The fragile threads of p.., p.44
The Fragile Threads of Power, page 44
The girl’s eyes had brightened when she said it.
Perhaps it was just the promise of a deal, or the challenge of the work, but Lila thought she caught a glint of steel in that gaze, just like the one that had drawn her to the stall. Her grip tightened on the knife, the cut along her hand still aching from the sacrifice she’d made to the queen.
Blood was a valuable thing. It anchored spells and strengthened curses. It made all magic stronger. According to Nadiya Loreni, it held countless secrets. And Lila had made her way through enough black markets in the past few years to know the value of that blood if it came from an Antari. Lila was glad she’d left the black eye back on the ship. She pretended to consider the merchant’s offer before returning the knife to the table.
“On second thought,” she said, “what fun is there, without a little risk?”
The merchant shrugged, but held her gaze. “If you change your mind…”
But Lila was already moving away from the stall, and the blades, and the fox-faced girl. She reached the far edge of the market, and turned right, away from the river and toward the shal, and Haskin’s.
Now all she needed was a pretense for visiting the shop. She patted her pockets, felt the familiar weight of her watch. Not her watch—the one Holland had found in her old rooms, along with Berras, the one he’d returned to her stained with blood, the one she’d given to Maris as payment years before—but a gift from her crew one summer festival, the surface engraved with a C. For Casero.
Captain.
She drew it out, ran a thumb over the silver shell before she clicked it open, listened to the steady, almost silent tick of seconds passing. And even though the hands inside were driven by a spell instead of cogs, it was easy to forget. Perhaps harder to break, she mused, but she was sure she could do it, was about to pry away the face when she saw the time, the minute hand slipping past the hour, both of them a breath off straight.
“Nonis ora,” she murmured.
Eleventh hour.
Her steps dragged to a stop. She’d assumed the time on the edge of the coin referred to night, but what if she’d been wrong? After all, the surest crimes were those done in daylight, right under the mark’s nose.
Lila turned, and headed for the nearest bridge.
VI
WHITE LONDON
Kosika leaned her elbows on the castle terrace.
Below, a hundred soldiers were going through their morning practice, the motions of battle broken down and ordered into movements. They reminded her of leaves, the way they bent and moved, the way they rose up and turned together, guided by an invisible wind, their charcoal armor turning them to shadows on the training ground.
As she watched, Kosika plucked at a strip of linen wrapped tight around her forearm, her skin still raw from yesterday’s tithe. And perhaps it was just her imagination, or the nature of the season—and there were seasons now, four of them, instead of the pale breath of change that used to mark the passing of the year—but today, the sky looked bluer, the leaves a more vivid shade of green. The sun was burning off the morning chill, and Kosika savored the warmth of it against her skin as a shout rose up from the training ground below.
The soldiers had finished their movements, and broken off to spar, those who could conjure paired with those who couldn’t, so each could learn how to best the other.
Kosika spotted Lark among them. He had grown a foot or more in the last few months, his narrow shoulders banded with new muscle. And while there were other fair-haired soldiers, his curls alone shone silver-white in the sun, making him look less like a boy of nearly eighteen and more like a struck match.
She watched him circle his partner, turning the sword in a lazy arc, fire licking down the blunted practice blade. The other man was twice his size, but Lark darted and dodged like flame itself, and in moments, the other soldier was stamping out a lick of fire on his forearm. As he did, Lark twisted around his sparring partner and came up behind him, resting the blade against his throat.
And then he looked up at Kosika, and flashed her a wicked, toothy grin. An infectious smile that made her smile, too. As if they had a secret—the only secret being that they had lived a life before this one. That they were thieves, had stolen their way into this castle.
“You’ve got a crush.”
Kosika jumped, fingers tensing on the terrace wall. Nasi had come up behind her.
“Are you sure you cannot bend the air?” asked the young queen. “I never hear you coming.”
Nasi shrugged. “It comes in handy, being quiet. The better to watch you swoon.”
Kosika crinkled her nose, even as she felt her cheeks burn. She was not swooning. She looked down, but he was gone again, a blur of motion.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, turning her back to the soldiers. “Lark is like a brother.”
Nasi’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Just as I am like a sister?”
“Exactly.”
The other girl drew closer then, until their fronts were pressed together. She ran teasing fingers down Kosika’s ribs, her waist, still flat and narrow as a child’s. “One day you will want more than the company of siblings.”
Kosika hissed between her teeth, and swatted Nasi’s hand away.
“I just don’t want you to be alone,” said Nasi, and Kosika wished that she could tell her friend she wasn’t.
She was never alone anymore.
Holland stood beside her, as he had all morning, as he had every day for nearly a year. Her constant shadow. Her blessed saint. The hand that guided everything.
* * *
ONE YEAR AGO
After Holland appeared to her in that first dream, she lived for sleep.
Kosika sat through the council meetings, and entertained the parade of citizens who came to ask her favor, and walked the castle grounds, and dined with the Vir, and waited for night, when she could fall into bed and go in search of Holland.
Sometimes she found him in his room.
