Winterspell, page 39
Nicholas leaned hard on a bedpost, skin shining with sweat. “She keeps them blue and keeps them sweet, drugs their minds and drugs their meat.”
Clara’s hand flew to her dagger. “Nicholas?”
“I’m fine. I hear her, though. Riddles and songs. She’s in a corner of me somewhere, rocking. Dancing. Digging.” His dark eyes searched her face. “Clara, you must think me—”
“Brave. Yes.” She took his hand. “Strong. That’s what I think.”
His eyes softened, and for a moment he seemed fully himself. There were tired lines around his eyes and mouth. Then a shock ripped through him. He shoved Clara back toward the door.
“Leave! Go! Now!”
Clara felt it the next instant—a disturbance in the air, the ground trembling as something rushed toward them. A door at the other end of the room swung open. Four faeries entered, in uniforms of braided leather cords and high black boots.
One of them was Borschalk.
* * *
“Ah,” Borschalk said, his face tight with hatred. “If it isn’t the queen’s little princess.”
He darted toward them, the other soldiers at his heels.
Clara readied herself to fight, but before she could strike, white light flashed to the ceiling. An electric explosion littered blue sparks to the floor; pipes of sugar burst, spewing liquid. Metal beams fell from the ceiling, blocking Borschalk’s path.
“Go!” Ralk summoned another arrow.
Clara hesitated, but Nicholas pulled her on, and as they barreled back through the door they’d entered through—Godfather and Kora behind them—they heard another crash, the crack of bone, a scream.
Kora cried out, “Ralk—”
“Wanted us to run.” Godfather pushed her on.
Clara led them down the dripping tunnel, trying frantically to maintain focus for navigation, but the door was slamming open behind them, and heavy splashes marked Borschalk’s pursuit. She felt giddy with fear.
Up, she thought, instinct taking over. Out of these tunnels. She did not want to die trapped underground like a rat. But the tunnel was bending, eternal. Nicholas’s breathing rattled behind her. Then she felt it, a draft from the right. A fresh wave of air.
She turned them into the dark. At the rear Kora made an arrow; it was stronger here, in the fresher air. She notched it, let it fly. It shot into the dark behind them, and a faery screamed.
Clara’s headset crackled, and Bo’s voice spoke in her ear, tiny and worried. “Clara? What’s happening? I lost you there for a while.”
“Underground.” There was blue torchlight ahead, stairs, and then an archway. Clara ran for the steps, and the others followed.
“The city’s gone mad, Clara. I can see everything from here. The wall’s swaying, and the storms—”
“Can’t talk, Bo!”
They reached the top of the stairs, raced into a wider hallway with bare black walls and iron sconces, and high windows near the ceiling. Power gathered at Clara’s fingertips, surging out from her gut. We need an escape, she directed it, and it obeyed, slamming through a half-formed door that cascaded into lifeless mechaniks at her touch.
“Wait,” Nicholas murmured. “I know where we are.”
He pushed past them into the room beyond—a wide gallery, with tall pointed windows of dark glass webbed with iron, drapes with frayed hems, a high ceiling.
A throne, black and monstrous, glittering with blue jewels.
“They came at us here.” His voice was haunted, his face drawn. “They crashed through the windows and crawled down the walls. . . .”
Then he fell, screaming. A ridge of plates erupted across his collar bones, tearing open his shirt.
Behind them Kora screeched. Clara turned in time to see her jerked back, through the door and into darkness. Her bow flew from her. Awful crunching sounds ripped through the air; the crackling blue electricity burned Clara’s nose.
Borschalk leapt into the throne room, his hands dripping silver. He locked eyes with Clara and raised his spear.
“Get back,” Godfather said, shoving her toward Nicholas, but Nicholas spun out of her grip with a savage cry and ran toward the faeries, his sword at the ready.
Clara hurried after him, barely dodging Borschalk’s spear. She spun around and met it with her bare hands, shoving him back off his feet with a surge of power that surprised even her. Borschalk’s face flickered with uncertainty. Clara thought, You’re right to fear me. But then the moment passed, and he attacked.
