Burning Glass (Burning Glass #1)(3)
On the far side of the room, Kira and Dasha awoke in their beds. They felt the mob, too. I knew it. Kira’s face was tear-stained as she moved to Dasha’s bed, where the younger of the two little girls clutched her hair at the scalp.
“Once she is locked in the east wing,” Sestra Mirna said to Basil, “barricade the front door. Are the gates reinforced?”
The old man nodded. “I hope it will be enough. With any luck, the wolves will come before the peasants find a way to break through.”
I gaped at him. “You wish the wolves to devour them because they are hungry?” Basil’s floppy ears and close-set eyes always made him appear sweet. But even he had no pity. “What a horrible thing to say.”
“Not another word!” Sestra Mirna said. New lines of fury carved paths across her wrinkled face. With her emotion escalating inside me, it was all I could do not to strike out at her. I’d never seen her so unraveled. She wasn’t quick to anger, but tending to the sick night and day over the past weeks had pushed her to extremes. “Latch your mind onto someone else’s aura and forget the peasants!” Her nostrils flared. “Your unrestrained empathy will be the ruin of us all!”
Before she could see the tears spring to my eyes, she slammed the door. I clenched my hands. It was no matter that she didn’t know how she hurt me. My unshed tears weren’t for her. They belonged to the freezing swarm of people pressed against the convent’s gates.
As Basil haltingly led me to the east wing, I dug my hands through my hair and clawed at my arms, fighting not to lose myself to the aura of the mob. Their relentless desperation pulsed through my body. They weren’t just hungry. This famine would destroy them, body and soul. It was a pain worse than death if I didn’t feed my children, my village. No, their children, their village.
I flinched and whimpered as Basil dragged my weight through corridor after corridor. The peasants’ single purpose throbbed through my skull until there was no difference between us. Until I was one with them. Until everything became as clear as polished glass.
I formed the only barrier between them and their need.
I was more than the mob. I was the convent gate.
My bones were its welded iron.
I could open my doors. Let them in.
I alone could help them.
With a sidelong glance at Basil, I sized him up, as if seeing him with new eyes. He startled at every shadow, every noise. A mouse could overtake him. He wouldn’t stand in my way.
I scanned the dark alcoves for something with which to incapacitate him. A candlestick for a blow to the head. A length of rope or a sturdy chair.
The entrance to the east wing loomed nearer. Six or seven girls near my age huddled together around the light of a candle—Nadia’s candle. The senior Auraseer was only nineteen and already a master of controlling her ability. Every measure of her ink-stained skin proved her skill. She marked herself when she needed release, and the sharp cut of her quill made the etches permanent. In the last weeks, when the ague had claimed the lives of her elder Auraseers, Nadia did not weep with the rest of us. Instead, she accused me of bringing the disease from the “filthy gypsy camps.” Even if that were true, which it wasn’t, it only gave her cause to rejoice. With her elders now dead, she was next in line to serve the emperor, and that pride showed in the stiff elegance of her neck and the precise way she balanced her head upon it.
She lifted her nose at us as we crossed the threshold into the east wing. “Basil, tell these girls they have nothing to fear.”
He forced a reassuring smile, even though every one of us had the gift to divine what he was really feeling. “Everything is fine. Go back to your warm beds. This happens every winter. The peasants have yet to penetrate the gate.”
A pinch-faced Auraseer—Lena? Lola? I could never remember her name, nor did I wish to—folded her arms. “The peasants have never come in such numbers.” She shivered and the girl beside her placed a hand to her own stomach. They must have sensed the mob, but not like I did. They wouldn’t be standing here if they truly understood the peasants’ need.
“Yes, well, I have firearms if it comes to it,” Basil replied. He drew one of the great doors closed. As it thudded into place, my heart pounded with the peasants’ ravenous urgency. I couldn’t be locked in here. I couldn’t. Not when there were so many mouths to feed.
He set his hand on the latch of the opposite door when the solution to my dilemma presented itself.
Nadia’s eyes narrowed, riveted to mine. The careful balance of her head tipped to the side. “Something is very wrong with you,” she said slowly, her words laced with accusation.
I retreated behind Basil. My fingers grazed his over the latch.
His wiry brows peaked. “What are you—?”
“Stop her!” Nadia shouted.
I kicked Basil in the pit of his knee so he crumpled to the floor. I fetched the gate keys hanging from his pocket, shoved him into the huddle of girls, then darted into the hallway and flung the door shut behind me. The wooden beam boomed into its iron casings as I pulled it down across both doors, fastening them closed. The Auraseers were locked inside. They couldn’t stop me now.
Cries rang out from the other side as the girls rammed their fists against the barricade.
I smiled. They deserved to panic for all the spitefulness they’d doled out on me.