A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  “Lila,” he said, and there was so much sadness in his voice, she suddenly realized she didn’t want to hear his answer, didn’t want to think of all the ways their story could end, of the chance that none of them would make it out alive, intact. She didn’t want to think beyond this boat, this moment, so she kissed him, deeply, and whatever he was going to say, it died on his lips as they met hers.

  VIII

  Holland sat on the cot with his back against the cabin wall.

  Beyond the wooden boards, the sea splashed against the ship’s hull, and the rocking of the floor beneath him made him dizzy every time he moved. The iron cuff around Holland’s wrist wasn’t helping—the manacles been spelled to dampen magic, the effect like a wet cloth over a fire, not enough to douse his flame, but enough to make it smoke, like a cloud smothering his senses.

  He was kept off balance by the second cuff, no longer around his wrist but clamped to a hook in the cabin wall.

  And worse, he wasn’t alone.

  Alucard Emery was leaning in the doorway with a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other (the thought of both made Holland ill) and every now and then his dark blue eyes flicked up, as if to make sure the Antari was still there, safely tethered to the wall.

  Holland’s head ached. His mouth was dry. He wanted air. Not the stale air of the cabin cell, but the fresh air above, whistling across the deck.

  “If you set me free,” he said, “I could help propel the ship.”

  Alucard licked his thumb and turned a page. “If I set you free, you could kill us all.”

  “I could do that from here,” said Holland casually.

  “Words that do not help your cause,” said the captain.

  A small window was embedded in the wall above Holland’s head. “You could at least open that,” he said. “Give us both some air.”

  Alucard looked at him long and hard before finally tucking the book under his arm. He downed the last of the wine, set the empty glass on the ground, and came forward, leaning over him to unlock the hatch.

  A gust of cold air spilled in, and Holland filled his lungs as a spray of water sloshed against the hull and through the open window, spilling into the cabin.

  Holland braced for the icy spray, but it never hit him.

  With a flick of his wrist and a murmur of words, the water sprang up, circling Alucard’s fingers once before hardening into a thin but vicious blade. His hand tightened on the hilt as he brought the knife’s ice edge to rest against Holland’s throat.

  He swallowed, testing the blade’s bite as he met Alucard’s gaze.

  “It would be a foolish thing,” he said slowly, “to draw my blood.”

  Flexing his wrist, Holland felt the splinter of wood he’d slipped under the manacle, point digging into the base of his palm. It wouldn’t take much pressure. A drop, a word, and the cuffs would melt away. But it wouldn’t set him free.

  Alucard’s smile sharpened, and the knife dissolved back into a ribbon of water dancing in the air around him.

  “Just remember something, Antari,” he said, twirling his fingers and the water with them. “If this ship sinks, you will sink with it.” Alucard straightened, shooing the sea spray back out the open window. “Any other requests?” he asked, the picture of hospitality.

  “No,” said Holland coolly. “You’ve already done so much.”

  Alucard cracked an icy smile and opened his book again, obviously content with his post.

  The third time Death came for Holland, he was on his knees.

  He crouched beside the stream, blood dripping from his fingertips in fat red drops as the Silver Wood rose around him. Twice a year he went there, a place up the river where the Sijlt branched off through a grove of trees growing up from the barren ground in shades of burnished metal—neither wood nor stone nor steel. Some said the Silver Wood had been made by a magician’s hand, while others said it was the place where magic made its final stand before withdrawing from the surface of the world.

  It was a place where, if you stood still, and closed your eyes, you could smell the echoes of summer. A memory of natural magic worn into the wood.

  Holland bowed his head. He didn’t pray—didn’t know who to pray to, or what to say—only watched the frosted waters of the Sijlt swirl beneath his outstretched hand, waiting to catch each drop as it fell. A dash of crimson, a cloud of pink, and then gone, the pale surface of the stream returning to its usual whitish grey.

  “What a waste of blood,” said a voice behind him casually.

