by C. S. Pacat
Will looked instinctively at Violet. She had a tumble of dark curls in a boy’s cut, her brown skin scattered with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. In boy’s trousers, jacket, and waistcoat, she was dressed similarly to him, although her clothes were of far better quality.
The two of you . . . Will didn’t know what had forged this uneasy association between her and Justice. The last thing he remembered was attempting to take a step with his arm around Violet’s shoulders, and feeling weakness wash over him. Before that, Justice had been fighting against Simon’s men, while Violet had been fighting for them. Now Violet was hanging back near the shuttered windows looking tense, while Justice had come forward past the room’s only chair and table, his attention all on Will.
“Then tell me,” Will said.
“Here’s what I know,” said Justice. “Simon was searching for a boy and his mother. For seventeen years, he bent his whole attention to finding them. He watched the roads, the lodging houses, and the ports in this country, on the continent, and beyond, to the farthest reaches of his trade empire. And for seventeen years, the boy’s mother evaded him, always staying one step ahead. Until nine months ago, when Simon found and killed them both.”
Justice leaned forward, fixing Will with his gaze.
“Then last night as I watched Simon’s ship from a hidden vantage, I saw his Lion shouting orders in the rain, while men holding flaming torches brought a prisoner on board under cover of darkness. I thought that prisoner was my shieldmate, Marcus, but it wasn’t. It was someone else.”
Will’s breathing was shallow. “I don’t know what any of that has to do with me.”
“Don’t you?” said Justice.
And Will thought of months of hiding, and before that years of fear in his mother’s eyes.
“Though I can’t summon the Blade, I have fought many dark and dangerous things,” said Justice. “And Simon is the most dangerous of them all. If he has turned his eye to you, then you will not escape him by hiding.”
Violet broke in, shattering the moment. “This isn’t possible. Simon’s a trader. You’re talking about him like he’s . . . Simon’s ruthless, but so is every man on the docks. He doesn’t kill women and children.”
“Do you really think all of this concerns the simple dealings of trade?” said Justice. “You’ve seen the brand on the wrists of Simon’s men. You’ve seen the unnatural strength of the one Simon calls his Lion.”
“Lion—you mean,” Violet said, “you mean that boy. The boy you were fighting.”
“The boy who took you both captive,” said Justice.
You both? Will’s eyes jerked helplessly to Violet, whose flush darkened—guiltily. Violet wasn’t a captive. Violet had gathered up that boy Lion in her arms and pulled him from the sinking ship.
Justice doesn’t know. The realization hit him fully. Violet worked for Simon, and Justice didn’t know. Justice had brought her here believing she was Simon’s captive.
It made sudden sense of their strange alliance. In a rush, Will understood the nervy tension in Violet, as well as Justice’s calm trust in her—the way he turned his back to her as though she was no threat. In the dark chaos of the hold, he must not have seen who had knocked him out.
Justice had no way of knowing that Violet had left him floating facedown and unconscious, ignoring him to instead save Simon’s Lion.
Will remembered waiting alone and exhausted, the black water swirling at his chest. He had sheathed the nightmare sword, but he had had no way off the ship, chained to one of its heavy beams. He had thought it was over. He had thought that all his running had led him to a dark dead end that would seal him up with water.
He had looked up to see Violet’s face on the stairs. She had waded forward and put her hands on his chains. And he had woken up here, when he had not expected to wake up at all.
“That’s right,” said Will, without hesitating, “the boy who took us both captive.” He deliberately didn’t look at Violet, his eyes on Justice.
“Simon’s creature,” said Justice, with distaste. “Sworn to serve him, as a Lion always will. It’s in his blood.” Will felt rather than saw Violet react to those words.
“You know,” said Will. “Don’t you? You know what connects all these”—marvels, he might have said, using Justice’s word, or he might have used his own, horrors—“all these strange and unnatural things.”
—a lady in a mirror with eyes like his mother; a sword on the ship that spewed black fire; Matthew pressing a strange medallion into his hand; his dead eyes staring as the rain soaked his clothes—
“I can’t tell you all of it,” said Justice, lowering his voice. “Even to my Order, much is shrouded in mystery. And some tales are too dangerous to tell, even in daylight.”
“I’ve—seen things. I know Simon isn’t a good person,” Will said. “No one good burns their name onto their men.”
Justice was shaking his head. “Did you think the S that he brands into the flesh of his followers stood for ‘Simon’? For ‘servant,’ perhaps, or ‘submission’? That S is the symbol of something older, a terrible sigil with power over his followers that even they do not fully understand.”
“A symbol of what?” said Will.
Justice just looked back at him. He knows, Will thought again. His heart was pounding. That S had felt ancient, evil and rapacious, as if it, even more than the men who bore it, was hunting him. He felt right on the edge of understanding, as if something vast and important lay just outside of his reach.
After a long moment, Justice pulled the chair forward and sat, half-shadowed by the dim light of the shuttered room, his heavy brown cloak settling around him.
“This is as much as I can tell you,” he said, and the shadows of the room seemed to gather in close as he spoke.
