He lifted his head and pulled at his hair. “There is one man who wants Yggdrasil’s power to continue more than anything, because he relies on it.”
“King Otto?” Nan said.
“Yes.”
“Do you know something about this?” Nan demanded. “Does she have some kind of history with Otto?”
“I know nothing,” he said. “The day I met her, she got me under her spell.”
“I’m going after her,” Nan said, snatching up Thea’s wooden hand. “I have to find out what this is all about. I’m taking this, so I have evidence.”
“You’re leaving?” Thea asked, not wanting her to go, though she realized the scope of Nan’s life went beyond this place.
Nan gave Thea a quick embrace. She didn’t smell like Telephone Club smoke as she once did—now she seemed clean as snow. “I hate to abandon you now. I could still use a good chat with you, and I bet you could, too.”
“Yes. But…we can have it when you get back.”
Nan’s eyes held a hundred apologies and explanations. “I need to hurry so I can catch up with her. I feel like I’m the only person who can stop this.”
“Listen, when you get there—” Sebastian lifted a hand before she could run out. “Look for a woman named Jenny. She’s kept in the place they call the Mausoleum. Tell her I’m well, and ask her if she knows anything that might help. You can trust her.”
“Thank you, I will.” She was out the door in a flash of green skirt and heels.
Sebastian looked at the desk. “Maybe I ought to start smoking a pipe. I’ve heard it’s relaxing, and it’s an excellent prop, besides. It might make me seem more authoritative.”
Thea sat down on the edge of the desk near him. She could see he had no idea what to do. She didn’t feel like making light of the situation.
When she didn’t respond, Sebastian lifted his eyes to hers. Even now, he had a strong presence. His eyelashes were short and dark, so his eyes seemed sharply defined. She could tell he was thinking about a lot of things at once. His eyes didn’t stay put—they kept glancing toward different objects in the room, putting together pieces. She had a fleeting thought of touching his unshaven cheeks.
The thing about Sebastian was that he had seemed safe. Now she knew he actually wasn’t.
“Do you still have bandages in that bag of yours?” he asked.
She had forgotten she carried it. “Yes.”
“My leg is bleeding from the—thing.” He held out a hand, and she gave him the satchel. He pulled up the leg of his pants, and she wasn’t sure if she should avert her eyes, if he was self-conscious as she was, but he started talking matter-of-factly as he unrolled the bandage. “I am quite sure we can’t blame Ingrid for my accident, unless she can grant wishes.”
“You wished to have an accident?” Thea asked, confused.
“No, not really. Only in the way you wish for things when you’re angry. My father, you see, is deathly afraid of injury. He never goes anywhere without a healer or two at his side, and that extended to me. Whenever I hurt myself as a kid, I was immediately healed. No cuts, scrapes, bruises, skinned knees for me. And it might sound nice—” He rolled the bandage around the stump of his leg, just below the knee, and secured it.
“It sounds intrusive,” Thea said.
“Exactly.”
“But just being royalty sounds like that. In books, anyway. Like you have no privacy.”
“It’s true. I just think he’s a bit more unhinged than some kings.”
“Too inbred?”
His brow wrinkled. “I don’t know if I like the implications of that statement.”
She almost smiled. “So a part of you wanted to have an accident just to mess up your father’s careful safekeeping?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions.” He half-smiled back. “But sort of. I was an athletic kid, and all those healers of my youth had made me feel invincible. I always wanted to ride the wildest horse in the stable.”
“And ski the most dangerous slope, I suppose?”
“Yes, although I was on a moderate slope when it happened. One I thought I knew well. There’s a life lesson for me, I guess. Can’t get too comfortable.”
“How did the accident happen?”
“I don’t remember it. I lost control, and it’s a blur from there. When I woke up, they said I tumbled down the mountain and twisted my leg. The healers couldn’t save it. It was terrible. But—the look of horror on my father’s face was almost…Well, I can’t say it made it all worth it; let’s say it put the fire into me to find something else to do with myself.” He reached for her hand, and his grip tightened around her fingers. “You will find new opportunities, too.”
