A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  Distaste washed across Kell’s face. “We don’t glorify death with displays.”

  The chains rattled as Holland sat forward. “This one needs to be public. Something out in the open where he can see.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Osaron needs a body. He cannot take this world without one.”

  “Is that so?” challenged Kell. “Because he’s doing an impressive job of it so far.”

  “It’s clumsy, broad strokes,” said Holland dismissively. “This isn’t what he wants.”

  “You would know.”

  Holland ignored the jab. “There is no glory in a crown he cannot wear, even if he has not realized it yet. Osaron is a creature of potential. He will never be satisfied with what he has, not for long. And for all his power, all his conjuring, he cannot craft flesh and blood. Not that it will stop him from trying, and poisoning every soul in London in search of a pawn or vessel, but none will do.”

  “Because he needs an Antari.”

  “And he has only three options.”

  Kell stiffened. “You knew about Lila?”

  “Of course,” said Holland evenly. “I’m not a fool.”

  “Fool enough to play into Osaron’s hands,” said Kell through clenched teeth. “Fool enough to call for your own execution. To what end? Reduce his options from three to two, and he still—”

  “I plan to give him what he wants,” said Holland grimly. “I plan to kneel and beg and invite him in. I plan to grant him his vessel.” Kell stared in bald disgust. “And then I plan to let you kill me.”

  Kell’s disgust turned to shock, then confusion.

  Holland smiled, a cold, rueful twitch of the lips.

  “You should learn to guard your feelings.”

  Kell swallowed, made a thin attempt to mask his features. “As much as I’d like to kill you, Holland, doing so won’t kill him. Or have you forgotten that magic does not die?”

  “Perhaps not, but it can be contained.”

  “With what?”

  “As Tosal.”

  Kell flinched reflexively at the sound of a blood command, then paled as the realization dawned. “No.”

  “So you do know the spell?”

  “I could turn you to stone. It would be a kinder end.”

  “I’m not looking for kindness, Kell.” Holland tilted his chin up, attention settling on the cell’s high ceiling. “I’m looking to finish what I started.”

  The Antari ran a hand through his copper hair. “If Osaron doesn’t take the bait. If he doesn’t come, then you’ll die.”

  “Death comes for us all,” said Holland evenly. “I would simply have mine mean something.”

  The second time someone tried to kill Holland, he was eighteen, walking home with a loaf of coarse bread in one hand and a bottle of kaash in the other.

  The sun was going down, the city taking on another shape. It was a risk, to walk with both hands full, but Holland had grown into his frame, long limbs corded with muscle, shoulders broad and straight. He no longer wore his black hair down over his eye. He no longer tried to hide.

  Halfway home, he realized he was being followed.

  He didn’t stop, didn’t turn around, didn’t even quicken his pace.

  Holland didn’t go looking for fights, but still they came to him. Trailed him through the streets like strays, like shadows.

  He kept walking, now, letting the soft clink of the bottle and the steady tread of his boot form a backdrop for the sounds of the alley around him.

  The shuffle of steps.

  The soft exhale before a weapon’s release.

  A blade whistling out of the dark.

  Holland dropped the bread and turned, one hand raised. The knife stopped an inch from his throat and hung there in the air, waiting to be plucked. Instead, he twirled his hand and the blade spun on its edge, reversing course. With a flick of his finger, he flung the metal back into the dark, where it found flesh. Someone screamed.

  Three more men came out of the shadows. Not by choice—Holland was dragging them forward, their faces contorted as they fought their own bones, his will on their bodies stronger than their own.

  He could feel their hearts racing, blood pounding through their veins.

  One of the men tried to speak, but Holland willed his mouth shut. He didn’t care what they had to say.

  All three were young, though a little older than Holland himself, with tattoos already staining their wrists and lips and temples. Blood and word, the sources of power. He had half a mind to walk away and leave them pinned in the street, but this was the third attack in less than a month, and he was getting tired.

  He loosened a single pair of jaws.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Ros … Ros Vortalis,” stammered the youth through still-clenched teeth.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the name. It wasn’t even the first time he’d heard the name from one of the would-be killers following him home. Vortalis was a thug from the shal, a nobody trying to carve a piece of power from a place with too little to spare. A man trying to get Holland’s attention in all the wrong ways.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “He told us … to bring him … your head.”

  Holland sighed. The bread was still on the ground. The wine was beginning to frost. “Tell this Vortalis that if he wants my head, he’ll have to come for it himself.”

  With that, he flicked his fingers, and the men went flying backward, just like the knife, slamming into the alley walls with a solid thud. They fell and didn’t get back up, and Holland took up the bread, stepped over their bodies—chests still rising—and continued home.

  When he got there, he pressed his palm to the door, felt the locks slide free within the wood, and eased it open. There was a slip of paper on the floor, and he was halfway to it when he heard the padding rush of steps, and looked up just in time to catch the girl. She threw her arms around his neck, and when he spun with the weight of her, the skirts of her dress fanned like petals, the edges stained from dancing.

  “Hello, Hol,” she said sweetly.

  “Hello, Tal,” he answered.

