Sisters of Glass

by Naomi Cyprus

  Nalah reached out. She could feel the cool metal of the gate under her hand, even though it was on the other side of the courtyard. She grabbed it and yanked it down. The iron gate slammed into place with a heavy clang.

  Nalah took a deep breath, and then couldn’t seem to let it go. She felt as if she had suddenly become as light as air, as if she might float away on the wind like the last of the dissipating colored smoke. The world turned around her and she felt the sword drop from her grip as the wooden platform came up to meet her.

  “Nalah!” cried Halan’s voice, from far away. Nalah lay facedown on the platform until a pair of hands turned her over and she looked up into the face of her tawam. Halan was going in and out of focus a bit, but she was smiling, tears streaking down her cheeks. “Nalah, you did it! You saved us all.”

  She helped Nalah sit up. Nalah looked around at the courtyard, weak and dazed, waiting for her head to stop spinning.

  The fighting had ended. Guards and nobles were surrendering their weapons to the rebels. With a clatter of mail, Captain Alamar and her armsmen marched up to the front of the platform and presented their swords to Halan.

  “We serve at your command, Princess,” they chorused.

  Halan looked back at her mother, the queen. Queen Rani was smiling, with tears in her eyes. “It is your time, my love,” she said. “Go.”

  I wouldn’t completely trust the guards, Nalah thought. Especially Alamar. She turned on her king at a moment’s notice.

  Don’t worry, I won’t, replied Halan.

  Then they stared at each other, openmouthed.

  Nalah broke into a stunned smile. “Your Majesty,” she said to Halan. “You should say something, they’re waiting for you.”

  Halan shook her head, with a small smile. “They’re waiting for us.”

  She took Nalah’s hand in hers, and before Nalah knew quite what was happening, Halan had raised them both over her head.

  Starting with the guards, and then the rebels, and then the nobles, all the people in the courtyard sank to their knees. Soren Ferro swept a low and elaborate bow, and laid his silver sword on the ground. Marcus was the last one left standing. He grinned at Nalah, and then bowed low, as well.

  Nalah looked out over the crowd and to the bright blue sky, where a flashing glass bird was circling above. Now, it really was a beautiful day.

  This all started with a shard of glass and a challenge. Little did I know that I wouldn’t just make a mirror. I would help make something else. Something better.

  Peace.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sisters

  When the Great War is over, peace will finally be welcomed in the land. But peace is not a trophy to be won, not a prize to be placed on a pedestal. Like a fire, peace must be tended, must be fed with justice, understanding, and cooperation. There will come a time when this fire may go out—but never fear. With only a single bright ember—or two—the flame of peace can be rekindled.

  Cyrus, Prophet of the Sands

  The great hall of the Magi Palace was thronged with people, all of them silent, all of them staring at Halan. She looked back at her subjects, her face a mask of calm—though inside she felt anything but.

  It had been two days since the battle for the palace, but so much had happened that it seemed like only a blink of an eye. A blur of celebrations, political shuffling, and public pronouncements filled Halan’s mind, threatening to distract her from the moment at hand. And what a moment it was. She forced herself to concentrate on Lord Helavi’s wizened face, as her old teacher asked her a very important question.

  “And do you, Halan Ali,” her old teacher boomed, his voice magically amplified throughout the hall, “swear to defend the state and its people, through dust and storm, through drought and flood, against all enemies, for as long as you live?”

  “I swear,” Halan said. She looked at her mother, who smiled, her eyes twinkling with a pride Halan had gotten familiar with over the last few days.

  Nearly all traces of the worry that had plagued her for twelve years were gone from Queen Rani’s face as she lifted the light, simple golden circlet and placed it on top of Halan’s head. Then she stepped aside, and Halan gazed down at the huge crowd of people as her mother spoke the final words of the coronation ceremony.

  “Let the sun and the sands bear witness, let the mountains and the farmlands bear witness, as I present to you all: Queen Halan the First, ruler of the Magi Kingdom!”

