“Not a dream,” Sebastian said. “He shot you.”
Anton took a few tense breaths and then said, “This morning I rummaged in Roger’s coat pockets. I wanted to bum a smoke. I found a letter.”
“From whom?”
Ingrid held up one hand and took Anton’s hand in the other. She glanced quickly at Freddy. “Anton may want to talk to you in private, Sebastian.”
Freddy crossed his arms. Maybe she could make him use magic, but she couldn’t make him leave Anton’s sight.
“Whatever Anton has to say, I trust Freddy with it,” Sebastian said. “He’s worth the risk.”
“I’m telling you,” Ingrid said. “Freddy has no loyalty to Yggdrasil. Until he swears his allegiance, it’s just too dangerous.”
“I will answer for any negative consequences,” Sebastian said. “Anton, please, go on. Tell me about the letter.”
Ingrid paced to the side of the room, trailing her fingers along the wall.
“It was from the king,” Anton said, looking unsure about Freddy himself. “Asking for information about you.”
“You mean Roger is working for Otto?”
“Yes. I asked Roger about it when we started our shift, and he wouldn’t answer. It was obvious he was a spy for Otto, and we got in a quick scuffle. I was trying to get his weapon from him, and he shot me. Did he get away?”
“Seems he did,” Sebastian muttered.
It had been years since Freddy had seen a photograph of Crown Prince Rupert of Irminau, but as Sebastian spoke to Anton, the pieces fell together with such satisfaction that he smiled.
“Ah,” Freddy said. “Now I know why you seemed familiar.”
Freddy couldn’t have a conversation with Sebastian until Anton had said his final words and asked Sebastian to bless him for the afterlife.
“I’m not a priest,” Sebastian said.
“You’re my sovereign. It’s good enough.”
Sebastian glanced uncomfortably at Freddy, and then took Anton’s hand and said a prayer for him. Then Freddy let Anton go. It was getting easier to break the magic, though he doubted it would ever be truly easy.
“Ingrid, let me talk to Freddy alone,” Sebastian said, as Will and Johan carried Anton’s body away.
Her eyes flashed at him, but she said nothing. She walked out stiffly, her face pinched with hurt. Freddy almost felt as if Sebastian had been looking for an excuse to tell him the truth.
“Prince Rupert,” Freddy said. “The last time I saw you in the newspaper, you lost a leg skiing and then drowned while swimming in the river. Was any of that true?”
“Ingrid was able to heal my leg, and the drowning story is what the servants told my father.”
“How did Ingrid heal a missing leg?”
“I’m not quite sure. She had me in a healing trance. She’s quite powerful.”
Freddy was beginning to recognize the distant stare through half-closed eyes that showed Sebastian had lost himself to Ingrid’s enchantment. “So you think Otto knows your identity? Does he believe you really drowned?”
“It isn’t unreasonable to suppose I did drown,” Sebastian said. “I lost my leg the winter I was sixteen, and all that spring and into the summer I was recuperating and extremely depressed. He sent me to his summer retreat with my most dearly loved servants in the hopes I would cheer up. As far as he knew, I wanted to die, but he does have spies peppered throughout the revolution. It’s impossible to say if Roger suspected my identity or not.”
“So you ran away from home deliberately when Ingrid healed your leg. Why leave that position of power?”
“I have no power as long as my father is alive. He abuses people, and he’s killed people I loved—magic users, drained dry until they’re dead. I want to help them, but obviously I can’t simply kill my father: I have to build an army worthy of challenging him.”
“Why did you come here?” Freddy asked. “Why not incite rebellion in Irminau first?”
“It was easier not to be discovered here,” Sebastian said. “Working in Irminau? That’s the kind of thing he would see coming. Besides that, I love Urobrun, even with all its flaws. This is how I imagine the future. Or at least, it’s a start. And Ingrid agrees with me.”
“Ingrid,” Freddy said. “She certainly doesn’t seem happy with me.”
