Winterspell (20 page)

“Will we?” She let out a small, unsteady sound. “It seems unlikely. I know nothing of this place, and neither do you, it seems.”

“So we'll discover it together.”

“And every moment we spend
discovering
is another moment closer to my father's death, closer to my sister's . . . Nicholas, if I'm not back to New York within a week, with my father alive and whole, they'll kill my sister. Concordia will give her to Dr. Victor to do with as he will, and that will be the end of it. Of her.”

Of me.

Nicholas turned away.

“And I don't know what happened to poor Godfather. I should hate him, yet I don't, and I can't bear to think of anything happening to him.” Clara folded herself into a filthy knot on the ground, her gorge rising. “And this place . . . is
disgusting
.”

She hadn't meant to say that, but it was outrageously true. Nicholas paused and then began to laugh, and after a moment Clara did too—erratic laughter that fought with her tears. She put a hand over her mouth to hold it all in. Her palm smelled unholy, and that made her laugh even harder.

“Oh, Clara.” Nicholas sighed, sliding down to sit beside her, still chuckling. He turned toward her, grime warring with metal to make his face a mosaic of strange angles. But his dark eyes were merry and soft.
“If only you could see what Cane looked like before. You would much prefer it, I think. It wasn't quite so . . . tall then. Nor so misshapen.”

Tall. The hum of trains overhead made Clara glance up and shiver. He was distracting her from herself, and though the urgent part of her felt insulted, she knew they could do nothing else until they had at least one or two hours of sleep. She knit her fingers together and tucked her family out of her thoughts, leaving her mind open and ready.

“Tell me about it. Cane, before.”

Nicholas was quiet for a moment. “I think,” he began slowly, “that where we were this morning was Mira's Ring.”

“What is that?”

“The edge of the world.” He smiled a little. “Or so the stories call it. So my old bedtime tales called it. The last stretch of land before you reach the seas. It's always been tempestuous, but never like what we saw. They say Mira's Ring formed when a mage was betrayed by her lover. Her ghost wanders there still, heartbroken, trailing winter forever behind her. It surrounds the entire country.”

“A mage,” Clara said. “Godfather never told me about them.”

Nicholas chuckled. “No, most likely because he feared that if he mentioned them, he'd be unable to stop himself from confessing.”

“Confessing what?”

“That he is one himself.”

It took her a moment to truly hear the words.
Mage.
It echoed through her mind like the call of someone new and yet somehow dear—a stranger opening loving arms to her. Swift affinity. Bone-deep
recognition
.

Of course Godfather was a mage. Of
course.
Normal men did not tell stories like Godfather did, normal men could not quiet panicked horses with a word, and normal men did not have silver blood.

“Godfather is a mage,” she said, more to try the idea aloud than for Nicholas's confirmation. It was the most ridiculous sentence she had ever uttered, and the most satisfying.

So many unasked questions now answered. A riddle she hadn't known needed solving.

Nicholas, curious: “Are you all right?”

She turned to him, feeling bright with new clarity, unsettled and yet not, and shook her head. “I suppose I should be surprised. Aghast and agape.”

“Aren't you?”

Was she? For a moment she considered it. “It's just . . .” She smiled. No. She wasn't. The rational part of her was surprised. Of course it was. But the rest of her—the larger part of her, which Godfather had crafted over many years with such care—that part of her was simply contented. Quietly triumphant, and knowing.

“You don't believe me,” Nicholas said.

“In fact I do. I actually used to pretend he was something like that. A wizard or . . . I don't know. I was young, and he was this strange, fearsome man who talked to himself and wore an eye patch and built the most exquisite toys. Any child would think he was magic in the form of a man. I convinced myself that was nonsense, but . . .”

They were quiet then. Clara's nostalgia subsided into a dull, oppressive sadness, her thoughts whirling between Godfather and Mother, Father and Felicity and lonely women with winter at their feet, and Anise with her sharp blue eyes, and the throngs of people Clara could hear, even now, buzzing on the streets in search of them. Magic.
Mages.
Her head pitched with vertigo. She would not be able to sleep.

