The Glass Spare Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Aprilynne, who takes ideas and turns them into gold

  EPIGRAPH

  AT THE HEART

  OF ALL BEAUTY LIES

  SOMETHING INHUMAN.

  —ALBERT CAMUS

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Lauren DeStefano

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  ON THE MORNING WIL WAS born, the queen ordered that sheets be hung across every window of the castle. It was an old superstition from her wanderer’s upbringing, to keep fragile spirits from being lured off by the beautiful song of death. It was a song that only the queen could hear, calling sweetly in the rustle of the October leaves—for it had come to take her away as well.

  In her efforts to have a daughter, the queen had given the king three sons, and it was against the advisement of the king’s finest doctors that she have a fourth child at all. The queen knew this child could well kill her.

  Wil came out bloody and white, with purple veins marbling her cheeks, and no promises that she would live. She didn’t cry as her brothers had, but the most peculiar thing about her was the birthmark that lay between the spread of her ribs. It was a clean white line, as though someone had cut her open, torn out her heart, and returned it.

  The king had always been fearless, but he feared her. When his sons were born, they had been perfect dolls of boys. But in this child’s eyes, he saw something very much unlike his other children. Something that did not belong to this world at all.

  Wil would be the last spare. For days after her birth, both mother and child lay in the shadow of sheets that hung over the windows, curled up small together in the wealth of blankets damp with sweat. But they did not die, despite what the doctors had murmured.

  On many nights in Wil’s childhood, the queen would hold her and rock her to sleep, and she would whisper, “Death itself is no match for you. The day you were born, it shrank away in fear.”

  ONE

  YOU’RE WIND. YOU’RE EVERYWHERE.

  Rawhide bag slung across her chest, Wil pushed into the crowd.

  She went past the storefronts and cafes, straight to the vendors whose carts lined the Port Capital’s edge. The Port Capital ended where the sidewalk was hemmed by a low stone wall. Just over its edge, the ocean’s waves were some ten feet below, slapping against the stone and then rolling back into their depths.

  She loved it here; she loved that her footsteps on the cobbles became a part of the city’s hard beating pulse. In the Port Capital, she was not the princess who had never left her kingdom. She could carry herself as though the sea was an old friend, as though she’d been everywhere and seen it all. Anyone might believe it.

  The Port Capital was the finest trading center the world had to offer: a city made of stone and geometric oak beams, twelve-paned windows that glistened like tiny pieces of sun. It sat on the edge of a restless sea that tumbled and rolled right into the open mouth of the sky.

  But venturing into its shadows carried its own feeling of dread—no matter how many times she had done it.

  Gerdie frequently employed her to run these errands; he might go himself, if he weren’t so perpetually lost in the throes of his genius. He was quite good at scaling the stone wall. But, as it was, sunlight hadn’t touched him for days.

  He would be at the castle now, maddened with purpose, the glow of his cauldron tracing the bags under his blue eyes, his monocle gleaming. He would be muttering, whispering, pleading with the elements he manipulated.

  The materials he needed for these endeavors always seemed to lead her to the underground market. Still, being the sister of an alchemist prodigy had its advantages. One of her favorite of his creations was sheathed to her thigh: a slender dagger with a cruel crescent arch. At a glance, its floral etchings were purely decorative, but with one clockwise twist of the hilt, the pin-size holes in those etchings would well with sleep serum. The instant blood was drawn, the fight would be over.

  She also wore a pair of his old boots that came to her knees. He wouldn’t miss them. They were too small for him now, and a childhood spent at the mercy of Gray Fever meant none of his shoes had gotten much wear. The fever was a vicious illness that embedded into the spinal cord. If its victims lived at all, they were often left paralyzed. Gerdie had been bedbound for months at a time, and rarely well enough to be allowed outside.

  The clock tower had just chimed noon, and by now, everything unloaded from shipping crates would be for sale in shops and in the vendors’ market.

  Everything.

  As usual, she’d chosen the least assuming outfit she could find for a journey into the Port Capital. It was a blue dress, without the frill and fanfare of most things her mother had tailored for her. At the collar was a simple beaded floral pattern in the typical Northern fashion, whose threading was beginning to wear. Unremarkable. All this added to her invisibility quite nicely, Wil thought. Invisibility in plain sight was her finest skill, forged over a lifetime as the third spare in the royal line.

  She stopped at a vendor selling hunks of glittering stone affixed to cheap metal chains. “From the famed mountain palace of the Southern Isles,” the vendor was shouting in Nearsh, to whoever would listen.

  A fake accent, Wil knew, just like the stones. Nearsh was the language of Arrod, but because Northern Arrod was the trading hub of the world, it was adopted by nomads and ports around the world.

  The woman was well dressed, in a crisp red tunic and matching trousers that belled at the ankles, ruffled with pristine black lace. Something like the outfits displayed in the storefronts here, which meant it was purchased here. Probably an indication that she would pack up her wares and phony accent and be gone by the time next week’s import ships departed; Wil had seen it dozens of times before.