“Long ago,” said Justice, “there was a world of wonders—of what you and I might call magic. Great towers and palaces, fragrant gardens, and marvelous creatures.”
It was like the words of a familiar story, yet it was one Will had never heard before.
“In that world, a Dark King rose, growing in power and killing those who stood in his path.”
The light from the room’s only candle flickered, obscuring the planes of Justice’s face.
“It was a time of terror. The Dark King’s shadow spread out across the lands. Armies broke against his power. Cities fell to his hordes. Heroes gave their lives to hold him back just for a moment. The lights of the world went out one by one, until there was only one light left, the Final Flame. There, those on the side of Light made their last stand.”
Will saw it, an island of light surrounded by a vast expanse of darkness, and over it all rising a great and terrible power wearing a pale crown.
“They fought,” said Justice, “until the earth was scoured. They fought for their own lives and for all the generations that were to come. And with a single act of great sacrifice, the Dark King was overthrown.”
“How?” Will was caught by it, as if he were there, battered by the fighting, tasting the ashes and flame.
“No one knows,” said Justice. “But his defeat came at a terrible cost. There was nothing left of that world. The survivors were too few, and the world fell to ruin. Years passed, and all that had been was lost to the silence of time, grass growing over the fields where armies once fought, palaces no more than a scattering of stones and the deeds of the dead forgotten.
“And gradually humanity took up residence, and built cities, and knew nothing of what had come before. For that world is our world, with all its wonders gone, except for fragments, like this stone, which time will take too, until even it is worn away into nothing.”
Justice held up the white chalcedony, which swayed like a slow hypnotist’s watch at the end of its chain.
A remnant, thought Will, of a once-great world.
“And Simon?” said Will. He felt half-dazed, like one blinking out of a dream, almost surprised to find himself in an ordinary i
nn room and not looking out at the vistas of the past.
Justice gazed back at him with dark eyes.
“Simon is descended from the Dark King, who swore to return and retake his kingdom,” said Justice. “Simon works to bring him forth and restore him to his throne.”
It was as if a chill wind pierced him, turning Will cold.
Simon works to bring him forth . . .
The words rang in his mind, like his fear of what lay beyond the locked shutters, Simon’s men killing his mother, then hunting him down with that S on their wrists and trying to kill him too.
An ancient world, a Dark King—it ought to have been impossible. But he could feel that presence in its pale crown as if it were right here with them.
As the white chalcedony swung on its chain, Will knew somehow that it was not the only remnant. The Blade on the ship had been another. A terrible weapon unearthed by Simon for a deadly purpose. He shivered at the memory.
“None of that is written in any of the history books,” said Will, shaken.
“Not all that is written has passed,” said Justice, “and not all that has passed is written.” Justice looked troubled. “My Order are all that’s left who remember. Only we keep the old ways, and it is no accident that the Dark King reaches his hand across time now, when our numbers dwindle.”
Justice’s coat slipped back from his left shoulder, and Will saw two things at once. The first, that the fabric of Justice’s sleeve was red with blood from wrist to shoulder. Justice had taken a bullet to protect Violet, thinking that he was saving her from Simon’s men.
The second was the symbol on his livery, torn and grimy but visible. It was a silver star, its points of varying lengths, like a compass rose.
The bright star holds, he thought.
“You’re a Steward,” he said.
He was suddenly conscious of the medallion that he wore under his shirt. Simon’s men hadn’t taken it, uninterested in a dull, warped piece of old metal.
“It’s our sacred duty to stand against the Dark,” said Justice, “but if Simon succeeds, we will not be enough. The last time that the Dark King rose, all fell before him. The only one powerful enough to stop him was—”
And Will felt the knowledge pushing at him, like it was part of him—
“—a Lady,” said Will.
He remembered her in the mirror, ancient and beautiful, but with the same determination in her eyes as his mother. He remembered the jolt of familiarity, and the shock when their eyes had met, as though she recognized him.
His stomach twisted. “She looked at me like she knew me.”
“You saw her?”
“In a mirror.” Will closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the warm metal against the skin of his chest. Then he made his decision. “She was wearing this.”
With unsteady fingers, he unbuttoned his coarse shirt and took out the battered medallion. It swayed on its leather tie, engraved with the words in that strange language, which now took on a new meaning:
I cannot return when I am called to fight
So I will have a child
Justice had gone very still. “Where did you get that?”
Will thought of his mother’s old servant Matthew, his sightless eyes, the rain soaking his clothes. “It belonged to my mother.”
Justice let out a breath. Will wanted to ask a question, but in the next moment Justice’s hands clasped around his own on the medallion and pressed it back to his chest.
“Show it to no one else.” He seemed shaken, and that more than anything convinced Will to quickly tuck the medallion back in his shirt and do up the buttons again.
“I must take you to the Elder Steward. I came to that ship searching for my shieldmate, Marcus, and have stumbled on something beyond me.” Justice’s eyes were serious. “But I swear to you: I will protect you. My sword is yours, and by my life I will not let Simon take you.” Justice closed his eyes briefly, as though even he might be afraid. “Though I think, having had you in his grasp, he will tear London apart to find you again.”
