by Naomi Cyprus
Halan stared at her father, who once again seemed like a stranger. Something was beginning to build in Halan’s chest, a feeling like she was falling from a great height, not knowing what lay below. She wanted desperately to take solace in her father’s words, to feel them around her like a warm, safe embrace. But instead they felt like an iron vise, cold and unforgiving. And suddenly, for the first time, she wondered if she’d done the right thing by telling him the truth.
Her father led her out of his study, strode to the end of the corridor, and rang the Thauma brass bell that hung by the doorway. It let out a sound that was muffled to Halan’s ears, but barely five seconds later there was a clattering of armor and a phalanx of guards came up the stairs, led by Captain Alamar, her sword drawn.
“Your Majesty,” she panted. “Are you all right?”
“Rouse the guards,” said the king. “I need a company to come with me at once to the dungeons, and more to guard the tunnel exits and the road into the city. Nobody enters or leaves this palace. Send word, if anyone sees the young Lord Ferro, that he—” The king glanced back at Halan, and his expression changed, just a little. “He is to be apprehended and brought to me at once,” he finished, speaking very deliberately.
Halan felt like she was falling faster and faster. Her skin crawled. What would the order have been if I hadn’t been here?
“Now, back to your rooms, Halan,” her father said.
Numbly, she walked past the captain and down the stairs, barely noticing the curious looks the guards were giving her peasant clothing. She reached the next floor and paused in the wide hall, hung with Thauma tapestries, that she would cross to reach the royal quarters and her own rooms. She leaned against the wall, trying to stop this sick feeling of wrongness from overwhelming her. She’d believed so strongly in her father’s goodness, believed that all she’d seen and heard was just a mistake that could easily be corrected—that she never stopped to think about what would happen if she was wrong. What would they do to Soren once he was captured? To those raggedy children in the rebels’ hideout? What would happen to Nalah? Her tawam was still in the palace somewhere, with no idea of what Halan had done.
Had she just condemned them all?
Halan felt sick.
She heard the rattle of mail and the echo of soldiers’ voices coming her way and wondered where they were going. Then she knew. There was another door straight ahead. It led back to the grand staircase, the great hall, and, eventually, to the dungeons.
Staring at that door, Halan made a decision. She had to know, for certain, what kind of a man her father really was.
Against one of the walls there was a couch upholstered in Thauma silk that radiated a gentle warmth at night. She pulled it out from the wall, and crouched down behind it just as the guards—led by her father—stormed past and went through the door. When she was sure they had all passed, Halan crept out from her hiding place and followed.
She was afraid that her father would turn and spot her instantly, but she needn’t have worried. He was too focused on leading his troops down to the dungeons, and the clatter and stomp of their passage down the wide sandstone steps and across the great domed, tiled hall was loud enough to mask any noise Halan made.
Captain Alamar barked instructions to guards that they passed, giving the king’s order to close all the gates and stop anyone coming in or going out. Confusion and worry spread behind them like a dust cloud raised by a horse’s hooves, and guards and servants swarmed in the corridors, hurrying to make sure the orders were carried out.
Despite all the chaos around her, Halan felt exposed. If only I had Marcus’s shadow cloak, she thought. Instead she put the plain headscarf she’d been given back on. With it pulled across her face, she was nearly as invisible as she had been when she was wearing the Veil of Strangers.
She heard her father’s voice as they passed through the hall.
“You, armsman. Send messengers to rouse Kayyali, Lang, and Malek. Tell them to bring everything they have ready.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said a young voice, and Halan heard one of the guards peel off from the group and hurry away.
The descent to the dungeons felt interminable, but finally they were there. Halan had never been in a dungeon before. The first thing that hit her was the smell—the stink of sweat and grime and fear—so bad she was glad of the scarf to cover her face. And then there was the darkness and the silence. The eerie, terrible silence that was almost like a prison in itself.
As she entered a long tunnel and approached a door lit by blue torchlight, she realized that the stomping of the guards had stopped.
“Your Majesty,” said a creaky, frightened voice. “I—I don’t know what happened.”
Halan slipped into the blue-lit room, keeping to the shadows. Rows of cages—filthy, horrible-looking cages—lined both sides of the room. All of them were empty. Their locks were twisted and melted off.
Nalah was here, Halan realized, and her heart lifted. She hadn’t expected to feel glad that her tawam had helped the rebels to escape, but another glance at the cages and she was certain that nobody, not even real criminals, deserved to be left in here to rot.
In the center of the room, a bony old man in an ill-fitting leather vest, a bunch of keys lying at his feet, was bowing to the king, his hands pressed to his face in shame.
“Please, I beg you, show mercy, my lord,” he said. “I was at the door the whole time, nobody came in or out. It must have been some Wild magic!”
“Take him away,” the king growled, and two of the guards dragged the jailer back through the door. Tam turned to a door at the end of the room, strode toward it, and yanked it open—and then he let out a laugh that chilled Halan to her core.
“Well,” he said. “My darling daughter. What a surprise.”
Nalah!
