A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

“There are rumors, in my city,” she said. “Rumors about Kell, and rumors about you. They say you di—”

  “Was it your idea, or his?” demanded Rhy, fighting to keep his voice even, to hold his grief at bay, the way his father did, sadness kept behind a dam.

  Cora rose to her feet despite the weight of the manacles. “My brother has a gift for swords, not strategies.” She curled her fingers around the bars, metal sounding against metal like a bell. The cuff slipped down, and again Rhy saw the bruised skin circling her wrist. There was something unnatural about those marks, he realized now, something inhuman.

  “That wasn’t your brother, was it?”

  She caught him looking, chuckled. “Hawk,” she admitted. “Beautiful birds. Easy to forget that they have claws.”

  He could see it now, the curve of talons he’d mistaken for fingers, the prick of the creature’s nails.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” said Cora, and what he hated most was that she sounded sincere. He thought of the night they’d spent together, the way she’d made him feel less alone. The ease of her presence, the realization that she was just a child, a girl pretending, playing at games she didn’t fully understand. Now, he wondered about that innocence, if it had all been an illusion. If he should have been able to tell. If it would have changed anything. If, if, if.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked, his resolve threatening to break. She cocked her head, perplexed, like a hooded bird of prey.

  “I’m the sixth of seven children. What future is there for me? In what world would I ever rule?”

  “You could have killed your own family instead of mine.”

  Cora leaned in, that cherubic face pressed against the cell bars. “I thought about it. I suppose one day I might.”

  “No, you won’t.” Rhy turned to go. “You’ll never see the outside of this cell.”

  “I’m like you,” she said softly.

  “No.” He shoved her words away.

  “I have hardly any magic,” she pressed on. “But we both know there are other kinds of power.” Rhy’s steps slowed. “There’s charm, cunning, seduction, strategy.”

  “Murder,” he said, rounding on her.

  “We use what we have. We make what we don’t. We’re truly not so different,” said Cora, gripping the bars. “We both want the same thing. To be seen as strong. The only difference between you and me is the number of siblings standing in our way to the throne.”

  “That’s not the only difference, Cora.”

  “Does it drive you mad, to be the weaker one?”

  He wrapped his hand around hers, pinning them to the bars of the cell. “I am alive because my brother is strong,” he said coldly. “You are alive only because yours is dead.”

  VI

  Osaron sat on his throne and waited.

  Waited for the impostor’s palace to fall.

  Waited for his subjects to return.

  Waited for word of his victory.

  For any word at all.

  Thousands of voices had whispered in his head—determined, weeping, crowing, pleading, triumphant—and then, in a single moment, they were gone, the world suddenly still.

  He reached out again and plucked the threads, but no one answered.

  No one came.

  They couldn’t all have perished throwing themselves against the palace wards. Couldn’t all have vanished so easily from his power, from his will.

  He waited, wondering if the silence itself was some kind of trick, a ruse, but when it stretched, his own thoughts loud and echoing in the hollow space, Osaron rose.

  The shadow king walked toward his palace doors, the smooth dark wood dissolving to smoke before him and taking shape again in his wake, parting as the world should for a god.

  Against the sky, the impostor’s palace of stone stood, its wards cracked but not broken.

  And there, littering the steps, the banks, the city, Osaron saw the bodies of his puppets, their strings cut.

  Everywhere he looked, he saw them. Thousands. Dead.

  No, not dead.

  But not entirely alive.

  Despite the cold, each had the essential glow of life, the faint, steady rhythm of a heart still beating, the sound so soft it couldn’t crack the silence.

  That silence, that horrible, deafening silence, so like the world—his world—when the last life had ebbed and all that was left was a shred of power, a withered sliver of the magic that had once been Osaron. He’d paced for days through the dead remains of his city, every inch gone black, until even he had stilled, too weak to move, too weak to do anything but exist, to beat stubbornly on like these sleeping hearts.

  “Get up,” he ordered his subjects now.

  No one answered.

