“No, but—”
“We won’t be gone long.”
The streets had more people on them now, the mood changing from withdrawn fear to a desperate energy. They had to stop for a pack of factory workers marching by, waving United Workers Party flags, the group including some wives and older children. At the university, students milled around the wrought-iron fences surrounding the dorms. Someone had climbed the university clock tower to hang up a sign that said BETTER TO DIE ABOVE THAN SLAVE BELOW, so anyone checking the time would see it.
Sigi said Hel was studying architecture at the university and lived on the third floor of one of the grand old apartments with a mansard roof and elegant balconies. The hallway smelled of baked goods. When Sigi knocked, a girl opened the door and immediately threw her arms around Sigi.
“I thought Hel was playing a trick on me!” she cried. Then she slapped Sigi, although not hard. “Why did you die in our apartment?”
Sigi looked pained. “Is there any good answer to that question?”
“No. Of course not. But—never again. God bless your poor mother. Did she really trade her life for yours?”
Hel swept over and kissed Sigi’s cheek. “I told you not to talk about it.”
“Easy for you to say. You always liked magic more than I do,” said the girl Nan assumed was Margie. More faces had crowded around. One girl grabbed Sigi’s hand while another shoved Hel out of the way to hug her. Nan already felt overwhelmed.
“This is Nan,” Sigi said, pulling her into the fray. “We met underground. Nan, this is Hel, Margie, Hilda, Lena, Doris, and there’s Martin, I wondered if you were here.”
“Hello,” Nan said, quietly counting the people in her head. Seven people, including Sigi. That wasn’t a lot, so why did it seem like so many, when they were all looking at her?
Luckily they didn’t ask anything of her. “Can you tell us what’s happening?” Lena asked Sigi, as they all sat down on the tidy white sofa and gathered chairs. She was a tall girl with sallow skin, full red lips, and a small chin. “All we have are rumors and lies.”
“What happened underground?” Margie asked. Her eyebrows seemed almost perpetually raised, making her blue eyes even wider. “Or is too painful to speak of?”
“We didn’t have it as bad as some,” Sigi said, launching into an explanation of the serum that tore their memories away, the drab meals, the rote tasks. Nan noticed she left out the more uncomfortable parts, such as the way Rory Valkenrath would prowl around the cafeteria. Sigi had been terrified of him. And she didn’t speak of what happened to the revived workers without the serum—that it had also kept them from decaying and hungering for blood.
Nan hadn’t thought of all this much since arriving at Sebastian’s. Thinking of Rory reminded her of that taste of her own power. She had tried to use the wyrdsong on him. I was so close to showing him his own wrongdoing. Although she hadn’t quite understood her power, it felt so right.
Hel was moving back and forth through the arched passage between the kitchen and living space, setting out bread and jam, cheese, and sliced apples. Nan hadn’t gotten a very good look at him in the dim bar the other night. Now he seemed rather harmless—quite tall and big-boned yet gentle, clearly a pampered rich boy in an argyle sweater and neatly pressed slacks, his hair parted to the side and curled over one eye. She caught him looking at her here and there.
Nan stayed mostly quiet throughout Sigi’s story, from the underground to the escape, to Sebastian’s revolutionary group. Her friends were gripped.
“Should we join up?” Lena asked. “We could help the revolution.”
“Sebastian sounds handsome,” Doris said, although Sigi hadn’t said one word about him being handsome.
“No,” Sigi said. “I don’t want any of you to get hurt.”
“So it’s all right if you keep getting hurt?” Margie said.
“Well—we’re still not even sure we can trust Sebastian,” Sigi said.
“Why?” Doris asked.
Sigi looked at Nan with a crumpled brow. She hadn’t mentioned Nan’s involvement, and was clearly struggling with how to explain.
Nan thought of the party at Arabella von Kaspar’s house. She had felt just as uncomfortable there, among people with some inkling of what she was. The first time she had met Sigi, she’d gone upstairs to escape the crowd. I can never fit in, because I can never explain. It ruins everything when I do.
