A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  Veskans, he’d read, streaked their faces with black ash, while Faroans painted their gems white for three days and three nights, but Arnesian families celebrated loss by celebrating life, and that they did by wearing red: the color of blood, of sunrise, of the Isle.

  He felt the priest come through the door behind him, but did not turn, did not greet him. He knew that Tieren was grieving, too, but he couldn’t bear the sadness in the old man’s eyes, couldn’t bear the calm, cold blue. The way he’d listened to the news of Emira, of Maxim, his features still, as if he’d known, before the spell was done, that he would wake to find the world changed.

  And so they stood in silence beneath the curtain of rain, alone with their thoughts.

  The royal crown sat heavy in Rhy’s hair, much larger than the golden band he’d worn for most of his life. That band had grown with him, the metal drawn out every year to fit his changing stature. It should have lasted him another twenty years.

  Instead, it had been stripped away, stored for a future prince.

  Rhy’s new crown was too great a weight. A constant reminder of his loss. A wound that wouldn’t close.

  The rest of his wounds did heal—far too fast. Like a pin driven into clay, the damage absorbed as soon as the weapon was gone. He could still summon the feelings, like a memory, but they were distant, fading, leaving that horrible question in their wake.

  Was it real?

  Am I real?

  Real enough to ache with grief. Real enough to reach out a hand and savor the spring rain as it dripped coolly on his skin. To step out of the palace’s shelter and let it soak him to the bone.

  And real enough to feel his heart quicken when the streak of darkness slid past against the pale sky.

  He recognized the bird at once, knew it came from Vesk.

  The foreign fleet had retreated from the mouth of the Isle, but the crown had yet to answer for its crimes. Col was dead, but Cora sat in the royal prisons, waiting to learn her fate. And here it was, strapped to the ankle of a hawk.

  Word of Col and Cora’s treason had spread with the waking of the city, and London was already calling for Rhy to take the empire to war. The Faroans had pledged their aid—a little too quickly for his tastes—and Sol-in-Ar had returned to Faro in the name of diplomacy, which Rhy feared meant readying his soldiers.

  Sixty-five years of peace, he thought grimly, ruined by a pair of bored, ambitious children.

  Rhy turned and made his way downstairs, Isra and Tieren falling into step beside him. Otto was waiting in the foyer.

  The Veskan magician shook the rain from his coarse blond hair, a scroll—its seal already broken—clutched in his hand.

  “Your Majesty. I bring news from my crown.”

  “What news?” asked Rhy.

  “My queen does not court war.”

  It was a hollow phrase. “But her children do.”

  “She wishes to make amends.”

  Another empty promise. “How?”

  “If it pleases the Arnesian king, she will send a year’s worth of winter wine, seven priests, and her youngest son, Hok, whose gift for stone magic is unsurpassed in all of Vesk.”

  My mother is dead, Rhy wanted to scream, and you would give me drink and danger. Instead he said only, “And what of the princess? What will the queen give me for her?”

  Otto’s expression hardened. “My queen wants nothing of her.”

  Rhy frowned. “She is her blood.”

  Otto shook his head. “The only thing we despise more than a traitor is a failure. The princess went against her queen’s command for peace. She set her own mission, and then she failed to see it through. My queen grants Your Majesty leave to do with Cora as he will.”

  Rhy rubbed his eyes. Veskans did not look at mercy and see strength, and he knew the only solution the queen sought, the only one she would respect, was Cora’s death.

  Rhy resisted the urge to pace, to chew his nails, to do a dozen different things that were not kingly. What would his father say? What would his father do? He resisted the urge to look at Isra, or Tieren, to defer, to escape.

  “How do I know the queen won’t use her daughter’s execution against me? She could claim I broke the final strands of peace, slaughtered Cora in the name of revenge.”

  Otto said nothing for a long moment and then, “I do not know my queen’s mind, only her words.”

  It could all be a trap, and Rhy knew it. But he could see no other choice.

