A Conjuring of Light

  “Then what?” pressed Lila.

  “I bought my father’s death.”

  The table went still, a pocket of silence in the noisy room. Kell’s mouth hung open. Alucard’s clenched shut. Lila stared.

  “That’s not possible,” murmured Kell.

  “These are open waters,” said Alucard, pushing to his feet. “Anything is possible. And on that note … I’ve got an errand to run. I’ll meet you back at the ship.”

  Lila frowned. There were a hundred shades between a truth and lie, and she knew them all. She could tell when someone was being dishonest, and when they were only saying one word for every three.

  “Alucard,” she pressed. “What are you—”

  He turned, hands in his pockets. “Oh, I forgot to mention—you’ll each need a token to enter the market. Something valuable.”

  Kell set his cup down with a crack. “You could have told us this before we left London.”

  “I could have,” said Alucard. “It must have slipped my mind. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll think of something. Perhaps Maris will settle for your coat.”

  Kell’s knuckles were white on the handle of his cup as the captain strode away. By the time the door swung shut, Lila was already on her feet.

  “Where are you going?” snapped Kell.

  “Where do you think?” She didn’t know how to explain—they had a deal, she and Alucard, even if they would never say it. They watched each other’s back. “He shouldn’t go alone.”

  “Leave him,” muttered Kell.

  “He has a way of getting lost,” she said, buttoning her coat. “I’m—”

  “I said stay—”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Lila bristled. “Funny thing, Kell,” she said coldly. “That sounded like an order.” And before he could say anything else, Lila turned up her collar against the wind and marched out.

  * * *

  Within minutes, Lila lost him.

  She didn’t want to admit it—she’d always prided herself on being a clever tail, but the streets of Rosenal were narrow and winding, full of hidden breaks and turns that made it too easy to lose sight—and track—of whoever you were trying to follow. It made sense, she supposed, in a town that catered mostly to pirates and thieves and the sort who didn’t like to be tracked.

  Somewhere in that maze, Alucard had simply disappeared. Lila had given up any attempts at stealth after that, let her steps fall loud, even called his name, but it was no use; she couldn’t find him.

  The sun was setting fast over the port, the last light quickly giving way to shadow. In the twilight, the edges between light and dark began to blur, and everything was rendered in flattened layers of grey. Dusk was the only time Lila truly felt the absence of her second eye.

  If it had been a little darker, she would have hauled herself up onto the nearest roof and scanned the town that way, but there was just enough daylight to turn the act into display.

  She stopped at the intersection of four alleys, certain she’d already come this way, and was about to give up—to turn back toward the tavern and her waiting drink—when she heard the voice.

  That same voice, its melody carrying on the breeze.

  How do you know when the Sarows is coming …

  A flick of her wrist, and a knife dropped into her palm, her free hand already reaching for the one beneath her coat.

  Footsteps sounded, and she turned, bracing for the attack.

  But the alley was empty.

  Lila started to straighten just as a weight hit the ground behind her—boots on stone—and she spun, jumping back as a stranger’s blade sang through the air, narrowly missing her stomach.

  Her attacker smiled that rotting grin, but her eyes went to the tattoo of the dagger across his throat.

  “Delilah Bard,” he growled. “Remember me?”

  She twirled her blades. “Vaguely,” she lied.

  In truth, she did. Not his name, that she’d never caught, but she knew the tattoo worn by the cutthroats of the Copper Thief. They had sailed under Baliz Kasnov, a ruthless pirate she’d murdered—somewhat carelessly—weeks before, as part of a bet with the crew of the Night Spire. They’d scoffed at the idea that she could take an entire ship herself.

  She’d proven them wrong, won the bet, even spared most of the Thieves.

  Now, as two more men dropped from the rooftops behind him, and a third emerged from the lengthening shadows, she decided that act of mercy had been a mistake.

