Glittering Shadows (14 page)

“Nothing much,” Nan said.

“Oh?” Ingrid shot Sigi a look as if she wanted her to go away, but Sigi stayed put. “I have seen so little of you, sister. I hope you’re concentrating on regaining your
memories and your powers.”

At night, the memories crept in. Ingrid in her youth, a slip of a girl in a dark green dress and apron, her long blond hair braided and coiled around her head, with a few wisps floating out to
soften her face. Her bare, dirty feet curled beneath her as she peeled apples. She never liked to stay inside. Their small cottage was built under Yggdrasil’s branches, with just enough room
for their three beds and three chairs and a hearth for cooking, where Urd liked to read by the fire.

Nan swallowed. Even the beautiful memories frightened her beyond words. They belonged to a stranger.

“You have been remembering,” Ingrid said. “I see it in your eyes. Why do you fight it? Why don’t you want your old life back?” When Nan didn’t answer, she
glanced at Sigi again. “Do you want to lose everything?”

Nan narrowed her eyes. “No, I certainly don’t,” she said. “You were different, in my memories.”

“We were so happy together before Yggdrasil’s destruction. Such a thing had never happened, in all our years. Of course, it
will
grow again. And when it does, we can be happy
as we were.” Ingrid smoothed her hand down the front of her dress, fretfully, like she was looking for comfort. “Good night, Nan.”

Nan’s stomach flipped as she watched Ingrid leave the room. She didn’t want to sleep, fearing she might recall more of her sister in young and merry days.
I must have loved her
once, more than I love Thea, or anyone in this life. The old me probably would have protected her above all.

Something dark has a hold on her, too.

“Nan?” Sigi asked. “You look so troubled.”

“She’s right. I do have memories of her. And all I know is that something’s wrong.” Nan pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’d like to meet your friends. I
need to think about something else.”

The guards didn’t want them to leave the next morning. “Sebastian’s tightening security after what happened to Roger,” they told them.

“I can assure you I’m not reporting to any enemies,” Nan said. “Sebastian wouldn’t force me to stay, I’m sure.” She was certain of this now; Freddy had
told her and Sigi Sebastian’s true identity yesterday. Sebastian must know that she knew, and since he clearly wanted this kept secret, she was sure he wouldn’t challenge her.

“No, but—”

“We won’t be gone long.”

The streets had more people on them now, the mood changing from withdrawn fear to a desperate energy. They had to stop for a pack of factory workers marching by, waving United Workers Party
flags, the group including some wives and older children. At the university, students milled around the wrought-iron fences surrounding the dorms. Someone had climbed the university clock tower to
hang up a sign that said
BETTER TO DIE ABOVE THAN SLAVE BELOW
, so anyone checking the time would see it.

Sigi said Hel was studying architecture at the university and lived on the third floor of one of the grand old apartments with a mansard roof and elegant balconies. The hallway smelled of baked
goods. When Sigi knocked, a girl opened the door and immediately threw her arms around Sigi.

“I thought Hel was playing a trick on me!” she cried. Then she slapped Sigi, although not hard. “Why did you die in our apartment?”

Sigi looked pained. “Is there any good answer to that question?”

“No. Of course not. But—never again. God bless your poor mother. Did she really trade her life for yours?”

Hel swept over and kissed Sigi’s cheek. “I told you not to talk about it.”

“Easy for you to say. You always liked magic more than I do,” said the girl Nan assumed was Margie. More faces had crowded around. One girl grabbed Sigi’s hand while another
shoved Hel out of the way to hug her. Nan already felt overwhelmed.

“This is Nan,” Sigi said, pulling her into the fray. “We met underground. Nan, this is Hel, Margie, Hilda, Lena, Doris, and
there’s
Martin, I wondered if you were
here.”

“Hello,” Nan said, quietly counting the people in her head. Seven people, including Sigi. That wasn’t a lot, so why did it seem like so many, when they were all looking at
her?

Luckily they didn’t ask anything of her. “Can you tell us what’s happening?” Lena asked Sigi, as they all sat down on the tidy white sofa and gathered chairs. She was a
tall girl with sallow skin, full red lips, and a small chin. “All we have are rumors and lies.”

“What happened underground?” Margie asked. Her eyebrows seemed almost perpetually raised, making her blue eyes even wider. “Or is too painful to speak of?”

“We didn’t have it as bad as some,” Sigi said, launching into an explanation of the serum that tore their memories away, the drab meals, the rote tasks. Nan noticed she left
out the more uncomfortable parts, such as the way Rory Valkenrath would prowl around the cafeteria. Sigi had been terrified of him. And she didn’t speak of what happened to the revived
workers without the serum—that it had also kept them from decaying and hungering for blood.

Nan hadn’t thought of all this much since arriving at Sebastian’s. Thinking of Rory reminded her of that taste of her own power. She had tried to use the wyrdsong on him.
I was so
close to showing him his own wrongdoing.
Although she hadn’t quite understood her power, it felt so right.

Hel was moving back and forth through the arched passage between the kitchen and living space, setting out bread and jam, cheese, and sliced apples. Nan hadn’t gotten a very good look at
him in the dim bar the other night. Now he seemed rather harmless—quite tall and big-boned yet gentle, clearly a pampered rich boy in an argyle sweater and neatly pressed slacks, his hair
parted to the side and curled over one eye. She caught him looking at her here and there.

Nan stayed mostly quiet throughout Sigi’s story, from the underground to the escape, to Sebastian’s revolutionary group. Her friends were gripped.