Other times, she found him sitting on the throne, or in the courtyard, or on the steps.
Some nights they walked the castle, side by side, and some they stood before his own altar, and he told her the stories of his life as Serak had so many times—only he also told her things that Serak hadn’t, details of his life before he came to serve Vortalis.
And if it was strange that a dream could know things that she did not, well then, Kosika assumed it was her own imagination. But every night she dreamt of him, Holland seemed to grow more real. Until one night, as they stood before his altar, she found herself saying, “I wish you were here.”
Holland had been studying the statue. Now he looked down at her, perplexed. “I am.”
“But this is only a dream,” said Kosika.
He surveyed the alcove where they stood. “It may be a dream for you,” he said. “It is something else for me. A shadow world. A waiting place. I was here, long before you found me.”
The words rattled through her, shook loose a vicious hope that he was not merely a figment after all. That he and this were somehow real. That Kosika was in the presence not of a conjuring, but the Someday King. An impossible hope, and yet, what was impossible, in a world where magic rekindled and power passed like a sugar cube between hands, and her eye turned black, and she was queen?
“What are you then?” she asked.
The question elicited the faintest twitch at the edge of his mouth. In all the works of art, in all the statues and sketches and reliefs, Holland Vosijk never smiled. His brows drew together, his mouth always a firm line, his jaw clenched, as if biting back words. Or pain. Even this could hardly be called a smile—it was only the barest curve at the corner of his lips—but she felt bathed in light.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked, and Kosika shook her head. She never had, even when Lark tried to scare her with tales when they were young. She knew that magic came and went, and so did people. Here was here and gone was gone—but what, then, did that make Holland Vosijk?
He seemed to consider the question, though she didn’t ask aloud.
“I know what I was,” he said. “But not what I am. I bound myself to the magic of this world. And so, it seems, I am still here.” He studied his hands. “In a way. I have been here in this place between. And then you found me. The question is…” His gaze flicked back to her. “How did you find me now?”
Kosika said nothing, even as his eyes weighed down on her.
“Your power was mine once,” he ventured. “Perhaps it grows. Or perhaps you have done something…”
She flinched, and knew he saw the truth, in her face, or her mind. Of the day she had used his token to travel, the day her dreams of him had started. And it was as if he himself had forgotten, and now remembered, suddenly, the open box, the missing piece.
What have you done?
His anger rekindled, then, and all the altar candles with it.
“You should not have gone there, Kosika.” She took a step back, but he caught her by the shoulders. “Tell me you took nothing out.” His fingers tightened, until it hurt. The pain felt real. “Tell me.”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I swear.”
Holland let go as quickly as he’d grabbed her, the sudden absence of weight leaving her off-balance. He turned away from her, and the circle of altar lights, and leaned against the alcove wall, shadows washing over his weary face.
“There was nothing to take,” Kosika went on. “No signs of magic. Everything I saw was dead.” But as she said the word, she thought of Serak’s lantern, the wick hissing with smoke as the fire went out.
Magic does not die.
Fear sparked inside her then, fear that she had carried some piece of cursed magic from that place, like mud on the bottom of her shoes.
But Holland shook his head. “You would know.” His mouth was a small, bitter line. “The magic in that place is not subtle. It has a mind and a will of its own.” He studied the altar. “Trust me,” he muttered, and her mind went to the writings in his room.
“The ten days,” she said. “The ten days you vanished from the world. That is where you went.”
Holland did not look at her. “I would have done anything, to see our world restored. And so I did.”
The worthy ruler is the one who understands the price.…
“Black London is the source of all magic,” he said. “It is a wellspring. But every drop comes at a cost.”
He told her, then, what happened in the ten days after the Danes fell, and before he took the throne. How he’d been mortally wounded, forced into Black London. How he’d lain there, lifeblood leeching into the ruined soil. How he would have died, had he not met Osaron—Osaron, the shadow king, the center of the flame that burned the world to ash, now reduced to an ember in an empty world. How he carried that ember out in his own form, to rekindle the magic of their world.
What have I done? Only what I must. Carried a spark out of the darkness to light my candle. Sheltered it with my body. Knowing I would burn.
“In the end,” he said, “it cost me everything.” He looked to the window, open onto the summer night. “But it worked.”
“And Osaron?” she asked, hating the way the word snaked across her tongue.
Holland clenched his teeth. “Osaron wanted what all flames want. To spread unchecked. To burn.” He met her gaze. “But that fire, at least, has been put out. Extinguished with my own.”
And yet, thought Kosika, you are still here.
But she said nothing.
* * *
One night, Holland told her of the other Londons.
Not of the fallen world—he did not like to speak of it—but of the other two, whose tokens she’d seen in the box. The first, and farthest, where magic was forgotten, and the other, closer, where it burned so much brighter than their own. That world, which the Danes had coveted, and so many kings and queens before them, as if its magic was a prize that could be taken back.
He told her of Kell Maresh, the Antari who called that world home. Told her of Delilah Bard, the Antari from the world beyond, who thrived despite its absent magic.
