Glittering Shadows

by Jaclyn Dolamore

Her heart was beating so fast, she had to pause for breath. She couldn’t even look at the Wachters, only Volland standing on the sidelines. He gently nodded that she was doing fine. She’d been worried she might speak too fast.

  “He adopted me to test whether or not magic was real, if legends were true, while never mentioning these legends to me. I grew up loving my father and this modern nation with all my heart—but I have always been different. At night, I heard strange music. Just dreams, he told me. My eyes are not always able to see colors. He told me it was a ‘condition.’

  “Whatever spark of strange power lived inside of me, my father smothered, just as he smothered my own voice when he asked me to give a speech on the radio to reinforce his lies.”

  Her voice shook. She paused to steady herself. She had lost herself so many times in the power of the opera house, she couldn’t falter now that she finally had the stage. “I have learned the truth,” she said, sweeping her eyes across them all. “I speak, for the first time, as myself. I am a guardian of magic and of the people. Some of you will have heard the legends of the three fates who protect the tree Yggdrasil, deep in the northern forest.”

  She sensed skepticism, but continued. “The Norns are reborn again and again. I am Urd. I have lived countless lives. I am also still Marlis, who loves Urobrun with all her heart.”

  When she paused again, an agitated murmuring of voices filled the room all the way up to the balcony. The sound was harsh, as this theater was only carpeted down the aisles. It was cold, too. Her hands were growing numb. She heard a few questions called from different directions and shook her head.

  “Urobrun broke away from Irminau,” she said. “And then it shook off the ancient tradition of emperors and kings. With each incarnation, we become better and bolder and freer. All I want from you is to fight with me for a world in which no one needs to live in suffering. Though I know most of you will not believe me, you deserve the truth after all these years of my father’s lies. And his final lie? It was his own death. When my father was shot three days ago, I was there as it happened. I watched him die.”

  The rumbling rose. Wachter started to stand up. Wilhelmina clutched his arm, but she met Marlis’s eyes, the question in them plain.

  “Down with the Chancellor!” someone shouted. “Down with the Republic!”

  Now Wachter did stand, and all his men stood with him. They sat near the front, so they all turned back to the revolutionaries in the audience.

  What am I doing? Marlis thought. She had thought if the Wachters heard the truth straight from her, they might see the right path before them. But if they didn’t…This could turn into a bloodbath. The Wachters came at my invitation. If they open fire on the revolutionaries—

  Even though Sebastian had arranged for heavy security, she was no longer sure who had control.

  “Listen!” She lifted her arms, trying to draw the room’s attention back. The wyrdsong was a pulsing rhythm in her mind. Her diaries said the wyrdsong would show people the path of fate. This was the moment to share the song that her father had asked her to keep locked away.

  But as Wachter looked back at her again, she struggled to believe she had ever been anyone but Marlis. Her arms lowered and her mouth was dry.

  How do I share it with them, exactly? It doesn’t have words.

  Wachter motioned for her to step down from the stage. Just come quietly, I don’t want an incident, his expression said.

  Marlis faltered, unwilling to concede but just as unable to find her voice. The wyrdsong had always been with her. Papa wanted to have her as his daughter, he claimed to be proud of her, but he didn’t want to face what she truly was. He wanted her to be just like her mother, brushing off her differences with lies. And as much as she had loved her mother…

  I am different. I am more than you allowed me to be.

  He had made her believe she had no power, except that which he was willing to give.

  The wyrdsong burst into Marlis’s mind. Her body became a willing vessel for that strange sound. Her mouth opened as visions of Yggdrasil crossed her mind. When she shut her eyes, the outlines of branches, bright as lightning, spread around her. But the magic went beyond her voice. The planks of the stage beneath her feet vibrated like a small earthquake had rocked the stage.

  Marlis tried to pull back, and at first the wyrdsong didn’t want to let her go. It had a terrible beauty that left her torn between surrender and struggle. She wasn’t sure how much time passed, with the entire theater caught in her thrall. It might have been one minute, it might have been ten. Time was meaningless in that stream of sound.

