A Darker Shade of Magic

by Victoria Schwab

  “Put down that sword,” ordered Kell. He tried to will the weapon from the cutthroat’s grip, but it was warded. Another fail-safe to keep the blade from falling into the wrong hands. Which it already had. Kell swore and drew his own knife from its holster. It was a good foot shorter than the royal blade.

  “Surrender,” said the cutthroat again, his voice strangely even. He tilted up his chin and Kell caught a glimmer of magic in the man’s eyes. A compulsion spell? Kell had only a moment to note the use of forbidden magic before the man lunged, the glowing weapon slicing through the air toward him. He jerked back, dodging the sword as a second figure appeared at the other end of the alley.

  “Surrender,” said the second man.

  “One at a time,” snapped Kell. He threw his hand into the air, and the street stones shuddered and then shot upward in a wall of rock and dirt, barring the second attacker’s path.

  But the first kept coming, kept slashing, and Kell scrambled backward out of the sword’s arc. He almost made it; the blade caught his arm, slicing through fabric but narrowly missing his skin. He lunged away as the weapon cut again, but this time it found flesh, slashing across his ribs. Pain tore through Kell’s chest as blood welled and spilled down his stomach. The man pressed forward and Kell retreated a step and tried to will the street stones to rise between them. They shuddered and laid still.

  “Surrender,” ordered the cutthroat in his too-even tone.

  Kell pressed his hand to his shirtfront, trying to stem the blood as he dodged another slice. “No.” He spun the dagger in his hand, took it by the tip, and threw as hard as he could. The blade found its mark, and buried itself in the cutthroat’s shoulder. But to Kell’s horror, the man didn’t drop his weapon. He kept coming. Pain didn’t even register on his face as he pulled the knife free and cast it aside.

  “Surrender the stone,” he said, dead-eyed.

  Kell’s hand closed protectively around the talisman in his pocket. It hummed against his palm, and Kell realized as he held it that even if he could give it away—which he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, not without knowing what it was for and who was after it—he didn’t want to let it go. Couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it. Which was absurd. And yet, something in him ached to keep it.

  The cutthroat came at him again.

  Kell tried to take another step back, but his shoulders met the makeshift barricade.

  There was nowhere to run.

  Darkness glittered in the cutthroat’s eyes and his blade sang through the air, and Kell threw out his empty hand and ordered, “Stop,” as if that would do a damned thing.

  And yet, somehow, it did.

  The word echoed through the alley, and between one reverberation and the next, the night changed around him. Time seemed to slow, and so did the cutthroat, and so did Kell, but the stone clutched in his hand surged to life. Kell’s own magic had bled out through the wound across his ribs, but the stone sang with power, and thick black smoke poured between his fingers. It shot up Kell’s arm and across his chest and down his outstretched hand, and rushed forward through the air toward the cutthroat. When the smoke reached him, it did not strike him, did not force him off his feet. Instead, it twisted and coiled around the cutthroat’s body, spreading over his legs, up his arms, around his chest. And everywhere it touched, as soon as it touched, it froze, catching the cutthroat between one stride and the next, one breath and the next.

  Time snapped back into motion, and Kell gasped, his pulse pounding in his ears and the stone singing in his grip.

  The stolen royal blade hung mid-slash, inches from his face. The cutthroat himself stood motionless, his coat caught midbillow behind him. Through the sheet of shadowy ice or stone or whatever it was, Kell could see the cutthroat’s stiff form, eyes open and empty. Not the blank gaze of the compelled, but the vacancy of the dead.

  Kell stared down at the stone still thrumming in his hand, at the glowing symbol on its face.

  Vitari.

  It is the word for magic. It refers to its existence, and its creation.

  Could it also mean the act of creating?

  There was no blood command for create. The golden rule of magic said that it couldn’t be created. The world was made of give and take, and magic could be strengthened and weakened, but it could not be manifested out of nothing. And yet … he reached out to touch the frozen man.

  Had the power somehow been summoned by his blood? But he hadn’t given a blood command, hadn’t done anything but say “Stop.”