“We will find him, Clara,” said Nicholas at last, and his face in the dim light was so earnest and endearingly boyish that she reached up without thinking and touched his cheek. When her fingers met the sliver of metal at his temple, beneath his hair, memory and familiarity and wonder blended sweetly within her. A curious dichotomy, this hard and soft, this hot flesh and cold steel. The familiar and unfamiliar, man and metal.

Between them, warm breath in frigid air. A slow crawl of tension.

Nicholas let his eyes close. “Do you know how long it's been since . . .”

She waited. “Since?”

“Never mind.” His voice was low, measured. Gently he pulled away from her touch and tucked Godfather's coat about both their shoulders. “We should rest.”

Unnerved, Clara sat in silence. Every time Nicholas shifted, she flinched; whenever a crash came from an apartment overhead or a shout rang out from the streets, she snapped her gaze into the darkness. Exhaustion battled with restlessness.

Father, where are you?
Absurdly, she thought it into the approaching night. If there was truly magic in Cane, maybe he would somehow be able to hear her.

But there was no response, of course. There was nothing but the sounds of people and train whistles, and the warm presence of Nicholas's body.

Clara felt ready to scream. She could not stand this silence.

“Why are you helping me?” she whispered. She had not meant to say it aloud.

At first she thought Nicholas was asleep, but then he said, without looking at her, “Because you helped me. You fought the loks so Drosselmeyer could free me. You could have died.”

“So it's a matter of debt?”

“Strictly speaking.”

There was more to his words, but she was too troubled to explore it. “And what will you do if we find him?”

“
When
we find him.”

“Yes. What then?”

“I don't know. I had thought of taking back my throne.” He said it casually, like it was nothing. “How naive I was. I thought I could return and people would recognize me, gather at my side, fight her with me, for love of me, for loyalty. But no one does recognize me. And I hardly recognize myself, or Cane.”

Clara did not know what to say to this, how to respond to the false lightness in his voice. It so obviously masked despair, but her own was too great to offer comfort. So she said nothing, and tried to force a sleep that would not come.

“I imagined this,” she heard him say quietly after a long time. “In the shop. I imagined being beside you.”

Clara pretended sleep so she would not have to respond, but her heart beat suddenly faster, and an awful tenderness warmed her. She was relieved when she heard his breathing even out, and tried to forget his words. They would do nothing but soften her, and as kind as he had been, it occurred to the part of her trained to suspect and defend that such a softening might be his intention.

* * *

She awoke to screams.

They tore her from sleep, and Nicholas, too. For a moment they were still, listening.

Then the screams came again.

Clara saw them first—three figures at the end of the alleyway, shoving a smaller figure between them. It was a girl, and the screams were hers.

“Don't move,” Clara whispered. “If we stay quiet, I don't think they'll notice us.”

But Nicholas was already getting to his feet. He reached for his sword. “We've got to help her.”

The figures threw the girl to the ground.

“Please, don't!” the girl screamed.
“Please!”

Clara rose and turned away. She itched to run to them, to wreak havoc with her blades. But the threat of being caught held her still—her family depended on her.

That did not ease the sick feeling in her stomach.

“Ignore them,” she breathed. “Plug your ears.”

High above them lights flickered in windows; a pair of blue-eyed
birds perched on a rooftop to watch. The girl's screams became deafening. Would no one help her?

Nicholas stared at her. “Are you mad? We can't stand by and let this happen.”

Clara grabbed his arm. Stupid, foolishly noble boy. “And if they see us, and we're caught?”

“We won't be. We fought a train full of faeries. I was raised by war, and I've seen your training. We can handle them.” He stepped closer, his face fierce. “You're powerful, Clara. Or you
could
be, if you would let go of your fear long enough to realize it.”

As if struck, Clara stepped back from him. He seemed suddenly so impatient with her, so disgusted. She was tempted to slap him for the insult—but then, he was right, wasn't he? She had been weak for so long.