  And then it suddenly passed like a thunderstorm moving on, leaving a silent theater.

  Marlis hardly understood what had moved through her. She touched her lips, her face, as if she expected to have changed into some new form. She smoothed her expression, knowing everyone had seen her alarm.

  Wachter stepped into the aisle. He staggered, like he was dizzy, and clutched his stomach. “Marlis.” His voice shook.

  “What do you think, General?” Marlis rattled the letter. “Did Papa do right by your men when he brought them back from the dead?”

  He looked to Wilhelmina. She reached for him. He didn’t return the gesture.

  Marlis was braced for Wachter to launch an attack.

  “No,” Wachter said gently. “I don’t believe he did. Nor did I.”

  Marlis watched in horror as General Wachter got down on his knees. “I knew who you were. I just didn’t know the power you had. I didn’t know.” He lowered his head like he was waiting for execution. “I’m guilty. I’m guilty.”

  She had taken his shaking voice and his terrible expressions for anger, and now she realized that he was breaking down before her eyes. Marlis stepped down from the stage.

  “Sir!” Wachter’s second in command had rushed to his side. “What are you doing?”

  “She’s right. I have been an evil man.”

  Marlis could feel hundreds of eyes upon her as she walked down the aisle to Wachter’s side. They were hungry to see someone pay for the city’s sins. Their whispers combined into something like a low growl.

  “General Wachter, I asked you to come tonight in the hopes that you would work with me.” She spoke carefully. “You have valuable information and skills.”

  “Your magic brings up every sin, and I have too many.” He suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood. He reached out a hand, and she took it without thinking.

  Visions cut through her mind. Wachter, in her forest. Wachter, giving the order to shoot the Norns on sight. Wachter’s men, dragging the corpse of a woman to him, to show that it was done. Wachter commanding the body to be destroyed.

  It was me.

  Wachter, approaching Yggdrasil. She was inside his head, the moment he saw Yggdrasil’s beauty, the heavy branches lush with leaves that seemed a brighter green than any tree in the forest. She felt his awe—his sorrow that he had been ordered to destroy it. She saw him standing rapt, thinking of comforting memories of picking berries with his grandmother. But those days were long gone. The men were somber, but they did what they had come to do. Yggdrasil was felled.

  He killed me.

  She saw herself again, now an infant in his arms, being presented to her parents.

  My father made the decisions, but Wachter carried them out.

  “I—want—this—” he choked. “It’s too late for anything else—” He reached for Wilhelmina’s hand. She looked sober, as though she expected this moment. “I’m sorry, Willa. I’m sorry…Marlis.”

  He slumped forward, Wilhelmina still holding his hand. She lowered his body to the ground gently. Marlis had her hands mussed into her hair; she looked at Wilhelmina. “I didn’t know the wyrdsong would—”

  All those hungry eyes were still upon Marlis.

  Wilhelmina was a regal statue in a black dress. “He never forgave himself,” she said, so quietly that Marlis could barely hear her over the shouting in the room. Then
she abruptly turned away and left, as the chorus of revolutionaries cried, “He deserved it!” “Guilty!” “Bastard!”

  Shots fired. Marlis didn’t know which side had taken the initiative.

  “Come on! Come on!” One of Sebastian’s guards pulled a gun out of his coat and muscled Marlis toward the exit.

  Doors swung open in the back of the theater. The army rushed around the aisles as the crowd flooded toward the exit. Marlis kept her head down and her grip tight around the arm of Sebastian’s guard. An elbow jabbed her ribs, a man stepped on her foot, as some people struggled to reach the doors and others rushed to fight.

  One of Wachter’s soldiers fired at Marlis—or close to her, at least. It was difficult to tell in the chaos. A woman screamed nearby. Marlis covered her head with her hands.

  Sebastian’s guards fired back, catching one soldier in the leg. Some of the UWP rushed in to provide Marlis further cover. Marlis sucked in the night air as they fled out of the theater toward their car. At last, she flung herself through the door, unsure whether she had been a hero or a villain.

