A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  Even when Alucard wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

  Even when he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  “You’re my best thief,” he whispered, and her eyes burned.

  “I should have killed you,” she muttered, hating the waver in her voice.

  “Probably,” he said, and then, so soft his words were lost to everyone but her, “Keep him safe.”

  And then his arms were gone, and Kell was pulling her toward the boat, and the last thing she saw of Alucard Emery was the line of his broad shoulders, his head held high as he stood alone on the deck, facing the fleet.

  * * *

  Lila’s boots hit the dinghy floor, rocking it in a way that made Holland grip the side.

  The last time she’d been in a boat this small, she’d been sitting in the middle of the sea with her hands tied and a barrel of drugged ale between her knees. That had been a bet. This was a gamble.

  The dinghy pushed away, and within moments Alucard’s mist was swallowing the Ghost from view.

  “Sit down,” said Kell, taking up an oar.

  She did, reaching numbly for the second pole. Holland sat at the back of the little boat, casually rolling up his cuff.

  “A little help?” said Lila, and his green eye narrowed at her as he produced a small blade and pressed it to his palm.

  Holland brought his bleeding hand to the boat’s side and said a phrase she’d never heard before—As Narahi—and the small craft lurched forward in the water, nearly throwing Kell and Lila from their bench.

  Mist sprayed up into her eyes, salty and cold, the wind whipping around her face, but as her vision cleared she realized the dinghy was racing forward, skimming the surface of the water as if propelled by a dozen unseen oars.

  Lila looked to Kell. “You didn’t teach me this one.”

  His jaw was slack. “I … I didn’t know it.”

  Holland gave them both a bland look. “Amazing,” he said dryly. “There are still things you haven’t learned.”

  VII

  The streets were filled with bodies, but Rhy felt entirely alone.

  Alone, he left his home.

  Alone, he moved through the streets.

  Alone, he climbed the icy bridge that led to Osaron’s palace.

  The doors swung open at his touch, and Rhy stilled—he’d half expected to find a grim replica of his own palace, but found instead a specter, a skeletal body hollowed out and filled in again with something less substantial. There were no grand hallways, no staircases leading up to other floors, no ballrooms or balconies.

  Only a cavernous space, the bones of the arenas still visible here and there beneath the veneer of shadow and magic.

  Pillars grew up from the floor like trees, branching toward a ceiling that gave way here and there to open sky, an effect that made the palace seem at once a masterpiece and a ruin.

  Most of the light came from that broken roof, the rest from within, a glow that suffused every surface like fire trapped behind thick glass. Even that thin light was being swallowed up, blotted out by the same black slick he’d seen spreading through the city, magic voiding nature.

  Rhy’s boots echoed as he willed himself forward through the vast hall, toward the magnificent throne waiting at its center, as natural and unnatural as the palace around it. Ethereal, and empty.

  The shadow king stood several paces to the side, examining a corpse.

  The corpse itself was on its feet, held up by ribbons of darkness that ran like puppet strings from head and arms up toward the ceiling. Threads that not only propped the body up, but seemed to be stitching it back together.

  It was a woman, he could tell that much, and when Osaron twitched his fingers, the threads pulled tight, lifting her face toward the watery light. Her red hair—redder even than Kell’s—hung lank against her hollow cheeks, and below one closed eye, black spilled down her face as if she’d been weeping ink.

  Without a shell, Osaron himself looked as spectral as his palace, a half-formed image of a man, the light shining through him every time he moved. His cloak billowed, caught by some imaginary wind, and his whole form rippled and shuddered, as if it couldn’t quite hold itself together.

  “What are you?” said the shadow king, and though he faced the corpse, Rhy knew the words were meant for him.

  Alucard had warned Rhy of Osaron’s voice, the way it echoed through a person’s head, snaked through their thoughts. But when he spoke, Rhy heard nothing but the words themselves ringing against stone.

  “I am Rhy Maresh,” he answered, “and I am king.”

  Osaron’s shadowy fingers slipped back to his sides. The woman slumped a little on her strings.

