Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (24 page)

Staff looked from Kell to Rhy, as if it were a trap, a trick question. “Well … he said we were to watch, and to keep him from harm, and to report to His Majesty if we saw Master Kell doing anything … suspicious.”

Kell scowled, but Rhy flashed an encouraging smile. “Is that so, Hastra?”

The guard with dark gold hair bowed his head. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“But if you were informed about something in advance, then it wouldn’t be suspicious, would it?”

Hastra looked up. “Um … no, Your Highness?”

“Rhy,” protested Kell, but the prince held his hand up.

“You both swore your lives to this family, this crown, and this empire. Does your oath hold?”

Both men bowed their heads and brought their hands to their chests. “Of course, Your Highness,” they said, almost in unison.
What on earth is Rhy getting at?
wondered Kell.

And then, the prince’s countenance changed. The easiness fell away, as did his cheerful smile. His posture straightened and his jaw clenched, and in that moment he looked less like a prince than a future king. He looked like
Maxim.

“Then understand this,” he said, his voice now low and stern. “What I’m about to tell you regards the safety and security of not only our family, but of the Arnesian empire.”

The men’s eyes went wide with concern. Kell’s narrowed.

“We believe there is a threat in the tournament.” Rhy shot Kell a knowing look, though Kell honestly had no idea where he was going with this. “In order to determine the nature of this threat, Kell will be competing in the
Essen Tasch
, disguised as an ordinary entrant, Kamerov Loste.”

The guards frowned, cheating looks toward Kell, who managed a stiff nod. “The secrecy of my identity,” he cut in, “is paramount. If either Faro or Vesk discovers my involvement, they’ll assume we’ve rigged the game.”

“My father already knows of Kell’s inclusion,” added Rhy. “He has his own matters to attend to. If you see anything during the tournament, you will tell Kell himself, or me.”

“But how are we supposed to guard him?” asked Staff. “If he’s pretending to be someone else?”

Rhy didn’t miss a beat. “One of you will pose as his second—every competitor needs an attendant—and the other will continue to guard him from a safe distance.”

“I’ve always wanted to be in a plot,” whispered Hastra. And then, raising his voice, “Your Highness, could I be the one in disguise?” His eagerness was a barely contained thing.

Rhy looked to Kell, who nodded. Hastra beamed, and Rhy brought his hands together in a soft, decisive clap. “So it’s settled. As long as Kell is Kell, you will guard him with your usual attentiveness. But when dealing with Kamerov, the illusion must be flawless, the secret held.”

The two guards nodded solemnly and were dismissed.
Saints
, thought Kell as the doors swung shut.
He’s actually done it.

“There,” said Rhy, slouching onto the couch. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Kell looked at his brother with a mixture of surprise and awe. “You know,” he said, taking up the mask, “if you can rule half as well as you can lie, you’re going to make an incredible king.”

Rhy’s smile was a dazzling thing. “Thank you.”

IV

It was late by the time Lila made her way back to the
Night Spire.
Sasenroche had quieted, and it had started to sleet, an icy mix that turned to slush on the deck and had to be swept away before it froze solid.

Back in her London—
old
London—Lila had always hated winter.

Longer nights meant more hours in which to steal, but the people who ventured out usually didn’t have a choice, which made them poor marks. Worse than that, in winter, everything was damp and grey and bitter cold.

So many nights in her past life, she had gone to bed shivering. Nights she couldn’t afford wood or coal, so she’d put on every piece of clothing she owned and huddled down and froze. Heat cost money, but so did food and shelter and every other blasted thing you needed to survive, and sometimes you had to choose.

But here, if Lila practiced, she could summon fire with her fingertips, could keep it burning on nothing but magic and will. She was determined to master it, not just because fire was useful or dangerous, but because it was
warm
, and no matter what happened, Lila Bard never wanted to be cold again.

That was why Lila favored fire.

She blew out a puff of air. Most of the men stayed behind to enjoy the night on land, but Lila preferred her room on the ship, and she wanted to be alone so she could think.

London.
Her pulse lifted at the thought. It had been four months since she first boarded the
Night Spire.
Four months since she said good-bye to a city she didn’t even know, its name the only tether to her old life. She’d planned to go back, of course. Eventually. What would Kell say, when he saw her? Not that
that
was her first thought. It wasn’t. It was sixth, or maybe seventh, somewhere below all the ones about Alucard and the
Essen Tasch.
But it was still
there
, swimming in her head.

Lila sighed, her breath clouding as she leaned her elbows on the ship’s slush-covered rail and looked down at the tide as it sloshed up against the hull. Lila favored fire, but it wasn’t her only trick.