  “Four on one hardly seems fair,” she said, putting her back to the wall as two more men slunk toward her, tattoos like dark and jagged wounds beneath their chins.

  That made six.

  She’d counted them once before, but then she’d been counting down instead of up.

  “Tell you what,” said the first attacker. “If you beg, we’ll make it quick.”

  Lila’s blood sang the way it always did before a fight, clear and bright and hungry. “And why,” she said, “would I want to rush your deaths?”

  “Cocky bitch,” growled the second. “I’m gonna fu—”

  Her knife hissed through the air and embedded itself in his throat. Blood spilled down his front as he clawed at his neck and toppled forward, and she made it under the next man’s guard before the body hit the ground, driving her serrated blade up through his chin before the first blow caught her, a fist to the jaw.

  She went down hard, spitting blood into the street.

  Heat coursed through her limbs as a hand grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her feet, a knife under her chin.

  “Any last words?” asked the man with the rotting teeth.

  Lila held up her hands, as if in surrender, before flashing a vicious smile.

  “Tyger, Tyger,” she said, and the fire roared to life.

  VI

  Kell and Holland sat across from each other, swathed in a silence that only thickened as Kell tried to drown his annoyance in his drink. Of all the reasons for Lila to leave, of all the people for her to go with, it had to be Emery.

  Across the room a group of men were deep in their cups and singing a sea shanty of some kind.

  “… Sarows is coming, is coming, is coming aboard…”

  Kell finished his glass, and reached for hers.

  Holland was drawing his fingers through a spill on the table, the glass in front of him untouched. Now that they were back on solid ground, the color was returning to his face, but even dressed down in winter greys with a cap pulled over his brow, there was something about Holland that drew the eye. The way he held himself, perhaps, mixed with the faintest scent of foreign magic. Ash and steel and ice.

  “Say something,” Kell muttered into his drink.

  Holland’s attention flicked toward him, then slid pointedly away. “This Inheritor…”

  “What about it?”

  “I should be the one to use it.”

  “Perhaps.” Kell’s answer was simple, blunt. “But I don’t trust you.” Holland’s expression hardened. “And I’m certainly not letting Lila try her hand. She doesn’t know how to use her power, let alone how to survive getting rid of it.”

  “That leaves you.”

  Kell looked down into the last of his ale. “That leaves me.”

  If the Inheritor worked as Tieren suggested, the device absorbed a person’s magic. But Kell’s magic was all that bound Rhy’s life to his. He’d learned that from the collar, the horrible severing of power from body, the stutter of Rhy’s failing heart. Would it be like that? Would it hurt that much? Or would it be easy? His brother had known what he would do, had given his assent. He’d seen it in Rhy’s eyes when they parted. Heard it in his voice. Rhy had made his peace long before he said good-bye.

  “Stop being selfish.”

  Kell’s head snapped up. “What?”

  “Osaron is mine,” said Holland, finally taking up his drink. “I don’t give a damn about your self-sacrificing notions, your need to be the hero. When the tim
e comes for one of us to destroy that monster, it is going to be me. And if you try to stop me, Kell, I’ll remind you the hard way which of us is the stronger Antari. Do you understand?”

  Holland met Kell’s eyes over the glass, and beyond the words and the bravado, he saw something else in the man’s gaze.

  Mercy.

  Kell’s chest ached with relief as he said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?” said Holland coldly. “I’m not doing this for you.”

  In the end, Vortalis had named himself the Winter King.

  “Why not summer,” Holland asked, “or spring?”

  Vortalis snorted. “Do you feel warmth on the air, Holland? Do you see the river running blue? We are not in the spring of this world, and certainly not in the summer. Those are the seasons for your someday king. This is winter, and we must survive it.”

  They were standing side by side on the castle balcony while the banners—the open hand turned out on its dark field—snapped in the wind. The gates stood open, the grounds filling edge to edge as people gathered to see the new king, and waited for the castle doors to open so they could make their cases and their claims. The air buzzed with excitement. Fresh blood on the throne meant new chances for the streets. The hope that this ruler would succeed where so many had failed before him, that he would be the one to restore what was lost—what began to die when the doors first closed—and breathe life back into the embers.