  The stone had done the rest.

  Which was impossible. Even with the strongest elemental magic, one had to focus on the form they wanted it to take. But Kell hadn’t envisioned the frozen shell, which meant the stone didn’t simply follow an order. It interpreted. It created. Was this the way magic had worked in Black London? Without walls, without rules, without anything but want and will?

  Kell forced himself to return the talisman to his pocket. His fingers didn’t want to relinquish it. It took all his focus to let go, and the moment the stone slipped from his hand back into his coat, a dizzy chill ran through him, and the world rocked. He felt weak as well as wounded. Drained. It isn’t something for nothing after all, thought Kell. But it was still something. Something powerful. Something dangerous.

  He tried to straighten, but pain tore across his stomach, and he groaned, slumping back against the alley wall. Without his power, he couldn’t will the wound closed, couldn’t even keep his own blood in his veins. He needed to catch his breath, needed to clear his mind, needed to think, but just then the stones at his back began to shake, and he pushed off the wall an instant before it crumbled to reveal the second hooded figure.

  “Surrender,” said the man in the same even tone as his counterpart.

  Kell could not.

  He didn’t trust the stone—even as he itched to take hold of it again—didn’t know how to control it, but neither could he surrender it, so Kell lunged forward, recovering his own knife from the ground, and when the man came at him, he buried it in his attacker’s chest. For a second, Kell worried the man wouldn’t go down, feared the compulsion would keep him on his feet as it had the other one. Kell forced the blade deep and wrenched it up through organ and bone, and at last the man’s knees buckled. For one brief moment, the compulsion broke, and the light flooded back into his eyes. And then it was gone.

  It wasn’t the first time Kell had killed someone, but he still felt ill as he pulled the knife free and the man crumpled, dead, at his feet.

  The alley swayed and Kell clutched his stomach, fighting for breath as pain rolled through him. And then he heard another set of steps in the distance and forced himself upright. He stumbled past the bodies, the frozen and the fallen both, and ran.

  V

  Kell couldn’t stop the blood.

  It soaked through his shirtfront, the fabric clinging to him as he ran—stumbled—through the narrow maze of streets that gathered, weblike, in the corners of Red London.

  He clutched at his pocket to make sure the stone was safe, and a thrum ran through his fingers as they felt it there. He should have run for the river, should have pitched the talisman into the glittering Isle and let it sink. He should have, but he hadn’t, and that left him with a problem.

  And the problem was catching up.

  Kell cut a corner too sharp and skidded into the wall, biting back a gasp as his wounded side collided with the bricks. He couldn’t keep running, but he had to get away. Somewhere he wouldn’t be followed.

  Somewhere he couldn’t be followed.

  Kell dragged himself to a stop and reached for the Grey London pendant at his neck, ripping the cord over his head.

  Footsteps echoed, heavy and too close, but Kell held his ground and pressed his hand to his blood-soaked ribs, wincing. He brought his palm and the coin in it against the alley stones and said, “As Travars.”

  He felt the word pass his lips and shiver against his hand at the same time.

&nbs
p; But nothing happened. The wall stayed where it was, and so did Kell.

  Pain tore white-hot through his side from the royal blade, the spellwork cutting him off from his power. No, pleaded Kell silently. Blood magic was the strongest kind in the world. It couldn’t be disabled, not by a simple piece of spellwork. It was stronger. It had to be stronger. Kell closed his eyes.

  “As Travars,” he said again.

  He shouldn’t have to say anything else, shouldn’t have to force it, but he was tired and bleeding and fighting to focus his eyes, let alone his power, and so he added “Please.”

  He swallowed and brought his forehead to rest against the stones and heard the steps getting closer and closer and said, again, “Please let me through.”

  The stone hummed in his pocket, a whispered promise of power, of aid, and he was about draw it out and call upon its strength, when the wall finally shuddered and gave way beneath his touch.

