Winterspell (45 page)

“Why hasn't it stopped?” A frenzy lit his eyes. “We're in Rieden, aren't we? Shouldn't it protect us?”

“I don't know,” she said helplessly.

Movement behind her made Clara whirl. Shadowed figures approached from the gloom, hooded and armed with tremendous crossbows. The shafts of the arrows they carried were silver—like faery spears and their blue.

Clara put herself between Nicholas and the strangers, shielding him with her body. Fury was shaking her into cold fits. Recollections of the train, of the encounter with the dragons, burst into her mind. She was near such a moment now. Frantic to protect Nicholas, her palms tingled with bottled-up energy. She did not want to release it. Her time in the Summer Palace had taught her to open Doors, but not how to control much else about her power—and if her suspicions were correct, she did not want to hurt these people.

She thrust one of her hands at the figures, making sure they could see the energy there. “Don't come any closer. If you do, we'll both regret it.”

To her surprise they paused. The closest of them threw back its hood. It was a man, tall and slender, with dark hair tied at the base of his neck and a familiar gray tinge to his skin. Clara thought of Godfather, and sorrow tightened her chest.

“You're a mage,” the man said, calm.

It wasn't a question. How startling to be recognized so matter-of-factly. “I am. And so are you.”

The man tilted his head, birdlike. “But you're also like
her
. Your magic smells the same. Tastes the same. Cold instead of warm, though. The wards were confused when they admitted you inside. And whoever that is”—he gestured at Nicholas—“reeks of faery.”

Another figure, bow at the ready, said curtly, “What are we waiting for, Ralk?” This was a woman, eyes pitiless beneath her hood. “Smells like Anise, tastes like Anise. What more do you want?”

“But she entered the forest. Anise cannot enter the forest.”

“Yet.”

The man, Ralk, lowered his bow. “What are you, girl? Speak slowly and don't—”

The woman made an impatient noise. She pulled her bowstring taut, and where an arrow should have been, energy crackled, stretched between the woman's hands. As with the faery's spears and gloves, it seemed the mages could use objects to focus their magic into weapons. The woman loosed her arrow, and it flew straight for Clara.

Clara twisted and flung up her arms, crossing them. It was an automatic movement, like watching Godfather's stance and knowing how he would attack before he did it. A tiny shock of light burst from her joined wrists and grew around her like a shield. The arrow bounced off it harmlessly.

Careful,
Clara instructed. It surprised her how easily she fell into talking to her magic as though it were a living thing. The energy from opening the series of Doors still sat over her like a cloak, ready to listen. Force shot out from her, knocking the woman to the ground. Rising, the woman clamped a hand over her shoulder. Silver leaked from between her fingers, and her eyes were fearful.

Another mage perched in the low-slung branches of a nearby tree released an arrow, and a third mage released two more. Clara moved to meet each of them. From a past that seemed many lifetimes ago, she heard Godfather's voice as they'd trained in the dark.

It was not so different fighting these arrows of lightning. She was tired, uncertain, but she fell into the rhythm of it like a dance—absorbing the energy of the mages' arrows as she would absorb the force of Godfather's blows, pivoting on the balls of her feet as she would have to match Godfather's quick-footed moves.

He had been training her to help him, he said, and to defend herself against the city's evils.

Perhaps he'd also trained her with the small hope that if she did discover her latent power someday, she would have some idea of how to fight with it. Instead of grief in that moment, she felt a surge of gratitude.

The figures subsided, lowering their bows.

Clara was exhilarated and exhausted by the expense of power. She felt Nicholas touch her ankle, steadying her.

Ralk watched her curiously. “You work magic as Anise does. You require no external device to use it against others.”

Clara glanced at the woman who had first attacked her. “I won't apologize for defending myself.”

“Nor should you. My word. The air is
vibrating
around you.” Ralk regarded her for another moment, and then his face relaxed into a slight smile. “You are Clara, aren't you?”

Nicholas tried to sit up, and the female mage looked stunned to see his face.

