A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  Rhy’s amber gaze kept swinging toward him like a pendulum on a heavy rope.

  He took another drink.

  And then another, and another, in preparation for the ache of want and loss and memory washing over him, a small boat pitching miserably against the waves.

  * * *

  Hold on to me.

  That’s what Rhy had said, when Alucard was burning from the inside out. When Rhy was lying there beside him in the ship’s cabin, hoping desperately that his hands could keep Alucard there, and whole and safe. Keep him from vanishing again, this time forever.

  Now that Alucard was alive and more or less upright, Rhy couldn’t bring himself to look at his lover, and couldn’t bear to look away, so he ended up doing both and neither.

  It had been so long since Rhy’d been able to study his face. Three summers. Three winters. Three years, and the prince’s heart still cracked along the lines Alucard had made.

  They were in the conservatory, Rhy and Alucard and Lila.

  The captain sat slumped in a tall-backed chair, silver scars and sapphire stud both winking in the light. A glass hung from one hand, and a fluffy white cat named Esa curled beneath his seat, and his eyes were open but far away.

  Over at the sideboard, Lila was pouring herself another drink. (Was this her fourth? Rhy felt he wasn’t the one to judge.) However, she was pouring a little too liberally and spilled the last of Rhy’s summer wine onto his inlaid floor. There was a time when he would have cared about the stain, but it was gone, that life. It had fallen between the boards like a bit of jewelry, and now lay somewhere out of reach, vaguely remembered but easily forgotten.

  “Steady, Bard.”

  It was the first thing Alucard had said in an hour. Not that Rhy had been waiting.

  The captain was pale, his thief ashen, and the prince himself was pacing, his armor cast off like a broken shell onto a corner chair.

  By the end of the first day, they’d found twenty-four silvers. Most were being kept in the Rose Hall, treated by the priests. But there were more. He knew there were more. There had to be. Rhy wanted to keep looking, to carry the search into the night, but Maxim had refused. And worse, the remaining royal guards had put him under an unyielding watch.

  And what troubled Rhy as much as his own confinement when there were souls still trapped in the city was the sight of the rot spreading through London. A blackness like ice on top of the street stones and splashed across the walls, a film that wasn’t a film at all, but a change. Rock and dirt and water all being swallowed up, replaced by something that wasn’t an element at all, a glossy, dark nothing, a presence and an absence.

  He’d told Tieren, pointed out a lone spot at the courtyard’s edge, just outside their wards, where the void was spreading like frost. The old man’s face had gone pale.

  “Magic and nature exist in balance,” he’d said, brushing fingers through the air above the pool of black. “This is what happens when that balance fails. When magic overwhelms nature.”

  The world was decaying, he’d explained. Only instead of going soft, like felled branches on a forest floor, it was going hard, calcifying into something like stone that wasn’t stone at all.

  “Would you stand still?” snapped Lila now, watching Rhy pace. “You’re making me dizzy.”

  “I suspect,” said a voice from the door, “that’s the wine.”

  Rhy turned, relieved to see his brother. “Kell,” he said, trying to summon something like humor as he tipped his glass at the four guards framing the door. “Is this what you feel like all the time?”

  “Pretty much,” said Kell, lifting the drink from Lila’s hand and taking a long sip. Amazingly, she let him.

  “How maddening,” said Rhy with a groan. And then, to the men, “Could you at least sit down? Or are you trying to look like coats of armor on my walls?”

  They didn’t answer.

  Kell returned the drink to Lila’s hand and then frowned as he noticed Alucard. His brother pointedly ignored the captain’s presence and poured himself a very large glass. “What are we drinking to?”

  “The living,” said Rhy.

  “The dead,” said Alucard and Lila at the same time.

  “We’re being thorough,” added Rhy.

  His attention swung back to Alucard, who was looking out at the night. Rhy realized he wasn’t the only one watching the captain. Lila had followed Alucard’s gaze to the glass.

  “When you look at the fallen,” she said, “what do you see?”

