Glittering Shadows (28 page)

“Good morning, Mr. Huber.” Sebastian lifted his hand as the man walked in, a balding fellow with reddish hair and bright blue eyes.

“Good morning, Mr. Hirsch. I could hardly make sense of your message. What on earth happened here?”

“I had a magical leg and Miss Holder here had a magical hand, and, to make a long story short, the magic went awry.”

“I’m afraid I can’t compete with a magical limb, though I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“That’s fine,” Sebastian said, waving the UWP pamphlet impatiently before putting it down. “I have an ordinary artificial leg now, I’ve just outgrown it. I
don’t have time for my body to get in my way—I just need something that fits, and as quickly as possible.”

Mr. Huber
tsked
at him. “You need to take care of that body of yours, young man, or it’ll get in your way whether you like it or not. You look like you haven’t slept in
days.” He opened a bag and rummaged in it, bringing out a few measuring implements. “When you get to be my age…” He glanced at Thea.

“What about you, my dear? Are we making an artificial hand or a hook? Or both?”

“Both,” Sebastian said. “She should have options.”

Thea was starting to tremble. This just sounded so real, and of course, what happened was real. She thought she already knew that, but each new aspect felt like a boot stomping on her chest,
leaving her short of breath and wondering what had happened.

She expected Mr. Huber to measure her arm, and was surprised when he also measured her shoulders. “To operate the hook,” he explained, “you’ll use your opposite shoulder
with a slight motion that will come very naturally with practice. It’s two hooks, really, that can open and close to grip things through the use of bands.”

“That sounds bulky.”
And hideous
.

“Not as much as you might fear. It will fit under most clothes without much notice, and you’ll soon find you can do almost everything you used to do. I’ve helped men who lost
both hands and are able to live quite normal lives. Thanks to all these conflicts, people have come up with very functional solutions.”

There was that word again, “functional.” No one described hands as functional, because they were so much more than that. Slender. Beautiful. Expressive. Deft. Soft. She forced
herself to display good spirits as he took a plaster cast of her arm, but storm clouds gathered inside her. Mr. Huber had said she might have “quite” a normal life—she
didn’t need him to tell her that normal life was over.

“M
y name is Marlis Horn. Most of you will know me as the Chancellor’s daughter.” Her voice echoed through the theater, hundreds
of faces staring back at her in the darkness. She kept returning to Wilhelmina and General Wachter.
They actually came.

She’d had no idea if they would even respond to her invitation. Wilhelmina looked confused, while Wachter kept surveying the surroundings—a drab but spacious venue in the bohemian
district of Langstrasse—like he expected an ambush. Wachter had brought enough of his own men to fill three rows of threadbare chairs. They looked out of place in their sharp uniforms. She
expected more were watching the place outside, but in here they were outnumbered by over a hundred revolutionaries and several hundred more common people.

“At least,” she said, “that’s who I
thought
my father was. Three days ago, he gave me this letter.” She held the letter up as evidence. The audience
wouldn’t recognize his handwriting from their seats, but the very suggestion of its existence made Wachter sit up a little straighter. Wilhelmina looked at him. Marlis couldn’t make out
their expressions in the dim light.

She read the first part of the letter aloud. “‘And then we tried to capture the Norns. You were the only one we could find.’ This, you see, was my father’s dying
confession to me.”

The audience rumbled. The capitol had not announced her father’s death yet.

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.