Thea looked around wildly. She spotted the walking stick he’d been using to point at maps earlier. It was an antique with a finely worked silver ram’s head handle. Sebastian lunged to grab it when he saw it swing toward him. “Not that!”
Thea whipped the stick out of his grasp and then swept it sideways, full force, toward his head. Maybe he was protected, but he obviously didn’t want her breaking his possessions against his own head.
He ducked. Nan jumped on top of him and pushed his face into the floor. “Thea, hold him!”
Thea sat awkwardly on his legs. “Nan I don’t know how to get his leg off.” Her left arm, still buttoned under her coat, itched to be free and useful, but without a hand, an arm wasn’t good for much.
Meanwhile, Sebastian was rocking beneath them, trying to throw off their weight. “Ingrid!” he shouted.
Nan slapped her hand over his mouth. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head up. “I don’t want to be violent with you. Please. Fight her off.”
“Mmf!”
“Look, I—ow!” Nan withdrew her hand, bitten. Sebastian reached back and shoved her sideways, and with another heave managed to get out from under them, even as Nan tried to drag him back down again.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, holding up his hands. “You need to back off.”
“Thea, give me that cane.” Nan whacked his right shin with the cane and it cracked in two. The only pain in Sebastian’s face seemed to come from what she’d done to a well-crafted object.
“Right one, then?” Nan said.
“I will not allow you to have it,” Sebastian said. He glanced at the door, obviously wondering if Ingrid or anyone was ever going to hear all this scuffling and intervene.
With a trembling hand, Thea worked open the buttons of her coat. She flinched, not from pain but from a mix of shame and horror, as she pulled the bandage away. Maybe she shouldn’t be vain at such a time, but at this moment what hurt the most was the loss of the sheer beauty of her hand.
She lifted her left arm toward him. “Look at me. Max shot my hand under Ingrid’s orders. That’s why he was so upset when you questioned him. The other day, when he came back from chasing Roger, he started to cry. He tried to tell me that Ingrid took his hands. He’s your man. You need to take responsibility for him and for me. For all of your men. If I can fight this, you can, too.”
Sebastian had gone very pale. She saw the weight settle into his eyes, understood all too well the pain of accepting the truth. A part of her wanted to stop him. She didn’t want to see him without a leg any more than she wanted to see herself without a hand. His mouth set, as he seemed to muster his resolve. “Help me…do it.”
“We will,” Thea said. “Sit down.”
“Hurry,” Nan said. “I can’t believe Ingrid hasn’t come. She must know.”
Sebastian sat in his desk chair and rolled up the right leg of his pants. Nan quickly grabbed his leg with both arms and pulled. The illusion briefly broke, revealing the wood, but it didn’t give. Sebastian winced. Thea grabbed his hand, worried they might lose him again.
“Let me…” Nan put her hands on his leg more gently, and she began to chant. Thea remembered the wyrdsong from Ingrid. It sounded softer from Nan, which was strange when she had never thought of Nan as soft. The illusion vanished again and the leg broke free just below Sebastian’s knee, leaving a clean stump with spots of blood where the leg had rooted, just like the end of her arm.
Nan stopped chanting and dropped it like a hot stone. The little roots that had sunk their way into his mind and soul were longer and deeper than on Thea’s hand, although some of them seemed withered and stunted, as if they represented the part of Sebastian’s mind that had fought against Ingrid.
Thea shuddered.
Sebastian gripped the desk, his eyes squinting shut with the stinging pain of the torn roots. The pain of Thea’s own wounds sharpened with sympathy. “Oh no,” he said. “Now I do remember everything.”
“What do you remember?” Thea asked, trying to sound gentle, although her stomach was tied in a knot. She felt like she’d broken him.
“Something inside me knew the truth all along—that every time we approached a wounded man and offered him help, he was giving up his freedom to choose his own fate. I’ve known that I was trapped, that my choices weren’t always my own either, but I couldn’t seem to fight it off. And look, I can live without a leg. Some of those men will have a harder time.”
“They should be able to choose, at least,” Thea said. “I watched my mother lose her mind from bound-sickness over the course of years. I’d rather give up my hand than my thoughts.”
“If they want to stick with her by choice, maybe there’s nothing we can do,” Nan said. “But then you shouldn’t be able to trust them either.”
“What do I have to fight with now?”
“Ingrid said your inner circle was affected,” Nan said. “How many?”
“Perhaps fifty men,” Sebastian said.
“You still have plenty of healthy men without their numbers. And the ones who are injured can surely still do something,” Thea said, although maybe this was her own wishful thinking.
“You were raised a prince,” Nan said. “You learned a few things about running a country that Ingrid could never have taught you. The military strategy: She didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“No, she didn’t,” he agreed. “All of my education was founded around learning how to rule.”
“Wait—a prince?” Thea glanced at Nan.
“Sebastian is the prince of Irminau.”
Suddenly everything about Sebastian was cast in a new light. She’d been dancing with a prince. She’d just helped break the enchantment on a prince. And not just any prince—the son of the king her mother had fled. King Otto was just a name in the newspaper to her; to Sebastian, he was a father.
