A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  “No,” snapped Rhy, “you didn’t.”

  Kell held his ground. “He might have let Holland drown, or he might have simply been trying to get him away from us before claiming his shell, and if you think Osaron is bad without a body, you should have seen him in Holland’s. I didn’t realize he was after me until it was too late.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” said the king. Kell looked at him, stunned. It was the closest Maxim had come to taking Kell’s side in months.

  “Well,” said Rhy peevishly, “Holland is still alive, and Osaron is still free, and we still have no idea how to stop him.”

  Kell pressed his palms to his eyes. “Osaron still needs a body.”

  “He doesn’t seem to think so,” said Lila.

  “He’ll change his mind,” said Kell.

  Rhy stopped pacing. “How do you know?”

  “Because right now, he can afford to be stubborn. He has too many options.” Kell looked to Tieren, who had remained silent, still as stone. “Once you put the city to sleep, he’ll run out of bodies to play with. He’ll get restless. He’ll get angry. And then we’ll have his attention.”

  “And what do we do then?” said Lila, exasperated. “Even if we can convince Osaron to take the body we give him, we have to be fast enough to trap him in it. It’s like trying to catch lightning.”

  “We need another way to contain him,” said Rhy. “Something better than a body. Bodies come with minds, and those, as we know, can be manipulated.” He plucked a small silver sphere off a shelf, and stretched it out between his fingers. The sphere was made of fine metal cords woven in such a way that they drew apart, expanding into a large orb of delicate filaments, and folded back together, collapsing into a dense ball of tightly coiled silver. “We need something stronger. Something permanent.”

  “We would need an Inheritor,” said Tieren softly.

  The room looked to the Aven Essen, but it was Maxim who spoke. He was turning red. “You told me they didn’t exist.”

  “No,” said Tieren. “I told you I would not help you make one.”

  The priest and the king locked stares for long enough that Rhy spoke up. “Anyone want to explain?”

  “An Inheritor,” said Tieren slowly, addressing the room, “is a device that transfers magic. And even if it could be made, it is by its very nature corrupt, an outright defiance of cardinal law and an interference”—Maxim stiffened at this—“with the natural order of magical selection.”

  The room went quiet. The king’s face was rigid with anger, Rhy’s own features set but pale, and understanding settled in Kell’s chest. A device to transfer magic would be able to grant it to those without. What wouldn’t a father do for a son born without power? What wouldn’t a king do for his heir?

  When the prince spoke, his voice was careful, even. “Is that really possible, Tieren?”

  “In theory,” answered the priest, crossing to an ornate desk that stood in the corner of the room. He pulled a piece of parchment from the drawer, produced a pencil from one of the many folds of his white priest robes, and began to draw.

  “Magic, as you know, does not follow blood. It chooses the strong and the weak as it will. As is natural,” he added, casting a stern look at the king. “But some time ago, a nobleman named Tolec Loreni wanted a way to pass on not only his land and his titles, but also his power to his beloved eldest son.” The sketch on the page began to take shape. A metal cylinder shaped like a scroll, the length embossed with spellwork. “He designed a device that could be spelled to take and hold a person’s power until the next of kin could lay claim to it.”

  “Hence, Inheritor,” said Lila.

  Rhy swallowed. “And it actually worked?”

  “Well, no,” said Tieren. “The spell killed him instantly. But”—he brightened—“his niece, Nadina, had a rather brilliant mind. She perfected the design, and the first Inheritor was made.”

  Kell shook his head. “Why have I never heard of this? And if they worked, why aren’t they still used?”

  “Power does not like being forced into lines,” said Tieren pointedly. “Nadina Loreni’s Inheritor worked. But it worked on anyone. For anyone. There was no way to control who claimed the contents of an Inheritor. Magicians could be persuaded to relinquish the entirety of their power to the device, and once it was surrendered to the Inheritor, it was anyone’s to claim. As you can imagine, things got … messy. In the end, most of the Inheritors were destroyed.”