“Oh, Zoya have mercy on me, it
is
you.” She fell to her knees. “Forgive me, sire—I didn't recognize you, or your lady.”

Utterly confused, Clara ignored Ralk's question. “Either attack us or help us. Don't stand there gaping.”

Ralk chuckled, and so did someone emerging from the trees. She saw familiar faces—Erik, Igritt, and . . .

Clara stood rooted by shock as a tiny shape raced toward her out of the shadows and threw its arms around her.

“Bo?” Nicholas whispered hoarsely.

“Headed straight here after you left, sire.” Bo pulled back, breathless. “Just like you told us. The mages let us in after much groveling and flattery, and when they saw who we'd brought. If you weren't already so beat up at the moment, I'd pound your face in for disappearing on us like that.”

“The hunters—”

“Gave us many a merry chase, but we're mostly all here. Oh, Clara.” Bo hugged her again, beaming. “Was it awful in the Summer Palace? Were you scared? Does Anise smell? Was there cake?”

But Clara wasn't listening; she had eyes only for the figure limping toward them.
When they saw who we'd brought.
Impossible. Inconceivable. And yet there he was—despite his bandaged arm, his
makeshift cane, and his many burn marks, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. His eye patch was missing, and where his eye should have been sat a dull knot of twisted faery metal.

Nicholas, struggling to rise, sucked in a breath.

“Godfather?” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. She was hurrying toward him, and her heart could not settle on any one emotion. As she fell into his arms, she was a knot of joy, relief, doubt.

“Clara, Clara,” he was whispering, and she realized as she heard his voice how old he truly was, and how burdened with pain. She stepped back to grin tearfully at him.

“You look fantastic,” she announced.

He laughed, and kissed her cheeks. “You flatter an old man, dear heart.”

“How did you—” She clutched his arms, wanting to bury her face in his tattered shirt, but she did not dare take her eyes off him now. “I heard faeries that night.”

“The faeries here have forgotten much.” He smiled sadly. Angry flesh puckered around his ruined eye socket. “They hardly remember how to fight mages. Even poor ones.” His gaze was fixed on her, significant and encouraging. “They have forgotten the might of what we can do.”

We.
And to think she had felt so alone during the pain of transformation. Now, to be part of these people, however ravaged they were: herself, Godfather, the mages watching them. Her mother, and all those slaughtered. A history of magic, and now she was part of it, and it meant something, this thing. This sense of
us.

She felt the gravity of this new pride and took Godfather's hand. “They hurt you.”

A flicker crossed his face. “Yes.”

“I'm so—”

“No. I would let them do it a thousand times over if it meant saving you.”

“Anise didn't kill Mother,” she whispered. It was important to her that he know before anything else was said.

He seemed surprised to hear it but didn't ask for an explanation. Instead he smoothed the hair back from her face, his hands coming away damp and glittering with powder.

“You have much to tell me, don't you, my Clara?”

She ached to think of the queen in all her lovely gowns, of how close she had come to losing herself in the Summer Palace, of the girl Anise had once been, and of Nicholas being slowly eaten alive. She felt weary, and very small. She had been holding herself together for too long and now felt herself unraveling.

“I think she wants to kill me,” she said. “She will kill me if I don't give myself to her.”

Godfather's expression darkened. “I won't let her.
We
won't let her.”

Overhead, thunder boomed dully, and lightning arced as the shape of a train raced high above the dark net of trees. Even through Rieden's thick magic, the train's passage cast the forest floor in shades of angry blue.

T
he mages' settlement was cleverly hidden in Rieden's snarled recesses. Tiny cottages of wood and stone sat at the bases of trees. Crooked white chimneys sent furls of smoke high into the canopy. Heavy white flowers bloomed in mammoth clusters, and inside their petals pollen glowed silver.

The Prince's Army, as Bo proudly deemed the surviving underground refugees, had already made camp, scattered in cottages and tents throughout a clearing. They slept and ate and accepted crowns of flowers from eager mage children, as slender and soft-eyed as fawns. Clara counted the survivors—twenty-four now, where there had been dozens in the tunnels. She found it hard to meet their eyes, and wondered what they thought of her once again barging in on their safe haven, covered head to toe in faery finery.

