A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  Lila’s stomach turned. “You know,” she said, fighting to keep her tone airy, “I need the one I have.”

  Maris chuckled. “Believe it or not, dearie, I’m not in the business of blinding my customers.” She held out her hand. “The broken one will do.”

  * * *

  Lila watched the lid of the small black box close over her glass eye.

  The cost had been higher, the loss greater, than she realized when she first agreed. The eye had always been useless, its origins as strange and lost to her as the accident that took her real one. She’d wondered about it, of course—the craftwork so fine it must have been stolen—but for all that, Lila wasn’t sentimental. She’d never been particularly attached to the ball of glass, but the moment it was gone, she felt suddenly wrong, exposed. A deformity on display, an absence made visible.

  It is only a thing, she told herself again, and things are meant to be used.

  Her fingers tightened on the Inheritor, relishing the pain as it cut into her palm.

  “The instructions are written on the side,” Maris was saying. “But perhaps I should have mentioned that the vessel is empty.” The woman’s expression went coy, as if she’d managed a trick. As if she thought Lila was after the remains of someone else’s power instead of the device itself.

  “Good,” she said simply. “That’s even better.”

  The woman’s thin lips curled with amusement, but if she wanted to know more, she didn’t ask. Lila started toward the door, combing the hair over her missing eye.

  “A patch will help,” said Maris, setting something on the table. “Or perhaps this.”

  Lila turned back.

  The box was small and white and open, and at first, it looked empty, nothing but a swatch of crushed black velvet lining its sides. But then the light shifted and the object caught the sun, glinting faintly.

  It was a sphere roughly the size and shape of an eye.

  And it was solid black.

  “Everyone knows the mark of an Antari,” explained Maris. “The all-black eye. There was a fashion, oh, about a century ago—those who’d lost an eye in battle or by accident and found themselves in need of a false one would don one of blackened glass, passing themselves off as more than they were. The fashion ended, of course, when those ambitious, misguided few discovered that an Antari is much more than a marking. Some were challenged to duels they could not win, some were kidnapped or murdered for their magic, and some simply couldn’t stand the pressure. As such, these eyes became quite rare,” said Maris. “Almost as rare as you.”

  Lila didn’t realize she’d crossed the room until she felt her fingers brush the smooth black glass. It seemed to sing beneath her touch, as if wanting to be held. “How much?”

  “Take it.”

  Lila looked up. “A gift?”

  Maris laughed softly, the sound of steam escaping a kettle. “This is the Ferase Stras,” she said. “Nothing is free.”

  “I’ve already given you my left eye,” growled Lila.

  “And while an eye for an eye is enough for some—for this,” she said, nudging the box toward Lila, “I’ll need something more precious.”

  “A heart?”

  “A favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  Maris shrugged. “I suppose I’ll know when I need it. But when I call you, you will come.”

  Lila hesitated. It was a dangerous deal, she knew, the kind villains coaxed from maidens in fairy tales, and devils from lost men, but she still heard herself answer, a single binding word.

  “Yes.”

  Maris’s smile cracked wider. “Anesh,” she said. “Try it on.”

  When she had it in, Lila stood before the mirror, blinking fiercely at her changed appearance, the startling difference of a shadow cast across her face, a pit of darkness so complete it registered as absence. As if a piece of her were missing—not an eye, but an entire self.

  The girl from Grey London.

  The one who picked pockets and cut purses and froze to death on winter nights with only pride to keep her warm.

  The one without a family, without a world.

  This new eye looked startlingly strange, wrong, and yet right.

  “There,” said Maris. “Isn’t that better?”

  And Lila smiled, because it was.

  V

  The slip of paper Maris had given Kell still blazed against his palm, but he kept his fist closed tight around it as he and Alucard stood, waiting, beyond the door.

  He was worried that if they crossed the platform and left the ship, they wouldn’t be allowed back on, and given Lila’s tendency for trouble, Kell wanted to stay close.

