Glittering Shadows

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  “Last night,” Sigi whispered to Nan at breakfast, “when you went to bed, I got talking to Andre about how he met Ingrid.”

  “Who is Andre?” Nan asked.

  “He’s the one with all the sisters,” Sigi said, as if Nan would know who that was.

  “So what did he say?” Nan asked.

  “He was at a protest. It turned violent, and he was hurt. He said Ingrid appeared like an angel and healed his wounds. I asked what the wounds were and how she healed them, and he said he didn’t remember.”

  “I can’t help wondering if she’s spreading her magic too thin. She’s always looking around like she’s paranoid about something.”

  “So the whole thing might topple with one nudge.” Sigi flicked her finger at the air.

  “Mm.” Nan had been haunted for the past couple of days by the memory of King Otto holding her captive. He knew exactly how to harm a Norn—the pain of music, how the wyrdsong worked, how they would be reborn after death. She had gone to him for help, to save Yggdrasil. He had held her there for weeks and finally—did he kill her, or did she manage to kill herself? Why didn’t he help her, if the tree was what provided him with magic users? What had happened after that?

  Whatever had happened, Ingrid could no longer be trusted for answers.

  “I’m losing you again,” Sigi said. “Are you having another memory?”

  “Just thinking.” Walking home from the gathering at Hel’s two days ago, she had told Sigi about the memory of King Otto, though she didn’t relate details. She felt so vulnerable speaking to anyone about the memories that seemed to assault her at unexpected times. Even the pleasant ones—Skuld’s hutch of rabbits, or Urd’s potato stew.

  Thea peered in the room, plate of bread and cheese in hand, her hair freshly curled. “Why are you two hiding out in here?”

  “It’s quiet,” Nan said. They had purposefully sought out this room in the far corner of the house.

  “Well, Sebastian is back from the UWP meeting. He’s making an announcement in a few minutes, and I thought you’d want to listen.”

  The men were gathered around the drawing room. The pocket doors had been opened to accommodate everyone. Nan, Sigi, and Thea pressed in at the back.

  “Well,” Sebastian said, taking a drink of coffee, “I’d say it was a success. The UWP is making a valiant effort to stop fighting with one another and mobilize. A few key figures have been killed over the past week, and that’s shaken everyone into action. They held an election, and Brunner is now officially the UWP president.”

  “They are planning a coup d’état,” Heffler said, “and we will support them. The first stage begins tonight.”

  “I’ll be acting as field leader for this mission,” Sebastian said. “Heffler will be my second in command. I’ll need one hundred and forty men, so we’ll be recruiting from our secondary bases as well. Once they arrive, I’ll hold a planning meeting. Will, you’ll be serving as third in command under Heffler. Most of you will be going with Heffler, while I need about twenty men to follow me for the first phase.”

  Sebastian called for volunteers to fill a few more positions. When he mentioned a medical unit, Thea lifted a hand. “I could go as a nurse.”

  Nan looked at her with alarm. “What are you doing?”

  Thea moved closer to the front of the room—it had cleared out a little, as some of the men had left after receiving their orders. Sebastian scratched his cheek. “Nursing on the battlefield is going to be a lot uglier than here. That’s no place for you, and you don’t really have any training.”

  “No place for me? Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “It’s dangerous. Everyone else who’s going has combat experience.”

  “I think she could be very good at it,” said Ingrid as she wrapped her hand around Sebastian’s, pulling it down from his thoughtful pose. “She could assist Dr. Keller. A woman’s touch is always appreciated, and Thea has the touch.”

  Sebastian looked blank. He nodded at Thea. “Tell Dr. Keller you’ll be going with him, and he’ll tell you what you need to know.”

  Nan grabbed Ingrid’s arm before she could go. “Thea can’t go into battle.”

  “She won’t be in battle,” Ingrid said, “she’ll be support. She can handle it. Trust me.”

  “Nan, I’ve got to do something,” Thea said. “I want to do something that matters.”