  His father had told him so many things about peace and war, had compared it to a dance, a game, a strong wind, but the words that rose in Rhy’s mind now were some of the first.

  War against an empire, Maxim had said, was like a knife against a well-armored man. It may take three strikes or thirty, but if the hand was determined, the blade would eventually find its way in.

  “Like your queen,” he said at last, “I do not covet war. Our peace has been made fragile, and a public execution could either quell my city’s anger or inflame it.”

  “Something need not be a demonstration to be an act,” said Otto. “So long as the right eyes see it done.”

  Rhy’s hand drifted to the hilt of the gold short sword at his hip. It was meant to be decorative, another piece of his elaborate mourning garb, but it had been sharp enough to cut down Col. It would do the same for Cora.

  At the sight of the gesture, Isra stepped forward, speaking for the first time.

  “I will do it,” she offered, and Rhy wanted to let her, wanted to shed the business of killing. There had been enough blood.

  But he shook his head, forced himself toward the prison cell.

  “The death is mine,” he said, trying to infuse the words with an anger he didn’t feel—wished he felt, for it would have burned hot where grief ran cold.

  Tieren did not follow—priests were made for life, not death—but Otto and Isra fell in step behind him.

  Rhy wondered if Kell could feel his racing heart, if he would come running—the king wondered, but didn’t wish it. His brother had his own chapters to close.

  As soon as Rhy’s boots hit the stairs, he knew something was wrong.

  Instead of being met by Cora’s lilting voice, he was met by silence and the metal tang of blood on his tongue. He plunged down the last few steps into the prison, taking in the scene.

  There were no guards.

  The princess’s cell was still locked.

  And Cora lay inside, stretched out on the stone bench, her fingers trailing limply along the floor, nails swallowed by the shining slick of blood.

  Rhy rocked back.

  Someone must have slipped her a blade. Had it been a mercy or a taunt? Either way, she’d slashed her arms from elbow to wrist and written a single Veskan word on the wall above the bench.

  Tan’och.

  Honor.

  Otto stared in silence, but Rhy rushed forward to open the cell, to what end, he didn’t know. Cora of Vesk was dead. And even though he’d come to kill her, the sight of her lifeless body, her empty gaze, still made him sick. And then—shamefully—relieved. Because he hadn’t known if he could do it. Hadn’t wanted to find out.

  Rhy unlocked the cell and stepped inside.

  “Your Majesty—” started Isra as blood stained his boots, splashed up onto his clothes, but Rhy didn’t care.

  He knelt, brushing the limp blond hair from Cora’s face before he forced himself upright, forced his voice steady. Otto’s gaze was trained not on the body but the bloody word painted on the wall, and Rhy sensed the danger in it, the call to action.

  When the Veskan’s blue eyes swung back to Rhy’s, they were flat, steady.

  “A death is a death,” said Otto. “I will tell my queen it’s done.”

  III

  Ned was drooping with fatigue. He hadn’t slept more than a handful of hours in the past three days, and then not at all since the king’s visit. The shadows had stopped sometime before dawn, but Ned didn’t trust the silence any more than he had the sound,
so he kept the windows boarded and the door locked, and stationed himself at a table in the center of the room with a glass in one hand and his ceremonial dagger in the other.

  His head was beginning to loll when he heard the voices coming from the front step. He stumbled to his feet, nearly overturning the chair as the locks on the tavern door began to move. He watched in abject horror as the three bolts slid free one by one—drawn back by some invisible hand—and then the handle shuddered, the door groaning as it opened inward.

  Ned took up the nearly empty bottle in his free hand, wielding it like a bat, oblivious to the last few drops that spilled into his hair and down his collar as two shadows crossed the threshold, their edges rimmed with mist.

  He moved to strike, only to find the bottle stripped from his fingers. A second later it struck the wall and shattered.

  “Lila,” said a familiar—and exasperated—voice.

