Sisters of Glass Read online

  Acknowledgments

  With special thanks to Rosie Best

  Dedication

  To my daughters:

  May you always give each other strength

  To fight the battles that matter most

  And never let anyone tell you

  You aren’t powerful

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Part One: Before the Mirror Chapter One: Nalah

  Chapter Two: Halan

  Chapter Three: Nalah

  Chapter Four: Halan

  Chapter Five: Nalah

  Chapter Six: Halan

  Chapter Seven: Nalah

  Chapter Eight: Halan

  Part Two: Into the Mirror Chapter Nine: Nalah

  Chapter Ten: Halan

  Chapter Eleven: Nalah

  Chapter Twelve: Halan

  Chapter Thirteen: Nalah

  Chapter Fourteen: Halan

  Chapter Fifteen: Nalah

  Chapter Sixteen: Halan

  Chapter Seventeen: Nalah

  Chapter Eighteen: Halan

  Chapter Nineteen: Nalah

  Chapter Twenty: Sisters

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Before the Mirror

  Chapter One

  Nalah

  Thauma activity is hereby forbidden to be practiced within the city limits. Under this regulation, no crafts—medicinal, protective, or otherwise—are permitted to be made or sold. The penalty for illegal Thaumaturgic activity may include exile, imprisonment, or, in cases of extreme misuse, physical alteration or execution. Penalties will be decided at the discretion of the Hokmet.

  The Thauma are dangerous. They must be contained.

  Clause 5, “New Hadar Regulations Regarding Thaumaturgic Activity”

  Nalah Bardak bit her lip in concentration as she worked. The heat from the furnace scorched her face, and she twisted her free arm up to wipe a bead of sweat away before carefully drawing the long, hollow steel pole out of the fire. A red-hot bulb of molten glass about the size of her fist clung to the end.

  Nalah glanced behind her and paused, rolling the pole between her hands to keep the glass from dripping off. She waited, listening for footsteps, for her father’s voice outside the door.

  There was nothing. Nobody was coming toward her father’s workshop at the back of the little house on Paakesh Street.

  Good.

  Nalah turned back to the glass, and after one final look out the window to check for spies, carefully dipped and rolled the hot bulb in the flat dish of silver-blue powder that lay on her father’s workbench.

  “Moonstone for luck,” she said quietly, “turquoise for protection.”

  Adding the dust would imbue the object with only a little magic. Harmless magic. Still, she knew that even this much Thauma work was forbidden, that her father would be as angry as any Hokmet enforcer if he found out. But . . .

  But the feeling—the excitement and triumph she felt when the magic took hold—was addictive. She couldn’t stop.

  Nalah dipped the bulb back into the furnace and turned it to keep the gathered glass smooth. Her father should understand the feeling. He’d spent his whole life doing Thauma glasswork—it was who he was. He’d had to stop when the government made all Thauma work illegal, but you can’t just stop being who you are because of some government regulation. She was only twelve years old, but even she knew that.

  There was no going back now, anyway. She’d mixed the powders and lit the furnace. The magic was already taking hold, binding to the glass itself, changing it into something more.

  She pulled the pole out again and began to roll the molten bulb against the marble surface of the workbench, shaping it into a smooth oval, letting it cool just a little. Then she rested the pole on the shaping rail and began teasing and tugging at the glass with her iron tweezers and thin chisel, constantly turning the pole so that her work wouldn’t sag. The glass had the consistency of thick taffy, and looked like the boiled-sugar sweets that Mr. Asiz sold in the market. But this glass was hot enough to melt your skin.

  Nalah held the image of a bird in her mind, imagined its bright eyes and the proud line of its neck. She could feel the beat of its wings and hear its cry as she tweezed out a beak, shaped the creature’s head, and fanned out a chunk from the base to form the tail.

