A Gathering of Shadows

  They were alone on the stretch of ship, tucked beneath the lip of the upper deck. Lila’s fingers drifted to the knife at her waist, but Alucard held up a hand.

  “Why don’t we take this conversation to my chambers?” he asked, eyes glinting. “Unless you want to make a scene.”

  Lila supposed it would be better not to slit the captain’s throat in plain sight.

  No, it could be done in private.

  * * *

  The moment they were alone, Lila spun on him. “You speak Eng—” she started, then caught herself. “High Royal.” That was what they called it here.

  “Obviously,” said Alucard before sliding effortlessly into Arnesian. “But it is not my native tongue.”

  “Tac,” countered Lila in the same language. “Who says it is mine?”

  Alucard gave her a playful grin and returned to English. “First, because your Arnesian is awful,” he chided. “And second, because it’s a law of the universe that all men swear in their native tongue. And I must say, your usage was quite colorful.”

  Lila clenched her teeth, annoyed at her mistake as Alucard led her into his cabin. It was elegant but cozy, with a bed in a nook along one wall and a hearth along the other, two high-backed chairs before a pale fire. A white cat lay curled on a dark wooden desk, like a paperweight atop the maps. It flicked its tail at their arrival and opened one lavender eye as Alucard crossed to the desk, riffling through some papers. He scratched the cat absently behind the ears.

  “Esa,” he said, by way of introduction. “Mistress of my ship.”

  His back was to Lila now, and her hand drifted once more to the knife at her hip. But before she could reach the weapon, Alucard’s fingers twitched and the blade jumped from its sheath and flew into his hand, hilt striking against palm. He hadn’t even looked up. Lila’s eyes narrowed. In the week she’d been aboard, she hadn’t seen anyone do magic. Alucard turned toward her now with an easy grin, as if she hadn’t been about to assault him. He tossed the knife casually onto the desk (the sound made Esa flick her tail again).

  “You can kill me later,” he said, gesturing to the two chairs before the fire. “First, let’s talk.”

  A decanter sat on a table between the chairs, along with two glasses, and Alucard poured a drink the color of berries and held it out to Lila. She didn’t take it.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I’m fond of High Royal,” he said, “and I miss having someone to speak it with.” It was a sentiment Lila understood. The sheer relief of talking after so long silent was like stretching muscles after poor sleep, working the stiffness out. “I wouldn’t want it to rust while I’m out at sea.”

  He sank into one of the chairs and downed the drink himself, the gem in his brow glinting in the hearth light. He tipped the empty glass at the other chair and Lila considered him, and her options, then lowered herself into it. The decanter of purple wine sat on the table between them. She poured herself a glass and leaned back, imitating Alucard’s posture, her drink braced on the arm of the chair, legs stretched out, boots crossed at the ankle. The picture of nonchalance. He twisted one of his rings absently, a silver feather curled into a band.

  For a long moment, they considered each other in silence, like two chess players before the first move. Lila had always hated chess. Never had the patience for it.

  Alucard was the first to move, the first to speak. “Who are you?”

  “I told you,” she said simply. “My name is Bard.”

  “Bard,” he said. “There’s no noble house by that name. Which family do you truly hail from? The Rosec? The Casin? The Loreni?”

  Lila snorted soundlessly but didn’t answer. Alucard was making an assumption, the only assumption an Arnesian would make: that because she spoke English, or High Royal—she must be noble. A member of the court, taught to flash English words like jewels, intent on impressing a royal, claiming a title, a crown. She pictured the prince, Rhy, with his easy charm and his flirtatious air. She could probably have kept his attention, if she’d wanted to. And then her thoughts drifted to Kell, standing like a shadow behind the flamboyant heir. Kell, with his reddish hair and his black eye and his perpetual frown.

  “Fine,” cut in Alucard. “An easier question. Do you have a first name, Miss Bard?” Lila raised a brow. “Yes, yes, I know you’re a woman. You might actually pass for a very pretty boy back at court, but the kind of men who work on ships tend to have a bit more …”

  “Muscle?” she ventured.

