A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  “Are you hurt?” asked Kell urgently.

  Hastra shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, his voice trembling.

  “Good,” said Kell, retrieving the assassin’s knife. “Then let’s take back this ship.”

  IV

  Holland was sitting on his cot, studying the band of silver on his thumb, when he heard Lila storming up the stairs, heard the splash of something heavy breaking water, the tread of too many feet.

  He rose, and was halfway to the door when the floor tilted and his vision plunged into black, all of his power bottoming out for a sudden, lurching moment.

  He scrambled for strength, felt his knees hit the floor, his body a thing severed from his power as someone else pulled on his magic as if it were a rope.

  For a terrifying instant, there was nothing, and then, just as suddenly, the room was back, resolving just as it had been before, only now there were shouts overhead, and a burning ship beyond the window, and someone was coming down the steps.

  Holland forced himself up, his head still spinning from the shortness of magic.

  He tore the abandoned chains from the wall, wrapped them around his hands, and staggered out into the corridor.

  Two strangers were coming toward him.

  “Kers la?” said one as he let himself stumble, fall.

  “A prisoner,” said a second, seeing the glint of metal and assuming—wrongly—that Holland was still bound.

  He heard the hiss of blades sliding free from sheaths as he drew his borrowed power back in like a breath.

  Holland’s blood sang, magic flooding his veins anew as the intruder’s hand tangled in his hair, wrenching his head back to expose his throat. For a single beat, he let them think they’d won, let them think it would be so easy, and could almost feel their guard lower, their tension ebb.

  And then he sprang, twisting up and free in a smooth, almost careless motion and wrapping the chains around his foe’s throat before turning the vise from iron to stone. He let go and the man toppled forward, clawing uselessly at his neck as Holland drew the blade from his hip and sliced the second man’s throat.

  Or tried to.

  The killer was fast, dodging back one step, two, dancing around the blade the way Ojka used to, but Ojka never stumbled, and the killer did, erring just long enough for Holland to knock him over and drive the sword down through his back, skewering the man to the floor.

  Holland stepped over the writhing bodies and toward the steps.

  The scythe came out of nowhere, singing in its special way.

  If Athos and Astrid hadn’t favored the vicious curls of steel, if Holland hadn’t dreamed of using the curved blades to cut their throats—he would have never recognized the tone, would not have known how and when to duck.

  He dropped to a knee as the scythe embedded in the wall above his head, and turned just in time to catch a second blade with his bare hands. The steel cut quick and deep, even as he fought to cushion the blow, willing metal and air and bone. The killer leaned into the blade, and Holland’s blood dripped thickly to the floor, triumph turning to fear on the man’s face as he realized what he’d done.

  “As Isera,” said Holland, and ice surged out from his ruined palms, swallowing blade and skin in the space of a breath.

  The scythe slipped from frozen fingers, Holland’s own hands singing with pain. The cuts were deep, but before he could bind them, before he could do anything, a cord wrapped around his throat. His hands went for his neck, but two more cords came out of nowhere, cinching each wrist and forcing his arms wide.

  “Hold him,” ordered an assassin, stepping over and around the few bodies littering the corridor. In one hand she held a hook. “They want the eye intact.”

  Holland didn’t lash out. He went still, taking stock of their weapons and counting the lives he’d add to his list.

  As the killer stalked toward him, his hands began to prickle with unfamiliar heat. The echo of someone else’s magic.

  Lila.

  Holland smiled, wrapped his fingers around the ropes, and pulled—not on the cords themselves, but on the other Antari’s spell.

  Fire erupted down the ropes.

  The twisted threads snapped like bones, and Holland was free. With a slash of his hand, the lanterns shattered, the corridor went dark, and he was on them.

  V

  The Sea Serpents were good.

  Frighteningly good.

  Certainly better than the Copper Thieves, better than all the pirates Lila had come across in those months at sea.

  The Serpents fought like it mattered.

  Fought like their lives were on the line.

  But so did she.