  Vortalis wore a single ring of burnished steel in his hair to match the circle on his banner. Beyond that, he looked like the same man who’d come to Holland months ago, deep in the Silver Wood.

  “The outfit suits you,” said the Winter King, gesturing to Holland’s half cloak, the silver pin bearing Vortalis’s seal.

  Holland took a step back from the balcony’s edge. “Last time I checked, you are king. So why am I on display?”

  “Because, Holland, ruling is a balance between hope and fear. I may have a way with people, but you have a way of frightening them. I draw them like flies, but you keep that at bay. Together we are a welcome and a warning, and I would have each and every one of them know that my black-eyed knight, my sharpest sword, stands firmly beside me.” He shot Holland a sidelong glance. “I’m quite aware of our city’s penchant for regicide, including the bloody pattern we continued in order to stand here today, but, selfish as it seems, I’m not keen to go out as Gorst did.”

  “Gorst didn’t have me,” said Holland, and the king broke into a smile.

  “Thank the gods for that.”

  “Am I supposed to call you king now?” asked Holland.

  Vortalis blew out a breath. “You are supposed to call me friend.”

  “As you wish…” A smile stole across Holland’s lips at the memory of their meeting in the Silver Wood. “Vor.”

  The king smiled at that, a broad, bright gesture so at odds with the city around them. “And to think, Holland, all it took was a crown and—”

  “Köt Vortalis,” cut in a guard behind them.

  Vor’s face closed, the open light replaced by the hardened planes befitting a new king. “What is it?”

  “There is a boy requesting an audience.”

  Holland frowned. “We haven’t opened the doors yet.”

  “I know, sir,” said the guard. “He didn’t come by the door. He just … appeared.”

  * * *

  The first thing Holland noticed was the boy’s red coat.

  He was standing in the throne hall, craning his head toward the vaulted bones of the castle ceiling, and that coat—it was such a vivid color, not a faded red like the sun at dusk, or the fabrics worn in summer, but a vibrant crimson, the color of fresh blood.

  His hair was a softer shade, like autumn leaves, muted, but not faded by any stretch, and he wore crisp black boots—true black, as dark as winter nights—with gold clasps that matched his cuffs, every inch of him sharp and bright as a glare on new steel. Even stranger than his appearance was the scent that drifted off him, something sweet, almost cloying, like crushed blossoms left to rot.

  Vortalis gave a low whistle at the sight of him, and the boy turned, revealing a pair of mismatched eyes. Holland stilled. The boy’s left eye was a light blue. The right was solid black. Their gazes met, and a strange vibration lanced through Holland’s head. The stranger couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen, with the unmarked skin of a royal and the imperious posture to match, but he was undeniably Antari.

  The boy stepped forward and started speaking briskly, in a foreign tongue, the accent smooth and lilting. Vortalis bore a translation rune at the base of his throat, the product of times abroad, but Holland bore nothing save an ear for tone, and at the blankness in his gaze the boy stopped and started again, this time in Holland’s native tongue.

  “Apologies,” he said. “My Mahktahn is not perfect. I learned it from a book. My name is Kell, and I come bearing a message from my king.”

  His hand went into his coat, and across the room the guards surged forward, Holland already shifting in front of Vor, when the boy drew out, of all things, a letter. That same sweet scent drifted off the envelope.

  Vortalis looked down at the paper and said, “I am the only king here.”

  “Of course,” said the boy Antari. “My king is in another London.”

  The room went still. Everyone knew, of course, about the other Londons, and the worlds that went with them. There was the one far away, a place where magic held no sway. There was the broken one, where magic had devoured everything. And then there was the cruel one, the place that had sealed its doors, forcing Holland’s world to face the dark alone.

