Splinters of Scarlet

by Emily Bain Murphy

  He misjudged the power of greed too.

  “What’s this?” Steen says ahead of me. He stumbles over something in the hallway. He kicks at it. Swears.

  “Are these our men?” he asks.

  The leather in Tønnes’s boots creaks as he bends to examine the bodies.

  “Out cold,” Tønnes confirms. “And stripped of weapons.”

  There’s a crash from somewhere above our heads.

  “They’re trapped,” I say, wiping my brow. I brush away the slightest tick of concern. “We still overpower them in size, weapons, and magic.”

  And now we have a sense of where they are.

  I strip down to my vest, securing the gemstones I plucked from the map of Denmark and stashed into every pocket I could find. We creep forward. Snow falls gently in the foyer, silent and eerie. The windows look like sheets of ice. The doors to the ballroom are closed. There are two sets of footprints that spread out in front of us. The first leads to a dead end—a solid wall—and then vanish like a ghost’s.

  The second set leads to the ballroom.

  I move silently, feeling the snow fall like feathers onto my face. I put my finger to my lips. Then to the cold steel of my pistol.

  Aleks’s portrait watches me from behind his gilded frame.

  He never knew that half my miners were planning to turn me in. They wanted to tell King Frederick where those jewels were really coming from. But the other half wanted in on the scheme.

  They set an explosion that killed their own friends. Sealed the truth in before it could get out.

  Then there was truly no turning back for me.

  I pull at my tie now to loosen it. It feels as though it’s strangling me.

  My brother wept the day those miners died. I fed him a lie—that it was an unpreventable accident. I told him what would make him breathe easier. Just like I will do with the royal family when this is over—what I tried to do even for Helene. I spare others the weight of the truth and carry the load of it myself while they reap all the benefits. They get to sleep with a clean conscience. It is just like the way that soldiers go to war and come back with the burden of what they saw, what they did, for the greater good of the country. Is there not something selfless, something even admirable, in that?

  I pause outside the ballroom and listen.

  From inside, there is the faint sound of chiseling.

  We have a cache of stored magic—so much more magic than they have—and the flames to release it. But a cornered animal is always the most dangerous animal of all, I remind myself. I raise my gun and fire straight through the ballroom doors.

  Someone cries out.

  In the next moment, we burst inside.

  At first all I can see is green, a verdant patch set among the snow both inside and out. The scent of greenery is overwhelming. The ballroom is flooded with blossoms. It’s sickeningly sweet, like swimming through perfume. The room is so still it seems abandoned.

  But they are hiding here, somewhere.

  I snap to light a flame between my fingers and warm the ring on my left hand. I feel the magic stir inside the stone. Feel when the magic then enters my skin and runs through me.

  Steen starts stalking around the perimeter of the room, shooting into the greenery. Outside, the snow is thick and blinding white, swirling, like dancers turning. The sun set hours ago, and now the snow reflects the moon, brightening the world outside to an eerie dusk.

  “You’re going to run out of bullets,” Tønnes says, as if he’s bored. “Be patient. Save them for when you have a clear target.”

  We move through the orange trees, our backs to one another for cover, until we reach the center of the ballroom. My eyes fall on what caused the sound of the first crash and then the chiseling. Ah. They were trying to destroy the jewels we left in the Denmark map. We took as many as we could carry, determining by color the ones that could be used as weapons. The servants tried to hammer the others, to shatter them to dust.

  It’s that moment when I realize, vaguely, that something is swinging above my head.

  I look up just as the chandelier begins to fall.

  I shove Tønnes and dive out of the way.

  One.

  The chandelier shatters where I was standing half a breath ago. It explodes, like a grenade of crystal.

  Two.

  The second one follows.

  I struggle to my feet again and leap from the path of the third.

  My hands are empty when I hit the floor. In my haste and surprise, I dropped my pistol.

  It’s buried now, somewhere beneath the mounds of glass.

