by V. E. Schwab
Two more people were seated at the table: a man and a woman, both dressed in shades of red and each with a gold pin of the Maresh seal—the chalice and rising sun—fastened to their shoulder. The pin marked the figures as friends of the crown; it permitted them full access to the palace and instructed any servants and guards to not only welcome but assist them.
“Parlo, Lisane,” said Kell in greeting. They were the ostra selected to help organize the tournament, and Kell felt like he had seen more of them in the past few weeks than he had the king and queen.
“Master Kell,” they said in unison, tipping their heads with practiced smiles and calculated propriety.
A map of the palace and surrounding grounds was spread across the table, one edge tucked beneath a plate of tarts, another under a tea cup, and Lisane was gesturing to the south wing. “We’ve arranged for Prince Col and Princess Cora to stay here, in the emerald suite. Fresh flowers will be grown there the day before they arrive.”
Rhy made a face at Kell across the table. Kell was too tired to try to read it.
“Lord Sol-in-Ar, meanwhile,” continued Lisane, “will be housed in the western conservatory. We’ve stocked it with coffee, just as you instructed, and …”
“And what of the Veskan queen?” grumbled Maxim. “Or the Faroan king? Why do they not grace us with their presence? Do they not trust us? Or do they simply have better things to do?”
Emira frowned. “The emissaries they’ve chosen are appropriate.”
Rhy scoffed. “Queen Lastra of Vesk has seven children, Mother; I doubt it’s much of an inconvenience for her to loan us two. As for the Faroans, Lord Sol-in-Ar is a known antagonist who’s spent the last two decades stirring up discontent wherever he goes, hoping it will spark enough conflict to dethrone his brother and seize control of Faro.”
“Since when are you so invested in imperial politics?” asked Kell, already on his third cup of tea.
To his surprise, Rhy shot him a scowl. “I’m invested in my kingdom, Brother,” he snapped. “You should be, too.”
“I’m not their prince,” observed Kell. He was in no mood for Rhy’s attitude. “I’m just the one who has to clean up his messes.”
“Oh, seeing as you’ve made none of your own?”
They held each other’s gazes. Kell resisted the urge to stab a fork into his own leg just to watch his brother wince.
What was happening to them? They’d never been cruel to each other before. But pain and pleasure weren’t the only things that seemed to transfer with the bond. Fear, annoyance, anger: all plucked at the binding spell, reverberating between them, amplifying. Rhy had always been fickle, but now Kell felt his brother’s ever-shifting temperament, the constant oscillation, and it was maddening. Space meant nothing. They could be standing side by side or Londons apart. There was no escape.
More and more, the bond felt like a chain.
Emira cleared her throat. “I think the eastern conservatory would be better for Lord Sol-in-Ar. It gets better light. But what about the attendants? The Veskans always travel with a full compliment….”
The queen soothed the table, guiding the conversation deftly away from the brothers’ rising moods, but there were too many unspoken things in the air, making it stuffy. Kell pushed himself to his feet and turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” asked Maxim, handing his papers to an attendant.
Kell turned back. “I was going to oversee the construction on the floating arenas, Your Highness.”
“Rhy can handle that,” said the king. “You have an errand to run.” With that, he held out an envelope. Kell didn’t realize how eager he was to go—to escape not only the palace but this city, this world—until he saw that slip of paper.
It bore no address, but he knew exactly where he was meant to take it. With the White London throne empty and the city plunged into crown warfare for the first time in seven years, communication had been suspended. Kell had gone only once, in the weeks after the Dane twins fell, and had nearly lost his life to the violent masses—after which it was decided that Kell would let White London alone for a time, until things settled.
That left only Grey London. The simple, magicless realm, all coal smoke and sturdy old stone.
“I’ll go now,” said Kell, crossing to the king’s side.
“Mind the prince regent,” warned the king. “These correspondences are a matter of tradition, but the man’s questions have grown prodding.”