  “Kings are like weeds in this world.” He turned, and Rhy saw a face made of layered shadow. It flickered with emotions, there and gone and there and gone, annoyance and amusement, anger and disdain. “Has this one come to beg, or kneel, or fight?”

  “I’ve come to see you for myself,” said Rhy. “To show you the face of this city. To let you know that I am not afraid.” It was a lie—he was indeed afraid, but his fear paled against the grief, the anger, the need to act.

  The creature gave him a long, searching look. “You are the empty one.”

  Rhy shivered. “I am not empty.”

  “The hollow one.”

  He swallowed. “I am not hollow.”

  “The dead one.”

  “I am not dead.”

  The shadow king was coming toward him now, and Rhy fought the urge to retreat. “Your life is not your life.”

  Osaron reached out a hand, and Rhy stepped back, then, or tried to, only to find his boots bound to the floor by a magic he couldn’t see. The shadow king brought his hand to Rhy’s chest, and the buttons on his tunic crumbled, the fabric parting to reveal the concentric circles of the seal scarred over his heart. Slivers of cold pierced the air between shadow and skin.

  “My magic.” Osaron made a gesture, as if to tear the seal away, but nothing happened. “And not my magic.”

  Rhy let out a shaky breath. “You have no hold on me.”

  A smile danced across Osaron’s lips, and the darkness tightened around Rhy’s boots. Fear grew louder then, but Rhy fought hard to smother it. He was not a prisoner. He was here by choice. Drawing Osaron’s attention, his wrath.

  Forgive me, Kell, he thought, leveling his gaze on the shadow king.

  “Someone took my body from me once,” he said. “They took my will. Never again. I am not a puppet, and there is nothing you can make me do.”

  “You are wrong.” Osaron’s eyes lit up like a cat’s in the dark. “I can make you suffer.”

  Cold knifed up Rhy’s shins as the bindings around his ankles turned to ice. He caught his breath as it began to spread, not up his limbs, but around his entire body, a curtain, a column, devouring first his vision of the shadow king and his dead puppet, and then the throne, and finally the entire chamber, until he was trapped inside a shell of ice. Its surface was so smooth, he could see his own reflection, distorted by the warp of the ice as it thickened. Could see the shadow of the creature on the other side. He imagined Osaron grinning.

  “Where is the Antari now?” A ghostly hand came to rest against the ice. “Shall we send him a message?”

  The column of ice shivered, and then, to Rhy’s horror, it began to grow spikes. He tried to retreat, but there was nowhere to go.

  Rhy bit back a scream as the first point pierced his calf.

  Pain flared through him, hot and bright, but fleeting.

  I am not empty, he told himself as a second spike cut into his side. A muffled cry as another shard drove through his shoulder, sliding in and out of his collar with terrible ease.

  I am not hollow.

  The air caught in his chest as ice pierced a lung, his back, his hip, his wrist.

  I am not dead.

  He had seen his mother run through, his father killed by a dozen steel blades. And he could not save them. Their bodies were t
heir own. Their lives, their own.

  But Rhy’s was not. It was not a weakness, he realized now, but a strength. He could suffer, but it could not break him.

  I am Rhy Maresh, he told himself as blood slicked the floor.

  I am the king of Arnes.

  And I am unbreakable.

  VIII

  They were nearly to the coast when Kell started to shiver.

  It was a cold day, but the chill had come on from somewhere else, and just as he realized it for what it was—an echo—the pain caught up. Not a glancing blow, but sudden and violent and sharp as knives.

  Not again.

  It lanced through his leg, his shoulder, his ribs, opening into a full-blown assault against his nerves.

  He gasped, bracing himself against the side of the boat.

  “Kell?”

  Lila’s voice was distant, drowned out by the pulse raging in his ears.

  He knew his brother couldn’t die, but it didn’t douse the fear, didn’t stop the simple, animal panic that pounded in his blood, crying out for help. He waited for the pain to pass, the way it always had before, fading with every heartbeat like a rock thrown into a pond, the crash giving way to smaller ripples before finally smoothing.