He explained how to travel between the four worlds, spoke of them as if they were doors, not lining the same hall, but set one before another, so that to reach the farthest, she would have to pass through the one that sat between. He taught her these things, as if she had any desire to set foot beyond the boundaries of her own world. But she did not.
“I don’t see the point,” she told him. “Why should I care about the other worlds?”
And for the first time, she saw a shadow of displeasure cross Holland’s face. She flinched from it, afraid that she had angered him. But then the shadow passed, and he only sighed and said, “Perhaps you will not have to.”
But he told her no more stories that night.
And the next, he wasn’t there.
Kosika dreamed of the castle as usual, searched the halls, the throne room, and the tower altar, even traipsed barefoot across the courtyard. But she couldn’t find Holland. Panic bloomed behind her ribs as she called out for her saint, her king, voice echoing through the empty halls, and she began to fear that he was gone, gone for good, that whatever had possessed this past week had been nothing but a strange and fleeting vision. The waiting place, he’d called this space, and it felt empty now, hollow in a way it had never been, and as she searched, the panic grew, and grew, and by the time she woke, it had wound itself around her ribs, made it hard to breathe.
He was gone, she thought. Gone.
Grief wrapped itself around her as she sat up, flinging off the sheets, and—
There he was.
Holland stood at the window of her chamber. It was the first time she had dreamed of him in daylight, and he looked different. The sun caught the white of his hair, and the silver of his cloak and pin, light tracing his edges even as it poured through his body, as if he were a curtain.
“There you are,” she said, relief overcoming the strange sensation of waking from one dream into another. “I have been looking everywhere.”
Holland glanced over his shoulder. “I am right here.” He turned his attention back to the window. “Come and see.”
She rose, surprised by how cold the stone floor felt on her bare feet, her senses keen even though she was still dreaming. She joined Holland at the window, felt the almost weight of his hand as it came to rest on her shoulder, the other gesturing out and down to the courtyard below. The leaves were changing on the trees, the red and gold so bright it looked like they were burning.
A moment later the door flew open behind them, and Kosika turned, Holland’s touch falling away as Nasi barreled in. There was a sweet bun in her mouth, another on a plate.
“Oh good, you’re up,” she said.
Kosika realized, with some surprise, that she was indeed awake.
Nasi flopped down on the nearest chair. “What are you doing at the window?”
She looked back, sure that she would find the room behind her empty. But Holland was still there, one hand resting on the sill.
Not a dream.
“I have never been a dream,” he said evenly, and Kosika expected Nasi to startle at the sound of his voice, but the other girl didn’t seem to notice, sprawling across the sheets in the presence of the Summer Saint.
“She cannot see me.”
His voice rang so clearly, not in Kosika’s mind but through the room itself. As if he were standing there. As if—
“Again you doubt me,” said Holland, his voice taking on a darker note.
Kosika pressed her palms against her eyes. It was one thing to see someone in your dreams, in the in-between, the shadow realm of sleep, and quite another to see them standing in the living world, especially when no one else could. She was afraid then, of what he was, and wasn’t, afraid that she wasn’t blessed, but mad.
“What’s wrong?” asked Nasi. A moment later Kosika felt cool fingers brush her forehead, and looked up into her friend’s scarred face. She wanted to tell her—but what would she say? That she was seeing phantoms? That her dreams were following her out of sleep?
Holland stepped behind Nasi, his eyes dark, impatient.
“Is your faith in me so fragile? That it bows and breaks under the slightest breeze?”
“No,” said Kosika, quickly, only to realize she’d spoken aloud. Nasi was staring at her, confused. “I don’t feel well,” she said. “Could you fetch some tea?”
Nasi searched her face another moment, then kissed her temple, and said of course. The moment she was gone, Kosika turned to face the king.
“Why can’t she see you?”
“Because I did not choose Nasi,” he said. “I chose you.” Those words, like a hand smoothing rumpled sheets. Followed too quickly by the disappointment on his face. “Tell me, Kosika, did I choose wrong?”
“No,” she said, her voice tinged with desperation.
She wanted him to be real. She wanted to believe. And as if he knew her mind, Holland stepped closer.
“Hold out your hands,” he said, and she did, cupping them before her. To her surprise, he held out his own, and brought them to rest around hers, and she could almost feel them, like a breeze brushing her knuckles, grazing her skin.
“I chose you in the Silver Wood,” he said, and as he spoke, she felt a sudden flush of heat, a warmth that kindled at her very core, spreading through her chest and down her arms to the place where Holland’s fingers swallowed hers.
“I chose you,” he said, “to be my hands.”
Something began to happen in the room around them. Crumbs of dirt rose from the floor, where they had lodged between stones, and beads of moisture squeezed themselves out of the air, and warmth dragged itself from the sunlight in the window and all these fragments gathered in the space between her palms, and began to grow. Out of everything, and out of nothing, a seed, a sprout, a sapling that threw roots down between her fingers—and his fingers—and reached its narrow limbs to the ceiling and sky as it grew in the space between their bodies. It was a silver tree, its bark tender and pale.