“How stupid I am,” he said. “I met Ingrid in the forest when I was recovering. She seemed so kind; she must have been plotting all the while. She gathered these men under the banner of my family name.”
“But not all of them know you’re the prince,” Thea said, “right?”
“No. Just the ones who have been with me the longest, the ones sworn to Yggdrasil.” He sighed. “Considering how difficult it is to break free of the magic, I’m not sure how to address my men. Maybe I should talk to them one by one?”
“What we really need is to force Ingrid’s hand,” Nan said. “We have to get her to lift the spell, or it will be very difficult to make the men understand.”
“Then we’ll speak to her first. Bring her here.”
Thea picked up her coat from where it had dropped on the floor and started to button it over her arm again.
Sebastian watched her, guilt in his eyes.
“We’re in the same position, so you don’t need to pity me,” she said. Her tone was harsh. She couldn’t help it. She pitied herself. Her beauty had given her a job that paid better than any other opportunity for a girl of her station. She was so aware of the loss, and so aware of how hollow the loss sounded in the face of larger disasters.
“I hope being sorry isn’t the same as pity,” he said. “I don’t pity you—I know how odious it is to be pitied. I just want you to know that at least you won’t want for livelihood, as long as I’m in a position to give anyone a job.”
“I want more than a livelihood,” she snapped, then looked away. It’s not his fault. It’s not his obligation to give me a purpose. He had suggested she might be a reporter or a spy, but that was before, when they were both under the enchantment. Now the idea sounded ludicrous. A spy needed anonymity, which a one-handed girl would lack. A reporter needed poise, and hers was shattered.
“Sebastian!” Aleksy was suddenly pounding on the door, sounding frantic.
“What is it?” Sebastian called.
“Why did you send Ingrid over to Bauer Hall?”
Sebastian hid the wooden leg behind the desk
and put his elbows on the desktop like everything was normal. “Come in, come in.”
Aleksy ran inside, glancing at Nan and Thea with very brief confusion. “I’m sorry if I interrupted anything.”
Sebastian waved his hand impatiently. “What do you mean, Bauer Hall? She has no reason to spend time at the secondary bases.”
“Ingrid just left with a bunch of men. She said you wanted them to change posts; I don’t understand why you wanted Will and Heffler and everyone to go.”
“Damn it,” Sebastian said. “I don’t think that’s where they’re going.”
The dream tore Marlis from sleep. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the spartan walls of her own bedroom, couldn’t recall her own name. Then it all rushed back like the first breath after a dive.
The books.
She had dreamed of the books.
Diaries and journals she had kept throughout time, recording everything she had done, everything her sisters had done, every enemy they faced, every twist and turn of their own powers. So that they might remember. So that they might not repeat their mistakes.
It was a cold night, yet sweat soaked her nightgown. The books were her only clear memory. The rest came in snatches—faces and moments, none of them clear, just teasing dreams that made her feel unsure of who she was or who she had ever been.
She glanced around the shadows, wishing she were not alone. She took deep breaths, taking in the sight of familiar furniture, a heavy walnut bedroom set that had belonged to her late grandmother.
She really was my grandmother. I am Marlis Horn, she thought fiercely, and she had to wipe tears from her eyes. That memory of the books was too concrete, and too tempting, to ignore.
The books were buried beneath one of Yggdrasil’s roots in a box, an enchanted box that only she could open.
Could Papa’s men have captured the box?
She didn’t sleep the rest of the night. It was hard just to keep her feet under the covers. Sometimes she had to pace, to release all the energy pent up inside her; other times she drifted to the window and stared at the moon.
In the morning, she was already dressed when the maid, Elsie, brought breakfast. “No, thank you,” she told the young woman. “I’ll eat later. I need to see Papa.”
“He’s already left,” Elsie said. “Something terrible happened last night, I think. I don’t know what it was, but he rushed out before the sun had risen.”
“I never heard anything!”
“They were whispering. They didn’t want to wake you and Mr. Linden.”
“Right, ‘Mr.’ Linden.” Marlis huffed. Papa clearly wanted to keep Freddy out of his business as much as possible. The less Freddy knew, the less likely he would try to influence policy by dangling her father’s life in front of him—that was the reasoning, she was sure, though Freddy wasn’t likely to stand for it long.
“Papa can be so stupid,” she muttered, going back to the breakfast, pouring herself tea with loads of milk and sugar.
Elsie bobbed her head and departed, clearly not wanting to be implicated in any word against Papa.
Marlis had no desire to talk to a maid anyway. She wouldn’t be any help with these problems. Quite likely no one would, except perhaps her fellow Norns. That meant leaving with Freddy. What of Papa then?
If only Mama were here. She might understand.
Might. Even then, Marlis wasn’t sure. Marlis wondered what Mama had thought of her, in truth. Marlis had a feeling Mama didn’t believe in Norns. She probably felt she had rescued a poor ordinary girl from being brought up by monks. But then, it was such an odd thing to do, for her parents to agree to raise a baby from Irminau.