  “Get up,” he screamed into their minds, into their very cores, pulling on every string, reaching into memory, into dream, into bone.

  Still, no one rose.

  A servant lay curled at the god’s feet, and Osaron knelt, reached into the man’s chest, and wrapped his fingers around his heart.

  “Get up,” he ordered. The man did not move. Osaron tightened his grip, pouring more and more of himself into the shell, until the form simply—fell apart. Useless. Useless. All of them, useless.

  The shadow king straightened, ash blowing in the wind as he turned his gaze on that other palace, that seat of redundant royalty, the threads of spellwork spooling from its spires. So they had done this, they had stolen his servants, silenced his voice.

  It did not matter.

  They could not stop him.

  Osaron would conquer this city, this world.

  And first, he would tear the palace down himself.

  VII

  People spoke of love as if it were an arrow. A thing that flew quick, and always found its mark. They spoke of it as if it were a pleasant thing, but Maxim had taken an arrow once, and knew it for what it was: excruciating.

  He had never wanted to fall in love, never wanted to welcome that pain, would have happily faked an arrow’s bite.

  And then he met Emira.

  And for a long time, he thought the arrow had played its cruelest trick, had struck him and missed her. He thought she’d stepped around the point, the way she stepped around so many things she did not like.

  He’d spent a year trying to free the barb from his own chest before he realized he didn’t want to. Or maybe, he couldn’t. Another year before he realized she was injured, too.

  It had been a slow pursuit, like melting ice. A kinship of hot and cold, of strong forces equally opposed, of those who did not know how to soften, how to soothe, and found the answer in each other.

  That arrow’s barb had so long healed. He’d forgotten the pain entirely.

  But now.

  Now he felt the wound, a shaft driven through his ribs. Scraping bone and lung with every ragged breath, and loss the hand twisting the arrow, trying to rend it free before it killed and doing so much damage in the process.

  Maxim wanted to be with her. Not the body laid out in the Rose Hall, but the woman he loved. He wanted to be with her, and instead he stood in the map room across from Sol-in-Ar, forced to bind up a mortal wound, to fight through the pain, because the battle wasn’t yet won.

  His spell was beating against the inside of his skull, and he tasted blood with every swallow, and as he lifted the crystal cut glass to his lips, his hand shook.

  Sol-in-Ar stood on the other side of the map, the two of them divided by the wide expanse of the Arnesian empire on the table, the city of London rising at its center. Isra waited by the door, head bowed.

  “I am sorry for your loss,” said the Faroan lord, because it was a thing that had to be said. Both men knew the words fell short, would always fall short.

  The part of Maxim that was king knew it wasn’t right to mourn a single life more than a city, but the part of Maxim that had set the rose on his wife’s heart was still breaking inside.

  When was the last time he’d seen her? What was t
he last thing he’d said? He didn’t know, couldn’t recall. The arrow twisted. The wound ached. He fought to remember, remember, remember.

  Emira, with her dark eyes that saw so much, and her lips that guarded smiles as if they were secrets. With her beauty, and her strength, her hard shell around her fragile heart.

  Emira, who’d taken down her walls long enough to let him in, who’d built them twice as high when Rhy was born, so nothing could get in. Whose trust he’d fought for, whose trust he’d failed when he promised over and over and over again that he would keep them safe.

  Emira, gone.

  Those who thought death looked like sleep had never seen it.

  When Emira slept, her lashes danced, her lips parted, her fingers twitched, every part of her alive within her dreams. The body in the Rose Hall was not his wife, not his queen, not the mother of his heir, not anyone at all. It was empty, the intangible presence of life and magic and personhood gutted like a candle, leaving only cooling wax behind.

  “You knew it was the Veskans,” said Maxim, dragging his mind back to the map room.

  Sol-in-Ar’s features were grim, set, the white gold accents on the lord’s face strangely steady in the light. “I suspected.”

  “How?”