  When she safely reached home, Marlis locked herself in her room to be alone with her diaries and her rattled nerves. Freddy knocked on the door, but she turned him away.

  “I feel sick,” she said.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “Only to be left alone.”

  She didn’t sleep, but stayed up reading the diaries, searching for solace that she never found. The person she had been in the past never seemed conflicted, even when she had to dole out punishment.

  In the morning, Volland came to see her, and although she had been so glad when he agreed to follow her here, now it was almost painful to see a familiar face. She wanted to cry to him, and she didn’t have that kind of relationship with Volland. She didn’t have that relationship with anyone.

  “Marlis,” he said gently. “It would not have gone well for General Wachter anyway. You know the revolutionaries are going to dredge up every detail of who did what and who knew what, and then hold trials. Every person who had a family member laboring underground will demand that. He wouldn’t want to be executed or imprisoned or exiled. It’s just as well.”

  “I knew him all my life…” She didn’t even know what to say anymore.

  Volland gave her an awkward shoulder pat. He hesitated, searching for words, before saying, “It was a brave thing to do.” Then he left. She did feel better from this, but it wasn’t enough.

  When she emerged from her room, Sebastian approached her in the hall. He was only limping a little now, so he must have gotten a properly fitted leg. And he looked excited. “Well, well. The city is all abuzz about you this morning,” he said. “A copy of your speech is already circulating. I’m not sure everyone knows what to make of the Norn story, but we can put out our own literature and get it sorted out. Are you all right?”

  “You must have heard about General Wachter.”

  “Yes, I talked to Volland. He said you were fairly close to Mrs. Wachter.”

  She nodded, but no explanation quite captured her feelings. She tried to shake it off. Nothing to be done now. “Is there really a copy of my speech out there? I’d like to see it.”

  “I’ll obtain one for you.”

  In a manner of days, Marlis had the political attention she had always wished for. Her words circulated throughout the city. First, the copy of her speech—full of inaccuracies that made the revolutionaries sound better. Then she released an official transcript, adding additional material on the history of the Norns, drawing quotes from her diaries.

  One afternoon Freddy approached her with a poster rolled up in his hand. “Looks like someone has become the poster girl for the revolution.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Lucas just brought it in.” He unfolded the paper to reveal a stylized modern girl with severe black bob and round glasses, lifting her hand in the revolutionary salute, with bold lettering that said THE FACE OF MODERN MAGIC.

  “I would never do the revolutionary salute!” She tried to grab the poster, but he lifted it out of reach.

  “No use ripping it up,” he said. “They said it’s plastered everywhere. Shouldn’t you be proud? What did you want that speech to accomplish, if not something close to this?”

  “Hmm,” she said, not wanting to admit he was right.

  “I know. Sometimes getting what you want isn’t quite as good as it sounds,” he said.

  She wanted even less to admit he was right about that as well.

  The last pieces of her world crumbled in the few weeks following her speech, now that so many pillars of the old guard had fallen—Roderick Valkenrath, Vice Chancellor Walther, her father, General Wachter. Gerik was taken to trial. Others resigned. Brunner was appointed chancellor in a hastily arranged election, and UWP members took all the minister positions.

  Sebastian insisted on patience as this unfolded. “We have to let the dust settle,” he said. “Your strategy has been perfect. You’re above all this ugly negotiation. If Brunner goes down, he won’t drag you with him.”

  “But we must design some better posters,” she said, “where I am not giving the UWP salute!”

  She didn’t listen to a word of Brunner’s inauguration. Deep down, the UWP would always feel like her enemies, and she hated being lauded for killing Wachter. The new poster-girl Marlis felt as fake as the one who had given a speech for her father.

  Her father’s words had never felt more true. All politics is a game. Even when you told the truth, it seemed that truth had a life of its own.

  “Do you recognize this place?” Ingrid asked, as the spires of a town came into view in the valley ahead. She did not usually walk beside Nan on their travels, but stayed with her men, leaving Nan and Sigi guarded but set apart.