  The third chandelier ricochets so hard off the floor that it sends crystal shrapnel flying into a window. The glass shatters but stays locked in place. It looks like a glittering spider web.

  These servants are putting up more of a fight than I expected.

  Just like Ivy did.

  I touch my mouth. My lip is bleeding. My side aches from the injury that little servant gave me when she sliced into me that winter morning.

  I didn’t know she had any glass on her when I approached. I didn’t expect her to morph it into a blade.

  I guess that’s two things I should never underestimate, I think grimly.

  Human greed and servant magic.

  Helene suddenly bursts from behind a fern and darts up on top of the display table. She’s almost quicker than my eye can follow, graceful and intense with power. Before I can move, she is behind me. She puts a knife to my throat.

  I can feel the serrated edges against my skin when I swallow.

  Steen groans. He’s bleeding, holding his ribs, but he’s staggering up to his feet. He barely makes it to standing before he’s confronted by two women. They are older than Helene and don’t appear to be using magic to fight. One of them merely screams, then hits Steen square in the face with a cooking pot.

  He crumples to the floor like a sack of flour.

  We all turn at the distinctive sound of a pistol cocking. I can swivel my head just enough to see Tønnes, standing rigid. His jaw is set. He is pointing a gun in my direction. It’s trained on Helene.

  “Let him go, Helene,” he says.

  I did not set off the explosion in the mines that day.

  It was not my idea, nor my intention, to kill people for their magic.

  At first, all I wanted to do was help the mines.

  Then all I wanted to do was help Denmark.

  And here we are.

  “No,” Helene says defiantly. Her knife grazes my throat, like a violin bow sheering along a taut string.

  Very calmly, I tell Tønnes: “Shoot her.”

  And then the walls around me begin to shift, coming alive like snakes.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Marit

  “Get down and drop your weapons,” the miner who is holding Lara demands again. “Now!”

  I lower my hands and gently release my candlestick. It’s wet with sweat and drops onto the floor with a dull thud. I focus on breathing and try not to faint.

  Beside me, Declan and Jakob slowly kneel, arms raised.

  “ ’Ey, what do we have here? Is that the Vestergaard daughter?”

  The miner pulls Eve out of the darkness. She lets out a small shriek and then tightens her lips. She doesn’t make another sound, even when he throws her roughly to the floor.

  Could I actually kill someone?

  I don’t know.

  My fingers curl into fists.

  For Eve, I think so.

  Jakob releases his weapon so gently it doesn’t make a sound. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Declan carefully put his hands, palms down, against the wooden beams of the floor.

  “Keep the Vestergaard girl for negotiations,” says the miner holding Lara. “Dispatch the other one so she doesn’t get in the way.”

  Lara lets out a small whimper.

  Declan sends me and Jakob one furtive glance of warning. We barely have time to flinch before his hands flex and a deep
tremor shoots through the wood.

  It’s a shocking pulse that I feel reverberate through each of my bones. It rattles all the way up to my teeth and knocks everyone who is standing off balance.

  The miner holding Lara tumbles backwards, and Lara falls with him. Her head makes a sick thump when it catches the edge of a marble side table.

  “Jakob!” Liljan cries, and emerges from the stairwell.

  The miner closest to Eve scrambles to his feet. His fingers glitter with jewels when he instinctively raises his sword and slashes toward Liljan. Eve lunges toward him and kicks her powerful foot squarely at his knee. Her kick connects, diverting him just enough to save Liljan’s throat. The sword catches her cheek instead and Liljan cries out as a slice of bright red appears down her face.

  The miner stumbles backwards, slashing out one more time.

  Straight along Eve’s right arm.

  She gasps and draws it tight to her body.

  Declan sends one final tremor through the wood and then jumps to his feet. He wrenches a board clean from the floor and wields it nails-out, advancing toward the miner who held Lara.

  Jakob and I scramble for our weapons.

  I lob my heavy candlestick through the air to Liljan.