Kell nodded. He had often wanted to ask King Maxim what he thought of the Grey London leader and wondered about the contents of his letters, whether the prince regent asked as many questions of his neighboring crown as he did of Kell.
“He inquires often about magic,” he told the king. “I do my best to dissuade him.”
Maxim grunted. “He is a foolish man. Be careful.”
Kell raised a brow. Was Maxim actually worried for his safety? But then, as he reached for the letter, he saw the flicker of distrust in the king’s eyes, and his spirits sank. Maxim kept grudges like scars. They faded by degrees but always left a mark.
Kell knew he’d brought it on himself. For years, he’d used his expeditions as royal liaison to transport forbidden items between the worlds. If he hadn’t developed his reputation as a smuggler, the black stone would never have found its way into his hands, would never have killed men and women and brought havoc to Red London. Or perhaps the Danes would still have found a way, but they wouldn’t have used Kell to do it. He’d been a pawn, and a fool, and now he was paying for it—just as Rhy was forced to pay for his own part, for the possession charm that had let Astrid Dane take up residence in his body. In the end, they were both to blame. But the king still loved Rhy. The queen could still look at him.
Emira held out a second, smaller envelope. The note for King George. A courtesy more than anything else, but the fragile king clung to these correspondences, and so did Kell. The ailing king had no idea how short they were getting, and Kell had no intention of letting him know. He’d taken to elaborating, spinning intimate yarns about the Arnesian king and queen, the prince’s exploits, and Kell’s own life in the palace. Perhaps this time he’d tell George about the tournament. The king would love that.
He took the notes and turned to go, already pulling together what he’d say, when Maxim stopped him. “What about your point of return?”
Kell stiffened imperceptibly. The question was like a short tug, a reminder that he was now being kept on a leash. “The door will be at the mouth of Naresh Kas, just off the southern edge of the Night Market.”
The king glanced at Staff, who hung back by the door, to make sure he’d heard, and the guard nodded once.
“Don’t be late,” ordered Maxim.
Kell turned away and left the royal family to their talk of tournament visitors and fresh linens and who preferred coffee or wine or strong tea.
At the sunroom doors, he cast a glance back, and found Rhy looking at him with an expression that might have been I’m sorry, but also could have been fuck off, or at the very least we’ll talk later. Kell let the matter go and escaped, slipping the letters into the pocket of his coat. He walked briskly through the palace halls, back to his chambers, and through to the smaller second room beyond, closing the door behind him. Rhy probably would have used such an alcove to hold boots, or coat pins, but Kell had transformed the space into a small but well-stocked library, holding the texts he’d collected on magic. They were as much philosophical as practical, many gifted by Master Tieren or borrowed from the royal library, as well as some journals of his own, scribbled with thoughts on Antari blood magic, about which so little was known. One slim black volume he’d dedicated to Vitari, the black magic he’d grasped—awakened—destroyed—the year before. That journal held more questions than answers.
On the back of the library’s wooden door were half a dozen hand-drawn symbols, each simple but distinct, shortcuts to other places in the city, carefully drawn in blood. Some were faded
from disuse, others fresh. One of the symbols—a circle with a pair of crossed lines drawn through it—led to Tieren’s sanctuary on the opposite bank. As Kell traced his fingers over the mark, he vividly remembered helping Lila haul a dying Rhy through the door. Another mark had once led to Kell’s private chamber at the Ruby Fields, the only place in London that had been truly his. Now it was nothing more than a smudge.
Kell scanned the door until he found the symbol he was looking for: a star made of three intersecting lines.
This mark came with its own memories, of an old king in a cell of a room, his gnarled fingers curled around a single red coin as he murmured about fading magic.
Kell drew his dagger from its place under the cuff of his coat, and grazed his wrist. Blood welled, rich and red, and he dabbed the cut and drew the mark fresh. When it was done, he pressed his hand flat against the symbol and said, “As Tascen.” Transfer.