  Alucard squinted dully, the way he always had when he was trying to picture something. “Knots,” he said simply.

  “Care to expand?” said Kell, who knew of the captain’s gift, and cared for it about as much as he cared for the rest of him.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” murmured Alucard.

  “Maybe if you chose the right words.”

  “I couldn’t make them short enough.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” snapped Lila. “If you two could stop bickering for a moment.”

  Alucard leaned forward in his chair and set the once-more-empty glass on the floor beside his boot, where his cat sniffed it. “This Osaron,” he said, “is siphoning energy from everyone he touches. His magic, it feeds on ours by … infecting it. It gets in among the strings of our power, our life, and gets tangled up in our threads until everything is in knots.”

  “You’re right,” said Kell after a moment. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It must be maddening,” said Alucard, “to know I have a power you don’t.”

  Kell’s teeth clicked together, but when he spoke, he kept his voice civil, smooth. “Believe it or not, I relish our smallest differences. Besides, I may not be able to see the world the way you do, but I can still recognize an asshole.”

  Lila snorted.

  Rhy made an exasperated sound. “Enough,” he said, and then, to Kell, “What did our prisoner have to say?”

  At the mention of Holland, Alucard’s head snapped. Lila sat forward, a glint in her eyes. Kell downed his drink, wincing, and said, “He’s to be executed in the morning. A public display.”

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  And then Lila raised her glass.

  “Well,” she said cheerfully, “I’ll toast to that.”

  VIII

  Emira Maresh drifted through the palace like a ghost.

  She heard what people said about her. They called her distant, distracted. But in truth, she was simply listening. Not only to them, but to everyone and everything beneath the gilded spires of the roof. Few people noticed the pitchers by every bed, the basins on every table. A bowl of water was a simple thing, but with the right spell, it could carry sound. With the right spell, Emira could make the palace speak.

  Her fear of breaking things had taught her well to watch her step, to listen close. The world was a fragile place, full of cracks that didn’t always show. One misstep, and they might fissure, break. One wrong move, and the whole of it could come crashing down, a tower of Sanct cards burned to cinders.

  It was Emira’s job to make sure that her world stayed strong, to shore the fractures, to listen for fresh cracks. It was her duty to keep her family safe, her palace whole, her kingdom well. It was her calling, and if she was careful enough, sharp enough, then nothing bad would happen. That is what Emira told herself.

  Only she had been wrong.

  She’d done everything she could, and Rhy had nearly died. A shadow had fallen on London. Her husband was hiding something. Kell would not look at her.

  She hadn’t been able to stop the cracks, but now she turned her focus on the rest of the palace.

  As she walked the halls, she could hear the priests in the sparring room, the crinkle of scrolls, the drag of ink, the soft murmur as they prepared their spell.

  She could hear the heavy tread of guards in armor moving through the lower levels, the deep, guttural voices of Veskans and the sibilant melody of the Faroan tongue
in the eastern hall, the murmur of the nobles in the gallery as they sat up still, whispering over tea. Talking about the city, the curse, the king. What was he doing? What could he do? Maxim Maresh, gone soft with age and peace. Maxim Maresh, a man against a monster, against a god.

  From the Rose Hall, Emira heard the toss and turn of the fevered bodies still trapped in burning dreams, and when she turned her ear to the palace’s east wing she heard her son’s similarly fitful sleep, echoed in turn by Kell’s own restless turnings.

  And through it all, the steady whisper against the windows, against the walls, words muffled by the wards, breaking down into the rise and fall and hush of the wind. A voice trying to get in.

  Emira heard so many things, but she also heard the absences where sound should be, and wasn’t. She heard the muffled hush of those trying too hard to be quiet. In a corner of the ballroom, a pair of guards summoning their courage. In an alcove, a noble and a magician tangled up like string. And in the map room, the sound of a single man standing alone before the table.

  She went toward him, but drawing closer, she realized it wasn’t her husband.