  “I do not have magic, Your Majesty,” Sol-in-Ar answered in slow but even Arnesian, the edges smoothing with his accent, “but I do have sense. The treatise between Faro and Vesk has become strained in recent months.” He gestured at the map. “Arnes sits squarely between our empires. An obstacle. A wall. I have been watching the prince and princess since my arrival, and when Col answered you that he had not sent word to Vesk, I knew that he was lying. I knew this because you housed their gift in the chamber below mine.”

  “The hawk,” said Maxim, recalling the Veskans’ offering—a large grey predator—before the Essen Tasch.

  Sol-in-Ar nodded. “I was surprised by their gift. A bird like that does not enjoy a cage. The Veskans use them to send missives across the harsh expanses of their territory, and when they are confined, they caw in a low and constant way. The one beneath my room fell silent two days ago.”

  “Sanct,” muttered Maxim. “You should have said something.”

  Sol-in-Ar raised a single dark brow. “Would you have listened, Your Majesty?”

  “I apologize,” said the king, “for distrusting an ally.”

  Sol-in-Ar’s gaze was steady, his pale beads pricks of light. “We are both men of war, Maxim Maresh. Trust does not come easily.”

  Maxim shook his head and refilled his glass, hoping the liquid would quelch the lingering taste of blood and steady his hands. He hadn’t meant to hold his spell aloft for this long, had only meant to—to see Emira, to say good-bye.…

  “It has been a long time,” he said, forcing his thoughts back, “since I was at war. Before I was king, I led command at the Blood Coast. That was the nickname my soldiers and I had for the open waters that ran between the empires. That gap of terrain where pirates and rebels and anyone who refused to recognize the peace went to make a little war.”

  “Anastamar,” said Sol-in-Ar. “That was our name for it. It means the Killing Strait.”

  “Fitting,” mused Maxim, taking a long sip. “The peace was new enough to be fragile, then—though I suppose peace is always fragile—and I had only a thousand men to hold the entire coast. Though I had another title. Not one given by court, or my father, but by my soldiers.”

  “The Steel Prince,” said Sol-in-Ar, and then, reading Maxim’s expression: “It surprises you, that the tales of your exploits reach beyond your own borders?” The Faroan’s fingers grazed the edge of the map. “The Steel Prince, who tore the heart from the rebel army. The Steel Prince, who survived the night of knives. The Steel Prince, who slayed the pirate queen.”

  Maxim finished his drink and set the glass aside. “I suppose we never know the scale of our life’s stories. Which parts will survive, and which will die with us, but—”

  He was cut off by a sudden tremor, not in his limbs, but in the room itself. The palace gave a violent shudder around them, the walls trembling, the stone figures on the map threatening to tip. Maxim and Sol-in-Ar both braced themselves as the tremor passed.

  “Isra,” ordered Maxim, but the guard was already moving down the hall. He and Sol-in-Ar followed.

  The wards were still weak in the aftermath of the attack, but it shouldn’t have mattered, because everyone beyond the palace doors was asleep.

  Everyone—but Osaron.

  Now the creature’s voice rumbled through the city, not the smooth, seductive whisper in Maxim’s mind, but an audible, thunderous thing.

  “This palace is mine.”

  “This city is mine.”

  “These people are mine.”

  Osaron knew about the spell, must have known too that it was coming from within the walls. If Tieren woke, the enchantment would shatter. The fallen would revive.

  It was time, then.

  Maxim forced himself toward the front of the palace, carrying the weight of his spell with every step, even as his heart called for Rhy. If only his son were there. If only Maxim could see him one last time.

  As if summoned by the thought, the prince appeared in the doorway, and suddenly Maxim wished he hadn’t been so selfish. Grief and fear were painted across Rhy’s features, making him look young. He was young.

  “What’s going on?” asked the prince.

  “Rhy,” he said, the short word leaving him breathless. Maxim didn’t know how to do this. If he stopped moving, he would never start again.

  “Where are you going?” demanded his son as Osaron’s voice shook the world.

  “Face me, false king.”