  Holland didn’t startle. He’d heard the steps coming from the edge of the grove, boots landing on dry grass. A short, sharp knife lay on the bank beside him, and Holland’s fingers drifted toward it, only to find it wasn’t there. He rose to his feet, then, and turned to find the stranger holding his weapon in both hands. The man was half a head shorter than Holland, and two decades older, dressed in a faded grey that almost passed for black, with dusty brown hair and dark eyes flecked with amber.

  “Nice blade,” said the intruder, testing its tip. “Gotta keep them sharp.”

  Blood dripped from Holland’s palm, and the man’s eyes flicked to the vivid red before smiling broadly. “Sot,” he said easily, “I didn’t come looking for trouble.”

  He sank onto a petrified log and drove the knife into the hard earth at his feet before lacing his fingers and leaning forward, elbows on his knees. One hand was covered in binding spells, an element scrawled along each finger. “Nice view.”

  Holland still said nothing.

  “I come here sometimes, to think,” continued the man, drawing a rolled paper from behind his ear. He looked at the end, unlit, then held it toward Holland.

  “Help a friend out?”

  “We’re not friends,” said Holland.

  The man’s eyes danced with light. “Not yet.”

  When Holland didn’t move, the man sighed and flicked his own fingers, producing a small coin-sized flame that danced above his thumb. It was no small feat, this display of natural magic, even with the spellwork scrawled on his skin. He took a long drag. “My friends call me Vor.”

  The name settled like a stone in Holland’s chest. “Vortalis.”

  The man brightened. “You remember,” he said. Not you’ve heard of me, or you know, but you remember.

  And Holland did. Ros Vortalis. He was a legend in the Kosik, a story in the streets and the shadows, a man who used his words as much as his weapons, and one who always seemed to get his way. A man known across the city as the Hunter, named for tracking down whoever and whatever he wanted, and for never leaving without his quarry. A man who had been hunting Holland for years.

  “You have a reputation,” said Holland.

  “Oh,” said Vortalis, exhaling, “we both have those. How many men and women walk the streets of London without weapons at hand? How many end fights without lifting a finger? How many refuse to join the gangs or the guard—”

  “I’m not a thug.”

  Vortalis cocked his head. His smile vanished. “What are you, then? What’s the point of you? All the magic in that little black eye, and what do you use it for? Emptying your veins into a frozen river? Dreaming of a nicer world? Surely there are better uses.”

  “My power has never brought me anything but pain.”

  “Then you’re using it wrong.” With that he stood and put the end of his taper out against the nearest tree.

  Holland frowned. “This is a sacred—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish the admonition, for that was when Vortalis moved, so fast it had to be a spell, something scrawled somewhere beneath his clothes—but then again, spells only amplified power. They didn’t make it from scratch.

  His fist was inches from Holland’s face when Holland’s will ground against flesh and bone, forcing Vortalis to a stop. But it wasn’t enough. The man’s fist trembled in the air, warring with the hold, and then it came crashing through, like a brick through glass, and slammed into Holland’s jaw.
The pain was sudden, bright, Vortalis beaming as he danced backward out of Holland’s range. Or tried to. The stream shot up behind him and surged forward. But just before it caught Vortalis in the back, he moved again, sidestepping a blow he couldn’t have seen before Holland finally lost patience and sent two spears of ice careening toward the man from opposite sides.

  He dodged the first, but the second took him in the stomach, the spear spinning on its axis so it shattered broadside across the man’s ribs instead of running him through.

  Vortalis fell backward with a groan.

  Holland stood, waiting to see if the man would get back up. He did, chuckling softly as he rocked forward to his knees.

  “They told me you were good,” said Vortalis, rubbing his ribs. “I’ve a feeling you’re even better than they know.”

  Holland’s fingers curled around his drying blood. Vortalis picked up a shard of ice, handling it less like a weapon than an artifact. “As it is, you could have killed me.”

  And Holland could have. Easily. If he hadn’t turned the spear, it would have gone straight through flesh and muscle, broken against bone, but there was Alox in his head, stone body shattering against the floor, and Talya, slumping lifeless against her own knife.

  Vortalis got to his feet, holding his side. “Why didn’t you do it?”

  “You weren’t trying to kill me.”

  “The men I sent were. But you didn’t kill them, either.”

