“Good call there. I don’t trust you,” Freddy said. “I already told one of your men I want to be left alone.”
“That wasn’t one of our men,” Will said. “Probably someone from one of the other revolutionary factions. Sebastian doesn’t want you to work for him. He just wants to make sure you’re safe.”
“Who is Sebastian?” Freddy asked. “And why should I trust him?”
“Sebastian,” Nan repeated. “I’ve seen some of his tracts.”
“The name sounds familiar.” Sigi’s nose scrunched thoughtfully. “He’s young, isn’t he? I think my mother mentioned him.”
“He’s our leader, and he’s an Irminauer. So are we.” Will looked at Freddy and held a hand out slightly, as if offering the kinship of shared rustic heritage.
But plenty of Freddy’s enemies were Irminauer.
“He’s young but he knows what he’s doing,” Max said. “You must realize your magic is too important for you to be wandering around. Come with us, for your own good.”
“For my own good,” Freddy scoffed. “That’s what they all say.” But it was dangerous for him to be out. It would take just one wrong person glimpsing his silver hair. Should he trust them? Could he?
The men glanced at each other briefly.
Then Max shot Freddy.
After fumbling with the clasp of Thea’s purse, Nan had the gun in her hands.
“Stop right there,” she warned, “or I’ll shoot back.”
Freddy staggered behind Nan.
“Are you all right?” Thea asked Freddy.
“It hit me.” He sounded bewildered, and now Nan glanced back to see him pulling up the leg of his pants. A bruise was already darkening, but a gunshot should leave more than a bruise.
“It did hit me,” he insisted.
Sigi picked up something small off the ground. “Here’s the bullet.”
“There must be—some kind of protection on me,” Freddy said. “I never knew.”
Nan’s focus whipped back to the revolutionaries.
“Are you Nan?” asked Will. The eyes peering out under his cap looked deceptively friendly.
Nan kept her hands steady around the weapon. She had never held a gun before, but this feeling was familiar. Like she had held weapons in other lives, held a man’s fate in her hands many times before.
“Sebastian would like to see you, too. He knows what you are. He wants to help you find the answers.”
As Nan feared, Arabella must have told others about her. But Arabella got her information from other revolutionaries. What if Sebastian did know something? She still needed more answers than she’d been given. She only knew bits and pieces—the strange song in her head, her defiance of death, her inability to see colors. She couldn’t stop thinking of the flash of color she had seen from Sigi’s kiss.
Green. She had known its name, her gray world peeled back to allow a glimpse of beauty.
“Don’t trust them.” Freddy stood up again. “They just shot me in the leg.”
The men exchanged a more serious glance. Their eyes said Whatever it takes. Nan recognized that look. She probably had it, too. So it would be a test of who really meant it. She met Thea’s eyes and looked up ahead at a break between buildings, a narrow lane leading back to the busier street. Thea nodded almost imperceptibly, acknowledging the escape plan. They had to communicate with a look all the time when they worked together at the Telephone Club. Hopefully Sigi and Freddy would know to follow.
Thea grabbed Freddy’s hand and started to run.
Max fired again.
A pained scream cut through Nan’s ears.
Thea let go of Freddy’s hand. Her left hand was covered in blood. The bullet had cut through Thea’s hand and stopped when it reached Freddy’s protected skin. Nan registered all of this in a split second, and then she fired back at Max’s knee.
Anger pulsed through her hands. With a little less self-control, she might have shot to kill. But she’d be no better than Arabella, who killed Rory Valkenrath without giving him a chance for redemption.
The bullet struck. She heard the crack of impact, like it hit a wall. But Max didn’t bleed.
So, he was protected like Freddy. I should know how to get out of this, Nan thought. Unknown magic thrummed inside her; she had started to use it with Rory, and she felt it now, but she didn’t understand her power, didn’t know what would happen if she let it out.
“Why did you hurt her?” Freddy lunged toward Max and grabbed his arm, shoving his hand toward the ground, trying to wrest away the gun. Will had his gun out too, but he had taken a step back.