Halan felt a squeezing in her gut as she crept closer. What have I done to her? None of the guards seemed to notice Halan—they were too busy either running back out into the darkness to try to find the escaped prisoners, or flanking her father as he stepped inside the dark room. Captain Alamar took up a torch from the wall of the prison and followed him in. The blue light filled the small room, and Halan approached the doorway, afraid of what she would see.
There was only one cell in the room. Its lock had been melted off too, but it still held two people. One of them was Nalah, and the other, kneeling protectively in front of her, was a man who looked like a gaunt, dirty version of Captain Bardak.
Nalah’s father.
Halan stared at him, a thought rising from deep inside her. When are you going to stop fooling yourself?
This Bardak was really Nalah’s father—and Halan was not truly the king’s daughter.
“Leave us alone, you monster,” Mr. Bardak snarled in a dry and cracked voice. “Whatever you want from me, you won’t get it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the king, but all the rage had gone out of his voice. He sounded . . . happy. “I want nothing at all from you, Amir. Nalah has come to me, as I expected—so I have no use for you.”
The king struck like a snake, so fast Halan barely saw his hand move. A small metal ball, about the size of a plum, flew from inside his flowing sleeve and struck Nalah’s father in the forehead. It stuck there, and immediately crackled with tiny fingers of white lightning, sending them climbing all across his body. Amir Bardak’s eyes grew wide with surprise, and his arms and legs spasmed uncontrollably.
And then, the ball stopped crackling and floated back into the king’s hand. Nalah’s father went limp and fell forward, lifeless in the dirty straw.
It all happened in seconds—but it felt like an eternity.
“Papa!” Nalah screamed, shattering the shocked silence in the room. She grabbed her father’s shirt and shook him. “No, please, no!”
Halan silently retched as she watched her twin grasp her father’s body, crying and begging him to come back. And at that moment Halan truly felt that they shared
the same heart, the same searing, terrible pain. Because Nalah’s father was dead, but, in just as real a way, so was Halan’s. For the man who had just murdered Amir Bardak before her eyes was no longer the man she thought she knew. He wasn’t her papa.
Soren Ferro had been right. Asa Tam, the king, was a cruel, heartless man. He was a murderer.
And Halan had been wrong about him all along.
She stopped retching and stood, feeling numb.
The king was standing before the cell, watching Nalah’s grief with interest. “From the moment I saw you at the market in New Hadar, I knew,” Tam said, his voice making Halan’s skin crawl. “I saw your raw power and I knew that you, a filthy peasant from another world, you were the reason my daughter suffered.”
What? Halan couldn’t believe her ears.
“I thought that I could simply put you out of your misery once you’d completed making my mirror—another tawam to add to my list,” the king went on. “But fate had other plans.” He sighed, glancing at Amir Bardak’s body. “I hate it when things get messy, but then again, your coming to this world turned out to be in my favor. If not for your involvement in the rebels’ little plan, I wouldn’t know the identity of their leader! And I am so very glad to have that tidbit of information.”
All this time, Halan thought, her breath coming in great, ragged gasps, I was worried about Nalah hurting my father, when he was the one out to hurt her. One of the guards turned and saw Halan, and began to advance toward her. Let them. I won’t run. I have to face him sooner or later.
She stepped into the room, her head as high as she could hold it.
“Father, what have you done?” she demanded. “How could you kill an innocent man who you had at your mercy?” She glanced at Nalah. Her tawam was doubled up with sobbing, but she looked up and met Halan’s eyes.
The king spun around and pinned Halan with a calculating stare. “Halan,” he said in a low, warning tone, stepping between her and the cell. “I’m sorry you had to see this, but soon you will understand it was all necessary. You do not understand what’s at stake here. The future of the kingdom, of our family. As you said in my study, you are to become queen when I am gone. But to rule the Magi Kingdom without any magic of your own? Such a thing would be impossible. You may not think so now, but you wouldn’t have been able to keep control of the people without true power.”
Halan stared at him, each word like a tiny dagger in her heart. He had always told her that she would make a great queen, Thauma or not. He’d always made it seem like he believed in her for who she was. Was all of that a lie, to keep her from knowing how little he really thought of her?
“This common girl is a powerful Thauma,” Tam went on, while Halan stood speechless and Nalah cradled the body of her father in the blue darkness. “She’s hoarding all the power that should have been shared between you. But when she dies, all that power will flow into you! You will be the most magnificent queen this world has seen since the Thauma War! You will finally have the life you deserve.”
How could he think I would want that?
She looked at Nalah, and she was suddenly consumed with guilt. She remembered how she’d felt in the rebels’ hideout, watching Nalah make wonders with her hands. Envious. Full of anger and sadness that Nalah was so effortlessly able to do what she could not. She wanted the power—she always had.
I thought maybe we could be friends, but you were brought here for me, as a sacrifice. Your father is dead because of me. I’ve already betrayed you, though I didn’t realize it.
I won’t let that happen again.
“Nalah is not a common girl,” said Halan, as softly and clearly as her father had spoken before. “And I won’t let you hurt her.”
The king blinked at her in confusion.