  The man in the map room stood with his back to the door, head bent over the city of London. Emira watched as he reached out a single, dark finger and brought it to rest on the quartz figurine of a royal guard before the palace.

  The figurine fell onto its side with the tiny clatter of stone on stone. Emira winced, but the statue did not break.

  “Lord Sol-in-Ar,” she said evenly.

  The Faroan turned, the white gold gems embedded in his profile catching the light. He showed neither surprise at her presence nor guilt at his own.

  “Your Majesty.”

  “Why are you here alone?”

  “I was looking for the king,” answered Sol-in-Ar in his smooth, susurrant way.

  Emira shook her head, eyes darting around the room. It felt askew without Maxim. She scanned the table, as if something might be missing, but Sol-in-Ar had already righted the fallen piece and taken up another from the table’s edge. The chalice and sun. The marker of the House Maresh.

  The sigil of Arnes.

  “I hope it is not out of line,” he said, “to say I believe we are alike.”

  “You and my husband?”

  A single shake of the head. “You and I.”

  Emira’s face warmed even as the temperature in the room fell. “How so?”

  “We both know much, and say little. We both stand at the side of kings. We are the truth whispered in their ears. The reason.”

  She said nothing, only inclined her head.

  “The darkness is spreading,” he added softly, though the words were full of edges. “It must be contained.”

  “It will be,” answered the queen.

  Sol-in-Ar nodded once. “Tell the king,” he said, “that we can help. If he will let us.”

  The Faroan started toward the door.

  “Lord Sol-in-Ar,” she called after him. “Our standard.”

  He looked down at the carved figure in his hand as if he’d forgotten about it entirely. “Apologies,” he said, setting the piece back on the board.

  * * *

  Emira finally found her husband in their chamber, though not in their bed. He’d fallen asleep at her writing desk, slumped forward on the carved wooden table, his head on folded arms atop a ledger, the scent of ink still fresh.

  Only the first line was legible beneath his wrinkled sleeve.

  To my son, the crown prince of Arnes, when it is time …

  Emira drew in a sharp breath at the words, then steadied herself. She did not wake Maxim. Did not pull the book from its place beneath his head. She padded silently to the sofa, took up a throw, and settled the blanket over his shoulders.

  He stirred briefly, arms shifting beneath his head, the small change revealing not only the next line—know that a father lives for his son, but a king lives for his people—but the bandage wrapped around his wrist. Emira stilled at the sight of it, lines of blood seeping through the crisp white linen.

  What had Maxim done?

  What was he yet planning to do?

  She could hear the workings of the palace, but her husband’s mind was solid, impenetrable. No matter how hard she listened, all she heard was his heart.

  IX

  As night fell, the shadows bloomed.

  They ran together with the river and the mist and the moonless sky until they were everywhere. Osaron was everywhere. In every heartbeat. In every breath.

  Some had escaped. For now. Others had been reduced already to dust. It was a necessary thing, like the razing of a forest, the clearing of ground so that new things—better things—could grow. A process as natural as the passing of the seasons.

  Osaron was the fall, and the winter, and the spring.

  And all across the city, he heard the voices of his loyal servants.

  How can I serve you?

  How can I worship?

  Show me the way.

  Tell me what to do.

  He was in their minds.

  He was in their bodies. He whispered in their heads and coursed through their blood. He was in every one of them, and bound to none.

  Everywhere, and nowhere.

  It was enough.

  And it was not enough.

  He wanted more.

  SIX

  EXECUTION

  I

  Grey London

  Ned Tuttle woke to a very bad feeling.

  He’d recently moved out of his family’s house in Mayfair and into the room above the tavern—his tavern—that magical place once called the Stone’s Throw, and rechristened the Five Points.

  Ned sat up, listening intently to the silence. He could have sworn someone was speaking, but he couldn’t hear the voice anymore, and, as the moments ticked past, he couldn’t be sure if it had ever been real, or simply the dregs of sleep clinging to him, the urge to listen to an echo of some peculiar dream.