  As one, the crowd of nobles, guards, servants, and common people knelt down and bowed their heads. In the front row, Nalah swept a slightly wobbly bow, Cobalt perched on her shoulder. As Halan caught her eye, the same thought seemed to be coursing through both of their minds.

  I always wanted a real friend, someone I would trust, who would treat me as an equal.

  I got something else entirely. I got a sister!

  Halan’s heart was bursting with joy as she brushed down her flame-colored gown and stepped forward. “My people,” she called out across the sea of bowed heads, “I take the throne at a time of great changes. King Tam called this a new era for the Magi Kingdom, and he was right. This is a new chapter for us, but it isn’t the one he wanted to write. I hope—with the Queen Mother by my side—to bring true peace to this land, and I will need the help of each and every one of you to make that dream come true.”

  The crowd roared their approval.

  The hall had been draped in banners depicting every Thauma house and every profession in the city. All the doors to the palace had been thrown open, so that even the poorest citizens could come to see their new queen crowned.

  But many had not come. The captains had told her that they’d been sent away from some homes with curses ringing in their ears, and some doors hadn’t been opened to them at all. Halan knew she would have to work hard to prove to those citizens that she was a better monarch than the man she’d always called father.

  She couldn’t wait to get started.

  Beside her mother, shining in a suit of silver armor that Soren Ferro had made for him, was her real father—Omar Bardak. Halan met his eyes, and he gave her a smile and a wink back. Halan nodded, in a way she hoped seemed warm.

  She didn’t know this man. In the hectic aftermath of the battle and the run-up to her coronation, they had tried to talk, but those rushed conversations had barely begun to breach the chasm between them. It would take time—and, luckily, they had plenty of that.

  She only knew that Omar was a better man than Asa Tam, and that her mother loved him. Had always loved him, ever since they met when they were barely older than Halan. But as a woman of royal blood, she’d had little say with regard to her marriage, and Tam was never a man to take no for an answer.

  It would have to do for now. Halan instinctively trusted Omar, for a very simple reason: the happiness of not having to hide her feelings or keep Halan’s paternity a secret from her dangerous husband had changed Rani, so that she was almost unrecognizable. She remained the formal queen mother, but now her smiles reached her eyes. The false pretense of happiness had been replaced by something genuine.

  Music began to play—a self-playing Thauma harp and dulcimer, and a low thunder roll of drums.

  Halan sat down—almost without looking behind her—on a pile of gold-embroidered cushions nearly as tall as she was. People began to join a long line to present her with their allegiance and their gifts.

  “It will be a long day, love,” Rani said to Halan under her breath. “But protocol says if you need to take a break, they have to wait for you.”

  “Perhaps protocol isn’t all that bad,” Halan whispered back.

  Right at the front of the line were Nalah, Marcus, and Soren Ferro. But as they approached, Halan saw that Nalah wasn’t looking at her—she was staring up at Rani and Omar, the queen mother and her consort, a wistful smile on her lips and tears glistening in her eyes.

  Both of Nalah’s own parents were gone, and yet here they were—or here they appeared to be. T
hrough their newfound connection, Halan could sense Nalah’s bittersweet feelings of pain and love as she stared at the two people in front of her.

  Nalah approached Halan and dipped another slightly clumsy curtsy. She was wearing a gown of the finest Thauma silk, the color of Cobalt’s wings, with a white sash across her chest.

  “Your Majesty,” she said.

  As Nalah straightened up, Rani—to Halan’s surprise—stepped forward and gathered her into an embrace. Rani looked down at her daughter’s twin, a confused sort of love in her eyes. “Nalah Bardak,” she said. “For everything you have done, I promise you, you will always be welcome here in the Magi Kingdom.”

  Nalah’s eyes blurred with tears. “Your Highness. Captain Bardak . . . ,” she murmured, her voice cracking. “Thank you.”

