by Naomi Cyprus
Nalah cradled Cobalt in her hands, stroking the glassy feathers at the base of his neck. She didn’t feel it anymore—the connection to her father. She didn’t hear his voice in Cobalt’s sad, quiet keening.
He’s gone. Forever.
“Did they get out?” she whispered, her voice hoarse and cracked. “The prisoners, did they make it?”
“Yes,” said Marcus. “Ironside got them out of the palace just in time. They’re back at the hideout now, arming themselves. They’re going to attack in the morning.”
“Tam’s having me killed at noon,” Nalah said flatly.
Marcus stumbled back, the words like a blow. “We won’t let that happen,” he finally managed. “We’ll get you out before then.”
Nalah nodded. She couldn’t seem to feel anything. She knew that Marcus’s words should have given her hope, but all she felt was empty.
“Halan must have told her father about the rebels’ plan,” Nalah said, as the realization came to her. “That’s how he knew I was here.”
“I should never have trusted her,” Marcus hissed. “She told me she was afraid the rebels would kill her, and if we didn’t get here, her father would know you were an imposter. Then she smacked me with a rock. If it wasn’t for me, if I hadn’t been so naive, she wouldn’t have been able to get back here and betray us, and—”
He was looking at her father’s body. Nalah shook her head.
“It’s not your fault. She’s not a bad person, and you were trying to help her.” She swallowed. “You’re a good friend. You came to this place with me even though you didn’t have to. I’ll never forget that.”
“Of course I came, dummy,” Marcus said, feigning his usual mocking tone. “You’re always getting yourself into trouble when I’m not around.”
Marcus reached for her hand, and she reached back.
“Don’t worry, Nalah,” Marcus whispered. “When I leave here, I’ll go straight to Ironside and tell him about the impending execution. He’ll know what to do. He’ll rally the rebels and get you out before they can touch you. Okay?”
Before Nalah could answer, a clatter of footsteps sounded outside the door, and they both pulled their hands back quickly. Marcus threw the shadow cloak over himself, and Cobalt scurried underneath it.
The door opened again, spilling blue light down the steps. Tam strode in, with a pair of guards dragging a limp figure behind him.
“I’ve brought you some company, Nalah,” Tam said. “Not only for your cell, but also for your execution.”
Nalah refused to look afraid. She regarded Tam with cool hatred, and hoped that it made him angry.
The guards didn’t bother to open the cell—they simply shoved their prisoner through the melted hole in the bars. Nalah twitched as he nearly landed right where Marcus had been sitting under the shadow cloak.
He was almost unrecognizable, his clothes torn and a black eye swelling up one side of his handsome face, but Nalah knew who it had to be.
Ironside.
Her last hope, the one person who could have saved her from her fate at Tam’s hands, was going to be executed right alongside her.
Dawn might have been breaking outside the palace, but inside that cell, the darkness was complete.
Chapter Eighteen
Halan
What our people need is a leader who uses their strength not to control and suppress them, but to lift them to greater heights than they ever imagined for themselves. Only with such a leader can our kingdom be truly powerful.
David Ferro, from his personal journals
“I’m sorry about this,” Halan said to the servant who she’d tied to a chair in her bedroom. The trayful of tea and orange cakes the girl had been carrying when she’d come to keep watch over Halan lay scattered across the floor. “I really am. I promise I’ll make it up to you when this is all over. Two weeks’ paid vacation, courtesy of the princess, okay?”
The girl nodded—as her mouth was gagged, it was the best she could do.
Halan sighed. First the little rebel boy, then Marcus, and now this. She was turning into a barbarian. But she had to get out of here and do something. The old Halan, the pampered princess who might have stayed locked in her high tower, ignoring the evidence of her eyes and her heart, who couldn’t face the truth even when it was right in front of her . . . that Halan was gone forever.
And good riddance. I don’t need her anymore, I have work to do.