  A young boy and girl sat at her feet, peering at passersby under the slats in the cart. The children were equally pristine and dressed in a matching green dress and vest set, respectively. They caught Wil’s eyes, and their casual interest in the crowd took on a new purpose. The vendor glanced at her too. “Fancy a necklace for those lovely collarbones of yours?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for something shinier,” Wil said, cautious. The children were still watching her. She extended her index finger and gave three quick taps to the strap of her bag. An innocent enough gesture, unless her suspicions were correct.

  The girl crawled out from under the cart. “Were you looking for sterling chains instead?” she asked. Her accent sounded Eastern.

  Wil raised her chin in a nod.

  The und
erground vendors loved to send the girls to hook their customers. Young orphan girls with ribbons in their hair, or elegant young women with soft faces and sweet smiles, all to mask the sinister depths of their trade.

  The boy moved as though he wanted to stand. The vendor cast the boy a look, though, and it rooted him. The vendor likely wasn’t any relation to them—just a lackey—but the boy was clearly the girl’s brother. It wasn’t merely their resemblance Wil noticed but the way the boy looked at the girl. Like letting her go off alone was the same as casting a gem into the sea.

  Owen looked at her that way.

  For her part, the little girl was unafraid. She gave Wil a smile that didn’t reach her steely eyes. “My father makes the finest jewelry you’ll find anywhere in the world,” she said. “Follow me.”

  The girl walked with purpose, her twin braids gleaming in the hot August sun. She moved expertly through the crowd without touching any of the passersby, Wil at her heels.

  Arrod was an ancient kingdom, and many of its buildings were hundreds of years old, outfitted for electricity but otherwise untouched. Beyond the bustle at the docks, where shadows of tall stone buildings stamped out the sun in their alleyways, it was like stepping into a cartographer’s old map: blanched bone white by sun, the windows dark and blank, no indication that time had changed a single stroke of ink.

  Here was where the wealth of Northern Arrod receded into disrepair. Twenty years earlier, a storm had flooded the Port Capital, and its outskirts had never recovered. Towering stone buildings with dark oak trim were left to the elements. Wil thought they were beautiful, and the tragedy of their abandon made them even more so.

  But she knew better than to mention renovations to her father; a king had no time to deal with the poor, she’d heard him say many times. Not with territories to conquer and leaders to reason with. Not with the reins of the world in his fists.

  A laundry line hung between two windows, pinioned by tiny tattered dresses.

  The little girl led Wil down the alleyway under the laundry line, and they came to a stop at a metal door. The dagger at Wil’s thigh felt more present at the sight of it. Metal doors. She hated those. They were much harder to escape if things got ugly. And in the forgotten outskirts of the Port Capital, things did tend to get ugly.

  She began to clench her fists, but thought better of it and quickly slackened her hands. Best to use her small stature and unremarkable face to her advantage, to play the part of a defenseless girl off on a fool’s errand.

  You’re wind. You’re everywhere.

  The little girl knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice more. After several beats, the door yawned open. The girl slipped past the man who had opened it, into the darkness that swallowed her immediately.

  The man was tall. He had boulders for muscles, marred by veins. His mere presence was a warning. He took in the sight of Wil, expressionless.

  Gerdie had better appreciate this.

  “Powders or metals?” His voice was a rasp.

  Doing her best to sound deadpan, Wil replied, “Powders. Tallim.”

  Tallim was a paralytic when boiled, highly illegal, and difficult to smuggle because of its strong scent. And, unfortunately, this meant the underground market could only obtain it in small quantities. Wil would cheerfully haul a ton of the stuff in a burlap sack all the way back to the palace for her brother if it meant never having to go through the ordeal of getting it again.

  The man studied her. Not much to see, he must have been thinking. Just a girl, with eyes as dark as a moonless night, and long tangled hair to match. On her head was a pair of orange data goggles—a common tourist trinket. No visible weapons. Not much by way of height—even Gerdie, whose growth had been stunted by his many bouts of illness, towered over her. And he certainly wouldn’t think she was at all related to the Royal House of Heidle—those princes with their aquamarine eyes and blond hair, just like the king and queen.

  The man moved aside to let her in, as she’d suspected he would.

  The room was small, its windows boarded up from the inside—as were many of the windows here.

  There was a single gas lantern hanging from the ceiling. Four children sat on the floor, measuring minerals from unmarked tins beside an empty shipping crate. Orphans, most likely, sold and traded like the goods they handled. The children held each spoonful up to the dim light, inspecting it, making sure they had not been dealt fillers like sand or sugar, before packaging them into neat little pine boxes.

