A Darker Shade of Magic (13 page)

He held on to that thought as he drew the knife from its holster and brought it to his forearm.

“It’s you,” came a voice behind him.

Kell turned, the blade sliding back to his side.

A woman stood there at the mouth of the alley, her face hidden by the hood of a threadbare blue cloak. If they’d been in any other London, the blue might have been the color of sapphires or the sea. Here it was the faintest shade, like the sky through layers and layers of clouds.

“Do I know you?” he asked, squinting into the dark.

She shook her head. “But I know you,
Antari
.”

“No, you don’t,” he said with a fair amount of certainty.

“I know what you
do
. When you’re not at the castle.”

Kell shook his head. “I am not making deals tonight.”

“Please,” she said, and he realized that she was clutching an envelope. “I don’t want you to bring me anything.” She held out the letter. “I only want you
take
it.”

Kell’s brow crinkled. A letter? The worlds had been sealed off from one another for centuries. Who could she be writing
to
?

“My family,” said the woman, reading the question in his eyes. “Ages ago, when Black London fell, and the doors were sealed, we were divided. Over the centuries our families have tried to keep the thread … but I’m the only one left. Everyone here is dead but myself, and everyone there is dead but one. Olivar. He’s the only family I have and he’s on that side of the door and he’s dying and I just want …” She brought the letter to her chest. “We are all that’s left.”

Kell’s head was still swimming. “How did you even hear,” he asked, “that Olivar was ill?”

“The other
Antari
,” she explained, glancing around as if she feared someone would hear. “Holland. He brought me a letter.”

Kell couldn’t picture Holland deigning to smuggle
anything
between Londons, let alone correspondences between commoners.

“He didn’t want to,” added the woman. “Olivar gave him everything he had to buy the letter’s passage and even then”—she brought her hand to her collar as if reaching for a necklace, and finding only skin—“I paid the rest.”

Kell frowned. That seemed even less in Holland’s nature. Not that he was selfless, but Kell doubted that he was greedy in this way, doubted that he cared about that kind of payment. Then again, everyone had secrets, and Holland wore his so close that Kell was forced to wonder how much he truly knew of the
Antari
’s character.

The woman thrust out the letter again.
“Nijk shöst,”
she said. “
Please
, Master Kell.”

He tried to focus, to think. He’d promised Rhy … but it was only a letter. And technically, under the laws set out by the crowns of all three Londons, letters were a necessary exemption from the rule of no transference. Sure, they only meant letters between the
crowns
themselves, but still …

“I can pay you in advance,” she pressed. “You needn’t come back to close the deal. This is the last and only letter. Please.” She dug in her pocket and retrieved a small parcel wrapped in cloth, and before Kell could say yes or no, she pushed the note and payment both into his hands. A strange feeling shot through him as the fabric of the parcel met his skin. And then the woman was pulling away.

Kell looked down at the letter, an address penned onto the envelope, and then to the parcel. He went to unwrap it, and the woman shot forward and caught his hand.

“Don’t be a fool,” she whispered, glancing around the alley. “They’ll cut you for a coin in these parts.” She folded his fingers over the package. “Not here,” she warned. “But it’s enough, I swear. It must be.” Her hands slipped away. “It’s all I can give.”

Kell frowned down at the object. The mystery of it was tempting, but there were too many questions, too many pieces that didn’t make sense, and he looked up and started to refuse. …

But there was no one to refuse.

The woman was gone.

Kell stood there, at the mouth of the Scorched Bone, feeling dazed. What had just happened? He’d finally mustered the resolve to make no deals, and the deal had come to him. He stared down at the letter and the payment, whatever it was. And then, in the distance, someone screamed, and the sound jarred Kell back to the darkness and the danger. He shoved the letter and parcel both into the pocket of his coat, and drew his knife across his arm, trying to ignore the dread that welled with his blood as he summoned the door home.

I

The silver jingled in Lila’s pocket as she made her way back to the Stone’s Throw.

The sun had barely set on the city, but she’d already managed a fair take that day. It was risky, picking pockets by anything but night—especially with her particular disguise, which required a blurred eye or low light—but Lila had to shoulder the risk if she was going to rebuild. A map and a silver watch did not a ship buy or a fortune make.

Besides, she liked the weight of coins in her pocket. They sang like a promise. Added swagger to her step. A pirate without a ship, that’s what she was, through and through. And one day, she’d have the ship, and then she’d sail away and be done with this wretched city once and for all.