She watched as Ralk helped Erik arrange a barely conscious Nicholas on a table in one of the cottages. When Ralk gave Clara fresh clothing patched together out of rough, itchy fabrics, she felt that she did not deserve it. At her hesitation Erik sighed sharply.

“Oh, take them. Can't do much fighting in a gown like that.” Erik's expression was as bitter as ever, but he held out a hand to her, a peace offering. “Can you, now?”

“No,” Clara said. She clasped his hand with both of hers and smiled. “I should say not.”

He grunted and turned away, but it was a start. As Clara changed into her new tunic and a fresh cloak, she felt more hopeful. The clothes were simple but well made and reminded her fondly of Karras; she shed her party gown like an uncomfortable skin. Slipping on a pair of supple leather boots, she felt a brief twinge for her old, dear ones. Her daggers would rot there, hidden in their heels, somewhere in the Summer Palace. Perhaps if she wheedled sweetly enough, Godfather would fashion her new ones.

Back in the cottage, she went straight to Nicholas's side. He had fallen asleep, or into unconsciousness. She stroked his feverish brow and looked across the table to Godfather. He stared down at Nicholas with an unreadable expression—worry, perhaps, and the old hostility he had always directed toward the statue. Every expression that passed over his face, Clara viewed as if through an enchanted looking glass that took her former life and turned it on its head. She had so many questions—about the war, his bond with Nicholas, Leska—but they could wait.

She brushed Nicholas's damp hair back from his forehead. Her fingers touched metal, and it hissed softly, shifting. From her perch on a stool at Nicholas's feet, Bo perked up, eyes round with fascination.

“Will he be all right?” Clara said.

Godfather glanced at her. “I can't say. Being here in Cane, and so close to the capital . . . I'm afraid to remove anything from him, and I can't predict what the curse will do. Although, as much as I hate to say this, you should touch him again.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just on the forehead, as you did before. Slowly.”

She obeyed, dragging her fingertips across his skin.

The metal embedded at his hairline sizzled at her touch. Tiny screams sounded, quiet and shrill. Nicholas moaned, his eyes fluttering halfway open.

“Clara?” he murmured.

“I'm here.” She leaned over him. “Everything will be fine. Godfather will tend to you.”

Nicholas's mouth quirked. “Don't leave me alone with him. Never trust . . . a one-eyed witch.”

“Oh, honestly.” Godfather turned away in a huff.

Clara stifled her smile. “I'm not leaving you. We'll work this out.”

Something strange passed over Nicholas's face. Darkness bulged beneath the skin of his neck. Clara put her hand there, and it receded, sending a sharp shock up her arm. Nicholas twitched, his eyes falling closed.

“How interesting,” Godfather murmured. “Your touch can't eradicate the curse that's already there, but it can prevent it from getting worse.”

Clara raised her hand to eye level, inspecting it. “Truly?”

“So it would seem.” He looked at her, thoughtful. “Some sort of repulsion? Equal but opposite, perhaps—your magic, and Anise's.”

Something tugged at Clara, back toward the Summer Palace—a twinge of longing that filled her with some guilt, but not much, and that made it worse. She leaned hard on the table and said nothing, though she felt Godfather watching her.

Ralk, standing near the wall in the corner, had watched the entire exchange in silence. “I hate to interrupt,” he said at last, coming forward smoothly, “but many of my people want answers, and I want something to give them. One of you is cursed by faery magic, one of you is a fallen mage sullied by faery magic, and one of you”—Ralk turned to Clara—“has magic similar to that of a creature responsible for the near-destruction of my race. We had safety here, and peace. Then you bang at my wards,” he said, pointing at Drosselmeyer, “screaming at me until I admit you and this ragtag band of humans, and then
she
comes and slips through with no trouble. Quite against my will I'm harboring thirty-one fugitives with no end in sight. At the moment the person I trust most in this room is the human with blue hair. Tell me that isn't strange.”