You must go to the Stewards, Matthew had said. Justice was offering answers. Justice understood what he faced. Justice was the only person he had met who was fighting against Simon. Will found himself nodding, once.
Justice said, “It’s not long till sunset. Once it’s dark, the three of us can make for the Hall.”
“The three of us,” said Will, and thought again of this strange alliance of three, forged in water and black fire. He turned to look for Violet.
But the girl had gone.
Chapter Seven
VIOLET PUSHED OUT onto the street, her heart pounding.
Outside, there were just the regular sounds of London: the clop of hooves, the barks of an overexcited dog, the cry of the evening newspaper, “Fine Evening Mail!” A stagecoach trundled past on spoked wheels. A boy darted in front of a water cart, and the driver called a perfunctory “Watch it!” after him.
She blinked at the normality of it. It was nothing like the inn room she had left—the boy on the bed with the dark eyes, and the man who dressed like an ancient knight and talked about the stirrings of a bygone world. Magic and dark kings . . . Will had listened to Justice’s stories like he believed them. And she—even she, remembering the black fire on the Sealgair, watching the bruises fade from Will’s face as he drank water poured across the surface of a stone—for a moment, she had started to believe.
Justice had talked about Tom like—
Like he was a monster. Like he’d hunt a woman down and kill her. Like he served a dark power, and did it willingly. A horror rose up in her. Simon’s creature. It’s in his blood. She remembered Tom splattered in blood driving an iron bar through a woman’s chest on the Sealgair. Long ago, there was a world that was destroyed in its battles against a Dark King . . .
A burst of laughter to her left. A cluster of young men in rough-spun shirtsleeves passed her, still slapping each other on the back at the tail end of their joke. Violet let out a breath and shook her head.
The street was just a street. There were no men out searching, no shadowy figures sent by Simon. Of course there weren’t. Those stories were just stories. This was England, where everyone knew magic wasn’t real, and there wasn’t any King except George.
She hurried on.
Her brother would be at Simon’s warehouse. He’d insist on working with his first coughing breath, still dripping river water. He would see her and throw his arms around her, as glad to see her as she’d be to see him. He’d ruffle her hair, and things between them would be the way they used to be.
No one needed to know that she had helped Will escape.
She slipped skillfully through a piece of broken boarding into a loading yard. She had grown up on these docks, where she had often scavenged odd jobs for herself. Some nights, she had snuck out of her house to sleep high up among stacked crates, or just to sit, gazing out at the ships, their lights bright. Now, clambering up a stack of cargo, she looked out at the river that was like a second home.
And went cold.
It looked like the site of an explosion. Great tracts of riverbank were gouged and burned where they’d been lashed by ropes of black fire. Ruined, dripping cargo lined the foreshore. The pier was smashed and twisted, the lapping water clogged with splintered wood.
On the bank, dockers strained at a winch crane. A team of men had roped four draft horses in heavy collars and were calling “Heave, ho!” as they hauled. A wave of horror passed over her.
They were dredging the river for the Corrupted Blade.
No, no, no. The thought of that thing back in Simon’s hands made her stomach churn. The cold, trapped terror of the hold swept over her as she remembered Simon’s man vomiting up black blood.
They were going to find it. The search spanned the full length of the docks. Simon’s men were manning barges with nets and long poles, and somewhere down there the Blade was waiting, the corrupted horror of its presence barely held back by its s
heath.
—black fire tearing a hole in the hull, the men around her rotting from the inside out—
Staring out at the wreckage now, she saw the scale of what the Blade had done. Simon collected objects, she recalled sickly. She thought of Simon’s archaeological digs, his trade outposts, his empire spread across the world all to drag things up out of the earth and back to London. Like the Blade, full of dark power that could tear a ship in half.
I don’t think the two of you have any idea what you’re caught up in, Justice had said.
“Capsized,” she heard from the gathered crowd on the bank, trying to fit natural explanations to the sight, when nothing natural had done this. “Burst pump” and “Freak weather.”
She tore her eyes from the wreckage. The bank swarmed with onlookers held back by Simon’s dockers. She glimpsed a few distinctive jackets, quay guards from the Thames River Police. A flash of auburn hair amid the crowd on the bank—
Tom.
She was scrabbling down from the crates the instant she saw him.
Staying out of sight, she maneuvered through the dredged cargo, glimpsing Tom greeting the Sealgair’s Captain Maxwell. As the two men walked, she followed the distinctive glint of Tom’s hair.
They stopped on the far side of a few stacks of cork. There was no one else around, just her brother and the captain talking in low voices—perfect for an inconspicuous homecoming.
Violet stepped out, opening her mouth to say Tom when she heard—
“—thirty-nine dead in the attack, but there are no more bodies in the water. The boy is missing.”
“And the girl?”
The auburn-haired man wasn’t Tom. It was her father.
Some child’s instinct stopped her in her tracks, the sight of her father’s back and shoulders conjuring up guilt, as though she might be in trouble. Hastily, she stepped back, finding a shadowed space between the piles of cork.
“Where is Violet, Maxwell?” Her father’s shoulders were taut, his voice clipped in the way it became when he was controlling himself.
“There’s no sign of her,” said Maxwell.