  She looked at Halan, and they smiled at each other, though Halan felt an icy shiver as she thought about Nalah’s return to the other world. It had been decided: Marcus had family in New Hadar, and it was where he and Nalah both belonged. They would step back through the mirror into their own world after the coronation ceremony was over.

  Part of Halan hoped the ceremony would never end.

  She had a kingdom now, a people to look after, and there was plenty to do. But she had something else, something she had always wanted, and never quite expected to have. More than a double, or a sister. A true friend.

  And she didn’t want to say good-bye.

  The Transcendent Mirror was a beautiful thing. Halan stared into its radiant depths, wondering what the world on the other side was really like. Was the sea as blue and limitless as the sky? Were the great steel engines as fast as they were in the stories? And what about the government—this “Hokmet”—would Marcus and Nalah be all right if they went back?

  She tried to put such thoughts out of her head. She was certain that anything Nalah had to face, she could overcome.

  Marcus and Nalah stood before the mirror, dressed in their peasant clothes.

  “Good-bye, Your Majesty,” said Marcus. “Try not to knock anyone out today.” Nalah gave him a playful shove.

  “Marcus, she’s the queen now! She can knock out anyone she likes.”

  “I’ll try not to,” said Halan, with a chuckle. “And I’m sorry again for what I did.”

  “Apology accepted,” Marcus said, and bowed to her. He looked at Nalah. “Time to go?”

  “Yes,” Nalah said. She looked down at her hands, and then turned to the young fabricworker. “It’s time for you to go, Marcus.”

  Halan stared at Nalah in confusion. What is she saying?

  “What?” Marcus frowned. “What do you mean, Nalah? We’re both going home.”

  “You need to get home,” Nalah said, the words coming out all in a rush, like a dam was breaking. “Your mother and father, your grandmother, they’re all waiting for you in New Hadar. It’s where you belong. But . . . there’s nobody waiting for me. My parents are both gone, you’re my only real friend there, and I’m a wanted criminal. Here, I can be myself, and be as powerful as I know I can be. Here, I . . . I have Halan.” Nalah looked up at Halan, and Halan felt as if her heart was frozen, scared to beat in case it burst with happiness. “And what if Tam comes back, like he said he would? My fate is here, where I’m strongest, where I can do some good.”

  She’s staying!

  Halan felt like dancing around the room, and then she looked at Marcus’s face and sagged. Her gain was Marcus’s loss, and she could tell it was devastating. He stared at Nalah for a moment, and Halan saw his lip tremble, just a little. Then he sniffed and nodded. “Dunno what I’m going to do without you around to make me look good,” he said.

  “Well, don’t be a clumsy idiot and break the mirror, and you can come back and visit,” Nalah replied. “Besides . . . I’m not sure why, but I feel I haven’t seen the last of New Hadar. We are mirror worlds, after all. Our fates are intertwined.”

  “I hope so.” Marcus grinned and pulled Nalah into a hug, and held on for a long few seconds. When he pulled away, Halan noticed that his eyes were wet. He blinked a few times and then said, “Nalah, I know you think I only talked to you at the market out of pity, but that wasn’t why.”

  Nalah had raised her hand to begin writing the Thauma symbols on the mirror’s surface. Now she turned around. “It wasn’t?” she asked, looking curiously into her friend’s eyes.

  Marcus shook his head. “It might be hard to believe, given my charming personality,” he said wryly, “but I didn’t have many friends, either. You were the only one who’d put up with me.”

  Nalah huffed at that.

  Marcus wrung his hands. “No, but it was more than that. I wanted to talk to you. Everyone else may have thought you were dangerous or clumsy—but I knew better. I knew you were special. And I wanted to be part of that. You were—you are my best friend.”

  Nalah’s face broke into a slow grin, and she rushed forward to hug Marcus again. “And you’re mine,” she said over his shoulder, “even if you are a know-it-all.”

  Marcus grinned wryly and pulled away. “Seems like you kind of needed a know-it-all.”

  Shaking her head, Nalah raised her hand again and began sketching the symbols on the mirror, chanting under her breath.

