A Conjuring of Light

  And then they fell on her.

  * * *

  Holland was proving horrible company.

  Kell had tried to keep the conversation alive, but it was like stoking coals after a bucket of water had been poured on them, nothing but fragile wisps of smoke. He’d finally given up, resigned himself to the uncomfortable quiet, when the other Antari met his gaze across the table.

  “At the market tomorrow,” he said. “What will you offer?”

  Kell raised a brow. His own mind had just been drifting over the question.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “of offering you.”

  It was said in jest, but Holland only stared at him, and Kell sighed, relenting. He’d never been very good at sarcasm.

  “It depends,” he answered honestly, “on whether Maris cares for cost or worth.” He patted down his pockets, and came up with a handful of coins, Lila’s kerchief, his royal pin. The look on Holland’s face mirrored the worry in Kell’s gut—none of these things were good enough.

  “You could offer the coat,” said Holland.

  But the thought made Kell’s chest hurt. It was his, one of the only things in his life not bestowed by the crown, or bartered for, not given because of his position, but won. Won in a simple game of cards.

  He put the trinkets away, and instead dug the cord out from under his shirt. On the end hung the three coins, one for each world. He unknotted the cord and slid the last coin out onto his palm.

  His Grey London token.

  George III’s profile was on the front, his face rubbed away from use.

  Kell had given the king a new lin with every visit, but he still had the same shilling George had given him on his very first trip. Before the age and the madness wore him away, before his son buried him in Windsor.

  It cost almost nothing, but it was worth a great deal to him.

  “I hate to interrupt whatever reverie you’re having,” said Holland, nodding at the window, “but your friend has returned.”

  Kell turned in his seat, expecting Lila, but instead he found Alucard strolling past. He had a vial in his hand, and was holding it up to the light of a lantern. The contents glittered faintly like white sand, or finely broken glass.

  The captain looked their way and flashed an impatient summons that a little too closely resembled a rude gesture.

  Kell sighed, shoving to his feet.

  The two Antari left the tavern, Alucard a block ahead, his stride brisk as he headed for the docks. Kell frowned, scanning the streets.

  “Where’s Lila?” called Kell.

  Alucard turned, brows raised. “Bard? I left her with you.”

  Dread coiled through him. “And she followed you out.”

  Alucard started shaking his head, but Kell was heading for the door, Holland and the captain close on his heels.

  “Split up,” said Alucard as they spilled out onto the street. He took off down the first street, but when Holland started down another, Kell caught his sleeve.

  “Wait.” His mind spun, torn between duty and panic, reason and fear.

  Letting the White London Antari out of his chains was one thing.

  Letting him out of Kell’s sight was another.

  Holland looked down at the place where the younger Antari gripped him. “Do you want to find her or not?”

  Rhy’s voice echoed in Kell’s head, those warnings about the world beyond the city, the value of a black-eyed prince. An Antari. He’d told Kell what the Veskans thought of him, and the Faroans, but he hadn’t said enough about their own people, and Kell, fool that he was, hadn’t thought about the risk of ransom. Or worse, knowing Lila.

  Kell snarled, but let go. “Don’t make me regret this,” he said, taking off at a run.

  VIII

  Lila sagged against the wall, gasping for breath. She was out of knives, and blood was running into her eye from a blow to the temple, and it hurt to breathe, but she was still on her feet.

  It would take more than that, she thought, shoving off the wall and stepping over the bodies of the six men now lying dead in the street.

  There was a hollow feeling in her veins, like she’d used up everything she had. The ground swayed beneath her and she braced herself against the alley wall, leaving a smear of red as she went. One foot in front of the other, every breath a jagged tear, her pulse heavy in her ears, and then something that wasn’t her pulse.

  Footsteps.

  Someone was coming.

  Lila dragged her head up, wracking her tired mind for a spell as the steps echoed against the alley walls.

  She heard a voice calling her name, somewhere far behind her, and turned just in time to watch someone drive a knife between her ribs.

  “This is for Kasnov,” snarled the seventh Thief, forcing the weapon in to the hilt. It tore through her chest and out her back and for a moment—only a moment—she felt nothing but the warmth of the blood. But then her body caught up, and the pain swallowed everything.

  Not the brisk bright pain of grazed skin but something deep. Severing.

  The knife came free, and her legs folded beneath her.

  She tried to breathe, choked as blood rose in her throat. Soaked her shirt.

  Get up, she thought as her body slumped to the ground.

  This isn’t how I die, she thought, this isn’t—

  She retched blood into the street.

  Something was wrong.

  It hurt.

  No.

  Kell.

  Get up.

  She tried to rise, slipped in something slick and warm.

  No.

  Not like this.

  She closed her eyes, tried desperately to summon magic.

  There wasn’t any left.

  All she had was Kell’s face. And Alucard’s. Barron’s watch. A ship. The open sea. A chance at freedom.

  I’m not done.

  Her vision slipped.

  Not like this.

  Her chest rattled.

  Get up.

  She was on her back now, the Thief circling like a vulture. Above him, the sky was turning colors like a bruise.

  Like the sea before a … what?