  Maxim tugged on the threads of his power and felt his spell pull tight, cinching like armor around him as steel hearts came to life within steel breasts.

  “Father,” said Rhy.

  “Surrender, and I will spare those within.”

  The king summoned his steel men, felt them marching through the halls.

  “Refuse, and I will tear this place apart.”

  He kept walking.

  “Stop!” demanded Rhy. “If you go out there, you will die.”

  “There is no shame in death,” said the king.

  “You are no god.”

  “You can’t do this,” said Rhy, barring his path as they reached the front hall. “You’re walking right into his trap.”

  Maxim stopped, the weight of the spell and his son’s stricken face threatening to drag him down. “Stand aside, Rhy,” he ordered gently.

  His son shook his head furiously. “Please.” Tears were brimming on his dark lashes, threatening to spill. Maxim’s heart ached. The palace trembled. The steel guard was coming. They reached the front hall, a dozen suits of armor spelled into motion with blood and will and magic. Royal short swords hung at their waists, and through their helmets, the soft light of their spelled hearts burned like coal. They were ready. He was ready.

  “Rhy Maresh,” said Maxim steadily, “I will ask you as your father, but if I must, I will command you as your king.”

  “No,” said Rhy, grabbing him by the shoulders. “I won’t let you do this.”

  The arrow in his chest drove deep.

  “Sol-in-Ar,” Maxim said, and, “Isra.”

  And they understood. The two came forward and seized Rhy’s arms, pulling him away. Rhy fought viciously against them, but at a nod from the king, Isra drove her gauntleted fist into the prince’s ribs and Rhy doubled, gasping, “No, no…”

  “Sosora nastima,” said Sol-in-Ar. “Listen to your king.”

  “Watch, my prince,” added Isra. “Watch with pride.”

  “Open the doors,” ordered Maxim.

  Tears spilled down Rhy’s face. “Father—”

  The heavy wood parted. The doors swung back. At the base of the palace stairs stood the shadow, a demon masquerading as a king.

  Osaron lifted his chin.

  “Face me.
”

  “Let me go!” cried Rhy.

  Maxim strode through the doors. He didn’t look back, not at the steel guard marching in his wake, not at his son’s face, the eyes so like Emira’s, now red with anguish.

  “Please,” begged Rhy. “Please, let me go.…”

  They were the last words Maxim heard before the palace doors fell shut.

  VIII

  The first time Rhy saw his father’s map room, he was eight years old.

  He hadn’t been allowed past the golden doors, had only glimpsed the stone figures arrayed across the sprawling table, the scenes moving with the same slow enchantment of the pictures on the city’s scrying boards.

  He’d tried to sneak back in, of course, but Kell wouldn’t help him, and there were other places in the palace to explore. But Rhy couldn’t forget the strange magic of that room, and that winter, when the weather turned and the sun never seemed to come out, he built his own map, crafting the palace from a golden three-tiered cake stand, the river from a stretch of gossamer, a hundred tiny figures from whatever he could get his hands on. He made vestra and ostra, priests and royal guards.

  “This one’s you,” he told Kell, holding up a fire-starter with a red top, a dab of black paint for an eye. Kell wasn’t impressed.

  “This one’s you,” he told his mother, brandishing the queen he’d fashioned from a glass tonic vial.

  “This one’s you,” he told Tieren, proudly showing him the bit of white stone he’d dug out of the courtyard.

  He’d been working on the set for more than a year when his father came to see. He’d never found the stuff to make the king. Kell—who didn’t usually want to play—had offered up a rock with a dozen little grooves that almost made a ghoulish face, if the light was right, but Rhy thought it looked more like the royal cook, Lor.

  Rhy was crouched over the board before bed one night when Maxim entered. He was a towering man draped in red and gold, his dark beard and brows swallowing his face. No wonder Rhy couldn’t find the piece to play him. Nothing felt large enough.

  “What’s this?” asked his father, sinking to one knee beside the makeshift palace.

  “It’s a game,” said Rhy proudly, “just like yours.”