  But then the door swung open and Lila stepped through, the Inheritor clutched in her hand. And yet it wasn’t the scroll-like device that caught his attention. It was Lila’s smile, a dazzling, happy smile, and just above, a sphere of glossy black where shattered brown had been. Kell sucked in a breath.

  “Your eye,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Lila with a smirk, “you noticed.”

  “Saints, Bard,” said Alucard. “Do I want to know how much that cost?”

  “Worth every penny,” she said.

  Kell reached out and tucked the hair behind Lila’s ear so he could see it better. The eye looked stark and strange and utterly right. His own gaze didn’t clash against it, the way it did with Holland’s, and yet, now that it was there, her eyes divided into brown and black, he couldn’t imagine ever thinking she was ordinary. “It suits you.”

  “Not to interrupt…” said Alucard behind them.

  Lila tossed him the Inheritor as if it were a mere coin, a simple token instead of the entire goal of their mad mission, their best—and maybe only—chance of saving London. Kell’s stomach dropped, but Alucard snatched the talisman from the air just as easy.

  He crossed the plank between the market and the Ghost, Lila falling in step behind him, but Kell lingered. He looked down at the paper in his hand. It was nothing but parchment, yet it could have weighed more than stone, the way it rooted him to the wooden floor.

  Your true family.

  But what did that mean? Was family the ones you were born to, or the ones who took you in? Did the first years of his life weigh more than the rest?

  Strange thing about forgetting spells.

  Rhy was his brother.

  They fade on their own.

  London was his home.

  Unless we don’t let go.

  “Kell?” called Lila, looking over her shoulder with those two-toned eyes. “You coming?”

  He nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

  His fingers closed over the paper, and with a brush of heat, it caught fire. He let it burn, and when the note was nothing but ashes, he tipped them over the side, letting the wind catch them before they ever hit the sea.

  * * *

  The crew stood on deck, gathered around a wooden crate—the makeshift table where Kell had set the bounty for which he’d paid three years.

  “Tell me again,” said Lila, “why, with a ship full of shiny things, you bought yourself a ring.”

  “It’s not just a ring,” he protested with far more certainty than he felt.

  “Then what is it?” asked Jasta, arms crossed, still clearly bitter from being turned away.

  “I don’t exactly know,” he said, defensively. “Maris called it a binding ring.”

  “No,” corrected Alucard. “Maris called it binding rings.”

  “There’s more than one?” asked Holland.

  Kell took up the loop of metal and pulled, the way he had before, one ring becoming two the way Lila’s knives did, only these had no hidden clasp. It wasn’t an illusion. It was magic.

  He set the newly made second ring back atop the crate, wondering at the original. Perhaps two was the limit of its power, but he didn’t think it was.

  Again Kell held the ring in both hands, and again he pulled, and again it came apart.

  “That one
never gets smaller,” noted Lila, as Kell tried to make a fourth ring. It didn’t work. There was no resistance, no rebuff. The refusal was simple and solid, as if the ring simply had no more to give.

  All magic has limits.

  It was something Tieren would say.

  “And you’re sure it’s Antari-made?” asked Lenos.

  “That’s what Alucard said,” said Kell, cutting him a look.

  Alucard threw up his hands. “Maris confirmed it. She called them Antari binding rings.”

  “All right,” said Lila. “But what do they do?”

  “That she wouldn’t say.”

  Hastra took up one of the spell-made rings and squinted through it, as if expecting to see something beside Kell’s face on the other side.

  Lenos poked at the second with his index finger, startling a little when it rolled away, not a specter, but a solid band of metal.

  It tumbled right off the crate, and Holland caught it as it fell, his chains rattling against the wood.

  “Would you take these foolish things off?”

  Kell looked to Lila, who frowned back but didn’t threaten mutiny. He slipped the original ring on his finger so he wouldn’t drop it as he undid the manacles. They fell away with a heavy thud, everyone on deck tensing at the sudden sound, the knowledge that Holland was free.