When he saw Nan’s gun train on him, he held up his hands. “We didn’t want to hurt anyone. I swear.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Nan said.
Max dodged Freddy’s fists. He moved with the experience of training, his evasion as graceful as the way he used Freddy’s miss to knock him off balance and punch him back. Freddy staggered, and Max kicked him to the ground.
“Max!” Will looked as horrified as Thea, who was rushing toward Freddy’s fallen form, a stain of blood spreading on her sweater where her hand was tucked under the wool.
“Please!” she shouted, her voice wild with pain. “Please, stop!” She put her good hand to his bruising jaw.
“Max, all these gunshots! What are you thinking? The police are going to come!” Will said. “We have to get them out of here.” His eyes implored Nan and Thea. “Your hand will be all right, miss. We have a healer. You won’t want to go to the hospital. They’re already dangerously crowded with people wounded in the uprising.”
Nan lowered her gun, and Max lowered his, too. There was still a gleam in his eye she didn’t trust. But Thea was badly hurt. And Will was right. If their fight alerted the police, that would be worse.
Freddy seemed to be thinking the same thing. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, but his eyes were dark.
“I’ll come with you,” he said, “but your healer had better be good.”
“Let’s get a bandage on that to stop the bleeding.” Will glanced at Thea, all business now. He unbuttoned his coat to access a small bag slung across his chest and took out a roll of bandages.
She stepped back into Freddy’s arms when Will tried to get close. “Don’t touch me.” Tears of pain blurred her eyes. Max had fired at them like he shot people every day.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Max said abruptly, as if he read her mind. “I don’t know what got into me. I won’t hurt you anymore.” He held up his hands.
Thea let Will wrap her mangled hand. The pain had stolen her speech. She wanted to cry but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. The world was a blur; she was aware of climbing into the spacious backseat of a clunky black car, and Freddy putting his arm close around her, but she must have passed out after that, because the next thing she knew, she was in a stranger’s arms as he carried her into a sunlit room and placed her in bed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Ingrid’s going to take care of you.”
“Where did my friends go?” she asked, panic rising.
“I’m going to meet with them now.”
“Are you Sebastian?” She thrashed her head back and forth, writhing as if she could escape the searing in her hand, only vaguely aware of Sebastian himself. He was young, as Sigi had said.
He gave her a cup of medicinal-smelling liquid. “Drink that for the pain. It’ll be over soon.”
She took the liquid, and sleepy warmth immediately rushed over her.
A little later, she opened her eyes when she heard something rustle. A girl was at her bedside. This must be Ingrid, slight and small-featured, with fair hair spilling over her shoulders. She looked young, but Thea had the sense that she was older than she appeared—something about the shadows under her gray eyes, and the way she sat so still. When she saw Thea was awake, she tilted her head like a bird. “Are you feeling any better?” Her accent was rustic and thick.
“A litt
le.” She felt drowsy and stupid. It would be so easy to succumb to the cheerful numbness of drugs. Stay alert.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“We have houses to stay in, throughout the city, that belong to our friends. This house belongs to Mr. Schiff, the zeppelin builder. Isn’t he kind? I think this room must have been his daughter’s.” On the nightstand was a porcelain doll in a dusty pinafore, a stuffed bear, and a glass of water. The wallpaper was striped yellow and cream with chains of small roses, while the white bedspread was embellished with frills.
“You’re a healer?”
“Yes. I’m a Norn—like your friend.” The harsh sounds of her accent contrasted with a certain dreaminess of tone.
“Norn,” Thea repeated, trying to fix the idea in her fuzzy mind. She still didn’t really understand what Nan was. “My friends—they’re with Sebastian?”
“Yes. I expect they’ll have plenty to say. Sebastian always does.” Ingrid was gazing at the sunlight beaming through the window as she spoke. She suddenly put a small, cool hand on Thea’s arm, trying to pull it away from her chest. “I need to look at it.”
Thea winced and drew back. “It’s—it’s all right,” she said, although it wasn’t. “Can you just find Nan for me?”