  “But if we could find the Loreni designs,” said Lila, “if we could re-create one—”

  “We don’t need to,” said Alucard, speaking up at last. “I know exactly where to find one.”

  VII

  “What do you mean you sold it?” Kell snapped at the captain.

  “I didn’t know what it was.”

  This had been going on for several minutes now, and Lila poured herself a fresh drink as the room around her hummed with Kell’s anger, the king’s frustration, Alucard’s annoyance.

  “I didn’t recognize the magic,” Alucard was saying for the third time. “I’d never seen anything like it before. I knew it was rare, but that was all.”

  “You sold an Inheritor,” repeated Kell, drawing out the words.

  “Technically,” said Alucard, defensively, “I didn’t sell it. I offered it in trade.”

  Everyone groaned at that.

  “Who did you give it to?” demanded Maxim. The king didn’t look well—dark bruises stood out beneath his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept in days. Not that any of them had, but Lila liked to think she wore fatigue rather well, given her sheer amount of practice.

  “Maris Patrol,” answered Alucard.

  The king reddened at the name. No one else seemed to notice. Lila did. “You know them.”

  The king’s attention snapped toward her. “What? No. Only by reputation.”

  Lila knew a lie, especially a bad one, but Rhy cut in.

  “And what reputation is that?”

  The king wasn’t the one to answer. Lila noticed that, too.

  “Maris runs the Ferase Stras,” said Alucard.

  “The Going Waters?” translated Kell, assuming Lila didn’t know the words. She did. “I’ve never heard of it,” he added.

  “I’m not surprised,” said the captain.

  “Er an merst…” started Lenos, speaking up for the first time. It’s a market. Alucard shot the man a look, but the shipmate kept going, his voice soft, the accent rural Arnesian. “It caters to sailors of a special sort, looking to trade in…” He finally caught the captain’s look and trailed off.

  “You mean a black market,” offered Lila, tipping her drink toward the captain. “Like Sasenroche.”

  The king raised a brow at that.

  “Your Majesty,” started Alucard. “It was before I served the crown—”

  The king held up a hand, clearly not interested in excuses. “You believe the Inheritor is still there?”

  Alucard nodded once. “The head of the market took a shine to it. Last I saw, it was around Maris’s neck.”

  “And where is this Ferase Stras?” asked Tieren, pushing a piece of parchment toward them. On it, he’d outlined a rough map of the empire. No labels, just the drawn borders of land. The sight tickled something in the back of Lila’s mind.

  “That’s the thing,” said Alucard, running a hand through his messy brown curls. “It moves around.”

  “Can you find it?” demanded Maxim.

  “With a pirate’s cipher, sure,” answered Alucard, “but I don’t have one anymore. On the honor of Arnes, I swear—”

  “You mean it was confiscated when you were arrested,” said Kell.

  Alucard shot him a venomous look.

  “A pirate’s cipher?” asked Lila. “Is that a kind of sea map?”

  Alucard nodded. “Not all sea maps are made equal, though. They all have the ports, the paths to avoid, the best places and times for making deals. But a pirate’s cipher is designed
to keep secrets. To the passing eye, the cipher’s practically useless, nothing but lines. Not even a city named.” He glanced at Tieren’s rough map. “Like that.”

  Lila frowned. There it was again, that tickle, only now it took shape. Behind her eyes, another room in another London in another life. A map with no markings spread across the table in the attic of the Stone’s Throw, weighted down by the night’s take.

  She must have lowered her guard, let the memory show in her face, because Kell touched her arm. “What is it?”

  She drew a finger around the rim of her glass, trying not to betray the emotion in her voice. “I had a map like that once. Nicked it from a shop when I was fifteen. Didn’t even know what it was—the parchment was all rolled up, bound with string—but it just kind of … pulled at me, so I took it. Weird thing was, after all that, I never thought to sell the thing. I suppose I liked the idea of a map with no names, no places, nothing but land and sea and promise. My map to anywhere, that’s what I called it.…”

  Lila realized the room had gone quiet. They were all staring at her, the king and the captain, the magician and the priest and the prince. “What?”