  He was getting closer, crouching down, burying a knee in her wounded chest and she couldn’t breathe and this wasn’t how it happened, and—

  A blur of motion, quick as a knife, at the edge of her sight, and the man was gone. The beginnings of a shout cut off, the distant sound of a weight hitting something solid, but Lila couldn’t raise her head to see, couldn’t …

  The world narrowed, the light slipping from the sky, then blotted out altogether by the shadow kneeling over her, pressing a hand to her ribs.

  “Hold on,” said a low voice as the world darkened. Then: “Over here! Now!”

  Another voice.

  “Stay with me.”

  She was so cold.

  “Stay…”

  It was the last thing she heard.

  IX

  Holland knelt over Lila’s body.

  She was deathly pale, but he had been quick enough; the spell had taken hold in time. Kell was at Lila’s other side, distraught, face pale under crimson curls, checking her wounds as if he doubted Holland’s work.

  If he’d gotten there first, he could have healed her himself.

  Holland hadn’t thought it wise to wait.

  And now there were more pressing problems.

  He’d caught the slow-moving shadows flitting over the wall at the end of the alley. He rose to his feet.

  “Stay with me,” Kell was murmuring to Lila’s bloody form, as if that would do any good. “Stay with—”

  “How many blades do you have?” Holland cut in.

  Kell’s eyes never left Lila, but his fingers went to the sheath on his arm. “One.”

  Holland rolled his eyes. “Brilliant,” he said, pressing his palms together. The gash he’d made in his hand wept a fresh line of red.

  “As Narahi,” he murmured.

  Quicken.

&n
bsp; Magic flared at his command, and he moved with a speed he rarely showed and had certainly never seen fit to show Kell. It was a hard piece of magic under any circumstances, and a grueling spell when done to one’s self, but it was worth it as the world around him slowed.

  He became a blur, pale skin and grey cloak knifing through the dark. By the time the first man crouching on the roof above had drawn his knife, Holland was behind him. The man looked wide eyed at the place where his target had been as Holland lifted his hands and, with an elegant motion, snapped the man’s neck.

  He let the limp body fall to the alley stones and followed quickly after, putting his back to Kell—who’d finally caught the scent of danger—as three more shadows, glinting with weapons, dropped from the sky.

  And just like that, their fight began.

  It didn’t last long.

  Soon three more bodies littered the ground, and the winter air around the two Antari surged with exhaustion and triumph. Blood ran from Kell’s lip, and Holland’s knuckles were raw, and they’d both lost their hats, but otherwise they were intact.

  It was strange, fighting beside Kell instead of against him, the resonance of their styles, so different but somehow in sync—unnerving.

  “You’ve gotten better,” he observed.

  “I had to,” said Kell, wiping the blood from his knife before he sheathed it. Holland had the strange urge to say more, but Kell was already moving to Lila’s side again as Alucard appeared at the mouth of the alley, a sword in one hand and a curl of ice in the other, clearly ready to join the fight.

  “You’re late,” said Holland.

  “Did I miss all the fun?” asked the magician, but when he saw Lila in Kell’s arms, her limp body covered in blood, every trace of humor left his face. “No.”

  “She’ll live,” said Holland.

  “What happened? Saints, Bard. Can you hear me?” said Alucard as Kell took up his useless chant again, as if it were a spell, a prayer.

  Stay with me.

  Holland leaned against the alley wall, suddenly tired.

  Stay with me.

  He closed his eyes, memories rising like bile in his throat.

  Stay with me.

  NINE

  TROUBLE

  I

  Tieren Serense had never been able to see the future.

  He could only see himself.

  That was the thing so many didn’t understand about scrying. A man could not gaze into the stream of life, the heart of magic, and read it as if it were a book. The world spoke its own language, as indecipherable as the chirping of a bird, the rustling of leaves. A tongue meant not even for priests.

  It is an arrogant man that thinks himself a god.

  And an arrogant god, thought Tieren, looking to the window, that thinks himself a man.

  So when he poured the water into the basin, when he took up the vial of ink and tipped three drops into the water, when he stared into the cloud that bloomed beneath the surface, he was not trying to see the future. He wasn’t looking out at all, but in.

  A scrying dish, after all, was a mirror for one’s mind, a way to look in at one’s self, to pose questions that only the self could answer.

  Tonight Tieren’s questions revolved around Maxim Maresh. Around the spell his king was weaving, and how far the Aven Essen should let him go.

  Tieren Serense had served Nokil Maresh when he was king, had watched his only son, Maxim, grow, had stood beside him when he married Emira, and been there to usher Rhy into the world, and Kell into the palace. He had spent his life serving this family.

  Now, he did not know how to save it.

  The ink spread through the basin, turning the water grey, and in the shudder of its surface, he felt the queen before he saw her. A blush of cold in the room behind him.

  “I hope you won’t mind, Your Majesty,” he said softly. “I borrowed one of your bowls.”

  She was standing there, arms folded across her front as if chilled, or guarding something fragile behind her ribs.