  Lila plucked the third ring from Hastra’s grip.

  “A little plain, aren’t they?” She started to put it on, then cut a look at Holland, who was still considering the band of metal in his palm. Her eyes narrowed in distrust—they were binding rings, after all—but the moment Holland returned his ring to the crate, Lila flashed Kell a wicked grin.

  “Shall we see what they do?” she asked, already sliding the silver band onto her finger.

  “Lila, wait—” Kell started tugging his own ring off, but he was too late. The moment the band crossed her knuckle, it hit him like a blow.

  Kell let out a short, breathless cry and doubled over, bracing himself against the crate as the deck tilted violently beneath him. It wasn’t pain, but something just as deep. As if a thread in the very center of his being had pulled suddenly tight, and his whole self thrummed with the sudden tension of the cord.

  “Mas vares,” Hastra was saying, “what’s wrong?”

  Nothing was wrong. Power coursed through him, so bright it lit the world, every one of his senses singing with the strain. His vision blurred, overwhelmed by the sudden surge, and when he managed to focus, to look at Lila, he could almost see the threads running between them, a metallic river of magic.

  Her eyes were wide, as if she saw it, too.

  “Huh,” said Alucard, gaze flicking along the lines of power. “So that’s what Maris meant.”

  “What is it?” asked Jasta, unable to see.

  Kell straightened, the threads humming beneath his skin. He wanted to try something, so he reached, not with his hands, but with his will, and drew a fraction of Lila’s magic toward him. It was like drinking light, warm and lush and startlingly bright, and suddenly anything felt possible. Was this what the world looked like to Osaron? Was this how it felt to be invincible?

  Across the deck, Lila frowned at the shifting balance.

  “That’s mine,” she said, wrenching the power back. As quick as it had come, the magic was gone, not just Lila’s borrowed stake but his natural well, and, for a terrifying moment, Kell’s world went black. He staggered and fell to his hands and knees on the deck. Nearby, Lila let out a sound that was part shock, part triumph, as she claimed his power as her own.

  “Lila,” he said, but his voice was unsteady, weak, swallowed by the whipping wind and the rocking ship and that sudden, gutting absence of strength, too like the cursed collar and the metal frame. Kell’s whole body shook, his vision flickered, and through the spotted dark he saw her bring her hands together and, with nothing but a smile, summon an arc of flame.

  “Lila, stop,” he gasped, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Her gaze was empty, elsewhere, her attention consumed by the gold-red light of the fire as it grew and grew around her, threatening to brush the wooden boards of the Ghost, rising toward the canvas sail. A shout went up. Kell tried to rise, but couldn’t. His hands tingled with heat, but he couldn’t pull the ring from his finger. It was stuck, fused in place by whatever spellwork bound the two of them together.

  And then, as sudden as the gain of Lila’s magic, the loss of his, a new wave of magic surged through his veins. It wasn’t coming from Lila, who still stood at the burning center of her own world. It was a third source, sharp and cold but just as bright. Kell’s vision focused and he saw Holland, the final ring on his hand, its presence flooding the paths between them with fresh magic.

  Kell’s own power came back like air into starved lungs as the other Antari peeled away thread after thread of Lila’s magic, the fire in her hands shrinking as the power was drawn away, divided between them, the air around Holland’s hands dancing with tendrils of stolen flame.

  Lila blinked rapidly, waking from the power’s thrall. Startled, she dragged the ring from her finger, and nearly toppled over from the sudden spike and subsequent loss of power. As soon as the band was free of her hand, it melted away, first dissolving into a ribbon of silver mist and then—nothing.

  Without her presence, the connection shuddered and shortened, drawing taut between Kell and Holland, the light of their collective power dimming a fraction. Again Kell tried to wrench the ring from his finger. Again he couldn’t. It wasn’t until Holland withdrew his own band, the echo of Kell’s original, that the spell broke and his ring came free, tumbling to the wooden deck and rolling several feet before Alucard stopped it with the toe of his boot.