  “I was going to say facial hair.”

  Lila smirked despite herself. “How long have you known?”

  “Since you came aboard.”

  “But you let me stay.”

  “I found you curious.” Alucard refilled his glass. “Tell me, what brought you to my ship?”

  “Your men.”

  “But I saw you that day. You wanted to come aboard.”

  Lila considered him, then said, “I liked your ship. It looked expensive.”

  “Oh, it is.”

  “I was going to wait for the crew to go ashore, and then kill you and take the Spire as my own.”

  “How candid,” he drawled, sipping his wine.

  Lila shrugged. “I’ve always wanted a pirate ship.”

  At that, Alucard laughed. “What makes you think I’m a pirate, Miss Bard?”

  Lila’s face fell. She didn’t understand. She’d seen them take a ship just the day before, even though she’d been confined to the Spire, had watched from the nest as they fought, and raided, and sailed on with a fresh bounty. “What else would you be?”

  “I’m a privateer,” he explained, lifting his chin. “In the service of the good Arnesian crown. I sail by the permission of the Maresh. I monitor their seas and take care of any trouble I find on them. Why do you think my High Royal is so polished?”

  Lila swore under her breath. No wonder the men had been welcome in that tavern with the compass. They were proper sailors. Her heart sank a little at the idea.

  “But you don’t fly royal colors,” she said.

  “I suppose I could….”

  “Then why don’t you?” she snapped.

  He shrugged. “Less fun, I suppose.” He offered her a new smile, a wicked one. “And as I said, I could fly royal colors, if I wanted to be attacked at every turn, or scare away my prey. But I’m quite fond of the vessel, and I don’t care to see it sunk, nor do I care to lose my post for lack of anything to show. No, the Spires prefer a more subtle form of infiltration. But we are not pirates.” He must have seen Lila deflate, because he added, “Come now, don’t look so disappointed, Miss Bard. It doesn’t matter what you call it, piracy or privateering, it’s just a difference of letters. The only thing that really matters is that I’m captain of this ship. And I intend to keep my post, and my life. Which begs the question of what to do with you.

  “That man you knifed on the first night, Bels … the only thing that saved your skin was the fact that you killed him on land and not at sea. There are rules on ships, Bard. If you’d spilled his blood aboard mine, I’d have had no choice but to spill yours.”

  “You still could have,” she observed. “Your men certainly wouldn’t have objected. So why did you spare me?” The question had been eating at her since that first night.

  “I was curious,” he said, staring into the calm white light of the hearth fire. “Besides,” he added, his dark eyes flicking back toward her, “I’d been looking for a way to get rid of Bels myself for months—the treacherous scum was stealing from me. So I suppose you did me a favor, and I decided to return it. Lucky for you, most of the crew hated the bastard anyhow.”

  Esa appeared beside his chair, her large purple eyes staring—or glaring—at Lila. She didn’t blink. Lila was pretty sure cats were supposed to blink.

  “So,” Alucard said, straightening, “you came aboard intending to kill me and steal my ship. You’ve had a week, so why haven’t you tried?”

  Lila shrugged. “We h
aven’t been ashore.”

  Alucard chuckled. “Are you always this charming?”

  “Only in my native tongue. My Arnesian, as you pointed out, leaves something to be desired.”

  “Odd, considering that I’ve never met someone who could speak the court tongue, but not the common one….”

  He trailed off, obviously wanting an answer. Lila sipped her wine and let the silence thicken.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, when it was clear she wouldn’t follow him down that path. “Spend the nights with me, and I’ll help improve your tongue.”

  Lila nearly choked on the wine at that, then glowered at Alucard. He was laughing—it was an easy, natural sound, though it made the cat ruffle her fur. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, regaining his composure. Lila felt as though she were the color of the liquor in her glass. Her face burned. It made her want to punch him.

