The fragile threads of p.., p.23
The Fragile Threads of Power, page 23
“I told you it was a bad idea,” Kell had muttered after, cheeks still burning from the king’s rebuke.
“Then why did you come?” Rhy had shot back.
“To make sure you didn’t break your neck.”
“You could have stopped me,” he’d said.
Kell had looked at him then with bald surprise. “Have you met you?”
But Rhy knew that secretly his brother liked their rooftop hideaway as much as he did. He saw the way Kell’s shoulders loosened and his hands relaxed whenever they were up here, that constant frown softening to something thoughtful.
He glanced at Kell now, and was surprised to find his brother staring back.
“Kers la?” he asked, slipping into Arnesian. They’d always spoken it, when they were alone, to keep their tongues fluent, their accents smooth. At least, that had been Rhy’s reason. Kell, he knew, preferred the common tongue.
“Nas ir,” said his brother, shaking his head. Nothing. “It’s just, you look well.”
“Of course I do,” quipped Rhy, adding, “So do you.”
Kell snorted. “Liar.”
Was it a lie? Rhy didn’t know. He studied his brother. He had always been able to read Kell, but he was starting to wonder if it was just that, growing up, Kell had always allowed himself to be read. But in their years apart, he’d changed, his face, once a pane of glass, now turned until the light bounced off instead of passing through. There was a coiled confidence in the way he held himself, even leaning back on one elbow, an edge that belonged more to a pirate than a prince. Not Kell, but Kay. As if he had to bury his past, their past, to live as he did now.
He’d managed to put on weight, his shoulders broadened from the months at sea. His pale skin, where it showed at his open collar and his wrists, had become a tapestry of scars. Rhy had felt every one, though his body never held the marks for more than a day or two. But those scars were nothing against the deeper wound. Even in the dark, Rhy could see the bruises beneath Kell’s eyes, the long-term toll of so much suffering.
And he knew better than to ask, but he must have been drunker than he thought, because the words came out anyway. “What does it feel like?”
And Kell must have been drunker than he seemed, because he answered honestly. “It feels like my heart is breaking in my chest. Like I’m coming undone.”
Rhy looked down at the bottle. “I would take it from you, if I could.”
“I know.”
“It isn’t right,” he muttered. “We are bound together. Everything that hurts you, should hurt me.”
“This pain lives somewhere else,” said Kell. “And I wouldn’t wish it on you. Besides,” he added with a grim smile, “someone once told me that pain is a reminder that we are alive.”
Rhy shook his head at the memory of those words, spoken at a time when he was trying to convince himself. “Sounds like a fool.”
“Or an optimist.”
“An arrogant prince,” said Rhy.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Kell with a smirk. “You were also stubborn. And vexing.”
Rhy felt the laughter bubble up inside his chest. And with it, the air between them loosened.
“Well,” said Kell, lifting the bottle of summer wine to his lips. “What have I missed?”
And so they traded stories, of the queen’s inventions, and the Grey Barron, and of Lila, and Alucard. Kell regaled Rhy with tales of life at sea, and Rhy told him of Ren’s animal menagerie and Kell smiled, and Rhy laughed, and for a little while, at least, it was easy to ignore the things they left unsaid. For a little while, at least, Kay was gone, and so was the king, and the two brothers drank and spoke of everything, and nothing.
* * *
Lila Bard stood over the world.
She ran her fingers down the coast of Arnes, skated her nails across the sea, splayed her hand over London, the tiny points of the palace spire pricking her palm. The model was massive, the land carved from a block of marble, the water made of stained glass. It was a wondrous thing, cities and port towns sculpted from colored stone. Tiny boats floated on panes of blue, or sat like matchsticks in their ports, and the glass of the Isle even turned red as it wound its way upriver from Tanek into London.
Lila took up a miniature ship and balanced it on the end of her finger, as across the room, Alucard drew two short glasses from a gilded cabinet, along with a bottle of wine.