  Lila ducked as a curved blade embedded itself in the mast behind her, spun away from a sword as it cut the air. Someone tried to loop a cord around her throat, but she caught it, twisted free, and slid her knife between a stranger’s ribs.

  Magic thudded through her veins, drawing the ship in lines of life. The Serpents moved like shadows, but to Lila, they shone with light. Her blades slipped under guards, found flesh, freed blood.

  A fist caught her jaw, a knife grazed her thigh, but she didn’t stop, didn’t slow. She was humming with power, some of it hers and some of it borrowed and all of it blazing.

  Blood ran into Lila’s good eye, but she didn’t care because every time she took a life, she saw Lenos.

  Lenos, who’d feared her.

  Lenos, who’d been kind despite that.

  Lenos, who’d called her a portent, a sign of change.

  Lenos, who’d seen her, before she knew to recognize herself.

  Lenos, who’d died with a barb in his chest and the same sad confusion she’d felt in the alley at Rosenal, the same horrible understanding scrawled across his face,

  She could feel Kell and Holland fighting too, on opposite sides of the ship, feel the flex and pull of their magic in her veins, their pain a phantom limb.

  If the Serpents had magic, they weren’t using it. Perhaps they were just trying to avoid damaging the Ghost, since they’d already sunk their own ship, but Lila would be damned if she went down trying to spare this shitty little craft. Fire flared in her hands. The floorboards groaned as she pulled on them. The ship tipped violently beneath her.

  She would sink the whole fucking boat if she had to.

  But she didn’t get the chance. A hand shot out and grabbed her by the collar, hauling her behind a crate. She freed the knife from her hidden arm sheath, but the attacker’s other hand—so much larger than her own—caught her wrist and pinned it back against the wood beside her head.

  It was Jasta, towering over her, and for a moment Lila thought the captain was trying to help, trying for some reason to pull her out of harm’s way, to spare her from the fight. Then she saw the body slumped on the deck.

  Hano.

  The girl’s eyes shone in the dark, open, empty, a clean cut across her throat.

  Anger rolled through Lila as understanding struck. Jasta’s insistence on steering the Ghost, on going with them to the floating market. The sudden danger on the docks at Rosenal. The drinking game, earlier this evening, with its too-strong drink.

  “You’re with them.”

  Jasta didn’t deny it. Only flashed a ruthless smile.

  Lila’s will ground against the turncoat captain’s, and the other woman was forced back, away. “Why?”

  The woman shrugged. “Out here, coin is king.”

  Lila lunged, but Jasta was twice as fast as she looked, and just as strong, and a second later Lila was being slammed back into the side of the ship, the rail catching her in the ribs hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.

  Jasta stood exactly where she’d been before, looking almost bored.

  “My orders are to kill the Arnesian princeling,” she said, freeing a blade from her hip. “No one ever told me what to do with you.”

  Cold hatred surged through Lila’s veins, overtaking even the heat of power. “If you wanted to kill me
, you should have done it already.”

  “But I do not have to kill you,” said Jasta as the ship continued to swarm with menacing shadows. “You are a thief and I am a pirate, but we are both knives. I see it in you. You know you don’t belong. Not here, with them.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “You can pretend all you like,” sneered Jasta. “Change your clothes. Change your language. Change your face. But you will always be a knife, and knives are good for one thing and one thing only: cutting.”

  Lila let her hands fall back to her side, as if considering the traitor’s words. Blood dripped from her fingers, and her lips moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, the words—As Athera—lost beneath Jasta’s preening and the clash of metal to every side.

  Lila raised her voice. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Jasta’s smile widened. “I know how to spot a knife, always have. And I can teach you—”

  Lila clenched her fist, pulling on the wood, and the crates behind Jasta slammed forward. The woman spun, tried to dodge, but Lila’s whispered magic had worked—As Athera, to grow—and the ship boards had branched up over Jasta’s boots while she was gloating. She went crashing to the deck beneath the heavy boxes.

