A Darker Shade of Magic

by Victoria Schwab

  No, this was spellwork.

  And it was fresh. Warmth still wafted off the ruins as Kell and Lila waded through them, searching for something—anything—that might have survived. But nothing had.

  Kell felt sick.

  This kind of fire burned hot and fast, and the edges suggested a binding circle. It wouldn’t simply have contained the flames. It would have contained everything. Everyone. How many people had been trapped inside? How many corpses now in the wreckage, reduced to bone, or merely ash?

  And then Kell thought, selfishly, of his room.

  Years of collecting—music boxes and lockets, instruments and ornaments, the precious and the simple and the strange—all gone.

  Rhy’s warning—give up this foolishness before you’re caught—echoed in his head, and for an instant, Kell was glad that he’d been robbed of the bounty before it could be discovered. And then the weight of it sank in. Whoever did this, they hadn’t robbed him—at least, that hadn’t been the point. But they’d stripped him of his loot to cut him off. An Antari could not travel without tokens. They were trying to corner him, to make sure that if he managed to flee back into Red London, he would have nothing at his disposal.

  It was a measure of thoroughness that reeked of Holland’s own hand. The same hand that had ripped the London coins from Kell’s throat and cast them away into the dark.

  Lila toed the melted remains of a kettle. “What now?”

  “There’s nothing here,” said Kell, letting a handful of ash slide through his fingers. “We’ll have to find another token.” He brushed the soot from his hands, thinking. He wasn’t the only person in Red London with a trinket, but the list was short, as he’d been far more willing to trade in artifacts from the novel, harmless Grey than the warped and violent White. The king himself had a token, passed down over the years. Fauna had one, a trinket as part of their deal (though Fauna, he feared, was now buried somewhere in the rubble).

  And Fletcher had one.

  Kell cringed inwardly.

  “I know a man,” he said, which wasn’t the half of it, but was certainly simpler than explaining that Fletcher was a petty criminal who’d lost a bounty to him in a game of Sanct when Kell was several years younger and several shades more arrogant, and Kell had gifted him the White London trinket as either a peace offering (if he felt like lying to himself) or a jab (if he was being honest). “Fletcher. He keeps a shop by the docks. He’ll have a token.”

  “Yes, well, let’s hope they haven’t burned his shop down as well.”

  “I’d like to see them tr—” The words died in Kell’s throat. Someone was coming. Someone who smelled of dried blood and burning metal. Kell lunged for Lila, and she got out half a word of protest before he clamped one hand over her mouth and shoved the other into her pocket. His fingers found the stone and folded over it, and power surged through his body, coursed through his blood. Kell caught his breath as a shudder ran through him, but there was no time to dwell on the sensation—at once thrilling and terrifying—and no time to hesitate. Conviction, Holland had said, conviction is key, so Kell did not waffle, did not waver.

  “Conceal us,” he ordered the talisman.

  And the stone obliged. It sang to life, its power ringing through him as—between one heartbeat and the next—black smoke enveloped Kell and Lila both. It settled over them like a shadow, a veil; when he brought his fingers to it, they met something that was more than air and less than cloth. When Kell looked down at Lila, he could see her, and when she looked up, she could clearly see him, and the world around them was still perfectly visible, albeit tinted by the spell. Kell held his breath and hoped the stone had done its task. He didn’t have a choice. There was no time to run.

  Just then Holland appeared at the mouth of the side street.

  Kell and Lila both tensed at the sight of him. He looked slightly crumpled from his time on the alley floor. His wrists were red and raw beneath his wrinkled half-cloak. His silver clasp was tarnished, his collar flecked with mud, and his expression as close to anger as Kell had ever seen it. A small crease between his brows. A tightness in his jaw.

  Kell could feel the stone shudder in his hand, and he wondered if Holland was drawn to it, or if it was drawn to Holland.