“Should we join up?” Lena asked. “We could help the revolution.”

“Sebastian sounds handsome,” Doris said, although Sigi hadn’t said one word about him being handsome.

“No,” Sigi said. “I don’t want any of you to get hurt.”

“So it’s all right if you keep getting hurt?” Margie said.

“Well—we’re still not even sure we can trust Sebastian,” Sigi said.

“Why?” Doris asked.

Sigi looked at Nan with a crumpled brow. She hadn’t mentioned Nan’s involvement, and was clearly struggling with how to explain.

Nan thought of the party at Arabella von Kaspar’s house. She had felt just as uncomfortable there, among people with some inkling of what she was. The first time she had met Sigi,
she’d gone upstairs to escape the crowd.
I can never fit in, because I can never explain. It ruins everything when I do
.

“I think it’s best we don’t talk about it yet,” Nan said. “We don’t want to spread rumors ourselves. If Sebastian is trustworthy, I wouldn’t want to
ruin his reputation.”

“Oh dear. So mysterious.” Doris sighed.

The crowd began to break up now into two smaller groups. “I still have a lot of your things at our place,” Margie was telling Sigi, “if you want to get them.”

“Sure, we could come by.” Sigi kept trying to work Nan into the conversation, but Nan remained an awkward presence, always standing around listening to everyone else talk.

“Nan?” Hel approached her while Sigi was talking to Margie. “Would you like a drink?”

“Just me?” Nan asked, since he hadn’t offered anyone else a drink.

“You look like you could use one.”

“I actually don’t care all that much for drinks.” Then she felt bad for rejecting his hospitality. “If you have tea…”

“I do. I have a few varieties, if you want to see which you’d prefer.”

She sensed that he wanted to get her alone, although she didn’t know why. This put her on edge even more, but she still followed.

“You don’t like meeting lots of new people much, do you?” he asked, as they stepped into the kitchen. “I feel exactly the same way.”

“Oh—”
Is that all?
Nan was relieved. By now, she almost expected strangers to drop heavy information into her lap. “I guess I’m sort of a loner.”

He nodded. “It took Sigi ages to get me out of my shell. Even now, I prefer to play waiter instead of leading the conversation. You might have noticed. I’m sorry we’re all so
loud.”

“You’re fine.” Nan smiled a little. “I’m glad to see Sigi enjoying herself. She told me she’s known you a long time.”

“Truth be told, I’m still unsettled, seeing her alive again.” He filled the kettle and put three different tins of tea on the counter. “But I’m glad. We grew up
playing together. Our mothers are good friends, and we didn’t really get along with our mothers, either of us, though we got along with each other. She got me through some hard times in
boarding school, writing me supportive letters.”

“That’s nice.” Nan chose one of the teas, without really caring.

“She means the world to me.” He hesitated. “I’d let her stay with me in a heartbeat, if she needed it, but she seems to want to stick with you.”

Nan felt pierced with guilt, as if Hel sensed her own confused feelings. “I definitely want her to enjoy a long, happy life, since she’s gotten this second chance,” she
said.

“I hope she does. I didn’t realize how fragile she was, until the—the suicide.”

“We’re all fragile in certain ways, I suppose,” Nan said, looking through the passageway to the living room, seeing Sigi laugh heartily over something Margie had said.

In the living room, Lena turned to the phonograph and put on a record. A song began to play, a jerking, screeching sound that Nan recognized as jazz. Sigi looked at Nan and then turned sharply.
“Oh—I’m sorry, Lena, maybe not yet. We—uh—had some bad memories of music underground. They played it sometimes to…”

“It’s all right,” Nan said. Sigi was never a good liar, anyway, and Nan was used to hearing music all the time, unpleasant as it was to her ears. “Really,” she
said, when Lena looked unsure. “Sigi loves music. I’m the one who has bad memories, but I really don’t mind at all.”

She had never been around a phonograph, though. She certainly hadn’t had one at home, and a live band played at the club. Something about the bell shape of the horn unnerved her.

Why?

An answering memory flashed into her mind.

A cold white room with only a cot and a table. Her hands and feet, shackled so she couldn’t move quickly. And when she did move, she stumbled. Her mind was hazy.

She remembered a man sitting beside her. And a phonograph. “I hear you don’t like music,” he said. “That it disturbs your powers.”

He was speaking gently. She wouldn’t look at him. Her skin was hot with hatred.

“I don’t want to do this to you, god knows,” he said, “but you have to stop fighting. I’ll protect you and your sisters and Yggdrasil—I
need
my magic
users, though, Verthandi. Is it so unreasonable to ask that they serve their king? Is it?”

Nan shuddered violently, remembering days upon days—or was it weeks?—of tinny music and shackled hands.

“Your tea is ready,” Hel said.

“Thank you.” Nan gripped the cup, even though it almost burned her fingers. She didn’t want to embarrass herself around all Sigi’s friends by revealing her shock, but now
that she remembered King Otto’s face, it was all she could think about.

“M
arlis? Your father would like to see you. He’s sending a car.”

“It’s safe?” Marlis looked at Wilhelmina hopefully. She was tired beyond words of being cooped up with the other women and children, and the weather had turned too cold to hide
in the attic.

Wilhelmina smiled humorlessly. “Safe enough, I suppose. They’ve cleared the rebels out of Republic Square.”

Marlis wasn’t used to Papa keeping her at arm’s length like this. He usually liked her to be involved, but he would also want her to be safe.
He wants me for something else.
Another speech, perhaps
.