“All I had to go on was my looks.” Her voice was a little hoarse with the admission. Back then, she hardly dared admit that she hated leaving school. It just hurt too much. She had to leave school, so all she could do was tell herself that working at the Telephone Club was the best thing she’d ever done.
“Well, I know a little something about that, too. The prince with the prosthetic leg is a lot less romantic than the prince who is known for his athletic prowess. Your talents go beyond your looks. The thing about sports, or maybe anything, is that the people who win the races and the tournaments are the people who can put aside their fear and do what needs to be done. And you’re obviously one of those people, or you wouldn’t be here.” He gave her fingers a final squeeze before letting them go. He looked sad now. Despite his encouraging words, he was surely thinking of his own loss.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “You need to tell the men something before that dark-magic rumor grows a life of its own.”
He sighed. “Maybe a part of me knew something was wrong, because I brought my prosthetic leg with me to Urobrun. It’s under my bed in a trunk. The key is in my nightstand. Maybe…”
“I can get it,” she said.
Thea walked into his bedroom uninterrupted. She could hear a noisy, continuous murmuring downstairs.
He wasn’t using the Schiffs’ master bedroom—he’d chosen a small guest room much like Freddy’s. She couldn’t resist a glance around. The only photograph beside his bed was of a dog. No girls. The dog photograph wasn’t just a snapshot, it was a studio portrait on sturdy cardstock in a velvet frame. It gave her a fuzzy feeling. It was a little much to get a formal portrait of a dog, but it was also sweet.
Thea didn’t want to have these feelings about Sebastian. It didn’t feel right to toss Freddy over like that. Her mother married the first boy she ever loved. Her father married the first girl he ever loved. It felt, in some way, like the way love ought to be. Like in fairy tales.
But no one loved the sorcerer, in the fairy tales. They loved the prince.
She shoved these thoughts aside and knelt to peer under the bed. She had to use her left arm to support herself while she pulled out the wooden box. The pose didn’t feel right without her hand, and the wounds from pulling out the wooden hand were a little tender.
She opened the box and looked at the prosthetic leg. It was made of a lightweight metal, connected with straps to a leather thigh harness with laces to secure it. It didn’t look very comfortable. Of course, she had seen war veterans with various prosthetics. Crude ones for the beggars and the poor, sometimes no more than a peg. This one was obviously well made, but seeing the leg was like ice down her spine, a reminder that no prosthetic could come close to the real thing.
The ice turned to fire as she recalled dim memories of Ingrid cutting off her hand, that smile on her face as she said, One must trust in fate. “Bitch,” Thea whispered. It felt good to speak her hatred aloud.
She hurried back to Sebastian. After securing the straps and laces, Sebastian winced when he stood, and his attempt to walk looked painful and off-balance. The leg didn’t quite fit. “I guess I’ve grown a little since Ingrid found me,” he said. He cursed and pounded the desk, and his accumulation of empty coffee mugs with spoons in them all jumped
and clinked. “If word gets out that I’ve lost a leg, people might start to think about the one-legged prince whose death was a little bit suspicious.”
“What are you going to tell them, then, if not the truth? How are you going to explain this?”
“I need more time to think.”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t think you have that.”
He took a deep breath.
Nan found Sigi downstairs talking to Adrian, a tall young man who worked in the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Sigi asked. “Ingrid just left with a group. Adrian said they grabbed some food on their way out.”
“I need to go after her.”
“You’d better not go without me,” Sigi said. “Let me get my camera. Adrian, could you pack us some food?”
Nan suppressed a smile. Sigi might have tried to escape the socialite life she’d been born into, but she still possessed the ability to give breezy orders.
“They won’t be very fast,” Sigi said, as they shoved their clothes into a bag. “They carried out two trunks that looked heavy. Say, isn’t that Thea’s valise?”