She curled her hands into fists. Just like that—a shift, a spark of anger.

She would not be weak this time.

The girl was struggling to rise, but one of the figures shoved her back down. Clara bent to eject the knives from her boots and followed Nicholas, daggers in hand.

It's more a dance than anything, fighting,
Godfather's memory whispered.
Stay light on your toes. Stay fluid. Stay two strikes ahead of them. Speed kills more quickly than strength.

The girl's attackers heard them coming. Clara saw them turn, squint into the darkness.

And then she and Nicholas were on them, leaping shoulders-first. The man Clara slammed into was caught off guard, and she knocked him down easily. He landed with a grunt, and she rolled over him, letting the movement propel her to her feet.

The man followed her, more agile than he looked, and lunged. Her daggers caught him across the chest, and dark ribbons of blood blossomed on his sweat-soaked shirt. Clara hesitated, revulsion at taking
yet another life making her pause—not a lok life, not even a faery life, but a
human
life—but then, these men weren't entirely human. Like Dr. Victor, their cruelty defined them, stripped them of personhood. Not men but beasts. No better than loks. The thought bolstered Clara.

But the man's eyes were on her face, and he
knew
.

“It's you,” he whispered. “From the queen's proclamation.”

Queen?

He dove for her again, greedy this time, clumsy and eager-eyed. She pounced and stabbed him in the gut.

The dagger sank hideously into flesh and organs with a terrible hot spurt of blood, but it had to be done, and she did not feel guilty, with the girl's screams still echoing in her head. She turned as his body fell, tugging her daggers free. Where was Nicholas? She whipped around, looking for him, but another of the men was there, leaping over the body of his predecessor. And he was angry.

Clara tried to dodge him, but the great bulk of his body caught her, knocking one of her daggers loose. She swiped with the other, but he ducked and leapt at her, catching her by the throat and slamming her against the wall. His grip was strong, pinning her hand to the stone, rendering her remaining dagger useless. She felt the first twinges of fear.

He saw it in her face. His neck was laden with crude jewelry; tar lined his teeth. “Ah, not so brave without your claws, are you, kitty?”

Movement rustled from beyond him—grunts, gasps of surprise. He gave a shudder and coughed; blood flew from his lips, spattering her face. He slumped, and she squirmed loose, searching for her daggers. Ah—there on the ground, glinting silver. She grabbed them and spun around, ready to spring.

Nicholas pulled his sword from the man's back.

The third man, already felled, lay inert behind him.

Nicholas, breathing hard, caught her gaze, and she nodded. She was all right. Shaking, head spinning, sick at the tang of blood, but all
right. And Nicholas was too, she noticed, though his eyes shone with that same hard light from the train, and she thought, as she had the first time, that it suited him far too well. She recognized that lust for righteous violence, for the euphoria that came afterward. She thought back to his words:
I was raised by war.

So many stories yet to be told, so many secrets to be unearthed. It would happen soon; Clara would make sure of it, and if Nicholas tried to evade her, well, she still had her daggers. And, apparently, the skill to use them against her own kind after all—a simultaneously encouraging and appalling accomplishment.

Grim, she cleaned her blades on the coat of the nearest fallen man and sheathed them, and turned to find the girl. She was a tiny thing, a ball on the ground, arms tucked over her head.

“Hello?” Clara knelt beside her. “It's all right. They're gone.”

“Leave her,” Nicholas said, scanning the darkness. “She's unhurt. If she sees us . . .”

The girl peeked up at them.

Nicholas sighed and rubbed a tired hand over his face.

She was a tiny creature with wan skin and black eyes and spiked blue hair. An array of jewels hung from her ears, and two smaller ones from her bottom lip; her patchwork jacket had fallen open and revealed, curiously, tiny rows of tools in tied pouches. Her face was young, but her expression—closed, suspicious, weary—was not.

Clara tried to smile, though every second they delayed, every second the girl studied her face, was a sinister clock ticking away inside her. “You're safe now. What's your name?”