Dressed in Nalah’s plain peasant clothes, Halan sprinted back down the tunnel. She was lucky: very few people knew about this entrance; even Lord Helavi had been surprised when Halan found evidence of it in the old history books. There was nobody waiting for her in the dark, and nobody was watching the trapdoor into the gardens, either—though there were guards patrolling the paths between the palm trees and beds of flowers and succulents. Halan crept under a bush and waited for them to pass before slithering down the steep hill, keeping away from the road. She scaled the wall by climbing up a prickly palm tree with her hands wrapped tight in her headscarf. She dropped down the other side and slipped between two buildings, back into the city.
The sky was orange-pink with the light of dawn. Her father had said Nalah would die at noon. Halan still had time.
She just prayed it would be enough. She had to make this right—for the kingdom, for Nalah, and for herself, too.
The king had to be stopped.
The city was just waking up. It felt very different from the bustling, exciting place Soren had shown her. She could see the tattered clothes and tired eyes of the people pushing carts along the road toward the bazaar. She heard the hungry cries of children as she passed one house, and a loud argument from another.
This was what the luxury of the Thauma lords cost. This was what her father thought of as a peaceful city.
She couldn’t help wondering what exactly the king thought would be left for her to inherit when he was gone. She could see it, clear as the rays of sun that slanted between the buildings: he would crush this rebellion, and in another few years he would have to crush another. How would the kingdom go on if, one by one, he turned every baker and stonemason and trader against him? How long would it take him to turn every Thauma against him, too?
How did he think he would keep his throne, if their loyalty was built on nothing but fear?
Finally reaching the rebels’ hideout, Halan checked the street for guards before entering the abandoned house and climbing down into the subterranean rooms. There she found herself faced with a crowd of people, all gathered in a disorganized huddle. More than half of them, she had never seen before. They looked thin and dirty, and very angry. They were already armed, a motley collection of Wild Thauma weapons glinting in their hands and at their sides.
She searched the crowd for Soren, and her heart sank. He wasn’t there.
Soren or not, this is all I can do to save Nalah. I didn’t believe my subjects when they told me how they had been hurt—I need to make up for that now.
Feeling a little like she might be sick, she stepped forward and threw back the headscarf.
“Citizens! Listen to me!”
Heads turned. A few of the rebels exclaimed in surprise. Darry and Felis pushed their way to the front of the crowd, as did—to Halan’s dismay—Seyed.
“It’s Nalah! She’s back!” Darry called out.
“No, it’s not,” said a voice behind her. Halan turned around to see Marcus standing there, looking haggard, the shadow cloak slung around his shoulders. “It’s the princess. I never forget the face of someone who’s hit me on the head with a rock.”
A roar of shock ran through the crowd of rebels. Seyed drew his sword. It glinted red in the slanting sunlight.
“It’s true,” Halan said. “I’m Princess Halan, and I’ve come back because I need you. Where is Ironside?”
“Your father has him,” said Marcus, through gritted teeth. “He’s going to be executed at noon, along with Nalah. I just came from the palace.”
Halan swallowed. She hadn’t even had a chance to warn him.
Her throat felt as dry as the Sand Sea.
“Listen, please!” she said. “So much of this is my fault. I couldn’t believe my father was who you all said he was, but I’ve learned the truth, and I need your help to make this right.”
“Here to offer your head, are you?” Seyed sneered. “Because that’s all we need from you.” He advanced on her, his sword drawn. Halan felt a prickle of panic in her chest.
“Get away from there, boy,” snapped another voice. It was that of a grown woman, as tall as Seyed and with one burned arm. The axe she was carrying sang strange harmonics as it cut the air, and she stepped between Halan and Seyed without a hint of fear. “You’re not the leader here, you don’t get to decide what happens to the princess.”
“You’re not the leader, either, Rosa,” Seyed snarled. But there was a hint of childish petulance in his voice, and Rosa didn’t move.
“Ironside is the leader,” said Darry.