“Yeah, she’ll understand, though. Come on.” Nan shouldered the bag, and they rushed down the stairs. Adrian had a parcel of food and a flashlight ready for them.
“You’re the best,” Sigi said. “I hardly know you, but you’re the best.”
They stepped out into the night. This cold air blows down from Irminau, Nan thought. The neighborhood felt forbiddingly large when they were planning on leaving it behind.
“Do you know where she went?” Sigi’s whisper produced a cloud of frigid breath.
“No, though I think I know where she’s headed.” Nan’s skin tingled, intuition pricking at her temples. She proceeded cautiously, staying close to the wall around Mr. Schiff’s house. Usually guards were posted at the corner, near the old subway station, but she didn’t see them. She crept forward, Sigi just behind her.
Sigi stopped. “Is that a body, there? By the subway station?”
Nan had been looking for people standing, not collapsed, but Sigi was right: There was a human-size lump of darkness at the entrance to the subway station. She approached a little faster now, and the lump didn’t move.
It was one of the Chancellor’s guards, and he’d been shot. The subway entrance was open, and she saw another man slumped halfway down the stairs.
“Ingrid’s work?” Sigi asked.
“I think so.”
Nan started down the stairs, trading the brisk breeze of a winter night for air that was damp and still.
“Some of them are probably still down here.” Sigi’s eyes turned haunted. “The dead.”
They were several miles from the spot where the workers had escaped—but some of them could have come this way. She held out her hand.
“Where is she headed?” Sigi asked, as they descended the concrete steps. The station was now inhabited mostly by spiders—or at least, the ghosts of them. Nan switched on her flashlight, and wherever she pointed it, ragged gray webs floated from ceilings and between turnstiles. The musty smell roused memories, but there was no sign of death.
“To King Otto.”
“Really? Isn’t he abusive to magic users? I thought her whole philosophy was about respecting magic users.”
“I expect she plans to control him the way she did Thea and the men here.”
“What are you going to say when you find her?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe I could show them all Thea’s wooden hand and use the wyrdsong.” Nan didn’t know if the wyrdsong would work on her own sister and all the men she had already used the wyrdsong on, or if she could use it effectively on such a large group.
“Maybe we should just play along. Pretend you had a change of heart. Go to Irminau with her.”
“But…King Otto? I don’t want to go there.”
“I’ve never known you to be scared,” Sigi said. “I know Otto locked you up and killed you, but so did Valkenrath, and you weren’t afraid of him.”
“Things have changed. I’ve seen colors. I’ve heard music….I feel that I’m changing, that maybe I don’t have to be stuck in this same pattern anymore. But if I go to Irminau…”
“Irminau is where it all began,” Sigi said, “and where it all ended. Maybe you need to go there, to finish whatever is going on.”
In the distance, voices echoed faintly along the tunnels like ghosts. “That must be them,” Nan said.
Sigi’s eyes went briefly wide at the sound. “All right. We’re doing this.”
Nan squared her shoulders and moved ahead.
The voices grew louder and closer. They turned a bend in the track and saw flashlights faintly illuminating the silhouettes of a large group of people.
“Ingrid!” Nan shouted.
Sigi jumped. “Try not to give me a heart attack.”
Nan heard a few guns being readied, but she couldn’t see much besides the flashlights now pointing in her face. Sigi held up her hands, and Nan did the same.
“Ingrid, I’m sorry,” Nan said.
“Sorry?” Ingrid sounded tense.
“I broke Sebastian’s tie to Yggdrasil. I know that’s why you left. I thought it was the right thing to do, but…it wasn’t. I understand that now. I don’t want you to go. We’re—we’re family.” She still hoped maybe she could convince them to turn around.
“I was the one who made a mistake. I thought when I found you, things could be as they were, that you would understand what I did,” Ingrid answered. “I realize now that I am alone. Cut your ties to Yggdrasil and…and find what happiness you can.” As she spoke, the men watched with blank faces.