  She rolled and pinched and chiseled, and finally there it was: perched on the end of the steel pole, a blue falcon, still glowing faintly from the inside. The bird’s aspect was noble, but also a tiny bit playful, its head tilted just slightly to one side.

  It was perfect.

  Nalah examined the bird with deep affection, and a bit of the warmth from her chest seemed to trickle down her arm and into her gloved hand—a familiar sizzling sensation that filled her with dread.

  Just calm down, she thought. Take slow breaths and it will go away. This always happened when she got too excited. But she was wearing her father’s thick glassworking gloves and was just holding a metal pole. Not glass. It should be fine.

  For a moment, it had almost looked like the falcon was glowing from within—as if it were still inside the furnace. But when she looked closer, there was nothing out of the ordinary to see. Just a trick of the light, Nalah assured herself.

  “All right,” she told the falcon, “in you go.” She covered the end of the hollow steel pole with her thumb and plunged the bird into a bucket of water. The water roiled for a moment; when it was still, she pulled the bird out and quickly struck the weak point at the base with a chisel. The falcon came away neatly and fell into her gloved hand.

  “Got you,” Nalah said, and jogged across the workshop to put it into the cooling cupboard. “I’ll see you in an hour,” she told the bird, which seemed to give her a sideways look, as if to say, Why so long? She shut the heavy metal door and set the rusty old clock timer on the table for sixty minutes.

  Nalah let out an enormous breath and flopped down into the squashy old armchair in the corner of the room. She tugged off the thick gloves and hooked her legs over the arm of the chair. Her own fawn-colored gloves lay on a side table nearby, where she’d cast them aside when she put on the work gloves. But she wasn’t ready to put them back on just yet. Right now she was enjoying the sensation of air on her hands and fingers, which she felt so rarely. I’ll put them back on later, she told herself.

  This was the worst part. Nalah was good at shaping the glass, but she was bad at waiting. She seized a book with a tattered golden spine from the little side table that stood next to the armchair, but even The Collected Tales of the Great Magos couldn’t hold her interest. Normally, there was nothing Nalah loved more than to escape into the fantastical world of the Magi Kingdom, a fairy-tale land where everything and everyone was bursting with magic. A place where someone like her would be celebrated—not kept secret. But today she was just too excited to concentrate on the stories. She set the book back down.

  She stared into space and tried to think about something else: the weather, her father’s smile when he’d left that morning, which path she’d take to the market later. But she kept sneaking peeks back at the cupboard. She couldn’t wait to to open it up and pull out her latest creation.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the timer let out a metallic ding. Nalah leaped from her chair, tugged open the cooling cupboard, and poked her head inside. The bird, its head slightly cocked, looked up at her as she pulled it out, cradling it carefully in her bare hands. It was a perfect, smooth turquoise. Its beak was sharp, and its eyes seemed to regard her with interest. She ran a finger over the bird’s smooth, warm neck. It almost felt alive.
>
  “You’re so handsome,” she cooed.

  “Nalah! What are you doing?”

  Nalah jumped, spinning on the spot to see her father in the doorway, a basket hanging loosely from his hand. She took a step back, her heart pounding, and her fingers began to tingle.

  No! Not again!

  She tried to breathe slowly and calm her racing heart, but this time, it was no good. A shock of power surged through her body into her hands, like a tidal wave hitting a rock pool, crushing everything in its path.

  The precious glass falcon cracked, a line of white snaking down from its eye deep into its chest.

  In an instant, her father was at her side, tearing off his coat and wrapping the falcon in its folds. He held it tight for a few breathless moments before he relaxed.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Nalah. She nodded, unable to speak.

  I was so close. He was so beautiful. If only I had worn my stupid gloves . . .

  “Nalah, how could you?” her father snapped. She looked up at him and saw the terror in his face morph into anger. “We’ve talked about this! You infused that with magic, didn’t you?”

