Magic Under Glass (15 page)

Hollin rushed into the silence. “Victory for all the masses; freedom comes for all the classes—!” He took up a tune of Lorinar’s independence, a common song for national holidays. I joined in, for I knew the chorus, at least. “Praise to country, man’s glory—hail to precious liberty!”

We sang together. I couldn’t tell if we were making progress yet. I shut my eyes and shouted the lyrics for all I was worth.

I was afraid to open them when the song ran out.

“I am not afraid!” I suddenly shouted. I realized I was no longer shivering. The cold had lifted from my arms in the course of our song. “I am not afraid! I am not afraid!”

A lower voice joined with mine. Hollin was shouting, too.

When I opened my eyes again, the shadows were slipping away like they had come, melting back into the walls. Hollin and I started to fan out, still shouting like we were driving back stray dogs. We were winning now, and my exhilaration roared in my ears. In the moment, we were triumphant, united. The voices in my head died away with groans and sighs.

Finally, the moonlight shone once more, a gentle light that seeped from the window at the end of the hall, and my candle cast its golden glow.

Hollin and I turned to face each other.

“You’re safe,” he said. His hand cupped my cheek.

“I—I’m sorry.”

He flung his arms around me. Suddenly, this reserved man was all abandon. He pressed me so tight against him that I could hardly find air.

“I was so scared, Nimira. I thought I’d lose you, too. I—I—just, thank God. Thank God. We won. We’ve done it.”

I nodded against his chest, so awash with relief that I had forgotten everything else.

“You were wonderful,” Hollin said. “I could never have done it without you. When I faltered, you fought . . . I had to fight for Annalie alone and I lost her, but you—”

“Annalie,” I repeated. Her name reminded me just why I had tried such a dangerous spell to begin with.

He released his hold. “Who is Erris?”

“The—the automaton.” I had tried everything now. I could tell him.

“The fairy prince?” Hollin furrowed his brow. I thought he’d be angry, but just then he only seemed perplexed. “You know his name? He spoke to you?”

“I would have told you, only I thought you’d send me away. Or send him away. I thought you’d let Smollings destroy him! Anyway, it doesn’t matter—the Queen didn’t get to unwind the spell and now it’s no good, only, only, you mustn’t destroy him,
please.
She told me to take care of him.”

He released his hold on me and stalked back into the room where Erris should have been sitting erect at his pianoforte. I rushed after him, nearly colliding with his back as he stopped short. I peered around him.

Erris was on the floor, fallen on his side.

I dropped quickly to his side. I brushed back his bangs. His skin was warm and soft.
Oh . . . oh . . . !
I didn’t dare hope, yet . . .

I put my fingers to his throat, trying to feel a pulse, but his eyelashes fluttered before I could.

He blinked, and squinted at me. A glorious, wondering smile spread on his lips. “Nim?”

“You’re . . .
alive.
”

“How?” His hand lifted to my cheek, the very same place Hollin had just touched. I couldn’t believe it. He was real and living, flesh and bone. He looked just like his clockwork form, a young man, attractive and brown-eyed, but he was utterly different. He smelled like pines and autumn. I wanted to press my nose to his coat. His face was full of the motion and detail that only a living thing could have. My eyes traced the dent above his lips, the little pink moist corners of his eyes, the barest stubble on his chin, the heavy lids of his eyes, the full brows . . . I could have looked at him for hours in speechless wonder.

“I—I summoned the Queen of the Longest Night,” I said.

He put a hand on the floor and pushed himself into a sitting position before clambering shakily to his feet. “I’m alive. I’m alive.” He kept repeating it, like it might cease to be true. “I’m alive.” He spread his fingers and turned his hands over.

I realized my own lips reflected his smile. I couldn’t seem to
stop
smiling.

I covered my mouth and looked at Hollin.

“What have you done?” he cried. “What shall we do with a fairy prince, brought back from the dead?” He grabbed me and shook me.
“What have you done?”

Erris stepped between us, pushing Hollin back none too gently. “Calm down. Let Nim go.”

Erris was alive. Erris was speaking. Even with Hollin’s tension, even though Hollin had shaken me, I couldn’t stop wondering at this miracle.

“What are we to do with him?” Hollin said again. “What will Smollings say to this? How could we even explain?” His fingers spread and searched like he wished to hold on to something that made sense.

“There’s no need to shout.” Erris was starting to sound a little angry himself. “I don’t want to cause trouble. I’m going to see Karstor.”

“Karstor!” Hollin cried. “I’ll be damned if you’re off to see him! Smollings would . . . My God, I don’t even know what he’d do.”

“You don’t get to decide anymore,” Erris said. “I’m alive.” He stopped and touched his hand to his temple in sudden disbelief. He reached for my hand. “Nim, I can’t believe you really did it.”