“Ironside is in the dungeons,” Felis pointed out. “Someone needs to decide what to do.”
“We’re wasting time!” Halan said. “We have to storm the palace immediately—or Soren and Nalah will both be executed!”
“What do you care?” Seyed spat.
“I care because I’m not like the king! Soren and Nalah are good people, I know that now. I won’t let them die because I was too blind to listen to them.”
“How will we get into the palace without Ironside?” said an old man with a bag full of glistening glass orbs. “He was our way in, he knew every secret passage. Without him, we’re just a doomed rabble. The guards would cut us down before we even reached the gate, Thauma weapons or not.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Marcus spoke up. “The princess knows the palace better than anyone. If she really wants to make this right, let her help us.”
Halan’s heart beat faster. Every one of the rebels was staring at her now. Most of them looked like they were considering Marcus’s words carefully. She looked at Seyed and Rosa, and then a broken cart a few feet away caught her eye. She ran over and climbed onto it, so that she was looking down at the whole group of rebels.
This is absurd. You can’t do this.
No—it would be absurd not to do this. If I don’t, nobody will, and Nalah and Soren will die, and the king . . . he’ll keep on hurting people. Perhaps he was good once. Perhaps he really was the man he made sure I thought he was, a man who wanted what was best for everyone in this kingdom.
But fear changed him. The fear of being overthrown, the fear of handing his kingdom over to a powerless daughter. And that fear made him do terrible things.
Halan was all too familiar with fear. She’d lived with it all her life, been told to be afraid of everyone and everything. But since the moment she stepped out into the world that night with Soren, and all her fears were realized, she’d changed too. She’d begun to understand that it wasn’t her lack of Thauma skills that made her powerless, it was fear itself. The moment she stopped being afraid of the world was the same moment she began to feel powerful.
And right now, the people didn’t need her to be a Thauma. They needed her to be a leader.
“Marcus is right, I know the palace like the back of my hand,” she called out. “Three days ago, I was sitting in that palace, looking out of the window, dreaming of the magical kingdom I would rule someday and the happy, thriving city I was about to visit with Soren.”
A few of the rebels scoffed. But Halan barreled on.
“I know! I was wrong. Actually I was wrong about nearly everything. But I’ve seen my kingdom now, I’ve seen my city, and I see you. All of you. I see that you’re starving and freezing. I see that the king’s way of ruling has been cruel and unjust.”
“Yeah!” cried one of the younger rebels. “Down with the king!”
Halan tried not to look like she was shaking, though she could feel the tremble starting in her fingers.
“I’ve seen with my own eyes how some of the nobles treat the people in this kingdom, not with courtesy and respect, but with insults and violence. But I’ve also seen that there are good nobles like Soren, like his father, like my mother, who only want to end the injustice of my father’s reign.” The trembling in her hands felt like the beating of a drum, and she tried to use that feeling, to make her voice louder and her heart stronger. “They will flock to us, and we will free our kingdom together. My tawam is in that palace, and so is your leader. Will we leave them to their fate?”
A roar went up from the rebels, nearly all of them raising their weapons.
“No!” they cried as one.
Halan suddenly felt something that she’d never felt before in her whole life.
Powerful.
“Then let’s go and get them,” she said.
Chapter Nineteen
Nalah
There have been rumors for many decades that members of some of the great houses were also Fifth Clan Thaumas. None are supported by much evidence, but the tale of Zarek Ali, the legendary metalworker, is one that bears repeating.
Ali was one of the king’s advisers during the Thauma War. When the world as we knew it ended, the Ali family worked through the Year of Storms to save not just themselves, but any others who came to their house needing shelter, water, or food.
Ali was said to be able to work metal into any shape, to give it nearly any property, within one day. He was famed for what he was said to call his “little trick”: given any lump of rock, no matter how base, he could vanish for a single night and return with some Thauma craft, whether it was a battle- axe or a single, tiny pin. This led many to speculate that in order to refine the ore and craft it so quickly, Ali must have been a Fifth Clan Thauma, shaping the material with his very hands. Others said that he cheated, using scraps from his workshop to impress the gullible.