  “No!” Nalah snapped back. The lie was small, but it still tasted bitter in her mouth. “I just wanted to work with the glass—”

  “But you know what happens.” Mr. Bardak held out the broken falcon, perched in the nest of his rumpled coat. “What if the glass exploded again? You were lucky to get away with a few scars. This time, it could have blinded you! Why would you risk so much for a glass bird?”

  “Because I’m bored!” Nalah blurted. It sounded childish, even to her ears. But it was true. “I’ve read every book in the house eight times,” she continued, trying to make her father understand. “I’ve done all the laundry and washed all the dishes. All I do is walk from here to the market and back, every single day, and I don’t have any—”

  She stopped abruptly. It was just too sad to say out loud.

  “You have friends,” her father said, and Nalah cringed.

  “Forget it, Papa, all right?”

  “But you do, don’t you? There are always lots of other kids at the market.”

  Something inside Nalah cracked, and tears threatened to break through. “The Thauma kids call me No-Luck Bardak,” she said flatly. “They think I break everything I touch. And none of the other kids will even talk to me.”

  Mr. Bardak looked confused. “But I thought you got along with the other Thaumas,” he said. “What about Marcus?”

  “Oh, well . . . Marcus,” Nalah said begrudgingly. “How would you like it if I forbade you to go anywhere or speak to anyone but Marcus?”

  “What’s wrong with young Mr. Cutter?” her father asked.

  “Oh, he’s fine, I guess,” Nalah replied. “He’s just such a show-off. It’s always, ‘I made this’ and ‘I made that.’ He knows that I can’t practice my craft, even without Thauma magic, and it’s like he’s constantly rubbing it in. He thinks he’s so much better than me, Papa—he probably just talks to me out of pity, because no one else does.” Nalah crossed her arms and scowled.

  Her father dropped his coat and parcels on the table and plopped into the armchair. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding tired. “I know this is hard for you. I wish it could be different, I do. But the enforcers are really cracking down on those who don’t observe the new restrictions, arresting anyone even suspected of still trying to sell Thauma crafts. And with your problem—”

  “Papa, they don’t know that it’s a magical Thauma problem—they just think I’m clumsy,” Nalah said. “And anyway, there are still people making Thauma crafts. Marcus just told me his dad has him working on a commission for someone in the Hokmet! If I practiced my craft, I might eventually be able to control it better and stop breaking things. I could—”

  “No!” Mr. Bardak blurted, with surprising force.

  Nalah fell silent, the arguments she’d lined up stilled on her lips. Her father never yelled at her.

  Mr. Bardak took a deep breath. “Marcus’s family is rich,” he said, his voice controlled now. “They have influence with the Hokmet. We don’t. And anyway, it’s not a matter of you needing more practice, Nalah. You’re not like the others. You’re . . . special. But they’d see you as dangerous. They’d take you away from me. They’d—” He stopped himself, and looked away.

  Nalah frowned. She didn’t feel special. She felt like a freak. Set apart from everyone else because of a power she had never asked for. She’d thought that maybe if she just figured out how to control it, she could make it go away. But now she couldn’t even do that. Why? Her father was always a worrier, but this was different. Had something happened?

  “After your mother, I can’t risk losing you, too,” he said with finality. “I’m your father, and you need to trust me. Please, Nalah. Just go to the market and come straight home. Promise me?”

  “I promise,” Nalah said, suddenly feeling very small.

  Her father gave her a weary smile, and then hugged her tight. “I have some errands to run,” he said, rising. He pulled her into a tight embrace. “I’ll see you later, all right? And please, be careful.”

  When he had gone, Nalah stood in the workshop alone, the quiet gathering around her once more. If only she were still six years old, and her father and the market were still enough for her. If only things didn’t have to change.

  But Nalah’s strange power was growing stronger every day—she could feel it, like a rising tide threatening to drown her. She wouldn’t be able to keep it inside forever.