And then he stepped forward.
The world softened and warped around his hand, and he passed from the darkened alcove into sunlight, crisp and bright enough to revive the fading ache behind his eyes. Kell was no longer in his makeshift library, but standing in a well-appointed courtyard. He wasn’t in Grey London, not yet, but in an ostra’s garden in an elegant village called Disan, significant not because of its fine fruit trees or glass statues, but because it occupied the same ground in Red London that Windsor Castle did in Grey.
The same exact ground.
Traveling magic only worked two ways. Kell could either transfer between two different places in one world, or travel between the same place in different ones. And because they kept the English king at Windsor, which sat well outside the city of London, he had to make his way first to ostra Paveron’s garden. It was a bit of clever navigation on Kell’s part … not that anyone knew enough of Antari magic to appreciate it. Holland might have, but Holland was dead, and he’d likely had a network of acrosses and betweens intricate enough to make Kell’s own attempts look childish. The winter air whipped around him, and he shivered as he drew the letters out of his pocket with his unbloodied hand, then turned the coat inside out and outside in until he found the side he was looking for: a black knee-length garment with a hood and velvet lining. Fit for Grey London, where the cold always felt colder, bitter and damp in a way that seeped through cloth and skin.
Kell shrugged the new coat on and tucked the letters deep into one of the pockets (they were lined with softened wool instead of silk), blew out a plume of warm breath, and marked the icy wall with the blood from his hand. But then, as he was reaching for the cord of tokens around his neck, something tugged at his attention. He paused and looked around, considering the garden. He was alone, truly alone, and he found himself wanting to savor it. Aside from one trip north when he and Rhy were boys, this was the farthest Kell ever strayed from the city. He’d always been watched, but he’d felt more confined in the past four months than in the nearly twenty years he’d served the crown. Kell used to feel like a possession. Now he felt like a prisoner.
Perhaps he should have run when he’d had the chance.
You could still run, said a voice in his ear. It sounded suspiciously like Lila.
In the end, she had escaped. Could he? He didn’t have to run to another world. What if he simply … walked away? Away from the garden and the village, away from the city. He could take a coach, or a boat to the ocean, and then … what? How far would he make it with almost no money of his own and an eye that marked him as an Antari?
You could take what you need, said the voice.
It was a very big world. And he’d never even seen it.
If he stayed in Ames, he would eventually be found. And if he fled into Faro, or Vesk? The Faroans saw his eye as a mark of strength, nothing more, but Kell had heard his name paired with a Veskan word—crat’a—pillar. As if he alone held up the Arnesian empire. And if either empire got their hands on him …
Kell stared down at his blood-streaked hand. Saints, how could he actually consider running away?
It was madness, the idea that he could—that he would—abandon his city. His king and queen. His brother. He’d betrayed them once—well, one crime, albeit committed many times—and it had nearly cost him everything. He wouldn’t forsake them again, no matter what restlessness had been awakened in him.
You could be free, insisted the voice.
But that was the thing. Kell would never be free. No matter how far he fled. He’d given up freedom with his life, when he handed it to Rhy.
“Enough,” he said aloud, silencing the doubts as he dug the proper cord out from under his collar and tugged it over his head. On the strap hung a copper coin, the face rubbed smooth from years of use. Enough, he thought, and then he brought his bloody hand to the garden wall. He had a job to do.
“As travars.”
Travel.
The world began to bend around the words and the blood and the magic, and Kell stepped forward, hoping to leave behind his troubles with his London, trade them for a few minutes with the king.
But as soon as his boots settled on the castle carpet, he realized that his problems were just beginning. Instantly, Kell knew that something was wrong.
Windsor was too quiet. Too dark.
The bowl of water that usually waited for him in the antechamber was empty, the candles to either side unlit. When he listened for the sound of steps, he heard them, distantly, in the halls behind him, but from the chamber ahead he was met with silence.