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  Lila was leaning heavily against the rail, the deck scorched beneath her feet. Holland braced one hand against the mast for balance. Kell shivered, fighting the urge to be sick.

  “What—” gasped Lila, “—the bloody hell—just happened?”

  Hastra whistled softly to himself as Alucard knelt and retrieved the abandoned ring. “Well,” he mused. “I’d say that was worth three years.”

  “Three years of what?” asked Lila, swaying as she tried to straighten. Kell glared at the captain, even as he sagged back against a stack of crates.

  “No offense, Bard,” continued Alucard, scuffing his boot where Lila had scorched the deck. “But your form could use some work.”

  Kell’s head was pounding so loudly, it took him a moment to realize Holland was talking, too.

  “This is how we do it,” he was saying quietly, his green eye fever-bright.

  “Do what?” asked Lila.

  “This is how we catch Osaron.” Something crossed Holland’s face. Kell thought it might have been a smile. “This is how we win.”

  VI

  Rhy sat atop his mount, squinting through the London fog for signs of life.

  The streets were too still, the city too empty.

  In the last hour, he hadn’t found a single survivor. He’d hardly seen anyone at all, for that matter. The cursed, who’d moved like echoes through the beat of their lives, had withdrawn into their homes, leaving only the shimmering mist and the black rot spreading inch by inch over the city.

  Rhy looked to the shadow palace, sitting like oil atop the river, and for a moment he wanted to spur his horse up the icy bridge to the doors of that dark, unnatural place. Wanted to force his way in. To face the shadow king himself.

  But Kell had said to wait. I have a plan, he’d said. Do you trust me?

  And Rhy did.

  He turned the horse away.

  “Your Highness,” said the guard, meeting him at the mouth of the road.

  “Have you found any more?” asked Rhy, heart sinking when the man shook his head.

  They rode back toward the palace in silence, only the sound of their horses ringing through the deserted streets.

  Wrong, said his gut.

  They reached the plaza, and
he slowed his horse as the palace steps came into view. There at the base of the stairs stood a young woman with a bunch of flowers in her hand. Winter roses, their petals frosty white. As he watched, she knelt and placed the bouquet on the steps. It was such an ordinary gesture, the kind of thing a commoner would have done on a normal winter day, an offering, a thanks, a prayer, but it wasn’t a normal winter day, and everything about it was out of place against the backdrop of fog and barren streets.

  “Mas vares?” said the guard as Rhy dismounted.

  Wrong, beat his heart.

  “Take the horses and get inside,” he ordered, starting forward on foot across the plaza. As he drew near, he could see the darkness splashed like paint across the other flowers, dripping onto the pale polished stone beneath.

  The woman didn’t look up, not until he was nearly at her side, and then she rose and tipped her chin to the palace, revealing eyes that swirled with fog, veins traced black with the shadow king’s curse.

  Rhy stilled, but didn’t retreat.

  “All things rise and all things fall,” she said, her voice high and sweet and lilting, as if reciting a bit of song. “Even castles. Even kings.”

  She didn’t notice Rhy—or so he thought, until her hand shot out, thin fingers clutching the armor plate of his forearm so hard it buckled. “He sees you now, hollow prince.”

  Rhy tore free, stumbling back against the steps.

  “Broken toy soldier.”

  He got to his feet again.

  “Osaron will cut your threads.”

  Rhy kept his back to the palace as he retreated up, one step, two.

  But on the third stair, he stumbled.

  And on the fourth, the shadows came.

  The woman gave a manic little laugh, wind rippling her skirts as Osaron’s puppets poured from the houses and the shops and the alleys, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. They appeared at the edge of the palace plaza, holding iron bars, axes, and blades, fire and ice and rock. Some were young and others old, some tall and others little more than children, and all of them under the shadow king’s spell.

  “There can be only one castle,” called the woman, following Rhy as he scrambled up the stairs. “There can be only one—”