He was strong, his bulk lean and hard, but Clara matched him blow for blow—spinning to kick his legs out from under him, launching icy waves of magic at him that he couldn’t quite dodge. One caught his foot and sent him flying into a window.
Behind her, Nicholas cried out in pain.
She whirled. He fought one of the faeries, and Godfather the other, and they were both faltering. The faeries were lithe, their weapons quick. As recklessly as Nicholas wielded his sword, as many times as his blade hit faery armor, it would not be enough. Clara could see that. The curse was taking its toll on him.
And Godfather—he was trying so hard, and holding up fairly well, considering, but he was unsteady without his cane. His opponent’s spear caught him under the arm. Silver blood spurted; he stumbled, but still managed to point over Clara’s shoulder and cry out.
Clara turned at his warning, saw the faeries—four, six—spilling in through the door.
They were outnumbered.
Desperately she leapt at them and thrust her arm out, parallel to her body. The magic in the air blasted toward them, knocked them off their feet.
But Borschalk was leaping for her; she could feel his shadow bearing down upon her.
She rolled away, avoiding the crash of his body. Instantly he was up, lunging for her on all fours, bestial. Long strands of jewels dangled from his right ear, and Clara recognized them as Anise’s.
Nicholas dove onto him, wild, and plunged his sword into his back. Borschalk howled, reared up, and threw him off. Nicholas skidded across the floor, metal scraping metal, and was still.
Clara stared at his prone form in terror. A cry from behind her drew her attention. The faeries were swarming on Godfather, and Clara’s heart soared with pride to see him fight so beautifully, despite his wounds, despite his weakened magic. He fought with dim light and sword, his coat swirling about him. This was the man she knew, the man who had taught her everything.
But it was not enough. He was falling; the faeries were closing in on him. Nicholas was still; Borschalk, wheezing, crawled toward his fallen spear.
She closed her eyes, grabbed hold of her power, and shoved it down—past the riveted metal floor, beyond the layers of surging mechaniks ready to move at Anise’s command, into the stone and earth of Wahlkraft’s oldest foundations.
Once there she found the pillars and beams supporting the throne room, and delved below them into the heart of the earth. There—fresh earth and pockets of air. She could breathe again, and so could her magic. And it hurt, the scale of magic she was about to release; it tore at her muscles, blinding her with pain. But she forced herself to focus, and felt for the ground, and pulled.
The floor began to buckle.
The faeries paused, looking about them.
Clara found Godfather, caught the dear, lone gray eye. “Protect him.”
For an instant he looked devastated, as though something had crumbled inside him. But the floor was wobbling dangerously and the faeries were yelling in panic, scrambling to get away.
A great weight beneath them snapped. Godfather hauled Nicholas to his feet and staggered with him to safety. They barely made it to the room’s edge before the floor collapsed, the foundations giving way, the earth driven apart beneath them. The faeries fell, scrabbling for purchase on the tilting floor. The last one she saw was Borschalk, clinging to a beam. Her magic pulsed through the room more thickly than air, making it difficult to breathe, crusting his reaching hand with ice.
Then the beam snapped, and he slid into blackness.
Across the chasm that had been the throne room, Godfather threw himself and Nicholas to the ground. Clara stumbled back against the throne, shielding her eyes.
The impact had woken Nicholas. He called for her through the clouds of black dust. She saw his figure, his balled fists, his stricken face. “Clara, no! What have you done?”
At Clara’s ear her headset crackled, whined, and settled into a low buzz. “Bo? Bo, are you there?”
Nothing. The light at her cheek went dim.
Nicholas was beside himself. “Clara, stop!”
She turned to face the throne, behind which a great curtained doorway led to stairs cloaked in darkness.
Clara, Anise’s voice whispered merrily in the walls.
Furious, her eyes watering from the sting of wreckage, sugar, and sulfurous rot, Clara wiped the sweat from her palms. “Where are you?”
Come and find me.
The walls moved, undulating. Then they lit up, and a face appeared in panels on every wall—bleeding and swollen, unshaven. Netted in blue lightning.
