Now when Rose looked at her, it was with sympathy. Or worse, she didn’t look at all.
Frustrated, Pilar peeled back a flap of canvas. They were deep into Shabeeka now. Sandy dirt roads, buildings of mud and wood and limestone. There was no glass in the glass city. One more bill of goods she’d been sold.
And then she saw it. The caravan veered down a wide street, and at the far end, an enormous structure appeared. Pilar sucked in her breath.
The building was made of glass. Every wall a different color, cut into a different shape. Her sharp eyes took in spheres, cubes, diamonds, waves. The walls dipped and rose—some smoothly curved, others sliced at sharp angles. One whole surface was blue and rippling. Were those fish swimming inside the glass?
Beyond the fish, she saw bigger blurs. People, she assumed. It seemed laughable, imagining humans in a house of glass. Wouldn’t they constantly knock into the walls?
In the front courtyard, a clear staircase led to a massive gold door. The entire building seemed to be hovering a few feet off the ground. Obviously a mirage. They’d been in the desert too long.
Pilar rubbed her eyes.
The building was definitely hovering.
“We’re here,” Nell said, waking with a start. She hadn’t even looked outside, yet somehow she knew.
Mia peered out of the caravan, clearly as awestruck as Pilar.
“Is it . . . ?”
“Floating? Oh yes. That’s just one of the many strange things you’re about to see, believe me. Remember what I taught you about the Elemental Hex? The House of Shadows was built on an ancient source of power: the Elemental Whorl. All the elements are suspended in perfect balance, no human intervention required. The Whorl is strong enough to hold the whole House, and supple enough to adapt to the wind. The sands here are always shifting. This is why other structures sink, some become totally submerged. But the House hovers, impervious to time.”
“Till the glass cities sink into the western sands,” Mia murmured. Familiar words, though Pilar couldn’t place them.
She felt pulled toward the House of Shadows, and also repelled. It was too open. Too exposed. Pilar thought of Dove’s underground torture chamber, where she’d stood, unable to move, staring at her reflection in frosty black ice. Not so different from glass, really.
Of course, the Shadowess didn’t torture children to fuel a kingdom. Or so Nell said. You couldn’t be too careful.
“Great sands,” Nell murmured. “Four years and it hasn’t changed a bit.”
They stepped out of the caravan, which wasted no time trundling off without them. For a moment they stood in perfect silence, staring up at the House.
“What’s that?” Pilar pointed to a coil of glass stones in the courtyard. The path looped in on itself, then looped back, then looped back again. Which was pointless, when she thought about it.
“A labyrinth,” Nell said. “It’s how everyone enters the House. Sometimes you have to go backward to go forward.” She groaned. “Listen to me, I sound just like her! That’s the problem with the Shadowess’s little sayings: once you’ve heard them, they’re stuck in your head forever.”
After a month of silence, Nell was suddenly doling out all kinds of little gems about the Shadowess. It seemed suspicious. Who cared if the Shadowess was appointed to her position? That meant some self-righteous temple of experts gave her power, not the people she served. In Pilar’s experience, people with power were all the same. Her mother. King Ronan. Lord Dove. Orry.
No one should have that kind of power. It was too easy to abuse.
“Shall we, then?” Nell started toward the House. “I can’t wait to show you the Creation Studio . . . Oh! And the Curatorium, of course. I think you’ll love it, Mia, scientist that you are.”
When she beckoned, Rose followed.
Maybe Nell wouldn’t abandon them at the House, Pilar realized. Maybe Nell would stay, and she and Mia would become lovers. Or friends. Or sisters.
Pilar’s heart sank. There was more than one way to be abandoned.
She clenched her fists. It wasn’t too late. She could leave them before they left her.
“Pilar?”
Mia had stopped walking. Pivoted halfway.
“You coming?”
Pilar’s heart lifted. Mia was waiting for her.
“The thing about a labyrinth,” Nell said, “is that there’s only one place you can end up. Which is exactly the place you were meant to end up all along.”
Pilar unclenched her fists. Swallowed. And stepped onto the first glass stone.
Chapter 7
Home
“WHERE,” SAID TOBIN, RISING from the piano bench, “are your manners?”
Quin stood in the not-so-deserted brothel, mouth agape, still trying to parse this unexpected reunion with his music teacher.
“My . . .”
“Not your manners. Gods, no.” Toby flourished a hand toward his band of unsmiling acolytes, the way an innkeeper might flourish a hand toward a plate of bad cheese. “Don’t you remember how to address a royal? All hail the son of Clan Killian!”
“Uncontested king of Glas Ddir,” muttered a gravelly voice behind him.
Someone snickered to Quin’s left, and it echoed through the group. He bristled. Was his rightful claim to the throne so amusing? He glanced over his shoulder, hoping it wasn’t Domeniq. But Dom was nowhere in sight.
Instead Quin saw a girl of eleven or twelve, with cropped dirty-blond hair and puckish blue eyes. When those eyes met his, she did not laugh. She curtsied. A tiny curtsy—presumably so as not to provoke the others’ ire—but a curtsy nonetheless.
“Silence,” Tobin reprimanded the others, and the snickers immediately ceased. “Forgive them, Your Grace. We’re all in need of a good laugh.”
Were these people loyal to Tobin? They certainly seemed to listen when he spoke. Quin winced, remembering the last time he and Tobin had seen each other. As Quin and Mia fled the Kaer, Toby had emerged from the shadows with bread and snow plums—stale and moldy, respectively. Quin knew he deserved far worse. What struck him that night was how old Tobin had looked, how tired. So painfully diminished from the dazzling prodigy he once was.
“What should we do with him, Toby?” said the big fellow to Quin’s left, presumably the same jester who’d found his claim to the throne hilarious.
“Take him with us, of course.”
“Alive?”
Tobin massaged his temples. “Is that so hard to grasp?”
“But we . . .” The man looked to the others, uncertain. “We don’t believe in kings.”
“Pinch him, if you must. I’m fairly certain he exists.”
This seemed to confound the man, who frowned and folded his arms over his burly chest. The others looked equally uncertain.
Tobin’s silver eyes locked onto Quin’s, and he did not look away.
“Four gods,” Quin said, realizing. “You’re the Embers.”
Toby looked pleased. “Our reputation precedes us! I must admit: I’m surprised you’ve heard of us. You’ve been gone quite awhile now. All the way to Luumia, I hear, chasing after your wife.” He tapped his upper lip, thoughtful. “Or were you running away from your other wife?”