Her focus narrowed on the water below, and as it did, she tried to push the current back, away. The nearest wave stuttered, but the rest kept coming. Lila’s head had begun to hurt, pounding in time with the waves, but she gripped the splintered rail, determined. She imagined she could
feel
the water—not only the shudder traveling up the boat, but the energy coursing through it. Wasn’t magic supposed to be the thing in all things? If that was true, then it wasn’t about moving the water, it was about moving the
magic.

She thought of “The Tyger,” the poem she used to focus her mind, with its strong and steady beat … but it was a song for fire. No, she wanted something else. Something that flowed.

“Sweet dreams,”
she murmured, summoning a line from another Blake poem, trying to get the feeling right.
“Of pleasant streams …”
She said the line over and over again until the water filled her vision, until the sound of the sloshing waves was all she could hear, and the beat of them matched the beat of her pulse and she could feel the current in her veins, and the water up and down the dock began to still, and …

A dark drop hit the rail between her hands.

Lila lifted her fingers to her nose; they came away stained with blood.

Someone
tsk
ed, and Lila’s head snapped up. How long had Alucard been standing at her back?

“Please tell me you didn’t just try to exert your will on the
ocean
,” he said, offering her a kerchief.

“I almost did it,” she insisted, holding the cloth to her face. It smelled like him. His magic, a strange mixture of sea air and honey, silver and spice.

“Not that I doubt your potential, Bard, but that’s not possible.”

“Maybe not for
you
,” she jabbed, even though in truth she was still unnerved by what she’d seen him do back in the tavern.

“Not for
anyone
,” said Alucard, slipping into his teacher’s voice. “I’ve told you: when you control an element, your will has to be able to encompass it. It has to be able to reach, to surround. That’s how you shape an element, and that’s how you command it. No one can stretch their mind around an ocean. Not without tearing. Next time, aim sma—”

He cut off as a clod of icy slush struck the shoulder of his coat. “Agh!” he said, as bits slipped down his collar. “I know where you sleep, Bard.”

She smirked. “Then you know I sleep with knives.”

His smile faltered. “Still?”

She shrugged and turned back to the water. “The way they treat me—”

“I’ve made my orders very clear,” he said, obviously assuming she’d been misused. But that wasn’t it.

“—like I’m one of them,” she finished.

Alucard blinked, confused. “Why shouldn’t they? You’re part of the crew.”

Lila cringed.
Crew.
The very word referred to more than one. But belonging meant caring, and caring was a dangerous thing. At best, it complicated everything. At worst, it got people killed. People like Barron.

“Would you rather they try to knife you in the dark?” asked the captain. “Toss you overboard and pretend it was an accident?”

“Of course not,” said Lila. But at least then she’d know how to react. Fights she recognized. Friendship? She didn’t know what to do with that. “They’re probably too scared to try it.”

“Some of them may fear you, but all of them respect you. And don’t let on,” he added, nudging her shoulder with his, “but a few may even
like
you.”

Lila groaned, and Alucard chuckled.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Delilah Bard,” she said calmly. “The best thief aboard the
Night Spire
.”

Normally Alucard left it at that, but not tonight. “But who
was
Delilah Bard before she came aboard my ship?”

Lila kept her eyes on the water. “Someone else,” she said. “And she’ll be someone else again when she leaves.”

Alucard blew out a puff of air, and the two stood there, side by side on deck, staring out into the fog. It sat above the water, blurring the line between sea and sky, but it wasn’t entirely still. It shifted and twisted and curled, the motions as faint and fluid as the rocking of the water.

The sailors called it scrying fog—supposedly, if you stared at it long enough, you began to see things. Whether they were visions or just a trick of the eye depended on who you asked.

Lila squinted at the coiling mist, expecting nothing—she’d never had a particularly vivid imagination—but after a moment she thought she saw the fog began to shift, begin to
change.
The effect was strangely entrancing, and Lila found she couldn’t look away as tendrils of ghostly mist became fingers, and then a hand, reaching toward her through the dark.

“So.” Alucard’s voice was like a rock crashing through the vision. “London.”

She exhaled, the cloud of breath devouring the view. “What about it?”

“I thought you’d be happy. Or sad. Or angry. In truth, I thought you’d be
something
.”

Lila cocked her head. “And why would you think that?”

“It’s been four months. I figured you left for a reason.”

She gave him a hard look. “Why did
you
leave?”

A pause, the briefest shadow, and then he shrugged. “To see the world.”

Lila shrugged. “Me, too.”

They were both lies, or at best, partial truths, but for once, neither challenged the other, and they turned away from the water and crossed the deck in silence, guarding their secrets against the cold.

V