“And you feel fine? You’re really alive?”

He put his hand over his heart. “Yes. I think so.” The briefest concern knit his brows. Hollin and I both noticed.

“How could this even have happened?” Hollin said. “I doubt even the Lady could make flesh and blood from nothing.”

“I must be alive,” Erris said. He looked down at his chest, inhaling and exhaling to watch it rise and fall. “Or else . . . well, what’s all this?”

“I don’t know, but the Sorcerer’s Council will have to see about it,” Hollin said. “The council has to approve bringing someone back from the dead. I think other forces must be at work.”

“Stop it, Hollin. You’re scaring him.”

“I should be scaring you, Nimira. You’re the one who did this, and the council will decide your fate, too. The council headed by Smollings.” He held his hands out, almost pleadingly, and said once more, softer now, “What have you done?”

“There must be something we can do,” I said. I was beginning to grow frightened indeed. Smollings would probably be happy to lock me away and use Erris for his own purposes. I had never thought what to do afterward, if I actually brought Erris to life. I supposed I thought he would protect me, but he was a fairy on human turf, and his own people would have considered him dead for some thirty years.

“I want to see Karstor and I want Nim to come with me,” Erris said.

“‘Nim’ is my fiancée.”

I inhaled sharply, ready to protest, when Erris spoke again.

“You don’t treat her like the woman you love.”

“Because she’s been sneaking around in the middle of the night casting dark magic! I’m hardly going to gather her into a loving embrace, considering the circumstances!” Hollin’s hands slowly curled into fists, relaxed again, curled again—Erris tapped his palm to his hip like he was checking for a weapon.

“Wait—please, let’s be reasonable,” I said, only this was no ordinary case of two suitors dueling for a woman’s hand. I had hoped Erris might live again, but seeing him before me as a real man, I hardly knew what to do or think or say . . .

Erris suddenly clutched his chest.

I grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” He staggered. “I’m winding down . . . !”

His knees gave out from under him, and all at once he was crumpled on the ground again, his face mashed into the hard floor, a pose no conscious person would have borne. I cried out and dropped to his side again, reaching for his wrist, trying to find the beat of life. Hollin got down with me. “Get back,” he said, pushing aside Erris’s coat. His shirt still had an open back for his clockwork mechanism, and there in the center of his back, interrupting the line of his spine, was a small metal plate, with a keyhole in it.

23

“So that’s how she brought him to life,” Hollin murmured. “He’s still an automaton, only she animated the clockwork body in absence of a corpse . . .”

I didn’t even hear Hollin at first. I stared at that dreadful keyhole, unable to believe this impossible reality. The shock seared through every nerve in my body, paralyzing me. Could it be true? Had I really brought Erris into such an unnatural life, at the mercy of a silver key?

I had left the key on the floor and now I reached for it, but Hollin saw me. He snatched it first, holding it against his chest.

“Wind him!” I said, as if he would follow my command.

“No one is winding him.” Hollin tapped his palm with the key. I don’t think he really knew what to do.

“But there are so many questions to ask him—”

“Nimira, I am flabbergasted by your lack of concern with the situation as a whole. Do you know what you did? How close you came to death, or worse? If I hadn’t come along—”

“Everything was fine
until
you came along! The Queen was very kind. She—”

“Hush!”

I realized how exhausted I was. I didn’t have energy for this kind of fight. Why couldn’t he just understand? Poor Erris had finally found life, only to collapse on the floor, still clockwork, after all. The ramifications were more than I wanted to consider.

“We’re supposed to be departing on the voyage of a lifetime,” Hollin said. “Instead, you’ve saddled us with this. If we leave now, I could still save you from Smollings, but we’d have to do something with
him.
”

“Hollin, you know I can’t leave with you now.”

“And you know you can’t save him!” Hollin cried. “Listen carefully, Nimira. Smollings is head of the council and his allies have the council majority. If you stay here, he will have the automaton and he can put you in prison if he wishes. You’ve placed us all in a very bad position.”

I stared at the floor. I had thought bringing Erris to life would put everything right. Now this seemed an utterly foolish hope. I had to get the key from Hollin somehow, but I couldn’t just ask for it. Could I ask Annalie for help again? Miss Rashten would surely be on alert now.

I didn’t really know what to do anymore.

“Well, Nimira.” Hollin spoke softly. “Have you nothing to say?”

“You dare to accuse me of putting us in a bad situation?” I asked, my anger burning all the brighter for my lack of solutions. “You told me you used dark magic to try and save Annalie. You told me Smollings is using it to blackmail you. But you didn’t tell me that she’s still alive!”

