Glass Sword

My silence persists, broken only by steady bites of fish. They’re watching me closely, as instructed. Mom, Dad, Kilorn, Gisa, all pretending not to stare, and failing. The boys are gone, still at Shade’s bedside. Like me, they thought him dead, and are making up for lost time.

“So how did you get here?” The words stick in my mouth, but I force them out. Better I ask the questions before they start in on me.

“Boat,” Dad says gruffly around a slurp of porridge. He chuckles at his joke, pleased with himself. I smile a little, for his sake.

Mom nudges him, clucking her tongue in exasperation. “You know what she means, Daniel.”

“I’m not stupid.” He grumbles, shoveling back another spoonful. “Two days ago, round midnight, Shade popped up on the porch. I mean actually popped.” He gestures with his hands, snapping his fingers. “You know about that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Near gave us all a heart attack, what with the popping and him being, well, alive.”

“I can imagine,” I murmur, remembering my own reaction to seeing Shade again. I thought us both dead, in some place far beyond this madness. But like me, Shade had merely become someone—something—else to survive.

Dad continues, on a roll now, literally. His chair rocks back and forth on squeaky wheels, moving with his wild gestures. “Well, after your mom stopped crying over him, he got down to it. Started throwing stuff in a bag, useless stuff. The porch flag, the pictures, your letter box. Didn’t make no sense, really, but it’s hard to ask anything of a son come back to life. When he said we had to leave, now, right now, I could tell he wasn’t joking. So we did.”

“What about the curfew?” The Measures are still sharp in my head, nails in my skin. How could I forget them, when I was forced to announce them myself? “You could’ve been killed!”

“We had Shade and his . . . his . . .” Dad struggles for the right word, gesturing again.

Gisa rolls her eyes, bored with our father’s antics. “He calls it jumping, remember?”

“That’s it.” He nods. “Shade jumped us past the patrols and into the woods. From there, we went to the river and a boat. Cargo’s still allowed to travel at night, you see, so we ended up sitting in a crate of apples for who knows how long.”

Mom cringes at the memory. “Rotten apples,” she adds. Gisa giggles a little. Dad almost smiles. For a moment, the gray porridge is Mom’s bad stew, the concrete walls become rough-hewn wood, and it’s the Barrows at dinner. It’s home again, and I’m just Mare.

I let the seconds tick by, listening and smiling. Mom jabbers about nothing so I don’t have to speak, letting me eat in quiet peace. She even chases away the stares of the mess hall, meeting every eye that swings my way with a vicious glare I know firsthand. Gisa plays her part too, distracting Kilorn with news of the Stilts. He listens intently, and she bites her lip, pleased by his attention. I guess her little crush hasn’t gone away just yet. That leaves only Dad, glopping through his second bowl of porridge with abandon. He stares at me over the rim of his bowl, and I glimpse the man he was. Tall, strong, a proud soldier, a person I barely remember, so far from what he is now. But like me, like Shade, like the Guard, Dad is not the ruined, foolish thing he seems. Despite the chair, the missing leg, and the clicking contraption in his chest, he’s still seen more battles and survived longer than most. He lost the leg and lung only three months before a full discharge, after near twenty years of conscription. How many make it that far?

We seem weak because we want to. Perhaps those are not Shade’s words at all, but our father’s. Though I’ve only just come into my own strength, he’s been hiding his since he came home. I remember what he said last night, half-hidden in dreams. I know what it is to kill someone. I certainly don’t doubt it.

Strange, it’s the food that reminds me of Maven. Not the taste, but the act of eating itself. My last meal was at his side, in his father’s palace. We drank from crystal glasses and my fork had a pearl handle. We were surrounded by servants, but still very much alone. We couldn’t talk about the night to come, but I kept stealing glances at him, hoping I wouldn’t lose my nerve. He gave me such strength in that moment.

I believed he had chosen me, and my revolution. I believed Maven was my savior, a blessing. I believed in what he could help us do.

His eyes were so blue, full of a different kind of fire. A hungry flame, sharp and strangely cold, tinged with fear. I thought we were afraid together, for our cause, for each other. I was so wrong.

Slowly, I push the plate of fish away, scraping the table. Enough.

The noise draws Kilorn’s eye like an alarm, and he swings back around to face me.

“All done?” he asks, glancing at my half-eaten breakfast.

In response, I stand up, and he jumps to his feet along with me. Like a dog following commands. But not mine. “Can we go to the infirmary?”

Can, we. The words are carefully chosen, a smoke screen to make him forget who and what I am now.

He nods, grinning. “Shade’s doing better by the second. Well, Barrows, care for a trip?” he adds with a glance toward the closest thing he has to a family.

My eyes widen. I need to speak to Shade, to find out where Cal is and what the Colonel plans for him. As much as I missed my family, they’ll only get in the way. Luckily, Dad understands. His hand moves swiftly beneath the table, stopping Mom before she can speak, communicating without words. She shifts, adopting an apologetic smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “We’ll come along later, I think,” she says, meaning much more than those few words. “About time for a battery change, isn’t it?”

“Bugger,” Dad grumbles loudly, tossing his spoon into his bowl of muck.

Gisa’s eyes flicker to mine, reading what I need. Time, space, an opportunity to start untangling this mess. “I’ve got more banners to sort out,” she sighs. “You lot go through them pretty fast.”

Kilorn shrugs off the good-natured jab with a laugh and a crooked smile, like he’s done a thousand times. “Suit yourselves. It’s this way, Mare.”

Condescending as it may be, I let him lead me through the mess. I’m careful to make a show of it, playing up a limp, keeping my eyes downcast. I fight the urge to stare back at everyone watching, the Guardsmen, the Lakelanders, even the refugees. My time in the dead king’s court serves me just as well on a military base, where once again I must hide who I am. Then I pretended to be Silver, unflinching, unafraid, a pillar of strength and power called Mareena. But that girl would be right next to Cal, confined in the missing Barracks 1. So I must be Red again, a girl named Mare Barrow, a girl no one should fear or suspect, reliant on a Red boy and not herself.

Dad and Shade’s warning has never been so clear.

“Leg still bothering you?”

I’m so focused on faking the limp, I barely hear Kilorn’s concern. “It’s nothing,” I finally respond, pressing my lips into a thin line of forced pain. “I’ve had worse.”

“Jumping off Ernie Wick’s porch comes to mind.” His eyes glitter at the memory.

I broke my leg that day, and spent months in a plaster cast that cost both of us half our savings. “That wasn’t my fault.”