  But the pain didn’t pass.

  Every breath brought a new rock, a new crash.

  Lila’s hands hovered in the air. “Can I heal you?”

  “No,” said Kell, breath jagged. “It’s not … his body isn’t…” His mind spun.

  “Alive?” offered Holland.

  Kell scowled. “Of course it’s alive.”

  “But that life is not his,” countered Holland calmly. “He’s just a shell. A vessel for your power.”

  “Stop.”

  “You’ve cut strings from your magic and made a puppet.”

  The water surged around the small boat with Kell’s temper.

  “Stop.” This time the word was coming from Lila. “Before he sinks us.”

  But Kell heard the question in her voice, the same one he’d asked himself for months.

  Was something truly alive if it couldn’t be killed?

  A week after Kell had bound his brother’s life to his, he’d woken with a sudden pain searing across his palm, white hot, as if the skin were burning. He’d stared down at the offending hand, certain the flesh would be blistered, charred, but it wasn’t. Instead, he’d found his brother sitting in his rooms before a low table with a candle on it, eyes distant as he held his hand over the flame. Kell had snatched Rhy’s fingers away, pressing a damp rag to the red and peeling skin as his brother slowly came back his senses.

  “I’m sorry,” Rhy had said, a now tiring refrain. “I just needed … to know.”

  “Know what?” he’d snapped, and his brother’s eyes had gone lost.

  “If I’m real.”

  Now Kell shuddered on the floor of the small boat, the echo of his brother’s pain fierce, unyielding. This didn’t feel like a self-inflicted wound, no candle flame or word scrawled on skin. This pain was deep and piercing, like the blade to the chest but worse, because it was coming from everywhere.

  Bile filled Kell’s mouth. He thought he’d already been sick.

  He tried to remember that pain was only terrifying because of what it signaled—danger, death—that without those things, it was nothing …

  His vision blurred.

  … just another sense …

  His muscles screamed.

  … a tether …

  Kell shivered violently, and registered Lila’s arms circling him, thin but strong, the warmth of her narrow body like a candle against the cold. She was saying something, but he couldn’t make out the words. Holland’s voice came in and out, reduced to short bursts of incoherent sound.

  The pain was smoothing—not easing, exactly, just evening into something horrible but steady. He dragged his thoughts together, focused his vision, and saw the coast approaching. Not the port at Tanek, but a stretch of rocky beach. It didn’t matter. Land was land.

  “Hurry,” he murmured thickly, and Holland shot him a dark look.

  “If this boat goes any faster, it will catch fire before we have a chance to crash upon those rocks.” But he saw the magician’s fingertips go white with force, felt the world part around his power.

  One moment the jagged shore was rising in the distance, and the next, it was nearly upon them.

  Holland rose to his feet, and Kell managed to uncoil his aching body, his mind clearing enough to think.

  He had his token in hand—the swatch of fabric the queen had given him, KM stitched on the silk—and fresh blood streaked the cloth as the dinghy drew precariously close to the rocky shore. Their coats were soaked with icy water by the time they drew near enough to disembark.

  Holland stepped off first, steadying himself atop sea-slicked rocks.

  Kell started to follow, and slipped. He would have crashed down into the surf, had Holland not been there to catch his wrist and haul him up onto the shore. Kell turned back for Lila, but she was already beside him, her hand in his and Holland’s on his shoulder as Kell pressed the swatch of cloth to the rock wall and said the words to take them home.

  The freezing mist and the jagged coast instantly vanished, replaced by the smooth marble of the Rose Hall, with its vaulted ceiling, its empty thrones.

  There was no sign of Rhy, no sign of the king and queen, until he turned and saw the wide stone table in the middle of the hall.

  Kell stilled, and somewhere behind him, Lila drew in a short, shocked breath.

  It took him a moment to process the shapes that lay on top, to understand that they were bodies.