“First I need to see your wound.” Ingrid took a firm hold of Thea this time. She pulled the bandage away from her skin—slowly, with careful little fingers. Ingrid’s hands could’ve belonged to a child.
Fibers clung to dried blood, and Thea sucked air through her teeth.
“It hurts,” Ingrid said gently.
“Of course it does.” Thea’s voice shook, especially when she saw the wound laid bare again. If it were anyone else’s hand, she might have looked away from the torn red flesh.
“I’ll soothe the pain,” Ingrid said, but Thea already felt the pain melting away, even though her hand looked awful. “How’s that?”
“A lot better.”
Ingrid bent over and rummaged around on the floor. When she came back up, she had Thea’s book of fairy tales. “I saw this poking out of your bag. Running away with clothes and lipstick and a book of Irminauer tales?” She smiled a little. Her teeth were neat and straight.
“Father Gruneman gave it to me when I was little,” Thea said. “At my father’s memorial.” She thought Ingrid might know Father Gruneman, since he’d been a revolutionary leader.
“Father Gruneman must have understood that the forest always calls us home, even here in the city,” Ingrid said, putting the book in front of Thea and opening it to an image of a girl in beautiful stylized robes plucking a mushroom from the forest floor. “The pictures are lovely.”
Thea glanced at her uncertainly. She was still holding Thea’s wounded hand, her touch featherlight but never breaking contact. “Are you going to heal my hand?”
“Yes, of course I am. But it might hurt a lot, just for a moment. Have some more medicine”—Ingrid poured from a bottle on the nightstand—“and look at your beautiful book.”
Thea took the medicine. “It’ll be all right, though?” she asked. The medicine had deadened some of her fear, but in the back of her mind she thought that if she lost the use of some of her fingers, she wouldn’t be able to work many places anymore.
“It will be fine very soon.” Her voice was even, soothing. Thea heard the actual words less and the rhythm more. The words were like water running over rocks, constant and sweet, and she closed her eyes.
“Your voice is like a song,” Thea said. “My mother used to sing to me when I was sick.” Mother sang all the time, before her sickness. Sometimes it was annoying, Mother throwing open the curtains and waking her up for school singing. But other times it was nice. She wished Mother were here now.
“I could give you a song,” Ingrid asked. “It will help.”
“Okay.”
Ingrid began to chant—it was more like a chant than a song—long, beautiful tones. The music seemed to spin its way into the picture of the girl in the forest, so the colors grew brighter and Thea could almost smell moss and earth. Ingrid’s hand upon her arm was like a thread to another world, not unlike that fairy-tale forest that was a little bit frightening but also full of wonder. Anything could happen. The chant filled her with a sense of Ingrid’s power.
Thea felt something bite her wrist, heard a grinding, and her eyes snapped away from the book.
Ingrid held a bone saw in one hand, driving the blade just above Thea’s wrist with long, slow strokes. The saw was bright with Thea’s blood, but Ingrid had put cloths down so none would drip onto the bedspread or the carpet. Thea saw this through a haze of soothing tones and visions. She tried to say something, but her body was too dulled to speak or move. Ingrid’s eyes were half-closed, almost dreamy, as her lips moved with her strange song, but when she saw Thea looking, her note trailed off.
“I’m sorry if it still hurts a little.” Ingrid’s words retained their rhythm. “I didn’t think I’d be giving this gift to you. But one must trust in fate.”
“Wait here. I’ll get Sebastian.” Will had shown Nan, Freddy, and Sigi into the cellar of a labyrinthine home, one of the grand old mansions overlooking Mecklinger Park.
As soon as he climbed the stairs, Sigi squinted after him. “Sebastian wants Freddy, and he knows something about you,” she told Nan. “But I’m not very interesting. I’ll scope out the place while you talk to them.”
“Just don’t get shot,” Nan said.
