NAME : LUTHFIA USWATUN HASANAH

NIM : 204190023 / TBI-A

SUMMARY 4

Glass Sword ( Red Queen 2 )

They seem weak because they want to. Shade was talking about the Guard when he said that,
explaining their motives. Now she (Mare) wonder if he wasn’t also trying to convey a message.
Like words hidden in a letter long ago.

Mare said, “I need to get off this thing." Despite the strange angle of the room and the persistent
ringing in her head, her feet know what to do. They have not forgotten the mud of the Stilts, the
nights spent in alleys, or the obstacle courses of Training. She wrench the door open, gasping for
breath like a girl drowned. But the stale, filtered air of the mersive offers her no respite. She need
the smell of trees, water, spring rains, even summer heat or winter snow. Something to remind
her of the world beyond this suffocating tin can.

The mersive levels out beneath them, but no one stumbles. Not even Cal, who has nowhere near
her balance or Kilorn’s sea legs, hard earned on a fishing boat. He’s taut as a wire, waiting for
Mare to take the lead. It should make me laugh, the thought of a prince deferring to her, but she's
too cold and worn to do much of anything but carry on.

So she does it. Down the corridor, with Cal and Kilorn in tow, to the throng of Guardsmen
waiting by the ladder that brought them down here in the first place. The wounded go first, tied
onto makeshift stretchers and hoisted up into the open night. Farley supervises, her shift even
bloodier than before. She makes for a grim sight, tightening bandages, with a syringe between
her teeth. A few of the worse off get shots as they pass, medication to help with the pain of being
moved up the narrow tube. Shade is the last of the injured, leaning heavily on the two
Guardsmen who teased Kilorn about the nurse. Mare would push through to him, but the crowd
is too tight, and I don’t want any more attention today. Still too weak to teleport, he has to
fumble on one leg and blushes furiously when Farley straps him onto a stretcher. Mare can’t hear
what she says to him, but it calms him somewhat. He even waves off her syringe, instead gritting
his teeth against the jarring pain of being hoisted up the ladder. Once Shade is safely carried up,
the process goes much faster. One after the other, Guardsmen follow one another up the ladder,
slowly clearing the corridor. Many of them are nurses, men and women marked by white shifts
with varying degrees of bloodstains.

The cold Mare felt on the mersive and in the rain persists, even when She's ushered into the
doorway of the barracks marked with a painted black “3.” She's cold in my bones, in my heart.
But Mare can’t let her parents see that, for their sake. Mare owen them this much. They must
think her whole, unbroken, unaffected by Cal’s imprisonment and my own ordeals in a palace
and an arena. And the Guard must think she's on their side—relieved to be “safe.”

They believe as Mare do, in an end to Silver kings and Red slaves. They sacrificed soldiers for
me, because of her. They are her allies, her brethren, brothers and sisters in her arms—but the
blood-eyed man gives her pause. He is not Farley. She might be gruff and single-minded, but she
knows what Mare have been through. She can be reasoned with. Mare doubt reason lives in the
heart of the blood-eyed man.

Any sensible person would call them Mare enemies. Strange, Mare enemies know her best, and
Mare's family doesn’t know her at all.

Inside the barracks is blissfully dry, humming with lights and wires bundled along the ceiling.
The thick concrete walls turn the corridor into a maze, with no markers to guide the way. Every
door is shut, steel gray and unremarkable, but a few bear the signs of life within. Some woven
beach grass adorning a knob, a broken necklace strung across a doorway, and so on. This place
holds not just fearsome soldiers but the refugees of Naercey and who knows where else. After
the enactment of the Measures, commanded from my own lips, man Guardsmen and Reds alike
fled the mainland. How could they stay, threatened by conscription and execution? But how did
they manage to get away? And how did they make it here? ..............