He took a step closer to me, and I took a step back. “Who told you?” he asked.

“No one. I found her.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Of course I’ve seen her. She ran into my room that night, begging for help, if you recall!”

Anguish swept his face. “She didn’t know what she was saying. And she’s not the same anymore. She hears voices, Nimira. She speaks to spirits; they
got
to her. She has spells where I wonder if she even knows me.”

“I’ve just been to see her,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t make more trouble for Annalie by mentioning her involvement, but it didn’t seem like things could get worse anyway. “She was quite kind to me. She didn’t seem like the madwoman you described. She deserves better treatment than being left alone while you run off with me.”

“Why didn’t you say something before?”

“I figured you’d send me away. And I needed to save Erris.”

He scowled. “I don’t know what you would have me do.”

“You could tell the truth about her. You could, at least, do that much.”

He looked at Erris’s limp form, and then he met my eyes for the first time since we had entered the room. “I am . . . truly sorry I brought you into this. But it’s bigger than we have the power to change. You’ve acted without thinking of the consequences.”

“You’re one to speak to me of acting without thinking of consequences!” I said.

Hollin looked away, tucking Erris’s key inside his pocket. “Go back to bed.”

24

Sometimes, before you make any plans or resolutions, before you declare your heroic intent to persevere, you just have to cry.

And cry I did.

I may have slept; it was hard to be sure. When morning crept through the crack in my curtains, I was crying again, soft sobs that came almost unconsciously. My head was buried in my arms at the little table where I ate breakfast. One of my braids had come undone.

Someone rapped on my door.

I didn’t lift my head. “Go away.” I sounded hoarse.

“Nonsense.” It was Miss Rashten, not the
very
last person I wanted to see, but certainly on the list. “I have your breakfast.”

“I don’t want breakfast.”

The doorknob rattled. I had locked it. I heard her keys jingle. With a whispered curse, I got to my feet and flung the door open.

She smiled a little at my vexed expression. “Well, well,” she said, shoving past me into the room. “You thought you were quite crafty, didn’t you? Sneaking around behind my back, in cahoots with the Mistress. I hope you enjoyed your little escapade.” She dumped the breakfast tray on my table and arched a brow at me.

“I don’t want to talk,” I said, reaching for my chair.

She kicked the chair from me with her foot and seized my nightgown by the ruffles decorating the front. “Enjoy your defiance while you can, girl. When Master Smollings gets hold of you, you’ll talk when he wants you to—and only then.”

“How dare you touch me,” I snapped, wrenching from her grasp.

“I might ask you, miss, how
you
dare. To snoop upstairs where Hollin told you not to go, to summon the Lady. From the moment you arrived, you’ve been trouble.”

We stared each other down. Her blue eyes drooped at the corners and bagged underneath; old eyes, but they had not softened with their years. Some old women you can never imagine young, but you could picture Miss Rashten in an awkward sort of youth. I guessed she had not been happy, probably the type who couldn’t flirt and never seemed to dress right, who came into her power when she got past the time when such things mattered.

“I owe Mr. Smollings my life,” she said, still staring at me. “If you think fairies and spirits are such wonderful creatures, try living near the gate. A group of fairies would have killed me if he hadn’t come to my aid, back in his days as chief of the border patrol. So you’ll understand why I have very little tolerance for your antics.”

A sudden shout turned both our heads to the door. Hollin. Something crashed.

Miss Rashten rushed to the hall, and I came just behind her, pulling my other braid loose, my bare feet sticking to the wood floors, and my robe and nightgown—well, Hollin had already seen me in a nightgown before.

Erris was darting around the chairs in the great hall, gripping a cushion in one hand, while Hollin put up a chase, holding his sorcerer’s staff at a threatening angle. A vase had shattered on the floor, and Linza stood back with a broom, looking far too terrified to clean anything.

Erris halted, holding the cushion like a shield. They looked like boys playing a game of chase, except for the serious expressions.

“Stay back, Nimira,” Hollin said. “He’s gone wild. Tore the door handle right off.”

“You’re the one who stormed out and locked me up!” Erris shouted.

“For your own
good.
”

“That had nothing to do with my own good! You just didn’t care for the questions I was asking!” Erris threw the pillow down onto the nearest chair. “Why don’t we have it all out, right here in the hall, with Nimira? This concerns her, too.” Erris waved a hand to me. He still had on his fairy clothes, a festive antique costume more fit for a palace than Vestenveld’s somber interiors.

“There is nothing to have out with Nimira,” Hollin said. “She isn’t part of this decision. Neither are you, for that matter. The Sorcerer’s Council will decide what to do with you.”

Erris cupped his hands in front of him. It seemed to be a fairy gesture of supplication. “Please. All I want is to go home.”

