Winterspell (43 page)

On them, magnified to grotesque proportions, was the face of John Stole.

“Clara?” His voice, mammoth and distorted, echoed across the city. “Clara, is that you?”

Beside Clara, Nicholas swore. Clara took a faltering step back toward the palace. Her father's hair was unkempt, his eyes bleary, but it was unmistakably him. As Anise had said, he was unhurt. Confused but unhurt.

Up on the wall the gloved faery—arms bathed in fresh blood—clapped wet, spattering applause and crowed, “Oh, what a marvelous party this is!”

“I don't know where I am.” John Stole rubbed his eyes. His lips were stained sugar blue. “Someone's telling me . . . I'm supposed to tell you to stop. Whatever you're doing, Clara, stop. We need to get home. They're telling me if you do this, we'll never get home. What do they mean?”

His dear face, his ridiculous red beard. The sight of him was a terrible relief. To see him alive and well, as Anise had promised . . . Clara turned away, full of doubt.

“Do you think it's real?” Nicholas said. “Maybe it's a trick.”

No, not a trick. Clara knew it for what it was: a second chance. She could go back, apologize, give them Nicholas, and beg her way back into Anise's good graces. If she did it now, she could save Anise the humiliation of asking.

Perhaps she could save her father as well.

The miserable mischief of it. Clara was sick with indecision. “It's real. It's perhaps more real than anything else she's said to me.”

Her father began to scream, twisting on the chromocasts. Someone unseen was hurting him.

The faeries on the wall hooted, whistled. Above the great tents fireworks exploded.

“Clara, I don't understand what's happening, what they're doing.” Her father was heaving with pain. “They won't tell me. Is it Plum? I keep asking for her. No one will listen to me.”

His confusion was the worst thing. He thought he was still in New York. He thought this was about Patricia Plum, about Concordia. At the wall the mob of faery soldiers, glittering in their party dress, had stopped and were looking down at where Clara stood, motionless with indecision. The soldiers were waiting, no doubt, for the word from Anise.

Clara turned away.

Nicholas stepped closer. “Clara? What do you want to do?”

The steel in his voice, and the patience, brought her back to herself. She blinked past her tears, clung to the intensity of his focus. “She wants me back with her. She wants me to help her rebuild her kingdom.”

“I see.”

“Is that what you want?” She took a step toward him. The discordant relief of seeing him alive was fading in the face of her father's screams. “For me to
help
you? Godfather warned me against trusting you, and he was right. While I was losing my mind with pain, you were plotting how best to use me.”

He seemed lost for words, his shoulders slumped. He did not apologize again, and she appreciated that, when such pale words would have infuriated her more than anything else. The hollowed-out look in his eyes was enough, for now.

Her father had slipped off the chromocast, but she could still hear him. His screams grew hysterical.

“I can't talk about this now,” Clara said tearfully, her breathing tight. “We have to run.”

“But are you sure—”

“I will not be responsible for your death, as you are for my mother's.” She was hurting him with her words, and the accusation was unfair, but she was glad to say it anyway. “Just
run
, before I change my mind.”

She turned into the night. The Summer Palace was a monster at her back, and though it would make everything harder, she had to run
from it. Anise wanted her too badly to risk hurting her father beyond repair, at least until she had Clara back.

At least Clara hoped so. It was an incredible thing on which to wager her father's life. Maybe the queen would decide Clara was not worth this trouble—though, after last night, she thought it unlikely.

Then the lights went out, the chromocasts turning dark. Jealousy shot through the air like poison, like a real thing, real and terrible and as alive as any creature. The palace walls shook with rage.

And Nicholas began to scream.

Clara whirled to see him fall to the ground, twisting in pain. She hurried to him, unsure where to touch, for he was
clawing
at himself. She reached for his arm, said his name. With a force that surprised her, he threw her away, and she hit the ground hard. Immediately defensive, she scrambled to her hands and knees—and stared in horror, for Nicholas was tearing at his hair, every muscled line taut with pain. Blood erupted in hot spurts, metal plates resurfacing across his body, thick steel pins snaking out of them and into his flesh, a steel lattice echoing his veins.