The chamber was nearly as large as the king’s, or Kell’s, but where theirs were pale marble interrupted by gold silk and polished wood, Alucard’s retained the spirit of the Night Spire, dark-walled and cluttered with finery. There was no bed—no need, she supposed—but there was a large wooden desk, like the one he’d left in the captain’s quarters of his ship—now hers.
Only the ceiling belonged to the palace. Skeins of fabric billowed high overhead, unraveling into a gossamer sky, as they did in every chamber—only it was not sunrise, like Rhy’s, or dusk, like Kell’s, but the kind of night you found on open water, the blue almost black, the clouds lit by moon.
“I thought you didn’t miss your life at sea,” she mused, setting the tiny ship down in a port.
“It’s not that I don’t miss it,” explained Alucard, pouring the wine. “I’ve simply found something worth staying put for.” He joined her at the model’s edge and handed her a glass. “Compliments of the royal cellar.”
The wine inside was the color of pearls, and littered with little flecks of light, and when Lila drank, it tasted like moonlight. If moonlight could get you drunk. She held the glass up, studying the tiny bubbles that rose to the top.
“Tell me,” said Alucard, rounding the model, stopping on the other side so the empire lay between them. “What brings the captain back to London?”
“Oh, you didn’t hear? I need a ship.”
The color drained from his face. “What happened to the Spire?”
“You mean the Barron?” She shrugged. “Afraid I sunk it.”
He choked on his wine, looked at her in horror. “You didn’t.”
She shrugged, said nothing. The silence drew thick enough to cut. Until, at last, she cut him free. Her lips twitched, and Alucard collapsed back in his chair, the air rushing from his lungs.
“You’re not funny,” he muttered. “Why have you come back, then? Planning to go abroad?” He wasn’t referring to Faro or Vesk. He knew that whenever Lila returned to this London, she made a point of visiting the others.
The first time she went abroad, as Alucard put it, it was only because Kell had asked her to. It was in those early months, when he still thought his magic simply needed time to rest. She had gone in his stead, the last Antari with working power, first to Grey London, to make sure Osaron’s remains were still secure in the cellar of the Five Points (they were), and then to White London, to see what had grown in Holland’s wake (imagine her surprise to discover, of all things, a child queen).
As far as Kell knew, those had been her last excursions. But they weren’t. Over the last seven years, Lila had gone back again and again, despite having little love for one world, and a wealth of loathing for the other. Call it curiosity. Call it a desire to stretch her legs. Call it twenty-something years of living on guard. But Lila couldn’t seem to choose ignorance, didn’t believe it would ever equal bliss.
She’d only confided in Alucard when one day he’d broached the subject himself, asking if she would keep an eye on the other worlds. Arnes had enough enemies in its own, he’d said. The last thing it needed was another, knocking at the doors.
Now Lila shook her head.
“If you’re not here for the other worlds,” he said, “then what?”
She looked down into her glass. “Fair wine and decent company.”
“I knew it,” said her old captain with a grin. “I’m far more fun than Kell.”
“Without a doubt,” she said, but the humor was bleeding already from her voice.
Alucard leaned forward, bracing himself against the model cliffs. “What is it?”
Lila drained her glass, and set it down on a stretch of open sea. “Have you ever heard of a persalis?”
The look on his face said he hadn’t. So she told him: of Maris, and the thieves who made it aboard her ship, of the two who died, and the one who got away. And the prize that went with him.
Alucard listened, eyes storm-dark, chin resting on his palm, until she was done. “And you think this thief was bound for London?”
Lila chewed her cheek. “He was branded, beneath his clothes. Can you guess the mark?” She fluttered her fingers, and Alucard let out an oath.
“A hand.”
She nodded. “Since they’re intent on tearing down the throne, London seemed the likely place to start.” She rose, and rounded the model. “I don’t suppose you’ve found them yet.”
