A Darker Shade of Magic (32 page)

Kell sifted through a desk he swore he’d searched, then felt under the lip for hidden drawers. “Because I gave it to him.”

“Well, what were
you
doing with it?” Her eyes narrowed. “Did you steal it?”

Kell frowned. He had. “No.”

“Liar.”

“I didn’t take it for myself,” said Kell. “Few people in your world know about mine. Those that do—Collectors and Enthusiasts—are willing to pay a precious sum for a piece of it. A trinket. A token. In my world, most know about yours—a few people are as intrigued by your mundaneness as you are by our magic—but everyone knows about the
other
London. White London. And for a piece of
that
world, some would pay dearly.”

A wry smile cut across Lila’s mouth. “You’re a smuggler.”

“Says the pickpocket,” snapped Kell defensively.

“I know I’m a thief,” said Lila, lifting a red lin from the top of the chest and rolling it over her knuckles. “I’ve accepted that. It’s not my fault that you haven’t.” The coin vanished. Kell opened his mouth to protest, but the lin reappeared an instant later in her other palm. “I don’t understand, though. If you’re a royal—”

“I’m
not
—”

Lila gave him a withering look. “If you
live
with royals and you
dine
with them and you
belong
to them, surely you don’t want for money. Why risk it?”

Kell clenched his jaw, thinking of Rhy’s plea to stop his foolish games. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Lila quirked a brow. “Crime isn’t that complicated,” she said. “People steal because taking something gives them something. If they’re not in it for the money, they’re in it for control. The act of taking, of breaking the rules, makes them feel powerful. They’re in it for the sheer defiance.” She turned away. “Some people steal to stay alive, and some steal to feel alive. Simple as that.”

“And which are you?” asked Kell.

“I steal for freedom,” said Lila. “I suppose that’s a bit of both.” She wandered into a short hallway between two rooms. “So that’s how you came across the black rock?” she called back. “You made a deal for it?”

“No,” said Kell. “I made a mistake. One I intend to fix, if I can find the damned thing.” He slammed a drawer shut in frustration.

“Careful,” said a gruff voice in Arnesian. “You might break something.”

Kell spun to find the shop’s owner standing there, shoulder tipped against a wardrobe, looking vaguely bemused.

“Fletcher,” said Kell.

“How did you get in?” asked Fletcher.

Kell forced himself to shrug as he shot a glance toward Lila, who’d had the good sense to stay in the hallway and out of sight. “I guess your wards are wearing thin.”

Fletcher crossed his arms. “I doubt that.”

Kell stole a second glance toward Lila, but she was no longer in the hall. A spike of panic ran through him, one that worsened a moment later when she reappeared behind Fletcher. She moved with silent steps, a knife glittering in one hand.

“Tac,”
said Fletcher, lifting his hand beside his head. “Your friend is very rude.” As he said it, Lila froze mid-stride. The strain showed in her face as she tried to fight the invisible force holding her in place, but it was no use. Fletcher had the rare and dangerous ability to control
bones
, and therefore
bodies
. It was an ability that had earned him the binding scars he was so proud of breaking.

Lila, for one, seemed unimpressed. She muttered some very violent things, and Fletcher splayed his fingers. Kell heard a sound like cracking ice, and Lila let out a stifled cry, the knife tumbling from her fingers.

“I thought you preferred to work alone,” said Fletcher conversationally.

“Let her go,” ordered Kell.

“Are you going to make me,
Antari
?”

Kell’s fingers curled into fists—the shop was warded a dozen ways, against intruders and thieves and, with Kell’s luck, anyone who meant Fletcher harm—but the shop owner himself gave a low chuckle and dropped his hand, and Lila went stumbling to her hands and knees, clutching her wrist and swearing vehemently.

“Anesh,”
he said casually. “What brings you back to my humble shop?”

“I gave you something once,” said Kell. “I’d like to borrow it.”

Fletcher gave a derisive snort. “I am not in the business of borrowers.”

“I’ll buy it then.”

“And if it’s not for sale?”

Kell forced himself to smile. “You of all people know,” he said, “that
everything
is for sale.”

Fletcher parroted the smile, cold and dry. “I won’t sell it to you, but I might sell it to her”—his gaze glanced to Lila, who had gotten to her feet and retreated to the nearest wall to lurk and curse—“for the right price.”

“She doesn’t speak Arnesian,” said Kell. “She hasn’t the faintest idea what you’re saying.”

“Oh?” Fletcher grabbed his crotch. “I bet I can make her understand,” he said, shaking himself in her direction.

Lila’s eyes narrowed. “Burn in hell, you fu—”

“I wouldn’t bother with her,” cut in Kell. “She bites.”

Fletcher sighed and shook his head. “What kind of trouble are you in,
Master Kell
?”

“None.”

“You must be in some, to come here. And besides,” said Fletcher, smile sharpening. “They don’t put your face up on the boards for nothing.”

Kell’s eyes flicked to the scrying board on the wall, the one that had been painted with his face for the last hour. And then he paled. The circle at the bottom, the one that said
If seen touch here
was pulsing bright green.

“What have you done?” growled Kell.

Fletcher only smiled.

“No hard feelings,” he said darkly, right before the shop doors burst open, and the royal guard poured in.

V

Kell had only an instant to arrange his features, to force panic into composure, before the guards were there, five in all, filling up the room with movement and noise.

