objects I’ve seen here. Magic is illegal in New Hadar; we feared for our lives every day. It’s dangerous to be magical at all, let alone to have the power to shatter glass with just a touch.”
Halan let out a sigh. “Try being unmagical in a world where everyone expects you to be magical,” she said.
Halan’s expression turned stony. “I have no powers. The royal line are all powerful Thaumas, every single one of them—except me.”
Nalah flushed, feeling strangely guilty. Why would she get so much power, while her tawam got none? If anything, it would have made more sense for Halan—a royal princess in a magical world—to be the Thauma, not her.
“Well, that’s going to be another problem with me pretending to be the princess,” she pointed out to Ironside. “If I get scared or panicky and I . . . do something, they’ll know I’m an imposter! They’ll put me in prison with my father!”
Ironside stroked his chin. “I think I’d like to see this power of yours myself. If what you say is true, we’ll need to figure out a way to help you control it. Who has something glass with them?”
There was a general rummaging as the rebels fished in their pockets, and finally, after some whispering and elbowing, one of the youngest reluctantly held out a little red marble. She was tiny, with deep brown skin and curly black hair that cascaded down to the small of her back. The yellow tunic she wore was so overlong that it brushed the sandy floor as she moved.
“Don’t break it,” she said as she handed it over to Nalah.
Nalah smiled at her. “I’ll try not to.” She held the marble in the palm of her hand and looked at it. Nothing happened.
“Well?” said Ironside.
“I don’t know!” Nalah sputtered. “It’s always happened by accident. I’ve never tried to do it intentionally—I’ve spent my whole life trying not to do it!”
“What’s usually going on when it happens?” he asked.
Nalah shrugged. “Usually it’s when I’m really excited, or upset, I guess.”
“I see,” Ironside mused. And without another word, he walked over to Nalah and planted a kiss right on her cheek.
Nalah’s entire head seemed to blush. Out of the corner of her eye she saw both Darry and Marcus—Marcus?—throw daggers at the young lord with their eyes.
“So?” Ironside asked rakishly. “Are you excited or upset?”
“Look at the marble!” one of the rebels shouted.
Nalah looked. The little red marble was melting into a pool of liquid glass in her hand, and then reforming, like soft taffy, into a long, wicked point.
Everyone looked at the thin red glass knife that had formed in her hand.
“Ah,” Ironside quipped, “upset, I see.”
The little girl rebel folded her arms. “You broke it,” she whined.
“No, I didn’t,” Nalah said. She stared at the glass knife and concentrated. She willed herself to bring back that feeling—the strong pull from her belly, the quickening of her heart—and it worked. She could feel the blood flowing around her body, every vein and nerve pulsating. She raised the glass to her lips, thought for a moment, and whispered: “Little glass world, light the way in darkness.”
The words came to her out of her memory, as if someone had whispered them to her a long time ago and she was simply repeating them. She heard the glassy chime in her voice, and from the way the rebels looked at each other and drew back slightly, she knew they’d heard it too. The glass in her hand glowed and melted, rolling back into a perfectly smooth marble. She knew it should have been agonizingly hot, but just like with the sword, she didn’t feel anything but a gentle warmth and the power in her fingers.
The marble turned hard and cool. Then it began to glow, not from heat, but with a shifting, dancing light that shone from her hand into the darkest corners of the room. She leaned down and handed the marble back to the little girl, who took it with glee.
“It’s so pretty,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“Here,” said Darry, picking up a piece of old wood from the fireplace. “Try something with this!”
Nalah hesitated. “But wood’s not my element,” she said. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Metal isn’t either, is it?” Ironside said. “Why not give it a try?”
Nalah began to protest, but then she held the wood in her hands, and was silent. She ran her fingers over the grain and she could feel the sap that had once flowed through it, the pulse of life. She thought hard about the wooden chests she’d seen being sold in the market, held the image of them in her mind: solid, square, polished things.
Nalah let her mind wander, and once again the words floated up from the depths of memory. “Keep safe my treasures,” she whispered, and there was a sound like the creaking of ancient branches in it. She brought her hands together, and the wood folded as easily as paper, the edges slotting together to form a rough box about the size of her palm, with a lid that fitted perfectly.
“No,” said a voice, choked with emotion.
Nalah turned to look at the princess.
She was standing, staring at Nalah. Her face was a mask of sorrow.
“What is it?” Nalah asked her.