  With a heavy heart, Nalah turned to pick up her gloves from the table. They were made from the thinnest leather her father had been able to find, and as close to the color of her brown skin as he could manage. Nalah appreciated the effort—but sometimes the gloves felt like a brick wall between her and the world. Every time she put them on, she felt a little more shut out.

  With one last look at her broken falcon, Nalah gathered up her wares for the market and went to the door. A breeze washed over Nalah as she stepped out onto the street, carrying the scent of New Hadar: jasmine and petrol, cumin and salt from the Hadar Sea, sweat and palm oil. Big black motorcars rattled down cobblestoned streets, honking at one another like angry, sputtering beasts, while on the horizon Nalah could see one of the hulking cargo ships coming in to port. Skirting around the morning commuters in their sedate black robes, Nalah made her way toward the center of the city, where the gleaming white tower of the Hokmet loomed over Market Street like a sentinel.

  The New Hadar market had once been teeming with stalls and vendors, selling all manner of wonders. Artisans from all four Thauma clans—glasswork, woodwork, fabricwork, and metalwork—had been proudly represented here. Now the market was reduced to a mere dozen stalls, whose once-legendary artisans had been reduced to peddling useless souvenirs.

  Nalah envied the tourists. They could wander down the palm-lined streets, pointing at the old men and women begging for coins, never realizing that many were homeless Thauma who’d once been respected shop owners or artisans, people whose livelihoods had been swept out from under them by a government that feared them. Most of the tourists came from far-off countries and had no knowledge of what really went on in New Hadar with the Thauma population. The Hokmet saw to that.

  Nalah, her basket of baubles held firmly in both hands, turned onto Market Street and wove through a crowd of laughing women in pastel pink headscarves and large dark glasses. She glanced up at an ancient, fading sign painted on the side of an abandoned building:

  MASTER AL-HARTHI’S WOODWORK EMPORIUM

  She looked up at the sign on her way to the market every day. Master al-Harthi’s emporium would have been as grand and magical as her great-grandmother’s glasswork store, but like all the other Thauma stalls and shops, they were both gone now. Nalah’s father sometimes said that the glasswork store had been a cave of wonders, where you could buy mirrors that spoke, and chimes that would ring out the time of day whether there was a
wind or not. Back when real, powerful magic was common and Thaumas were respected.

  After the war, the Thaumas had been blamed for the storms and the earthquakes that had torn fissures through the city. The new Hokmet had preferred electricity to magic. They made sure everyone knew: the wonder-workers were dangerous. Soon, nobody wanted to live near their workshops or use their crafts. And every year, the regulations got more and more strict—until the day that Thauma magic was outlawed altogether.

  By the time Nalah was born, her father said, Thaumas had started to seem romantic to those who had never known their true power. Stories of “forbidden magic” drew tourists to New Hadar. The Hokmet made sure that stories were all they would find.

  The market stalls were laid out in a horseshoe shape, each one festooned with colorful decorations and bright, eye-catching signage. The merchants sat behind their stalls, the white canvas over their heads flapping in the breeze, and called out their wares to passing customers. Jewelry glittered on tables, embroidered robes and scarves billowed in the breeze, and delicately carved figurines stood frozen in dramatic poses. It was beautiful—but lifeless. Before the regulations, the necklaces would have enhanced the beauty of the wearer, the robes would have changed color depending on the time of day, and the figurines—instead of being frozen—would have danced if music began to play.

  Now, all of that was gone.

  Nalah gave a skeptical side-eye to a shrill woman who was selling bejeweled veils in lurid colors.

  “Morning, No-Luck,” the woman sneered when she saw Nalah. Nalah flushed and looked away.

  “Hey, you stay away from my stall,” said the teenage boy at the next table, leaning protectively over ranks of collectible spoons and thimbles.

  Nalah tried to ignore them, but her cheeks burned with the heat of embarassment. If this wasn’t the only time she got to really get out of the house and be on her own, she would have stopped coming to the market a long time ago.