  “And you will,” Ingrid said. She motioned to the door, keeping Thea close.

  “Should we go with her?” Sigi asked.

  Nan hesitated. I’ve been running away from my fate. What if Thea is killed because I couldn’t figure out a way to end this enchantment?

  Ingrid must have a purpose for Thea, she thought, to have bothered with her in the first place.

  “No,” she said at last. “If the men are leaving, and I can search the house without Ingrid’s people breathing down my neck, maybe I can find answers.”

  Once the rest of Sebastian’s unit arrived, he called everyone back into the drawing room, where a hand-drawn map had been tacked to the walls. It was standing room only, and so warm with body heat that Thea would never have guessed cold autumn winds blew outside. She was sweating and shivering at once, adrenaline already beginning to rush through her.

  “Tonight we are launching a series of simultaneous attacks to destroy what remains of the Chancellor’s government. Our task is perhaps the most difficult,” Sebastian explained. “We’re going to capture the Urobrun Production Arsenal, take what weapons are in the warehouses, and destroy their operations.”

  The room erupted with raised voices. One of the men managed to make himself heard over the rest: “Destroy them? What about Irminau? How will anyone fend them off without the arsenal?”

  “With the weapons we have, with magic, and by recruiting from the king’s army,” Sebastian explained. “Yes, destroying the country’s primary munitions supplier may have some unfortunate consequences, but we have to force the government’s hand. They can’t grow their army without weapons to give them.”

  The voices settled to a murmur yet didn’t stop.

  “Winter will come early this year”—Ingrid lifted a hand for their attention—“and it will bring much snow. I sense it.”

  “The king’s army can’t move through the winter,” Sebastian said, “but the news can. We’ll have months to send whispers over the border of a new leadership here in Urobrun, one that is friendly to magic. And when the spring thaw comes, the king will find that all his sorcerers have a renewed hope of freedom here.”

  This suggestion finally settled the room.

  “Now, as for this operation—we’re departing at nightfall,” Sebastian continued. “We’ll split into three groups and take separate routes. Any guards you run into must be dealt with quickly before they can alert the Chancellor’s forces.”

  Sebastian grabbed a cane propped against the wall and pointed at the map. “This is a map of the supply base, drawn from an inside man at the UWP. He said the place usually has about fifty guards; I’d expect that will be at least doubled right now.”

  Even based on the drawing, the arsenal looked formidable. It was depicted as a large square of wall with a guard tower at each corner, surrounded by a fence with guard stations at the gate. Within these two layers of defense were the buildings themselves—one for production, one for offices, and three for storage.

  Sebastian tapped the spot on the map depicting the guard stations at the fence. “Most of you will go with Heffler and Will to attack from the front. First, cut the phone lines. Next take out the guards at the gate, and then the patrol inside and the towers.” Now the tip of the cane was moving all over the place. “You’re going to set explosives to breach the wall. Meanwhile, I will be coming in through the sewers in back with about twenty of you. We’ll take out the guards in the office and turn off the power. From there, we just have to clean up the rest, get the weapons onto their delivery vehicles, and destroy the factory.

  “Even tho
ugh it’s after hours, some workers will probably still be in the factory,” Sebastian added. “Try not to harm them. They may sympathize with us, but if they don’t cooperate, capture them.”

  Preparations consumed the rest of the daylight hours. The men seemed ready; many of them had fought in the previous war, and although in recent years their missions might have consisted more often of distributing banned literature, that held plenty of risk, too.

  “Finally, a good, straightforward fight,” she heard Will say.

  When night fell, they gathered in the main hall. Thea stood at the back with Dr. Keller, a leather satchel with bandages and salves hung at her hip.

  Sebastian gave the order for them to proceed quietly. Outside, the air was bitter cold, more like January than November. High winter clouds blocked what little moon there was, and the streets were so dark that occasionally she heard someone stumble.