Halan sniffed, and stared at her hands, seemingly not wanting to meet Nalah’s eyes. “Because I had no skill as a Thauma, my parents sent me for lessons every day with a boring old lord in his dusty tower in the palace. Whenever I wanted to get away, there was one story, an old forgotten legend that I knew I could ask him about. ‘The Legend of the Fifth Clan.’ Most people don’t know about it, but I found it when I was skimming through his library one day. It’s about a mythical clan of Thaumas who could work with any material—glass, wood, fabric, or metal—just by touching it. Everyone has always thought it was just a story . . .” Halan smiled at her, but her eyes glistened with tears. “But now, here you are.”
Nalah said nothing, her mind spinning with this news.
I’m a Fifth Clan Thauma?
Meanwhile, the rebels were abuzz with this new revelation.
“Try it with metal next! Make me a new helmet!”
“No, fabric. Get her to make something out of fabric!”
“Get her to do stone!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, nobody can do stone!”
Nalah still wondered about one thing. “Why did you ask your teacher about that story?”
Halan chuckled. “Because he would always end up saying how amazing it would feel to have those powers, and I—Halan the Weak, Halan the Powerless—could pretend to be terribly hurt. He would apologize and flee, and I’d have the rest of the afternoon to myself.”
“But you weren’t pretending, were you?” Nalah murmured.
Halan stared at her.
Several of the rebels were offering up random objects from their pockets now—but Ironside rose and commanded them to be quiet.
“There’s no time for this. Nalah, do you think you can control this power? It’s a great gift, but as you said, if you lost control of it in the palace, all would be lost.” His eyes bored into Nalah’s.
Nalah bit her lip. How can I know for sure? I’ve lost control so many times before, why not now? She thought for a moment before the answer came. Your father’s life never depended on it before. “I’ll control it,” Nalah finally said. “And I’ll keep my gloves on as much as I can, just to be safe.”
“That’s good.” With a grim smile, Ironside squeezed her shoulder. “Because you should know—the king won’t care if you’re Fifth Clan. Magic makes our lives here possible, but in truth, it doesn’t matter how good you are, only what family you’re from, and how much trouble you make.”
“Well . . . there’s a bit of that in our world too,” said Marcus quietly. Nalah nodded, thinking of the poor Thauma woman begging on the street, and the Hokmet enforcers patrolling the market looking for contraband. “I’ll do my best, I truly will, but there’s more to taking Halan’s place than just not using magic,” she pointed out. “How can I learn to be a princess so quickly?”
“Princess Halan,” Ironside said, turning to Nalah’s tawam, who gave him an angry stare. “This is your opportunity to prove to us that you’re as innocent and well-meaning as you claim. I can promise your
captivity will be much more pleasant if you do as I ask. Will you help her?”
“Fall in a furnace, Soren,” Halan sneered. “I’ll never help you deceive my father.”
Ironside shook his head sadly. “I hope you won’t regret that decision. Well, we’ll help you, Nalah. I’ll tell you as much as I can. And I’ll be in the palace to watch over you—nobody there knows I’m a rebel, and they won’t be surprised to see me with the princess, especially after our little dance at the feast.” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Halan.
“Humph!” said the princess.
Is that it? Nalah wondered. That’s the plan?
She turned to look at Halan. The princess’s lips pursed, but Nalah caught a flicker of worry crossing her face.
“Please, Halan,” Nalah said. I have to do this, but I won’t make it without you.
Halan seemed to be searching Nalah’s face. Nalah felt the same strange pang of connection she’d felt before—as if an invisible thread tied her and Halan together. Still, she had no idea what her twin was thinking. She tried to look honest and good, but it was hard to do when her own eyes were staring right back at her, challengingly.
Halan sighed. “Fine. But I will only talk to Nalah. The rest of you get out. That includes you, Soren. And no more ropes.”
Nalah let out a breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. One step closer to Papa.
Ironside bowed. “As Your Highness desires,” he said, with a hint of mockery.
When they were finally left alone, Nalah suddenly felt awkward. She studied Halan’s face—it was her face, but without the little scars that Nalah had stopped seeing even when she looked in a mirror. Halan’s skin was a tiny bit paler—she must almost never go outside, whereas Nalah spent hours each day at the market under the blazing sun.
Aside from my Thauma powers, we’re the same person, Nalah said to herself, who led two different lives. I don’t think I could ever be a bad person, no matter what happened to me. So she couldn’t, either, right? It made her wonder about Zachary Tam. She’d remembered him being a nice man when she was a child. Her mother had seemed to think so too. But somewhere in his heart, was there the potential for the same kind of evil that was in his tawam, the king?