A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  A splash of color caught her eye, and she looked up.

  The sky overhead was streaked with sunset—pink and purple and burnished gold. Only, White London didn’t have color, not like this, and for a terrible second, she thought she’d crossed into yet another city, another world, had trapped herself even farther from home—wherever that was now.

  But no, Lila recognized the road beneath her boots, the castle rising to gothic points against the setting sun. It was the same city, and yet entirely changed. It had only been four months since she’d set foot here, four months since she and Kell had faced the Dane twins. Then it had been a world of ice and ash and cold white stone. And now … now a man walked past her on the street, and he was smiling. Not the rictus grin of the starving, but the private smile of the content, the blessed.

  This was wrong.

  Four months, and in that time she’d learned to sense magic, its presence if not its intent. She couldn’t see it, not the way Alucard did, but with every breath she took, she tasted power on the air as if it were sugar, sweet and strong enough that it was cloying. The night air shimmered with it.

  What the hell was going on?

  And where was Kell?

  Lila knew where she was, or at least where she’d chosen to pass through, and so she followed the high wall around a corner to the castle gates. They stood open, winter ivy winding through the iron. Lila dragged to a stop a second time. The stone forest—once a garden filled with bodies—was gone, replaced by an actual stretch of trees, and by guards in polished armor flanking the castle steps, all of them alert.

  Kell had to be inside. A tether ran between them, thin as thread, but strangely strong, and Lila didn’t know if it was made by their magic or something else, but it drew her toward the castle like a weight. She tried not to think about what it meant, how much farther she would have to go, how many people she’d have to fight, to find him.

  Wasn’t there a locator spell?

  Lila wracked her mind for the words. As Travars had carried her between worlds, and As Tascen, that was the way to move between different places in the same world, but what if she wanted to find a person, not a place?

  She cursed herself for not knowing, never asking. Kell had told her once, of finding Rhy after he’d been taken as a boy. What had he used? She dragged her memory—something Rhy had made. A wooden horse? Another image sprang to mind, of the kerchief—her kerchief—clenched in Kell’s hand when he first found her at the Stone’s Throw. But Lila didn’t have anything of his. No tokens. No trinkets.

  Panic welled, and she fought it down.

  So she didn’t have a charm to guide her. People were more than what they owned, and surely objects weren’t the only things that held a mark. They were made of pieces, words … memories.

  And Lila had those.

  She pressed her still-bloody hand to the castle gate, the cold iron biting at the shallow wound as she squeezed her eyes shut, and summoned Kell. First with the memory of the night they’d met, in the alley when she’d robbed him, and then later, when he’d walked through her wall. A stranger tied to her bed, the taste of magic, the promise of freedom, the fear of being left behind. Hand in hand through one world, and then another, pressed together as they hid from Holland, faced down sly Fletcher, fought the not-Rhy. The horror at the palace and the battle in White London, Kell’s blood-streaked body wrapped around hers in the rubble of the stone forest. The broken pieces of their lives cast apart. And then, returned. A game played behind masks. A new embrace. His hand burning on her waist as they danced, his mouth burning against hers as they kissed, bodies clashing like swords on the palace balcony. The terrifying heat, and then, too soon, the cold. Her collapse in the arena. His anger hurled like a weapon before he turned away. Before she let him go.

  But she was here to take him back.

  Lila steeled herself again, jaw clenched against the expectation of the pain to come.

  She held the memories in her mind, pressed them to the wall as if they were a token, and said the words.

  “As Tascen Kell.”

  Against her hand, the gate shuddered and the world fell away as Lila staggered through, out of the street and into the pale polished chamber of a castle hallway.

  Torches burned in sconces along the walls, footsteps sounded in the distance, and Lila allowed herself the briefest moment of satisfaction, maybe even relief, before realizing Kell wasn’t here. Her head was pounding, a curse halfway to her lips when, beyond a door to her left, she heard a muffled scream.