  Thanks to the curfew, the streets were empty and the late-night streetcars Thea once rode home from work no longer ran along the rails. The automobiles of late-night revelers sat safely in their garages. It was as though the apocalypse had come and gone, sucking all the life from the city. Thea was glad they didn’t have to pass through the Lampenlight District; she couldn’t bear to see it dark and empty.

  As they reached more public areas of the city, their march halted. Thea stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck both ways, trying to see why. “Probably guards up ahead,” Dr. Keller whispered.

  Someone shouted, the sound quickly cut off by scuffling. A gun fired, then a return shot. Thea drew closer to the wall of the building they were passing, pierced by a sudden memory of other gunshots. She clutched her hand, then she remembered the magic Ingrid had taught her. There was nothing to fear.

  “Get him!” a man yelled ahead, and suddenly a guard was running toward Thea. He shoved her out of his way. Dr. Keller sidestepped her and tried to grab the man’s coat, but he was running too quickly.

  “Back up, girl!” someone shouted. Dr. Keller jumped out of the way just before a round of bullets punched holes in the guard’s back. He was running and falling at once, leaving his legs sprawled at an odd angle before he went still.

  Fresh blood leaked over the sidewalk. Thea watched it slowly spread across the concrete and seep into the cracks.

  Dr. Keller grabbed Thea’s arm. “Keep up. We need to move.”

  “He’s dead!” Thea gasped.

  “Remember, you have the strength of Yggdrasil,” Dr. Keller said.

  Thea cast her mind back to that vision of strength. Ingrid had chosen her, thought her worthy of this, and there was no time to question. It was easy enough to detach from the situation—it had happened so quickly in the darkness. The man probably only had seconds to register he’d been shot before he was dead on the ground.

  Quietly but quickly they were moving again, the cold air sharp in Thea’s lungs, rushing down streets that all seemed the same in the shadows, until they reached the arsenal.

  It was just outside the factory district, on the eastern edge of the city. The fence had three layers topped with barbed wire, and beyond that was a stone gate, with the guard towers rising up behind it. It was big. Really big, it seemed to Thea, to be conquered by their group, which suddenly seemed so small.

  They were still some distance away when Sebastian halted and motioned for his smaller group to split. Silently, he and Heffler exchanged a salute, and they started moving around the back. A few other men moved toward the telephone poles. Thea’s breath came in frosty clouds as she waited for the order to move again.

  The men shimmied up the telephone poles. Wearing black, they could hardly be seen. The men on the ground advanced closer to the guard posts at the fence. Spotlights whipped around from the towers, though there was no sign of alarm.

  Out of the right corner of her eye, motion. Split telephone wires fell toward the ground. One of the men raised an arm to signal.

  Heffler lifted a hand. “Advance!” he shouted. His voice boomed through the darkness over the rattle and click of guns being aimed and readied. The men opened fire.

  The arsenal sprung to life, returning fire. The voices of the guards crying alarm sounded indignant at first. The lights from the guard towers turned toward them. Sirens rang.

  At the first exchange of fire, Thea went rigid. A memory shoved its way into her mind, past all her defenses: the night her father died. They had been running down the street trying to reach her mother when a military vehicle had driven by and fired on them. Her father knocked her to the ground and protected her, so she didn’t see it, only heard it. He was badly hurt, and she had to leave him in the alley.

  She’d forgotten until she heard the sound.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  But she wanted to be strong. Though her father surely didn’t want to go to war, he had. She was working to save Yggdrasil, and Yggdrasil would keep her safe in return, keep her strong.

  After the men broke through the gate and ran toward the arsenal, a few fallen forms were left behind. Two of them were already lost, she could see at a glance. Two more were bent over, clutching wounds. Dr. Keller checked on all of them.

  “Swab some alcohol on that and bandage him up,” Dr. Keller ordered, pointing Thea to one of the injured men, who clutched his arm, while he tended the other, who was worse off, having been shot in the side.

  Thea opened her bag and worked quickly. She felt very calm as long as she didn’t think.

  There were still tears in her eyes. Why? Why couldn’t she get these pained memories of Father out of her mind, when she needed to be brave? He would have been brave.