Marlis stirred her tea like it was the pool of an oracle and an answer might bubble to the surface. She wondered if Mama would like the idea of her husband living thanks to a thread of magic and a serum made from a tree. Marlis doubted it. “It’s time,” she would have said, the way she said when she was dying, dragging the words through her congested lungs. “Everything lives and everything dies, and when we die we become part of the soil that helps trees and flowers grow,” she told Marlis, adding with a smile, “Unless you’re a cow or a pig, and then you get eaten. So be sure to plant flowers on my grave, and when they grow, that will be me saying hello.”
Papa must die.
Marlis wiped her nose. No, she liked Mama’s words better. It’s time.
She had to think of the future now, and the future would not have her parents in it. The future was leading her to her own past, one they didn’t share. She scribbled a note with one hand while she ate her breakfast with the other. I might have new information. Very important. I don’t know who I can trust besides you. Please see me as soon as possible, alone. She called Elsie back again.
“Will you have this sent out to Volland immediately?”
“Of course, right away.”
Volland appeared several hours later, without her father. “What is it?”
“I remembered something last night. I’ve always kept a diary, you know.”
He nodded. Volland could appreciate these things; at thirty-five, he was the youngest man on her father’s staff, a precocious scholar in his earlier days. Marlis could still see the gawky student in him despite the polish he must have acquired over the years.
“There was a box underneath Yggdrasil with all of the diaries I kept…before. In other lives. Is there any chance they may have been recovered by the army when the tree was destroyed?”
“I’m sure I would have heard of something like that. Seems more likely they’re still right where you left them.” More heavily, he said, “In Irminau.”
“Or else the other Norns have it. And they are here in the city.”
“How do you know that?”
“Freddy’s seen them.”
His brow furrowed. “Well, we ought to bring them here, in that case.”
“I don’t think they’d come willingly. I must go to them.”
“Would you be safe?”
“Am I safe now?” she asked.
His posture shifted to concession. “Not at all, really. There was a multipronged attack last night. The production arsenal was destroyed, the east end armory was raided, and so our weapons supply lines have been disrupted. The revolutionaries are committed to taking over the government, clearly. I hope they’re prepared to fend off Irminau.”
“Without the arsenal, even?” She put a hand over her heart. “Were there many casualties?”
“We lost about a hundred men, and a hundred more were captured. This wasn’t a military engagement, though—it was an attack on a strategic point. We weren’t guarded as heavily as we should have been.”
“A hundred men is a lot, in context. Well, here is what I think. Papa’s death is quite clearly inevitable, and so is our downfall. The Republic, I mean. Papa as good as said so.”
“Yes, he has,” Volland agreed. “At this point he wants to go down in a blaze of glory.”
“And what do you think of that?”
“It isn’t what I would choose.” For the first time, his expression showed a hint of fear.
“I know you’ve often been the voice of reason to my father,” Marlis said, “but I think he’s beyond that now.” She glanced down. “I wondered if you might go with me to find the others.” She couldn’t quite admit that she didn’t want to be alone, and Freddy wasn’t enough. She wanted someone older and, in many ways, wiser.
Volland tapped his hands together, smiling in an anguished way. “A week ago I would never have considered a suggestion like this—now everything’s gone crazy, hasn’t it? I want to believe in miracles. I want to believe that all of this means something. I’ve always thought you were unlike other children.”
“And I’m not such a child anymore,” she added.
“If I leave, I’ll be considered a traitor,” Volland said. “I couldn’t return.”
“Not necessarily,” Marlis said, not wanting to frighten Volland off. “Once we find the b
ooks, we can always come back. If the information in them has any value to the government for the impending war against Irminau, no one will care that you left, only that you came back with them.”
“Do you plan to bring the books back here, then?” She could hear his uncertainty, as if he also realized she didn’t quite belong here anymore.
“We’ll see what I learn from them.” She tried to smile, as if she knew what she was doing, though it didn’t feel genuine. “This place is slipping through my fingers, Volland, whether I try to hold on to it or not. I’d rather…let it go. By my own choice. I’ve already said good-bye to Papa.” Marlis wanted to cry again. This was real. This was a farewell to everything she had ever known, not just people but also places and things. Every little thing. The three-hundred-year-old painting in the western wing of the house of a woman making stew while her children played on the floor, their emotions palpable across the ages. The way the light fell on her favorite chair on an autumn afternoon, the best place to read in the whole house. How the horses in the stable perked up eagerly and came forward for apples when she visited them.
She had been a child here, and when she left, that would be gone. When she saw those books, she would have to face that her life went far beyond this place, whether she liked it or not. That her name had been Urd before it was Marlis.
But.
It is time.
“Let them go, Aleksy,” Sebastian said. “Those men, the ones who left, are bewitched.” He frowned and tapped his fingers on the desk. “Please…tell the others something. I have to think about this for a moment.”
“Bewitched?” Aleksy asked.
“I’ll explain it to everyone soon. I just need to compose myself for a minute. Please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sebastian dropped his head onto his crossed arms on the desk. He stayed like that for a long moment. He had been so calm throughout this crisis in the city; now Thea wondered how much of that Sebastian was real.
Nan looked at Thea. Her expression was grim. “Sebastian, where do you think Ingrid is going? Is there someone she would turn to?”
Glittering Shadows Page 16