John Stole was screaming. Magic burned angry lines across his face. Tiny black mechaniks scampered up his throat, swarming him like bees. He clawed at them; his screams became inhuman, hysterical. Behind him Clara saw a green sky and black towers.
He was twisting strangely.
She looked harder. He was in midair.
“The roof!” Godfather cried out from where he lay, nursing what looked to be a broken leg. Silver pooled beneath him.
She nodded. Yes. High above everyone, for all the kingdom to see. Anise could not resist putting on a show.
Nicholas reached toward her, screaming her name, begging for her to stop, but she turned away and pushed past the throne’s curtains into the staircase soft with shadows. Whispers laughed at her heels. Her father’s screams and Nicholas’s fading pleas followed her up.
And up, and up.
The whispers said, Clara.
Clara.
Clara.
46
The stairs led up a tower and then out onto a network of slender walkways that jutted out from the battlements and connected clusters of towers like a lattice. Grotesque statuaries and elaborate parapets lined each walkway, and gargoyles protruded from the rounded tower walls—sea serpents, loks, monstrous stags. The castle was black and shining, and the sky was lit by a storm.
Above Clara’s walkway hung a man in a burning blue net. He was frozen in place, his limbs twisted.
Father. She barely resisted calling to him.
Anise waited, pale in white furs, her hair loose, as it had been that night. Clara hardened herself against the thought.
“Finally,” Anise said, bored, amused. Her eyes were everywhere. Kambots lined the jagged towers, silent and waiting.
Clara stepped out onto the walkway. It was stable, but around her, towers shifted and climbed, spooling and unspooling like spindles being crafted from shadows.
Everywhere—affixed to the battlements, hanging from railway trestles—chromocasts displayed Clara’s image, and Anise’s image, and the image of her father, like a hall of lit-up mirrors. It was as though this were a stage and she and Anise the players.
Up here, alone, with memories of Anise eating away at the edges of her courage, Clara felt suddenly unsure. But the sight of her father suspended like a demon’s plaything kept her moving forward.
“Hello, Anise.”
Anise smiled, her bow a mockery. “Lady Clara. Lady of the North.”
Clara put up her chin. “That’s right.”
Lazily Anise circled her finger in the air. John Stole twirled, matching her movement. “I gather you bonded with the usurper prince. I can feel the change in you and in the air. Surprising, Clara, that you should give yourself to someone who thinks you a monster, who so utterly betrayed you.”
“He doesn’t think I’m a monster.” Clara examined everything, noting the closeness of the clouds, the temperature of the air, the taste of oncoming snow. The treacherous incline of the roof below her and to the left, capping a squat tower. “He struggles with prejudice, and he betrayed me once, but he wants to change. He wants to do better, and he will not hurt me. I am stronger than he is.”
“Oh dear. I thought you were smarter than this, Clara.”
“And was I smart to trust you, to believe you? Much has happened since your bedroom.”
For answer Anise laughed. She clapped her hands, and John Stole jerked and fell, and jerked still again, and then floated back up to his former position.
It happened so fast that Clara could not even move.
Anise put a delicate hand to her mouth. “Oh, how clumsy of me. I forgot to mention that at one wrong move from you, or from me—one gesture, one blink of my eye—I can send your father plummeting down into—”
“You don’t need to explain. I understand. I am like you. You are like me.” She paused, and there was a hurt inside her; she held it in place, stubbornly, so it could grow no more. “I thought you wanted to remake the world. You said we could do it together. You said we would be unstoppable.” She smiled sadly. “We could have been friends.”
Ah—there. Anise faltered, uncertain. There was that vulnerability from the snowy tower roof; there was the fervent hope, the terrible affection.
But only for an instant.
“I was wrong,” Anise said, her voice hard, and the air teemed with vengeance. Clara felt her power building inside her in defensive response, the air bending toward her and the tiny hairs on her body rising to meet it.
She moved before Anise could, running along the walkway with the wind at her back. She gathered magic into her fingers, drew strength from the lightning in the air, and prayed that she could be strong enough to at least make a good go of it.