He couldn’t run—there was nowhere to run
to
—and he didn’t want to hurt them, and Lila … Well, he had no idea where Lila was. One moment she’d been right there against the wall, and the next she’d vanished (though Kell had seen her fingers go into the pocket of her coat the instant before she disappeared, and he could feel the subtle hum of the stone’s magic in the air, the way Holland must have felt it at the Ruby Fields).

Kell forced himself to stay still, to feign calm, even though his heart was racing in his chest. He tried to remind himself that he wasn’t a criminal, that the royals were likely only worried by his disappearance. He hadn’t done anything wrong, not in the eyes of the
crown
. Not that they
knew
of. Unless, in his absence, Rhy had told the king and queen of his transgressions. He wouldn’t—Kell
hoped
he wouldn’t—but even if he had, Kell was
Antari
, a member of the royal family, someone to be respected, even feared. He coated himself in that knowledge as he leaned back lazily, almost arrogantly, against the table behind him.

When the members of the royal guard saw him standing there, alive and unconcerned, confusion spread across their features. Had they expected a body? A brawl? Half went to kneel, and half brought hands to rest on the hilts of their swords, and one stood there, frowning, in the middle.

“Ellis,” said Kell, nodding at the head of the royal guard.

“Master Kell,” said Ellis, stepping forward. “Are you well?”

“Of course.”

Ellis fidgeted. “We’ve been worried about you. The whole palace has been.”

“I didn’t mean to worry anyone,” he said, considering the guard around him. “As you can see, I’m perfectly all right.”

Ellis looked around, then back at Kell. “It’s just … sir … when you did not return from your errand abroad …”

“I was delayed,” said Kell, hoping that would quell the questions.

Ellis frowned. “Did you not see the signs? They’re posted everywhere.”

“I only just returned.”

“Then, forgive me,” countered Ellis, gesturing to the shop. “But what are you doing
here
?”

Fletcher frowned. Though he spoke only Arnesian, he clearly understood the royal tongue well enough to know he was being insulted.

Kell forced a thin smile. “Shopping for Rhy’s present.”

A nervous laugh passed through the guard.

“You’ll come with us, then?” asked Ellis, and Kell understood the words that went unsaid.
Without a fight.

“Of course,” said Kell, rising to his full height and smoothing his jacket.

The guards looked relieved. Kell’s mind spun as he turned to Fletcher and thanked him for his help.

“Mas marist,”
answered the shop’s owner darkly.
My pleasure.
“Just doing my civic duty.”

“I’ll be back,” said Kell in English (which garnered a raised brow from the royal guard), “as soon as I am through. To find what I was looking for.” The words were directed at Lila. He could still feel her in the room, feel the stone even as it hid her. It whispered to him.

“Sir,” said Ellis, gesturing to the door. “After you.”

Kell nodded and followed him out.

* * *

The moment she heard the guards burst in, Lila had the good sense to close her hand over the stone and say
“Conceal me.”

And the stone had obeyed once more.

She’d felt a flutter up her arm, just beneath her skin, a lovely sensation—had it felt that nice the last time she’d used the talisman?—and then the veil had settled over her again and she was gone. Just as before, she could see herself, but no one else could see her. Not the guards, not Fletcher, not even Kell, whose two-toned eyes leveled on her but seemed to make out only the place she’d been, and not the place she was.

But though he could not see her, she could see him, and in his face she read a flicker of worry, disguised by his voice but not his posture, and under it a warning, threaded through the false calm of his words.

Stay
, it seemed to urge, even before he said the words, lobbed at the room but clearly meant for her. So she stayed and waited and watched as Kell and four of the five members of the guard poured out into the street. Watched as a single guard hung back, his face hidden beneath the lowered visor of his helmet.

Fletcher was saying something to him, gesturing at his palm in the universal sign for payment. The guard nodded, and his hand went to his belt as Fletcher turned to watch Kell through the window.

Lila saw it coming.

Fletcher never did.

Instead of reaching for a purse, the guard went for a blade. The metal glinted once in the shop’s low light, and then it was under Fletcher’s chin, drawing a silent red line across his throat.

* * *

A closed carriage, pulled by royal white horses, gold and red ribbons still woven through their manes from the earlier parade, was waiting for Kell in front of the shop.

As Kell made his way to it, he shrugged out of his coat and turned it left to right, sliding his arms back into the now-red sleeves of his royal attire. His thoughts spun over what to tell the king and queen—not the truth, of course. But the king himself had a White London token, an ornament that sat on a shelf in his private chamber, and if Kell could get it, and get back to Lila and the stone … Lila and the stone loose in the city—it was a troubling thought. But hopefully she would stay put, just a little while. Stay out of trouble.

Ellis walked a half step behind Kell, three more guards trailing in his wake. The last had stayed behind to talk to Fletcher, and most likely settle the matter of the reward (though Kell was fairly sure Fletcher hated him enough to turn him in even without the added prospect of money).

Down the river toward the palace, the day’s celebrations were dying down—no, not dying,
shifting
—to make way for the evening’s festivities. The music had softened, and the crowds along the docks and up the market stretch had thinned, migrating to the city’s various pubs and inns to continue toasting Rhy’s name.

“Come, sir,” said Ellis, holding the carriage door open for him. Instead of seats that faced each other, this carriage had two sets of benches both facing forward; two of the guards took the seat behind, and one went up to sit with the driver, while Ellis slid onto the front bench beside Kell and pulled the carriage door closed. “Let’s get you home.”