“I think it’s best we don’t talk about it yet,” Nan said. “We don’t want to spread rumors ourselves. If Sebastian is trustworthy, I wouldn’t want to ruin his reputation.”
“Oh dear. So mysterious.” Doris sighed.
The crowd began to break up now into two smaller groups. “I still have a lot of your things at our place,” Margie was telling Sigi, “if you want to get them.”
“Sure, we could come by.” Sigi kept trying to work Nan into the conversation, but Nan remained an awkward presence, always standing around listening to everyone else talk.
“Nan?” Hel approached her while Sigi was talking to Margie. “Would you like a drink?”
“Just me?” Nan asked, since he hadn’t offered anyone else a drink.
“You look like you could use one.”
“I actually don’t care all that much for drinks.” Then she felt bad for rejecting his hospitality. “If you have tea…”
“I do. I have a few varieties, if you want to see which you’d prefer.”
She sensed that he wanted to get her alone, although she didn’t know why. This put her on edge even more, but she still followed.
“You don’t like meeting lots of new people much, do you?” he asked, as they stepped into the kitchen. “I feel exactly the same way.”
“Oh—” Is that all? Nan was relieved. By now, she almost expected strangers to drop heavy information into her lap. “I guess I’m sort of a loner.”
He nodded. “It took Sigi ages to get me out of my shell. Even now, I prefer to play waiter instead of leading the conversation. You might have noticed. I’m sorry we’re all so loud.”
“You’re fine.” Nan smiled a little. “I’m glad to see Sigi enjoying herself. She told me she’s known you a long time.”
“Truth be told, I’m still unsettled, seeing her alive again.” He filled the kettle and put three different tins of tea on the counter. “But I’m glad. We grew up playing together. Our mothers are good friends, and we didn’t really get along with our mothers, either of us, though we got along with each other. She got me through some hard times in boarding school, writing me supportive letters.”
“That’s nice.” Nan chose one of the teas, without really caring.
“She means the world to me.” He hesitated. “I’d let her stay with me in a heartbeat, if she needed it, but she seems to want to stick with you.”
Nan felt pierced with guilt, as if Hel sensed her own confused feelings. “I definitely want her to enjoy a long, happy life, since she’s gotten this second chance,” she said.
“I hope she does. I didn’t realize how fragile she was, until the—the suicide.”
“We’re all fragile in certain ways, I suppose,” Nan said, looking through the passageway to the living room, seeing Sigi laugh heartily over something Margie had said.
In the living room, Lena turned to the phonograph and put on a record. A song began to play, a jerking, screeching sound that Nan recognized as jazz. Sigi looked at Nan and then turned sharply. “Oh—I’m sorry, Lena, maybe not yet. We—uh—had some bad memories of music underground. They played it sometimes to…”
“It’s all right,” Nan said. Sigi was never a good liar, anyway, and Nan was used to hearing music all the time, unpleasant as it was to her ears. “Really,” she said, when Lena looked unsure. “Sigi loves music. I’m the one who has bad memories, but I really don’t mind at all.”
She had never been around a phonograph, though. She certainly hadn’t had one at home, and a live band played at the club. Something about t
he bell shape of the horn unnerved her.
Why?
An answering memory flashed into her mind.
A cold white room with only a cot and a table. Her hands and feet, shackled so she couldn’t move quickly. And when she did move, she stumbled. Her mind was hazy.
She remembered a man sitting beside her. And a phonograph. “I hear you don’t like music,” he said. “That it disturbs your powers.”
He was speaking gently. She wouldn’t look at him. Her skin was hot with hatred.
“I don’t want to do this to you, god knows,” he said, “but you have to stop fighting. I’ll protect you and your sisters and Yggdrasil—I need my magic users, though, Verthandi. Is it so unreasonable to ask that they serve their king? Is it?”
Nan shuddered violently, remembering days upon days—or was it weeks?—of tinny music and shackled hands.
“Your tea is ready,” Hel said.