  As she patched up the injured man, gunfire and shouting and cries of pain battered her ears, and she kept seeing the bodies of the fallen out of the corner of her eyes. Father had always been such a peaceful man: He was gentler than her mother, in many ways. Was “brave” the right word for how he might have felt in a place like this?

  A pang shot through her heart. It didn’t seem quite right. He had been fighting against his own homeland: He must have been sad more than anything.

  The spotlights sweeping across the broad lawn of dead winter grass between the fence and the arsenal walls abruptly shut off. A few whoops of triumph went up from their men. Sebastian’s group had been successful, then. Dr. Keller had a flashlight, and he found her and took her hand.

  “Over here,” he said, and when she didn’t respond right away, “Are you all right?”

  She heard a falling scream, like a man had been shot off a wall. Such an awful sound.

  “Keller!” A man called out. “We need a medic!”

  Dr. Keller turned the flashlight that way. Ulrich was dragging a younger man forward, blood soaking his shirt around the stomach.

  “Lay him down gently,” Dr. Keller said. He tore open his shirt.

  This man was one of the younger ones, his face pale and frightened. “I want my mother.”

  Mother. Everything kept reminding Thea of the moments she couldn’t let her mind return to: her mother’s sickness, her father’s death. She turned away in desperation, her left hand itching, her mind crowded with memories.

  A voice shouted warning. The grounds suddenly lit with brightness. She dropped in blind panic as an explosion rocked her.

  Then she remembered that blowing the gates open was part of the plan. Her thighs and arms shook as she pushed them up again. Her hands were wet with frigid dew. She watched as the men rushed the gate to meet the guards inside. Although their pounding footsteps shook the ground beneath her, it felt like a dream. The perimeter was almost empty of people now…except the dead.

  “Thea! Come help over here!” Dr. Keller called her name from the deep shadows around the arsenal walls.

  Thea’s arms were shaking violently, and she had only taken two steps toward Dr. Keller when she halted at the sight of a man lying dead in the grass. His eyes were open, sightless and staring. A bullet had torn through his stomach, and his shirt was stained dark with bl
ood. She didn’t know this man’s name, but he was from the house—she’d seen him just yesterday, bringing pine boughs from outside to fill the vase on the dinner table.

  I don’t want to be here. I never wanted to be here. I don’t want to fight. I want to see Mother.

  She ran away from Dr. Keller without knowing where to go. She couldn’t roam the streets alone. She veered to one of the guard stations. Maybe she could just wait out the battle.

  Past the door, Thea could just make out the silhouettes of two men. Of course. The guards would be dead, too. Today they were the enemy, though they worked for her own government, and they might very well be as ignorant of what was going on as she had been just weeks ago. No, the word “enemy” didn’t feel right. She stepped closer, clutching her bag. “Hello? Is anyone alive?”

  The silence pierced her. The little room was quiet with death. The body closest to her feet was slumped on the ground, only the rounded shape of his back visible. The other body had been shot in the head, his eyes untouched and glassy, but his blood fanned violently across the table behind his skull. And they were so young. They couldn’t know anything. She didn’t know anything.

  She crouched and opened her bag, staring at the bandages and medicine like she should be able to use them, to fix something. There was nothing she could give them except a prayer. She searched for words Father Gruneman might have said, tears streaking her cheeks, but couldn’t remember them.

  Yggdrasil whispered in her ear, with the voice of Ingrid. Don’t think. Listen to me, and nothing you see on earth will matter.

  “No…!” Thea struggled to get the word out. She needed to think, needed to feel. She needed to remember what she had lost and who she still had. Father and Mother were not worth giving up, not even for the protection of Yggdrasil, not even if the memories came with such pain.

  Ingrid cut off my HAND—

  Her eyes opened wide as she wrapped her thoughts around the truth, all those moments where she had struggled to scream, to tell Freddy or Nan something. She still heard Ingrid’s whispers, her song, in her mind. She had to stop it before it got a hold of her again.