  The world vanished and an instant later reappeared, and Kell collapsed to the cobblestoned street, the subtle, steady light of Red London replaced by the dank, smoke-filled Grey London night. He stayed a moment on his hands and knees, and actually considered losing consciousness right there in the alley, but finally managed to get to his feet. When he did, the city slanted dangerously around him. He took two steps, and promptly collided with a man in a mask and a broad brim hat. Distantly, Kell knew it was strange, to be wearing a disguise, but he was hardly in a position to judge appearances, given his current state.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, pulling his coat close around him to hide the blood.

  “Where’d you come from?” asked the man, and Kell looked up and realized that under that disguise it wasn’t a man at all. It was a woman. Not even that. A girl. All stretched out like a shadow, like Kell, but one even later in the day. Too long, too thin. But she was dressed like a man, boots and britches and a cloak (and under that, a few glinting weapons). And, of course, the mask and the hat. She seemed out of breath, as though she’d been running. Strange, thought Kell again.

  He swayed a little on his feet.

  “You all right there, gent?” asked the girl in disguise.

  Footsteps sounded in the street beyond the alley, and Kell tensed, forcing himself to remember that he was safe now, safe here. The girl cast a quick glance back before returning her attention to him. He took a step toward her, and his legs nearly buckled beneath him. She went to catch him, but he caught himself against the wall first.

  “I’ll be okay,” he whispered shakily.

  The girl tipped her chin up, and there was something strong and defiant in her eyes and the lines of her jaw. A challenge. And then she smiled. Not with her whole mouth, just the edges, and Kell thought—in a far-off, woozy way—that under different circumstances, they might have been friends.

  “There’s blood on your face,” she said.

  Where wasn’t there blood? Kell brought his hand to his cheek, but his hand was damp with it, too, so it wasn’t much help. The girl came closer. She drew a small, dark kerchief from her pocket and reached out, dabbing his jaw with it before pressing the fabric into his hand.

  “Keep it,” she said. And then she turned and strode away.

  Kell watched the strange girl go, then slumped back against the alley wall.

  He tipped his head back and stared up at the Grey London sky, starless and bleak over the tops of the buildings. And then he reached into his pocket for the Black London stone, and froze.

  It wasn’t there.

  He dug furiously through his pockets, every one of them, but it was no good. The talisman was gone. Breathless and bleeding and exhausted, Kell looked down at the kerchief clutched in his hand.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  He’d been robbed.

  VI

  THIEVES MEET

  I

  A London away, the city bells struck eight.

  The sound came from the sanctuary at the city’s edge, but it rang out over the glittering Isle and through the streets, pouring in open windows and out open doors and down alleys until it reached the Ruby Fields and, just beyond, the frozen figure of a man in the dark.

  A man with an X on the back of his hand and a stolen royal sword still raised above his head. A man trapped in ice, or stone, or something stranger.

  As the bells trailed off, a jagged crack formed in the shell over the man’s face. And then another, down his arm. And a third, along the blade. Small fissures that deepened quickly, spreading like fingers through the casing.

  “Stop,” the young Antari had ordered his attacker, and the attacker had not listened, but the magic had. It had poured out of the black stone in the Antari’s hand, coiled around the man, and hardened into a shell.

  And now, the shell was breaking.

  Not as a shell should break, the surface fracturing and the shards crumbling away, raining down upon the street. No, this shell broke apart and yet never let go of the man beneath. Instead, it clung to him as it melted, not down his body, but into it. Seeping in through his clothes and his skin until it was gone—or not gone. Absorbed.

  The once-frozen man shuddered, then took a breath. The royal half-sword slipped from his fingers and clattered to the stones as the last shimmering drops of magic glistened like oil on his skin before sinking in, the veins darkening, tracing over him like ink. The man’s head hung forward, eyes open, but empty. And fully black, pupils blown and spreading through irises and into whites.

  The compulsion spell already cast on him had stripped the man’s resistance and allowed the other magic to slip right in, through vein and brain and muscle, taking hold of everything it touched, the once-red core of life now burning pure and dark. Slowly, the man—or rather now, the thing inside him—lifted his head. His black eyes shone, slick against the dry dark as he surveyed the alley. The body of the second cutthroat lay nearby, but he was already quite dead, the light snuffed out. Nothing to salvage. Nothing to burn. There wasn’t much life left in his own body, either—just enough flame to feed on—but it would do for now.