As Lila strolled down the cobblestones, she began making a mental list (as she often did) of all the things she’d need to be a proper privateer. A pair of good leather sea boots, for one. And a sword and scabbard, of course. She had the pistol, Caster—beauty that it was—and her knives, all sharp enough to cut, but every pirate had a sword and scabbard. At least the ones she’d met … and the ones she’d read about in books. Lila had never had much time for reading, but she
could
read—it was a good skill for a thief, and she turned out to be a quick study—and on the occasion that she nicked books, she nicked only the ones about pirates and adventures.

So, a pair of good boots, a sword, and scabbard. Oh, and a hat. Lila had the black, broad-brim one, but it wasn’t very flashy. Didn’t even have a feather, or a ribbon, or—

Lila passed a boy perched on a stoop a few doors shy of the Stone’s Throw, and slowed, her thoughts trailing off. The boy was ragged and thin, half her age and as dirty as a chimney broom. He was holding out his hands, palms skyward, and Lila reached into her pocket. She didn’t know what made her do it—good spirits, maybe, or the fact that the night was young—but she dropped a few coppers into the kid’s cupped hands as she walked by. She didn’t stop, didn’t talk, and didn’t acknowledge his thanks, but she did it all the same.

“Careful now,” said Barron when she reached the tavern steps. She hadn’t heard him come out. “Someone might think you’ve got a heart under all that brass.”

“No heart,” said Lila, pulling aside her cloak to reveal the holstered pistol and one of her knives. “Just these.”

Barron sighed and shook his head, but she caught the edge of a smile, and behind it, something like pride. It made her squirm.

“Got anything to eat?” she asked, toeing the step with her worn-out boot.

He tipped his head toward the door, and she was about to follow him inside for a pint and a bowl of soup—she could spare that much coin, if he’d take it—when she heard a scuffle behind her. She turned to see a cluster of street rats—three of them, no older than she was—hustling the ragged boy. One of the rats was fat and one of them was skinny and one of them was short, and all of them were obviously scum. Lila watched as the short one barred the boy’s path. The fat one shoved him up against the wall. The skinny one snatched the copper coins from his fingers. The boy barely fought back. He just looked down at his hands with a kind of grim resignation. They had been empty moments before, and they were empty again.

Lila’s fists clenched as the three thugs vanished down a side road.

“Lila,” warned Barron.

They weren’t worth the work, Lila knew that. She robbed from the rich for a reason: they had more to steal. These boys probably didn’t have anything worth taking besides what they’d already picked off of the boy in the street. A few coins Lila obviously hadn’t minded parting with. But that wasn’t the
point
.

“I don’t like that look,” said Barron when she didn’t come inside.

“Hold my hat.” She thrust the top hat into his hands, but reached in as she did and pulled the nested disguise from its depths.

“They’re not worth it,” he said. “And in case you didn’t notice, there were three of them, and one of you.”

“So little faith,” she said, snapping the soft broad-brim hat into form. “And besides, it’s the principle of the thing, Barron.”

The tavern owner sighed. “Principle or not, Lila, one of these days, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Would you miss me?” she asked.

“Like an itch,” he shot back.

She gave him the edge of a grin and tied the mask over her eyes. “Look after the kid,” she said, pulling the brim of the hat down over her face. Barron grunted as she hopped down from the step.

“Hey, you,” she heard Barron calling to the boy huddled on the nearby stoop, still staring at his empty hands. “Come over here. …”

And then she was off.

II

7 Naresk Vas
.

That was the address written on the envelope.

Kell had sobered considerably, and decided to go straight to the point of delivery and be done with the peculiar business of the letter. Rhy need never know. Kell would even drop the trinket—whatever it was—in his private room at the Ruby Fields before heading back to the palace so that he could, in good conscience, return empty-handed.

It seemed like a good plan, or at least, like the best of several bad ones.

But as he reached the corner of Otrech and Naresk, and the address on the paper came into sight, Kell slowed, and stopped, and then took two steps sideways into the nearest shadow.

Something was wrong.

Not in an obvious way, but under his skin, in his bones.

Naresk Vas looked empty, but it wasn’t.

That was the thing about magic. It was everywhere. In everything. In
everyone
. And while it coursed like a low and steady pulse, through the air and the earth, it beat louder in the bodies of living things. And if Kell tried—if he
reached
—he could feel it. It was a sense, not as strong as sight or sound or smell, but there all the same, its presence now drifting toward him from the shadows across the street.