  Ned squinted, eyes adjusting to the sudden light. “Master Kell?”

  The door swung shut again, plunging the room back into a lidded dark as the magician came forward. “Hello, Ned.”

  He had his black coat on, the collar turned up against the cold. His eyes shone in their magnetic way, one blue, the other black, but a streak of silver now marred the copper of his hair, and there was a new gauntness to his face, as though he’d been long ill.

  Beside him, the woman—Lila—cocked her head. She was rakishly thin, with dark hair that brushed her jaw and trailed across her eyes—one brown, the other black.

  Ned stared at her with open awe. “You’re like him.”

  “No,” said Kell dryly, striding past him. “She’s one of a kind.”

  Lila winked at that. She was holding a small chest between her hands, but when Ned offered to take it from her, she pulled back, setting it instead on the table, one hand resting protectively on its lid.

  Master Kell was making a circle of the room, as if looking for intruders, and Ned started, remembering his manners.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. “Have you come for a drink? I mean, of course you haven’t just come for a drink, unless you have, and then I’m truly flattered, but…”

  Lila made a decidedly unladylike noise, and Kell shot her a look before offering Ned a tired smile. “No, we haven’t come for a drink, but perhaps you’d better pour one.”

  Ned nodded, ducking behind the bar to fetch a bottle.

  “Bit gloomy, isn’t it?” mused Lila, taking a slow turn.

  Kell took in the shuttered windows, the spell book and the ash-strewn floor. “What’s happened here?”

  Ned needed no further encouragement. He launched into the story of the nightmares and the shadows and the voices in his head, and to his surprise, the two magicians listened, their drinks untouched, his own glass emptying twice before the tale was done.

  “I know it sounds like lunacy,” he finished, “but—”

  “But it doesn’t,” said Kell.

  Ned’s eyes widened. “Did you see the shadows too, sir? What were they? Some kind of echo? It was dark magic, I’ll tell you that. I did everything I could here, blockaded the pub, burned every bit of sage and tried a dozen different ways to clear the air, but they just kept coming. Until they stopped, quick as you like. But what if they come again, Master Kell? What am I to do?”

  “They won’t come again,” said Kell. “Not if I have your help.”

  Ned started, certain he’d misheard. He’d dreamed a hundred times of this moment, of being wanted, being needed. But it was a dream. He always woke up. Beneath the counter’s edge, he pinched himself hard, and didn’t wake.

  Ned swallowed. “My help?”

  And Kell nodded. “The thing is, Ned,” he said, eyes trailing to the chest on the table. “I’ve come to ask a favor.”

  * * *

  Lila, for one, thought it was a bad idea.

  Admittedly, she thought anything involving the Inheritor was a bad idea. As far as she was concerned, the thing should be sealed in stone and locked inside a chest and dropped down a hole to the center of the earth. Instead, it was sealed in stone and locked inside a chest and brought here, to a tavern in the middle of a city without magic.

  Entrusted to a man, this man, who looked a bit like a pigeon, with his large eyes and his flitting movements. The strange thing was, he reminded her a little of Lenos—the nervous air, the fawning looks, even if they were geared at Kell instead of her. He seemed to teeter on the line between wonder and fear. She watched as Kell explained the chest’s contents, not entirely, but enough—which was probably too much. Watched as this Ned fellow nodded so fast his head looked hinged, eyes round as a child’s. Watched as the two carried the chest down into the cellar.

  They would bury it there.

  She left them to it, drifting through the tavern, feeling the familiar creak of boards under her feet. She scuffed her boot on a small, smooth patch of black, the same suspicious slick that lingered in the streets of Red London, places where magic had rotted through. Even with Osaron gone, the damage stayed done. Not everything, it seemed, could be fixed with a spell.