  “Where is it now,” said Rhy, “this map to anywhere?”

  Lila shrugged. “Back in Grey London, I suspect, in a room at the top of the Stone’s Throw.”

  “No,” said Kell gently. “It’s not there anymore.”

  The knowledge hit her like a blow. A last door slamming closed. “Oh…” she said, a little breathless, “well … I should have figured someone would—”

  “I took it,” cut in Kell. And then, before she could ask him why, he added, hurriedly, “It just caught my eye. It’s like you said, Lila, the map has a kind of pull to it. Must be the spellwork.”

  “Must be,” said Alucard dryly.

  Kell scowled at the captain, but went to fetch the map.

  While he was gone, Maxim lowered himself into a chair, fingers gripping the cushioned arms. If anyone else noticed the strain in the monarch’s dark eyes, they said nothing, but Lila watched as Tieren moved too, taking up a place behind the king’s chair. One hand came to rest on Maxim’s shoulder, and Lila saw the king’s features softening, some pain or malady eased by the priest’s touch.

  She didn’t know why the sight made her nervous, but she was still trying to shake the prickle of unease when Kell returned, map in hand. The room gathered around the table, all but the king, while Kell unfurled his prize, weighting the edges. One side was stained with long-dry blood. Lila’s fingers drifted toward the stain, but she stopped herself and shoved her hands instead in the pockets of her coat, fingers curling around her timepiece.

  “I went back once,” said Kell softly, head tipped toward hers. “After Barron…”

  After Barron, he said. As if Barron had been a simple thing, a marker in time. As if Holland hadn’t cut his throat.

  “Nick anything else?” she asked, voice tight. Kell shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she didn’t know if he was sorry for taking the map, or for not taking more, or for simply reminding Lila of a life—a death—she wanted so badly to forget.

  “Well,” asked the king, “is it a cipher?”

  Alucard, on the other side of the table, nodded. “It appears to be.”

  “But the doors were sealed centuries ago,” said Kell. “How would an Arnesian pirate’s cipher even come to be in Grey London?”

  Lila blew out a breath. “Honestly, Kell.”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “You weren’t the first Antari,” she said, “and I’ll bet you weren’t the first to break the rules, either.”

  Alucard raised a brow at the mention of Kell’s past crimes, but had the sense for once to say nothing. He kept his attention fixed on the map, running his fingers back and forth as if searching for a clue, a hidden clasp.

  “Do you even know what you’re doing?” asked Kell.

  Alucard made a sound that was neither a yes nor a no, and might have been a curse.

  “Spare a knife, Bard?” he said, and Lila produced a small, sharp blade from the cuff of her coat. Alucard took the weapon and briskly pierced his thumb, then pressed the cut to the corner of the paper.

  “Blood magic?” she asked, sorry she’d never known how to unlock the map’s secrets, never even known it had secrets to unlock.

  “Not really,” said Alucard. “Blood is just the ink.”

  Under his hand, the map was unfolding—that was the word that came to mind—crimson spreading in thin lines across the paper, illuminating everything from ports and cities to the serpents marking the seas and a decorative band around the edge.

  Lila’s pulse quickened.

  Her map to anywhere became a map to everywhere—or, at least, everywhere a pirate might want to go.

  She squinted, trying to decipher the blood-drawn names. She picked out Sasenroche—the black market carved into the cliffs at the place where Arnes and Faro and Vesk all met—and a town on the cliffs named Astor, as well as a spot at the northern edge of the empire marked only by a small star and the word Is Shast.

  She remembered that word from the tavern in town, with its twofold meaning.

  The Road, or the Soul.

  But nowhere could she find the Ferase Stras.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Patience, Bard.”