  She lets go of her face long enough to catch the weapon and hurls it at the miner who slashed her, striking a blow to his cheekbone to return the favor.

  When he crumples, Liljan kicks him hard in the ribs, and he gasps for breath and then loses consciousness. I sprint to Eve and sink to her side. The blossom Liljan pinned to her costume is withered and bruised. She’s breathing quickly and lightly, as if she’s in shock.

  “Jakob,” I say. Blood pours out of Eve’s arm. The cut is deep.

  But the miner with the silver-blond hair is going head-to-head with Declan, and Jakob moves to help. Neither Jakob nor Declan is trained for fighting, and even between the two of them, they can barely hold the man off.

  Jakob scoops up a fireplace poker from the bedroom and advances on the miner, the pointed end outstretched.

  “How do you get the magic from those stones?” he demands.

  He jabs the silver-blond miner in the arm and makes him drop his sword. It clatters at their feet, and Jakob continues to advance, jamming the poker near the base of the miner’s throat. “Tell us and I’ll hit you where it will simply knock you unconscious rather than through your carotid artery.”

  The miner swallows, then furtively looks around. His colleague is down, and he’s cornered. He slowly raises his hands to his chest.

  I watch warily as I wrap a tourniquet made from curtain ties around Eve’s arm.

  “I’m not going to be able to dance anymore,” she says. “If I can’t raise my arms.”

  “Shh,” I say, stroking her hand. “Don’t think of that now.” Liljan presses the ends of her dress to her face to staunch her own bleeding and helps me tighten the tourniquet.

  The miner makes a sudden move and Jakob jolts him in the throat.

  He passes out.

  “Jakob,” I gasp, and in an instant, he is here.

  “You’ll be better at closing this,” I say, showing him the gash on Eve’s arm. “Unless . . .” I hesitate. “I use my magic.”

  “Don’t you dare, Marit,” Eve snaps.

  Jakob gingerly picks her up and carries her in his arms.

  “You’re going to be all right, Eve,” he says gently. He looks at Liljan and says, “How are you, Lil?”

  She shows him her cheek and he winces. “I like grotesque trivia,” she grumbles, “but I never wanted to be in it.”

  “Help me with Eve and Lara, and then I can stitch you up, too,” Jakob says, bringing them to the guest room. Declan and I drag the two miners into one of the small side closets, their unconscious bodies heavy as lead. We lock them inside and examine our newly acquired weapons. Each man had a sword, dagger, and pistol, plus fifteen-odd different jewels containing indiscernible magic. I pick up the stone that the silver-blond man held in front of the fire. The jewel is starting to darken.

  “We’ve subdued four of them,” I say to Jakob. I finger the darkening stone. “And I think I know how they get the magic out,” I say slowly. “When they heat the stones, the magic seems to enter their bodies.”

  I pour out a dose of laudanum for Eve. Just enough to take the edge off her pain but allow her to keep her wits about her in case she needs to run and hide herself.

  “Can we destroy the stones, then?” Jakob asks. “Lil, burn them in the fire so the magic is spent and the miners can’t use it against us.” She nods and begins to toss the jewels one by one into the flames. They heat like glittering coals and then steadily blacken, and I wonder if pure magic is seeping out of them, pouring into the air like a scent or wisping smoke. What sort of beautiful power did each jewel hold? And now we burn it away and turn the stone to a mere shell, and I can’t help but think of it as a life that was utterly wasted.

  “That blackened stone we took from Philip’s room,” I say. “It must have been old magic. Once they’re spent, they’re ugly as lumps of coal. Just useless, dead Firn.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jakob says, as if an idea has struck him like a match being lit. Eve winces as he starts sewing the wound in her arm. “Say that again?”

  But the sudden sound of a crash below makes us jump.

  Followed shortly by another massive crash.

  It sounds like a lot of glass, shattering.

  “Marit,” Eve says desperately, turning to me. “Helene. She might need help.”

