He didn’t wait for the merchant’s answer, only shoved Lila through the crowd, away from the stall and the guard about to reach it.
“Uncivilized?” growled Lila as Kell clasped her shoulder and guided her out of the market.
“Five minutes!” said Kell, sliding his coat from her shoulders and back onto his own, flicking up the collar. “You can’t keep your hands to yourself for five minutes! Tell me you haven’t already gone and sold off the stone.”
Lila let out an exasperated noise. “Unbelievable,” she snapped as he led her out of the throngs and away from the river, toward one of the narrower streets. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Lila,” she parroted. “Thank God using the stone didn’t rip you into a thousand thieving pieces.”
Kell’s hand loosened on her shoulder. “I can’t believe it worked.”
“Don’t sound so excited,” shot Lila drily.
Kell came to a stop and turned her toward him. “I’m not,” he said. His blue eye looked troubled, his black unreadable. “I’m glad you’re unhurt, Lila, but the doors between worlds are meant to be locked to all but Antari, and the fact that the stone granted you passage only proves how dangerous it is. And every moment it’s here, in my world, I’m terrified.”
Lila found her eyes going to the ground. “Well, then,” she said. “Let’s get it out of here.”
A small grateful smile crossed Kell’s lips. And then Lila dug the stone out of her pocket and held it up, and Kell let out a dismayed sound and swallowed her hand with his, hiding the stone from sight. Something flickered through his eyes when he touched her, but she didn’t think it was her touch that moved him. The stone gave a strange little shudder in her hand, as if it felt Kell and wanted to be with him. Lila felt vaguely insulted.
“Sanct!” he swore at her. “Just hold it up for all to see, why don’t you.”
“I thought you wanted it back!” she shot back, exasperated. “There’s no winning with you.”
“Just keep it,” he hissed. “And for king’s sake, keep it out of sight.”
Lila shoved it back into her cloak and said a very many unkind things under her breath.
“And on the topic of language,” said Kell, “you cannot speak so freely here. English is not a common tongue.”
“I noticed that. Thanks for the warning.”
“I told you the worlds would be different. But you’re right, I should have warned you. Here English is a tongue used by the elite, and those who wish to mingle with them. Your very use of it will cause you to stand out.”
Lila’s eyes narrowed. “What would you have me do? Not speak?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” said Kell. Lila scowled. “But as I doubt that’s possible for you, I’d ask that you simply keep your voice down.” He smiled, and Lila smiled back, resisting the urge to break his nose.
“Now that that’s settled …” He turned to go.
“Pilse,” she grumbled, hoping it meant something foul indeed as she fell into step behind him.
II
Aldus Fletcher was not an honest man.
He ran a pawnshop in an alley by the docks, and each day, men came off the boats, some with things they wanted, others with things they wanted to be rid of. Fletcher provided for both. And for the locals, too. It was a truth widely known in the darker corners of Red London that Fletcher’s shop was the place for anything you shouldn’t have.
Now and again honest folk wandered in, of course, wanting to find or dispose of smoking pipes and instruments, scrying boards and rune stones and candlesticks, and Fletcher didn’t mind padding the shop with their wares as well, in case the royal guard came to inspect. But his true trade lay in risk and rarity.
A smooth stone panel hung on the wall beside the counter, big as a window but black as pitch. On its surface, white smoke shifted and shimmered and spread itself like chalk, announcing the full itinerary of the prince’s birthday celebrations. An echo of Rhy’s smiling face ghosted itself on the scrying board above the notice. He beamed and winked as beneath his throat the message hovered:
The king and queen invite
you to celebrate the prince’s
twentieth year on the palace steps
following the annual parade.
After a few seconds, the message and the prince’s face both dissolved and, for a moment, the scrying board went dark, then came back to life and began to cycle through a handful of other announcements.
“Erase es ferase?” rumbled Fletcher in his deep voice. Coming or going?