  The entire landscape was deeply familiar to Nan. They had walked through thick forests that smelled of evergreens and clean snow and memories. They crossed rolling pastures and passed farmhouses with cheerful lines of wood smoke reaching straight for the cloudy winter skies. But the town that lay before them did stir something even deeper with its particular makeup of church spires and the crumbling stone walls wrapped around it.

  For a moment, as she looked at the town, the soft colors of winter bloomed in her vision. The sky was not pure gray, as she thought, nor the snow only white. Both held layers of blue: gray-blue clouds across the sky, purple-blue shadows beneath the trees. The snowcapped roofs of the town reflected the setting sun, turning golden.

  The vision was there only for an instant.

  We were happy here, Nan thought. The sight of this town seemed to promise a warm fire and good food.

  “Did we live here once?” Nan asked.

  “Close,” Ingrid said. “This is Rauthenburg. The Mariendorfs lived here. They were friends of ours across several lifetimes, who gave us a place to stay when we traveled between the north and south—or Irminau and Urobrun, as we know the regions now. Urd always thought them a little too loud, but then, she thought that of most people.”

  “Will we stay with them now?” Nan asked.

  “I lost touch with the current generation, and I wouldn’t impose when we have such a large group. We’ll stay at a hotel.”

  As they walked into town, the memories grew thicker. Small shops and vendor stalls crowded the main street. Witches once sold charms and potions here, but she didn’t see any of them now. She remembered a cloth vendor that she had particularly liked, although she couldn’t recall what kinds of cloth she used to buy.

  “I’m feeling so oddly homesick,” she whispered to Sigi.

  “For the past?” Sigi asked.

  “I don’t know. For this town. I don’t know if you can be homesick for a place when you’re in it, but I am. I’m a stranger now.”

  Nan had barely been outside of the neighborhood where she’d grown up, much less the city of Urobrun itself. Just as a part of her was homesick, another part of her felt it was all new. She was delighted at the sigh
t of old frame cottages and the narrow, curving streets that followed the natural slopes of the hilly landscape. It grew dark so early now that it was near the shortest day of the year, and streetlamps turned the snow bright. Doors and balconies were decked with evergreens. It was all like a scene from a storybook. Thea would have been peering at all the pastries and dolls in shop windows.

  The charm was finally broken when six men in uniforms, with epaulets and tall boots, approached Ingrid as if they had been expecting her.

  “Lady Skuld,” the one in front said, bowing. “Baron Best.” His clothes were finer than the rest, with an array of medals pinned to his chest, a cape, and a peaked hat edged in fur, but he was a ferocious-looking man. His dark beard fell across the collar of his uniform, and his eyes were pale. “King Otto told me you were coming. Some of my men shall escort you to the capital. For tonight, I have the pleasure of entertaining you.”

  “Thank you.” Ingrid didn’t bow or curtsy in return.

  “You all must be tired. We have reserved space at Traveler’s Hotel for tonight.”

  Ingrid nodded. “Lead the way, Baron.”

  Nan felt pinched inside at every mention of his status. They had really arrived, to this land of royalty. Baron Best didn’t look or sound like the Irminauers Nan was familiar with. He must come out of the far north, where snowcapped mountains cut a rugged border between Irminau and the small countries beyond, which were even more wild and strange. When he walked down the street, people scurried out of the way. He was almost seven feet tall with his hat. He and all his men were armed with pistols and sabers.

  “Whoa, it’s the Six Swordsmen of Salandra,” Sigi said, referencing a swashbuckler movie from last year.

  Nan grinned. “But Remy Paul is only a hair over five feet in real life,” she said.

  “Did you ever serve him, then? At the Telephone Club?” Sigi asked.

  Nan nodded. “Once. He was very nice. And he tips well, too. But his favorite waitress was Pauline.”

  “Really? I thought you’d tell me he was a cad. Nearly all the famous actors I’ve ever met were. I used to pretend to be Remy Paul when I was a kid, back when he was in Master of the Seas. My mother was very chagrined that I used her makeup to paint a mustache on my face.”