  Lila’s blood went cold.

  Kell. She reached for the door’s handle, but as her fingers closed around it, she caught the low whistle of metal singing through air. She cut to the side as a knife buried itself in the wood where Lila had been a moment before. A black cord drew a path from the hilt back through the air, and she turned, following the line to a woman in a pale cloak. A scar traced the other woman’s cheekbone, but that was the only ordinary thing about her. Darkness filled one eye and spilled over like wax, running down her cheek and up her temple, tracing the line of her jaw and vanishing into hair so red—redder than Kell’s coat, redder even than the river in Arnes—it seemed to singe the air. A color too bright for this world. Or, at least, too bright for the world it had been. But Lila felt the wrongness here, and it was more than vivid colors and ruined eyes.

  This woman reminded her not of Kell, or even of Holland, but of the stolen black stone from months ago. That strange pull, a heavy beat.

  With a flick of the wrist, a second knife appeared in the stranger’s left hand, hilt tethered to the cord’s other end. A swift tug, and the first knife freed itself from the wood and went flying back into the fingers of her right. Graceful as a bird gliding into formation.

  Lila was almost impressed. “Who are you supposed to be?” she asked.

  “I am the messenger,” said the woman, even though Lila knew a trained killer when she saw one. “And you?”

  Lila drew two of her own knives. “I am the thief.”

  “You cannot go in.”

  Lila put her back to the door, Kell’s power like a dying pulse against her spine. Hold on, she thought desperately and then aloud, “Try and stop me.”

  “What is your name?” asked the woman.

  “What’s it to you?”

  She smiled, then, a murderous grin. “My king will want to know who I’ve—”

  But Lila didn’t wait for her to finish.

  Her first knife flew through the air, and as the woman’s hand moved to deflect it, Lila struck with the second. She was halfway to meeting flesh when the corded blade came at her and she had to dodge, diving out of the way. She spun, ready to slash again, only to find herself parrying another scorpion strike. The cord between the knives was elastic, and the woman wielded the blades the way Jinnar did wind, Alucard water, or Kisimyr earth, the weapons wrapped in will so that when they flew, they had both the force of momentum and the elegance of magic.

  And on top of it all, the woman moved with a disturbing grace, the fluid gestures of a dancer.

  A dancer with two very sharp blades.

  Lila ducked, the first blade biting through the air beside her face. Several strands of dark hair floated to the floor. The weapons blurred with speed, drawing her attention in different directions. It was all Lila could do to dodge the glinting bits of silver.

  She’d been in her fair share of knife fights. Had started most of them herself. She knew the trick was to find the guard and get behind it, to force a moment of defense, an opening for attack, but this wasn’t hand-to-hand combat.

  How was she supposed to fight a woman whose knives didn’t even stay in her hands?

  The answer, of course, was simple: the same way she fought anyone else.

  Quick and dirty.

  After all, the point wasn’t to look good. It was to stay alive.

  The woman’s blades lashed out like vipers, striking forward with sudden, terrifying speed. But there was a weakness: th
ey couldn’t change course. Once a blade flew, it flew straight. And that was why a knife in the hand was better than one thrown.

  Lila feinted right, and when the first blade came, she darted the other way. The second followed, charting another path, and Lila dodged again, carving a third line while the blades were both trapped in their routes.

  “Got you,” she snarled, lunging for the woman.

  And then, to her horror, the blades changed course. They veered midair, and plunged, Lila taking frantic flight as both weapons buried themselves in the floor where she’d been crouched a second earlier.

  Of course. A metal worker.

  Blood ran down Lila’s arm and dripped from her fingers. She’d been fast, but not quite fast enough.

  Another flick of a wrist, and the knives flew back into the other woman’s hands. “Names are important,” she said, twirling the cord. “Mine is Ojka, and I have orders to keep you out.”

  Beyond the doors, Kell let out a scream of frustration, a sob of pain.