The question was lobbed at a boy—and he was a boy, the stumble of his first beard growing patchily in—who stood considering a table of trinkets by the door. Coming meant a buyer, going meant a seller.
“Neither,” murmured the boy. Fletcher kept an eye on the youth’s wandering hands, but he wasn’t too worried; the shop was warded against thieving. It was a slow day, and Fletcher almost wished the boy would try. He could use a little entertainment. “Just looking,” he added nervously.
Fletcher’s shop didn’t usually get lookers. People came with a purpose. And they had to make that purpose known. Whatever the boy was after, he didn’t want it badly enough to say.
“You let me know,” said Fletcher, “if you can’t find what it is you’re looking for.”
The boy nodded, but kept cheating glances at Fletcher. Or rather, at Fletcher’s arms, which were resting on the counter. The air outside was heavy for a morning so late in the harvest season (one might have thought that, given his clientele, the shop would run thieves’ hours, dusk till dawn, but Fletcher had found that the best crooks knew how to play off crime as casual), and Fletcher had his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing a variety of marks and scars on his sun-browned forearms. Fletcher’s skin was a map of his life. And a hard-lived life at that.
“S’true what they say?” the boy finally asked.
“About what?” said Fletcher, raising a thick brow.
“ ’Bout you.” The boy’s gaze went to the markings around Fletcher’s wrists. The limiters circled both his hands like cuffs, scarred into flesh and something deeper. “Can I see them?”
“Ah, these?” asked Fletcher, holding up his hands.
The markings were a punishment, given only to those who defied the golden rule of magic.
“Thou shalt not use thy power to control another,” he recited, flashing a cold and crooked grin. For such a crime, the crown showed little mercy. The guilty were bound, branded with limiters designed to tourniquet their power.
But Fletcher’s were broken. The marks on the inside of his wrists were marred, obscured, like fractured links in a metal chain. He had gone to the ends of the world to break those binds, had traded blood and soul and years of life, but here he was. Free again. Of a sort. He was still bound to the shop and the illusion of impotence—an illusion he maintained lest the guards learn of his recovery and return to claim more than his magic. It helped, of course, that he’d bought favor with a few of them. Everyone—even the rich and the proud and the royal—wanted things they shouldn’t have. And those things were Fletcher’s specialty.
The boy was still staring at the marks, wide-eyed and pale. “Tac.” Fletcher brought his arms back to rest on the counter. “Time for looking’s over. You going to buy something or not?”
The boy scurried out, empty-handed, and Fletcher sighed and tugged a pipe from his back pocket. He snapped his fingers, and a small blue flame danced on the end of his thumb, which he used to light the leaves pressed into the bowl. And then he drew something from his shirt pocket and set it on the wooden counter.
It was a chess piece. A small, white rook to be exact. A marker of a debt he’d yet to pay but would.
The rook had once belonged to the young Antari whelp, Kell, but it had come to Fletcher’s shop several years before as part of the pot in a round of Sanct.
Sanct was the kind of game that grew. A mix of strategy and luck and a fair bit of cheating, it could be over in minutes or last for hour
s. And the final hand of the night had been going on for nearly two. They were the last players, Fletcher and Kell, and as the night had grown, so had the pot. They weren’t playing for coins, of course. The table was piled high with tokens and trinkets and rare magic. A vial of hope sand. A water blade. A coat that concealed an infinite number of sides.
Fletcher had played every card but three: a pair of kings with a saint among them. He was sure he’d won. And then Kell played three saints. The problem was, there were only three saints in the whole deck, and Fletcher had one in his hand. But as Kell laid out his hand, the card in Fletcher’s shimmered and changed from a saint to a servant, the lowest card in the deck.
Fletcher turned red as he watched it. The royal brat had slipped an enchanted card into the set and played Fletcher as well as the game. And that was the best and worst thing about Sanct. Nothing was off-limits. You didn’t have to win fair. You only had to win.