“Excuse me?”
Nalah looked up from her father’s body, and her eyes locked on Halan’s. It was like looking into a mirror and suddenly seeing something in herself that she never saw before.
There was so much that divided them. Halan had rank; Nalah had power. Halan’s parents were alive, but they were strangers to her; Nalah’s were gone, but she would have the loving memory of them forever.
But they both had heart. They had their wits.
And they would not falter, not when their family was at stake.
“She’s my twin,” Halan continued. “My other self. She shows me who I am, and who I am not. I pity you, Father, that you never gave your tawam the chance to show you that before you killed him.” She paused, shaking her head. “I don’t want power,” she finished. “Not if that’s the price.”
Her father’s face flushed dark with fury, and then turned cold and serious once again. “You cannot make this decision, Halan. You don’t know what you’re saying, you’re too young. Too sheltered.”
“That was not my choice!” Halan yelled, years and years of frustration boiling over.
“No, it was mine!” Tam snarled back. He stalked toward Halan and she forced herself to hold her ground, even as he loomed above her. “You are nothing but a danger to yourself and to me, without any powers to protect you. You understand nothing about what it means to be a leader. But you will, in time. With the power you will have, we will crush the pathetic rebellion and rule this land in peace, forever.”
Peace? How can there ever be peace, when these are the lengths you’ll go to? This isn’t about peace—it’s about your own pride.
“No.” Halan stepped between her father and Nalah.
“Captain Alamar, take the princess to her rooms and lock the door. We will execute the tawam at noon, when my daughter has had time to calm down.”
Halan felt her arms seized from behind, and she screamed, “Let me go! You can’t do this!” But the guards ignored her. She writhed and kicked out at them as they dragged her away, but it was no use.
Captain Alamar followed, straight-backed and silent, and when they reached Halan’s rooms she stood in the doorway with her sword drawn. Halan wheeled around and tried to walk past her.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she snapped. “My father would have your head!”
“Princess,” said the captain with a weary sigh, “I have done much worse than this at your father’s behest. Be glad he still loves you enough to lock you away.”
And with that she slammed the door in Halan’s face.
Chapter Seventeen
Nalah
There is a strange story about a pair of tawams who met in the flesh one moonlit night. The one from the nation of steel and smoke related a story from his life, while the one from the kingdom of sand and magic listened. They realized that despite their very different worlds, they had both lived the same story, had both experienced the same joy and heartbreak.
Other stories tell of tawams whose connection becomes stronger and stronger, until they can sense each other’s thoughts, share dreams, even speak across the void.
—From Legends of the Magi
Nalah sat pressed into the corner of her father’s cell, hugging her knees, staring through tear-blurred eyes at nothing.
Her father’s body was still at her feet, and it was cooling even as she sat here in the dark. She had rolled him onto his side and closed his eyes. In a way it had only made things worse. Now he looked like he was sleeping—like, any minute now, she would see him breathing and know that everything was going to be all right, after all.
But nothing was ever going to be all right again.
Nalah should have leaped to her feet as soon as Tam struck, formed her glass light into a dagger and stabbed Tam through the heart. She should have gotten in front of her father, should have been the one to take the blow from Tam’s Thauma sphere.
She should have done something.
She only distantly remembered the moments after Tam had found them. Tam and Halan had argued. What was Halan doing there? Nalah wasn’t sure, but she suspected that Halan had been drawn toward the palace for the same reason she had been—to save her father.
&n
bsp; Halan had succeeded. Nalah had failed.
But in the end Halan had stood up to her father, who she loved so much, for Nalah’s sake.
Forgive me, Halan. I misjudged you. I misjudged everything.
Halan didn’t want her to die, but Tam had said she would, at noon the next day.
She was vaguely aware that there were guards at the door, guards in the dungeons, to stop her from using her powers to escape the way the other prisoners had. But she hadn’t tried to escape. There was no point anymore.
Would it be morning soon? Nalah hoped it would. At least this long night would be over. Whatever came next, it would be better than waiting here, with her father’s body, watching it and waiting for the breath that wouldn’t come.
There was a noise, as if someone had opened the door to the Well and walked inside. Nalah squeezed her eyes shut and tears scorched down her cheeks.
“Nalah,” hissed a voice.
Marcus.
She looked up, her eyes so used to the darkness that she could make out the movement of a scorpion on the far wall. But Marcus wasn’t there.
For a moment, she thought she was imagining things. Why wouldn’t she imagine Marcus’s voice, when she’d been imagining her father’s all night?
“Oh my god,” Marcus breathed. “Mr. Bardak . . .”
Marcus’s head appeared, followed by the rest of him. He bundled the shadow cloak in his hands. Cobalt leaped from his arm, hopped though the hole melted in the bars of the cell, and climbed into Nalah’s lap. He pressed his smooth, warm glass head against the underside of her chin, and Nalah bit back another sob.
“Nalah, I’m so sorry,” Marcus said, climbing in after the falcon. “I should have gotten here faster. Halan clocked me in the head. Cobalt had to fetch the rebels. By the time we . . .” He trailed off.