  The other Antari was holding something—a flattened crystal, the size and shape of a playing card—up to his lips, and speaking into it in his low even way.

  “Öva sö taro,” he said in his native tongue. He is in the city.

  Kell couldn’t hear the other person’s answer, but after a pause, Holland answered, “Kösa”—I’m sure—and slipped the crystal back into his pocket. The Antari tipped his shoulder against the wall and studied the charred ruins of the inn. He stood there, as if lost in thought.

  Or waiting.

  The steadiness of his gaze made Lila fidget ever so slightly against Kell, and he tightened his grip over her mouth.

  Holland squinted. Perhaps in thought. Perhaps at them. And then he spoke.

  “They screamed while the building was burning,” he said in English, his voice too loud to be meant only for himself. “All of them screamed by the end. Even the old woman.”

  Kell gritted his teeth.

  “I know you’re here, Kell,” continued Holland. “Even the burned remains cannot hide your scent. And even the stone’s magic cannot hide the stone. Not from me. It calls to me the way it does to you. I would find you anywhere, so end this foolishness and face me.”

  Kell and Lila stood frozen in front of him, only a few short strides separating them.

  “I’m in no mood for games,” warned Holland, his usual calm now flecked by annoyance. When neither Kell nor Lila moved, he sighed and drew a silver pocket watch from his cloak. Kell recognized it as the one Lila had left behind for Barron. He felt her stiffen against him as Holland tossed the timepiece in their direction; it bounced along the blackened street, skidding to a stop at the edge of the inn’s charred remains. From here Kell could see that it was stained with blood.

  “He died because of you,” said Holland, addressing Lila. “Because you ran. You were a coward. Are you still?”

  Lila struggled to get free of Kell’s arms, but he held her there with all his strength, pinning her against his chest. He felt tears slide over his hand at her mouth, but he didn’t let go. “No,” he said breathlessly into her ear. “Not here. Not like this.”

  Holland sighed. “You will die a coward’s death, Delilah Bard.” He drew a curved blade from beneath his cloak. “When this is over,” he said, “you will both wish you had come out.”

  He lifted his empty hand, and a wind caught up the ashes of the ruined inn, whipping them into the air overhead. Kell looked up at the cloud of it above them and said a prayer under his breath.

  “Last chance,” said Holland.

  When he was met by silence, he lowered his hand, and the ash began to fall. And Kell saw what would happen. It would drift down, and settle on the veil, exposing them, and Holland would be upon them both in an instant. Kell’s mind spun as his grip tightened on the stone, and he was about to summon its power again when the ash met their veil … and passed through.

  It sank straight through the impossible cloth, and then through them, as though they were not there. As though they were not real. The crease between Holland’s two-toned eyes deepened as the last of the ash settled back to the ruins, and Kell took a (very small) measure of comfort from the Antari’s frustration. He may be able to sense them, but he could not see them.

  Finally, when the wind was gone and the ground lay still, and Kell and Lila remained concealed by the power of the stone, Holland’s certainty faltered. He sheathed the curved blade and took a step back, turned, and strode away, cloak billowing behind him.

  The moment he was gone, Kell’s grip on Lila loosened, and she wrenched free of him and the spell and shot forward to the silver watch on the street.

  “Lila,” he called.

  She didn’t seem to hear him, and he didn�
�t know if it was because she’d abandoned their protective shroud or because her world had narrowed to the size and shape of a small bloodied watch. He watched her sink to one knee and take up the timepiece with shaking fingers.

  He went to Lila’s side and brought his hand to her shoulder, or tried, but it went straight through. So he was right. The veil didn’t simply make them invisible. It made them incorporeal.

  “Reveal me,” he ordered the stone. Energy rippled through him, and a moment later, the veil dissolved. Kell marveled a moment at how easy it had been as he knelt beside her—the magic had come effortlessly—but this was the first time it had willingly undone itself. They could not afford to stay there, exposed, so Kell took her arm and silently summoned the magic to conceal them once more. It obeyed, the shadow veil settling again over them both.