  Jasta let out a strangled curse in a language Lila didn’t speak, her leg pinned beneath the weight, the snap of bone hanging on the air.

  Lila squatted in front of her.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said again, lifting her blade to Jasta’s throat. “And maybe you’re wrong. We don’t choose what we are, but we choose what we do.” The knife was poised to bite in.

  “Make sure you cut deep,” goaded Jasta as blood welled around the tip, spilling in thin lines down her throat.

  “No,” said Lila, withdrawing.

  “You won’t kill me?” she sneered.

  “Oh, I will,” said Lila. “But not until you tell me everything.”

  VI

  The ship was blood and steel and death.

  And then it wasn’t.

  There was no in between.

  The last body crumpled to the deck at Kell’s feet, and it was over. He could tell by the silence, and the sudden stilling of the threads that ran between him and Holland and Lila.

  Kell swayed from exhaustion as Holland strode up the stairs, stepping over a shining pool of wetness, his hands a mess of torn flesh. In the same moment, Alucard appeared, cradling one arm against his chest. Someone had torn the sapphire from his brow, and blood ran into his eye, turning the storm grey a violent blue.

  Nearby, Hastra sagged onto a crate, still shaking and pale. Kell touched the young guard’s shoulder.

  “Was this the first time you took a life?”

  Hastra swallowed, nodded. “I always knew that life was fragile,” he said hoarsely. “Keeping something alive is hard enough. But ending it…” He trailed off, and then, quite abruptly, turned and retched onto the deck.

  “It’s all right,” said Kell, kneeling over him, his own body screaming from a dozen minor wounds as well as the hollowness that always followed a fight.

  After a few seconds Hastra straightened, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “I think I’m ready to be a priest. Do you think Tieren will take me back?”

  Kell squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “We can talk to him,” he said, “when we get home.”

  Hastra managed to smile. “I’d like that.”

  “Where’s Bard?” cut in Alucard.

  Lila appeared a moment later, hauling the massive, hobbled form of the Ghost’s captain behind her.

  Kell stared in shock as Lila forced Jasta to her knees on the deck. The woman’s face was swollen and streaked with blood, her hands bound with coarse rope, one leg clearly broken.

  “Lila, what are you—”

  “Why don’t you tell them?” said Lila, nudging Jasta with her boot. When the woman only snarled, Lila said, “It was her.”

  Alucard made a disgusted sound. “Tac, Jasta. The Sea Serpents?”

  It was the woman’s turn to sneer. “We can’t all be crown pets.”

  Kell’s tired mind turned. It was one thing to be attacked by pirates. It was another to be made bounty. “Who hired you?”

  “I found these on her,” said Lila, producing a pouch of blue gems. Not just any kind, but the small oval chips used to adorn a Faroan’s face.

  “Sol-in-Ar,” muttered Kell. “What was your task?”

  When Jasta answered by spitting on the deck, Lila drove her boot down into the woman’s wounded leg. A snarl escaped her throat.

  “Killing the traitor would have been a perk,” she growled. “I was hired to slaughter the black-eyed prince.” Her gaze drifted up to meet Kell’s. “And a Serpent doesn’t stop until the job is done.”

  The knife came out of nowhere.

  One moment Jasta’s hands were empty, and the next, her last, hidden piece of steel was free and flying toward Kell’s heart. His mind caught up before his limbs, and his hands rose, too slow, too late.

  He would wonder for weeks, months, years, if he could have stopped it.

  If he could have summoned the strength to will the steel away.

  But in that moment, he had nothing left to give.

  The blade struck home, embedding to the hilt.

  Kell staggered back, braced for a pain that never came.

  Hastra’s curls floated up before his eyes, touched with gold even in the dark. The boy had moved like light, lunging between Kell and the knife, his arms not up to block the blade, but out, as if to catch it.

  It took him in the heart.

  An animal sound tore from Kell’s throat as Hastra—Hastra, who made things grow, who would have been a priest, who could have been anything he wanted and chose to be a guard, Kell’s guard—staggered, and fell.