  “Way of light, open the door to the kingdom of the many sands. Let me cross over the void.”

  Marcus turned away and Halan saw him wipe his eyes on his sleeve, but she didn’t say anything. Blue-white light and a pungent smell of smoke and salty air began to seep from the mirror’s surface.

  “See you soon,” said Marcus simply, and waved to Halan. Then he stepped into the mirror. It rippled and let him pass through, and a moment later it hardened and the light vanished, and there was nothing there but the glass.

  “Nalah,” said Halan breathlessly. “Are you sure?”

  Nalah grinned at Halan. “I’ve thought about it a lot over the last couple days. I want to be here. With you.”

  Before Halan’s blush could fully heat up her cheeks, a creaking caw rang out from above them, and Cobalt fluttered down onto Nalah’s shoulder and gave her a slightly insulted glare.

  “And with Cobalt, obviously,” Nalah corrected herself.

  Halan smiled and reached up to pet the glass falcon’s neck feathers. She ran her hand down his chest, tracing the white line that Nalah said had once been a crack, until Amir Bardak had mended it.

  “You said that Cobalt had a link to your father,” Halan said slowly, hoping that it was all right to ask. “Do you . . . feel anything from him now?”

  “Not really,” Nalah said. “He’s gone. Far enough that I can’t reach him, anyway. But when I look into Cobalt’s eyes, I do feel something. I feel . . . warm. It’s like the feeling of the furnace when it’s all but gone out and there’s only a couple of embers left burning.”

  They were silent for a moment. Halan felt a little sorry for asking, but not sorry that she’d heard the answer.

  “Oh,” said Nalah. “Listen, there’s something else I wanted to show you. I’ve been doing a lot of reading. There are so many books in here—it’s incredible! How can one person ever read them all in a lifetime and still get anything done?”

  “I’ll make sure to introduce you to Lord Helavi,” Halan said, with a grin. “You’ll probably get along. What did you find?”

  “Well, I was wondering about the sword. The Sword of the Fifth Clan. Where did it come from? Why did it have that effect on me?” She led Halan over to the study desk, where the sword was lying beside a pile of open books. “As far as I can tell, it belonged to some Fifth Clan Thauma during the Great War, but it was, well, appropriated by the king’s descendants during the Year of Storms.”

  “You can say stolen,” Halan said.

  “I found an old legend that said that way, way back, before the war, the person who wielded the sword was a Fifth Clan warrior who protected the monarch on the battlefield. She was called the Queen’s Sword.”

  “The Queen’s Sword,” Halan w
hispered. The words had a strange echo in her head, even though Nalah hadn’t spoken them with her Fifth Clan voice. Halan had heard them before, but when? Was it some story her mother had told her?

  “My father said something to me,” Nalah went on. “He said perhaps I was always meant to come here, to discover my true place in the world.”

  Nalah lifted the sword, and its glass pane glinted in the bright sunshine. Halan thought she saw her tawam’s eyes sparkle, but whether it was a reflection or the power coursing through her, she couldn’t say. Nalah knelt at Halan’s feet, and held out the sword.

  “I think my place is beside you. As the Queen’s Sword.”

  A smile spread over Halan’s face, irresistible and unstoppable.

  Like the two of us.

  “Then consider your destiny fulfilled,” said Halan solemnly. “Rise, Nalah Bardak, Queen’s Sword.”

  Her tawam stood, and Halan saw her own smile reflected on Nalah’s face.

  Whatever came next, they would face it together.

  About the Author

  NAOMI CYPRUS lives on the beach with her two cats, Pim and Haze. She came up with the idea for Halan’s and Nalah’s worlds while walking on the sand one day, when she imagined that each grain had the potential for magic. Ms. Cyprus loves strong tea and occasionally dyeing her hair blue.

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  Credits

  Cover art by Erwin Madrid

  Cover design by David Curtis

  Copyright

  SISTERS OF GLASS. Copyright © 2017 by Working Partners Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.