She put a hand to her mouth. Not this. Anything but this.

“It's coming back, Clara.” His face was drenched with tears. He put out a warning hand, and metal erupted along his fingers, fully encasing them in spiked, formfitting plates. He fell away from her, unable to stay upright. “The curse. She's found me. She's waking it up.”

F
or the first sixteen years of my life, I knew nothing but hate and war. I was raised on strategy and weaponry, in laboratories with dissected faery bodies pinned open for study. My nightmares were full of monstrous black mechanized creatures swallowing me whole and spitting me back out, silent and still.

Then I met Leska.

She was a mage, a true Lady of the North, powerful and ambitious—to a point. Whereas some mages would do anything to be one of the Seven, Leska held fast to her principles. As the war between humans and faeries escalated, as the mages' participation evolved from reluctant to eager, Leska began petitioning the nobility for peace—negotiations, an armistice. She even once arranged for a meeting between Father and Anise.

It did not go well.

I still remember it. In the wide, brightly lit Hoflicht, where the white stone caught the sunlight and made the entire courtyard glitter like a glass-cut sea, Father and Anise met on the Drachstelle seal. It was to be a greeting full of ceremony and empty pomp, before adjourning to a neutral location for negotiations.

I remember seeing Anise arrive, her personal guard accompanying her. One in particular, a tall beast of a faery with a cruel face and the unadorned sash that signified a new recruit, had eyes only for Anise,
following her movements with undisguised lust. I stood behind my mother and father, seething that we should stoop so low. Peace with the faeries? Incomprehensible.

Anise must have felt my rage. As she approached Father, her eyes met mine. The headdress and robes she wore made her look impressive despite her slight form. Even I could admit that to myself. She examined me head to toe, and the smile that curled across her lips was dismissive, amused.

I nearly lunged for her.

I did not have the opportunity. In the next instant a shot was fired from somewhere in the crowd of human nobility—a black arrow that looked suspiciously like a reengineered faery weapon. I recognized in the arrow the efforts of the mages and our finest swordsmiths, who'd worked tirelessly to re-create the faeries' designs from the wreckage of innumerable skirmishes and confiscated inventions.

Anise dismantled the thing in midair, whipping toward it with a snarl. At the same instant a figure crashed into her, knocking her off her feet.

Leska pinned Anise to the ground, shielding her with her body.

“Are you mad?” Leska cried to the stunned audience. “This is a peace talk, not a battleground!”

The large faery soldier shoved Leska away, drawing Anise into his arms for a moment before she shook him off, screaming vulgarities at the crowd. The rest of her escort readied their weapons—those fearsome black gloves, those massive black spears that spat blue electricity as easily as our archers unleashed arrows. Our royal guard unsheathed their swords.

Father had not even flinched. He smirked, watching Anise coldly.

He had known this would happen. The meeting had been a ruse. No doubt Father had hoped the arrow would pierce her heart.

The outnumbered faeries retreated after a tense few moments, although Anise's feral, determined grin lingered long after her departure. Looking back, I see that we sealed our fate that day.

In their wake Lady Leska rounded on my father.

“What have you done?” she whispered. “We cannot be forever at war, my king, or we will tear ourselves apart.”

Father's expression was one of disgust as he dismissed her.

But I was captivated. It had never occurred to me that there was another option besides war and hate. When you are raised on hate alongside milk and bread, it begins to sustain you. It becomes you.

As it had become me.

For weeks I contemplated this change in me, this change wrought by the appearance of Lady Leska with her stubborn jaw and fearless gaze. I sent out my personal spies to gather information about her. Finally I sought her out, in the shadowy northern neighborhoods of the capital.