  “My name is Lila Bard,” she answered, drawing her favorite knife, “and I don’t give a damn.”

  Ojka smiled, and attacked.

  When the next strike came, Lila aimed not at flesh, or blade, but the cord between. Her knife’s edge came down on the stretched fabric and bit in—

  But Ojka was too fast. The metal barely grazed the cord before it snapped back toward the fighter’s fingers.

  “No,” growled Lila, catching the material with her bare hand. Surprise flashed across Ojka’s face, and Lila let out a small, triumphant sound, right before pain lanced up her leg as a third blade—short and viciously sharp—buried itself in her calf.

  Lila gasped, staggered.

  Blood speckled the pale floor as Lila pulled the knife free and straightened.

  Beyond that door, Kell screamed.

  Beyond this world, Rhy died.

  Lila didn’t have time for this.

  She dragged her knives together and they sparked, caught fire. The air seared around her, and this time when Ojka threw her blade, the burning edges of Lila’s own met the length of cord, and the fire caught. It wicked along the tether, and Ojka hissed as she pulled herself back. Halfway to her hand, the cord snapped, and the knife faltered, missing its return to her fingers. A dancer, off cue. The assassin’s face burned with anger as she closed the distance to her opponent, now armed with only a single blade.

  Despite that, Ojka still moved with the terrifying grace of a predator, and Lila was so focused on the knife in the woman’s hand that she forgot the room was filled with other weapons for a magician to use.

  Lila dodged a flash of metal and tried to leap back, but a low stool caught her behind the knees and she stumbled, balance lost. The fire in her hands went out, and the red-haired woman was on her before she hit the floor, blade already arcing down toward her chest.

  Lila’s arms came up to block the knife as it slashed down, their hilts crashing together in the air above her face. A wicked smile flashed across Ojka’s lips as the weapon in her hand suddenly extended, metal thinning into a spike of steel that drove toward Lila’s eyes—

  Her head snapped sideways as metal struck glass and the sound of a sharp crack reverberated through her skull. The knife, having skidded off her false eye, made a deep scratch across the marble floor. A droplet of blood ran down her cheek where the blade had sliced skin, a single crimson tear.

  Lila blinked, dismayed.

  The bitch had tried to drive a knife through her eye.

  Fortunately, she’d picked the wrong one.

  Ojka stared down, caught in an instant of confusion.

  And an instant was all Lila needed.

  Her own knife, still raised, now slashed sideways, drawing a crimson smile across the woman’s throat.

  Ojka’s mouth opened and closed in a mimicry of the parted skin at her neck as blood spilled down her front. She fell to the floor beside Lila, fingers wrapped around the wound, but it was wide and deep—a killing blow.

  The woman twitched and stilled, and Lila shuffled backward out of the spreading pool of blood, pain still singing through her wounded calf, her ringing head.

  She got to her feet, cupping one hand against her shattered eye.

  Her lost second blade jutted from a sconce, and she pried it free, trailing a line of blood in her wake as she stumbled over to the door. It had gone quiet beyond. She tried the handle, but found it locked.

  There was probably a spell, but Lila didn’t know it, and she was too tired to summon air or wood or anything else, so instead she simply summoned the last of her strength and kicked the door in.

  VII

  Kell stared up at the ceiling, the world so far above, and getting farther with every breath.

  And then he heard a voice—Lila’s voice—and it was like a hook, wrenching him back to the surface.

  He gasped and tried to sit up. Failed. Tried again. Pain shuddered through him as he got to one knee. Somewhere far away, he heard the crack of a boot on wood. A lock breaking. He made it to his feet as the door swung open, and there she was, a shadow traced in light, and then his vision slid away and she became a blur, rushing toward him.

  Kell managed a halting step forward before his boots slipped in the pool of blood, and shock and pain plunged him briefly into black. He felt his legs buckling, then warm arms snaking around his waist as he fell.