“She is cautious around people who haven’t sworn an oath to Yggdrasil. She knows I’d do anything to protect the tree—she doesn’t know that about you. She’ll warm to you, I’m sure.”
If Ingrid had every person in the house bewitched, then even if he and Nan found proof of her wrongdoing, they wouldn’t be believed. Sebastian sounded perfectly sensible—until it came to Ingrid. He would have to tell Nan about this right away, but how could they fight an enemy that lurked inside the mind?
That afternoon, Sebastian’s men returned with thirty or so weary, grateful refugees from Irminau. They were hungry and exhausted, and some were sniffling and coughing with winter colds. Thea saw echoes of her parents in their kind, weather-beaten faces and humble trunks of clothes and valuables.
Their unofficial leader was an older woman with long gray hair, wearing bits of silver finery along with her shabby clothes. When Thea brought her soup and a blanket, the woman glanced over her bobbed hair, geometric knit sweater, and pleated skirt as if she was an alien species. She reminded Thea of her grandmother. Thea had only met her once, before the war, when trips across the border were easier. In her fuzzy memory, Grandmother had worn the same kind of silver rings on her fingers. “Those are lovely,” she said, motioning to the woman’s hand. “Are they very old?”
“Yes, very old. They came down to me from my great-great-grandmother.”
“I wish my family kept things like that,” Thea said. “My parents left Irminau when they were young. They had nothing.”
The woman cracked a small smile. “An Irminauer girl? Really? You look like a movie star.”
Thea laughed. “You haven’t seen a real movie star yet.”
It was strange to think of movie stars still existing in this new, torn-up world. She felt as if all the glamorous clientele of the Telephone Club must surely have vanished the moment the workers saw the light of day.
After she tended to the Irminauer family, Ingrid told her to dip a cloth in a cup of herbal tea for Max, who had gone out drinking and come home with two black eyes. When he saw her come into the room to tend to him, he turned away.
“You shouldn’t be helping me,” he said. “Not after what I did to you.”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Close your eyes.” The tea smelled unpleasant, and reminded her of something her mother would’ve made for her when she was sick. Mother…
“I didn’t mean to do it.” He grabbed her arm, the warm cloth falling off his face, his breathing growing rapid. “I didn’t want to shoot you. Or anyone. Something came over me—”
Thea laughed uncomfortably. “Really, you sound possessed! I told you, I’m fine. You’re just shaken. Get some rest.”
“No one deserves to be hurt like that. No one deserves any of this! I don’t want it, but—it was done. She said it was for the best.”
Thea gently yet firmly removed her arm from his clutches and stood up out of reach. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What was for the best?”
“M-my hands…” He put a hand over the compress and started to cry.
“What about them?”
“She—had a saw—”
Thea broke into a cold sweat. She hurried from the room, leaning against the wall outside Max’s door. What’s happening to me? She couldn’t seem to catch her own thoughts. She was already forgetting what Max had said, but a sick feeling lingered, a snatching at something she wasn’t sure was there.
Yggdrasil—
Yggdrasil is always there.
That evening, when the musicians began to play, Nan crossed the room and held out her hand.
Thea laughed. “You can’t dance!”
“Maybe I coul
d learn, if I keep trying.”
“You think?” Thea took Nan’s hands. Sometimes, when it had been slow at work, the Telephone Club girls would dance a few lively steps together, encouraging the crowd to get going. Nan never participated, because she was so terrible. Thea tried to lead her now, and it was still hopeless, her steps always out of time. When Nan stepped on Thea’s foot, her ears flushed and she glanced at Sigi, who had just walked into the room with some papers in hand. She waved at them.
Sebastian walked in and started chatting with Max, along the periphery, and now Thea was blushing, too.
Nan glanced over her shoulder and saw the focus of her attention, even though Thea had tried to mask it by looking away. She raised her eyebrows at Thea. “He isn’t the reason you’ve been acting so weird, is he?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t been acting weird.”
Nan nodded, seeming distracted. “So do you like him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You know what I mean! Do you want to know him?”