“Thank you.” Nan gripped the cup, even though it almost burned her fingers. She didn’t want to embarrass herself around all Sigi’s friends by revealing her shock, but now that she remembered King Otto’s face, it was all she could think about.
“Marlis? Your father would like to see you. He’s sending a car.”
“It’s safe?” Marlis looked at Wilhelmina hopefully. She was tired beyond words of being cooped up with the other women and children, and the weather had turned too cold to hide in the attic.
Wilhelmina smiled humorlessly. “Safe enough, I suppose. They’ve cleared the rebels out of Republic Square.”
Marlis wasn’t used to Papa keeping her at arm’s length like this. He usually liked her to be involved, but he would also want her to be safe. He wants me for something else. Another speech, perhaps.
She had always dreamed of giving speeches to the people. The words she had already said still haunted her, however. They weren’t her own.
You know that’s how it works.
She wished she knew how to talk to Wilhelmina, to share her hesitations with someone else, but since her own mother died, she had kept her deepest thoughts inside her head. Sharing them felt too uncomfortable, as if no one would understand. She could have attended a thousand balls, worn the finest couture gowns, made endless small talk—all the things Papa urged so she would fit in—but people would always sense the farce. She didn’t want to play the woman’s role on the political stage.
But Papa was trying his best to give her what she’d always wanted.
She couldn’t climb into a car without thinking of Ida’s death, and she shoved that back, trying to remember the powerful deaths that had happened in the opera, not the real ones. Kriemhild wouldn’t brood, she would do something.
The drive to the Chancellery only took a few minutes, and Papa awaited her inside, pulling her into an embrace. “Have you been all right at the Wachters’?”
“Fine.”
He took her arm and started walking, leaning close. “It hasn’t been made public yet—we caught Gerik Valkenrath this morning.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Oh yes. He was trying to escape by boat. He swears he has no idea where Freddy is.” Papa’s grip on her briefly tightened. “You were right, I think—this all happened because Gerik was reckless. He won’t own up to it—says he always had the situation under control—but his story has more holes than a wheel of cheese. He let Freddy talk to rustic girls without supervision. I’ll bet the boy’s running around with the rebels as we speak.”
The hall of the Chancellery was so vast and hard and cold. The marble floors had a grayish sheen that matched the light struggling through clouds outside. The chill wrapped around her down to the bone. “Freddy was getting too old for the way he was kept,” Marlis said.
Papa gave her a hard look. “Marlis—Freddy wasn’t going to grow up. You know that. That’s why he needed an heir.”
Marlis drew her arm away from his touch.
“I’m not telling you anything new,” Papa said.
She remembered one of her birthdays, asking Papa if Freddy could come to the party. No, Papa said. Freddy couldn’t go anywhere, he was sick. She wasn’t told the secret then, though as she got older, she found out in bits and pieces: Freddy isn’t really sick, he has powerful magic. That’s why he’s so tired sometimes. That’s why his hair is silver. Freddy’s magic does so much for this city; he’s terribly important. Indispensable. You’re old enough to know the truth now. You can keep a secret.
No one ever said outright that Freddy’s magic would kill him, but it was alluded to in so many little concerned comments. Of course it wasn’t new. Of course she’d known.
“Don’t look like that, Princess,” Papa’s voice cajoled gently. “Look how many young rustics just threw their lives away this week. Freddy would have died having made a difference.”
She bit back the sick feeling inside her. She knew Papa didn’t like the idea of draining Freddy’s life away. Freddy wasn’t really different from the young men who were drafted in the war. It only disturbed her because she was one of the few people with the privilege of watching him grow up under the weight of his magic.
Papa exchanged a muted greeting with a few other ministers they passed in the hall. “We need to find him,” he continued, turning the corner. “We can’t let power like his fall into enemy hands. I wondered if we might lure him out.”
Volland walked out of one of the meeting rooms and lifted a hand in greeting. “I’ve just sent on the documents,” he said. “And you’ll meet with Taussen tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll look it over. I’m talking to Marlis about Freddy.”