Dread crept in as he made his way into the king’s sitting room, hoping to see his withered frame sleeping in his high-backed chair, or hear his frail, melodic voice. But the room was empty. The windows were fastened shut against the snow, and there was no fire going in the hearth. The room was cold and dark in a closed-up way.
Kell went to the fireplace and held out his hands, as if to warm them, and an instant later flames licked up across the empty grate. The fire wouldn’t last long, fueled by nothing more than air and magic, but in its light Kell crossed through the space, searching for signs of recent occupation. Cold tea. A cast-off shawl. But the room felt abandoned, un-lived-in.
And then his gaze caught on the letter.
If it could be called a letter.
A single piece of crisp cream paper, folded and propped on the tray before the fire, with his name written on the front in the prince regent’s steady, confident script.
Kell took up the note, knowing what he would find before he unfolded the page, but he still felt ill as the words danced in the enchanted fire’s light.
The king is dead.
II
The four words hit him like a blow.
The king is dead.
Kell reeled; he wasn’t accustomed to loss. He feared death—he always had—now more than ever, with the prince’s life bound to his, but until the Black Night, Kell had never lost someone he knew. Someone he liked. He had always been fond of the ailing king, even in his later years, when madness and blindness stole most of his dignity and all of his power.
And now the king was gone. A sum returned to parts, as Tieren would say.
Below, the prince regent had added a postscript.
Step into the hall. Someone will bring you to my rooms.
Kell hesitated, looking around at the empty chamber. And then, reluctantly, he closed his hand into a fist, plunging the fire in the hearth back into nothing and the room back into shadow, and left. Out past the antechamber into the hallways beyond.
It was like stepping into another world.
Windsor wasn’t as opulent as St. James, but it wasn’t nearly so grim as the old king’s chamber made it out to be. Tapestries and carpets warmed the halls. Gold and silver glinted from candlestick and plate. Lamps burned in wall sconces and voices and music carried like a draft.
Someone cleared their throat, and Kell turned to find a well-dressed attendant waiting.
“Ah, sir, very good, this way,” said the man with a bow, and then, without waiting,
he set off down the hall.
Kell’s gaze wandered as they walked. He had never explored the halls beyond the king’s rooms, but he was sure they hadn’t always been like this.
Fires burned high in the hearths of every room they passed, rendering the palace uncomfortably warm. The rooms themselves were all occupied, and Kell couldn’t help but feel like he was being put on display, led past murmuring ladies and curious gentlemen. He clenched his fists and lowered his gaze. By the time he was deposited in the large sitting room, his face was flushed from heat and annoyance.
“Ah. Master Kell.”
The prince regent—the king, Kell corrected himself—was sitting on a sofa, flanked by a handful of stiff men and giggling women. He looked fatter and more arrogant than usual, his buttons straining, the points of his nose and chin thrust up. His companions fell silent at the sight of Kell, standing there in his black traveling coat.
“Your Majesty,” he said, tipping his head forward in the barest show of deference. The gesture resettled the hair over his blackened eye. He knew that his next words should express condolence, but looking at the new king’s face, Kell felt the more stricken of the two. “I would have come to St. James if I’d—”
George waved a hand imperiously. “I didn’t come here for you,” he said, getting to his feet, albeit ungracefully. “I’m spending a fortnight at Windsor, tying up odds and ends. Putting matters to rest, so to speak.” He must have seen the distaste that contorted Kell’s face because he added, “What is it?”
“You don’t seem saddened by the loss,” observed Kell.
George huffed. “My father has been dead three weeks, and should have had the decency to die years ago, when he first grew ill. For his sake, as well as mine.” A grim smile spread across the new king’s face like a ripple. “But I suppose for you the shock is fresh.” He crossed to a side bar to pour himself a drink. “I always forget,” he said, as amber liquid sloshed against crystal, “that as long as you are in your world, you hear nothing of ours.”