“Maybe. I don’t know what’s come over me! I never used to fall for anyone and…now I’m confused. I kissed Freddy, but Sebastian is so handsome.”
“Handsome men are nothing new,” Nan said. “It must be more than that.”
“I feel as if we share something,” Thea said, unsure how to explain.
Nan stopped her poor attempt at dancing and clutched Thea’s hand. “Thea, I just want to talk to you.” Her husky whisper was barely audible over the instruments. “Whatever Ingrid did to you, please shake it off.”
“All Ingrid did was to show me a purpose,” Thea said, though she felt, once again, the sense of other thoughts and feelings, smothered behind a veil. “I don’t know why you and Freddy seem so…” Afraid of her. Afraid of her. Nightmare. Ingrid. Blood.
Thea tightened her own grip of Nan, riding a sick wave of panic she couldn’t voice. “She did…” Speak. “She did something.”
“What did she do?” Nan demanded.
Thea shook her head, her mind a blur of pain and terror. Whatever had happened was too terrible to tell Nan. If she told Nan, she would have to face that awful thing.
“Damn it,” Nan said, as the door swung open and Ingrid entered. She was looking right at them. Thea pulled away from Nan, feeling as if she had betrayed Ingrid.
Sebastian noticed all of this from the side of the room. He walked over to Ingrid. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Ingrid said, her forehead wrinkled with tension so she almost looked her age for once.
“The way you charged in here…”
“I just wanted to see how things were going, to make sure everyone’s comfortable. I feel as if the mood has been a bit unhinged.”
Sebastian took a sip of the drink in his hand and glanced around. “If this is your idea of unhinged, you might want to take a step back, because I was thinking of removing my jacket.”
“You should be working, Sebastian,” Ingrid said, and then she smiled her neat little smile. She could’ve been a movie star herself, Thea thought, the type who could play a little girl for decades.
As she departed, Sebastian did toss his jacket aside, and he gave Thea and Nan a crooked grin. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.”
“I’d sure love to know myself,” Nan said, her tone sharp. She squeezed Thea’s hand, and left them.
“Do you ever get the feeling—” Sebastian began. Then frowned.
“That something is wrong?” Thea asked softly. Even though Ingrid was gone, she kept seeing that terrible look she’d had in her eyes when she pushed the door open.
“Maybe,” Sebastian said. “It reminds me, sometimes, of my childhood bedroom. I swore it was haunted, but I never saw the ghost. I just felt that someone was there, watching me. Or that someone was speaking in the next room, yet when I opened the door, the room was empty.” He laughed sharply. “That makes me sound like I’m losing my mind, and I don’t have time for that.”
“I feel the same way.” Thea took a step closer so she could whisper. “Like someone’s watching us.”
He looked at her, and she saw an echo of her own thoughts in the way his expression suddenly set as sure as an egg poured into a hot pan. Don’t speak of it anymore.
He reached for her shoulder, almost fumbling, and drew her close, while he still held his drink in one hand. “We should just dance,” he said, shutting his eyes. “Live in this moment. This is the first chance I’ve had to relax in days.”
She took the drink from his hand, drank the last sip, and put it aside. Whatever it was, that odd touch of madness that sometimes crept into her mind, it was shared. It bonded them in some unseen way that only their eyes seemed to understand. She would never have put her head on any other man’s shoulder, but she found herself now doing just that, spreading her hand across his back to feel the way his muscles shifted as he danced, the warm soft-and-hard of his skin beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. She shut her eyes.
When she opened them, Freddy was standing in the doorway. As soon as she noticed him, he left, his expression unchanged.
“Hel wrote back,” Sigi said, flashing the letter at Nan as she walked away from Thea.
Nan was still lost in her worries over Thea; she had to run Sigi’s words back over in her mind. “You didn’t even tell me you sent a letter.”
Sigi pushed the doors open, heading back into the hall. The sound of the music grew muffled as the heavy doors shut behind them again. “I’ve been so nervous about what he’d say, I didn’t want to talk about it. He understands now, though.”