  In the hall, she found the narrow stairs that led up to a landing, then up again to the small green door. Her feet moved without her, climbing the worn steps one by one until she reached Barron’s room. The door stood ajar, giving way to a space that was no longer his. She averted her gaze, unsure if she would ever be ready to see it, and continued up, Kell’s voice fading by the time she reached the top. Beyond the small green door, her room sat untouched. Part of the floor was dark, but not smooth, the faintest trace of fingers in the ruddy stain where Barron had died.

  She crouched, brought her hand to the marks. A drop of water hit the floor, like the first sign of a London rainfall. Lila wiped her cheek brusquely and stood up.

  Scattered across the floor, like tarnished stars, were beads of shot from Barron’s gun. Her fingers twitched, the magic humming in her blood, and the metal rose into the air, drawing together like a blast rewound until the beads gathered, fused, formed a single sphere of steel that fell into her outstretched palm. Lila slipped the ball into her pocket, savoring the weight as she went downstairs.

  They were back in the tavern, Ned and Kell, Ned chattering and Kell listening indulgently, though she could see the strain in his eyes, the fatigue. He hadn’t been well, not since the battle and the ring, and he was a fool if he thought she hadn’t noticed. But she didn’t say anything, and when their eyes met, the strain faded, replaced by something gentle, warm.

  Lila drew her fingertips along a wooden tabletop, the surface branded with a five-point star. “Why did you change the name?”

  Ned’s head swiveled toward her, and she realized it was the first time she’d spoken to him.

  “It was just a thought,” he said, “but you know, I’ve had the worst luck since I did it, so I’m thinking it’s a sign I should change it back.”

  Lila shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what you call it.”

  Ned was squinting at her now, as if she were out of focus.

  “Have we met?” he asked, and she shook her head, even though she’d seen him in this place a dozen times, back when it was called the Stone’s Throw, back when Barron had been the one behind the bar, serving watered-down drinks to men seeking a taste of magic, back when she came and went like a ghost.

  “If your king comes around again,” Kell was saying, “you give him this letter. My king would like him to know that it will be the last.…”

  Lila slipped out the front door and into the grey day. She looked up at the sign over the entrance, the dark clouds beyond, threatening rain.

  The city always looked drab this time of year, but it looked even bleaker now that she had come to know Red London and the world that surrounded it.

  Lila tipped her head back against the cool bricks, and heard Barron as if he were standing there beside her, a cigar between his lips.

  “Always looking for trouble.”

  “What’s life without a l
ittle trouble?” she said softly.

  “Gonna keep looking till you find it.”

  “I’m sorry it found you.”

  “Do you miss me?” His gravelly tone seemed to linger in the air.

  “Like an itch,” she murmured.

  She felt Kell come up beside her, felt him trying to decide if he should touch her arm or give her space. In the end, he hovered there, half a step behind.

  “Are you sure about him?” she asked.

  “I am,” he said, his voice so steady she wanted to lean against it. “Ned’s a good man.”

  “He’d cut off a hand to make you happy.”

  “He believes in magic.”

  “And you don’t think he’ll try to use it?”

  “He’ll never get the box open, and even if he did, no. I don’t think he will.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I asked him not to.”

  Lila snorted. Even after all they’d seen and done, Kell still had faith in people. She hoped, for all their sakes, he was right. Just this once.

  All around them, carriages clattered and people jogged and strolled and stumbled by. She’d forgotten the simple solidity of this city, this world.

  “We could stay awhile, if you want?” offered Kell.

  She took a long breath, the air on her tongue stale and full of soot instead of magic. There was nothing for her here, not anymore.

  “No.” She shook her head, reaching for his hand. “Let’s go home.”

  IV

  The sky was a crisp blue sheet, drawn tight behind the sun. It stretched, cloudless and bare, save for a single black-and-white bird that soared overhead. As it crossed into the sphere of light, the bird became a flock, shattering like a prism when it meets the sun.

  Holland craned his neck, mesmerized by the display, but every time he tried to count their number, his vision slid out of focus, strained by the dappled light.

  He didn’t know where he was.

  How he’d gotten here.