  “Come keep me company,” he tried again, “and I’ll keep your secret.”

  “And let the crew think you’re bedding me?”

  “Oh, I doubt they’ll think that,” he said with a wave of his hand. Lila tried not to feel insulted. “And I promise, I want only the pleasure of your conversation. I’ll even help you with your Arnesian.”

  Lila rapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, considering. “All right,” she said. She got to her feet and crossed to his desk, where her knife still sat atop the maps. She thought of the way he’d plucked it out of her grip. “But I want a favor in return.”

  “Funny, I thought the favor was allowing you to remain on my ship, despite the fact you’re a liar, a thief, and a murderer. But please, do go on.”

  “Magic,” she said, returning the blade to its holster.

  He raised the sapphire-studded brow. “What of it?”

  She hesitated, trying to choose her words. “You can do it.”

  “And?”

  Lila pulled Kell’s gift from her pocket and set it on the table. “And I want to learn.” If she was going to have a chance in this new world, she needed to learn its true language.

  “I’m not a very good teacher,” said Alucard.

  “But I’m a fast learner.”

  Alucard tipped his head, considering. Then he took up Kell’s box and released the clasp, letting it fall open in his palm. “What do you want to know?”

  Lila returned to the chair and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Everything.”

  V

  THE ARNESIAN SEA

  Lila hummed as she made her way through the belly of the ship. She shoved one hand in her pocket, fingers closing around the shard of white stone she kept there. A reminder.

  It was late, and the Night Spire had sailed on from the picked-over bones of the Copper Thief. The thirteen pirates she hadn’t killed would be waking soon, only to find their captain dead and their ship sacked. It could be worse; their throats could have been slit along those inked blades. But Alucard preferred to let the pirates live, claiming that catch and release made the seas more interesting.

  Her body was warm from wine and pleasant company, and as the ship swayed gently beneath her feet, the sea air wrapping around her shoulders, and the waves murmuring their song, that lullaby she’d wanted for so long, Lila realized she was happy.

  A voice hissed in her ear.

  Leave.

  Lila recognized that voice, not from the sea, but from the streets of Grey London—it belonged to her, to the girl she’d been for so many years. Desperate, distrustful of anything that wasn’t hers, and hers alone.

  Leave, it urged. But Lila didn’t want to.

  And that scared her more than anything.

  She shook her head and hummed the Sarows song as she reached her own cabin, the chords like a ward against trouble, even though she hadn’t found any aboard her own ship in months. Not that it was her ship, not exactly, not yet.

  Her cabin was small—barely big enough for a cot and a trunk—but it was the only place on the ship where she could be truly alone, and the weight of her persona slid from her shoulders like a coat as she closed the door.

  A single window interrupted the wooden boards of the far wall, moonlight reflecting against the ocean swells. She lifted a lantern from the trunk’s top and it lit in her hand with the same enchanted fire that filled Alucard’s hearth (the spell wasn’t hers, and neither was the magic). Hanging the light on a wall hook, she shucked her boots as well as her weapons, lining them up on the trunk, all save the knuckled knife, which she kept with her. Even though she now had a room of her own, she still slept with her back to the wall and the weapon on her knee, the way she had in the beginning. Old habits. She didn’t mind so much. She hadn’t had a good nights’ sleep in years. Life on the Grey London streets had taught her how to rest without ever really sleeping.

  Beside her weapons sat the small box Kell had given her that day. It smelled like him, which was to say it smelled like Red London, like flowers and freshly turned soil, and every time she opened it some small part of her was relieved that the scent was still there. A tether to the city, and to him. She took it with her onto the cot, sitting cross-legged and setting the object on the stiff blanket before her knees. Lila was tired, but this had become part of her nightly ritual, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep well—if at all—until she did it.

  The box was made of dark, notched wood and held shut by a small silver clasp. It was a fine thing, and she would have been able to sell it for a bit of coin, but Lila kept it close. Not out of sentimentality, she told herself—her silver pocket watch was the only thing she couldn’t bring herself to sell—but because it was useful.