  He rolled his shoulders and began to walk, haltingly at first, as a man unused to his body. And then faster, surer. His posture straightened, and his legs strode toward the lights of the nearest building. The man’s mouth drew into a smile. It was late, but the lanterns were lit in the windows, and laughter, high and sweet and promising, filled the air like the sound of bells.

  II

  Lila hummed as she made her way back to the Stone’s Throw.

  As she walked, she began to divest herself of the disguise; the mask came off first, followed by the broad-brim hat. She’d forgotten she was wearing them when she ran into the drunk fellow back in the alley, but he’d been so deep in his cups that he’d hardly seemed to notice. Just as he’d hardly seemed to notice her hand in his coat as she held up the kerchief, or her fingers curling around the contents of his pocket as she pressed the dark cloth into his palm. An easy mark.

  Truth be told, she was still cross with herself for running—or rather, for falling into a trap and needing to run—from the trio of street rats. But, she thought, closing her hand around the satisfying weight in her cloak pocket, the outing hadn’t been a total waste.

  As the tavern came into sight, she pulled the trinket from her cloak and paused beneath a lamppost to get a closer look at the take. When she did, her heart sank. She’d hoped for metal, something silver, or gold, but the lump was stone. Not a gem or a jewel, either. Not even a bit of crystal. It looked like a river rock—glossy and black—one side smooth and the other jagged, like it had been smashed or chipped off from a larger piece of stone. What kind of gent walked around with rocks in his pocket? And broken ones at that?

  And yet, she thought she could feel something, a kind of prickle where her skin met the stone’s surface. Lila held it up to the light, and squinted at it a moment before dismissing the sensation and deeming the rock worthless—a sentimental trifle at best. Her mood soured as she shoved it back in her pocket and cli
mbed the steps of the Stone’s Throw.

  Even though the tavern was bustling, Barron looked up when she came in, eyes going from her face to the disguise tucked under her arm. She thought she saw a flicker of concern, and it made her cringe. She wasn’t his family. He wasn’t hers. She didn’t need his worry, and he didn’t need her weight.

  “Run into trouble?” he asked as she passed up the counter and went straight for the stairs.

  She wasn’t about to own up to being snared in the alley or running away from the fight, and her take had been a total bust, so she simply shrugged. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  The scrawny boy from the steps sat on a corner stool, eating a bowl of stew. Lila realized she was hungry—that is to say, hungrier than usual, Lila hadn’t felt full in years—but she was tired, too, and relieved to find that the call of her bones to bed was louder than that of her stomach to table. Besides, she hadn’t retrieved the coins. She had the silver, of course, but she had to save it if she was ever going to get out of this tavern, out of this city. Lila knew too well how the cycle went, thieves stealing only enough to stay thieves.

  She had no intention of contenting herself to such meager victories. And now that she’d been made—she cursed the thought of three street rats discovering what three dozen constables hadn’t, that their wanted man wasn’t a man at all—stealing would only get harder. She needed larger scores, and she needed them soon.

  Her stomach growled, and she knew Barron would give her something for nothing if she could bring herself to ask for it, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  Lila Bard might have been a thief but she wasn’t a beggar.

  And when she left—and she would—she had every intention of leaving behind the coin she owed him, down to the last farthing. She set off up the stairs.

  At the top of the narrow steps stood a little landing with a green door. She remembered slamming that same door, shoving past Barron and down the steps, leaving only a tantrum in her wake. She remembered the fight—she’d stolen from a patron, and Barron had put her to task for it. What was worse, he’d wanted rent but barred her from paying him room and board with any “borrowed” coin. He’d wanted only honest money, and she had no way to get it, so he’d offered to pay her to help him run the tavern. She’d shot him down. Saying yes would have meant staying, and staying would have meant settling. In the end it’d been easier to hang the place and run. Not away, Lila had told herself. No, Lila had been running toward something. Something better. And even if she hadn’t reached it yet, she would.