  Holland had never been to this other place—he knew the spell to go there, had found the words buried in his mind like treasure in the months after he’d turned Alox to stone—but travel needed a token the way a lock needed a key, and he’d never had anything with which to cast the spell, to buy his way through.

  And yet, Holland had always assumed that other world was like his. After all, both cities had been powerful. Both had been vibrant. Both had been cut off when the doors sealed. But as Holland took in this Kell, with his bright attire, his healthy glow, he saw the hall as the boy must—dingy, coated with the film of frostlike neglect, the mark of years fighting for every drop of magic, and felt a surge of anger. Was this how the other London lived?

  “You are a long way from home,” said Vor coolly.

  “A long way,” said the boy, “and a single step.” His gaze kept flicking back toward Holland, as if fascinated by the sight of another Antari. So they were rare in his world, too.

  “What does your king want?” asked Vor, declining to take the letter.

  “King Maresh wishes to restore communication between your world and mine.”

  “Does he wish to open the doors?”

  The boy hesitated. “No,” he said carefully. “The doors cannot be opened. But this could be the first step in rebuilding the relationships—”

  “I don’t give a damn about relationships,” snapped the Winter King. “I am trying to rebuild a city. Can this Maresh help me with that?”

  “I do not know,” said Kell. “I am only the messenger. If you write it down—”

  “Hang the message.” Vortalis turned away. “You found your way in,” he said. “Find it back out.”

  Kell lifted his chin. “Is that your final answer?” he asked. “Perhaps I should return in a few weeks, when the next king takes the throne.”

  “Careful, boy,” warned Holland.

  Kell turned his attention—and those unnerving eyes, so strange and so familiar—toward him. He produced a coin, small and red, with a gold star at the center. A token. A key. “Here,” he said. “In case your king changes his mind.”

  Holland said nothing, but flexed his hand, and the coin whipped out of the boy’s grip and into his own, his fingers closing silently over the metal.

  “It’s As Travars,” added Kell. “In case you didn’t know.”

  ??
?Holland,” said Vortalis from the door.

  Holland was still holding Kell’s gaze. “Coming, my king,” he said pointedly, breaking away.

  “Wait,” called the boy, and Holland could tell by his tone that the words were meant not for Vor, but for him. The Antari jogged toward him, steps ringing like bells from his gold clasps.

  “What?” demanded Holland.

  “It’s nice,” said Kell, “to meet someone like me.”

  Holland frowned. “I am not like you,” he said, and walked away.

  VII

  For a while, Lila held her own.

  Flame and steel against blind strength, a thief’s cunning against a pirate’s might.

  She might have even been winning.

  And then, quite suddenly, she wasn’t.

  Six men became four, but four was still a good deal more than one.

  A knife slid along her skin.

  A hand wrapped around her throat.

  Her back slammed against the wall.

  No, not a wall, she realized, a door. She had hit it hard enough to crack the wood, bolts and pins jangling in their grooves. An idea. She threw up her hands, and the nails shuddered free. Some struck only air or stone, but others found flesh, and two of the Copper Thieves staggered back, clutching their arms, stomachs, heads.

  Without its pins, the door gave way behind her, and Lila tumbled backward, rolling into a crouch inside a shabby hall and heaving the door back up before pressing her blood-slicked fingers to the wood.

  “As Steno,” she said, thinking that was the word Kell had taught her for seal, but she was wrong. The whole door shattered like a pane of glass, wooden splinters raining down, and before she could summon them back up, she was hauled into the street. Something hit her in the stomach—a fist, a knee, a boot—and the air left her lungs in a violent breath.

  She summoned the wind—it tore through the alley and whipped around her, forcing the men back as she took a running step, pushed off the wall, and leaped for the edge of the roof.

  She almost made it, but one of them caught her boot and jerked her back. She fell, hitting the street with brutal force. Something cracked inside her chest.