  Lila shook under his touch, and he wanted to tell her it was all right, that Holland might have taken the timepiece and left Barron’s life, but he did not want to lie. Holland was many things—most of them well hidden—but he was not sentimental. If he had ever been compassionate, or at least merciful, Athos had bled it out of him long ago, carved it out along with his soul.

  No, Holland was ruthless.

  And Barron was dead.

  “Lila,” said Kell gently. “I’m sorry.”

  Her fingers curled tightly around the timepiece as she rose to her feet. Kell rose with her, and even though she would not look him in the eye, he could see the anger and pain written in the lines of her face.

  “When this is over,” she said, tucking the watch into a fold of her cloak. “I want to be the one to slit his throat.” And then she straightened and let out a small, shuddering breath. “Now,” she said, “which way to Fletcher?”

  X

  ONE WHITE ROOK

  I

  Booth was beginning to fall apart.

  In this grim grey London, the drunkard’s body hadn’t lasted long at all—much to the displeasure of the thing burning its way through him. It wasn’t the magic’s fault; there was so little to hold on to here, so little to feed on. The people had only a candle’s light of life inside them, not the fire to which the darkness was accustomed. So little heat, so easily extinguished. The moment he got inside, he burned them up to nothing, blood and bone to husk and ash in no time at all.

  Booth’s black eyes drifted down to his charred fingers. With such poor kindling, he couldn’t seem to spread, couldn’t last long in any body.

  Not for lack of trying. After all, he’d left a trail of discarded shells along the docks.

  Burned through the place they all called Southwark in a mere hour.

  But his current body—the one he’d taken in the tavern alley—was now coming undone. The black stain across his shirtfront pulsed, trying to keep the last of the life from bleeding out. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stabbed the drunkard first, but it seemed the fastest way in.

  But the failing shell and the lack of prospects had left him with a predicament. He appeared to be rotting.

  Bits of skin flaked off with every step. The people in the street looked at him and moved away, out of reach, as if whatever was eating him was contagious. Which, of course, it was. Magic was a truly beautiful disease. But only when the hosts were strong enough. Pure enough. The people here were not.

  He walked on through the city—shuffled, hobbled, really, at this point—the power in this shell only embers now, and quickly cooling.

  And in his desperation, he found himself drawn on—drawn back—to the place where he had started: the Stone’s Throw. He wondered at the pull of the odd little tavern. It was a flicker of warmth in the cold, dead city. A glimmer of light, of life, of magic.

  If he could get there, he might find a fire yet.

  He was so consumed by the need to reach the tavern that he did not notice the man standing by its door, nor the carriage fast approaching as he stepped off the curb and into the street.

  * * *

  Edward Archibald Tuttle stood outside the Stone’s Throw, frowning at the time.

  It should be open by now, but the bolts were still thrown, the windows shuttered, and everything within seemed strangely still. He checked his pocket watch. It was after noon. How odd. Suspicious, he thought. Nefarious, even. His mind spun over the possibilities, all of them dark.

  His family insisted that he had too vivid an imagination, but he held that the rest of the world simply lacked the sight, the sense for magic, which he, obviously, possessed. Or at least endeavored to possess. Or, truly, had begun to fear he would never possess, had begun to think (though he would not admit it) did not exist.

  Until he found the traveler. The renowned magician known only as Kell.

  That single—and singular—meeting had rekindled his belief, stoked the fires hotter than they had ever been.

  And so Edward had done as he was told, and returned to the Stone’s Throw in hopes of finding the magician a second time and receiving his promised bag of earth. To that end, he had come yesterday, and to that end, he would come again tomorrow, and the next, until the illustrious figure returned.

  While he waited, Ned—for that was what his friends and family called him—spun stories in his head, trying to imagine how the eventual meeting would take shape, how it would unfold. The details changed, but the end remained the same: in every version, the magician Kell would tip his head and consider Ned with his black eye.