  I’m about to say no, that I want to stay with her and make sure she’s all right, but the utter despair on her face stops me.

  “Yes,” I hear myself say. “I’ll go.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Declan says, grabbing a pistol for each hand. He offers one to me. I shake my head.

  “I don’t know how to use that, and I don’t want to learn.” He digs through the pilfered weapons, sifting them like pieces of gold.

  “I’ll come back,” I promise Eve before she can say anything else. I squeeze her hand. “Be brave, dear one.”

  I exchange the briefest look with Jakob. His suit is torn and there’s blood on it. His glasses are perched on his nose. He looks so grimly handsome, as if he is searching for just the right thing to say.

  Just like at the Mill, I hurry to stand, putting off goodbye. If I don’t say it to anyone in this room, the small handful of people I care for most in the world, then don’t I have to survive?

  I have to.

  Declan hands me a knife. And we run.

  * * *

  The magic the miners set must have run out, because it has finally stopped snowing in the foyer.

  The footsteps we left before are mostly covered over again. We step into the new drifts, and the snow enters my boots like a cold gasp.

  The ballroom doors are ajar.

  With each step forward, my fear grows.

  There’s still time to turn back, I think as Declan and I crouch. I could take Eve and we could run far away from here, from the Vestergaards and their horrible mines. We could save ourselves. Tell someone the truth. Seize the future I have always wanted.

  I don’t want to fight anymore. I want to run from here. I want to forget magic ever existed. I want to be away from the Vestergaards and their endless misery of hurting the people I love.

  But then there’s another crash inside the ballroom.

  “Come on,” Declan whispers.

  I hesitate for a half second and an old, wretched thought slithers through me. Who would Eve want to survive more—Helene or me?

  I shake off the thought as if it is something I can squash beneath my boot. Then I follow Declan through the ballroom doors.

  We step from the winter of snowbanks into the heady spring of an orange blossom grove. I peek through the flowering branches, softly moving beneath the cover of greenery. Declan and I crouch under the shielding corner of a marble table. Helene is a mere three meters away from u
s.

  She has Philip at knifepoint.

  Dr. Holm steps out from the shadows. I don’t think he knows we are here. He raises his gun in Helene’s direction and cocks it. “Let him go, Helene,” he says.

  “No,” Helene says.

  I squeeze Declan’s arm, and Philip swallows.

  “Shoot her,” he says calmly.

  Declan tenses beside me and my mouth instantly goes dry. There is no way we can save her from this distance.

  And then I feel something shift along the wall behind me. I bite back a shriek of surprise. The walls around us are moving. Shifting, like green waves or emerald snakes.

  The vines—it’s as if they’ve come alive.

  I search the room.

  Brock is here somewhere.

  A strong gust of wind suddenly whips through the house, blowing out the shattered glass that hung like a delicate spider web in one of the windowpanes. The flurry sends a spray of debris into the ballroom, tinkling as the glass falls, and Helene jumps. The blade in her hand takes a small bite into Philip’s skin.

  A single shard remains in the bottom windowpane. The glass slants up like a shining, jagged iceberg.

  Helene shifts her grip on the knife and her voice is like steel: “Did you kill my husband?” she asks.

  But instead of Philip, Dr. Holm is the one to answer.

  “I wouldn’t have,” he says. “If I had known he’d leave the mines to you.” He sniffs, still pointing the pistol. “Or that you’d be so stubborn not to sell them off.”

  Philip’s face looks so pale and aghast that I almost feel sorry for him.

  But then my eyes fall to the floor.

  One of the vines is no longer clinging to the gilded walls.

  It has pulled away to slither across the honeyed floorboards. At first I think it’s just a trick of the wind. But then the vine begins to climb along Dr. Holm’s shoe, to coil and wrap itself around his right leg. For a split second he looks down, blinking as if he can’t believe his eyes. He lowers the gun from its aim on Helene. Points the barrel down and tries to shoot the vine on the floor.