There I found not only Leska but many people—humans and mages alike—who gathered secretly and exchanged coded messages in broad daylight, who spoke of peace and rallies and protests.

That first night I was apprehended by masked men and brought before Leska herself.

Once unbound, I warned her, “I could have you executed for this.”

“But you won't,” she said, and her smile was gentle. “You no longer want to be an executioner. You're curious about peace. Aren't you, my prince?”

She gave words to emotions I hadn't yet deciphered. I was tired of killing, tired of strategy and espionage. I had been bred to carry out my father's war, and I wondered if I was anything besides that bloody purpose. Who was I beneath the blood on my hands?

Under Leska's tutelage I learned about peace. Cloaked in dirty garments, I snuck out of my guarded rooms and across the rooftops, shimmied down gutters. I met with Leska and her followers several times a week. I even consulted with faeries who had defected, who had come to the capital seeking help from sympathetic mages, who escorted them north into hiding.

Leska became the greatest teacher I had ever known, and I loved her. I worshipped her. All of us did, I think, those of us thirsty for peace. How could we not love her, when she burned with such desire for justice?

But it could not last.

Drosselmeyer, my bound mage, my sworn protector, my tutor, my ally at court, had a terrible, embarrassing secret.

He loved Leska too.

And for him it was not merely platonic admiration. It was obsession. Once, they had been lovers, as Leska told me one night; there had been years of passion between them. I was shocked to learn that Drosselmeyer had yearned for peace as well. But ultimately his ambition had gotten the better of him—when old Ehrlmeyer had died and a seat had opened on the Seven, Drosselmeyer had abandoned the peace efforts and had done anything he could to earn Father's favor.

It had worked. He'd been appointed, and over the ceremonial altar, as naked as newborns, he and I had clasped hands, exchanged blood, and been bound.

Even before meeting Leska, I knew Drosselmeyer for what he was—a sycophant with dubious morals and cutthroat political aspirations.

He was also jealous, desperately so, of anyone whom Leska so much as smiled at, for once Drosselmeyer had abandoned peace for the Seven, Leska had abandoned him.

So when I began sneaking out, when rumors rumbled throughout the castle staff that the prince was liaising with some mysterious mistress, Drosselmeyer suspected the worst. That Leska had taken me into her bed, that she now loved me as she would no longer love him.

One night he followed me, and he did not come alone. He brought along Rohlmeyer, the first of the Seven, determined to humiliate us.

They found us in Leska's humble apartment, relaxing together after a successful meeting. It was as innocent as sister and brother, and I could see on Drosselmeyer's face that he understood his mistake at once.

But it was too late for that. Rohlmeyer arrested Leska for treason and brought me before my parents for punishment. In those days Drosselmeyer shadowed me everywhere, a blank, dumb look on his face. In shock, perhaps, that he had so misread our relationship, and by doing so had sentenced his great love to death.

For, of course, it would be death for Leska. Father's judges twisted her peace efforts into a diabolical rebellion and our relationship into something scandalous and manipulative.

I watched, devastated, as the judges declared their sentence. Beside them Father smiled.

Leska showed no emotion at the pronouncement of her own impending execution. She held her head high as they bound her in chains.

“Have you no shame, traitor?” Mother said from her throne. “Not even a plea for mercy?”

Leska smiled. “Why would I be ashamed, Your Majesty? All I have done I would do again. All I have done I did for my country.”

That night I heard Drosselmeyer weeping in his rooms, which adjoined mine. Leska would be executed the next morning.

I knew what I had to do.

I called for him, and together—though the hate between us now stormed like an inferno, for each of us blamed the other for Leska's fate—we snuck to the prison tower.

We helped Leska escape, cloaked in their combined magic. Leska was the more powerful of them; she always had been. Before she'd turned peacemaker, Leska would have been in line for Rohlmeyer's spot. She would have ruled the Seven, and in turn been the ambassador of the mages.