  “Edward Archibald Tuttle,” he’d say, “May I call you Ned?”

  “All my friends do.”

  “Well, Ned, I see something special in you. …”

  He’d then insist upon being Ned’s mentor, or even better, his partner. After that, the fantasy usually devolved into praise.

  Ned had been playing out yet another of these daydreams while he stood on the steps of the Stone’s Throw, waiting. His pockets were weighed with trinkets and coins, anything the magician might want in exchange for his prize. But the magician had not come, and the tavern was all locked up, and Ned—after whispering something that was equal parts spell and prayer and nonsense and trying unsuccessfully to will the bolt from its place—was about to pause his pursuit for the moment and go pass a few hours in an open establishment, when he heard a crash behind him in the street.

  Horses whinnied and wheels clattered to a halt. Several crates of apples tumbling out of a cart as the driver pulled back sharply on the reins. He looked more frightened than his horses.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Ned, striding over.

  “Bloody hell,” the driver was saying. “I’ve hit him. I’ve hit someone.”

  Ned looked around. “I don’t think you’ve hit anything.”

  “Is he under the cart?” went on the driver. “Oh God. I didn’t see him.”

  But when he knelt to inspect the space beneath the carriage, the spokes of its wheels, Ned saw nothing but a stretch of soot—it was, strangely enough, vaguely person-shaped—across the stones, already blowing away. One small mound seemed to move, but then it crumbled inward and was gone. Strange, he thought with a frown. Ominous. He held his breath and reached out toward the smear of charcoal dust, expecting it to spring to life. His fingers met the ash and … nothing happened. He rubbed the soot between his thumb and forefinger, disappointed.

  “Nothing there, sir,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “I swear,” said the driver. “There was someone here. Right here.”

  “Must have been mistaken.”

  The driver shook his head, mumbling, then climbed down from the cart and reloaded the crates, looking under the cart a few more times, just in case.

  Ned held his fingers up to the light, wondering at the soot. He had felt something—or thought he had—a prickle of warmth, but the feeling had quickly faded to nothing. He sniffed the soot once and sneezed roundly, then wiped the ash on his pant leg and wandered off down the street.

  II

  Kell and Lila made their way to the docks, invisible to passersby. But not only invisibl
e. Intangible. Just as the ash had passed through them at the ruined inn, and Kell’s hand through Lila’s shoulder, so did the people on the street. They could neither feel nor hear them. It was as if, beneath the veil, Kell and Lila were not part of the world around them. As if they existed outside of it. And just as the world could not touch them, they could not touch the world. When Lila absently tried to pocket an apple from a cart, her hand went through the fruit as sure as the fruit went through her hand. They were as ghosts in the bustling city.

  This was strong magic, even in a London rich with power. The stone’s energy thrummed through Kell, twining with his own like a second pulse. A voice in the back of his head warned him against the thing coursing through his body, but he pushed the voice away. For the first time since he’d been wounded, Kell didn’t feel dizzy and weak, and he clung to the strength as much as to the stone itself as he led Lila toward the docks.

  She’d been quiet since they left the remains of the inn, holding on to Kell with one hand and the timepiece with the other. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and sharp.

  “Before you go thinking Barron and I were blood, we weren’t,” she said as they walked side by side. “He wasn’t my family. Not really.” The words rang stiff and hollow, and the way she clenched her jaw and rubbed her eyes (when she thought he wasn’t looking) told another story. But Kell let Lila keep her lie.

  “Do you have any?” he asked, remembering her biting remarks about his situation with the crown. “Family, that is?”

  Lila shook her head. “Mum’s been dead since I was ten.”

  “No father?”

  Lila gave a small humorless laugh. “My father.” She said it like it was a bad word. “The last time I saw him, he tried to sell my flesh to pay his tab.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kell.