  It had been nine years since Alox attacked him. Nine years trying to survive in a city out for blood, weathering every storm, every fight, every sign of trouble, all the while waiting for something better.

  And then, something better came.

  And her name was Talya.

  Talya, a spot of color in a world of white.

  Talya, who carried the sun with her wherever she went.

  Talya, so fair that when she smiled, the day grew brighter.

  Holland saw her in the market one night.

  And next he saw her in the square.

  And after that, he saw her everywhere he looked.

  She had scars in the corners of her eyes that winked silver in the light, and a laugh that took his breath away.

  Who could laugh like that, in a world like this?

  She reminded him of Alox. Not the way he’d disappear for hours, or days, come home with blood caking his clothes, but the way her presence could make him forget about the darkness, the cold, the dying world outside their door.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as he set her down.

  “Nothing,” he said, kissing her temple. “Nothing at all.”

  And perhaps that wasn’t strictly true, but there was a startling truth beneath the lie: for the first time in his life, Holland was something like happy.

  He stoked the fire with a glance, and Talya pulled him onto the cot they shared, and, then, tearing off pieces of bread and sipping cold wine, she told him the stories of the someday king. Just the way Alox had. The first time, Holland had flinched at the words, but didn’t stop her because he liked the way she told them, so full of energy and light. The stories were her favorite—and so he let her talk.

  By the third or fourth telling, he’d forgotten why the stories sounded so familiar.

  By the tenth, he’d f
orgotten that he’d first heard them from someone else.

  By the hundredth time, he’d forgotten about that other life.

  That night, they lay wrapped in blankets, and she ran her fingers through his hair, and he felt himself drifting from the rhythm of the touch and the heat of the fire.

  That was when she tried to cut his heart out.

  She was fast, but he was faster, the knife’s tip sinking only an inch before Holland came to his senses and forced her bodily away. He was up, on his feet, clutching his chest as blood leaked between his fingers.

  Talya just stood there in the middle of their tiny room, their home, the blade hanging from her fingers.

  “Why?” he asked, stunned.

  “I’m sorry, Hol. They came to me in the market. Said they’d pay in silver.”

  He wanted to ask when, ask who, but he never got the chance.

  She lunged at him again, tightly, swiftly, all her dancer’s grace, and the knife whistled sweetly toward him. It happened so fast. Without thinking, Holland’s fingers twitched, and her knife twisted in her grip, freezing in the air even as the rest of her kept moving forward. The blade sank smoothly between her own ribs.

  Talya looked at him then with such surprise and indignation, as if she’d thought he’d let her kill him. As if she’d thought he’d simply surrender.

  “Sorry, Tal,” he said as she tried to breathe, to speak, and couldn’t.

  She tried to take a step and Holland caught her as she fell, all that dancer’s grace gone out of her limbs at the end.

  Holland stayed there till she died, then laid her carefully on the floor, got to his feet, and left.

  V

  “He wants what?” said the king, looking up from the map.

  “An execution,” repeated Kell, still reeling.

  As Tosal, those had been Holland’s words.

  “It must be a trick,” said Isra.

  “I don’t think so,” started Kell, but the guard wasn’t listening.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, turning to Maxim. “Surely he wants to draw Osaron in so he can escape.…”

  As Tosal.

  To confine.

  Kell had used the blood spell only once in his life, on a bird, a small sunflit he’d caught in the Sanctuary gardens. The sunflit had gone perfectly still in his hands, but it hadn’t died. He could feel its heart beating frantically beneath its feathered breast while it lay motionless, as if paralyzed, trapped inside its own body.

  When Tieren had found out, the Aven Essen was furious. Blood spell or not, Kell had broken the cardinal rule of power: he had used magic to harm a living creature, to alter its life. Kell had apologized profusely, and said the words to dispel what he’d done, to heal the damage, but to his shock and horror, the commands had no effect. Nothing he said seemed to work.

  The bird didn’t revive.

  It just lay there, still as death, in his hands.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Tieren shook his head. “Things are not so simple, when it comes to life and death,” he’d said. “With minds and bodies, what is done cannot always be undone.” And then he’d taken up the sunflit, and brought it to his chest, and broken its neck. The priest had set the lifeless bird back in Kell’s hands.

  “That,” said Tieren grimly, “was a kinder end.”

  He had never tried the spell again, because he’d never learned the words to undo it.

  “Kell.”

  The king’s voice jarred him out of the memory.

  Kell swallowed. “Holland did what he did to save his world. I believe that. Now he wants it to be over.”

  “You’re asking us to trust him?” challenged Isra.

  “No,” said Kell, holding the king’s gaze, “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Tieren appeared in the doorway.

  Ink stained his fingers, and fatigue hollowed out his cheeks. “You called for me, Maxim?”

  The king exhaled heavily. “How long until your spell is ready?”

  The Aven Essen shook his head. “It is not a simple matter, putting an entire city to sleep. The spell must be broken down into seven or eight smaller ones and then positioned around the city to form a chain—”

  “How long?”

  Tieren made an exasperated sound. “Days, Your Majesty.”

  The king’s gaze returned to Kell. “Can you end it?”