  Holland held his gaze.

  “You got something against killing?” pressed Vortalis.

  “I’ve taken lives,” answered Holland.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Holland fell silent. He clenched his fists, focused on the line of pain along his palm. At last, he said, “It’s too easy.”

  “Killing? Of course it is,” said Vortalis. “Living with it, that’s the hard part. But sometimes, it’s worth it. Sometimes, it’s necessary.”

  “It wasn’t necessary for me to kill your men.”

  Vortalis raised a brow. “They could have come after you again.”

  “They didn’t,” said Holland. “You just kept sending new ones.”

  “And you kept letting them live.” Vortalis stretched, wincing faintly at his injured ribs. “I’d say you have a death wish, but you don’t seem all that keen to die.” He walked to the edge of the grove, his back to Holland as he looked out over the pale expanse of the city. He lit another taper, stuck the end between his teeth. “You know what I think?”

  “I don’t care—”

  “I think you’re a romantic. One of those fools waiting for the someday king to come. Waiting for the magic to return, for the world to wake up. But it doesn’t work like that, Holland. If you want change, you have to make it.” Vortalis waved dismissively at the stream. “You can empty your veins into that water, but it won’t change a thing.” He held out his hand. “If you really want to save this city, help me put that blood to better use.”

  Holland stared at the man’s spell-covered hand. “And what use would that be?”

  Vortalis smiled. “You can help me kill a king.”

  EIGHT

  UNCHARTED WATERS

  I

  The coffee tasted like muck, but it kept Alucard’s hands warm.

  He hadn’t slept, nerves sharpened to knife points by the foreign ship and the traitor magician and the fact that every time he closed his eyes, he saw Anisa burning, saw Jinnar crumbling to ash, saw himself reaching out as if there were a damned thing he could do to save his sister, his friend. Anisa had always been so bright, Jinnar had always been so strong, and it had meant nothing in the end.

  They were still dead.

  Alucard climbed the steps to the deck and took another swig, forgetting how bad the brew really was. He spit the brown sludge over the rail and wiped his mouth.

  Jasta was busy tying off a rope against the mainmast. Hastra and Hano were sitting on a crate in the shade of the mainsail, the young guard cross-legged and the sailor girl perched like a crow, leaning forward to see something cupped in his hands. It looked, of all things, like the leafy green beginnings of an acina blossom. Hano made a delighted sound as the thing slowly unfurled before her eyes. Hastra was surrounded by the thin white threads of light particular to those rare few who held the elements in balance. Alucard wondered briefly why the young guard was not instead a priest. The air around Hano was a nest of dark blue spirals: a wind magician in the making, like Jinnar—

  “Careful, now,” said a voice. “A sailor’s no good without a full set of fingers.”

  It was Bard. She was standing near the prow, teaching Lenos a trick with one of her knives. The sailor watched, eyes wide, as she took the blade between her fingertips and flipped it up into the air, and by the time she caught it handle side, the knife’s edge was on fire. She gave a bow, and Lenos actually flashed a nervous smile.

  Lenos, who’d come to Alucard on her first night aboard the Spire and warned that she was an omen. As if Alucard didn’t already know.

  Lenos, who’d named her the Sarows.

  The first time Alucard had seen Delilah Bard, she’d been standing on his ship, bound at the wrists and frizzing the air with silver. He’d only ever met one magician who glowed like that, and that one had a black eye and an air of general disdain that spoke louder than any words. Lila Bard, however, had two average brown eyes, and nothing to say for herself, nothing to say for the corpse of Alucard’s crewmember, stretched out there on the plank. Had offered a single broken sentence:

  Is en ranes gast.

  I am the best thief.

  And as he’d stood there, taking in her dagger smile, her silver lines of light, Alucard had thought, Well, you’re certainly the strangest.

  The first bad decision he’d made was taking her aboard.

  The second was letting her stay.

  From there, the bad decisions seemed to multiply like drinks during a game of Sanct.