  Ned had always had vivid dreams.

  So vivid he couldn’t always tell when something had truly happened or when he’d simply dreamed it. Ned’s dreams had always been strange, and sometimes they were wonderful, but lately, they’d grown … disturbing, skewing darker, more menacing.

  Growing up, his parents had written off his dreams as simply an effect of his reading too many novels, disappearing for hours—sometimes days—into fictional and fantastical worlds. In his youth, he’d seen the dreams as a sign of his sensitivity to the other, that aspect of the world most people couldn’t see—the one even Ned couldn’t see—but that he believed in, fervently, determinedly, doggedly, right up until the day he met Kell and learned for certain that the other was real.

  But tonight, Ned had been dreaming of a forest made of stone. Kell was in the dream, too, had been at one point but wasn’t anymore, and now Ned was lost, and every time he called out for help, the whole forest echoed like an empty church, but the voices that came back weren’t his. Some of them were high and others low, some young and sweet, and others old, and there at the center, a voice he couldn’t quite make out, one that bent around his ears the way light sometimes bent around a corner.

  Now, sitting up in the stiff little bed, he had the strangest urge to call out, the way he had in the forest, but some small—well, not as small as he’d like—part of him feared that just like in the forest, someone else would call back.

  Perhaps the sound had come from the tavern downstairs. He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, slid his feet into his slippers, and stood, the old wooden floor groaning beneath his toes.

  He moved in silence, only that creak-creak-creak following him across the room, and then the oomph as he ran into the dresser, the eek of the metal lantern rocking, almost tipping, then humphing back into place, followed by the shhhh of tapers rolling of the table.

  “Bugger,” muttered Ned.

  It would have been dreadfully handy, he thought, if he could simply snap his fingers and summon a bit of fir
e, but in four straight months of trying, he’d barely managed to shift the pieces in Kell’s kit of elements, so he fumbled on his robe in the dark and stepped out onto the stairs.

  And shivered.

  Something was most certainly strange.

  Ordinarily Ned loved strange things, lived in the hope of spying them, but this was a type of strange bordering on wrong. The air smelled of roses and woodsmoke and dying leaves, and when he moved it felt like he was wading through a warm spot in a cold pool, or a cold spot in a warm one. Like a draft in a room when all the doors were shut, the windows latched.

  He knew this feeling, had sensed it once before in the street outside the Five Points, back when it was the Stone’s Throw and he was still waiting for Kell to return with his promised dirt. Ned had seen a cart crash, heard the driver rant about a man he’d crushed. Only there was no body left behind, no man, only smoke and ash and the faint frisson of magic.

  Bad magic.

  Black magic.

  Ned returned to his room and fetched his ceremonial dagger—he’d bought it from a patron the week before, the handle etched with runes around a pentagram of inlaid onyx.

  My name is Edward Archibald Tuttle, he thought, gripping the dagger, I am the third of that name, and I am not afraid.

  The creak-creak-creak followed him down the warping stairs, and when he reached the bottom, standing in the darkened tavern with only the thud-thud of his heart, Ned realized where that feeling of strangeness was coming from.

  The Five Points was too quiet.

  A heavy, muffled, unnatural quiet, as if the room were filled with wool instead of air. The last embers in the hearth smoldered behind their grate, the wind blew through the boards, but none of it made any sound.

  Ned went to the front door and threw back the bolt. Outside, the street was empty—it was the darkest hour, that time before the first streaks of dawn—but London was never truly still, not this close to the river, and so he was instantly greeted by the clop-clop of carriages, the distant trills of laughter and song. Somewhere near the Thames, the scrape of a fiddle, and much closer, the sound of a stray cat, yowling for milk or company or whatever stray cats wanted. A dozen sounds that made up the fabric of his city, and when Ned closed the door again, the noises followed him, sneaking in through the crack beneath the door, around the sill. The pressure ebbed, the air in the tavern thinning, the spell broken.