“I—I want to go with you,” Nan said. “I want to see Irminau and Yggdrasil. I’ve grown up here in the city. Maybe if I could see…I would understand.”
Ingrid clasped her fingers together like she was considering this idea. “Is that really what you think? I thought you didn’t believe in our cause anymore.”
“I was caught in the shock of the moment,” Nan said. “But when you left, I thought of all the years we’ve shared. I want you to be as you were, with your long hair and bare feet and your pet rabbits.”
“I don’t want to let you go either,” Ingrid said softly. “I want to fight at your side, I just don’t trust you.”
“You outnumber us,” Nan said. “Do you have to trust me? I wouldn’t have come if something didn’t draw me to you.” She held out her hand. She wanted to believe the Skuld she had known still existed.
Ingrid’s hand reached out, but she didn’t step forward. A gap stood between them—of space and trust. Ingrid looked so small, the only girl in the crowd, standing in her pale-colored dress. Nan wished she could grab her and shake the pain out of her. Let them go, Ingrid! Let them all go. Forget whatever terrible things you saw, and be the girl you used to be.
She grabbed Ingrid’s hand instead. They were going home.
Marlis couldn’t tell Papa she was leaving. And she couldn’t be there when Freddy let him go, because today could not be that day. She wanted Papa and all the other ministers to be busy with their meetings, late into the night, while she slipped away.
She had already said good-bye.
Now, how to get out of the Chancellery with Freddy and Volland? Pairs of guards stood at every door, along with a few posted across the street. They were supposed to protect her, and she couldn’t imagine how she’d get past them.
She gathered Freddy into the fold to plot. “Uncle—Valkenrath’s house connected to tunnels that led to the workers,” he said. “He talked about their history, how they were part of an older system that once connected to the palace. Does this house connect, too?”
“Papa never mentioned that our house did, but—”
“It must,” Volland said. “This house predates the Republic. It was first built for the Duke of Schwarzwasser. The old nobility must have had ways to sneak out and find one another.”
“Well, then, we
’d better look for the door,” Freddy said.
“I never go in the cellar,” Marlis said. “It’s very gloomy. Seems like a good place to catch one’s death.”
“I doubt anyone has ever died from going into the cellar,” Freddy said.
Marlis gathered candles and matches into her coat pockets, then walked ahead of them to the door. She waited a moment, making sure no guards or servants were watching, then opened the door slowly, so the noisy creak would alert Freddy and Volland.
The cellar felt older than the rest of the house, like a dungeon, with claustrophobic ceilings and ancient brick walls. Two small doors formed of old planks led in two different directions; she chose the one farthest from the kitchen, because the space under the kitchen was used for storing food and wine. This room was a catchall of junk better suited to the trash: dusty jugs with broken spouts, pine boughs that had shed their needles with old garlands wrapped around them, rusty tools of unknown usage.
She was beginning to wonder if this quest was futile when her candlelight danced across an old loose door propped against the wall. She clambered over the barrels and boxes to peer behind it, where the edge of a hidden door came into view. “Could this be it?”
Volland and Freddy pulled the heavy old door away and lowered it gently to the ground. The second door was locked into a frame with a plank across it to hold it shut; they removed that, too, and used a rusty crowbar to pry it open. The door hadn’t been opened in ages and had settled against the frame. Behind it was a narrow tunnel that sloped downward and traveled as far as the candle could see.
“We’ve found the beginning,” Volland said. “Now the only problem is, where do you suppose we can get out without drawing attention?”
“Valkenrath’s house linked to the entire underground,” Freddy said. “The subway system. Old catacombs. Everything.”
Two steps in, Marlis could already see the path ahead was going to split. The tunnel smelled like trapped time. It was difficult to imagine it would ever connect to something as modern as subways.
Just when she feared they might be lost in a labyrinth, the tunnels intersected with the subway system. Not only were Marlis and Freddy too young to remember the subways, they were never in the position to have used them. But Volland did.
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