It’s a funny thing, but Hitler wouldn’t have called himself a Nazi. Indeed, he became quite offended when anyone did suggest he was a Nazi. He would have considered himself a National Socialist. Nazi is, and always has been, an insult.
The standard butt of German jokes at the beginning of the twentieth century were stupid Bavarian peasants. And just as Irish jokes always involve a man called Paddy, so Bavarian jokes always involved a peasant called Nazi. That’s because Nazi was a shortening of the very common Bavarian name Ignatius. This meant that Hitler’s opponents had an open goal. He had a party filled with Bavarian hicks and the name of that party could be shortened to the standard joke name for hicks.
Dreams
“And what if we end up separated?”
“I will find you, little wife, wherever you go. But when we reach
Kahedin, I need you to enter his mind and force him to agree to the letter I
sent him. Can you do that?”
“I can do that in the dream,” I say, “but I can’t be sure he’ll follow
through in real life when he wakes up. My power usually works only so
long as I maintain connection.”
“It should work,” Talan says. “Dreams are powerful. As long as you
really imprint the notion in his mind that he must do it, he’ll do it when he
wakes up. Trust me.”
I nod. “Okay. I can do that.”
“Good. Take my hand.”
I take his hand in mine, my heart quickening.
“Watch the flames.” Talan’s voice is low and hypnotic. “Imagine your
body becoming lighter. You are drifting into mist, floating along with the
clouds above Lake Avalon.”
I stare at the fire, an ember floating up. I follow it with my eyes, and the
world grows dimmer as Talan’s magic whispers around me, kissing my
skin. Even now, I intuitively try to maintain the veil in my mind, but he
doesn’t try to intrude. Instead, he gently leads me away from my body and
into the dream world.
The world around me swims into focus. I’m in a garden, and warm sun
spreads over my skin. It’s clearly summer here, and enormous roses are in
full bloom around me. Rue and marigolds blossom, and hawthorns and
mulberry trees line the path leading up to a white palace. Fish swim in a
little pond, and the water glitters under the summer sky. Bees hum in the air,
and blackbirds warble in the boughs. A warm breeze whispers over my bare
thighs.
Talan stands next to me, taking in the scene. “I didn’t imagine Kahedin
would dream of beauty like this. He always seems like such a soulless
Reklam
The court and University coalesced in a concerted effort to unseat Benedict XIII. Although they knew him well, the French were offended by the election of a Spaniard, and he, though nobly born, did not have the kinship with Valois, Bourbons, and Counts of Savoy which had made Clement, from the French point of view, “one of us.” An end to the schism became the more imperative as the tocsin for crusade rang more insistently. Hungarian ambassadors were on their way to France; the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria had already arrived with a tale of woe.
Her game plan
“Why isn’t anyone watching us?”
He only blinks at me. “So there is a difference,” he mutters. What that means I don’t know, and it infuriates me.
“Why?”
“Mare, I’m here to teach you your histories, to teach you how to be Silver and how to be, ah, useful,” he says, his expression souring.
I stare at him, confused. Cold fear bleeds through me. “My name is Mareena.”
But he only waves a hand, brushing aside my feeble declaration. “I’m also going to try to understand exactly how you came to be and how your abilities work.”
“My abilities came to be because—because I’m a Silver. My parents’ abilities mixed—my father was an oblivion and my mother a storm.” I stutter through the explanation Elara fed me, trying to make him understand. “I’m a Silver, sir.”
To my horror, he shakes his head. “No you are not, Mare Barrow, and you must never forget it.”
He knows. I’m finished. It’s all over. I should beg, plead for him to keep my secret, but the words stick in my throat. The end is coming, and I can’t even open my mouth to stop it.
“There’s no need for that,” he continues, noting my fear. “I have no plans of alerting anyone to your heritage.”
The relief I feel is short-lived, shifting into another kind of fear. “Why? What do you want from me?”
“I am, above all things, a curious man. And when you entered Queenstrial a Red servant and ran out some long-lost Silver lady, I have to say I was quite curious.”
“Is that why there aren’t any cameras in here?” I bristle, backing away from him. My fists clench, and I wish the lightning would come to protect me from this man. “So there’s no record of you examining me?”
“There are no cameras in here because I have the power to turn them off.”
Hope sparks in me, like light in absolute darkness. “What is your power?” I ask shakily. Maybe he’s like
Sayfa 128
A marrige
I remember the queen’s words. “Well, I’m not sorry you can’t kill me.”
The king chuckles. “They didn’t say you were quick.”
Relief floods through me. Death does not wait for me here. Not yet.
The king throws down a stack of papers, all of them covered in writing. The top sheet has the usual information, including my name, birth date, parents, and the little brown smear that is my blood. My picture is there too, the one on my identification card. I stare down at myself, into bored eyes sick of waiting in line to have my picture taken. How I wish I could jump into the photo, into the girl whose only problems were conscription and a hungry belly.
“Mare Molly Barrow, born November seventeenth, 302 of the New Era, to Daniel and Ruth Barrow,” Tiberias recites from memory, laying my life bare. “You have no occupation and are scheduled for conscription on your next birthday. You attend school sparingly, your academic test scores are low, and you have a list of offenses that would land you in prison in most cities. Thievery, smuggling, resisting arrest, to name but a few. All together you are poor, rude, immoral, unintelligent, impoverished, bitter, stubborn, and a blight upon your village and my kingdom.”
The shock of his blunt words takes a moment to sink in, but when it does, I don’t argue. He’s entirely right.
“And yet,” he continues, rising to his feet. This close, I can see his crown is deathly sharp. The points can kill. “You are also something else. Something I cannot fathom. You are Red and Silver both, a peculiarity with deadly consequences you cannot understand. So what am I to do with you?”
Is he asking me? “You could let me go. I wouldn’t say a word.”
The queen’s sharp laughter cuts me off. “And what about the High Houses? Will they keep silent as well?
Sayfa 83
What!!!
The ash takes shape, re-forming into the shadow. It engulfs me in darkness, until a wave of memories overtakes me again. Gisa’s hand. Kilorn’s conscription. Dad coming home half-dead. They blur together, a swirl of too-bright color that hurts my eyes. Something is not right. The memories move backward through the years, like I’m watching my life in reverse. And then there are events I can’t possibly remember: learning to speak, to walk, my child brothers passing me between them while Mom scolds. This is impossible.
“Impossible,” the shadow says to me. The voice is so sharp, I fear it might crack my skull. I fall to my knees, colliding with what feels like concrete.
And then they’re gone. My brothers, my parents, my sister, my memories, my nightmares, gone. Concrete and steel bars rise around me. A cage.
I struggle to my feet, one hand on my aching head as things come into focus. A figure stares at me from beyond the bars. A crown glitters on her head.
“I’d bow, but I might fall over,” I say to Queen Elara, and immediately I wish I could call back the words. She’s a Silver, I can’t talk to her that way. She could put me in the stocks, take away my rations, punish me, punish my family. No, I realize in my growing horror. She’s the queen. She could just kill me. She could kill us all.
But she doesn’t look offended. Instead, she smirks. A wave of nausea washes over me when I meet her eyes, and I double over again.
“That looks like a bow to me,” she purrs, enjoying my pain.
I fight the urge to vomit and reach out to grab the bars. My fist clenches around cold steel. “What are you doing to me?”
“Not much of anything anymore. But this—” She reaches through the bars to touch my temple. The pain triples beneath her finger, and I fall against the bars, barely conscious
Sayfa 80
Reklam
Reklam