Glittering Shadows Read online

  “But didn’t we use magic to force people into slavery?” Wilhelmina asked. Although she had a forceful presence, she looked pallid, or maybe it was just the lighting in the basement.

  “I suppose you think we deserve to be hanged?” Mrs. Rasp asked.

  “Shh,” Mrs. Baum said, stroking her boy’s hair when he stirred a little.

  “Of course not,” Wilhelmina said. “I know why we did what we did. But—” She shook her head and glanced at Marlis again. “You might as well have a seat. I know you won’t sleep. For now, we can only wait.”

  Marlis pulled out from under her dress the necklace her mother had given her as a child—gold in the shape of a real human heart. Mother had loved science; Marlis thought of her every time she rubbed the familiar shape between her fingers.

  The women sat, talking sometimes, falling into heavy silence other times. At some point in the night, the power flickered. Wilhelmina had candles at the ready. The workers underground had managed some of the electric plants. But the power remained on—for now.

  Marlis finally fell into fitful sleep in her chair. A child’s wailing woke her again. More women had joined them. Now Mrs. Alberti sat at the piano. The ornate cuckoo clock on the wall said it was six in the morning. Some of the wives had gathered at the table around a pot of coffee, speaking in hushed tones.

  Marlis rose, shaking off her bleariness. “Has there been any news?”

  “Not much,” Wilhelmina said. “It sounds like we might be down here longer than we thought, though. We haven’t seen your father, but I spoke to my husband. The military have their hands full, so they want us to stay under guard.”

  “Did he say what’s happening out there? Have they found the Valkenraths? Freddy?”

  “Roderick is dead,” Wilhelmina said. “They found his body underground. That’s all we know of him. Apparently the streets are madness—fires and riots. People beat a police officer to death in Langstrasse. They’re trying to get it under control.” She spoke calmly but looked pinched. Beside her, Mrs. Baum dropped her face into her hands.

  Marlis went into the hall and paced. Down here, she heard nothing, felt nothing. What did the world look like outside these walls? When she stepped into the light of morning, would it be transformed? She wanted to be at her father’s side, hearing every detail. Here they were, all the ladies crowded in a concrete hole, like inanimate valuables tucked into the cellar for safekeeping.

  I can’t bear this blindness.

  Marlis tried to go up the stairs. A guard stopped her at the top. “Sorry, Princess. Your father said not to let you up.”

  “I won’t bother him. I won’t say a word. I’ll stay outside the meeting chamber. It can’t be any more dangerous up there.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” the guard said. “The crazies might just find a way to storm the Chancellery. I heard they have more magic than anyone expected.”

  Her heart beat faster.

  “But don’t worry.” He spread a hand hastily. “The military’s out in force.”

  The door above the guard opened. Volland! He would always spare her a moment. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s bad, dear,” he said gently, walking past the guard. “All of the workers are dead. It happened a few moments ago, at sunrise. Freddy must have ended his magic.”

  “He chose to kill all those people?” She adjusted her vision of the world outside—now seeing the streets littered with bodies.

  “It’s possible he may have been killed himself. Although we had protection spells on him, spells can be broken. If he dies, his magic dies with him. But for it to happen right as the sun rises does suggest a deliberate action to me—that he, or his captors, chose to end the workers’ lives at dawn. We can only speculate for now.”

  Marlis clenched her fist, smothering just how disturbed she was at the idea of losing not just Ida but also Freddy. She’d grown up with both of them. “Freddy never got to…I mean, he was so young.”

  “He may have betrayed us,” Volland said, but he sounded sympathetic.

  “Even if he betrayed us…it’s our fault, really. We never really—I don’t know. We didn’t give him much respect.”

  “You might be right. But it’s too late now.” Volland patted her shoulder. “Can you tell the others? I just wanted to share the latest news.”

  “Of course.”

  She watched Volland’s scarecrow-lean body dash back up the stairs. The door shut her out once again.