  “No!” he cried, catching the young man’s body before it hit the deck. He was already so quiet, so still, already gone, but Kell had to say something, had to do something. What was the use of so much power if people still kept dying?

  “As Hasari,” he pleaded, pressing his palm to Hastra’s chest, even as the last rhythms of a pulse faded beneath Kell’s hands.

  It was too late.

  He had been too late.

  Even magic had its limits.

  And Hastra was already gone.

  Curls tumbled back from eyes that had once—just—been lit with life, that now sat dark, still, open.

  Kell lowered Hastra’s body, dragging the knife free of his guard’s chest as he rose. His chest was heaving, ragged breaths tearing free. He wanted to scream. He wanted to sob.

  Instead he crossed the deck, and cut Jasta’s throat.

  VII

  Rhy groaned in pain.

  It wasn’t a sudden, lancing blow, but the deep ache of muscles pushed too far, of energy drained. His head pounded and his heart raced as he sat up, trying to ground himself in the silk sheets, the warmth of the fire still smoldering in the hearth.

  You are here, he told himself, trying to disentangle his mind from the nightmare.

  In the dream, he had been drowning.

  Not the way he’d almost drowned on the balcony, just hours—days?—ago when Kell had followed Holland into the river. No, this was slower. Rhy’s dream-self had been sinking, deeper and deeper into a wave-wracked grave, the pressure of the water crushing the air from his lungs.

  But the pain Rhy felt now hadn’t followed him out of the dream.

  It didn’t belong to him at all.

  It belonged to Kell.

  Rhy reached for the royal pin on the table, wishing he could see what was happening to his brother instead of only feeling the effects. Sometimes he thought he did, in glimpses and dreams, but nothing stuck, nothing ever stayed.

  Rhy curled his fingers around the spelled circlet of gold, waiting to feel the heat of Kell’s summons, and only then did he realize how helpless he truly was. How useless to Kell. He could summon his brother, but Kell wouldn’t—or couldn’t—ever summon him.

  Rhy sl
umped back against the pillows, clutching the pin to his chest.

  The pain was already fading, an echo of an echo, a tide receding, leaving only dull discomfort and fear in its wake.

  He’d never get back to sleep.

  The decanters on the sideboard glinted in the low firelight, calling, and he rose to pour himself a drink, adding a single drop of Tieren’s tonic to the amber liquid. Rhy raised the glass to his lips, but didn’t swallow. Something else had caught his eye. His armor. It lay stretched like a sleeping body on his sofa, gauntleted arms folded on its chest. There was no need of it now, not with the city fast asleep, but it still called to him, louder than the tonic, louder even than the darkness—always worst before dawn.

  Rhy set the glass aside, and took up the golden helm.

  VIII

  Myths do not happen all at once.

  They do not spring forth whole into the world. They form slowly, rolled between the hands of time until their edges smooth, until the saying of the story gives enough weight to the words—to the memories—to keep them rolling on their own.

  But all stories start somewhere, and that night, as Rhy Maresh walked through the streets of London, a new myth was taking shape.

  This was the story of a prince who watched over his city as it slept. Who went on foot, for fear of trampling one of the fallen, who wove his way between the bodies of his people.

  Some would say he moved in silence, with only the gentle clang of his golden-armored steps echoing like distant bells through the silent street.

  Some would say he spoke, that even in the far-off darkness, the sleeping heard him whisper, over and over, “You are not alone.”

  Some would say it never happened at all.

  Indeed, there was no one there to see.

  But Rhy did walk among them, because he was their prince, and because he could not sleep, and because he knew what it was like to be held by a spell, to be dragged into darkness, to be bound to something and yet feel utterly alone.

  A sheen of frost was settling over his people, making them look more like statues than men and women and children. The prince had seen fallen trees slowly swallowed by moss, pieces of the world slowly reclaimed, and as he moved through the crowd of fallen, he wondered what would happen if London stayed under this spell a month, a season, a year.