“Did you tell him the truth?”
“Not exactly. I didn’t give him many details about what it was like underground. And I didn’t tell him about Freddy. I just said my mother gave up her life for mine, and it was a rare spell that I didn’t know existed. After that, I tried to sound like my old self, to ease his mind. I asked him a lot of questions about how things are going for him. He likes attention.”
“I see he wrote a lot in response.” The letter looked to be at least five pages, covered front and back in small handwriting.
“Brevity isn’t his strong suit. He spent three pages just giving me a detailed account of what happened to him the night the workers got out. ‘At approximately two forty-five p.m., I was wakened by shouting outside the window, so I reached for my robe and hurried downstairs to see what was the matter, finding three young men who looked dirty and distressed. They started to explain the horrifying circumstances, and I tried to invite them up for cheese toast, but they insisted on—’ Well, anyway. You can tell he’s a dear, can’t you?”
“Sure,” Nan said, although she was not usually quick to call anyone a “dear,” and certainly not on such scant evidence. She could tell Sigi was eager to share her friends; despite apprehensions, Nan tried to play along.
“He invited us to a gathering tomorrow morning. University classes have been canceled all week, so no one has much to do, and the curfew has ruined evening parties.”
“Oh—you told him about me?”
“Of course I told him something.”
Nan glanced at the doors again, wishing even more that Thea was her old self. She needed someone to talk to about this. Should she even try to pursue normal friendships now? What would she say at a gathering? At least Sebastian had sent for some other clothes for her and Sigi, and they weren’t bad.
The door creaked open. Ingrid slipped out. “What are you two doing?” she asked suspiciously, as if they would discuss huge secrets right in the hallway.
“Nothing much,” Nan said.
“Oh?” Ingrid shot Sigi a look as if she wanted her to go away, but Sigi stayed put. “I have seen so little of you, sister. I hope you’re concentrating on regaining your memories and your powers.”
At night, the memories crept in. Ingrid in her youth, a slip of a girl in a dark green dress and apron, her long blond hair braided and coiled around her head, with a few wisps floating
out to soften her face. Her bare, dirty feet curled beneath her as she peeled apples. She never liked to stay inside. Their small cottage was built under Yggdrasil’s branches, with just enough room for their three beds and three chairs and a hearth for cooking, where Urd liked to read by the fire.
Nan swallowed. Even the beautiful memories frightened her beyond words. They belonged to a stranger.
“You have been remembering,” Ingrid said. “I see it in your eyes. Why do you fight it? Why don’t you want your old life back?” When Nan didn’t answer, she glanced at Sigi again. “Do you want to lose everything?”
Nan narrowed her eyes. “No, I certainly don’t,” she said. “You were different, in my memories.”
“We were so happy together before Yggdrasil’s destruction. Such a thing had never happened, in all our years. Of course, it will grow again. And when it does, we can be happy as we were.” Ingrid smoothed her hand down the front of her dress, fretfully, like she was looking for comfort. “Good night, Nan.”
Nan’s stomach flipped as she watched Ingrid leave the room. She didn’t want to sleep, fearing she might recall more of her sister in young and merry days. I must have loved her once, more than I love Thea, or anyone in this life. The old me probably would have protected her above all.
Something dark has a hold on her, too.
“Nan?” Sigi asked. “You look so troubled.”
“She’s right. I do have memories of her. And all I know is that something’s wrong.” Nan pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’d like to meet your friends. I need to think about something else.”
The guards didn’t want them to leave the next morning. “Sebastian’s tightening security after what happened to Roger,” they told them.
“I can assure you I’m not reporting to any enemies,” Nan said. “Sebastian wouldn’t force me to stay, I’m sure.” She was certain of this now; Freddy had told her and Sigi Sebastian’s true identity yesterday. Sebastian must know that she knew, and since he clearly wanted this kept secret, she was sure he wouldn’t challenge her.
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