  “I’ve got you,” said Lila, sinking with him to the floor. His head slumped against her shoulder, and he whispered hoarsely into her coat, trying to form the words. When she didn’t seem to understand, he dragged his bloody, broken hands and numbed fingers once more around the collar at his throat.

  “Take it … off,” choked Kell.

  Lila’s gaze—was there something wrong with her eyes?—flicked over the metal for an instant before she wrapped both hands around the collar’s edge. She hissed when her fingers met the metal, but didn’t let go, grimacing as she cast her hands around until she found the clasp at the base of Kell’s neck. It came free, and she hurled the collar across the room.

  Air rushed back into Kell’s lungs, heat pouring though his veins. For an instant, every nerve in his body sang, first with pain and then power as the magic returned in an electric surge. He gasped and doubled over, chest heaving and tears running down his face as the world around him pulsed and rippled and threatened to catch fire. Even Lila must have felt it, leaping back out of the way as Kell’s power surfaced, settled, every stolen drop reclaimed.

  But something was still missing.

  No, thought Kell. Please, no. The echo. The second pulse. He looked down at his ruined hands, wrists still dripping blood and magic, and none of it mattered. He tore at his chest, tunic ripping over the seal, which was still there, but beneath the scars and the spellwork, only one heart beat. Only one—

  “Rhy—” he said, the word a sob. A plea. “I can’t … he’s…”

  Lila grabbed him by the shoulders. “Look at me,” she said. “Your brother was still alive when I left. Have a little faith.” Her words were hollow, and his own fear ricocheted inside them, filling the space. “Besides,” she added, “you can’t help him from here.”

  She looked around the room at the metal frame, cuffs slick with red, at the table beside it, littered with tools, at the metal collar lying on the floor before her attention returned to him. There was something wrong with her eyes—one was its usual brown, but the other was full of cracks.

  “Your eye—” he started, but Lila waved her hand.

  “Not now.” She rose. “Come on, we have to go.”

  But Kell knew he was in no shape to go anywhere. His hands were broken and bruised, blood still running in ropes from his wrists. His head spun every time he moved, and when she tried to help him up, he only made it halfway to his feet before his body swayed and buckled again. He let out a strangled gasp of frustration.

  “This isn’t a good look on you,” she said, pressing her fingers to a gash above her ankle. “Hol
d still, I’m going to patch you up.”

  Kell’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he said, twitching back from her touch.

  Lila’s mouth quirked. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” she said, pressing her bloody hand against his shoulder. “What’s the word, Kell?”

  The room rocked as he shook his head. “Lila, I don’t—”

  “What’s the fucking word?”

  He swallowed and answered shakily. “Hasari. As Hasari.”

  “All right,” she said, tightening her grip. “Ready?” And then, before he could answer, she cast the spell. “As Hasari.”

  Nothing happened.

  Kell’s eyes fluttered in relief, exhaustion, pain.

  Lila frowned. “Did I do it ri—”

  Light exploded between them, the force of the magic hurling them in opposite directions, like shrapnel from a blast.

  Kell’s back hit the floor, and Lila’s thudded against the nearest wall.

  He lay there, gasping, so dazed that for a second he couldn’t tell if it had actually worked. But then he flexed his fingers and felt the wreckage of his hands and wrists knitting back together, skin smooth and warm beneath the trails of blood, felt the air move freely in his lungs, the emptiness filled, the broken made whole. When he sat up, the room didn’t spin. His pulse pounded in his ears, but his blood was back inside his veins.

  Lila was slumped at the base of the wall, rubbing the back of her head with a low groan.

  “Fucking magic,” she muttered as he knelt beside her. At the sight of him intact, she flashed a triumphant smirk.

  “Told you it would wor—”

  Kell cut her off, taking her face in his stained hands and kissing her once, deeply, desperately. A kiss laced with blood and panic, pain and fear and relief. He didn’t ask her how she’d found him. Didn’t berate her for doing it, only said, “You are mad.”