Fletcher had no choice but to lay out his ruined hand, and the room broke into raucous comments and jeers. Kell only smiled and shrugged and got to his feet. He plucked a trinket from the top of the pile—a chess piece from another London—and tossed it to Fletcher.
“No hard feelings,” he said with a wink before he took the lot and left.
No hard feelings.
Fletcher’s fingers tightened on the small stone statue. The bell at the front of the shop rang as another customer stepped in, a tall, thin man with a greying beard and a hungry glint in his eye. Fletcher pocketed the rook and managed a grim smile.
“Erase es ferase?” he asked.
Coming or going?
III
Kell could feel the stone in Lila’s pocket as they walked.
There had been a moment when his fingers closed over hers and his skin had brushed the talisman, when all he wanted was to take it from her. It felt like everything would be all right if he could simply hold it. Which was an absurd notion. Nothing would be all right so long as the stone existed. Still, it pulled at his senses, and he shivered and tried not to think about it as he led Lila through Red London, away from the noise and toward the Ruby Fields.
Rhy’s celebrations would last all day, drawing the majority of the city—its people and its guard—to the banks of the river and the red palace.
Guilt rolled through him. He should have been a part of the procession, should have ridden in the open carriage with the royal family, should have been there to tease and chide his brother for the way he relished the attention.
Kell was sure that Rhy would sulk for weeks about his absence. And then he remembered that he’d never have the chance to apologize. The thought cut like a knife, even though he told himself it had to be this way, that when the time came, Lila would explain. And Rhy? Rhy would forgive him.
Kell kept his collar up and his head down, but he still felt eyes on him as they moved through the streets. He kept looking over his shoulder, unable to shake the feeling of being followed. Which he was, of course, by Lila, who looked at him with increasing scrutiny as they wove through the streets.
Something was clearly bothering her, but she held her tongue, and for a while Kell wondered if she was biding his order or simply biding her time. And then, when the appearance of a pair of royal guards, helmets tucked casually under their arms, sent Kell—and by necessity Lila—retreating hastily into a recessed doorway, she finally broke her silence.
“Tell me something, Kell,” she said as they stepped back onto the curb when the men were gone. “The commoners treat you like a noble yet you hide from the guards like a thief. Which is it?”
“Neither,” he answered, silently willing her to let the matter go.
But Lila wouldn’t. “Are you some kind of valiant criminal?” she pressed. “A Robin Hood, all hero to the people and outlaw to the crown?”
“No.”
“Are you wanted for something?”
“Not exactly.”
“In my experience,” observed Lila, “a person is either wanted or they’re not. Why would you hide from the guards if you’re not?”
“Because I thought they might be looking for me.”
“And why would they be doing that?”
“Because I’m missing.”
He heard Lila’s steps slow. “Why would they care?” she asked, coming to a stop. “Who are you?”
Kell turned to face her. “I told you—”
“No,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Who are you here? Who are you to them?”
Kell hesitated. All he wanted was to cross through his city as quickly as possible, retrieve a White London token from his rooms, and get the wretched black stone out of this world. But Lila didn’t look like she planned on moving until he answered her. “I belong to the royal family,” he said.
In the matter of hours he’d known Lila, he’d learned that she didn’t surprise easily, but at this claim, her eyes finally went wide with disbelief. “You’re a prince?”
“No,” he said firmly.
“Like the pretty fellow in the carriage? Is he your brother?”
“His name is Rhy, and no.” Kell cringed when he said it. “Well … not exactly.”
“So you’re the black-eyed prince. I have to admit, I never took you for a—”
“I’m not a prince, Lila.”
“I suppose I can see it, you are rather arrogant and—”
“I’m not a—”
“But what’s a member of the royal family doing—”
Kell pushed her back against the brick wall of the alley. “I’m not a member of the royal family,” he snapped. “I belong to them.”
Lila’s forehead crinkled. “What do you mean?”