  That first night, in his cabin, Lila sat across from Alucard, her magic tangled, a snarled knot of power never used. And when she asked him to teach her, he’d nearly choked on his wine. Teach an Antari magic? But Alucard had. He’d groomed the coil of power, smoothed it as best he could, and watched the magic flow through clear channels, brighter than anything he’d ever seen.

  He’d had his moments of clarity, of course.

  He’d thought of selling her to Maris at the Ferase Stras.

  Thought of killing her before she decided to kill him.

  Thought of leaving her, betraying her, dreamed up a dozen ways to wash his hands of her. She was trouble—even the crew knew it, and they couldn’t see the word written in knotted silver above her head.

  But for all of that, he liked her.

  Alucard had taken a dangerous girl and made her positively lethal, and he knew that combination was likely to be the end of him, one way or another. So when she’d betrayed him, attacking a competitor before the Essen Tasch, stealing their place even though she had to know what it would mean for him, his crew, his ship … Alucard hadn’t truly been surprised. If anything, he’d been a bit relieved. He’d always known Antari were selfish, bullheaded magicians. Lila was simply proving his instinct right.

  He thought it would be easy then, to be rid of her, to take back his ship, his order, his life. But nothing about Bard was easy. That silver light had snagged him, gotten his own blue and green all tangled up.

  “You knew.”

  Alucard hadn’t heard Kell coming, hadn’t noticed the silver stirring the air outside his thoughts, but now the other magician stood beside him, following his gaze to Bard. “We look different to you, don’t we?”

  Alucard crossed his arms. “Everyone looks different to me. No two threads of magic are the same.”

  “But you knew what she was,” said Kell, “from the moment you saw her.”

  Alucard tipped his head. “Imagine my surprise,” he said, “when a cutpurse with a silver cloud killed one of my men, joined up wi
th my crew, and then asked me to teach her magic.”

  “So it’s your fault she entered the Essen Tasch.”

  “Believe it or not,” said Alucard, echoing Kell’s words about Rhy from the night before, “it was her idea. And I tried to stop her. Valiantly, but it turns out she’s rather stubborn.” His gaze flicked toward Kell. “Must be an Antari trait.”

  Kell gave a grunt of annoyance and turned away. Always storming off. That was definitely an Antari habit.

  “Wait,” said Alucard. “Before you go, there’s something—”

  “No.”

  Alucard bristled. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “I know it was probably about Rhy, so I know I don’t want to hear it, because if you say one more thing about how my brother was in bed, I’m going to break your jaw.”

  Alucard laughed softly, sadly.

  “Is that funny?” snarled Kell.

  “No…” said Alucard, trailing off. “You’re just so easy to rile. You really can’t fault me for doing it.”

  “No more than you will be able to fault me for hitting you when you go too far.”

  Alucard raised his hands. “Fair enough.” He began to rub the old scars that circled his wrists. “Look, all I wanted to say was—that I never meant to hurt him.”

  Kell gave him a disparaging look. “You treated him like a fling.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Rhy was in love with you, and you left him. You made him think…” An exasperated sigh. “Or have you forgotten, that you ran from London long before I ever tried to cast you out?”

  Alucard shook his head, eyes escaping to the steady blue line of the sea. His jaw locked, body revolting against the truth. The truth had claws, and they were sunk into his chest. It would be easier to let it go unsaid, but when Kell turned again to go, he forced it up.

  “I left,” he said, “because my brother found out where I was spending my nights—who I was spending them with.”

  Alucard kept his eyes on the water, but he heard Kell’s steps drag to a stop. “Believe it or not, not all families are willing to put aside propriety to indulge a royal’s taste. The Emerys have old notions. Strict ones.” He swallowed. “My brother, Berras, told my father, who beat me until I couldn’t stand. Until he broke my arm, my shoulder, my ribs. Until I blacked out. And then he had Berras put me out to sea. I woke up in a ship’s hold, the captain ten rish richer with the order not to return to London until his crew had set me right. I made it off that ship the first time it docked, with three lin in my pocket and a fair bit of magic in my veins, and no one to welcome me home, so no, I didn’t turn back. And that’s my fault. But I didn’t know what I meant to him.” He tore his gaze from the sea and met Kell’s eyes.