  Kell didn’t know if Maxim was asking if he had the will or the strength to kill another Antari.

  I’m not looking for kindness, Kell. I’m looking to finish what I started.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  The king nodded and swept his hand over the map. “The palace wards do not extend to the balconies, do they?”

  “No,” said Tieren. “It is all we can do to keep them up around the walls, windows, and doors.”

  “Very well,” said the king, letting his knuckles fall to the table’s edge. “The north courtyard, then. We’ll raise a platform overlooking the Isle, and hold the ritual at dawn, and whether or not Osaron comes…” His dark eyes landed on Kell. “Holland dies by your hand.”

  The words followed Kell into the hall.

  Holland dies by your hand.

  He sank back against the map room doors, exhaustion winding around his limbs.

  It’s rather hard to kill an Antari.

  By the blade.

  A kinder end.

  As Tosal.

  He pushed off the wood and started for the stairs.

  “Kell?”

  The queen was standing at the end of the hall, looking out a pair of balcony doors at the shadow of her city. Her eyes met his in the reflection in the glass. There was a sadness in them, and he found himself taking a step toward her before he stopped. He didn’t have the strength.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing before he turned and walked away.

  VI

  All day Rhy had searched the city for survivors.

  In ones and sometimes twos, he found them—shaken, fragile, but alive. Most were startlingly young. Only a few were very old. And just like the magic in their veins, there was no common factor. No bond of blood, or gender, or means. He found a noble girl from House Loreni, still dressed for a tournament ball, an older man in threadbare clothes tucked in an alleyway, a mother in red mourning silks, a royal guard whose mark had failed or simply faded. All now left with the silver veins of a survivor.

  Rhy stayed with them only long enough to show they weren’t alone, long enough to lead them to the palace steps for shelter, and then he was off again, back into the city, in search of more.

  Before dusk, he returned to the Spire—he’d known it was too late, but had to see—and found all that was left of Anisa: a small pile of ashes, smoldering on the floor of Alucard’s cabin, beyond the cage of warped planks. A few drops of silver from her House Emery ring.

  Rhy was crossing the deck in numbed silence when he caught the glint of metal and saw the woman sitting on the deck with her back to a crate and a blade in her hand.

  His boots hit the wooden dock with a thud.

  The woman didn’t move.

  She was dressed like a man, like a sailor, a black-and-red captain’s sash across her front.

  At first glance, he could tell she was from the borderlands, the coast where Arnes looked onto Vesk. She had the build of a northerner and the coloring of a local, her rich brown hair worn in two massive braids that coiled like a mane around her face. Her eyes were open, unblinking, but they looked ahead with an intensity that said she was still there, and thin lines of silver shone against her sea-tanned face.

  The knife in her hand was slick with blood.

  It didn’t appear to be hers.

  A dozen warnings echoed in Rhy’s head—all of them in Kell’s voice—as he knelt beside her.

  “What’s your name?” he asked in Arnesian.

  Nothing.

  “Captain?”

  After several long seconds, the woman blinked, a slow, final gesture.


  “Jasta,” she said, her voice hoarse, and then, as if the name had sparked something in her, she added, “He tried to drown me. My first mate, Rigar, tried to drag me into that whispering river.” She didn’t take her eyes off the ship. “So I killed him.”

  “Are there any others on board?” he asked.

  “Half of them are missing,” she said. “The others…” She trailed off, dark eyes dancing over the vessel.

  Rhy touched her shoulder. “Can you stand?”

  Jasta’s face drifted toward his. She frowned. “Has anyone told you that you look like the prince?”

  Rhy smiled. “Once or twice.” He held out his hand and helped her to her feet.

  VII

  The sun had gone down, and Alucard Emery was trying to get drunk.

  So far it wasn’t working, but he was determined to see it through. He’d even made a little game:

  Every time his mind drifted to Anisa—her bare feet, her fevered skin, her small arms around his neck—he took a drink.

  Every time he thought of Berras—his brother’s cutting tone, the hateful smile, the hands around his throat—he took a drink.

  Every time his nightmares rose like bile, or his own screams echoed in his head, or he had to remember his sister’s empty eyes, her burning heart, he took a drink.

  Every time he thought of Rhy’s fingers laced through his, of the prince’s voice telling him to hold on, hold on, hold on to me, he took a very, very long drink.

  Across the room, Lila seemed to be playing her own game; his quiet thief was on her third glass. It took a great deal to shake Delilah Bard, that much he knew, but still, something had shaken her. He might never be able to read the secrets in her face, but he could tell she was keeping them. What had she seen beyond the palace walls? What demons had she faced? Were they strangers or friends?

  Every time he asked a question Delilah Bard would never answer, he took a drink, until the pain and grief finally began to blur into something steady.

  The room rocked around him, and Alucard Emery—the last surviving Emery—slumped back in the chair, fingering the inlaid wood, the fine gold trim.

  How strange it was, to be here, in Rhy’s rooms. It had been strange enough when Rhy was stretched out on his bed, but then the details, the room, everything but Rhy himself, had gone out of focus. Now, Alucard took in the glittering curtains, the elegant floor, the vast bed, now made. All signs of struggle smoothed away.