Alucard shook his head. “And if they have a persalis, it will only make it harder.”
“According to Maris, it was damaged in the taking.” As if damaged things could not be fixed. As if damaged did not still mean dangerous.
Alucard said nothing, his expression clouded with worry. Lila knew those thoughts. She’d had them, too. A weapon that could cut through space, the way Antari did. Only this door could be held open, and let a hundred killers through.
She reached out and rested a finger on one of the palace spires, its tip sharp enough to prick. “The palace is still warded, yes?”
“It is,” he said. “But I don’t know if those wards would hold against a door made inside the walls.”
“According to Maris,” she said, “there’s a ring-shaped key at the core of the persalis. Something that has to be placed, to show the door exactly where to open.”
If Alucard took heart from that news, he didn’t show it. He didn’t even seem to be listening. “I should have found them by now,” he muttered. “I have eyes all over the city.”
“And now you have mine, too,” she said, starting toward the door.
He looked up. “Where are you going?”
“To put them to good use.”
III
The last thief woke to the smell of something burning.
He didn’t remember getting back to the room he’d rented, didn’t remember collapsing, fully dressed, onto the bed, didn’t remember sinking through delirium into the dream.
That beautiful dream.
In it, he’d gone home, and his father hadn’t been mad, had simply folded him into his strong arms and agreed that youth was full of folly, said that he was forgiven; that he was, would always be, the merchant’s son.
And it was going so well, until the world shuddered back, and he was dragged into waking by the acrid scent of smoke. His mouth tasted like ash, and there was a horrible heat beneath his skin, and he had the disconcerting sense that he was burning alive, being eaten from the inside out by some unseen flame, and that, he thought, must be the source of the smell. Until he heard voices, low and muttering, and accompanied by the all-too-real crackle of flame chewing through wood. He dragged his eyes open, wishing still that he was somewhere else, and saw that he wasn’t alone, and his table was on fire.
It wasn’t a large fire, not yet, contained to the surface of the table, but a block of a man with lank pale hair and a face covered in scars was slowly feeding the merchant’s son’s few possessions to the hungry flame.
“See?” said the stranger, crunching the word between his teeth. “Told you that would wake him up.”
“A knife would have been faster,” said a second voice. It came from the woman who was balanced on the back of his chair, her hair shaved short on the sides and braided long on top. She wore a metal bracer on one forearm, and it caught the light of the growing blaze.
“Left your door open,” she said. “Someone could walk right in.”
Of course, someone had.
He didn’t know their names, but he knew what they were, and who they worked for. He’d seen them there, lurking like shadows against the wall, on the night he had been given his mission.
Now the woman tapped her fingers absently against the bracer, and as she did, the metal rippled like the surface of a pond. Across the room the pale-haired man tossed a shoe into the fire, which bellowed with unhappy smoke.
The merchant’s son tried to rise from his bed, only to feel his body refuse, his limbs leaden. “Put it out,” he croaked, wincing as the words raked his burning throat.
The man raised a scarred brow, and tossed the other shoe in.
“We waited,” said the woman, unbothered by the growing flame. “Down at the docks. You three were supposed to come to us. But you didn’t. We know, because we had to wait.”
“Not a nice night for waiting,” muttered the man, who was now tearing the pages from a journal.
“Please stop,” said the merchant’s son, head swimming as he forced himself to sit up. He tried to stand, but the bed was no longer a bed but a boat at sea, rocking beneath him. He sank down again, fought back the urge to retch.
“I hate waiting,” continued the woman. “It’s boring as shit. And I have to look at Calin there. Which is punishment enough. So I say to him, let’s go find them. And turns out, the other two never made it back. And here you are, having a nap.”
“If you ask me, Bex,” said Calin, “that’s pretty inconsiderate.”
The woman—Bex—stared at the man, eyes wide, and he frowned. “What?”
“I honestly didn’t think you knew any words that big.”