“They own me,” he said, cringing at the words. “I’m a possession. A trinket. So you see, I grew up in the palace, but it is not my home. I was raised by the royals, but they are not my family, not by blood. I have worth to them and so they keep me, but that is not the same as belonging.”
The words burned when he spoke them. He knew he wasn’t being fair to the king and queen, who treated him with warmth if not love, or to Rhy, who had always looked on him as a brother. But it was true, wasn’t it? As much as it pained him. For all his caring, and for theirs, the fact remained he was a weapon, a shield, a tool to be used. He was not a prince. He was not a son.
“You poor thing,” said Lila coldly, pushing him away. “What do you want? Pity? You won’t find it from me.”
Kell clenched his jaw. “I didn’t—”
“You have a house if not a home,” she spat. “You have people who care for you if not about you. You may not have everything you want, but I’d wager you have everything you could ever need, and you have the audacity to claim it all forfeit because it is not love.”
“I—”
“Love doesn’t keep us from freezing to death, Kell,” she continued, “or starving, or being knifed for the coins in our pocket. Love doesn’t buy us anything, so be glad for what you have and who you have because you may want for things but you need for nothing.”
She was breathless by the time she finished, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.
And for the first time, Kell saw Lila. Not as she wanted to be, but as she was. A frightened, albeit clever, girl trying desperately to stay alive. One who had likely frozen and starved and fought—and almost certainly killed—to hold on to some semblance of a life, guarding it like a candle in a harsh wind.
“Say something,” she challenged.
Kell swallowed, clenched his hands into fists at his sides, and looked at her hard. “You’re right,” he said.
The admission left him strangely gutted, and in that moment, he just wanted to go home (and it was a home, far more of one than Lila probably had). To let the queen touch his cheek, and the king his shoulder. To swing his arm around Rhy’s neck and toast to his birthday and listen to him ramble and laugh.
It ached, how badly he wanted it.
But he couldn’t.
He had made a mistake. He had
put them all in danger, and he had to make it right.
Because it was his duty to protect them.
And because he loved them.
Lila was still staring, waiting for the catch in his words, but there was none.
“You’re right,” he said again. “I’m sorry. Compared to your life, mine must seem a jewel—”
“Don’t you dare pity me, magic boy,” growled Lila, a knife in her hand. And just like that, the scared street rat was gone, and the cutthroat was back. Kell smiled thinly. There was no winning these battles with Lila, but he was relieved to see her back in threatening form. He broke her gaze and looked up at the sky, the red of the Isle reflecting off the low clouds. A storm was coming. Rhy would sulk at that, too, spiteful of anything that might dampen the splendor of his day.
“Come on,” said Kell, “we’re almost there.”
Lila sheathed her blade and followed, this time with fewer daggers in her eyes.
“This place we’re headed,” she said. “Does it have a name?”
“Is Kir Ayes,” said Kell. “The Ruby Fields.” He had not told Lila yet that her journey would end here. That it had to. For his peace of mind and for her safety.
“What are you hoping to find there?”
“A token,” said Kell. “Something that will grant us passage to White London.” He parsed through the shelves and drawers in his mind, the various trinkets from the various cities glittering behind his eyes. “The inn itself,” he went on, “is run by a woman named Fauna. You two should get along splendidly.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re both—”
He was about to say hard as tacks, but then he rounded the corner and came to a sharp stop, the words dying on his tongue.
“Is that the Ruby Fields?” asked Lila at his shoulder.
“It is,” said Kell quietly. “Or, it was.”
There was nothing left but ash and smoke.
The inn, and everything in it, had been burned to the ground.
IV
It had been no ordinary fire.
Ordinary fires didn’t consume metal as well as wood. And ordinary fires spread. This one hadn’t. It had traced the edges of the building and burned in a near-perfect inn-shaped blaze, only a few tendrils scorching the street stones that circled the building.