“Ah.” Volland’s expression was neutral. Being neutral is my job, he told her when she teased him once about being expressionless. “Is she amenable?”
“He hasn’t told me the plan yet,” Marlis said.
“Beating around the bush, are we, sir?” Volland teased. “Your father and I were disagreeing this morning about how to approach the situation, Marlis. I think we’re on the same page now. We feel you might have the best chance of saying something on the radio that would compel Freddy to return home, if he is at all able to do so.”
He paused as Lieutenant Acherbaum rounded the corner, walking purposefully like he was trying to catch up with them, even though they weren’t moving. Acherbaum stopped in front of Papa and saluted, hand slashing the air.
“Acherbaum!” Papa said. “Let me extend my sincere apologies: I heard your unit sustained heavy losses against the revolutionaries.”
“Thank you, sir.” There was a curious insistence to Acherbaum’s tone that made Marlis nervous. He should have little reason to approach Papa like this when Papa was so busy; he was a second-tier officer. “I suppose a few lives are a small price to pay for this country. Especially when you can bring them back again.”
“You misunderstand,” Papa said, as Volland placed a protective hand on his shoulder. “We never had that capability. Dark magic brought them back, we could only attempt to control it.”
“Liar!” Acherbaum shouted. “You’re a liar! You could have used that magic to bring back good men.”
“This is not the time and place for this discussion,” Papa said, even as one of the guards moved toward Acherbaum.
“You betrayed us!” Acherbaum pulled out a gun. Three shots happened almost at once—Acherbaum firing once, twice, and then the guard. Papa fell back, caught by Volland, clutching his stomach.
“You—” Acherbaum gurgled, and then he turned his gun on his own head.
Acherbaum’s blood splattered onto Marlis. She ripped off her coat and flung it to the floor.
“Papa! Papa!” She knelt beside him, trying to pull open his coat. Beneath the black wool, bright-red blood stained his shirt. Marlis had never seen a color as vibrant as the blood all over Papa, all over the floor, all over her hands. “Hang on!”
“Marlis.” He grabbed her arm. “I’m so sorry. I love you. I love you so much.”
“Don’t—” He never
told her that. She knew, and that unspoken knowing was all she needed. “I love you too,” she whispered, realizing this could be her only chance.
“But—I need to tell you—You should know—you are—more than my daughter. There’s a letter hidden in my desk—at home—my office there—left drawer.” He seemed to shiver, his eyes bulging slightly and unfocused, as if struggling with the Grim Reaper. “Your mother loved you, too. You were our daughter. Please…”
He spasmed, and that was the last of him. More guards had gathered around, trying to keep panicked officials at bay. In those few moments where it was only Marlis and the dying light in Papa’s eyes, the empty hall had filled up with gibbering voices and rushing footsteps. Someone shouted for the doctor, while someone else cried out, “He’s gone!”
Volland looked at her. He had heard every last word Papa said. She could hardly see him through the tears in her eyes. She couldn’t speak. She held on to Papa’s arm, blocking out all the commotion around her, seeing only his face. The only person who loved her. The only person she loved. A doctor rushed in, but she knew it didn’t matter. Only one person could have any hope of mattering, one little fox who had eluded the chase of the hounds.
She clutched Papa’s hand tight as they loaded him onto a stretcher.
“He’s alive, barely,” Volland announced. “Everyone get back, let them get through.” He took Marlis’s arm and pulled her off Papa. She was stunned into silence. He most certainly isn’t alive.
Everyone else was moving around her, guards following the stretcher, ministers running to and fro, Acherbaum’s body pulled up, leaving a slick pool of blood on the floor. Despite all this movement, Marlis felt as if time had stopped.
Volland stepped in front of her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Come with me a moment. Please.”
She jerked back. “I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Come on,” he said, even more gently. “We need to talk. To find Freddy.”
She forced herself out of the haze of pain. “I’ll follow you,” she said quietly.
He didn’t lead her far, ducking into an unoccupied meeting room. “We can’t lose your father now when everything is already so unstable.”
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