  Two bodies, side by side atop the stone, each draped with crimson cloth, the crowns still shining in their hair.

  Emira Maresh, with a white rose, edged in gold, laid over her heart.

  Maxim Maresh, the petals of another rose scattered across his chest.

  The cold settled in Kell’s bones.

  The king and queen were dead.

  IX

  Alucard Emery had imagined his death a hundred times.

  It was a morbid habit, but three years at sea had given him too much time to think, and drink, and dream. Most of the time his dreams started with Rhy, but as the nights lengthened and the glasses emptied, they invariably turned darker. His wrists would ache and his thoughts would fog, and he’d wonder. When. How.

  Sometimes it was glamorous and sometimes it was gruesome. A battle. A stray blade. An execution. A ransom gone wrong. Choking on his own blood, or swallowing the sea. The possibilities were endless.

  But he never imagined death would look like this.

  Never imagined that he would face it alone. Without a crew. Without a friend. Without a family. Without even an enemy, save the faceless masses that filled the waiting ships.

  Fool, Jasta would have said. We all face death alone.

  He didn’t want to think of Jasta. Or Lenos. Or Bard.

  Or Rhy.

  The sea air scratched at the scars on Alucard’s wrists, and he rubbed at them as the ship—it wasn’t even his ship—rocked silently in the surf.

  The Veskans’ green and silver were drawn in, the ships floating grimly, resolutely, a mountainous line along the horizon.

  What were they waiting for?

  Orders from Vesk?

  Or from within the city?

  Did they know about the shadow king? The cursed fog? Was that what held them at bay? Or were they simply waiting for the cover of night to strike?

  Sanct, what good was it to speculate?

  They hadn’t moved.

  Any minute they could move.

  The sun was sinking, turning the sky a bloody red, and his head was pounding from the strain of holding the mist for as long as he had. It was beginning to thin, and there was nothing he could do but wait, wait, and try to summon the strength to—

  To do what? challenged a voice in his head. Move the sea?

  It wasn’t possible. That wasn�
�t just a line he’d fed Bard to keep her from doing herself in. Everything had limits. His mind raced, the way it had been racing for the last hour, stubbornly, doggedly, as if it might finally round a corner and find an idea—not a mad notion parading as a plan, but an actual idea—waiting for him.

  The sea. The ships. The sails.

  Now he was just listing things.

  No. Wait. The sails. Perhaps he could find a way to—

  No.

  Not from this distance.

  He would have to move the Ghost, sail her right up to the ass end of the Veskan fleet and then—what?

  Alucard rubbed his eyes.

  If he was going to die, he could at least think of a way to make it count.

  If he was going to die—

  But that was the problem.

  Alucard didn’t want to die.

  Standing there on the prow of the Ghost, he realized with startling clarity that death and glory didn’t interest him nearly as much as living long enough to go home. To make sure Bard was alive, to try to find any remaining members of the Night Spire. To see Rhy’s amber eyes, press his lips to the place where his collar curved into his throat. To kneel before his prince, and offer him the only thing Alucard had ever held back: the truth.

  The mirror from the floating market sat in its shroud on a nearby crate.

  Four years for a gift that would never be given.

  Movement in the distance caught his eye.

  A shadow gliding across the twilit sky—now a bruised blue instead of bloody red. His heart lurched. It was a bird.

  It plunged down onto one of the Veskan ships, swallowed up by the line of mast and net and folded sail, and Alucard held his breath until his chest ached, until his vision spotted. This was it. The order to move. He didn’t have much time.

  The sails …

  If he could damage the sails …

  Alucard began to gather every piece of loose steel aboard the ship, ransacked the crates and the galley and the hold for blades and pots and silverware, anything he could fashion into something capable of cutting. Magic thrummed in his fingers as he willed the surfaces sharp, molded serrated edges into the sides.

  He lined them up like soldiers on the deck, three dozen makeshift weapons that could rend and tear. He tried to ignore the fact that the sails were down, tried to smother the knowledge that even he didn’t have the ability control this many things at once, not with any delicacy.