Calin turned on her, fists clenched, and for a second, he thought the two might kill each other instead of him. But she waved him away, her eyes still on the merchant’s son. They were the flat grey of unpolished steel.
“Where is it?” she asked. He didn’t answer. She leaned forward. “You came all the way back to London,” she said. “So you must have it.”
“I don’t—” he tried, and her expression darkened.
“Wrong answer.”
“No, I—” he started again, but his stomach heaved, and bile rose in his throat. He retched over the side of the bed. Whatever came up left his mouth tasting like ash and rot. He swallowed. “I don’t have it,” he managed, “but I did, and I will. It got broken, back on the ship. So I took it somewhere, to get fixed. She’ll have to bring it to me. I kept the key.” He clawed at his pockets, searching for the metal ring.
But it wasn’t there. It should have been. It had been.
Panic rolled through him, but he couldn’t think, not with the sickness and the fever and the fire, which was spreading now, licking up one wall, smoke clouding the ceiling. He coughed, searching for something, anything. All he found was the little black ticket, with the gold H printed on one side, and the number on the other. He held it out, hoping it would be enough. The woman sat forward and plucked it from his shaking fingers.
“Well, Bex,” said Calin, as he splashed the oil from a lantern into the growing blaze. “What do you think?”
“I think this is a fucking mess,” she said, pocketing the ticket and getting to her feet. She turned toward the door. “And you can have him.”
The merchant’s son squeezed his eyes shut.
He didn’t want to be a hero anymore.
He didn’t want to be a Hand.
He just wanted to go home.
“Nah,” said the man. “Waste of a good weapon.”
“Since when do you have standards?”
Black smoke plumed across the ceiling, and the two strangers chatted on about who was going to kill him. The man drew a coin, and told the woman to call it. He won, and she rolled her eyes, and the merchant’s son decided that he must be still asleep. This was all a horrible dream. He would wake up back at sea, sailing for the floating market. Or in the hull of a docked ship, in bed with a beautiful woman, their limbs still tangled, her fingers running through his hair. He must have drifted off. But he’d wake up.
He’d wake up.
The merchant’s son didn’t realize he was smiling until Bex shot him a strange look.
“What are you grinning at?” she said, as she turned her hand up, and the metal unfolded from her skin, re-forming into a shining spike.
“I’m still asleep,” he said, closing his eyes, sinking back against the pillow.
Her voice, when it reached him, was soft, and far away.
“Sure you are,” it said, and then he heard the metal whistle through the air, felt the brief, cold kiss of it against his throat.
He never woke up.
IV
There was a side to Kell few people ever saw.
It was like one of his coats, not the red one or the black one or any of the other sides he favored, but a shiny frock kept tucked away beneath so many turns that no one ever found it.
Except for Rhy.
It had always been a challenge, unwinding his brother.
Before—that was how Rhy thought of twenty-one years of life, as simply before; before Black London leaked into their world, before his parents died, before he became king—before, he’d drag Kell out into the city, under cover of night and common clothes, and ply him with drink until he found that rare and precious side. Until he stopped fighting so hard to hold on, and loosened his grip on the world. Until he let go. When that happened, the lines around Kell’s eyes—lines that had nothing to do with age, lines he’d had since he was five—would soften, and he would smile, and laugh, and Rhy would marvel at this other version of his brother, and mourn the fact it was so hard to draw him out.
Now, on the roof, that side was shining through.
The bottle in Rhy’s hand was long empty, and only a finger sloshed in the bottom of Kell’s, and though pain had always traveled louder than pleasure, they’d drunk enough that one’s light-headedness added to the other’s. Kell’s blue eye was bright, his free hand gesturing broadly as he recounted a story involving Lila Bard and a stolen ship that turned out to be carrying nothing but chickens. Which was made funnier by the fact that the Arnesian word for chicken—corsa—was so close to the word for swords—orsa: the only reason Bard had wanted aboard in the first place.