  Thea tried to lose herself in the smell of coffee, the familiarity of her own kitchen, of filling cups and stirring in sugar and milk.

  Trying not to think of those last moments with Father. Watching his spirit slip away. Holding his hand as it went still and lifeless. She had to leave his body on the street, covered by her coat, and walk home with Mother.

  Stop.

  She handed one cup to Freddy, who stood close to Thea in the kitchen, crowded between the cabinet and chipped enamel sink. The rest she distributed around the small table adjacent to the kitchen, where Nan, Sigi, and her mother occupied all three of the chairs. Coffee would do little to battle the exhaustion in their eyes, but it was nice to do some small thing for the people she loved.

  “We need to make a plan,” Nan said. “Freddy isn’t safe here. Everyone will be looking for him.” Her voice was a little sharper than Thea remembered. Nan was always tough, but never so serious. Now she seemed all edges and angles, and her face matched—it was thinner, her cheekbones standing out, her blond cropped hair ruffled and unwashed.

  “Maybe you should introduce me to your friends, Thea,” her mother said. “I know I haven’t been myself, but I do remember you mentioning Nan before. Didn’t you two work together?”

  “Yes,” Thea said, “at the club.” She looked at Nan uncertainly. What are you, anyway?

  Nan hadn’t explained much to Thea, either. There hadn’t been time.

  Nan looked at the table. “So much has changed since we worked at the club. I didn’t know how to explain. I still don’t. Sigi’s mother, Arabella von Kaspar, told me I was a Norn. I’d never heard of it, and she had to dig up these dusty books to try and convince me. All I knew was, I’d always felt different, and the description matched—that Norns can’t see colors, for instance.”

  “I have heard of Norns,” Thea’s mother said.

  “You have?” Thea asked.

  “Yes. In the north, there is a festival dedicated to them. They’re believed to be the guardians of magic and the sacred forest. But I don’t know much more than that. I lived in southern Irminau.”

  “And you didn’t die, Nan,” Thea said. “Do you have some kind of magic?”

  “I think so, but I don’t know how to use it. I don’t really know much of anything.” Nan shrugged like she was trying not to show how much this distressed her.

  Thea’s mother turned to Freddy. “Now, you—I see, with your silver hair, that you’re a sorcerer. A powerful one. You had something to do with what happened….”

  He glanced down. “I had everything to do with what happened.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Thea said. “They made him do it. The government took him from his family when he was a child because he could raise the dead. That’s why he has to hide now, so they don’t try it again.”

  Thea’s mind flashed back to the kiss they had shared out in the hall, just minutes ago. My first kiss, shared with a boy whom everyone will be hunting for. She’d imagined her first kiss would be a joyous thing, but the memory lingered bittersweet on her lips. Nothing about Freddy felt safe.

  “Are you the one who brought back my husband?”

  “I brought back all of them.” Freddy’s eyes were still pointed at the floor.

  “This is the sort of thing we left Irminau to avoid.” Mother put a hand on Freddy’s shoulder. “Don’t apologize, Freddy. If they forced you into it, then…”

  Mother had plenty of stories about life in the village where she had grown up, but she didn’t
talk much about why she and Father left their home in the neighboring country of Irminau. Now she said, “When we came to Urobrun, we were promised a land without magic.”

  “But,” Sigi said, “is that really better? I used to walk the streets taking photographs of people. I remember—” She tapped her left temple impatiently. “My memories are still coming back. It’s almost there. I think I’d hurt myself. Twisted my ankle, maybe. This old man was on the street and he healed me, but he looked panicked the whole time, and as soon he was done, he ran away. As if I was going to go tell the police or something.”

  “It would be painful, I’d think, to be able to heal people but feel like you were forbidden to do it,” Thea said.

  Sigi nodded. Thea didn’t really know Sigi—she had come out of the underground with Nan—but Thea felt an affinity with her. Sigi was just another ordinary girl, albeit a wealthy one. She was short and plump and likable-looking, with a head of wild brown curls and a few faint freckles. “My mother was Arabella von Kaspar, the leader of one of the revolutionary groups. She talked about it all the time, how magic should be free.”