Hollin shook his head. “I can’t let you go. You’re the heir.”

“No,” Erris said. “You must understand, I don’t wish for the throne. I’m sure whichever brother or sister is ruling is doing a fine job. I just want my old life back. Or what I can find of it now. My piano, and my . . . well, my hound will be very much dead.”

I didn’t want Hollin to tell him, but I knew he would, and I knew Erris must know.

“Your brothers and sisters are gone,” Hollin said. “They were all killed in the war.”

“Not . . . all of them? I knew about Peri and Rennin and . . . Aria.” His face seemed to age five years in an instant. “There were ten of us. They can’t all be dead.” He brought his hands tight against his chest, and I briefly feared he would rend his clothes, but he kept calm. “Who is king now?”

“Graweldin,” Hollin said. “Luka Graweldin.”

“Luka?” Erris cried. “My cousin? The one who always ran a victory lap around the lawn when he beat me at toss-rings?”

Erris stared at Hollin like he truly wanted an answer. Hollin finally said, “I . . . presume.”

Erris’s face was alarmingly blank. I should have merely been happy he was alive, but what world had I granted him? His family was dead. He lived only as a prisoner to whoever held the silver key. What balm could I offer to a wound so gaping as the loss of one’s family? Perhaps death would have been more merciful. I still couldn’t bear the thought, but was I only being selfish?

Hollin looked at me. I did not expect this moment, this sympathy that suddenly flashed across his eyes. We had both tried to save someone with the most desperate means. And in our way, we had both failed.

I saw something wake in Hollin’s eyes then as he looked at me and then to Erris again. Something that went beyond sympathy and verged upon strength.

Hollin took a step toward Erris.

Erris’s jaw was clenched with the effort of keeping his composure.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Hollin said stiffly. He opened his hand. The key rested in his palm. “Take it.”

Erris hesitated. He was obviously as startled as I was by the sudden offer.

“Take it and go!” Hollin shouted. “Both of you, go.”

Erris snatched the key and stepped back again. He glanced at me.

“Where can we go?” I said. “To—to Karstor’s?” I didn’t know if we could escape without Hollin’s help . . . but with it?

“Where does he live?” Erris asked.

I shook my head.

“I can tell you where he lives,” Hollin said. “I could even lend you a carriage. But Miss Rashten knows who you are and what you are, which means Smollings will know before long. I wouldn’t be surprised if you cross him on your way to find Karstor. Supposing you make it to Karstor’s without getting caught, supposing he’s even home, he could try and get you to the border, but it’s three days away, and who will help you once you’re across? I don’t suppose the fairy king will be too happy to see the lost heir. And what will the council do to Karstor once they learn he’s smuggled you out? You are putting him in certain peril.”

“So you’re saying it’s hopeless?” Erris said.

“I’m just stating facts,” Hollin said. “I’ll leave the choice to you. I’m . . . tired. I don’t care anymore.” He stalked from the room.

Miss Rashten had watched the whole thing from the doorway. I had no doubt she was already forming her own plans about what to do if we tried to flee.

Erris turned the key over. He gripped it in his fist. “Nim.”

For the first time, we had our chance to really talk. I approached slowly, until I stood before him, and our eyes met.

He reached for my hand—his skin so alive—and pressed the key into my limp fingers. He folded them around it, his hands closed on my own.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

He shook his head. “Sorry? No. Don’t be sorry.”

“But . . . I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”

“Don’t think for a moment this is your fault. I haven’t had an ordinary life in a long time. You did what you could, and look—now we can talk. At last.” He smiled, and his eyes roamed a little lower.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Are you looking at my bosom, sir?”

The eyes snapped back up. “At such a serious moment? What do you take me for?”

“A rogue, I believe.” I tried not to smile.

He held out his elbow. “Well, fair lady. Let’s walk in the garden. It will help me to think.”

“I’m still wearing my nightgown.”

With a nervous glance to Miss Rashten, Linza broke from her side. “I’ll get you dressed right quick, Miss Nimira.”

Miss Rashten lifted her head like she might call out to stop us, but instead she snatched up her dustpan and headed for the door.

Linza led me back to my room, where she brought forth one of my most fetching outfits, a white day dress with lace inserts on the bodice and finely worked white embroidery detail on the skirt.

“Oh, I’m not sure about that one,” I said. “I’m not really in a white dress mood, Linza. How about the old plaid?”

“The old plaid!” Linza cried. “Miss
Nimira.
” She gave me an exasperated face and raised her eyebrows. “It’s not my place to question you, but I will say that while I’m not sure exactly what happened with the automaton, he is a
very
handsome man now, and
very
finely dressed.”

“Oh, all right, all right.” I motioned for the white dress.