“They are trigger-happy, aren’t they? Well, hopefully they’ve gotten it out of their system. I can be quite charming if I feel like it.” Sigi fluttered her lashes, her tone light, but Sigi always joked when she was tense. Her mother had traded her life for Sigi’s last night; Nan couldn’t imagine what she must be thinking now.
Nan handed Sigi the purse with the gun. No one had confiscated it; hopefully that showed some measure of mutual trust, but she’d feel better if Sigi had a weapon. “Don’t get lost, either. This place is as big as a hotel.”
“That I can’t promise.” Sigi moved to the stairs.
Freddy was peering over the long table; at least twenty chairs fit down its length, and maps of the city and the nations of Irminau and Urobrun were spread out, with a few points marked. Shelves stocked with tins of food lined the walls. Barrels and sacks of grain, beans, and wine occupied much of the empty floor space. If they stayed, Nan imagined she’d be eating better than she had in a long time.
Thea was unconscious when they arrived and had been whisked away to the healer over their protests.
It didn’t matter anyway, Nan thought. Clearly, they were not in control here. Guards had watched them pass through the outside entrance, their purpose clear despite the fact that they wore plain clothes and not uniforms.
Nan thought Sigi might run into guards and be ushered back down to the cellar, but moments passed and Sigi didn’t reappear. Boots thumped down the stairs, followed by a disheveled dark suit and a scruffy face. The young man was already holding out his hand before he reached the bottom. “Sorry about all of the trouble. Sebastian Hirsch.” He gripped Freddy’s hand. “I’m so embarrassed by the whole incident.”
Nan was too surprised to return the handshake with her usual grip when he moved on to her. She had expected Sebastian to be a younger version of Rory or Arabella—arrogant, authoritative, wealthy enough to own this house. Instead, she got what looked like an unshaven college student. At a second glance, though, he did have the appropriate revolutionary look: half-laborer, half-intellectual; dark-haired with eyeglasses, strong hands, penetrating eyes, and military posture.
“I can’t believe you would send your men out with orders to shoot,” Freddy said. “Thea is innocent in all of this. Her father just died this morning. And now she’s had to take a bullet for me.”
Sebastian gripped his hands together. “Well, I think we’ve had a gross misunderstanding.” His voice was aristocratic, but not the way Sigi’s voice was. His was the rougher tone of a wealthy Irminau
er. Even their nobility sounded like they came from the deep, dark wood. “What I told them was to bring you and Nan to safety. Obviously I didn’t want anyone to be hurt. That would belie the whole mission. I did say that you might not trust us, and as a last resort, they could use force if necessary. Max is one of my best men. He’s got a bit of a mouth on him sometimes, but violence isn’t like him.”
Sebastian paused, studying Freddy. “I know you’re reluctant to trust me after this, but my concern is that you’re safe. I’m not sure how many people Arabella told about you, or how many government officials know you exist.” His attention shifted from Freddy to Nan. “You’re Nan, aren’t you?”
She bristled. “How much did Arabella tell you about me?”
“Arabella didn’t want to tell me anything,” he said. “She didn’t like me. But in this case, she needed information. She approached me asking about Norns. It took a while to tease out the fact that she’d found one.”
“So you were the one who gave her the book I found at her house?”
“Probably. I heard you went to one of her parties, but of course she left me off the invitation list. What an audacious woman.” He pulled out a chair. “Have a seat, if you like. We have a lot to talk about. Do you mind being called Nan? Arabella wouldn’t tell me your last name.”
“It’s Nan Davies. But Nan is fine. I never knew my parents anyway.” Nan sat on the edge of the chair, her guard still up.
“Well, I’m glad to have found you looking none the worse for wear this morning. Not everyone was so lucky.”
She glanced down. It was still hard to believe that every other person she’d met underground was dead now.
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs on the table, like he was settling in for a story. “One of your sisters is here.”
“You mean—another Norn?” She sat up straighter, more hopeful that he really might have answers for her.
“There are three of you in Irminau, and Ingrid—”
“We aren’t in Irminau,” Nan said. “I wasn’t even born there.”
Glittering Shadows Page 3