  Mother twisted her loose hair into a coil. She still wore it unfashionably long. “Magic should be a gift. But shortly after I got married, King Otto called for all the magic users in the country to register at the palace, and they didn’t leave. I couldn’t have children in a place like that. Magic didn’t run in our families, but sometimes it appears out of nowhere.” She opened a drawer, scrounged a couple of pins, and put her hair up.

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen Mother fix her own hair. With the bound-sickness that tied her by magic to Thea’s missing father, she forgot the simplest things. Thea had to remind her to put on stockings before leaving for church, or how to make eggs.

  “I shudder to think of Irminau’s response to this,” Mother continued, her hand now moving to the photograph of Father in his army uniform. “When they hear how much trouble this country is in, King Otto will surely take advantage.”

  “What can you tell us about King Otto?” Nan asked. “How much of a threat do you think he poses?” Her fingers twitched like she wanted to take notes.

  “The papers make him out to be rather foolish,” Thea said. “They say he just builds models of his castle and has portraits painted of himself in costumes.”

  “Well, papers,” Sigi said. “They’ll say anything that sounds entertaining.”

  “King Otto was no fool when I lived in Irminau,” Mother said. “Conniving and eccentric, yes. But a lot of people in Irminau love him. He can seem like a father figure, and has built a strong national pride. But then he began taking steps to round up the magic users, and all of us with our eyes open left if we could.”

  “How many kinds of magic users are there?” Nan asked.

  “Healers and garden witches,” Mother said. “Nearly every village had those. Then there are elemental powers, also fairly common, and witches that handle basic connective spells like binding magic. But I have no idea how many types of rare magic, like reviving, might exist.”

  “Why didn’t the magic users rebel,” Freddy asked, “if that’s where Otto’s power comes from?”

  “Some of them have favored positions at his court,” Mother said. “And magic users are such a small section of the population. They are appreciated, but also feared. Many people back home saw King Otto’s tough laws simply as keeping magic under control.

  “But to answer your original question,” Mother continued, “Urobrun once belonged to Otto’s kingdom, and all the wars this nation has fought since trace back to the original battle for independence.”

  “If Otto decided to march his army in here, would Urobrun be able to fight back?” Nan asked.

  “The military is already stretched thin,” Freddy said. “And who knows what will happen here after today.”

  Nan’s eyes darted quickly across each of them. “That’s why we need to try and find a safe place to hide,” she said. “To protect ourselves—especially Freddy—from the Chancellor’s forces and Irminau’s, and even the revolutionaries.”

  “Maybe with my father?” Sigi ventured. “He wasn’t involved with the revolutionaries. He hasn’t lived with my mother for years. And his apartment’s swank—it’s over on Parc. We’d have to sleep on the floor, but at least there’s a good pantry to raid.”

  “I’m worried someone might find us there,” Nan said.

  “I bet he could find us a place with some friends,” Sigi said. “He and I do get along better than Mother and I did. He’s a bit of a lout, but I think he can keep a secret.”

  “It’s better than staying here. We need to get on the move immediately.”

  Mother’s hands were clenched around her mug of coffee, but she hadn’t taken a single sip. “You should do what you need to do,” she said softly, touching the back of the chair like it was an anchor. “I know you’ll return safely.”

  “You don’t know,” Thea said, hesitant. She wanted to go with her friends, but she wanted just as much to stay with Mother, who had been sick for so long. Now she was sharp and well, bringing a sense of comfort Thea hadn’t felt in years.

  “You’d go crazy with worry if you stayed here,” Mother said.

  Thea squeezed her hand. Mother was her old self, except that the old Mother wouldn’t have let Thea leave. Mother had just lost the man she loved, the man she had been bound to by magic. Thea met her eyes with the fears she wouldn’t voice. “Just swear to me you’ll be here safe and sound when I get back, too.”