  Emira, who never confided in him, never sought out his waiting ear, no matter how many times he offered. Instead, he’d learned of her through Rhy, through Maxim, through Kell. He’d learned of her through watching her watch the world with those wide, dark eyes that never blinked for fear of missing something.

  Now those wide, dark eyes went to the shallow bowl between his hands. “What did you see?”

  “I see what all reflections show,” he answered wearily. “Myself.”

  Emira bit her lip, a gesture he’d seen Rhy make a hundred times. Her fingers tightened around her ribs. “What is Maxim doing?”

  “What he believes is right.”

  “Aren’t we all?” she whispered.

  Thin tears slid down her cheeks, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. It was only the second time he’d ever seen Emira cry.

  The first had been more than twenty years ago, when she was new to the palace.

  He’d found her in the courtyard, her back up against a winter tree, arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold, even though two rows away the summer was in bloom. She stood perfectly still, save for the silent shudder of her chest, but he could see the storm behind her eyes, the strain in her jaw, and he remembered thinking, then, that she looked old for one so young. Not aged, but worn, weary from the weight of her own mind. Fears, after all, were heavy things. And whether or not Emira voiced them, Tieren could feel them on the air, thick as rain right before it falls.

  She wouldn’t tell him what was wrong, but a week later Tieren heard the news, watched Maxim’s face glow with pride while Emira stood at his side, steeling herself against the declaration as if it were a sentence.

  She was pregnant.

  Emira cleared her throat, eyes still trained on the clouded water. “May I ask you something, Master Tieren?”

  “Of course, Your Highness.”

  Her gaze shifted toward him, two dark pools that hid their depths. “What do you fear most?”

  The question took him by surprise, but the answer rose to meet it. “Emptiness,” he said. “And you, my queen?”

  Her lips quirked into a sad smile. “Everything,” she said. “Or so it feels.”

  “I do not believe that,” said Tieren gently.

  She thought. “Loss, then.”

  Tieren curled a finger around his beard. “Love and loss,” he said, “are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.”

  II

  Lila opened her eyes.

  At first all she saw was sky. That same bruised sunset she’d been staring at a moment before. Only the moment was gone, and the colors had bled away, leaving a heavy blanket of night. The ground was cold beneath her but dry, a coat bunched up beneath her head.

  “It shouldn’t take this long,” a voice was saying. “Are you sure—”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  Her head spun, fingers drifting over her ribs to the place where the blade had gone in. Her shirt was sticky with blood, and she cringed reflexively, expecting pain. The memory of pain sang through her, but it was nothing but an echo, and when she took a testing breath, crisp air filled her lungs instead of blood.

  “Fucking Copper Thieves,” said a third voice. “Should have killed them months ago, and stop pacing, Kell, you’re making me dizzy.”

  Lila closed her eyes, swallowed.

  When she blinked, vision sliding in and out of focus, Kell was kneeling over her. She looked up into his two-toned eyes, and realized they weren’t his eyes at all. One was black. The other emerald green.

  “She’s awake.” Holland straightened, blood dripping from a gash along his palm.

  A copper tang still filled her mouth, and she rolled over and spit onto the stones.

  “Lila,” said Kell, so much emotion in her name, and how could she ever have thought that cold, steady voice belonged to him? He
crouched beside her, one hand beneath her back—she shivered at the sudden visceral memory of the blade scraping over bone, jutting out beneath her shoulder blade—as he helped her sit up.

  “I told you she’d be fine,” said Holland, folding his arms.

  “She still looks pretty rough,” said Alucard. “No offense, Bard.”

  “None taken,” she said hoarsely. She looked up into their faces—Kell pale, Holland grim, Alucard tense—and knew it must have been a near thing.

  Leaning on Kell, she got to her feet.

  Ten Copper Thieves lay sprawled on the alley floor. Lila’s hands shook as she took in the scene, and then kicked the nearest corpse as hard as she could. Again and again and again, until Kell took her by the arms and pulled her in, the breath leaving her lungs in broken gasps, even though her chest was healed.

  “I miscounted,” she said into his shoulder. “I thought there were six.…”

  Kell brushed the tears from her cheek. She hadn’t realized she was crying.

  “You were only at sea for four months,” he said. “How many enemies did you make?”

  Lila laughed, a small, jagged hiccup of a laugh, as he pulled her closer.

  They stood there like that for a long moment, while Alucard and Holland walked among the dead, freeing Lila’s knives from chests and legs and throats.

  “And what have we learned from this, Bard?” asked the captain, wiping a blade on a corpse’s chest.

  Lila looked down at the bodies of the men she’d once spared aboard the Copper Thief.

  “Dead men can’t hold grudges.”

  * * *

  They made their way back to the ship in silence, Kell’s arm around her waist, though she no longer needed him for support. Holland walked in front with Alucard, and Lila kept her eyes on the back of his head.

  He hadn’t had to do it.

  He could have let her bleed out in the street.

  He could have stood and watched her die.

  That’s what she would have done.

  She told herself that’s what she would have done.

  It isn’t enough, she thought. It doesn’t make up for Barron, for Kell, for me. I haven’t forgotten.

  “Tac,” said Jasta as they made their way up the dock. “What happened to you?”