  Alucard’s fingers skimmed the edge of the map, and that’s when she saw that the border wasn’t simply a design, but three bands of small, squat numbers trimming the paper. As she watched, the numbers seemed to move. It was a fractional progress, slow as syrup, but the longer she stared, the more certain she was—the first and third lines were shifting to the left, the middle to the right, to what end she didn’t know.

  “This,” said Alucard proudly, tracing the lines, “is the pirate’s cipher.”

  “Impressive,” said Kell, voice dripping with skepticism. “But can you read it?”

  “You’d better hope so.”

  Alucard took up a quill and began the strange alchemy of transmuting the shifting symbols of the map’s trim into something like coordinates: not one set, or two, but three. He did this, keeping up a steady stream of conversation not with the room, but with himself, the words too low for Lila to hear.

  By the hearth, the king and Tieren fell into muted conversation.

  By the windows, Kell and Rhy stood side by side in silence.

  Lenos perched nervously on the sofa’s edge, fiddling with his medallion.

  Only Lila stayed with Alucard and watched him translate the pirate’s cipher, all the while thinking she had so much left to learn.

  VIII

  It took the better part of an hour for the captain to crack the code, the air in the room growing tenser with every minute, the quiet taut as sails in a strong wind. It was a thief’s quiet, coiled, lying in wait, and Lila kept having to remind herself to exhale.

  Alucard, who could usually be counted on to disrupt any silence before it grew oppressive, was busy scratching numbers on a slip of paper and snapping at Lenos whenever the man began to hover.

  Tieren had left shortly after the captain started, explaining that he had to help his priests with their spell, and King Maxim had risen to his feet several minutes later looking like a corpse revived.

  “Where are you going?” Rhy asked as his father turned toward the door.

  “There are other matters to attend to,” he said in a distracted way.

  “What could be more—”

  “A king is not one man, Rhy. He does not have the luxury of valuing one direction and ignoring the rest. This Inheritor, if it can be found, is but a single course. It is my task to chart them all.” The king left with only the short command to summon him when the damned business of the map was done.

  Rhy now sprawled across the couch, one arm over his eyes, while Kell seemed to be sulking against the hearth and Hastra stood at attention with his back to the door.

  Lila tried to focus on these men, their slow
movements like ticking cogs, but her own attention kept flicking back to the window, to those tendrils of fog that coiled and uncoiled beyond the glass, taking shape and falling apart, cresting, then crashing like waves against the palace.

  She stared at the fog, searching for shapes in the shadows the way she sometimes did in clouds—a bird, ship, a pile of gold coins—before she realized that the shadows were indeed taking the shape of something.

  Hands.

  The revelation was unsettling.

  Lila watched as the darkness drew together into a sea of fingers. Mesmerized, she lifted her own hand to the cold glass, the warmth of her touch steaming the window around her fingertips. Just beyond the window, the nearest shadows drew into a mirror image, palm pressed to hers, the seam of glass suddenly too thin, humming as wall and ward strained and shuddered between them.

  Her brow furrowed as she flexed her fingers, the shadow hand mimicking with a child’s slow way, close but not in time, a fraction off the beat.

  She moved her hand back and forth.

  The shadows followed.

  She tapped her fingers soundlessly on the glass.

  The other hand echoed.

  She was just beginning to curl her fingers into a rude gesture when she saw the greater darkness—the one beyond the wave of hands, the one that rose from the river, blanketed the sky—begin to move.

  At first, she thought they were coalescing into a column, but soon that column began to grow wings. Not the kind you found on a sparrow or a crow. The kind of wings that formed on a castle. Buttresses, towers, turrets, unfolding like a flower in sudden, violent bloom. As she watched, the shadows shimmered and hardened into glassy black stone.

  Lila’s hand fell away from the glass. “Am I losing my wits,” she said, “or is there another palace floating on the river?”

  Rhy sat up. Kell was at her shoulder in an instant, peering out through the fog. Parts of it were still blossoming, others dissolving into mist, caught in a never-ending process of being made and remade. The whole thing seemed at once very real and utterly impossible.