  On the other side of the unfurnished room, a man sat in the darkness, sorting through various bits and gears—precious metals molded and disguised to look like old machine parts. They would have to be melted down, probably diluted with something cheap to add bulk and get a higher price.

  Wil recognized the tallim immediately. It was the pile of foul green granules that smelled like sewage and bonfire. The children hadn’t gotten around to sorting it yet. It was in an open container at their feet.

  The man sorting the metals was thin, and he appeared frail. Indebted to the dealer, perhaps, and maybe even the father to one of these children. He was emaciated, his cheekbones cutting sharp dunes in his face. He didn’t look like much of a threat, but Wil kept him in her periphery. She stood with her back to the wall. See everything. Be everywhere.

  The smell of this place was overwhelming. Must and chemicals and sweaty skin. Without air circulation of any kind, the heat was unrelenting.

  “It’s a thousand geldstuk,” the muscular man said.

  There wasn’t much room to haggle, Wil knew. It was on the low end of what she’d paid before. “All I have is eight hundred.” Her voice was toneless. Paying asking price was what a wealthy girl would do—a girl worth following home, worth targeting for ransom.

  The man advanced on her, pinning her with one arm against the wall. Wil’s eyes flickered to the hollow below his throat. The jugular notch. A hidden vulnerable spot amid a fleshy sea of muscle.

  He leaned so close that his breath grazed her lips. “The price is a thousand.” He was looking at her mouth, her chest, and then, at last, her eyes. “But we can work something out.”

  Owen’s voice filled her head. Only instigate a fight you can win.

  The man was thrice her size, easily. But Wil had the element of surprise on her side. He wouldn’t be expecting much pushback from a small thing like her.

  In the shadows beyond the reach of the lantern, the little girl had moved to stand beside the man dealing with the metals. Despite the bravado she’d put forth in the streets, she seemed frightened now, in this confined room. And there was something else in that fear, Wil noticed. What was it? Expectancy?

  Her throat went dry. What had this girl seen this man do to other potential customers?

  The man grinned at Wil. The dagger was beginning to feel more and more necessary. The only law in the outskirts was barter. There were no uniformed kingsmen patrolling these cracked roads. A cry for help was the same as an alarm signaling the arrival of easy prey.

  “Five minutes with you seems worth the two hundred geldstuk you owe me,” the man said.

  Wil hadn’t expected this to be easy, but she had hoped. Mostly, the underground vendors tried to swindle her with diluted wares, or packets of dyed sugar. Sometimes they pretended to be feeble or blind to earn her trust. Wil favored that lot of crooks. At least their stares didn’t seep through her skin like canmar poison, rotting her from the inside once it got into the blood. She felt sick. But her senses heightened.

  If this was how the man wanted it to be, she had no choice. The last time she had agreed to pay full price, the vendor, an old woman feigning feebleness, suspected she was a child of Arrod’s famed wealth and tried to follow her home. Three of her lackeys had melted out of the alleyway and joined her; Wil escaped the four of them and was nearly shot for her trouble.

  “Please,” she whispered. “All I have is eight hundred. I can come back in a week with the rest.” She curled a loose fist against her
mouth, her eyes flitting nervously downward.

  The man traced a wisp of dark hair that had fallen loose from her clumsy ponytail. The touch radiated deep into her stomach, churning an uneasy tide.

  He smiled.

  Wil’s fist tightened, and in a single sweep, she threw her full weight into her arm and slammed the side of her fist to the man’s nose.

  The cartilage snapped.

  He staggered back, dazed, choking up a mouthful of thick blood.

  But it didn’t render him unconscious. He would overcome his shock in seconds. Wil rushed past him, to the tin of tallim, and a discarded cloth to serve as a lid. She got a lungful of granules for her effort, and her eyes filled with tears from the sting of the next painful breath.

  She sensed the man coming at her a moment before she whirled to face him. He managed to get out a slurred obscenity, but his gruff voice was fading. There was a dagger in his hand now, its blade small against his enormous fist. He lunged at her and she arched back and then to the left, out of the way of his blade’s path. She grasped the knob of the metal door, tallim spilling out as she jostled the tin.

  Locked. Why did the doors always have to be locked? There was a window; she’d seen it when she first assessed the room. It was boarded up from the inside, but she’d be able to fit through if she could loose one of the planks. There had to be something she could use to pry it away. She looked to the tools the metalworker was using.

  The man came at her again, and she twirled around him as though in a dance, making him dizzy when he spun to follow her movement.

  She’d hoped her blow would stupefy him long enough for her to get away, but he seemed to be regaining himself.

  She reached for her dagger an instant before he reached for her throat. She was just able to twist the hilt. The crescent arch slashed his bicep, drawing a crimson line. He grunted and stumbled forward faster than Wil could evade him. He had her on her back, her wrists pinned, the breath gone from her lungs.

  The tin hit the ground hard, scattering the tallim across the floor, the granules falling through the cracks in the rotted wooden floor.