  “I promise,” Mother said. “I might get a few more supplies.” Outside the window, people were hauling bags of food. “The smart ones are getting provisions now, before they’re gone.”

  “Maybe you should pack some clothes,” Nan told Thea, “quickly.”

  Thea didn’t have that many clothes to begin with, so it wasn’t hard to sweep the contents of her wardrobe and vanity into a bag. Winter was coming, and she had abandoned her coat as a shroud for Father’s body. At the time, it had not seemed important. Coats could be replaced. Now she wondered if that would be true. Having packed the clothes, Thea threw in her book of old fairy tales from Father Gruneman, then snapped her bag shut.

  Her mother hugged her so tight that Thea let out a tiny croak of pain.

  “Be safe,” Mother said, her voice breaking.

  “If worse comes to worse, I still have Father Gruneman’s gun.” Thea picked up her purse, feeling the weight.

  “That poor man,” Mother said. “Though I’m not surprised he was in deep.” On top of everything else, last night Thea had to break the news to Mother that their beloved priest had been killed for his involvement with the revolution.

  Then the four of them ran out into the street, leaving Thea’s mother behind.

  “Let’s take the back way down Arch Street,” Thea said.

  In front of Thea’s apartment, it might have been any other day. The sidewalks were flush with the pure, golden light of morning. It seemed wrong to have such a beautiful, cloudless sky when the city was full of the bodies of lost loved ones.

  Several long paces behind them, a man was hunched into a gray coat, the brim of his cap pulled down over his face. Nan looked back at him suspiciously.

  “Thea, maybe I should carry the gun,” Nan said in a low voice.

  Thea wouldn’t argue with that idea. She didn’t like having responsibility for the weapon; even in self-defense, she wasn’t sure she had the guts to shoot someone. As she handed over the purse, the man walking behind them glanced up.

  Last night Freddy had escaped his prison. No guards had followed him underground. For the first time in his life, every turn of the path, every decision was his own.

  He didn’t want to let that freedom go. He had to fight an urge to clutch Thea’s hand tighter and run, as if he could outrun his fate.

  “The candy store is closed,” Thea commented. “Maybe all the shops are. It already feels like the war all over again.”

  Freddy
followed her gaze to a tiny shop tucked ahead in the narrow street. Tiered towers of flower- and fruit-shaped marzipan in the windows, colored pink and green and orange, caught the eye even from a distance.

  He veered closer to the window, to peer in for just a moment. Thea followed easily, their shared touch adding a new element to conversation.

  “Come on!” Nan said. “What are you two doing? We don’t have time!”

  Where one man had been behind them, now there were two. They were picking up their pace—and looking at Freddy. He instinctively clutched his hat, although his silver hair was hidden.

  “You three, run,” Nan said, her voice tense. “I’ll distract them.”

  The men each took out a gun.

  Freddy cursed and put a protective arm around Thea. They wouldn’t hurt him when they needed his magic, but they could hurt anyone around him.

  “Stop!” one of the men shouted. “We don’t want to harm you.” He was the shorter of the two, their appearance otherwise concealed under coats, hats, and scarves.

  “Wait—I know you,” said the taller one, whose dark brows were furrowed in concentration under the brim of his hat. He was looking at Sigi. “You’re one of the workers! Why aren’t you dead?”

  Sigi stiffened. “I certainly was not!” Her upper-class accent grew more pronounced.

  He looked at her feet. “How about those worker-issue boots, then?”

  “Who are you?” Sigi demanded.

  “I was one of the guards underground.”

  “You work for the Chancellor?” Nan asked, stepping forward, putting Sigi behind her.

  “No, I was spying for the revolution. We are with the Hands of the White Tree.” He motioned to his companion. “I’m Max and this is Will. We have a safe place here in the city where you can hide.”

  “If you’re here to help us, why were you shadowing us down the alley?” Freddy asked.

  “We wanted to make sure it was you,” Will said. “And—we weren’t sure if you’d trust us.”