It is said that Fifth Clan Thaumas appear in our history only at times of unrest, when the kingdom needs a hero of legend to intervene in great battles. This is, of course, merely superstition, but as they say—in all stories there is usually a grain of truth.
From “The Legend of the Fifth Clan,” in Myths and Legends of the Magi
Nalah opened her eyes, waking from one nightmare straight into another.
In the darkness, she felt the dirty straw under her hands and Cobalt’s warm and solid body against her chest.
Reality struck her like a blow. Her father was dead, she was about to be executed, and there was no hope for rescue.
Then she heard the sound that had woken her—footsteps and a rattle of scale mail, outside in the main dungeon.
On the other side of her cell, a figure stirred.
“Hide the bird,” Soren slurred past a thick, bleeding lip. “They’ll take him.”
Nalah hurriedly set Cobalt down in the corner and shoved a pile of straw over him, catching a glimpse of the white stripe across his breast as it reflected the torchlight.
She had no more tears to shed—she had cried a whole ocean overnight. But she sighed to see the rift that her father had so carefully mended. She wondered if anyone would ever be able to mend the crack in her heart the way Papa had fixed the falcon’s.
“Don’t lose hope,” Soren whispered. “The rebels will come for us.”
“Without you to lead them?” Nalah whispered back. “They wouldn’t know how.”
Soren was silent for a second. “They’ll find a way,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “The people will rise.” Nalah couldn’t tell whether he believed it or not.
The door opened, and the blue light from the dungeon flowed into the Well.
“Up,” said a voice. “It’s time to go.”
Nalah looked up at the stern faces of the two guards in the doorway. They were holding two long ropes that glistened with an oil-slick sheen. Behind them, Nalah could see a whole troop of guards, their swords drawn, waiting.
“We know about you,” said one of the
guards in the doorway. “You’re a Fifth Clan Thauma. So just in case you have any ideas about crafting something, be assured—this rope has been made to resist any attempt to escape, and if we so much as hear a whisper out of you, our orders are to cut you down.”
“I thought the king wanted a public execution,” snarled Soren.
“He’ll settle for a private one, if necessary,” said the guard simply. “And as for you, Ironside,” the guard sneered. “If you think your little band of thieves is coming to save you, think again. The king has erected Thauma barriers on every gate into the courtyard—no Wild weaponry can pass through. Don’t you worry, though, there will be plenty of peasants—unarmed ones, of course—to watch you die. His Majesty wants to make absolutely sure the rebellion dies with you.”
Nalah saw Soren’s resolve falter at those words. What hope did they have now?
Nalah got to her feet and climbed out through the melted bars, her limbs feeling heavy. She let the guard tie her hands, and resisted the urge to immediately try to grab the rope and use magic to unravel it. What was the point?
If I’m about to die, she thought, I’d rather see the sky again before I go.
She allowed herself to be led out of the dungeons, through dark corridors, and up narrow stairwells. Finally a door was thrown open, and Nalah was pushed out into a sea of light.
She blinked, trying to adjust to the noonday sun, which was searingly hot after the cool depths of the Well. The sky was as clear and shining as a perfect sheet of turquoise glass. A heron wheeled overhead and was gone. It felt wrong to Nalah that such a terrible day could be so beautiful.
She was standing on a wooden stage in the corner of the palace’s courtyard. The guards led her stumbling across it, and tied her hands to a stake. Beyond that, she saw the gates thrown wide open, and a crowd standing in front of the stage. It was a rainbow of color—with the nobles in colorful Thauma robes, peasants in threadbare tunics the color of sand, and guards in black.
To one side, in a raised gallery, sat a small group. The highest nobility, Nalah guessed—as well as two people she recognized. A girl dressed all in gold, shining like the sun, and a woman in robes of royal purple.