* * *
The first strike caught Anise by surprise, a cold thrust of air slamming into her belly and flinging her back against the opposite tower. But she fell gracefully, sprang to her feet, and recovered, then flung off her furs with a savage smile. She wore a corset of chain and curved metal, her arms bare. She cast one of them violently to the side, ripping forth sharp metal plates from the shifting rooftops beside them. They shot straight for Clara, whistling through the air, and she leapt to evade them, and landed hard on her knees.
Below her, on a terrace tucked beneath buttresses, she saw a courtyard abandoned to neglect, a tangle of old trees and black soil. Drawing upon it, gasping through the stifling iron tang in the air, she jumped to her feet and flung her arms up over her face, just as a wave of mechaniks struck her, sending her reeling back. She rolled, still clinging to the anchor of the trees below, and flew unsteady arrows of light at Anise, but the queen dodged them nimbly, leaping from the walkway to a gargoyle adorning an adjacent tower.
She landed on her hands and feet, and cut her arm through the air. One of the watching kambots flew toward Clara in a flash of blue and sharp black. Clara jumped to avoid it, then reached out and sent it back at Anise on the slingshot of the wind, but Anise put out her hand and dissected the thing as it flew, its wires and metalwork scattering.
Clara ducked beneath the flying debris; her foot caught on a crack in the walkway. She teetered and fell back, grappling for handholds on the nearest statue—a sea serpent, its fanged mouth gaping. Its scales cut her hands, embedding tiny black shards in her palms. She hung there, her legs swinging for purchase on the narrow ledge below her.
This was it, then. That had been quick. Out of the corner of her eye, Clara could see herself on the chromocasts, a hundred images of her dangling in fear, and she hoped that, wherever they were, Nicholas and Godfather would not have to see.
“Such a shame.”
Clara looked up. Anise was perched above her, catlike, on the serpent’s back. The wind tangled her hair; the storm lit her eyes. Overhead, kambots had taken wing and now circled, waiting to pick Clara’s bones clean.
“What’s a shame?” Clara said, stalling. If she could lower herself enough, traverse the narrow black eave, she might make it. The tower she had come up stood a few paces away, its metal-plated wall full of footholds and narrow windows. She could climb up it, use the serpent gargoyle there to pull herself back up to the walkway.
“I thought you’d turn out to be stronger than this,” Anise was saying. “Maybe it’s a good thing you betrayed me. I’m well rid of you.”
It would have been convincing, had her voice not had such a childishly sulky note in it. But a sulky child could still be a dangerous one, so Clara jumped, and landed hard on the ledge below her. Pain knocked her shins, and she nearly fell, but she found her balance and pushed on, not letting herself glance down at the steep drop on her left, where the castle’s lower towers roiled—or beyond the far battlements, where the capital burned.
Anise was behind and above her, leaping from parapet to parapet in what was almost a dance, flinging kambots like darts. They hit the wall against which Clara sidled, feathers flying, knocking mechaniks loose like hailstones. Clara made for the tower amid a shower of them, crying out as they scraped her face. When she reached the tower where the ledge came to a stop, she clung to the corner where the walls met, fighting for strength.
Above, Anise laughed. She perched on a parapet overlooking the very gargoyle Clara needed to climb, and the scornful, petulant look on her face filled Clara with cold fury. How dare she act as though this were Clara’s fault? Lonely or not, the queen deserved no pity.
“I am stronger than this,” Clara hissed, and opened a Door in the sky.
* * *
Such a simple thing, a Door, that Clara had not thought of using it until now.
She emerged behind Anise, safe on the walkway, having traveled through the Door in the space of a blink. The force of it threw Anise back, and she lost her footing. The kambots faltered too, so closely linked were they to their queen. Clara ducked to avoid the tiny cuts of their flashing wings, but Anise was dazed, clumsy. A hundred wings rushed past her, clipped her, took her balance.
There was a scream in the confusion, a terrible sound, lost and frightened. Amid the mire of storm clouds and lightning and squawking black birds, Clara saw a white figure topple from the parapet and fall. She heard a sick crunch, a choked noise.