  She slid the silver clasp, and the game board fell open in front of her, the elements in their grooves—earth and air, fire and water and bone—waiting to be moved. Lila flexed her fingers. She knew that most people could only master a single element, maybe two, and that she, being of another London, shouldn’t be able to master any.

  But Lila never let odds get in her way.

  Besides, that old priest, Master Tieren, had told her that she had power somewhere in her bones. That it only needed to be nurtured.

  Now she held her hands above either side of the drop of oil in its groove, palms in as if she could warm herself by it. She didn’t know the words to summon magic. Alucard insisted that she didn’t need to learn another tongue, that words were more for the user than the object, meant to help one focus, but without a proper spell, Lila felt silly. Nothing but a mad girl talking to herself in the dark. No, she needed something, and a poem, she had figured, was kind of like a spell. Or at least, it was more than just its words.

  “Tyger Tyger, burning bright …” she murmured under her breath.

  She didn’t know many poems—stealing didn’t lend itself to literary study—but she knew Blake by heart, thanks to her mother. Lila didn’t remember much of the woman, who was more than a decade dead, but she remembered this—nights drawn to sleep by Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The gentle cadence of her mother’s voice, rocking her like waves against a boat.

  The words lulled Lila now, as they had back then, quieted the storm that rolled inside her head, and loosened the thief’s knot of tension in her chest.

  “In the forests of the night …”

  Lila’s palms warmed as she wove the poem through the air. She didn’t know if she was doing it right, if there was such a thing as right—if Kell were here, he would probably insist there was, and nag her until she did it, but Kell wasn’t here, and Lila figured there was more than one way to make a thing work.

  “In what distant deeps or skies …”

  Perhaps power had to be tended, like Tieren said, but not all things grew in gardens.

  Plenty of plants grew wild.

  And Lila had always thought of herself more as a weed than a rose bush.

  “Burnt the fire of thine eyes?”

  The oil in its groove sparked to life: not white like Alucard’s hearth, but gold. Lila grinned triumphantly as the f
lame leaped from the groove into the air between her palms, dancing like molten metal, reminding her of the parade she’d seen that first day in Red London, when elementals of every kind danced through the streets, fire and water and air like ribbons in their wake.

  The poem continued in her head as the heat tickled her palms. Kell would say it was impossible. What a useless word, in a world with magic.

  What are you? Kell had asked her once.

  What am I? She wondered now, as the fire rolled across her knuckles like a coin.

  She let the fire go out, the drop of oil sinking back into its groove. The flame was gone, but Lila could feel the magic lingering in the air like smoke as she took up her newest knife, the one she’d won off Lenos. It was no ordinary weapon. A month back, when they’d taken a Faroan pirate ship called the Serpent off the coast of Korma, she’d seen him use it. Now she ran her hand along the blade until she found the hidden notch, where the metal met the hilt. She pushed the clasp, and it released, and the knife performed a kind of magic trick. It separated in her hands, and what had been one blade now became two, mirror images as thin as straight-edged razors. Lila touched the bead of oil and ran her finger along the backs of both knives. And then she balanced them in her hands, crossed their sharpened edges—Tyger Tyger, burning bright—and struck.

  Fire licked along the metal, and Lila smiled.

  This she hadn’t seen Lenos do.

  The flames spread until they coated the blades from hilt to tip, burning with golden light.

  This she hadn’t seen anyone do.

  What am I? One of a kind.

  They said the same thing about Kell.

  The Red messenger.

  The black-eyed prince.

  The last Antari.

  But as she twirled the fire-slicked knives in her fingers, she couldn’t help but wonder …

  Were they really one of a kind, or two?

  She carved a fiery arc through the air, marveling at the path of light trailing like a comet’s tail, and remembered the feeling of his eyes on her back as she walked away. Waiting. Lila smiled at the memory. She had no doubt their paths would cross again.