“Noranna’s really excited to show you what she came up with,” Karston tells me, raising his voice over the others. A slight frown crossing his face, he adds, “I thought she might show me first, but she wouldn’t let anyone see until Her Majesty arrived.”
“Knowing Noranna,” Azelie adds from her seat near the window, where she’s making a flower do cartwheels along her forearm, “it’ll begood. She designs the neatest things—like a greenhouse where I can work with all sorts of plants, all year round.”
Seeing anyone do a trick like that with a flower would’ve startled me once, if not shocked me. But now I only feel the barest shiver of wonder as the milky-white orchid on Azelie’s arm takes a bow.
“You’re only excited about that greenhouse because we haven’t started building it yet,” Karston says to Azelie, shaking his head. “Wait till you’ve spent a few days swinging a hammer, and you’ll start dreading the work as much as the rest of us.”
Listening to their easy banter makes me think of the way Jax, Simeon, Evander, and I used to joke when we weren’t training.
“Have you seen Jax lately?” I ask Karston in a low voice.
Jax missed our last two practice sessions with the volunteer army, and I haven’t had a chance to really talk to him since the day of the protest on the palace lawn. Before that, it seemed like things between us were on the mend. I hope they still are.
“He’s probably at the Rotten Rose.” Karston shrugs, seemingly unaware of how troublesome that news is. “That’s where he said he planned to head after his patrol shift yesterday. Usually, when he goes there, he doesn’t come back for a while.”
A flicker of alarm crosses Valoria’s face as she overhears, and I nod grimly. I’ve never been inside the Rotten Rose, a pub deep in the Ashes, but I’ve heard the name in passing. It’s the only place in the city where Kasmira and her crew won’t go for a drink.
“So,” Karston says, drawing my attention again with a smile and a look. “Any chance the students here can enlist in the army you’re training?”
It’s not a bad idea. Since people are afraid of the change that the students at the school represent, they might eventually take out that fear on one of them. They’ll stand a better chance if they know how to fight.
As if sensing my thoughts, Azelie leans forward and, in her usual bubbly voice, says, “Don’t look so worried. We’re working on creating our own defenses for this place, and for the palace as well. You’ll seesoon enough, I think.” Grinning at me, she adds, “But it’ll be worth coming to training just to see you kick some ass.”
Shaking my head, I mutter, “Thanks, Zee.”
She makes her flower walk from her arm to mine, using its drooping leaves like a pair of legs. It climbs up to my shoulder and kisses my cheek with its petals to applause from everyone watching us.
Someone nearby chuckles softly, a good-natured sort of laugh. Glancing toward the sound, I meet Valoria’s eyes for the briefest moment. It’s good to hear her laugh again.
As I excuse myself from Karston to make my way to her side, Simeon emerges from another room, his arm around the shoulders of the curly-haired girl who showed Azelie around on her first day here. Noranna.
She keeps her doe-brown eyes trained on Valoria as she moves away from Simeon to give the queen a bow, then clears her throat. Everyone goes quiet.
“Before you gave me my super-arm,” Noranna begins in a soft and steady voice, gesturing to the metallic lower half of her right arm, “I got by just fine. I wasn’t always happy, but I did things my way, and most days, that was okay.” She swallows. “But when you gave me this”—she taps her fingers against the metal with a hint of pride— “I felt complete. Not at first, but after a while, I realized I could do things better than before.” Gazing around at the other students, her lips twitch into a slight smile as she says, “Maybe even better than some of my friends here.”
I sneak a glance at Valoria, whose eyes glisten with admiration as she puts both hands on the wolf’s head that tops her cane.
“So anyway,” Noranna continues, excitement making her words come out in a rush, “when you asked us for help building a defense forKarthia, I thought: What if we had soldiers that were as strong as my super-arm? No amount of skill would stand a chance against them. I was already building mechanical people to serve as butlers, so I just had to tweak the design a bit, and now I’m proud to present...”
Her voice trails away as she runs back into the small side room she and Simeon came from earlier.
“Your very own indestructible soldiers!” she shouts from out of sight.
There’s a creaking, like rusty door hinges but louder, and clanging, like the cooks throwing pots around in the palace kitchens, as three figures march stiffly into the library. Sunlight gleams off their iron bodies and the spears clutched in their hands as they shuffle deeper into the room, cutting a path through the students.
I step back, almost bumping into Karston as the soldiers draw near. He steadies me with a hand on my elbow, though his awed gaze stays fixed on the three metal figures marching.
Noranna reappears in time to hear Valoria declare, “They’re fantastic! But how do you get them to move? I must know.” In a lower voice, she adds more to herself than anyone else, “Amazing. Dreaming up things and seeing them become reality.Thisis the future I want for Karthia.”
“So, there are two cords in the back that you pull,” Noranna says, missing Valoria’s softly muttered words in the excitement of her big moment. “One to make them walk, and one that makes them use the spears. Their hands have every joint a real one does, since I followed the design you used for my arm, but then I added—”
The rest of her words are drowned out as the soldier in front walks into a bookcase, causing not only the books but the large wooden shelf to come crashing down on top of it. There’s a screeching of metal that makes everyone cringe as the other two soldiers collidewith each other and the mess. Down they go, their spears flying from their hands.
I duck, pulling Azelie down with me and muttering a curse under my breath.
Everyone else shouts and scatters, too. Except Noranna.
“I...” She stammers, standing frozen amidst the wreckage. “I guess they need some work still.” Her eyes shimmer as she crouches beside the mess and lifts a book, its cover now torn off, from the rubble.
